15

 

Retribution. It was the word of the hour.

Lee anticipated it like a forehand kill shot on a racquetball court. He hadn’t lied when he said his plan wasn’t about sacrificing himself so she could get away. However, if the goons came over the ridge line in the next couple of minutes he would draw attention to himself and away from Jennifer, gladly taking any associated risks.

He waited for two minutes. No goons. He would now draw their attention to something else, something of his choosing.

Over the backside of the ridgeline from the goons Lee ran to reach another limestone outcropping three hundred yards to the southeast. There, a large cave ran the full length of the big rock, a distance of nearly one hundred yards. Halfway in a dogleg hid the far end of the cave from anyone who entered.

Upon entering this cave it took several seconds for the human eye to adjust. Initially, only the largest features of the cave were visible. That’s what he needed to pull off this part of his plan—the initial inability to see the details. In this cave, at this particular time, the devil really was in the details. The thought brought a smile to his face as he ran.

Nineteen years ago Lee and his buddy became intimately, and most unpleasantly, acquainted with a phenomenon occurring in the cave in mid-March after a cold winter.

Last winter was cold and snowy, typical of La Nina winters in the Pacific Northwest. What he needed to know today was whether the timing was right for the effects he counted on. Bad timing would convert the trap to nothing more than a short detour. If that happened he could end up in a desperate run for his life.

He loped through the fir trees and scrubby oaks growing on the south side of the ridge. After a couple of minutes he approached the east end of the long cave. When he reached the top of a small rise he walked cautiously towards the cave’s mouth. It wouldn’t do to walk in on a mama black bear with cubs. Being killed by a bear instead of an assault rifle would be worse than ironic.

He slipped to the right side of the cave’s east entrance and rolled up his left shirt sleeve. He wouldn’t expose his injured right arm to the abuse he anticipated. He hugged the rock forming the face of the cave, gritted his teeth and plunged his bare arm into the darkness. After waiting a full second he pulled his arm out and backpedaled rapidly away from the opening.

He brushed his hand and arm furiously to remove every trace of the blackness covering them. A wide grin spread across his face. The timing was perfect.

The winter weather had been miserable, but as Lee set his snare for the goons, he thanked God for every cold, snowy day. Treading lightly he backtracked towards the spire, staying two hundred yards off to the side of the trail. He didn’t want to leave any tracks pointing back to the limestone spire so he kept to the rocks as much as possible.

Near the spire he stopped and listened for the goons. No sounds. Nothing.

Running so as to leave behind fresh tracks and broken earth, he returned to the cave. He looked back towards the spire. His tracks left a clear trail. Satisfied with his work he returned to the pinnacle of the spire once again using the rocks to the side of the trail to hide his tracks.

Two dicey parts to his scheme remained. The first required getting the goons attention without giving them a clear shot at him. He hadn’t disclosed this part to Jennifer. She would have said—he didn’t even want to think about the threats she would have made.

The second part, the diciest one, required luring the goons to the trail of tracks so they would follow it one-quarter mile to the other cave. While the goons followed his trail he must remain far ahead of them and out of sight or—he didn’t want to think about that consequence, either.

He moved to a boulder on the west edge of the spire and studied the slope below him for a few moments. Below his position slide areas lay scattered around the limestone formation. An abundance of limestone chunks lay on the steep slope and each chunk possessed enough potential energy to participate in his scheme. The rocks needed a little shove, a kick, or perhaps another rock tossed onto them to release their kinetic state.

When two of the goons emerged from the large cave at the base of the rock nearly three-hundred feet below him he stepped from behind the boulder.

They were engaged in an animated hand-waving conversation and they didn’t look up towards him. He selected a softball-sized rock and moved out onto the shoulder of the spire. The spot featured a fairly easy, though very long, climb up from the base. It was the shortest path to his location. The goons would take it.

Lee stepped from behind the shoulder of the rock and tossed his chunk of limestone onto a small slide area below him. He turned around to make it appear he was climbing up the rock to escape.

Small at first, the slide soon became an impressive avalanche. Maybe they would think he was trying to take them out with a rock slide. That a weaponless man would even attempt to take them out might enrage them. Anger would fuel their desire to follow him while blunting their suspicion.

Lee turned his head and glanced down towards the goons. The avalanche missed them by a few yards, but their gaze followed the slide up to its origin. Two sets of eyes were looking directly at him.

He took several steps in the direction he wanted them to follow and then cut behind a boulder. When he topped the ridge his last view of the goons was indelibly stamped on his memory. They had raised their weapons to shoot.

