Page 15 of The Fourth Option
“Looks that way,” Walker replied from behind the wheel. “What’d you think, Lenny?”
“A lot of potential here,” the case officer responded.
“So, you made the deal?” Staub asked.
“Yes,” Fisk answered. “As long as Mongoose delivers, he’ll get a special visa to come to the U.S. After a year of what amounts to probation he’ll become an American citizen, but…”
“But what?” Walker asked.
“He has to deliver.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Quinault Rain Forest, Washington State
Present Day
AS THE RAINhammered down and the ocean thundered, Walker rolled up the awning, folded his chair, and packed up camp. Paladin had been fed and Walker had roasted three rockfish he had killed spearfishing that morning in the Queets River estuary.
Next, he collected Paladin’s fetch toys, which he had arranged around the campsite so the dog would have something to do while waiting for the authorities to arrive. His last packing task was to lower the pop-up tent atop the VW and secure his tan Bison cooler to the cargo shelf extending from the rear bumper. When he was finished, the van rumbled to life with that familiar whistle that afflicts old Volkswagens. Walker put it in gear, twisting the parking brake handle to the right and pushed it forward. He engaged the windshield wipers and slowly pulled from his campsite onto a dirt logging road.
Why am I still alive?
A shaft of light filtered through a break in the clouds as Walker pulled into Tommy Hawkeye’s driveway five miles away. A U.S. Marine Corps flag marked Tommy’s single-story rambler on the outskirts of town. Walker had met Hawkeye, a Vietnam veteran, on a hunting trip in eastern Washington State. The old man had noticed Walker’s trad bow. Hawkeye appreciated the nod to heritage and tradition. Walker had asked him about the faded USMC tattoo on his right forearm. Through a federation of Indian tribes, Hawkeye had led Walker onto the hunting lands of the Yakama Nation. Together, they had taken a bull elk using traditional bows.
“You leaving?” Tommy asked through the screen door, as a reality show about finding love blared from an older-model television. Walkercould see Tommy’s wife in an easy chair, her hands busily crocheting. The couple was well into their seventies.
“It’s time,” Walker said. He was in jeans, a flannel, his Iron Ranger boots, and wearing a black hat now faded to gray with a barely visible symbol on the front, that of an eagle over a tommy gun and what appeared to be an anchor.
Hawkeye looked at him through the screen. He reminded Walker of a priest peering through a confessional.
Tommy pushed the screen door open. It creaked on its hinges.
“Did you get what you came for?” the Vietnam veteran asked, nodding past Walker at the forest.
“No luck on a blacktail, if that’s what you mean. I did some spearfishing, ate a lot of rockfish, went for a beach dive, and collected clams.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Walker remained quiet.
“Where you off to now? Home?” Hawkeye asked, his face lined and creased with the vestiges of time.
“For a bit.”
“And then?”
Walker paused.
“Then I’ll be heading south.”
The van was not designed with speed or aerodynamics in mind.
His first two hundred miles brought him into the majestic Cascade Mountains. On the eastern side, he decided that the van’s overworked engine needed a break, so he stopped in the town of Cle Elum for fresh groceries.
After his resupply, he drove along Highway 97 toward the Teanaway River Valley, where, under a fading sky, he set up camp in a grove of mixed cottonwoods, maples, firs, and pines. The river, still swollen from melting snow, hissed and gurgled.
Natural rhythms.
