The Alberta Connection (26 page)

After closely checking the camera twice more,
Ryce crawled back over the ridge. With everyone at the cabin
accounted for, he was more comfortable with a single person on
watch. He smiled at his team.

“I’ll take the first watch and awaken someone
to relieve me. We’ll do two hours so your naps won’t be too
disrupted. Get some sleep. Tomorrow will likely not be a walk in
the park.”

Ryce pulled on his night vision goggles and
began scanning where he thought Tanya might be camping. He knew he
could not see her through the trees, but he hoped he might catch a
hot spot from a campfire.

Ryce crawled back over the ridge long before
the sun highlighted the western mountains. The vehicles at the
cabin were in the same places they had been when Ryce crawled into
his sleeping bag. As he was deciding which of four flavors of
C-Rats would best destroy his digestive system, Ryce flipped the
camera display open. He started scanning the pictures taken after
4:00 AM.

Ryce immediately went into an alert mode when
he checked the pictures at 4:57 AM. The camera had snapped a
picture of someone on the cabin porch. Since the scope could not
distinguish male or female in thermal imaging mode, Ryce had no
idea if it was Dianne or one of the men.

The next thermal image was of someone
crossing the stream. Ryce checked the time on his cell phone. The
image was four minutes behind actual time. Ryce flipped the scope
to normal imaging, and panned the road. He had sufficient light to
see a figure with an obvious weapon on his shoulder walking toward
the lake.

As he reached for his radio, he heard O2’s
voice.

“Boss man, I have someone heading in my
direction from the cabin. He is carrying a Barrett M82 with a
silencer. Someone is after a very large squirrel. Will keep you
advised.”

Ryce chuckled. The Rangers used the term
“squirrel hunting” to indicate an assigned target. Did O2 get the
term from Ramona? And how is “boss man” going to go over on the
radio network? But, it was good to work with people who knew what
they were doing.

Ryce could barely see the man through the
scope as he approached one of the port-a-potties, opened the door
and stepped in. He heard O2 chuckle.

“This is just not right. Who walks two miles
to use a port-a-potty when there are hundreds of trees within
twenty feet of the cabin?”

After a few minutes, the door to the
porta-potty opened, and the man stepped out, still carrying his
Barrett. He was also carrying a trash bag that was tied with
parachute cord. O2 watched the man untie the cord and carefully lay
three laptops on the ground in front of him.

O2 keyed his transmitter. “The walker is at
the port-a-potties and just came out with a trash bag with three
laptops in it.”

Ryce glanced through his scope and then keyed
his radio.

“Did you say three laptops? The Pentagon is
missing four laptops.”

Ryce heard O2’s voice over the radio. “I see
only three laptops on the ground in front of the bad guy.”

Ryce checked a few more thermal images on his
camera, but unless a laptop was on fire, he did not expect he would
see anything. Why were there only three laptops? He smiled. Did it
really matter? One laptop or four laptops, Ryce still needed to
discover who was receiving the stolen property.

Ryce keyed his radio. “What’s your distance
from the target?”

O2 chuckled over the radio. “He’s less than
five hundred yards away. He’s too close. I’ll miss.”

A voice Ryce recognized as Ramona’s chuckled
on the radio. “Just be sure to police your brass.”

Ryce grinned. He had heard the story of the
third time Ramona and O2 had gone head-to-head in qualifying. Even
the smallest detail was taken into account, including picking up
spent cartridges after the firing exercise. O2 had overlooked one
shell casing when he cleaned up. The deduction moved him from first
to third. He finished .06 points behind Ramona.

The walker returned to the cabin with the
garbage bag. Ryce watched more smoke exit the chimney. Odors were
soon drifting up the hillside. He decided that he would allow his
team to eat MREs for breakfast. The occupants of the cabin would
never smell his fake scrambled eggs with chemically produced bacon.
They had real scrambled eggs with bacon that came from real
pigs.

The front door of the cabin opened at 9:00
AM. Ryce watched the group as they carried four packs from the
cabin and loaded them into the Silverado. From the size of the
packs, Ryce could see they were not expecting to be on the trail
long. Ryce reported to O2 that the target was moving. The vehicle
drove across the stream and turned toward the lake.

