Nowhere to Run

15

Dave Farkus had spent most of his adult life working hard to avoid hard work. His philosophy was to save himself for pursuits he favored-hunting, fishing, poker, snowmobiling, mountain man rendezvous reenactments, and blasting through the mountains on his 4 x 4 ATV.

Avoiding hard work required discipline and a complete awareness of his surroundings, as well as an intuitive sense of when to be in the wrong place when extra time or effort was demanded. Like golf or fly-fishing, it was a lifelong pursuit that he knew he might never perfect but he could certainly continue to improve. When his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Ardith, suggested bitterly he consider writing a pamphlet on the techniques he employed to maintain his lifestyle, Farkus told her it would be too much work.

Before everyone had been laid off from the natural-gas pipeline company, he’d been supremely skillful at the art of slipping into the men’s room or taking a break moments before the shift supervisor entered the shop to outline new assignments or ask for volunteers for a big new job. When dirty and grueling tasks were demanded, like sandblasting old valves or replacing blown motors in pump units, Farkus expertly anticipated when the jobs would have to take place, due to his intimate knowledge of the industry and workplace, and would schedule a dentist appointment or mandatory drug test for that day.

It was easier to game the system in his new job working for the county. Bureaucracy was made for shirking, and he felt kind of stupid it had taken so many years to settle into his true calling. Today, for example, he’d gotten a tip that all the bus drivers would have to go into the garage and assist a contract cleaning crew on a top-to-bottom scrubbing of the vehicles. Which is why he’d taken a personal day to go over the mountains to try to spot-weld his marriage back together instead.

Dave Farkus always figured there would be high-intensity brown-noses who would take on the tough jobs and want to be heroes. He let them. Part of his philosophy was that it was as important to have slackers as to have go-getters within every work crew. For balance.

Additionally, in the thirty years since he’d graduated from high school (barely), he’d made it a point to avoid anything to do with horses, like ranch work. Horses were unpredictable, prone to break down, and involved after-hours maintenance. So after three hours of riding up into the timber nose-to-tail with the four men and their horses, he said, “So, if we find whatever it is you’re looking for, will you let me go home?”

Which made the red-haired rider in black, named M. Whitney Parnell, according to the nametag on his rifle scabbard, snort and exchange looks with Smith. Farkus gathered from observation that Parnell was in charge of the whole operation. Smith, and the two camo-clad men, the tall thin one with the nose named Campbell and the blond man named Capellen, were subservient to Parnell.

Parnell rode out ahead, followed by Smith. It was necessary to ride single-file because the trail was narrow and trees hemmed in both sides. Farkus rode a fat sorrel horse in the middle. Behind him were Campbell, Capellen, and the two packhorses.

“You see,” Farkus explained, “I’m just thinking my role here is to help you out because I know these mountains and you don’t, but if in the end you’re not going to let me go, well, you know what I’m saying. Where’s my motivation, you know?”

This time, Smith snorted derisively and touched the butt of his rifle. “Here’s your motivation.”

Farkus craned around in his saddle to see if the riders behind him were more sympathetic. Campbell simply glared at him, his face a mask of contempt. Capellen, though, looked miserable. His face was bone-china white and his eyes were rimmed with red. He clutched the saddle horn with both hands as if to remain mounted.

“Capellen looks bad,” Farkus said.

“He’s just fine,” Campbell said through gritted teeth. “Turn around.”

“He looks sick or injured to me,” Farkus said. It was obvious Campbell and Capellen stuck together, just as Parnell and Smith were a team. What had brought them all together besides McCue? he wondered.

“Besides,” Farkus said, turning back around, “shouldn’t you let me know what we’re after? I can’t help guide if I don’t know what we’re hunting for.”

What Farkus didn’t tell them was that he had no idea where they were.

Parnell said, “We’ll tell you what you need to know when you need to know it and not before. I should have been more explicit and said if you came with us that you’d need to keep your mouth shut and stay out of the way. I didn’t figure it was necessary at the time because we have the guns and gear and all you’ve got is that stupid expression on your face. I guess I thought the additional conditions would be obvious and implied.”

