Desolation Mountain

by William Kent Krueger

  “Did Boog tell you to round up the people from the reservation?” Cork asked.

  “Them orders came from Wannamaker hisself.”

  “Your cousin, was he the man with you when you went after my son?”

  “Look, I’m sorry about that beating, kid,” he said to Stephen. “That was Axel’s doing. He’s always been on the impulsive side.”

  “What about my dad?” Stephen said. “Someone took a shot at him. Was that you?”

  “Not me. Nels Jensen, one of the other guys in the brigade. Boog’s orders.”

  “Why me?” Cork said.

  “Boog was real worried about you interfering. You know, you being this hotshot investigator and all. Plus, I guess he’s never liked you much. Jensen was supposed to take you out at your house, but he blew it.”

  “The break-in,” Daniel said.

  “After that, you were bouncing around so much, we couldn’t get a bead on you. Wannamaker suggested Boog set you up somewhere Jensen could take a good, clean shot. Boog came up with the ransom idea. Guess he didn’t count on you wearing body armor.”

  “Why’d you and your cousin split up today?” Stephen asked.

  “Got a cell phone call from Boog. Surprised the hell out of me that we could even get service out here. Something big was going down. He wanted us all back at the Op Center. By then we figured the woman must be hiding somewhere behind us. Axel went to look for her. I kept after you. He was supposed to come back for me. The son of a bitch musta just took off. Or maybe he was under orders.”

  “Something big?” Cork said. “Did they tell you what it was?”

  “Uh-uh. Just ordered us to come back.”

  Cork saw a look in Bo’s eyes that told him they were both thinking the same thing. It was Bo who spoke. “They have the flight recorder.”

  “Where’s this Op Center?” Daniel asked.

  “Bout five miles west of Aurora on a little lake called Celtic.”

  “Because the water’s green,” Cork said. “I know the place. An old hunting lodge, the only structure on the lake. Pretty well isolated. Used to belong to Casper Ferguson before he died. Don’t know who owns it now.”

  Rainy spoke for the first time since the questioning of Simpson had begun. “What about the people from the rez you rounded up?”

  “Got ’em locked in an old smokehouse at the Op Center.”

  “They’re okay?” Cork asked.

  Simpson was slow to answer. “The men, their faces are going to look kinda like your boy’s. Nothing that time won’t take care of.”

  “What’s the plan?” Bo said. “Any idea what they’re going to do with those people?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think about it for a moment, Wes,” Bo pressed him. “Those people were kidnapped. That’s a felony, maybe a capital crime. If they can identify you and the others, that’s prison, at the very least, for all of you.”

  “Not me. I got immunity promised.”

  “My point is this,” Bo said. “Now that they have what they wanted, they can’t just let those folks go.”

  “Kill ’em?” Simpson said, as if it was the first time the thought had occurred to him. “Naw. Axel is a little hotheaded, but he wouldn’t just kill somebody.”

  “Maybe not him,” Bo said. “But the others. Wannamaker or Sorenson or that Nels Jensen who took a shot at Cork.”

  Simpson mulled it over. “Yeah, I guess I could see Wannamaker or Boog or Jensen doing something like that. Or maybe even one of the other guys. They really buy this resistance shit.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Seven locals and Wannamaker.”

  “We need to get our people out of there now,” Cork said.

  Daniel spoke the unthinkable. “Maybe it’s already too late.”

  Henry Meloux, who’d been silent for a long while, staring into the fire and listening, said, “And maybe it is not. There is only one way to know.”

  * * *

  Before leaving Crow Point, the men discussed bringing in Sheriff Marsha Dross, but Cork was deeply concerned that every passing minute placed the prisoners in greater danger, especially if the brigade had the flight recorder in its possession. If the sheriff was brought in, too many agencies would want a hand in mounting an assault, and the time it would take to mobilize them might make it too late to save the Hukaris and Blessing. At the very least, it would be wise to confirm the truth of the things Simpson had told them before bringing in the authorities.

