by Rick Mofina
He spotted a white-tail deer amid a stand of spruce, some seventy-five yards off; heard the rustling of a bald eagle’s wings skirting the treetops of a valley below; detected the sweetness of glacier lilies; sensed mountain butterflies zigzagging among them.
Hood was home. Free. A king in his kingdom. He pushed on swiftly.
He had cheated his executioners. Cheated his scheduled death, as he knew he would. For it was only right. He had given them twenty-two years for a game. Time for him to take control.
Hood had plans--intricate designs--drafted, polished, taken apart and reassembled in a million dreams dreamed while living in a concrete casket. His poster of the Rockies was his portal to his paradise. His trances, visions and “apprehension of the mind,” the vehicles that got him here.
A network of ancient Indian, trapper and miners’ trails existed among the ranges that traversed the U.S.-Canadian border. They were not on maps but burned into Hood’s heart. He knew them all. Knew them better than any other human being. He had travelled them as a boy, disappearing for weeks after a savage thrashing with the hooks. All part of his education. It took him years to learn who he was and how the world loathed the thing he had become.
The Mark of Cain, some called it. Living with the sin of the father.
“Don’t you understand?” his sister whispers to him the night she packs and runs away for the last time. Dad murdered Mom! Dropped her from a mountain. I’m messed up because of it. Get away from him! Why are so loyal? He beats you like a dog. Get away, Isaiah, before he kills you, too!
In his heart, Hood knew his sister was right but could not accept it. He was fourteen at the time. She ran away to Seattle; he escaped to the Rockies, where he would spend days and weeks alone in the alpine trails. Perhaps in some way he was hoping to prove his sister wrong by somehow finding their mother. But more likely, it was because he realized that, like his father, he was afflicted with the malevolent need to have those under his control plead for mercy, giving currency to his power.
But for Hood, it was a consuming game.
“A psychopath with a destructive psychological neurological disorder most likely brought on by his father’s beatings.”
That is how the doctors defined it.
It was a game, one he was compelled to play. That is how Hood lived it.
It started with the dog, the rabbit, the cat. Then the butterfly girl. No one understood that, to him, it was a game.
He pushed on fast, relishing the gift he had left behind. The warden, the DOC boss and the Governor, the guards on death row. Hood could picture them, finger-pointing, ass-covering. He feasted on that one.
Hood was startled, sensing a helicopter in the distance.
Stepping under a thick stand of cedars, he rummaged through the pack, produced the guard’s radio, flipped the channels. It was fully charged, coming to life with emergency transmissions from rangers, SAR and others in the region. He secured it in the holster clipped to the belt around his waist, inserted an earpiece.
Hood’s nostrils flared. Tracking dogs were in the area far off, searching.
Quickly, he rooted through the bag: a hatchet, fruit, water, first-aid kit, pilot’s wallet with cash and credit cards, sunglasses, several other items. Then he found the lunch kit belonging to one of the nurses. Had some sliced vegetables, crackers, cheese and cookies. He tore off a patch of towel in the bag, rubbing it under his armpits, his sweating groin, his stomach, still oozing blood and puss. He headed into an area dense with trees for nearly fifty yards, then back-tracked carefully. He placed the towel down.
Ought to tie up the first dog behind me, he thought before pushing north.
Dressed in the blue flight suit, wearing the pilot’s boots, sunglasses, a cap, a utility belt with the radio, a small knapsack, using a walking stick, Hood resembled someone with search operations. His plan was to slip into Canada using the most treacherous trail, a long-forgotten ancient Indian path on the western slopes.
But a message was coming.
There was a critical twist to his plan. The special reason he came here.
A headache, one of his mega-pounders, seized him.
He knew he possessed the power to find her.
No. I shouldn’t.
Yes. Find her. It is key to the plan.
The message was building. Triggering rage pent-up for twenty-two years.
Why not find her and play?
One more time.
