Apache Dawn: Book I of the Wildfire Saga (17 page)

“What the hell?” he whispered to himself.
 
Glacier National Park had been put under quarantine months ago.
 
No one could get in or out without approval.
 
His boss had made it clear that his job was to find the root of the plague and flush it out.
 
The Centers For Disease Control in Atlanta needed samples.
 
If some assholes slipped past the border and got in here they could ruin a hunt that had taken half a week.
 
Or worse, they could get themselves shot in his attempt to bag a sick-critter.
 

Not to mention the whole park had been ringed with National Guard units patrolling the borders to keep lookie-loos out.
 
Ignorance and fear made powerful motivators, even a decade after the Blue Flu.
 
Signs proclaiming the presence of Bubonic Plague in the park were good enough for most people, but boredom and alcohol bred bravery.
 
He frowned.
 

“Crap,” he muttered.
 
When he looked back to the clearing, the cougar was gone.
 
He grunted and lay the rifle down on the boulder.
 

Well, there goes the element of surprise.
 

He slid down the back face of the snow-crusted boulder to his pack and rested with his back against the cold rock.
 
He pulled out the heartbeat monitor.
 
The blip representing the cougar was definitely absent.
 
But now, on the very edge of the monitor’s range, he could see there were a few large clusters of blips.
 
The monitor was calibrated for large animals—human size or above.
 
It was detected his uninvited visitors.

On the gusty breeze he heard the wafting sound of engines growing louder.
 
Whoever they were, they were getting closer and running right up into his hunting grounds.
 
“Dammit,” he growled.
 
They were not only going to spook the cougar, but any deer or wolves for miles around.
 
He rummaged through his pack and brought out the field binoculars he always carried and repositioned himself on the sloping face of the boulder.

The early season snow was moving from the west and his vision through the tree line was obscured by what looked like fog.
 
He realized the engine noise had disappeared.
 
Hoping whoever it was down there had moved on, he scanned the area where the cougar had been looking.
 
His hope was dashed.
 
There on the edge of a ridgeline about 500 yards out, a white Jeep appeared.
 
As he watched, the front passenger door opened and a figure in woodland camouflage of some sort stepped out and stretched.

He could barely make out through the swirling flurries the roof of a second Jeep behind the first, just on the other side of the ridge.
 
Now, two more people crested the ridge and joined the first.
 
They stood there talking.
 
He could see the first man gesture with his arm, clearly encompassing the sloping ground before them—exactly where Chad was positioned.
 
He knew behind him was Little Matterhorn, the imposing snow covered mountain that brooded over Lake MacDonald.

“What the hell are
you
doing here?” he whispered.
 
Four more men in camouflage joined the first three and stood quietly behind them.
 
The other doors opened on the first vehicle and then three more men got out.
 

“What is this, a corporate retreat?” Chad asked the snow swirling around his head.
 

It only took a few minutes for the men to unload from the two vehicles a large pile of crates and gear and place everything under camouflage tarps.
 
Headlights cast beams of light through the snow and trees as the Jeeps turned and rolled off into the woods toward the lake.
 
When the noise from their engines was lost the in snow-filled wind, Chad counted 18 men, a whole lot of camping gear, and more rifles than he cared to see.
 
He needed a closer picture of what was going on.

He slowly lowered the binoculars and placed them in the fresh snow at his side.
 
Just as slowly, Chad raised his rifle and peered through the scope.
 
The man that appeared to be talking to the others made some more gestures to the pile of equipment.
 
Then, two of them immediately began digging through the gear pile. The rest began to fan out into the clearing.
 
They moved with confidence and made a box about 10 yards wide. Then, in a single coordinated movement, all of them dropped to one knee and brought their rifles up, scanning in front of them.
 
But, it was the sharp synchronization of their movements that really spooked Chad.

“Holy shit…those aren’t hunters…” Chad whispered to himself.
 
Through the rifle scope, he could clearly see the hard outline of the black guns the men in camo carried.
 
They were clearly military rifles.
 
He just wasn’t sure of the make.
 
A few looked like AK-47s, but he thought it was his imagination, or the snow that was starting to obscure his view.

Chad panned back to the apparent leader of the group.
 
He was using binoculars now, with huge, orange-tinted objectives.
 
He was scanning the tree line and sweeping upward to view Little Matterhorn, the snow-capped mountain directly behind Chad’s position.
 
Then the man next to him suddenly started to gesticulate excitedly, pointing in Chad’s direction.
 
He was looking down at a little black box.
 
The leader with the binoculars turned and looked straight at Chad.

“Shit!” Chad dove for the ground.
 
A shout echoed through the snow.
 
He risked a peek over the boulder and saw the men—they
had
to be soldiers—fan out and start to move methodically toward his position.
 
They were not running, they were keeping formation, covering each other and moving at a steady, deliberate pace.
 
At that distance, Chad figured he had about ten minutes before they arrived.
 
There were a few nasty ravines they’d have to cross to get up the side of the foothill he was perched on.
 

Another barked command from the leader of the large squad of men helped Chad quickly make up his mind.

The command sure didn’t sound like English to him, which he thought odd.
 
Chad reckoned the gathering storm was playing tricks on his ears.
 