  It was well after midnight when they got to the cutoff to Celtic Lake. The moon was up, casting shadows. Cork pulled the Expedition off the road and into a grove of aspens. Simpson’s hands were bound with duct tape substituted for the strips cut from his pant leg.

  “Just keep away from the road and you should be good,” Simpson advised. “About that promise?”

  “I’ll make sure you get immunity,” Cork said, a lie that fell easily from his lips.

  On foot, they paralleled the lane through the forest, keeping their distance because of the motion sensors Simpson had claimed were placed along the way. In the moonlit night, it took them fifteen minutes to reach the lodge, which was perched on a rise overlooking the small lake. A light shone in a window on the first level; otherwise the building was dark. Several vehicles had been parked in front.

  “Yep, Axel’s there. See that big black Ram pickup? That’s mine. We was driving it today.”

  Cork said, “Where’s the smokehouse they’ve got our people in?”

  “Among them trees to the right of the lodge. Can’t really see it in the dark like this.”

  “Is it guarded?”

  “Just locked. But the brigade’s got itself an armory,” Simpson cautioned. “Heavy-caliber stuff. They hear us coming, they’ll cut us down in seconds.”

  Cork prayed they could do this thing without any shots being fired. Bo had drawn his Sig and Daniel his service sidearm. Ned Love carried his rifle. But from what Simpson said, this was nothing compared to the armaments inside the lodge.

  They moved slowly, carefully. The building was surrounded by birch trees whose leaves were so newly fallen that they’d created a soft bedding on the ground, which muted the men’s footfalls. At the edge of the birch trees lay a wide, barren space, the parking area for the brigade vehicles. Some twenty yards to the right, just as Simpson had said, stood a squat log structure, dappled with silver moonlight breaking through the branches of the trees. The men made their way around the yard to the smokehouse. Again, just as Simpson had said, the door was padlocked.

  “Who has a key?” Cork asked.

  “Wannamaker and Boog. That’s it.”

  “We’ll need to pry that hasp loose.”

  “I got a crowbar in the toolbox in the back of my truck. I can get it,” said Simpson.

  “No, I’ll get it,” Cork told him.

  “There’s a combination lock.” Simpson gave him the numbers.

  He stole across the yard to the big Dodge Ram and climbed into the bed. He unlocked the toolbox and dug as quietly as he could for the crowbar. Just as his hand wrapped around the cold metal, the door of the lodge swung open, and a man stepped onto the porch. The opened door allowed light to spill across the yard, and Cork was no longer in the dark. He froze, pressed himself against the back of the cab, the crowbar clutched in his hand. The man walked to the edge of the porch, a figure black against the light from inside. There was something odd about the silhouette. Then Cork understood he was carrying a rifle on a strap, and the long barrel was like a single antenna jutting up from his shoulder. The man struck a flame, illuminating his face for a moment as he lit a cigarette. Cork didn’t recognize him. The man smoked for a while, then flicked the butt and its ember onto the ground.

  “Time to take care of business,” he mumbled to himself, but loud enough that Cork heard.

  Business? he thought. His hand tightened around the crowbar. He calculated quickly. If the man headed to the smokehouse, he’d have to be taken
out, and taken out quietly. It would require a leap from the truck bed and a sprint, a significant risk, but one that couldn’t be avoided.

  The man moved across the yard toward the smokehouse. He brought the rifle off his shoulder and cradled it with both hands. Cork tensed, ready to leap.

  Then the man stopped. He set the rifle on the ground. Cork heard the sizzle of a zipper being lowered, followed by the dull sound of urine on dirt, a sound that went on for a while. The man zipped back up, lifted his rifle, and returned to the porch, where he paused, eyeing the night one last time before he slipped back inside, closing the door behind him.

  Cork loped to the smokehouse.

  “Thought he was coming this way for sure,” Daniel said, his firearm in his hand.

  “Keep those guns ready,” Cork said. “This might be noisy.”

