Smoke Signals (A John Tall Wolf Novel Book 4) (8 page)

John and Rebecca circumnavigated their way to the far side of the former illicit pot processing camp. Using their Garmin eTrex20x device that offered a choice of topographical maps or satellite imagery, they picked their way along an indirect path through the forest that John thought would be the safest, i.e. the sneakiest, way to approach the camp without taking them too far afield. The waited on the periphery of the cleared area, concealed by trees, watching and listening for signs of life.

John held the MP5 submachine gun in his hands. He was relaxed but he had the weapon’s safety off. Rebecca held her bow, its limbs extended and strung, in her left hand, an arrow in her right hand. John’s weapon was intended for a quick kill, if things came to that; Rebecca’s bow was meant for a quiet kill or a debilitating wound, depending on the situation. She’d assured John she was up to taking either kind of action. Provided their own lives were in jeopardy.

“Didn’t really think things would come to this,” John whispered. “Still hope it won’t.”

“Me, too. If we
have t
o shoot at people, so be it. But if that bear comes looking for us, I’m pretty sure my three arrows aren’t going to stop him, try as I might.”

Keeping a straight face, John said, “Pretend the bear is Serge Marchand.”

She laughed quietly. “Yeah, that’d be good motivation.” Then she understood John’s subtext and gave him a light sock on the shoulder. “You meant I should put an arrow in the bear’s nut-sack, didn’t you?”

“Well, if it’s a male and he stands on his hind legs, gives you a clear shot.”

Rebecca grinned. “Yeah, I imagine even a big grizzly wouldn’t be able to shrug off something like that.”

“Just a thought,” John said.

After waiting thirty minutes, John said, “You think the place is empty? I do.”

“Me, too.”

“Ready to check things out?’

She nodded, but said, “Should we call in first? Let Madam Secretary know we’ve arrived and are going in with weapons at the ready?”

John gave it a moment’s thought and nodded. “I’ll send a text to Marlene.”

He did so and kept his phone on vibrate so any response wouldn’t give away his position.

John asked, “You want to switch from the bow to the MK14?” The sniper rifle.

Rebecca shook her head. “You’ve put me in an archery frame of mind.”

Holding more fire-power and possessing a politically incorrect sense of gallantry, John went first, silently walking point as Rebecca gave him a ten pace lead and then followed. John kept his eyes face front, taking in a visual sweep of 180º, but he was listening a full three-sixty. It pleased him that he couldn’t hear Rebecca bringing up the rear. Couldn’t smell her either because she was downwind of him. Still, without the benefit of any of the usual five senses, he knew she was behind him, not crowding him but a healthy distance back.

Maybe healthy. An automatic weapon in the hands of a bad guy could spray a long arc of fire in a heartbeat. That was the whole point of such firearms. Still, there would be some small interval in which Rebecca might react if John was targeted first, and a fit person could move a surprising distance in a second or less.

Even so, he thought, this was a hell of a situation in which to put your betrothed.

Rebecca thought so, too. She had an arrow on the bowstring now, ready to draw and let fly. She was doing her best not to watch John; he’d take care of himself and her against any threat in their direction of travel. That was his job.

Hers was to spot any armed dudes — or dudettes — to their right or left, and listen for anyone trying to sneak up on them from behind. Doing all that should have commanded her full attention, but the best she could assign the task was maybe ninety percent. A small, nagging thought kept intruding.

Well, maybe not so small, but definitely persistent. If she put an arrow or three through the gizzard of anyone who didn’t walk around on four paws, how was that going to look to Deputy Commissioner Murphy? Like maybe
she
was the loose cannon in the Bramley vs. Marchand brouhaha? Might the official judgment then become that she’d had every right to, say, sock Marchand on his jaw, but kicking him the way she’d done was the proverbial low blow?

If that was the case, the boom would be lowered on her and Marchand might get off with a slap on the wrist. He might even be encouraged to sue her for … what? She wasn’t sure but she thought a guy could both get it up and father a child with just one testicle. Still, explaining to a new sweetheart that you didn’t come fully equipped might be dismaying.

Marchand might file a legal action for emotional discomfiture.

Or, if he couldn’t get hard, loss of standing.

A soft whistle, sounding like a lark but also like John, brought Rebecca to an abrupt halt. She saw that she’d halved the distance between herself and him, and John was standing before a good sized tent with a door-flap drawn back. An inclination of his head toward his far shoulder drew her to him.

She silently mouthed the word, “Sorry.”

He gave a small nod and directed his eyes at the interior of the tent.

