Hostile Territory

by Paul Greci

  And that makes me think of my mom and dad. Are they being detained in Fairbanks, or did they slip off into the woods like these people did? I don’t care if they stay married or not, I just want them to be alive.

  “What makes different people do the things they do?” Brooke asks. “I mean, our case was kind of unique because we stumbled upon Sam and learned about the invasion, but other people, how did they decide what to do after the invasion?”

  I think about the militia we saw, and then the refugees fleeing. “I don’t know what I would’ve done. Part of it would depend on what was happening where I was. Sounds like some people were just plain captured and had no choice.”

  “I see the people leaving, and I want to go, too,” Brooke says. “Maybe that’s because I know I might die on this mission. Those people”—she points to the clearing where the refugees passed by—“they aren’t actively putting themselves in danger like we are.”

  “True,” I respond. “But they might if they were faced with the same situation as us; we were given a chance to make a difference.”

  “I felt like my life was just beginning when I went to Simon Lake.” Brooke pauses. “I was finally doing something independent from my sisters. Even though this whole wilderness thing isn’t my thing, I pushed myself to do it.”

  “That’s impressive,” I respond. “I—”

  Brooke interrupts me. “It’s not impressive compared to you, Josh. You push yourself with your running and other physical stuff all the time.”

  I shake my head. “What you’re doing is harder. You’re doing something new. I’ve been running for a long time and when I got to Simon Lake, I spent a lot of time running. If anything, I avoided doing anything new out there. You went way out of your comfort zone going to Simon Lake. I didn’t. I was just doing the same thing in a different place. I didn’t really realize that until now.”

  Brooke stretches her arms over her head and then nods. “But now we’re both out of our comfort zones.” She smiles, but it’s not a happy smile. It’s a we-share-this-intense-thing smile.

  CHAPTER 79

  I’VE GOT THE ROUTE FINDER in my hand, and we’re all staring at it. “If we keep getting pushed off our target”—I point at the red dot—“we might need to cover some ground in broad daylight.” The green dot, representing our location, has basically moved along the bottom of the screen. Instead of being closer to the red dot, it’s farther away.

  “I wonder if it’s possible to go off the screen?” Derrick asks.

  “That would be a poor design feature,” Shannon responds. “Maybe it adjusts the scale to keep us onscreen.”

  “Orienteering for dummies.” Derrick grins.

  We talk a little more and decide to cut across the meadow and take the direct route. I keep the route finder in the palm of my hand as I stride through the clearing. The sun has set so it’s about as dark as it’s going to get—dusky.

  I know once we get into the thicker forest on the other side, the going will be slower. But it’ll also be safer with more places to hide.

  When we hit the dense forest the mosquitoes immediately start swarming around us. Because of the special clothing and extra-strong repellent Sam gave us, they’re not biting, but I’m programmed to wave them away like all Alaskans are.

  I keep the arrow pointed at the red dot and take us through a thick patch of wild rose. The boots, combined with the clothing, provide a good barrier to the thousands of thorns we’re brushing up against.

  After a while the roses thin out, and now we’re in a mixed-birch-and-aspen forest with a scattering of large spruce trees, which means there are a lot fewer places to hide.

  We stop to drink some water and hear a bird trilling. Shannon tells us it’s a varied thrush.

  “Shouldn’t it be a constant thrush?” Derrick asks. “The song is the same over and over and over.”

  “Varied refers to its plumage, not its song,” Shannon explains. “They look similar to robins in size and shape, but they have more color variety. If you spot one, you’ll see what I mean.”

  We keep walking, and the varied thrush song grows fainter and fainter until it disappears. The giant spruce trees, birches, and aspens are replaced by a forest of small, scraggly spruce trees growing out of bumpy, soggy ground, but at least our green dot has moved off the edge of the route finder and is about a quarter of the way to the red dot.

