Exile Hunter (40 page)

“And now you’ve
decided to share it with me, the guy who helped put Roger and his
family behind the wire?”

“Tell me, would you
do it again, knowing what you do now?” Yost asked.

Linder lowered his
head. “I’d sooner die,” he answered.

“I believe you,”
Yost said. “But that’s not the answer I’m looking for. Do you
know the camp saying ‘I’ll die later?’”

Linder nodded.

“That phrase
originated in the old Soviet gulag,” Yost went on. “American
troops picked it up from the Russians during the Manchurian War. In
the gulag, the phrase had a purely cynical and fatalistic meaning.
But in the American camp system, it got turned around to mean that
man has a moral obligation to preserve his own life as long as he can
to help others and live up to his own potential. At the same time, he
has to respect his neighbor’s choice whether to live or die. The
complete phrase is ‘You die first, I’ll die later’ and, in its
modern sense, it restores free will and divine providence to their
rightful place above survival of the fittest.”

“That’s all very
nice,” Linder responded. But how does all that relate to you and
me?”

“The point is to make
sure at least one of us survives to do something useful,” Yost
declared.

“And that something
would be to get Patricia Kendall and her daughter out of the camps?”

“Yes, but to me,
what’s important about Patricia is that she’s Philip Eaton’s
daughter, not Roger Kendall’s wife,” Yost explained. “You see,
I worked for Patricia’s father at the Eaton Company for nearly
thirty years. He was probably the finest man I’ve ever known.
Though Philip came from wealth, he never acted superior to anyone.
When he looked at you, you had his full attention, as if there were
no one else in the room.”

“How did you meet
Philip?” Linder asked, recalling that Yost had expressed the need
to unburden himself, and sensing that this might be a good time to
draw him out.

“My father worked for
Philip’s father, so I started working for the Eaton Company
part-time when I was in high school. Phil was in college then and we
would be assigned to jobs together sometimes. Years later, I came
back and started working as a plant engineer while Phil worked in
management. Our paths crossed often back then and we became good
friends, though our families rarely mingled. We shared the same
politics, though, so when Phil started actively opposing the
President-for-Life, I joined the opposition, too.”

“And is that how you
ended up here?” Linder asked.

“More or less,”
Yost replied. “One thing led to another.”

“But Philip made it
to England,” Linder pressed. “Why not you?”

“We each had our
roles in the insurgency,” Yost continued. “His was overseas, in
finance. Mine was here, in operations. That’s not to say that Phil
ever ran from a fight with the Unionist Party. Far from it. If
playing it safe were what he cared about, he wouldn’t have consumed
his entire personal fortune and devoted every waking hour to bringing
the Party down.”

“So what’s your
purpose in rescuing Patricia Kendall?” Linder asked. “Is it more
about helping Philip’s family or about sticking it to the
Unionists?”

Yost laughed. “Ah,
therein lies the genius of our future partnership. Now that you’ve
entered the game, my focus can be on the fight. While yours is on the
fair damsel. You see, Linder, I know more about you than you think.”

Linder blushed. “And
exactly how are you going to wage the good fight as a fugitive in the
wilderness?” Linder pressed. “Where will you find the men and the
money to pick up where you and Philip left off?”

“What do you know
about the Battle of Cleveland?” Yost asked in return.

“Plenty. I was
there,” Linder replied.

“Then you know about
the safe deposit boxes?”

Linder gave a knowing
smile.

“Yes, and the missing
treasure,” he added. “What can you tell me that I wouldn’t
already know?”

“Whatever you want. I
helped hide it away. And I know what’s left.”

“Holy shit,” Linder
sputtered. “There’s more? Where?”

“It’s a long story.
I’ll tell you on the trail tomorrow. Why don’t you get some sleep
first? It’ll be your turn at the watch in a couple hours.”

Despite his excitement,
Linder agreed to wait before learning what had become of the missing
loot. Moments after lying down beside the banked campfire, he dropped
off to sleep. Only after repeated prodding did he awake a few hours
later, more eager than ever to hear Yost’s secrets.

