Get Me Bigfoot!

By Daniel Wrong

ACT 1

Germ Warfare

Chapter 1

The Discovery

January 16, 2001

Bandundu Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo

William Maruka dashed through the forest underbrush heedless of the leaves and branches that slapped his head and arms as he ran. The cuts made in his legs by thorns and broken off tree limbs went unnoticed. His only concern was to escape from his pursuers. He could hear their shouts about seventy meters behind him. Every few seconds, a bullet would zip by his head or prune a few leaves off of a nearby tree.

Maruka was not alone. Other members of his rebel group ran with him. About half a dozen of them remained alive. When the pursuit began, there had been more than forty. Some had surrendered, but most had been shot or overtaken by their pursuers and hacked to death with machetes.

They had been encamped in the deep jungle in a position they thought secret. Unfortunately, eight hours ago, they discovered how wrong they were. In the early morning hours, a rain of sniper fire erupted from the bush. Seconds later, troop transports burst into the clearing, screeched to a halt and opened up. Far more troops than Maruka's band of rebels could handle erupted from those trucks. The best the rebels could muster was a haphazard retreat in to the dense jungle where vehicles would be unable to follow.

Over the past eight hours they had been picked off in small skirmishes until only a dozen remained. At that point the troops charged forward, and Maruka's group bolted. Out of ammunition, they dropped everything they could, and so, less encumbered, they endeavored to gain distance from their enemy.

Now fatigue had set in. Soon they would be overtaken and meet the same fate as the rest of their rebel group. Maruka had to think of something, and quickly, if they were to survive.

He knew this part of the jungle well. It was his one advantage. Straining his thoughts as he ran, he tried to think of some place to hide. There was a crack of gunfire in the distance behind him. The bullet found its mark, and the man that ran to his left fell face down into a small puddle of rainwater.

The splash gave him an idea. They were less than a quarter of a mile from a small canyon, and he knew where they could hide in it. He veered to the right, and, without a word from him, the rest of the group followed. After five minutes, they came to a wide stream and turned to follow it. They ran down a steep slope and as a result, increased the distance between them and the soldiers giving chase, who paused from time to time to take a shot.

After a few hundred meters, the stream appeared to run into a wall of foliage. The others in the group began to slow to see which way Maruka would turn, but he neither turned nor slowed. Instead, he crashed through the bushes at an all out scramble. The rest picked up the pace and did the same. On the other side, they found themselves in mid air falling over a five meter high waterfall into a dark pool below.

The pool was deep only at the falls. A few meters downstream, they could all stand. Maruka gathered them together quickly. "We must split up," he said urgently. He quickly glanced at each remaining individual then, he pointed to the man who looked the least winded. "You, get to the shore and move downstream along the banks as quickly as possible. Now go!"

The rebel did as he was told. Maruka turned to the next man as if he were going to issue a similar instruction, but once the first had cleared the area, he spoke to the group as a whole. "The soldiers will follow the tracks he makes on the shore," he whispered. "Quickly! Get back into the deep water and hide behind the falls. They're not strong enough to drown us."

Maruka hated to sacrifice one of his men, but he had no choice. He and his companions were exhausted and that one appeared to be in the best condition to lead the soldiers away. He didn't even know the man's name.

As they hid, he looked at the others. There were five left including himself. His second in command, Ma'ti Bawan, was still alive. He had been Maruka's enforcer for six years, a very large man whose loyalty was unquestionable. Though his formal education level was low, he was a superior woodsman and hunter.

There were two other men that Maruka recognized, but had forgotten the names of. Furthest from him, almost obscured by the falling water, was Jenna Mateki, a woman who had only joined the group a month before. Most of the rebels could only speak French or one of the more localized languages, such as Lingala or Kingwana. Jenna however, spoke several international languages and acted as an interpreter when they dealt with arms dealers who spoke English or German. On one occasion, she was even able to communicate with a Chinese dealer.

"From a hundred down to five," Maruka lamented to himself. A silver cross hung from his neck. He placed it in his mouth and chewed on it as he thought. It was an old habit of his. "What happened?"

He did not even know who the soldiers were. Obviously, his plan had failed. William Maruka had been a general in Mobutu's army and was one of the most educated officers in the country. He held a bachelor’s degree in chemistry that he had received from the University of Texas and an MBA from the University of Michigan. He had returned home to start a company that would take advantage of the many resources of this land, but along the way he got mixed up in politics. When Mobutu's government fell to Laurent Kabila, he became an outlaw overnight. Joining with the rebels in the North, he soon became an important leader.

Recently, he had hatched a plan to seize power for himself. One of Kabila's bodyguards, by the name of Rachidi Kasereka, had been kidnapped from his residence and replaced with a look-a-like. This imposter was to assassinate Kabila and then signal for the rebels to move in on the Capital of Kinshasa. Unfortunately, that signal never came.

"The assassin must have been caught and sold me out," Maruka thought to himself. He thought of his other camps and wondered if they too had been attacked. His forces were divided up into small cells in the event of a situation such as now. He did not want his enemies to be able to eliminate his rebels in one fell swoop.

There was a rustle in the bushes above. Shortly after, the soldiers that had been pursuing them climbed down alongside the falls. Everyone in Maruka's group held their breath and sank into the water up to their eyes. They knew if they were seen that they would die in a hail of gunfire, but the troops did not turn around and look beneath the falls. They began to hurry off following the tracks of the unfortunate decoy.

Maruka squinted through the splashing water at the soldiers as they passed by. To his surprise they were not Kabila's forces. They were Tutsi rebels from the east. Perhaps he had been wrong. The assassin must have been successful in killing Kabila, but instead of signaling Maruka, he sold them out to the Tutsis. They were making their power play instead of him, yet for them to do so, he had to be eliminated. Whether it was the eastern rebels or Kabila's forces was irrelevant though. Either way, Maruka had to elude them and reunite with his forces from the other camps, assuming any of them survived.

As soon as he was sure the soldiers had passed them by, he motioned the others to the banks. They would not be able to tread water for much longer; they were too exhausted. They crept quietly onto the shore. No one uttered a word for fear the soldiers might hear. Maruka motioned for the others to follow him towards the west. He knew of an extremely dense part of the forest in that direction. He hoped they could find a safer hiding place there. It would not take the soldiers long to figure out that they were only tracking one man. Then, they would double back.

***

It was slow going through the dense forest. Darkness was setting in, the foliage was thick, and there were no paths; furthermore, the group had to make as little noise as possible. They were not sure if the Tutsi rebels were tracking them, and they didn't want to give away their position. Suddenly, they all heard a dull metallic thud, followed the quite rapping of knuckles to metal. The silence was broken by a whisper.

"General!" It was Ma'ti. "I found something."

Maruka and the others gathered around the object that Ma'ti was motioning to. From a distance, it looked like nothing more than a mound of vines about a meter and a half tall, but upon closer inspection, it appeared to be some sort of steel box. It was roughly the shape of portable restroom that you would see at a construction site, but it was riveted steel. Vines had grown over it, making detection all but impossible from more than two or three meters away. Parts of it were covered in military camouflage paint. It looked as if the whole thing had been that way at one time, but the paint appeared to have flaked off over a number of years. There was a door on one side with a wheel on it, like one might see on a ship or submarine.

They stood just looking at it for a few moments before curiosity seized Maruka. He reached out and attempted to give the wheel a turn, but it was rusted solid. Ma'ti joined in, and both men strained to turn it. Suddenly, the wheel gave way and rotated a quarter of a turn creating a metallic screech that echoed through the forest. All five immediately dropped to the ground anticipating fire from their pursuers, but none came. No one moved for almost ten minutes. Once they were sure no one had heard them, they slowly rose to their feet and focused their attention on the door.

The quarter turn of the wheel had been enough to unlatch the door. It now stood ajar by a few centimeters. Maruka slipped his fingers in and slowly pulled the door open as not to make the creaking of the hinges too loud. As he did so, his nostrils were met with a draft of musty air. The thick vines prevented him from opening the door very far, but it was enough for a single person to squeeze in. Inside, they could see a ladder descending down into the darkness. One of the rebels produced a lighter and handed it to Maruka. He ignited it and held it over the dark shaft, but it did not produce enough light to see more than a meter down.

"This might be the hideout we needed," said Maruka to the others.

He stopped the lighter and put it in a pocket. He reached in and grabbed the ladder with one hand followed by the other. Then, he carefully moved one foot onto the rungs and then followed that with the other when he was sure the ladder would hold his weight. He descended slowly in to the darkness, carefully feeling for the next rung with his feet at every step of the way. About four meters down he came to the base of the ladder and stood on a concrete floor. He pulled the lighter from his pocket and ignited it. On three sides of him were concrete walls, one of which had a locker built in to it. The open side led into some sort of chamber or room. The lighter was not bright enough to illuminate into the open side very well, but Maruka could see many reflections of the little flame in the dark room. Apparently, there were many pieces of glass in there.

He decided to open the locker first before venturing into the room and was glad he did so. The locker contained several small oil lamps as well as some canisters of kerosene. Though they appeared old, the canisters still contained fuel. He called up to the others to start heading down as he filled a lamp.

The first to reach the bottom was Ma'ti. By the time he reached the floor, Maruka was using the lighter to ignite the lamp. Though small, it was very bright and they could see far into the room. Maruka took a few steps in and looked around. It appeared that they were in some sort of medical bunker or, perhaps, a laboratory. It was very large, almost 20 meters on each side. There was a series of cots along one wall while the other walls were lined with cabinets and shelves holding bottles and syringes. The glass that had been reflecting the firelight was in the form of beakers and test tubes sitting on a series of drab wooded tables. Many of them had been shattered. As a matter of fact, it appeared as if the place had been ransacked. Some of the tables had been smashed, there were fallen bookshelves in one corner, and many of the wall cabinets were torn out.

Just outside of the light, in the corner most distant from him, Maruka thought that he could make out steel cages. He stepped further into the room to get a better look. As he did so, he tripped over something on the floor. He looked down to see what it was and gasped. It was a human skeleton! It appeared to be in good condition and the bones were all in place. No large scavengers had picked through them. The body appeared to be lying on its side while it decomposed and it wore a black uniform of some sort that was now gray with dust. There was one disturbing feature. The skull was turned 180 degrees, and when he looked closer, Maruka saw that some of the vertebrae in the neck were broken. This person appeared to have had their head nearly twisted off.

Ma'ti stood beside him looking at the skeleton while the others had all climbed in and were in the process of lighting two more lamps. Both Ma'ti and Maruka stood, looking at the skeleton for a minute without uttering a word. Then Ma’ti broke the silence.

"What's this?" he asked as he reached down and brushed the dust off of a patch on the skeleton's uniform to reveal a swastika.

"This must have been some sort of Axis hospital during World War II,” surmised Maruka.

The group searched the rest of the bunker and found a dozen more skeletons. Every one showed signs of a violent death. Many had crushed skulls, some had broken necks, and there were two that appeared to have had limbs torn off. There were no signs, however, of weapons damage, no blades or bullet casings left behind. All wore German uniforms or lab coats.

"Something tore these people apart," stated Jenna with a quiver of fear, "I wonder who...what it was."

The others were beginning to show signs of apprehension. Maruka heard the uneasy murmurs and said to them all, "Whatever did this did it half a century ago. We are the only living things in here. The soldiers outside are what should worry us. As long as we stay here, we will probably avoid detection. We should rest now, use the cots on that wall..."

"General," interrupted one of the rebels, "over here, this one's different."

He was over by the cages in the corner. The other four gathered around. The cages were large, about a meter and a half on each edge. There were three of them. Two were locked closed and empty, but the one in the middle had its door wide open. Inside there was a skeleton, but it was different.

"Was it a gorilla?" asked Jenna.

"I don't think so," answered Ma'ti, "I've seen gorilla bones before, and that is definitely not a gorilla skull."

It was true. It looked like a human skeleton, but the person would have been almost nine feet tall. Unlike the others this one did not appear to have died a violent death. At least every bone was unbroken and in the right location; furthermore, there were no signs of a uniform. It had died naked.

"This must have been the killer,” concluded Maruka. "He certainly was big enough to crush a man's skull."

"There are some bookshelves over there," said Jenna indicating the fallen ones. "Maybe one of the books will tell us what was going on here."

"It is not important right now," replied Maruka. "We need rest. Ma'ti, you take the first watch. Wake someone else up to replace you in two hours. The next person does the same, and so on. We will stay here for a day or two if we can. That should be enough time for the soldiers to give up on us."

Ma'ti headed over to the ladder. The rest laid in the cots and almost immediately fell asleep.

***

They woke up the next day somewhat better off. The previous day had exhausted them to their limits. A full nights rest had done them each good. Ma’ti volunteered to return topside to scout around for any enemy soldiers as well as to fetch some water. Maruka agreed, knowing that Ma’ti was competent in the art of camouflage and would resist telling the soldiers of their location if he were caught. Besides they did need water. Jenna and the other two rebels stayed on their cots, recuperating from the previous day. Maruka however, was too curious and decided to further examine the bunker.

He noticed that there were lights overhead and followed metal pipes, presumably encasing the electric wires, to a switch on the wall. Flipping the switch had no effect. He followed the electrical conduits some more to a panel in the wall. Removing the panel, he found a gas-powered generator. He checked the tanks, but what fuel they contained had long since evaporated. It was just as well since the light bulbs were so old. There was little chance that the filaments were still intact.

He walked over to the fallen bookshelves and placed his gas lamp on the floor. He then proceeded to lift one of the bookshelves revealing a pile of books underneath. He picked one up and opened it. A musty, old-book smell invaded his nostrils. It reminded him of days spent in college libraries during his education. He looked at the text and gave a frustrated sigh. It was hand written in German, and he only knew a word of two of it.

Examination of other texts yielded the same result. He took one book over to Jenna and tossed it in her lap.

“I know you can speak German, but can you read it to?” he inquired.

“Yes,” she replied, “I’ll have a look.” She began to page through the book, her lower lip sticking out more than usual as if she were about to move her lips as she read. After a few minutes she looks up and said, “this appears to be some sort of a medical journal detailing research in some disease they found in a monkey from the forest. It looks like these people were attempting to develop diseases for war, but according to the last entry, this particular disease was considered ineffective for military purposes.”

“Very interesting,” said Maruka, stroking his chin. “Let’s have a look at some of the others.”

He and Jenna walked over to the pile of books. Maruka organized them into stacks and handed them to Jenna. As they were all in roughly the same format, she was able to skim through them relatively quickly. As she finished with one, she would hand it back to Maruka, and he would place it back on the bookshelf.

For several hours, they scanned through the lab notebooks until they had restored all of the fallen bookshelves. Each book detailed a different disease that the Germans had found infecting the local wildlife. A few dealt with various types of poisons extracted from local plants and insects. All of them ended the same, however. Each one concluded that the disease or poison was ineffective or impractical for military use.

Maruka felt a little disappointed until one of the two rebels resting on the cots pointed to one of the wooden tables and said, “there’s one more on that table over there.” Jenna walked over to pick it up, but not before seeing a skeleton on the floor underneath the table. Its skull was crushed. Stepping over the skeleton, she picked up the logbook and flipped to the end.

“This one does not end the same,” she announced after reading it for a few minutes. “As a matter of fact, it does not end. The author was cut off in mid sentence. I would assume that this is him on the floor.”

“Well, what does the journal say?” inquired Maruka impatiently.

“Let me read it for a few minutes,” replied Jenna as she walked back over to the cots and sat down. “This one contains more text than the others.”

Maruka sat on the cot next to hers and leaned against the wall with his knees pulled up to his chest. He expected to wait a few minutes, but Jenna did not stop flipping through the pages of the journal for nearly an hour. From time to time, Maruka caught looks of disbelief upon her face as she read. Much of the time, though, she showed no signs of emotion other than her protruding her lower lip as she appeared to read something of particular interest.

Finally, she looked up, ready to give her report. “It seems that they were finally successful in discovering a disease that they could use as a weapon. One of their scouts found what he though was a small gorilla in the forest. It was brought back for study where it was found that it was not a gorilla but a vastly oversized monkey. They discovered that it had a virus that increased the amount of growth hormones resulting in gigantism. Their first idea was that they could use it to enhance a soldier’s strength. They abducted local villagers as test subjects and attempted to infect them with the virus. It appeared that the virus could only be passed by directly introducing it to the blood stream. It took only days for the full effect to be seen. The test subjects increased in size substantially and also exhibited excessive hair growth. By the time the disease had taken full effect, the test subjects had reached heights between eight and nine feet and looked more apelike than human.”

One of the rebels interrupted with a snicker, “Sounds like they invented Bigfoot.”

“Shut up,” responded Maruka with a hint of annoyance. “I want to hear the rest of the story.” He was fidgeting with the silver cross that he wore around his neck. When Jenna resumed talking, he started chewing on it. The chain dangled from the sides of his mouth and appeared almost like a horse’s reins.

Jenna continued, “The disease had an unfortunate side effect though. The test subjects consistently suffered from brain damage, reducing them to the mental level of a young child. They could only understand a few verbal commands and had to use gestures to communicate. They were also prone to violent outbursts.”

“Not surprising, I would be prone to violence too if I were kidnapped and subjected to medical experiments,” said Maruka before he resumed chewing on the cross.

“The Germans envisioned bombing civilian targets with the virus, turning the people into wild ape-men that would cause havoc among the population. They decided to field test the virus, but they were cut off from Europe by American and English forces in the North. As a result, they decided to ship it to Japan for use in something they called a ‘balloon bomb’ where the device was rigged to expel shrapnel coated with the virus. They must have died before hearing the results. The last entry says that they were running low on supplies and after killing two of the test subjects, decided to destroy the last in order to save on food.”

“It must have gotten loose before they could do so and torn them to shreds,” Maruka concluded as he let the cross drop out of his mouth and dangle again from around his neck. “That must be it in the cage. It probably was not intelligent enough to open the door and starved to death, or perhaps they poisoned it before it killed them all.”

Maruka looked at the soldier who had made the “Bigfoot” comment. “Your statement may have been on the mark. I read about the balloon bombs not too long ago. The Japanese released them from their beaches and let the trade winds carry them into over the sea to the forests in the northwest corner of the United States. Perhaps Bigfoot was a victim of the bomb. That’s where he is always sighted.”

They spent the next few hours in silence, from time to time they poked around at items in the bunker, but they found nothing more of interest. Towards late afternoon, Ma’ti returned with water and news that the soldiers were nowhere to be seen. Regardless of his report, they waited another day until they left bunker to seek out any surviving rebel camps. It turned out that few of the camps had been decimated like the command site. Maruka was pleased to find out that he still had a rebel army to command. He soon found that Kabila had indeed been assassinated, but the Tutsi rebels had failed to take over. Kabila’s son now controlled the country. He held a meeting with his lieutenants a few nights later to tell them how he escaped the Tutsi assault.

“Did you bring back any samples of the virus?” asked General Zemutu, a fellow rebel leader and ally.

“Of course not,” Maruka responded. “That lab was half a century old and most of the glass containers had been smashed. No samples would have survived.”

“That is a shame. It would have made a fantastic weapon,” said General Kagani, one of Maruka’s commanders.

“Yes, the only way we could obtain the virus now would be to capture Bigfoot himself,” replied Maruka with laugh, “and no one has ever even found solid proof that he is real much less stood a change of actually finding him.”

Kagani’s voice grew excited, “Actually sir, somebody did.”

Chapter 2

The Invention

May 2000

Georgia Institute of Technology

Several students sat around the lobby, transfixed on the television. They watched a daytime talk show whose title today was “Men with Harems”. It featured a man who had numerous girlfriends, all of which had just found out about one another, there, in front of the audience. Most of the conversations were bleeped out due to the curses the women on stage slung at one another and the man to whom they were all involved with. The parts that were not formed a kind of talk show sub-language consisting of odd derogatory phrases, mispronounced words, and exaggerated gestures.

August Thatcher looked at the man at the center of this storm on the stage with a frown. His name, at least for the show anyway, was “Jimmy” and he sat slouched in the chair with wearing torn faded jeans, an old t-shirt, and sandals. He had long greasy hair and a fuzzy blonde goatee. When he was introduced on the show, Jimmy’s occupation was listed as “Strip Club Valet Attendant.” He had two of his girlfriends on either side of him, shouting at one another.

“This loser has four girl friends, and I haven’t had a date in two years,” Thatcher thought to himself quietly. “What an upside down world.”

He looked down at the paper in his hands, trying to ignore the stupid show. Typed on the paper was an outline of the presentation that he would give to The World Explorer Channel’s representatives in less than two hours. He went through it again, making sure he memorized it. He did not like doing this. He hated talking in front of crowds and felt queasy in anticipation of it, even though there would only be two or three representatives.

He scratched at his collar. It was a brand new Polo shirt that he had bought just for this presentation. Professor Geren, who was hosting the presentation for the potential grantors, told him he had to wear a nice shirt for it. Thatcher only had t-shirts, so he ran out the night before to the mall to buy the dark green one he now wore. He also bought a new pair of jeans, as all the rest of his were faded.

He decided that he had better arrive early to make sure that the computer system was setup. He believed that he might have time to run a few more tests as well. He stuffed the paper into his backpack, rose and headed for the door, slinging the right strap of the backpack over his shoulder. None of the other students in the lobby took their eyes off of the television to notice him leaving.

On his way to the College of Computing, he spotted Karen sitting on a bench in front of the Electrical Engineering Building. She was smoking. He did not care much for her smoking habit, but otherwise, he liked her...a lot. As of yet though, he still did not know her last name.

Figuring he had some time, he decided to chat with her a while. At first, she did not notice his approach and seemed lost in though. Her straight, shoulder-length blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail. She wore tight blue jeans and a loose white button up shirt that was several sizes too large for her. It was not tucked in and gave her a rather unkempt look. When he was close enough to her for his footsteps to be heard, she looked at him and rolled her eyes and gave a small sigh.

“Hey, Karen, how are classes going?” asked Thatcher.

“Hi August. Classes are going okay, I guess. I just turned in a project for my Compilers class. I was up all night trying to get it done. I think I’ll get a good grade on it, but I’m pretty tired now. I was gonna head back to my dorm after I finish this,” she said while flicking the ashes from her cigarette.

“I have to do a presentation in a couple hours, myself. Professor Geren and I are trying to sell my IR identification program to the WEC.” Thatcher assumed she knew the cable channel that he was referring to. It was a favorite among students on campus. The dorms got such cable channels for free. He had, in fact, gotten the original idea for his project while watching a show where a scientist had left a sort of infrared camera booby trap in the jungle for taking pictures of animals at night.

“That’s sounds pretty cool. I wish undergrads could work on fun projects like that. It sounds like something someone in the real world would use. This weekend, I have to write a program that simulates philosophers sitting around a table eating and thinking. Who would ever use that?”

As he spoke to her, he focused on the necklace she wore. It was a small gold chain with a tiny magnifying glass hanging from it, a gift from her boyfriend. Thatcher had met him once. He was a jerk.

“Well, I should be moving along. I need to get ready for this presentation. I hate talking in front of people, and I need to prepare mentally.”

“Alright, I’ll see you later,” she said while standing up and stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray built into the sidewalk next to the bench. “Hey, if you make the sale we should go and get some pizza to celebrate, my boyfriend won’t be visiting this weekend, so I have no plans.”

“Okay, sounds great.”

***

“Is everything in order, Mr. Thatcher?” asked Professor Samuel Geren as he peered into the classroom.

