The Alberta Connection

The Alberta Connection

By R. Clint Peters

All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be produced, stored in a retrieval system in any form or by any
means without the prior written permission of the author.

All characters in this book are fictitious,
and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is
coincidental.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Ryce Dalton gazed through his spotting scope
for perhaps the tenth time in the hour. A small cabin stood
directly in front of him. A woodshed to the right of the cabin
almost overflowed with cut and split firewood. A swiftly flowing
stream gurgled in front of the cabin. Far to his right, Ryce could
see flashes of light glinting off a medium-sized, glacier-fed lake.
Occasionally, between the trees, patches of the dirt road leading
to the lake could be seen through the scope.

The ridge where Ryce was positioned was a
little over a half mile from the cabin and extended to more than
one thousand feet above the valley floor. He was painfully hidden
in a small copse of trees two hundred feet below the crest of the
ridge. He was unable to move until it was dark and the lights had
gone out in the cabin. He had learned to use zipper baggies.

The cabin was the suspected hand-off point
for smugglers transporting secrets across the border into Canada.
The Montana-Alberta border was relatively close. It was two miles
to the lake and then two miles up a dead-end canyon. At the closed
end of the canyon, the trail climbed a shale hog’s back
approximately the same height as the ridge Ryce now occupied. Once
over the hog’s back, the trail was a twenty-mile walk in the
park.

Ryce squinted through the viewfinder of his
spotter scope and spun the focus knob. With the crosshairs centered
on the cabin, the range finder indicated it was 1,130 yards from
his position. With the right sniper rifle, he knew several people
who could make that shot. Oliver Pendergast II was one of them.
Ryce chuckled. Oliver Pendergast did not like being called Oliver.
He liked O2 much better. Ryce had not seen or spoken to O2 since
departing Afghanistan.

Ryce had been on the mountain for twelve
days. A partial road washout had prevented his insertion team
dropping him closer than six miles from this observation post. He
hoped the road had been repaired, although he did not mind hiking.
The US Army Rangers effectively introduced its members to the
concept and love of hiking.

Ryce scoped the road leading to the cabin.
The road crossed the stream several times on large corrugated steel
pipes. The last pipe, in front of the cabin, was clogged with
trees, forcing the stream to flow over the road. Ryce shivered. If
he needed to get closer to the cabin, he would get wet.

Ryce checked the cabin once again. A faint
stream of smoke drifted up from the chimney. The Dodge Ram 4-wheel
drive pickup was still parked near the front door. The scene was
still peaceful. Ryce chuckled to himself. He might even be able to
dig into his MRE while it was still light out. Eating an MRE using
the Braille method was highly over-rated.

Ryce picked up his smart phone and
synchronized it to the conversion box. The nearest cell tower was
over twenty miles away and on the other side of three mountains.
The box turned the cell phone into a satellite radio. Ryce kept an
eye on the cabin as he typed his report for the day. He had only
enough supplies to last for two more days. There were no signs that
the group in the cabin had plans to go anywhere. Ryce closed the
text message with, “
What would you like me to do
?”

As he was waiting for a reply, Ryce detected
movement on the road to his left, out of sight of the cabin. A
Black Suburban came to a stop, blocking the road to the cabin. Ryce
swung his scope around to the Suburban. Four men exited the vehicle
and began to walk toward the cabin.

All four were wearing forest camouflage with
jump harnesses and side arms. They were also carrying automatic
rifles with the distinctive outlines of an M-16. Ryce was puzzled
when he noticed they were wearing running shoes instead of normal
military-style boots. Ryce frowned. They might be carrying M-16s
and wearing camo, but they were not trained military personnel.
Ryce did not know who was sneaking up on the cabin, but he was
confident that they did not know what they were doing.

Ryce did a quick mental checklist of what
they were doing wrong. They were walking down the middle of the
road in two pairs less than five feet apart. Ryce could actually
hear laugher from where he was located. If he could hear the
laughter from a half mile away, the occupants of the cabin would
also hear it. Their M-16s were hanging from the slings on their
shoulders. A quick burst of automatic rifle fire would take out the
first pair of the assault group. The remaining members would likely
be mowed down trying to bring their weapons into play.

They should be staggered. The first man
should be as close to the edge of the road as possible. The second
man, on the opposite side of the road, should be fifty feet behind
the first man. With this group of four, two should be on each side
of the road. And, they should be strung out for two hundred feet.
Ryce chuckled. Apparently, he had learned something during his
years in the Army.