* * *

Now that more than
forty-eight hours had passed since their escape and they felt
confident of having evaded their trackers for the moment, the men
settled in for a day of rest and recovery. Shortly after sunrise the
following morning, they rose again, ate their meager breakfast and
prepared to leave the cave. But as Linder went to the cave mouth to
urinate in the designated spot, he heard an odd buzzing in the sky
above. Within a few seconds, he recognized the sound as an aircraft
engine, but with a distinctly menacing quality unlike that of any
civilian aircraft he had heard before. He listened closely and felt
some comfort that the buzz was low and falling rather than high and
rising, which suggested that the craft was retreating rather than
approaching.

A few seconds later,
still watching and listening from inside the cave mouth, he noticed a
metallic glint in the sky and withdrew at once to warn the others to
stay inside. While a drone’s cameras, radar, and infrared sensors
were not likely to detect them within the cave, if even one of them
strayed outside, he could give away the entire team.

Yet, with the aircraft
at so high an altitude, it was impossible to know whether it was on a
reconnaissance mission or was merely a passenger flight. As most of
America’s combat and surveillance drones had been lost in the
Manchurian War and the remaining ones redeployed to Alaska and
British Columbia for coastal defense, the odds were slim of a drone
being spared to search for six prisoners missing from the Yukon. At
the same time, this was an unpopulated area, devoid of any economic
infrastructure and far from normal air traffic routes. So why else
would a small propeller-driven aircraft appear now over this spot?

Linder waited inside
with the others around the dying campfire until the sound was gone.
Then he returned to the cave mouth to listen for its possible return.
By now the sun was well above the horizon in a cloudless blue sky.
While their plan had been to follow the valley south to its end while
the terrain remained in shadow, the route offered scant place to hide
from aerial surveillance once the sun was up. Instead, Scotty
proposed that they cross to the opposite side and climb into the next
valley to evade the aircraft, should it return. This, however, would
require a steep ascent up a jagged ridge and a traverse across
avalanche-prone slopes rather too soon after a major snowstorm.

They decided the
question by secret ballot, each man dropping a light- or dark-colored
stone into a mess tin. As the majority favored the climb over another
day’s wait, they set out at once across the valley, staying close
to large rock formations where they could hide if needed. From afar,
the ridge looked formidable. As the going would be steep and
treacherous, undertaking it without ropes or any other climbing gear
made it a reckless move. But they consoled themselves with the
thought that surely no dogs could follow here.

As usual, Linder and
Yost started out last in line, which gave them the opportunity to
resume their conversation of the night before.

“You know, I was in a
couple of those downtown vaults after the rebels ransacked them,”
Linder began. “I still don’t get how your men managed to escape
with so much booty before the National Guard arrived.”

“You have to remember
that no battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy,”
Yost answered. “Our original plan was for the East Side teams to
commandeer some Coast Guard vessels and other craft to exfiltrate our
men, while the goods would be ferried out to a freighter that was
steaming toward Buffalo and the St. Lawrence River. Any vessels that
might be used to pursue us were to be scuttled once we were safely
aboard the freighter. But it didn’t turn out quite that way.”

“You mean for the men
or for the loot?”

“The latter, mostly,”
Yost replied, slowing his pace so as not to slip on the steepening
path. “Nearly all the men found their way to their exfiltration
points along Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga, where they met boats that
took them across the lake to Canada. Even the last troops to evacuate
Tower City made it out okay, although some were caught later, after
they went into hiding. But as soon as we took the seized assets to
our repacking site, it was clear that we had far more than we could
transport to the freighter and safely conceal on board. We realized
we would have to cache the rest.”

“Ah, so that’s how
the legend of the hidden treasure started,” Linder commented.

“Yes, nearly all the
currency, negotiable securities, and finished gemstones made it to
the freighter, along with as much gold as we could handle,” Yost
explained. “The rest of the gold, along with assorted jewelry, fine
art, and antiques were crated up and taken by boat to the West Side,
where they were loaded onto a pair of trucks. Only the crew who
packed the crates had any idea of what was inside. My assistant and I
then drove the crates from the pier to a prearranged spot outside the
city, where he and I blindfolded the loaders who came with us and
drove the trucks the rest of the way to the cache site.”

