The Hunt, page 12
“What if I want to make him go fast?”
“Tell him the glue people are on the way,” laughed Matt.
“No, seriously.”
“Keep the reins loose,” said Tony, “pressure his sides with your legs, mainly your heels, and say ‘giddy-up.’”
“That’s it?”
“Pretty much, though I don’t know when you’d want to make him go fast, not on this trip.”
Tony saddled up and with a quick check behind him, swiveled around, gave his horse a nudge with his heels and headed out and up, Luke behind him and Matt in the rear. The trail was well tended here, almost as smooth as a bridle path. This gave him a chance to look around and absorb the vibes in this aspen-rich woodland. Two weeks ago, it would have been pure gold. Now, some leaves still clung desperately to the trees, but they spoke only of a lost glory. Each passing cloud foretold winter.
Pel
After crossing the valley at first light, Pel stood on what he thought to be the final ridge and saw nothing; nothing, that is, but trees below, lots of them, and more ridges beyond. He pulled the map from his backpack and stared at the red X. By his imperfect reckoning, the X should have been right below him at the base of this hill or whatever you called it. The morning sun was at his back. He was facing west. He could figure that much out. If that X marked anything real, he was not seeing it.
“Moom,” he yelled down at his brother, who was still ascending the slope.
“Yeah?”
“Take a look at this,” he said, waving the map. “Tell me what I’m missing.”
Pel could not shake the sensation he had suppressed from day one that he was being played, that the whole thing was an elaborate con. He needed Moom to reassure him.
“Am I crazy or what?” he said, handing the map to his brother when he reached the ridgeline.
“Give me a second,” said Moom, now bent over and struggling to pull some oxygen from the thin air.
Pel had no patience. “The X should be right below us, shouldn’t it?” He was not sure why he was asking Moom. His brother knew no more than he did, but sometimes he asked good questions.
“Yeah,” said Moom slowly. “Should be right below us. What’s the problem?”
“The problem,” said Pel, making no attempt to hide his frustration, “is that I don’t see anything.”
“What did you expect to see?”
That’s what he liked about Moom. He asked good questions. What did he expect to see? Directional signs? Balloons? An inflatable Uncle Sam waving in the wind?
“If they’re here,” Moom added, “I suspect they’ll find us.”
“I suspect you’re right,” affirmed Pel.
Moom
As he followed his brother down the slope, over a stretch of bare ground, and into the trees, it dawned on Moom just how piss-poor a revolutionary he made. Pel was desperately hoping R would be there. Moom was kind of hoping he would not be. Although he had resigned himself to his fate, he wished that fate would take a twist his way.
“Don’t lose me,” he yelled out to Pel, already twenty or so yards in front of him. There was nothing like a trail to follow. Pel was just dodging randomly between trees.
“Hustle then,” shouted Pel.
The way Moom figured, if R were not here, and things did not pan out, Pel could content himself with the thought that he at least tried something totally hard-core. If so, they could walk out of the woods as anonymous and as unhurried as they walked in. Hell, if he could talk Pel out of demanding his money back from that old lawyer—or trying to, what with the giant Samoan and all—they could put this whole misadventure behind them and get on with their lives.
“Stop!”
The shove of a hard object into the base of Moom’s skull killed those thoughts in a heartbeat. From that one whispered word, Moom sensed the guy knew few other words, at least not in English. He raised his hands over his head. There was no backing out of this now.
Pel
Pel did not know quite how, but he sensed Moom was no longer following him, and the second he did, he turned.
“Okay!” he said on seeing Moom, hands in the air, confusion all over his face. Pel raised his own hands and started walking towards his brother and the man behind him. Although he tried not to show it, he hadn’t felt relief like this since they crossed the Verrazzano. This wasn’t a scam after all. The game was on. He was about ready to star in the single greatest anti-fascist drama since Castro kicked reactionary butt at the Bay of Pigs.