Thatcher was in the empty room standing at a computer installed into a podium near the front. A projector hung from the ceiling in the middle of the room. It projected an image of Thatcher’s monitor onto a screen that was pulled down in front of the white dry erase board.

“Yeah, it looks like everything is okay,” he replied without looking up from the computer. “I’ve got all of the test images scanned in, and I’ve run them through twice.”

“Did you check to make sure the PowerPoint presentation was all in order?”

“Yup, it’s ready to go.”

“Alright then ‘cause they’re here.”

Thatcher had felt more relaxed after checking the presentation and finding everything ready, but now his stomach suddenly turned over. He was not worried at all about the success of his project. He just hated having to do the presentation. He desperately wished he could have had the professor present it to these people.

The professor entered the room followed by two men in business suits. Thatcher walked over to meet them half way to the door. As he walked towards them, he looked at their shoes. One of them was wearing somewhat scruffy brown shoes, while the other had shiny black loafers.

“This is Benjamin Johnson,” said Geren putting his hand on the shoulder of the man wearing the black loafers. “He’s a Production Manager at The World Explorer Channel.”

Thatcher shook hands and exchanged greetings. Johnson was young to have what sounded like a very important position, Thatcher was sure that he was no older than thirty. He wore a very clean black suit with a silk maroon tie and carried a leather brief case. When he spoke, he had a high-pitched tone of voice that made him sound like he was talking down to a young child.

Johnson took the liberty of introducing the man in the brown shoes. “This is Bob Ormus, the head of our IT department. I brought him along to interpret the technical details for me.”

Ormus gave an irritated look, unseen by Johnson. It appeared that he too found his director patronizing. Bob Ormus was quite the opposite of his coworker. He looked to weigh about 350 pounds with brown beard and hair on a balding head. He looked very uncomfortable in his suit, which was less tidy than that of his partner. He wore a comical tie that depicted little cartoon snakes, but when he spoke, it was in deep tones that gave sincerity to his words.

Thatcher shook hands with him then addressed the group as a whole, but kept his attention focused on Ormus’s tie. “I guess we should started.”

The professor, Johnson, and Ormus took seats at three desks at the head of the class while Thatcher stood behind the computer at the podium. Thatcher took hold of the mouse and started the PowerPoint presentation. The first slide came up and displayed the title of his project, Infrared Wildlife Identification System.

He gave a quick overview of his computer application while displaying the title. “I called my project the Infrared Wildlife Identification System because it analyses pictures taken from an infrared camera and attempts to identify heat signatures in the photo as a particular animal. The magic of it is that is uses artificial intelligence to determine the type of animal represented by the heat signature. Rather than programming in specifications for such heat signatures, we showed the program many images that we had already identified and told it what it was looking at. This allowed the AI to ‘learn’ how to identify animals. The advantage being that it would take a single person thousands of times longer to manually program in heat signature specifications than it would take the AI to learn them. Also, the AI might pick up on differences that people may not notice, so it makes for more accurate identification.”

Thatcher proceeded with the slide show, rarely looking up from the computer screen. The slides mostly depicted technical details showing how the AI was constructed and the methods that it used to analyze the images that it was fed. During the presentation, the professor would nod approvingly every few minutes, while Johnson appeared on the verge of dozing off. Ormus on the other hand seemed genuinely impressed and very interested.

After Thatcher finished the technical slide show, he moved onto the actual demonstration. At this point, Johnson became much more alert. Thatcher brought up an aerial photo taken with an infrared camera. It was an odd sort of monotone green, like a black and white photo that went through shades of lime instead of gray.

“This is an image from the mountains in North Carolina that the National Weather Service let us have,” said Thatcher. “It covers roughly half a square mile. The bright white blobs represent life forms. If I click on one, a text bubble appears to tell me what it is. For instance, if I click on this one...it tells me that it is a deer.”

Johnson seemed quite impressed. Thatcher clicked on a few more, identifying various animals. He brought up other images and did much the same. In one case it even identified a group of human campers. After a dozen images, he concluded the presentation and asked for questions.

Ormus started to ask something but was interrupted by Johnson who spoke more quickly and more loudly. “How are the pictures taken?”

“These were taken with an infrared camera from a helicopter flying over the mountains. I imagine the World Explorer Channel would do much the same to obtain images.”

“Why use infrared and not normal cameras?”

“Well, for one, you can take pictures both during the day and at night, good for nocturnal animals. Also, high quality IR cameras can pickup heat signatures through the tree canopy, while a regular would just produce a picture of leaves.”

“I’ve brought a few photos with me that were taken in the same manner, could we give those a try?” asked Johnson much to the surprise of the others in the room, including Ormus.

“Sure,” agreed Thatcher. He was not particularly worried. He had not had a single failure when introducing a new image in months. “Where were they taken?”

“No place particularly special, just over the Rockies. We flew a helicopter over a few weeks ago with an infrared camera. There are longitude and latitude coordinates for the center of each picture at top left corner.”

“Do you have the altitude at which they were taken and the camera specifications. The application is smart, but it still needs a little bit of information, such as the focal length of the lens, shutter speed, etc.”

Johnson fished around in his briefcase for a moment then produced a piece of paper containing information about the camera. He handed it to Thatcher along with a stack of ten 8”x10” photographs. “Here you go. Will this do?”

“Yes, this is the information I needed,” replied Thatcher. “Just give me a minute to set up the application.”

Thatcher proceeded to enter the necessary data into the computer. He then placed the infrared photos on a scanner and created digital versions of them. Finally, he restarted the application and brought up the first image. A flashing picture of a clock then appeared on the screen.

“It takes about thirty seconds to process and image of this size,” Thatcher announced to the group. “It would take significantly less time or even appear instantaneous on a better computer. This one is about three years old.”

A few moments later the image appeared again on the screen. This time however a flashing red outline appeared around several of the bright white blobs on the image. Thatcher placed the mouse cursor over the largest such blob. A text bubble appeared over it stating that it was a bear.

“Very impressive,” said Johnson with tone of respect.

“Thanks,” replied Thatcher. “With more training it might even be able to tell you different breeds, such as grizzly or black bear.”

“What about that one over there?” asked Johnson indicating another, smaller blob.

Thatcher selected it. “Eagle”.

Both Johnson and Ormus nodded their heads in approval. The professor leaned back, crossed his arms and cracked a satisfied smile. Thatcher began to feel like he had just won a contest. He could barely suppress a smile.

“Let’s bring up another one,” suggested the professor confident that the application could handle whatever was thrown at it.

The next image was much like the first. Thatcher selected various animals as he had before, every time eliciting compliments from Ormus and Johnson. He brought up the third picture that Johnson provided. This one was different, though. It had three very large white blobs in the bottom left corner. They were even larger than the bear on the first image.

When Thatcher selected one, the worst happened. The text bubble appeared and in bright red letters reported: “UNKNOWN LIFE FORM.” His eyes widened and he appeared visibly shocked.

“Hmmm, how often does it fail to make an identification?” asked Johnson returning to his original patronizing tone of voice.

“Very rarely,” responded Thatcher in a shaken voice. “This is the first time it has failed in months. What are they?”

“I don’t know,” answered Johnson. “We never sent a ground crew to actually find out what we had taken pictures of. Perhaps it’s just a fluke with the camera, try the rest.”

Thatcher loaded the next image. This time, everything when okay, but the following image again revealed unidentifiable creatures. They continued to view all of the photographs that Johnson provided. Out of all ten images, four had similar such blobs, all causing the application to fail to positively identify the heat signatures.

“Alright, thank you for the presentation Mr. Thatcher,” said Johnson after the conclusion of the demonstration. “If you could, please wait outside while I have a word here with Mr. Ormus and your professor.”

No one spoke as he left the room. This was devastating to him. He could not understand what went wrong. They had been identifying wildlife from the Northwest for months now without failure.

***

Thatcher sat alone outside the student center at a round table. He stared at a newspaper that had been lying there when he sat down, but he only pretended to read it. In fact, he went over and over again the failure of his presentation. He had waited in the hall outside the classroom for about fifteen minutes before Johnson emerged to tell him that he was not going to get the grant. They only gave a grant away once a year and though his project was impressive, they just couldn’t accept a “forty percent failure rate”.

Thatcher grumbled quietly to himself, “It wasn’t a forty percent failure rate, the application only failed on a few animals on those four pictures.” He knew that fact didn’t really matter though, once they had said “no”, it was final. He decided to focus on why the failure had occurred and withdrew one of the photographs from his backpack. Seeing no further use in them, Johnson had let Thatcher keep them.

Maybe he could fix it and sell the program to someone else. He was sure that they had entered every known animal in the continental U.S. The application often failed in cities with its large masses of people and numerous heat sources that confused the infrared images. Zoos were usually a problem too, but these pictures had been taken in the Northwestern wilderness. They had successfully processed many images from that region in the past several months with out even failing to identify various rodents.

“Maybe they escaped from a zoo or something,” he said to himself. He had looked at enough such photographs to know that the blobs definitely represented large animals and were not the heat signatures of any machinery or natural phenomenon. “Perhaps I can call a ranger station nearby and have someone find out what they are.”

He was suddenly startled by a knock on his table. He looked up to see Bob Ormus standing on the other side of the table. He was so focused on the photograph that he had failed to notice the large man’s approach.

Thatcher noticed that Ormus no longer wore his tie. “Oh...hi, I’m sorry I didn’t hear you come up. I thought you and Mr. Johnson would have left by now. What happened to your snake tie?”

“That jerk, Johnson, already left. We traveled in separate cars, as I really can’t stand to be around him. But what I dislike even more is wearing a tie. I took it off once the meeting was over and stuffed it in my pocket.” replied Ormus as he sat down opposite Thatcher.

“Oh, well is there anything I can do for you?”

“I just wanted to make sure that you didn’t get too discouraged. Your project was extraordinary, I’ve sat in on dozens of grant application presentations and never seen anything so novel.”

“Well, it appeared it was still not good enough, at least for Mr. Johnson.”

“I argued your case and tried to tell Ben that we’d be passing up something awesome and that every software application has quirks that need to be ironed out. Unfortunately, it will be a cold day in hell before he ever listens to advice from someone who is smarter than he is.”

“He sounds like a cliché boss.”

“A lot of managers are that way, the cliché has a good foundation. It too bad that he had the final say, but he’s the one who allocates the grant money, and you know what they say: ‘He who has the gold, make the rules’. That’s Johnson’s favorite quote...drives me nuts.”

“Thanks,” replied Thatcher frowning a bit at the proverb. “I’m already trying to figure out how to fix what went wrong.”

“Well you may not want to do that just yet. It seemed to really work quite well, certainly better that the forty percent failure rate that half wit calculated.”

Thatcher grinned. Ormus saw his smile and realized that Thatcher had been dwelling on the inaccuracy of that figure as well.

Ormus continued, “If I were you, I would try to publish an article about your application and see if you might attract some job offers with it. Wait to see if someone else is interested, before you spend time fixing it. A lot of companies are more understanding of how software works. You could actually wind up getting paid to fix the bugs.”

“That’s good advice. I’ll give it a go.”

***

Thatcher thought how about how he would write the article as he walked back to his dorm room. He knew he would have no trouble discussing the technical details, but he had no idea how he could make it interesting to read. He was no expert at advertising.

When he got back to his room, the television was on, but his roommate was not there. It was on the World Explorer Channel at a commercial break. He gave a heavy sigh and started to change the channel, when his roommate, Alan, walked in the door.

“Hey, I was watching that!”

“Sorry, Alan, my presentation to their people didn’t go that well,” said Thatcher. “They wouldn’t accept it because it failed to identify some bear or something in the Rockies.”

“Maybe it was Bigfoot. That’s what the show on now is about.”

Thatcher cracked a smile. He suddenly had the catch his article needed dropped into his lap by the very people who had just rejected him.

Chapter 3

Exercise

April 19, 2001

Cherokee National Forest, Tennessee

In the Appalachian Mountains, a stream had cut a small gorge in the forest running west to east. Just over five hundred meters long, it sloped downward in the direction of the flow of the stream and ended in a series of waterfalls descending into a large valley. The slope was severe enough to make traversing the area difficult, and one could easily slip and tumble downhill and over the falls. For the most part, this area was heavily forested; however, at one point there was a flat, muddy clearing that opened up along side the stream. It was about fifteen meters long and ten meters wide and was quite level in comparison to the rest of the sloping landscape around it. It was about fifty meters from the end of the gorge.

Thaddeus Foote lay concealed in the trees on top of a rise that overlooked the clearing. He was dressed in camouflage and lying on his stomach on a large granite rock from where he could peer over without being seen. He used a small pair of field glasses to look at a large black, six-axle truck, which sat in the clearing. On top of this truck, rested a large missile, a Chinese DF-31, an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting a target from five thousand miles away. The truck had been manufactured in Belarus by the Minsk Automotive Factory and was one of the most advanced types of mobile missile launchers available. He could see several men stationed at various locations around the truck, and there were three tents at the edge of the clearing towards the high side of the valley.

“Target located,” he whispered into a small microphone that was clipped to the collar of his jacket.

“Confirmed,” said a disembodied voice into his right ear. The earpiece receiver in his ear was so small that it could actually fit inside the ear canal. One could only detect it by closely examining the ear with an otoscope. Inserting and removing it actually required a specialized tool.

Foote described the situation to those on the receiving end of his transmissions. “I’m south of the vehicle. I see three guards around a campfire on the western side of the launcher, just in front of a group of tents, and one leaning against the cab smoking. What have you got?”

Foote was talking to a team of three techs who were sitting in a van two kilometers away. The van was a mobile command center loaded with computers and communication devices. Among those was an uplink to one of the CIA’s infrared spy satellites, which acted as the eyes of the team. Foote relied on data from the satellite to detect anyone that he was unable see down in the campsite from his vantage point.

The response came. “We confirm the three around the fire and the smoker. We also have eight more heat signatures in the tents and one on the north side of the truck towards the middle. We advise waiting until some more of them hit the sack.”

It was early afternoon and it was very hot, unusually so for the middle of spring. It felt more like the late summer. Most of the guards went to sleep during the daylight hours, assuming that the bright sun made it too difficult for intruders to approach and as such, only a few would be needed until evening. It was the darkness of night that they believed would conceal aggressors. Foote was hoping that at least two of the guards would soon go into the tents to sleep away the hot hours of the afternoon, like the rest of their companions.

Foote took off his cap and ran his right hand though his graying crew cut. At that moment, a curious thought entered his mind. “I wonder how they got that truck up here. Air lifted by a helicopter? It could be possible, but I wonder if they drove it somehow.”

He decided to see if there was any way that they could have gotten the mobile launcher there via the ground. He figured that he had a little time to explore before he would be able to sneak down to the vehicle, anyway. He put his cap back on and crawled away from the overlook. He stood up out of sight from the camp below and proceeded to slowly hike eastward to where the hillside opened up to the adjoining valley. All the while, he kept his eyes peeled for any sorts of traps or detection devices.

Five minutes later, he reached the end of the gorge and looked down on the waterfalls created where the stream fell out into the valley below. The gorge did not end in a sheer cliff, but instead turned in to a steep forty-five degree downward slope. “It could be possible to drive a truck up such a slope with the help of a winch.” Foote pulled out the field glasses and focused them on the ground on the opposite side of the falls. After two minutes of searching he spotted some tire tracks in the mud close to the stream.

“Aha!” he exclaimed quietly to himself, forgetting the highly sensitive microphone at his collar.

He was startled a bit by the response from the command center. “What is it, Thad?”

“Just doing a little investigating while I wait,” he replied in a low voice. “I wanted to know how they got the truck up here. It looks like there is a small road at the base of the falls. They must have winched it up.”

As he communicated with the command center, he leaned forward and peered up the gorge, exposing as little of himself as possible. He could see the truck facing him from the clearing. Indeed, there were two winches on either side of the front bumper. He could also make out the smoking guard who was still leaning against the cab of the truck. He was looking up at the area were Foote had previously been surveying the site from. Foote wondered if he had somehow been detected while up there.

“We’re in luck,” declared a voice through his receiver. “Only two guards are left posted. Your smoker leaning on the right side of the cab, and another to the rear left side. This’ll be our best chance to move in. Remember, the terminal is in the cab on the passenger side.

“Understood,” responded Foote as climbed down and began creeping up the valley, making sure to stay concealed behind tree and brush whenever possible. It was time to accomplish this mission.

***

“What does he care about how they got the truck up there?” inquired Kellerstrom, who held down a mute button on the side of his communications headset. “The only task that he needs to complete is the hacking of the guidance controls.”

James “Jim” Kellerstrom sat in the mobile command center manning the radar. Before him was a twenty-one inch computer monitor hooked up to a small tower computer on the floor next to his feet. The computer ran Windows NT allowing it to multitask. The top half of this monitor was covered with a window containing the radar’s output.

Monitoring the radar was actually a rather easy job. This far up in the mountains there was practically no air traffic. The mobile launch camp had received its supplies from a helicopter twice a week for the past month. The helicopter was not expected today. As a result, the bottom half of Kellerstrom’s screen contained a game of solitaire to which he was devoting most of his attention.

Samantha Blair, who was sitting back to back with him, also pressed the mute on her headset. “He does that sometimes. Curiosity gets the better of him and then lets silly details distract him. Maybe the old guy is getting senile.”

Samantha watched a three-dimensional projection of the terrain around the launcher. Hundreds of satellite photos had been processed by the Silicon Graphics workstation that sat before her. A software application called PowerScene, developed by the company Cambridge Research Associates, pieced the information from the photos together. The result was an interactive terrain map that Samantha could rotate and zoom in on as if she had a floating camera out there. If Foote needed to find a path to approach on or a depression to hide in, she would provide the answers.

“I don’t think that he’s quite that old, Sam,” countered Fredrick Leighton with a laugh at her jab at Foote’s age. Instead of muting his headset he just grabbed the microphone with his hand and held it away from his mouth. Leighton stood in front of his terminal, an infrared bird’s eye view of the launcher camp. He never looked up from it while talking to the others. His job was more important as he would have to warn Foote of any movement from the guards. “But his curiosity could cause a problem in the future,” he added. “I’ll have to have Conager give him a talking to concerning properly following the plan.”

“It’s probably not a problem this time,” said Samantha. “That was likely the best way to get in the gorge anyway. Most of the other paths in look too exposed.”

“Where’s he at now?” asked Kellerstrom.

Leighton pointed to a white blob on his screen. “That’s him right there. It looks like he’s managed to cross the stream and is headed for our smoker.”

The others could see Foote’s image headed towards another white blob, which stood against the side of the truck closest to the stream. There was a mass of such forms to the west of the truck, but their shapes were longer, men lying down in the tents. Luckily, the launcher crew had been at this location long enough without disturbance to become a little too relaxed in their guard duties. There was also a person-blob on the north side of the truck.

It was at that point that Kellerstrom noticed something. “Shouldn’t he be easily close enough to shoot that guy?”

Leighton immediately took on a more serious look. “Thad, what are you doing?”

“I’m taking out the guy closest to the stream”

“You’re easily within range, and getting a little too close.”

There was no response from Foote. He was so close now that the guard would hear anything he might say in response. The command crew watched the infrared feed from the satellite. Seconds later, the white mass representing Foote connected with that of the guard.

Leighton let out and exasperated sigh. “He’s taking them out by hand.”

***

The guard looked at the ground. Foote peered around the rock that he was crouched behind and watched as the guard dropped his cigarette and stomped on it. He then started to fumble around in his pockets for his pack and a lighter.

At that moment, while the guard was distracted, Foote slipped up to the front of the truck. Here, he was out of site of the guards on both sides. He produced a small dental mirror from his chest pocket and used it to look around to the side of the truck and spy the guard on the southern side. As soon as the guard looked away from his direction, Foote quickly but silently rushed up behind him and wrapped his right arm around the surprised guard’s neck. With his right hand he grabbed the inside of his left elbow and pushed his left palm on the back of the guards head forming a classic sleeper hold. After about ten seconds of struggle, the guard went limp. Foote gently laid him on the ground a few feet away from the truck.

He now had to take out the other guard on the north side. He thought about going around the front and repeating the procedure with the dental mirror, but was worried that it would take too much time to wait for the guard to look away. If he took too long, the first guard could wake up.

Foote decided instead to take a more direct route. He laid down on his stomach and rolled under the truck near the rear. He paused briefly under the middle to make sure that the guards feet were pointed outward away from the truck and then continued to pass underneath. Upon reaching the other side, he immediately hopped to his feet. Unfortunately, he made just enough of a rustle to alert the guard. Foote’s luck held though, for instead of raising the alarm the guard spun to face him swinging an outward chop with his left hand. Foote deftly caught the guards left arm in mid chop and pulled, spinning the guard back around and positioning him for the same sleeper hold.

“Not very original, but always effective,” Foote thought to himself as he waited for the guard to go limp.

“Well that was unnecessary,” said Leighton over the radio.

“Whether or not I kill the guards will not affect the outcome of this mission.”

“What if they wake up?”

“I have at least five minutes. That’s plenty of time.”

“Alright,” agreed Leighton reluctantly. “Let’s get down to business.”

Foote climbed in to the cab on the driver’s side then edged over to the missile’s control terminal on the passenger side. As he did so, he looked down at the ignition.

“Boy, these guys are sloppy,” he commented. “They left the key in the ignition.”

“We’ll be sure and note that in our report,” Leighton replied. “Are you ready?”

“Affirmative.”

Leighton turned to Samantha. “The ball’s in your court now, Sam.”

Samantha minimized the three-dimensional landscape on her system and revealed a text file containing a list of instructions for hacking the missile’s computer. “Alright Thad, what have you got on the screen?”

“Just a prompt.”

“Type ‘login’ and hit enter.”

“Alright, now it’s asking for a name.”

“Enter ‘Jensen’”, said Samantha after which she spelled out each letter. As she did so, Foote repeated every letter. Any incorrect information would result in triggering an alarm.

Foote hesitated for a moment and took a deep breath before hitting the enter key. He hit the button and let out a sigh of relief. “Okay, we need the password now.”

“The first password is ‘thunder’”, said Samantha as she repeated the spelling process. This was followed with the entry of nine more passwords in the same fashion.

“Okay, I’m in,” announced Foote, after entering the tenth password.

Samantha continued to the next set of instructions. “Type ‘setnav’ and hit enter. It’s all one word, six letters. This will setup the launch sequence”

“Done. Now it’s asking for a direction.”

“Okay, we are going to aim it towards safe zone in the ocean off the coast of Newfoundland. The system wants you to enter the direction in degrees. Based on the current position of the truck you need to enter 315 to point it north east.”

Foote entered the number then hit the enter key. “Okay what next? It looks like it’s asking for distance. Think 1200 miles will do?”

“No! Don‘t enter that. It needs to be in kilometers!”

“Oops, I’ll just back space over that...damn!”

“What is it?!” Leighton asked with a start.

“When I hit the delete key, the launch sequence initiated with a distance of 1200 kilometers.”

“Looks like we just targeted some place in New England,” reported Leighton with a frown. “We can fix that though.”

“We have a problem!” shouted Kellerstrom suddenly. “The supply helicopter is on its way!”

“What is the distance?” asked Leighton.

“Not far enough. It came in low and was shielded by the hills. We have about thirty seconds before it is in range.”

Samantha got a little panicked. “Okay, Thad we are going to have to do this in a hurry.”

“Damn!” Leighton let out a curse. “It’s too late. The campers are waking up. They must’ve heard the helicopter.”

“I have an idea!” yelled Foote as he hopped into the driver seat.

“What is it?” asked Leighton in a worried tone, but Foote did not reply.

