Back from the Brink

by Emery Hayes

  It was an evidence bag, clear and tagged. Inside were ten one-kilogram bags of the drug. Nearly ten million dollars street value—a quarter of what they had lost. Gates and Green paused. Their facial expressions opened in surprise—they hadn’t expected this of her, and she had counted on that. And then she waited more. Longer than she should have. Long enough to know there was a problem. Sisk didn’t have a clean shot. Or his nerves had spiked a fever. She shifted. She was turning to get a visual when she heard the crack of his rifle, felt the rush of the bullet as it burrowed through the air, smelled the singe, heard Gates yelp.

  She had been in the way. Sisk had waited for her to move.

  And then everything canted off-center.

  She heard MacAulay ordering the boys into the brush. She watched the Scout leader scramble to his feet even as Gates staggered backward. He ran off after the boys, and Jordan was with them, retreating into the thickly wooded mountainside.

  She swung her gaze back in time to see Green and a third man dive into the trees north of the trail. Luke Franks followed. She brought her gaze back to center. Gates was raising his rifle.

  The shadow of a bird passed over the landscape. The rustling of the boys as they scattered through the brush grew impossibly loud. She prayed Jordan had gotten deep into the trees, outside the scope of Gates’s assault rifle. That they had all reached a place of safety.

  “Sisk tapped a wing,” Lars said. “Gates won’t be worth much.”

  The bullet had ripped through the man’s bicep, shredding muscle and sinew, particularly the ligaments that connected to the elbow joint. That arm was useless.

  And yet he was positioning the rifle with his right hand, snugging it up against his shoulder. It wasn’t possible to control a Deuce single-handedly.

  Nicole shook her head. “You have nowhere to go, Gates. And no way you’re going to shoot your way out of here in a blaze of glory.”

  And the world slowed down. She caught a blur of motion from the corner of her eye. A mix of colors, green and orange. She’d seen it before. His jacket. MacAulay was closing in from her right, entering the zone, between her and Gates. Flame burst from the muzzle of Gates’s automatic rifle, the metal cartridges popped into the air, and MacAulay’s body jerked and shuddered with the impact. Three times. He’d taken three bullets. As he fell, clearing the strike zone, Nicole squeezed the trigger. The crack of the gun broke the spell terror had cast over her. She heard more shots, watched, even as she advanced toward MacAulay, Gates’s body absorb the bullets from her men.

  “What did you do?” she demanded, as she knelt beside him. “MacAulay, what did you do?”

  Blood oozed at three separate points on his jacket. One beneath his collarbone, another two inches lower and toward his side, the last above his rib cage.

  “Saved your life,” he said.

  “That’s my job.”

  “Not this time,” he said. His breath came rapidly. He was going into shock.

  “Lars!”

  “Right beside you.”

  His voice was close, and Nicole turned and found Lars on his knees, an open medic box on the ground in front of him. It wasn’t a complete case, like the ones they stored in the trunk of their cruisers. It was the portable version, packed with bandages and, what they needed most, QuikClot. She grabbed the case from him.

  “Call in a chopper for transport. Check on the Scouts. On Jordan.”

  She rummaged through the case and brought out a sleeve of the powder. Half a dozen. Twice what they needed. She hoped.

  And then she heard a barrage of shooting, the kind that could only come from a fully automatic machine gun. The rounds seemed to overlap, so possibly Green and his man were firing together. A hundred rounds or more spent in less than half a minute. There was return fire. Franks had gotten off several rounds before he was either silenced or had changed strategy.

  Lars returned, jogging up from the encampment.

  “They’re fine. All of them. Scout leader is holding it together too.”

  Nicole followed Lars’s nod. Jordan stood amid a group of boys. His face was pale and he was on the edge of tears, but she couldn’t muster even a reassuring smile for him. She scanned the area and found Sisk and Casper. They had secured Gates’s body. He was clearly dead, no longer a threat, but they had removed the Deuce and any other weapons he might have had on his person and formed a clear zone around the body.

