Watchers in the Woods Read online

  “It’s called a butt pack, Tom. Very useful when hiking. It rests on top of one’s buttocks.”

  “How quaint. Don’t get one for me. Let’s see now: folding shovels, gloves, binoculars, and innumerable other items, each of them as uninteresting as the next.”

  “You’re turning into a real shithead, Tom. Hey, Tom? I have an idea: why don’t you stay home?”

  “And miss all the fun? I wouldn’t dream of it, darling.” He waved a hand at the littered bed and floor. “Where is your rifle, dear?”

  “Oh, I thought I’d wait and buy one out there,” she said sarcastically.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “May I make a suggestion, Tom?”

  “Is it highly vulgar?”

  “Not.”

  “By all means.”

  “I wouldn’t suggest tennis shoes where we’re going, Tom. Not for hiking. They’re okay in camp. But you need ankle support. The ground is fairly uneven, and we’ll be hiking.”

  “I shall take that into consideration. Thanks much.” He walked out of what had once been their bedroom and went across the hall to what was now his room.

  “Tom!”

  He turned around to face her.

  “The children and I will sleep in one tent. You can have the other.”

  “Fine.” He walked into his room and slammed the door.

  “Oh, happy days ahead,” Susan muttered. She turned to inspect herself in a full-length mirror.

  She smiled at her image. A touch of gray in her hair. Susan did not color her hair; if she was gray, fine. She wholeheartedly agreed with Barbara Bush. Her figure was still very good, and the only lines in her face were laugh lines. She frowned. Khaki was definitely not her color. But after consulting with the other women, they had all decided that was what they would wear. It was good, tough material and very suitable for a two-week stay in the woods.

  Not even Tom’s crappy attitude could dampen the excitement she felt.

  She wondered how much of that stemmed from the thought of seeing Matt again.

  “How silly,” she muttered. “He probably is happily married with children of his own.”

  She’d know in three weeks.

  * * *

  “If there is nothing else you can tell me,” Matt said to Richard, “I’ll shove off.”

  “I knew you would. Matt, you’re going to be on your own in there. If you push the panic button, we can fly people in; there are little airstrips all over the place, but no roads to speak of.” He shoved a small packet across the desk. “Updated ID’s in there, along with a federal gun permit in case some cowboy deputy sheriff decides to get antsy with you. Just as soon as the campers get into the area, I’ll have people ready to go down from Boise. They’ll be ready to fly in immediately if you hit the button on that transmitter. The Bureau will have people there, too. We’re working pretty close on this one.”

  “I know. I’ve been over to the Hoover Building several times talking with them. I’ve met the Bureau agents who will be standing by in Boise. Williams, Ford, Macky, and Pointer. All young and looking like they eat rocks and trees for breakfast. Very eager and sincere young men. Law-and-order by-the-book types.”

  “That’s the price we pay when we work domestic, Matt,” he was reminded.

  “You know what you can do with that comment, Rich?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. But it would be a very uncomfortable fit.”

  “Fine. Just don’t tell me my hands are tied by law books and statutes and constitutional rights and all the rest of that happy crap. I defend myself when attacked or threatened with attack. Vocal intent to do harm upon my body is good enough for me to launch an attack. I know right from wrong; if other people don’t, that’s their problem. I have advised the Bureau of my philosophy toward unfriendly people. The gentlemen appeared to be very unhappy with me. I am going hiking in the woods. The woods belong to the animals. I will avoid them, climb a tree if I’m threatened by a large animal. I gave up killing animals for sport when I went from boyhood to manhood. If I am threatened with attack by humans, I’ll use whatever force is necessary to protect my person. Do we understand each other?”

  Number Two looked at Matt for a moment. Matt’s code name was Husky; he had worked under the name for years. Unofficially, many field personnel called him Sponge—behind his back. The reasoning for that was that on several occasions, Agency higher-ups had seriously considered sending in teams with huge sponges to mop up the blood when Matt finished an assignment.

  The assistant director of Central Intelligence nodded his head. “I understand you, Matt. Now you understand me: you are not in the jungles of South America. The IDs in that packet I handed you give you full arrest powers anywhere in the continental United States, its territories and possessions. That means that the constitutional rights of those you might encounter must be protected . . .”

  He paused when Matt started laughing.

  “Do you find this amusing?” he asked Matt.

  “The white-shoes boys at the Bureau told me the same thing. Do you know what I told them?”

  “I can guess. How many people over there did you antagonize?”

  “Everyone I came in contact with, probably.”

  3

  Upon his return to the United States, Matt had gone to a dealership and ordered a new, full-sized, fully equipped four-wheel-drive on-demand Ford Bronco. This was before he knew anything about the class reunion, or the camping trip, or the CWA, or the unknown forces, whatever they were, in the deep wilderness of Idaho. He had planned to take a year out of his life just wandering the country and looking at all the changes that had occurred in America since he’d left.

  He was not leaving the Company—if anyone ever really left it—a rich man. But he’d never married, he’d never had to support a family, so he’d invested his money over the years and done so wisely. With his pension and the return from his investments, he would be comfortable for the rest of his life, with extra money coming in when he worked contract for the Agency ... something many ex-agents did from time to time.

