The Maze

by Will Hobbs

  “What if those guys come into camp this afternoon?”

  “Keep your daypack ready with some food and water. Don’t let them get close to you. Run, hide in the Maze.”

  “This is crazy. You don’t even have a gun.”

  “They don’t want to shoot me.”

  “No, they’ll use the dog.”

  “No, they won’t. Carlile saw the knife. He doesn’t want to lose that dog.”

  “Don’t…” Rick pleaded. “They might still be moving their stuff.”

  “Then they can wait for me to clear out. I won’t go anywhere near that cave you told me about. They won’t feel threatened.”

  Exasperation filled Lon’s eyes. “Gotta go,” he said, his hand briefly to Rick’s shoulder. “But I want to see you driving out of here before I take off. And don’t forget to fill up when you get back to camp—we’re nearly running on empty. Good luck to us both!”

  Rick tried to pump gas from the big fuel drum on stilts. Nothing, not a drop. What could possibly be wrong? There was nothing complicated about it. It was a simple gravity feed, and he’d done it before.

  He rapped his knuckles on the tank. It sounded hollow as a drum. He leaned his shoulder to the stand and pushed with one hand. He could have tipped the drum over.

  Empty. The realization made him go light-headed. When had they stolen the gas? That morning, when he and Lon were at the dunes?

  His stomach went queasy. They were stranded. No possibility of calling in help, no way to escape. There could be no doubt that Carlile and Gunderson had returned for more of their contraband. And they didn’t want to take the slightest chance.

  Should he take the bicycle and go for help? Sixty miles, that was how far he’d have to ride. Lon had told him to wait until an hour after dark, but that was assuming he had the truck. How long would it take him to bicycle sixty miles? Forever. Out in the open like that, the Humvee would catch him and squash him like a bug. “Hide in the Maze”—that was what Lon had said.

  It was excruciating, waiting for Lon’s return. It was the longest day of his life. Unmindful that everything was going horribly wrong, the four condors soared back and forth above the red cliffs. The cumulus clouds boiled up tall and massive, turned dark, and began to rumble—forerunners of the hurricane moisture that was on its way. All the while Rick kept scanning the slickrock canyon rims to the east with the spotting scope. No glimpse of Lon returning. Nothing.

  Every minute, every second, he listened for the Humvee. He couldn’t guess what they were going to do next, but it might involve him. They might even try to sneak up on him on foot.

  Rick’s daypack was stuffed full with everything he might need, including maps and a compass, and he was keeping it within arm’s length. He was ready to bolt for the Maze.

  It rained. It rained hard enough to drown a cat.

  At first the downpour agitated him, and then it terrified him. Lon, you better not be down in a place like I was.

  After ten minutes the rain quit.

  Nothing to do but wait. It was 3:00 P.M., 4:00 P.M., 5:00 P.M. Across the Colorado, from north to south and everywhere but above the Maze, thunderheads were spitting lightning and spilling rain that was dark and dense as a wall. He could imagine all too well the flash floods that were sluicing through thousands of canyons.

  Then he heard a distant gunshot. Moments later, its echo. The sound had come from the east, from the direction of Jasper Canyon.

  He knew what it meant. They’d killed him.

  A second shot was followed quickly by a third, and a fourth and a fifth. Rick closed his eyes.

  Then only the sound of unraveling thunder. He tried to think of a reason for hope, and he found it in the number of shots. There was virtually no cover where Lon had gone. One shot should have been enough if they were trying to kill him. Maybe they were driving him away from their cave. But no, Lon knew not to go near the cave. Maybe they had a whole other cache of weapons, somewhere different, and Lon had gotten too close to it….

  The shots could mean anything. Those men were capable of anything. His skin tingled and the hair rose on the back of his neck. If Lon was dead, they’d come for him next.

  The gunshots changed everything. He couldn’t wait helplessly in camp. He had to do something. It had to be something they’d never expect.

