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So, the first task was to backtrack Ken’s route from yesterday and take some photos of a dead guy. Rand led the way. Angie followed him, while Mac brought up the rear. He was tired. He could have used a couple more hours of sleep. And yesterday had been a hard one. His legs hurt. His back hurt. His pack seemed heavier. Well actually it was heavier, he reminded himself. He’d stocked it with weaponry. He added to Rand’s personal collection.
He looked at Angie consideringly, and then shook his head. “Stealth is your best friend,” he said. “You’ve got the Ruger if you need it. But you’re quiet, you know how to move through the woods. You’ve got a compass. Your job is to get your photos to Janet. And more weaponry will just weigh you down.”
“And besides, I can’t shoot worth shit,” she said equitably.
“And there’s that,” Mac agreed with a laugh. He had pulled out his phone and gave her a couple of extra numbers: Janet’s complete list, Stan Warren’s cell phone, Rodriguez’s cell, even Dunbar’s. And then just to be safe — because Mac knew without a shadow of a doubt he’d come — he gave her Shorty’s number.
“If you get out? Don’t go to Ken if you can help it. Don’t go to anyone local. As soon as your phone has service, you start down that list, until you get someone who can come to you and then you hide out until they get there.”
“What about the rangers?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, not even them,” Mac said adamantly. “Something’s not adding up right.” He considered it. “If you have to? Go to Ken. Or call Mrs. Jorgensen. She might help. But Angie? You can’t trust anyone local. There are pressures that they may be under that we don’t know about — an uncle who is a reserve, for instance.”
“OK,” she said. “But don’t forget. You promised. If I have to head down alone? You two have to be right behind me.”
“Count on it,” Mac assured her.
Mac was beginning to like the mountains. The plants were amazing, lush with huge leaves, or delicate like the trilliums Angie stopped to photograph: three petals to the flowers, three leaves to the stalk. Rand knew where he was going, and he knew how to pace himself and them. And Mac could feel some of the tension seeping out of his muscles. These were people worth being with, he thought. Partners. Peers.
Squad.
Didn’t mean he didn’t need to be wary. He did. That’s why he was at the back. Didn’t mean he might not have to fight to protect them, he expected he would. But he also realized he trusted these two to be fighting there with him. To guard his back — not people he had guarding his back in Afghanistan, even while fighting alongside them. And he’d had some teams like that. Squirrelly fuckers who couldn’t be counted on. Couldn’t be trusted.
Rand held up his hand and they stopped. He motioned them up beside him, and he crouched down. Mac crouched beside him. Angie stood at his shoulder, her camera out.
“They’re hauling the body out,” Rand said softly. Mac looked at the two deputies who were loading up the body. He heard the soft click of Angie’s camera, and hoped it wouldn’t carry. Not that these deputy reserves were paying any attention to their surroundings.
He frowned. What were they up to?
“Shit,” he said, remembering in time to keep his voice soft. “They’re going to blame us for the deaths.”
Rand frowned. “How will that work? Their word against ours?”
“Dead men tell no tales,” Mac reminded him. He shrugged. “And maybe they figure their word against a couple of reporters and a part-time crew member, would be believed.”
Rand’s smile grew slowly, and he choked back laughter. “They don’t know who I am.” He said. “You think Norton never ran background checks on Ken’s people?”
“Nope.”
“Still, dead men tell no tales seems more likely.”
“Depends on how pragmatic Ken is,” Mac said. “If we’re dead, and we take the fall, would he try to clear our names? Or would he keep his head down and stay quiet?”
“Pragmatic,” Rand said slowly. “If we get out? He’d back us. If we don’t? He’ll do whatever keeps him alive and in business.”
“And I don’t fault him for that,” Mac said. “I’m just saying, Norton may be counting on it.”
“Mac,” Rand hesitated. “I count Ken a friend. If it wasn’t for Angie here, I’d be in the caravan out of here to guard his back. I want to see him make it out of here alive, you know?”