“Rest of the way to
where?” Linder pressed. “Where are the crates now?”

Yost laughed. “In a
place that’s well enough hidden that no one’s found it yet,” he
replied, stopping to catch his breath from the climb. “For now,
let’s just say that we took it to a farm owned by a close friend of
mine. After we put away the crates, we blindfolded the workmen again
and headed south to hole up in the green hills of Kentucky.”

At that moment, Yost
interrupted the conversation to wave to Browning and Burt, who had
stopped twenty or thirty yards ahead. By now the way had become
increasingly treacherous, and from time to time Linder had to help
Yost hoist himself up and over difficult spots. When they stopped to
rest again, Linder asked more questions.

“And is that where
you were arrested?”

“No, that happened
after I moved up to Canada,” Yost explained. I made the mistake of
crossing back into Michigan for an operation and was caught at a
roving checkpoint. But by some miracle, the DSS took me for a common
smuggler and booked me under my alias ID without a thorough
interrogation and without even checking my fingerprints and DNA
against their database. They just tossed me into the meat grinder to
meet their quota.”

“Did that happen
before or after Philip’s arrest in Beirut?” Linder probed.

“Before. I had just
received a message from Philip a few days earlier, asking me to check
out a character named Joe Tanner.” Yost gave Linder a searching
look. “Had I been free, I suppose I might have warned him.”

“I wish you had,”
Linder replied.

But before Yost could
respond, Browning shouted out for the two stragglers to catch up and
they suspended their dialog to tackle the final portion of the steep
climb. Linder’s arms and legs cramped more than once along the way
and at times he felt as his lungs might burst. Now and again, Yost
made wheezing noises that caused Linder to fear for him. But at last,
they reached the ridgeline, where the others awaited, equally
exhausted. As the two men lay under the bright sun, a short distance
from the rest of the team, Yost moved closer to Linder to finish what
he had wanted to say.

“Our side lost a
giant in Philip Eaton,” he said, once he had caught his breath. It
may be a long time before someone else comes along who can fill his
shoes.”

“And refill the rebel
coffers,” Linder added. “Insurgencies run on money. These days,
even the Brits and Aussies are tightening their purse strings.”

“I suppose that’s
true,” Yost added. “But what’s so sad to me is that, with the
military phase of the insurgency over and done, it wouldn’t be
nearly as expensive now to fund an entirely new campaign based on
non-violent opposition. “If only we had found a way to bring out
more of the money we left behind, the underground dissident movement
would have funding for years of non-violent political organizing.”

“Do you suppose the
money is still there?” Linder inquired.

“I see no reason why
it wouldn’t be,” Yost asserted. “If you and I can get to it, we
might have a decent shot at taking it out the same way we did last
time. Now that you’ve slept on it, are you still willing to partner
up with me?”

“How could I refuse?
But knowing my background, why would you ever trust someone like me?”

Yost waved off the
objection with a smile. “Good men learn and grow,” he observed.
“If there’s anyone I’d trust to recover Philip’s war chest
and put it to good use, it’s you, Warren. Now, let me show you
how.”

* * *

Once the men
recovered their strength under the sun’s gentle warmth, they began
their traverse across the snowfield that descended into the next
valley. After taking just a few steps, however, Scotty stopped and
borrowed Sam Burt’s long wooden staff to poke a hole through the
snow’s icy crust. Then he cut a shaft with a knife to expose the
layers beneath. Browning looked expectantly over Scotty’s shoulder
as the old man crumbled the mix in his gnarled hand and muttered a
few words that only Browning could hear.

“The snowpack is
unstable,” Browning repeated aloud. “The snow layers haven’t
bonded. We’ll have to string ourselves out, at least ten meters
between men, to avoid putting too much stress on the surface layer.
And take extra care to stay in the track made by the man ahead of
you, okay?”