Primal Threat (4 page)

“I appreciate that, sir,” Scooter said. “But we’ve got a friend up there.”

“When he comes on down, I’ll tell him you were looking for him. Or you’re welcome to wait.”

“You don’t understand. My friend’s Bronco is broken down.” Scooter had deliberately chosen his imaginary vehicle to match the security guard’s. “He and his girlfriend have been waiting for hours. He’s sick.”

“It’s only three or four miles up the road,” Kasey said, leaning over and smiling at the guard. “We’ve been talking to him all the way from Bellevue. He busted his crankcase on a rock. He’s maybe three miles in. I don’t think he has anything to drink.”

“We’ve gotta get him out,” said Scooter.

“He really
is
sick,” Kasey added.

Scooter could tell from the guard’s face that whoever had hired him had not prepared him for this contingency. “Here. I can get him on the phone.”

“I can’t really—”

“Here,” Scooter said, pushing the buttons on his cell phone. “Jack? Are you there? Jack? Jenny? Where’s Jack? What?” Scooter glanced across at the guard as he spoke. “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news. You’re going to have to walk out…I can’t help it. There’s a guard here who won’t let us in. Well…I’ll let you talk to him.”

Scooter could hear Jennifer’s voice over the cell phone pleading, explaining that her boyfriend had diabetes and was beginning to lose consciousness—that they had no water and had been stranded for hours and she thought her boyfriend was going to die. If he didn’t let her friends in, the guard was headed for a huge lawsuit. Couldn’t he please let her friends come get them? They would be in and out in ten minutes.

Wordlessly, the guard handed the phone back to Scooter, then walked over to the steel gate and swung it out of their way. Kasey fired up the Porsche SUV, and the four trucks wended their way up the washboard hill. A minute later Scooter’s cell rang. “Did I do good or what?” Jennifer asked.

“Oscar time, Jenn.” Scooter could hear the two brothers, Fred and Chuck, laughing in the background. Soon all four vehicles were racing along the deserted county road.

Scooter clapped his phone shut and said, “That was beautiful.”

“Hang on. They’re right up here.”

“The cyclists? Already?”

“There’s a bunch of ’em. I thought there were just going to be two.”

“Nadine said eight or something like that.”

“I see five. Hang on. We’ll smother those fuckers in dust.”

“Yee haw!” Scooter shrieked as they hit a pothole that jarred his teeth. “Look at that cloud. These bastards are going to be brushing grit out of their teeth for weeks.”

“I hope it’s the right group.”

After they passed the cyclists, Scooter added, “It was them. I saw him. Jesus, I think Fred and those guys are going to run them over. It’s dustier than hell back there. I don’t know how they can miss. I think we cut it a little
too
close.”

“Did he see you? That’s what matters.”

“He was too busy spitting dust.”

A few moments later the walkie-talkie squawked.
“Jesus. Can you guys slow down? We can’t see a thing back here. We’re going to go off a cliff or something.”

It was Roger Bloomquist in the Land Rover. “Just don’t hit any cyclists,” Scooter said. “I don’t want to have to crawl under somebody’s truck to pick a bunch of Lycra out of the undercarriage.” He laughed at his joke.

5

“
W
hat was wrong with those assholes?” Muldaur asked.

“I don’t know,” said Stephens. “Maybe they didn’t see us.”

“They could hardly have missed us,” said Muldaur. “I can’t believe how close they came to killing us. It was like they didn’t care if they did or not.”

“My guess is they’ve already started drinking,” said Giancarlo.

“Let’s not get too excited about something that, uh, ended up being rather inconsequential,” said Stephens. Zak had to admire that quality of reasonableness, even though he was as pissed off as Muldaur. Clearly, the yahoos in the trucks had been out to do damage; had the cyclists not ducked off the main road when they did, he was reasonably certain one or more of them would be on their way to the emergency room right now.

Stephens led them down to the rugged North Fork of the Snoqualmie, which now in late August was just a shadow of its normal self, and then along some overgrown logging roads Weyerhaeuser workmen had once used to haul logs out of the area. Somewhere on the county road to the west they could hear the caravan of vehicles racing back down the road. “Who the hell let them past the gate?” Muldaur asked.

“I wonder if they even knew we were there,” said Zak.

“The first car did.” Muldaur turned to him. “I saw the passenger laughing.”

“They were laughing at us?”

“One of them was.”

Eventually they made their way down a slight incline to where the road crossed the Snoqualmie River on a concrete bridge. Because they’d detoured into the woods, they’d bypassed a good part of the county road, as well as what Stephens called the Spur Ten gate, which he assured them would be locked and would effectively bar the Jeeps from following them.

Once they attained the bridge, they stopped to take in the panorama. Zak could see a quarter mile to the north and a bit more to the south. The water was slow and swirling with eddies and currents and moss-covered rocks exposed by the summer waterline. He could have watched the river all afternoon. The bridge had no railings, and Zak couldn’t help thinking how easy it would be for a car to drive off it. They stared at the hypnotic currents, at the silvers, greens, and lazy blue colors farther downstream. A kingfisher sat on a branch thirty yards away, and Zak spotted a deer standing in the water downriver. The air was cooler here and refreshing.