Mac nodded. “And I suspect Ken knows exactly why you stayed behind. So, we’ve got to clean up this mess, and catch up with them before Norton loses the rest of his God-damn mind and takes out everyone — even his own.”
He looked at Angie. “You take the photos?”
She nodded.
“Then let’s go. You’ve got the compass,” he said. “Can you get us to their camp from here without using any known trails?”
She hesitated, pulled out the map from yesterday, and looked at it. She frowned. “Need to go around that ravine Mark got himself trapped in,” she muttered. She traced a route on the map with her finger. Rand looked at where she pointed.
“Stream in there,” he said briefly. “Be pretty wild these days. Too wild to get across, I’m afraid.”
She found the thin blue line that indicated the stream and traced it. Mac liked watching her. It was as if she used touch to help her convert the map into a 3-D version. “We’re going to have to go almost all the way back to camp,” she said with a shake of her head. “Or follow them back.”
Mac considered that. Looked at Rand. “There’s just the two of them,” he said. “We could take them.”
“And do what with them?” Rand asked. “I’m not going to be party to killing them.”
Mac rolled his eyes. “I was thinking zip-ties,” he said.
“Sorry. It would be nicer to ride in than to walk,” Rand conceded. “Fine. Let’s do it.”
“What are you going to do?” Angie asked anxiously.
“You stay here,” Mac said. “Photograph and watch. If you see anyone else? Sing out. You’re our spotter.”
Rand had already headed out to get around the two men who were loading the dead man into the SUV. Really, they’d caught them at just the right time, Mac thought. He watched for Rand, and when Rand gave him the high sign, he stepped into the road and pulled his pistol out of his sweatshirt pocket. He aimed, nodded at Rand, and waited.
“Stop what you’re doing, put your hands up,” Rand said authoritatively.
“Who are you to give us orders?” One of the men said, looking over his shoulder. He saw Rand, and frowned. “You’re one of Ken’s men,” he said. “I’m a deputy sheriff. I’ll give the orders.”
“Deputy reserve,” Mac said. His voice coming from the other side of them made the two men freeze. “You don’t have any police powers. So just do what he says.”
“Shit,” the second deputy reserve muttered to his buddy. “That’s the one Norton is looking for.”
“And you’re the ones who found him,” Mac said dryly. “Congratulations. “Now do what Agent Rand said. Hands in the air.”
“Agent?” Deputy Reserve 1 spluttered. “Agent of what? He’s a part-time trek guide!”
Rand kept his pistol trained on them with one hand, and pulled an FBI shield out of the cargo pocket on his pant leg. “And this tells you what I do the other part of the time,” he said with amusement in his voice.
Mac grinned. It was kind of funny, he admitted. The two men looked at each other, and put their hands up. Mac cuffed them using the zip-ties. Should have waited until they got the man loaded, he thought sourly. He put the two cuffed reserves in the back seat of the SUV, and then he and Rand got the dead man wrapped in plastic and stored in the cargo hold.
Angie got to ride in the center of the front seat while Rand drove. Mac kept his gun trained on the two men in the back.
“So exactly what were you told you were doing this weekend?” Mac asked. Rand glanced at him, and kept driving.
The men didn’t say anything. “No really,” Mac persisted. “Did you know that Norton was going to take you up here to play war games? Do you follow Sensei on Facebook? What were you told?”
“As if you would know anything about Sensei,” Reserve 2 muttered. He was a sullen man by nature Mac thought and being captured by the men they were supposed to be hunting hadn’t improved his mood. Probably early 30s, a small man, with a chip on his shoulder.
“Inner circle,” Mac said with a shrug. “I get his inner circle newsletter daily. And I’m pretty sure you all aren’t following instructions. Because he hasn’t mentioned a need for killing his own men.”
The two men looked at each other worriedly. Reserve 1 was a bit a younger, maybe mid-20s, spent a little more time in the gym. He had military short brown hair, although Mac doubted he’d ever served.
“So, what did Norton tell you?”