“Relax,” he said to Moom, who clearly needed encouragement. “We’re good.”
The man holding Moom motioned for Pel to turn around and walk forward. Pel got the message and heeded it. He could hear Moom and the man follow behind. R was waiting for them in a small clearing at the foot of the slope. He was smiling. To Pel, the smile seemed genuine. As Pel approached, R opened his arms in welcome.
“You guys are not bullshitters, are you?” said R.
“Nope,” said Pel. “We did it. Wasn’t easy.”
“So I heard,” laughed R.
“So you heard?”
R just smiled. “Follow me,” he said.
Pel did as requested, just a little bit uneasy about R’s comment. ‘So I heard?’ What the hell did that mean? He did not have much time to think about it. R led him and Moom through the trees and into a camp he could not have spotted from above. No one could have. It was too small, too simple, too well integrated into the environment. It consisted of little more than a pop-up canopy, maybe twelve feet by twelve feet, camouflage-colored with a cammy sidewall. Beside the wall, underneath the canopy, were two piles of boxes with what looked like Russian lettering on every box. One pile Pel guessed to be ammunition. On top of that pile were several sleeping bags. The other pile he guessed to be food. On top of that were a bunch of plastic water bottles. Underneath the center of the canopy was a single, collapsible director’s chair, on the back of which was written a word that Pel figured was probably the Russian word for “director.”
“Nice touch,” said Pel.
“Thank you,” said R.
“But the technology? I’m not seeing that.”
“It is on the way.”
Pel just shrugged. He did not want to look too concerned. R then turned to the guy who escorted the brothers in and spoke to him in a language Pel had not heard before. The conversation seemed serious. The man, of indeterminate age with fresh beard growth nearly up to his eyeballs, nodded his assent and then headed back in the direction from which he came. Pel chose not to ask R who he was or which language they spoke. On some subjects, the less he knew, the better.
“Are you guys hungry?” R asked.
“Yeah, sure,” said Pel. Moom echoed him.
“Have a seat,” said R, pointing to the ground. Pel and Moom got the message and sat down. R handed each of them several packs of food and a water bottle, then settled himself in his chair.
“What are we eating?” asked Moom.
“Just read the label,” said R. “These are Russian version of what your Army calls MRE’s, meals ready to eat, no cooking.” He added playfully, “You guys speak Russian, correct?”
R was jacking with them, thought Pel. He knew about the Caspian. He had to. He must have heard the Russian toms-toms or whatever. If R was from Chechnya or some other breakaway republic, his people and the Russians had been killing each other for generations. How deeply each side had infiltrated the other he did not know at all. He decided to play dumb. It wasn’t hard.
Tony
The air was brittle, the trail hard and dry. It obviously had not rained in a while. About one mile in, he passed an encouraging sign. It read, “Wilderness area, no motorized vehicles.” That was good, one less class of humans to share the world with. Tony dismounted and pulled the topo map from his saddlebag and the compass from his pocket. The boys grabbed theirs—he insisted they each be able to operate independently—and joined him on a thick log just off the trail.
Tony unfolded his map so they could see the entire area. He then quickly oriented it so north on the map roughly aligned with reality.
“For now, let me just lay out the basic route in rough terms. We’re heading almost due west now and we’ll veer northwest once we cross Crow Creek. You see these two ridges here? They run largely north-south, perpendicular to the trail we’re on. I’m not telling you something you don’t know, but the closer the lines get to each other, the steeper the climb.”
“Understood,” said Matt.
“In the field we always give these things names. So let’s call the first of these two ridges, the one we cross first, ‘Alpha.’ The second ridge, the one on the west side of the valley, we’ll call ‘Bravo.’ Let’s be optimists and call the space in between them ‘Elk Valley.’ By mid-afternoon, just before we reach Alpha, we’ll find a spot to set up camp and leave the horses to graze.”
“Why leave ’em?” Luke asked.
