by Trevor Scott
They all went inside and sat around the dining room table, Vic pouring thick, black coffee for Lori and Jake and a glass of water for the professor. Jake had determined early on that he could use his brother’s help but he also wanted to insulate him against any potential danger. He told Vic a quick story about the professor witnessing a murder in Oregon, which was true, and how the killer was now trying to hunt him down to make sure he didn’t testify against them. Jake didn’t mention the fact that he had killed the killer himself the night before outside of Whitefish. He had called that incident in to the Whitefish Police on the drive down to Missoula a few hours ago at one of the last public phone booths in America. There was no way Jake would let Lori get wrapped up in a shooting incident in rural Montana. She didn’t need that scrutiny.
“What can I do for you, Jake?” his brother asked him. “Sounds like he needs police protection.”
Jake considered that. He could give his brother a little more information. Put out a feeler. “They tried that in Whitefish.”
Vic cast his gaze upon Professor Tramil. “You were part of that?”
Tramil nodded his head. “The cops were shot right in front of me.”
Shifting back toward his brother, Vic said, “They haven’t reported this in the media, but I understand a man was kidnapped during that shooting. That was this man?”
“Yeah, little brother. That was him. And if they’ll shoot a couple of cops, they’ll do just about anything to make him dead.”
Vic sat with his mouth open, speechless for a moment as he thought about the situation. “Okay, I’m confused. How in the hell did you and Lori get involved with this?”
Jake said nothing.
“And maybe more importantly, how did you find this man when the local police, the Flathead County Sheriff’s department, the FBI, and the Montana Highway Patrol failed to do so?”
Jake shrugged. “You know what I used to do, Vic.”
His brother leaned across the table. “Are you back with them?”
“No. But just because I’m retired doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten everything I learned.”
Vic’s mind was reeling. Jake remembered his brother’s little tells. When he did math in his head, or considered a complex problem, his eyes would gaze upward and his lips would move, as if he were speaking the thoughts to himself. He was a terrible poker player.
“But,” Vic started and cocked his head to the right, “what do you two have to do with a man in Oregon witnessing a murder?”
Okay, Jake’s brother had a damn good point. “Let’s just say I was hired by a concerned interest. I can’t say who did so. You understand. Just like you have attorney client privilege, I have similar respect with my private consulting firm.”
“The law doesn’t see it that way, Jake.”
They would get nowhere if he tried to argue the law with his brother, a subject he knew intimately and which had no real basis of understanding for Jake. When he worked for the Agency overseas, he rarely had to worry about what was legal. Ethics were debated from time to time, but the mission was everything. He let the lawyers worry about the details. He just tried to stay alive.
“I hear you, brother,” Jake said. “But when bullets start flying, I don’t have the option to look through a law book for precedence. I have to react. Better yet, I have to be proactive. Which is why I’m here.” He slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a twenty dollar bill, which he handed to his brother.
“What’s this for?” Vic asked.
“A retainer.”
“Really? A twenty? That won’t buy me a box of pens.”
Jake shrugged. “Call it the family discount.” He looked around the room at all the nice things his brother owned, from the high end dining room oak table they sat at to the original artwork on the walls. “I’ll get you more when I need you. But right now I need my cash. Speaking of which. . .”
“Seriously? You came here for money? I thought you made a crap-load of cash on your last case in Europe.”
“Well, a few cases ago,” Jake corrected. “I didn’t really make anything off my last two cases, except to stay alive. I’ll pay you back, brother. You know I’m good for it. It’s just that America has screwed up laws on cash. You can only pull so much each day, and then you can only travel with a certain amount.” In reality Jake didn’t need anything from his brother, but he wanted his brother to feel needed by his big brother. “Never mind, Vic. I’ll get the cash. And that’s not why I came here. I need to stash our friend in a safe location.”
“You want him to stay here with me?” Vic looked at the professor, who seemed a bit disturbed by that idea as well.
“No, Vic. But he might need you to bring him some provisions.”
“Provisions? What’s he going to be, some mountain man trapper?”
Jake smiled. “That’s right. And only you know where he’ll be.”
“Your cabin in the Bitterroots? Jesus, Jake. I don’t even know if I can find that. I haven’t been there since we were kids. There’s got to be ten feet of snow up there right now.”
“That’s right. No phone. No cell service. No internet. No television.”
“No electricity,” Vic reminded his brother.
“It has a generator with enough gas to run for a month, which powers up the battery packs. But I need you to know he’s there in case anything happens to me.”
The congresswoman’s eyes suddenly shot toward Jake and she said, “What do you have planned, Jake?”
“I need to find the people who want. . .our friend dead.”
“But you already. . .” She stopped herself and bit her lower lip.
Vic chimed in. “Why can’t you leave this to law enforcement?”
