Exile Hunter (36 page)

“Remember the broken
saw?” Linder asked in a low voice without introduction.

“I do,” Yost
answered, letting the sock fall to his lap.

“Still interested?

“When?” Yost asked.

“Soon.”

“Your timing is good.
How soon?”

Linder looked to both
sides to make doubly sure that no one was within earshot.

“Tomorrow.”

“What else do I need
to do?” Yost asked, scarcely moving his lips.

“Nothing. I’ll see
you at work and fill you in on the details then. Oh, and bring a
snack.”

Yost picked up the
paperback and returned to his reading. “Sweet dreams,” he replied
without looking up.

“And you,” Linder
answered before heading for the door.

* * *

The next morning,
before breakfast, Linder approached Browning and Scotty separately
and told them of the promise he had made to Yost weeks before after
being discovered with the broken saw. Without disclosing that he had
already renewed the agreement with Yost, he asked each man for
permission to speak to Yost at the logging site and re-extend his
invitation to join the escape.

While neither Browning
nor Scotty appeared happy to hear of the hidden contingency with
Yost, each agreed that, once Linder’s offer had been made, it would
be dangerous to attempt escape under Yost’s nose without offering
him the opportunity to go with them. Imagining Yost’s choice
between possible freedom if he joined the escape and certain
punishment if he stayed behind, they expected Yost to come along, and
in the end, they were pleased at the prospect of having him.

Upon arriving at the
parade ground for morning roll call, Linder looked in vain for Yost
and the other worksite leaders at the front of the assemblage.
Instead, he spotted the Deputy Commandant and his top security aides.
He watched with growing alarm as Bracken approached the podium and
raised a bullhorn to address the prisoners.

“As some of you know,
this camp has been assigned to supply laborers for the new expansion
at the tungsten mine just north of here. Last week the new shafts at
MacTung were cleared to start production and the mine’s general
manager has called on us to provide a hundred men to work the
deposits there.

“Effective today, the
following work teams will be transferred to the MacTung mine: from
Grounds and Maintenance, Team A3. From Recycling, Team B2. From
Logging, Teams A1, A2 and A3. These teams will remain on the parade
ground after roll call to receive their new orders. The Team leaders
and foremen involved have been notified and will direct their men to
prepare for the transfer. Prisoners dismissed.”

Linder and Burt were on
Logging Team A2.

The moment he heard of
the prisoner transfer, Linder’s guts started to churn. He cast a
sidelong glance at Burt, whose eyes were closed and his face white as
a corpse. Their transfer to the mine was to be immediate. Even if the
storm came as expected, they would not be at the logging site to make
use of it. There would be no escape today.

At Bracken’s order,
the teams assigned to the mining site remained at attention until the
last prisoners walked out the gate for work. Moments later, Captain
Holzer and the leaders of the teams selected for transfer emerged
from the administration building and stood before the assembled men,
while Bracken issued final orders.

“You will have
fifteen minutes to collect your belongings into one regulation
rucksack and report back here for the march to the mining site.
Latecomers will be sent straight to the disciplinary unit.
Dismissed!”

Linder, Burt, and
Browning retreated to their hut to pack their bags, leaving the
cached escape supplies intact in their hiding places. As they left
Hut J-6 for the last time, with their limbs feeling heavy as lead,
the first fine flakes of the approaching blizzard swirled around
them.

* * *

For more than a week,
Linder was unable to find Yost again to speak with him about the
aborted escape. Not only were they assigned to different shifts, they
slept in different huts. On occasion, Linder would catch a glimpse of
Yost trudging in or out of the mine while he slogged in the opposite
direction.

Similarly, while
Linder, Burt and Browning all worked the same shift, they were
assigned to different sections of the mine. After only a few days of
training, Linder alternated between operating a pneumatic drill to
bore holes for explosive charges and wielding a pickaxe or scaling
bar to remove loose rock from walls and ceilings. The heat, noise,
dust, and danger required his utmost concentration. When rest breaks
occurred, he usually collapsed on the spot to conserve energy until
work resumed.