“The next morning we’ll need to negotiate our way over that ridge in the dark. We need to be in place to shoot before dark. So better to check the route out on foot first in the daytime and find a spot on Alpha’s east slope that gives us a good angle on the elk below.”
“Any chance we’ll actually see an elk?” asked Luke. The kid’s skepticism bled through even when he tried to conceal it.
“No guarantees,” said Tony. “In any case, once we find that spot, we’ll climb back east over Alpha to where we left the horses, bed down early, and head out before dawn back to our spot so we’re in position to shoot at first light.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Luke, with that seemed to Tony just a hint of enthusiasm. They were making progress.
“I hope it still sounds like a plan when I drag your butt out of your sleeping bag tomorrow morning,” said Tony, smiling. For now, at least, he liked the way the plan was working out. He had his sons’ attention. They were learning things they needed to learn. With the maps stashed, they remounted and headed out.
About five klicks ahead, on the near side of Crow Creek, the main trail bent north, and the secondary trail forked northwest on the far side of the creek just as Thor had said it would. Tony noticed they were not the first ones to have come this way, but he could not tell how fresh the horse tracks were. He kept the observation to himself.
“Remember what Yogi Berra said about this situation?”
“Who’s Yogi Berra?” asked Luke.
“Dope,” said Matt to his brother, then turned to his father. “No, what did Yogi say?”
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Tony laughed. The boys rolled their eyes. The trio now headed northwest on a trail much rougher than the one they had left. After a couple more hours, Tony led the boys into a small, natural clearing beside the stream. The site had “lunch break” written all over it.
The horses got lunch too. The boys did not need to be fed. They figured it out on their own and had wolfed down the sandwiches, chips, apples, and Gatorade by the time Tony sat down. If nothing else, thought Tony, these kids knew how to eat.
Matt
His lunch finished, Matt wandered off into the nearby woods to relieve himself. He had not strayed far from the center of camp when he saw something glisten in the sunlight. On picking it up, he shook his head in disgust. It was an empty, recently discarded pack of Marlboro 100s. He looked closer and saw fresh cigarette butts scattered about. He had tried to ignore the horse tracks he had seen along the route, but there was no ignoring this. Had to be Fedora Man and Tonto. Pissed him off. The fire danger was bad enough, but these guys were pigs.
“Dad,” he yelled, holding up the pack, “check this out.”
“Looks like our territory’s not so virgin after all. Throw it in with our trash.”
Matt walked back to his horse, more uneasy than he cared to admit. Every time he took a leak, it seemed, he learned something he wished he hadn’t. He suspected his father felt the same way. He might have misread his dad, but Matt sensed him biting back the impulse to say, “There’s something wrong here.” He certainly wanted to say that himself—the hunters he knew would never leave cigarette packs behind—but the last thing he wanted to do was worry Luke.
Tony
With the afternoon light illuminating the trail, Tony glassed the mountainside ahead for signs. At each water crossing, even the rivulets and dry streambeds, Tony would stop again and look closely at the trail. Nothing. Nothing, that is, except cigarette butts, the occasional candy wrapper, and steaming piles of horse manure. You didn’t have to be Kit Carson to follow these guys, but Tony was getting the sense that there was more than one set of guys. The candy wrappers had been there longer than the cigarette packs.
Moom
Sitting on top of the ridge and facing east across the valley they just hiked through, a pair of binoculars around his neck, Moom was beginning to feel just a little bit foolish. He had seen nothing in the two hours or so he had been out there. R had told him to look out for some horsemen, three in all. Pel was manning a spot some 200 yards further north. R told the brothers no more about the horsemen than that they could communicate only in Spanish and English. R’s own guys spoke neither, which was why he needed the brothers to serve as lookouts.
R had given each of them a Motorola two-way radio and instructions to use it only when necessary. If Moom spotted the horsemen, he was to alert Pel, and Pel would lead the men down to the camp. Moom’s job was to remain on the ridge and keep an eye out for any other people who might stray into the area. As far as Moom figured, this was pure make-work. He was wrong.
