Adirondack Attack

“Tell my girlfriend, Sally, that I was fixing to ask for her hand. Tell her I love her and I’m sorry.”

“I’ll tell her.” If he lived to see this through. Judging from the number of bullet holes in that chopper and the size of the caliber, staying alive was going to be a challenge.

Erin returned with her down sleeping bag and draped it over the shivering captain. Before the sun reached the treetops as it dipped into the west, the captain joined Carol Walton in death.

Dalton stood. “We have to go.”

“Go? Go where? I’ve got two dead bodies and responsibility for the welfare of my group. I can’t just leave them.”

No, they couldn’t just leave them. But there were few safe choices. Traveling as a group would be slow. “Get the kayaks ready. We’re going.”

“I am not taking this group into river rapids ninety minutes before sunset. Are you crazy?”

“Not as crazy as meeting them here.” He motioned to the open field.

“Meeting who?” she asked.

“Siming’s Army.”

Twenty minutes later Erin, now in dry clothing, gathered the surviving campers and explained that the captain’s helicopter was shot down, he claimed, by terrorists who would be coming for whatever was in that bag. She explained that leaving this evening was hazardous because of the volume of water at the forefront of the scheduled release from Lake Abanakee. Finally, she relayed that it was her husband’s belief that they needed to leave this site immediately.

“I’m for that. Staying the night with two dead bodies gives me the creeps,” said Brian.

“You can’t just leave them out here for the predators,” said Richard.

“You rather be here when the predators show up?” asked Merle.

“We called for help. They are sending an air rescue team for them,” Brian said. “We should at least wait until they pick up the dead.”

“We wait, there will be more dead,” said Dalton.

“What do you think, Erin?” asked Brian.

“I would prefer to stay put and wait for help.”

“What’s coming isn’t help,” said Dalton.

* * *

ON EMPTY STOMACHS, the campers packed up their tents and gear, while Erin and Dalton headed down the rocky outcropping to ready the kayaks that had been stowed for their excursion the following morning. Dalton took Carol’s gear and kayak.

“You really sure about this?” asked Erin, her gaze flicking from Dalton, who carried one end of Carol’s kayak, and then to the frothing river behind him.

“Sure about our responsibility to deliver this? Yes.”

“Sure about taking inexperienced kayakers into the roughest stretch of white water one hour before sunset. What if someone upends?”

He lowered the kayak onto the grassy bank. “What would you normally do?”

“Pick them up from the river and guide them to shore.”

“We’ll do that.”

“In the dark?”

“You’re right. We can’t do that.”

“So your plan is to leave anyone who gets into trouble. And here I thought you were the hero type.”

That stung. He wouldn’t leave anyone behind. She had to know that. “Erin, he said they’re coming. Mercenaries. You understand? That means hired killers, and I know they are using high-caliber rounds from the size of the holes in the tail section of the chopper. We can argue later about specific logistics. Right now we need to...”

She was cocking her head again. Looking toward the sky. He didn’t hear it yet, not over the roar of the river. But he knew what was coming.

Dalton looked at the three kayaks they had retrieved from cover. Her gear lay beside her craft, neatly stowed in her pack. Dalton slipped her gear into the hollow forward compartment of her craft and added her paddle so that it rested half in and half out of the opening.

Erin arched backward, staring up at the pink sky with her hand acting as visor. Dalton packed his gear into the bow of Carol Walton’s craft and added the red nylon cooler, which now contained nothing but a river rock. The black case, recently within, held two small vials in a padded black compartment with a thumb drive. This precious parcel now rested safely in the side pocket of his cargo pants.

“They’re here,” she said, pointing at the red-and-white helicopter with Rescue emblazoned on the side.

The chopper hovered over the meadow, then began a measured descent. Erin stepped back toward the tree-lined trail that led to the meadow. Dalton glanced at the kayaks, packed and ready, and just knew he’d never get her to go without her group.

So he abandoned their escape plan and followed her. He could at least see that she wasn’t one of the welcome party.

Dalton made sure he was beside her when they reached the sharply ascending trailhead at the edge of the open field. Before them, the chopper had landed. The pilot cut the engine and the copilot stepped down. Dalton studied the man. He wore aviator glasses, slacks and a button-up shirt. Nothing identified him as mountain rescue and his smile seemed out of place. As he crouched and trotted beneath the slowing blades that whirled above him, Dalton spotted the grip of a pistol tucked in the back of his slacks.

Erin moved to step from cover and he dragged her back.

“What are you doing?” she said.

He held a finger to his lips. “Wait.”

Merle was first to greet the copilot. Their raised voices carried across the meadow.

“How many in your party?” asked the new arrival, straightening now. He was a small man, easy to underestimate, Dalton thought. The relaxed posture seemed crafted, just like his casual attire.

“There are six of us,” answered Merle, omitting the two dead.

“Where’s the crashed chopper?”

Merle pointed, half-turning to face the river. “Went into the Hudson and sank.”