Rebecca looked that way. She saw, among other things, two camp beds with aluminum frames, thick memory-foam mattresses and plump pillows. Each bed was covered with a striped wool blanket, the kind advertised as wind resistant and water repellent. Somebody liked a good night’s sleep in the woods and was willing to pay top dollar for their comfort.

Speaking of money, a waist-high safe sat at the far end of the tent between the beds. The thing looked like it might weigh a ton, several hundred pounds at least. The door to the strong box stood open and the interior showed empty.

Rebecca took another look at the two beds. The one on her right was neatly made; the one on the left was a jumble. She turned to John trying to understand what had caught his attention. He pointed to the messy bed, before turning to keep an eye on their surroundings.

It took a moment, but Rebecca spotted what had roused John’s interest.

Peeking out from beneath the pillow on the unkempt bed was the corner of a wallet. Someone liked to sleep on his boodle. A not inconsiderable sum either. She could see the wallet was thick with American cash. At the exchange rate with the Canadian dollar, that put a 33% premium on every buck there, too.

Rebecca whispered to John, “Farming pays pretty well in your country.”

“Even without crop subsidies sometimes,” John agreed.

They carefully moved away from the tent and checked out the remainder of the camp. There were odds and ends of all sorts: other tents, big multi-person shelters; numerous black plastic bags that smelled of discarded food; even an unpowered freezer with beef inside; two huge plastic bins filled with bottles of ibuprofen and other NSAIDs and so many items of worn and ragged clothing they didn’t bother to count them all.

They didn’t find so much as an ounce of marijuana, though.

John commented on that once they’d made sure the place had been abandoned.

“Plenty of signs of a vanished civilization,” he said, “but no dope at all.”

“If you’ve got to make a quick getaway,” Rebecca said, “you take what you value most.”

“Right. The marijuana and the people who grew it. They can always grow more. But I don’t think anyone knew we were coming, so what scared them off?” John asked.

“Beebs Bandi and his camera?”

John frowned. “Maybe, but the people running this place didn’t know of his connection to Freddie Strait Arrow or Freddie’s relationship to Marlene. For all they knew Beebs was just a guy with a camera who was lucky to get away and wouldn’t ever bother them again.”

“We heard an automatic weapon fire and a man and a woman speaking Spanish,” Rebecca said. “Maybe they have something to do with the evacuation here.”

John nodded. “Maybe. Something certainly scared the bosses, one of them taking off and leaving his wallet behind.”

“Leaving all this food here,” Rebecca said, “that had to be what drew the bear this way.”

“Yeah, and if he’s not hurt too bad, he’ll be back. If not him, his family and friends will certainly stop by for a nosh.”

Rebecca frowned. “Let’s not stick around in case they prefer fresh food, like you and me.”

“Good point. If we want to call it a day, we’ve already discovered that somebody was camping out illegally on Freddie’s land, and that’s what I was asked to do. We could head back to Tesla, get our rental Cherokee and go somewhere with more amenities. Sort out our future.”

Rebecca studied John’s face. She knew he’d do just what he said, if that was what she wanted. He’d turn the pursuit of the drug operation over to someone else. Maybe the DEA. All she had to do was say, “Let’s go.”

Instead, she asked, “Is that what you want to do? That’d be fine with me. But if you want to find out what’s going on here, I’d be good with that, too.”

John told her, “I really couldn’t ask you to help me any more, unless you allow me to help you with your problem.”

Sounded like they were married already, negotiating terms and conditions.

“Would you really involve your president?”

“Only if I had to. If that was the case, though, yeah, I would.”

Rebecca leaned forward and kissed John.

“Let’s check out that wallet somebody left behind,” he said.

They returned to the tent in question, finding forty one-hundred-dollar bills and two photographs in the wallet.

Polaroids yet. Someone was truly old school.

The first picture showed a large, grinning Hispanic man with two naked ladies nestled under each of his outstretched arms. Each of the women was cupping her breasts and smiling widely for the camera.

“Family reunion?” John asked.

Rebecca shook her head. “Not even if it’s the Addams family.”

The second photo was a candid head-and-shoulders shot of a clothed Latina woman.

“Much prettier woman,” Rebecca said, “but it looks to me like she doesn’t know the creep took the picture.”

“Quite possibly,” John said.

There was no identification in the wallet as to who owned it.

Well, maybe the photos would help provide names.

They stepped out of the tent. John had a text reply from Marlene.

He read it and called her.

Rebecca stood watch, looking for bears and cradling the MP5.

Julián Fortuna sat on the ground with his back against a fallen tree trunk. He used a sleeping bag to cushion both his back and his ass, but the damn ground was so cold he could feel it right through the bag and his jeans. He knew for sure it was going to get a lot colder and more uncomfortable after the sun went down.