The freshly wakened soldiers almost immediately sighted the two guards lying on the ground. They drew their guns and began to immediately approach the cab from either side, but before they could get into range the truck rumbled to life and began to roll forward down the slope towards the falls.

The pilot of the supply helicopter hovering above witnessed the subsequent events. As he stared in disbelief, the mobile missile launcher surged forward at an ever-increasing rate. The soldiers ran after it firing away uselessly as the distance increased between them and the truck. Only one in about every ten shots scored a hit on the truck, leaving a splatter of white paint. As it reached the end of the valley the truck went careening down the steep, almost cliff-like slope. Amazingly, the truck never rolled or flipped. It just bounced its way down to the bottom until it ended with a huge crash into the river below.

The pursuing soldiers reached the edge of the slope and slowly climbed down to where the launcher was now pointed downward forty-five degrees, half submerged in the river.

The sergeant in charge of the soldiers ran up to the driver side door opened it and pulled Foote out. “I thought the exercise was to set the missile to launch into the middle of the Atlantic.”

“Just off the coast of Newfoundland, actually, but the main objective was just to nullify the missile as a threat.”

“I think driving it over a cliff was a bit extreme, especially for an exercise. Though it did look like a hell of a lot of fun.”

“I’ll tell you what is NOT going to be fun,” Leighton chimed in on Foote’s earpiece in an irritated voice. “Wait till you see Conager’s reaction to trashing the Army’s only Russian mobile launcher during a simulation.”

Chapter 4

The Arrival

April 23, 2001

Atlanta, Georgia

The plane touched down at 5:30 a.m. It was still pitch dark outside, and the sun would not bring daylight for another two hours. Even then, the day was set to be a dull one. The pilot had reported to the passengers that the sky was overcast and that rain was expected throughout the day.

The wet surface of the runway sparkled with the reflection of the runaway landing lights as well as those of the plane. Maruka looked out the window, much as he had the whole trip. Whenever he flew, he demanded to sit by the window so that he could look down upon the world and think about how a piece of it would one day be his kingdom. As they came in for a landing, he admired the lights of the city. He had visited Atlanta a decade and a half before on a brief layover while flying home from college. He was amazed at how much larger the city appeared to be. “It must be due to the Olympics in ’96,” he thought to himself.

Ma’ti, his ever-loyal companion, sat next to him, never taking his eyes off of the back of the next seat. He was deathly afraid of flying and had barely even blinked the entire flight. Maruka found it amusing and had quietly laughed several times during the trip at Ma’ti’s near catatonic state. He had flown with his friend many times before and knew he would be back to normal the moment they taxied into the concourse.

On the same row in the center island of seats sat the rest of the group Maruka had brought with him. Two of his most loyal lieutenants, Abisa Hamum and Nyiragongo Timan were playing cards, oblivious to anything else around them. Jenna Mateki was calmly leaning to one side of her seat, her legs crossed, reading the latest copy of Newsweek. From time to time, she cast an annoyed glance at the sleeping man leaning on her shoulder. His name was Dr. René Charleroi, and she felt nothing but contempt for him. He was known as The White Pestilence of Interahamwe. He was infamous for using disease as a weapon and was responsible for the deaths of hundreds. However, he had a vast medical knowledge and it had been a stroke of luck for Maruka to have one so knowledgeable in the area of disease research to bring with them in the search for the virus.

Half an hour after touching down, their plane taxied up to the international concourse. As they were sitting in the very back row of seats, Maruka and his group were the last passengers to disembark. They had only a single carry on bag each. Maruka made sure that they had brought only a few changes of clothes. He did not wish to take the chance of arousing any suspicions while passing through customs.

As they reached the door to the plane, the Charleroi’s carry-on fell open and his clothes fell to the ground, exactly as Maruka had instructed. He did not know why, but something felt wrong. He decided to play it safe and trust in his paranoia. The copilot shook his head while the flight attendant gave and exasperated sigh. The two crewmen left to help passengers off of the plane rolled their eyes in unison.

Maruka’s people all gathered around helping to pick up the clothes, though none of them were working quickly. This gave Ma’ti the time to walk up the exit ramp to scout ahead. Only the flight attendant, copilot and Maruka’s group remained on the plane.

The moment they finished repacking Charleroi’s luggage, Ma’ti came back down the ramp towards them walking at an unusually fast pace. Without a word he grabbed the flight attendant by the by the shoulder and spun her around. In a smooth motion he placed his right hand on her chin and the left on the back of her head. Then with a whipping motion snapped the alarmed woman’s neck.

The copilot began to shout for help, but Maruka quickly placed his hand over his face and forcefully slammed the back of his head against the bulkhead behind him. He fell to the ground unconscious but still breathing. Maruka looked up at Ma’ti with a glance that demanded an answer.

“There are a group of police officers and men in suits waiting at the top of the ramp,” Ma’ti announced to them all. “They were waiting for us.”

“We must find another way off the plane,” said Dr. Charleroi in a panicked voice.

“What are we going to do?” asked Timan in a hushed tone.

Hamum said nothing, but his eyes were wide with fright.

“Everyone, control your fears,” ordered Maruka without any hint of uncertainty. There was a door to the outside built into the boarding ramp, but it was made of metal and locked. He glanced around for a few moments before letting his eyes come to rest on the closest joint of the boarding ramp. While the boarding ramp was mostly made of metal, the joint appeared to be made of some weaker material folded in an accordion-like manner that allowed for the bend in the joint. He pointed at it. “Find something to cut through that!”

All turned and looked in various directions, searching supply cabinets and overhead bins. After about ten seconds of rummaging around, Maruka suddenly turned towards the cockpit. He entered it and returned a moment later with a fire axe in hand.

They all gathered around as he made a rough gash through the wall. He pushed his head through and glanced around. There appeared to be no one out there who could see them. He pulled his head back in and turned to the others. “Luck has favored us. There is no one out there, and it is still too dark for any one to see us from a distance. Climb out fast. We’ve wasted too much time as it is. The Americans will soon figure out that we are on to them and come down the ramp after us.”

One after another they clambered out of the slash and climbed down to the tarmac below. Once on the ground, Maruka led them under the belly of the plane. On the other side was a baggage car parked next to an electronic ramp that led up to the cargo hold of the plane. A steady stream of luggage flowed down the ramp and fell into a pile in the back of the cart. It appeared that all of the baggage handlers were inside the cargo hold feeding the bags to the ramp.

Maruka looked back at his people and motioned towards the vehicle. Making as little noise as possible they all climbed onto the electric cart. There was only seating for two. Maruka and Ma’ti took these. The other four piled into the baggage hold of the cart on top of the luggage. When Maruka took the brake off and threw the cart into forward, it emitted a loud buzz.

“Hey!” They heard the shout from the belly of the plane. One of the baggage handlers had heard the buzzing and seen them. They all looked up at him and saw the surprised look on his face. Maruka quickly looked ahead and started to move the cart forward. Timan picked up a suitcase from the hold and hurled it at the baggage handler, but failed to hit him as he dodged out of the way and back into the cargo hold. Less than ten seconds later, they were a hundred meters away, speeding down the tarmac. Uncomfortably lying on a pile of luggage, Jenna looked back at the plane as it receded into the distance and silently cursed under her breath.

“Security will be after us soon. Everyone look for a parking lot,” shouted Maruka over the whirring of the cart.

As they came to the end of the concourse, they could only turn right to avoid the runways. They left the international concourse in the distance and passed by the ends of four more concourses. Though there were several planes taxiing to and from the runways, they were slow and easily avoided. The terminal was coming up on their right. Next to the terminal, they came to a ten-foot tall chain link fence topped with barbed wire. On the other side was a massive field of thousands of parked cars as well as an enormous multileveled parking deck.

“I think I see a parking lot,” said Ma’ti with a grin. The parking facilities were impossible to miss.

“Flashing lights behind us!” hollered Timan. They all looked in the direction in which he was pointing. Sure enough, there were security vehicles with blue flashing lights coming up from behind.

“Everyone over the fence!” ordered Maruka. They quickly jumped out of the cart and rushed the barrier. Climbing over a tall fence topped with barbed wire would be a difficult task for a regular person, but everyone in the group was a well-trained guerilla. The only exception was the Doctor, but he made it over quickly enough with help from Hamum and Timan.

Once on the other side, Maruka dashed into a mass of parked vehicles with the rest following him. He glanced from side to side as he moved through the lot. Eventually, his eyes settled on a white Ford Econoline 250 van with a picture of a dead cockroach on the side. Beneath the cartoon roach was the name Southern Pest Control Systems. He pointed to it. “That’s the one.”

They gathered around it as Ma’ti broke out one of the rear windows, reached inside, and opened the back door. He climbed in first and headed for the driver’s seat as the others followed. Maruka sat in the passenger’s seat as Ma’ti hot-wired the vehicle. Ten minutes later they were headed up the interstate and away from the airport. There were no police or security vehicles following them.

Ma’ti spoke quietly so that only Maruka could hear him. “They were waiting for us. They knew we were coming and when. Only the people here knew where we were going. No one back in the DRC knew our destination. Someone among us is a traitor.”

“I know,” he responded with a nod. “From now on we will always travel as a group or at least in pairs so that the traitor will not have a chance to contact the police.” He placed his silver cross in his mouth and chewed on it.

***

They spent the day stopping at various pawnshops around the city. At each location, only Maruka and Ma’ti would go in while the rest were usually ordered to stay in the van. At one of the more secluded stores they removed all of the van’s pest control supplies and dumped them into a ditch behind a parking lot. Maruka could think of no use for the chemicals and decided that they needed as much room in the van as possible. They did however keep some safety goggles and dust masks that the Doctor had found in the back.

By late afternoon, they had visited half a dozen pawnshops, yet not a thing had been purchased. As a matter of fact, none of them was able to buy anything. Due to the manner in which they had left the airport, none of them had had a chance to exchange their Congolese francs for American dollars. Furthermore, the idea of going to any financial institution was completely out of the question as it ran to much risk of apprehension.

Maruka and Ma’ti returned from the seventh pawnshop that they had visited that day. They climbed into the side door of the van. Seeing that they returned empty handed, Jenna became visibly agitated.

“Why do you two keep going to these stores and not getting anything?” she asked with a hint of frustration. “Shouldn’t I be going to so that we can communicate with the clerk?”

“If we were going to buy something, I could speak enough English to handle it,” replied Maruka. “We have no intention, nor any means for that matter, to make a purchase. We have been looking for a store where the guns are not too well secured. Luckily, this one appears to fit our needs. The gun counter is secured only on three sides. Someone behind it could break through the glass to get at the firearms.”

“So we are going to rob the place?” Jenna asked as the situation dawned on her. “Well then, let’s go. I think I speak for the rest of us when I say that we are tired of sitting in this cramped vehicle.”

“No, we will wait for now.”

His answer caused her to curse under her breath. She knew that any pawnshop owner would be too well armed for the robbery to be successful. She had grown up in the slums of St. Louis and was quite familiar with how well pawnshops were protected. The owners had an array of firearms to choose from and were often protected behind bulletproof glass. She wanted such a robbery to fail.

It was her intention to stop Maruka’s plan at any cost. In fact, her name was not Jenna Mateki; it was Jenna Mallis. She was an agent for the Office of Near Eastern, South Asian, and African Analysis. It was part of the Directorate of Intelligence, one of the CIA’s four main divisions. Her assignment had been to keep an eye on the rebel leader and report if he were threatening U.S. interests in any way. His plan to abduct August Thatcher certainly fell under that category. It was she who had been responsible for the reception at the airport, but since that had failed, Maruka had become paranoid. She knew that she might not have another chance to call in before they took Thatcher and was getting desperate.

***

When night fell, Maruka, Ma’ti and Timan got out of the van. They were wearing the dust masks and goggles that Charleroi had found earlier in the day. The other three were to stay in the van and keep it running, with Hamum at the driver seat. The parking lot was otherwise devoid of people as were all of the others in the vicinity. Apparently, it was a bad neighborhood to stay in after dark. There were however, a few abandoned vehicles around.

It was towards one of these, a dilapidated Ford pickup truck, which Ma’ti Bawan now walked. Meanwhile, Maruka and Timan positioned themselves alongside the entrance to the pawnshop. After about two minutes, Ma’ti had hot-wired the old truck. It rumbled to life, the revving engine echoed throughout the deserted streets. The tires screeched as he dropped it into gear and began speeding right for the store. Just before the truck smashed through the front window of the store he ducked behind the dashboard in order to avoid injury from flying glass. It was unnecessary though; the windshield cracked but stayed in place.

Maruka and Timan quickly entered the gaping hole in the front of the store as Ma’ti hopped out the truck. An alarm began shrieking. They knew the police would be there soon. Maruka and Ma’ti quickly began moving around the store gathering the items that they had spotted in their initial visit, items that they though would be useful.

Meanwhile, Timan jumped behind a glass display case containing a wide selection of handguns. He grabbed six, stuffing two in his front pockets and four more in his belt. He then began tearing through drawers and boxes looking for ammunition, eventually locating a drawer full of boxes of varying types of bullets. He grabbed as many as he could then headed strait for the waiting van outside.

Ma’ti actually made several trips to the van with supplies while Maruka forced open the register. Unfortunately, there was no cash inside. He cursed, looked around and spotted a display case full of jewelry and watches. “That will have to do,” he thought to himself as he smashed the case and grabbed the contents. He then hurried out and jumped in the van along with the others as it sped away. They whole robbery had taken less than two minutes.

They drove several blocks until they pulled into a dark and quiet gas station that appeared to be closed. They heard no sirens and felt it safe to stop. There they picked through what they had stolen from the pawnshop. Aside from the guns and jewelry, they had also obtained a large toolkit, two small hunting knives, a can of white spray paint, three walkie-talkies, a high-end video camera, a pair of binoculars, several machetes, a couple of duffel bags, and several ropes.

Maruka did not explain to the others why they had taken these items. He wanted them to know as little as possible, as he now suspected a traitor. He handed the paint can to the only one of them he trusted without question. “Ma’ti, take this and fix the van.”

Ma’ti immediately hopped out of the van with the can of paint and used it to eradicate the logo on the side. Maruka wanted no identifying marks on the vehicle. The others inside sorted through the ammunition and distributed the guns. They were now prepared to do what they had come for.

***

The next morning they made a quick stop by yet another pawnshop on the other side of town. There, Maruka sold the jewelry that he had stolen the night before. They then used some of that money to buy food, the first they had eaten in over twenty-four hours. By ten o’clock in the morning, they had arrived at the campus of the Georgia Institute or Technology.

Ma’ti, in the driver’s seat, focused on the road while Maruka scanned the sidewalks for Thatcher. Finding Thatcher turned out to be more difficult than he had planned; there were many students, far more than Maruka had anticipated. Meanwhile, the others sat quietly in the back.

“We will never find him this way,” announced Maruka. After three hours, he was beginning to get frustrated. “Ma’ti, find a place to park.”

As Ma’ti searched for a parking spot, a daunting task in itself as the campus had very limited parking, Maruka discussed his plan with the others. “We have three radios. We will divide up into teams of two and search for Mr. Thatcher. Ma’ti and I will go, Dr. Charleroi and Jenna, and Abisa and Nyiragongo. If and when you find Thatcher, follow him and radio his location to the rest of the group. Do not try and grab him, just follow him. We don’t want to get him without the van. It’ll be too easy for him to call for help. Also, never separate from you partner!”

Ma’ti eventually found parking near a set of sports fields. From there each team struck off in different directions. Much to Jenna’s disappointment Maruka gave the radio to Charleroi. She had hoped to get the radio herself and sneak away from the Doctor in order to call her contact at the Directorate. Now though, he would radio Maruka the instant she disappeared.

It was getting to be late in the afternoon as Jenna and Charleroi walked side by side through the campus. Jenna decided to start a conversation to see if she could find some way to catch the twisted Doctor off guard.

“Tell me doctor, how is it you came to work for Maruka?” she asked trying to sound as innocent as possible. It was a question to which she knew the answer well from CIA reports, but the Doctor, of course, was unaware of that. “I do it because I believe in his cause to bring order to our country, but you are a European, it is not your homeland.”

“He was the first person that I met in the Congo who did not want to kill me, and he shares a hatred with me for the Tutsis.”

“The Tutsis? I know Maruka hates them because they tried to kill him when the Kabila was assassinated. I remember; I was there, but you joined us later. Why do you hate them?”

“They killed my wife and daughter. They didn’t just kill them; they mutilated them terribly with machetes and clubs.”

“Why would they do such a terrible thing?”

“They blamed me, at least in part, for the Genocide in Rwanda. I helped a Hutu extremist, one of those who conducted the slaughter.

“An Interahamwe? How did you help him and why?”

“You see I came to Rwanda as part of a humanitarian mission from Belgium. I had no real knowledge of the various tribes; I just came to heal anyone I could. One day a guerilla was brought to me. He had been shot in the stomach. I operated and he survived. While he was recovering, soldiers came and demanded I hand him over. I told them he had already gone, while, in truth, he hid in my hospital. I was not going to turn over a man to be executed that I had just saved. Later, he healed up and left, but word got out that I had helped him. Eventually, the Americans invaded to stop the Genocide. A band of Tutsi’s seeking revenge heard of the aid I had given and came to my home, but I was not there. I had gone to a nearby village to investigate a case of malaria. They took their revenge on my family.”

“It must have been horrible,” said Jenna with sadness in her voice. She was genuinely surprised by his story. The CIA report never mentioned his family.

“I got them back through. I went to the village where some of them lived and infected their well with every disease that I had specimens of. I couldn’t get them all though so I went to the Interahamwe for help. I agreed to supply them with bioweapons so long as they would use them to destroy the Tutsis. This went on for many months, but eventually I came to the realization that the Hutus were equally to blame for my family’s deaths. After all, they had spread word of my help for one of their leaders. I decided to use my abilities to destroy them as well. I laughed as I watched them suffer. However, it became too difficult for me to continue to operate in Rwanda so I escaped to the Congo. It was difficult though as the Tutsi rebels control so much of the eastern side. Luckily however, I stumbled across one of Maruka’s camps. Not long after, he convinced me to help him.”

As he told his story, Jenna searched for a way to break away and get word to her contacts. She looked longingly at a pay phone as they passed by, but the Doctor told his story mechanically as if is mouth were not attached to him. He remained aware of her actions the entire time. She tried to think of something she could use from his story to control him, but with her limited resources and present location, she came up with nothing.

She was startled when the radio in the Doctors hands emitted two rapid beeps.

“We’ve found him.” It was Maruka on the radio. “Meet Ma’ti back at the van.”

Jenna and the Doctor turned around and headed back the way they had come. They said nothing the whole walk back. The Doctor walked calmly, but it took every amount of effort for Jenna to disguise her anguish at not knowing how to prevent what was about to occur.

When they reached the van, all had returned except for Maruka, he had stayed to keep an eye on August Thatcher. Ma’ti drove them to a dormitory that Maruka was standing in front of, a dorm to which they had followed Thatcher. Now they waited for him to emerge. They waited all night.

Chapter 5

A New Assignment

April 24, 2001

Atlanta, Georgia

The building at One Atlantic Center is a fifty-story skyscraper in the Midtown area of Atlanta. Originally, IBM commissioned its construction; however, upon completion, the company only occupied about fifty percent of it. Many floors were leased to other entities. Among these was Digital Vision Systems, which occupied the entire twenty-second floor. Anyone attempting to research this company would be hard pressed to come up with any solid data. It was not publicly traded, produced no reports, did not advertise, bought nothing, and sold nothing. As a matter fact, though it was made to look like a legitimate business, it was not a company at all. DVS was a division of The Directorate of Science and Technology, a branch of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Its official duties were to develop advanced surveillance technology as well as employ that technology to safeguard national interests. These duties ranged from planting bugs in the offices of hostile governments to tracking and eliminating terrorists with the help of satellites.

The head of DVS was George Matthew Conager, a former Air Force major and a member of the CIA since 1973. At this moment, he sat in his cubicle (private offices were all reserved as conference rooms). It was 9:00 a.m. and he was idly checking his email while he drank his coffee. It usually took him two hours to go through his mail each morning. As he read, there was a knock against cubicle wall behind him.

“You wanted to see me?” asked a deep voice from behind him.

Conager turned around to see Thaddeus Foote. Foote, an agent for about the past year, was six foot six, clean-shaven with black and gray hair, kept short in a crew cut, with blue eyes. He was a former army drill sergeant, who after leaving the army at the age of forty, tried his hand at police work. Finding the work less than satisfying he had attended night classes to learn computers at a vocational school. DVS had recruited him shortly after he graduated. His technology skills were not quite as advanced as the average DVS agent, but they were adequate. Besides, what he lacked in industry knowledge he made up for in physical abilities. At forty-four he was in almost perfect shape, working out every day for several hours. He had the build of a professional wrestler and the fighting skill of an army elite ranger. Foote found his place at DVS as a field man, sabotaging or stealing technology from numerous hostile governments and criminal organizations and often handling combat situations. Today, however, Conager had a different kind of assignment in mind.

“The army is pissed about their truck,” said Conager in a stern voice. “Did you have to be so drastic?”

“I wanted it to be as realistic as possible. I thought it was a pretty good idea considering the circumstances. No missile could launch effectively wedged in a muddy river. It wasn’t a real missile anyway, just a mock up for the exercise.”

“The fake missile wasn’t the problem. As I said before, it was the truck that they are upset about. It is the only mobile launcher of that type that we possess.”

“I’m sorry sir,” said Foote as he looked at the floor. He kicked at the ground with his right foot as he spoke then looked back at Conager. “I won’t get so carried away next time. Is there anything I could do to pay for the truck?”

Conager’s mood immediately changed as he let out a deep laugh. “Both of our salaries combined couldn’t pay for that in ten years. They should be able to get it out of the river and clean it up good as new. They’re probably just bitching because you stole the truck from under their noses in broad daylight.”

“Any hard feelings from those two soldiers that I choked out?”

“They had some nasty head aches, but I’m sure they’ll forgive you. At least they didn’t have to wash white paint pellet from their uniforms. Anyway, let’s move on. I have an easy going assignment for you today, a bit of work in town.”

“Not another exercise?” asked Foote. He had been through three military exercises in as many weeks and was getting a little tired of simulations.

“No, it’s real. I want you to enter the exciting world of recruitment.”

“What, you mean go under cover in some other country and look for potential agents?”

“Nothing so subversive. I want you to work our table at the Georgia Tech job fair tomorrow.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. Do we have posters with Uncle Sam wearing a dark suit and sunglasses saying, ‘I want you to join to join the CIA?”

“No, but that’s a pretty good idea,” responded Conager with a laugh.

“Is this going to be a common assignment for a field agent around here from now on?”

“No, we usually have some professional recruiters from HR handle it. I have a special reason for sending an agent.”

Foote suddenly became more interested, like a kid expecting a present. “What is it?”

“There is a graduate student there by the name of August Thatcher. Apparently, he’s pretty bright. He’s come up with a software application that identifies infrared signatures of animals. He tried to sell it to one of those nature network cable companies a few months ago. His idea was to attach an infrared camera to a helicopter then have it fly over a jungle and take lots of pictures. Then the pictures could be processed by this application to identify animals that couldn’t be seen by a regular camera through the tree canopy.”

“Sounds interesting. Well...sort of anyway” said Foote with a hint of confusion. He wasn’t sure, why Conager found identifying animals so interesting. “Why did the cable company refuse?”

