A brief excerpt from an as yet unpublished novel:
“What the fuck is going on? I thought I told you
guys to bring the ATVs around.” Vance was angry, but beneath that there was a
rising unease. Something was going terribly wrong and he hoped that his
suspicions would not be confirmed.
Tankersley, the mechanics and
electronics troubleshooter he’d brought along was working at one of the
vehicles with socket wrenches and screwdrivers. He had removed the cowling on
the moter, his hands covered in oil; the man smelled of gasoline. The short,
stocky mechanic was leaning over that engine, peering intently at the partially
exposed assembly. Rubbing his fingers together, he then opened his hand and
seemed to offer it, palm up, to his employer.
“Metal filings,” he said. “Somebody
put some high quality filings in the gas tank—shit—probably even in the oil
reservoir.”
Vance swept a hand through his wild
mane of hair. “What’s that mean? Can’t you clean it out? We need to get these
vehicles started.” The camp was as cold as the forest around them, and from
time to time every man looked up into the trees each time they heard a limb
snap or a trunk creak beneath the weight of tons of ice.
“Short answer: no,” Tankersly
admitted. “This shit is all in the engine. It’s in the fuel lines. It’s really,
really hard stuff. Went through the whole engine and pretty much totally fucked
it up. I’d need parts we don’t have. We’ll have to hike out or have one of your
choppers bring us the parts we need.” He huffed steam into the air. “Fuck. Just
have them bring us a couple of engines. It’s that bad.”
“We need these ATVs,” Holcomb
insisted. “I need you to get these damned things running. We’ve got people out
there.” He pointed into the frozen, creaking iced forest that loomed around
them and threatened to fall over and bury them all.
“Look, Mr. Holcomb. This ain’t some
Star Trek show and I’m not Montgomery Scott. I cannot fix these engines.” He
held up his fingers again and wriggled them at Vance. “This metal is super-hard
steel. It went through the engine a few times and ruined the whole damned
thing. If gas or oil passed through it, it’s ruined. I don’t know what else to
tell you.”
Holcomb put his hands on his hips
and stood there, eyes closed, in thought, feeling the stress. “Fuck it, then,”
he said. Tankersly and the others within hearing were surprised. They were not
accustomed to hearing the man curse like that. “We’ll have to go out on foot.
Those folk are out there somewhere and if we don’t find them...well...I don’t
want to think about it.”
Well,
you have some drama for your goddamned movie, Tankersly thought. But he
kept those thoughts to himself. He didn’t know what kind of video was being
shot, especially since Holcomb’s cameraman was among the missing. “I’m sorry,
sir. I don’t know what else to tell you. Just use your satellite phone and get
in touch with someone. Even if the helicopters can’t make it in here in this
weather, someone can carry in what we need to get these four-wheelers up and
running.”
Holcomb decided to keep to himself
the other bit of news. The satellite phones were gone, too. He’d found one of
them, in the conference tent, but it had been stomped to pieces, the battery
pulled out and taken. His worst fear was that they had a saboteur within the
camp, but he couldn’t be certain of that and he didn’t want to start the paranoid
panic such an accusation would bring. Worst case, his crew would be fighting
among themselves within minutes of that news. Dropping his chin to his chest,
he sighed.
“Okay,” he conceded. “We’ll have to
send out a couple of search parties. We’ll just do it all on foot. Heck. Maybe
it’ll turn out to be more efficient this way.”
He walked back to the conference
tent, noticing that the intensity of the sleet had lessened, but that there
seemed to be more rain misting down. As he went into the tent he glanced at the
thermometer they’d affixed to the door. It was still four degrees below
freezing. He could only hope that the temperature would start rising soon. If
not, the woods were going to start tumbling down all around them, and then
movement would be a relentless slog over and under and through downed trees,
limbs, and brush. Holcomb had experienced that kind of travel in the past, and
it was hard work.
He saw that Friday was sitting at
the map table. His assistant looked up at him as he entered the tent. It was
cold in there—only a couple of degrees warmer than it was outside. The place
was just too big for a little body heat to have any influence. “Where are the
ATVs?” he asked.
“They’ve been wrecked,” Holcomb
told him.