  He worked the teeth of the crowbar between the hasp and the wood of the door, which had softened with age. He wedged the two teeth deeper until he got some force behind the pry. The wood gave a loud creak. He stopped, waited. Nothing from the house. He resumed the prying and in a minute, had broken the hasp free. He opened the door, and the smell of burned wood washed over him. There was no sound from the utter dark inside, and he tried to prepare himself for the worst. Bodies, maybe. Or maybe nothing. Because if you killed someone in the North Country and you wanted to get rid of the evidence, there were plenty of bogs that would swallow a body whole.

  He slipped out his cell phone and used the light to illuminate the dark.

  They sat on the dirt of the smokehouse floor, their backs against the wall. Sue Hukari was positioned between her husband and Tom Blessing. Her eyes were white circles of fearful anticipation. Her hands, and her husband’s and Blessing’s, were bound at the wrists with disposable plastic restraints.

  “It’s Cork O’Connor,” he whispered. “We’re getting you out of here.”

  Ned Love and the others joined him, and they cut the restraints. They helped the prisoners to their feet and, because their ordeal had weakened them, offered support.

  In half an hour, they were back at the Expedition, and Cork made the call.

  “Marsha, we’ve got a situation.”

  CHAPTER 41

  * * *

  “I had to bring Quaker in, Cork. Domestic terrorism is out of my jurisdiction. Quaker made that abundantly clear to me.”

  They waited with Marsha Dross at the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Office—Bo and the O’Connors and Daniel English. The others—Wes Simpson, Ned Love, Phil and Sue Hukari, and Tom Blessing—were all still being questioned by the FBI. Assistant Director Alex Quaker had come and gone, taken with him the information they’d supplied, as well as diagrams of the exterior and interior of the lodge that Wes Simpson had sketched. Quaker assured them that agents were preparing an assault at Celtic Lake. Dross had put a call out to all her deputies to assemble and stand by.

  “They better get there soon,” Cork said. “If those lunatics see that broken hasp on the smokehouse door, they’ll scatter like flies.” He stood at the window of Dross’s office, staring where the streetlights of Aurora shone in bright circles on the empty thoroughfares.

  It had been a long day for Stephen O’Connor, who sat in the common area visible through the door of Dross’s office, his feet propped on a table, eyes closed and, despite all the activity around him, napping. English had gone outside to talk to his wife on his cell phone.

  Bo sat in a hard wooden chair in front of the sheriff’s desk, drinking bad coffee from a cardboard cup.

  “The Lexington Brigade shot down Senator McCarthy’s plane.” Dross sat at her desk, looking as tired as the others, her words sounding leaden. “I would have said that’s nuts, except for Oklahoma City and Ted Kaczynski and the bomb at the Atlanta Olympics.”

  Bo could have offered other examples of patriotism gone horribly awry, many of which were completely unknown outside a relatively small circle of D.C. national security experts.

  “What did they hope to accomplish?” She spoke more to herself than to the others.

  “Maybe they’d finally had enough of her political agenda,” Bo said. “It certainly ran contrary to everything the brigade espouses. But there’s still the question, why now?”

  “The mine?” Dross offered. “It’s generated a lot of anger up here, from all sides. And Senator McCarthy was outspoken in her opposition to the project. Maybe Wannamaker convinced Boog Sorenson this was the time to make a stand.”

  Cork was still looking through the window at the dark night. “A stand. Shooting down a civilian plane? Now there’s true American heroism for you.”

  Bo said, “If they were the ones who got to the flight recorder before us, I’d love to know for sure how they understood where to look. The rez telegraph you talk about, Cork?”

  Cork looked over his shoulder. “No telling who’s tapped in.”

  “Boog Sorenson is a horse’s ass,” Dross said bluntly. “But he’s got a lot of feelers out there in Tamarack County, and some of them, I’m sure, extend into our Native community. And, Cork, somebody must’ve let the brigade know you were involved and helped set you up for that shot at the town meeting.”

  “There are lots of people with Native blood who share the brigade’s distrust of our government,” Cork said. “But I have trouble believing they’d go along with any of this. I’m inclined to think Bo was on the right track. Someone bugged us.”

