SPIDER MOUNTAIN Read online

  We checked our communications with the DEA base camp over on the lake and then heated some food. Afterward we sat around the fire and talked about our experiences in law enforcement. During the whole time we’d been down there, I realized, we hadn’t heard a single vehicle up on the road above. The woods around us were extremely quiet, with no animal or even bird sounds. There was a dim moon, but the stars blazed above us in the crystalline mountain air.

  “You know,” I said quietly, looking around at the clearing, “this would be a bad place to be if someone were to come at us in the night. We’d be trapped with our backs against these two streams.”

  “You think those people in that one trailer recognized you, don’t you?”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “That guy looked pretty hungover, and he obviously didn’t cotton to strangers. And that woman was in bad shape. I’m thinking maybe we should move our bags over across the stream, just in case.”

  “Leave the tent halves?”

  “Yeah; bank the fire, leave the shelter halves, make it look like we’re sleeping down here. I just think there may be more eyes watching these hills than we know about.”

  Carrie shivered. “That’s a lovely image. And I suppose I have to cross that damned log up there? In the dark?”

  I grinned. “It’s been there a while,” I said. “And there’s a hand rope. Piece’a cake.”

  “Unh-hunh. For those of us who don’t like heights, not exactly.”

  “I’ll hold your hand,” I said. “Let’s see if there’s some flat ground over there behind those big rocks.”

  Getting the dogs across the tree-trunk bridge turned out to be harder than getting Carrie across. We set up a bare-bones camp behind three large boulders. There was a thick carpet of windblown pine needles on the back side, which would make for more comfortable sleeping, but I still sprayed the sleeping bags with DEET before setting them down in hope of deterring the five billion or so ticks and spiders I knew were lurking in that aromatic piney carpet. While Carrie got settled, I went back across the log bridge and climbed up to the road. Using a small LED flashlight, I finally found what I was looking for, two serviceable if rusty tin cans. With my knife and some fine fishing line from my woods vest, I rigged a tripwire consisting of the tin cans with pebbles inside, to cover the approaches to the log bridge on the road side. We might not hear it if we were sound asleep, but the shepherds would.

  Then I went down to the original campsite, added a few thick logs to the edge of the fire, piled the stone ring a little bit higher, closed up the shelter halves, and returned to our sleeping hide.

  “I miss my tent,” Carrie said from deep inside her sleeping bag as the evening dew began to draw the chill from the ground. I rolled my bag around in the pine needles, took off my boots, and slithered in. Frick came over immediately and curled up.

  “Call one of the dogs over if you get cold,” I said, looking over at her, fondly, I realized. All I could see of her was the pale oval of her face against the indistinct material of the sleeping bag. “If that doesn’t work, you can always call me.”

  “In your dreams,” she said sleepily.

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “Is that news?”

  “That’s your libido talking,” she said. “Baby Greenberg tell you my nickname at work?”

  “That he did.”

  “Well, I haven’t been exactly successful in my relationships with men,” she said. “I’ve about given up.”

  “If it’s not lust at first sight, then the trick is to become friends and let the physical side come along when you least expect it.”

  She sat up on one elbow. “That the voice of experience?”

  I told her about how I’d gotten back together with my ex-wife. How we’d operated as just friends until the night when our respective libidos had come up-scope in the hot tub, as sometimes happens. I also told her what had happened to Annie, and that while I wasn’t avoiding relationships, I wasn’t actively looking for one, either.

  She was quiet after that, and I had to smile. Our conversation sounded an awful lot like the BS boys and girls say to one another so as to not be seen as taking that first, potentially embarrassing step. I thought she’d gone to sleep.

  “You have that thunder stick ready in there?” I asked, just to make sure.

  “Mmm-hnnh.”

