The Alberta Connection (30 page)

“John, this is Ryce.

“Go to four.”

Ryce had just instructed John to change the
channel on his radio. After changing his own channel, Ryce keyed
the transmit button.

“John, this is Ryce again.

“I need your eyes in the sky. I have one man
on either side of the trail. I am part of a two-blob group. What do
you see ahead of me?”

Ryce could hear some comments in the
background and then Dexter’s voice.

“I’ve got this one, John, if you don’t mind.
There are two hot objects directly ahead about two hundred meters.
There is a third object about twenty-five meters away from the two.
Using your Timex reference, the third object is at the fours.”

Ryce had been forced to use metric
measurements in Afghanistan. He did a quick conversion. He did not
like metric. Moreover, he was glad that Dexter did not have a
digital watch.

When he was stationed in Afghanistan, Ryce’s
company had been involved in a firefight. He sent an observation
team to a small bluff that overlooked the battle area. When the
team said they saw a large group of insurgents hiding behind a mud
hut, Ryce asked for the location. The reply he got was, “the group
is over there behind that building.” Ryce explained how to use a
wristwatch for relative directions. The twelve on the wristwatch
was north, six was south, three was east, and nine was west.

There was a long silence and then the radio
crackled. “I am sorry, Sir, but I have a digital watch.”

Ryce pressed the transmit button on his
walkie-talkie. He told the point man in the right hand tree line
where to look for the person waiting in ambush. And he repeated
that he had permission to terminate with prejudice. Ryce was
carrying the Barrett with a silencer. The rest of the group were
carrying M4s with silencers and scopes. The former SEAL would have
no difficulty with his newly assigned task.

Ryce keyed his walkie-talkie and instructed
the Ranger working in the trees on his left to keep an eye on the
other side of the canyon. Ryce also indicated where the suspect
might be hiding.

Ryce found a location that allowed him to see
both of the point men as they worked the tree line. He watched the
one on his right work up into the trees and eventually disappear
from view.

After several minutes, the walkie-talkie
earplug crackled. “He’s got a park ranger uniform but he is not
going to do any more park ranger stuff. He has two horses tethered
near the trail for bait.”

Ryce told the two point men to swing back to
the trail and he would meet up with them near the horses. Ryce
pulled the earphone for the walkie-talkie out of his ear and
replaced it with the radio earphone. He reset his radio to the
operational channel.

“Ramona, you have Kathy, Adam and someone in
a park ranger uniform heading your way. The kill instructions are
still in effect.”

As Ryce was starting to move up the trail, he
heard the sound of an exceptionally large caliber rifle echoing off
the canyon walls. It sounded like the 50 caliber Barrett that
Ramona was carrying. It did not, however, sound like a 50 caliber
Barrett in a pink gun case. Several more shots were heard a few
seconds later. These were a smaller caliber, perhaps either 7.62 or
5.56. Did anyone from John’s team have a Mini 14? Ryce did not
remember seeing a Mini 14 among the weapons carried to Great Falls,
but the park rangers had Mini 14s. Of course, the echoes in the
canyons distorted the sounds.

Ryce was interrupted by someone’s voice in
his earphone. It was Tanya.

“Ryce, the lady is heading back your way.
Ramona thinks we winged her. The other two are definitely
expired.”

For a moment, Ryce felt irritated that John
would send Tanya out on a backstop assignment. But, she had passed
all of the FBI’s weapons requirements. Why wouldn’t she be
included?

Ryce signaled his group to spread out and
then unslung his Barrett. The trail ran straight for three hundred
feet but Ryce was not interested in capturing Kathy. When she
galloped around the small curve in front of him, he aimed the
Barrett and squeezed the trigger.

Ryce watched as Kathy’s hat flew off. She
immediately stopped the horse she was riding and raised her right
hand into the air. Ryce could see blood running down her left arm
below her elbow. Someone had definitely winged her.

Ryce chuckled. He had gone for a head shot
but the horse had stumbled. Kathy was one lucky lady. Ryce sent two
of his men to secure Kathy and attend to her wound and then
informed Ramona that Kathy had surrendered.

