“Johnny, Tony, Choir!” Freeman shouted. “Come with me.” He then told Eddie Mervyn and Gomez to “clean up then catch up,” as he and the other three, with Prince leading, continued their forced march north on the deserted road. Freeman, on point as usual, spotted a faint gleam of metal in the woods off to his left. It was a downpipe from a creeper-covered cabin set well back, about a hundred feet, in the forest. The general led his men in through shoulder-high salal that formed the perimeter of a small clearing, mist enveloping the surrounding timber like malevolent layers of swamp gas. A thin, lazy plume of smoke issued from the cabin’s stone chimney. A beat-up Ford Explorer, its left rear fender badly rusted and strips of duct tape holding in a rectangle of transparent plastic that had replaced the back window, stood forlornly a few yards from the rear of the cabin, its tires’ tracks disappearing into the overcast green of salal.
Freeman extracted one of DARPA’s “products”—or “goodies,” as the Special Forces called them. It was a matchbox-size scanner-remote-key that, upon activation with one push of a man’s thumb, scans for the solenoid opening frequency of a vehicle and unlocks it. A more civil approach, knocking on the cabin door, explaining the dire need for the vehicle to catch up with the terrorists, to overtake them, had occurred to the general, but the very thought of the disk being in enemy hands was chilling enough, the possibility of Americans being attacked by such weapons evicting any idea of social niceties.
A woman inside the cabin was screaming and a man in a tie-dyed nightshirt came running out with a baseball bat.
“Stop!” yelled Freeman. “U.S. Army Special Forces. We need your vehicle. We’ll pay you compensation. Give me the keys.”
“What the—”
“The keys! Quickly!”
The man, dropping the bat, ran back into the dimly lit cabin, followed by Freeman. The general watched him go past a potbellied stove to a small table by a creeper-covered window. “Here!” He tossed the SUV’s keys to Freeman.
“Thank you, sir,” said Freeman as they came out. “Stay inside. Bad day to be out.”
“You’re as bad as the guys you’re after!”
Freeman lobbed the keys to Choir, and glanced back at the man. “What other guys?”
“Guys who done the same as you to Mick Sutter.”
“When?
The man’s sense of outrage was increasing. “’Bout twenty minutes ago. Busted into his shed, stole his car. Tried to call the cops but they’d cut his line. Smashed his cell too. Just charged in like you guys.”
“If his phones were taken out, how come you know about it?”
“He walked down the road a ways to a neighbor’s. He called us.”
“You have any description?” Freeman asked him, adding, “We’re on your side.”
“Huh,” said the man derisively. “Funny way of showin’ it.” But Freeman could tell the man believed him. “They was dressed like you guys. Battle gear. Dark eyes, Mick’s wife said. Middle Eastern guys. Like A-rabs. They looked wet — like they’d been out on the lake.”
“What kind of car did they take?” asked the general.
“Gray — old Dodge Colt.”
“License?”
“Canadian. Sutters are Canadian — stay all summer and fall. Thelma,” he called back to the woman in the cabin, “you got that license plate number Mick gave you?”
“It’s RCV—” said the woman, timidly emerging from the cabin with a piece of paper, her hands shaking, pulling jerkily at her bath robe. “—RCV 625.”
Choir backed the Explorer out quickly, throwing gravel. Freeman made contact with Sal and Aussie via their headsets. “You still have a beep?”
“Affirmative. It’s coming from what’s indicated on the Tac Nav chart as a campground, a new one — Melson Campground — near the top of the lake. Possible they’re changing into civilian—” There was the crackle of static, and then Aussie and Sal could hear Freeman telling them that now that the rearguard action was over they should wait at the helo until further notice. The general had no sooner finished talking with Aussie and Sal than he heard Eddie Mervyn coming in on his MIR line informing him that, as suspected, all the rearguard terrorists — six of them — were dead. Freeman thanked Eddie and Gomez, telling them that he, Ruth, Choir, and Johnny Lee were only a quarter mile up the road, they had an SUV, and would pick them up within a few minutes.
After Mervyn and Gomez were in the SUV, the team headed north on the lone road. The Ford Explorer was doing a maximum of thirty miles per hour, Ruth on the passenger-side running board, the general on the driver’s- side running board, both looking ahead for any sign of an improvised booby trap. The Explorer’s defroster was on the fritz, so Choir had to use his free hand to wipe the condensation from the windshield. Thirty miles per hour on the straightaway was Choir’s compromise between getting there quickly but still having time to jam on the brakes, should anything suspicious appear on the road that was now funneling into a dark tunnel of trees.
Freeman figured Choir’s speed was a bit overcautious, but one anti-personnel mine on the road could rupture a tire and bring everything to a screeching halt.
There was no mine, but an all-but-invisible cable strung tautly across the road.
“Brake!” yelled Ruth, Choir shouting, “Heads down!” Choir’s controlled skid saved the Explorer from taking the impact full-on, its right side slamming against the cable. Ruth, caught by the cable, was lifted up by it, his helmet flying off, his severed head rolling along the road’s shoulder in a flurry of dead leaves, his torso gushing blood. The nose-clogging smell of burnt rubber wafted over the others as the SUV stopped, everyone in utter shock, their obscenities rending the air. Recovering first, Douglas Freeman said, “God watch him,” then “Put him in the back!
Choir was as white as a sheet. It had been Ruth yelling, “Brake!” but it had been Choir who made the mistake of swinging the wheel instead of letting the vehicle hit the wire full-on, in which case it would likely have twanged over the roof without touching either Ruth or Freeman. Freeman ordered Choir to get back in and drive. Again Freeman took his position on the driver’s-side running board. “Go!” To prevent them from hearing the head rolling around, Johnny Lee, in the back, almost sick to his stomach, wrapped it up in a bunch of old clothing the owner had obviously dumped in the backseat, and stuffed it into a corner. No one spoke save Freeman, who, riding the driver’s-side running board, bellowed into the window against the slipstream, his eyes on the road all the time, “Stay focused! We can’t do anything to help Ruth now. But we
“Mines!” screamed Choir.
“Six of them, right?” said Johnny Lee.
“Yes!”
Now Freeman saw them: six small, black objects, no more than a hand’s span wide, placed, staggered, across the road so that it would be impossible for a vehicle to pass without making contact with at least one of them.
“Back up,” he ordered Choir, “till we’re at least fifty yards away.”
Choir had no sooner stopped the Explorer than the general, regretting that neither Sal nor Aussie’s longer- range weapons were at hand, ordered Gomez and Eddie Mervyn to concentrate on two targets apiece while he, Freeman, would deal with the remaining two. Choir turned the SUV’s engine off. The ensuing silence was eerie. They could smell the rain in the air. An ominous deep green color curdled the sky, promising heavy snow to the north along Idaho’s border with B.C. Leaves scuttled across the road with unnerving urgency. Although superbly trained, Gomez and Eddie Mervyn were showing signs of stress, Mervyn unusually jumpy, Eddie breathing rapidly. Still, their aim was true, and through the roar of the submachine guns Freeman could see the targets disintegrating. But something was wrong. There were no explosions.
“What the—” began Johnny Lee.
“All right,” said the general. “Let’s go.” He told Choir to stop momentarily by the targets then quickly stepped down from the driver’s-side running board and retrieved part of what they had thought were mines. “Son of a bitch!”
