“Yes. People like that rarely come at a man one on one. They’re basically cowards. So put any thoughts of fair play out of your minds. It’s not too late for you people to change your minds,” Matt reminded the group. “You can always have Nick take you to a less isolated part of the area.”
“I’d recommend it,” the guide said.
“I refuse to allow crap and crud like that to ruin my vacation,” Wade said. “I vote we stay on course.”
It was unanimous among the group members. They would not change their plans.
Matt had no more to say on the subject. Later, when the others had gone to bed, he and Nick pulled back from the campsite and talked.
“Something’s been bothering me, Nick—I’d like for you to clear it up. You said when the urge to change came, it wasn’t physical, but mental. That doesn’t ring true with the savage attacks. What about the fang marks on Mrs. Gaston and some of the others?”
“Some of the breakaways I told you about returned to the wilderness area and lured throwbacks out. Maybe one out of ten children born are throwbacks—pure Sataw, mentally and physically. They ain’t pretty to look at. The tribe voted about five years ago to start destroying those who are imperfect. It’s a hard thing to do, but they all knew it was necessary for survival. Them on the outside are the older ones. The breakaways hide them out and run with them when the urge strikes.”
“How widespread is it?”
“I’d say it’s pretty much confined to the rural areas of this section of the country. Pretty much on the west side of the Divide.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“Not.”
“Nick, do you realize the problems facing the general public should news of this ever get out?”
“Yeah,” the guide replied, a weary and sad note in his words. “I do. But the leaders know that civilization is closing in on them. They voted to do it this way rather than put it off and be discovered by some goddamn hunters or trappers and then have to face a hysterical mob of misinformed folks with blood lust runnin’ hot and high.”
“I believe they made the right decision, Nick.”
“I hope so, Matt. If just one bobble is made, if just one person screws up, it could get bloody for a lot of people. Disregard everything Dan said about him sidin’ with the tribe. He won’t. He’s just angry and sad and somewhat bitter. But the younger ones who haven’t been on the outside long will. Bet on that. It’s got to be handled on the Q.T., Matt. And I don’t know how you’re gonna arrange to get the tribe out of here.”
“Fly them out.”
Nick shook his head. “Maybe. But I don’t know about that. Matt, these people have never seen a helicopter or plane up close. Some of the older ones still think they’re some sort of giant bird of prey. The younger ones know better, but they’d still be scared half out of their minds if one landed close.”
“I guess now is as good a time as any to bump my contact and see if anything has been firmed up. Do you think we need to post a watch tonight?”
“I don’t see the point in it. The Sataw ain’t gonna bother us and them fools like them was trackin’ us make enough noise to raise the dead. I seen you got perimeter bangers; use them after I leave you.”
Matt strung his antenna, slipped on his headset, flipped the scramble toggle switch, and called in.
“The plans now are for them to be taken to an old National Guard base in Montana. It’s damn near inaccessible. We’ve got army combat engineers moving in there now to fix the place up and troops on standby to be flown in for security. Sugar Cube has been advised, and so have members of both houses of Congress that we know can keep their damn mouths shut. Big Daddy One has warned that if anyone leaks this to the press, they will face dire consequences, and I think he convinced those in the know that he means it.”
“The CWA is going to be a problem.” He told his contact what happened that evening.
“Bigfoot!”
“Yes.”
“Are you serious, Husky?”
“Yes.”
“Can you get one for study?”
“Now, God damn it!”
“Okay, okay, Husky. Calm down. It was just a thought. This CWA bunch, do they have any redeeming qualities?”
“Hell, no.”
“Stand by. I’ve got to check on this.”
Matt waited for nearly half an hour.
“Husky?”
“Right here.” Matt was an old hand at this. He activated a small tape recorder.
“You have the authority to deal with the CWA in an extremely prejudicial manner.”
“Put it in plain English and make it blunt.”
“Are you taping this?”
“You’re damn right I am. And if a certain Marine lieutenant colonel had been smart, he’d have done the same thing. Who’s giving me the authority to kill?”
“Stand by, Husky,” the voice said patiently.
Matt waited for another half hour.
“Husky?”
“I haven’t gone into hibernation.”
“Due to the extremely sensitive nature of this operation, with hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent lives at stake, you and all with you have the permission of both the President of the United States and the United States Congress to use deadly force to secure the completion of this operation and to protect yourselves.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome, Husky. Out.”
Matt cut off the transceiver, took down the antenna, and stowed the rig. He wondered how Jim Bob was doing explaining the death of Luddy.
* * *
“Bear!” Monroe yelled, after looking at the headless body of Luddy. “You goddamned idiot. Bear don’t tear the heads off folks and eat them. You said Luddy was flung how far ’fore he hit the tree?”
“A good thirty feet.”
“Picked up off the ground and flung, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“That weren’t no bear, Jim Bob.”
“Well, what the hell could it have been, then?”
“Them . . . things that’s been followin’ us.”
“What things, Monroe?” Floyd asked.
“Them things that I sent Yates and the others out to find, that’s what things I’m talkin’ about.”
“Well, what is they?” Sanders asked.
