by David Dun
“I will. You can get up and be free, but first you have to tell me some things.”
“Please, please, please!” He was hysterical and barely rational. Sam reached down and ran the zipper halfway up, providing a little airway.
“Relax. I’m not letting you out until you relax.”
The man whimpered and cried, nearly incoherent, but his breathing slowed.
“Okay, Roberto, now all you have to do is tell me the truth. And I will let you up.”
“What do you mean?”
Suddenly it was as if the old Roberto had come back. Sam sensed resistance.
“I thought you had learned. I guess not.” Sam reached out and closed the zipper. Roberto’s body jumped as if Sam had hit him with 120 volts. Suddenly he was screaming and shaking. T.J. winced and looked at Sam, obviously worried, pointing to his heart Anna bent, her lips low to Sam’s ear.
“Please, Sam, I can’t take this.”
Sam loosened the zipper; maybe he was pushing it. If it didn’t work this time, he would let the man up.
“Roberto, I think we may just leave. Up here somebody may find you. Or when we move you off the trail they may not.”
“What do you want?” He became incoherent. He was crying and had defecated in his pants.
“Tell me where Jason is.”
Roberto talked.
Sam pulled the zipper down; he supposed Roberto could see light. When they had established that he knew nothing of Jason’s whereabouts, that Jason had been taken, Sam knew they should move quickly.
“Who shot the rocket at my boat?”
“Jason.”
“Were you with him?”
Silence. Sam reached for the zipper.
“I was.”
“What did Grace Technologies do to Jason’s brain?”
“He had a rare disease and they experimented. I don’t understand it. Something about changing his brain cells. Chellis and his scientists understand it. Chellis knows how to make Jason paranoid so he stays close to home. The massages help his symptoms-it’s the oil, but I don’t know how.”
After a few more questions it became obvious that Roberto didn’t understand the mechanisms involved. They would need to go elsewhere.
Ten people or more had kidnapped Jason. Probably across the island. Sam released Roberto and listened while he cursed.
“Panic is your worst enemy, Roberto. If you don’t tell Chellis, I won’t. Seems to me you ought to be on our side.”
“Fuck you,” Roberto screamed, no doubt imagining the fury of Chellis and the death of his own career. Now that he was up and looking at them, he surely realized that they would have freed him with or without the confession. Humiliation fused with anger made him hateful, and Sam could see it in his eyes.
“Relax. Any one of us could have had your reaction. Once the mind starts flying free you never know where it’s going to come down. You just flew a little further than most.”
“You are despicable,” Anna said to Roberto. T.J. stepped out of the brush and handed Sam a filterless cigarette butt with a small gold insignia stamped on one end.
“Middle Eastern,” Sam said.
“We should chase them in the helicopter,” Roberto said.
“Very handy, a helicopter. A beanie on a coffin. They’ll blow it out of the sky about the way you blew my boat out of the water.”
“Jason did that,” Roberto corrected him.
“While you watched,” Anna said.
“Well, I’m sending the chopper anyway.”
Sam just nodded; he would try to take advantage of the idiocy.
“We’ll need boots, water, warm clothing, preferably wool or moisture-wicking, a lighter, water, knife, and some fully automatic weapons if you have them.”
“We have the weapons.”
“And a rocket launcher?”
“We have one of those as well.”
“Good.” Sam moved off toward the lodge at a jog. “Let’s roll.”
As soon as they started they heard a seaplane circling low and dropping. Sam ran, suspecting that the plane was to pick up the intruders at Lodge Bay. If they had not done so already, at any minute the intruders would discover that their plans were being interrupted. Even as he thought it he heard the approaching plane apply power and fly low over the island. It sounded to Sam like a large twin-engine seaplane. No doubt the intruders had gone back toward the lodge, then turned and gone overland toward the other side of the island.
It took only five minutes to get everything on Sam’s list. They grabbed some food bars for good measure and some of Nutka’s salmon jerky.
“I suppose you want to go with us,” Sam said to Anna.
“I can act the part of a commando. My performance will be convincing.”
Sam allowed his eyes to tell her she was a dope.
“Give her a gun,” Sam said. She snatched an M-16 from T.J. It was made of camouflage-colored plastic and steel.
“Can you use it?”
Anna popped out the clip, pulled back the bolt, and checked the chamber. With a business like ka-chink she replaced the clip.
Sam nodded his approval.
Sam, Anna, the men, and Roberto left the lodge before Sam said what was on his mind.
“I want to have the pilot take us to the far side of the island in the Beaver. Roberto, you can come when your helicopter arrives.
“The Beaver will be there before the overland troops. It will come in fast and low and land. Still, it may get shot up. These kinds of people are going to have a lot of firepower.”
“Okay, I’m going,” Anna said.
“It will hold five. But you really shouldn’t go.”
“Why the hell not?” Anna said.
“Death. Horrible disfigurement. Those good enough reasons?”
“I’ll risk it.”
“What if it increases the risk for the rest of us?” Sam let his serious eyes make his point.
“You can’t make me stay, Sam.”
