WRITERS NOTE: This is another filler chapter. It's trash writing again. I'm sorry. I promise the next few chapters are gonna be much better and much longer. More smut, more action... maybe some more betrayal *wink wink* We are building to the good shit. Bare with me.
The plane ride seemed short because I slept through most of it in silence, as did the rest of the team. The car ride from the Missoula airport was just as short, because I slept through that as well. But now I was looking at a wooden door that led inside to the cabin I used to live in, the same wooden door I had left two months ago with Kate Laswell. I fumbled with the keys that I forgot were in my bag, tumbling around in the rest of the random shit I carried with me.
My fingers shook, as I placed the key into the door and turned it, but I was even more horrified by the smell that came from inside when it swung open. Dust, mildew, and leather. Before I had even broken the threshold, I eyed my father's hunting rifle and tears sprung to my eyes. I grabbed it and pulled it into my chest. Holding it again was so foreign yet felt so right. It was unlike the M4 that I worked with every day, it was worn and chipped and had still had the little spots of blood from hunting on it. My father's signatures.
I stepped inside and nearly collapsed as I saw nothing had been changed since I left it. My bed was still in the same position that I had left it, the blankets had not even been made up. I saw my towel still hanging over the back of one of my kitchen table chairs, my bathroom door was still open from the shower I took after I nearly died of hyperthermia. Although I should have cried, I should have felt something, I didn't step further inside. I looked around at the numerous books that I always told myself that I was going to read and never did.
"Jamie, we need to keep moving," Captain Price said from behind me. Ghost stood outside the SUV on the lawn with a cigarette in his mouth and Soap leaned against the hood with a pair of pitch-black sunglasses over his eyes. We had thirty-six hours to intercept the Russian smugglers who were going to be moving. I was wasting time, but I couldn't stop looking at who I used to be in the room around me. I saw my darkness in these walls, but the darkness was different. The darkness that Ghost and I shared was all consuming and felt like black flames touching my skin over and over again. The darkness that I was living in before was like a cloud constantly hanging over my head, holding onto my shoulders like a demon constantly stalking me.
I flung my father's rifle over my shoulder and turned, not looking back as I closed the door behind me and locked it again. I doubted I would ever come back to this little cabin, whoever came into my job for David after me was welcome to my shit inside. I didn't want any of it anymore. It wasn't home anymore. "We're Oscar mike," I say as I put my sunglasses back over my eyes and pull myself into the back of the SUV again. Squishing between Gaz and Soap wasn't ideal, but no one said anything to each other the entire ride, only the occasional time check or request to lower the air conditioner in the car.
I sat and stared out the windshield of the vehicle, almost feeling sick to my stomach at the thought of what was going to happen once we got to the top of the hill. Laswell had let David know that we were coming, but there was a small part of me that hoped that he wouldn't be there. How could I face the man who brought me from the brinks of homelessness and gave me a reason to keep going after I went AWOL. My gaze went to Ghost who sat in the passenger seat next to Price, arms crossed over his chest and a fresh black balaclava over his face. David was to me what Price was to Ghost.
I closed my eyes and sighed a little too loudly, and Price's calm but stern voice broke the nearly ten hours of silence between all of us. "You're nervous to be back, love?"
I hesitated for a moment, not really wanting to answer him but figured it would be disrespectful to ignore his question, "Yes, it's weird."
"David will be protected, I can promise you that," Price said, even though I was going to tell David to take his wife Amy and the kids to their flat in Missoula the first moment that they could. I wouldn't have David brought into the mess that we were about to make in his forest.
"Thank you, sir," I said lightly, but my heart wasn't in my words.
As the top of the hill crested and the ranger station emerged from the black spruce forest that surrounded it, I saw him, and my heart turned to slush. He looked the same, and he smiled with a smile that would have made the sun look dull. As soon as the car came to a stop, I was crawling over Gaz's lap to open the door. My eyes blurred as I ran to him and flung my hands around his neck with a sob. "Hey, whoa- hey!" He said as I slammed into him.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" I sobbed into his shoulder, I kept repeating it over and over until I felt one of his hands on the back of my neck, holding me up. My head was pounding, I felt my body shaking with the pain of it, but I didn't care. I apologized until I couldn't even get the words out anymore.
