The crackling of his earpiece awakened Ryce. It was John. Dianne and her group were on the move. Ryce checked the time. It was 6:00 AM. He looked around the camp. O2 had a small fire lit and was heating a pot of water for coffee. The sun was just beginning to kiss the tops of the mountains to the west. Ryce woke up the rest of the group. They would have to wait until Dianne stopped before warming up their MREs.
Camp cleanup took less than five minutes, and then they were all swinging their packs over their shoulders. Ryce sent out a point man, and the group started moving up the trail.
Ryce radioed John and told him that he wanted to close up to about a half mile behind Dianne. There was sufficient cover to stay out of sight.
Ryce smiled. Having a topographic map to compare with the thermal imaging would be really nice; all John had to look at was some heat blobs on a grey background.
Ryce pulled a map out of his pack. It was one he had printed online using Google Maps. The stream they were following was not on the map. A blue squiggle crossed into Canada northwest of their present position.
The maps were good in populated areas but not quite as good in uninhabited locations. Even his high priced GPS had not provided anything more than a very basic road map of the single unpaved road into the area. Now, if only they had some technology that would tell them where Dianne was going.
At 9:00 AM, John radioed Ryce that Dianne had stopped. Ryce responded that he was looking at her through a spotting scope. They were at a small dilapidated shack with a faint trail of smoke coming out of the tin smoke stack.
Ryce scanned the area. He and O2 had been here less than a week ago. Wasn’t this where Francine had been murdered? When he scanned the cabin, O2 confirmed this was where they had rescued Brenda.
As Ryce scoped the area, he noticed a mine entrance several hundred feet away from the cabin, on the opposite side of the stream. Ryce could see a mine car still on the rails leading into the mine. There was a sluice box next to the stream, with several small piles of mine tailings.
Ryce’s scan was interrupted by O2. “Oh, oh, Dianne has added a couple members to her group.”
Ryce swung his scope over to the shack. There were three men standing on the cabin porch, with Dianne and her four friends standing in a semi-circle near the porch steps. As he was reaching for his radio to call John, Ryce heard Tanya’s voice.
“Ryce, honey, watch that pretty butt of yours. Three more blobs just popped out of nowhere.”
Ryce looked over at O2, who was almost rolling in the dirt, laughing. Ryce confirmed three new players and let Tanya know this was the miner’s shack where they had found Brenda.
As O2 continued to laugh, Ryce swung his spotting scope to watch Dianne. She collected three laptops from three different backpacks and placed them on a bench on the front porch of the cabin. One of the new participants walked into the cabin and returned with a small duffle bag. He handed the duffle bag to Dianne. Dianne unzipped the bag and pulled out several bundles of money. Ryce could not hear the conversation but the three new players seemed to be extremely unhappy.
A spokesperson for the three new men kept pointing at the laptops. He was still obviously asking about the fourth laptop. Where was the fourth laptop? Ryce himself wanted an answer for that question. If it had been left in the cabin near the lake, the laptop was in many small pieces.
The conversation soon became more heated. Even without his scope, Ryce could see Dianne give the three men the “We’re Number One” salute. She walked over to Delbert. Two of the new men walked back into the shack. Without warning, two automatic rifles opened up on Dianne and her four companions.
O2 looked over at Ryce. “Those were AK-47s.”
Ryce shook his head “yes,” and continued scanning the shack. One of the men who had been part of the massacre walked out of the shack. He walked up to each of Dianne’s group, placed his rifle barrel above the head of the person and pulled the trigger.
Ryce radioed John and reported the events of the previous five minutes. His conversation was interrupted once more by O2. One of the three new players had walked into the mine and was returning with three horses.
Ryce immediately radioed John with the new information. O2 looked over at Ryce.
“Those horses are going to be slow on this trail. I think we can keep up with them.”
O2 radioed John.
“Hey, big brother, I think we can keep up with the horses. This trail is pretty rocky. See if you can figure out where they are going. A topographical map from the map store across from Wal-Mart would be extremely good right now.”