Farkus grunted. Said, “You can’t blame a guy for wondering about his fate.”

“Dave,” Parnell said, not even turning in the saddle, “you’re a loser from Bumfuck, Wyoming. You have no fate. So shut up.”

“Yeah,” Smith echoed. “Shut up, Dave.”

From behind him, Campbell said, “If you keep yapping, I’m going to put a bullet into your head.”

Farkus looked over his shoulder, grinning uncomfortably, hoping for a hint that Campbell was kidding, that he was chiding him with insults the way men do with each other.

Instead, Campbell reached down and patted the butt of his AR-15 and mouthed, “Bang.”

They continued climbing. Farkus recognized a couple of the mountain parks from previous elk hunts, but he knew if they kept riding west, he’d soon run out of country with which he was familiar. The fact was that Farkus had always hunted with the same philosophy he used at work. He was happy to let his buddies pore over maps and determine where they’d hunt and develop the strategy for the day. Farkus would just go along. He’d never actually guided hunters in these mountains, as he’d let on earlier. Rather, he’d always volunteered to be the man behind the log looking out on a meadow while his buddies walked the timber to spook out the animals. Just as he’d always take on the role of holding the leg of the elk that was being field-dressed so he wouldn’t have to get down into the gore.

He didn’t dare let on that while he’d found Cottonwood Creek once, he’d thought it was Elkhair Creek and his buddies had come and found him before he spent the night lost. Or that the location of Bandit Creek was a complete mystery to him.

And at the clipped pace they were riding, they’d be near the summit by nightfall. He’d never been to the summit of the mountains before. His butt hurt and his knees ached from bending them unnaturally around the belly of his sorrel so his boots would fit into the stirrups. He was hungry and the beer buzz he had going earlier was being replaced by a dull headache. The fat sorrel labored more than the other horses, probably the reason they’d held her in reserve.

The slow realization came over him that he’d likely not see his pickup or Ardith or the Dixon Club or another twelve-pack of Keystone Light ever again. This foray into the Sierra Madre might cost him everything.

Farkus looked furtively over his shoulder, making it a point not to establish eye contact with Campbell. Capellen was still with them, but had drifted farther back. Capellen was leaning forward in his saddle with his head down and looked to be in great pain. As Farkus watched, Capellen listed to the side and vomited up a thin yellow-green stream into the high grass.

“Excuse me,” Farkus said, trying to get Parnell’s attention.

“Shut up, Dave,” Smith and Capellen said in unison from in front and in back of him.

The men didn’t talk, except to make random observations that were answered by grunts from the others.

“It’s cooling down a little,” said Capellen.

Campbell said, “This is a live-game trail, judging by the fresh deer scat.”

“That’s elk,” Farkus corrected, surprised the man hadn’t ever seen elk shit before. “The pellets are twice the size of deer.”

“Oh.”

Smith walked his horse out of the line and let everyone pass him. “Gotta piss,” he said. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up.”

Farkus used the opportunity of the temporary opening ahead of him to nudge his horse and catch up with Parnell and get the man’s attention without including any of the others.

“Let me get this straight,” Farkus said. “You guys aren’t with the sheriff’s team that came up here from the other side a few days ago and you’re not with the state cops.”

“Correct.”

“Feds?”

“Not hardly.”

“You’re operating on your own, then?”

“Correct.”

“So who are you with?” Farkus asked. “Who is McCue? Does this have to do with what that game warden said happened to him? I was the last one to see him before he went up. Did you know that? I was fishing down on the creek way over on the other side when I seen the game warden saddling up. I told him my theory. Do you want to hear it?”

Parnell said, “You’re talking too much.”

“Ever hear of a Wendigo?”

“Of course,” Parnell said. “I’m from the UP.”

“The Union Pacific?”

From behind him, Campbell drew his handgun and jacked a cartridge into the chamber and barked, “Shut the fuck up, Dave.”

Farkus shut up. Pork-bellied cumulus clouds floated across the sky like foam bobbing on the surface of a river. When they crossed the sun and doused it, the temperature cooled instantaneously and he shivered. The air and atmosphere were both thin at this altitude, and temperature fluctuations were almost comically extreme.