"Hey, it's ok, relax Jamie," he said, and his hands lightened their hold on me, but I didn't dare let go of him, not yet. "Jamie..." I finally relented as the tears fogged my sunglasses and snot dripped down my face. I didn't turn around to see the looks that the boys were giving me, I didn't care if I was an emotional wreck though.
"David, I can't apologize enough, I should have never..." I sucked in a breath, "my past was such a..." I sucked in another breath, "I should have turned myself in..." I breathed again. For some reason, my mind went to the chainsaw that I had been cursing at the day before all of this had begun, "did you get the chainsaw running?"
He scoffed and made a face of utter disbelief at me, "what?"
"The chainsaw, it needed a new chain and there was sawdust in the motor," I rambled, and his smile only widened as my brain seemed to process my thoughts faster than the words could come out. I peeked over my shoulder at the boys who were watching at a distance, giving me just enough privacy with my old mentor that I could be emotional without embarrassment.
"Jamie, God will you just..." his hand came to rest on my shoulder, seeing my face fall as my mind settled, "yes, I got the chainsaw running."
I smiled and wiped my eyes with the back of my shirt, I nodded and put my hands on my hips, finally taking a full breath of air. "Let's go inside," he said to me, waving to the rest of the team to join him.
The office was unchanged, even my desk had a few items on it that I kept like a few fossils and a mason jar of pens. The single computer I used to log my data on had gone off completely and collected dust, even the retractable cot that I used to sleep on was still laid out in the corner. My eyes began to water at the old iPod nano that I had kept in the drawer of my desk, now dead and useless, there was also a roll of quarters that was unused. I grabbed it without even thinking and headed for the vending machine. Price stared at me as I chewed my Oreo cookies and potato chips.
"I hope you don't eat like that all the time," he said with a grunt.
I snickered, lost in the serotonin boost that came with downing the roll of Oreo cookies, "I used to, this was my usual dinner when there was too much snow to get back down the mountain to the cabin. I would sleep here instead."
"Always so dedicated," David said as he pulled a chair up to the conference room table, "we hired a replacement, he's half as dedicated as you are." He said, inviting me to sit down next to him. Soap, Ghost, Gaz and Captain Price sat at the table as well; it reminded me of the day that I woke up from my brush with hyperthermia. They were all sitting in the same places, looking at me, this time I was wearing more than a big sweatshirt.
"We are on a time crunch here," Price said, throwing the satellite computer open and connecting to Kate Laswell who was back in Washington D.C on the hunt for General Shepard. "Laswell, you're live."
"Valeria wasn't lying, we got special permission from the Canadian government to take satellite photos of the area north of Kootenai National Forest. Four tractor trailers have been on the move along the board. One has a suspicious container on it that we believe is the missile," she informed us. Gaz nodded in confirmation at Price who straightened his posture, as if trying to hold himself back from throwing something.
"Why are they using the border so far away? Why not cross the border closer to Chicago with the cargo?" Gaz asked, rubbing his scalp under the ball cap he wore.]
"Russian mafia has a drop zone in that area, it's just like the drop zones they have in New York and Brighton Beach here in the United States, it's easy access. Once inside the U.S. they could be in Chicago by the end of the day," Laswell answered.
"So, these people are gonna be Russians, not a cartel?" Soap asked, a gloved hand on his face as he looked through the satellite photos that were given out.
"Correct, we believe that Hassan bought his missiles from the Russians that attacked Philip Graves' convoy that was taking them to give to the Iranian counter-terrorism military. The cartel moved the missiles from Hassan," Laswell's voice was shrill now, she was worried and for good reason. If the cartel was a grenade in Las Almas, Russian mafia and ultranationalists were an atomic bomb for America. "Hassan is just a pawn for the Russians."