They had three horses, five dead men, and one
living but extremely shaken woman. Ryce could see a faint streak of
red running from a point an inch above her eye to an inch above her
ear. When her horse stumbled, it had saved her life.

Horses do not like to be ridden by dead
people. They had to double up on two of the horses but eventually
got the dead secured well enough to transport. Kathy was not
thrilled with riding double with a dead man. When Ryce informed her
that she could walk, she chose to ride.

The horses had saddlebags with lead ropes.
Ryce snapped a lead on the halter of each horse and handed a lead
to each of his men. With a Mini 14 in one hand and his Barrett in
the other, he started Kathy down the trail.

The hike to the trail head took less than
forty-five minutes. Ryce radioed John and gave him an update. Ryce
knew that Dexter was listening to the radio and would know that his
friend’s killers had been terminated with prejudice.

The horses ridden by Adam and the park ranger
had been killed in the firefight at the trailhead. They would be
left where they had fallen. Ryce smiled. He would like to see the
face of someone who found the horses and wondered why elk had
horseshoes.

Ryce remembered a story he had heard when he
was young. The father of a friend was a game warden in Washington
State. During elk season one year, a roadside checkpoint had been
set up near Chelan, WA. Three hunters who were stopped at the
checkpoint were extremely proud they had bagged an elk. They were
no longer proud when they were told to unload the horse they had
killed. Elk do not wear horseshoes.

The dead Mounties and former park rangers
were loaded into one of the trailers. Tanya, Ramona, and their two
angler friends agreed to stay at the trailhead until the helicopter
with two RCMP drivers arrived. After giving Tanya a long kiss and
the Mini 14, Ryce led his group back up the trail.

O2 and one of his team were just cleaning up
a delicious smelling trout dinner when Ryce arrived back at the
camp. O2 was getting hourly radio reports from John. Dianne and her
friends had moved no more than a mile. A Ranger had been sent to
establish visual contact. Ryce was glad that O2 shared assignments
between Rangers and SEALs.

Ryce told his group to dive into some MREs
and then they would all move closer to where Dianne was camping.
Ryce radioed John to inform him they had safely returned to the
group, and they were moving up. He also asked John to warn the
group when the distance to Dianne was less than a mile.

As soon as the camp was clean, they all moved
out. O2 set a moderate pace, nearly two miles an hour. Ryce checked
the time when they were notified that Dianne was a mile ahead of
them. They had been on the trail for ninety minutes.

Ryce noticed that the trail had swung
significantly to the northwest. If his calculations were correct,
Dianne was less than ten miles from the border. He keyed his
transmitter.

“Can one of you with a thermal image tell me
how far Dianne is from the border?”

“Ryce, this is Dexter. Dianne is about ten
miles from the border as the crow flies. But since she can’t fly,
she’s about thirteen miles from the border.”

Dexter was slow to end the transmission. Ryce
could hear several people laughing. One voice was heard asking
Dexter why he hadn’t given the distance in kilometers. Dexter’s
response was because Americans don’t do well with the metric
system.

O2 recalled the point man as soon as Dexter
said the group was within a mile of Dianne. He didn’t want to
accidently spook the target, although all of the shots heard
earlier in the day should have.

Adam and Kathy did not appear to spend any
time with Dianne but Ryce was curious. Adam had a map to the cabin.
And the pickup crew was staying in the campground close to the
cabin. There were just too many coincidences.

Ryce looked over at O2. “Don’t we have
someone in Idaho monitoring this radio?”

O2 smiled. “By George, I think you have a
good idea. I am sure Vince is monitoring this radio frequency. We
can have Vince call Doug in Monroe. Doug can chase down Adam and
Kathy and see if they have a connection to Dianne.”

O2 pressed his transmit button. During the
next fifteen minutes, Vince was brought up to speed. He promised to
call Doug, whose new mission was to find a connection between Adam,
Kathy, and Dianne.

Ryce had spent most of the day on the trail
at a fast trot. He decided he could skip supper and take a nap. He
rolled out his sleeping bag and crawled in. He was surprised that
the nights were as cool as they were.