  My boots sink into the swampy ground with every step. We walk and walk and walk. It seems like the route is taking us through the thickest part of the swamp. When I glance over my shoulder I see that I’ve pulled away from Derrick, Brooke, and Shannon, so I stop and wait. When they catch up, I pull a bag of peanuts out of my pack for all of us.

  Derrick takes a handful and says, “What’s with the miniature trees? The spruce back in the dry forest were huge.”

  “The trees in the swamp are black spruce. The trees in the dry forest were white spruce, and they’re always bigger,” I say.

  Shannon finishes chewing some peanuts and swallows. “Generally white spruce are significantly bigger than black spruce. But these trees around here”—she motions with her arm—“are particularly stunted, most likely because of low nutrient content in the soil.” She points to the ground. “There’s probably permafrost—frozen ground—under a thin layer of nutrient-poor soil.”

  “Black spruce must be tough trees,” Brooke says, “to survive harsh conditions.”

  We all nod in silence. I shove another handful of peanuts into my mouth and think about what Brooke and Shannon said. The tall white spruce appear strong, but they grow in ideal conditions and haven’t been subjected to poor soil or permafrost like the black spruce. We’re like the black spruce; we’re scraggly compared to an army of trained fighters, but we’ve been tested in some harsh conditions.

  But the harshest are yet to come.

  We walked into the daylight hours to make up for lost time due to the detours we had to make at the beginning of the trip. Dusk came and went, and now the sun is just breaking over the ridge for the start of a new day. Through the trees I catch my first glimpse of the lake.

  “We should lie low right here and wait till dusk,” I say.

  “That’s almost twenty hours.” Shannon takes off her pack. “Maybe we could inflate the boats, paddle the length of the lake to the outlet, and wait out the rest of the day there. That way, we can use the flat paddling on the lake to work out any kinks so we’ll be super efficient when dusk sets in.”

  I nod. “I could live with that.”

  “We should stay here until the sun sets.” Brooke takes off her pack. “We can’t just keep breaking Sam’s rules. He’s counting on us. What if Russian soldiers on patrol see us?”

  We all turn to Derrick. “Well, Frank,” Shannon says, “what say you?”

  Derrick yawns a big yawn. “Dudes, I like both ideas.”

  In the end, we compromise without having to do any random bottle-cap flipping. We agree to hike the quarter mile down to the lake and inflate the boats, but then wait until dusk to start paddling. We haven’t taken two steps when movement at the lake stops us in our tracks.

  CHAPTER 80

  “SOMETIMES I STILL THINK, NO way can this be real,” I say to Shannon as I study the lake through my binoculars. We’re on watch, peering down at the lake from a thick patch of spruce trees while Derrick and Brooke try to get some sleep. Mosquitoes buzz around us, but we’ve reapplied the insect repellent Sam gave us, so they’re not biting.

  “I stopped thinking that after Sam’s camp was bombed.” Shannon sets her binoculars down. “We may have to totally avoid the lake.”

  “That would slow us down more,” I say. “And we’re probably already taking more time than Sam thought we would because of all the people we’ve had to avoid.”

  “The other teams might be running into similar problems.” Shannon waves her hand in front of her face to disperse the mosquitoes even though they aren’t biting. “Maybe Sam accounted for having
to avoid obstacles in his time estimate.”

  “It might take us from dusk to dawn to hike to the far end of the lake instead of paddling along the shore.” I shift my legs because they’re starting to tighten up. “I mean, who are those people going to tell if they spot us? We’re in the middle of nowhere. I doubt they even know we’ve been invaded.”

  One red canoe and one green canoe. That’s what we’ve seen so far in the partial view of the lake through the trees. Do those people live in the wilderness? Or are they on a trip? Are they going to float down the creek and then down the river like we’re planning to? But if they float down the river and they don’t know about the Russians, they could be surprised and gunned down. Plus, if the Russians spot them, it’ll put them on alert and make it harder for us to carry out our mission, which would make it more likely that the United States will nuke Alaska.

  When I share all this with Shannon, she swallows and says, “No matter what it takes, we’ve got to stop them from reaching the bridge.”