“There were some test photos taken by a plane flying over some forest in the Rockies. During his presentation to the cable company he came across a hit that his application could not identify. So they refused. He came back pretty good though with an article called ‘I Found Bigfoot’ describing his invention a few weeks later...made it into the back pages of Newsweek.”

“Does he really think he found Bigfoot?”

“I don’t know and I don’t really care. I want him and his invention. I’m hoping that we can get him to enhance it to identify individual people or at least track them by heat signature. Also I want to see if he can get it to work using satellite photos instead of something taken from a low flying plane or helicopter.”

“Okay, I’ll do it,” said Foote. It was not a terribly exciting assignment, but at least it was not another simulation.

“Good, I’ll email all the information that we got on this guy. Look it over and meet our regular recruiters at the job fair tomorrow at 9 a.m. sharp”

***

After reviewing Thatcher’s file, Thaddeus Foote was thoroughly unimpressed. Thatcher was short and skinny. His picture, taken for his article in Newsweek, showed the image of your typical geek with an acne covered face, long greasy hair, poor posture and a large frown. His file indicated little parental guidance growing up. The status of his parents was unknown. They had left him to be raised by his grandmother when he was only two years old. He had gotten an undergraduate degree in computer science at the University of Florida with a grade point average of 3.0. Now he was a grad student at Georgia Tech. His only work experience was as a clerk at Wal-Mart.

Foote was authorized to offer Thatcher up to $35,000 a year to join DVS. Though the benefits of working for the Federal government were excellent, that was a less than competitive amount in the Atlanta job market for a skilled software engineer. Despite the fact that the current economy was weakening, local software companies still looked for talent, sometimes offering upwards of $65,000 for recent graduates. Foote would have to be creative in order to recruit Thatcher.

The thought of enticing Thatcher with the opportunity to work with the leading edge technology did not appeal to Foote. Though DVS, being a subdivision of the technology wing of the CIA, had plenty of such opportunities, every other company at the job fair would be touting the opportunity to work on new and sophisticated projects. Besides, Foote knew that he was not really as technologically adept as many of his coworkers. He believed any attempts to recruit using such techniques would seem insincere.

“Maybe I can get him excited about being a spy and work the James Bond angle,” Foote thought to himself. Thatcher did not strike him as field agent material, but it was not impossible. As a drill sergeant, Foote had seen many unlikely recruits succeed and go on to join the elite rangers, though he had to admit he had seen a greater number fail and barely survive boot camp, afterwards only to be placed in some desk job. “Everybody wants to be like James Bond,” he told himself. “I’m sure that will work.”

Chapter 6

The Abduction

April 25, 2001

Georgia Tech Student Center, Atlanta, Georgia

“I don’t want to be James Bond,” said August Thatcher to Thaddeus Foote. “It’s pretty cool that he gets all the women, but people are always trying to kill him, and he’s always wearing uncomfortable looking clothes.”

Foote was fighting the urge to kick Thatcher in the face. He was failing miserably at recruiting him. He found the young man to be argumentative, cynical, paranoid, and self-centered. Most other students at the job fair were wearing suits while he wore jeans and a t-shirt. Throughout the whole conversation, he had never once made eye contact, and his posture was awful. “Well it’s not completely like it is in the movies. You’d rarely if ever be in danger and you would get to travel all over the world.”

“Have you ever been in danger?” asked Thatcher in a smart tone.

“Well...I’m not allowed to discuss details of any missions that I’ve been on,” replied Foote. It was partially true, but whether or not he had ever been in danger was not one of those classified pieces of information. He did not want Thatcher to know that he had faced dangerous situations dozens of times.

“So, you have?” It was almost more of a statement than a question.

“Let’s just say that I have never been in a situation that I was not equipped to handle. The training programs at the CIA prepare you to handle any sort of dangerous situation and since DVS is part of the agency, you have access to same training programs that all agents do, even the hardcore anti-terrorists.”

“That doesn’t sound like fun. I’ve seen the ROTC guys do physical training and it looks like torture. Do you have any positions that are less ‘action hero’?”

“Of course,” replied Foote. He was trying to sound confident, but he was becoming apprehensive. He knew that he was not prepared to sell Thatcher on a tech job. So he decided to call in the reinforcements. “Just a minute, let me get our tech specialist.”

As luck would have it, he had not come to the job fair alone. In addition to the two recruiters, who were currently occupied with other students, Samantha Blair had volunteered to spend the day working the job fair. He did not know why, at first, as recruitment did not seem to be a particularly exciting job, but he soon realized her motive when she began flirting with nearly every male student who showed any sign of future success. Currently though, she had returned to the DVS table to check in, just in time to help bail out Foote.

He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her over to meet Thatcher. She attempted to make a protest, but found herself face to face with Thatcher before she could get a word out. With a small aggravated sigh, she held out her hand.

“This is Samantha Blair, though she sometimes does some field work, she is primarily a tech, specializing in three dimensional graphics. She’s much more qualified to talk about our IT jobs. Samantha, this is August Thatcher.”

Thatcher’s eyes widened as he suddenly found himself unexpectedly talking with what he considered a remarkably attractive woman. She was slightly shorter than he was and had long red hair that was tied back in a ponytail. Her low cut, light green business casual dress was quite revealing and accented her rather shapely figure. As he shook her hand and exchanged greetings, Thatcher could not help but stare at her cleavage.

Samantha stuttered somewhat at first, finding herself unexpectedly pitching the life of a DVS agent, but she soon settled in to a conversation with Thatcher. She mostly discussed technological aspects that were over Foote’s head. He even laughed to himself a bit when he realized that she was using the same “leading edge technology” spiel he had tried to avoid, and it seemed to be working. Seeing Thatcher’s seemingly hypnotized expression, Foote quickly realized that Samantha could have been trying to recruit Thatcher for working as a grocery store bag boy and still been successful. Apparently, he had quite a weakness when it came to women, a weakness in which Samantha was an expert in taking advantage of. Eventually, the conversation ended with him signing up for an interview for a desk job position and leaving to talk to a few other recruiters for various companies.

***

The white van sat idling outside of the student center. No one took any notice of it, as it appeared no different than any other of the dozens of utility vehicles one might see throughout the day in the city. Its reason for being there though was anything but typical. In this van, Maruka and his henchman waited.

William Maruka sat in the front passenger seat and watched the doors to the student center, like a cat waiting for a mouse to come out of its hole. He idly chewed on his silver cross. They had waited all night for Thatcher to emerge from his dorm and were planning on grabbing him as soon as he appeared on the sidewalk out front by the street. Unfortunately for them, he had used a different exit at the side. If it had not been for Maruka’s eagle eyes spotting him cross the street about fifty meters to the North or the dorm, they would have lost him. They tried to approach him in the van without attracting any attention, but it was slow going through the crowds of students on their way to class and, before reaching him, he had slipped into the student center.

Now they waited outside for him. The Doctor and Jenna had been sent on foot to the other side of the building, in case he left via a different door. Hamum was in the driver seat while Ma’ti and Timan were in the back of the van. They were the ones who were in charge of restraining Thatcher.

By eleven o’clock in the morning, they had waited for Thatcher to leave the student center for almost two hours. Just as Maruka began to consider that they had somehow lost him, he emerged only a dozen meters from the van. That was close enough for Maruka.

“Now Ma’ti!” he shouted.

If Timan had opened the sliding side door of the van any faster, it would have broken off. Even before it bounced off of the stops, Ma’ti was already out the door. He lunged at Thatcher and attempted to grab him in a frontal bear hug. Thatcher was too surprised to make any sort of noise, but he instinctively reacted by stepping backwards. As a result, Ma’ti grabbed only air. He lunged again. This time Thatcher did not retreat. Instead, he put his hands up in front of him in an attempt to keep his attacker at a distance.

“Get away from me!” he shouted, finding his voice.

Unable to get Thatcher in a bear hug, Ma’ti changed tactics and grabbed him by the wrists instead and began dragging him into the van.

“Let go of me!” howled Thatcher. He kicked at Ma’ti’s knees. While not strong enough to do any real damage, he was able to disrupt his attacker’s balance. This bought him a few more seconds as Ma’ti stumbled, but never released his grip. Thatcher used this moment to shout for help at the top of his lungs.

At that time, Karen was walking down the sidewalk in that direction. Upon seeing Thatcher’s struggle with an unknown assailant, she ran to help. Though she did not really have a plan of action, the adrenalin was pumping.

By the time she reached them, they were right next to the van. Timan reached out and grabbed Thatcher’s left arm at the same moment she caught his right. It became a tug of war between the two students and the two guerillas. Unfortunately for Thatcher and Karen, it was a very lopsided one. Karen reached out with her right hand and clawed at Ma’ti’s eye. She barely broke the skin just over his eyebrow, but it was enough. He instinctively reached up and covered his eye, letting go of his grip on Thatcher. Timan held on, but was not able to pull Thatcher in any further.

The commotion was beginning to attract the attention of bystanders as well as people inside. Among these was Thaddeus Foote. He had watched Thatcher walk out of the student center, but had turned away once he believed the student gone. Now he refocused his attention on that exit and could make out Thatcher’s struggle through the glass door. As he ran to the door, he put his hand on the gun inside his jacket, but he did not draw it for fear of creating a panic. Samantha was not far behind.

Seeing that it was more difficult to drag Thatcher in than he had anticipated, Maruka climbed over the passenger seat and into the rear of the van. He grabbed Thatcher’s right arm and began to pull. Karen reached up to scratch him too, but Maruka caught her arm with his left hand as he held onto Thatcher with his right.

By now, Ma’ti had recovered from her scratch. The anger welled up inside him. He was furious at the girl. Tired of struggling to pull Thatcher into the van, he drew the gun that was tucked into he belt. He then maneuvered behind Maruka and then to his left. He pointed the gun right at her face. She started to scream but before she could do so, he pulled the trigger.

“Ma’ti!” Maruka shouted in shock and anger. Unlike the murder of the flight attendant two days ago, this killing had been carried out in front of many witnesses. Maruka suddenly realized that none of them had been wearing the dust masks to obscure their faces. He cursed at himself under his breath for not being more prepared. Suddenly, he felt a terrible pain in his shoulder as a tremendous force threw him back into the van. Someone had shot him.

At seeing Karen killed, Thatcher immediately went into shock and stopped struggling. Timan was able to pull him in without much trouble and slam the door. He turned to Hamum in the driver’s seat and yelled, “Go! Go! Go!”

Seeing the girl shot, as he burst through the door of the student center, Foote had instinctively drawn his gun aimed and fired. He had been trying to hit the shooter, but another kidnapper had turned to yell at him and took the bullet instead.

“Oh my god!” It was Samantha yelling beside him. She had just come out and saw the now faceless woman lying in a pool of blood on the sidewalk. The van sped off around a parking deck.

“You look after her,” barked Foot. He holstered his gun and started running to his car that was parked only a few yards away in spots that had been reserved for the recruiters. “And call Conager! I’m going after the van.”

***

“They’ll be gone before I can even get my car started,” Foote thought to himself with a growing sense of urgency as he cranked his car. The Maroon 1987 Mercedes 300 E was far from top of the line as it was approaching 300,000 miles on the odometer. Foote had spent many hours maintaining it, but its age still showed as it took four attempts to get the engine to turn over.

When the vehicle finally roared to life, Foote wasted no time throwing it into reverse and backing out of the parking space with gas floored. He slammed on the brakes causing the car to skid the last meter out of the parking space. Then, with tires screeching, he pursued the van around the outside of parking deck.

As he rounded the corner, he saw the parking attendant’s booth. The gate that the attendant used to stop vehicles for parking fee collection had been broken off. It was lying about three meters from the booth. The parking attendant was out attempting to pull the broken gate onto the sidewalk.

As Foote squealed around the corner, the Attendant looked up like a deer caught in headlights. Not about to slow down, Foote applied even more pressure to the gas pedal and swerved around the frozen employee. All people within sight had stopped as they watched the chase begin.

At the end of the driveway to the student center, Foote spotted the van. As luck would have it, they had stopped to pickup others. He could see two more figures getting into the van. He accelerated towards it, the gas pedal all the way down against the floorboard. He planned to hook around to the front end to block it from going forward, but he could not reach them fast enough. They began speeding away. The best Foote could do was to pull along side them.

He looked up into the passenger window, but there was no one there, and he could only see the faint silhouette of the driver. Every time he tried to accelerate past the van, the driver would match his speed. He dared not attempt to run the van off of the road as it was lined with students walking to classes on the sidewalks, nor did he want to harm Thatcher inside. He fell behind them as the turned onto a short two-lane street, but again pulled up beside them again as they made a sharp left onto North Avenue.

They traveled only a short distance down the road before coming to a very busy intersection. The light was red. The van began to enter the intersection, but had to make a sharp left on in order to avoid a collision with a large pickup truck coming from the other side. Foote, who had lost some ground in the chase, turned onto the street to follow them. His tires screeched and the inertia nearly carried him onto the opposite sidewalk.

“Oh my god!” he exclaimed as he realized that they had just turned onto the busiest street in the city. “That stupid son of a...”

He stopped in mid sentence as he saw the van swerve over the double yellow line and into oncoming traffic in order to get around a slow moving delivery truck. He tensed, expecting to see a collision at any second, but the oncoming cars veered away until the speeding white van lurched back over the lines. Foote jammed on the accelerator and whipped passed the delivery truck on its right side.

For several more seconds, both vehicles weaved through the heavy traffic. Then, the van veered to the right until it was in the outer lane. Foote was again right behind it. Suddenly, the van’s tires screeched as the driver slammed on the brakes. Foote instantly floored the brake and turned the wheel to the left in order to avoid rear-ending it.

The van did not come to a complete stop, but dodged down small side street. Foote downshifted and turned to follow. The street was very thin and lined with parked cars.

“It’s too thin. Something is wrong!” he though to himself. Then he realized what it was. All of the parked cars had been parked going the opposite direction. “We’re going the wrong way on a one way street!”

The moment he realized this, he saw the van ahead almost jump to the side to avoid a head on collision with a Honda hatchback. It then swung back onto the street. Now the Honda headed straight for him. It was swerving to his left, horn blaring. Foote attempted the same evasive maneuver the van had done but lost his right side mirror against a telephone pole. He did not, however, strike the car or even slow down.

The street dead-ended into a larger road were the van screeched to the left. Foote followed. When he came around the corner his eyes widened. There was a railroad crossing up ahead. The gates were down and its lights were flashing, and they were speeding towards it.

Foote could see it in the corner of his eye. A large freight train was coming from the left. The van was going to make it, but he was not so sure about himself. He downshifted and floored the gas praying that he would not throw a rod. The van passed over the tracks knocking the gates out. Foote was suddenly startled by a loud blast of the train’s whistle. He sped towards the crossing. He felt the car lurch into the air as he hit the hump of asphalt at the tracks. Then he was over the crossing, the train just missed him by a meter.

They sped down the road. This street was very winding but was several lanes wide. Foote was able to get along side the van now, the superior suspension of his Mercedes allowing him to hold the curves better.

“Maybe they’ll respect a warning shot or two,” he thought to himself as he drew his gun and rolled down the window. He pointed the gun at the passenger side window, but angled the shot so that it would not hit the driver. When he pulled the trigger, the passenger window on the van disintegrated into dust while a spider web shaped crack exploded onto the windshield.

The response was far from what he hoped for. For an instant the van swerved to the left, almost into oncoming traffic, but it quickly recovered. Suddenly, the sliding side door of the van sprang open. Foote counted four handguns trained at him. He slammed on the brakes just at the moment they began firing. Though he escaped harm, a number of bullet holes suddenly appeared in the hood of his car. All power lost, he sputtered to a stop onto an access road at the next intersection.

Foote beat on the steering wheel and cursed. Then, he suddenly stopped, getting control of his anger. He patted the dashboard a couple of times. “Sorry, Jennifer.” He had named his car after his first girlfriend in grade school. Then, he got out and saw that somebody had jumped from the van just before it disappeared from view around the corner.

***

When they had opened fire on the pursuer, Jenna saw her chance to save the Thatcher. Maruka and his men were focused on the maroon sedan that was chasing them and were busy trying to stabilize themselves so that they could get a clear shot. Maruka, Ma’ti, Charleroi, and Timan all had their guns pointed out of the side door, but Jenna stood behind them.

She knelt down next to Thatcher. He was sitting in the back corner of the van with his knees pulled up to his chest. His eyes were wide, appearing never to blink. He stared straight ahead focusing on nothing. Jenna removed her watch. It appeared to be a standard cheap digital watch, not much different than what any of the other rebels in Maruka’s group had. She grabbed Thatcher’s left wrist and forced the watch into his hand.

“My people will be able to find you with this,” she whispered to him. “I work for the CIA. It’s a tracking device.”

“Hopefully they won’t need to use it to find him,” she thought. “Maybe I’ll manage to get them all before they get me.”

She had been lucky. No one had noticed her talking to Thatcher. She rose and turned around. Her first priority was to take out the leader. She pointed her pistol at the back of Maruka’s head as he shot at the pursuing vehicle. That was when her luck ran out. Ma’ti spotted her out of the corner of his eye and shouted a warning to Maruka as he pointed his gun at her.

Jenna hesitated when faced with death pointed at her. Maruka spun around and parried her gun away with his right wrist as he drove is left fist into her side. Normally a hit like that would have caused her to double over in pain, but his shoulder was injured and arm weak. She knew she had to act to save herself. She lashed out. Before he could steady himself and shoot, Jenna drove her fist into Ma’ti’s groin. He dropped his gun and fell into a fetal position. Though her quick action had saved her from the Ma’ti’s gun, she had given Maruka time to punch her in the side again. This time he hit harder causing her to involuntarily arch her back forwards. This moved her head back, giving Maruka room to raise his gun and point it at her face.

At that moment Charleroi and Timan turned around to find out what the commotion was behind them. They turned in opposite directions creating a gap between them. At the same time, Hamum made a sharp turn to the right causing Maruka to momentarily point his gun away from her. Seizing her chance, she hurled herself between Charleroi and Timan and out of the van.

She rolled hard onto the concrete sidewalk and tensed waiting for the inevitable shots, but they never came. The van was speeding away too quickly. When she turned around and looked up, it was already thirty meters away, rocketing off towards the North.

“Don’t move!” are gruff voice said from behind her. “Slowly sit up and turn around if you’re able.”

She complied slowly. Much to her surprise, nothing was broken. Though her knees and elbows were bleeding from scrapes against the concrete. She turned around to see a very large man with a crew cut standing over her pointing a gun at her.

“My name is Jenna Mallis,” she said looking up at the massive figure. “I work for the government. I’m a federal agent.”

“What a coincidence. So am I. Is anything broken?”

“No.”

“Then stand up. We are going to make a few calls and find out if you are who you say you are.”

She slowly got up. When she finally stood she realized that she had twisted her ankle. She limped a few steps and then looked around. She was at one end of and access road that was there to ease in right turns at the intersection. At the opposite side she recognized the maroon sedan. The man was indicating that she needed to walk over there.

“Who are you?” she asked as she hobbled towards the car.

“My name is Thaddeus Foote.”

ACT 2

The Hunt for Old Bigfoot

Chapter 7

“You want what?”

April 25, 2001, 6:00 p.m.

Somewhere On The Road In North America

August Thatcher suddenly snapped too, feeling like he had abruptly awakened from a deep sleep. His muscles jerked as if he had been startled, but for no reason. He had no idea of how long he sat huddled in the back of the van. The last thing he remembered clearly was Karen being shot. Since that moment, only a few hazy images came to mind.

“What’s this?” he asked himself feeling a tight pinch around his left wrist. “Did they handcuff me?”

He looked down at his left wrist and saw that he was wearing a digital watch. He didn’t own a watch. He was about to take it off when he got the overwhelming urge to keep it. Though he did not know why, he had an intense feeling that it was the key to his escape.

He looked around the van. They must have been traveling for hours. The one who had shot Karen was now driving. He counted four others. There was one in the passenger seat and three in the back with him. Two of those in the back were asleep. The third was positioned right behind the driver, talking to him. Some of the windows were open and the rushing wind made it difficult to hear, but what he could make out was in a language that he had never heard before.

From his position in the back corner, Thatcher was unable to see out any of the windows. It was very breezy. He looked up at the back window and realized why this was so. One of the back windows had been broken out. When he looked forward he saw that the passenger window was broken as well, and the windshield was severely cracked.

Deciding to look out of the rear window to determine his location, Thatcher slowly got to his knees and rose up just enough to peer through the empty window. Though there were still a few small shards around the rim of the window, someone had cleared out most of the broken glass. Outside, it appeared to be twilight. The sky was purple and turned darker as it met the horizon behind the van. He could see the expressway as it extended behind them. It was relatively busy, and about half of the cars that traveled behind them had their headlights turned on.

Thatcher tensed when a hand touched his shoulder from behind. He turned around and found himself face to face with one of his captors. The man was very large, probably close to two hundred pounds. He was wearing Khaki pants, a white t-shirt, and a black denim shirt that that hung loosely on his shoulders. A gun was tucked into his belt.

“Do not try to escape,” he said with a strong accent that Thatcher placed as African. “If you jump out on the expressway you will only break your legs or get hit by a car.”

Thatcher did not respond. He had not actually considered jumping out, but he did not want this man to know that he was trying to ascertain their whereabouts, either. He opened his mouth to say something but only made a few barely audible sounds. He was still a bit disoriented and no words came to mind.

The man seized him by the jaw and forced him to meet his gaze. His eyes were a dark brown almost black. The man glared angrily at him, but for some odd reason, Thatcher’s fears unexpectedly evaporated. The man was very strong and seemed very dangerous, but when Thatcher was forced to look him in the eye, he felt something other than fear. He could not understand why, but he felt as if he were somehow the one in control of the situation, not the man who threatened him.

“Do you understand?” asked the man, speaking slowly and emphasizing every word. “Do not try to escape.”

Thatcher nodded, and then asked, “Who are you? Why am I here?”

“I am Maruka,” he replied, releasing his grip on Thatcher. He moved over to a duffle bag, reached inside, rummaged around, and produced a magazine. He opened it and flipped through the pages. Eventually he stopped and held it up to Thatcher. “I want you to find him for us.”

Thatcher instantly recognized it. It was his article. “I Found Bigfoot,” it said in large black letters. He blinked in disbelief. He could not comprehend that these people actually believed that he could lead them to the legendary creature. He himself did not even believe that the mysterious blob on that cable network’s photo was Bigfoot. He had really just used it as a title to grab attention.

“I don’t know if I can,” he admitted. “I only found a possible trace of him in a photo.”

“You will find him. Where do we go?”

“I don’t even have the photo with me. I’d at least need that to show you where to go on a map.”

Thatcher was lying. After his failure to sell his application to the World Explorer Channel, he had looked the photo over hundreds of times and figured out exactly the location on the map that it represented. He hoped that he would be released if he pretended that he could not help them, Maruka only frowned and put his hand on the gun in his belt.

“I can get it,” Thatcher added quickly. “ I just need to find a computer with a modem. I can download it from my account.”

“Perhaps I can also send an email to get help,” he thought.

“We can get you a computer,” said Maruka. Taking his hand off of the gun, he turned around and began conversing with the driver and man in the passenger seat.

Thatcher listened intently. At first the language sounded totally alien to him, but he soon figured out that it was French. It seemed that Maruka’s accent was as strong in French as it was in English, making it tough to recognize. Though Thatcher could not really speak French, he did manage to recognize enough words to identify the language. The driver’s voice was very similar. He seemed to be replying to Maruka as if agreeing to follow some set of instructions.

