by Scott Conrad
JARED
Brad parked his pickup in Jared’s driveway and looked over at Jessica’s sleeping face. She hadn’t wasted a moment’s time falling asleep when he’d closed the door after loading her gear in the bed of the big four-door pickup truck. He climbed out of the cab and walked quickly up to the door of Jared’s three bedroom ranch house. The lights were on in the living room, so he only knocked once before opening the door and going inside.
Jared was on the sofa, fast asleep. A half empty cup of hot chocolate sat on the coffee table beside him and his left arm was hanging off the sofa, dangling down to the carpet.
Brad grinned. Jared’s near fetish for hot cocoa was legendary among his friends. The big rangy Texan managed to carry what he called his “makin’s” wherever he went, and he drank hot cocoa before he settled down to sleep no matter how damned hard it was to prepare it. Brad had watched him scoop a hole in the desert floor near Fallujah, under the very eyes of Taliban troops they were surveilling on a long range reconnaissance. Jared had dug deep into the sand behind a shallow dune and made a stove out of a tin can, perforating top and bottom with the tip of his custom knife. He placed a heat tab inside the can and carefully struck a match from one of his MRE accessory packs to the blue tablet, ensuring that any possible light from the flame would not be visible to the people they were watching.
He had judiciously measured a quantity of water into his canteen cup, and then he removed the clear plastic bag of his “makin’s” from his rucksack and meticulously added just the exact amount of the powdery substance into the water, stirring it with a plastic spoon. He had explained to Brad a thousand times that the mixture had to be stirred in after the cup was placed on the flames but before the water began to heat. Then he slowly stirred the drink until the steam began to rise from the cup… which had to be removed from the flames before the cocoa began to boil. Nothing short of an assault by the Taliban would have made the man deviate from his ritual. Brad had only seen that happen once, and Jared’s wrath had been an awesome thing to behold.
“Wake up brother,” he said, gently shaking the rangy Texan’s shoulder. Noise hadn’t wakened him, but Brad’s touch had torn him from sleep instantly.
Jared looked confused as he sat up, and then he glanced down at the watch on his wrist. “Jesus Christ Brad, I just now finally got to sleep!”
“You’ve been out at least three hours my brother,” Brad said with a grin as he pointed to Jared’s cell phone. “You’ve got two voice mails from Ving on your phone and your beeper is going off in your bedroom.”
Jared cocked his head, and he could faintly hear the sound of his beeper coming from the master bedroom. “Shit!” he said, getting up and stumbling to his bedroom to grab the device.
“What’s so important you had to wake me up this early in the morning?” he asked as he came back into the living room in his stocking feet.
“Pete’s plane went down somewhere around Stephan’s Lake Lodge above Talkeetna. We’re going to go find him and bring him home,” Brad said soberly.
Jared was instantly wide awake, putting on his boots and going to his closet for his “D” bag. “What are you waiting for?” he called out as he opened the gun safe in his closet. His hand came out with a web belt and holster with the .45 in it, which he tossed over his shoulder. He reached back inside for his M40A5, but Brad stayed his hand.
“You’re going to need the Barrett,” he said. “Remember? The grizzlies?”
“Shit! I hope we don’t run into one of those bastards up there. They’re mean as hell and hard to kill.” He lifted the big Barrett out of the safe and put it in a hard-shell case along with the .45. He reached for a second case, much smaller, and added half a box of .45 ammo and a dozen rounds for the Barrett. “We got ammo resupply up there?”
Brad nodded. “Hank’s got it all set up.”
“Good,” Jared said, shouldering his bag and carrying the hard-shell case as if it were empty. “Time’s a wastin’. Let’s get this show on the road!” He strode out the door, leaving it to Brad to close and lock the front door.
Jared was tossing the case and his bag into the back of the truck beside Brad’s and Jessica’s. “What’s up with that?” he asked, jerking a thumb in Jessica’s direction as he opened the back door of the truck and climbed in.