  I creep back to the tent, which is a couple hundred feet farther from the lake than our lookout spot, and tell Derrick and Brooke about our fear that the people on the lake will head down the river.

  “We can’t all go down there and confront them,” Derrick says, “because if it doesn’t work out, like if they turn out to be crazed murderers, or if they’re Russian soldiers undercover, then we’ll all be captured or killed, and we’ll have no chance of pulling off this mission.”

  Brooke sticks her head out of the tent. “If anyone goes to talk to them, we should all go. The more of us there are, the less chance we have of being overpowered.”

  Derrick turns to Brooke. “That’s a smart move if it works, but a dumb one if it doesn’t.” Then he shrugs. “I guess you could make the same argument for my idea.”

  “Sounds like we all agree that we need to do something,” I say. “We—”

  Brooke cuts in. “We need to beat them to the bridge.”

  Derrick and Brooke put their shoes on, and we all go sit with Shannon at the watch point.

  “I think it’s more a question of when they leave, not if.” Shannon motions toward the lake. “As far as I can tell, there’s two of them and they’re camping. Even if someone was supposed to fly into the lake and pick them up, we know that’s not happening now, so they’ll have to paddle out.”

  “We should leave,” Brooke says. Then she repeats her argument about how beating them to the bridge will solve our problem.

  But then I come up with a different plan, which basically puts us all at more risk than the ideas offered up so far. But sometimes you have to risk big in order to have any chance of succeeding. And in our case, succeeding could mean the difference between saving Alaska and having it nuked by the United States.

  CHAPTER 81

  STAY HERE UNTIL HELP ARRIVES, or you will die. United States Government.

  I’ve written this in big blocky print on a page that I’ve torn out of my journal. I’ve put the note into a ziplock bag that used to have peanuts in it, and I’ve stuck it inside one of my neoprene booties so the edge of the bag is sticking out just enough that I’ll be able to grab it easily. The last part—United States Government—was Derrick’s idea to make it seem official.

  “You ready, Frogman?” Derrick grins and holds up a flipper, but I can tell he’s nervous. Even though he’s a stronger swimmer than I am, I can see his body quivering a little bit. We’ve got our dry suits on. At this point, there’s nothing stopping us but ourselves.

  I pick up my flippers. A half mile swim across—that’s Derrick’s best guess. For a long-distance runner, a half mile doesn’t sound like much, but when I stare out across the water little shivers run up my spine. When you run, you can stop anywhere you want, and your feet are on the ground, but that’s obviously not the case when you’re swimming across a frigid lake. We don’t have life vests, but, according to Sam, our dry suits have enough built-in flotation to keep us at the surface.

  Brooke and Shannon took off an hour ago, making their way as silently as possible around the lakeshore to the left with the goal of positioning themselves in the woods behind the people’s camp. Derrick and I have all four kayaks assembled and all our gear stowed in them. The kayaks are hidden in the brush close to the water, across the lake from the camp we’re about to invade. Not only will Derrick and I have to swim to their camp and then do our part of the plan, we’ll have to swim back, retrieve the kayaks and gear, and then each paddle one while towing another until we meet up with Shannon and Brooke, who hopefully won’t have gotten caught, even though their part of the plan is to draw attention to themselves to the point that the people in camp pursue them through the woods for a while.

  Derrick and I walk into the lake and sit down in the water like Sam told us to do. I fit one flipper over my neoprene bootie and pull until it’s halfway on. Then I grip its heel and yank it with both hands, and it stretches around my heel in a tight fit, like a snake constricting a small animal.

  By the time I’m done getting both flippers on, I notice my dry suit is filled with air and it’s like I’m in a giant balloon with my head sticking out of it.

  I turn and look at Derrick, and he’s in the same predicament.

  “Use your hand,” Derrick says as he sticks his hand down his tight-fitting neck cuff.