"We gotta stop them," I said, swiftly standing and looking towards the map of the entire forest that hung on the wall of the room. "The border is 271 miles of the forest, but there are only two crossings that are viable for eighteen-wheelers."
David stood directly next to me and began to trace the Elk River that lay about a mile inside the United States, all the way along the border. "There is a river that runs along the entirety of the border with Canada in our forest. There are two bridges that are still viable to cross, but one is monitored by border patrol, the other is monitored by us."
"Has homeland security been made aware of this situation?" Soap asked, handing the satellite photos behind him to Ghost who was lurking in the back of the room. Our eye connected for a moment, and I felt a flash of that invisible link between us. Since my helicopter crash, I had not felt any kind of heat between us. But that imaginary pull and flash image of our bodies colliding over and over was followed by the reminder that the helicopter crash was due watching Ghost and not the building behind me. I had let the mission slip due to my feelings for my lieutenant.
"They've been put on high alert, but they have not made a formal statement to stop public hysteria," Laswell confirmed. "We need to put this to bed before it gets out publicly."
"And border control?" I asked, turning my focus back to the computer.
"I'll contact the border patrol at the gate that is monitored by them," Laswell said on the other line, the sound of a key typing away on her laptop. "They will be alerted if one of those trucks cross them."
Price stood and looked at the map with David and I, for once I felt useful again, this was my forest. I knew this place like the back of my hand and there was only one way those trucks could get past the border without being detected, and that was the fire tower bridge. I looked at David and pointed to Grim's Fire tower, just south of the Elk River. "Is Grim still out there?"
"It's nearly fire season, Grim would-be breaking code if he wasn't," David said, shrugging his shoulders. Grim, the writer. Grim, the hermit. Grim, the Flirt. Grim, the Firewatch. I left the conference room and retrieved the satellite phone from my old desk, punching in the numbers that I memorized. It rang once, then twice, before a very familiar voice answered. My heart pumped like the wheels of an old train.
"Grim Reaper, this is Ranger 1, how copy?" I said into the phone.
"Jamie! Good God, is that you? Where have you been?!" His voice was hoarse, probably from the high winds and dry air that hit the top of the fire watch tower.
"Busy, my friend," I said with a smile, "Listen, we need to start protocol 8."
Protocol 8 was code for an attack of some kind on the United States. Without Wi-Fi, or news, or radio signal, and no civilization for nearly sixty miles in all directions. Grim would never know about anything happening in the United States until long after it happened. Protocol 8 was a safety measure to make sure that all forest personnel were aware of the danger. "What is happening?" His voice was ragged, and he struggled to get the words out.
"Terrorists are moving through the border at Fire Tower Bridge, we are sending a counter-terrorism group to the bridge. We need you on watch on that bridge until we arrive," I said, looking around the room as the boys began to scramble for their belongings.
"Affirmative Ranger 1, what happens if they cross before you get here?" Grim asked through the phone.
I hesitated because I knew that we were putting Grim at risk here, collateral damage that would be on my hands if things went south. But I brought my phone to my mouth and took a breath, "fucking run Grim."
It was like a scene out of a movie. After taking the TAC-50 from the back of the SUV and loading my gear, including my father's old hunting rifle, I led the boys down to the shed with all of the equipment we used to travel around the forest, including the two UTV vehicles that David had already given us permission to use. Ghost and Soap loaded into the first one, rucksacks big enough to sink a ship in the back. Price and I loaded the second while Gaz slid into the bed of the ATV with the guns.
As we began to pull away, I stopped next to David who watched with his hands in his pockets and sunglasses hiding the tears that were running down his face. Somewhere between the two of us, we both knew that this would be the last time that we would be seeing each other for a very long time, if ever. Putting the UTV in park and slowly walking around to approach him, we embraced, closer than my father would hug me. "You take Amy and the kids, take them far away from here and you don't come back until someone contacts you, do you understand?" I said into his shoulder.
