The Camp (25 page)

Ellen saw the break in the trees and stopped when she spotted a crouching figure step forward. She was about to call out but she approached the edge of the clearing for a better look, still hidden, and was instantly filled with panic.

Slowly, terror-filled, Ellen circled around until she was positive. Jane, her counselor from Camp Hiouchi, was standing next to Cindy and the other worker from the store. She wasn’t sure what was going on until she followed Jane’s pointing hand and saw two girls strapped to the conveyor belt that led to the top of the wood burner. But that’s also when she noticed that the guy was holding a gun on Claire, who had just stepped into the clearing.

Ellen worked her way around to the backside of the burner, and then, stumbling and shaking, stepped out and pressed the gun to the middle of the guy’s back and stammered. “Put your gun down.”

Frank dropped his gun and Jane pulled hers and leveled it at Claire. “Cindy, start the conveyor belt.” Then she looked over at Ellen. “Ms. Stulov, if you want to save your friend’s life, put your gun down and we all walk away. Nobody has to get hurt.”

Nobody had moved. Jane suddenly took on her counselor voice. “Think about it, Ellen. You’ll be saving the life of the two girls up there and this woman. All you have to do is put down your gun.”

Cindy hadn’t moved.
 

“I said, start the conveyor.”
 

The storeowner stepped closer to Claire. “No!” In one quick move, Jane shot Cindy in the head, then brought the gun back to point at Claire and began to walk backwards.

“One last chance, Ellen. The two girls will fry, I’ll shoot this woman, and I don’t care about Frank. Go ahead. Shoot him and see what happens.”

Jane had reached the handle that would engage the conveyor, but it wouldn’t move. She twisted so she could see and in that moment, Claire lunged. Two slow. Jane caught the movement out of the corner of her eye, raised the pistol, and fired.
 

With loud grinding and scraping, the conveyor belt started to move.

Tears running down her cheeks, Ellen slammed the gun as hard as she could into the back of Frank’s head, but when she turned, Jane was crossing the clearing for the cover of the forest.
 

Suddenly, Paul burst out between two trees, slightly behind the burner and got off one shot at the figure who was rapidly blending into the woods. Then he raced to the engine that propelled the conveyor belt. He picked up a stick in the process, used it to leverage the wire from the spark plug, and quickly took in the scene, noting the young girl who was standing there. Then he ran to Claire, rolled her onto her back, gasping when he saw the blood flowing from her head. He had to stop the bleeding.

“Quick, he said to the girl. “Give me a hand here.” The teenager stepped over the crumpled figure at her feet and staggered next to Paul. Then she looked down at the rapidly pooling blood. In a flood of images and suffering a lack of blood to her brain, Ellen fainted.

The sting to the side of her face was more than she could take and she opened her eyes to yet another slap.

When Paul saw her eyes flutter open, he grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her to a sitting position. “C’mon, wake up. I need your help. What’s your name?”

Pushing her legs out in front of her, she leaned back on her arms. Then she saw the knife in his hand.

“No! No, get away.”
 

She began to crab away until one arm hit a branch that rolled and she fell onto her back.

“It’s alright, don’t be afraid.” Paul glanced down at the pocketknife in his hand and understood her fear. “This woman will bleed to death unless we help her. I need a strip of material from your sweat pants.”

Timidly, she extended a leg in his direction.
 

First he cut the elastic, then looked up at her. “What’s your name? I’m going to cut a strip up to your knee.”
 

“Ellen.”
 

Paul ran a hand up the inside of her pant leg to her knee and she instantly stiffened.
 

“Hey, it’s okay.” Then he shoved the knife up and through the material and pulled the pant leg tight with one hand while pulling the knife down. “See? Once more so I have a strip.”

This time she reached down and pulled the sweat material around the knee tight and he made the second cut.

“You’ll have to help me.” She crawled over on her hands and knees.
 

“Lift her head so I can wrap the material all the way around.”