  “Sisk,” she called across the trail. “Luke Franks went in pursuit of Green. Assist.”

  She watched Sisk. He opened the magazine on his Remington, counted bullets, added a few more, and snapped the piece back into place. And then he faded into the woods.

  Another pair of hands appeared on MacAulay’s chest.

  “How are you, sir?” It was Matthew Franks.

  “Been better,” MacAulay gasped.

  “We’re going to get you off this mountain,” Franks said. He worked the buttons down MacAulay’s jacket, then took hold of the collar of his T-shirt and began to tear it.

  “What are you doing?” Nicole demanded.

  “I have medic training,” Franks said, and caught Nicole’s gaze. His was steady, confident. “In the field.”

  “Because you were a Marine.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He turned back to MacAulay. “You’re a doctor, sir?”

  “MacAulay,” he said. “No ‘sir’.”

  Franks nodded. “Tell me where you’ve been shot.”

  Franks took the QuikClot from Nicole and began tearing open packets and pouring them directly into MacAulay’s wounds.

  MacAulay began a medical assessment of the damage the bullets had done. It was brief and punctuated by gasps as he struggled to catch his breath. “Collarbone not a worry … bullet tucked up against the pectoralis major. Second bullet all soft tissue … the third … not so lucky.”

  “Shattered a rib?” Franks guessed.

  MacAulay nodded. “Let’s hope … that’s all it did.”

  “Pierced your lungs?”

  “Possible.”

  Which was bad. They could stop the bleeding from the outside with the QuikClot but could do nothing for internal injuries until MacAulay was at the hospital.

  “Nicole?” Lars caught her attention. “Chopper is on its way.” But there was something more. She heard it in the heaviness of his tone.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “There’s no way for them to land up here. No place clear enough.”

  She knew that. Had known it as she watched MacAulay’s body absorb the bullets, as he came crashing down to earth.

  “Where?”

  “Two-point-two miles due south,” he said. “An open meadow. They’ll be waiting for us there.”

  They had the ATVs. That was the only way. They wouldn’t be able to lay MacAulay flat, but they would get him to the medevac quickly.

  “We don’t know where Green is.”

  “Franks and Sisk are on him,” Lars said. “He won’t double back for a chance at us. Freedom calls.”

  Matt Franks caught her attention. “It’s time, Sheriff.”

  She glanced at MacAulay. He was pale but conscious.

  She stepped back, and Lars and Matthew Franks lifted MacAulay to standing. Each supporting him under an arm, they walked him the few feet to the waiting ATV, and Nicole followed. Once they had him seated, she took the seat belt and stretched it over his shoulder and chest, fastening it.

  “Not too tight?”

  “Lots of padding,” MacAulay said.

  Matthew Franks had done good work. There was no evidence of blood flow through the thick gauze bandages that she could see.

  MacAulay grabbed her hand when she would have stood clear.

  “Probably not the time,” he said, and paused for a breath. “Will you marry me, Nicole Cobain?”

  Nicole blinked back a rush of tears.

  “Yes,” she said. “Soon.”

  He smiled, slim and waning. “Glad that’s out of the way.”
>
  “You knew I was a sure thing.”

  “No. You kept me guessing from the beginning.”

  “I’ll be at the hospital,” she said.

  “I know you will.”

  She caught and held his gaze. “Don’t die on me, MacAulay.”

  “Not a chance.”

  Franks leaned on the throttle, and Nicole stepped back from the Yamaha. She raised a hand and prayed it wasn’t their last farewell.

  They weren’t quite out of sight, around the curve in the trail, when Luke Franks came stumbling out of the tree line. He had his Commando in one hand and he looked alert, but blood was streaming heavily from a head wound. Sisk came out of the woods behind him, back first and Remington raised and ready.

  She and Lars rushed to meet them.

  “You shot, Franks?” Lars called.