  They’d never expect him to come to them. On foot he could do that. There was plenty of cover to take advantage of along the way. At their camp he would have a chance of finding out what had happened and what they’d do next.

  Rick started out, keeping the Maze close on his left, the road on his right. He could be down in the Maze in a minute if he had to run for it.

  He went so slowly, used his cover so carefully that dusk gathered while he was still under way. He was grateful for the twilight. He could move a little more quickly. The moon, half full, appeared to be racing through the clouds.

  At last he was approaching Chimney Rock’s tall silhouette. At some moments the moon was ghostly pale behind the clouds; seconds later it was shining bright and lighting up the monolith.

  He could hear the two even before he saw the bright white light cast by their propane lantern. Their voices were bitter. Arguments were flying back and forth. “How could you be so stupid!” Carlile fumed.

  “How was I supposed to know the guy would go off chasing the bird?”

  “You shoulda never fired that shot in the first place. That’s what brought him over here. Or you could have shot to kill and been done with it. But shooting at the bird just to scare it—idiotic. You just didn’t think. The bird might fly toward our cache, the guy might follow…. It wouldn’t have taken a rocket scientist, Gunderson.”

  Rick stepped cautiously, approached closer, and crouched behind a juniper. Through the branches he could see them clearly. Carlile was seated on a lawn chair with his back to Rick. The dog was at his side. Gunderson was pacing back and forth with arms folded. “So, what’s the big problem?” Gunderson exploded.

  “The problem is, because of you, we haven’t been able to do what we came here for. We just wasted the whole afternoon following that bird guy while he blundered closer and closer to our second cache.”

  I was right, Rick realized. They do have a second hiding place, more weapons.

  “You’re the one who started shooting at him, Nuke. Quit tryin’ to blame it all on me.”

  “I had to scare him away from the cave—he was looking right at our stuff.”

  “You don’t know he saw anything. He had his binoculars on the bird, not on the cave. The bird was on the rim. Why would he have been focusing on the cave, through the brush and all, when the bird was in plain sight on the rim?”

  “Okay, maybe he wasn’t looking at the cave. I just don’t like it. Too much slop. That’s the way it is with you, Gunderson. All slop and no discipline.”

  “Hey, I told you we shouldn’t put both caches in the same canyon. That was your bright idea, putting everything in Jasper. Look, Nuke, where that guy is stuck—”

  “You don’t know he’s stuck, you just think he’s stuck. He might be out of there already.”

  Lon’s alive, Rick realized.

  “What are the chances?” Gunderson thundered. “Look, he’s trapped below one of those ledges down in that side canyon. You saw where he jumped when you fired those shots. He can’t get back up, so the only way he can go is down, and he won’t get far that way. That big storm is supposed to be here tomorrow, and when that hits, he’s gonna be history.”

  Carlile was furious. “You idiot. You still don’t get it. The whole place is going to be crawling with search and rescue.”

  “So? What are the chances, out of all that country out there, they’d look in that one cave? They’ll find a dead body down in the canyon, call off this vulture project, and we come back later and get our stuff. No problem.”

  “And what about the kid? We don’t know for sure that he didn’t see something last week.”

  “Nine
ty-nine out of a hundred, he didn’t.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  Rick went from his crouch down onto one knee, to ease his back. The dog must have heard something. The pit bull growled, lifted its ears.

  “Shut up, Jasper!” Carlile rasped, and gave the dog a kick.

  “What do you want to do now, Nuke?”

  “We don’t have much choice. With this storm coming, we clear out of here in the morning. Empty-handed, thanks to you. We could have had everything out of here, neat and tidy, been done with it. Now everything’s slop, all slop.”

  Rick backed away and started for camp. He was hoping against hope that Lon would be waiting there when he got back.

  Lon wasn’t there. He must be trapped, just like Gunderson said.

