by Gordon Ryan
Pulling into his apartment complex in Roseville shortly before seven, he climbed the flight of stairs and unlocked the door to his apartment. “Pack enough for a few days and we’ll send the rest.” That’s what she’d said. As he closed the door and set the dead bolt, he flicked on the lights, simultaneously noticing the smell of cigarette smoke.
“Mr. Stevenson?”
Stevenson jerked around, startled by the voice. “Who’re you?”
“No need to worry, Mr. Stevenson. We’re with the FBI, and we have a few questions.”
“But I just answered all your questions,” he blurted, startled to see a second man who was standing in the corner of the room. “Hey, you’re not FBI. I’m calling the police, and-”
“You’re calling nobody,” the second man said, stepping forward, his heavily tattooed arms now visible in the lamp light. He brandished a pistol in Stevenson’s face. “Have a seat. We’d still like to ask you a few questions. Since you’ve already had a jabber with the Feds, it shouldn’t be hard for you to repeat the message.”
Stevenson’s face blanched, and his legs felt weak. Shoved hard in the chest, he fell into a chair behind him. “Now, Mr. Stevenson,” his antagonist said in a calm drone, “this will be a rather unusual question-and-answer session, I’m afraid. You’ll have to respond by nodding your head, yes or no,” he said, slapping a piece of duct tape across Stevenson’s mouth. “If your answer needs talkin’,” he said to the terrified man, “you’ll have to write the answer on this here clipboard. Just to be sure it don’t slip off your lap, we’ll just lock it down,” he snarled, revealing a construction-type staple gun, which he used to drive a double-pronged staple through the clipboard into Stevenson’s knee, causing the terrified man to jerk upright in the chair, eyes blazing with pain.
The pain increased over the next hour to the point where Stevenson’s mind could no longer react to the repeated demands for information. The crude map he’d drawn on the clipboard was barely recognizable. Even Captain Roger Dahlgren, who accompanied First Sergeant Otto Krueger, had, at times, been forced to look away from Stevenson’s agony.
“I’m tellin’ ya, he told us everything he knew.”
“That’s what you hope,” Dahlgren said. “By the time you finished with him, he couldn’t have remembered his mother’s name. I told you to ease up. What if he knew more, or if he lied?”
“No chance, Captain. You haven’t got the stomach for what’s necessary,” Krueger scoffed. “He didn’t lie, and he got what he deserved.”
“Yeah, right,” Dahlgren said. “Tell that to the commander when you try to explain that the computer data disks are in some cabin near Clear Lake, and you don’t know what’s on ’em, and just in case they’re not there, that the informant’s dead.”
Shorter than Dahlgren by nearly a foot, and burly, Krueger replied, “We’ll find ’em, Captain. We’ll call the commander, and he can still get there before that useless female agent.”
Dahlgren looked once more at the slumped, bloody body and turned to leave, pausing at the door.
“If I remember right, this useless female agent is the same woman who put one between the eyes of your bank-withdrawal associate. Let’s get out of here before the neighbors smell the stench and call the cops.”
“Let’s call the commander. If he can get there before her, she’ll come up empty and think this guy lied to her.”
“Yeah, that’s a big if. Leave the message.”
Otto picked up the staple gun, blood still oozing from the handle, and stepped over to the now-silent body. He placed a small California bear flag against the dead man’s chest and fired the stapler once more. “Death to Traitors” was scribbled across the flag, affixed to what once had been the living, breathing body of Richard Clarke Stevenson. Newly appointed to his long-sought career position, Stevenson now sat lifeless in his apartment, his bloody head slumped to his chest. Surveying the room once more before leaving, Otto pulled off his rubber gloves and threw them on the floor.
“Have a nice day, Mr. Stevenson.” He spat at Stevenson’s lifeless body as he closed the door.
