Leave No Trace Page 9

  “No.”

  Meg froze at the cutting tone in Brian’s voice. “What do you mean no?”

  “I’m not sure how to make it clearer. No, we aren’t going to cover the safer route. No, the hill isn’t where the shooter shot from; we both could see that from the angle of the arrow. No, you’re not going to tell me Hawk is a water dog, so if he goes in, he’ll do better than Lacey. Just . . . no.” He crossed his arms over his chest and Meg could see there would be no shifting him.

  She sighed. She knew he was right, that they’d do better as a team, but her gut instinct was always to protect, even if the other person didn’t want it. And Brian was not about to take the easy way out. “You take the right side then, and I’ll take the left.”

  “Damn straight.” Brian quickly removed Lacey’s vest, handing it to Torres as well. “We’ll call you when we have news. But, like the last time, this could take a while.”

  Torres nodded and clutched both vests against his suit jacket. “Good luck.”

  “Stay safe,” Hastings called.

  “We will.” Meg seated her pack more firmly on her shoulders, checked her dog—Hawk stood alert, clearly waiting to start—and took a deep breath. “Ready?”

  Brian stood poised beside Lacey and gave her a nod. “Ready.”

  She bent and lay a hand on Hawk’s sun-warmed back. “Hawk, find.”

  Her heart in her throat, she watched her dog step out onto the narrow boards over the rushing water.

  CHAPTER 9

  Ocoee: Built by the Eastern Tennessee Power Company starting in 1910, the Ocoee powerhouses, dams, and flume comprise an ambitious hydroelectric project constructed entirely in a twelve-mile stretch of the narrow Ocoee River Gorge. Besides being a national historic site, it was also the site of white-water events for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

  Wednesday, April 10, 1:57 PM

  Ocoee Flume

  Turtletown, Tennessee

  Head high, Hawk stepped confidently onto the boards. Rather than head-down tracking, he was using a head-up scenting technique, searching for a scent before he put his head down to follow it.

  Meg guessed they had to cover at least another fifty or sixty yards before they’d come near the spot where the shooter stood to make his kill. If they went much farther than that, they’d have to rethink the shot and find a way off the flume, or retreat and start again from the beginning.

  But Meg’s gut told her they were on the right track.

  Meg followed about two feet behind her dog, miming a runway model, carefully placing her boots along the center seam between the two wooden planks to give herself as much room between her feet and the precarious drop into the flume waters as possible. She walked with both arms extended, as if treading a balance beam, keeping her left hand hovering over the railing at her side. She didn’t want to run her fingers over it—that would lead to multiple splinters—but she needed to be able to grip the wood for support in case of a stumble or false step. A quick glance at Brian confirmed he did the same, and the dogs carefully watched their steps. Both dogs wanted to push the pace, but their handlers ordered them to keep the pace slow. It was all about safety before speed during this search.

  It was just before the flume curved to the left to disappear from view that Meg caught Lacey’s change in attitude. Her tail shot up and her head dropped toward the pooling scent. Turning her attention to her own dog, Meg waited to see if he caught it as well.

  Hawk’s steps slowed and his nose dropped toward the planks. Got it.

  “Hawk, stop. Brian.”

  “Yup, they have it. Lacey, stop.”

  As one, they both turned to look down the rail line. In the distance, the tram house was a straight line from their current position.

  “He shot from here,” Brian stated. He looked over his shoulder, down toward the curve. “And then escaped via the flume. Lacey’s on the outside edge, so she caught the scent drifting around the corner first. It took Hawk a few more feet to enter the scent cone.”

  “That’s how I read it, too. We need to let Torres know. If he’s on this track, he may follow it to the end. Torres and Hastings need to get men out to the other end of the flume and any middle access points between.” She pulled her satellite phone out of her pack and speed-dialed Torres.

  “Sam Torres.”