The man in the passenger then spoke up and said something in response to Maruka. His voice, however, sounded like the European French that Thatcher was used to hearing. This made him look closer at the man. He was completely bald, with a gaunt face and wore wire rim glasses. He was the only other Caucasian in the van. He too acted subservient to Maruka.

The conversation ended as Maruka turned and sat down. He closed his eyes as if to rest, but to Thatcher it felt like the man could see through his eyelids, as if he were being watched closely. Feeling that there was nothing more he could do, Thatcher sat down to rest his eyes as well.

***

Thatcher awoke with an explosion of pain in his side. He had dozed off, and was now being forced awake. He had just been kicked in the side by one of his kidnappers. Several of them, including Maruka, knelt around him.

“We are going to get your computer,” Maruka said to him. Then he pointed to the man who had kicked him awake. “This is Timan. He will watch you and make sure that you do not run. Do you understand?”

Thatcher nodded in agreement. One of them opened the sliding side door in the van. They piled out then shut the door behind them while the one called Timan stood over him grimacing. The bald Caucasian had also remained in the van and now sat in the driver’s seat.

Thatcher did not move for several quiet minutes. He only stared straight ahead, tucked in the back corner of the van. He could see enough out of the windshield to know that it was night, but he did not know what time it was. The idea of looking at the watch he now wore did not occur to him. He had not, as a habit, worn a watch in many years. To him the device he now wore around his wrist was not a tool for telling time, but a symbol of hope for rescue. Though, he could not clearly remember why.

For a time, the night was silent. He could hear no sounds coming through the broken windows of the van. After a couple of minutes though, he heard someone trying to start a car. It sounded as if the engine did not want to turn over. After about a dozen tries, Thatcher heard the engine rumble to life and rev several times. He was not really paying the sound any notice until he heard the tires squeal followed a few seconds later with a loud crashing explosion of noise. It sounded like a dozen plate glass windows shattering all at once.

Startled by the clamor, Thatcher tried to get up and look out of the window, but the moment he began to move, Timan kicked him in the side. Thatcher’s weight dropped out from underneath him and he landed with a thud back into the corner of the van. The pain was sharp and there would surely be a nasty bruise there in a few hours.

“Hey, what was that for?” he demanded.

Timan’s only response was another swift kick. This time the blow was to Thatcher’s abdomen. All of the air rushed from his lungs as he curled into a fetal position. Coughing spasms followed as his body reacted to getting the wind knocked out of it.

Thatcher did not move for the next several minutes. He just lay there recovering from the kick while Timan glowered over him. Eventually, he managed to sit up again. He looked up at his abuser with hate filled eyes. “You son of a...”

Timan interrupted him before he could finish with yet another kick. This one however, was to the side of the head. Thatcher fell onto his side clutching his head with his hands.

At the same moment the door to the van swung open. It was the Maruka and the two others that had left earlier. All three of them were carrying armloads of computer equipment. Maruka paused for a second and looked at the beaten form of Thatcher, but he quickly resumed loading the equipment and jumped into the van when an alarm sounded from behind him. Maruka tapped the shoulder of Charleroi, who was in the driver seat of the van. Charleroi put the van in gear and sped away. Feeling safer now that they had left the electronics store and its alarm behind, Maruka turned to Ma’ti.

“Check on Thatcher,” he ordered as he began climbing into the passenger seat. “Find out why Timan beat him.”

Ma’ti turned to Timan and asked, “What did he do?”

“He got up and tried to look out the window. I did not want him to try and escape, so I knocked him down by kicking him in the hip”

“We saw you kick him in the face, not the hip.”

“I kicked him in the gut and head afterwards to teach him to respect me.”

“I see,” replied Ma’ti as he turned his head to look at Thatcher. Out of habit, Timan also turned to look at the graduate student who was now recovering from the kick to the head. Thatcher’s left eye was swelling and his nose was bleeding.

Suddenly, Ma’ti shifted his weight forward driving his fist into Timan’s gut. Timan doubled over with pain and fell to the floor of the van. When he was down, Ma’ti kicked him twice in the back.

“Idiot!” yelled Ma’ti. “We need him to help us find the wild man and you try to beat him to death for respect. Do not touch him anymore! He’s no good to us dead.”

Thatcher watched the confrontation with a sense of confusion. He found it odd that the same man who had originally attacked him and dragged him into this infernal van, the man who had killed Karen, now appeared to be defending him. Because he could not understand the language that they were speaking, he was not sure of the exact reason they fought. Though beaten and barely conscious, he really didn’t care if they killed one another at that moment.

***

A few hours later they stopped again. Maruka left the van for a short while then returned and gave the driver instructions. They pulled around a corner then got out of the van. Maruka grasped Thatcher by the shoulder while the rest had picked up armfuls of computer equipment as well as various duffel bags.

It was still dark outside when Thatcher stepped out of the van and was able to stand at full height. His legs were so stiff that he could barely keep himself from falling over. Furthermore, his left eye was nearly swollen shut, making it difficult to focus his vision on anything. It appeared that they had stopped as some roadside motel, but due to the darkness just beyond the parking lot, Thatcher could not see to get a sense of what part of the country they were in. Nor could he see any motel sign.

“We must be on the back side of the motel,” Thatcher thought hazily to himself.

He felt a pull on his shoulder as Maruka dragged him towards the door to one of the rooms. They were the first to enter the room followed by the other four. The room was relatively large, as least for a motel anyway. There were three beds against the wall to the left, a television and a large dresser on the one to the right. At the back of the room was a desk sitting next to a closet.

Maruka pulled Thatcher over to the desk and made him sit at it. He then said something in French to the others. They responded by piling the computer equipment on the desk. There was so much that they piled much of it on the floor at Thatcher’s feet after running out of desk space.

Maruka put one hand on Thatcher’s shoulder and with the other hand motioned to the pile of electronics and said, “We did not know what exactly you needed, so we grabbed everything we could.”

He gave Thatcher a firm pat to the shoulder, and then walked away to talk to some of the rest of his men. Thatcher took this to mean that he was to get to work immediately. He was glad for this. He wanted to try sending an email for help as soon as he could.

The pile contained much more equipment than he needed to both satisfy Maruka by getting the infrared photograph and to send an email for help. It consisted of several laptop computers, two larger desktop computers, a few printers, various external CDROM drives and modems, and dozens of cables.

“A bit of overkill,” Thatcher thought to himself, “One of these laptops will probably be all I need.”

He grabbed a small Sony Vaio SR Notebook. Then he fished the power cable out of the box, attached it to the computer and powered it up. After a few minutes, it had completely booted. He went through and found that the computer was pre-equipped with everything he would need. It already had the latest operating system for personal computers installed, and not only was there a photo editing application, but there also was a telnet application that he could use to dial into the school’s network.

Luckily, the computer had a modem already installed. Thatcher reached over to the phone and grabbed it. Everyone in the room suddenly turned towards him. Maruka ran over to the desk.

“Don’t try to call for help!”

“I need to plug the phone cable into the modem so I can dial in and get that photo, ” Thatcher replied defensively.

Maruka looked slightly foolish, but was still suspicious. He moved over to the closest bed with a grumble and sat down. He put his silver cross in his mouth and started to chew and then made a motion towards the television. One of the other men turned it on, and they all sat watching while Thatcher worked at the computer.

From time to time, Maruka or one of his men would look over at Thatcher to check on him, but for the most part they just watched the television. There was one exception to this though. Timan sat on the bed closest to the door and furthest from Thatcher. He glared menacingly at Thatcher, memories of the beating he had received earlier still fresh on his mind.

At one point the Caucasian, which the others called “Docteur”, checked a stitched up wound on Maruka shoulder. Thatcher wondered how Maruka had been hurt. When Maruka saw him watching he snapped his fingers at Thatcher indicating that he should get back to work.

After that, Thatcher took no notice of Maruka or any of his men. He was sure they were not close enough to see him send an email for help. Unfortunately, he found himself facing a dilemma. He had always kept people’s email addresses in a phone book menu in his own computer’s email application. Though this computer had a similar email system, it did not have any of the addresses he needed. He could not remember anyone’s address.

More problems with his plan began to enter into his thoughts. Who would he send the mail to anyway? The more he though about it, the more he realized that he did not really know anyone who had the ability to help. They might even think he was joking. Also, he had no idea where he was. He kicked himself mentally as he realized he did not even look at the room number on the way in.

He sighed realizing his plan would not work. He resigned himself to retrieving the digital version of the infrared images that Maruka wanted. He brought them up on the screen and then turned to his captor. “Here is the picture.”

Maruka stood up and walked over to Thatcher. Standing next to him he looked at the image on the screen. Maruka really could not make heads or tails of it. It just looked like a bunch of green and white blobs. “Where is the creature?” he asked.

“These white spots were what the application could not identify.”

Maruka nodded. “Can you use this to tell us where to go?”

“There are map coordinates in the corner. I can use those to find where to go on any good road map.”

“Will the creatures still be there?”

“They could be, but the image is many months old. I can’t promise that we’ll find them.”

Maruka paused for a few seconds lost in thought. He stroked his chin, then pointed to the screen and asked, “If we could get more pictures like this, could you search them too.”

“Yes,” admitted Thatcher reluctantly, “I can download my application from my account at school.”

Maruka turned around and called out, “Ma’ti.” Then he spoke something in a language that Thatcher did not understand. The man who had killed Karen got up and started rummaging around in one of the duffel bags.

“So that psycho’s name is Ma’ti,” Thatcher told himself.

Eventually, Ma’ti retrieved the video camera that they had stolen from the pawnshop and brought it over to the desk. Maruka held it in front of Thatcher. “Will this camera work? It has infrared for night time taping.”

Thatcher looked at it. It was a Sony, the same brand as the laptop computer he was using. He recalled seeing an add saying that a Sony camera could be directly interfaced to one of their computers, but he didn’t know how.

He looked up at Maruka and said, “It might work, let me see if I can figure out how to get them to work together.” He now believed that his best way out would be to cooperate as much as possible.

As Thatcher spoke, Ma’ti watched him. Because he could not understand English, he was attempting to read body language to figure out what was being said. When Thatcher reached out to take hold of the camera Ma’ti saw the watch on his wrist. He reached out and seized his arm.

“He was not wearing this when I grabbed him at the school.” He said to Maruka, speaking in Kingwana. “I remember grabbing him by the wrists.”

Maruka pointed to the watch and asked Thatcher in English, “Where did you get this?”

Thatcher was stunned. He did not know how to respond. He knew that the watch was not his, but he did not want to give it up. Somehow it represented a hope of freedom for him.

“It is that traitor’s watch!” exclaimed Ma’ti. “I remember seeing her with it.”

“Give the watch to me,” demanded Maruka.

Reluctantly, Thatcher removed it and handed to his stern captor. Maruka held it in his hand for a few seconds looking it over. Then, he dropped it to the floor and smashed it underneath his shoe. “It’s time to go,” he announced as he grabbed Thatcher by the shoulder.

Chapter 8

Who is Maruka?

April 25, 2001

Atlanta, Georgia

Foote sat on a table facing Jenna Mallis in a small interrogation room. The Atlanta City Police had arrived shortly after Foote had apprehended her, following her leap from the van. He had intended to call Conager at DVS, but did not get the chance before the police arrested both of them and brought them to the station. Foote had informed them of his status as a federal agent which they had quickly verified with DVS. Soon after, they released him from his handcuffs, but Jenna still remained restrained at Foote’s request.

“When are you going to take these things off?” asked Jenna looking at the handcuffs as she tried her best to cross her arms. She was leaning against the reflective, one-way glass. “You don’t think a little girl like me can hurt a big gorilla like you, do you?” she asked in a playful tone.

“I’ll let you out just as soon as I confirm your identity,” he responded in a firm militaristic tone that startled her. He was most unhappy at the events of the day. He had his cell phone in hand and was dialing. “Now sit down and be still!” He ordered motioning to a chair.

“The way you talk, I feel like I’m in boot camp again,” she said with a touch of sarcasm as she pulled the chair back from the table and sat down.

“I used to be a drill sergeant,” he informed her. “Now please be quiet while I talk to my boss.”

Foote did not put the phone to his ear but instead looked at a small screen that was revealed by folding open the keypad. After a couple of rings Conager’s image appeared on the screen. It was a choppy image, but still enough to see Conager’s facial expressions. Foote’s image was, conversely, sent to the other end by a small camera imbedded in the mobile phone.

“What in the world is going on?” asked Conager his voice coming through the wireless earpiece that was tucked into Foote right ear. “I just got off the phone with Sam. She was almost hysterical. She said that Thatcher was abducted and another student killed. The police called me, too, to verify that your status as a Fed.”

“Is Sam okay?” asked Foote speaking into the microphone that was pinned to the inside of his collar. A deep tone of concern could be heard in his voice, a stark contrast to the terse voice he had just used with Jenna.

“She’s a bit shaken up, but she’ll be fine. She happens to be on the way to your location. The police wanted to take her statement.”

“Good, I’m going to need a ride back to the office my car got shot to pieces.”

“Tell me what happened,” demanded Conager again.

“Thatcher was taken, but I don’t yet know by who,” Foote began as he related the story of the abduction, chase, and the apprehension of Jenna Mateki/Mallis to Conager. “I’ve got the woman here,” he informed him, “but she says that she’s with the Company. I need you to verify. Here name again is Jenna Mallis. She says she works for the Directorate of Intelligence. Her director’s name is Clint Sampson.”

“Send me a picture,” requested Conager, “I’ll run a check.”

“Alright,” replied Foote. He pointed the camera lens in the phone at Jenna and pushed a button on the side. The phone captured a high resolution still and sent it to Conager.

Conager received the image a few seconds later. He had already brought up Jenna’s file on his computer. He compared the image in the file with the one Foote had sent. She had short hair in her CIA photo whereas she had extensions now, but otherwise, the photographs matched.

“Looks like her story checks out. Bring her here. I’ll call her director while you’re on your way. Find Sam and have her drive you.”

“Understood,” replied Foote. “One more thing, I need you to arrange to have Jennifer towed to Jackson’s garage. She’s pretty shot up, but Harold should be able to fix her.”

Jenna snickered quietly to herself. When Foote got off the phone, she teasingly asked, “Do all big tough drill sergeants give their cars girlie names?”

“Hmph.” The grunt was his only reply.

***

“He plans to capture Bigfoot for its blood,” Jenna announced to the room eliciting nothing but blank stairs.

Jenna Mallis, Thaddeus Foote, George Conager, and Samantha Blair sat around an oak table in one of the dozen conference rooms at Digital Vision Systems. They were seated in comfortable leather chairs with Jenna at the end furthest from the door. The other three sat at the other end of the table. It was dusk, and the last rays of the sun shown through the large window in the conference room, giving everything a reddish hue. It had taken the whole afternoon for them to get out of the police station.

“First of all, did you bump your head when you fell out of that van?” asked Conager sarcastically, “and secondly, who is ‘he’?”

“No! I did not hurt my head, and don’t you know who Maruka is?”

“I’ve never heard of him,” replied Conager. Foote shook his head to indicate that he had never encountered the name before, while Samantha just shrugged her shoulders. Conager continued, “Your director, Clint Sampson, told me that you were on assignment in Africa watching some warlord, but he didn’t really give me a lot of details. Is this ‘Maruka’ that warlord?”

“Yes, I had radioed ahead before we left the Congo, but he managed to escape the agents at the airport. You mean that you were not dispatched to capture him?”

“We were only at Tech to recruit at the job fair,” said Samantha. “It was just a coincidence.”

“Why don’t you tell us exactly who this Maruka is and what your assignment with the Directorate of Intelligence is about,” suggested Conager.

“I am with the Office of Near Eastern, South Asian, and African Analysis,” said Jenna. “I was assigned nine months ago to infiltrate a rebel group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. William Maruka was the head of that group. I was basically supposed to keep an eye on him and make sure that he could not endanger U.S. interests.”

“How in the world does this lead to him hunting for Bigfoot?” asked Foote impatiently.

“I’m getting to that,” she said staring at Foote with an expression of annoyance. “The night that president Kabila was assassinated, Maruka’s command camp was raided by a rival rebel group. We fled into the jungle. It was in the jungle that we stumbled across an a most interesting discovery.”

Jenna proceeded to tell them the story of the lab, the virus, and the plan to abduct August Thatcher in order to locate the legendary Bigfoot. As she told the story, the expressions on the others changed from that of mocking disbelief to those of shock and terrifying comprehension. By the time she had finished, the idea that Bigfoot was real was no longer the stuff of charlatans, hoaxers, and the deceived. They believed in the possibility that he might actually exist.

“But I thought that Bigfoot had been reported for centuries, not just since World War II,” argued Samantha. ”Isn’t he an old Indian legend?”

Jenna nodded her head and looked down and to the left. “I remember that one of Maruka’s lieutenants asked that very same thing. Maruka researched it. It turns out that there were very few sightings more than fifty years ago. It wasn’t until 1958 when a bulldozer operator found footprints that the rash of modern sightings began. The Indian legend was just a coincidence. Every primitive culture has such legends. The Native American’s only became important when actual sightings started to occur.”

“What exactly does Maruka intend to do once he obtains a sample of this virus?” asked Foote, running his hand through his hair.

“He never told me,” admitted Jenna. “My guess would be that he wants to have Dr. Charleroi produce mass quantities of it so that he can use it as a terrorist weapon to threaten his way into power.”

“It’s possible,” pondered Conager, “but we can’t rule out the possibility that he might use it as a weapon of mass destruction for revenge, not just as a threat.”

“It won’t matter how he intends to use it, if we apprehend this jerk before he even gets half way across the country,” said Foote optimistically.

Conager looked at him and grinned, humored by his enthusiasm. “All in good time, Thaddeus. First we need to find some way to locate them. That probably won’t be any easier than actually finding Bigfoot by now. It’s been over nine hours.”

Jenna cleared her throat to get attention then smiled. “Actually it should not be difficult at all. I gave Thatcher my locator watch before jumping out of the van. We only need to access the CIA’s Agent Tracking System.”

“Then I suggest we get to it now,” said Conager. “While we do that though, it occurs to me that anyone who knew Thatcher well, might be able to tell us where he would take them. I seem to recall that there is a professor’s name mentioned in the Thatcher’s article.” He turned to Samantha Blair. “Sam, see if you can find out who that professor was and go talk to him first thing in the morning.”

“Will do,” answered Samantha with a nod.

“As for the rest of us, lets go see if that watch will give us a bead on Thatcher’s location.”

***

The door through which they entered was made of steel and was a foot thick. A security guard stood outside. In order to enter the room, Conager had to pass various forms of biometric security. Once he had his retina, handprint, and voice scanned the door clicked open. He walked through as Foote went through the same procedure. Jenna followed them next.

Access to any one of the machines in the room by unauthorized personnel would catastrophically compromise national security. There were computers that contained all sorts of classified military data, intelligence mission details, and lists of agents. There were also those that provided access to a worldwide network of surveillance devices, the particular specialty of DVS.

In a back corner though, was an odd looking device with an oversized screen. It looked much like a microfiche reader one might see in a library, but there was a numeric keypad on the side of it and two buttons on the bottom, one with a plus sign and the other with a minus. This was DVS’s link to the CATS, the CIA’s Agent Tracking System. Though it was now somewhat dated technology, it was still widely used by the agency to keep track of field agents.

Many agents carried some form of tracking device, usually in a watch or ring. Some of the deeper cover agents even had it hidden in a false tooth. This device would constantly emit a signal containing a code unique to each agent, a signal that could be tracked by a system of satellites. By entering an agent’s identification number on the keypad, one could see a map indicating that person’s location. The signal that was broadcast from the tracking device was made to appear no different than that of a mobile phone, but the data contents of that signal were far too encrypted for anyone other than the CIA to recognize it.

“Alright, Ms. Mallis, please enter your ID code.” Requested Conager.

Upon doing so, a satellite image of North America appeared on the screen. It was overlaid with a road map. There was a red flashing dot in the middle of Arkansas.

“There he is,” proclaimed Jenna, pointing to the dot.

“Zoom in and see if they are in motion”, suggested Foote.

Conager leaned forward and tapped the plus button a few times and caused the image to zoom in and center on the flashing red dot. When magnified enough, they could see that the locator was not moving.

“It appears that they have stopped just outside of Little Rock,” observed Foote. Then he turned to Conager and asked, “Can we pin down the exact location and dispatch a swat team?”

“We can’t get the exact address, but we can get the street names,” replied Conager. “I’ll get the Arkansas State Police on the line,” he said as he started punching in numbers on his mobile phone.

Suddenly Jenna cried out. “It’s gone! We lost the signal.”

“Damn!” cursed Foote.

“Quick! Zoom in until you can get the street name,” ordered Conager. “We might still have time to get the cops there.”

Foote pushed Jenna out of the way and tapped the zoom button twice after which the street names appeared. Conager was already talking rapidly on the phone with the Arkansas State Police. Foote recited the street names to Conager who relayed them to the police dispatcher on the line.

***

Ten minutes later three patrol cars arrived at a small roadside motel on the outskirts of Little Rock. The state troopers stormed into the office of Big Smith’s Roadside Inn. The clerk, intently playing a game of solitaire on the motel’s booking computer, nearly fell backwards out of his chair as the troopers burst through the door.

A cop by the name of William Harrison stepped forward and looked the trembling clerk directly in the eye. “Sir, we have reason to believe that a group of Congolese terrorists may be staying in a room at your establishment. Has anyone with an African accent checked-in in the past several hours?” asked the trooper in a clear and demanding tone.

The clerk had no problem remembering just such a customer. In fact, Maruka had been the only customer all night. “R-Room eighteen, around back,” stuttered the clerk. “He checked in about two hours ago.”

Immediately, the troopers left the office and followed the parking lot to the other side of the rectangular building. They arrived at room eighteen to find the door ajar. The television was still on and there was a pile of computer equipment in the rear of the room, but otherwise, there was nothing for them.

***

In his small 8’ by 8’ office, Professor Geren sat in front of his computer. His desk was a simple pine construct painted brown and thick with a varnish that, on close inspection, would reveal dozens of chips and nicks. The walls were lined with numerous bookshelves piled high with books on various computer science topics. The little room was windowless and smelled musty, like a hundred-year-old library.

The professor busily scanned through computer application source code. The code had been submitted by one of his undergraduate students for the most recent project that he had assigned in one of his classes. Many professors would have a graduate student normally do such a task, but he had been unable to reach his TA of choice for a couple of days.

Geren jumped a little when he heard a quiet rapping at the door. Looking up from his computer he turned to the door and said, “Come in please.”

A young woman with red hair and freckles entered the room with a big smile on her face. She was wearing a tight green dress that barely reached below her knees and was a bit too revealing. “Professor Geren?” she asked timidly.

“Yes, that’s me, but I’m afraid that I’m quite busy right now. My office hours are not until one o’clock.” He spoke in a slightly annoyed, but very official tone of voice.

“I’m actually not a student,” she replied batting her eyes. “My name is Samantha Blair, and I’m looking for a friend of mine.”

“I doubt I can help you. I haven’t seen anyone all day. I’ve been cooped up in this office grading projects since seven.”

“I’m sure you can still help me,” she assured him as she walked towards him and, putting her elbows on the desk, rested chin in her hands. “I’m looking for graduate student named August Thatcher.”

“I’m sorry Ms. Blair,” he apologized, his tone becoming more gentile. “I’ve been trying to find him myself. He was supposed to be grading these projects for me, but I haven’t been able to contact him for a few days.”

“Well, you see that’s just it. I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning, and because of the shooting I’m a little bit worried about him.”

