The Distant Echo of a Bright Sunny Day

by Patrick O'Brien

  Evidently the group on the ridge had moved on. The sound of their voices had trailed off; he could only wonder where they might be now or where they were going. If Heidi and the others had run into a trap—as seemed certain—he couldn’t do anything to help them. And if Rick and Peewee had been part of the trap, that could only mean that whoever had been on the ridge was probably out looking for him—the one member of the group unaccounted for.

  How close they had come to finding him, they were never going to know, and Mitch was never going to tell them. But right now he had to get back to the campsite. Heidi had stashed her car keys in her backpack for safekeeping; Mitch needed transportation. If the group had walked into a trap and if he “borrowed” her car, she wouldn’t be in a position to object.

  Shielding the beam with his open hand, he used his flashlight to make a quick assessment of the snowfall. A minimal amount had accumulated, barely an inch, but the flakes were coming down close together, and with a mile back to camp and another mile to the parked cars, he could ill-afford to linger.

  He put on the boot he had taken off to relieve the pressure, and stood up. The two ibuprofen tablets Ralph had given him had kicked in. At least he could stand: blood would flow, muscles would limber up. He’d be okay.

  The first few steps were tentative. Starting off with his left foot, he brought the other up alongside and eased down onto it. A sharp pain radiated up the outside portion of his ankle bone; a throbbing sensation accompanied the pain. He had definitely sprained the ankle, or twisted it badly. He knew that walking would be a problem, especially on a wet surface. But he had no choice. An even more immediate danger than anyone out there looking for him was maintaining body temperature. For now, he felt mildly warm, but that could change. Hypothermia had a way of creeping up, and he needed to move, to generate body warmth.

  With the roughness of the terrain and the undulating slope as obstacles to contend with, he moved gingerly downhill. Not even a partial moon or occasional starlight relieved the utter darkness. And blowing snow only worsened the effect. It spat relentlessly into his eyes and against his cheeks. It was cold and wet, and the hood on his anorak gave only partial protection. Mindful of the pain in his ankle, he hunched along like a shell-shocked battlefield casualty intent on one thing only—survival.

  Less than a hundred yards out he heard the first shot.

  It came from above, where he had heard the voices a few minutes before, and it ripped into the darkness with the suddenness of a large tree cracking in half in a gale-force wind and crashing onto the forest floor.

  Two shots of the same caliber quickly followed, and were instantly greeted with several of a smaller caliber.

  Then silence.

  He stopped…

  Cocked his head…

  Listened…

  Nothing.

  As best he could, he quickened his pace and continued on. Whoever was out there, whatever was happening, it didn’t concern him anymore.

  53

  Mitch might have reached the bivouac well within an hour; even with a bad ankle and having to trudge through darkness, he still had a sense of how to get there. His trek earlier in the day had oriented him visually, and coming out the same way that evening had only reinforced the mental picture. And he had indeed started out on the right path. But the gunfire threw him off. It not only startled him, but caused him unwittingly to alter his course. As would any sensible person feeling threatened, he automatically moved away from the threat.

  The effect was basically the same as forgetting to apply a compass declination when plotting a course. Depending on the distance involved, leaving it out eventually throws one off by whatever degree so that he winds up over there instead of over here, or well away from where he set out to get to. Anyone who has ever taken an orienteering course is familiar with the phenomenon. And so it was with Mitch.

  He set out to get from point A to point B, but looking at his watch realized he was about thirty minutes off schedule: more than an hour had passed and still he had not yet reached the washout. Instead of being at the meadow, where he could have used the taller and thicker grass to “feel” his way around to where the washout fed into it, he had been blown off course, so to speak, and had probably wound up west of where he needed to be.

  He recognized that he might be lost. Had it been a crystal clear night, with stars overhead and a lucent moon in the sky, the two humpback hills to the immediate north of the meadow might have served as silhouettes to guide him. But a relentless shower of snowflakes, combined with a darkness as absolute as the Stygian depths of an underground cavern, obliterated those particular landmarks and threw into uncertainty a sense of direction that up until now he thought intact.