“He said one of the men on this trip was a wanted man, and he — you — had infiltrated the trip,” Reserve 2 said.
“Wanted for what?” Mac asked.
“Killing a man,” Reserve 2 answered. “That dead hiker in the morgue. And we needed to stop you before you killed again.”
“Obviously, we were too late,” Reserve 1 said with a gesture toward the body in the cargo hold.
Mac turned that story over in his head. It didn’t hold up, of course, but Norton needed plausible, not truth. “And is this how you normally bring in a suspect in a murder case?” he asked. “How many reserves are out here? And why were you shooting at members of the trek yesterday?”
“Us?” Reserve 1 said startled. “We weren’t shooting at anyone!”
“Who was? Ken carted four injured out early this morning,” Mac said. “And there’s another dead body besides this one. Cleve? You all know him?”
“Went to school with him,” Reserve 1 said. Mac judged it was news to him.
“A man sat in a tree and held a group of the trek clients pinned down yesterday after killing Cleve. I was the one that chased him off. And Mark can testify to that. So, unless you can figure out a way that I was firing into the ravine and out of the ravine at the same time? Your crew killed him.”
Mac watched the two, studying them. He didn’t think they knew what Norton and Sensei were up to. They glanced at each other. Reserve 2 chewed his lip.
“You really an FBI agent, Rand?” Reserve 2 asked.
“Yes,” Rand replied. “And I really am up here to find out who is killing hikers and homeless men — it’s been going on for a couple of years, matter of fact. Norton tell you all that?”
“No,” Reserve 2 said slowly. “Just heard about this last one.”
“So, here’s the truth of if it, guys,” Rand said. “You’re in trouble. Your boss has gone rogue, and he thinks he’s playing wargames with Ken and his tour group. Then this morning, Sheriff Norton offered Ken a chance to leave with his tour group and the wounded if he’d leave these two reporters behind for Norton to hunt down and kill. And if you don’t want to be serving a prison sentence along with him, you need to tell me what you know. Starting with the call out for the weekend.”
Reserve 1 closed his eyes briefly, and sighed. “Shit,” he said. “He started believing all the crap, didn’t he?”
“What crap?” Mac asked.
Reserve 1, whose name turned out to Tim, started talking. And Kevin, Reserve 2, interjected occasionally to create a picture that Mac found disturbing, in part, because he had hoped that with Ken and his crew gone, things would become simpler. If they were still up here they were the enemy. But now? Now, they didn’t know how many of the reserves were a part of Norton’s war games, and how many thought they were on a man hunt for a suspect who had killed a hiker and might kill again.
Mac looked at the dead body they were carrying, and amended that thought: had killed again already.
The callout came Friday afternoon, but they’d been given a heads up earlier in the week that there might be a training exercise in the mountains this weekend. Kevin had thought it was a bit early in the spring to be hiking up here, and he glanced anxiously at the sky visible through the front windshield, but Norton had laughed at him and said they needed some wilderness skills for blustery days not just the sunny and warm ones. Hard to argue with that, Kevin had thought, so he’d volunteered to go. They’d had a meet up at the Sheriff’s Department Friday evening, organized car pools and headed out.
“Any regular deputies along?” Mac asked.
Kevin frowned and thought about it. “Don’t think so,” he said finally. “Which is odd, there usually are.”
“So, you headed out,” Mac prompted.
Kevin nodded and resumed his narrative. They’d driven directly to the site where they set up camp — it was obviously a site that had seen some use. Kevin assumed that Wilderness Adventures or one of the other tour guides had built it. They set up camp, talked for a while, and went to sleep. Next morning, they had breakfast, got in a run, came back for a briefing.
Norton told them that they had a killer attached to a Wilderness Adventure group. He’d come up before, killed a hiker, and then rejoined the group to get out of the mountains.
“This time, Norton said we were going to catch him in the act,” Tim interjected. “He divided us up into five groups. One group was to guard the exit roads. The other four groups were given quadrants to police and watch for suspicious activity.”