John replied that he had one pinned to the wall, but O2 and Ryce were simply two heat blobs on a grey computer screen. They weren’t even in color like the nightly weather report.
After the three men placed the laptops in a saddlebag, they mounted their horses, turned, and started up the trail. Ryce could hear faint laughter as they rode past the dead bodies.
O2 looked over at Ryce. “We can take them out at any time. You can have the one on the left. I’ll take the two on the right.”
Ryce smiled. “They are one level up on the food chain. I would like to see who the biggest fish is. Then we can decide who gets to shoot twice.”
Ryce and O2 signaled to the team that it was time to move out. As they approached the shack, Ryce asked John to keep the pursuit team within a half mile of the riders.
Ryce grimaced as they passed the dead bodies. So far, nine people had been executed. If the dead at the trailhead were included, the number was sixteen.
Chapter 36
The riders were not in a hurry. Had Dianne been aware that she had been followed? Had she told the riders about the gunfire the previous day? Perhaps they did not even care if they were followed.
The point man saw the trailing rider from time to time as he reached a rise in the trail. O2 had instructed the point to be very careful to not present an outline until after the rider had again vanished from view.
After approximately two hours of travel, John radioed Ryce that one of the riders had temporarily stopped. He rejoined the others less than five minutes later. O2 chuckled. Was this a potty break?
Ryce asked John to notify the pursuit group when the point man was within a hundred feet of where the horseman had stopped. When Ryce got the call from John, O2 keyed his walkie-talkie and told the point man to freeze in his tracks. Ryce was carefully scanning the edges of the tree line as they worked up the trail.
Ryce set the scope to display the distance and checked everything that was one hundred feet in front of the point man. A large tree hugged the trail at exactly 32 meters. Ryce chuckled. That would be an excellent spot to place something. Ryce turned up the magnification setting for the scope. There was a small, dark object on the tree. It did not resemble anything that was usually on a tree. Ryce slowly scanned the tree from the object down to the ground.
Ryce handed the scope to O2.
“That big tree next to the trail looks like where they want to cause trouble. I think there is a motion detector about chest high to a man on a horse. There is also a small package of something on the ground next to that big root. I don’t see any wires running down the tree so it might be wireless. Does it look to you like there is another motion detector on the package?”
O2 scanned the tree for several moments. “The package is wired. I saw the wind move the wires. I think I can get to the back of the tree without being detected and then cut the wires. Wish me luck.”
O2 handed Ryce the scope, slid his pack off his back, unzipped it, reached in, and pulled out a pair of wire cutters. He then disappeared into the forest. Five minutes later, Ryce saw an arm reach around the tree and cut the wires. The arm reached around the tree again and pulled the package out of Ryce’s sight. Finally, the arm motioned the group to come forward.
As Ryce began to move up the trail, O2 stepped out from behind the tree. He was holding a small package wrapped in a torn section of a grocery bag. Inside was ha
lf of a block of C-4. One of the SEALs knocked the motion detector off the tree with butt of his M4. It was a rudimentary ambush, but if someone was not careful, they would be unable to continue the chase.
Ryce heard Ramona’s voice in his earphone. “Ryce, John asked me to tell you that the riders stopped again for almost a minute, but have resumed moving up the trail.”
Ryce looked over at O2. “I, for one, have been convinced we should not be travelling on the trail. Even that small chunk of C-4 would take out a couple people. I suggest we split the group and move into the tree line to follow these jokers.”
O2 shook his head in agreement, pointed at three of the group, and then motioned for them to follow him. He walked back up the trail about three hundred feet and then disappeared into the trees.
Ryce selected two of the remaining six. They would go out on point on the other side of the trail and about one hundred feet above it. Ryce would follow three hundred feet behind. If either of the point men saw any of the riders, he was authorized to shoot first and ask questions later. At this point, Ryce was content to shoot them off their horses and try to explain his actions. The remaining four men would hang back and come running if the others got into trouble.
