Radio Free Vermont

by Bill McKibben

  “Hey,” the guard shouted, and then he grabbed his rifle—but he hesitated. He’d doubtless been told, thought Vern, that this was where the Olympians trained; you wouldn’t want to shoot an athlete. He could hear the guard yelling into a radio instead. They all could hear him—and the pace picked up, still relaxed enough to be efficient, but now Vern could really feel his heart start to pound.

  “You okay, Coach?” asked Gardner over his shoulder.

  “Of course I am,” said Vern, who would have much sooner suffered a massive coronary than suggest slowing the pace. “Just a little out of training.”

  The road had been plowed sometime during the night, and snowbanks hemmed them in on either side. Over the pounding of his heart, Vern could hear the whine of snowmobiles starting not far ahead. “As soon as you can see those sleds, split up and take them on a chase,” he said, straining so they wouldn’t hear him pant. “I’m hiding behind that shed and hoping the snowstorm will keep them from counting.” He jumped the snowbank, and glided to a stop beside a small outbuilding in a little grove of red pines.

  Through the scrim of falling, blowing flakes, he could see the six men powering up the road, and he could see the snowmobiles roaring down the road. He strained to count them: four machines, damn. The line of skiers began to split: Mike and Mike jumped the bank and headed left, toward the top of the biathlon course. Steve and Replay went right, headed toward a beech woods where the brown leaves still hung in tatters. Burke and Gardner just reversed course, plunging back down the road till they were past his shed, then hanging a left out across the open field. Two of the black snow machines followed them, one each on the other pairs, and now Vern could see that there were two men on each of the sleds, in black uniforms with helmets. No rifles strapped to their backs, but he was pretty confident there were handguns in easy reach, and they were gaining fast.

  No time to worry, he thought. He skied through the deep snow and then back out onto the main track, racing now as hard as he could. It didn’t look hard—it never did, which is why when they showed the Winter Olympics all you got was about forty seconds of Nordic skiing for every six hours of ice dancing. But at full speed there was no more aerobic activity on earth: arms and legs both cranking hard, stomach muscles flexing with every pole plant. The snowmobiles had made the track harder, faster; he hadn’t raced in many years, but he could feel himself redlining as he crested the hill with the barracks appearing out of the snow in front of him.

  Remember, he told himself, pace yourself coming into the range. He wasn’t going to have to shoot, but he would definitely need to think—he slowed a little over the last hundred yards, letting his heart rate fall, and he slid to a stop by the fire escape on the west end of the building. He pulled off his skis, and slid Trance’s from the pack straps, sticking both pairs tail-end down in the snowbank.

  The fire escape ran straight to the ground—this wasn’t like the city, where they were worried about thieves—and he trotted up two flights. The door he wanted was, as expected, locked. So he climbed over the railing of the fire escape, aiming for the short leap to the nearest window. The sill was just as he’d remembered, a good eight inches wide. But the five-foot jump looked longer than it had when he’d done it dozens of times in his youth, this being the way young biathletes snuck in and out of their training camp to drink beer. It’s true that there was a good eighteen inches of fresh snow on the ground, but it was also true that the ground was twenty feet below, and that bones of his vintage tended to be brittle. He hesitated, and then heard the snarl of the snow machines in the distance, and a shot. Compared to the chance those guys were taking . . .

  He leaped, and landed on both feet on the sill, grabbing the top of the window as his ski boots slid. It wasn’t exactly stealthy, he thought. If anyone was actually in the room, they were looking out at a green spandex torso splayed across the center of the pane, almost like those cardboard targets the FBI practiced on in every TV movie he’d ever watched. He clung there a moment, catching his breath. He took the fact that nobody shot him as a good sign, and cautiously lowered his head to look inside. And there was Trance, giggling.

  She pointed to her feet to show they were cuffed to a chair, but then mimed lifting the window. Vern did, and found it unlocked. He slipped inside as quietly as he could, closed it behind him, and then turned around to give Trance a hug.