He already had the
campesinos
clearing the ground needed to set up the new camp. It was hard work and everyone was tired from the uphill trek. There might actually have been mumbles of complaint, despite the guards being in a bad mood of their own and looking like shooting somebody might raise their spirits, except Julián stepped forward to head off trouble with a bit of enlightened and devious management.

He’d told the assembled workers, “We have all had a hard day. So tomorrow will be a day of rest and will not extend your release date. In fact, I will need volunteers to go back down the mountain to retrieve the things we left behind that will make our lives much more comfortable up here. This chore should take no more than a few days, but I will count the time as a month’s credit toward an early release.”

That news brought a harvest of smiles and excited murmurings.

“I will leave it to you to decide who should earn this bonus,” Julián said. “I think a dozen good men will be all I need.”

At a stroke, he’d given them positive motivation and pitted them one against another as to who would get to claim his generous offer. Their competition against each other would deflect any hard feelings they’d otherwise direct at him. He was sure his B-school profs would be proud.

As to getting them to continue clearing ground after their difficult journey, Julián said,
“Compañeros,
we will all be much more comfortable tonight if we have the room to build fires without setting the whole forest on fire and making ourselves look like burnt
frijoles.”

Self-interest was always good motivation, too.

The grumbling subsided and most of the
campesinos
started thinking of how they could be among the ones who would win early release. Showing
el jefe
how hard they could work at that very moment would be a good start. With the potential rebellion peacefully quelled, Julián had turned his attention elsewhere.

As he sat propped against the fallen tree trunk, he used his satellite phone, an Inmarsat BGAN, to create a Wi-Fi hot spot for his MacBook. Deep in the wilds of the Cascade Mountains, he had Internet connectivity. A man who couldn’t tap global resources, he’d been taught, might as well be a troglodyte.

Julián had decided in his hour of distress that it might be smart to learn more about his unwitting host, Frederic Strait. He’d always imagined Strait as a bloated old coupon-clipper with liver spotted hands, or possibly a spoiled brat, someone concerned with nothing more than running through his inheritance as fast he could. Racing to see whether his money or his time on earth ran out first.

The way things were going lately, he thought it wise to verify his preconceptions.

Turned out, a Google search told him, he couldn’t have been more wrong about Strait.

The guy was now known as Freddie Strait Arrow. Had made billions on his own. Was maybe on his way to becoming the richest man in the world. Damn, Julián thought, the trouble you got into when you didn’t do your homework.

That was a lesson you learned in elementary school not B-school.

“Jesus,” he said, using the English pronunciation as he continued to read, “I never should have messed with this dude.”

Julián hadn’t noticed his cousin approach.

Basilio stood over him and asked, “Messed with what dude? Someone I should kill?”

The Boeing 737 that Freddie Strait Arrow had chartered had a top cruising speed of 472 knots or 543 miles per hour. Facing little to no headwind on a calm day, and the pilot putting the pedal to the metal, the flight from DC to Seattle had been relatively quick. True, following Federal Aviation Administration rules, the aircraft had to slow to 250 knots as it entered the busy airspace around Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. And it had to slow further for its approach and landing as both the rules and common sense dictated.

But the billionaire’s aircraft, with a prospective member of the president’s cabinet aboard, didn’t have to queue up for landing and circle the airport. It went straight in. Further aiding Freddie and Marlene’s intention to get to Tesla as soon as possible, a Sikorsky S-76C executive helicopter was waiting for them. Eliminating the need to get bogged down in automotive traffic. The Sikorsky could do 178 mph.

Freddie and Marlene were nine minutes out from Tesla when Acting Madam Secretary received a call from John Tall Wolf. She put it on speaker so Freddie could participate.

John told them, “We found the camp but not the campers.”

“What about the drugs?” Freddie asked. “Were they growing marijuana?”

“We haven’t found so much as a seed, but there is a certain lingering odor in the air. Either it was a processing location or someone had a hell of a party.”

Marlene cut in. “Who are ‘we?’ Did you bring a BIA colleague along?”

“No, a close friend from the RCMP.”

Knowing just who Tall Wolf meant, Marlene frowned.

The initials were unfamiliar to Freddie, but as quick as his mind was and given the vast data base of information it had to draw on, he swiftly figured them out. “Royal Canadian Mounted Police?”

“Exactly. In the person of my fiancée, Lieutenant Rebecca Bramley.” John asked, “Is that you, Freddie?”

The young billionaire grinned, darkening Marlene’s mood further. “Yeah, it’s me. Looking forward to meeting you, Mr. Tall Wolf. Lieutenant Bramley, too. Despite the absence of people and drugs, do you think someone was using my land illegally?”