  She drifted off to sleep, but for some reason I wasn’t sleepy. Maybe it was just instinct, but I had a sense that the night wasn’t over yet. It had been too easy, our little hike through the hollow. I reached over to my pack, retrieved the flask, and shucked the sleeping bag. I put my boots and jacket back on and tiptoed over to the one flat rock overlooking the junction of the two streams. The waterfall made a soothing sound as it plashed over mossy rocks and snags. The scent of mud, wet weeds, and dank stone wafted up out of the creek bed, and a few horny frogs sounded off from time to time, defying their reptilian thermostats. The fire flared briefly across the way as one of the larger logs rolled over in a shower of sparks.

  I tried to figure out what it was she was waiting for me to detect among the hill people. They had been, all things considered, about as I had expected, an eclectic mixture of retirees, working families, and farmers, as well as layabout white trash. Tomorrow we would walk north along this larger creek and then head up the next valley to rendezvous with our DEA support team. I wondered what they were doing to amuse themselves; probably spying on Grinny Creigh’s lair in the second valley over. The fire across the water looked inviting, and I wondered if I hadn’t become a bit paranoid about nighttime attackers. I poured a second cap of scotch, tossed it off, and went back to my own bedroll. The shepherds were both curled around the indistinct form of Carrie’s sleeping bag. Faithless mutts, I thought. It wasn’t that cold.

  I awoke to the sound of a large truck laboring its way up the one-and-a-half-lane road above the creek. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and shivered in the cold air. The two shepherds came over and helpfully licked my face while I struggled to get my arms out of the sleeping bag. Carrie remained asleep. I unzipped my bag, got up, and reached for my boots and jacket. The truck sounded like it was about a half mile away, but it was definitely coming this way. The moon had gone over the mountains to the west, deepening the darkness. Even so, I could see fairly well in the starlight.

  I checked my watch, and wondered why a big rig would be coming up the mountain at this hour in the morning. An owner-driver coming home after a ten-day cross-county stretch? I checked my SIG .45 and wondered if I should wake Carrie. She was certainly physically fit, but she was also an office rat, and all this mountain trekking had put her down like the proverbial log. I moved quietly down to the edge of the big boulders and tried to see across the creek. The fire had declined to a red glow, and the pines above were pitch-black. The truck kept coming. The shepherds had left Carrie and were tight alongside me, ears up.

  Finally I saw it, or rather its marker lights. It was running without headlights and coming up in a low gear, the diesel working at high RPM. I could make out the cab lights, and the fact that there was some kind of trailer behind the truck. As it got closer, I could see something black and bulky behind the cab, but couldn’t make it into a trailer. The dogs were fully alert now as they sensed my own rising tension. When the rig finally drew abreast of the campsite, some fifty feet up on the road, I realized it was a logging truck with a full load of huge logs. Even as I comprehended what I was seeing, the tractor veered over toward the edge of the road and then swung hard left as if trying for the dirt road we’d walked down earlier. But the trailer came much too far to the right and the wheels slipped over the road’s edge. The entire load, several thousand pounds of logs, came right off with a thunderous noise, tumbling huge logs down the slope, smashing everything in their path, including our original campsite. One log hit the fire end-on, showering red sparks and embers into the creek in a spray of fire. Most of the logs ended up in the larger creek, and the trailer itself slid down the embankment for about twen
ty feet before finally stopping and then doing a slow-motion rollover onto its right side. The tractor cab remained on the road above, its engine still roaring, until the driver finally idled it. Carrie appeared at my side, the mamba stick in her hands.

  “What the fuck?” she whispered, as the last of the big logs rolled over the bank and crashed down into the creek. Frick woofed at all the noise. I told her to shut up.

  “Bad luck for the campers over there,” I said. “Notice the truck didn’t come down the hill with its trailer?”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means this may have been deliberate. He did something to the hitch and the tie-downs before he shed that load. I think we’re supposed to be dead under all that stuff.”

  The trucker shut down the engine and doused all his lights. I motioned for Carrie to follow me into the jumble of big rocks. I chose a position from which we could see the tree-trunk bridge upstream.