  Richard had squalled when Matt had told him how much this contract was going to cost the Company. But after he settled down, Number Two agreed to the terms, muttering about Matt being a mercenary.

  Matt drew some equipment from the Agency, bought some with his own money (he would hand in requisitions later), loaded his Bronco, and pulled out, heading west. He intended to take his time getting to Denver, and once there, look around the city and make contact with the Agency man who’d been stationed there for years. Matt had not been to Denver in two decades.

  Some of the equipment he’d be needing for the woods would be flown into the Denver office. He would either pick it up or it would be shipped to him at the jumping-off spot in Idaho. Now all he had to do was figure out how to get himself invited on this camping trip his ex-classmates had planned.

  He drove the Interstate and marveled at how much work had been done on it since he’d left the country. He began to wonder if there was a single traffic light between Washington, DC, and Denver. He drove through West Virginia, through southern Ohio, and into Indiana. He picked up Interstate 70 at St. Louis and would stay with it all the way to Denver.

  The big Bronco handled well, and with its 30-gallon tank, he could drive all day without having to fill up. At first he tried the fast-food chains that dotted the landscape, but soon found that most of the fare was unpalatable. He began to seek out the smaller home-owned cafés in the towns and found what they offered much more to his liking.

  Before leaving the Washington area, Matt had requested a much more in-depth report on Tom Dalton. There wasn’t that much and what there was was mostly hearsay. After reading the notes, Matt concluded the man had an enormous ego and was all but humorless, a fine attorney on the job and a tyrant at home. Matt began to dislike the man. He had to keep reminding himself that the report had been gathered in bits and pieces and was not all inclusive.

  Matt
drove past the Denver city limits two and a half weeks before the class reunion was to start.

  He checked into his room at a medium-priced and quiet motel, in the back, on the ground floor—and immediately called his Denver contact to tell him he was in town.

  “You’re early, Husky.”

  “Just say I’m overeager. You have my gear?”

  “Came in this morning. Agent-in-charge over at the Bureau wants to see you as soon as possible. His name is Simmons. He’s an old Company hater from way back.”

  “What’s his problem?”

  “The usual. The Company gets too much money. We’re all a bunch of thugs and lawless renegades. We don’t have any respect for the rights of others and for due process of the law. Et cetera—ad nauseum.”

  “I’ll see him later. I’ll be with you in a couple of hours.”

  “See you then.”

  Matt ordered a sandwich from room service, ate, and then showered and dressed in slacks and a sport coat. He carefully knotted his tie and slipped into a shoulder holster, checking his Beretta .380 model 84BB, loaded up full, with every other round the exploding shock-type ammo; the other rounds were hollow-nosed. He fitted his twin-clip pouch on his belt, in the small of his back, and stepped in front of the mirror.

  He was a shade under six feet. At first glance, one would think him slightly stocky. The second glance would reveal a naturally heavy musculature. His hands were big and flat-knuckled. His wrists were large for a man his size. He was a skilled fighter, but no kung fu or karate expert. His was the best—or worst, depending upon one’s point of view—of all kinds of fighting, combined with plain old gutter tactics.

  His thick hair was brown, just now beginning to gray at the temples. He wore it parted on the left, and shorter than most men his age would wear theirs. Matt did not have his hair styled. When it got too long for him, he got it cut.

  His eyes were a strange light blue. Spit-blue, one lady had described them. His face was not lady-killing handsome, but interesting. He did not smile often, but when he did it took years off him.

  He left his Bronco parked at the motel and called a cab to take him over to his old neighborhood. It was now a slum.

  The cabbie noticed the look on his face. “You must have lived here at one time?”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “Thought so. I been drivin’ a cab for quite a few years. I occasionally bring someone over here like you, nicely dressed an’ all. You been gone a long time, buddy?”

  Matt slowly nodded his head. “Yes . . . a lifetime.”

  He had the cabbie take him downtown, and from there he walked to the Agency’s small offices at the back of a religious bookstore. The store did a steady business and made money.

  Matt said the right words and was let on through to the back. There he greeted the agent in charge, who had only one hand; he’d had to have the other amputated years back after being tortured for information. He was a bit old to still be active, which let Matt know the man had a lot of clout within the Agency. He was old enough to have crossed over from the OSS with Wild Bill Donavan in the late forties. The man waved Matt to a seat. They chatted about people they’d known over the years, some now dead, and about the pitiful image of the United States, both at home and abroad, and they talked about the way criminals were currently being treated at home.

  “Well, enough of that,” the older man said. “You want to know what’s happening in the primitive area in Idaho.”

  “What is happening?”

  “Well, first I’ll tell you what the Company knows about it: nothing. We waited seventy-two hours past Jimmy’s check-in time and then sent people in to his last known location. What was left of his camp was torn all to hell.”

  “What was taken?”

  “Nothing that the team could tell. And that, to me, lets out outlaws. And there are some in that area. They’d take guns, ammo, food, blankets, anything of that nature. The only things missing were his camp ax and belt knife. Pistol and rifle and several hundred rounds of ammo were left behind. Put that together for me.”