Then he realized what was wrong with Capellen. “He’s got altitude sickness. I recognize it. It always happens above eight thousand feet. I helped guide a couple of hunters from Florida a few years back and one of them got it bad and spent the entire week in his tent. It hits guys from flatland states like Michigan.”

“What can be done for it?” Smith asked Farkus.

“Keep him drinking water, for one thing. But really the only thing that will cure him is to get off the mountain. I’d be happy to ride with him back to camp-”

“Nice try.”

Parnell said, “We aren’t leaving him, and we aren’t going back.”

So Capellen rode in agony, moaning, complaining that he had the worst headache he’d ever had in his life and that he was so dizzy they might have to tie him to his saddle to keep him from falling off.

Farkus said, “I’m not gonna ask whether you’re after the woman that game warden described or the girl runner if that’s really her, or the Grim Brothers themselves. I’m not gonna ask that.”

Parnell nodded. Good.

“And I’m not gonna ask who you work for or why you aren’t in contact with the locals in this area. I’m not going to ask you where you’re from in Michigan or why you came this far.”

“Shut the fuck up, Dave,” Campbell growled from behind him. He sounded very annoyed again, Farkus thought.

“All I’m gonna ask,” Farkus said, pushing, “is if you’re gonna let me go after all of this is over.”

Parnell shrugged, said, “Probably not.”

Farkus felt the blood drain out of his head and pool like dirty sludge in his gut.

From what Farkus could observe without asking, the expedition was heavily armed and expensively geared up. He counted three AR-15s Winchester and a heavy sniper’s rifle and scope probably chambered in.308 Magnum. All of the riders packed at least one semiauto in a holster, and judging by the bulges at their ankles above their boot tops, they likely had additional pistols. And that’s just what he could see.

He had no idea how much additional weaponry they had in the heavy panniers carried by the packhorses. He’d seen plenty of electronic equipment when he’d stumbled into the camp, but it had all been packed away out of his sight. What he’d recognized, though, were radios, GPS devices, sat phones, range finders. Other pieces were unfamiliar to him, but they looked like tracking devices of some sort.

Tracking what? he wondered.

They rode through a gnarled stand of knotty pine. The trees were twisted and beautifully grotesque with football-sized growth tumors bulging out from the trunks and branches. It was as if they’d left the forest and entered some kind of primeval funhouse, and Farkus said, “Do you realize what this wood is worth if we took it back and sold it? I know furniture makers who’d pay a fortune for this stuff.” Then, remembering that he’d claimed knowledge of the area, he said,

“Every time I come here, I try to figure out how to get a vehicle into the area to gather up some of this knotty pine. But as you can see, there aren’t any roads.”

He got silence in response, except for the now-inevitable, Shut up, Dave. He was grateful no one challenged him.

They cleared the knotty pine stand and rode into a mountain park where the trees opened up to the now-leaden sky. Farkus noted how overcast it had become, like the clouds that were previously bouncing across the sky had hit a barrier and gathered up, blocking out the blue, like tumbleweeds stacked against a barbed wire fence.

Parnell pulled up and climbed down from his horse, looking up at the sky as if it were sending him a message. Smith said to Parnell, “Think we’ll get a reading yet?”

“That’s what I want to find out.”

Parnell let his reins drop and his horse stepped to the side of the trail and began grazing, clipping long bunches of tall grass with its sharp yellow teeth and munching loudly enough to cue Farkus’s horse to do the same. When the fat horse bent her head down, she nearly pulled Farkus out of his saddle because he’d been holding the reins too tightly.

Recovering his balance, he said to Parnell as the man walked past, “I think I’ll stretch my legs, too.”

“Stay mounted,” Parnell said, flicking his sharp, dark eyes at Farkus.

Farkus sighed and stayed in the saddle. He took his boots out of the stirrups, though, and flexed his legs. God, his knees hurt.

