Exile Hunter (46 page)

Linder came to a full
stop and peered ahead. The vertical drop would be only about twenty
or thirty feet and the timbers were arranged in a way that he thought
he could maintain a firm grip on the beams during his descent.

“Okay, let’s do
it,” he agreed.

They walked out another
thirty meters, tossed the branch overboard and slid cautiously down
the snow-dusted beams, with Rhee in the lead, until they reached the
ice.

“No damned dog is
going to follow us down that jungle gym,” Rhee announced
triumphantly when Linder joined him at the bottom.

The two men looked back
up at the structure while they caught their breath.

“Smells like rain,”
Linder noted once his chest stopped heaving from the exertion. “If
they do track us this far, the rain will help cover our scent. But
just to be sure, let’s keep moving.”

The pair crossed the
river gingerly, noticing that the ice was rotten in places and might
break up before many more days. Minutes after reaching the far bank,
the sky clouded over as Linder had predicted and a light drizzle
began to fall. But now that the moon and stars were obscured, the men
lost their sense of direction and zigzagged aimless through the
forest for over an hour until they found themselves facing the river
at the same place as before.

After a short debate
over which direction to take, Rhee pointed to some driftwood aimed
downstream and they set off again with Linder in the lead. About a
half hour later, just as the rain began turning to sleet, Linder
stepped around a mass of rocks and driftwood only to feel the ice
give way beneath him. Before he could recover his footing, he plunged
into deep and fast-moving water. Bracing his fall with outstretched
arms, he kept his head above the surface but felt the powerful
current pulling him under. Each time he tried to lift himself out by
kicking and reaching, chunks of ice broke off under his weight. Now
panic held him in its grip.

“Stay calm and do
exactly as I say,” Rhee instructed from the rocks only a few meters
away. “You’ll get out of this just fine, but first stop and take
a couple of deep breaths. Now, can you reach your knife?”

Linder did his best to
slow his breathing and managed to croak out a hoarse “I’ll try.”
Next, he reached for the scabbard on his belt and pulled out his
hunting knife.

“Okay, now,” Rhee
continued. “Do a flutter kick with your feet and try to scoot
forward as far as you can on the ice. Then jab the knife into the ice
to keep you from sliding back. Got it?”

Linder did what he was
told while Rhee rummaged in his pack for a coil of rope, at the end
of which he tied a fixed loop.

“Now I’m going to
toss you the rope,” Rhee went on. “Slip your free hand through it
and wrap it around your wrist a couple times. Okay? When you’re
ready, say go and start the flutter kick again. While you pull
against the ice with your knife hand, I’ll haul you up with the
rope. Ready?”

“Go,” Linder
rasped.

While pushing against
the rocks with his feet, Rhee reeled Linder in slowly like a prize
game fish too heavy for the line. At the same time, Linder flattened
himself on the ice and flutter-kicked as fast as he could, jabbing
the knife into the ice again and again after each pull from Rhee.
Once Linder lay flat on solid ice, Rhee told him to do a slow roll in
his direction so as not to break through the ice again.

Seconds later, Rhee
seized Linder under the armpits and dragged him to safety. The moment
they reached solid ground, Rhee raised the shivering victim to his
feet and, despite Linder’s weakened condition, helped him climb the
steep ravine to a clearing twenty or thirty meters above the ice.
There he set to work removing Linder’s pack, undressing him and
zipping him into the only dry sleeping bag.

Linder lay shivering
and hyperventilating for the next half hour while Rhee busied himself
gathering twigs and wood, lighting a fire, and erecting a makeshift
scaffold over it to dry Linder’s soaked clothing. Though they had
nothing left to eat but a few roots and nuts and a half-spoiled fish,
Rhee filled one metal pot with snow for water to drink and another to
create a thin fish stew. By then, the rain had passed and the moonlit
sky had begun to clear. The hot water did wonders to raise Linder’s
body temperature and revive his flagging spirits.

“I guess I owe you
one,” Linder said at last, once his teeth had stopped chattering
and he could control his breathing sufficiently to speak.

“Actually, you
don’t,” Rhee answered, looking away. “Yost told me about how
you gave me CPR when I collapsed in the disciplinary unit.”