By keeping the ridge between them for the next minute he would remain out of their sight while he ran along the trail of tracks leading to the destination cave—the cave of destiny.

Good name. The cave of destiny.

As he sprinted down the backside of the mountain, Lee put the sequence of events working out behind him in fast forward, playing them like a video in his mind.

The goons would take a minute or more to climb up the steep slope. They would stop for a few seconds to catch their breath and then look in the direction he had gone.

There his tracks began. By then he would have tripled his lead, keeping him far out of sight, out of earshot, and out of shooting range.

Unless he fell and injured himself he was home free. He would soon see Jennifer.

But there’s something else I need to see first.

Moving through the trees towards the cave of destiny he had, at most, sixty seconds to hide himself. After running nearly one hundred yards he leaped off the trail and onto a stretch of bare limestone rock protruding up from the mountain’s back side. This vein of limestone ran for a considerable distance perpendicular to his tracks and towards a saddle located between the limestone spire and a smaller peak to the southwest. He would hide at the saddle.

In less than thirty seconds, trees hid him and he was nearly half way to his camouflaged hiding place in the saddle. The saddle lay nearly one-quarter mile from the cave of destiny, two hundred feet higher and nearly one-quarter mile closer to Jennifer and safety. It provided a view of the area near the opening of the cave.

While he scampered towards his hiding place he recalculated the amount of time he gave Jennifer to summon the police. If this plan failed he might be leading the goons down to houses where innocent people resided.

She had at least thirty minutes already, but it should take only five or ten minutes to summon the police. The events of last night undoubtedly resulted in every patrolman in the state looking for Jennifer, him, and a bunch of gunmen.

Lee put that worry out of his mind, but another worry quickly replaced it.

Jennifer was going to be concerned.

No. That’s a euphemism.

She would be furious when he arrived. She didn’t expect him to take this long—not nearly this long and he had made a promise to her.

He held onto one hope. When he told her what he did to the goons maybe she would forgive him. He’d seen enough to know forgiveness was not a certainty. Would their kiss in the cave help his cause?

The more he thought about it, his plan smacked of masculine pride. That fact might make her even angrier. If he pulled this off he would have a story a guy could tell his kids and his grandkids. But if Jennifer didn’t forgive him he might be telling his story to fellow convicts in Leavenworth.

Lee skirted the clearing below the saddle and settled into his observation point. As soon as they topped the ridge the goons found his tracks and headed down the trail. They moved quickly, but they were being cautious.

At this rate they would reach the cave in about three minutes. He started timing them with the second hand on his watch. At two minutes and forty-five seconds three goons emerged from the trees and stood in front of the rise leading up to the cave’s mouth. All three carried assault rifles.

The three spread out in a single row. Shoulder-to-shoulder they walked slowly up the slope. When they topped the rise and saw the mouth of the cave they stopped abruptly.

He chuckled.

They probably weren’t excited about any more spelunking adventures. But the trail was hot and he watched as they entered the wide mouth of the cave three abreast.

He knew what would happen next. Lee and his buddy entered similarly nineteen years ago. They never went near that cave again in the spring.

A loud shriek came from the cave far below.

He couldn’t stifle his laughter. He didn’t need to.

The screams of the three goons became too loud for them to hear anything but each other.

While he convulsed with belly-shaking laughter, the goons repeatedly yelled two words, “awrah” and “haraam.” He seemed to recall from his study of Islam, that the words meant something like nakedness and forbidden.

Lee remembered how it was for him when the screaming started. His exposed skin began itching and burning within a second. His entire form became black, coated with evil, crawling, hopping fleas—fleas left by hibernating bears two or three weeks earlier.

After the bears left the fleas multiplied without a host until there were millions of ravenous insects desperate for blood. One bite could make a person wince and scratch. Multiply it by ten thousand and the pain became unbearable. Clothing did nothing to stop the fleas’ inexorable conquest of every square inch of skin on the human body.

He had felt contaminated, beyond any hope of being clean again, and he worried about dread diseases the little pests sometimes carried.

The three goons ran from the cave littering the ground behind them with their clothing. They weren’t carrying their guns. This was better than he hoped for. They had dropped their weapons in the cave after they were shrink-wrapped in fleas.

A shrill scream pierced his ears.

Was one of the goons a gooness?

He moved to his right around a small pond fed by an underground spring. After jumping down an embankment and onto the road he began his run. He ran to set a world record in the downhill eight hundred meters—running towards civilized people, the police, safety, and Jennifer.

As he ran a question crossed his mind. Would the goons go back into the cave to get their guns? No way this side of…well…this side of the place the goons felt they were in.