Parnell walked back to his horse after digging through the panniers in back. He carried an electronic instrument of some kind about the size and thickness of a hardback book. Farkus could see several lit-up digital windows on the instrument as well as a screen that glowed like a GPS display. Good, he thought. Parnell knows exactly where they were.

Parnell mounted up, holding the panel between his arm and his tactical vest. He unfolded a stubby antenna from the unit and adjusted a dial. To Smith and the others, he said, “I’ve got a faint signal. We’re headed the right direction.”

From in back of Farkus, Campbell said, “Any idea how far?”

Parnell adjusted the metal knob. “Nearly ten miles. Over the top and down the other side of the mountain.”

“Where we thought they’d be,” Smith said, nodding.

Farkus moaned. “Ten more miles? On horseback?”

“Shut up, Dave,” Smith said casually.

Even with the overcast, Farkus could tell there was only an hour of daylight left, at most. He said, “Don’t tell me we’re gonna keep riding in the dark? I’m tired, hungry, and I’ve got a little hangover. I could use a rest.”

It happened quickly behind Farkus, the sound of a swift boot kick into the flanks of a horse and the squeak of leather and thumping of hooves. Suddenly, Campbell was right beside him, their outside legs touching. Campbell had his sidearm out, a deadly-looking two-tone semiauto with a gaping muzzle that he pressed against Farkus’s cheekbone.

“Do you know what this is?” Campbell hissed. Farkus didn’t move his head-he couldn’t-but he swung his eyes over. Campbell was squinting and the skin on his face was pulled tight. “This is a Sig Sauer P239 SAS Gen 2 chambered in.357SIG. I’ve been wondering what it would do to a man’s head from an inch away. Do you want me to find out?”

Farkus knew he shouldn’t say anything, but he couldn’t help himself. “No, please.”

Smith had turned in his saddle and was watching them now with a smirk on his face. “I was kind of wondering that myself.”

“Please, no,” Farkus said, his voice cracking. “Put the gun away. You see, I’ve always been a talker. I’m sorry. I’ll shut up. I’ll start now.” To himself, Farkus said, “Shut up, Dave.”

Campbell’s face twitched. “What’s that smell?”

Farkus felt hot tears in his eyes from fear and shame. He said, “I’ve ruined the saddle.”

Campbell leaned away and lowered the pistol. Farkus looked down as well. A wet stain blotted through the denim of his crotch. Dry leather on the pommel soaked it in, turning it dark.

To Parnell, Campbell said, “This guy is becoming a liability.”

Parnell’s dead-eye silence didn’t reveal a thing about what he was thinking. But what he didn’t do, Farkus noted, was disagree with Campbell.

Campbell said, “Dave, I’m starting to think you’re just a bullshitter, because all I’ve heard out of your pie-hole is bullshit. And don’t think I didn’t notice how you caught yourself back there when we rode through that knotty pine. You’d never been there in your life, have you? I’m thinking you don’t know where the hell you are right now and I don’t see how the hell you’re going to help us.”

A minute went by. Toward the end of it, Campbell raised the Sig Sauer to eye level.

Despite the cold feeling of dread that coursed through him, Farkus said, “That’s where you’re wrong. Hell, I’ve not only hunted up here, I used to move cows from the mountains down to pasture on the other side.”

Campbell shook his head, not buying. Then he gestured to the horizon, toward the highest point. “What’s the name of that peak?”

To Parnell, Campbell said, “Check his answer against your map, and we’ll see if he’s lying.”

Farkus pointed, stalling for time, “That one? That one there?” He searched his memory, trying to recall conversations from his buddies around the campfire talking about where they’d been that day. Years of conversations to sort through. He wished he’d paid more attention.

His mouth was dry. He could recall his friend Jay telling a story about wounding a young bull elk and tracking it in the snow all the way to.

“Fletcher Peak,” he said.

Parnell studied his map. While he did, Farkus tried to think of how he could talk his way out of this. Could he say, Well, that’s what we always called it.

But Parnell said, “Fletcher Peak. Ten thousand, eight hundred feet.”

Farkus tried not to close his eyes as joy replaced dread.

Campbell lowered the weapon.

And Farkus thought, I wish I knew where the hell we are.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 2