NSummer

by Never Summer (retail) (epub)

  Joe Ramirez was resentful and felt targeted himself. Why? Simple. He was of Mexican-American ancestry. Prejudice was rife in the force. It was something he lived with, but had never gotten used to. Joe was certain he never would. He hated being the low man on the pole. Even so, it was pointless to complain. That only made things worse.

  Such were his thoughts as Ramirez reached the camp. As he swung his car around a number of camper-trailers flashed in the sweep of his headlights. He pulled alongside one, and opened the door of the patrol car. Quickly he checked his gear. He made sure his piece was loaded, standard protocol, and grabbed his Maglite. The night was pitch black but for the flickering light of a campfire. He thought he heard voices, but was not sure.

  Moving toward the fire, where the noise seemed to be coming from, he scanned with the light as he cleared the back end of the first camper. But the training academy and his four years as a trooper had not prepared him for what happened next.

  As he swept his flashlight he noticed a figure to his right; a blur in the dark. It appeared to be a large man and, here was the strange part, just sitting in the darkness. Instinctively Ramirez went into a crouch and reached for his revolver. Unsnapping the flap, he gripped his weapon with his right hand. But almost immediately he knew he had over-reacted. Loosening his grip on the .38, he stood up and moved closer. It was a large man and he appeared to be on his knees. Or maybe he was just sitting on the ground. From this distance Ramirez could not be sure. As he moved closer he put the beam directly on the man, but the guy never looked up and continued doing whatever he was doing.

  Ramirez was startled. It was unusual that a man would fail to acknowledge the arrival of law enforcement. The person looked to be intoxicated, which probably explained his behavior, but Ramirez was not certain. He could not see what the man was doing. He moved nearer and was startled again. The man had his cheek against a tree and … was stroking the bark with his hand…

  What in hell…?

  The deputy had no idea. To all appearances the man was totally absorbed with the tree. That was all. That was it. A shiver passed through the deputy.

  Yes, it was strange. But Ramirez sensed no threat so he moved on. Now, he swept his light across the flat surface of a camper trailer and noticed it was covered with Day-Glo. He concentrated the beam. There were swirling red bulls’ eyes, spirals, all manner of graffiti. Was it a prank? Or something more serious, evidence of sabotage by tree huggers?

  He moved toward the fire and nearly tripped over another body, a man lying on the ground. Passed out? Or dead?

  “Shit.”

  He shone the beam on him, up and down.

  What…?

  More Day-Glo. The man’s face was blue. But he wasn’t dead, his lips were moving and his eyes were open, wide open. The guy was … whispering to himself.

  Too weird.

  The man appeared to be inebriated. The deputy thought so, but he was not sure. He could not get a handle on what he was seeing. During his years on the force he had run into plenty of drunks and druggees, but nothing like this. There was something about this drunk that did not seem right. He made another closer pass with the beam, studying the face. The man was smiling in the strangest way, almost like…

  Ramirez moved on. Two men, no, three, half in shadow, were sitting around the dying fire. Three flickering shapes. He spotlighted them with the Maglite, one after another.

  Un-fucking believable.

  It was a circle jerk.

  And I thought I’d seen everything. Three grown men.

  Sweeping the light more widely, now, he noticed another big man sitting on a nearby tractor. The piece of heavy equipment was also covered with nonsensical graffiti. Spirals, figures, circles, what-all. Nonsense. The guy was clearly wide-awake and also had a Day-Glo face. He was not doing anything. The man was just staring into the darkness...

  Ramirez steadied the beam. There was nothing threatening about him. The guy was peaceful like the others, with the same spacy smile.

  As the deputy strode through the darkness back to the patrol car he tried to make sense of it all. But none of it added up. For a moment he half-seriously entertained the possibility that someone was playing a practical joke on him, just one of a many disjointed thoughts and impressions racing through his head. By the time he reached the vehicle he was convinced the report about sabotaged equipment had been a mistake, or maybe a hoax.

  He reached in the car door window and grabbed the mike. The curly-Q cord stretched out like a slinky.

  “Unit 3-0-5 to base. Do you read?”

  “Roger. Is that you Joe? You’re coming through clear, now. ”

  “Copy, Sher.” The deputy hesitated. He was unsure how to begin. Suddenly, he wished he had delayed the call for half a minute, to collect his thoughts. It was all nuts, just nuts.

  “Joe, I lost you. Are you there?”

  “Roger that. Sorry...Look, Sher, uh..We got a situation, up here. OK? Get a grip. You probably won’t believe what I’m going to tell you.” He paused. “Wait. What was that?”

  THIRTY TWO

  It was after 10:00 p.m. when Jacques St. Clair pulled into the Rustic Resort, half way up the Poudre River road. He was exhausted after an emotionally grueling day. He had spent the morning in Denver sequestered with state bureaucrats who informed him that Right of Way Inc. was currently four months in arrears to the State Workmen’s Compensation Insurance Fund for disability premiums. Although Jacques hotly disputed the charge, he insisted it was all a misunderstanding, formal notice was served that the state was about to enforce compliance by slapping a lien on property owned by the company. His dander up, Jacques spent the better part of the next two hours playing phone tag, first, with Priscilla his secretary, then, with his accountant. When he finally stormed out of the state offices around noon the matter still was not resolved. At that point, all Jacques wanted was to find a saloon on Larimer Street and drown his troubles in an anonymous pitcher of golden Coors.