After watching
To Hell and Back
, the
story of Audie Murphy, for the fifth time when he was eight, Ryce
announced to his mother that he wanted to join the Army. At twelve,
his dream was to become an Army Ranger. Using money received on his
fourteenth birthday, Ryce sent for the Army Ranger training manual.
While his classmates were rushing to the ball field, Ryce was
sitting in the library, focused on “his” Rangers. The summer after
his sixteenth birthday, he passed all the requirements from the
manual except one. His mother would not allow him to jump out of an
airplane.

The day after he graduated from high school,
Ryce applied to the US Military Academy. He eventually received a
notification that his application was denied because he had not
included a nomination from a Senator or Representative from
Montana. He was devastated for almost five minutes, but he had a
back-up plan.

Ryce enrolled at Montana State University,
Billings, and applied to join the Army ROTC program. During the
second semester of his junior year, Ryce was selected as Unit
Student Commander, a position normally reserved for seniors. Four
days before his twenty-first birthday, Ryce was presented with his
2nd Lieutenant’s bars.

Ryce glanced at the road once more. The group
was perhaps halfway to where the road crossed the stream to the
cabin. They were moving agonizingly slowly. Did they think they
were taking a stroll in a park? Ryce looked around. This area was a
truly beautiful place to take a stroll. He shook his head.
Significantly nicer than some of the places he had visited.

After graduating from Montana State
University, Ryce was faced with a choice. He could take a paid,
two-week vacation, or he could stash his leave and report to
Airborne School. He decided to begin qualifications
immediately.

Ryce graduated in the top five percent. As he
recounted later, Ranger school had been the most difficult days of
his short life. They were now remembered as the best days, if he
did not include jumping out of airplanes. Before Ranger school, he
could not climb a six-foot ladder without
almost
paralyzing
fear. Now, he enjoyed diving out of an airplane that was still in
perfectly good flying condition.

Ryce looked through his scope once more. The
four men walking up the road had split into two groups. One pair
was continuing toward the lake. The other two men had forded the
stream and settled in behind the Dodge.

Ryce attempted to follow the pair on the road
with his scope, but trees often obscured them. They completely
disappeared no more than a quarter of a mile from the cabin
turnoff. Ryce began a grid search. He saw them once again as they
were exiting the stream not far from the woodshed. Ryce smiled. One
of the men appeared to have fallen into the water. He had removed
his tunic and was attempting to wring it out. Ryce could detect
amusement in his partner even from this distance.

Ryce swung his scope back to the men behind
the pickup truck. They had unslung their M-16s. They were ready for
a firefight.

Using the trees as cover, the team near the
woodshed inched closer to the cabin. When one of the men reached
out to steady himself on the woodshed, Ryce changed his opinion
that the cabin had no security. The wall that the man had just
touched erupted in an explosion that blew both men off their feet.
Ryce swung his scope to the two prone men. Both were bleeding
profusely, and neither was moving.

The two men behind the truck opened fire at
the cabin. Ryce scanned the area. He noticed three figures barely
visible in the trees to the left of the cabin. Ryce was only
slightly surprised when one of the two men behind the truck fell
over. The second man turned to see what had happened to his
partner. He fell over. Three men carrying silenced M-16s walked out
of the trees and approached the two men crumpled in the grass.

One of the three from the cabin walked over
to the still smoldering woodshed. He reached down and began
dragging one of the bodies to the truck. After a close inspection,
Ryce could see that the woodshed was still intact. Ryce wondered
how the explosion had been triggered, but he was not interested in
exploring the woodshed for clues anytime in the near future.

A second man from the cabin walked to the
second body near the woodshed and began dragging it to the truck.
How did the men in the cabin know that they were under assault?

Ryce carefully scoped the cabin and the
woodshed once again. He saw no electrical services running to the
cabin and no obvious power generation equipment. Were the lights he
had seen in the cabin from lanterns or light bulbs?

The four bodies were dumped near the rear
bumper of the truck. One of the men from the cabin pulled a pistol
from his shoulder holster and carefully fired a bullet into the
head of each man on the ground. When he replaced the pistol in the
holster, he helped load the four dead men into the pickup truck
bed.

The executioner pointed at one of his
companions and then across the stream. The companion waded the
stream to the main road and looked in both directions. When he saw
the Suburban, he returned to the cabin and checked the pockets of
the dead men. With the keys to the Suburban in his hand, he again
splashed across the stream. A few minutes later, he parked the
Suburban next to the woodshed and covered it with vegetation.

Sadly, Ryce started composing a report of the
incident. He did not know who the four men were, or why they were
there, but no one deserved to be executed.