“Wrecked? What are you talking
about?” The other man stood, his knuckles holding down the topo map he’d been
examining.
“Somebody poured metal filings in
the engine. Probably in the gas and in the oil.”
“Why would somebody do that?” There
was genuine confusion on Friday’s face.
Holcomb shrugged, but actually he
figured he knew exactly what was going on, so he voiced that opinion. “I think
someone—several people, likely—have come in here to monkey wrench the
operation.”
Friday thought about it for a
moment. “You think Smoak did it?”
There was that shrug again. “I
doubt it.” He considered the possibility. “It’s not impossible. He’s a devious
crazy guy. But I don’t think so.”
“Then who would do that?” Friday
looked at the map and pressed down the curling edges of the green map with its
shaded contours.
“Well...this area has some really
committed green monkey wrenchers. What the politicians like to refer to as our
domestic terrorist threat.” Holcomb chuckled. “I don’t think they normally
qualify as terrorists, but they do know how to move in a screw up anything they
see as an industrial operation. Mining. Timber. Even real estate development.”
Sitting back down, Friday relaxed
and slumped back in his chair. His hands found the map again and he pushed down
the corners which were attempting to curl up into the moist air. “But why would
they screw with us? We’re not here to do anything like that.”
Holcomb smiled and laughed lightly
again. “Yeah, I know that and you know that. But they don’t. Think about it—we
must look pretty damned suspicious to anyone who thinks it’s there job to
safeguard the wild places. We’ve been out here raising Hell, making noise,
driving gas engine ATVs all over the place. To them, it looks like we’re here
to fuck the place up.”
“Well...we were fucking the place
up. Not in the way they think, but we’ve made quite the nuisances of ourselves.
Especially Smoak’s crew. I even heard those dog packs of his a few times
myself. And he’s what...five or six miles northwest of us?”
Vance nodded. “Yeah. About that
distance.”
“So you think someone just crept
into the camp and did a number on us in the night?”
“Basically, yes. Unless they have
someone here with us. That’s possible, I guess. We have about two dozen men
working here. I don’t know them. You don’t know them all, either. Any one of
them could be a member of a monkey wrenching gang.”
“Any suspicions?” Friday asked. His
mind was running through the names and faces of the men with whom he’d been
introduced.
“No.” Holcomb’s gaze suddenly
became intense. “And I don’t want you getting paranoid trying to figure it out.
It’s just as likely as to have been an outside saboteur. I’d almost bet on it,
the more that I think about it.”
“Then how did they get in here and
find us?”
Vance finally walked to the table
and sat down opposite Friday. His fingers found one of the topo maps and he
drew it to him, looking down at the emblems representing hills and canyons,
waterfalls and rivers. Blue lines for creeks and thick brown marks to indicate
steep slopes. “I was thinking about that,” he said. “We put in for leases up
here, you know. Paid out good money for mineral and timber rights.” Holcomb
sighed. “My bet is that someone who had something to do with issuing those
leases basically ratted us out to the wrong bunch.
Friday sat forward, inclining toward
his employer, his head down, chin tucked. “Then they’d know about Smoak, too.”
“Of course.”
“If that’s the case, then he’s
probably in the same shape we’re in.” His eyebrows arched. “If Smoak’s camp is
as fucked as ours, then we can surmise that he’s as much a victim as we are.”
“I’d bet good money that’s the
case,” Holcomb said. “But the only way to find out now is to hike over there
and take a look.” He spread his arms. “And in this weather, I don’t know how
easy that will be. But I’ll send some guys over in that direction.”
“Think that’s safe?”
Outside, a slight breeze blew, and
that was followed by the snapping of a dozen limbs on as many trees and the
forest was suddenly alive with the roar of tumbling wood and shattering ice.
“No, I don’t think it’s especially
safe,” Holcomb acknowledged. “But what I do know is that we have a commitment
to find those lost people. And if we can talk to Smoak’s bunch and take a look
around we’ll have a better idea of whom to blame.”
Standing, Friday reached up and punched
the roof of the tent to remove the obvious accumulation of ice there. It
slithered across the nylon as it slid off and hit the ground with a slight
cracking noise. “Well, then. Let’s get to it.”
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