“God damn it, Sanders! If I knowed what they was I wouldn’t have sent Yates and Whitman and Hardin out a-lookin’ to see what they was, now would I?”
“I reckon not.”
“Thank you. Y’all hush up and let me think on this. I got me some suspicions about all them folks come in here supposed to be goin’ campin’. It just don’t add up.” He held up a hand. “Don’t ask me no questions. I’ll ask the questions and you give me the answers.” Monroe thought about that statement for a moment. Somehow, the words didn’t come out exactly as he planned them to, but no matter. “First off, we got us one tough pale-eyed man come in here alone. That’s fact. We don’t know how long he stayed in the wilderness or what he was doin’. Fact. Then he shows up again with a bunch of Jews and niggers. Educated Jews and niggers. That’s fact if what y’all told me was true.”
“It’s true,” Alton said.
“And that Jew could fight,” Luther said. “But his skin was pale like he don’t get out in the sun much.”
“All right,” Monroe said, turning to Jim Bob. “And you tell me he come into the woods after Luddy was killed totin’ a Mini-14 with a sound suppressor on it.”
“That’s right.”
In the old cabin they had found and were using for a kitchen and headquarters building, Monroe moved to a small blackboard they used to chalk out terror tactics they used against one race or religion or writer or action group, or just anybody or anything that didn’t follow along their narrow lines of thinking.
Monroe took a piece of chalk and printed: Hired gun? Bodyguard? Govurxxxx Gouverxxx Government Agent? “Which one fits the pale-eyed man?”
<
br /> “Them last four, Monroe,” Seymour said.
Monroe looked at him, sighed, and said, “You’re right. Government agent. Now then, why would a government agent be escortin’ a bunch of Jews and niggers into the wilderness? They all city folks, and from what y’all say, they all is as out of place as a turd in a punchbowl.”
The others sat or stood in camouflaged silence.
Monroe again picked up the chalk and started to write on the blackboard. But he wasn’t all that sure he knew how to spell the word. He put the chalk down and yelled, “Scientists!”
“Scientists?” Marwood said. “What in the hell would scientists be doin’ in here?”
“It wasn’t no bear that attacked Luddy.” Monroe was getting excited. “It was the missin’ link. They done discovered the missin’ link!”
“The what?” Ely said.
“The missin’ link. The creature that is between us and the animals in the chain of things.”
“Boy,” Claude said, standing up. “You beginnin’ to talk like a damn communist. You speakin’ words that’s against the teachin’s of the Good Book.”
“Oh, sit down!” Monroe told him. “I ain’t neither. They’s some sort of creature out yonder that science can’t explain, so they called it the missin’ link ’cause they don’t know what else to call it. Point I’m makin’ is this: let’s us catch the thing. The government would pay millions for it.”
“Just think what one did to Luddy,” Judd said, and the room fell silent.
“Get on the radio,” Monroe said. “Get Yates and the others back here. Go on, do it. We got to follow them scientists. And we got to do it so’s they don’t see us. Now then, what do we do with them outsiders when we discover the missin’ links?”
“They’s kids in that bunch,” Duff reminded him.
“Nigger kids and Jew kids. They all inferior to the white race. Do I have to remind you of the oath we all took? We have to purify the race. We have to rid ourselves of the inferiors. And this is a damn good time to get shut of a whole bunch of them. You just keep the money that creature will be worth in your minds. That’ll give you something to write home to mama about.”
“I vote we go for it,” Dolan said, standing up.
The rest slowly stood up and raised their hands, sealing the fates of the campers.
Monroe grinned. “And them women ain’t bad lookin’ neither, Alton said. Even that colored gal was a looker, weren’t she, Alton?”
“Finest lookin’ shine I ever put my eyes on, for a fact. High-class nigger.”
“Ain’t nothin’ no better than brown sugar, boys. That’s one thing them gals was born knowin’ how to do.”
“I want first dibs on her,” Gerard said. “She is prime, man, prime.”
“Not only is this gonna make us all rich,” Monroe gloated. “But it’s gonna be fun, too. I ’member the time I horsewhipped a Jew once. I whupped him slow, made it last a long time. That was more fun than the time me and some ol’ boys blew up that church and killed them coons who was havin’ a civil rights meetin’. And that was some fun, let me tell y’all, it was. I’ve had me some good times in my life, boys. Some high ol’ times.”
“And you done time for blowin’ up that church,” Monroe was reminded by a CWA member named Donny.
“Not me, boy,” Monroe boasted. “Them others did, but not this ol’ boy. I was way too smart and slick for them. Just like we’re gonna be slicker than greased owl shit on this operation. We’re a military organization, so we got to give it a name, boys. What’ll it be?”
Several dozen names were tossed out and all of them rejected. Alton brought out a case of whiskey that had been carefully packed in by horse and the bottles were passed around. The men drank and thought of all the money they were going to have to spend. They could buy themselves new four-wheel drive pickup trucks with great big fat tires that would set them high off the ground and pull through any kind of mud. And they’d have smoked windows and gun racks filled with shotguns and rifles, so they could tote them around twelve months out of the year and show them off; besides, you never knew when a deer was going to pop up—in or out of season—and you could blast it.