  He did not do it, of course, though he was sorely tempted. He still had two replacement skidders to run down. Not to mention that stupid escape clause. So far, he had not been able to contact Tim Hollinger.

  There followed another round of calls to dealers in the Denver area. It took longer than expected to run down even one skidder. After calling around, he finally learned from a friend in Cherry Creek about an operator based in La Porte, just north of Fort Collins. The man had one skidder for lease, including the driver. Although Jacques needed two, he would have to settle for one. He closed the deal over the phone, then made haste to get out of Denver before the start of the afternoon rush hour. It was a relief to put that brown excrescence that passed for Denver air behind him.

  Phewww...

  He never did reach his attorney.

  As he was cruising north on I-25 Jacques finally realized he was out of options and would have to contact his brother Paul. He hated relying on his brother, but the way things presently stood he could think of no alternative. Paul was currently at a remote site in the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado, about to kick off another large right-of-way project. There was no way to reach him during the day by telephone, but Jacques finally did manage to contact Priscilla, his secretary, who manned ‘Right of Way Inc.’s front office in Leadville. Priscilla served as the go-between when the brothers were out of town working separate jobs.

  At these times, Priscilla’s regular duties often took a back seat to mediation, because relaying messages between two men as volatile as Jacques and Paul was tantamount to being caught in a crossfire. Fortunately, Priscilla understood her role as go-between and handled the brothers with aplomb. She knew both had short fuses and she adapted accordingly. She was absolutely fearless with men and had a knack for toning down their heated rhetoric. She was also quite adept at massaging their male egos. In short, Priscilla was the slender thread that kept the brothers civil and speaking to one another. It was curious that even though she was vital to the smooth operation o
f Right of Way, Inc., the brothers remained strangely unaware of her key role and actual importance to their business. Priscilla was the unsung employee, the anonymous glue that kept everything together.

  There were glitches, of course. After leaving Bowen Gulch, the previous afternoon, Jacques had attempted several times without success to raise Priscilla by phone. For some weeks, things had been slow in the office, and with nothing to do but sit by the telephone Priscilla sometimes took the afternoon off out of sheer boredom. Later that evening, he tried to reach her by CB, but again, without success. CB worked by line of sight, and was almost useless in the mountains during the daytime. At night, though, Jacques could often catch a skip off the ionosphere and reach Priscilla in Leadville. It was why the brothers had equipped her home with a CB unit. Priscilla hated the constant static, however. She claimed it drove her crazy. The woman probably had turned the volume down, again, too low to hear his call. This was no salve for Jacques’ frayed nerves.

  It was not unusual for the brothers to be incommunicado for days at a stretch. Jacques had no phone in his mobile office. Even while conducting the business in Denver, he was dependent on pay telephones. Earlier that morning, he had pumped nearly ten dollars in coinage into a public phone in the lobby of the state government building. Damned one-armed bandits.

  We put a man on the moon but we can’t even put a call through on the C-band. What the world needs is a goddamned portable telephone. Now why is that so difficult?

  Once he made the decision to contact his brother, Jacques exited the interstate and finally reached Priscilla from a pay phone at a truck stop north of Denver. After explaining the situation he gave her emphatic instructions. “I need to talk with Hollinger too,” he told her. “But Paul’s the priority. Keep trying, all day, if need be. I absolutely must have a decision by tonight. We are down to the wire.”

  After finishing with Priscilla he pumped in more coins and phoned ahead to reserve a room at the Rustic Resort, which was famously located about half way up the south fork of the Poudre River on the road to Cameron Pass. Jacques had stayed at the quaint resort on numerous occasions, and thought well of it. At Rustic the raging Poudre slowed to riffles and meandered through a broad vale of fertile bottomland. It was a sweet spot, with large black cottonwoods along both banks.

  His brother Paul was obstinate to the point of being pigheaded. Jacques had decided against trying to reach him directly. Any attempt at a conversation was likely to rekindle the same old issues over which the brothers so often feuded. Jacques was not eager to be on the receiving end of the dollop of grief Paul would certainly dish up when he learned about the eco-tage and the fine print in the Western-Pacific contract.

  What a fucking mess!

  His brother would probably explode at the news. Paul would need a few hours just to cool down enough to have a reasonably sane conversation. Jacques had been through it before, enough times to know better.

  Best let Priscilla handle him.

  The job in the San Juans was scheduled to start up any day. The site was a high alpine valley northeast of Durango, not far from the headwaters of the Rio Grande. The job would entail ground clearing for a new destination resort, including a major lodge and ski runs.