  Remaining in place, shuffling his feet back and forth, and blowing into his cupped hands, he tried to allay the encroaching panic of the lost hiker. He knew he had come west of where he had fallen and that the half-mile or more of slope he had been on had panned out. He stood on level ground now and assumedly somewhat in line with the west end of the meadow. If he backtracked in a wishbone fashion, or at an angle to his line of travel, he might just luck out. If he calculated rightly, he might just run into the wide-open meadow, with its “centerpiece” of lush, higher grass. From there, he could work his way along the perimeter until stumbling onto the pebbled surface of the washout.

  Feeling like a blind man trying to follow in his own footsteps, he set off.

  Whether luck, an innate sense of direction, or the deliberateness of his calculation had anything to do with it, sometime later, with the sensation of moving through foot-high pasturage as it brushed against his pant legs and cushioned his footsteps, Mitch stopped and realized how close he might be. For the past twenty minutes he had been moving eastward; all he had to do now was edge around to the north: the washout lay up that way.

  Sure enough—after a short distance, he felt the harder surface of the pebble-strewn gully beneath his hiking boots. Disregarding any safety concerns now, he turned on his flashlight. The continuing snowfall obliterated much more than ten feet ahead, but even a feeble ray of illumination heightened the feeling of being almost there. Forgetting now any pain that had not been snuffed out by whatever bodily defenses had taken over, he quickened his pace.

  Fifteen minutes into a renewed surge of energy, he rounded a large boulder that earlier had reminded him of a smaller version of an Easter Island monolith, and stepped into the campsite.

  “You made it back, huh?”

  Coming out of the darkness, the voice threw him back on himself. Recovering, he shined his light on Peewee.

  Using one of the boulders to keep himself propped up, the ex-Marine grinned up at him from where he was sitting.

  “You scared the shit outta me, buddy, you know that?”

  “That must be a helluva flashlight you got there, Mitch. You been usin’ it all this time?”

  Mitch walked over to his backpack and, shaking it free of snow, slipped it onto his shoulders. He snugged the waist belt around his hips and made sure it was tight enough.

  “I brought extra batteries,” he said, not bothering to explain that he had gotten lost and had to find his way back. “What about you? Your batteries give out yet?”

  “My batteries are dying at this very moment. I give ’em another thirty minutes at the most.”

  Mitch unzipped a top compartment of Heidi’s pack. He fingered through its contents and after a moment came out with a set of keys. “I’m gonna borrow these,” he said. “I’ll see that she gets them back.”

  Peewee laughed a low, painful laugh that ended in a fit of throaty, mucous-filled coughing. “Yeah, I’ll tell her,” he said. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “Ain’t nothin’ funny…not now.”

  “What happened out there?”

  Peewee struggled to keep himself from coughing again. He tried to clear his throat, and finally spat out something off to the side.


  “Happened? What didn’t happen? We got the shit blown outta us. They’re all dead…every fuckin’ one of ’em. And me, too, in a few minutes. You lucky fucker, you’re the only one left to tell about it.”

  Mitch shined his light on Peewee’s face. “It was a trap, wasn’t it?”

  “Big time. And just the way me and Rick thought it might be. Hell, we should’ve taken long odds—we could’ve come out of it rich.”

  “You guys set it up, didn’t ya, you and Rick?”

  “Rick set it up…I only came in later, to help out a friend. But he didn’t have a choice…they had him by his balls. But, either way, they had you fuckers nailed. You were goin’ down, whether Rick helped ’em or not.”

  “Who’re you talking about?”

  As he laughed again, Peewee went into another spasm of coughing. He waited until it passed, then answered. “Who the fuck do ya think I’m talkin’ about? I’m talkin’ about the Feds—Fucking Bastards Incorporated. America’s foremost police force—pledged to serve and protect. I guess we can all feel safer now.”

