Nightwatch

Chapter 3

Vince Kellogg stood on the muddy riverbank, his gaze locked on the swiftly moving waters. The ghostly blanket of fog that had veiled the Eleven Point all morning was at long last lifting. It had been much too long since he had been in such an isolated setting, over a hundred miles away from the nearest sizable city, and Vince scanned the cascading current while filling his lungs with a deep breath of clean Missouri Ozark air.

“Special Agent Kellogg,” sounded a voice from behind.

Vince turned and set his eyes on the heavily furrowed, weathered face of the man responsible for this interruption. Ron Wyatt was a native of these woods and, as a thirty-two-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service, was one of Vince’s current hosts.

“I’m sorry to disturb you. Special Agent,” said Wyatt, his accent flavored by a slight country drawl.

“Ranger Eberly just called. They’re climbing out of the springs right now, and should be down here within the next fifteen minutes.”

“I sure hope this late start doesn’t mean that the VP will miss out on all the good fishing,” Vince replied.

“The trophy management area starts a stone’s throw downstream from here,” said Wyatt.

“And this late start don’t mean much to those fat lunker trout that live down there. What’s gonna make a difference is the Vice President’s savvy with a fishin’ pole.”

“Though I’ve yet to see him fish, the regulars on his detail swear he’s got an almost uncanny knack to catch his fair share of big ones.”

“I wonder if it’s true that he always releases ‘em, like the papers say,” pondered Wyatt.

Vince grinned.

“What else do you expect from America’s number one environmentalist?”

A green Forest Service truck pulling a trailer filled with canoes backed onto the boat ramp and Wyatt excused himself to help unload it. With a practiced glance, Vince surveyed the rest of the site. The immediate area was reserved for official vehicles and security personnel. The general public was confined to the adjoining campground, behind a temporary sawhorse barricade manned by a half-dozen members of the Oregon County Sheriff’s Department.

From his vantage point, Vince could see that a crowd of over fifty spectators was gathered in the campground, curiously watching the last-minute preparations. He knew that most of them were waiting for a glimpse of the Vice President. Included in this group was a television news crew from Springfield, Missouri.

To check this crowd for any potential troublemakers, Vince walked over to the barricade. It didn’t take him long to spot two of his fellow Secret Service agents, bedecked in shorts and Tshirts, mixed in alongside the motley assortment of tourists and locals.

They were working undercover, and appeared to have their attention focused on the current subject of the news crew’s cameras.

Without having to cross the barricade himself, Vince could hear the young, blond reporter as she interviewed an elderly woman wearing a “Give the Eleven Point Back to the People!”

sweatshirt. The crowd of tourists and locals offered their encouragement each time the old lady made a pertinent point, often using flowery language that would make most grandmothers blush and keep the news editor busy back at the station.

“To hell with the Vice President and that bunch of outlaws he represents back in Washington!” she ranted, making the best of her moment in the spotlight.

“My kin have lived and died on the banks of this river for three generations, and no snotty-nosed bureaucrat is gonna come down here and tell me I’ve got to sell my land or else the government is gonna take it. This is my home! My parents and grandparents are buried here, and I aim to join ‘em, regardless of the intentions of that gang of thieves at the Forest Service.”

As part of the crowd issued a boisterous shout of support, Vince carefully scanned their faces. Shortly after he had received this assignment, he’d read a briefing paper covering problems they might encounter during the float trip. The subjects ranged from snake bites to sunburn, and included a short history of the area that explained some of the reasons behind the oldtimer’s upset.

It was in 1933 that the Forest Service began acquiring lands in the area of the Eleven Point. In 1939 these lands were given National Forest status. Yet it wasn’t until 1968, when Congress passed the National Wild and Scenic River Act, and actual private land began to be confiscated, that local resentment of the government reached a boiling point. With the lofty intention of protecting the Eleven Point for generations to come, the Act authorized the Forest Service to forbid all private development along the actual river way Scenic easements were required for all property not part of the National Forest system, with the government continuing to pursue an active acquisition process whose goal was one hundred percent ownership of all lands abutting the river.

Government practices such as the enforcement of horsepower restrictions on all watercraft, and the creation of trophy fish management areas limited to artificial lures, further infuriated the locals, who were fiercely independent by their very nature. Forest fires were intentionally set to express their dissatisfaction, with grass-roots political action committees formed in a vain attempt to counter Federal policy. Frustrated when such acts failed to succeed, the remaining landowners had few courses open to them, and the Secret Service feared that one of them might go to the extreme of expressing their displeasure by taking a potshot at the Vice President.