“You two were on the road crew?” Mac asked.
“Yeah?” Kevin said, questioning how he knew.
“Go on,” Mac said.
So, after lunch they went out and did a bunch of nothing, until they got the come in command through their hand-helds just before dark.
“You hear all the shooting?” Mac asked.
They nodded, but it was well known that Ken was bringing up gun clubs from Seattle to experience shooting outside of a gun range. No one thought anything of it.
“And someone had come in and stole one of our vehicles!” Tim was indignant. Angie gave Mac a sideways look and grinned at him. He laughed.
“Keep going,” Mac said.
“And blew up the barbeque,” Kevin said sourly. “Cook went to light it and it blew up. He got hit by some shrapnel as did a couple of others on the kitchen crew. Why would anyone do that?”
“Why were you all carrying eight bricks of C-4?” Rand asked.
“What? We were carrying C-4? Why would we do that?” Tim asked startled.
Mac rolled his eyes. They would have to capture two of the clueless ones. “How many reserves are out here?” he asked.
Tim had to mentally count them. “Ten plus Sheriff Norton,” he said.
“So, five two-man teams?” Mac mused out loud.
Kevin nodded.
“Dinner was sandwiches?” Mac asked to prompt them along.
And then they went to bed. Tim and Kevin were sharing a tent. They heard talking later, but they weren’t part of it. Then this morning, they were sent out to get this body. “We were told we failed to protect him, and the killer had struck again. But we’d get the killer, dead or alive.” Tim said.
“And who went after Cleve?” Mac asked.
Tim frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Don’t know that we were even told there was another dead body out here.”
Odd, Mac thought. But maybe two dead bodies would strain credibility.
“And the other teams? What were their tasks?”
They didn’t know. They’d been sent out right away after breakfast to reclaim the body. They weren’t a part of the discussion.
“When are you planning to head out today?” Mac asked finally.
“When everyone got back and had some lunch,” Tim said. He glanced at his watch. “Two hours?”
Rand glanced at Mac. “So, you said earlier, he’s started believing all that crap,” he said to the reserve deputies. “What did you mean?”
“There’s a guy Malloy? He often comes up here with Wilderness Tours when they’ve got the gun club trips,” Tim said. “And he’s always talking about how they’ve got to toughen people up. Uses terms like ‘blooded’, things like that. Sheriff Norton listens to him. Malloy used to be a Seattle cop, and I think Norton wants to be like him. But really? Malloy is kind of racist and mean. I’ve been on a trip out here with him, and he’s scary.”
“So, the trip you were out here on was with Malloy? Did you stay behind for some late shooting with him and Norton?” Mac asked.
Tim shook his head. “Had to get back,” he said. “I caught a ride back with Ken and the some of the clients.”
“What about you, Kevin? You ever stay up for a late Sunday shoot?” Mac asked.
Kevin shook his head. “I don’t usually come up for the wilderness survival trips,” he said. “I grew up out here. I know how to survive better than they do. Ken knows what he’s doing. Been doing it for a long time. But Norton? Norton’s OK as a sheriff, but he’s a city boy. He’d be better off staying out of the mountains. So anyway, I only come out when there’s a mission — like this one. I thought we were after the guy who killed a man.”
He looked out the window again. “And we’re going to have snow within the hour.”
Rand eased up the speed a bit. “Did you see how the teams were divided up this morning?” Rand asked. “Where did Norton go?”
“Heard him say he was going to take a car down to Ken,” Tim volunteered. He frowned. “Why did Ken need a car?”
“Because some of your reserves came through our camp yesterday and slashed all the tires,” Rand said.
“You sure it was reserves?” Tim asked, obviously startled.
Rand nodded. “I saw them. Recognized a couple. Couldn’t give you names, but yeah, they are Norton’s men.”
“We going to get Cleve?” Angie asked.
“Might as well,” Rand replied. “Save us a trip back up here later.”
Mac just watched out the windows. What were the other men doing out there, he wondered. And what about Ken and the wounded?