“Oh my, he wasn’t involved in the shooting in any way was he?”

“Well, he was friends with the girl. I’m afraid the tragedy of it may have affected him. I know it sounds crazy, but I think he went looking for Bigfoot.” The last few words were spoken in a whisper as if preventing anyone else from overhearing though there was no one else around.

“Actually, that makes more since than you might believe,” said Geren. “You see he wrote a article on using computers to find Bigfoot, but I always thought he just used that as an attention grabber for his article.”

“Well is there any information you might have on where he would go to do such a thing?”

The professor’s eyes glazed over a bit as he thought. For nearly thirty seconds he said nothing, and did not move. The he blinked twice as if awakened from a trance. “There is something,” he said turning to his computer. “August had an aerial photo showing where Bigfoot might be. He scanned it into a JPEG. I think that there were map coordinates on it.”

Samantha moved next to the professor and put her head next to his so that she could see the computer screen. “Do you have the picture?” she asked.

“I think that August put it in a public directory on his account, I’ll see if I could find it for you.”

“Thank you. It could really help.”

“Here it is!” he announced as the infrared image came up on the screen a few seconds later. “See there in the top corner, those are the map coordinates of where this was taken,” he said pointing to the top right corner.

“Oh, that’s perfect!” exclaimed Samantha. “Is there any way I can get a copy of it?”

“I’ll send it to the printer down the hall. It’ll be a bit grainy, but you should still be able to read the coordinates.”

“Thank you so much,” she exclaimed as she gave the professor a hug. Then she was up and out of the office before the professor could blink and eye.

“Good luck in finding him,” the professor shouted after her. Then, grumbling, he returned to grading projects.

Chapter 9

The Hunt Begins

April 29, 2001

Timothy Lake, Mount Hood national forest, Oregon

The thick fog made it feel like they were trapped in silence as they hiked the trail. It was not only that no one spoke. There were no birdcalls or wind, nor was there any sound of creeks or any kind of stream. Even the footsteps of the six men hiking up the lonely trail seemed to make no noise. The fog was thick and the sky overcast, making it seem like it was early in the morning though it was, in fact, mid-afternoon. Though it was late in the spring, the air was still quite chilly due to the elevation. The silence, in combination with the lack of visibility, made everyone in the group apprehensive. They were used to marching through the steamy Congo forests that teamed with life. These mountains seemed like a land of spirits and of the dead. They walked slowly all glancing around nervously.

The only one among the group that seemed to be nonchalant was August Thatcher. The past few days had exhausted his fears. Now he only followed along behind Ma'ti and always looked down at the ground right in front of him. In a way the silence brought him a sort of comfort. The chaos of the past few days now seemed more distant. The pain from the beating Timan had given him had subsided to dull aches. He no longer replayed Karen’s death over and over in his head. Though he still thought of it often, he now entertained new thoughts, those of escape and, if possible, revenge. He had come to hate his captors and wished them only agony and torment for the pain that they had caused him and for the murder of his friend.

Unfortunately, he knew there was little he could do in his present predicament. He was significantly weaker than his captors and was completely unarmed. With the possible exception of the leader Maruka, he was sure that he was smarter than these thugs, but that advantage was at least partially nullified by the fact that none but Maruka spoke English, and his was barely understandable at that. Thatcher’s inability to communicate with them made it impossible to talk his way out or to con his captors into making mistakes.

The trail that they currently followed inclined steeply. The muscles in Thatcher’s legs were beginning to burn from the exertion of constantly climbing the steep trail. His ankles were beginning to get sore as well. They had walked all day, significantly more than Thatcher was used to. His pace was beginning to slacken. Timan, who was walking behind him, began to become irritated with his slowness and from time to time would give him a light shove.

For almost an hour they saw and heard nothing as they walked along the path. At some point they began to hear the sound of running water off in the distance. As they continued, the sound became louder and more violent. It sounded as if they were approaching a huge waterfall, but they could see nothing through the fog. They came to the top of a hill, and the sound suddenly tapered off. They continued on for about another hundred yards as the path sloped down. There they came to the source of the roar. It was nothing more than a small waterfall no more than half a meter high. On the other side of the hill, the echo had made it sound enormous, but it was nothing more than the part of a small stream that intersected the path.

Maruka and Ma’ti easily leapt over the creek and turned around waiting for the others. Thatcher, however, paused before jumping. The stream was about two meters wide and he was not sure if he could make the jump. Behind him, Timan became annoyed at Thatcher’s stalling and shoved him. In a struggle to keep his balance, Thatcher stumbled forward and managed to avoid falling into the water by stepping onto one of the many moss-covered rocks in the stream. Ma’ti had earlier broken off a walking stick from a fallen tree branch. Glaring at Timan, he now held out the end of that stick for Thatcher to grab on to and hoist himself out of the streambed. Thatcher looked back at Timan with a glare of defiance then turned and hopped up to the other bank leaving a bald spot among the moss of the stone where he had stepped. The others then followed by jumping over the stream, the aging doctor only just making it.

They continued on the path as it again began sloping upwards. After about another mile, Thatcher stepped on a small loose rock. The round stone rolled out from under his foot causing his already sore right ankle to fold to the inside of his leg. It did not cause any real injury, but a sharp pain shot up from his heel all the way to his knee. It was enough to make him lean over and rub his ankle for a few seconds. Timan had grown increasingly frustrated at Thatcher’s slowness and finally lost his patience.

“Keep moving!” he shouted in French as he kicked Thatcher in the lower back. Thatcher rolled forward, barely managing to keep his face out of the mud. The other members of the group immediately stopped walking and focused on the scuffle. Thatcher started to get to his feet, but Timan again kicked him into the mud. This time however, Timan felt the repercussions of his abusive nature. Ma’ti stepped forward and swung his walking stick at Timan. It landed against his upper back with such force that the stick split. “I told you not to touch him anymore, why did you not listen to me?” shouted Ma’ti in Kingwana. Furious, Timan advanced towards Ma’ti as if to counter attack.

“Enough!” Maruka shouted in a thundering voice that would make even the bravest person tremble with fear. “My plans will not be ruined by you two fighting. Stop now or neither of you will live to return to the Congo.” Both Ma’ti and Timan relaxed from their aggressive postures and cast their eyes at the ground in submissive gestures upon hearing the threat. “Timan, you will take point from now on,” continued Maruka in an attempt to prevent similar situations in the future. “Ma’ti, help him up and make sure that he can keep up with...”

Maruka’s voice trailed off as the sound of a terrible wail filled the air. It was a sound unlike anything that anyone in the group had ever heard and if asked, each one would have described it differently. Startled the group scrambled to the side of the path and dropped to the ground, except for Thatcher who still sat on the path clutching his ankle. Though, he still looked around to find the source of the sound. While the sound unnerved him as well, he found it slightly amusing that his captors were so quick to hide in the bushes. The wail continued for several seconds, progressing through various pitches. Then, abruptly as it began, it stopped and the woods were again immersed in silence.

“I think it came from behind us,” whispered the doctor to Maruka.

“Yes, it does sound that way” agreed Maruka, ”but these mountains are tricky with echoes, and the fog makes things worse.” He spoke louder to the whole group: “Let’s double back and find whatever made that noise.”

Ma’ti helped Thatcher to his feet as the group began to retrace their steps back down the trail. This time Timan walked about twenty paces in front of the rest. Soon they returned to the stream that they had crossed earlier.

“Wait!” cried out Ma’ti, interrupting Timan, as he was about to jump across.

“What is it?” asked Maruka.

Ma’ti knelt down and pointed at the rock that Thatcher had put his foot on. “See how Thatcher stripped the moss off of this rock when he stepped on it when we crossed before.”

“Yes. What is your point?” asked Maruka and he knelt beside Ma’ti for a closer look at the stone.

“This was the only one he stepped on and the rest of us all jumped clear over, but now there are other rocks that have had the moss scraped off. I did not see them that way before. See how rocks going in both directions appear this way. Something was traveling on this stream after we were here, and it was at least as big as man.”

“Any indication of which way it was going?”

“It’s hard to tell without knowing what it was, but you can see on a few of the rocks that the moss was pulled back away from the downstream side. An animal or person would most likely pull the moss away from the rock while walking on them. That would seem to indicate that it was heading downstream.”

“Then that is where we go,” said Maruka loudly enough for them all to here. He then pointed to Timan and indicated that he was to lead the group as they followed the stream downhill. Timan did as ordered began walking alongside the flowing water. The rest fell in line behind him.

Travel was slow along side the stream. There was no well-defined path and they spent much time hacking through, pulling aside, or climbing around bushes and undergrowth. The group had traversed through the woods along the stream for only a mile or so before it had gotten too dark to see where they were going.

None of them was particularly well equipped for camping. Maruka and his men were used to sleeping outdoors, but that had always been in the Congo. There they had no need of heavy sleeping bags or tents. These mountains, though, were most unlike the jungles of Africa. They were cold and damp; furthermore, there seemed to be almost no wildlife, only a ghostly silence. Due to the dampness, starting a fire took over and hour. The fire did little to relieve their discomfort or ease their nerves. It only made the woods around them seem even darker.

Thatcher, who was exhausted, fell asleep on a cold, but dry rock not long after Ma’ti got the fire burning. The others however took longer due to the uneasiness they felt. The night passed with each of Maruka’s men taking their turn at watch. None saw or heard anything except for Dr. Charleroi who managed to catch a possum, which he tortured to death to pass the time shortly before dawn.

***

The next morning, after a light meal of trail mix, they again began to follow the stream. From time to time Maruka would stop the group to allow them to pick thorns from their clothes and skin and allow Ma’ti time to look for more signs of whatever it was they were tracking. Their progress slowed even more as the forest became so dense that they could not see more than a few paces in front of them.

For several hours, they continue in this manner, then shortly before noon, the forest opened up. The sky was clear and the late morning sun shown brightly forcing Thatcher to shut his eyes for a few minutes. When he became acclimated to the sunlight, he opened his eyes and looked around. They stood on a small muddy beach at the edge of a large lake. The water was a deep brown with and was completely lined with forest. The sunlight shimmered off of the gentle ripples. Far off in the distance was a small sailboat with a blue and white sail over a red hull. It appeared to heading in their direction, but it was too far away for Thatcher to be sure.

Maruka appeared particularly interested in the sailboat. He glared at it in an attempt to discern its direction. Ma’ti walked up and stood beside him. He too looked at the boat for a moment then asked, “do you think it could be trouble?”

“I do not think that it is a problem itself, but it could be a bad omen.”

“Over here!” yelled the doctor in French. Every one, but Maruka turned towards him. He was standing near the edge of the water pointing at mud at the edge of the waterline.

“What is it?” asked Maruka, not taking his eyes off of the approaching sailboat.

“It a foot print, a big one!”

Maruka immediately turned and walked over to the doctor, his eyes wide with anticipation and excitement. Everyone else followed behind him. As they approached the spot that Charleroi was pointing at, there were several audible gasps. There indeed was a footprint in the mud between some stones, and it was no ordinary footprint. It was similar to that of a barefoot human, elongated with a deep heel, five toes and a curved instep, but it was the size of it that was the source of the group’s amazement. The print had to belong to a giant, an individual that could be twice the height of an average man.

To Maruka it felt as if the sun had burst forth from the darkness of a storm. His enthusiasm, which had been waning over the past few days, now became like a tidal wave behind his eyes. He now felt sure that not only did Bigfoot exist, but that they were also very close to him.

“Perhaps the boat was a good omen after all,” said Ma’ti.

“Yes, perhaps so,” agreed Maruka. “Can you tell us which way it was heading?”

“Unfortunately, the rocks on this beach are bare of moss. It will be much more difficult to track the beast, but give me a while to look around and see what I can find.”

Maruka agreed, and he and the others waded out into the lake to wash off the dirt from days of hiking. Meanwhile Ma’ti busied himself with inspecting the beach for any signs of their quarry. Thatcher sat quietly on a rock watching the distant sailboat. It was so far away that he could make out little more than the vague shape of the vessel. He realized that the boat would still be far away when they resumed the chase.

Eventually, Ma’ti was able to pick up the trail again. They followed it the rest of the day, but lost it in on an exposed rocky cliff shortly before nightfall. For another two days they wandered the mountains, but with no success.

***

As the sun rose on the fifth morning of their expedition, Maruka, his men and August Thatcher came to a large clearing in the forest. They saw before them several hills, bare of greenery and covered in cleanly cut tree stumps. They could hear the sound of numerous chainsaws and heavy machinery coming from the other side of the hills. Maruka and Ma’ti climbed the hill closest to them on the their elbows and knees while the others remained hidden under the trees at the edge of the clearing. This time Hamum was assigned to keep an eye on Thatcher.

When they reached the top of the hill, Maruka and Ma’ti exposed as little of themselves as possible as they looked down on what appeared to be a logging camp. There were two odd looking flatbed trucks with steal arms and saw blades on the front. The arms grabbed pine trees while the saw would cut though the trunk. The arm would then dump the tree onto the bed behind the cab. The two trucks were removing trees at an astounding rate. There were also several men with chainsaws cutting the limbs off of larger trees that had already been cut down and were now lying on the forest floor. There was a dirt road leading away into the forest between two hills on the left side of the camp. A white trailer was setup to the right of the camp and appeared to be used as an office. Half a dozen muddy pickup trucks were parked around the trailer, but what Maruka found most interesting as he chewed on his cross was the small helicopter that sat right in the middle of the clearing.

“Look there,” he said to Ma’ti quietly while pointing towards the helicopter. “That might just be the thing we need to help get up back on the hunt. If it weren’t right in the middle of them, I say we just sneak up and steal it.”

“I see only two guns,” observed Ma’ti, “and they are both on racks in the trucks over by the trailer. We could probably just charge in, shoot them and take the helicopter.”

“No, there may be more here than we see, and we used of most of our ammunition on that car that was chasing us in Atlanta. If we ran out before killing them all, we might be facing men armed with chainsaws while we have nothing but machetes. That is not a situation I wish to face. I have a better idea. I saw it in a movie once.”

***

The helicopter was only large enough to carry two people, so Maruka had Charleroi and Timan take Thatcher back to the van that they had originally stolen in Atlanta. Though they had hiked for several days, they had made somewhat of a circle and they were, in fact, only a few hours trek from where it had been left in a deserted campground parking lot.

Ma’ti and Hamum stayed with Maruka to help carry out the plan to obtain the helicopter. They made there way through the forest around to the side of the camp to the rear of the trailer while keeping behind the hills as to remain unseen by the loggers. It was about an hour before noon by the time the three positioned themselves behind the trailer. Maruka and Hamum remained hidden while Ma’ti crept among the trucks. He was hoping to find one with the keys still inside as hotwiring would take too long. The lumberjacks were no more than fifty meters away and would be able to catch him long before he got any of the trucks started using that method, but as luck would have it, all of the trucks appeared to have their keys in the ignition. The loggers obviously believed that there was no danger of their vehicles being stolen out here in the middle of the woods. Ma’ti quietly slipped into an old gray Dodge Ram. There was a shotgun sitting in a rack against the rear window, one of the two that he had spotted earlier. Since he had his choice of trucks to steal, he decided that it was best to reduce the firepower that might be directed against him. He took several deep breaths to prepare himself mentally for the chase, and then he cranked on the truck.

The sound of the motor was drowned out by the noise made by the logging trucks and chainsaws. As a result, there was no immediate reaction from the loggers, but that changed when Ma’ti shifted the truck into gear and sped through the camp like a madman, heading straight for the dirt road. For a few moments, the lumberjacks only stared after him with looks of confusion and astonishment. They managed to regain their composure quickly, though, and all of them bounded for the remaining trucks and, in seconds, were racing after Ma’ti.

When all of the trucks were gone from site, Maruka and Hamum emerged from the shadows. They cautiously walked towards the helicopter. It appeared that all of the loggers had joined the pursuit and the camp was now silent.

“Hey You! What are you doing here?” a voice shouted from behind Maruka and Hamum when they were almost to the helicopter. In one fluid motion Maruka drew a handgun that he had tucked into his belt, spun around and fired at a man who was standing in the doorway of the trailer. Even before Maruka could see him long enough to describe what the man looked like, he jerked back into the dark trailer door as the bullet struck him in the chest.

“Let’s go!” order Maruka as he and Hamum sprinted the rest of the way to the helicopter. They both jumped in at the same time and were air born a few minutes later.

As Maruka did not know how to pilot the vehicle, Hamum was at the controls. He turned to Hamum and yelled to him, “Do you see Ma’ti anywhere?”

“No sir,” replied Hamum. “The forest is too thick.”

“Alright then, lets meet up with the others. Head for the van.”

***

Ma’ti barreled down the dirt road, the loggers only seconds behind. He was going so fast that it was a struggle to maintain control at every turn. Furthermore, the road was wet and muddy, causing the tires to slide around erratically. Unfortunately, he was unfamiliar with this road whereas the loggers knew it well. They were rapidly catching up to him. The lead truck was only thirty meters behind him. He knew he had to think of something fast.

There was an intersection with another dirt road that he could see up a head. It was quite wide and appeared very muddy. Right as he got to it, Ma’ti jerked the steering wheel to the right causing the truck to spin almost 360 degrees and nearly flipped it over. While he spun, he floored the gas causing the rear tires to spray a wave of mud radiating away from him. The mud covered the windshield of the leading truck in the pack of pursuers. The truck screeched to a halt in order to avoid hitting anything while the windshield wipers cleared the mud. The rest of the drivers behind him also slammed on their brakes to avoid colliding with the leader. This gave Ma’ti several valuable seconds and allowed him to establish a lead of several hundred meters as he took the right turn and sped down through the forest.

The road he was on now appeared to have been less used than the one leading away from the camp. Low hanging tree branches slapped against the windshield and the ground was covered in pine straw. At times, it was difficult to differentiate between the road and the rest of the forest floor. Ma’ti was beginning to get worried that he might veer off the road without realizing and find his way blocked by trees. He did not know what the loggers would do if they caught him. He was not particularly worried about them trying to harm or kill him, but he was very concerned about them turning him over to the police, especially since he knew from the airport that the American federal agents were after them. They might force him to reveal the full extent of Maruka’s plans. He knew that they already probably knew much due to Jenna’s betrayal, but she did not know the totality of Maruka’s vision. Maruka, never completely trusted her.

Ma’ti check the rear view mirror. The drivers of the pursuing trucks were more cautious now. They were not catching up like they had before and Ma’ti would lose them for a few seconds every time he went around a turn. However, he was not increasing his lead either.

Without warning the thick forest suddenly gave way to open skies. Ma’ti found himself driving along a sheer cliff. The road was barely wide enough to accommodate the truck. To the left side was the drop, and because of the angle he was at, he could not tell how far of a fall it was. On his right was a rocky slope that rose so steeply that he could not see the top because of the roof of the truck. There trucks behind him were not in sight, but he had to drive slowly to avoid going over the cliff, and he knew that they would soon catch up.

Suddenly, he was struck with an idea. He slammed on the brakes and grabbed the shotgun from behind him. He hoped out of the truck and quickly glanced over the side of the cliff. The drop was not precipitously high, only about fifteen meters, but it would do. Already hearing the trucks approach from around the bend, he took up position behind a boulder on the slope opposite the cliff. As the lead truck came around the mountainside, the driver saw the abandoned Dodge blocking the road and slammed on the brakes. At the same time, Ma’ti pointed the shotgun at the hood of the vehicle and pulled the trigger. Steam erupted from the front of the truck. The startled driver lost control and veered to the left and over the cliff. The other trucks screeched to a halt and all of the loggers jumped out and looked over the cliff. The truck had become caught up in tree limbs and had only fallen a few meters, but it was inverted and shouts for help could be heard erupting from it. While the lumberjacks tried to help their friends out of the suspended vehicle, Ma’ti slunk away up the side of the steep slope, unnoticed.

***

Back at the van, Maruka and Hamum had landed the helicopter before any of the rest of the party arrived. They inspected the helicopter while they waited for the others to get there. They found that it had enough fuel for about six hours more of flight. Maruka was disappointed with this, but accepted that they would only be able to use the helicopter for a limited amount of time.

When he was done going over the helicopter with Maruka, Hamum walked over to the van, his stomach growling. After eating only trail mix for several days, he was starving. He got into the back of the van and began rummaging around a cardboard box they had used to hold their supplies. He found a box of Pop Tarts under the video camera that they had stolen from the pawnshop after their escape from the airport.

He unwrapped a couple of the Pop Tarts and put one in his mouth holding it in his teeth while he put back any items that he had taken out of the box. The last of these items was the video camera. He was about to return it to the box, when he paused. He got out of the van and walked over to Maruka with the camera while chewing on his snack. “Weren’t you somehow going to use this to help us?”

Maruka’s eyes widened with delight as he grabbed the second Pop Tart out of Hamum’s hand and took a bite out of it. The he reached out and took hold of the camera. “That is right,” he said with a tone of gratitude. “I had forgotten about it. Thank you for reminding me.”

“What do you intend to do with it exactly?”

“You are going to fly me over the over this forest, so that I can take video of it,” he said with a smile as he found the night vision button on the camera.

Chapter 10

Tracking Maruka

May 4, 2001

Esther’s Mill, Oregon

An unmarked, blue Ford E250 van pulled into the gas station at the end of the only paved road of the small town of Esther’s Mill. The street, rather generically named Pine Lane was really nothing more than an access road between highways. The town only consisted of about a dozen buildings, all of which had been made of dark timber. As a result, the whole town appeared to be comprised of log cabins. If it had not been for the brightly lit Chevron canopy over the gas pumps and the modern cars parked along the street, one might think that they had stepped back in time a hundred years.

The van was very crowded and the trip up to the mountains had been most uncomfortable. Much to the dismay of the others, Thaddeus Foote sat in the driver’s seat. Once he had stopped next to a pump, he turned to Samantha Blair was seated next to him with a large map unfolded in her lap and the infrared photograph she had gotten from Professor Geren in her hand. “Are we there yet”, asked Foote with grin.

“Almost,” she responded then added, “at least I think so. I’m sure where in the right vicinity...give or take eighty miles.”

The rest of the passengers in the back of the van issued a collective groan. “Are you sure you know how to read that thing?” asked Jim Kellerstrom, who was sitting among the crowd in back. He grinned and added, “I mean, it’s not powered by electricity, so are you sure you can handle it?”

“Shut up!” she snapped back at him. “I’m not one who forgot to load longitude and latitude support into the satellite map application.”

“Well I’m not the one that failed to mention that we needed such an archaic system,” retorted Fredrick Leighton, the team leader and also the one who was responsible for all of the satellite applications. “Now lets not argue about it anymore, I’m sure well do just fine with the paper map.”

“Well, we need to fill up anyway,” interrupted Foote. “While I’m doing that, maybe y’all could ask around this little town a bit to see if any of the residents has seen anyone matching the description of Maruka and his gang.”

“We should all ask about any strange goings on as well,” added Jenna, who was sitting in the seat directly behind Samantha. “Maruka is not stupid. He will try and avoid contact with anyone in such a sparsely populated area for fear of arousing suspicions.”

That said, they all piled out of the van. After a bit of stretching to relieve the stiffness of the long ride, they split up and headed to various shops and establishments on the street. Meanwhile Foote filled up the van, cleaned the windshield, and checked the fluids. Afterwards, he headed into the convenience store.

“Hi there!” The clerk greeted Foote with an enthusiastic smile.

“Hi. How are you today?” replied Foote with a casual wave.

“Doing well, though business is slow as usual. You up here hunting?”