When he brushed at Claire’s hair to move it away from the wound, a handful fell away, exposing bone. He tied the strip on the opposite side of her head.

“Ellen, look at me. Her name is Claire…”

“I know.”

Surprised he looked at the teenager. “What?”

 
She looked down at Claire as though talking to her. “This woman, her husband, and Amy saved me. I was sleeping in the back of their bus when…”
 

Paul interrupted her narrative with such excitement she scooted back.

“It’s okay. Amy is my daughter. I thought...” Then he caught himself. “Where is she?”

Ellen turned and pointed. “There’s an animal trail. She tripped and hurt her ankle.”

He reached down, took her hand and pressed her palm to the bandaged wound. “Keep applying pressure until it stops bleeding.”

He pushed to his feet and stepped over to Frank and scanned the ground until he found the gun. Then he hustled over and gave it to Ellen.

“I think you did a good job on that guy’s head, but if he wakes up, shoot him. Can you do that?”

With a surge of self-confidence Ellen would never understand, she shifted her position to face the crumpled figure. “No problem.” Then she watched Paul vanish into the trees.

Chapter Forty-one

One of the bodyguards stepped out into the parking lot and began to wave his arms and then point. Alto climbed into the stretch limo and instructed the driver to park at the end of the lot, next to the two vans.

“No, stop here. Pull up close to the trees.”

He cautiously slipped from the driver’s side with the forest to his back and waved over the top of the car.
 

One of the bodyguards jogged over. “We found the girls.”

Alto stepped around the front of the limo. “What is their condition?”

The man looked over his shoulder at his partner who was now leaning in the doorway of room one, then back at his boss. “Mostly okay. I think they’ve been drugged.”

Alto walked toward the vans. “How many?”

His bodyguard followed closely. “Nine.”

“I’ll bring the van over myself, go help with the girls.”

Alto climbed in the nearest van and rolled down the windows. There seemed to be nothing that could stop him now, but he wondered who the young man who fired on him was and what had happened to the people who had transported the girls. He scanned the forest, but saw no movement. Could they be waiting for him to load the girls before making their move? He shrugged and started the engine. Then he pulled the van as close as possible in front of the motel room.

The girls were drugged, dehydrated, and hadn’t eaten in two days. It took both men practically dragging them to the van, then Alto wrestling them into their seats and buckling them up so they wouldn’t fall over.
 

After the third girl was secure, one of the guards climbed in. “These girls need food and water.”

Alto nodded as he looked at the near-unconscious young girls heavily leaning into their shoulder harness. “They’re young and will be fine. Once we get them into the plane at the Medford Airport, we’ll revive them with food and water. We were expecting twelve, so there will be plenty of food and water for all of them. “

He stepped out of the stifling hot van and took a deep breath. “Right now it is important to get them loaded and get away from this place.”

Walter Link
jolted awake and looked around. He was alone.

He rubbed a point on his chest just below his sternum. “Shit, another Angina attack.”

He could remember Rye pushing him through a hole in the bathroom wall but not much beyond that. He sat propped against a stump and slowly began to test his limbs, first his hands and arms, then he rotated his feet from side to side. Everything seemed to be working without pain.

Grabbing the branches of the small tree next to the stump, he pulled himself to his feet, all the time tracking each movement. “So far so good.”

“Good, you’re up.” Rye walked up and leaned against the back wall of the motel.

“Three men are loading the girls into one of the vans.”

Link let go of the tree, took a step, and began to sway. Then he pointed at the throat mic. “Hey, what the hell?”

“You were out of it and I decided it was time to call in the cavalry. Where’s you’re task force located?”

The agent rolled his eyes, though he was feeling better by the minute. “Portland.”

The two men stood in silence at the realization that it would take at least two hours for them to reach Wolf Creek.

“Nothing we can do here, but Paul keeps a gun in the bus. Think you can make it?”

Link took a couple tentative steps. “What are we going to do with one gun? These guys are probably armed to the hilt.”