  “Green’s not that good, and that pissant he has with him couldn’t shoot an elephant out of a tree.” Franks swiped at the stream of blood. “Green got the trees around me, damn shower of wood chips. Probably just a splinter.”

  Lars looked at the wound. Made Franks sit while he pulled a bandage and antibiotic cream from the quickly emptying case.

  “Did you get close to Green?” Nicole asked.

  “Within fifty yards or so. Any more and you’d be cleaning gray matter off the tree trunks. He’s headed for the Shoe Horn, though.” He looked at Lars. “You were right about that.”

  “He funnel up through the channels?”

  The fastest approach to the Shoe Horn was a series of narrow paths through the mountain, steep and covered in shale.

  “Yeah. And he didn’t have to look for them.”

  Nicole turned to Sisk. “Did you have a shot?”

  He shook his head. “He kept to the trees like a damn bunny, hopping in and out of cover.”

  She had to send a team in after Green, but she wouldn’t be on it. Sometimes the personal had to trump the job. It was possible Green had slipped through their fingers. That he would make it over the rough terrain and into Canada. But she didn’t want to make it easy for him. The man was responsible for an untold amount of deaths, of theft so large that its magnitude was still being tallied, of corrupting justice and setting loose criminals who no doubt were continuing to wreak their havoc, victimizing the vulnerable. Green needed to be brought in, tried, and convicted.

  “I’ll call our Canadian counterparts,” she said. “You’re going to take lead on this, Lars.”

  “As it should be,” he agreed.

  “Pick your men. Take three.”

  “I want Luke Franks along.”

  Nicole nodded. “Good call.” Franks knew Green better than any of them. He would be an asset to Lars.

  “You’ll need horses and packs.” They could be gone for days. “Take the satellite phone. Answer it, Lars. Don’t keep me guessing.”

  “Will do.”

  “Minimize risk.”

  “Always.”

  “I’ll get started on arrangements.” She would have turned away, found her son and her ATV, and made a start for town. For the hospital. For cell range so that she could put into motion all that needed to be done, but Lars stopped her.

  “Hey,” he called after her.

  Nicole turned back to him.

  “Don’t rush to the altar,” he said. “I’d like to be part of the show.”

  32

  They borrowed the horses from a rancher who thought they were tracking illegals. Nicole did nothing to change his perception. They were keeping this as hushed as possible, moving in the early-evening light like shadows against the deeper gray of the mountains. Sunset, in its glorious array of oranges and pinks, had already closed its show and left the sky a shade of deep ore. She watched as Lars, two officers, and Agent Franks faded into the distance. They were to meet up with a Canadian mounted unit just over the border. RCMP knew the terrain better, which was at times treacherous. They would weave through trees and over land bridges and, when the woods grew thick, shimmy through fir and birch until even that was no longer possible. There was a point where they would have to dismount and walk their horses, fitted with blinders, across a footpath no more than three feet in width over a sheer drop of three hundred feet into the valley below. It was the way Green had gone. It was the way they must go.

  Part of her hoped Green had lost his footing and lay at the bottom of the canyon. Better that than to lose any of her officers. But an aerial search, conducted just before dark, had all but dashed that hope.

  Nicole looked over her shoulder. Darkness had already descended and was almost complete. The Astum River Trail behind her blended into the foliage. They had watched Lars and his crew head northwest, toward the border and Green, and had started their hike down the mountain. Matthew Franks flanked her left side. He knew how to ferret a man out of a rabbit hole. He had wanted to go, but she couldn’t risk sending in a civilian.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked him.

  “About what?”

  “Your life,” she said. He knew that she sympathized with his situation. Silently, she was glad Lois Embry was on their side. The woman had the tenacity of a dog with a bone and would make sure Adelai got hold of her birth certificate and any other documents she needed to move on with her life. “You have Adelai and a child. You need permanence, a career, and a home.”

  “I have a brother and Faris Amari to bury first,” he said. His voice was solemn, his words stirring the shadows.

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said.

