Survival Mission - Chapter 2

"Calm down,” she spoke quietly to herself. She was overreacting.

The other hiker was approximately five hundred yards ahead, and five hundred feet above her. She raised her arm to offer a quick wave—hikers were a friendly bunch—but before she could, he raised his hands to his face. Were those binoculars? Did he think she was a grizzly or other creature?

It was a “he,” she assumed, because his frame appeared masculine. But from this distance she could be wrong. The hiker was dressed in all black, which contrasted with the golden deciduous leaves that still hung on the birch trees behind him. Icy premonition skipped across her nape and she froze. And blinked.

The hiker lowered his binoculars, turned and hiked out of sight before she had time to process her observation.

The way the hiker had appeared and disappeared in an instant wasn’t unlike the “Sasquatch” figure in the grainy videos of decades ago, the ones that had haunted her nightmares as a kid.

Was the stranger someone she should be worried about?

The ground began to shake beneath her a split second before she was passed by a small herd of deer, moving so swiftly that the air disturbance blew tendrils of her long, tied-back hair into her eyes. Their rumps flashed white and she let out a laugh.

This was what taking a break from Cascade Confidential—the highly acclaimed security firm she worked at as a case researcher—was all about. Valerie sought a total immersion into nature. Forest bathing, if you will. The hiker had been bird-watching, and she’d probably been in the same area as whatever eagle or hawk they’d spied.

The shadow of the mountain loomed longer, prompting her to set off again, this time at a quicker pace along the worn trail, now covered in oak, maple and aspen leaves. Getting camp set before sunset was her preference. Especially with Caroline’s worried tone echoing in her mind.

***

Trevor Grist’s stomach grumbled as he hiked toward the camp he was assigned to maintain for the foreseeable future. In anticipation of an expected major narcotics delivery, he’d been sent by his immediate supervisor at the Seattle Drug Enforcement Administration, DEA, Seattle, to “collect and report any activity you deem to be related to the anticipated illegal operation.” Which meant he was to figure out whatever he could about the mules trafficking drugs via the many miles of hiking trails in the Northern Cascades. Working alongside FBI and local law enforcement-LE-entities, Seattle DEA had recently discovered that the flow of fentanyl across the Pacific Northwest had increased despite numerous arrests and takedowns of smaller trafficking rings. All intelligence pointed to as many as dozens of human mules trekking through the wilderness to evade LE detection.

Until now. The Loon Lake campsite was believed to be the central hub for the traffickers to meet up for this newest drop.

When he’d spotted the first hiker—a lone woman with a long strawberry blond ponytail—he’d thought maybe she was an anomaly, an innocent who’d picked the wrong time to hike. But by the way she’d frozen on the spot, and how three groups of additional hikers quickly followed her, he knew she was part of the trafficking ring. The hikers he’d so far spotted quadrupled the average number of hikers for this spot in September. He’d studied the trails and reconned the area three times in the last month in preparation for this weekend.

Trevor was ready to get the job done.

His footsteps, solid and dull on the leaf-strewn path, made crunching sounds as the trail ended and he found himself on the graveled lakeshore. Pristine aqua water reflected the sun’s rays as it dipped toward the far horizon that was dotted with undulating mountains. With no other campers in sight, it was almost inconceivable that he was laying a trap, a web, to catch these bastards with.

“Come into my web, losers.”