At any rate, he had no idea who the men were with all the military hardware and had no intention of finding out.
 
They did not look like the National Guard units that he had seen every now and then.
 
No, these guys were definitely…different.

Chad shoved his binoculars in his pack, strapped it on and crawled away from the protection of his boulder, rifle slung over his shoulder.
 
He donned his Stetson again and was damn glad to have it on his head.
 
The wide rim of his father’s hat blocked the glancing snow from drifting into his eyes as he made his way as low to the ground as possible.
 
He realized he was leaving a trail a mile wide, but figured that in this case, speed was more important than stealth.
 
The storm was brewing up and his best chance was to put as much distance as possible between those men and himself.
 

He soon crested a ridge and descended far enough to stand without being seen by his pursuers.
 
The storm winds were really starting to whip through the pines now, creating that oddly-loud whisper so familiar to him.
 
The violently blowing snow was producing a deafening roar and easily covered any tail noise he made.
 
Stumbling between rocks and roots, Chad tried to make his way up the sloping base of Little Matterhorn.
 

The mountain loomed before him, a wall of rock and snow that offered protection.
 
He was in the southern part of the large crescent shaped valley formed by the collapsed northern flank of the mountain.
 
Before him the trees thinned and over a few last ravines, the bare rocky ground sloped up at a dramatic rise nearly 1,500’ to the summit.
 
He was already about 4,000’ above sea-level and had to slow his pace.
 
He wouldn’t last long with his pack and rifle trying to run at this pace.
 
The storm was building, dropping the light down to dusk levels.
 
If he tripped and sprained an ankle in the dark, those soldiers would quickly overtake him.

That realization caused him to rethink his situation.
 
The men following him were not running, they were walking, methodically—as if they knew what would happen if you tried to run while carrying gear in thin air.
 
The rational part of his mind refused to believe that they were hunting
him
in particular, but he could not see any other reason why they were still on his trail, or even out here in the first place.

“What the hell is going on?” he shouted at the storm as he sucked in the cold air and thought frantically.
 
He pulled down the brim of Dad’s Stetson to block the biting snow in his face.
 

Chad peered around in the gathering dark and realized he couldn’t continue south or east any more.
 
His cover would be gone in about a hundred yards as the pines thinned to scrub brush.
 
After that, the protective foliage faded to nothing and he would be right out in the open.
 

If he could make it to his cabin, he’d have access to power communications gear, warmth, and security.
 
His cabin though, was in the exact
opposite
direction: behind him, behind the soldiers hunting him, on the northeast shore of Avalanche Lake near the headwaters of Avalanche Creek.
 
He turned and looked north.
 
Though he couldn’t see it, he knew Mount Vaught stood there at the entrance to the valley, blocking his escape that way.
 
To the east, through the storm, he could barely make out the dark shape of Bearhat Mountain, towering directly over his cabin and Lake Avalanche.
 
If he tried to sneak past his pursuers to the east, they would see him cross the open, rock-strewn field that graced the crescent skirt of Little Matterhorn’s base.
 
He had to reach the forest surrounding the lake so he could disappear into the trees.
 
He was starting to feel like a rat trapped in a cage—mountains all around him, soldiers chasing him, nowhere to run.

He fumbled in one of his pack’s outer pockets and pulled out his cell phone.
 
A quick check showed what he feared: NO SIGNAL.
 
As he put the cell back, he remembered the Iridium satellite phone the CDC issued him in case of emergency.
 
He took cover from the snow and wind behind a log and dug through his pack, cursing himself for not having it more accessible.
 

Just as his cold fingertips brushed the corner of the sat phone in the bottom of his pack, he heard a gunshot and instinctively ducked, dropping the pack and the sat phone.
 
“Shit!” Chad immediately began frantically digging through the snow looking for the phone.
 

 
“They’re
shooting
at me!” he said when a second shot echoed off the landscape.
 
Chad decided it was too dangerous to try and contact help with the sat phone.
 
Knowing there wasn’t much anyone could do to help anyway, he quickly gathered up the spilled backpack with cold, shaking hands while looking around nervously.
 
Satisfied he had picked up everything, he struggled to get to his feet on unsteady legs.
 

Wait, did I grab the sat phone?
 
He glanced down into the disturbed snow at his feet.
 
Suddenly it went from white to red.
 

When he looked up in surprise, Chad saw a bright red flare arcing through the storm directly overhead.
 
He watched, mesmerized, as the red star plummeted toward the ground and crashing loudly in a copse of pine trees before it winked out.
 
More foreign-sounding shouts echoed from farther up the valley startled him back to the task at hand.
 

The hell with this
, he told himself.
 
I need to get out of here.
 
If I can get back to the cabin, I’ll use the radio there and get help..

He turned toward the long, steep western arm of Little Matterhorn.
 
He knew on the other side of that mountain ridge, the land dropped sharply down to the adjoining valley and Lake MacDonald.
 
The dim outline was all he could see through the worsening snowstorm, but he knew it was well-forested and he could maintain the high ground on his pursuers.
 
Mind made up, he calmed his breathing and moved out to the west, trying to circle wide of his pursuers and hoping that the driving snow and steep terrain would give him enough time to escape.