  “They both died heroes.”

  She agreed. “You’re good people.”

  He nodded and lapsed into silence.

  “When you’re ready,” she said, “come see me.”

  “About a job?”

  “We’d be lucky to have a man with your skills on board.”

  They continued down the sloping, winding trail, using head lamps to light their way.

  “I spoke to your brother before they left. He thinks Green knows the Shoe Horn well.”

  “Green’s been sending undocumented aliens that way for more than a year now. That’s what Luke thinks,” Franks said. “There’s a gap in sensors almost a quarter mile wide over the pass. Probably because you’d have to be desperate or crazy to go that way.”

  There was no fence, no wall denotating where one country ended and the other began. The border between the United States and Canada was the biggest in the world, and such was not feasible. Instead, there was a border vista, maintained by both countries. Forty feet of land cleared of brush and, where there were shared bodies of water, buoys marking the spot and measured and adjusted twice yearly to allow for drift. Sensors that detected movement were hidden in wooded areas, but they were few and far between, and who better to know where they were located than the members of Montana BP?

  “You took a look up there.” When Nicole had been at the hospital, checking on MacAulay, who was in surgery, and when she was rounding up the necessary resources to outfit a group of men taking off into the high country, Matthew Franks had gone ahead to track the escaped. “What do you think? Lars said you tracked Green through seven miles of switchbacks and scree, all the way to the border.” And he’d been able to give them a starting point. “So, tell me something beyond the obvious.”

  He nodded, considering her request. “He’s carrying something heavy,” Franks said. “A loaded pack—the heels of his boots dug into the soil deeper. And he’s got some kind of high-powered rifle slung over his shoulder.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “And how do you know that?”

  “Because it’s spring. New leaves, the thin branches of saplings. The stock of the gun is up—solid wood, steel pin. I know this because in a few places it tore through the saplings, stripping it of the leaves, and put a distinct nick in the branches.”

  “So he has more than the Deuce.”

  “Definitely. He was carrying that in his arms.”

  She was impressed and said so.

  “B
ut that was the good news.”

  Nicole didn’t know how the possession of heavy artillery was good news and braced herself.

  “He’s not frantic. Not yet,” he said. “He has a steady, measured walk. Fast but not fleeing. He’s keeping his cool.”

  “Too bad for us.”

  He agreed. “Time will wear on him. He’ll grow tired. He’ll be looking over his shoulder,” he said. “Tensions will rise, and maybe he or his buddy will lose their cool.”

  “He’ll make a mistake.”

  “Yeah, that’s the way it happens,” he agreed. “But this man, Green, he knows something about the outdoors. Something about fading into the landscape. I picked up his track but lost it a few times too.”

  A heaviness settled on Nicole as she went through possible outcomes. The best, of course, was capture without incident. The worst, the loss of her men. And somewhere in between, that Green managed to escape.

  She was glad Lars had chosen Dan Carly, their department tracker, as one of the three to accompany him. If he could keep them on Green’s heels, that left Lars, Sisk, and Franks to apprehend him.

  It was the best they could do.

  A horned owl announced their arrival through the brush. The cicadas chirped. Still carrying the burden of her men, Nicole changed the subject.

  “How old is Adelai?” she asked.

  “Eighteen,” he said. “Nineteen in June.”

  “Cutting it close,” Nicole said.

  He nodded and wasn’t quick to pick up the conversation. She waited. She wanted to know more about Matthew Franks. Needed to know more about him. She didn’t want to hire blindly—skills were one thing, integrity another. There couldn’t be a giant leap between the two. And she couldn’t make another mistake. She might not survive it.

  “We started dating when she was seventeen. And I knew it. Wished like hell that wasn’t the case.” He thought over his next words before he spoke. “I tried to pretend it was just a friendship. She needed that, on her own so young. But it started becoming more even before I shipped out.” He stopped and turned to her. “We didn’t consummate. Not until I returned stateside, and she was already eighteen by then.”