“That,” Jessica mumbled, her eyes still closed, “is me going to Alaska with you.”
“Jesus girl, do you know how ‘freakin’ cold it gets up there?”
“Yes Jared,” Jessica replied mildly sarcastic. She liked the big Texan, but his overprotectiveness galled her.
“Charlie’s with Pete Jared,” Brad said.
“Oh shit, I forgot about that!”
“She would have gone whether we took her or not. I figured it’s better if I’m able to keep an eye on her.”
“Hey guys,” Jessica yelled, “I’m sitting right here, I can hear every word you’re saying!”
The two men laughed, knowing she was irate and knowing just as well that she’d get over it quickly.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Brad said, grinning.
“Shut up and drive,” Jessica muttered, her eyes closed. But she was grinning too.
JESSICA AND CHARLIE
Jessica was concerned for Charlie’s safety, and Pete’s as well because he was a good friend. She adored all of her uncle’s friends and they felt the same about her. Charlie was different though. Charlie made her heart race and the blood pound in her veins. He was handsome, intelligent, mysterious, and there was a bad boy quality to him that made him irresistible.
She had met him at her daddy’s country club, some kind of political thing that Jack Paul wanted her to attend. She hadn’t really wanted to go, but daddy had been insistent and she had finally given in. Jack Paul was rich, vain, and self-centered, but he was her father and he did give her money every month. The money, combined with what she earned with the principal of her trust fund, enabled her to do the research so necessary to continue doing what she loved so much. Jessica was a treasure hunter, and a moderately successful one at that.
In the past six years she actually made money in her hunt for treasure, though she had wisely invested most of it, something neither her daddy Jack nor her Cousin Brad were aware of. It wouldn’t be long before she could tell her father that she didn’t need his monthly check any more, and she was looking forward to that day. Maybe then Jack would take her a little more seriously.
The last few months she had been researching a story she uncovered of a lost gold mine in Alaska. The story had been recorded in a hand written journal she picked up, oddly enough, at a garage sale in Dallas. The seller, an older woman who had just moved to the Dallas-Ft Worth area from Seattle, let the musty old journal go for five dollars. But only after regaling her with a tale of her great-grandfather’s disappearance shortly after he sent word to his family that he had struck the mother lode. Apparently, he disappeared before he ever managed to return home and had never been heard from again.
Jessica had been surprised that the woman would let such a keepsake go, but the woman confessed that she was glad to be rid of it. “I could tell you stories that would curl your hair,” the woman had said with a bitter, distant stare in her eyes. “I’ve lost uncles and cousins who couldn’t resist the lure of that legend. It’s a curse on my family and I’ll be glad to be rid of it.” Jessica had been transfixed, and she had gladly paid the money.
She shivered deliciously. Charlie took her seriously. He was genuinely interested in her work, and he seemed to really enjoy helping her in her research. After Jack had introduced them at the club, Charlie had politely asked what she did for a living over a pair of mint juleps that she barely tasted. He was so good looking and he seemed very interested in her. When she first told him what she did he didn’t seem interested. She had nearly come to the conclusion that he was showing polite interest only because he had designs on her body… and for once that didn’t truly offend her. She was no shri
nking violet and she had no objections to an occasional tumble with the right man. It was when she mentioned the lost mine near Mount Watana that he had perked up and started to show a sincere interest in her work.
After the drinks they had made their exit from the gathering, Jack having long since disappeared into one of the club rooms. He liked to smoke smuggled Cuban cigars and drink from the very expensive bottle of fifty year old Macallan single malt scotch the club kept for him.
Charlie had driven her home, asking questions about her research into the old mine legend, and when she invited him in to see the journal, he had happily agreed. The evening seemed to stretch on forever, and by sunrise, Charlie joined the very select and extremely small group of men who had been privileged to share her bed.