  Rick was afraid to sleep in his tent; Carlile might come for him. He took a sleeping bag into a cleft in the rocks nearby, where he could keep an eye out. The moon set, and the stars shone only intermittently, but even in the near darkness he could have made out a silhouette moving in camp. If only it would be Lon. He saw no one. Lightning lit the horizon like monumental strobe lights.

  He followed the weather reports from Salt Lake City on the AM-FM. The station was predicting heavy weather for the coming afternoon, with flash flood watches likely to be upgraded to flash flood warnings. “Pandora is no longer a hurricane, but she’s packing a tremendous wallop tonight in parts of Arizona and New Mexico,” the forecaster said. “The eastern half of southern Utah and the western half of southern Colorado are in for a pounding.”

  An idea like a flickering candle of hope kept appearing in the back of Rick’s mind. Every time he extinguished it, it returned. It was too far-fetched, too impossible to be considered.

  Or was it?

  He couldn’t search on the ground, he knew that. Jasper had dozens of side canyons on each side, and it was ten miles long. Trapped in one of those narrow slots, Lon would be impossible to spot from the rim.

  His idea burned brighter and brighter, yet he was scared to death of it. He was afraid he was getting crazy from fear, crazy from desperation. Still he knew, he knew there was a way to get to Lon if he had the courage.

  22

  Forty feet away, at the edge of the cliff, the wind was snapping the green streamer. It was early morning. At the margins of the canyonlands, the clouds were already boiling up and erasing the blue of the sky. Yet inside him there was a strange calm.

  Methodically, Rick arranged the thin metal ribs along the rear of the wing, and then he knelt and slipped them one by one into their sleeves. He fastened the guy wires to the king post that stood vertically above the wing.

  He was going to do this thing. He couldn’t live with not trying.

  There was reason to try. Lon would be wearing the bright red rain suit, for visibility. Lon would think he’d driven out and called for help—he’d be looking to the sky, hoping against hope for a search plane or a helicopter.

  If he couldn’t spot Lon, surely Lon would see the hang glider up above him. And Lon had the two-way. If he was up above Lon, the radio should work.

  It all sounded plausible, but it depended on him getting up in the air above Jasper Canyon. This had to be more than a sled run. If he didn’t gain altitude, he couldn’t fly as far as Jasper Canyon. He had to catch a thermal.

  Was he crazy to think he could do that?

  From the tandem flight they’d made together, he could remember the turbulence inside a thermal all too vividly. He didn’t know if he could control the glider in that kind of turbulence, but he should be strong enough. He thought he could. And if he thought he could, he had to try.

  He was fitting the fabric cover over the nose of the glider and fastening its closures when the sound of a motor, extremely close, startled him. He looked up. It was the Humvee coming over the top of the dugway.

  Nuke Carlile drove no more than a hundred feet onto the plateau, then slowed to a stop and took a long look. Rick knew better than to appeal to him. It would waste time he didn’t have. Just leave me alone, he thought. Quickly he fitted one of the small plastic wheels and then the other to the ends of the control bar.

  He heard the Humvee starting away toward Hanksville. He wouldn’t look at it go. He walked around the wing twice. Everything looked right.

  Rick took the long climbing rope that he’d found in Lon’s tent and fitted it into the compartment at the back of the harness. He tucked Maverick’s flight feather inside for good luck and zippered the pouch closed. Stepping with one leg and then the other into the harness, he drew on the shoulder straps.

  Suddenly, in his imagination, the axis of the earth was tilting, and he was swimming in unreality. The horizon went spinning. He recalled the phrase tuck and tumble.

  He fought the panic back by focusing on what he was doing. He fastened his cocoon from belly to neck, buckled the parachute compartment across his chest. Almost certainly he was going to have to land on stone, on the slickrock terraces above Jasper. He’d never landed on stone before. He blew out a big breath and reached for the helmet.

  “Hook in,” Rick said aloud as he reached over his shoulder for the carabiner gathering his harness lines. He hooked the carabiner to the small loop suspended from the keel above, then swiveled the locking mechanism shut. He pulled on his gloves and jacked the radio wire at his shoulder into his helmet. He was set.

