Primal Threat (2 page)

2

August

P
edaling up into the first of the foothills, Zak felt a droplet of sweat trickling out of his helmet and down the side of his face, dangling for just a moment on the tip of his chin. The others had been sweating heavily all along, especially on this ferocious uphill. At some points on the gravel road they found themselves pedaling up grades so steep your average Joe would have a difficult time walking them, much less riding a bike—so steep that if they got off they would not be able to remount, each of them fighting hard to control his bike on the washboard fire road, each breathing in his own labored and painful rhythm.

The five riders were bonded by affection for this type of grueling exercise, intoxicated by the adventure of hard workouts, and addicted to the endorphins exercise produced. While other northwesterners spent the three-day weekend lounging around the house or semicomatose on a blanket at the beach, Zak, Muldaur, Stephens, Barrett, and Morse would be logging two hundred miles in the mountains, climbing fifteen to twenty thousand feet on fire trails, county roads, and overgrown logging roads.

For Zak and Muldaur it would be a calculated shock to their systems to help them prepare for a twenty-four-hour mountain bike race they planned to enter in three weeks. For Stephens, who lived nearby, and for his friend Morse, the ride was an end in itself. Always game for an adventure, Barrett had tagged along almost as an afterthought.

Zak had been riding last in the string of five men, a position he took up from time to time in order to size up the opposition.
Opposition
. He liked that word. They weren’t actually enemies—in fact they were friends—but he knew each climb on this trip would be a contest, and the best place from which to size up the other contestants was at the back. They were all competitive and more than a little vain about their prowess on a bicycle, and thus competition would be fierce.

The Northwest was suffering through the last days of August, and afternoon highs in western Washington had been languishing in the mid-to high nineties, briefly touching a hundred in some counties. In the mountains the evenings would be cooler, but the midday sun would also be harsher. Their plan was to traverse from the western side of the Cascade Mountains to the east, ending in Salmon La Sac, a journey Muldaur had promised Zak would be similar to running three or four marathons back-to-back.

Zak, Jim Muldaur, and Giancarlo Barrett were firefighters, while the other two were businessmen, friends of Muldaur’s. Besides the five years they’d put in together working on Engine 6, Zak and Muldaur had raced mountain bikes and competed in road races together, traveling to and from many of the events in Muldaur’s Subaru Outback with their bikes on a roof rack, so they knew each other’s habits and predilections like brothers. At 160 and 165 pounds, respectively, Zak and Muldaur were the fittest in the group. In biking the most critical single factor in climbing performance was the combined weight of bike and rider. A pound or two might not make much of a difference in football or basketball, but people paid hundreds of dollars to shave a couple of ounces off bicycle components.

Muldaur’s friend Steve Stephens was the chief financial officer for a successful local biotech company; his salary, bonuses, and stock options placed him in an income category none of the others could match, although his buddy Morse, a freelance labor negotiator, came close.

Thursday afternoon before Labor Day the five of them met at Stephens’s house in North Bend, a burgeoning hamlet at the base of the Cascades and the last town before Snoqualmie Pass and the ski areas. Stephens lived under Mount Si, a rocky, four-thousand-foot monolith that jutted almost straight up from the valley floor. Originally eight men and one woman had signed up for this weekend, but the woman and one of the men bailed for family reasons. The last two jumped ship after hearing that the woods in western Washington had been declared off limits because of fire danger. The drier eastern half of the state had been in a condition of fire alert for the past month, but until recently spotty rainstorms had shielded the western half from sanctions. Now
all
the backwoods in the state were officially off limits to motor vehicles, hikers, bikers, and riders on horseback. Forest fires had consumed a record number of acres in eastern Washington, Idaho, and Oregon, and the governors of the three states had asked for federal help to finance fire-suppression efforts.

“It’s bullshit,” Muldaur said when they gathered in Stephens’s driveway to discuss it. “We’ve waited too long. And now comes Labor Day weekend and the weather’s going to be perfect and we can’t go? We’re not going to have a campfire, none of us smokes, and bicycles don’t throw off sparks. The ban is to keep the morons out, and we’re not morons.”

“I agree,” said Giancarlo.

“I also vote that we’re not morons,” said Zak, facetiously.

Stephens added, “You’re absolutely right. That is…Well, after all, bicycles don’t set off sparks. Everybody knows…I mean rules like this are, uh, to keep out the vast majority of the public, because they know if they let everybody up there on a dry weekend like this…I’m sure you’ll all agree, uh, there’ll be a certain percentage of the population who don’t obey anybody’s rules, and of course, as we’ve all discussed before, at least Morse and I have, all it takes is one.”

