Eric picked up the travois again and dragged Sergeant Connelly along the stream bed until they were at last within sight of the river, but still hidden in the woods. It wouldn’t be dark for another hour, so he backtracked and did his best to obliterate signs of their passage, moving leaves over the skid marks and his own footprints in the most obvious places so that it would be difficult for anyone to follow the trail, especially in the dark. He was sure someone would find the bodies by tomorrow or the next day, but by then he planned to be many miles to the north on the Tennessee.
Stealing the canoe was relatively straightforward. Eric waited a full hour after nightfall, all the while watching the abandoned cabin and the surrounding yard through his night vision monocular until he was certain it was truly unoccupied. When he was satisfied that it was, he moved Sergeant Connelly to a concealed position on the riverbank and gave him the monocular and his M4, then he removed his boots and stripped to make swimming easier, wearing only his belt so that he could carry his knife and the Beretta. It was already chilly in the night air and rain, and the river was colder yet, but the cold was invigorating and gave him the burst of energy he needed as he was already lagging again after so many hours with so little sleep. He reached the far bank a hundred yards or so downstream due to the current and then began picking his way back up through the riverside undergrowth until he was at the edge of the yard, confident that Sergeant Connelly would cover him if anything went wrong.
Nothing was stirring though, so Eric bent low and crossed the yard to the canoe, checking it quickly to make sure the hull was sound before squatting under the yoke and lifting it off the sawhorses and onto his shoulders. With one hand to balance it by a thwart, he grabbed the two paddles with the other and returned to the edge of the yard and then descended the bank down to the river. Ten minutes later, he was pulling it up into the weeds close to where Sergeant Connelly waited, and in another five minutes was dressed and he and the sergeant were off, paddling silently and hugging the bank to keep to the shadows as they quickly put the next bend behind them.
For this particular purpose, the canoe might prove even better than the kayak, Eric thought, as they skimmed quietly along. It was certainly easier to get an injured man in and out of it, and the single-bladed paddles required a far smaller range of motion than a kayak paddle, making it easier to paddle without splashing and less likely that a wet blade would flash a reflection of light that could be seen from a distance. The canoe was faded forest green, so it blended in with the night almost as well as the matte black Klepper. Like the kayak, it could be easily carried far enough into the woods to hide it so that the two of them could stay out of sight every day while waiting for darkness to return.
Eric had no way of knowing if the owner of the cabin and the canoe was in the area, but from what he’d seen of the place, it looked doubtful anyone would miss it. Even so, when the bodies of the two hunters were found, along with whatever the rain left of the drag marks along the power line road, any searchers from the lake might deduce that the Tennessee River was their destination. Eric didn’t know how far downstream they might venture to look for them, but he intended to treat the entire journey like an E&E from deep behind enemy lines. He could afford to do no less after all that he’d seen, as unbelievable as it still was that such a thing could actually be happening here in the homeland.
If anyone from the lake thought to look for them on the Tennessee, they weren’t doing it tonight, though. Eric and Sergeant Connelly paddled a deserted river through a steady, cold rain until around midnight, when the precipitation finally tapered off and then stopped altogether. The wind was getting stronger out of the north though, and in some of the long, straight stretches of the big river, it made hard work of the paddling. By 0400, Eric decided he’d had enough. He was certain they’d covered a good fifteen miles, maybe closer to twenty, as they’d had some help from the lazy current despite fighting headwinds. He did his best to pick a place that looked as unlikely a landing spot as possible. The bank was steep, but once he’d hauled the sergeant up there and hidden the canoe in the woods at the top, it was as if they had effectively vanished from the river. Eric checked to be sure there was no road behind them, and then he practically collapsed with exhaustion, falling into a deep sleep for several hours until an annoying buzz in his ear became so persistent that he couldn’t ignore it. He opened his eyes to bright daylight and checked his watch: 0900. Sergeant Connelly was stirring too and was likewise listening to the sound Eric now knew was an outboard motor.
“I’ll check it out,” Eric said, grabbing his rifle. The boat was approaching from upriver, so Eric quickly moved into position near the top edge of the bank where he could watch from the concealment of the foliage as it went by. When it rounded the bend, he saw that it was an aluminum bass boat and that there were four men aboard, all of them scanning the banks and the river course ahead, clearly searching for something, as the man at the controls maintained a speed of barely 10 miles per hour. The one seated in the forward swivel fishing chair had a rifle in hand, and Eric saw more weapons leaning against one of the bench seats behind him. These men were clearly from the lake they’d left behind and seeing them now confirmed the wisdom of Eric’s decision to travel the river only at night. The boat continued on until it rounded the next bend and the sound of its outboard gradually faded away in the distance. How far they would go before turning back was a guess Eric wouldn’t bet on, but he figured they were surely looking for whoever attacked the compound. It seemed doubtful that the two bodies in the woods had been discovered already, so it was probably just a follow-up patrol, and they’d likely done the same thing yesterday.