"I will, but you take care of yourself. You hear me?" He said to me through broken whispers. His lips connected with the top of my forehead, and I had to force myself from his embrace so I wouldn't sob into his shoulder. He moved away from me just as quickly, heading for his car to leave the station completely. We looked at each other one last time before I pulled the UTV up the trail behind the ranger station, into the forest.
Since I knew the way, I led the caravan of UTV's up and up and up. Grim's fire tower was sixty miles north of the ranger station, a three-hour drive on the trail. But it took us four hours because of the sheer weight of the bags we were carrying weighing us down. But at that time, I reflected on my time here in this forest. When I came here, I was a shell of a human being, freshly AWOL, and scared of the world. David and I had met on one of the trails, I was illegally camping in the forest, and he offered to let me stay in the ranger station. I declined because I was scared of him, scared of men, scared he might want something more from me. But when temperatures started to drop and I ran out of money to sleep in hotels in town, I took him up on the offer. He offered me the tracking job the day after.
We passed by the trails I used to hunt on, the small streams that I used to fish in, the tree I would set my stand in. I loved this place, I still loved it, I would be damned if I let Russian terrorists and a missile pass through it so easily. Eventually we reached the opening to Fire Tower Bridge.
"Steamin' Jesus," I heard Soap say as I brought the UTV to a stop.
I smiled at him, my head pounding with the altitude change, but I couldn't help the genuine beauty that lay before us. I walked up to the edge of the cliffside and took in the majesty of the creator's imagination. Below us was a meadow that sprawled out like a blanket, covered in wildflowers that butterflies flitted around on, further below was the raging Elk River and the rust-colored Fire Tower Bridge that sat silently waiting. The scenery was backdropped by towering snow capped mountains that seemed to loom in the void beyond our reality. On the cliffside opposite of us, I spotted Grim's fire tower peeking up from beyond the tops of the black spruce trees. "Welcome to Heaven's Hollow," I say to the boys as they look at the view.
"How do we get down there?" Ghosts ask, stepping up to the cliffside beside me. I watched him for a minute, looking down at the two-hundred-and-twenty-foot drop below us. I give him a sly smile and return to the back of one of the UTV's, pulling out a rope and a bag of carabiners.
"Oh, you're taking the piss," Gaz scoffed, "we have to repel down there?"
I laugh gently, but that sends a pounding pain to my head, I really needed to lay down. I would take some ibuprofen once we got to the other side of the cliff. "Then we have to climb back up on the trail to get to the fire tower, there is a reason Grim never leaves."
"Let's get moving, the sun will be going down in a few hours," Captain Price says, moving to take some of the rappelling ropes from me. Attaching the ropes to sturdy anchors I pass out harnesses and tethers. I laugh slightly as each of the guy's groan about how comfortable the equipment is for them, but I help adjust when it's needed.
"I'm thankful the military does repel training at basic," I say with a smile on my face as I begin setting up the rope and attaching the locking carabiners. "This cliff is notorious for high winds so keep both feet on the wall, no long hulls or jumps down. I'll belay the guns and ammo down once all of you are at the bottom."
Captain Price takes point, leaning backward over the cliffside. I give him an encouraging thumbs up as he disappears, like he's done this before a million times. Soap follows close behind him. It doesn't surprise me when Gaz hesitates at the edge of the cliff, "Oh this is fucked," he says looking down behind him.
"You fell out of a helicopter, and you're scared of rappelling?" I hear Ghost tease as he adjusts his harness and his carabiners.
"I didn't mean to fall out of a helicopter, Simon. I have to force myself to lean back," Gaz confirms before he puffs out his cheeks and leans over the side. "Fucking hell..."
I giggle slightly, Ghost drops the bags of tactical gear and ruck sack of guns in front of me, attaching them with more clips and wrapping them in a tether. "Your head alright?" he asks as I begin to belay the bags over the side of the cliff.