Dan and Nicole were lost in their own thoughts during much of the steep, uphill climb. The quiet and darkness were almost welcome in the growing tension of the hunt. Reaching the crest, Dan stopped the Blazer and turned off the headlights and engine, plunging Nicole and himself into silence and near total darkness.
“Sorry, but nature’s call waits for no man,” he said, stepping out of the car and disappearing off the dirt road.
There was an overcast sky, completely hiding the moon, and only an occasional star shone through the growing cloud cover. Nicole stood outside the vehicle for a moment, and when Dan returned to the car, she gathered the courage to ask him about the voices of his ancestors he always spoke about. He laughed at first, but quickly understood the seriousness of her question.
“But do you actually hear them, Dan?”
He pulled her close. “No, I’m not schizophrenic. They don’t really speak to me. I thought about it years ago and came to the conclusion that they were somehow. . well. . genetically implanted in me. It’s almost as if I really knew them. Actually, it answered a lot of questions I had about reincarnation and other unexplainable beliefs. Imagine, if you will, that our cells-our individual DNA-come with implanted memory from our ancestors. Tiny computer chips that contain the memory of the ages. I know it sounds far-fetched, but if such a thing actually happens, it would account for people who can speak foreign languages under hypnosis and remember places they’ve never been. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
Nicole was silent for a moment. “We are them, you mean?”
“In a sense. We add our own experiences to their knowledge, but basically, we are the current rendition of all those who have created us and made us who we are. We can still choose to do different things, act differently, even deny our basic instincts, but we can never really escape our heritage. If one believes that. .” he said, pausing a moment to formulate his thoughts, “then it becomes important that we live so that our children and their children will benefit from our actions, rather than spend their energies trying to overcome whatever bad tendencies we’ve created. The theory could go in many directions, if you wanted to pursue it to its extreme. Psychologists could have a ball with it.”
“Is that something your grandfather taught you?” Nicole asked.
“No.” Dan laughed. “It’s vintage Rawlings Psychology 501-of my own making.”
Nicole stepped back to the Blazer and opened the door. “No time for philosophy tonight, Mr. Rawlings. We’ve got a tight timetable, but I think I understand your theory.”
They reentered the Blazer, then crested the mountain road and commenced down the other side. “One other thing, Nicole,” Dan said, anticipating Nicole’s thoughts. “I haven’t had my dream about Susan’s accident or any trouble sleeping for a couple of months now.”
She remained quiet, accepting Dan’s way of thanking her for entering his life and helping to put a troublesome and difficult memory to rest.
Reaching State Road 53, Dan turned north and began to search for the Anderson-Marsh Park Road. Several miles up that canyon there would be a side trail, Stevenson had told Nicole, which would be identified by a rusted bulldozer pushed off the side of the California Forestry Department’s fire trail. Finally, after making two passes, a small, faded sign reading Anderson-Marsh State Park appeared, and they turned off the gravel road onto a dirt fire trail. As dark as it was, only the glow from their headlights provided any guidance, and then only for short distances as the road broke left and right. Finally, after going about six miles, Nicole told Dan to stop and back up. Shining her flashlight to the side of the road, she spotted the broken bulldozer, now partially covered with brush and new growth.
“Can you turn around on this road? Stevenson said the trail was about a hundred yards farther south from this bulldozer, running east another three or four hundred yards to the cabin.�
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Dan maneuvered the Blazer around and located the fire trail, following it slowly. Dan spotted the cabin first and angled the car so the headlights provided partial illumination.
“Let’s get the shovel and walk around back. It’s gonna be hard with everything so dark. Can you leave the headlights on?”
“Yeah, for awhile. We don’t want a dead battery up here at night.”
Behind the cabin, Nicole tried to identify the landmarks Stevenson had named, tripping over fallen logs and righting herself again.
“You okay?” Dan queried.
“It’s like being in a Halloween fun house-blindfolded.” Nicole stumbled on for a few more feet, calling to Dan as she located a pile of discarded four-by-eight corrugated tin roofing panels. “It’s under here, Dan. Help me move this stuff.”