The copilot glanced back to the chopper and the side door slid open. The man within crouched in the opening. There was a familiar metal cylinder over his shoulder and a strap across the checked cotton shirt he wore. Dalton had carried a rifle just like it on many missions while in Special Ops. It was an M4.

“What about the pilot?” asked the newcomer. “He go down with his chopper?”

Brian answered that one, coming to stand beside Merle. “We got him out. But he died.”

Dalton groaned.

“Too bad,” said the copilot.

Alice smiled brightly, standing in a line beside Brian. The only thing missing was the wall to make this a perfect setup for a firing squad. Dalton had a pistol but it would hardly be a match for three armed mercenaries. They’d kill him and, more importantly, they’d kill Erin. So he waited, backing her up with a firm pull on her arm. They now watched through the cover of pine boughs.

Dalton knew what would happen next. He ran through possibilities of what he could do, if anything, to prevent it.

“Do something,” whispered Erin.

“If I do something, they’ll know our position.”

“They’re going to kill them.”

“I think so.”

“So save them.”

“It will endanger you.”

“What would you do if I wasn’t here?”

He glanced at her. “You are here.”

Dalton watched from his position. “Get behind that tree.” He pointed. “Stay there and when I say run, you run for the kayaks.”

“Dalton?”

“Promise me.”

She met his gaze and nodded, then stepped behind the thick trunk of the pine tree. He moved beside her.

In the clearing, one of the new arrivals glanced in his direction and then back to Alice.

“You retrieve anything from the craft before it went down?”

“Yeah,” said Alice,

Dalton aimed at the one with the rifle.

“What exactly?”

“A red cooler. We have to take it to the FBI,” said Brian.

“That so? Where is it now, exactly?”

Brian seemed to have realized that he faced a wolf in sheep’s clothing because he rested a hand on his neck and rubbed before speaking.

“Back by our tents,” he lied. “I’ll get it for you.” He turned to go.

The man with the aviator glasses motioned for the pilot to follow. The copilot lifted his hand to signal the shooter. The rifleman raised his weapon and Dalton took his shot, dropping him like a sack of rags.

By the time Dalton swung his pistol away from the dead man, the copilot had Alice in front of him, using her as a human shield.

“Come out or she dies,” said their leader.

He didn’t, and the man shot Merle and Richard in rapid succession. They fell like wheat before the scythe.

From the brush where Brian had disappeared came the sound of thrashing. Dalton suspected the teen had made a run for it.

The copilot dragged Alice back toward the chopper, using the nose cone as cover, as he shouted to the pilot. Another shot sounded and Alice fell forward to the ground, shot through the head.

“Kill whoever is shooting. Then find the sample,” said the copilot.

“The boy?”

“No witnesses.”

Dalton leaned toward Erin and whispered, “When they find that cooler, they’ll kill us. You understand?”

She nodded.

“Run!”

Erin didn’t look back at the carnage. Instead, she fled down the trail toward the river. Dalton had a time trying to keep up.

At the bank of the Hudson, Erin finally came to a halt. She folded at the waist and gripped her knees with both hands, panting.

“They killed them. Just shot them down,” she said.

Dalton thought he’d heard his wife express every emotion possible from elation to fury. But this voice, this high reedy thread of a voice, didn’t seem to belong to Erin.

“Where’s Brian?”

He wouldn’t get far with two trained killers on his trail.

Erin, who had just belayed into a river and rescued a wounded man. Who had led this group here to disaster. Who had just watched three more people die. The first deaths she’d ever witnessed.

A sharp threat of worry stitched his insides.

She straightened, and he took in her pale face and bloodless lips. He felt a second jolt of panic. She was going into shock.

“Erin.” He took a firm hold of both her elbows and gave a little shake. “We have to go now.” Her eyes snapped into focus and she met his gaze. There she was, pale, panting and scared. But she was back.

“Brian,” she whispered and then shouted. “Brian!” He appeared like a lost puppy, crashing through the brush, holding one bleeding arm with his opposite hand.

Behind him came the pilot. Dalton squeezed off two shots, sending his pursuer back into cover.

Erin and Brian crouched on the bank as Erin removed a red bandanna from her pocket and tied it around the bullet wound in the boy’s arm.

She closed her mouth and scowled as a familiar fierce expression emerged on her face.

“Those animals are not getting away with this.” She glanced toward the trail. His wife was preparing to fight.

“Erin, get into your kayak. Now.” He tugged her toward the watercrafts.

She paused and looked at her pack and the paddle already in place for departure. Then she glanced at him.

“You knew?”

“Suspected.”

She clutched Brian’s good arm. “He can’t paddle with one arm.” She wiped her hand over her mouth. “And you don’t know how to navigate in white water.”

True enough.

The kayaks each held only one person. Dalton took another shot to send their attacker back behind the tree.

“He’ll have to try,” said Dalton.

“Get in, Brian. I’ll launch you.”

