by Trevor Scott
“Keep it turned up,” Robin said. “But let’s get these canoes ready to go.”
As they turned over the canoes and started to put their packs inside, Kim said, “Do you think he found my sister?”
“We can only pray he did,” Robin answered.
“Then we should use the SAT phone and let our Forest Service people know,” Kim reasoned.
“We need to confirm it first.”
Donny said, “She’s right. We must be sure.” He fiddled with the radio again, keying in again and asking if Max was all right. “What’s your status?” Donny asked into the radio.
•
When the leader of the pack first discovered something was wrong, he simply thought it was one of his members acting out of turn in the main tent. But it was worth checking out, since he was not asleep anyway. He had grabbed his flashlight and left his tent. Then he saw movement heading toward the lake, and nearly making it to the canoes.
He totally expected to be the alpha of the forest. So, he was surprised when a man shot back at him. He was disturbed when that man also shot holes in their old aluminum canoes.
The leader thought back over the past twenty years. Everything the four of them had worked for could be coming to an end if those women were able to escape.
Once the man had gotten far enough into the forest, the leader knew he had only one choice. He directed his men to get to the canoes. They had prepared for nearly every contingency, including the possibility of repairing their canoes. They had brought along a repair kit that could easily fix a few holes. They simply taped over the holes on both sides and set the canoes back in the lake. The patches worked.
Then, with head lamps lighting their way, the four men got into their canoes and hurried toward the portage. With any luck, they could cut off the man and their girls before they headed back to the other lake. That would have to be the only way that man had found them. Every other way into their position was too far through the thick forest.
The chase was on, the leader of the pack thought from the stern of one canoe. He felt like the alpha wolf setting up a sick, old moose for dispatch. Nobody escaped the pack.
18
Max stopped for a second when he noticed the lights out on the lake moving slowly through the water. The young girl looked frightened out of her mind, but Pam seemed to have the same resolve as her sister Kim.
“What is it?” Pam asked quietly.
He flipped up his NVGs and verified the lights with his naked eyes. “They somehow got the canoes going.”
“Bullets holes won’t stop an aluminum canoe for long,” Pam said. “I once wrapped a canoe like theirs around rocks in a river and knocked a hole in it. I repaired it with a tampon and duct tape until I got back to Ely.”
Max did the math in his head, knowing there was no way he could reach the portage and get back to their camp before the men. And he couldn’t let these men attack his sister, Kim and Donny.
He found his radio and keyed in the push to talk. Then he said, “Base come in.”
“Loud and clear,” came Donny’s voice. “We heard shots.”
“I have the girls,” Max said. “But we can’t make it back before the four men reach you.”
Hesitation, and then, “What do we do?”
“Use my SAT phone and call this in,” Max said.
“Roger dodger.”
Then came a woman’s voice. “Pam. Are you there?”
Pam leaned in and Max held the button. “Yes, I’m here. I’m all right.”
Kim cried over the radio. “Get back safe.”
Max pulled back the radio and said, “You need to leave. Get in your canoes and head out into the lake.”
“We won’t leave you,” came another voice. This was his sister Robin.
“You have to go,” Max ordered. “There are four men with guns heading your way.”
“We can’t leave you,” Robin reiterated.
“You won’t forever,” he said. “Just cross the lake and hide until morning. That’ll give the cavalry time to get here. I’ll take the girls around the north shore and meet up at a portage.”
Now Kim came on the radio and said, “Pam, we both know the portage. It’s forty-two rods.”
Max pushed the talk button and Pam said, “I know it, sister. Get going.”
He confirmed a time to meet up and then turned down the volume. Then he glanced out at the lake and saw that the two canoes were getting close to their homemade portage.
“Where now?” Pam asked Max.
He looked at his compass and pointed into the forest. “That way.” Then he lowered his NVGs to his eyes and slowly led the young ladies away from the lake into the thick woods.
•
Robin knew that Kim was having a hard time leaving her sister, especially since she had finally proven all of the others wrong. Kim’s sister had not been hurt or killed by some black bear.
Before leaving the makeshift portage, Kim had used the SAT phone to call in the good news to her Forest Service office in Ely. Unfortunately, the only person she could reach was Wayne Cranston, the special agent with Forest Service Law Enforcement and Investigations, who had been brought in from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But he assured Kim he would notify everyone and get people there to help ASAP.
Only after this would Kim agree to get in her canoe, with Robin in the bow. Donny took the stern of the other canoe, since he was used to paddling in the Boundary Waters by himself anyway.
They used their headlamps to escape through the narrow part of the lake. Then the wind started to pick up, along with the rain.
“What now?” Robin asked, turning her head to see Kim in the stern.
“The wind is from the east,” Kim said. “Once we round the point ahead, the wind will be much stronger.”
Donny pulled up alongside them and said, “I’ll have a problem with this wind on my own. We should do as Max said and get into the woods until morning.”