I nod to him, although the pain was gone from my head, I couldn't fully focus on things. Thoughts got jumbled around in my head and talking felt weird. "I'll get better with time, I'm fine for now."
As he attached himself to the rope, I noticed his carabiner is slightly crooked and I walked over to him. I feel awkward as I adjust the top of his harness for him, my fingers fumbling on the loop just above his waist. I can feel his breath just above my head, his breath catches, and my heart skips a beat. That invisible link between us sparks. My nostrils flare as I breathe him in, he smells like nothing now, only the slightest hint of dirt and grass that is coming from the trees around us. I catch a glance at his hand, awkwardly clenching at his side as if trying to not reach for me. My traitorous eyes looked up to his and for the briefest moment, I imagined that we were just out here, in my favorite place, repelling for fun... spending time together.
"Am I alright to go?" His words broke me from my fairy tale imagination. I ripped my hands away from his loop and gave him a thumbs up. He stood and stared at me for a moment, but then leaned over the side of the cliff, I followed him by only a few feet.
I had done this several times, I knew where to put my feet, when to stop when the wind started to pick up. Walking down step after step, slowly. I took a moment to look off into the distance, watching the sun dip lower into the mountains, causing the sky to turn a burnt orange color. It was the color of fire, and it danced around in my eyes, lighting up my skin. I closed my eyes and smiled gently, letting the wind blow my hair around my face like it does the branches of the trees. I looked down at Ghost who had also stopped, looking up at me, admiring me. He let his eyes linger on me, then continued to walk down. Once on the ground again, the five of us each took a ruck sack full of equipment and began the trek back up the overside of the cliff to Grim's fire tower.
It was dark outside once we arrived, covered in sweat, heaving with the exertion of hiking up the cliffside. But it was all gone the moment I saw the gray wisps of hair running towards me from the fire tower. Grim was handsome for his age, a thick long beard that reached his chest. His hair slicked back into a ponytail that fit him well. He was short but still taller than me. "Jamie!" His voice boomed in the silent night air. His arms enveloped me and mine wrapped around his neck.
"It's good to see you Grim, have you seen anything?" I knew I wanted to talk with Grim, but I got straight to the point, knowing the mission was at hand.
"No, I haven't seen anything," Grim answered, then looked to the boys who were gathering behind me.
"Grim, this is Captain Jonathan Price," I point to Price who extends his hand out, the two shake hands.
"This is Gaz, Soap, and Ghost," Price introduces the rest of the team, and despite how strange the names are, Grim doesn't look confused. Instead, he raises his hand and salutes the captain. My mouth drops open, and confusion floods my mind.
"It's a pleasure Captain, I'm sergeant Evan Grim Jackson, retired," Grim answers. His eyes flick to me and I can see the laughter bubbling under the skin of his wrinkled cheeks. I never knew that Grim was prior military, I didn't even know what his real name was. "My tower is yours."
"You're ex-military?" I exclaim, shock evident in my voice.
Looking at me with that charming smile and sly sarcastic grin, he crosses his arms over his chest, "How do you think I got the nickname "Grim'?" He teases me. Why did it surprise me so much that Grim was ex-military? He was so quiet and secluded and wanted to be alone... like me.
Captain Price gives Grim a smile before he turns back to the rest of us, "get all that up to the tower," he said, pointing to the ruck sacks. "Thank you for your service, Sergeant Jackson. But I would suggest retreating from this area. It won't be safe soon."
The boys begin to walk the equipment up the stairs, and I turn to Grim who nods to the captain, "I've already packed my bags, is there anything else I can do for all of you?"
Pulling the keys to the UTV out of my pocket, I toss them over to him, "take one of the UTV's posted on the cliff, there is an ascending rope already set up for you." I told him.
He didn't wait around any longer, giving me a simple goodbye, before grabbing his bags, putting a headlamp over his head, and then disappearing into the forest