Zak was beginning to remember Stephens from a ride they’d been on together the previous year. In his late forties, he was two years younger than Muldaur, and he had a way of stammering out his thoughts as if English were a second language. In his own clumsy way he was fond of repeating important points others had stated, but at a torturously slower pace than the original speaker. It was almost as if he thought something hadn’t been said until he said it himself. Muldaur once said, “I always wondered where the center of the universe was, and then I met Steve Stephens and realized he was it.” Cruel, but there was a core of truth to the remark.

“It’s a very dry forest,” said Giancarlo Barrett. At 220 pounds, six feet three inches tall, Giancarlo had climbed Mount Rainier half a dozen times and had done STP, the Seattle to Portland bike ride, eleven years in a row. He and Zak had been friends since drill school six years earlier, and Zak was the best man at his wedding. “The weather guys said it was going to be dry and hotter into next week. More danger of fires. This’ll be our best window.”

“I’m going,” Muldaur said.

Giancarlo turned on his impish grin. “I’m going too, then.”

They would be riding north along the face of the mountain, circumnavigating it and other sheer peaks, pedaling up into a series of low, rolling hills that stretched into the northern part of western Washington. It was an area frequented by fishermen looking to be alone, loggers, mushroom gatherers, dope smugglers, and bear hunters.

A sign cautioned travelers that the road stretched twenty-six miles on gravel before ending, though Stephens assured everyone it was possible to ride mountain bikes all the way to the small town of Snohomish on Highway 2. But that wasn’t where they were headed. They would trek five miles into the hills and then turn east into the real foothills. The first climb after they crossed the North Fork of the Snoqualmie River would gain four thousand feet of elevation.

The plan was to scout for a couple of hours on the rolling county roads and then climb halfway up the side of the Cascades to a camping spot at Panther Creek, where Stephens had paid to have a local man stash their gear. Framed by the summer twilight, they would have a splendid view of Seattle and Bellevue and the Olympic Mountains eighty miles away.

They would spend the first two nights on the western side of the Cascades and then thread their way along hiking trails and back roads until they traversed the Cascade Crest Trail and descended into Salmon La Sac, a small tourist town in central Washington.

They were carrying only rudimentary repair kits for their bicycles, CamelBak water bags, GU packets, Clif Bars, sunglasses, and other necessities: traveling as light as a body could travel in these mountains. At the finish they would savor a Mexican dinner in Salmon La Sac with a couple of the wives, who would caravan across Snoqualmie Pass to meet them on Sunday afternoon.

The part Zak liked best was that there would be no cell phones, no GPS finders, and except for their bikes no appurtenances of the modern age. For one weekend they would be largely independent of modern amenities, knights errant jousting with one another on the climbs, racing down the miles-long descents at breakneck speeds, roaming a section of the Northwest where they were unlikely to see another human being for at least three days.

3

T
hey rode easily on the five miles of pavement that preceded the first climb into Weyerhaeuser property. Traffic in the upper Snoqualmie Valley was sparse, and the sunbaked tarmac roads gave off heat in waves they could see. In front of them to the east were the low, rolling green foothills of the Cascades they would soon be climbing.

The road pointed north with the sheer, rocky base of the foothills to their right and a series of low, forested hills to their left. Even though the Northwest had been suffering a drought for months, the stark green of the foothills never faded. They passed a Christmas tree farm and a few isolated houses. Then, while they were still on the paved road, four teenagers in a Honda sped past, honking and shouting. Muldaur, who was in the front next to Barrett, turned around with a smile and said, “None of that shit where we’re going.”

“No sirree,” said Morse. “Nothing but bears, coyotes, and deer-shit.”

Morse was a jolly man, repeatedly cracking impromptu jokes and launching into witty wordplay. The three firemen took to him and his self-deprecating sense of humor immediately, which was ironic because he didn’t seem too concerned whether people liked him or not, in stark contrast with Stephens who worked overtime to make friends without accomplishing a whole lot. Zak tried to recall if he’d ever met anybody who wanted to be an integral part of the crowd as badly as Stephens did.

Muldaur, the oldest rider and arguably the fittest, wasn’t going to let anybody beat him to the top of a mountain if he could help it; Zak felt the same. Certainly Stephens, who had been a national champion runner in college, wasn’t going to be outshone if he had any say in it. Giancarlo Barrett was tough but too heavy to be competitive on these long climbs. Morse would be at the back of the pack, and he made no bones about it. “Just wait for me, guys. I may be slow, but I’ll make up for it by eating and drinking more than my share.”