What she thought of as a once in a lifetime lark turned into something more, and they had since spent a good deal of time with their heads together, poring over her research. He had never honestly come right out and told her what he did for a living, he had just hinted at being on sabbatical. His interest in her work somewhat gave her the impression that he might be a college professor or an archaeologist, and in truth he reminded her of her favorite movie character, Indiana Jones. Charlie even looked a little like the movie actor who had played the character.
She had introduced him to Pete, and Pete had taken a real shine to him right away. When the three of them got to talking about Alaska and Pete had mentioned going grizzly hunting at Stephan Lake Lodge, Charlie had been fascinated, and before Jessica knew it, Pete had invited him along on his hunting trip. She’d had no desire to kill a grizzly, and she’d demurred when they’d asked her along. There was a lot more she wanted to know before she made the trip up to Alaska.
She wasn’t really worried about Charlie. Pete was an incredibly resourceful man and she knew he was an expert at cold weather survival… but if either of them was truly hurt, she wanted to be there for them.
CHAPTER FIVE
LEWIS HOSTBACK
Day 2 0630 hours AKDT
Lewis awakened early in the morning, as was his habit. His personal routine never varied. Up at 0430, he did an hour of calisthenics, and then he either ran or skied, depending on the weather, for two miles at the fastest pace he could manage under the circumstances. He followed his exercise routine with a half hour in his personal wood-fired sauna, hand built from a diagram out of a Finnish Army manual. He followed this by rolling naked in the snow, or, in the late spring and summer, a quick dip in the frigid snowmelt waters of the stream at the bottom of the hill behind his hut.
The low flying Piper that had passed directly over their compound the night before troubled him. The fact that it crashed just afterwards provided no consolation. He knew that whoever was in that plane might have gotten an up close and personal look at their mining operation. Familiar enough with the area, he realized if there were survivors they would be unable to communicate with anyone from the outside.
The very first item of equipment the Order of Phineas had purchased with their initial gold nuggets was an extraordinarily expensive piece of electronic equipment that the salesman had assured him would jam any frequencies used by cell phones, radios, satellite phones, and any other commonly available communications' equipment. There was even an adjustment that allowed him to unblock a certain bandwidth for the Order’s private use and then close it up again when they no longer needed it. It had been incredibly expensive to buy and transport to their base camp, and the building that housed it was costly to build as well.
Any survivors, however, would be eager to tell anyone who came to rescue them about what they might have seen, and that was not something he was prepared to live with.
Lewis Hostback was an arrogant man, a supreme egotist. He had been chosen by the people of this Aryan Nation splinter group as their leader, but he was ill equipped to do so. The only things he truly brought to the Order aside from his very obvious physical prowess were his charisma and his determination.
Lewis was an imposing figure of a man, well over six feet tall and possessing the massive chest, shoulders, and arms of an old time lumberjack. In fact, he had played inside linebacker for part of a season with the Packers in Green Bay until he permitted his personal prejudices to alienate him from his non-white teammates. He had been terminated and ostracized for his comments despite his superior abilities on the field.
A sympathetic friend convinced him to move to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where he’d used the generous severance package the team paid him to abrogate his contract to buy a cabin on the lake in a wooded region outside the town. His friend introduced him to the Aryan Brotherhood, and he had been welcomed with open arms for what they considered to be his “stand for the superiority and purity of the white race.”
His progress up through the ranks had been meteoric. The Brotherhood needed all the favorable press it could get, and Lewis Hostback represented a poster-boy “Mr. Clean.” He didn’t drink, smoke, or even swear, and he never missed a Sunday sermon in church. He also possessed a deep bass voice that made him a welcome addition to church choirs wherever he went.
What the Brotherhood did not know was that he maintained the “Mr. Clean” façade to cover a violent temper and dangerous psychotic tendencies, tendencies that often exploded into intensely violent acts that he was very careful to cover up. He never left a witness to one of his explosions… at least; he’d never left a living witness.