“Is there snowmelt at this time of year?” Zak asked.

“Oh, no, well, you know…that all ended months ago,” said Stephens. “Most of this water’s coming from up in the high lakes. When there’s snowmelt, it’s all sea green and milky from…well, not clear like this.”

Zak looked up at the close mountains above them in wonderment that they would conquer these slopes in ways that hadn’t been possible when their pioneer ancestors traversed them. Stephens pointed deep into the woods where there were occasional cedar stumps eight or twelve feet across, remnants of the titans that had been logged eighty years back and that dwarfed anything they would see in the tree farms.

“Can you imagine how dark this forest was at one time?” Giancarlo said. “We’ll never see that kind of majesty again. Not unless nature finds a way to eliminate us. Oh, my God, this is beautiful. This view is worth the trip.”

“I’ve been here many times,” said Morse, “but it never fails to amaze me.”

Stephens had located their first night’s camp on a rare flat spot hidden from the road, near an anorexic-looking waterfall that formed a small pool before disappearing over the side of the mountain. It was the terminus of Panther Creek, because from here it ran directly into the North Fork below. They’d been pedaling up the mountain on steep switchbacks, traversing the Z-scar patterns they’d spotted from the valley floor. The roads were impossibly sheer in some places—so sheer that even with twenty-seven speeds, Giancarlo was wishing for lower gears. “Couldn’t ride a lower gear,” said Muldaur. “You wouldn’t be going fast enough to stay upright. You’d fall over.”

Morse, who was gasping, said, “Maybe we should have brought ice axes.”

“Or parachutes.”

The camping spot at Panther Creek was one of the few places they’d seen where they could pedal off the road—everything else had been hemmed in by sheer rock faces, stands of trees, or drop-offs. Most of the area was closed in by maturing Douglas fir planted after this section of the mountain had been logged off twenty or thirty years before. The clearing was in a small cul-de-sac that had once acted as a dumping area for logging operations, old roots and broken limbs in a giant heap, on top of which sat a red-shafted flicker canting his head back and forth curiously. As soon as he hit the flat part of the road, Morse got off his bike and leaned over to catch his breath, while the other four pedaled around slowly to flush some of the lactic acid from their legs. Morse was definitely going to be their weak link, Zak thought.

After they located their gear, Zak climbed onto a stump, where he found an expansive view of the valley and the road they’d just climbed. The stump, an ancient cedar, was nine feet across and had stubby trees and brush growing out of it. According to Stephens, they were about a third of the way up the first of several mountains they would scale.

Except for the barely discernible outlines of the tallest buildings in Bellevue and Seattle thirty miles away and a single puffy white contrail high over Puget Sound, there were no traces of civilization beyond the remains of the logging operations behind them.

In August the pitiful waterfall was all that remained of Panther Creek, but it would provide fresh water and a cold shower. Morse, who’d overheated badly on the climb, stepped under the waterfall in his cycling clothes, taking off only his shoes. Giancarlo followed, grinning until his dimples showed. “That is
really
cold.”

“Feels good,” said Morse. “But it’s giving me a headache.” He peeled his wet and now heavy clothing off and stood nude.

The original plan had been to explore some of the rolling terrain on the valley floor for a couple of hours before making camp, but after the Jeeps passed them they didn’t want to remain on the valley floor.

Zak and Muldaur, after ascertaining that their gear had been cached properly, pedaled back to the road and continued climbing, anxious to log more miles. The other three, knowing there would be impromptu climbing contests in the coming days and having had a difficult time already following Zak and Muldaur up the first switchback slopes, seemed content to lollygag back at the waterfall and let the two wear themselves out.

After climbing for another hour, Zak and Muldaur stopped at a narrow perch on one of the upper road systems. As soon as they quit pedaling, the draft they’d been creating for themselves ceased, and they were both immediately painted in sweat. The afternoon sun stood fairly high in the western sky, and as they walked out to a small landing away from the side of the mountain, a breeze kicked up. They couldn’t see the camping spot below, but they could see just about everything else, including the last half mile of road they’d pedaled up. “I wonder what our elevation is,” Zak said.

“We passed Lake Hancock twenty-five minutes ago. It’s at twenty-two hundred, and I’m guessing we climbed at least another thousand feet. Probably closer to two.”

They could see a carpet of low, rolling hills stretching out thirty miles to Lake Washington, which they glimpsed just a sliver of, and then beyond the water Seattle, Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountains. Seattle sat in a basin between the Olympic and Cascade Ranges, so it was more or less shielded from storms off the Pacific. The basin also subjected the area to periods of air stagnation, one of which they were going through now—the sky over Seattle was brown and purple.