  “It’s Meg.” She looked down the track to where Torres still stood with Hastings. Raising one hand over her head, she waved and he waved back. “We have the trail.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Can you find out from Hastings how many locations along the flume can be driven to?” She listened as Torres asked her question, and heard Hastings’s indistinct response before Torres’s voice came back on the line. “He says two. This end and the powerhouse at the far end. If anything is needed in between those two points, they bring it in by rail over the flume.”

  “Okay. Can you ask Hastings to get some men out to the far end? I don’t know if the shooter’s going to stay on the flume for the entire distance, but if he does, we need men there to apprehend him just in case he’s still out here. I don’t know how long it will take to run the entire flume, but it can’t be done quickly without risking your life, so we may still have a chance.”

  “I agree, we at least have to try. We’ll make sure it gets done from this end. You just worry about the search from yours.”

  “Will do. Thanks.” She ended the call, tucked the phone in her bag, and seated it squarely over both shoulders. “Now we can really get started.” Grasping the railing, she squatted down behind her dog, balancing on the balls of her feet. “That’s it, boy, have you got the scent? Good. Now find him, Hawk. Find.” She pushed to her feet as Hawk moved forward, his pace faster. Swallowing her rising discomfort with the search, Meg glanced down at the eddies and froth shooting under the cross beams. Was it moving faster here, or was that her imagination?

  She forced her gaze up to her dog, watching his sure steps, and took a little fortitude from him. Head up and eyes bright, he loved the hunt and was damned good at it.

  The flume curved around the bend, following the bank of the river. The water became rougher at the curve as the direction changed and splashes rose out of the flume to soak the planks under their boots. They slowed, picking their way with more care until the waters calmed slightly.

  Meg glanced at Brian, whose eyes were cast down at his feet and at his dog. “Years ago, when we were first considering search-and-rescue as a career, seriously, what were we thinking?”

  “Some days, honestly I don’t know.” He tossed her an eye roll and then went back to watching his dog and his feet.

  As they moved along the flume, they learned how to manage it. They learned that every half mile or so, the platform extended from side to side for about eight or ten feet, allowing them a respite from the high-stress balancing act and giving them a place to safely catch their breath and water the dogs. They learned that straightaways were safest and driest, with the water flowing swiftly but relatively calmly, and that the curves in the track held hidden dangers. Those sections caused the deepest eddies and highest splashes as the water navigated turns that followed the natural landscape, soaking the walkways for large sections. Terrifyingly for Meg, they learned that deep gullies ran down from the peak, causing the flume builders to have to build bridges across them. As the landscape around them dropped, those bridges were suspended higher and higher, and Meg’s fear of falling into the flume waters was compounded by the fear of going over the railing and dying hundreds of feet below.

  Normally, if Meg and Brian were out for a morning jog together with the dogs—as they often did because staying in shape was a necessity in their job and misery loved company—they’d jog a comfortable mile in about ten minutes, aiming for five miles in total. But here, balanced on the top of the flume, they were at best managing only half that speed in a careful, power walk. But after nearly an hour, while the dogs still firmly had the scent, the high tension of the search was beginn
ing to wear on all of them.

  “How you doing?” Brian asked, still breathing a little more heavily than usual as he poured water into a collapsible bowl for Lacey where she stood beside Hawk in the middle of the platform.

  “I was doing better when we weren’t this high up.” Meg gratefully dropped her go bag on the planks and dug out water for both herself and Hawk.

  “Well, you know what they said about power generation. It needs height.” He looked out over the railing on his side and down, down to the river below. “We must be up about two hundred feet at this point.”

  “If two hundred and fifty feet is the highest point, then we must be about three-quarters of the way there.” She drank half a bottle of water, then backhanded the moisture from her lips. “Dogs are saying we’re still on track, though. I can’t believe this guy went all this way on foot. There have been a couple of places where he could have bailed into the trees, but he didn’t.”

  “I bet it’s because of the terrain around the flume. Look at the progress we’re making even on this difficult and dangerous track. We can keep up an even pace on a flat surface—”

  “As long as we don’t fall in,” Meg interjected.