The crackling of his earpiece awakened Ryce.
It was John. Dianne and her group were on the move. Ryce checked
the time. It was 6:00 AM. He looked around the camp. O2 had a small
fire lit and was heating a pot of water for coffee. The sun was
just beginning to kiss the tops of the mountains to the west. Ryce
woke up the rest of the group. They would have to wait until Dianne
stopped before warming up their MREs.

Camp cleanup took less than five minutes, and
then they were all swinging their packs over their shoulders. Ryce
sent out a point man, and the group started moving up the
trail.

Ryce radioed John and told him that he wanted
to close up to about a half mile behind Dianne. There was
sufficient cover to stay out of sight.

Ryce smiled. Having a topographic map to
compare with the thermal imaging would be really nice; all John had
to look at was some heat blobs on a grey background.

Ryce pulled a map out of his pack. It was one
he had printed online using Google Maps. The stream they were
following was not on the map. A blue squiggle crossed into Canada
northwest of their present position.

The maps were good in populated areas but not
quite as good in uninhabited locations. Even his high priced GPS
had not provided anything more than a very basic road map of the
single unpaved road into the area. Now, if only they had some
technology that would tell them where Dianne was going.

At 9:00 AM, John radioed Ryce that Dianne had
stopped. Ryce responded that he was looking at her through a
spotting scope. They were at a small dilapidated shack with a faint
trail of smoke coming out of the tin smoke stack.

Ryce scanned the area. He and O2 had been
here less than a week ago. Wasn’t this where Francine had been
murdered? When he scanned the cabin, O2 confirmed this was where
they had rescued Brenda.

As Ryce scoped the area, he noticed a mine
entrance several hundred feet away from the cabin, on the opposite
side of the stream. Ryce could see a mine car still on the rails
leading into the mine. There was a sluice box next to the stream,
with several small piles of mine tailings.

Ryce’s scan was interrupted by O2. “Oh, oh,
Dianne has added a couple members to her group.”

Ryce swung his scope over to the shack. There
were three men standing on the cabin porch, with Dianne and her
four friends standing in a semi-circle near the porch steps. As he
was reaching for his radio to call John, Ryce heard Tanya’s
voice.

“Ryce, honey, watch that pretty butt of
yours. Three more blobs just popped out of nowhere.”

Ryce looked over at O2, who was almost
rolling in the dirt, laughing. Ryce confirmed three new players and
let Tanya know this was the miner’s shack where they had found
Brenda.

As O2 continued to laugh, Ryce swung his
spotting scope to watch Dianne. She collected three laptops from
three different backpacks and placed them on a bench on the front
porch of the cabin. One of the new participants walked into the
cabin and returned with a small duffle bag. He handed the duffle
bag to Dianne. Dianne unzipped the bag and pulled out several
bundles of money. Ryce could not hear the conversation but the
three new players seemed to be extremely unhappy.

A spokesperson for the three new men kept
pointing at the laptops. He was still obviously asking about the
fourth laptop. Where was the fourth laptop? Ryce himself wanted an
answer for that question. If it had been left in the cabin near the
lake, the laptop was in many small pieces.

The conversation soon became more heated.
Even without his scope, Ryce could see Dianne give the three men
the “We’re Number One” salute. She walked over to Delbert. Two of
the new men walked back into the shack. Without warning, two
automatic rifles opened up on Dianne and her four companions.

O2 looked over at Ryce. “Those were
AK-47s.”

Ryce shook his head “yes,” and continued
scanning the shack. One of the men who had been part of the
massacre walked out of the shack. He walked up to each of Dianne’s
group, placed his rifle barrel above the head of the person and
pulled the trigger.

Ryce radioed John and reported the events of
the previous five minutes. His conversation was interrupted once
more by O2. One of the three new players had walked into the mine
and was returning with three horses.

Ryce immediately radioed John with the new
information. O2 looked over at Ryce.

“Those horses are going to be slow on this
trail. I think we can keep up with them.”

O2 radioed John.

“Hey, big brother, I think we can keep up
with the horses. This trail is pretty rocky. See if you can figure
out where they are going. A topographical map from the map store
across from Wal-Mart would be extremely good right now.”