Tears stained the boy’s pink, hairless cheeks, and blood stained his forearm, but he climbed into a kayak. Erin handed him a paddle and shoved his craft into the river.

“Now you,” she called to him.

He knew what would happen when he stopped shooting. They’d be sitting ducks on the river.

“I’ll be right behind you.”

“Dalton. No.”

“You promised,” he said.

Brian was already in the current, struggling to paddle.

“Go,” he coaxed, wondering if this was the last time that he’d ever see her.

She went with a backward glance, calling directions as she pushed the kayak into the Hudson.

“Get to the center of the river and avoid the logs. Hug the right shore going into the first turn and the left on the second. How far are we going?”

“Get under cover.” They would be sitting ducks on the river once the chopper was airborne. He needed to kill that pilot.

“Got it.”

He moved his position as the pilot left cover to fire at what he assumed was three kayakers.

Never assume. Dalton took the shot and the man staggered back to cover.

Body armor, Dalton realized.

He caught a glimpse of the man darting between the trees in retreat. He took another shot, aiming for his head, and missed. Then he climbed into the kayak. Erin’s graceful departure had made the launch look easy. His efforts included using the paddle to shove himself forward, nearly upending in the process.

He moved by inches, shocked at how much his abdomen ached as he felt the grass and earth dragging under him. The river snatched him from the shore. He retrieved his double-bladed paddle, glancing forward to catch a glimpse of Erin before she vanished from his view. The pitch and buck of the river seemed a living thing beneath him, and this was the wide, quiet part.

He used his paddle to steer but did not propel himself forward. The river began to churn with the first set of rapids. He rocketed along, propelled by the hydrodynamics of the surging water.

Above him, the sky blazed scarlet, reflecting on the dark water like blood. Erin had never seen a dead body. Today she had seen six.

As if summoned from the twilight by his thoughts, he glimpsed Erin on the far bank, towing Brian’s kayak to shore. He tried and failed to redirect her.

Erin reached the rocky shore and leaped out, holding both crafts as Brian struggled from his vessel. He didn’t look back as he ran into the woods and vanished.

Dalton shouted as he slipped past her, using his paddle in an ineffective effort to reverse against the current.

He still splashed and shouted when Erin appeared again, towing an empty kayak. She darted past him, her paddle flashing silver in the fading light. She took point and he fell in behind her, mirroring her strokes and ignoring the painful tug in his middle that accompanied each pull of the blade through the surging water. She hugged the first turn just as she’d instructed him and he tried to follow, but swept wider and nearly hit the boulder cutting the water like the fin of a tiger shark.

She glanced back and shouted something inaudible, and they sped through a churning descent that made his stomach pitch as river water splashed into his vessel’s compartment. He could hear nothing past the roar of the white water, and neither could Erin. He knew this because he spotted the second turn in the river at the same moment he caught the flash of the red underbelly of the helicopter.

Erin’s head lifted as the chopper swept over them and took a position downriver, hovering low and then dropping out of sight. It would be waiting, he knew, low over the water to pick them off when they made the next turn.

Hug the right shore on the first turn and the left on the second. That was what she had told him, but his wife was very clearly making a path to the right on this second turn.

Dalton struggled to follow against the pull of the river that tried to drag him left. On the turn he saw the reason for her warning. There before him loomed the largest logjam of downed trees he’d ever seen, and it rushed right at them. Waves hit the barrier and soared ten feet in the air, soaking the logs that choked the right bank of the turn. The pile of debris seemed injected with towering pillars of rock.

It occurred to him then why most groups did not run this section of the river and never after a release from the dam.

Erin performed a neat half turn, riding a wave partially up the natural dam as the second kayak flipped. The river dropped her back and she pulled until she grasped a branch near the shore. She held on as the river tore the empty craft from hers. The empty vessel bobbed up beyond the logs and sped downriver as Erin struggled to keep hers from being dragged under the web of branches.

He tried to mimic her maneuver but instead rammed bow-first into the nest of branches. The water lifted the back of his kayak while forcing the bow down and under the debris.

“Grab hold,” Erin yelled.

He did, managing to grip the slimy, lichen-covered limb as the kayak continued its path downward and into the debris. He used both feet to snag the shoulder straps of his pack as his watercraft vanished beneath him. His stomach burned and he knew he could hold his pack or the limb, but not both. His current physical weakness infuriated him, but he dropped his pack. It fell to his seat in front of the red cooler decoy. Both his gear and the kayak were pulled under.

He hauled himself farther up on the debris as his kayak resurfaced beyond the fallen tree limb where he clung and his craft was whisked away.

He sighed at the loss, but with his feet free he could now climb to a spot above where Erin was snagged. He help move the nose of her craft back and clear of a branch. Then she dragged and pulled herself toward the shore. Just a little farther and the current calmed. Erin shoved with her paddle and reached the shallows as he scrambled beside the log dam.

How many seconds until the chopper realized they were no longer on the river?

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