Only at night, in the
sleeping hut, did Linder have an opportunity to talk to Browning and
Burt, as none of them had seen Scotty during the week since the
transfer. Because the three were assigned to different sections of
the hut and did not know their bunkmates well, they were careful not
to speak of the aborted escape except in the most cryptic terms and
then only if they were certain of being undisturbed. Even then, they
found little to say to one another, except to confirm that their
supplies remained hidden back at Camp N-320 and that they still
intended to escape somehow, once they found their bearings at the
mine and could concoct a new plan. At this point, their morale was so
low and their new work so draining that the three men were beyond
commiserating.

As it happened, Burt
knew a good deal about the MacTung mine from his former work on
national defense issues. As Burt explained, MacTung’s strategic
military importance lay in being one of only two tungsten mines in
North America and by far the largest source of tungsten concentrate
in the Western world.

Tungsten’s hardness,
density, high melting point, and conductivity made it indispensable
for cutting and drilling tools, turbine blades, electronics and
advanced military ordnance, where tungsten could substitute for
depleted uranium. Years before the outbreak of the Manchurian War,
China and Russia had stopped selling tungsten on the world market,
causing tungsten prices to soar. Upon America’s entry into that
disastrous war, the President-for-Life nationalized the MacTung mine
and ordered the CLA to supply as many technicians and laborers from
among its prisoners as might be required to step up production. But
even after America retreated from Manchuria, the MacTung Mine and its
nearby companion mine, CanTung, remained vital to America’s
national defense and were ordered to expand further.

While the U.S. Interior
Department and Natural Resources Canada searched the market for
scarce mining equipment for the two state-owned mines, the CLA
scoured its labor camps for qualified workers. In the crush to expand
production, civilian labor was put on forced overtime and replaced by
convict labor when output fell short. The day after the prisoners
from Camp N-320 arrived at MacTung, they were given rudimentary
training in mining operations and assigned to shifts. As at Camp
N-320, a prisoner’s rations depended on meeting output quotas. And,
as at the logging sites, prisoners were worked nearly to exhaustion.

One evening toward the
end of their first week at MacTung, when their shift was brought to
the surface early because of a ventilation system breakdown, Linder,
Burt, and Browning sat together after the evening meal in their
sleeping hut and stared into each others’ weary eyes. They sat
cross-legged in a corner, away from where their bunkmates were
gathered around the stove, and huddled their heads together while
going through the motions of playing poker.

“What the hell
happened?” Browning asked, breaking the silence at last. “A few
more hours and we could have made it out.”

“I don’t know,”
Burt answered. “Maybe Bracken got wind of a breakout from the
logging site and ordered the transfer to head it off. After all, all
three logging teams were transferred but only one team each from
Recycling and Maintenance.”

Both men looked at
Linder.

“Could Yost have
ratted on us?” Browning asked.

“Possibly, but I find
it hard to believe,” Linder answered with a note of defensiveness.

“But we all agreed to
wait till we got to the worksite before offering him a chance to come
along. We didn’t even discuss it until just before roll call,”
Browning protested. “How could Yost have told anyone if he didn’t
know we were going?”

“Actually, I told
Charlie about it the night before,” Linder confessed in a low
voice, looking Browning straight in the eye.

“But you had no
right!” the Montanan sputtered.

“Now calm down,
Will,” Linder continued. “I went to his hut just before lock-up
because I didn’t want to risk moving our supplies to the site the
next morning if Yost refused to go with us. But Yost said yes, and
everything I know about him tells me he would never sell us out. Not
for anything.”

“Warren told me he
was going to see Yost and I agreed,” Burt concurred, “which makes
us both responsible. But think about it: if Charlie betrayed us, why
aren’t we lying face down in some snowdrift with bullets in our
heads?”

“Okay, okay, I want
to trust Charlie, too,” Browning conceded. “It’s just so damned
frustrating.”