Rumor had it the potential for danger was one reason the President had asked his VP to take this pre holiday float trip. Continued policy disagreements between the two politicians was public knowledge, with the more conservative VP accusing his boss of spending too much time on foreign policy matters.

It was shortly after the President informed the Secret Service of his desire to schedule a secret negotiating session in the Crimea that the VP had announced this excursion into the nation’s hinterlands.

Even though Congress was out of session, the gossip mongers warned that the President wanted the VP as far away from Washington and its summer-starved media as possible.

Regardless of the real reason for their presence here, Vince was delighted when Samuel Morrison had assigned him to head this detail. This was especially the case when the VP stated his decision to host a gala July Fourth charity bash at Branson, Missouri.

Long before the Crimea trip was announced, Vince had hoped to spend the Fourth of July at Branson himself. His in-laws had a condo and boat on nearby Table Rock Lake, and the plan was for the whole family to get together to celebrate Vince and Kelly’s twentieth wedding anniversary.

Samuel Morrison knew of Vince’s plans, and graciously offered him this change of assignments. Kelly personally sent the SAIC a box of his favorite Temple Hall cigars upon learning of the transfer. Morrison had been responsible for previously ruining too many holidays for the Kellogg family, yet this reassignment would make up for some of these past disappointments.

A loud metallic clang caused Vince to turn his attention back to the river, where Ron Wyatt and a pair of Forest Service workers were in the process of placing the last of the canoes into the water. The fog had almost completely dissipated, and Vince got his first clear view of the lush forest gracing the far side of the Eleven Point. The oaks and cottonwoods there were in full bloom, with a variety of colorful flowering plants hugging the bank itself.

If all continued to go smoothly, this float trip would be more like a vacation than work. The weather promised to be ideal, and the only thing lacking was the presence of his family. It was comforting to know that Kelly, Joshua, and Kimberly Ellen, the newest addition to the Kellogg family, were currently with Kelly’s sister, Julie, in nearby St. Louis. They’d be driving to Branson later in the day, where the anniversary festivities were scheduled to begin in a little less than twenty-four hours.

A Forest Service john boat powered by a propeller-free, three and-a-half-horsepower air-jet engine, approached the ramp from upstream. Special Agent Linda Desiante was perched behind the squared-off, blunt bow of the vessel, a bright orange life preserver tied around her neck.

“How’s the water, Linda?” asked Vince as he caught the john boat bowline and pulled its bow portion up onto the ramp.

“Cold and incredibly clear,” Desiante replied while stepping onto the ramp herself and scanning the operations area.

“Where’s the VP? I hope he hasn’t gone and scrubbed the trip.”

Vince shook his head.

“His tour of Greer Springs went a little longer than planned. If you had been monitoring the comm net, you would have known that he’s on his way back as we speak.”

Desiante pulled her two-way out of its waterproof neck pouch and extracted the battery.

“The darn thing lost its charge shortly after we got on the other side of the Highway Nineteen bridge.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask, but what was your reception like up at the hold site?” Vince questioned while pulling a fresh battery out of his backpack and tossing it to her.

“It wasn’t as bad as we anticipated. There were seven canoes in all, at the spot we picked to stop all traffic, with only two of the parties previously unaware that the river would be closed for most of the day. The beer was already flowing, and those not fishing were caught up in a spirited round of Frisbee.”

“So much for our feared river insurrection,” reflected Vince.

“Though there’s a crowd of angry locals up in the parking lot that still needs watching.”

A green Forest Service truck with a flashing red light on its cab’s roof pulled into the campground, prompting Vince to add, “Looks like the show’s about to begin. As soon as you get your comm back up, your john boat will be joining Avila’s downstream.

I want you close enough to provide an effective point unit, but far enough away that we won’t be able to hear your engine. We don’t want to go and ruin the man’s wilderness experience.”

Special Agent Desiante inserted the fresh battery, and as she depressed the two-way’s transmit button to ensure that it was operational, the rest of the Vice President’s motorcade pulled into the campground. An excited murmur rose from the crowd, and Vince hurried over to the barricade. The VP loved to interact with the public, and even though the president hated to share the media spotlight with him, once he spotted the television news crew, there’d be no stopping him.