Anger and adrenaline coursed through him, bubbling into a dangerous mixture. His head quaked with pain. Twenty-two years. He made one critical mistake with the butterfly girl. He let her big sister live.
Look what she cost him.
The message was clear now.
The lost one is very near.
SEVENTY-SIX
FBI Agent Frank Zander was shouting into a telephone.
“Yes, we know Isaiah Hood was on that helicopter! He walked away! No, I do not know why he was…Hello? You there?”
Zander lost his connection to the marshals. He swore while following a park ranger’s finger pinpointing the crash site on the wall-size map of Glacier National Park.
Radios sizzled with chatter, and cell phones, including Zander’s, trilled constantly in the command center. Its five TVs blared, each tuned to a different network’s live report.
“…an incredible series of events unfolding in the case of…”
“…Montana death row inmate Isaiah Hood, whose execution was…”
“…has confirmed Hood is a fugitive at large in the same area…”
At the Ops table, an EMS supervisor spoke above the bedlam into his radio.
“No, no, no! They are transporting them to the LZ at the command center now! That’s right! Then ground from here to Kalispell. Three ships. Yes. Stable. Kalispell’s alerted. Get one of them to stand by at the command post now until we get our air ambulance back…Yes, the largest one. Just a standby…at the post--talk to Brady Brook out there--”
Phones were ringing.
The National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. Marshals Service, news organizations, urgently demanding information.
“Frank! A quick meeting.” Lloyd Turner was calling Zander to an urgent, intense conversation with Maleena Crow. Nora Lam and the other detectives were there.
“All we’re requesting is that you release them back to the command post, back to their campsite,” Crow said.
“What do you think, Frank?”
“This is not a good time for this discussion.”
“You cannot hold Doug without charging him. Let them go back to the command post. Consider what they’re going through.”
Zander was wary. The case had taken a dramatic turn, but he refused to let his guard down.
“They know about the RCMP’s report,” Crow said.
“I told them Frank,” Elsie Temple, answered the question in his face. “They have a right to hope.”
Zander inventoried the group for allies. Bowman was absent, searching for David Cohen. Walt Sydowski’s subtle shrug suggested it would make little difference if the Bakers were under watch at the command post.
“I do not have a problem returning them for the time being,” Turner said. “No one has been charged. No one is under arrest or in custody. It’s an open investigation. No one is suggesting it is concluded, Frank.”
But Zander sensed that Turner and the others thought so; they believed events had miraculously cleared the Bakers.
This is exactly what happened in Georgia. He would not be fooled again. “You never know the truth until you hold the facts in your hand.”
Zander felt the decision to return the Bakers had already been made. “We still have agents at the command post?” he asked.
Turner nodded.
“Frank, let’s see what transpires with these other events. Let’s just see.”
Zander swallowed. “It’s your call.”
“We’ll send them back with an escort,” Turner said. “But it w
ill be some time before a helicopter is available. Until then, they are free to wait in this room.”
Stepping from the storage room, Doug and Emily were hurled into the maelstrom. Before Crow could alert them to Hood’s escape, they confronted his face displayed next to their daughter’s on one of the large TVs.
“…death row inmate Isaiah Hood escaped within the last hour when the air ambulance crashed in the same region the…”
Emily covered her mouth.
Doug was horrified. “Maleena, what is going on? Hood escaped! But how? Paige. Any sign?”
Crow worked quickly to explain, sitting them down.
Emily searched the chaos for Zander. Was this a blatant psychological trick? She saw him, looking angry on a phone call, carving notes. No. It’s real! She looked at the TV. Saw Doug and Paige, with Kobee smiling back from it. Then an old photograph of Rachel. Her eyes. Rachel.
Crow could not put it any other way. Hood had escaped in the very same area where the Mounties found fresh signs of Paige.
Emily groaned, began trembling.
“Doug! It’s happening again. Please not again!” Emily raised her face to the ceiling. “God, why!”
Doug’s heart nearly broke from his chest; his mind, a whirlwind of rage, fear, desperation. He pulled Emily tight, as much to hang on to his sanity as to comfort her.