After shifting the tin sheets, Dan started to dig in an area their flashlights illuminated as having a slightly discolored dirt surface. Only about eighteen inches down, he struck a metal box.
“Eureka!”
While Dan held the flashlight, Nicole knelt down and pried the lid off the tin box. Inside there were eight CD disks enclosed in plastic bubble wrap. Two disks were marked “Missouri” and two “Oregon.” Four of them read “California,” with progressive time notations on labels attached to each one.
“Let’s go,” Nicole said. “It’s getting cold.”
After they got in the Blazer, Dan slowly backed his way out of the clearing, then headed down the dirt road. Just before reaching the fire service trail, Dan suddenly stopped the Blazer and turned off the lights, once again engulfing them in darkness.
Nicole looked over at him. “Out of gas, Mr. Rawlings?”
Dan leaned forward without answering and stared through the windshield toward the mountain road where it joined State Road 53. “I thought I saw some lights through the trees.”
Nicole watched with him as lights could occasionally be seen flashing through the darkness as a vehicle proceeded up the road.
“I’m guessing there’s not usually traffic up here this late at night,” Dan said, starting up the Blazer again. Turning on just his parking lights to shine on the next few yards, he drove slowly toward the main fire trail. “I’m going to pull off into that small side-cut we passed, just short of the fire trail, until we see who these folks are.”
Turning off the engine, Dan and Nicole waited as the approaching lights grew brighter, appearing more frequently through the trees as they danced ever closer.
“They’ve passed the fire trail,” Dan said, prematurely. The vehicle stopped on the primary side road, its tail lights visible through the trees, and began to back up, much as Dan and Nicole had done twenty minutes earlier. Turning into the cabin trail, the vehicle, now clearly identifiable as an extended cab pickup, crept passed their hiding place, continuing up the road until it reached the cabin site and began shining a spotlight into the cabin yard. Dan and Nicole were close enough to hear voices through Nicole’s open window as several men got out of the pickup and headed for the house.
“It’s too much of a coincidence,” Dan said softly.
“That’s an understatement. Hide or run?” she said.
“If we’re trapped in this side trail, we’ve no escape. I vote we cut and run-then try to outdistance them on the mountain trail. I know that road pretty well.”
“You’re the guide. Let’s go,” Nicole replied.
The sound of the Chevy Blazer engine started the men near the cabin shouting to one another. Dan spun the tires, grabbing traction toward the fire trail. In his rearview mirror, he could see the men running through the headlights of their truck. Dan turned left onto the fire service trail, covering ground quickly and reaching Highway 53 in minutes. Turning south, he sped toward 29 and the entrance to the mountain trail that led back over into Rumsey Valley. A mile or two behind them, Dan could occasionally see the headlights of a vehicle.
“If we reach the mountain road, I think I can outdistance them. It’s about four miles farther on.”
Reaching the mountain road, Dan bounced the Blazer over the cattle guard and started the steep climb up toward the narrow pass on a road that became more of a switch-back the higher they went. He could still see the headlights behind them, sometimes across a canyon as they continued to outdistance their pursuers.
“We’ve got two choices. I can probably outrun them over the mountain, or we could take one of the side roads and lose them in the dark. They’d pass us, and we could retrace our steps back down toward Highway 29 and run on down to Calistoga.”
“It was stupid to leave my cellular in my car,” Nicole exclaimed.
“I’ve got one in the glove box-probably a dead battery, but there should also be a car cord in there. Who’re you going to call?”
“Have you got a Forest Service map?” Nicole asked.
“Under the seat.”
“Great. We just may have a way out. Keep heading up the mountain, and I’ll call the cavalry.”
Nicole rifled though the glove box, retrieving the phone and car battery cord. In moments, she had Pug Connor on the line.