  “Now what?” she whispered.

  “Let’s see if anyone comes down there to admire his handiwork.”

  With the trucker’s lights off, we could see the hillside across the way fairly well. Nothing happened for a few minutes, but then we heard another vehicle coming. This time it was a pickup truck, approaching from the right, also with no lights. The truck made a normal stop in front of the tractor, which told me the driver had expected it to be there. We could hear doors opening and closing, followed by the sounds of low voices. We heard and then saw four men pushing their way through all the wrecked vegetation and flattened pine trees to the area of the campsite. Two of the men were carrying what looked like shotguns.

  “That what you bring to an accident scene?” I whispered. “Shotguns?”

  Flashlights snapped on, and I pushed Carrie down behind one of the rocks as I ducked my own head. Moments later two white beams were probing the tops of our rock pile and then the creek bank on our side. I signaled the dogs to lie flat and stay there.

  “Ya git ’em?” a familiar voice called from the road above.

  “I believe that’s Nathan Creigh,” I whispered to Carrie.

  “They ain’t here,” one of the men opposite called back. “Ain’t nothin’ here but some hot rocks.”

  “They was there,” Nathan called. “Spread out and find ’em. Look down in that creek.”

  “Found a piece’a tent,” another voice called. “Tore all to hell.”

  “Then look down in that water, under them logs,” Nathan ordered. “Grinny’s gonna want’a know we seen meat.”

  I motioned for Carrie to follow me. We crawled on our bellies along the back of the rock pile until we had a clearer view of the log bridge. Carrie wiggled up alongside me. “Get on the radio and see if you can raise Greenberg’s boys,” I said. “Tell them what happened. I’ll watch the bridge.”

  “They’re off the air until morning, remember?” she said.

  “Try anyway; they may have left a radio on. Hell, they probably heard that crash. Then come back over here. I’ll cover the bridge.”

  Carrie disappeared into the gloom in the direction of our sleeping bags. I could hear the men crashing around the banks on the other side of the creek below me, trying to see under the massive pile of logs. After about fifteen minutes, I finally saw a shadow moving up the bank toward the log bridge. Carrie still hadn’t returned, so I pulled the two shepherds close to me, one on either side, and lay down with them. I put a hand gently over each of their muzzles and stared at the bridge in the darkness. The dogs went very still and watched where I was watching.

  I felt them tense and I squeezed their muzzles again, reinforcing the command to not bark or growl. I stared into the darkness, offsetting my gaze to put my peripheral vision on the bridge. I never saw the man start to cross, but I did hear a tinkle of gravel in the tin cans and then a soft oath.

  “Wait,” I murmured to the shepherds, whose heads were alongside mine and whose concentration was absolute. I hoped Carrie had heard the tin cans, too, and remembered what that meant. I was flat on the ground a good thirty feet from the bridge. I still couldn’t see anything against the stand of pines. I waited, one hand cupped gently over each dog’s nose.

  There. A thicker shadow. The man was alerted, which was probably why he wasn’t using his flashlight. He was creeping, his footfalls masked by the thick blanket of pine needles. I felt Frick gathering herself, so I finally whispered the command: Take.

  The dogs launched without a sound into the darkness like two furry torpedoes. I was suddenly blinded by the beam of a flashlight, which then shot into the air as Frick hit the man from one side in the knees while Frack hit him fullon in the chest going at the speed of heat. Two hundred pounds of determined German shepherd knocked the man flat in an instant, and Frack contained his target’s cry by clamping his jaws around the man’s throat and standing over him, growling quietly every time he moved. The flashlight had fallen ten feet away and was still on, pointing at a tree.

  I got up and hurried over to retrieve the flashlight. I swept the area of the bridge to make sure no one else was coming and then pointed it down into the man’s terrified face. I was pretty sure the men down in the creek bed couldn’t see anything but the light’s beam, but then I remembered that Nathan was up on the road. There were trees between where we were and the road, but I wasn’t going to take any chances with a long gun. I switched off the light and then felt Carrie at my side.