“In a manner of speaking,” started Foote as he stepped up to the counter and looked down at the candy racks. He reached down and picked up two rolls of Sweet Tarts and put them on the counter as he continued, “I work for the government. I’m pursuing a group of African terrorists that kidnapped a college student from Atlanta. You wouldn’t happen to have seen anything odd lately?”

“As a matter of fact I have,” said the clerk. Then he pointed to the front window. “See how clean that window looks. That’s because it’s brand new. Someone smashed there way in the night before last and stole lots food, the kind people prefer for camping, trail mix and the like.”

“Really, does the local law enforcement have any suspects, and did they find any clues?”

“I’m afraid they didn’t find nothing. Robberies are almost unheard of around here, so they don’t got no usual suspects neither.”

“Did they take anything other than food?”

“Not that I’ve noticed,” answered the clerk, “but, then again, I don’t really keep a strict count of everything.”

“Right, that might help me...thanks,” Foote said with a smile. Believing that he would not be able to get any more information out of the clerk, he paid for the gas and candy and returned to the van to wait for the others.

***

Samantha figured that if anyone in the town had heard anything about Maruka or Thatcher, it would be the local law enforcement. So, while the others headed for local shops and watering holes, she sauntered into the sheriff’s office. It was a two-story log building at the edge of the town. Next to the door was a large sign with a five-pointed star. Aside from that there was nothing more to indicate the function of the structure.

She opened the door and walked in to find herself in a relatively small room. Opposite the door she walked in was another, heavier looking door with a small square window built in the top of it. It was only big enough to see a person’s face on the other side of it. To her left was a worn and pitted dark wood bench against a bare white wall. To her right was a high counter. She walked over to this counter, which was as tall as her shoulders, and peered over. There was a young blonde police officer dressed in khaki uniform on the other side. He was looking down at a fishing magazine and did not notice her there.

“Hi!” she greeted him in her cheeriest voice.

The young officer jumped, momentarily startled by her unexpected appearance. “O...oh hi,” he stammered as he realized he was facing an attractive young redheaded woman. “Can I help you with something today, ma’am?”

Samantha put her elbows on the counter and hoisted herself up onto the counter so that her feet were over a foot off of the floor. She leaned on the counter towards the young officer and read the name on the badge pinned to his shirt. “Yes, Robert, hopefully you can help me,” she answered him with a playful smiled as she leaned even more towards him meeting his eyes. “My name is Samantha Blair. I work for the Federal government, and I’m here looking for some bad men. They kidnapped a boy from a college in Atlanta.”

Can you describe these men, Ms Blair?” asked Robert in a somewhat timid voice. He was trying his hardest to keep eye contact and not look down her shirt as she leaned over the counter.

“Of course! There are five kidnappers. Four of them are African, Congolese nationals, and the other is a European from Belgium. Only one of the kidnappers knows how to speak English, the rest would probably speak French. The victim is a twenty-four year old Caucasian who is a student at Georgia Tech. Does that sound like anyone you may have heard of in the past couple of days?”

“No, ma’am. I can say with certainty that any group matching that description around here would stick out like a sore thumb, and I haven’t heard about any groups even coming close to that description.”

“Is anyone else here who might have any more information?” she asked with a playful, overemphasized pout.

“I’m here most of the day playing the part of dispatcher, so I’m pretty much gonna hear about anything out of the ordinary. The only thing to happen here in weeks was the robbery at the Chevron, night before last. Someone broke the front window and stole lots of food. We didn’t find any clues though. We just assumed it was some rowdy teenagers.”

Just as he finished his sentence a voice came on over the dispatch. “Robby, you there? It’s Mason.”

“Excuse me a moment, Ms. Blair, it’s the park rangers.” Robert turned to his left and picked up an old fashion steel microphone. “This is Robby, what’s up, Mason?”

“Looks like I been robbed. I came back from making my rounds around the trails and someone had bashed in the door to my station. Looks like they took some stuff from the museum.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“What does it matter? They took my stuff. Get some heavily armed men up here to help me hunt‘em down.”

Robert looked annoyed. He let go of the talk button on his microphone and looked up ad Samantha. “Mason Simmons is the oldest ranger in the park. He’s pretty ornery and not quite playing with a full deck, if you know what I mean.” He pressed the talk button again. “Mason, how ‘bout I come up there and have a look around first? We don’t want to go willy nilly all over the hills looking for someone who stole a few rusty old tent pegs from your little museum.”

“Alright,” conceded the old ranger over the radio. “But since this is a federal park you should probably call the FBI.”

“Actually Mason, they’re already here.”

“What?!”

“Yes, I have an agent Blair here with me right now looking for some kidnappers. Maybe they’re your thieves,” he suggested.

“That’s great! Why don’t you bring him out this way,” suggested Mason.

“Her, sir.”

“Huh? What did you say, Robby?”

“The agent is a her. Her name is Agent Samantha Blair.”

“Alright then, bring her out. Over and out.”

“You heard him,” said Robert turning to Samantha. “Let me grab someone to handle the dispatch, then we’ll go in my patrol car.”

“Actually I’m not here alone,” Samantha told him. “I came with several other agents, can we follow you there in our van?”

“Okay”, he agreed in a noticeably disappointed voice. He had been hoping to flirt with her on the ride over to the crime scene. “I’ll meet you out front.”

Samantha thanked him as she headed out the door to round up the others.

***

The trip to the ranger station took no more than ten minutes from the town. During the trip, Foote filled in the group on what he had learned about the burglary at the convenience store. The others agreed that it could have been Maruka foraging for supplies, but that there was not enough evidence to be sure. They needed more proof that they were in the right area.

The old station was little more than a small log cabin with an observation deck on one side overlooking a valley on the eastern side of the structure. Next to the front door on either side was a pair of glass cases with various announcements and photographs. There was a small sign above the store indicating that there was a mountaineering museum inside.

Foote stopped the van a few yards behind Robert’s patrol car. He turned around and looked at Samantha and said, “Now please tell me why we are following this guy.”

Samantha had only told the rest of her team that they had to follow the patrol car. The trip to the ranger station was so quick that she did not have time to elaborate on the details without interrupting Foote’s discussion on the gas station burglary. While she could easily take control of a one on one dialog, she was always quiet and a bit nervous when it came to group conversation. She always waited until everyone was silent before talking herself. In Foote’s zeal to discuss the situation at the convenience store, the subject of where they were going had not come yet up.

“Apparently, someone broke into the ranger station and stole some stuff from the museum. The deputy asked us to come and investigate. I though it would be prudent for us to at least have a look. Besides, the ranger could provide up with some useful information.”

“Are you sure it was not to satisfy your libido?” asked Kellerstrom with a grin as he saw Robert, the young, tall, and blonde deputy exit the car they had followed.

“No!” she replied defensively, “This robbery could have been done by Maruka or one of his group to get some equipment.” Then she added playfully, “But Officer Robby is cute.”

Foote rolled eyes and was about to say something when Leighton interrupted and redirected the conversation, cutting short the banter. “Jenna, is there anything that you can think of that Maruka would steal from an mountain museum?”

Jenna though for a moment, her lower lip protruding, then answered. “I can’t think of anything in particular, but he will steal anything if he believes it will help him to achieve his goal.”

“And you say the deputy requested our presence?” he asked Samantha.

“Well yes...but I think he believes that we are FBI.”

“Now why would he think a thing like that, Sam?” asked Leighton, massaging his temples, “and why would he want the FBI to investigate such a petty burglary.”

“When I told the deputy that I was from the federal government looking for a kidnap victim, he just kind of assumed that I was FBI,” explained Samantha. “I was worried that if he knew I was a ‘spook’, he might get nervous and not be as forthcoming with information, so I didn’t correct him. As for the ranger, he seems to be a bit of an old crack pot, but he still might be useful.”

Leighton then addressed the whole group with a very official tone. “Alright then, we’ll go talk to him, but we really should not stay long if it appears that he can’t offer us any information.”

“Okay, boss man, let’s go,” replied Kellerstrom with a snicker. The group was always amused when Leighton tried to act authoritative as his youth made him somewhat awkward. Foote usually was the de facto leader of the team, though sometimes Leighton had to act to keep his sense of adventure in check.

After Samantha quickly introduced the team to Robert, they approached the ranger station. Even from several yards away, they could see that the front door had been knocked off of its hinges. Before they could reach the door a figure burst through the doorway shouting.

“Can you see what they did to my door, Robby?!”

“Calm down, Mason,” said Robert. From the tone he used, it sounded like he had uttered the same exact phrase to the old man on many prior occasions. “I brought some guests with me to help out. They are from the FBI.”

“Oh really!” said the old man in a delighted tone. He gave a big toothy grin that seemed to turn his face into a mass of wrinkles. “I’m glad you brought so many. I didn’t think that the Feds thought I was that important.”

The DVS team found the old ranger a bit amusing. He had no facial hair and was bald on top of his head. The hair above his gigantic ears was white and wiry. He stood only about five feet tall and was dressed in an old fashion ranger’s uniform that one would expect to see a ranger wearing in the 1950s. He was holding his wide brimmed hat in his hands.

“Actually, we are not from the FBI, per se,” Leighton corrected the young officer, “but we do work for the federal government in a similar capacity. We are actually not here to investigate your robbery. We’re on the trail of some kidnappers. Would you like to tell us about what happened here?”

“Sure, come on in,” Mason said without losing his grin. It was as if he had not even heard Leighton. “As you can see, they kicked my door in. Walk this way and I’ll show you what those bastards did to my personal museum.”

As they followed the old ranger into the museum, Foote paused and looked around while running his hand through his hair. He then approached Leighton and said to him, “I’m gonna stay out here for a few minutes and have a look around.”

“Sure,” replied Leighton, “come join us inside when you are done. That old ranger seems a bit lonely. I have a feeling that this guy will probably try and keep us here for hours.”

The station seemed a lot bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside. Through the door was a large room containing numerous display cases. Many contained old black and white photographs of rangers, hunters, and mountain men. Others cases were filled with various bits of camping and hunting equipment, everything from hunting rifles and tomahawks to antique lamps and even tent pegs. One of the cases has been smashed and it’s contents removed.

“That’s the one the bandits hit right there,” said Mason, pointing to the broken case.

“Well, Mason, tell us what was in there,” demanded the deputy.

“That was my case for displaying the old fur trapper equipment.”

“Really, what kind of equipment?” asked Leighton who suddenly became more attentive. He had not really expected to find anything of interest here, but trapping equipment would certainly be something Maruka would need.

“Well, they took three old style bear traps, ya know the old steel jaws type. Oh yeah and they took an antique bowie knife, too. Also, I can’t seem to find my fishing rod, I bet them thieves took that as well.”

“Are there many people who hunt bears around here with traps?” asked Jenna.

“Of course not! Didn’t you know it’s illegal, being a fed and all? In the state of Oregon it is illegal to use bait or hound to hunt a bear. Traps don’t work so well without bait.”

“I must admit, sir, that I don’t know much about hunting, bears or otherwise in the United States. I grew up in St. Louis and never even left the city limits until I was a teenager and since then I’ve spent most of my time in Africa.”

“That’s very interesting, miss,” said Mason with genuine interest. “Do they have hunting laws there?”

“Of course, though they vary from country to country.”

“I bet you they are not as tough on poachers as we are around here,” said the deputy who was listening in on the conversation. “It’s a class A felony. You can go to jail for a good while.”

“In the some parts of Africa, the penalty is death.” Jenna informed him coldly.

“Hey! Here’s a case dedicated to Bigfoot!” yelled Samantha. She was in the back corner of the room furthest from the door point at one of the glass cases on the wall. Then she asked Mason, “Have you ever seen him?”

The old man cracked a huge smile and walked over to where she was standing. “I’ve seen him dozens of times. Let me tell you about this time...” The whole group gathered round while the ranger started telling them tales of his encounters with the legendary creature.

About half an hour into his first story, Foote came in from his inspection of the grounds. The old ranger was so involved with his stories that he didn’t even notice the arrival of another person. As a matter of fact, the only person who did notice was Leighton. He turned to hear what Foote had found.

“I found some tracks on the west side of the building,” he said quietly to the team leader as not to interrupt the ranger telling his story. “It looked to be four to six individuals. It could have been Maruka, but I’m not a good enough tracker to tell you how long it has been since they were here.”

“Well it looks like he’s pretty lost in his story telling,” said Leighton, “but once he finishes well see if he can tell us more about the break in here.

After about three hours of Bigfoot stories, Mason finally began to get tired. While interesting, none of them was particularly useful to the DVS team. Leighton was quite sure that half of them could be attributed to the old man’s imagination.

“Ranger Simmons, we think we may know who broke into your station. We’ve been tracking a group of kidnappers all the way from Atlanta, and it could have been them. Could you tell us when the break in happened here?” asked Foote. “It may tell us how far behind we are.”

“Some time while I was making my rounds,” replied Mason, scratching his head. “That would be from roughly noon the day before yesterday until 10:00 am this morning. Since we don’t usually have many people around this time of year, I take my time and just sleep in my truck instead of coming back here at night.”

“Did you see anything unusual while on your rounds?”

“Nothing. I didn’t even run into another soul.”

“Is there anyone else who frequents the woods around here that we can talk to?”

“Of course. There’re lots of logger camps in the area. There’s a town about twenty-five miles north of here on 26 called Black River Gap. There’s a bar there named The Rotting Stump Roadhouse. Lots of loggers hang out there. If anything strange has happened in the area, someone in there would know.”

They thanked the old ranger and walked outside with Deputy Robert. He gave them directions to Black River Gap and then hopped in his car to go back to the station and file a report. The DVS team piled in the van and left the quiet little cabin all smiling at the old man’s stories.

***

The town of Black River Gap was even smaller than Esther’s Mill. In fact it was little more than a truck stop on Highway 26. However, the atmosphere was entirely different. Instead of quite log cabins, the structures were mostly brick and glass, covered in neon signs advertising various alcoholic beverages. Foote pulled the van up to the Rotting Stump Roadhouse just after 10:00 pm. It was hard to miss, the sign for it was bigger than the whole of the building. Dozens of pickup truck were parked in front of the building. Most of were so covered in mud that they appeared to have grown a dull brown skin.

“I think I’m going to stay in the van,” suggested Jenna. “I don’t think that I would quite fit in inside this place.”

“Nonsense, the more people we have in there to ask around, the faster we can get out,” countered Foote.

“I’m sure you’ll fit in just fine,” said Kellerstrom with a chuckle as they all got out of the van. “From what I hear, most of the Lumberjacks will be dressed in women’s clothing too. Granted the only thing I know about lumberjacks came from a song I once heard.”

“My being a woman was not what I was referring to,” replied Jenna under her breath as she followed the others into the bar.

“It does appear to be a bit of a rough place,” admitted Kellerstrom as they stood in the doorway examining the layout of the dark den.

They were assaulted by the smell of tobacco smoke; the air was thick with it. Nearly everyone in the place smoked some form of pipe, cigar, or cigarette. It made the place feel claustrophobic, even though bar was quite large, easily big enough to accommodate two hundred. Though, as the DVS team entered, it was only filled to about half of that capacity. There were only a few seats open at the bar, which was to the right of the entrance, and eight of the ten high bar style tables were occupied by groups of men all, to a man, wearing flannel shirts with blue jeans. At the rear of the building, Heavy metal music emanated from a jukebox, while the click of billiard balls sounded from the half dozen pool tables on the left side of the building.

It was on these tables that Jim Kellerstrom’s attention was focused. Leighton saw him staring and approached him. Putting his hand on Kellerstrom’s shoulder, he quietly warned him. “Remember, we are here to get information, not hustle the locals.” Kellerstrom was notorious for winning at pool. Many a new DVS agent had lost their first paycheck to him at the tables.

“Understood boss,” replied Kellerstrom with a hint of disappointment. “I’ll just play for information.”

“C’mon Jenna, let’s mingle,” chirped Samantha. She practically skipped over to the bar, dragging Jenna behind her by the wrist. In less than twenty seconds she had already ordered for the two of them and struck up a conversation with the tall man seated next to her.

Foote and Leighton claimed one of the tall tables next to the bar. They attempted to talk to the men at some of the other tables, but managed to get nothing more than complaints about the weather. After a few minutes they settled into scanning the room and looked for anyone who might be more forthcoming with useful information.

Jenna remained quiet, staring into her beer, hoping not to attract any trouble, but it found her regardless. Three men approached her from behind. She saw them in the mirror above the bar. Samantha was too involved in conversation to notice them.

“Simon, what do we have here?” asked the short, bearded man in the middle.

“I don’t know, Cud?” answered the blonde giant who stood on his right. “I ain’t never seen nothing like it in here.”

“What about you?” asked Cud, prodding the man to his left, a younger man with a shaved head who only shrugged his shoulders.

Jenna still had her back to the three. “What kind of a name is Cud?” she asked herself, disgusted by the smell of alcohol reeking from the dirt-smeared man. She pretended not to notice them, but this only angered Cud.

Cud pulled a knife from his belt with his right hand while reaching for Jenna’s shoulder with his left. He started to spin her around to face him. “Looks to me like we have us a nigg...ungh!”

He never finished his sentence. Cud was spinning her to her left. Instead of fighting it, she completed the turn herself, grabbing his left hand with hers and twisting his wrist. She grabbed the back of his head with her right hand and slammed his face into the bar. He bounced off and landed unconscious on his back, blood pouring from his nose.

The man called Simon swung a wide right hook her, but before he could complete the swing, Jenna intercepted his arm with her left. She simultaneously whipped her right in a claw across his face. Simon started to cry out as he shut his eyes and tried to cover his face. His scream was stifled though as Jenna swiftly kicked him in the groin. He double over, but less than a second later, Jenna’s right foot was in motion again, this time circling to the outside and catching him on the side of the head. Simon nearly flew across the room.

Jenna then turned to face the bald one. He was a more experienced fighter though. He threw a quick jab at her face. Jenna raised her hand to block, but too late figured out that he was faking. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her towards him. His left poised to deliver a heavy blow. Suddenly he let go of her, both his hands grabbing at the arm that was now wrapped around his neck. While he was fighting with Jenna, Samantha had crept up behind him and grabbed him in a sleeper hold. Ten seconds later, he was out cold on the floor along with his companions.

Before they could take another breath, the two women found themselves surrounded by at least a dozen more angry faces. At first, no one attacked. They were still shocked by how quickly the two women had beaten the trio of ruffians, but in a matter of seconds, they gathered enough courage to advance.

Suddenly, Foote burst into the crowd. With lightning speed, he launched four punches and four men went down. A fifth man swung at him, but he easily ducked under the swing. As he rose back up, Foote sent the man reeling with a strong uppercut. A quick backhand sent another spinning to the ground. While seeing Jenna and Samantha knock out three men caused the mob some apprehension, seeing the monstrous Foote clobber half a dozen downright terrified them. The shock of his attack caused the crowd backed away a few steps. Foote used the opportunity to grab both women by the wrists and rush towards to the door. The mob pursued them out the door, angry bikers, mountain men, and truckers, armed with bats, pool cues and broken bottles, surged towards them. Leighton was already in the van with Kellerstrom in the passenger seat. They had slipped out the door during the fight. They were pulling the van around, back doors wide open. Foote, and the two women jumped inside just in time to get away from the crowd.

“Step on it!” shouted Foote.

Leighton floored the accelerator and they sped out of the parking lot.

“Jenna, next time I order you to go into a lumberjack bar, call me stupid and remind me of this,” requested Leighton as he drove down highway 26.

“Sure, I guarantee you I won’t forget,” she replied.

“Did you at least manage to find anything out for all your trouble?” asked Foote.

Jenna shook her head in response.

“Actually,” interrupted Kellerstrom, “while y’all were picking fights, I used my pool skills to get us good info.”

“What’s that?” asked Leighton.

It seems some of the lumberjacks were pretty upset about a logger foreman getting murdered just over the state line. Apparently a helicopter was stolen, too.”

Leighton nodded. “Sam, get out your map.”

Chapter 11

Ma’ti’s Triumph

May 7, 2001

Washington State

The cabin seemed strangely quiet. The windows were nothing more than pitch-black rectangles in the night. Thatcher was used to always seeing the city lights when he looked out after dark. Out here in the woods, there were no other buildings or streetlights to break up the darkness. Clouds had rolled in during the evening and there was not even a moon. It made him feel closed in, as if he were in a cave instead of a lakeside house.

He sat at a desk in front of the laptop that Maruka had stolen for him. Connected to it was Maruka’s video camera. Thatcher was sure that it was also stolen. Maruka seemed to rely on thievery as his primary means of obtaining his goals. He had gone so far as to steal a helicopter a day earlier. Thatcher was now tasked with reviewing the video taken during the night from the helicopter.

The entire day had been required to alter his application to process live video. He had first started by processing each frame of the video, but this had proven two slow and the resolution of the camera was not nearly as good as the still photos that he had originally designed it for. Late in the afternoon, he hit on the idea of combining several frames of the video at a time in order to create a better image. This also reduced the number of frames to process, making the search faster.

Inwardly, he was rather proud of this solution. He envisioned other applications for this new video resolution enhancement algorithm, such as improved recognition programs for security cameras. Perhaps he could even sell it commercially as a way for people to get higher resolution still pictures from home video.

He planned for the future as a sort of defense. Deep in his mind, the fear that he would not live for very much longer was beginning to set in. He could still see, fresh in his mind, the elderly couple that had owned this cabin. His captors had simply broken down the door and killed them. Maruka had shot the tall, gray bearded man and Ma’ti had beaten the old woman into an unrecognizable mound of broken bones and blood.

Even while he searched for the infrared image of Bigfoot on the video, the wheels in his mind spun. He constantly tried to formulate plans for escape or revenge, but try as he might, he saw no way out. Someone always was posted to watch his every move. At the moment, the Doctor sat on the sofa behind him. Maruka and the rest of his men were sleeping after staying up all of the previous night to do the fly over of the forest with the camera. The Doctor was watching a show about serial killers on the World Explorer Channel.

“Funny, What do serial killers have to do with exploring the world?” asked Thatcher to himself cynically knowing that the show was merely a ploy to get ratings. The thought reminded him of the channel’s production manager, Benjamin Johnson, who had rejected his proposal so many months ago. “If that asshole had given me the grant, I would not be here now.”

The moment he finished that thought, a blinking message appeared on the laptop’s screen. “Target Silhouette Detected at 93 Minutes,” it reported. It would have sounded a tone too, but Charleroi had indicated that he wanted the volume on the laptop turned down several hours ago. Apparently, the sounds that emanated from the computer irritated him. The “93 minutes” indicated how far into taping that the image was captured. Maruka was especially interested in the times of any hits. Thatcher was sure that they had carefully timed their flight last night so that they could correlate times in the tape to the locations they were over.

Thatcher looked over his shoulder. The Doctor was still watching the television intently. Thatcher thought it a bit ironic that the doctor was so interested in the show since it was in English, as he probably could not understand a word of it. Thatcher idly wondered if the doctor had actually seen the show before, but in French, as he seemed to be following along quite well. It was a lucky break for Thatcher. The doctor had not seen the application display the detection message.

Thatcher knew that he was only useful until Maruka found Bigfoot. Rapping his knuckles against one another, he considered for a moment not telling Maruka about the find at all. However, he believed that Maruka would fly over the forest again tomorrow night and many more times if necessary until he found Bigfoot. Every time, he would be left locked in this cabin with a couple of men to watch him and the bodies of its owners rotting in the basement below him. Stuck in here, he knew he could not easily be found and rescued.