  “Good point. But to cover the same distance at ground level would take a hell of a lot longer. And distance seems to be the operative term. This one doesn’t pick killing grounds with an easy escape route.”

  “Possibly because he thinks he’d be more easily tracked if he keeps a getaway car nearby. With a long trek, there are more ways to lose pursuers.”

  “Unless you do it on a closed track like this.” Shading his eyes, Brian peered up the rail line. “He took a real risk coming here. What if we’d been right behind him? We might have actually seen him and called in backup to either meet him at the far end or get onto the flume at that end and bookend him.”

  “Maybe he heard K-9 assistance is coming from out of town and he didn’t feel the need to rush? Or maybe he never heard we were following him on Stanley Gap Trail? Maybe he’s cocky as hell and thinks he’s smarter than us and the dogs. It’s impossible to say.” Meg packed away the water bottles and Hawk’s bowl. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  They separated again at the edge of the platform to continue tracking. Meg felt more confident now and she suspected Brian felt the same. Both were more secure on the narrow path, and they followed the dogs at their pace instead of trying to slow them down for safety’s sake. They were narrowing in on the scent, and the dogs’ natural instinct was to run faster as they closed in on the target.

  The next corner was the sharpest turn so far as the flume abruptly banked left. Water crashed into the far side, arcing over the crossbeams and boards in drenching splashes.

  “Hawk, slow. This is getting slick. Slow.” Meg grabbed the railing as her boot slipped fractionally, dimly registering the green tinge highlighting the planks as if some type of algae coated the boards with slime. She clutched at the wood, keeping herself upright, and was about to tell Hawk to stop so they could ensure they crossed safely, when out of the corner of her eye she saw Brian start to go over backward, his arms windmilling madly.

  “Brian!”

  His feet went out from under him and he hit the planks on his back, the bulk of his backpack rolling him sideways toward the open water.

  One hand still clamped to the railing, Meg stretched out as if she could reach him across the ten feet separating them, but all she could do was watch with her heart in her throat as Brian desperately threw himself toward the railing post. His hands scrabbled, then clamped on, but the movement swung his body out, and the current grabbed at his boots with greedy hands, clawing him into its depths. His legs were pulled in right up to mid-thigh, and only his desperate grip on the post kept him from being sucked under completely.

  “Brian, hold on! Athena, pull!”

  The German shepherd immediately sank her teeth into the shoulder of Brian’s jacket, bracing and pulling with all her might.

  Save him.

  Meg looked around frantically for a way to the other side of the flume, but there was no way she could traverse a cross beam without falling in herself, and she was no good to him dead. She looked back, then ahead, quickly calculating distances. The platform ahead was closer.

  “Talon, down! Stay!”

  Hawk instantly went down to the boards, his head sunk between his front paws.

  No other way.

  Meg took a step back and then leaped, pushing off the slick boards, her hand extended, fingers reaching for the far railing as she launched herself over her dog to reach the planks on his far side. She landed, slid, recovered with the help of the railing, and then was running, one hand on the rough wood, no longer caring about splinters. It took almost twenty precious seconds to reach the platform, where she shrugged out of her pack, dropping it on the wooden boards between the rail tracks because she couldn’t risk being overbalanced by its weight, and then ran as fast as she could up the planking on Brian’s side.

  Ahead, Lacey was desperately trying to hold on to Brian, but he was slipping from her grasp. Meg was only about twenty feet away, but it was almost as if everything moved in slow motion as Brian pulled out of Lacey’s grip and then lost his battle against the current, his fingers ripping from the post with a scream.

  “NO!”

  With one final desperate attempt to save himself, Brian twisted as he was sucked into the flume and lunged forward, not aiming for the crossbeam, but for the metal rail track on his side, jamming his forearm under it to wedge himself into the corner of the track and the crossbeam, buying himself several crucial seconds.

  “Brian, hang on! Athena, move!”

  Lacey got out of the way, giving Meg space, as if instinctively knowing Brian was out of reach to her, but maybe the human could still save him.