Paige is alive! At least it appears they have signs she is alive. God! They have to find her! They have to do something. Anything. Think, Baker. Time is running out. Damn it. Think. You are not going to sit here doing nothing. Not anymore.
There had to be a way out of this. Amid the confusion, Doug was half-listening to Crow telling him about waiting for a helicopter to deliver them to their campsite, the point from where all the rescue efforts would be directed. Doug’s military training, his coaching skills, were kicking in, using the pressure to fuel his thoughts. Holding Emily. He took careful stock of the crowded room, watching as rangers, FBI Agents, searchers, came and went.
He had to get them out of here. Fast.
Isaiah Hood’s eyes met his.
No other options existed.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
Instinct compelled Paige to flee for the goat ledges of the high country.
She could smell the grizzly coming for her. She had become accustomed to its horrible odor. In her ten-year-old heart, she reasoned it to be the stench of death.
My death.
Again, she heard it huffing; its jaw clicked, gaining on her. In what had become a slow, dark ballet, she climbed as swiftly as her depleted, aching body would permit; the huge carnivore lumbering steadily after her.
Paige sobbed, scrambling for her life, stopping for a brief moment, certain she heard a helicopter nearby. Then a distant thud. Then nothing.
Keep moving. Keep moving.
Kobee had learned now not to bark.
But it didn’t matter.
Paige’s tormentor was an eight-foot one-thousand-pound mother sow. Pale cream, measuring nearly four feet at its humped shoulders, she ruled much of the Devil’s Grasp, having fiercely killed deer, goats, wolves. She was the manifestation of forces as ancient as the mountains. As the victim of circumstance, Paige continually trespassed in the most intimate regions of her territory, became enemy prey to be hunted, killed, buried in a shallow grave, then eaten by her cubs.
Reaching a higher elevation, Paige quickly scoured the area, finding a small shelter enclosed in rock that was naturally barricaded by two large, fallen trees. Paige squeezed her way inside with Kobee. The trunks were huge, but the bear was of nightmare proportions.
Hugging Kobee, Paige waited, realizing she was losing against a beast determined to kill her.
She began weeping softly. Closing her eyes. Waiting.
Waiting to die.
Paige peeked through the bright cracks between the trees, seeing only daylight and the snowy summits of the Rocky Mountains. She began praying.
Please, God. Don’t let it hurt. Just don’t let it hurt. God, please.
Paige searched her cold dark shelter for something--anything--with which she could write her parents a final note. A stick or stone to carve something in the mud, or scratch on a rock.
I’m so sorry I got lost. I love you, P.
She found nothing, and continued weeping until her world went dark.
The grizzly arrived in silence, blocking the sun, fouling the air, weaving and bobbing, deciding how it would open the container to its food source.
Paige squeezed Kobee.
The grizzly reached in with one of its huge paws.
Feeling it brush her, Paige screamed.
The bear groaned, thrusting its paw deeper, just under an inch from Paige’s face.
It climbed up on the trees, making them creak from its weight.
“Oh, please, no! Oh, please, please, no!”
The bear growled at the sky, enraged, clawing, pounding at the trunks, carving into them with its terrifying claws. Paige screamed; Kobee yelped.
Suddenly, one of the trees shifted as the bear rolled it away, reaching inside, touching Paige.
The grizzly slammed at the second trunk, nudging, pushing, shoving it aside. Paige screamed, clutching Kobee, sobbing, pushing back, deeper into the hole with nothing to defend herself.
No escape.
Paige saw its huge yellow fangs barred, white foam collecting around its mouth; she smelled its horrid breath and braced for its attack.
Suddenly, the bear vanished. Daylight filled the shelter.
Paige remained frozen, her heart beating wildly, holding her breath.
The grizzly was gone.
I can get out? Run?
She was trembling.
Without sound or warning, everything went black. Faster than Paige could scream, the monster reached into the cave, its claws locking into her. It dragged her out, standing victorious over her.