  “Nobody home,” she whispered. Suddenly there was a strong odor of urine. I cupped my hand over the flashlight lens, pointed it down into the man’s face, and switched it back on. Frack still had him by the throat but was looking up at me as if to say, This still necessary? The man’s eyes were rolled back in their sockets and he was entirely still.

  “Is he dead?” Carrie asked.

  “Fainted,” I whispered, and called Frack off. I ordered them to watch the man and went back over to the rock pile, where we could hear the other men still thrashing around down in the creek bed.

  “Y’all got em?” Nathan called down from up on the road.

  “They gone,” one of the men answered. “Ain’t no sign of ’em.”

  “Look across the creek, then,” Nathan ordered. “That there fire was goin’. That’s where they was.”

  “Tommy is doin’ that,” one of the men called back. “Hey, Tommy? Seen anything?”

  I nudged Carrie to follow me and went back to where Tommy was still lying on the ground. He was short and thin. His open mouth revealed the blackened, rotten teeth of a meth devotee. His throat was already starting to bruise. I grabbed the man’s legs and pointed Carrie to the other end.

  “What’re we doing?” she whispered.

  “Throw him down into the creek where they are,” I said. “While they deal with that, we’ll boogie.”

  We carried Tommy over to the end of the rock pile and got into position to launch him.

  “Hey, Tommy?” the man below called. “Where the hell are ye?”

  On a silent three, we heaved the inert Tommy over the bank’s edge and down into the tangle below. I switched on the flashlight and threw it after him. Tommy rolled down the bank in a clatter of stones and pine branches, while the flashlight hit the rocks and ended up in the water.

  We ran for our bedrolls as we heard a commotion break out down below.

  “Which way?” Carrie said.

  “Cross that log bridge, head up the slope toward the trucks.”

  “Toward the trucks?” she asked.

  “Last thing they’ll expect,” I said, grabbing my sleeping bag and pack.

  “Last thing I’d expect,” she said, but by then we were trotting toward the bridge, the shepherds right behind us. We crossed the log and moved as quietly as we could into the stand of pines below the road and then sideways up the hill. There were three flashlights going down in the creek bed and a lot of shouting between Nathan and his crew in the creek. We reached the road’s edge about a hundred feet to the right of the pickup truck. It sounded as if Nathan h
ad gone down the hill, so we slipped into our packs and moved out onto the road, where we began to jog away from the scene in the direction of the next valley.

  After we’d gone for about ten minutes, I stopped and told Carrie to hold up for a moment. I caught my breath and then called in the dogs and told them to sit.

  “Okay, guys,” I said, and they looked at me expectantly. “Wanna sing? Hunh? Wanna sing?”

  The shepherds started to pant eagerly. I threw back my head and let go with a mellifluous wolf howl for about twenty seconds. As soon as I stopped, Frack stuck his muzzle in the air and did likewise, followed by Frick. I did it again, and the shepherds really got into it this time, yipping and rooing for a good minute.

  “Okay,” I said, shutting off the serenade. “Let’s go.”

  “What the hell was that?” Carrie asked, as we resumed our trot up the dark road.

  “I wanted to spook those bastards,” I said. “Especially when Brother Tommy comes to and tells his tale.”

  “Worked for me,” she said.

  By sunrise we were hiding out in a barn about three miles upstream. We made contact with the DEA team on the radio and agreed to rendezvous on the southern slopes of Spider Mountain just before sunset. I debriefed Greenberg on the attack of the night before. He agreed to send a vehicle around from Marionburg to see what remained of the logging-truck wreck.

  The old barn was concealed from the road by a knoll of trees and was about a hundred feet above it. We had taken turns keeping watch in case Nathan and his boys decided to get their own dogs and do some tracking, but there’d been no movement or traffic along the road until well after sunrise. We waited until midmorning, then set off up the hill.