Monroe took him a long pull from the bottle and relaxed as the raw whiskey burned its soothing way down his throat to explode in his stomach. Monroe’s dreams were not elaborate like some of the others’. There wasn’t much he wanted out of life. He wanted a sweet little young thing he could stroke when the feeling hit him; he wanted a return to slavery; he wanted to be the Grand Doodaddy of the Citizens for a White America; but the one overriding thought in his mind was that he wanted to slow-kill that pale-eyed man who had tossed hot grease in his face. He wanted to kill that bastard so bad when he thought about doing it he got all biled up in his stomach.
“Operation: Death!” Monroe cried out.
“Yeah!” the others yelled. “Way to go, Monroe!”
Monroe smiled. I’m a-gonna kill you, Pale-Eyes, he silently vowed. And if you got a woman in that bunch of campers, I’m a-gonna mount her like a dog and make you watch.
Monroe sat and allowed his hate to envelop him in an invisible cloud.
12
All around them mountains loomed, thrusting majestically toward the sky. The valley was lush and green, a twisting, rushing stream cutting through it. The spot Nick had chosen for them was lovely and peaceful and so quiet.
“This is it, folks,” Nick told them. “You got it all right here in this valley. Hiking, camping, fishing, exploring, and relaxing.”
“It’s beautiful, Mr. Nick,” Judy told him.
“How many people have you brought to this spot?” Susan asked.
“Not too many. This is my personal spot, I like to think. I got to really take to someone to bring them here. Come on, folks, let’s get you all set up.”
Matt took his bearings and marked them on a plastic-covered map. Already his mind was working, noting where helicopters could touch down; checking for the best defensive spots—and Nick had obviously had that in mind when he’d chosen this spot.
They were on the high ground, with the rocky, rushing stream below them to the front and also curving to their right as Matt stood facing west on the flat of the ridge. Behind them, far enough behind them to prevent any danger from falling rocks, was a huge upthrusting of sheer rock face.
Matt paced off the flat. It was slightly more than a hundred feet wide and about three hundred feet deep. More than enough room for a chopper to land.
Matt relieved his pack animals of their burden and stacked the unmarked boxes. He pitched his tent well away from the others and carefully ditched it. He cached some of his supplies several hundred feet from the flat, in the deep timber, and carefully covered the cache with the natural foliage he had parted to make room. With the brush back in place, the cache was not likely to be found.
Nick walked over to him after Matt returned to the main campsite. “The leaders will be contacting you, Matt. The old ones are . . . well, not like you and me. So you’ll have to be careful not to hurt their feelings when you first meet them.”
“Give me some idea of what I’ll see, Nick.”
“Heavy forehead, deep-sunk eyes, big jaw, big mouth, and some of them, the real old ones, will have teeth that are, well, larger and longer than ours.”
“Fangs.”
“Yes. They’ll give you a start at first. Just bear in mind that they’re approaching you in good faith and with trust.”
“When can I expect them?”
“No later than two days from now. One of their camps is not that many miles from this spot. That’s why I hardly ever brought people here.”
“Any danger of these people here blundering into that camp while they’re hiking?”
“No. There are sentries all around to warn them, and their sleeping and living quarters are underground, connected by passageways. Bear this in mind, Matt: they’re not stupid people. Their ways are different, and many appear animal-like, but they have g
ood minds. And they’ll know if you lie to them. Just like a dog will allow ten people to pet it but growl at the eleventh person, sensing something wrong. I’m going over to the tribe’s camp in the morning to tell them that you all are good people and they have nothing to fear from you. And to trust you. Matt?”
Matt met the man’s golden yellow eyes.
“If you’re planning something awful, I swear to God I’ll kill you.”
“I’m planning nothing of the sort, Nick. We’ll get them out of here and over into that National Guard camp in Montana as soon as the government tells me the facility is ready to receive them.”
“I believe you. I just wanted you to say it.”
“Tomorrow morning I’ll start making sweeps, working in an ever-widening circle. I don’t trust the damn CWA, and I want to make sure they’re not in here to screw things up.”
Nick nodded his head in agreement. “When can I tell them to be ready for transport out?”
“Nick, just guessing, I’d say seven to ten days. I’ll bump my people tonight and try to firm it up.”
Nick smiled. “That’s all a mule can do, Matt: just try.”
* * *
Matt had hit it right on the head: his contact said between seven and ten days before the camp would be ready to receive.
“No leaks as yet?”
“No, thank God. And the damn meddling press has so far not picked up any vibes that something big is going down.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way. I don’t like those damn people, I don’t have any use for them, and they’d better not get in my way.”
“I swear you’re going to give me an ulcer before this is over.”
“Go take an antacid. When do I have permission to tell the happy campers what is really going on?”
“That is a problem, Husky.”
“Not for me. They’ve got to know sooner or later.”
“Make it later.”
“Husky out.”
Nick was napping, the kids were playing near the stream, and most of the other adults were exploring in the valley. Susan came over to where Matt was sitting outside his tent and sat down on the ground.
“We’re being used, aren’t we, Matt?” she asked.
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