Within five minutes, O2 reported that the
truck had arrived at the lake. The occupants had disembarked and
were now pulling on their packs. How did Ryce want to handle the
pursuit?

Ryce thought for a moment. “Give them about
thirty minutes and then follow them. I am taking my team down to
the cabin to see what I can find. I think we should be able to
catch up with you before it gets dark again.”

O2 did a double click on his transmitter,
indicating that he had gotten the message.

As Ryce cleaned up the observation post, he
heard Tanya’s voice on the radio.

“You watch yourself when you go check out the
cabin. If you blow yourself up, I will kick your ass, if I can find
a big enough piece to kick.”

Ryce chuckled. “I plan to, for several
reasons. You and Ramona clean up your camp at noon, go back to the
campground, and help John monitor the thermal satellite. It will be
nice to have someone watching my back.

“Radio protocol says I should not tell you
that I love you, Tanya, but I do. Ryce out.”

Ryce heard some giggling in his earphone and
then Ramona’s voice.

“O2, you bring Ryce back in one piece. Tanya
is a good friend.”

After packing up all the camo nets and
re-stuffing the packs, Ryce’s team was ready to invade the cabin.
He led the group down the backside of the hill and then turned
toward the junction of the stream and dirt road. He estimated the
hike to the cabin would take an hour from his present location. And
maybe he could see Tanya as they hiked past her camp.

When Ryce was halfway to the cabin, O2
announced he was leaving his observation point. He would have boots
on the trail at the lake in five minutes. He also mentioned he did
not think the laptop group had done a lot of hiking.

The stream was as cold as it had been when he
was last in the area. When they arrived at the cabin, Ryce handed
each member of his team a walkie-talkie. Only Ryce, O2, John, and
Ramona had combat radios.

Ryce directed Jimmy to circle the cabin at
the end near the woodshed, paying attention to not touch the
woodshed. Barry was sent in a sweep around the other end of the
cabin. The two were to meet near the back door, and check for any
possible explosive devices. Both of the men had been in Afghanistan
and had some experience with people setting bombs to kill them.

While Barry and Jimmy circled the cabin, Ryce
closely inspected the front door. The window glass had been
repaired with duct tape placed on the outside of the window. He
carefully placed his pack on the ground and pulled out a three-inch
mirror on an extendable rod.

Using only the slightest tugs, he removed all
of the duct tape from the window. More than half of the glass was
missing, and there was no window curtain. Ryce pulled an LED flash
light from his pack. He inspected everything he could see inside
the doorway. Positioning his mirror on a stick, he checked the
inside jambs of the door. After a few minutes, he replaced the
flashlight and mirror in his pack.

He looked over at the three remaining team
members. “Well, here goes nothing.”

The door opened inward. He reached out,
turned the doorknob and cracked the door. He did not want to break
any contacts that might be triggers. He backed away from the door
and stepped off the porch. As soon as he was a few yards away from
the door, Ryce keyed his walkie-talkie.

“Jimmy, I have my door unlocked. In three
minutes, I will hit it with a large chunk of wood.”

He pointed at Ted, at the woodshed, and held
up two fingers.

Ryce’s walkie-talkie buzzed and he heard
Jimmy’s voice. “We have a quarter inch gap, and we are ready.”

Ryce had found through experience that most
trigger points have a gap of about ¼ inch. Things will definitely
go boom if the object is moved any more. Ted returned with two
small logs. Ryce hefted one of the logs, decided it might be the
correct weight, and heaved it at the door. The log hit the door
near the handle and opened it about half way. Ryce and Ted waited
for a few moments in the event a timer was being used. They heard
the back door crash open. Ryce had opened his door a little early.
Ryce keyed his walkie-talkie and instructed Jimmy and Brian to stay
off the porch. Ryce and the rest of the team would come to the back
of the cabin, and all six would enter through the rear door.

Ryce grabbed his pack, and hurried around the
end of the cabin followed by Ted, Craig, and Hank. Before he
dropped his pack with the others, he pulled several LED flashlights
from it. Like a cat sneaking up on a bird, Ryce approached the door
of the cabin.

