The Alberta Connection (15 page)

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.

“If we don’t have any issues getting over the
border back to Montana, I think we will be in Great Falls in a
couple days. Ryce, O2, Nick, and Michael are out.”

O2 laughed at John’s parting words. “And the
short trail is where Francine’s killers are likely headed? How
convenient.”

After dividing the MREs and completing a
quick sweep of the area, Ryce sent Nick out on point and started
the team up the trail. Ryce checked the time on his cell phone. It
read 1:34 PM.

At 4:45 PM, Nick signaled the team to stop.
When O2, Ryce, and Michael worked up the trail to Nick’s location,
he pointed at an angle across the stream.

“It looks like there is a camping area in
that clearing on the other side of the stream behind the cabin. I
saw a flash of something, but the trees are too dense to see
much.”

Ryce pulled his spotting scope from his pack,
began to cross-cross the area, and then stopped to adjust the
magnification.

“It looks like there are three or four tents
set up in the clearing. I can see several people sitting in front
of one of the tents. They are looking at something or someone I
cannot see.”

He pulled four walkie-talkies from his pack.
“Use the earphone so you won’t make any noise. O2, take Nick or
Michael cross the stream and work your way in from the southeast. I
will go in from here.”

O2 pointed at Nick, who followed him to the
stream. As Ryce watched them wade through the frigid water, he
looked at Michael.

“Keep on your toes. That campsite looked like
a tornado just blew through it.”

Ryce stood and started walking up the trail,
stopping every twenty feet to scan the area with his scope. He and
Michael were halfway to the camping area when O2’s voice scratched
over the walkie-talkie.

“Heads up. I see two men with handguns. One
has a rag tied to his arm. There are five or six people sitting on
the ground. It looks like they are tied together. I cannot see if
there are people in the tents. I hear a baby crying.”