  “Thought you might show up,” she said. “Actually, I thought you might send someone younger.”

  “Everyone younger is out playing hide-and-go-seek with unpleasant men on snowmobiles,” he said. “Let’s get you out of here so you can play too. Where are the keys to these cuffs?”

  “Agent Dave’s got them in his pants pocket,” said Trance. “Dave, could you come in here?” she said, loudly.

  “Wha—what?” said Vern.

  “Sure, honey, I’ll be right in,” came a voice from down the hall, followed shortly by someone who looked like a wannabe FBI agent dressing down for a big snowstorm. He was carrying a gun, but he didn’t tighten his grip on it till he saw Vern standing next to Trance.

  “Who are you?” he asked, raising the Glock to cover them both.

  “Dave, meet Vern Barclay. He’s a terrorist.”

  “Vern . . . I’ve caught both of you?” said Dave.

  “Both of us, yeah,” said Trance. “Now give me the key to cuffs that you’ve got in your pocket.”

  “The key—you think just because you’ve handed me your terrorist pal I’m going to let you go? I’m bringing both of you in. This will make me.”

  “Dave’s ambitious,” said Trance to Vern, who was trying not to shake. “A go-getter.” Dave had been getting closer, and reaching toward his belt for another pair of handcuffs. But as soon as he was inside of three feet Trance simply reached out, grabbed the barrel of the gun, and pulled it out of his hands. She turned it on him and said, “Get down.” Which he did, quickly.

  Vern got the keys from his pocket, unlocked them from around Trance’s feet, and put them on Dave’s wrists. “Trance, weren’t you just a little worried he’d shoot you?” he asked. “I was a little worried, right about the moment you grabbed the barrel of his gun.”

  “Not too worried,” she said. “Dave was feeling frisky last night, and he put his very sophisticated big-city moves on me. Right about the moment he was trying to unhook my sports bra—which, by the way, Dave, for future reference sports bras don’t have hooks—I was removing the magazine from his Glock. It’s still here, in my bra, in fact, for safekeeping.”

  “Wait, this guy was trying to kiss you while you were cuffed?” said Vern.

  “I think that might have made it better for him,” said Trance. “You remember how I told you I like girls? Sometimes I think I just don’t like boys. Present company excepted.”

  “And the six guys out there getting shot at—let’s go,” said Vern, handing her a pair of ski boots from the pack.

  But suddenly Dave, who’d been blushing, yelled, “Chet! Help!”

  They heard a door open down the hall. “Who’s Chet?” asked Vern.

  “Agent Chet,” said Trance. “Psy Ops. Perhaps you could stand behind the door with this,” she said, handing him the Glock. Vern moved back by the jamb, just as Chet burst through, looking bewildered at the sight of Dave on the floor in handcuffs.

  “Hi, Chet,” said Trance. “Could you please kneel down on the floor next to Dave?”

  “Why should I?” he asked.

  “Because Vern will shoot you if you don’t,” she said, pointing with her eyes. Chet glanced backward, saw the man with the gun, and began to sink.

  “No!” said Dave. “It’s not loaded. The clip is in—it’s in her bra. Take your gun out of your holster and shoot these guys!”

  Chet looked around at the three of them.

  “This is an interesting moment for a psychological specialist like yourself,” said Tran
ce. “Dave says the gun is unloaded, and the clip is in my brassiere. That’s possible, I suppose. You know Dave well. If you trust his judgment, then you should probably take your gun out your holster and shoot us. If not, I’d be grateful if you’d kneel right there.”

  Chet looked around again. Then he sank to his knees.

  “My opinion exactly,” said Trance. She cuffed him back-to-back with Dave, then took the gun from Vern and put it on the floor just out of their reach. “Though in this case, he was actually making sense.” She pulled the clip from her chest, and laid it on the desk. “I’ll let Dave tell you the whole story—in fact, it will probably prove psychologically interesting. And then you guys can figure out how to explain why my fingerprints are all over your guns and your bullets.”

