by Rick Mofina
“…Ser--hiss--Garner hiss pop pop--CMP--have pop pop in pop sight-- hiss hiss visual--see--girl--pop alive pop--kilometer from me pop pop hiss hiss--coordinates--pop--hiss she is walking--dog--”
“What was that?”
Nash sat upright. Adjusted his headset.
“What was that?” Fiddling with the radio. Was he the only one who heard that? “Come back! Come back!” He slammed his radio. “Please, baby.”
SEVENTY-NINE
Doug Baker watched the command center fill with rangers, FBI agents, Montana officials and SAR people.
“We are going to get out of here,” he whispered to Emily.
Eyes vacant, she nodded.
Some of the agencies were changing shifts, reassigning bodies, redirecting resources.
“Listen up, people.” An unseen voice was issuing instructions. “Search and rescue efforts are to be concentrated in the following sectors….”
The teams who headed the camera probe of the crevasse had returned. Exhausted, they headed for the table with food and coffee. Removing their caps and utility belts, they listened to updates.
“…because of the danger, each team will have one armed park law enforcement officer, or FBI agent, or patrol officer, or sheriff’s deputy. The region is high elevation, one the most remote and treacherous--”
Doug squeezed Emily’s hand. They seemed to have been forgotten.
“Ground teams have already been dispatched or directed from the command post and are in the region. We are moving fast….”
Doug overheard FBI officials demanding two helicopters be readied for sniper teams. Another conversation spilled over, something about investigating the crash site and U.S. Marshals, then someone moving dog teams.
Doug’s thoughts raced. Now. It was their only chance. Now.
“Emily,” he whispered. “Come with me.”
The Baker’s shouldered their way through the forest of bodies, brushing against them toward the food table near the door; no one in the cramped room paid attention to them. Doug listened to every snippet of conversation.
A deep, tired voice: “I’m going to sleep for a spell in my truck.”
Inching closer to the food table.
“Do you believe they flew Hood to hospital on execution day?”
The heap of caps, sunglasses, utility belts.
“…a Mountie spotted her footprint….”
“I gotta take a leak….”
“Listen up, the following are to stand by, Hinkle, Prue, Framington, Barrow…”
Most backs were turned from the food the table to the speaker issuing instructions. Doug casually picked up two caps and two belts, reached down for two small packs under it, smoothly pulling Emily toward the exit door. They quickly slipped on sunglasses and adjusted the caps, which read FBI.
Nodding to the officers milling outside, carrying the packs and radio belts, they walked toward the landing zone where one helicopter was lifting off. Another was approaching, and two were idle.
“Just keep walking, Emily. Don’t look back.”
Doug sized the two parked helicopters. A Bell and an old Huey. The Huey pilot was alone in the cockpit, listening to his radio. Ready. He noticed Doug, who pointed a finger in the air, swiveling it as a signal to go up now, as he and Emily approached.
The pilot nodded. Relief washed over Doug, hearing the ignition start and blades commencing rotation.
“I’m supposed to take four. Where are the other two?” Rawley Nash shouted.
“Change of plan because of the circumstances.” Buckling up in the seat beside Nash, Doug expertly slipped on the headset, adjusted his mouthpiece. “We’ve got to move now.”
“Roger that,” Nash said. “All right back there?”
“All set.” Emily knew her way inside a chopper. She was buckled and connected. Her eyes drawn to the bloodstained seats. “You’ve got blood all over back here,” she shouted.
The rotors gathering momentum. Nash activated the intercom. “Transported one of the nurses from the Mercy Force crash. Didn’t have time to clean up. Sorry.”
“You were at the site?” Doug said. “How bad was it?”
“Everyone will make it, but it was chilling inside. You probably heard that the con had cuffed them before he escaped. Hey, I just heard on the radio it was the death row guy? That true?”
Doug swallowed, nodding behind his dark glasses and cap.
“Christ,” said Nash, radioing his call letters, hesitating. “You’ve got the coordinates? It was all broken up on my radio.”
“Which coordinates?” Doug said.
“Where the Mountie sighted the girl?”
“You mean the footprint?”
“I mean the girl. The lost Baker girl. Just a few minutes ago, it came across all broken up. The Mountie spotted her alive. That’s where we’re headed, right?”
Doug and Emily were speechless.
“Right.” Doug thought quickly. “You are supposed to take us to the general area. We’ll get the coordinates on the way.”
“OK. If you say so. I think it’s near the crash site. Where Hood is running around. I know they got people after him.” Nash called in his flight path and increased the throttle. “Here we go.”
The Huey rattled; the ground began dropping beneath them.
Emily’s knuckles whitened as she clasped her hands tightly, tears rushing down her cheeks from under her dark glasses.
Mommy and Daddy are coming, sweetheart.
Doug reached back, his hand finding Emily’s, squeezing it as they gained speed.
Strange, Nash thought. Never saw FBI agents holding hands on duty.
“Hey, you guys like CCR?”
EIGHTY
It was her.
Paige Baker. Yes. And her dog. A beagle. A glimpse through his binoculars. One, maybe two kilometers off before they vanished into a thick spruce forest. He had to locate her again.