“Sure do. This wasn’t a Boy Scout jamboree. There’s also another element that Rebecca and I haven’t been able to figure out. There seems to be a third party involved, apart from whoever operated the drug processing but possibly connected to it as well.”

Marlene asked, “What do you mean, Tall Wolf?”

He told her and Freddie about the bear and the automatic weapon fire.

“I definitely heard a man and a woman speaking Spanish. I learned the language in school, but it was the Castilian variant. You know, like learning the Queen’s English at Windsor Castle. My mom knows several dialects but she wouldn’t speak any of them at home with me. Still, I heard enough Mexican Spanish in Santa Fe, growing up, to recognize what I heard. My money says the man and woman were both recent border crossers.”

“The people who work in the camp,” Freddie said. “Dope dealers would recruit from illegal immigrants, wouldn’t they?”

Marlene gave the young man a mildly critical look.

Even so, it came as a shock to him, never having seen it before.

“If the workers weren’t kidnapped outright, they were certainly coerced,” she said.

Hearing that, Freddie had the grace to feel sheepish.

A prodigy or not, he was about to be introduced to a whole new world.

John told Marlene, “I agree, but that raises the question: What were these two doing off on their own? That and being heavily armed.”

“Did they kill the animal?” Marlene asked.

“Grazed it, enough to drive it off for the moment, but not sufficiently to keep it from moving like a blue streak. Well, maybe a brown and gray streak, being a grizzly.”

“That will make it even more dangerous than normal,” Marlene said.

“We’re well aware,” John replied.

“And you’re not distressed, Lieutenant Bramley?” Marlene asked.

“I’ll cope,” she replied tersely. “You would, wouldn’t you?”

“How big was this bear?” Freddie asked.

“Big. Pushing its species limits. Maybe 800 pounds,” John said.

“Closer to a thousand, I’d say,” Rebecca added, a note of bravado in her voice.

“Wow!” Freddie said, “That is too cool, a creature like that living on my land.”

John said, “You can bet there are others, but let’s get back to the two-legged predators. Rebecca and I, talking things over, think the people behind this operation, having moved their product and their human capital post haste, will come back soon for the infrastructure they left behind. There aren’t enough of us to grab all the bad guys, but we could follow them to their new location and then call in the cavalry.”

Freddie laughed. “That’s a good one, Indians calling in the cavalry.”

Marlene didn’t take it as a positive sign, Freddie finding Tall Wolf amusing.

She liked it even less when he added, “I want to be in on this. I want to help track these people, bring them to justice if they’re working people as slaves on my property.”

“A fine sentiment,” John said.

“A fine sentiment, but what?” Marlene added.

“Well, you would have to act as Mr. Strait Arrow’s security, Madam Secretary,” John conceded.

“Marlene protect me against bears and drug dealers?” Freddie asked.

His tone said maybe he was reconsidering the notion.

John told him, “Marlene could make the devil drop his pitchfork and run, if she wanted.”

There was a moment of silence, then Freddie said, “Yeah, you know —”

“You know, too, Tall Wolf,” Marlene said, “and some things you should keep to yourself.”

John silently agreed and changed the subject. “Are you two going to see Beebs Bandi before coming up to the mountain?”

“Yes,” Freddie said. “I want to meet him.”

“Do me a favor then,” John told him. “Ask if I can have any stink bombs he has left.”

After John ended the call, Rebecca asked, “Is Marlene really as tough as all that? Able to scare the devil?”

“I’ve told you I think she’s more than she appears, right?”

“More than human, yeah, but I’ve always thought you were exaggerating for effect. Being funny.”

“Humor is often the point, but not always. The gunshot that hit Marlene would have killed any normal person, but she was ready to meet the press the next day, in makeup and with her hair styled.”

Rebecca gave that a moment’s thought. “Should I be afraid of her?”

John shook his head. “She’d only like that, but Marlene knows my mother would take vengeance on her if she came after either of us. Mom really likes you.”

“And you’ve told me your mother is, among other things, a witch.”

“Right.”

“Is your father anything more than a semi-retired physician?”

“Dad has his scary side, too, but he’s kind of private about it.”

“How’s he feel about me?”

“Thinks of you as a daughter, much beloved.”

“Okay, then. So all we have to worry about is the wild life and the drug dealers with automatic weapons.”

John sighed and said, “I’d still like to know about that man and woman whose voices we heard. They seem betwixt and between. Maybe not bad guys themselves, but definitely armed and potentially dangerous.”

“It’s always the wild cards you have to watch out for,” Rebecca said.