Bumping and tripping, sweating and bleeding, with my arms still handcuffed behind my back, I ran down the endless slope of the middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania forest.
Crossing a narrow creek, I slipped and did another long roll that ended in a full somersault before I came to a painful, skidding stop in the wet forest leaves.
As I lay there spitting dirt out of my mouth, a memory surfaced from when I was a kid—when we’d play army in the woods of Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, using sticks that looked like rifles as we patrolled. I fought back a desperate urge to start weeping.
Instead, I stood and continued southwest. I would have headed back toward the road I’d taken there, except I had no idea where I was in this damned woodland maze. I knew west by the hastily setting sun, but what the hell did that gain me? Which way was help?
The one thing I could do was pick a direction—southwest—and keep steadily moving to distance myself from the wrecked truck. Because whoever was on the other end of that big dude’s phone would be coming after me, and they were going to be pissed. I still didn’t know a damn thing except that these guys were killers, of the professional CIA-military variety; and I now, like a complete idiot, was in their home court.
After another quarter-mile, I came to a small cliff—three or four stories of angled gray rock. I could have run down it if my arms were at my sides, but I couldn’t risk tripping, so I had to inch down like an infant.
At the bottom, I looked to the left and saw something sparkle through the brush. It was a creek, I saw. I walked over to it. A stream heading the same way I was, southwest. It was wider than the one I’d tripped over; and running water would lead to more, bigger running water, wouldn’t it? That might mean fishermen, a boat, perhaps a bridge.
But as I followed the stream down, it began to slow. When I came to the foot of the wooded hill, I saw that it became a trickle that fed an enormous wetland swamp. “There goes my merit badge,” I mumbled. I went to the left, following the curve of the wide hill.
I was at the edge of the swamp, where it seemed to become dry land again, when I began to hear it. To the left
beside the swamp was a stand of tall, very skinny white trees with yellow leaves, and a lot of brush; and from the brush came the faint sound of chirping.
At first I thought it was a bunch of birds, but it was too consistent. It sounded mechanical. A weird kind of electronic beeping, like a smoke alarm or a truck backing up, which made zero sense.
I thought I was cracking up when I heard a dog bark from the same direction. Initially it sounded like the beast I’d heard from the trailer—but it was a friendlier bark.
“Help! Help me, please! Hello?” I yelled, running for the brush and the white trees.
I was about twenty feet into the stand, crashing through the brush, when through the tangle of vines and twigs I saw Day-Glo orange.
A moment later I recognized the bright orange color as two hunting vests—and hope leapt in my heart in a way I had never felt.
Chapter 24
They were grouse hunters. Joe Walke, a tall, heavyset, bearded man with glasses, and his granddaughter Rosalind, who looked no older than fourteen.
The beeping came from the pointing collar of their English setter, Roxie, a floppy pooch with brown, black, and white fur. Roxie would be let off the leash into the woods to find the grouse and, when she did, would assume a pointing position—triggering the electronic beeping of the collar.
But I learned that later. When I first saw the older man and his granddaughter, they were pointing shotguns at me as I burst out of the bush, handcuffed and covered in filth and blood.
“Please help me! A bunch of men are trying to kill me!” I yelled.
While I panted in terror, trying to speak, Mr. Walke lowered the gun and came over. He calmly sat me down and washed out my head cut with a bottle of water from his pack.
“It’s okay, son. Slowly now. What’s really going on? Are you a fugitive of some sort? Why are you wearing handcuffs?”
I shook my head at him violently.
“There’s no time. A phone. Do you have a phone?”
“She has one, but I make her leave it back at the vehicle. Breaks her concentration,” Walke said, smiling.
He had a good and gentle whiskered face.
“Wouldn’t work, anyway. Not out here. No bars,” said Rosalind, a scrawny tomboyish girl with short, sandy hair and freckles.
“I’m a police officer,” I finally managed to get out. “From New York City. I was just attacked by two men up at that shooting range on top of the mountain who I was trying to question. I managed to escape, but they have friends who are right this very second trying to find me. If they do, they will kill me and you. These guys are soldiers, professional killers. We need to leave this place now.”
“Don’t believe him, Grandpa. He’s lying,” Rosalind said, shaking her head. “Leave him. He’s a bad man. Let’s just get out of here and call the cops.”
“At that shooting range, huh?” Walke said, nodding as he looked back up the hill. “I knew those fellas seemed fishy.”