Luke
Luke hated to admit it—and he wouldn’t give anyone that satisfaction—but there was something cool about riding a horse up a mountainside in Colorado with a rifle under his leg. It all just seemed so…so…totally cowboy.
“How ya doing?” asked his father at one point.
“Not too bad. I kind of half like this.”
“High praise from Mr. Buzzkill,” said Matt.
Luke decided to shrug his brother off and keep on riding. This was something he wouldn’t mind getting good at. Still, though, he did not want to hear anyone ask him how doing real stuff compared to video stuff. He wasn’t sure how he’d answer.
Moom
Moom leaped to his feet and keyed the radio.
Pel heard Moom’s faint voice and picked up his radio. “What?” said Pel. “Talk louder?”
“Sorry,” said Moom, now speaking up. “Look across the valley, just below that ridge across from us.”
“Got ’em. I’ll make sure R’s gotten the word.”
There they were, three of them on horseback, cresting over the ridge opposite him and now shuffling carefully down the steep slope. They seemed too focused on negotiating the slope to look up, and clearly did not see Moom before plunging into the trees. Through the binoculars, he tracked them as best he could, which was not good at all. Still, he knew more or less where they were. He looked nowhere else.
But somehow he lost them. He was hoping they had stopped to eat or rest at the creek that ran through the valley floor, but he feared they followed the creek in the wrong direction. He had mixed feelings about the whole damned plot, but he didn’t want to be the one to screw things up.
Luke
A few hours after lunch, they came to a relatively flat, sheltered stretch amidst the timber right alongside the trail. Up ahead, he could see the terrain getting steep and rough. He was more than hoping they’d take a break. He just didn’t want to be the one to ask.
“This is as good a spot as any to make camp,” said his father, dismounting. “We’ll stay close to the trail so if Thor comes, he won’t have any trouble finding us.”
That was exactly what Luke wanted to hear. Climbing stiffly off his mount, he didn’t fuss when his dad showed him how to set up a picket line for the horses and feed them. After removing the saddles from the horses and rubbing them down, the boys pitched their tents and stowed their gear.
“We’re on foot from here on in, guys.”
“No horses?” said Luke, disappointed. He was just getting the hang of it.
“It will be too dark in the morning for anyone but real horsemen, and that ain’t us,” said Tony. “No point taking them now. You guys ready to roll?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” said Luke.
“Grab your guns,” said his father. “Can’t leave them here unattended. Bring your day-packs too. Never know when you’re going to need them.”
Tony
After a strenuous mile or so of hiking west, Tony and his sons left the timber behind them. The uneven ridgeline lay about fifty meters ahead. This open area was close to flat, the footing relatively secure among the rocky soil and the scattered plants.
The trio walked easily to the ridgeline. On scanning the bowl-like valley below, Tony could see why hunters might avoid it. The slopes were steep and large stretches of terrain were densely wooded, maybe too dense to get a good shot at an elk. Undaunted, he followed the ridgeline north, looking for a negotiable passage into the valley and soon finding one.
“Take note of this outcropping,” he said. “This is where we’re crossing.”
“Looks like Skeletor,” said Luke of the skull-like rock formation. Tony had to admit it kind of did, stark and bulbous as it was.
“A good memory trick,” Tony flattered him. “Take a look around you. Remember where we are. Mark the place and time on your maps. If we find what we’re looking for, we’ll need to locate this turnoff before sunrise tomorrow.” They would be coming through here before light in the morning. It would be essential to have some point of reference.
“All downhill from here,” he said as he left the ridgeline, his sons following close behind. Although they had gravity at their back, the going got harder, not easier. Given the slope’s steep rake, Tony had to shuffle down the exposed surface sideways, his feet parallel to the ridge, leading with his left foot, his right foot anchoring the left. More than once he used his right hand to push off from the slope. Luke struggled behind him but said nothing. Matt had little trouble.