As they rode, Stephens dropped back and rode alongside Zak, attempting to be friendly, giving him encouraging words about how it wasn’t going to be “that hard.” Apparently he thought that because Zak was at the back, he was having a tough time keeping up. Stephens was six feet tall, almost the same as Zak, though built heavier, with pale skin he protected via gobs of sunscreen slapped on like paste. Zak learned as they talked that they’d been to many of the same biking events in years past: STP, Seattle to Portland; the Tour de Blast up Mount St. Helens to the observatory; and RAMROD, the one-day ride around Mount Rainier, 154 miles that included ten thousand feet of climbing. Like Muldaur, Stephens was in incredible shape, considering he was almost twenty years older than Zak and Giancarlo. Muldaur had the newest bike and, oddly enough, Stephens, who was the wealthiest, rode the oldest. Stephens also wore the tattiest clothing, most of it musty racing gear that was ten or fifteen years old. Zak wondered why a man would keep four luxury vehicles in his driveway, a speedboat, a new motor home, motorcycles, and Jet Skis—but then wear a cycling jersey that looked as if it had been in the doghouse.

At the point where the pavement ended, a sign was nailed to a tree.
FIRE DANGER
.
UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE ALL WEYERHAEUSER PROPERTY NORTH OF THIS POINT WILL BE OFF LIMITS TO HIKERS
,
CAMPERS
,
HORSEMEN
,
AND MOTORIZED VEHICLES
.

“Doesn’t say anything about cyclists, does it?” Zak said.

“Typically,” Stephens said, “they post a twenty-four-hour guard. But I don’t see him.” A steel gate had been swung across the road, and alongside the gate on a level piece of ground sat a black Ford Bronco coated in dust so thick, the windshield looked opaque.

“I don’t see a guard,” Muldaur whispered.

“I don’t see a guard,” Zak repeated as he dismounted and lifted his bike over the gate.

One by one the others followed. “I don’t see a guard,” said Morse, his voice softer than the others.

“Do you see a guard?” asked Giancarlo.

“Obviously…well, I mean, he’s probably asleep in the Bronco, wouldn’t you imagine?” Stephens asked, spoiling the joke for everyone.

As they rode up the steep hill and pedaled out of sight, they kept waiting for somebody to call them back, but all they heard was the soft crunch of tires in the dirt and the strong, hot wind blowing intermittent tornadoes of dust the height of theater curtains in front of them. The late-afternoon sun pounded their backs, and the heat flowing from the woods seemed almost too humid to inhale.

“It’s going to be great,” Muldaur said, speaking to no one in particular. “The whole area’s closed off, so we won’t have to worry about cars.”

Less than ten minutes later, after they’d gotten off the steepest part of the road and onto a rolling section, Zak sprinted from the rear to the front of the group. “Car back,” said Zak. “Car back.”

“It’s probably the guard,” said Muldaur. “Maybe we should duck into the woods.”

“I’m not hiding,” said Giancarlo. “If he wants to throw us out, let him have at it.”

They’d passed two gravel pits, a section of younger trees interspersed with hundreds of tall foxgloves gone to seed, and now were riding through a mature section of Douglas fir. If they were quick about it, they could conceal themselves in the woods alongside the road, and if they hiked far enough into the trees, they would avoid both the afternoon sun and the dust that coated everything within thirty yards of the road.

“The speed these guys are traveling,” Zak said, “they’re going to bury us in dust.”

“There’s more than one?” Morse asked, gasping for breath.

“At least two. Maybe three. Hear them?”

Traveling close to sixty and towing a gigantic plume of dust, the first vehicle, a white Land Rover, passed them on a section of small rolling hills. The fine-grained silt was light enough that even their bicycle tires were kicking it up, and when Zak looked down at his legs, his socks were tan with it. As the Land Rover overtook them, the air became saturated with a brown haze. Zak took a huge gulp of clean air and tried to hold his breath. In the miasma that was being created, the following vehicles had no way of knowing they were passing five bicyclists. It would be a miracle if one or more of them wasn’t run down, crushed, or annihilated without the drivers even knowing they’d hit anything. One or more of them would be hit and dragged for a quarter mile. Any second. There was no escape. To Zak’s mind, the actions of the first driver were criminal, the most reckless and infuriating driving he had encountered in a long time.

What saved their lives was Muldaur shouting “This way” as he bounced off the road, across a shallow ditch, over a log, and into the woods. All four riders followed in the nick of time as more vehicles roared past, four in all.