“The only reason we are in this cabin is so that I have electricity to run the computer,” Thatcher reasoned to himself. “If they think that they know where to look for Bigfoot, maybe we will go back to hiking around on trails.”

At that moment, the serial killer program that the Doctor was watching broke for a commercial. Thatcher heard the station announcing times for other shows throughout the evening. He heard the announcer give the show times for both the Eastern and West Coast time zones. This gave him an idea. It was a simple matter for him to change the timestamp on the image. They would look in the wrong place. He desperately wanted to get out of this cabin, but the last thing he wanted was for them to actually find Bigfoot. While being in the cabin made all hope of rescue fade, actually finding the creature would most likely be his end.

***

“Scenic Overlook”

That is what the sign next to the small gravel parking lot advertised, but it was hardly necessary. The view on top of the small mountain was quite spectacular, even at night. Looking through a pair of night vision binoculars, Foote could clearly see miles of forest stretched out beneath him. Behind him, sitting cross-legged on top of the van, Samantha Blair performed a similar task. She, however, was looking in the opposite direction. It was the highest such place they could find on the map that they could drive to, and it suited their purposes quite well. Inside the van, Kellerstrom was busy manning the radar while Leighton paged through dozens of different satellite images of the area covering an array of different light wavelengths, though the cloudy skies made many of the images useless.

This was their environment of choice, using high tech equipment for the art of surveillance. Each of them had their area of expertise. While performing their individual duties, their familiarity with their tasks helped them to remain relatively alert, despite the late hour. They had all been awake for nearly twenty-four hours since a hit on the radar brought them to this location, but none of them was experiencing any significant drowsiness, with one exception. Jenna, who was only on loan to DVS for this mission, specialized in infiltration and espionage. Unable to contribute for the moment, she was sound asleep in the passenger seat.

It was late, and Samantha had not seen anything at all in the sky for the last hour. She was getting bored. She stopped scanning the sky for a moment and idly watched the spinning radar dish that she had placed on the roof earlier for Kellerstrom. It was somewhat hypnotic and caught her attention for longer than it should have. She decided to break up the tedium a bit and check on Foote. Too short to jump down straight from the top of the van she crawled over to the front and slid down onto the hood first. Then she hopped to the ground and walked over to where Foote was leaning against the overlook safety rail.

“Hey, Thad, see much of anything?” she asked in her usual cheerful voice.

“There’s some sort of building near the top of that ridge over there. I think it’s one of those hiker hotels that you can only get to by trail. I don’t see any roads around it, and I was trying to figure out how they get supplies delivered.”

“So, in other words, you haven’t seen anything.”

“Precisely,” agreed Foote. “What about you?”

“The last thing I saw was a passenger jet over an hour ago.”

“Bored, eh?” asked Foote rhetorically. “Do you think the boys are having any luck in the van?”

“No. Otherwise, Fred would have me checking the 3D maps for a possible landing site near the helicopter’s location. They’re probably in there gambling on something.”

***

“Fifty bucks says she shifts again in the next sixty seconds,” said Kellerstrom.

He was talking about Jenna. Though she was sound asleep in the passenger seat of the van, she was obviously not very comfortable. Her tossing and turning was beginning to become aggravating. As there was no other movement inside the vehicle, every sound she made caused Kellerstrom and Leighton to lose their concentration on their monitors for a few seconds.

“I’ll take that bet,” returned Leighton with a snicker.

They sat quietly for another fifty five seconds pretending for one another’s benefit to be paying close attention to their work. The whole time Jenna did not move. Frustrated and worried that he was about to lose the bet, Kellerstrom began loudly clearing his throat in an attempt to disturb Jenna.

“Hey, no cheating,” protested Leighton.

“We didn’t establish any rules for this bet. Besides, how do you know that I didn’t really need to just clear my throat?”

Leighton started to answer him, but was interrupted by the beeping sound emitted from the computer in front of Kellerstrom. The radar was detecting a low flying target. Both men immediately forgot the wager.

“It looks to be about forty miles to the northeast,” reported Kellerstrom. “It’s too far out for me to identify with Darby here. Can you get anything?”

“Darby” was the name Kellerstrom had given the radar system of his own design. It was built to be highly portable, small enough to fit in a suitcase. It could be attached to any computer with a USB port and, combined with the right software, could even differentiate between various types of aircraft. The only problem was that its small size limited its range. The detail of anything targets within thirty mile was excellent, but beyond that it was little better than a World War II era radar.

“I can get it on infrared,” replied Leighton, “but the cloudbank makes it too blurry to be sure. It moves like a helicopter.”

“Go outside and see if Thad can see anything, and send Sam in here.”

A few minutes later Samantha hopped into the van and reported, “Jim is out there pointing away to the northeast, but Thad doesn’t see anything. He suggested that they might be running without any lights.”

“That would make it awfully difficult to find anything on the ground. We still have them on radar, but if they go any lower, I’ll lose them. They do seem to be flying in a search grid. See if you can find any obvious landing spots bearing 43 degrees, distance 40.75 miles.”

Samantha nodded and hopped into a chair in front of her designated station. She then brought up an aerial view of the entire area on the screen. A red dot at the center of the imaged represented their current location. The view covered fifty miles in every direction. She then entered the bearing and distance provided by Leighton causing a yellow dot to appear on the view to the northeast of their location. Using the mouse, she drew a box around the yellow dot. The screen then changed to a three dimensional interpretation of the landscape of the area that she had highlighted. She began panning and zooming through the virtual landscape looking for a clear, flat area where a helicopter could land.

“We’re in luck,” she reported a few minutes later. “That whole area is densely covered in forest. I can only find three suitable landing spots within a fifteen mile radius. The bad news is that it looks to be about a two hour drive to get there through back roads.”

“Jenna!” called out Leighton, loud enough to wake her.

“What is it?” she asked turning around to face him while rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

“Hop in the driver seat and start the engine, while I go collect Thad and Jim. We may have found this wacko.”

***

Thatcher was getting used to hiking. His legs were no longer as sore and he was having much less trouble keeping up with the others. The couple of days spent off his feet in the cabin had done him some good, despite his misgivings about being a prisoner there. It also helped that Timan was no longer allowed to walk behind him and prod him in the back.

After being presented with Thatcher’s findings, Maruka decided to do another, more detailed flyover of the valley where Thatcher had told him the detection occurred. Thatcher was a bit dismayed at this, fearing that Maruka would catch on to his deception. But he was lucky again and was not watched very closely the next morning while he reviewed the video. He altered his application to fake another hit in the search area, while the Doctor went to the restroom. Satisfied that they now had the right area to search, they abandoned the cabin the next morning at dawn and struck out on the trails.

Using a map of the area that they had stolen from a convenience store several days ago, they hiked what appeared to be the most direct route, but it still took them nearly eight hours of walking to reach the valley. On the map, it was known as Tower Valley. No roads traveled near it and the approach they took went over a couple of treacherous mountain passes. Late in the afternoon they emerged from the second pass to see the valley stretched out before them. The whole area appeared very heavily forested. Not a break in the green carpet of pines could be seen for miles.

After a short break, they descended into the forest. Ma’ti, employing his tracking skills led the way, followed by Maruka who walked with his head held high, listening for any signs of the beast they sought. The others trailed behind them. No one spoke as they walked.

From the mountain pass, the forest had appeared smooth, but they discovered otherwise under the trees. The whole area was laced with streams and rivers, which has turned the landscape into a chaotic terrain of rocks and slopes. Hiking was difficult and tiring for the whole group.

By nightfall, their energy was spent. Maruka selected a campsite in a clearing alongside a small river at the bottom of a steep slope. Using tarps that they had stolen from the cabin they constructed several small bivouacs under which to rest and store supplies.

There was a pile of boulders immediately next to the water about four meters high with a flat top. Maruka examined it. It appeared somewhat lopsided and not very stable, but its height made it a good lookout tower. Not wishing to risk one of his men, he pointed at Thatcher. “You,” he said in a stern voice, “get up on top of there and look for Bigfoot.”

Thatcher, seeing how unstable the tower appeared, started to protest. Before he could get a word out though, Maruka walked over to him and grabbed him by lapel of the jacket. He was dragged over to the rocky pile and nearly thrown up there. Thatcher discovered that the tower turned out to be quite stable as he climbed. When he got to the top, he found that he had just enough room to sit or lie down if he needed. He glanced around but only saw the darkness of the forest. “I don’t see anything,” he reported down to Maruka, who only nodded then walked over to the fire that Ma’ti had built. Thatcher knew then that he was going to spend the night up there. He laid down and dozed off.

***

He awoke the next morning with his mouth watering. The smell of bacon filled his nostrils. He started to roll over to sit up when he realized that he was still on top of the rocky tower. Barely catching himself, he managed not to fall. He sat up and looked down on Maruka’s camp. There was bacon cooking on a frying pan set on top of the embers left from the campfire. A couple of open cans of beans were placed alongside. What he found especially odd was that there was no one was around.

“Did they abandon me?” asked Thatcher, the hope rising in him. “They’d never just cook breakfast for me and leave,” he reasoned. “That would be absurd.”

Just then, he saw a movement in the bushes out of the corner of his eye. When he looked closer he saw the Doctor hiding there, looking out away from the camp. He looked more closely around the camp and saw the rest of them hiding in various locations as well. Then, he realized what was happening. They were trying to lure Bigfoot with the smell of the bacon. It was a trap.

Thatcher did not move for what seemed like hours, but was probably less than a minute. He knew he would be punished if he spoiled the trap, but he had not eaten since leaving the cabin the day before. The smell of the cooking food was beginning to overwhelm him. Just when he was about to give in, Maruka called out. All of his men emerged from their hiding places and walked over to the campfire. Apparently, Maruka was just as hungry, and decided to give up on the trap and eat before the bacon began to burn.

Timan looked up at Thatcher and saw the hungry look in his eyes. He greedily stuffed a piece of bacon into his mouth and smiled. Then he picked up his backpack and started rummaging through it. A few seconds later he fished out a can of cat food and tossed it up to Thatcher. It landed on the rock right in front of him.

Thatcher was not amused. He knocked the cat food off the tower, and it landed with a bounce on the ground a few meters away from Timan. Timan’s grin turned into a scowl. He snatched the can up and hurled it at Thatcher at full force. The can bounced off of Thatcher’s head and nearly toppled him off of the rock pile. His hands instinctively clutched at his right eye where the can had struck.

Timan laughed, but only for a moment. Ma’ti lunged at him and pinned him to the ground by straddling him, then rained heavy blows down on his face. Maruka got up to intercede, though not as quickly as he could have. By the time he pulled Ma’ti off, Timan’s face was a mass of blood.

“I told you to leave him alone!” shouted Ma’ti.

“We don’t need him anymore,” returned Timan, wiping the blood from his eyes. He thought about striking at Ma’ti, but though better of it. Ma’ti was far superior to him in both strength and fighting skill. “Why are we dragging him around with us now?”

“We have not found Bigfoot, yet,” answered Maruka. “We may need him still. Once we find the beast, he’s yours, but not until then.”

Timan stomped off into the woods to lick his wounds while the others gathered around the fire to discuss the day’s plans. None of them even thought to offer Thatcher any of the food. When he tried to climb down, Maruka looked up at him and ordered him to stay up there. He seemed angrier than usual. Thatcher wondered if Maruka suspected his deception about the location of the search hit.

***

An hour later, only the Doctor remained in the camp. The rest had gone off into the woods to look for Bigfoot. Some time around noon, the Doctor managed to snare a squirrel, which he then proceeded to gleefully torture. While he was occupied with that, Thatcher quietly climbed down from the tower and grabbed a can of beans. He then opened it and hurried back up onto the rocks with it fearing that Maruka would return at any second. He ate them cold.

***

The sun was coming up between two peaks in the distance to the east. Its light shined directly into Samantha’s eyes, forcing her awake. It was too bright. She turned away and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She saw four sleeping bags still in the shadows behind her. One of them was empty. She turned and looked back through the mountain pass to the east. Foote had woken before the rest of them. He was standing at the edge of the pass looking down into Tower Valley with his binoculars.

She decided to see what he was looking at, but the moment she pulled back the flap of her sleeping bag, cold air rushed in and she was instantly covered in goose bumps. She quickly pulled the flap back and the warmth of the sleeping bag returned. She searched around for a minute for her backpack. At first she though it was missing, before she realized her head was resting on it. She remembered then that she had waken up in the middle of the night with a crick in her neck and had stuffed all of her clothes and jacket into it last night to serve as a pillow. “That’s why the air seems so cold, stupid,” she said to herself quietly.

She opened her backpack and retrieved her clothes, putting them on under her sleeping bag. This time, when she opened the sleeping back she felt only a slight chill. “Much better,” she said quietly to herself as she hopped to her feet. Before she went to join Foote, she turned around and rolled her sleeping back up and repacked her backpack.

“See anything?” she asked him as she approached the edge of the pass that overlooked the valley.

Instead of answering, he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the shadows. “Stay out the light. This pass is very exposed to the valley. Anyone down there who happens to glance up will see you.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Can you smell it?”

“Huh?” She had no idea what he was talking about.

“Bacon. I smell bacon.”

“You sound like that dog food commercial,” she replied in blithe voice. “I don’t smell anything. You sure you just didn’t dream it ‘cause you’re hungry?”

“No. I’m sure about it. Someone down there is having a much better breakfast than I did. Those energy bars are disgusting.”

“They’re not so bad, I usually eat them for breakfast. They help me stay slim.”

Foote looked at her with mock disbelief, then returned to discussing the subject at hand. “I’m pretty sure it’s them down there doing the cooking. The soil up here is perfect for leaving footprints and there are only six sets of tracks going in. I looked at the map and this in the only trail in or out. If anyone else is down there, they have either been there a while, or they’d have to be expert rock climbers.”

“So we’ve got them trapped,” concluded Samantha.

“Looks that way. The only other way they could conceivably get out is over a forty-foot waterfall at the other end of the valley. Let’s wake the others up and get a move on.”

***

Ma’ti was alone in the woods. He was heading west, retracing their steps from yesterday. Slung across his back were three old-fashioned steel jawed bear traps. He moved quickly, as if he had been on the path many times before. He was constantly scanning the ground and trees around the path as he went, searching for any signs of large animals.

Maruka and the other two had gone to explore the east end of the valley, but Ma’ti had asked to head back towards the pass on the west side. He had told Maruka that he wanted to explore a few branching paths they had seen yesterday on the way to camp. The truth was that he had another purpose. Several hours before setting up camp yesterday, he had spotted a bush alongside the path that had been recently trampled.

“I will be the one who finds Bigfoot,” he repeated to himself over and over as he walked. He believed that he was the only true hunter among the group. This was his world, stalking a beast in the forest. The others would merely get in the way. Maruka may have wanted the blood of the beast for the weapon it could provide, but Ma’ti wanted to be the hunter to kill the legend. It was the reason he came, to hunt the unhuntable and, at the same time, prove is worth to Maruka.

In less than an hour, he found what he was looking for. There were a couple of bushes next to the path that looked like something has squeezed between them. Many of the small branches had been broken and the splits were still green. Ma’ti checked the ground, but could find no prints. He passed through the bushes. On the other side was a tangle of underbrush, but something had been this way recently. A gap had been made through the snarl of vines, limbs and bushes. Ma’ti followed it.

Navigating the narrow path was difficult, but after an hour, he came to a small clearing. His nostrils flared. The smell of decay was strong. Over in a corner of the clearing, he found what he was looking for. In a small trench were the discarded, half-eaten remains of various small animals and fish. It was a refuse pit, a sure sign of recent habitation by an intelligent creature. What was more, there was nothing in the pit but the remains of animals and plants. No plastic wrappers or empty cans contaminated it. Campers would have surely left some sign of civilization, and this pit contained none.

“This has to be where he comes to eat,” he said quietly to himself.

He set and concealed the steel bear traps in the clearing. He reasoned that if this clearing was frequented as much as it appeared to be, bait would not even be needed. The freshness of the kills in the pit led him to believe that Bigfoot would return soon. He knew however, that his presence would drive the beast away, so he decided to strike off to the north. There were many signs of passage in that direction, broken branches and torn underbrush. He would return later to see if his traps worked.

***

Foote led the group, using his tracking skills to follow the trail of Maruka’s gang. They were fresh and easy to follow. “They are being careless,” he thought, “they don’t suspect that they are being followed.” Behind him Samantha and Leighton hiked along, trusting in Foote’s tracking skills.

Jenna had stayed at the mountain pass with Kellerstrom to prepare an ambush, in the event that Maruka attempted to leave the valley by way of the pass. She was likely to be the only one Maruka or his men would recognize. If they saw her, they would know immediately to open fire on her and anyone she was with. So, it was deemed wise that she stay behind. Kellerstrom was already exhausted from hiking the day before. He was not in the best shape and had volunteered to stay and watch the pass with Jenna.

“What do y’all propose to do when we find these people?” asked Samantha to the other two. She was not sure who to direct the question to. While Leighton was in command of the group, Foote had far more experience in hazardous situations.

“I’ve got no solid plans yet,” answered Leighton. “Hopefully we can locate them without them spotting us. Then we can follow them and look for the opportunity to ambush them and subdue them.”

“But what if they spot us?”

“I’m still working on that part. Thad, any suggestions?”

Foote thought for a minute, ran his hand through his hair, and then answered. “If they do see us, we’ll pretend to be hikers. Hopefully they’ll believe it enough to let their guard down, then we’ll have to take them out or at least drive them west into Jim and Jenna.”

“Did you hear that, Jim?” asked Leighton, pushing the microphone on his lapel towards his mouth.

“Yup.” Came the response in his earpiece. “You just call ahead of time to let us know, and will take position on either side of the pass.”

A few more miles on, Foote stopped and examined the ground as well as various parts of the underbrush around the trail.

“What is it Thad?” asked Leighton.

“It looks like they all went to the east down the path, but somebody came back this way even more recently and headed through the underbrush there.”

“Could Thatcher have escaped and tried to hide?” asked Samantha.

“It makes sense,” agreed Leighton, “but there could be any number of reasons that it was one of Maruka’s men, too.”

“How about I find out who went through the bushes here, while you two follow the others,” suggested Samantha.

“Okay,” agreed Leighton. “But maintain radio contact at all times,” he added following after Foote who was already on the main group’s trail again.

Samantha examined the hole in the underbrush before going in. There was not a lot of room and no real path to speak of. It looked like someone had just plowed through the bushes really. She retied her ponytail to gather any loose strands of hair and tucked it under her jacket. She did not want to snag her hair on any branches. She drew her gun and chambered a bullet, just in case it was not Thatcher that she was following. Then, she plunged into the underbrush.

***

Ma’ti was getting frustrated. The trail he was following was getting cold. It was becoming more difficult to find any signs of his prey and he was getting close the northern edge of the valley. As a result, he was constantly walking up an ever increasing slope. The exertion climbing was beginning to make his legs sore, even for the experienced hiker that he was.

Suddenly it happened. Right at the moment he decided to double back, a loud inhuman shriek echoed through the valley. It was similar to the first one that they had heard days ago, but was higher pitched. “The traps,” he said to himself under his breath. “It must have stepped into one of the traps.”

He moved quickly, back towards the clearing where he had set the traps. He was running as fast as he could move without tripping or running into anything. “The others had to have heard it,” he thought. “I must get to it first and claim it as my prize.”

He slowed his pace when he neared the clearing and crept up to the edge of it. At first he was disappointed. There was no creature caught in the traps. There was, however, a short woman with red hair, dressed in a skiing jacket and blue jeans. She was stooping down and looking at the ground. His first thought was that she was a hunter that had stumbled into his traps until he saw the gun she was holding. It was not hunter’s weapon. It looked like military issue, but he could not identify the make. Furthermore, it had a silencer attached to it. Suddenly her face came to mind. He remembered seeing her when they had grabbed Thatcher in Atlanta. She must have been with the guy who had chased them through the city, an American agent.

Deciding that she was not likely to be alone, he decided to kill her quietly. A gunshot would echo through this valley and alert any others. He drew out his machete and circled around behind her before emerging into the clearing and creeping up behind her. The whole time, she had barely moved. Just before he got into striking range, he saw what she was examining. The twisted pieces of one of the bear traps lay on the ground. It was covered in blood and had been ripped apart.

“No human or animal could have torn through a trap like that,” he thought to himself.

Suddenly, Samantha spun around raising the gun towards him. She had detected him when he stopped to look over her shoulder at the remains of the bear trap. Without conscious thought he swung the machete before she could level the gun at him. He missed as she stumbled backwards. Ma’ti was sure that he was about to die. She was out of range of his machete. She now had the advantage with the gun in her hand, but fate was on his side.

Samantha’s eyes grew wide following a metallic clank. Then she screamed in pain and dropped her gun as she clutched at her leg. She had stepped into another one of the bear traps. Ma’ti took the opportunity to lunge at her, bringing the machete down towards her head. She tried to fall backwards away from the blade. The blade missed, but the trap had been chained to the ground. The chain pulled taut as she fell onto her back. The jaws bit deeper. A crack could be heard as her tibia started to splinter under the force of the trap. She screamed again.

Now there was no dodging the machete. Ma’ti brought it down hard, slashing right across her belly. The stuffing of her jacked puffed out of the slash. Realizing that her screams would draw others, Ma’ti decided to waste no time no more time with her. He grabbed the twisted pieces of the broken trap and bolted through the woods to the Northeast, but not before planting a firm kick into Samantha’s side.

***

Ma’ti had no idea just how well Samantha’s screams had been heard. The microphone attached to her jacket collar had broadcast it loudly to the other members of the team. Foote and Leighton without a word turned around and dashed up the path to where they had left her.

“Samantha, what happened?” panted Leighton as he ran.

She was hysterical on the other end. “My leg! It’s being cut off!”

“Calm down,” he said in a controlled voice. He stopped running so that he could talk and give instructions clearly. Foote was well ahead of him. He would reach her long before Leighton would and he thought it more prudent to coordinate. “Now take a deep breathe and tell us what happened.”

She answered on the radio, this time more calmly. “One of them attacked me. He backed me into a steel trap. Please hurry, it keeps biting deeper.”

“What about your attacker? Is he still there?”

“No. He left. He slashed at me with a machete, but...” she trailed off for a moment. “Wait, I think he’s coming back. I hear someone coming!”

“Sam?”

There was no answer.

“Sam? Answer! Is he back? Are you in trouble?”

Only silence.

“Thad, what is your twenty?”

“I’m proceeding down the path she took,” he answered. “Her trail is easy to spot. It shouldn’t take me long to find her.”

Leighton began moving up the trail again. He felt helpless waiting to hear the updates from his team member. Kellerstrom had heard the whole episode over his radio as well. He and Jenna scanned the valley with binoculars, looking for any sighs of Samantha or her attacker, but they saw only the green carpet of the pine forest.

***

Ma’ti dashed through the forest. He wanted to put as much distance between him and the clearing as he could. He was sure there were more agents in the forest. “Perhaps her screams were a blessing,” he thought as he ran. “Any other agents will now look for her instead of us.”

Once he returned to the camp, he would give the bloodied traps to Maruka and they could leave this valley before more Americans arrived. He was taking a roundabout route back to the base camp, as he was afraid that there might be other Americans on the main path. He came to a small stream and leapt over it. He didn’t expect it to be a problem, but he stumbled when he landed on the other side. It was then that the realized that his foot was in considerable pain. It was the foot that he had kicked the woman with. He wondered at it for a moment, but soon resumed his run to the camp, though at a slower pace.