Sam hesitated, gauging her, then took her aside. “Look, I’ll spend my time worrying about you and I won’t be as effective. Neither will the others. T.J. will be busy trying to save you.”
“Sam, don’t do this to me. I can shoot.”
“I’m not taking you. You’re obsessed with your brother-you don’t think straight.”
“How are you gonna stop me?”
“We’re wasting critical time.” She locked eyes with him and he knew he had a problem. Her hand went into her purse and she came out with a satellite phone. She unfolded the antenna.
“I gotta go,” he said. “Keep the gun. You may need it. Go in the house with the others.”
Anna said nothing, but she knifed him with her look.
Sam turned and trotted to the dock with T.J., who had been a few paces back and was listening.
“What’s she gonna do?” T.J. said.
“I don’t know,” Sam said while he watched her.
“I hate to say it but she looks like a woman who has you by the gonads.”
Even with the distance between them Sam knew she was looking right at him, and he could feel each punch of the dialer as if it were drilling his chest.
“Damn that woman,” Sam said. She was coming back toward them and talking on the phone.
“We should leave now,” T.J. said.
Sam walked up to Anna. “What are you doing now?”
“Just a minute, Harold,” she said before covering the mouthpiece. “I’m on the phone with the New York Times. Harold Butler. I’m going to give him an interview. If you get in that plane without me you’re going to read about yourself in the New York Times. You’re going to read how you left me standing on the dock at the residence of a bunch of criminals. Not only that, you’re going to read your life’s history. I can afford to forfeit the bond. And you can sue me if you want to.”
“But if I take you…”
She indicated the off button on the phone.
Sam was looking at a woman wh
o was crazy with determination.
“This is what I get for saving your life?”
“No. This is what you get for trying to run it. Nowhere in our contract does it say you can make life and death choices for me. I am your equal. Get that through your head.”
“If you come you fight my way.”
“Since I don’t know any other way to fight, I suppose yours is as good as any.”
“You are something else.”
“I’ll grow on you. Let’s go,” she said. “Harold, I’ll call you back later.” They both ran back to the plane.
T.J. looked worried.
As Sam was walking to the plane a bad feeling almost paralyzed him. He tried to shake it off. He considered that the intruders were far ahead, trained and heavily armed, and probably impossible to catch. His small group wasn’t ready for this.
“Come here,” Sam said, pulling T.J. away from Anna.
“What about me?” Anna said.
“Just stand there,” Sam growled, about as mean as he ever sounded.
“I don’t think we should take Anna and I’m afraid this could end in disaster,” Sam said.
“You stay. The boys and I will go. If you sit here she’ll stay and there isn’t a hell of a lot she can do about it.”
“I don’t want you dead, T.J.”
“It’s the job. I wanna go, but I sure as hell don’t wanna take Anna Wade.”
“If you fly right over to the far side you could be flying into automatic weapons fire. If that happens you’ll be dead.”
“We won’t go straight. We’ll come in at the end of the island and go overland.”
“It’s your choice.”
“What are you saying?” Anna walked over to where they were standing.
“You and I are staying here to run the radio,” Sam said.
“No way.”
“Anna, I’m staying here and so are you. T.J. and the boys are going.”
The pilot was slow in reaching for the door. He cleared his throat and spoke. “What are all these guns, and this?” he said, speaking in a tight voice, his eyes hard with fear.
“Little problem,” Sam said. “These gentlemen need to go to the other side of the island, up at the other end, and look for someone.”
“With those?” the man said, still eying the armament.
“Lotta bears over there,” Sam said.
“Bullshit,” the pilot said.
“Twenty-five thousand dollars if you take them.”
“Am I gonna get shot at?”
“Probably.”
“Fifty thousand cash plus you buy the plane if it’s damaged. And I want it in writing now.”
Sam took out a pen and scrawled the deal.
“And the movie star here signs it.”
“Listen, asshole, we gotta go,” Jeff said.
“Take it easy,” Sam said. The man’s being reasonable. And now that we’re paying him fifty grand he’s officially agreed to fly through live fire.”
The pilot swallowed and looked at Sam as if he might rethink his position. The three men jumped into the plane. Sam shut the door, practically choking with frustration.
He and Anna stood in silence while the plane taxied and took off.
They watched as the seaplane flew down the island, made a turn, and disappeared in the distance. In ten minutes they got a radio call.
“Sam, they are long gone. No seaplane, no boats, no nothing. We watched as the Otter took off in the distance. There was a chopper nearby that could have come into the old orchard back here. We’re coming back.” Then there was a few seconds’ silence and T.J. came on again.
“We’ve been hit. We’ve been hit. Somebody stayed behind. We’re going to try to land.” Then more stridently. “Duke and Jeff have both been hit bad. Automatic weapons fire.”
Sam called seaplanes and a medical helicopter. The pilot got the Beaver on the water.
Twenty minutes later T.J. came on the radio.
“Damn it, Sam. Duke and Jeff are dead. Both gone.”
Twenty-five
Sam and Anna sat in a Hawker 700 jet that had leveled off at 32,000 feet.
