Mike Klattenbach knew he wouldn’t last long. His mind had stopped working, conserving the last of the available oxygen, trying to survive. His body had long given up on him and was ready to curl up and die.
Klattenbach knew he was going to die, and very painfully. Several ribs of his were broken and one eye was permanently damaged. Bones were sticking out of his left hand and his whole body was one giant mass of pain.
He stood swaying, blinking sweat away from his eyes as a figure danced in front of him. The dull roar assaulting his ears wasn’t just the blood pounding in his ears. It was the voice of a blood thirsty crowd who had paid top dollar to witness a killing. They wanted bloodshed. They got it.
They wanted a death. Mike Klattenbach knew they would have it.
The dancing figure came closer, a man of enormous proportions, almost six feet five inches tall, all of it muscle and hard bone, his head clean shaven, his face an impassive mask.
The man was bare-chested, as was Mike Klattenbach. He was dressed in jeans and trainers, and on his hands were a pair of boxing gloves. Klattenbach had the same attire, though his gloves hadn’t offered much defense to him.
The approaching man jabbed and caught Klattenbach flush on his chin. Klattenbach staggered back but managed to stay on his feet. Hands shoved him back against his opponent who punched again, low, hard, wicked, and another rib broke.
The attacker rained more punches on his face and abdomen, each of them bringing out groans from Klattenbach. The losing fighter didn’t put up any resistance, his body too far gone to defy the punches. His hands lay limp by his side, his single eye blinking rapidly.
The taller man spun in the air and brought Klattenbach to his knees with a spinning kick. His knee crashed into the fallen man’s face. Klattenbach sprawled to his back and his last sight was that of his attacker.
Nothing moved in the sand and brush of Oregon’s High Desert in the morning hours, except for the sun continuing its relentless journey and for a few fleecy clouds moving in the sky.
The desert covered five counties in the state and was one of the most sparsely populated regions in the country. There were a few large ranchers, but the chances of coming across a rattler or a bighorn were higher than encountering human life. The first sign of life came when the sun was directing its height right down and shadows were the smallest. A small blob appeared over the horizon and over time, resolved into a human figure.
The person moved steadily, stopping every now and then to wipe sweat and take a swing of water. The man was well equipped with a backpack and had several liters of water in cans strapped across his body. The backpack contained several pieces of clothing to tackle the heat and the cold. The temperature in the summer could go as high as the mid-eighties and could fall to the low forties.
The man was brown-haired, lean and tall and moved with an easy gait that suggested a lot of experience walking outdoors.
The man, Zeb Carter, did have that kind of experience. He had walked in some of the most inhospitable deserts in the world and across the most rugged terrain. He wasn’t going to any particular place this time, nor was he on any mission. The High Desert wasn’t a region he had previously visited, and he was rectifying that during this trip. He was alone, his vehicle parked in a motel in Lakeview, which was on the edge of the desert.
He had been in the desert for three days, camping in the open, and it was on the third day, he spotted the bald eagle. It was circling in the sky, swooping lower, and disappeared out of sight, a mile away.
Zeb had nothing better to do and set out in the direction of the eagle. It rose several minutes later and through his binoculars, he spotted a piece of flesh in its beak.
Probably a wild animal, dead. He checked his location and his phone. His GPS was working, his phone had no signal. The eagle was flying away in the sky and became a distant speck.
Zeb navigated past a rocky outcrop and came to the bird’s position and stood still at the sight that beheld him.
A body, a human, male from what remained of it, lying face up.
He looked around swiftly, assessing any threat, the action second nature to him. Nope, no threat. He was the only living person for miles around.
He approached the body cautiously, watching where he placed his feet. There were no tracks for him to carelessly erase.
He got closer to the body and crouched next to it. The face had been savaged by wildlife, as was the upper torso. Heat and the dry weather had decomposed the skin and white bone showed in several places.
Male, white, bare-chested, was what Zeb could make out from the remains. The bare-chested part intrigued him. No sane person was foolhardy enough to wander in the desert without clothing.
The lack of tracks intrigued him even more. There wasn’t much wind and loose soil and sand wouldn’t have covered tracks. He moved in widening concentric circles, but he still didn’t come across any vehicle marks.
He came back to the body and photographed it from various angles. He spoke in his phone and narrated his discovery of it. He went closer to it to get a better angle when a remaining patch of skin on a forearm caught his attention.
There was a tattoo on that patch of skin, a design he knew very well. Several of his friends wore that ink. He pulled out his sat phone and powered it up, knowing that his vacation had just ended.
The tattoo was that of a dagger crossed by three lightning bolts, on a darker, arrowhead background. Zeb himself, once, had worn a patch with an identical emblem.
It was that of the Special Forces.