John, or one of his radio operators, radioed location data of the three riders to Ryce every fifteen minutes. Ryce then passed the information to the group using their walkie-talkies.
A little after 3:00 PM, Tanya reported that the riders had vanished from the thermal display. John cranked up the imaging and found a slightly warm, very large blob on a direct line of their previous travel. A few minutes later, O2 radioed that he had discovered a mining shack with an attached covered stable. He could see three horses in the stable.
Ryce and his group worked their way to a location where they could observe the cabin. They were far enough back in the trees to likely be unseen, but Ryce requested they use camo nets. He now regretted not bringing his Gillie suit. Although it did not weigh much, it took up more room than a rolled up sleeping bag.
Ryce scanned the cabin. The front door was open as were the three windows on Ryce’s side of the cabin. He thought he could see two figures in the shack through the open door. Well, at least the boots of two figures. Ryce flipped the scope selector to thermal. The shack was cold.
Ryce scanned the trail in front of him and in both directions. Cold. He began scanning in all directions around him. Two hot spots suddenly bloomed about two hundred yards to his left behind the cabin. They were followed by a third thermal image.
Ryce flipped his scope back to visual. The three men who had murdered Dianne were following a faint trail that appeared to lead directly up the side of the mountain.
Ryce’s radio growled in his ear.
“Ryce, this is Dexter. I have three hot spots moving sort of east, almost on your two and a half.”
Ryce responded that he had just become aware of them. He keyed the walkie-talkie and told O2 that they could meet at the shack, but carefully. As soon as they arrived at the shack, Ryce instructed the group to look everywhere, but be exceedingly careful.
The two figures he thought he had seen were actually just two pairs of very old cowboy boots stuffed with paper. Ryce chuckled when O2 opened his pack and pulled out a mobile explosives detector. The detector started growling. The boots contained C-4.
They had done their job. They had focused Ryce’s attention while the three men had escaped through an open rear window. Ryce called O2 over to discuss what they should do with the boots. They could not have an unsuspecting hiker think he had found a treasure. O2 opened his pack once again, and pulled out a spool of nylon parachute cord. He carefully constructed a loop and dropped the loop over the shafts of the boots. He motioned for everyone to leave the cabin, and began playing out the string.
When O2 was three hundred feet away from the cabin, he pulled a long length of medical tubing out of his pack. He tied one end to a limb and then stretched the tubing in the direction of the cabin. When he had tripled the length of the tubing, he tied the string to it.
“When I let go of the tubing, those boots are going to fly out of the cabin. I don’t think they will travel this far, but if I were you, I’d go a few yards farther away.”
O2 watched everyone increase his distance from the cabin. He let go of the tubing and dived behind the nearest tree. The boots came flying out of the cabin, but they did not explode.
O2 walked to the boots and pulled the paper out of each one. After collecting four blocks of C-4, O2 walked back to the cabin and inspected where the boots had been standing. Two small contact devices were lying on the floor of the cabin. The wires from the contacts disappeared between the floorboards. Ryce chuckled. The triggers had been ripped out of the boots before they could cause the C-4 to explode.
Ryce stepped off the porch and shined his flashlight toward where he thought the wires should emerge from the floor. The wires were wrapped around the positive and negative poles of a 9-volt battery.
Ryce stood and looked over at O2. “You didn’t invent that device to deactivate exploding Tony Lamas.”
O2 smiled. “No, I invented that gizmo when I was floating around the Pacific with the Gator Navy. They had a device for underway provisioning that shot a line between two ships. I tried to get one for my Glock but haven’t had any luck. I lost a guy in Afghanistan when we were trying to discharge an IED that was too close to an occupied house. We put a string on the trigger but could not manually pull the trigger fast enough or far enough to set it off. This device pulls the string a minimum of six feet. And it has an exceedingly fast pull rate.”
Ryce laughed.
“I think I would have just put a shell in the boots and blown the cabin up.”
