Chapter 17

When the time came, I quietly woke them up. Gunnar was already saddled up. Suzy grabbed me and was sobbing. The best I could do was gently pat her on the back. I could not trust my voice.

Once I was able to get them mounted up, the morning was rapidly approaching. As they left, I kept an eye on Suzy, Kathy, and Shadow, watching until they had disappeared over the ridgeline. Now, I needed to hurry. I had included all sorts of equipment in my shelter. Basic life-sustaining gear like tents and blankets. Food in the form of MREs and civilian hiking rations. I had also stashed ammo and a few other surprises. The other surprises were not at my hideout. I had put them in place long ago. And using them was a failsafe if my hideout was compromised and I couldn’t shake a pursuit.

I KNEW that there was a pursuit and that these trackers were good. False trails and spoofs were not going to work. I was not worried about myself. But Suzy was our slim hope. And I knew that if they could track me, following her would be like driving on a freeway. What I needed was a complete end to any tracking. And it was already set up.

My first action was to move to my secondary position. It was a barebones hideout. It gave me concealment but not much cover. What it did do was provide an excellent field of view of anybody approaching the hideout. They might be concealed from my fort, but from where I was, they would stand out like cows in a flock of sheep.

My plan was to give them 24 hours. If they did not show up at that time, they were not going to. If that were the case, I would break it off and follow Suzy over to the Hot Springs using a different route.

Our plan was for Suzy and Kathy to head for the Red River Hot Springs. From there, she would be able to call one of our friends and start the journey east.

As the sky slowly brightened, I was thinking about breaking open an MRE, when a movement caught my eye. I watched, and sure enough, a human figure moved out from the tree line and started climbing the rock field.

He was bald or had closely cut hair. Obviously, muscled and in shape. He was dressed in camouflage. It is not unusual nowadays. He was also carrying a rifle. I double-checked with the binos; he was carrying what looked like a Fabrique Nationional assault rifle. Not something normally seen being carried by a deer hunter.

He moved carefully from rock to rock. He was pausing and looking around at each move. He had moved about ten feet up the hill when another person appeared at the tree line. Followed quickly by two more. 10 or 15 feet to either side.

As the group slowly moved up the mountain, they were coordinated. Finally, two more showed about ten feet to the side of where the original came from. This pair only moved after all the others had moved far enough to get out of sight. Then, they would move forward.

I continued to watch until the point man found my distraction. My distraction was a claymore mine with so many tripwires, failsafes, and idiotlines as to appear impenetrable.

Now, personally, If I found some conglomeration of sudden death like I had rigged, I would have done what Hitler should have done at Stalingrad or Bastogne. Bypass the SOB and move on.

When the point man found my toy, he did exactly what I wanted. He stopped and let everyone know what he had found. He then called the squad leader forward. I watched as they looked at and discussed their discovery. In the meantime, the flankers moved in closer. As the saying goes, Curiosity killed the cat.

When they were all as close together as I thought they would get, I rang the bell. These idiots had climbed into a coffin, and I had just closed the lid.

I had not placed my packages at the distraction site. There were three, quarter-pound C4 charges that I had planted about fifty yards uphill from them. Each charge went off simultaneously. And the effect was catastrophic.

The charges themselves were not very spectacular. Not even a Fourth of July fireworks bang. Just three crumps and a cloud of dust. The result, however, was earth-shattering. The side of the mountain started moving downhill. I had triggered an avalanche. An inescapable, unstoppable destructive force of nature.

At first, they reacted to the bangs. Setting a hasty defense and looking for an attack. Then, there was a rumble, and the ground started to tremble. Their first realization of what was happening was when small rocks and gravel started rattling down the hillside.

Then the sounds and rocks got bigger.

For a moment, I could see the panic in their faces. And then came the desperate and fruitless attempts to avoid the inevitable. They started scrambling downhill. But it was already too late. There was no way that a human could outrun a landslide that big.

When it ended, there was nothing left. Nothing recoverable, No evidence, just dust and rocks.

Did I mourn their departure? I want to say that I did. That I was ashamed of the terror that I had brought to them. But I did not mourn their loss. Any more than they would have mourned our deaths.

After the dust settled on the mountainside, I carefully climbed down from my hideout and checked for any signs. I knew there would be none, but I just had to check anyway. Then I saddled Margarite, and we headed to Elk City.

It was late afternoon when I got to Elk City. My arrival went unnoticed. The town was quiet, and everything was normal. After I put Marguerite and Jughead in the pasture. I immediately headed to Paul’s office.

When I walked through the door, Steve Ring looked up. “Mr. Reynolds,” he said. “Good timing. I was getting ready to close up.” Then Steve did a double take and saw the look on my face. “What’s wrong? Dude,” he asked.

“Steve, I need to talk to Paul. Is he in?”

Steve raised his voice and called out, “Sheriff. We’ve got an issue out here.”

When Paul came out of his office, he saw me and exclaimed, “Matt, what’s wrong?”