“But he wasn’t
there,” Linder answered. “How would he have known about that?”

“Charlie knew
everything. He told me the day after we escaped but I didn’t want
to believe it back then.”

“It’s funny how the
world works,” Linder went on after drinking more fish stew. “A
guy I thought was my friend sends me to the camps. And a guy I
thought hated my guts saves my life. Go figure.”

“Forget it,” Rhee
replied with a dismissive wave of his knife as he cut away pieces of
spoiled fish. “All that is behind us. Besides, it wasn’t really
you I hated, it was who I thought you were.”

“And who was that?”

“A DSS goon,” Rhee
answered. “One of the palace guards who protected the Unionist
elite when they sent American fighting men off to Manchuria. And
then, once we fought our way back home, one of the goons who herded
us off to the camps.”

“You can call me a
goon all day long, Mark, but I didn’t know any more about the
Manchurian War than anyone else did at home,” Linder replied. “I
believed what I read in the papers until Burt told us what really
happened over there.”

“So what did you
actually do in the DSS?” Rhee challenged.

“I worked undercover
against the rebel militias during the insurgency, and then against
rebel exiles in Europe,” Linder replied.

“Tossing them in the
camps, too, I suppose,” Rhee accused.

“Yes, but if you were
on active duty during CWII, wouldn’t that have put us on the same
side?”

“For a while, maybe,
but the DSS went on filling the camps long after the insurgency was
over,” Rhee rejoined.

“Okay, then, how
about when we arrived at Ross River on the same plane and walked the
Canol Road chained to the same truck. Wouldn’t that put us on the
same side?”

Rhee suppressed a
laugh. “I guess you got me there,” he answered. “Anyway, like I
said, all that’s behind us now. You and I have come a long way,
dude.”

“So why did you save
me today?” Linder asked. “We were alone. Nobody would have
known.”

For a moment, Rhee’s
face took on a hard look and a long-buried anger flashed in his eyes.

“After losing my
entire company in Manchuria and not being able to save Sam, how do
you think I’d live with myself if I let you die, too?”

“Thanks, Mark. I
understand better now,” Linder replied, pulling the sleeping bag
more tightly around himself. “And please forget about the CPR. I
still owe you one.”

“No, really,” Rhee
shot back, poking a stick distractedly in the campfire. “I’m the
one who owes all of you guys for putting up with the shit that I
brought down on your heads: setting off the avalanche that killed
Charlie, taking Sam ice fishing, and finally, my crowning
achievement, stealing the lamb that got Browning shot. All of it was
completely my doing, not to mention killing the truck driver. Scotty
was right. I’ve been nothing but trouble from day one. It’s
totally crazy that I’m the last one left standing here with you.”

“That’s not for
either of us to say, Mark. God only knows…”

“Leave God out of
it,” Rhee snarled. “If he exists, he left the phone off the hook
a long time ago. I don’t even know why I bother to go on living
some days, except to spite the bastards who want us dead.”

“Then what do you
plan to do now? Where will you go? And don’t give me that line of
bull about a bar in Mexico.”

“I don’t have a
destination,” Rhee declared. “Not home, for sure. My parents are
far better off thinking their son is a dead hero than a live
fugitive. If I went to see them, we’d all get arrested. But even if
I could go back to my family, I don’t think I would.”

“Why not?” Linder
asked. “Most men in camp dream of nothing else.”

“Because they
wouldn’t understand me. They couldn’t,” Rhee asserted, putting
down his stick to gesture with his hands. “The things that seem
important to my parents I know to be trivial. And the things that are
important to me they would find incomprehensible. My return would
only add terrible new fears to the ones that already fill their
lives. Let’s be real: none of our families should see the things
that you and I have seen.”

“That’s not true,”
Linder challenged. “Whatever happened to you back in Manchuria,
you’ve got to let it go. And let go of Sam and Will, too. Quit
carrying the dead, Mark. Spit it out—all of it. I’ll listen if
you want. Because, if you keep holding it in, it’ll kill you. Maybe
not today or tomorrow, but sooner than you think.”

Rhee lowered his head
and stared at his swollen hands.