“Colonel, I’m sorry to bother you so late, but we’re in a predicament. I’m with Dan Rawlings in the mountains west of Rumsey Valley. We haven’t got much time to explain, but we’ve recovered some computer disks that should shed new light on the elections issue. We’ve been spotted, however-probably by some of the brigade boys-and we’re getting boxed in up here. I’ve got a forest service map and can give you approximate coordinates.”
“Uh, oh,” Dan said, followed by a soft whistle.
“Hold on, Colonel,” she said. “What’s wrong, Dan?”
Dan pointed high up on the mountain trail, and Nicole spotted the small headlights of another vehicle, coming toward them from the east, still miles across the multiple canyons they would have to cross to reach Rumsey Valley.
“We’re really boxed in now, Nicole. We can hide, but by morning, this mountain will be swarming with brigade troops, if indeed that’s who’s in those vehicles.”
“Not much doubt of that, is there?” She returned to the phone. “Colonel, our situation has changed. We’re traveling east on. . let’s see.” She paused, studying the map.
“Whispering Pines Road,” Dan said.
“Whispering Pines Road. We’ve got company about three miles behind, and we’ve just spotted a vehicle high up on the mountain, headed our way. It’s a single-lane dirt road, Colonel. They’ve got us boxed in, but Dan knows several side fire trails, and we can probably hide through the night. But in the morning. .”
“Understand, Nicole,” Connor replied. “Can you take the phone with you?”
“Dead battery, Colonel. As long as we can stay with the car, I can keep in touch.”
“Give me some idea of your coordinates, and I’ll get help out at first light.”
Nicole read off several adjacent coordinates paralleling Whispering Pines Road and gave Connor Dan’s cellular number.
“If we have to leave the vehicle, Colonel, I’ll advise.”
“Okay, Nicole. Good luck to you both. I’ll get right on it.”
“Thanks, Colonel. We’ll be watching for you. Dan said he’s got a couple of emergency flares, and we’ll use ’em if we spot you.”
“Right.”
Nicole pressed ”end,” but left the phone plugged in to accept what charge the phone battery could take in the short time remaining before they might have to leave the vehicle.
“Nicole,” Dan said, watching the headlights up ahead, “they’re about twenty minutes away, and the vehicle behind can’t catch us on this road unless we stop. But we have one other option. You could take the disks and what cold-weather gear we have, and I could find a good hiding place for you, then continue on until I meet the oncoming car. I could plead ignorance, at least for awhile, and they might think I’m alone.”
“No good, Dan. They have no other way of knowing about the cabin except from Stevenson. We have t
o assume they got to him sometime this evening after I spoke with him. I should never have agreed to drop the tail. If they got to him, they know I’m out here too, and if they find you first, they’ll just keep looking for me.”
Dan nodded at Nicole’s deduction. “It’s off the road, then, and into one of the hiding spots until first light. We’ll be surrounded and dependent on Connor to get us out.”
This time Nicole nodded. “We can take one evasive measure, though,” she said, quickly developing a plan. “We can hide these disks and let Colonel Connor know where they are in case we’re captured. Know of a good place?” she asked.
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do,” Dan answered. “About a half mile before we turn off this road onto the fire trail.”
“Well, let’s do it,” Nicole said, reaching into her purse and checking her pistol, then putting the two extra clips in her jacket pocket.
“Start to put all your warm clothing on, Nicole. We’re gonna have to leave the car at some point and scramble on foot. It’ll likely get cold up here tonight.”
Nicole smiled briefly at Dan, receiving a reassuring smile in return. “We’ve had several fun dates, Dan, but we haven’t been camping yet,” she said, trying to ease the growing tension.
“You’ve chosen a great time for it,” he said, smiling at her.
“Dan?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry I got you into this-but I’m glad you’re here with me.”
“I am too, Nicole.”
General Del Valle answered the phone on the second ring, glancing quickly at the bedside clock, which read 12:45.
“Hello.”
“General Del Valle?”