I sauntered along, resisting a powerful urge to fall out of character by hurrying. I wanted a place where I could cut the fence without being watched, despite the fact that the ground was scorched for about fifty meters on each side of the fence. I had to accept that; what I wanted was a stretch shielded along the scorched band by trees and bush about like Normandy hedgerows.
Minnesota does not have Normandy hedgerows.
Northern Minnesota almost does not have trees-or at least not in the stretch of the border I was covering. I was ey~ing a piece of fence, trying to tell myself that a wide reach of open space with no one in sight was just as good as being shielded, when a police APV came into sight cruising slowly west along the fence. I gave them a friendly wave and kept on trudging east.
They circled, came back, and squatted, about fifty meters from me. I turned and went toward them, reaching the car as the best boy got out, followed by his driver, and I saw by their uniforms (hell, damn, and spit) that they were not Minnesota Provincial Police but Imperials.
Best boy says to me, "What are you doing here this early?"
His tone was aggressive; I answered it to match: "I was working, until you interrupted me."
"The hell you say. You don't go on until eight hundred hours."
I answered, "Get the news, big man. That was last week. Two shifts now. First shift comes on at 'can.' Shifts change at noon; second shift goes off at 'can't.'
"Nobody notified us."
"You want the Superintendent to write you a personal letter? Give me your badge number and I'll tell him you said so."
"None of your lip, slitch. I'd as lief run you in as look at you."
"Go ahead. A day's rest for me... while you explain why this stretch was not maintained."
"Stow it." They started climbing back in.
"Either of you turkeys got a toke?" I asked.
The driver said, "We don't hit on duty and neither should you."
"Brown nose," I answered politely.
The driver started to reply, but best boy slammed the lid, and they took off-right over my head, forcing me to duck. I don't think they liked me.
I went back to the fence while concluding that Hannah Jensen was not a lady. She had no excuse to be rude to the Greenies merely because they are unspeakably vile. Even black widows, body lice, and hyenas have to make a living although I could never see why.
I decided that my plans were not well thought out; Boss would not approve. Cutting that fence in broad daylight was too conspidu
ous. Better to pick a spot, then hide until dark, and return to it. Or spend the night on plan number two: Check the possibility of going under the fence at Roseau River.
I wasn't too crazy about plan number two. The lower reach of the Mississippi had been warm enough but these northern streams would chill a corpse. I had checked the Pembina late the day before yesterday. Brrr! A last resort.
So pick a piece of fence, decide exactly how you are going to cut it, then try to find some trees, wrap yourself in some nice warm leaves, and wait for dark. Rehearse every move, so that you go through that fence like pee through snow.
At this point I topped a slight rise and came face to face with another maintenance man, male type.
When in doubt, attack. "What the hell are you doing, buster?"
"I'm walking the fence. My stretch of the fence. What are you doing, sister?"
"Oh, fer Gossake! I'm not your sister. And you are either on the wrong stretch or the wrong shift." I noticed with unease that the well-dressed fence-walker carries a walkie-talkie. Well, I had not been one very long; I was still learning the job.
"Like hell," he answered. "Under the new schedule I come on at dawn; I'm relieved at noon. Maybe by you, huh? Yeah, that's probably it; you read the roster wrong. I had better call in."
"You do that," I said, moving toward him.
He hesitated. "On the other hand, maybe-" I did not hesitate.
I do not kill everyone with whom I have a difference of opinion and I would not want anyone reading this memoir to think that I do. I didn't even hurt him other than temporarily and not much; I merely put him to sleep rather suddenly.
From a roll on my belt I taped his hands behind him and fastened his ankles together. If! had had some wide surgical tape, I would have gagged him but all I had was two-centimeter mechanics friction tape, and I was far more anxious to cut fence than I was to keep him horn yelling for help to the coyotes and jackrabbits. I got busy.
A torch good enough to repair fence will cut fence-but my torch was a bit better than that; I had bought it out the back door of Fargo's leading fence (the other sort offence). It was a steel-cutting laser
rather than the oxyacetylene job it appeared to be. In moments I had a hole big enough, barely, for Friday. I stooped to leave.
"Hey, take me with you!"
I hesitated. He was saying insistently that he was just as anxious to get away from the goddam Greenies as I was-untie me!
What I did next is matched in folly only by Lot's wife. I grabbed the knife at my belt, cut the tape at his wrists, at his ankles-dived through my scuttle hole and started to run. I didn't wait to see whether or not he came through, too.
There was one of the rare stands of trees about half a kilometer north of me; I headed that way at a new record speed. That heavy tool belt impeded me; I shucked it without slowing. A moment later I brushed that cap off and "Hannah Jensen" went back to NeverNever Land, as torch, gloves, and repair links were still in the Imperium. All that was left of her was a wallet I would jettison when I was not so busy.
I got well inside the trees, then circled back and found a place to observe my back track, as I was uncomfortably aware that I was wearing a tail.
My late prisoner was about halfway from fence to trees... and two APVs were homing in on him. The one closer to him carried the big Maple Leaf of British Canada. I could not see the insigne on the other as it was headed right toward me, coming across the international boundary.
The BritCan police car grounded; my quondam guest appeared to surrender without argument-reasonable, as the APV from the Imperium grounded immediately thereafter, at least two hundred meters inside British Canada-and, yes, Imperial Police-possibly the car that had stopped me.
I'm not an international lawyer but I'm sure wars have started over less. I held my breath, extended my hearing to the limit, and listened.
There were no international lawyers among those two sorts of police, either; the argument was noisy but not coherent. The Imperials were demanding surrender of the refugee under the doctrine of hot pursuit and a Mountie corporal was maintaining (correctly, it seemed to me) that hot pursuit applied only to criminals caught in
the act, but the only "crime" here was entering British Canada not at a port of entry, a matter not lying in the jurisdiction of the Imperial Police. "Now get that crock off BritCan soil!"
The Greenie gave a monosyllabic nonresponse that annoyed the Mountie. He slammed the lid and spoke through his loudspeaker: "I arrest you for violation of British Canadian air and ground space. Get out and surrender. Do not attempt to take off."
Whereupon the Greenies' car took off at once and retreated across the international border-then went elsewhere. Which may have been exactly what the Mountie intended to accomplish. I held very still, as now they would have time to give their attention to me.
I assume conclusively that my companion escapee now paid me for his ticket through the fence: No search was made for me. Certainly he saw me run into the woods. But it is unlikely that the RCMP saw me. No doubt cutting the fence sounded alarms in police stations on both sides of the border; this would be a routine installation for electronics people-even to pinpointing the break- and so I had assumed in planning to do it fast.