Suddenly the radio burst with a repeated police call for immediate assistance, near Alexandria Bay.
“Alice, we’ve got to move, now!”
The patrol boat’s motor grumbled to life and she leaped aboard.
After waiting several minutes for its wake to subside, Felk and the others climbed back into their canoes. They drove hard toward their destination, eventually coming to a large marsh and a welcoming symphony of croaking and chirping. The smell of fish and mud enveloped them as they set to work plunging knives into the canoes, weighting them down with rocks, sinking them and covering the area with cattails.
Once they’d moved to dry land, they changed into jeans, flannel shirts, woolen socks and hiking boots. They buried their wet suits and the things they no longer needed. Rytter clipped a digital police scanner to his belt, tuned it to frequencies for the Ontario Provincial Police and slipped on a headset. Northcutt monitored news reports on radio stations. Unger confirmed their location and their next destination point with his GPS unit.
“That way.” He pointed to a forest that bordered empty, rolling farmland. It looked like easygoing. “We’ve got a hike.”
As the group climbed a slope, Felk turned and looked back across the expanse of the river and the islands that straddled two nations. They’d fled the United States and entered Canada safely with millions in stolen cash strapped to their backs. This phase of the operation was behind them. Time to advance to the next.
Moving fast, the men soon entered a dense forest. It was the gateway to a rest stop along the Thousand Islands Parkway, a scenic two-lane highway meandering along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. Parked vehicles dotted the lot, an RV with Alberta plates, a Porsche from Quebec, a couple of sedans from Ontario.
Felk spotted a white Grand Cherokee bearing an Ontario plate with the numeric sequence 787. Leading them to it, he went to the driver’s door. The window lowered to a man in his late twenties, alone behind the wheel.
“Waiting long, Dillon?” Felk said.
“Not long at all.”
“Good, let’s roll.”
“Outstanding work, sir.” The driver gave Felk a half smile, pressed a button and the Jeep’s rear liftgate opened. After setting their gear in the rear storage area, they got in. The Cherokee wheeled quietly from the rest stop and west along the parkway.
Felk was in the front passenger seat next to Dillon, who was in charge of support for the unit in Canada. This operation had been planned, drilled and reviewed with a range of contingencies. Felk took nothing for granted, but savored a moment of relief, exhaling as he looked at Dillon in the glow of the dash lights.
Lee Mitchell Dillon. Age: twenty-six. Born in Scarborough, a Toronto suburb. His father was a doctor and his Montreal-born mother was a nurse. Dillon was fluent in French, Spanish and English. He held a master’s degree in science from McGill University. He had seen combat in Afghanistan as a member of the Canadian Forces Joint Task Force 2, the JTF2, before he quit to work as a private operator with Felk.
The team was solid, not a weakness among them. Felk regretted that Sparks had refused to sign on. He was the only holdout.
“News reports of the hit are being carried up here. It’s a big story,” Dillon said.
“We know,” Unger said. “How much farther?”
“About forty-five minutes, give or take.”
Traffic was nonexistent when they turned north on Highway 32, which cut across forests, farm fields and jagged rock exposures. When Highway 32 ended, they turned south on Highway 15, traveled another fifteen minutes beyond Seeley’s Bay toward the Dog Lake area. Dillon slowed to a near stop at an outcropping of house-size rock. The formation nearly concealed the mouth of a dirt road that twisted into a thick forest, disappearing in the darkness.
Private Property Keep Out, a hand-painted scrawl warned from a sign nailed to one of the trees. They bordered the entrance like sentries. Overhanging branches engulfed the road, as if to underscore the notice.
Lit only by the Cherokee’s high beams, Dillon proceeded along the narrow dirt ribbon, hugging small cliff edges.
“Some of the men behind Lincoln’s assassination fled to this region,” Dillon said as branches slapped at the doors and roof and gravel popcorned against the undercarriage.
The Cherokee arrived at a soft sandy path, curtained with tall shrubs. Then, through the bush, the headlights found a clearing and a cottage.
“It belongs to my buddy’s uncle.” Dillon killed the motor. “I told him I had some friends who wanted to fish. I’ve got full use for three weeks.”
It offered seclusion on three acres.
Felk was pleased.
After they hauled in their gear, Dillon showed them around. The cottage was built with cedar logs. The lake shimmered beyond large windows that framed a stone fireplace.
The main floor had an open living-dining area with a large flat-screen TV hooked to a satellite dish. The kitchen had a freezer, stove and a fridge Dillon had fully stocked. The sink had a pump to draw clean well water. There was a small hot-water reservoir. Upstairs, there was a private master bedroom and two large spacious bedroom areas with two extra-wide bunks in the loft area. There was no indoor plumbing. No toilet. No tub or shower. There was an outhouse at the rear. The lake was where people bathed, Dillon said before offering the men cold Canadian beer.
“Luxurious compared to some assignments,” Unger said.
“The Sheraton in Addis Ababa was comfy,” Northcutt added.
“Beats the hell out of Afghanistan,” Rytter said.
“Neighbors are rare in these parts,” Dillon said.
“We’ll cool off here for as long as we need before rolling on to the next stage.” Felk indicated the sports bags. “We need a tally on the take.”
The men opened all the bags containing the cash and other items from the heist. Dillon produced a money counter. As the men loaded cash in the machine, Felk took his gear upstairs to the master bedroom and stepped outside onto the upper balcony. He looked at the lake, tranquil under the starlight.
His attention shot back to the tribal regions of the disputed zone and he ran his hand over his stubbled face, knowing what was coming. The images were seared into his brain…
Three of Felk’s men were killed.
Five escaped with him.
The insurgents set their price for the lives of the six they’d captured: two million per man. Total: twelve million in U.S. cash. Whether the insurgents would actually make the cash-for-lives exchange was not a factor for Felk. He would secure the ransom and bring his men home.
He would not fail.
Felk returned to the bedroom and switched on his laptop, a state-of-the-art model fully encrypted with a satellite link. He checked for new emails from the intermediary.
There was one.
It had a video.
Felk braced to look at it, preparing himself for the worst he could imagine. The insurgents had threatened to make execution videos of the beheadings.
If this was it, he was ready.
The image blurred then focused on a newspaper showing the date, indicating the recording was less than twenty-four hours old. From his limited grasp of Urdu, Felk recognized the newspaper. It was the