They were situated on the side of a mountain—or technically a foothill—and the valley floor below looked just as it had several million years ago when the last glaciers moved through and scraped the earth raw, except now it was carpeted in Douglas fir and the large scabby patches that had been clear-cut. They could see the Snoqualmie River at the base of the mountain and several small lakes dotting the landscape, a couple of which they’d passed on their way in but hadn’t actually seen until now.

Zak noted his heart rate monitor, which had been registering in the high 160s while they were climbing, now registered 52. If his heart hadn’t been working to cool his body, the rate would have been even lower. He was in the best condition he’d been in all year.

“What’s that?” Muldaur asked.

“What?”

“Over there.” Following Muldaur’s gaze off to the north, Zak saw a puff of dust working its way in their direction.

“The Jeeps?”

“I don’t know who else would be out here. And they weren’t all Jeeps. That first one was a Porsche Cayenne. It costs over ninety thousand dollars if you get the loaded model.”

“At least we won’t have to contend with them. Stephens said they won’t be able to get past the Spur Ten gate. The people who have fishing cabins up at Lake Hancock have a key, but nobody else.”

“I just wonder how they got past the guard.”

“What would you have done if they’d stopped?”

“I don’t know, Zak. Every time somebody risks my life with a four-thousand-pound vehicle when I’m on a twenty-pound bike, I get pissed. I know people who carry guns when they ride, but if I carried one I’d end up using it. So I don’t.”

“Shooting at a car wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“It wasn’t such a good idea trying to run us off the road, either.” When Zak turned to leave, Muldaur said, “Wait a minute. I want to see if they head back to North Bend.”

“They really bugged you, didn’t they?”

They watched the distant plume of dust wend its way south. From their vantage point Zak couldn’t make out the individual vehicles, but he knew there were four of them. For more than a minute the dust trailed off behind the trees, then reappeared, then vanished again. Finally it stopped at a point almost exactly in line with Seattle’s skyline. “They’re at Spur Ten gate,” Muldaur said. “Probably trying to figure out how to get through it.”

The plume of dust flattened and gradually dissipated. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere and I can still hear somebody’s dog yapping,” Zak said.

“This is America. Everybody’s entitled to at least one gun, one truck, and two dogs. Geez. Feel how hot that wind is?”

The breeze came at them from two directions, from above on the mountain and from the south, skimming the face of the hills they’d ridden up. “It’s so dry it sucks the moisture out of your mouth.”

“In California they call them Santa Anas,” said Muldaur. “Up here they call them Chinooks. The wind picks up heat as it rolls down off the mountains. And some of that heat is coming directly from eastern Washington. The pass acts as a bellows.” Suddenly he noticed that the vehicles were headed straight for the base of the mountain on a ribbon of dirt road. “Jesus. They got through the gate!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. And they’re headed straight for our camp.”

They got back on their bikes and climbed for another fifteen minutes until they hit the crest of the foothills, where they turned around and headed back down. Muldaur estimated they’d reached the forty-five-hundred-foot level. They wouldn’t go a whole lot higher this weekend, though they would descend and climb these hills many times more. As they pedaled they drank from their CamelBak water packs. Even though Zak’s pack had held almost a hundred ounces when they started, it was nearly dry now.

Though they were both expert riders and had expensive high-tech mountain bikes with disc brakes and front and rear shock absorbers, on the downhill Zak easily sped away from Muldaur. The difference between them, Muldaur was fond of telling him, was that Zak hadn’t yet had his accident. “You get in a wreck where it takes six months to heal, you’ll slow down,” Muldaur said. “You’re just one crash away from going my speed.”

Zak laughed, let go of his brakes, and disappeared around a sharp bend. Later, Muldaur told him he must have been doing forty—an insane speed, really, when you thought about the unpredictable road surfaces and the drop-offs.

The trail was bisected by short sections of washboard produced by heavy truck traffic over the years. It had the added hazard of short, diagonal dikes laid across the path to channel off heavy rainwater. All of this on a bumpy road with unexpected twists and turns and the occasional rock smack in the center.

Zak bounced onto the dirt platform near their camp and purposely skidded his rear wheel, kicking up a cloud of dust. Giancarlo came out from behind the ancient debris pile, where they were setting up camp, just as Muldaur came down the hill and kicked up his own cloud of dust. “That’s all very little boy,” Giancarlo said.

“Isn’t it?” Muldaur said.

“They’re right down there.”

“Who’s down where?”

“The Jeeps. Just below us. Looks like they’re getting ready to spend the night.”

“Are you shitting me?” Muldaur rolled his bike toward the near side of the debris pile so he could peer down the hill. Zak followed until they were both able to peek directly over the lip of the landing. To their surprise, four vehicles were parked less than a hundred yards away in a tiny clearing at the end of an overgrown spur road: a Porsche SUV, a Ford pickup with gigantic tires, a Jeep, and a Land Rover that looked as if it had never been off a paved road until today. The vehicles were parked helter-skelter and coated in dust except for muddy eyeholes polished on the windshields by the wipers. One tent was already set up, and two people were working on another. Somebody had started a small fire.