  “The brigade?” Dross said.

  “If they have the flight recorder, I guess it had to be them.” Cork put his hand to the window glass as if trying to touch the night outside. “We’ll know in a while.”

  Not long after, a sudden commotion arose in the common area, and Alex Quaker entered the sheriff’s office, flanked by two men looking just as grim as he. Daniel English and Cork’s son came in behind them, escorted by another agent.

  “Close the door,” Quaker ordered one of the agents.

  It was a crowded room now, and Quaker moved to the center.

  Dross said, “Well?”

  Quaker focused on Cork. “Tell me again what went down while you were out there.”

  “We arrived at Celtic Lake and proceeded to the lodge, then to the smokehouse, where I pried off the hasp. We freed our friends, left the scene. I called Sheriff Dross and brought everyone back here.”

  “You were armed?”

  “Bo, Daniel, Ned, they had firearms. No one else.”

  “What kinds of firearms?”

  “A Sig Sauer, a Glock, a hunting rifle.”

  “Did you discharge them?”

  “Are you kidding? From what Simpson told us, they had an arsenal in that house. If we’d fired a shot, they would have cut us down. What’s going on? When are you going to make your assault on the lodge?”

  “The operation is finished.”

  “Finished?” Dross sounded astounded. “So soon?”

  “We encountered no resistance. What we found were seven bodies inside the lodge. They’d been lined up and executed.”

  “Wannamaker?”

  “He wasn’t among them.”

  “Boog Sorenson?”

  “Dead, like the others.”

  “What about the flight recorder?” Cork asked.

  “We retrieved the flight recorder.”

  “Executed,” English said. “By whom?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Quaker sat on the edge of the sheriff’s desk. “It’s going to be a while before you folks go home.”

  They were all interrogated again and, as the sky began to show the first light of day, finally allowed to go. The Hukaris and Tom Blessing had been taken to the Aurora Community Hospital to be checked over before they were officially released. Wes Simpson was being held, pending charges. The others piled into Cork’s Expedition and headed toward the reservation. They were silent, drained, each lost in thought or in the drowse of exhaustion. They arrived at the place where Bo had left his Jeep the evening before, and they prepared to separate.r />
  “Guess that’s it,” Cork said.

  “Are you kidding?” Bo gave a short laugh. “The press is going to descend on you. You’re heroes.”

  “I don’t feel like a hero,” Stephen said.

  “As I understand it, heroes seldom do,” Bo told him. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I need some shut-eye.”

  “Thanks for your help.” Cork extended his hand.

  “Any time.”

  Bo stood on the roadside and watched as the Expedition headed toward Allouette and beyond that the dirt road that would take them all back to Crow Point East. He believed that for them, this incident was over. He still had miles to go before he slept.

  * * *

  She was quiet on her end.

  “Quaker will release an official statement soon, I’m sure, at least outlining the operation and what came of it,” Bo told her.

  “The Lexington Brigade. Fanatics. And all this death.” She sighed, a sound like a hand smoothing satin. “What about Cole Wannamaker?”

  “If what Wes Simpson told us was correct, he was at the lodge earlier. But he wasn’t among the dead. The speculation at the moment is that he executed them all.”

  “Why?”

  “A case could be made, I suppose, that he was just trying to cover his tracks.”

  “Or he was just as crazy as he’s always sounded.”

  “They’ll grab him. Maybe not right away, but he can’t stay underground forever. Once they have him, they’ll get the whole story.”

  “Remember Jack Ruby? Someone arranged for him to kill Oswald before the man could talk.”

  Conspiracy theory, he thought. But she, of all people, was entitled to believe in conspiracies.

  “How did they do it?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Bring Olympia’s plane down?”

  “Quaker said they found a couple of Stingers among the armaments at the lodge.”

  “A Stinger?”

  “A manually operated ground-to-air missile system. Looks like a fancy bazooka. Quaker believes that the flight recorder and the NTSB investigation will verify that’s what brought the plane down.”