God, please, oh, please don’t let it hurt.
She hugged Kobee.
The grizzly grunted and dragged her out farther. She was totally at its mercy. Paige did not move as it growled, lifting its head to the sky, its saliva glistening. It shook its head savagely, nearly standing on its hindquarters, driving its opening jaws toward Paige.
Mommy, Daddy, please…please don’t let it hurt….
Paige looked to the blue sky…. Suddenly, a glint-flash of metal blurred into the grizzly’s skull, forcing the beast to suspend itself as the object was instantly removed then pounded again swiftly into its head. A second, third, fourth and final time by someone, something, forcing the animal to drop its huge head and neck, landing on Paige’s lower abdomen, its snout nearly touching her face. An ax was embedded between its ears some four inches deep into its brain; warm blood erupted from the wound onto her stomach, its stinking death gasp blowing up her nostrils.
Paige was too stunned to scream.
Someone, a man, lifted the head from her. Paige rolled clear. The man stood in the sun, a silhouette in a blue jumpsuit.
Her savior.
“You’re safe now,” Isaiah Hood said.
SEVENTY-EIGHT
The debate at the crash site between photographer Levi Kayle and Hilda Sim from Idaho SAR ended when Rawley Nash took charge.
“No one is going anywhere right now. Not until we make sure these injured people are safely on their way to hospital.”
“I agree,” Tom Reed said, along with Molly Wilson and Sim, who were comforting the victims.
Nash said two choppers would be arriving shortly to transport patients to the command center, where ground ambulances would take them to Kalispell. “I need your guys to help us load. After that, form a posse, do your thing.”
The first helicopter, dispatched from the command post, approached.
“If anyone asks, you press people were already here when Sim and I spotted the wreck, got it?” Nash said.
He directed the aircraft to a makeshift landing zone, then supervised the quick loading of the pilot and the
small guard, who looked to be in the worst shape. Both were now conscious and moaning.
The second helicopter took Nurse McCarry. No one asked questions. Attention was focused on airlifting the victims. Nash was last to depart. He had Wordell. Lifting off, he flashed a thumb’s up to the others, seeing Lux enthusiastically tugging Sim north into the forest, commencing pursuit.
Glancing over his shoulder at Wordell laid out across his rear seats, he noticed her diamond engagement ring.
Don’t worry, baby. Nash will get you to the church on time.
He could not shake off the images of the scene.
Handcuffs and shackles.
He had pushed them to the back of his mind but they leaped forward as he tried to comprehend what the Mercy Force crew had endured. Who was the con? What happened in the air? Christ, it looked bad.
Nash had ditched a number of times. Struck by lightning flying traffic reports over Atlanta. Not fun. In New York, some fuselage gave way flying a TV news crew over Manhattan. Nearly died from fear at the controls when he veered into the World Trade Center, averting disaster at the last second. Those two were dicey. Nash gazed down at the mountains. But handcuffs and shackles. He could not imagine what kind of hell the Mercy Force people survived. Who was their passenger?
On the subject of passengers, Nash considered the quick two grand he just made. He apologized for his actions, but he had bills to pay. Should he call that San Francisco TV guy at the park’s press camp, offering him a deal on a ride in for the return trip? Depended on his next assignment.
Putting down at the command center, everything went like clockwork. Enough paramedics were standing by to transport the victims.
Nash’s instructions were radioed to his call numbers.
“Kill your rotor. Stay in your chair and on the air. Next assignment’s coming up. Stand by. An FBI call. Four bodies to the command post.”
“Roger. Standing by.”
Sitting back in his seat to catch his breath, Nash removed one ear cup from his radio headset and began fiddling with his emergency radio for any updates. Mostly marshaling from the ranger’s command post. Next channel. Paramedic hospital talk--vital signs and stuff. Next channel. Weather conditions. Next Channel. Static. Next. Wait! Nash snapped back to the weak static. It was breaking up badly.