RCMP Sergeant Greg Garner continued radioing reports but knew his signal was weak from the valley. No response. If there was, he did not receive it.
“Let’s go, pal.”
Garner and Sultan were now about half a mile south of the Montana-Alberta border. He put an eighteen-foot-long line on the German shepherd, which had locked onto the girl’s scent. Garner knew it was a good, strong track. Sultan was panting, excited, pulling hard, moving so fast he had to slow it down after slipping in a few places.
“Hold on there, big guy. I’m no good to you with a twisted ankle.”
Garner’s exhaustion melted. Having spotted the Baker girl energized him.
Against all odds, she was alive. He saw her.
If he could just get to her, or get a chopper to her.
So close but so far.
Good. They were climbing now. Good.
It was clear to Garner the girl went this way, but ascending the rocky slope made things difficult. At the top of the next significant rise, he would stop to use his powerful field scope. The radio should transmit better, too. They attacked the climb, practically clawing up at double time.
“Oh boy.” Garner huffed at the top several minutes later, perching himself near a rock upon which he could steady his telescope. He drank some water to help his breathing normalize so he could look calmly through the eyepiece.
Sultan yelped impatiently.
“I know. Me too.
A moment passed. Garner squinted through his scope, sweeping the slopes across the vast alpine valley to the area where he expected the girl to be.
Sultan sat, ears pricked, panting.
“Relax, relax. We’ll find her,” Garner sounded like a surgeon probing slowly, confidently. A minute passed. Nothing but forest, rock, forest, rock. A deer. Forest, rock, forest, rock--what, a flash of color!
“Hold it!”
Blue? Large. A man?
“What the--”
A blue jumpsuit. A man. Cap. Sunglasses. Looked like a SAR guy. A ranger maybe. Then a small dog, the beagle. Come on. There!
She was with him, walking slowly. It was her! Walking. Alive. Thank God. But who was that with her? No chopper nearby. Nothing. SAR ground people must have her. We’re done then. Relieved.
“Looks like she’s safe, buddy.”
But wait. Better confirm. They should get a chopper out here. Actually, he’d like to hear the status. Garner pulled out his map, detailing his coordinates, then reached for his radio.
“Garner to base.”
“That’s better Greg,” his radio said. “Must be on high ground now because you are loud and clear. What do you have for us?”
“I’m going to tell you exactly where Paige Baker is.”
EIGHTY-ONE
Saved.
Paige watched the man in blue. Her savior.
She was not dreaming. The bear was real. Its blood still warm on her shirt. The stench lingering.
It was real. But she was alive. Saved.
Paige wept with joy, fear, exhaustion.
“Drink this.” The man passed her a canteen. They were under the shade of lodgepole pine, resting on an oasis of soft grass. He had given her water, some pieces of vegetables and fruit. Paige had never known such thirst or hunger. She shared some with Kobee and sobbed quietly while chewing. She could not stop shivering from the cold. The man searched his pack, pulling out a large clean T-shirt, fixing it on her, tying its waist. It warmed her. The blood bled through, but she didn’t care. She was saved.
His radio was bleating. As Hood expected, it didn’t take long.
“Sounds like a helicopter is on its way,” he said. “There’s a place it can land just over the ridge. A flat patch near a ledge.”
She nodded. She just wanted to see her parents, to go home to San Francisco, to her room, her bed. Never be scared again.
Paige looked at him.
“Everyone’s been looking for you,” he said.
She sniffed, pulling Kobee to her. She was so sorry she had run off. Sorry that her parents argued. She could not stop trembling.
“You are safe now,” he said. “Nothing will harm you now.”
“How--” her voice was weak. “How did you know where to find me?”
The sunglasses stared at her.
“I just knew, Paige. I just knew.”
Like I know this part of the world, its secrets and promises.
“Ready to go wait for the helicopter? Think you can make it a little farther?”
She nodded. It was a short, easy walk to the small, flat table that reached to a cliffside. Hood heard the helicopters first. Far off, approaching fast.
If I time it just right, they will all learn what I am capable of.
“Can you hear that?” he said.
Paige heard nothing.
“Helicopters. They’re coming. They’ll be here soon.”
They stood there waiting.
Butterflies darted by, stirring his memories. He walked to the cliff’s edge. Standing there, gazing down the rock face to the bottom, some four hundred feet below, he turned at the cliff and extended his arms.
“This is where I live.”
Paige was exhausted. Puzzled. Not certain she understood him.
“But I have no friends,” he said. “Will you be my friend?”
Paige blinked. Thinking. Trying to comprehend, she nodded slowly.
“Come closer. I’d like to show you something.”
She heard the helicopters. Kobee barked.
“I like it over here. The cliffs make me a little nervous.”
Kobee continued barking a warning.
“Please,” Hood raised his voice. “You’ll never guess what I’m going to do.”
“Look, the helicopters are getting closer!” Paige began waving. “Over here! Over here! Over here!”
“Please, Paige, you said you were my friend. Come over here.”
She saw no harm. He had saved her. Cautiously, she neared him.