Rye watched him for a minute then caught up and took one of his arms. “Block the road and stall for time.”

Link looked over at him and nodded.

Chapter Forty-three

Jane replaced the gun in the holster in the middle of her back, leaned against a tree, and looked down at her left hand. “Oh fuck.” Blood dripped from each finger. She tried to remember if they had eaten all the food Frank brought from the store. She’d need all the strength she could get to load the girls into the van.

First she had to take care of her wound. She had to look. She could move her arm with great effort, but that seemed to make it bleed more.
 

With her right hand she reached inside the windbreaker and unbuttoned her shirt, shrugging it off. She gave a tight laugh.
 

She had to lift her arm to see the wound, but couldn’t for the blood. The skin was puckered on the inside of her upper arm and there seemed to be a slight numbness. She had to stop the bleeding. Slumped down at the base of the tree, she ran her fingers through her hair and ripped lose a short hank. Then she looked around until she found a small flat rock and lay the hair across it. Sitting up straight, she reached into her front pocket and fished out her lighter.

One spin and the flame sprang to life. Hand shaking, she held it to the hair then tossed the lighter aside. With her thumb she crushed the now brittle hair until it was powder. Then taking a pinch between thumb and index finger, she applied it to the source of the bleeding until the blood had coagulated.

“Good to go.” Careful not to move her arm and start the bleeding again, Jane kept it pinned to her side and then started down the trail at a steady pace.
 

Frank was an idiot but she could have used Cindy. She ran the scenario of what took place at the wood burner, but couldn’t figure out who the man was that shot her. Then she was on to Josh. The two could easily load the girls. He could even run to the little store and get food and water. No. They could do that on their way out.

Over and over she imagined each step of loading the girls and driving to Portland. They could have the girls delivered by dark.
 

When the motel came into view, she slumped down at the base of a tree. Her arm seemed slippery against her chest and when she pulled it away, blood was running freely. She felt weak and nauseous. It took all her strength to shrug out of the windbreaker. Then she tried to wipe the blood away and finally wadded up the thin material and shoved it between the upper inside of her arm and her body.

Jane didn’t know it, but she was bleeding out. It takes the loss of a liter and a half of blood before vision closes in and the brain starts shutting down bodily functions. During the entire process, the mind knows it’s dying.

Jane had lost a liter of blood and knew that something was terribly wrong. That realization would be among her last thoughts. But still, she moved on, refusing to acknowledge her situation.

Her energy level surged briefly when she saw activity at the motel and thought that maybe Josh was already loading the girls. But that didn’t make sense. The windbreaker was blood-soaked, but it had stemmed the flow. Slowly, moving from one tree to another, Jane crept to the end of the motel and watched as two men helped a girl to the side of the van where another pulled her in. And what was with the limo? Was this the host or the buyer? There was no sign of Josh. Her mind was failing and she found it hard to focus. Then her vision closed in. Her brachial artery had been bleeding again. Sliding down, blackness took over and she slumped forward.

The three men stared in the van at the nine young girls who hung against their shoulder harnesses, moving only with the rhythm of their breathing.

Alto waved to the limo driver, then turned to the bodyguards.
 

“Leave the empty van. I want both of you with the girls.”

The driver pulled up, leapt out, and opened the door for his boss. Once inside, the driver executed a three-point turn and was followed by the two guards with the van full of girls.

Paul followed the animal trail, but found no trace of his daughter and finally emerged into the parking lot of the motel just in time to watch a white van disappear around a curve.
 

He walked backwards toward the empty van, glad that he knew Amy wasn’t in it with the other girls. He was pulled by the urge to go back in the woods and search until he found her, and at the same time, by the need to stop the men driving up the road.

Once at the van, he was surprised to find the key in the ignition. If he could just pull up fast and unexpectedly ram the other van. Then he could shoot the drivers when they got out. Paul shook that thought out of his head. There was too much risk that one of the girls would get hurt.