After zipping up their suits, they checked to ensure their small cargo packs were watertight before breaking camp, stepping into their canoes and heading into a chain of small islands in a northerly course.
The Thousand Islands, whose number is estimated at eighteen hundred large and small islands, are eroded Ice Age mountaintops. Part of a chain of metamorphic rock linking the Canadian Shield with the Adirondack Mountains. By Unger’s calculations, they still had a few miles to cover using a route that snaked along a necklace of small islands, many of them privately owned. In the distance, he saw the red beacons atop the spires of the bridges connecting the United States and Canada.
They traveled silently and unseen in the night, hugging islands wherever possible, ready at the first hint of trouble to vanish into a cove or inlet, or behind a jutting rock formation or trees that arched into the water. They heeded the approaching rumble of every motor, scrutinizing every vessel with their nightscopes, knowing they could easily encounter pleasure boaters, or an enemy.
The area was patrolled by the Ontario Provincial Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canadian and U.S. Coast Guards, the U.S. Border Patrol, New York State Police and New York State Park Police. Rounding an island dense with pine, Felk was satisfied that they’d come upon the invisible point in the river that was the border. But his relief was short-lived when he heard three soft knocks of Rytter’s paddle against the second canoe.
The alert for trouble.
On cue, the low distant rumble of a large inboard echoed around the island. Alarm rolled through Felk. The island nearest to them offered nothing but a rising wall of flat, wind-smoothed rock. The rumbling was getting closer. Nowhere to hide. Not a cove, inlet or tree. Nothing. The men paddled furiously to round the rock face, hoping some form of cover would present itself. Casting a backward glance, Felk saw the beam of a searchlight rake the surface.
Whatever was approaching was gaining.
Both canoes moved swiftly and silently, rounding the island until a good-size private dock reached out like a helping hand. With military precision the men guided their canoes to the dock. A large speedboat and two small boats were moored to it. Quickly, they tied their canoes to the dock, grabbed their packs and slipped into the water.
Keeping their eyes above the waterline, they hid behind the dock’s pilings. Felk manipulated the nightscope as a boat emerged. He cursed under his breath after glimpsing the word POLICE on the side. The boat’s powerful light swept across the dock and all the boats tied to it.
The engine stopped. The boat glided to the dock without a sound but for the gentle lapping of its wake.
“See.” A woman’s voice came from the boat. “He did it again.”
“Know what I think, Alice,” the man at the wheel of the police boat said. “I think you’re just looking for a reason to visit this guy again. I think you got a thing for him.”
“Bring me closer. He keeps forgetting to moor his boat properly. It drifts out into the shipping lanes. It’s not safe, Don. I’ll tie it down.”
The dock moaned as Alice hopped onto it.
From the water, Felk and the others watched through the planks as she moved strobelike above them in the light’s beam. Felk reached down to his calf until his hand found the handle for a ten-inch hunting knife. He would seize her ankle and bring her down into the water with him. He indicated for Unger to be ready and Unger gave a slight nod. Felk signaled for Rytter and Northcutt to pass under the police boat to take care of her partner.
They vanished in the black water.
Felk caught the patch for New York State Police as Alice crouched to secure the mooring line of the speedboat. He saw the butt of her pistol sticking from her holster.
“Okay, Don, done.”
“Sure you don’t want to go in, bat your eyes and tell him you done good, Alice?”
“Knock it off, wise guy. Hold on. What’s with these canoes? I don’t remember him having canoes.”
“Maybe he’s got company, Alice.”
“What the heck?” She walked along the dock, then halted directly above Felk. “Is there something down there? Don, bring the light over here.”
12
Thousand Islands / Somewhere in Ontario, Canada
Felk swallowed air and submerged.
Underwater, gliding along the bottom, he swam from the dock. Behind him he saw fingers of light spearing the dark water where he’d been. Using one of the moored boats for cover he surfaced without making a sound.
His hand tightened on his knife.
He could see the female trooper, crouched on the dock, working her flashlight, trying to determine what she’d seen.
“Alice, come on,” her partner called from the boat.
“I saw something down there.”
“Likely a fish.”
Felk heard a muted radio dispatch.
“We have to go, Alice.”
Suddenly the radio burst with a repeated police call for immediate assistance, near Alexandria Bay.
“Alice, we’ve got to move, now!”
The patrol boat’s motor grumbled to life and she leaped aboard.
After waiting several minutes for its wake to subside, Felk and the others climbed back into their canoes. They drove hard toward their destination, eventually coming to a large marsh and a welcoming symphony of croaking and chirping. The smell of fish and mud enveloped them as they set to work plunging knives into the canoes, weighting them down with rocks, sinking them and covering the area with cattails.
Once they’d moved to dry land, they changed into jeans, flannel shirts, woolen socks and hiking boots. They buried their wet suits and the things they no longer needed. Rytter clipped a digital police scanner to his belt, tuned it to frequencies for the Ontario Provincial Police and slipped on a headset. Northcutt monitored news reports on radio stations. Unger confirmed their location and their next destination point with his GPS unit.
“That way.” He pointed to a forest that bordered empty, rolling farmland. It looked like easygoing. “We’ve got a hike.”
As the group climbed a slope, Felk turned and looked back across the expanse of the river and the islands that straddled two nations. They’d fled the United States and entered Canada safely with millions in stolen cash strapped to their backs. This phase of the operation was behind them. Time to advance to the next.
Moving fast, the men soon entered a dense forest. It was the gateway to a rest stop along the Thousand Islands Parkway, a scenic two-lane highway meandering along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. Parked vehicles dotted the lot, an RV with Alberta plates, a Porsche from Quebec, a couple of sedans from Ontario.
There it is.
Felk spotted a white Grand Cherokee bearing an Ontario plate with the numeric sequence 787. Leading them to it, he went to the driver’s door. The window lowered to a man in his late twenties, alone behind the wheel.
“Waiting long, Dillon?” Felk said.
“Not long at all.”
“Good, let’s roll.”
“Outstanding work, sir.” The driver gave Felk a half smile, pressed a button and the Jeep’s rear liftgate opened. After setting their gear in the rear storage area, they got in. The Cherokee wheeled quietly from the rest stop and west along the parkway.
Felk was in the front passenger seat next to Dillon, who was in charge of support for the unit in Canada. This operation had been planned, drilled and reviewed with a range of contingencies. Felk took nothing for granted, but savored a moment of relief, exhaling as he looked at Dillon in the glow of the dash lights.
Lee Mitchell Dillon. Age: twenty-six. Born in Scarborough, a Toronto suburb. His father was a doctor and his Montreal-born mother was a nurse. Dillon was fluent in French, Spanish and English. He held a master’s degree in science from McGill University. He had seen combat in Afghanistan as a member of the Canadian Forces Joint Task Force 2, the JTF2, before he quit to work as a private operator with Felk.