  Meg quickly summed up the situation. Brian was submerged in the flume up to mid-chest, but his arms and shoulders were still out and his head was above water. His jacket, punctured by Lacey’s teeth, was in reach, but so was his go bag, the sturdy black handle rising from the top of the bag behind his neck. The go bag that Brian always buckled over his chest to give the heavy pack stability during long searches, so there was no way for her to yank it out of the water without bringing Brian with it.

  There was hope.

  Meg skidded to a halt, sat down on the planks, and wrapped her legs around the adjacent railing post for leverage and to anchor herself. She wrapped both hands around the handle of Brian’s bag and pulled with all her might. “Try to . . . help me if . . . you can,” she ground into his ear through clenched teeth. “Only way to . . . get you . . . out.”

  “Trying.” Brian’s voice was a low thread of exhaustion over the roar of the water. He had to be drained from fighting the frantic pull of the frigid water.

  But he had to keep trying. Meg refused to consider any other outcome. She put her back into it, her biceps screaming at the effort, drawing Brian closer, fighting the current, using her lower body as leverage, and keeping her legs wrapped about the pole to keep him from taking her with him to a watery death.

  One inch.

  Hold and gasp in a breath.

  Pull.

  Two inches.

  Hold. Another breath.

  Four.

  Again.

  A sound that started as a groan and morphed into a scream was ripped from her chest as she screwed her eyes shut and pulled with everything she had. She felt Brian fumble for the far side of the planks, heard his own strained cry, and then his weight crushed down over her, pinning her to the boards, his cheek against hers and one arm wrapped around her head, pressing it to his shoulder.

  For long seconds, all she was conscious of was the pounding of her heart, the sawing of their breaths, and the iciness of the water seeping from his clothing into hers where their legs intertwined.

  Brian finally shifted his weight to rise up on one elbow over her. His face was ashen, his green eyes wide, and his lips parted as
he panted, trying to get his breath back, but the corner of his mouth quirked into a smile that was a pale echo of his usual humor. “You know, if I was into women, this could be embarrassing.” But his eyes went serious as he looked at the frothing waters. “I thought it was game over for a few seconds there.”

  Meg reached up to squeeze his shoulder. “Me too. I wasn’t going to accept that.”

  “No, you weren’t.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead.

  “Thanks, pal. Not quite sure how to pay you back for that.”

  “No payment required. How many times have you saved my ass? The house collapse in Virginia Beach comes to mind, just to start. But if you’re done manhandling me”—she gave him a playful, but gentle shove—“how about you get off me?”

  It took a few seconds of careful maneuvering to ensure that neither of them ended up in the water, but then they were both on their feet.

  Looking across the chasm, Meg took in Hawk, still lying on the boards as commanded, and gave him the hand gesture to follow along with them. “Hawk, up. Let’s go.”

  Keeping her eyes on her dog and one hand gripping the railing periodically, they made their way to the platform and Meg’s bag. Once on the wider area of safety, Brian sank down to his knees, his hands braced on the planks on either side of them, his head bowed, and just breathed.

  Meg rubbed her palm over his shoulder. “You okay?”

  Brian tipped his head back to squint at her. “Yeah, just taking a minute. My legs need to warm up a bit. They’re clumsy from the cold.”

  “Clumsy is the last thing we need up here.” Meg knelt down beside him, unsnapped the clasp of his bag over his chest, and slid it off. Digging through it, she found one of his energy bars, unwrapped it, and handed it to him. “Eat this, and take a few minutes. The shooter is so far ahead of us that a few more minutes won’t make a difference. Cold, weak legs will be a hazard, and we’re not doing that again.” Meg dove back into the bag, found Lacey’s high-energy treats, and gave her a handful, then did the same for Hawk out of her own bag. She grabbed an energy bar and peered down the flume as she ate. “We must only have another mile or so to go. If he went all the way to the power station and was through before Hastings could get men there, it’s going to be a whole lot easier for him to lose us.”