“We have to go after them. The longer they are gone, the harder they will be to find.”
“You know, you’re trying my ego. Supposedly I’m an expert at this. We have fifty people or more working their butts off nearly twenty-four hours a day looking for escape routes from Canada. We are monitoring phones, we’re nudging the Canadian government, we’re getting informal help from the FBI and Scotland Yard without yelling too loud because of the circumstances and because governments can screw things up. They left in a private plane, and we’ll find it.”
“I know. I just can’t stand it.”
“We lost two more men because we couldn’t wait.”
“I know. I know. We’ve gone over this.”
“Until we know where they went, you need to get your mind off it and give the appearance of Anna Wade going about her business as usual.”
“Yeah, well, you can just haul your cute butt down to my studio party.”
“I said I would ride in the limo.”
“But we aren’t going if it will in any way affect the hunt for Jason.”
“Absolutely.”
Anna began eyeing the small couch in the back of the jet’s cabin.
“Lie down if you like,” Sam said.
“Will you come back so we can talk before I fall asleep?”
“Sure,” Sam said. He took a mint-green blanket and white pillow from a forward baggage compartment, ushered her to the back of the plane, and sat in an upright seat across from the couch. Anna, already in her stocking feet, lay down.
“Why don’t you sit here?” she said.
Sam got the idea, moved over, and put the pillow in his lap.
“Tell me about the letters in the picture book,” she said.
“Maybe I should be the one on the couch.”
“Come on, Sam.”
“The thing with the sat phone and the New York Times. I didn’t like it.”
“It was just a bluff. You were being a butt head. Let’s not digress.” She put her hand on his arm and patted it.
“No.” He said it with a tentative tone to soften what was not soft.
“I know. I was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. I won’t do it again but I’m sure I’ll be tempted.”
“One of the letters was to my son. It was in English so you know what it said. Mom found it in his things.
The other was in the language of my tribe. It was from my grandfather to me.”
“And what did it say?”
“It was very similar to the letter I wrote to my son except for the last line. My grandfather didn’t mention the sunset or the beer.”
“And?”
“It said ‘Do not neglect the gift that I have seen.’ Loose translation.”
“What is that gift?”
“I have dreams. Sometimes hunches. They are just normal things. Most people have them.”
“Your Grandfather was a Spirit Walker?”
“Yes.”
“And he had these dreams and hunches?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Methinks you doth protest too much. In the cabin when you jumped up and said we had to get out. Was that one of those dreams?”
“Yeah.”
“When was the last time you had one?”
“Before getting in the seaplane at the lodge; on the roof of the Dyna Science building before getting in the helicopter. But you know that was logical. It had only one engine. I usually use one with two turbines.”
“When before that?”
“When I was sailing past the mouth of Devil’s Gate. I turned in.”
“It’s how you saw me.”
“Well, it made it easier.”
“Come on. Would you have seen me if you’d kept going?”
“Probably not. I had the same bad feeling about putting you in the seaplane.”
“So what is this?
”
“It’s nothing.”
“What did your grandfather mean?”
“My Grandfather Stalking Bear decided that I inherited the Spirit Walker thing.”
“Fascinating.”
“It’s intuition pure and simple.”
“Did all Indians around these parts believe the same?”
“Well, there were some distinct differences. Only my tribe believed in Spirit Walkers, but all the tribes had the spiritual leaders known as Talth.”
“So tell me your tribe.”
“You can keep your trap shut?”
“Of course.”
“You threatened me with the New York Times.”
“I said I was wrong. I concede.”
“I’m a Tilok.”
“What’s your name? Your real name.”
“Oh, no.” He shook his head. “Let’s go back to Indians. Even in things as basic as language there were differences. The Yuroks spoke a language related to the Woodland Algonquian tribes of the northeastern United States, while the Karuk spoke Hokan, the oldest language in northwestern California, and the Hupa spoke the Athapaskan, which was a language common in the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest. Pretty amazing to have such diversity in one small area of northern California.”
“What do the Tiloks speak?”
“A dialect of the Algonquian tribes, but Mom says it’s pretty different. Before English, none of these tribes could talk to each other without a multilingual translator. Their economies, social structure, and spiritual beliefs were similar but there were differences. My mother can tell you what was common and what was not. Tiloks were travelers, not so much lowland Indians except seasonally. In spring and summer Tiloks went to the high country. They were hunters, trackers, and traders.”
“Why does she say that your soul lacks harmony?”
“I told you that you need to leave me with a few secrets.”
“Okay, just a little more. Tell me about your dad.”
“He was the penultimate tough guy. Life was about holding out the proper facade no matter what. Laugh at adversity, joke when others cry, never have a really serious conversation, and never under any circumstances be vulnerable.”
“Must have made a heck of a one-man platoon.”
“He was a parajumper. The bad-ass rescue patrol. The president or a cabinet member goes down, needs rescuing, or a pilot behind enemy lines, or a hiker on Mount Denali… the toughest rescues around are given to the parajumpers. That’s what you wanted to know.”