The Alberta Connection Read online

  “There are a couple wolves down the trail, near a cabin, making an awful lot of noise. Like they were arguing about something. I have seen flashes of fur, but the trees are just too heavy to see what they are upset about.”

  Ryce motioned to Michael to join the group and then pulled a spotter scope from his pack.

  “Sure looks like wolves, but I can’t see anything else there. Let’s get a little closer to the cabin, but spread out. And, remember, wolves are an endangered species. I do not want to have to fill out a casualty report for a wolf unless it was self defense.”

  He pointed at Michael. “You and I will take the left side of the trail, O2 and Nick can have the right side. Stay about one hundred feet apart.”

  Ryce swung into the tress on the left of the trail, and started working toward the cabin. Occasionally, he heard growling that sounded like a very big dog. Well, isn’t a wolf a very big dog?

  The team was less than one hundred yards from the cabin when one of the wolves smelled them. Both wolves darted up the trail, but stopped to observe if they were being pursued. When they realized Ryce had no interest in them, one sat down near the edge of the trail, and began to growl. Ryce pointed at Nick.

  “You win the privilege of keeping an eye on those two. I know they are a protected species, but you have my permission to send them to doggie heaven if they look like they want a piece of my butt.”

  O2 chuckled. “Yeh, I think you have that butt reserved for something that doesn’t look like any wolf I have ever seen.”

  As Ryce got closer to the cabin, he saw blood, body parts, and clothing spread out over a one hundred foot area in front of the cabin. There was not much left to collect for the forensic technicians. Ryce pulled a heavy-duty garbage bag from his pack, and several pairs of nytril gloves. He deposited the trash bag and gloves near one of the larger body pieces, and pointed in the direction of Michael.

  “If you can keep from tossing your lunch, put the big pieces in the trash bag. We’ll hang it high in a tree to keep the animals out of it until the park rangers can get here.”

  Nick walked over and pulled on a pair of gloves. “The wolves have decided to dine somewhere else.”

  With four people picking up body parts, the sight was clean in fifteen minutes. Ryce checked the cabin, but found nothing to indicate who had been killed. Were the body parts from a man or a woman? Two wolves would not usually take down a man, unless the man was injured, and unable to ward off the attackers. Ryce looked around.

  “We need to go over this place with a fine toothed comb. None of the bits of clothing indicated if the body was male or female. See if you can find anything that tells us something about the dead body.”

  Ryce returned to the cabin. In the corner, hidden partially under the slats of the bed, he found what appeared to be a single bloody running shoe. It had about four inches of jagged bone sticking out where the leg was normally located. Ryce picked up the shoe, carried it outside, and held it up for O2 to see.

  “This shoe has a lot of blood on it, so it’s hard to determine if the foot is female or male. I do think, however, it is either a large female or a really small male foot.”

  Michael walked around the corner of the cabin carrying the mate to the running shoe in Ryce’s hand.

  “These are lady’s running shoes. My wife has the same brand.”

  When no more body parts were discovered in the next hour, Ryce checked the wood stove. Someone was planning to use the stove. Kindling had been properly laid in the firebox. Ryce pulled a match from his pocket, and started a fire.

  “If you have anything to eat besides MREs, I have a couple pans in my pack. We can sleep here, with the doors closed. I don’t think wolves can open locked doors.”

  Ryce reached for the microphone on his radio.

  “Tanya base, this is Ryce. We found something at about mile nineteen. We think it is a human body in hundreds of pieces. A couple wolves chewed it up. We collected the pieces in a heavy-duty trash bag. We’ll stay here for the night.”

  John’s voice was heard on the radio. “How many GPS locators do you have?”

  O2 chuckled and grabbed the microphone. “John, you don’t need to worry. We’ll put one locator on the bag, not one locator for each body part.”

  Chapter 20

  At midnight, Ryce heard the wolves growling again. He shook O2 awake and then pulled his Rossi and a flashlight from his pack.

  “Something is bothering those wolves again.”

  O2 reached in his pack and pulled out a flashlight.

  “They sure don’t sound happy.”