“Listen,” Jake said, “I have all the respect in the world for the police. But they can’t be everywhere at all times. That’s why we need armed citizens. We have to use our God-given right to self protection.” He was preaching to the choir here. His brother was well known in the state of Montana for defending an individual’s right to carry concealed firearms. Same was true of the congresswoman, who had an A-plus rating by the National Rifle Association. The only one he wasn’t sure about was the good professor, who hailed from one of the most liberal states in America.
His brother Vic raised his hands as if in surrender. “I agree, Jake. I understand the concept in the abstract. I’m just trying to discern how this matters to our current situation.”
He didn’t really have time for this discussion. Jake needed to stash the professor, along with enough provisions to last him a couple of weeks. And that wouldn’t be easy with the amount of snow on the ground. He also didn’t know how long those who were after them would take to realize they were not following him.
Eventually he convinced his brother to quit asking questions and just do as his big brother asked. Vic would drive up to Jake’s cabin in the Bitterroot Mountains in one week to check on the professor and bring him supplies. Jake gave his brother the GPS coordinates.
With that behind them, Jake said goodbye to his brother and thanked him for the coffee and conversation.
Driving down the hill toward downtown Missoula, Jake asked Lori, “Where do you want me to drop you off?”
She looked somewhat hurt. “I thought I would go with you up into the mountains.”
“No, that’s not a good idea,” Jake said. “It’s better if you have plausible deniability from now on.”
“And what about the man you shot up in Whitefish? I was with you there.”
He wasn’t sure what she was getting at. Was she trying to use leverage against him? Or was she simply trying to say she was already involved? “That was self defense,” Jake assured her.
“Yeah, but we still left the scene. We should have called it in immediately.”
“Exigent circumstances,” he said.
She laughed. “Now you’re trying to explain the law to me? Exigent circumstances is what cops use to kick in doors when they don’t
have a warrant and they think they hear someone scream inside.”
“That sounds like a liberal interpretation.”
“Hey,” came a voice from the back seat. The good professor. “Would you two just have sex and get it over with?”
That shut the both of them up. Jake tightened his grip on the steering wheel. He had to admit that he was quite attracted to the congresswoman from Montana. Who wouldn’t be? But he also didn’t want to place her in any more danger.
“What?” Lori finally said. “We’re just discussing the finer points of the law.”
“Right,” Tramil said, leaning forward in his seat. “And the bad guys are just chasing me because I have a new Lego design.”
Silence all around.
Jake gave in first. After all, he was just bringing this man to a safe location before he regrouped to search for those who wanted to do him harm—or at least steal his work. “All right,” Jake said. “But those clothes won’t work up in the snowy high country.”
“Are you taking me shopping, Mister Jake Adams?” Lori asked enthusiastically.
“No. I’m guessing everyone in town knows you. I’ll shop for you and the professor. But first I need to make a stop at my storage unit.” He turned and headed toward the south side of town. There was a big outdoors store on the way out of town, and his storage locker a mile down the road from that. He had set this locker up years ago, but he also had similar storage units in Austria and a couple other countries, along with bank accounts in safe havens in four countries.
16
Portland, Oregon
Alex Yaroslav handed the driver cash and then stepped out of the taxi in front of Union Station, a large stone structure in the city’s Old Town Chinatown section along the Willamette River. Glancing up at the clock tower, he saw it was a couple minutes after ten, and he had only a few minutes until the Amtrak train, the Empire Builder, would arrive at the station. Assuming the train was on time, which he knew from experience was rarely the case.
He and his associate, Danko Boskovic, had decided to travel from the airport to the train station in different taxis. Alex suspected Danko was already inside somewhere, setting up the perfect intercept point. But he didn’t like this one bit. Neither of them had a weapon, having depended on airlines for their travel. Eventually Alex knew he would need to find a few guns, or at least a knife. For now, though, they would have to depend on their own strength and their training to fight by hand. This could be a problem, considering what they knew about Jake Adams. Based on their intel, Adams was a dangerous man. Their young friend Bogden had found that out himself in Montana.
Inside the terminal only a few people wandered about the structure, which would be considered old in this country but a new building in his own. To Alex it looked like the perfect place for Portland’s homeless to find warmth and get out of the frequent cold rains of winter.
It wasn’t hard to find Danko. His bald head lumped over the top of an Oregonian newspaper, which he lowered slightly to reveal his eyes. These little black orbs shifted to his left at a Portland Police Bureau officer talking with a disheveled man in dirty clothes with a backpack over both shoulders. The scruffy homeless man was being summarily escorted out of the building before the tourists could disembark and get an immediate negative impression of their city.
Alex found a rack of brochures against one wall and watched the policeman in the reflection of a window as he pretended to read a pamphlet on the nearby Chinese Gardens. In a few moments the area was clear of miscreants and available for passengers to disembark without panhandling.
Alex’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he checked the incoming text message. It was from Milena telling him that the train should be sliding into the terminal at this time. It was also at that very moment he heard the train and then saw it slowly slide by the windows outside.
He turned and saw Danko still behind his newspaper. Alex nodded his head at him, meaning get up and pretend to look for a friend or relative getting off the train. Danko did just that, leaving the paper behind on the wooden bench.
