In the Shadow of Mordor

Chapter 46

Curiosity dragged the old man unwillingly, and not without complaint from joints that were becoming stiff with age, to the edge of his property, but there was little to be seen. If this were a training facility for terrorists they were being damned quiet about it. The old farm house was visible from the tree line, and hours of patient watching revealed only a few occupants. Peering at them through his LRB 7 X 40 New Con laser range finder binoculars, he recognized the Russian-speaking man from Costco. There was another man, too, but he saw no sign of the woman.

Just for the sake of prudence, the old man set more perimeter alarms in the tree line above the farm house. Prudence was an important facet of his personality. Prudence kept people alive. For some it could be an excuse for doing nothing, for foregoing risk. Not so for the old man, but he had learned not to rush into things.

His ideas about the North Caucasus and the practitioners of Wahabi Islam there were not exactly politically correct, but it was entirely possible that this was a family group seeking only to escape the violence of their homeland and live in peace. If they were armed, it was likely an expression of well-founded caution and ingrained tradition. When this thought crossed his mind, the old man reminded himself with a curse that he did not believe in rainbows and unicorns.

The first heavy snow arrived in late November. Hunting season was signaled by the annual appearance of camouflaged coveralls on the Valley men as they appeared in local shops or drove their pick-ups loaded with crated bear-hunting dogs that howled along the mountain roads. Bow season came and went quietly, followed by black powder season and finally by an all-out assault on the forest wildlife. The deer population was culled and many black bears did not make it back to their dens for the winter’s hibernation. The people of the Valley were not bloodthirsty thrill killers. They depended on game to put meat on the table as much now as they had a hundred years ago.

The old man did not hunt. He had no desire to kill and he posted his own acres against hunting. The occasional black bear that lumbered past the cabin heading down the mountain to forage were objects of admiration rather than targets.

The snow fell from great, dark clouds invading as usual over the low peaks of the Appalachians from the south west, leaving a blanket of white silence over the forest and the Valley floor. Isolation was nearly complete, which suited the old man.

He celebrated the occasion by selecting an especially fine and rare Cuban Hoyo de Monterey double corona from his humidor and appreciatively caressed its tip with a long match. He stood at a window watching Sadie the Lab cavort in the snow outside. Satisfied that the tobacco was burning evenly, he decided a fresh pot of coffee would be a good idea and by the time the pot was brewing, Sadie had decided she wanted back into the warmth of the cabin. She stood quietly as the old man toweled off the snow and wiped her feet then shot into the kitchen and sat, tail thumping the floor, bright eyes fixed on the canister where the doggie treats were stored.

Night had fallen when the dog tensed, alerted by something only she heard. She pricked her ears and cocked her head before emitting a low, prolonged growl. The old man, who had closed his eyes long ago with his head resting against the back of the couch, soaking in the warmth of the fire that crackled in the stone hearth, put a hand on the Lab’s head to calm her. An animal, perhaps a deer, had passed close to the house. The dog shook him off and leapt from the sofa to stand by the door where the growl turned into a frantic bark.

Annoyed, the old man rose and went to the door where Sadie continued her disturbance unabated.

Before he could decide whether to pull on some boots and a coat to go out and inspect, there was a weak knock at the door, really more like a scratch, accompanied by a voice. He couldn’t make out the words. He flung open the door and a dark-haired young woman, clad much too lightly for the weather, stumbled against him and would have collapsed had he not caught her beneath her arms.

Sadie’s barks now turned to solicitous whines, and she followed as her master half carried the visitor to the sofa in front of the fire. She was mumbling something unintelligible through lips turned blue and stiff with the cold. She wore only a nondescript dress with a man’s light jacket over it. Her dark hair was wet with snow. On her feet was a pair of sturdy leather shoes several sizes too large for her.

He placed her on the sofa and went to the bedroom to gather a heavy, quilted comforter in which to wrap her and a towel to dry her hair.