“So we’re back to
square one,” Burt concluded wearily. “We’ve lost access to our
supplies. We’re in a new environment that’s more closely
controlled than ever. And we’re all getting weaker by the day.
Let’s face it: if we don’t catch a break, it could be game over
real soon.”

“The only breaks we
can count on are the ones we make ourselves,” Linder replied,
gathering up the cards from the rough-hewn wood floor. “I think
that what we need most right now is more intel. Let’s keep our
heads and see if we can make contact with Yost or Scotty. They may
know something we don’t.”

“I’ll work on
tracking down Scotty if the two of you can link up with Yost
somehow,” Burt offered.

“I know people in
Yost’s hut,” Linder agreed. “I’ll see if there’s some way
to catch him there, or maybe pass him a message to come see us.”

* * *

Two days later,
Linder returned for work in the evening in time to wait for Charlie
Yost outside his sleeping hut before Yost joined the march to the
mine for the graveyard shift. Linder watched and waited in the
relentless subzero wind, his hood and neck gaiter gathered closely
around his stubbled face. To distract himself, he looked up at a sky
filled with more stars than he ever could have imagined before coming
to the Yukon, with the Milky Way looking like a vast plume of smoke
rising to the heavens. High above, the Northern Lights played like a
luminous green curtain fluttering in the breeze. Spotting Yost
leaving the hut, he stepped in beside him and kept pace.

“Long time, no see,
Charlie,” Linder began, examining Yost’s face carefully for any
signs of defensiveness or guilt.

“Yeah, the world has
changed a bit since our last talk,” Yost replied. “You must be
wondering what happened. Hell, I’m still wondering and I wouldn’t
blame you one bit if you suspected me of turning you in.”

“It’s not that we
suspect you, Charlie,” Linder answered, raising his voice to be
heard above the roaring wind. “We just want to know what on earth
happened.”

“What happened is
that Bracken went crazy on us. Do you remember the day when I came to
visit Roger Kendall at the infirmary?”

Linder nodded.

“Well, it was no
coincidence that Bracken assigned Roger and you and every other
prisoner with any connection to Cleveland to the logging unit,”
Yost explained. “From what I could see, Bracken and the DSS hoped
that, by throwing us all together, somebody who knew about the
Cleveland bank job would start talking. Then, around the time you
left the infirmary and Roger entered the terminal ward, it seems that
Bracken heard from one of the loggers that Eaton’s men had
recovered the last of the loot long ago and packed it off to Europe
before his death.”

“I don’t get it,”
Linder interrupted. “If Bracken had sources among the loggers, why
would he send them all to MacTung and lose the chance to learn more?”

“Because he had been
pressuring his informants for months to find out what happened to the
bank money,” Yost explained. “And when his deadline passed
without getting what he wanted, he had to follow through. Besides, if
it were true that all the loot had left the country, there would be
little to gain from continuing.”

“Okay, let me get
this straight,” Linder replied. “When I asked you to escape with
us, you knew about Bracken’s deadline?”

“Of course,” Yost
replied.

“But you said
nothing.”

“I was hoping Bracken
would give us one more day.”

“But you also might
have turned us in to save yourself from going to MacTung,” Linder
noted.

Yost gave Linder a
puzzled look, as if Linder had called him by someone else’s name.

“You ought to know me
better than that,” he chided. Then he brightened and asked, “So
tell me straight, do we have a new plan yet?”

“Not quite,” Linder
replied. “But we will.”

“Then count me in,”
Yost declared. “Now that I’m not responsible for a work team any
more, there’s nothing left to hold me back.”

“We’ll need to get
assigned to the same work team again, for starters,” Linder noted,
his mind racing ahead. “Or at least to the same hut, so we can
talk.”

“Leave that to me,”
Yost assured.

After dinner that
night, Linder found Burt and Browning deep in conversation on Burt’s
bunk, with no one else close by, and was about to interrupt them to
share news of his meeting with Yost, when Burt held up a hand to
silence him.

“You’ll never
believe this, but I think we got our break tonight,” Burt
whispered.