‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ Ethan shrugged as he drove slowly through the town while consulting a local map for the correct logging trail off the main road that led to Clearwater. ‘But he would have been useful here. Most of these trails are the only access points to the deep forests, and he could have landed us on one of the lakes instead.’
The logging trail was just south of Piedmont, a dusty track that switched back off the main road and plunged deep into the shadowy forests. Ethan had wanted to reach the site on or around sunrise, both to avoid the traffic around major towns and also to limit the possibility of ambush out in the wilderness. Neither he nor Lopez had any doubts about the determination or ruthlessness of the assets assigned to Majestic Twelve after their experiences in Peru and Argentina.
The logging track wound for miles through dense forest, the tops of the trees rising high above the vehicle as it crunched along the gravel track. At times it simply wasn’t possible to see more than a few feet around the car, rare openings in the forest through which Ethan could see the occasional, unnaturally dead straight path of fire breaks between the trees.
It took almost an hour to traverse the wild terrain before they finally reached a deep valley. Below them was the glassy surface of a slow — moving river winding between the soaring hills.
‘There’s a bridge ahead,’ Lopez said as she pointed out the windscreen.
Ethan looked ahead and saw a white painted bridge, constructed from wood and with the paint peeling as though it had been left untended for many years. It crossed from the wooded hillside on the opposite side of the river, and as the car turned the corner on the track he could see the road straightening as it led into Clearwater.
Ethan reached down instinctively beneath his left arm and felt the reassuring cold metal of his pistol. One of the few advantages of them once again working for the Defense Intelligence Agency was a licence to carry weapons as part of official government business. Although they were not allowed to officially associate themselves with the agency itself, presenting the permits to any law enforcement officer would result in a computer search clearing them with a “right to carry”. Satisfied that his weapon was close by and ready, Ethan continued to drive toward the small town. The car crept to a halt on the dusty gravel just as the sun was rising behind them in the east, casting a warm golden glow across distant clapperboard houses, church, and rows of old shops that stretched away down Main Street and turned right into the woods.
Ethan pulled into a lay — by in the forest and killed the engine as he glanced at Lopez.
‘This is it,’ he said simply as he opened his door. ‘Let’s see what we can find.’
‘The town’s that way,’ she replied, pointing ahead.
‘Indeed, and we don’t know what’s waiting for us in there, so we’ll take a hike and watch for a while from an elevated position. Infantry tactics, one — oh — one.’
Lopez got out of the car. ‘I think you’ve already forgotten who’s in charge here.’
‘It’s not about authority, it’s about common sense. Unless you’re going to just head in there on your own?’
Lopez snorted something in response but followed Ethan out of the car and up a nearby hillside, deep forest concealing their path as they climbed up and around to a position that overlooked the town. Ethan located a suitable spot and they settled down to watch.
‘Is this really necessary?’
Lopez’s voice was a whisper as she lay in the deep, damp grass overlooking the small town. Below them stretched the silvery thread of the river that wound its way between the deep valleys and beneath the rickety old bridge that crossed the river into the small town.
Ethan lay beside Lopez, a pair of binoculars in his hands as he surveyed the town. The sun was not yet fully up, the horizon glowing and tendrils of mist draped like fallen angel’s wings across the forests around them.
‘We don’t know what we’ll find down there,’ Ethan said in a soft whisper as he swept the town once more with the binoculars. ‘I’m not about to walk into another trap like we did in Argentina.’
‘That was different. We already had people after us at that point, but nobody knows we’re here.’
‘As far as we know,’ Ethan cautioned as he watched the town.
Clearwater was barely a spot on a map, an old mining town that had been left behind by the rest of the world fifty years before. Logging and forestry work kept the town’s three hundred inhabitants in work, if three hundred people could be called a town at all. The fact that the state had not seen fit to pave the road that led into the town from the highway several miles away across the wilderness revealed how little the town had to offer the outside world.
Small town America was often seen as the quaint, grassroots heart of America, but the small towns were the first to go during economic crises. In his time Ethan had often driven long range across America, and more than once passed through the boarded — up remains of what had once been a thriving community, or witnessed the remains of modern houses and apartment complexes sitting alone far out in the wilderness, the funds for construction having dried up long ago. Both types of ghost town seemed like memorials to the past, the American dream gone bad.
‘My ass is wet.’
Ethan rolled his eyes as he looked across at Lopez. ‘It’s not like this is your first rodeo in the woods, Nicola.’
‘I certainly hope it’s my last,’ she shot back. ‘We came to check the town out up close, not sit on a hillside in the damp heather. Are we going down there or not because I’m not sitting up here for another hour waiting to freeze to death?!’
Ethan sighed and took one last look through the binoculars. ‘Fine, let’s go.’
The air this far out in the wilderness was scented with the odours of pine and cedar and possessed of a freshness Ethan rarely experienced in Chicago. It was also entirely silent, no sound of birdsong and only the whisper of the river passing by in glassy silence beneath the nearby bridge to accompany them as Ethan led the way into the town.
‘Looks like nobody’s been here for quite a while,’ Lopez observed as she looked at the various shops lining the right — hand side of Main Street.
Most of the windows were opaque with grime, once bright colors now faded and the wood peeled with age. Several of the roofs of the buildings had collapsed, many of their windows broken. Main Street ahead of them was littered with debris, and Ethan could already see that the church that dominated the town had probably not heard a service in decades.
‘Clearwater is not really mentioned any more on the census,’ Ethan said as he recalled the contents of the file that Doug Jarvis had handed to them. ‘According to official documents nobody has lived here for about forty years. Clearwater is one of countless ghost towns across the USA.’
‘It’s off the grid enough that nobody would notice if the place had vanished entirely,’ Lopez agreed. ‘Always makes me wonder who lived here and what happened to them?’
‘Especially now,’ Ethan said as he turned towards some of the shops lining the parade nearby.
A series of wooden steps lead up onto the parade, a simple fence across the front cut from trees many decades before and likely used to tie up horses in the days before vehicles. Ethan put a foot out and tested the first step, cautious of such old timbers collapsing beneath his weight, but he found it solid and firm beneath his touch. He climbed up onto the parade and looked into the windows of an old supply store, wiping the grime from the glass and peering inside. The interior was almost completely empty, stripped of any wares the owner of the shop might once have sold.
Ethan frowned thoughtfully, then stepped back from the window and looked at the line of shops. All of the properties were built in a similar style, well over a century old and with roofs that were tiled with different materials over the decades. The parade on which he stood was dusty, the paint long since scoured from the wood by years of rain and burning sunshine.