Eric reported what he’d observed to Sergeant Connelly and then curled up on the ground to sleep some more, as he wasn’t nearly caught up on all the hours he’d lost. When he woke the next time, it wasn’t to a sound but rather a smell that made his stomach growl. When he opened his eyes, he was surprised to see bright afternoon sunlight filtering through the trees overhead. The rain was completely gone, and the skies had cleared up since morning. When he sat up, he saw Sergeant Connelly hunkered down over a small bed of glowing coals, the quartered pieces of the rabbit cooking directly on top of them.
“I’d say it’s about ready. I couldn’t risk more than a small twig fire and I had to hunt around to find enough dry branches, but I finally got some decent coals after that boat went back upriver a couple of hours ago.”
“Are you sure it was the same one? You couldn’t see it from here.”
“No, but it sounded like the same motor; running at about the same speed and everything. It would make sense that they’d head back for home in time to get there before night. Anyway, I knew the breeze would carry any smoke away from the direction of the river, so I decided to risk it. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. One rabbit’s not much, but it’ll make that last MRE go a little further.”
“It looks good to me, but yeah we’re going to have to keep our eyes open for more food. We’ve still got a lot of paddling to do.”
“Well, it’s more than 200 miles, probably about 220, counting the stretch on the Ohio, depending on how far we actually got last night. Fighting that headwind, it may not have been as far as we thought.”
“We could make more than 20 miles a night with plenty to eat, but that’s also assuming steady paddling without running into trouble or having to evade anyone. But even if we were making closer to 30 miles a night the trip would take a week. That’s unacceptable. We need a faster boat.”
“A faster boat is going to come with its own set of problems though, Branson. You know that. Anything with a motor can be heard coming from a long way off. At the same time, it’ll prevent us from hearing anything but our own engine noise. It’s one thing when you’ve got steel plate to duck behind and a Browning M2 mounted on the bow, but I don’t have to tell you how vulnerable an open skiff would be. I suggest we continue to keep a low profile for another night or two, and then think
about our options from there. Worst case, we’d have to paddle as far as the north end of Kentucky Lake. The locks and dam there are secure. We can radio the base from there and they’ll send a boat to pick us up.”
“It’s still going to take days though,” Eric said, “and those are days I don’t really have.”
“Then you should leave me here like I already said. Cut cross country on foot to the highway and see if you can find a ride of some kind. It might not be easy, but it’s possible and it could save you a lot of time.”
“I’m not leaving you behind after dragging your ass this far, Sergeant. We’ll keep paddling for now and see how it goes, but while we’re waiting for it to get dark, it would be great if you would fill me in with everything you know about the fucked-up situation in this country, starting with everything you know about what’s going on back there at that lake. You can’t tell me that’s just a bunch of local rednecks that decided they no longer wanted to pay their federal income taxes. I don’t see rural, independent-minded folks like that coming together to unanimously agree to an organized revolt without damned good reason. Am I wrong? Or are we dealing with something else here?”
By the time the two of them were on the river again, Eric had a somewhat better understanding of the big picture. The violence that had erupted nearly nationwide and almost simultaneously wasn’t nearly as random as it appeared at first glance. Although some of it was spontaneous and unplanned, Sergeant Connelly assured Eric that there were powerful people and organizations behind the slow build-up to this and that it had started years prior. Nothing was ever completely as it seemed, and the growing divide between citizens of a once united nation had been largely orchestrated by purposeful and carefully planned dissemination of propaganda designed to fuel discontent and anger. Like any fire, when more fuel was added, in this case in the form of seemingly random terror attacks, it spread and grew beyond the control of those who’d first started it. In the vacuum the chaos and confusion created, Sergeant Connelly said there was no shortage of charismatic opportunists able to quickly amass a following in their various locations by simply giving the hopeless something to believe, whether a righteous cause or the promise of greater freedom or easy wealth. So many had become recently dispossessed of the latter in particular that they were desperate enough to do anything to get it back.
“That started with a series of massive cyberattacks,” Sergeant Connelly said when Eric asked him what he knew of the economic crash that left so many without access to their financial assets. “Of course, it was part of the plan by those seeking to bring down the republic, and it originated both here and from abroad. Then there was the panic, and the run on the banks, with predictable results. When people realized they couldn’t get their hands on their cash, and that even if they could, it was essentially worthless, that’s when the real trouble started.”
“Just one chain reaction after another,” Eric said.
“Who would have thought it possible?”
“My father did, for one. He talked about it ever since my brother and I were little kids. He was a ’Nam vet. He insisted that we acquire the skills he thought we’d need some day. It was all fun and games back then—great stuff for a couple of boys growing up among the southern woods and waterways—but it led us both to the careers we chose, and now here we are. I guess the old man knew more than we ever gave him credit for.”
Eric went on to tell Sergeant Connelly more details of his story, like how he’d met Jonathan and some of the things that had happened in the parish where Keith was a deputy sheriff. “I wouldn’t let the old man come any farther. He wasn’t too happy about it, but he knew my brother had his hands full down there too, so there was plenty for him to do to make himself useful.”
“Interesting that you brought that kid from Florida all this way though, and that it worked out as well as it did.”