“The point is narrow up ahead,” Kim said. “We can pull into this side and portage through the woods in the morning.”
“Good idea,” Donny said. “That will cut off at least a half a mile in the morning.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Kim said. “Follow me.”
Kim dug in deep and Robin tried her best to keep up with her pace. Despite their relative shelter behind the point, the wind was making their progress difficult. But in fifteen minutes, they had come ashore and pulled their canoes into the forest out of view.
•
Max couldn’t let this go. He led the young ladies through the forest and stopped for a moment. If he knew his sister, he worried that she might hold tight and not leave without them. And he had asked Pam about the four men. She had confirmed what they had done to her and Judy and that made his blood boil.
He set a waypoint on his GPS, and then pulled up the one he had set where he left his sister and the others on the lakeshore. He hit the button that would track his progress back to that waypoint, which was only about a quarter of a mile away.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
Even if Robin and the others had left and gone out to the lake, the men could go after them.
Lowering his NVGs to his eyes, he ran through the forest as fast as he could without falling through holes and keeping branches from whipping him to death. He needed to make it to the portage and intercept the men.
His problem? He had just one thing in mind and he would not cross that line without being provoked.
Periodically checking his GPS to make sure he was still on track, Max finally saw that he was within a hundred yards of his target, so he slowed down and started to walk quietly. He needed to see them before they saw him.
When he saw the lake come into focus of his NVGs, Max realized that the men had not made it there yet. Also, he saw that his sister and the others had taken his advice and left. Instead of simply waiting for the men to come to him, he turned and headed down the portage.
It didn’t take him long to find the men. He heard them before he saw them hiking down the trail. First came a man carrying two wooden paddles. Then he could hear the others coming, the aluminum canoes occasionally banging against trees. As he watched from behind a large cedar tree, he waited for the three of them to pass. The straggler was a man carrying the other two paddles. And he was significantly behind the rest of the group, his head lamp shifting from side to side as if the man was looking for something. Or someone.
With the wind whipping and the rain striking against the man’s face, Max had no problem with his attack. He moved in and slammed his body against the man like a football linebacker tackling a wide receiver across the middle. Once they both hit the ground, Max slammed his elbow into the man’s face, stunning him. Then he punched him repeatedly in the face until he was no longer a threat.
Now Max patted the man down and found a gun and a knife. Then he found the man’s wallet, which he took and put into his backpack.
He needed to do more, he thought. Something that would slow the men down more. He got up and grabbed the man by his collar, dragged him into the woods farther, and pulled out some paracord from his backpack. Then he tied the man’s hands behind his back. Almost satisfied, he took off the man’s shoes and threw them as far as he could in two different directions. He took off the man’s socks and tied some cord to each end. Then he shoved the sock into his mouth and tied the cord around his neck. Finally, he lashed the man’s ankles and attached them to his hands. Now the man couldn’t get far, Max thought.
He took out his GPS and tapped in another waypoint. Then he toggled back to the last place he had left the two young women and started walking slowly toward them. He stopped to pick up the two paddles before continuing on. Even if they found their partner, taking two paddles would slow them down.
In a few minutes he made it back to the young ladies. Just as he did, he could hear a couple of the men calling out to their lost man.
Pam smiled at Max and said, “What did you do?”
He handed her one of the paddles and said, “I evened the odds a little. They can paddle two canoes, but not nearly as fast with only one paddle each.”
“Most people carry one extra paddle per canoe,” Pam said.
“Even if they do, they’ll only have three paddling. Unless they find their man. Either way, we need to move.” He handed the second paddle to the young girl, who seemed glad to have it as either a weapon or a crutch.
They made quick distance between their position and a spot just north of the lake. When he realized the young girl was having a rough time trekking through the thick forest, Max slowed down and stopped temporarily. He pulled up his NVGs and took out his map of the area. Shining a small light on the map, he said, “This is the portage where we plan to meet your sister, right?”
Pam ran her finger to the spot on the map and said, “Yes. Forty-two rods into that lake.”
He found his GPS and pulled up the map function. He quickly found the end of the portage and pinpointed the location, punching in the coordinates as their destination. “That’s only about a mile,” he said.
“Yeah,” Pam said. “But it won’t be easy. We have to cross this big swampy area. It could even be a floating bog.”
“If it is, we’ll have to go around it,” Max surmised.
“That’ll add about a half a mile or more.”
“You got something better to do tonight?”
Both girls shook their heads.
He put down his NVGs and slowly headed out. Now that they had distance between them and the bad guys, Max guessed they could take it slow and steady.
19
Robin sat on the bank of the lake hidden by thick bushes. It was so dark out she couldn’t see the lake ten feet in front of her. She could hear the sounds of the Northland, though, from the cacophony of frogs and crickets to birds she couldn’t identify. She even heard a racoon as it chirped past her along the shoreline searching for a meal. As it waddled past her without being alarmed, the frogs finally had the good sense to shut up. Once it was past her, the frogs seemed to croak mockingly louder.