  Ryce carefully opened the cabin door. There was just enough moonlight to see the outlines of the trees. Ryce looked in the direction of the noise, cocked his .357, and stepped off the porch.

  The growling was coming from two wolves circling an outhouse more than three hundred feet from the cabin. Ryce looked over at O2 and chuckled.

  “I didn’t see the outhouse when we arrived at the cabin. I have been using the trees.”

  Ryce heard O2 snort in disgust. “I have, too.”

  When Ryce turned on his flashlight, the wolves turned, growled, and bounded off into the trees.

  Ryce carefully approached the outhouse, and pulled open the door. He was astounded to find a woman huddled on the two-seater bench. She was covered in blood, her hands were tied behind her back, and a rag had been jammed into her mouth. Ryce turned and shouted to Nick to get the first aid kits out of the packs.

  The woman appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties. Her left arm was bandaged with a rag above the elbow, she was missing both shoes, her feet were bloody, and there were claw or teeth marks down both legs.

  As soon as Ryce removed the gag, she forced a feeble smile. “Thank you.”

  Ryce carried her to the cabin, placed her on the table, and handed her a canteen. As she drank furiously, O2 began cleaning the blood off her legs and feet. When Ryce pulled an MRE from his pack and activated it, she grabbed the heated package from Ryce’s hand, and began eating. Between bites, she looked around the room.

  “You don’t look like the average run-of-the-mill hikers. You look like either SEALs or Rangers. My brother was a Ranger. My name is Officer Brenda Delany. I’m with the Browning Police Department.”

  Ryce smiled. “We have been looking for you. I am Ryce Dalton, with the Joint Border Task Force. My friend who just cleaned your wounds is Oliver Pendergast, but you can call him O2. And you’re right. He’s a SEAL and I am a Ranger. The other two are SEALs, so I am feeling a little outnumbered.”

  Ryce restarted the wood stove to heat up some water. As they waited for the water to boil, Brenda started to explain how she had gotten to the lake.

  Two men who were being booked overpowered the booking officer, took her weapon, and ran toward the station house exit. Several stolen laptops being tagged for evidence had been placed on a desk near the door. One of the men grabbed three of the laptops, and the two ran out the door to a waiting vehicle.

  Brenda and her partner, Francine Graves, had just gotten off shift and were walking to their cars. When they realized what the commotion was about, they jumped into Brenda’s car.

  The two officers had followed the vehicle to the lake, where the three male occupants held them at gunpoint while Brenda’s car was set on fire. After burning Brenda’s car, the three men burned their own vehicle. They then tied-up Brenda and Francine with some parachute cord they found in Brenda’s vehicle, and began hiking up the trail.

  Brenda paused her story long enough to ask if Ryce had another MRE.

  “I have been here for three days without food. The three men were not any more prepared than Francine and I. They did not have any food, no sleeping bags, and not even any way to light a fire. They were really upset when they didn’t find anything to eat or any matches.

  “They untied us for a few minutes to use the outhouse. That was when Francine pulled her hideout. She hit two of the men, and got herself shot to
hell for her efforts. They took our service weapons at the lake, but missed her hideout.

  “When they untied me, they took my shoes. I tried to run, but only got to the stream before my feet were too bloody to walk. Those rocks are sharp.

  “Before they left, they tied my hands behind my back with my own damned parachute cord, stuffed part of Francine’s bloody shirt in my mouth, and dumped me in the outhouse.”

  Brenda took a long drink from Ryce’s canteen. “Do you have any way to notify the Browning PD that I am still alive? And that Francine is dead?”

  Ryce checked his cell phone. It was 2:00 AM. He motioned to O2, who placed his radio on the table and pressed the transmit button.

  “Tanya base, this is O2. I know this is early in the morning, but we have successfully retrieved one of the Browning PD officers, Brenda Delany. When it gets light out, call Browning and let them know she is OK. A few scratches and bruises, and a through-and-through right above her left elbow, but in generally OK condition. Who’s manning the radio?”

  The voice that responded was John’s. “O2 and Ryce, this is John. Marge, Tanya, and Ramona could not sleep, so they are here with me. How are you going to get Brenda out of those mountains?”