  It was not unusual for the brothers to work separate jobs. The right-of-way business was lucrative, and there were obvious incentives to pursuing concurrent projects. To be sure, there were also risks. A company that allowed itself to become overextended could easily end up in a financial straitjacket. Jacques had seen it happen to a competitor and was determined to avoid similar missteps. Coordination was never simple or easy with two, or sometimes even three, concurrent projects. Often as not, the work sites were geographically remote. Managing projects at opposite ends of the state, sometimes at opposite ends of the region, could be a logistical nightmare. The brothers were often out of contact for days at a time; for which reason relatively minor problems could become serious in a hurry, especially when contracts involved deadlines.

  Fortunately, the completion date for the ski resort in the San Juans allowed plenty of margin. If Priscilla could persuade Paul to delay ground clearing and come north with a skidder and some crew, they might yet avoid trouble with Ted Roe…

  That surly son of a bitch…

  The issue probably hinged on whether Paul had already committed to heavy equipment rentals in Durango. Heavy equipment was a big-ticket item, a major part of the budget for any large job. The St. Clair brothers, between them, did not own enough cats and skidders to cover multiple contracts, which is why rentals often were needed when working separate jobs. A signed rental agreement in Durango ruled out a postponement.

  But good news was waiting when Jacques pulled in to the Rustic Resort, a message from Priscilla. The motel manager handed the note to Jacques when he checked in. It was brief and to the point:

  PAUL AGREES. WILL COME NORTH ASAP WITH SKIDDER AND CREW. HUGS. PRISCILLA.

  Finally, some good news. And about damn time.

  Jacques set the alarm for 5:00 a.m., and turned out the lights. By the time his lids closed he was dead to the world.

  THIRTY THREE

  Fifteen minutes after the police car departed the campground, three shadows crossed the access road not far from where the deputy had parked. They tip-toed soundlessly through the night.

  The trio had watched from concealment while the cop checked out the camp and called in his report. They were too far away to hear what the deputy said. It appeared that he was about to leave when for some reason he returned to one of the campers and went inside. Minutes later, he emerged with two men, one of them in handcuffs. After loading them into his patrol car, the cop finally left.

  A boisterous party had been underway in the campground when Pinecone and his mates first arrived, about an hour before. No matter. The trio was in no hurry. They were prepared to wait it out as long as necessary, until the camp quieted down. The loggers had to sleep sooner or later. From the sound of things, the men had been drinking heavily. Everyone knew loggers were boozers. The wild party had actually been a stroke of good luck. The drunken fools would sleep that much more soundly, once they crashed.

  As he waited, Pinecone glanced approvingly at his companions. Both were stout hearts.

  Conditions this night were excellent. The moon would not rise for several more hours. The pitch dark was perfect. Tonight, they meant to finish the job they started two days before. Monkey-wrenching those skidders in Bowen Gulch had been a nice piece of work. No sweat. Putting the skidders out of action had bought time for Bowen Gulch, probably several days. Now, however, each hour was important. Without a working dozer there would be no road construction.

  In recent weeks the Ancient Forest Rescue campaign had been steadily gaining support across the state. Things were moving in their direction. Polls showed the tide was turning. The previous day, two prominent state politicians had switched sides and were now publicly calling for the preservation of Bowen Gulch. Hope was rising too because Colorado Representative Pat Schroeder had introduced a new wilderness bill in the House. The bill included language that would cancel the proposed timber sale and add Bowen Gulch to the Never Summer Wilderness. Unfortunately, the legislation was stuck in committee, blocked by a senior conservative congressman known to be a strong backer of the timber industry. A whore for big timber. Yet, polls showed that if the bill ever made it to the floor of Congress it would pass by a wide margin. Why? Because the overwhelming majority of Americans supported wilderness legislation. For the moment, political posturing continued before the TV cameras, while serious horse-trading went on out of the spotlight.

  Time was of the essence.

  Pinecone’s only regret was that he had not been there to see the look on that operator’s face when he discovered the trashed skidders. That would have been almost worth the risk of arrest and prosecution. Mainstream environmentalists, of course, viewed this sort of indulgence as heresy. All of the big national groups, including the Sierra Clu
b and Wilderness Society, had denounced “ecoterrorism.” Indeed, they did so on a regular basis. It was nauseating how the nationals habitually kowtowed to the almighty dollar, that is, when they were not groveling before the god of private property. Two solid reasons why Pinecone and his mates had gone a different way.

  As far as they were concerned, it was always open season on timber beasts. No quarter. Any operator willing to strip mine high elevation forest deserved whatever he got. It made perfect sense to hit them where they lived, in the pocketbook, yes, as hard and as often as possible. Make their business prohibitively expensive and maybe the bastards would abandon the sale, and think twice next time.

  All the same, Pinecone knew that in addition to the obvious risks, sabotage remained a divisive issue, no mistake. Even among hard-core activists, opinion was sharply divided about monkey-wrenching, or eco-defense, as the Earth Firsters called it. There had been acrimonious debates, and little agreement. In the end the community of forest activists had been forced to agree to disagree. Pinecone was the first to acknowledge the important role played by the national and local groups. He had no problem working within the system. However, sometimes even the best system needs a gentle nudge, some elbow grease. To make an omelette you have to break eggs.

  When the system fails, like now, you have to wing it. That’s where we come in. What’s the alternative?