  “He could have lost the knife during the fight, and the ax could be buried in a log he was chopping on for firewood.”

  “Right.”

  “Blood signs?”

  “Not a drop. Nothing. And not a trace of Jimmy.”

  “Are you convinced the CWA is clean in this?”

  “Yes, I am, Husky. I saw the printouts of the tests. They bobbled a couple of questions, but they were supposed to bobble them. I think they’re clean on this one.”

  “But a dangerous group.”

  “Oh, yes. They’re mostly ignorant and crude and loud. They’re good in the woods. They hate anyone who isn’t white. We know they’ve tossed some bombs and set some fires and killed at least two people: a Mexican and a black. But we can’t prove it. That isn’t our job anyway. And yes, they are dangerous.”

  “How about the local police and sheriffs department?”

  “They were kept in the dark about Jimmy’s true employer, naturally. At that time, we didn’t know if the Bureau was going to squall about us working domestic.”

  The agent fell silent and Matt waited, knowing there was more. He walked to the ever-present coffeepot and poured himself a cup. “You have something on your mind. Something that I don’t think you’ve told the boys back at Langley,” he ventured.

  “You’re right about that.” The man sighed and shook his head. “I came in back in ’48—just after the Agency was formed. I’ve worked a lot of desks, and I’ve seen some shitstorms in my time. But this operation raises the hair on the back of my neck and gives me goosebumps. There is now, and has been for a long time, something . . . well, unnatural going on in the primitive area of Idaho. I got the same feeling when I looked inside that hangar down in Arizona and saw that spaceship that landed here on earth. That was back in, oh, ’59 or ’60, I believe. Just a couple of days before that big bastard blew up. We never could get inside that damn thing. I wish we could have—in a way, I do.”

  Matt knew better than to inquire further about the spaceship. He knew now that this old agent, code-named Swallow, had things in his head a science-fiction writer would gladly give his or her soul to learn.

  “You believe in the supernatural?” Matt asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ll tell you what I do believe in: I believe in the unnatural.” He shook his head. “Husky, I don’t think that the cause of what’s happening in the wilderness area is something alien to earth. I think it’s—they—are human or subhuman beings that have lived in that area for a long, long time. A tribe of beings . . .”

  The old agent paused, seeing the look of incredulity passing over Matt’s face.

  Swallow smiled. “Yeah. I know, Husky. I know. It sounds like I’ve been smoking funny cigarettes. I don’t even smoke regular cigarettes anymore. Hear me out: I think these beings are so far removed from the twentieth century they’ve never seen electric lights or television or experienced anything modern. They probably think airplanes are gigantic birds of prey and hide at the sound of one. Another guess is that they’ve been inbreeding for generations and are borderline cretins.”

  Matt leaned back in his chair. Maybe Swallow had something. It was certainly worth hearing him out. Matt also believed that this theory was not something new to the man, that he’d been working on this for years.

  “I’m from Idaho,” Swallow continued. “And I can tell you that a lot of that region has never been thoroughly explored. It’s wild, Husky. And dangerous. As far as people disappearing in there . . . hell, that’s been going on since I was a boy, and even further back than that.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But why hasn’t more press been given to it?”

  “So three or four old trappers or hunters or recluses who don’t come into any town more than twice a year disappear. Who cares? Odds are that most people would just think they died of old age or cut their foot off and bled to death. They have no family. No one really knows for su
re where they live. No one cares. A couple of tourists a year go in and don’t come out . . . that’s not news, man. That happens all over the United States—every day. Husky, we’re talking about thousands of square miles of wilderness area—wild rivers and deep timber and rattlesnakes and grizzly and puma. So five people a year vanish in there. Taking into account the transients and hitchers and so forth, I’d say the number is five times that. Maybe more. Let’s say it’s twenty-five a year. I can prove that it’s been going on for more than a hundred years. Husky, that’s at least twenty-five hundred people who’ve just vanished from the face of the earth.”

  “Twenty-five hundred?”

  “Over the years, yes. And that’s the low end, I believe. I don’t find it hard to comprehend at all. Man, an outsider can walk five hundred yards off the trail and be hopelessly lost in some areas. You’ve spent a lot of time in the jungles; you know what I mean. Wait until you see that country.”

  Matt nodded, waiting in silence, knowing there was more.

  “I think civilization is closing in on them, Husky. These . . . well, let’s call them people until proven otherwise, are panicked. More and more tourists are coming into their area for a week or two; more and more airstrips are being built. Their way of life is being threatened. I’m not defending them; not at all. They’re dangerous.”

  “Why haven’t the members of the CWA been attacked?”

  “Too many of them. The Unseen know they have guns, and they never travel in the woods alone. I think they prey on the unarmed, the campers and so forth. I think they lure them into the deep timber, and when they’re lost, then they make their final attack.”

  “Why are they harassing the camps then, letting a lot of people leave physically unharmed?”

  “To frighten people away. But it isn’t working; more and more people just keep coming in. They’ve become desperate.”