  Ryce looked over at O2, and then pressed the transmit button. “We will let you know as soon as we get some rest. Ryce and O2 out.”

  Ryce turned to Brenda. “Do you know how effective Francine was? How many shots did she get off?”

  Brenda thought for a moment. “She had an Airweight five shot .357, and I heard all five shots. I think she winged one of the men, and maybe killed one. I heard two voices arguing about leaving someone named Max, and one of the voices said he was only scratched.”

  Ryce looked over at O2. “OK, we set a double watch for the rest of the night. One in here and the other a couple hundred yards out in the trees, with night vision. Kill all the lights in the cabin and no fire.”

  He looked over at Brenda. “I hope you don’t mind sleeping in a guy’s sleeping bag.”

  Ryce pulled his team back to the cabin at first light. After he assigned Nick to watch Brenda, Ryce, Michael, and O2 began a circular search pattern around the cabin.

  Approximately five hundred feet upstream from the cabin, Michael found the lower half of an arm dangling from a pile of rocks. There were drag marks and a blood trail from the cabin to the rocks. Ryce pulled several rocks off the pile and discovered the body of a man. He had been shot four times in the chest. Ryce could cover the entry points with one hand. Francine knew what she was doing with her Airweight.

  The two survivors had apparently dragged the body from the cabin and covered it with rocks to keep the wolves away, but failed to cover the left arm. It was still partially attached slightly above the elbow. Ryce pulled out his cell phone, took several pictures of the body, and checked for identification. If this was Max, he was no longer carrying a wallet. Ryce placed a GPS tracker in the rocks, re-covered the body, and walked back to the cabin.

  O2 was changing the bandages on Brenda’s feet. He looked up.

  “It’s a good thing you brought the three-man first aid kits. I have emptied two of them getting her feet taken care of.”

  As soon as O2 completed his tasks, Brenda asked if someone could carry her to the outhouse. “I was stuck in that damned smelly thing for more than a day with my hands tied behind my back.”

  During their MRE breakfast, Ryce radioed Tanya base. Brenda had been able to walk less than two steps before she collapsed. She was certainly not going to walk out of the mountains. Did John or Dexter have any ideas for transporting Brenda to civilization?

  The radio went silent for several minutes, and then Dexter was heard.

  “I just talked to one of the RCMP officers here who has hiked that trail several times. He thinks you are at least five miles from anywhere a helicopter can land and perhaps a little less than ten miles from the border. That’s still two miles from our observation post. By the way, no one has been seen at the post.

  “I don’t think we can get a recovery team in from our side for at least a day.”

  O2 looked over at Ryce. “Brenda can’t wait a day. The cuts on her feet are already starting to get infected. And the bullet wound in her arm is looking really bad. She hasn’t lost a lot of blood, but we need her out of here now.”

  Ryce frowned and then picked up the microphone. “This is Ryce. O2 just informed me that we need to get Brenda out of here and to an emergency room now. We can’t land a helicopter around here, but they can drop a sky hook through the trees. I know the guard unit in Great Falls has a couple helos that are outfitted for air Evac. Someone needs to make some calls.”

  Ryce placed the microphone back on the table. Brenda looked over at Ryce and smiled.

  “Am I really that bad?”

  O2 chuckled. “Not nearly, but they will move a lot faster if they think you are going to die in the next five minutes. I want to make sure you get out of here in one piece. The three-man kit has some battlefield meds, and I think we caught everything before it got too bad.”

  Ryce looked over at Nick. “I am going to fire up the stove so we can boil some water. Take Michael, one of the walkie-talkies, and park a few hundred yards up the trail. If you see anyone coming down the trail, pull their plug.”

  Within a half hour, the radio crackled. “Ryce, this is Ramona. John found someone in Great Falls who is coordinating an air Evac of Brenda. The best guess on time is four to five hours to your location. Find a wide spot in the tress, and start a tracker beacon. And Tanya says to keep safe.”

  O2 pulled a small black box from his pack, checked to insure the red LED was blinking and walked out of the cabin.