Now he would need to contact Milena directly and have her guide them to the transmitter. He called her on his cell phone and waited.
She answered and started talking in their language.
Alex interrupted her. “Speak English,” he said. “We stick out too much otherwise.”
“Fine,” Milena said. “Your transmitter is working fine and on the move. Doesn’t seem to be waiting for the luggage, so they must have only carry-on.”
“That makes sense,” Alex said, his eyes scanning the door for Adams and the scientist. “Adams would have only his pack that he had in Washington. Where are they now?”
“Inside the terminal,” she said. “It says he’s inside the terminal.”
Alex shifted his eyes toward his partner, Danko, who was standing at the edge of the door. His shoulders shrugged slightly. The plan was to have him come up behind the men while Alex confronted them directly. But there was only a young man with a backpack over his shoulders, much like the homeless man only less scruffy. Other than him, there was only a young woman with a backpack almost as big as her and an old man who shuffled quickly toward a real bathroom.
“Where is it now?” Alex asked her.
“Looks like it’s going out the front door,” she answered.
Which is exactly where the young man was going.
Damn it. They had been duped.
Alex said, “Adams dropped it onto someone else.” But where and when did he do so? They would have to wait and watch everyone get off the train to be sure. He hung up with Milena and watched each person depart the train. As each person walked past him, it became clear that Adams had pulled off a grand deception from way back in Montana.
Bitterroot Mountains, Montana
The three of them had traveled for a couple of hours south of Missoula after first picking up some provisions and Jake Adams stopping at his rental storage unit. Snow had crusted over on the road, leaving washboard-like strips of ice, only parallel, which seemed to pull the SUV nearly off the road in one direction or the other. Snow plows had actually made conditions worse. From US Highway 93, which ran from British Columbia to Phoenix, they had gotten off on a county road, then a forest service dirt track, until they reached a dead end, gated with a warning that they were leaving forest service land and entering private property. Of course with two feet of snow covering the road beyond the gate, it wasn’t like anyone without snow shoes, cross country skis or a snowmobile would be traveling beyond Jake’s metal barrier.
This land had been in Jake’s family on his mother’s side since before Montana statehood in 1889. Officially it was still in Jake’s mother’s maiden name, but he was really the only family member still interested in the property. It was just too isolated for his brother or sister. The very reason Jake liked the place. But he had not been there himself in the winter in a number of years. Why? From the gate to the cabin it was two miles, with a rise of over a thousand feet of elevation.
They got out of the SUV and Professor James Tramil took in a deep breath of cold, fresh air. “This is fantastic, Jake. You own this property?”
Opening the back of the SUV, Jake said, “It’s been in my family for more than a hundred years. The Forest Service has been trying to get us to swap land with them for decades. But we’ve been here longer than there’s been a Forest Service.”
Lori zipped up her jacket. “I think a cold front is moving in from Canada.”
Jake handed the professor a pair of new lightweight snowshoes they had just purchased for him in Missoula. “You ever use these?”
“Yeah,” Tramil said. “I grew up in Marquette, Michigan. But the kind we used back then were those long wooden contraptions. I’ll bet I could run with these on.”
“Let’s hope you don’t have to,” Jake said. “We’ll be going well over eight thousand feet by the time we reach the cabin.” Then he turned to Lori. “You might want to wait here.”
“I forgot how much snow would be up here, Lori. It’s two miles up the road, uphill the whole way.”
“And downhill all the way back,” she said. “I can keep up.”
He looked her up and down and had to admit she was in very good shape. “All right.” He pulled a backpack from the back and threw it at the congresswoman, who caught it and almost fell over. “We can use the extra pack mule.”
“Great. I’ve gone from congresswoman to jackass in just a few days.”
Jake started to say something, but she gave him a wicked glare and he held back his comment.
In a few minutes of putting on snow shoes, backpacks and adjusting clothing, the three of them then headed around the gate and up the narrow road.
It took them two hours to travel the two miles through some of the deepest snow Jake had ever traversed. Tramil had kept up with Jake’s pace, but Lori had fallen behind many times, mostly because her legs were much shorter than either of the men, so she had to blaze her own trail half the time instead of simply falling into Jake’s snowshoe indentions.
Checking his watch as they got to the outside of the cabin, Jake wasn’t pleased with the time. It was already two p.m. It would be nearly dark by the time he and Lori got back to the SUV, and it was never a good idea to get caught out in the dark in the Montana mountains during the winter.
“Let’s go,” Jake said. “We’ve gotta hurry. Lori was right. Looks like a cold front is heading our way. And I’ve got to get the good professor set up before I leave.”
“Just point me in the right direction, Jake,” Tramil said, “and I’ll be fine.” He pointed at the stack of wood under the porch that ran the length of the cabin. Covered with a blue tarp, it was dry and seasoned.
“All right,” Jake said. “Lori, why don’t you head inside with your food pack and then take a rest. It will be easier going on the way down the mountain, but still not like a walk in a DC park.”