“Want to play a game?”
She stretched to gaze down, shaking her head.
“Let’s play a game.”
A game? Paige tried to understand. This is weird.
“I don’t think so.”
“Just a quick game?”
She was backing away, shaking her head.
“You are just like your goddamn mother.” Hood shouted. Smiling, he revealed his jagged brown teeth. “Guess what I’m going to do.”
Hood snatched Kobee, who yelped as he tossed him from the cliff.
Paige screamed.
Hood came for her.
EIGHTY-TWO
The two FBI agents crouching under the whirling blades of the helicopter looked familiar to Bowman.
Glimpsing them trotting to the old Huey distracted her as she waded into the press camp to retrieve David Cohen.
Curiosity kept her shooting glances in their direction.
Something is up.
Bowman caught a partial view of Cohen’s head through a wall of TV cameras. And kept looking at the agents.
Their body composition. Posture. It was gnawing at her.
Cohen was giving impromptu interviews when Bowman got to him.
“Please come now, Mr. Cohen. We need you at the command center.”
Seeing the Justice Department seal on Bowman’s shirt, Cohen agreed.
“If it’s about Isaiah’s alleged escape, I am as dumbstruck as anyone. I--”
Bowman was not listening. Working their way to the command center, it dawned on her watching the old Huey lift off.
Doug and Emily Baker. Wearing FBI caps. Dark glasses.
Gripped with concern, Bowman was hurrying now.
What is going on? It doesn’t look right. The chopper climbed. Bowman eyeing it while rushing into the Ops room. She sought out Frank Zander, leaving Cohen in the middle of the activity, perplexed.
Zander was studying a report near one of the rangers. “Frank, what’s going on with the Bakers?”
“What do you mean? They’re over there.” He nodded to a corner with a large TV. “They’re waiting to be taken back--”
“Superintendent Temple!” A ranger shouted. “Urgent call for you from Communications!”
Zander stepped closer to Bowman.
“Say that again, Tracy?”
“I saw them seconds ago, getting on a helicopter.”
“What?” Zander walked to the TV where the Bakers had been. “Tracy, were they escorted?”
“Attention, everyone!” Temple shouted. “The RCMP have a visual on the girl. She’s alive!”
Cheers and high fives rippled through the operations room.
Bowman and Zander heard the report, accepting back slaps while grappling with the new Baker situation.
“No, Frank, they were wearing FBI caps and sunglasses. Boarding an old Huey. One of the charter contractors, I think.”
“The ancient Huey is Rawley Nash.” A SAR pilot overheard them while jotting down the coordinates of the hot Mountie sighting. “He’s a character.”
“What do you mean?” Zander said.
“A rebel. Likes to bend the rules.”
Zander’s mind rocketed through a million scenarios. “Are you good to go now?” he said to the pilot.
“Sure, I got the fastest bird out there, but I’ve been told to wait for an assignment--”
“This is your assignment,” Zander said. “You take us to where this Nash guy is taking the Bakers.” Zander took the pilot’s upper arm. “Now. No discussion. FBI emergency. Come on, Tracy!”
Within minutes, the command center was shrinking beneath them as the new Bell thundered over the lake, then past Howe Ridge, then Heavens Peak.
Zander brushed the handle of his holstered gun, battling the fear eating at him as forests blurred below.
Let me be wrong. Let me be wrong.
Their pilot had reached Nash by radio, confirming the Huey was a few miles ahead. They were gaining on it, bound for the same coordinates. At Zander’s insistence, Nash was not questioned on his passengers.
The B
ell’s radio crackled again. The pilot adjusted it for Zander.
“It’s for you.”
“Turner to Agent Zander, come in?”
“Zander here.”
“We just learned of our subjects’ unauthorized departure.”
Zander looked at the mountains, leaving the air dead, forcing Turner to continue.
“No one could have foreseen these events, Frank.”
That’s what they said about the Georgia file.
“Frank?”
“Have you got the right people moving on this, Lloyd?”
“Two sniper teams coming behind you in National Guard rescue aircraft.”
Zander and Bowman’s Bell roared alongside Flattop Mountain. “Well, sir,” Zander said, using the senior agent’s words, “let’s see what transpires. Over.”
Let me be wrong.
How did the Bakers know where to go and when? How? And Isaiah Hood’s escape. At this moment? As if calculated? Why did Emily Baker return to Montana? To the same spot where her sister died? Why?
It was horribly tragic. Or horribly obvious.
Right under their noses.
Let me be wrong.
The chopper banked hard. Gravity pulled on Zander’s stomach.
Let me be wrong about the Bakers.
Zander was unsure if he could handle cases like this anymore.
When this one was over, he was unsure where to go with his life.
He looked at Bowman, suddenly glad she was here.
He needed her here.
EIGHTY-THREE
Hilda Sim carefully rolled the gnarled focus wheel of her binoculars.
Levi Kayle gently turned the focus of the telephoto lens on his digital Nikon camera.
Sim’s radio received nonstop alerts to the sector, confirming Isaiah Hood as the fugitive convict who escaped the crash.