  As soon as water was bubbling on the stove, Ryce checked his cell phone. It was 9:00 AM. If everything went off without a hitch, Brenda could be on her way to the hospital by 1:00 PM. Did anyone bring a deck of cards?

  At 12:30 PM, the radio crackled. “Tanya base, this is Great Falls Evac One. Please let your people know we have the beacon on the screen. ETA is ten minutes.”

  Ryce smiled when he heard Tanya’s voice. “Evac One, they are on the channel, but I will let them know. Ryce, honey, your taxi is on the way.”

  O2 had started to pick Brenda up to carry her to the beacon when he heard Tanya.

  He carefully placed Brenda back on the bed, looked at Ryce, and said, “Ryce, honey, your taxi is on the way. You’d better pray the radio is not being recorded. That last bit will go viral on the Internet.”

  O2 was still laughing when he carried Brenda from the cabin.

  As Ryce followed O2 to the pick-up point, he heard a voice on the radio.

  “Did she say Ryce? As in Ryce Dalton? If it is you, this is Mitch Taylor. I was one of your medics in Afghanistan. I graduated from the Rangers and went back to med school. They let me actually become a doctor. Then I joined the National Guard. I am on the local trauma team, playing guard doctor when I am not working at the local hospital.”

  Ryce grabbed the microphone. “Mitch, it is nice to hear your voice. Do you have any spare MREs on that bird you can drop down to us? We have had an extra hungry mouth to feed.”

  A few moments later, Mitch was on the radio. “I will put some on the sky hook when we send it down.”

  Ryce had heard the helicopter almost thirty minutes before it was overhead. A cable with a round platform attached descended through the trees. Ryce untied a trash bag, Brenda was placed on the platform and secured with web belts, and at 1:00 PM, the platform was winched up to the helicopter.

  Ryce heard Mitch’s voice once again. “Captain Dalton, we have the package, and we will take very good care of her.”

  Chapter 21

  Ryce dumped the MREs onto the cabin table and counted them. There were forty. The helo crew had likely cleaned out all of the daypacks on the chopper. Ryce smiled. He had planned for a week on the trail. Now he had an extra three days. He said a silent prayer he would not need the extra MREs.

 
Ryce radioed Nick and Michael to return to the cabin. It was time for a planning session. He checked the pot he was heating water in on the stove. It needed to be filled.

  Ryce was dumping the contents of a cocoa packet into his cup when Michael walked up. “Do you have some coffee in that bag of tricks? The last five MREs I opened had Gatorade.”

  Ryce reached into his pack, and pulled out a baggie filled with single serve coffee packets. “You’ll have to scrounge up your own cream and sugar.”

  When Ryce was satisfied the cocoa was sufficiently stirred, he asked O2, Michael, and Nick to follow him to the porch of the cabin.

  “We have fulfilled the request from Browning PD to find their officers. It is not our responsibility to chase the bastards down that killed Francine. However, the campground with Jeff and Dave is twenty miles back down that-a-way, and Dexter’s observation post is twelve miles up that-a-way. It’s your choice. We can hike twenty miles to the lake, or twelve miles to Dexter’s observation post. I think Dexter might give us a ride back to Great Falls.”

  Ryce took a long sip of cocoa. “I don’t want to influence your decision, but I vote for the short hike.”

  O2 looked over at Nick and Michael. “I think I can speak for my fellow SEALs when I vote for a run for the border.”

  Ryce walked back into the cabin, and picked the microphone off the table. “Tanya base, this is Ryce. Brenda is on her way out of the mountains on the Evac chopper, and we have just solved the problem of how we are getting out of here ourselves. It’s a twenty mile hike back to the lake, but Dexter has his people watching the trail only twelve miles from here. We think we’ll hike to the border and let Dexter give us a ride back to Great Falls.

  “Jeff or Dave, if you are listening, wrap up the camp and take the Suburban, camp trailer, and utility van back to Great Falls. Someone at Tanya base can reserve a room and a rental car for you and Dave. I know you haven’t been swimming in the lake, so a shower might be nice.