  She finished lacing on the boots. “Vern, I bet you brought me some gloves and a hat too,” she said.

  “Of course,” he said. “And your Green Mountain ski shirt, so you’ll look like the rest of us.” He turned around to let her put it on.

  “Maybe we should take one of these federal badges in case it comes in handy later,” she said. “Oh, and Vern, do you have room in that knapsack for Dave’s laptop? I think Perry might find something interesting in there.”

  “Plenty of room, but you may have to carry it,” said Vern. “I was having . . . just a little trouble keeping up with the boys up the last hill.”

  “No problem,” said Trance. “And thanks for coming. I’d been wanting a ski ever since that snow started to fall.”

  The pair ran down the fire escape stairs and clicked into their skis. The snow was falling, if anything, harder. They were headed downhill and picking up speed, which meant they couldn’t see much—the snow was whipping their faces. But fifteen yards in front of them a snowmobile suddenly went airborne right to left, jumping off the snowbank on one side of the lane and landing past the bank on the other. The driver was hunched over the wheel, but behind him his partner was gripping the seat with his knees and firing rapidly. Ten seconds behind him, another snowmobile cleared the bank—this one with three guys in green on board. One was driving, the next had his back to the driver and his arms around the waist of the third, who was kneeling with an odd-looking gun to his shoulder. “That looked like Mike and Mike—and Replay?” yelled Trance.

  “It sure is,” said another voice—Trance looked over her shoulder to see Steve and Burke and Gardner dropping in line behind them on skis, tucking down the hill. “I’ve got no idea what the feds are shooting at anymore, and I don’t think they do either,” said Steve. “This isn’t like biathlon—no penalty if you miss, so shoot all you want.”

  “Where are the other agents?” shouted Vern.

  “Wandering around in the woods,” Burke shouted back. “Those machines are fast as hell, but they’re not much at tight turns. Number one hit a beech tree, and number two hit a birch—and once they were off their horses, the jockeys couldn’t move much in this snow. I think ‘floundering’ would be the technical term. That’s how those three got a snow machine of their own. And since Mike used to groom trails, he actually knows how to drive it.”

  Up ahead they could see the black snowmobile, its crew still firing wildly, and the three Vermonters about twenty yards behind, with Replay trying to line up a shot. He waited till they were on flat ground, then carefully squeezed once. The rubber bullet was fat and beige, and traveled slowly enough that they could actually watch its flight—in fact, it hardly went faster than the speeding snowmobile. Slowly, slowly—but it plunked home into the left exhaust.

  ”Bull’s-eye,” said Burke. “That’s a tough shot.”

  The fed sled coughed and stammered for a few seconds, and then quit—and with its engine suddenly silent, the agents could hear the roar of the other snowmobile as it banked hard and headed for the road. They fired a few shots in its direction, but Mike angled it off the snowbank and back into the middle of the road—now his machine was leading the five skiers down the hill, and back toward the gate they’d rushed maybe fifteen minutes before. This time the guard was facing their way, gun drawn.

  “Stop,” he yelled.

  Mike responded by revving the engine one notch higher with a twist of his wrist. He sunk down behind the windshield as they drove straight for the guard, who let off one panicked round and then dove for the bank, just in time. The snowmobile crashed through the stop barrier with the skiers about ten yards behind, all still in formation but now whooping—their momentum carried them the half mile to where the cars were parked behind the shed. The three climbed off the snowmobile, and there were hugs all around for Trance, who did her best to look tough.

  “Thanks, guys,” she said. “Replay, nice shot.”

  “The scones settled me,” he said. “You need some ballast for a shot like that.”

  “Should we pile in?” said Mike. “Something tells me they may come after us eventually.”

  “We could,” said Burke. “But this snow is not going to make for easy driving. And we seem to be doing pretty well on skis.”

  “It’s only twenty miles to the arena,” said Gardner. “And we need a workout.”

  “I bet it’d be faster on skis,” said Trance. “What do you say, Coach?”