  Then I remember Sam telling us that we’d need to pull the neck cuff away from our skin to let the pressure equalize; otherwise, we’d be floating, helpless, like rubber duckies. I work my fingers under the neck cuff and create some space, and the ballooned-up air escapes. I keep the space open until I feel the suit pressing against me.

  Now there’s really nothing stopping us from swimming across, and I follow Derrick as he silently strokes away from the shallows. He’s taller than me and a better swimmer, so I work hard to keep up with him. We’re swimming breaststroke with our arms to keep our profile as low in the water as possible, but kicking like we’re doing the crawl stroke to take advantage of having flippers.

  We’re aiming for the two canoes tied off on trees and floating in the shallows in front of their camp. Besides leaving them a note telling them to stay, we need to destroy their method of transportation in case they decide to ignore our warning.

  CHAPTER 82

  “TWO MORE MINUTES,” DERRICK WHISPERS.

  I nod. My arms are mush, but I just keep stroking forward. The red and green of the canoes are a blur in front of me. I hope Shannon and Brooke can see us so they’ll know when to start their distraction.

  My legs are tight, like I’ve just completed a hard run, except I’m not even halfway done with this job. Even though I’m wearing the dry suit, I’m starting to cool down. There isn’t any ice in the water, but it sure feels like there is. If I had worn more clothing under the dry suit, I wouldn’t be as cold, but Derrick thought we’d be too hot with all the swimming we’d be doing.

  My feet hit the bottom and I want to stand up, but we need to stay as low as possible so I keep kicking. I see Derrick bump up against one of the canoes, and a minute later I’m next to him, breathing hard.

  “Listen,” Derrick whispers.

  I take a couple of controlled breaths and focus on hearing whatever there is to hear. Voices. Too faint to make out words. I reach down and pull the ziplock bag with the note in it out of my neoprene bootie and hold it in my hand.

  “I’m going to peek over the canoe,” Derrick whispers.

  “Okay.” I scrunch my toes up and down because they’re starting to go numb. I hope we don’t have to wait too long.

  “I see two people,” Derrick whispers. “They’re staring into the forest.” Derrick holds up his hand. “They’re walking away from camp into the forest. Go.”

  I creep around the green canoe, which is in knee-deep water, and extend my arm toward the shore and place the note on the shoreline. Then I crawl on my belly, pulling myself with my forearms. I catch a glimpse of Derrick doing the same thing, working his way toward the
rope tying off the red canoe.

  If only we’d thought to bring a knife, we could’ve cut the ropes and been on our way. At the tree anchoring the green canoe, I untie the rope and crawl back to the water. I wish I could stay on shore and just run the perimeter of the lake back to the kayaks, but we’ve got a job to do. Derrick’s got the rope for the red canoe freed up, and he’s crawling back to the shore when I hear shouts.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” one voice yells.

  “Stop right there!” a second voice shouts.

  I shove the green canoe into deeper water and start kicking. I know Derrick is scrambling toward the shore.

  “Son of a bitch,” the first voice yells. “Are you crazy?”

  “Don’t let them take the red boat!” the second voice yells. “We’ll be stranded.”

  “Crazy bastards!” the first voice yells.

  I hear splashing noises.

  Derrick yells, “Josh.”

  I turn and see Derrick struggling in waist-deep water with a man about as big as he is. I shove the green canoe away from shore and kick toward Derrick and the man, who are locked in a wrestling match for control of the red canoe.

  The man is trying to hold on to the canoe and Derrick at the same time, and Derrick is trying to shove the canoe out into deeper water, and he’s saying, “You don’t understand. We’re trying to help you. We—”

  And that’s when I barrel into the man at chest height and bring my fist down hard on the arm that’s holding Derrick hostage. The other man is ten feet away and closing fast.

  Derrick wrestles the canoe free and starts kicking away from shore, pushing the canoe in front of him.

  I jump backward and start kicking my way toward the green canoe I’ve abandoned.

  Now I can hear splashes behind me.

  “We can’t let them get away,” the second voice shouts.