His mind was racing. How had she gotten here without setting off one of his perimeter alarms? The answer had to be that the sensors were covered with snow where she had passed them, and he mentally kicked himself for relaxing the entire day when he should have been out checking his security system.

What worried him was that she could have come from only one place — the old turkey farm downslope. He wasn’t sure what this might portend, but he did not think her arrival was a good sign.

He covered the woman’s shivering form with the comforter and did his best to dry her hair while she stared at him with large, dark eyes. She was little more than a girl, not at all unattractive and was of no distinctive ethnicity. Any ambiguity in this regard, however, was immediately cleared up when she managed to pronounce her first intelligible words: “Pomogi mnie.” Help me, in Russian. That left no doubt where she came from.

Switching to Russian, the old man asked, “Are you lost?”

She raised her eyes to him incredulously. This was a country of miracles where this cadaverous, bearded old man even spoke Russian!

She shrugged the comforter from around her shoulders and grasped the front of his checked flannel shirt. “We must leave now!” A hard light entered her eyes as she said this, but it was followed by a spasm of sobs. “They’ll come after me.”

This definitely ruined his day. The snow had stopped falling before noon, and the sky was clearing. The girl’s tracks through the snow would be easy to follow even in moonlight.

“Slow down,” he said, pushing her gently back onto the couch. “Who will come after you? Your friends? Are you lost?” He repeated the question because if she answered yes, things would become much less complicated.

“They are not my friends. They want to kill me.”

The damned Wahabis! What the hell were they doing in Virginia?

He may not emerge as the winner in a long stand-off, besieged in his cabin. They had to get away before that happened.

Options available were limited because of the snow. He doubted he could drive out through it, and that meant that even if he called for help, no one could get up the treacherous mountain roads. But maybe the sturdy Land Rover could make it.

The old man glared through the snow-obscured windshield at the unbroken expanse of white ahead. Even the sure-footed Land Rover was slipping as he drove at a snail’s pace down the slope towards the gate at the main road. The deeply rutted trail from the cabin was invisible beneath at least two feet of snow, but he knew the way well.

Before they reached the gate, however, the snow resumed with reinvigorated fury, the wind driving the white stuff horizontally.

They weren’t going anywhere.

The old man swore under his breath.

Carefully, he backed the Land Rover up the slope to the cabin. Curse words he hadn’t uttered in years shouldered their way to the front of his brain.

The girl was alarmed. “We must leave this place.”

“There’s no way we’re getting out of here for a long while. That’s the bad news. The good news is that your friends will have a very hard time getting to us. That means no one will be able to take anyone anywhere until this storm is over.”

She stared as if he were some alien creature, this lanky old man with long hair and a patchy white beard covering his cheeks and chin, slitted eyes, and gnarled hands. A man who spoke Russian like a native. A man with a past.

“You won’t hand me over to them.” It was both a statement and a question

Back at the cabin the generator had cranked to life indicating the power lines were down. The noise of the motor would signal their location. He stepped out of the Land Rover to close the garage doors against the gusting wind, and the dog leapt out after him and darted outside. Between the cabin and the garage she sank into snow already so deep that her head was barely inches above the surface. Apparently considering this to be an insult to her character and race, she barked sharply and plowed ahead toward the cabin door, undoubtedly wishing her master would decide whether he was coming or going.

They followed the dog inside. The fire still glowed. A few moments and some additional logs later, it was blazing again, and the girl stared into the flames.

She was startled when the old man shoved a glass of whiskey toward her and settled onto the sofa beside her.

“Drink this. It’ll help,” he rasped.

A tentative sniff told her the glass contained alcohol, strong alcohol, and she hesitated, eliciting a snort from the old man.

“You need something to warm you up and calm you down. Then you can tell me what the hell is going on. First, you can tell me your name.”

She stared at him as though he had asked an incredibly difficult question and had to think hard about the answer.

After several seconds she said, “Olga. My name is Olga Polyanskaya.”