For the next hour, Ryce and his team
carefully inspected the cabin. They saw indications it had been
occupied, but nothing pointed to the three murderers who lived in
the cabin. There were no signs of weapons. No empty cartridges on
the floor, no reloading equipment, no paper targets.

A wood-burning stove was positioned next to
an obviously electric refrigerator. When Hank appeared to be
reaching to open the refrigerator door, Ryce stopped him.

“We have made it this far without blowing
ourselves up. Don’t open anything. We don’t need to see if they
have any bacon left from breakfast.”

Ryce noticed the kitchen floor near a china
cabinet was severely scratched. The wall behind the cabinet was
common to a small bedroom. An open closet extended halfway down the
wall, ending where Ryce thought the cabinet started. The closet was
nearly twice as deep as Ryce thought a bedroom closet should be. He
returned to the kitchen.

“OK, let’s slide the cabinet, preferably
without blowing the kitchen into millions of pieces.”

Hidden in the wall behind the cabinet was a
wooden hand-built ladder extending from a three-foot hole in the
ground. After pressing the switch on his flashlight, Ryce carefully
inspected the ladder. It did not appear to have any trigger points.
He pointed at Jimmy and then down the hole.

When Jimmy did not set off an explosion, Ryce
asked Ted and Craig to each pick a door and watch for someone
returning to the cabin. He then instructed Barry and Hank to follow
him down the hole.

The ladder was more than twenty feet long,
and ended at a dirt floor. Jimmy was waiting at the bottom with his
flashlight illuminating a tunnel leading away from the cabin. The
tunnel was tall enough for Ryce to walk without crouching and wide
enough for two people to walk side-by-side. The walls and roof were
heavily cribbed. Someone familiar with mining techniques had
constructed this tunnel. Ryce carefully counted his steps as he led
the group down the tunnel. It was close to one hundred yards
long.

The tunnel ended in a room approximately ten
feet square, with large posts supporting a wooden roof. A generator
with a flexible pipe connecting the exhaust to the roof was
positioned along one wall. A large open tube descended from the
roof in the center of the room. Ryce walked to the tube and looked
up. There was a hint of light at the end of the tube.

Ryce turned to Jimmy. “Take a hike up to the
trees and see where these tubes come out.”

Jimmy turned and trotted from the room.

Ryce continued to search the room and then
saw something that set him on edge. As he was sprinting down the
tunnel with Barry and Hank, Ryce shouted for Ted and Craig to get
the hell away from the cabin.

Ryce, Barry, and Hank exited the cabin just
as they heard a thump and saw a cloud of smoke erupt from the
forest behind the cabin. Ryce immediately recognized the sound of a
“Bouncing Betty” anti-personnel land mine and increased his speed
toward the dust.

The Bouncing Betty was so named because it
was designed to jump up approximately two feet when triggered. When
it reached the end of a small trigger chain, it exploded, sending
thousands of ball bearings in a circle of destruction.

Jimmy’s left leg had been raggedly severed at
the knee. His right leg was still attached, but he would certainly
lose it. Hank and Barry began triage. Ryce turned to find somewhere
the helicopter could land. The area behind the cabin was too
confined. Ryce began to run toward the stream. The only area large
enough to land a Chinook was on the road where it forked to go to
the cabin or the lake.

Ryce grabbed the microphone on his combat
radio and pressed the send button.

“We have a casualty. Jimmy tripped a Bouncing
Betty. I will set up a GPS tracker in the only place we can bring
in a Chinook.”

He checked his watch. “If you haven’t left
yet, Tanya, bring the Suburban to the cabin.”

The first return transmission was from Phil.
He was already in the air. Phil had two top-notch medics on the
helicopter with trauma equipment. Ryce felt confident Jimmy would
get the best care possible. Doctor Pen had sent her best people
with the trauma helicopter. They could patch up Jimmy well enough
to keep him alive long enough to get him to the nearest hospital.
And, Ryce had seen medics at work in Afghanistan. Hank and Barry
were two of the best. They would keep Jimmy alive until Phil
arrived.

The second transmission was from Tanya, who
said they were unhooking the trailer. Ryce heard a low rumble and
turned to see several trees disappear in a cloud of dirt. The
incriminating evidence in the tunnel had just been buried under
five meters of earth. Ryce wondered if the cabin was going to be
destroyed as well.