“Yeah, Jonathan is all right. Normally, I wouldn’t consider taking a civilian into the kind of danger we’ve already been through, and that no doubt lies ahead, but is he really safer anywhere else? Is anybody? Like the old man, he just wants to do something useful. I can’t blame him for that. And since he’s already saved my life and Shauna’s too, I’d say he’s earned the right to be on my team.”
Sergeant Connelly didn’t have anything much to tell Eric regarding what he might find farther west, other than the same generalizations Lieutenant Holton already provided. They would talk more in the coming days, and Eric knew he might remember something he was forgetting now, but regardless of all that he was glad he’d gotten to that compound in time to get Connelly out before it was too late. Those thugs had threatened to hang him if he didn’t give up the classified information they thought he had knowledge of and considering how they’d killed the rest of his crew, Eric had no doubt they would have carried it out soon enough. They were bent on expanding their control of the waterways and were trying to size up the opposition to the north, knowing that security resources were even thinner on the rivers than they were on the secondary roads. Eric still didn’t know exactly who they were, but he was glad he’d at least dealt them a small blow and left them guessing, unable to discern who was responsible and wondering what was going to happen next. He still didn’t like the idea of having to kill fellow American citizens like the two he and Sergeant Connelly left lying in the woods back there, but those men and the rest in their organization had given up their rights by their actions. Eric wouldn’t be here to see to it that they were stopped, but he felt confident that good men like Connelly would prevail in the end.
The winds out of the north continued to work against them most of the second night, but by the time Eric was thinking about their next daytime hideaway, he estimated they’d put another 25 miles behind them. With the skies clear again, they could better see what was ahead as they rounded each bend, but the banks of the river were dark and deserted for the most part. Twice, they’d crossed to the other side of the channel when passing riverside settlements that appeared to be occupied, but as far as they knew, no one was aware of the silent green canoe slipping downriver in the dark. But when they passed the mouth of a good-sized tributary, just inside of which was a dock with several motorboats tied up, Eric stopped paddling and let the canoe drift as he studied it through the monocular. It was 0500, and time to decide where to spend the day.
“That looks like it was some kind of guest fishing camp,” he whispered to Sergeant Connelly. “Those boats are numbered, and all have the same logo on the side. I’ll bet they’re rentals.”
“Yeah, but probably not now.”
“No, but one might be for sale for the right price.” They could both hear a generator running, so it was obvious that the cabin attached to the dock was occupied.
“Maybe, but I don’t have a penny to my name, as you can probably imagine considering how you found me. And even if you do, most people aren’t taking cash anymore.”
“I’ve got something way better than cash. I know it’s risky, but I think this is worth a try. Let’s paddle back upriver a couple hundred yards and wait for dawn. I’ll watch the place and see what’s going on and if I don’t see anything too shady looking, I’ll go see if they’ll talk. I think we’re far enough from that lake that we don’t have to worry that folks around here are affiliated with that bunch. But we won’t do it unless you agree. We’re in this together.”
“I trust you to make the right decision, Branson. You’ve done great so far and I’m lucky to be here. You’ve got more at stake than I do, so if this is what you want to do, let’s do it.”
Seven
“WHERE IN THE HELL did you get those?” Sergeant Connelly whispered when Eric showed him the Krugerrand coins he intended to offer in exchange for a boat.
“I came here prepared,” Eric said. “I didn’t know everything about what I was going to run into here, but I’d heard rumors of the currency problems. Besides, I’ve been dealing with this as long as I’ve been working in Europe, and it’s how I usua
lly get paid since I’ve been contracting there.”
“You made a good choice. I suppose gold is still pretty universal.”
“They’ve already come in handy, but of course their value is subjective now. I could care less about exchange rates though, as long as they buy me what I need at a price that seems fair, and right now, I need a faster boat.”
Eric had tied the canoe to some bushes at the water’s edge out of sight of the camp across the tributary channel. He’d helped Sergeant Connelly into position just before daylight and the two of them watched and waited, giving the occupants inside time to stir and hopefully show themselves before he approached them. The sergeant would cover him from his place of concealment with the M4 if things didn’t go well. It was less risky than both of them going in the canoe, and Eric thought a man alone would appear less threatening. He would carry the Beretta concealed under his shirt and leave the ordinary-looking hunting rifle and bow and arrows where they would be visible in the canoe. That way, he wouldn’t look like a totally unprepared fool out on a leisurely river jaunt.
Two men emerged from the camp house shortly after dawn, and it was apparent that they were getting ready to go fishing as they unhurriedly loaded tackle into one of the boats while sipping coffee from their stainless mugs. The two looked like they were probably locals, and likely were the owners of the fish camp, which had probably been out of business for months. Eric figured they were living off the river now, a not too difficult task for men with the know-how and the right equipment. When Eric paddled into their view, calling out first so as not to alarm them, he wasn’t really surprised when one drew a revolver from his belt and the other turned quickly to get something from the cabin.
Feral Nation Series Box Set 2 [Books 4-6] Page 6