Chapter 37
O2 and Ryce walked behind the cabin to check on the horses. They were still saddled. Only the saddlebag containing the laptops had been removed. Ryce asked two members of the group to remove the saddles and look around for some hay. The stable fence extended into the stream so the horses would have water. Ryce planned to inform the Park Service that they had abandoned horses at this cabin. Three pack animals would be nice but he did not know where he was going.
Ramona was the radio operator while Ryce and O2 were checking on the horses.
“They just went poof again, Ryce. Vanished.”
Ryce thanked her and turned to O2.
“Our three friends just vanished again. Somewhere on that hill east of us. Want to take a walk?”
It didn’t take long to find the trail the three men had taken when they had departed the cabin. It rose sharply through the trees on the opposite side of the stream they had been following. The trail then disappeared into a crevasse in the rocks less than a half mile from the shack. Ryce frowned. This must be where the three men had vanished. Ryce looked into the crevasse and then walked into it.
Less than one hundred feet into the crevasse, they were looking at a mine entrance. Ryce turned and walked back out of the crease. They now knew where the laptops had gone. He keyed his walkie-talkie and told the rest of the team to bring everything up the trail.
Ryce called John and told him which hole the three had gone into. But there was one big question. Why had they gone into this mine? Ryce pulled his Barrett off his shoulder. As he and O2 waited for their teams to arrive, Ryce heard Dexter’s voice.
“Ryce, this is Dexter. I think I can answer that question. That is the old Milburn mine. I explored it several years ago. It has one tunnel from your side of the mountain that goes about halfway and then splits. One of the tunnels goes all the way to the east side of the mountain, but I do not remember which one. I do recall that the mine tunnel is over four miles long.”
A few minutes after Dexter’s radio went dead, Tanya announced that John had requested the thermal satellite be relocated to the other side of the mountain. There were too many blind spots in the present position. Relocation would take a minimum of thirty minutes.
When the rest of the team arri
ved at the crease, Ryce explained what he had learned from Dexter. The team would split up at the junction of the two tunnels. They would have no contact after they entered the tunnels. Whoever took the tunnel that didn’t go all the way through the mountain would have to backtrack.
As they walked into the tunnel, Ryce checked his night vision headset. It turned the tunnel an eerie green color. Ryce wanted to be able to move quickly through the tunnel, but also move safely. After a long discussion with O2, Ryce decided they would use their night vision equipment and keep a one hundred foot gap. The vertical walls of the tunnel were jagged and might provide some protection in a firefight.
O2 led the team for the first hour and then stopped. They were almost halfway through the tunnel, and the split was just ahead. Ryce pulled a coin out of his pocket and told O2 to call it. O2 called “heads;” it came up “tails” and Ryce picked the left-hand tunnel.
The tunnel that Ryce had chosen ran arrow straight, as long as the arrow didn’t fly longer than five hundred feet. Ryce turned around and motioned to his group to backtrack.
Ryce soon caught up to O2. As the two walked down the tunnel, they could feel a slight breeze on their faces. O2 reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a book of matches. When he lit a match, they could both see the flame flickering in the direction they had come from. They were close to the eastern entrance.
Almost two hours after they entered the tunnel, Ryce and O2 were viewing a door. As they approached the door, both were checking the area for any hidden surprises. O2 pulled off his night vision and pulled a high-tech flashlight from one of his cargo pockets.
It did not appear that the door had been booby-trapped. Ryce looked around for any large object that he could use to test the door. In a small room to the left of the door, he found several 8-inch by 8-inch timbers used for the tunnel bracing. Some were less than two feet long.
Ryce had an idea. Approximately two feet from the entrance door was a large bracing beam. Ryce pulled a long length of parachute cord from his pack, tied the cord around one of the blocks, and looped the cord over the beam. The block was now suspended two feet off the floor and two feet from the door. Ryce tied a long piece of cord to the block and began to pay out the cord as he walked back up the tunnel. O2 motioned for the rest of the team to move away from the door. The tunnel made a small jog about two hundred feet from the entrance. The jog looked as if it would sufficiently shield the team if the door had been booby-trapped.
The Alberta Connection Page 23