They had come ashore about an hour ago and moved the canoes and packs up over the bank of the long peninsula, making sure nothing would be visible to those passing by. In the morning they would haul everything to the opposite side and paddle up to their meeting place at the portage along the northernmost point of the lake.
Luckily the rain had stopped, but Robin was still wet in areas of her body that had not been covered by her rain gear. When the wind was at its strongest, the chill had made her teeth chatter. But even the wind had died down now.
She heard a snap of a twig behind her and her mind immediately thought about the bear that had eaten the Forest Service worker nearby.
But she heard a quiet whistle and she returned this call to let her new friend know where she was sitting.
Kim stepped softly without using her light, and took a seat alongside Robin. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Robin said. “Just had a friendly racoon come by.”
“I’d worry more about them than a bear,” Kim whispered. “They carry rabies.”
“He wasn’t interested in me.”
“Probably the frogs.”
“Right. What’s Donny up to?”
“He wrapped himself in his sleeping bag and covered himself with the tarp,” Kim said. “Mosquitos are brutal tonight. I brought you some extra dope.” She handed Robin a small plastic container of the life-saving elixir.
Robin poured some into both of her hands and she slathered it onto her neck and face and the back of her hands. Her rain gear kept out most of the pests, but the little blood suckers had no problem finding any opening of exposed skin.
“How do you deal with these little bastards?” Robin asked.
“You don’t have them out west?”
“Not like this.”
“We tolerate them. Nobody likes them but bats. They can eat their body weight in mosquitos in one night.”
“Why aren’t bats the size of eagles then?”
Kim laughed. “They burn a lot of calories hunting.”
They sat in silence for a while. Finally, Kim put her hand on Robin’s leg and said, “Thank you for helping.”
“Not a problem,” Robin said. “How is your ankle?”
“Well, it still hurts. But at least I’m walking on my own now. The splint helps.”
“Will you be able to portage tomorrow?”
“I think so. I can carry my pack, but a canoe might be too much.”
“I can take a canoe,” Robin said. “Plus, we’ll meet up with Max in the morning.”
“My sister is very strong,” Kim said. “I’ve seen her carry her pack and a canoe simultaneously, just like the guys. I could do that when I was younger. But I’ve been in the office too long. You look very strong and athletic.”
“I was a college athlete,” Robin said. “But that was years ago. I still work out daily.”
“It shows.”
Robin hesitated for a moment, wondering if this woman was interested in her. “You aren’t. . .”
“Hitting on you? No, no. I don’t go that way.”
“Me either,” Robin said.
“I was just saying you’re in great shape for your age.”
“Wow. Am I that ancient?”
“I’m sorry. This isn’t coming out right. I was thinking about your brother. Since you’re twins, I could know his age if I knew yours.”
Robin smiled, but she guessed her new friend couldn’t see it in the dark. “We’re forty. He’s twenty minutes older. You like my brother?”
“Are you kidding me? He’s hot as hell. My body fell onto his, smashing him into rocks and probably cracking his ribs. Then he picked me up like a duffle bag, threw me over his shoulder, and hauled me over rough terrain. Do you know how sexy that is?”
“Maybe if he wasn’t my brother,” Robin said. “I’ve seen him do some extraordin
ary things. And I can only imagine what he did in the military.”
Silence again, with only the frogs jabbering.
Then Kim said, “I know Max only sees me as a client. And he lives in Nevada. So, there’s that. But still.”
Robin wished she could say this was an aberration, but it wasn’t. A number of clients over the past two years had fallen for her brother. And she had encountered similar shows of affection during their cases. These never worked, though. When they were finished with the case, she and her brother would simply go back to their homes in Utah and Nevada until the next outing. Maybe that was their problem. The reason they were both unattached.
As they were quiet, Robin suddenly heard paddling coming their way. She grasped Kim’s hand and she squeezed back in acknowledgment.
When the bright light came on, Robin and Kim sunk deeper into the forest, hiding behind tall grass and the low bushes. The light swept along the shore searching. Because of the light, Robin could see both canoes. She wished she had binoculars to view the men, but only Max had those. Two canoes and four men. But only the men in the back were paddling. Interesting.
As quickly as they had appeared, the canoes drifted through the dark lake like apparitions until the light went out and they were no longer visible.
Neither of them said a word for a while, until they were sure the men were out of range from their whispers.
Finally, Kim asked, “Do you think that was them?”
“It had to be. Nobody else would be out at this time cruising on a dark lake.”
“I agree. What now?”
“I don’t know. Do you think they’re heading toward the entry point?” Robin asked.
“If I were them, that’s what I’d do. They have to assume we could have a SAT phone, or at least a powerful radio to reach someone on Snowbank.”
That made Robin think about the call to the Forest Service. “Did your people say what they planned to do?”
“No. But they should have local cops at each entry point, from Lake One to Snowbank to Moose Lake.”