Mountain Man Dan, as the Stanley locals called him, pressed the binoculars to his face. He lived a solitary life up in the craggy Sawtooth Mountains. The area of the forest he called home was near an alpine lake at five thousand feet; he had been living here in the wild for the last sixteen years. Life had started closing in on him, or so he felt. It was too much for the old Vietnam vet to handle, when a sitting United States President got a hummer in the Oval Office and not a thing untoward happened to him. The bastard was even determined to grab for the guns of law abiding citizens while he tarnished the office and thumbed his nose at the Constitution. So Dan took his books and his guns and found his little slice of heaven.
He was in his element in the wilderness. Dan was a very patient and observant man. He always noticed anything out of the ordinary, and he had noticed that for the last three days there had been no air traffic. His first inclination was that the United States had suffered another 9/11 type terrorist attack.
The hike down to the small town usually took him four hours; a younger man could tackle it in two. The finger of rock he was perched on was only five feet across but it allowed him to stop and observe the last mile of the mountain trail he would have to descend.
The noises coming from below caught his attention before he even arrived at his usual resting spot. Gunfire echoed up from the Aryan Brotherhood camp. Dan witnessed the murder of four human beings in cold blood. The three men and a woman were dirty and shabbily dressed. One of the armed men released them from a building that looked like a tool shed or chicken coop. The four captives lurched into the middle of the compound. The shaved head, combat boot wearing skins were hooting and hollering while they stood in a semi-circle around the four people. Dan had a strong suspicion they were drugged because they staggered towards the assembled men in a lethargic, clumsy manner. He wasn’t prepared for what happened next. The towering redhead stood apart from the rest. He pulled out a big chrome pistol and coldly shot the woman in the head. She fell to the dirt and ceased moving. The captive men didn’t try to run, they just kept walking towards the pointed guns. As quick as it started it was over, AK-47s chattered and the three men dropped and sprawled on the ground, their blood turning the gravel black.
Dan wanted to go to town and tell Sherriff Blanda what he had just witnessed, but he couldn’t risk being seen while trying to circumnavigate the compound. The redheaded biker was an affiliate of the Aryans and Dan had crossed paths with him on a number of occasions. Today he wanted no part of the murderer.
He was in no position to be a hero, so the mountain man silently reversed course and headed back to his remote cabin. Alone with his thoughts he started up the trail. Those media folks will surely milk this latest terrorist attack for all it’s worth. No doubt there will be old newspapers or magazines to read in town after this blows over. Dan wasn’t worried about a radiological dirty bomb affecting him here. Why the hell would the idiots attack Idaho anyway? If this were another attack by Middle Eastern extremists then President Odero would have to listen to his fellow Americans and go kick some more Muslim ass.
He really disliked this part of the climb. For every two steps forward, the surface underfoot shifted and put him one step backward. Head down, watching the trail while putting one foot in front of the other, Mountain Man Dan continued his long trudge back up his talus- and scree-covered mountain.