When August B. Kreis III had stepped down from the leadership of the “Tabernacle of the Phineas Priesthood-Aryan Nations,” the whole of Aryan Nations had been thrown into turmoil. The members in Coeur d'Alene rebelled and separated from the splinter group and selected Hostback as their spiritual leader.
Hostback named their group “The Order of Phineas.” “Phineas” refers to a character in the Book of Hebrews who slew an Israelite man and a Midianite woman while they engaged in intercourse in the man's tent, running a javelin through the man’s back and the belly of the woman. The Bible story is often used by white supremacist groups to justify acts of cruel violence against people who practice miscegenation.
The Order had been run out of Coeur d'Alene two years before, and Hostback led his followers to sanctuary in the Nelchina Public Use Area. He had heard legends of riches in gold being found in the region, and he convinced his followers they were entitled to live on public land, after all, they were citizens and the ZOG maintained no right to deny them access to land owned by citizens. He paid for most of the migration out of his own pocket.
Hostback thought that Nelchina would be perfect for them for a number of reasons. Its immense size and low population density was the most obvious attraction. There were damned few neighbors in Alaska once you got outside the main cities, and what neighbors there were tended to mind their own business. The Nelchina Public Use Area was even better. There were no neighbors because the government didn’t permit anyone to build there. Another reason Nelchina seemed perfect was that the people in Alaska loved guns, depended on them. Going around armed looked as natural as breathing. Nelchina Alaska was a perfect fit for Lewis and the Order of Phineas.
Now, just as their placer mining operations were beginning to produce some real money, they were in danger of exposure. Lewis knew that he was being paranoid, but he felt certain that when the red Piper had buzzed over their compound that it had to have been on some kind of reconnaissance mission for the ZOG. He truly believed that if there were in fact survivors of the crash, it was only a matter of time until the Feds came after them.
He was determined to keep their sanctuary a secret from the outside world, and was prepared to do whatever it took to ensure that the secret remained unbroken. If it was necessary to hunt down and kill the interlopers that was just too bad for them. My will be done. The unconscious blasphemy didn’t register with him. Lewis Hostback was a bona-fide psychopath.
CRASH SITE
They came across the wreckage late in the afternoon, approximately twenty miles from their base camp. Lew
is, as usual, insisted on using cross-country skis to hunt for the site. The noise of snowmobiles would echo through the valleys and mountains, and sound carried a long way in the frigid air. There was no need to draw attention to themselves from the rare hunter or trapper in the deserted territory. Motorized vehicles are forbidden… and therefore objects of curiosity. Hostback lead a team of a dozen armed men spread out online, just far enough apart to maintain visual contact with the next man.
Hostback had seen the smoke rising from a fire not far from the wreckage and called in his team using hand signals so that the survivors wouldn’t be alerted to their presence. Lewis lay down in the snow and eyed the crash site with an objective eye through a pair of excellent high-powered Zeiss binoculars.
The Piper had come down at the bottom of the south slope of Mount Watana, almost reaching the surface of the narrow river at its foot. From what Lewis could see, the pilot failed to clear the last of the tall, narrow firs and had lost a wing before coming down hard on its side and sliding for several hundred feet. He winced. That had to have hurt. There was a body covered with a silver thermal blanket next to the shattered and burned fuselage.
It looked as if the survivors, two men whose features were impossible to make out due to their arctic clothing, had dragged the body back over the ice to the fuselage after the fire burned out. The survivors built a sort of reflector wall of green logs to build their fire behind, just up the bank from the ice, and they huddled behind it. Whoever they were, their field craft was impressive.
“Get as close as you can before opening up on them. If they think we’re a rescue party it should be easy enough to eliminate them.” If anyone in the hunter team had an objection to killing the interlopers, they kept it to themselves. Lewis Hostback was the leader, the Pastor of their Order, and his word was law.