  “Everybody?—everybody’s dead, then?”

  “Probably two or three times over. They didn’t fuck around. None of the poor bastards had a chance.”

  “How’d you make it back?”

  “I wouldn’t say I made it back. I’m mean, I’m here, but barely.”

  Mitch let it all sink in, then said, “I gotta leave, Peewee. I can’t stick around.”

  Peewee sighed—the sigh of a condemned man knowing his condemnation is final and beyond recall.

  “Well, good luck to ya, Mitch. Tell our story…Be sure to spell my name right.”

  Hesitating, Mitch let the beam from his flashlight pass over the backpacks the others had left behind. “Is there anything I can do for you before I go, Peewee? I don’t know if any of these people bothered to bring a first-aid kit or anything like that. But maybe there’s extra clothing that’ll keep ya warm…?”

  “Nah, you go on,” Peewee said and coughed again. “I’m just gonna sit here. I got nothin’ better to do now.”

  Mitch hesitated again.

  “You don’t have to hang around, Mitch—it’s okay. You don’t even have to say anything. What do you say to a dying man, anyway? Have a good day? Keep in touch? Take care? See ya later? Go on—get your ass outta here before the fuckers catch up with me.”

  A moment of compressed silence passed between the two men. Then, with his flashlight trailing ahead of him, Mitch turned and left.

  The snow had lightened up. Not far from the campsite, he picked up the contour of the trail as it tabled out from the bottom of the slope and curved off into the darkness in a rough demarcation between the ranch and the national forest. Impelled by the certain knowledge of misadventure and outright treachery, he hurried through the powdery snow, his mind devoid now of anything but the direction ahead. Whatever concern he had for the fate of his former companions, he shoved it all aside as determinedly as a soldier, in the midst of a battle, does the death of a man next to him. He had only himself to think of now—where to go and how to get there.

  He had not gone a hundred yards when he heard it—a pistol shot, muffled by distance and the falling snow. Immediately, he knew what it meant.

  He paused only long enough to look back.

  He moved on.

  54

  Butte, Montana, had been besieged by the same weather system that had settled over the Livingston area, a hundred miles to the east. Snow had fallen steadily for the past several hours; by the time Mitch got there at six-thirty in the morning, a four-inch blanket of white lay everywhere throughout the city and up and over the surrounding hills. The only traffic to speak of consisted of a few snowplows trundling over the pavement of city streets and roads. A police cruiser, its row of multicolored lights flashing atop its roof, was stopped alongside a black SUV that had slipped off into a ditch; the officer sat inside the cruiser, talking on the radio. As he came up on it, Mitch instinctively dropped below the posted speed limit.

  The choice of motels left little room for a decision. He picked the first one he came to with a vacancy sign on and pulled into the parking lot.

  The night clerk came out through the doorway of a back office and took down the necessary information. Mitch paid with a credit card, secured his key, and went down a covered walkway to a room at the far end of the building.

  After a quick shower and a hamburger from an all-night diner, he turned on the television and flipped through the channels until coming to a local news station. Sitting on the end of the bed, he watched a few minutes of a cattlemen’s report, heard the weatherman update his forecast (more snow), and learned of a home-invasion robbery on the outskirts of Butte, being investigated at that very moment. But nothing at all out of the Livingston area.

  He clicked off the television and dialed Lisa’s number on his cell. It rang six times, then went to voice mail.

  Leaving out the details, he told her that everything had gone to hell and to call back right away, just as soon as she got the message. Then he went to bed.

  Two hours later his cell phone, which he had left on the nightstand, rang. “Yeah?”

  “Mitch, are you all right?”

  “Tired…but otherwise okay. You got my message, huh?”

  “It was on the early-morning newscast…They said everyone died in a gun battle…”

  “Not everyone.” He told her about Peewee and of his own fortuitous accident. “I’m still wondering if I exaggerated the pain, though. It might have been more psychosomatic than real. But, you know what, Lisa? I don’t really care. With me, it was a struggle from the very beginning just to stay on board with it.”