  Poking his helmeted head underneath the peak where the downtubes met the keel, he reached around the tubes, grasped them, and lifted. He walked the glider ten feet forward, set it back down.

  Thirty feet from the edge of infinity, that was where he stood. His heart was trying to bludgeon its way out of his chest. His stomach swooned as his eyes took in the floor of the open country far below the cliffs. Don’t look down, he reminded himself.

  The streamer needed to be blowing directly at him. For a few moments it did, and then it blew again from the south.

  A cloud blocked the sun. He shivered and shook, and not from cold. From his right came the first rumble of approaching thunder. It was all dark over there in his peripheral vision.

  He couldn’t look directly above him now because he was standing under the center of the wing, but to the northeast, the direction he needed to fly, there were still patches of blue among the clouds. He knew he had a window, but the window was shrinking fast.

  It was hard to tell because of the muffling effect of his helmet, but he thought he heard a motor. Probably thunder, he thought, as he ducked his head and looked behind him under the wing.

  It was the Humvee again, coming in his direction across the slickrock. He saw it crush a small juniper under its wheels.

  Carlile had never left. At a distance, he’d been watching all this time.

  The Humvee halted abruptly several hundred feet away. The two men got out. The dog got out.

  What did Carlile want? He wasn’t calling or waving. His features, as ever, were contorted by malice.

  Rick had a sudden insight. He could feel it up and down his spine. Carlile meant to solve all his problems at once: no survivors.

  Rick glanced back to the cliff edge and the streamer. The wind was blowing hard enough, but still from the side. He needed it to shift, and soon.

  He looked over his shoulder again, saw the moment it happened. The command must have been spoken softly. The dog shot toward him like an arrow from a bow.

  Rick’s eyes found the streamer. It was blowing directly toward him. He lifted the glider and began to jog.

  The cliff edge seemed to be rushing forward to meet him. He felt the tail end of his harness bag flapping at his ankles, which was normal. But he also heard the dog snarling close behind, much too close.

  Suddenly he felt the powerful lift of the wing, and his pedaling feet found only air. As the glider soared out over empty space, he shifted his hands quickly to the control bar.

  Something was wrong. A dead weight at the bottom of his harness bag was keeping him from assuming a prone position. With a glan
ce below he saw the pit bull hanging on by its powerful jaws.

  He couldn’t do anything about that. All he could do was try to fly the glider. The variometer’s buzzing warned him that he was falling. Flying with his legs down, plus the weight of the dog, was causing him to sink.

  He couldn’t worry about that. All he could do was try to keep the wing stable. He couldn’t afford to let either wing tip get up in the air on him.

  The dog might have tried for a better grip, opened its jaws for a fatal split second. All Rick knew was that the pull at the bottom of the bag was suddenly gone. As he looked down he saw the dog hurtling toward oblivion like a missile.

  23

  Rick reached with his right leg, found the bottom of the bag. He reached with his left; they were both inside. Freeing his hand for a second, he pulled the draw cord that zipped the bag shut along his legs.

  Now he was prone. Now he could try to fly. He pushed himself back from the bar a little to see if the glider would climb. Immediately the variometer chirped its climbing signal. He was rising on the warm air sweeping up the face of the cliffs.

  With careful shifting of his weight, he raised the right wing tip and began negotiating a turn. The glider responded, the earth turned on its axis, and he spiraled up past the rim of the cliffs, regaining the altitude he had lost. He caught a glimpse of the Humvee heading across the plateau back to Hanksville. Good riddance, he thought.

  After five rising revolutions he was satisfied that he was high enough above the cliffs to glide away from them and head for Jasper Canyon.

  You’re still alive, he told himself as he broke to the east and began to soar toward the Standing Rocks. A powerful wave of exhilaration washed over him. He suddenly realized he was whooping and shouting like a wild man, grinning from ear to ear. “Yes!” he was screaming. “Yes!”