  “I say let’s do it—but no showing off. Some of us can’t quite hold the pace we used to. One of us, anyway.”

  Burke and Steve had been carrying the others’ skis and poles in their rifle slings. In less than a minute they were back in the road, skiing in a long line with Trance at the front and Vern at the back. They gave a thumbs-up to their friend at the first gate as they sped through.

  About a hundred yards later, they could see a pair of men in work gloves and chaps and hard hats waiting by the side of the road. As they went by, one of them waved, and fired up a chainsaw to cut the final notch—a big red pine toppled gracefully across the road behind them.

  “What the hell was that?” asked Gardner, who was in the back of the line nearest Vern.

  “Oh,” he said. “A little insurance, just in case anyone’s following.”

  For the next five miles, shortly after each intersection, they passed another pair of men, each team in full safety gear, and another tree toppled behind them. When they reached the main road to Burlington, Vern saw Sylvia standing by the side of the road, dressed in her cherry-red snowmobile leathers and shouting into a cell phone. She gave him a little wave and a thumbs-up. But he wasn’t the only one who’d seen her. Trance, at the head of the line, slid to a hockey stop, and skied over to Sylvia, looked at her for a second, and then wrapped her up in a big hug.

  “I’ll catch you guys,” she yelled to the rest of them. “You know I can.”

  28

  “I was a little worried that after we pulled those tricks with their scoreboard last time, they might tighten up the cyber-security?” Perry was saying. “But no worries. I think we’ll be able to improve the evening’s proceedings at, um, our leisure? In fact, it should be easier since we’re inside the big dome this time, not outside?”

  He was sitting with Vern, Trance, Burke, and Gardner in an empty computer lab at the university journalism school, which was actually about four blocks from the Gov. Leslie R. Bruce Facility. The skiers looked serene—a red glow on their faces.

  “Here, you can see the live feed from the hall,” Perry said, pointing to another monitor.

  “Where’s the crowd?” asked Vern. “The place is empty.”

  “The snowstorm might have something to do with that?” said Perry. “They managed to get about six hundred people, in a school bus convoy that followed a snowplow. So they’re seating them all around the podium, and the cameraman will keep it a tight shot all night so it looks like the place is filled.”

  “Can you show the whole thing so everyone watching at home will see how pathetic it is?”

  “Yep—there’s a remote-control roof-mounted camera that I
can switch to. But I’ll probably only get to use it once before they turn it off, so I’ll wait for my cue.”

  “Okay,” said Vern. “Burke, Gardner, time to get into the suits. You’re Trance’s federal escort for the evening. Here’s your badge—you’ll have to share, and it’s not even real FBI. Contractors. Subcontractors. Get going. Trance, you’re going to have to wing it, but I think the pictures on Dave’s hard drive should help.”

  “Hello, Vermonters,” the governor was shouting, as people on all sides waved American flags.

  “Hello, Vermonters. As you can see, we’ve got a tremendous crowd here at the Gov. Leslie R. Bruce Facility tonight for our big Celebration of America. I’m amazed so many of you made it out through our snowstorm—ha, they talk about global warming! But I know that for every person here, a hundred of you are gathered by your TV sets and iPads. This is truly a night for Vermonters to celebrate our two-hundred-twenty-seven-year-long connection to the greatest country in the history of the world, the United States of America. So let us begin by rising—you at home can join in too!—for the playing of our national anthem.”

  All eyes turned to the JumboTron, where an animated American flag was waving—until Perry hit a key back in the journalism building and it was replaced by the image of Jimi Hendrix in blue beads and red headband, onstage at Woodstock. The crowd in the hall stood for the whole three minutes and forty-nine seconds of wild feedback; when it was over, the governor, looking a little flushed, said, “The great thing about America is that it is a melting pot where people of all kinds can perform their rhythmic music.

  “Now, ladies and gentlemen, a very special treat. Joining us tonight via closed circuit broadcast is . . . none other than . . . the Secretary of State of the United States of America, the Honorable Rex Tillerson.”