  “What are you going to do now, Mitch? Where are you, anyway?”

  “Ever heard of Butte, Montana? Right now, it’s practically covered with snow, and I think I might be stuck here until they get the Interstate cleared. And I’ve got Heidi’s car. It might be a good idea to ditch it and get a rental.”

  “Do you need any money?”

  “No, I’ve got my card. But the thing I’m concerned about now, Lisa, is whether they can connect either of us to the others. Rick and his buddy Peewee were colluding with the Feds, though, according to Peewee, outta of necessity. Just how much they know about you and me, it’s hard to say.”

  “I never met Rick. And I have no idea who Peewee is…”

  “That wouldn’t matter. Heidi might have mentioned your name…and other things about you, as well. Rick might have passed on information, even incomplete information. It might have been enough to get you identified. And ditto for me…especially for me, because Heidi introduced us, and I spent some time with him over the last two or three days. There’s a possibility that, at whatever point he started cooperating, he identified the core group and never got around to anyone else. But that’s problematic, Lisa—we can only wait and see.”

  “I’m not going to wait and see, Mitch. As far as anyone will ever know, I simply donated to an environmental group. I gave them money in the same way you give money to Greenpeace or the Sierra Club. I had nothing at all to do with their agenda, and, if necessary, Daddy will hire a busload of lawyers to challenge any contention to the contrary.”

  “Sounds good to me, babe. But what about me?”

  “Did you say they’re all dead?”

  “According to Peewee, they walked right into a trap, and every last one of them was killed. Out of the whole bunch, he was the only survivor—but now he’s dead, too.”

  “Well, there you go, Mitch—there’s nobody to challenge your story. You can account for yourself any way you like.”

  “Not quite, Lisa…”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mitch told her about the evening the group had spent at Punch’s cabin. He couldn’t say with certainty, but he suspected the older man had been part of the scheme to entrap them.

  “But he wasn’t there when it happened, when everybody got killed, was he?”

  �
��After he got us to the backside of Art Jimson’s ranch, it was all he could do to put on a decent show of bidding us farewell and good luck. We all commented on it afterwards, and my impression was that he just wanted to get the hell outta there and back to his cozy mountain retreat. He never struck me as the type that would want to be mixed up in something like this, anyway.”

  “There you go again, Mitch—first of all, how’s he going to know that everyone who was there that night in his cabin wasn’t killed? And secondly, if he wanted to get away so badly, now that it’s over, why would he even care? He’s probably happy enough just to be out of it altogether.”

  “You may be right…Let’s just say he was a stooge, somebody they used as bait, and he went along for whatever reason—he probably knows there was some kind of skullduggery involved and would just as soon be out of the picture, now that it’s all over.”

  “So you don’t really have anything to worry about, then, do you, Mitch?”

  “Not unless they’re looking for Heidi’s car…”

  “Walk away from it—get yourself a rental.”

  Mitch looked at his watch. “I was hoping to sleep a couple more hours, but I guess that can wait.”

  “Be sure to wipe off the fingerprints.”

  “The fingerprints?”

  “On the car—wipe it clean.”

  “Yeah, that’d be the thing to do, I suppose. But what should I do with it afterwards? Just leave it?”

  Lisa didn’t hesitate: “Drive it back here, Mitch, and we’ll dispose of it.”

  “Dispose of it? Lisa, do you understand what you’re suggesting? And how are you gonna dispose of it, anyway? And even if you do dispose of it, they’re still gonna know somebody got away.”

  “Didn’t you say Peewee said they’d been betrayed?”

  “Yeah, he said that he and Rick had been used to set the group up. They were supposed to be led into a trap and, presumably, get caught in the act and arrested. But it sounds like they just got slaughtered. Peewee said the ‘poor bastards didn’t have a chance.’ That sounds to me like something the FBI would not want to talk about.”