“Here, let me show
you something,” he said at last, and pulled out a small plastic bag
that had been suspended around his neck from a rawhide thong. He
opened the bag, unwrapped another bag inside and removed four
Canadian fifty-dollar bills, a laminated photo identification card
from the MacTung mine, and a Montana residence permit and ration
card.

The identification,
Rhee explained, had belonged to a drunken mining engineer named
Horvath who passed out in a storm one evening and froze to death
while returning from the mine to the contract employees’ barracks.

Rhee, then working on a
snow-clearing team, had discovered the corpse the next day, stripped
it clean, and reburied it. Because Horvath frequently left his job
without permission, as Rhee later learned from a prisoner who worked
in payroll, the shift foreman had assumed that the engineer had run
off to drink his wages in Ross River and, after two days, the mine
had deleted Horvath from its payroll without reporting him missing.
Since the engineer was not declared dead, Rhee pointed out, the
documents might still be good.

“Take a close look at
the photo,” Rhee suggested. “It’s not much of a likeness, but
he certainly looks a hell of a lot more like you than me.”

Linder laughed. “Some
resemblance. The guy was butt ugly.”

“Yeah, but ugly in a
nice sort of way. And he’s about your age. Beyond that, he’s
definitely not Asian,” Rhee replied with a smile. “Go on, you
take it. Maybe it will come in handy down there in Utah.”

Rhee handed it over,
and Linder thanked him. The conversation ended with each man
retreating into his own thoughts until they fell asleep huddled close
to the warming fire.

* * *

The next morning,
they woke before dawn, added fuel to the banked embers, and fetched
some drinking water from the river. While they waited for the fire to
heat the water, they discussed how far it would be to the next rail
yard, where they might be able to safely board a southbound freight
train.

“I don’t see any
rail yards on the map,” Linder noted, “but there’s a town a few
clicks south of here. If it doesn’t have a yard or a siding, maybe
the next one will. Or maybe a train might slow down enough at a
crossing for us to catch it.”

“Then let’s do it,”
Rhee agreed. “It’s a long way to Edmonton. We’re bound to find
something before too long.”

After striking camp,
the men headed back toward the tracks and then skirted them as they
proceeded south. Since the terrain was unsuited for farming and no
homesteads were in sight, they decided to keep moving all day. Late
in the afternoon, with the sun sitting low on the horizon, they heard
the dull rush of water ahead, which seemed confusing because rivers
this far north would normally still be frozen. Before long, they
spotted a drop-off and a multi-span wooden railroad trestle
stretching across it. The men looked down and saw that the river
surged with slabs, chunks, and lumps of ice that until recently had
likely formed a smooth sheet over the river. The sound was louder
than any rapids and reminded Linder of a boyhood visit to Niagara
Falls.

“All right, what
now?” Rhee asked with a discouraged look. “There’s no way we’re
getting across that mess.”

“We could wait till
the ice is gone and try to swim it,” Linder suggested weakly.

“Too wide. We’d
never make it,” Rhee replied.

“We could search the
riverbank for a boat to steal.”

“Not likely.”

“Or head over to the
highway and make a mad dash across that bridge, along with the cars
and trucks,” Linder offered. “Major risk of being spotted,
though.”

“In that case, why
not try the trestle?” Rhee proposed. “Not much risk of being seen
out here.”

“Is it even
possible?” Linder asked, looking up at the tinker toy structure. “I
don’t see any kind of walkway alongside the tracks. It’s just a
flat platform all the way across.”

“Nothing is
impossible,” Rhee corrected him. “If there’s no walkway, we can
walk on the ties between the rails. We did it all the time when I was
in college. The big question is whether we can get across before the
next train comes. The trestle has two tracks, but I wouldn’t want
to be on one of them when a train barrels past on the other.”

“God, I don’t know
if I could do it,” Linder confessed, suddenly feeling weak at the
knees. “The last trestle was just about all I could handle. One
like this would have me crawling on hands and knees after the first
couple steps. I’d never make it across.”

“So what’s worse?
Facing up to an irrational fear of falling or getting hit by a
speeding freight train?” Rhee challenged.