The ledge terminated at a steam track leading along the mountain in a gentle decline, before reaching the lush deciduous forest at the base of the hills.
Sam and Ben continued in silence.
At the tree line, Ben stopped and faced Sam. “We should light a fire and get warm.”
“Agreed,” Sam replied. “I saw a log house down along the river. We should head there.”
“It might be occupied.”
Sam shrugged. “Even better. They might already have a fire going.”
Ben’s eyes narrowed. “They might tell someone about two strangers who wandered out of the woods…”
“It’s a risk we’re going to have to take.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Sam said, “Do you have a lighter?”
“No.”
“Then, I’m sure. We’ll freeze to death before long if we don’t start a fire and get warm and dry.”
“All right. Let’s go check out the log house.”
Twenty minutes later and after a brisk walk, Sam and Ben reached the bank of the Shenandoah River, upon which a large wooden building had been constructed. The place was a vacation camp, servicing adventurous youth.
A wire fence ran around the entire place and the gate at the front was secured with a heavy steel chain and padlock.
“It appears we’ve arrived too early in the season for the camp to be open,” Sam said, picking up a small river stone.
“It would appear so,” Ben agreed. His eyes drifted toward the stone Sam was carrying and Ben’s lips curled into a wry grin. “What are you hoping to achieve with that?”
“We need to break the lock. Unless you want to wait around until summer camp starts?”
“You won’t have a hope in hell of doing so with that. A padlock like that will take any amount of hammering you’re prepared to give it with that stone.”
Sam leveled his eyes on Ben. “You got a better idea?”
Ben removed two small metal picks from his wallet. “We could just open the lock.”
“You’re kidding.”
Ben ignored his skepticism, silently inserting the twin picks in the keyhole of the padlock and working them with the delicate and fastidious movements of an expert locksmith or a thief. It took him exactly twenty-two seconds to unlock it.
“Ta dah! What do you think of that?”
Sam looked him directly in the eye and said, “I’d like to know how a lawyer with the State Department became so proficient at breaking and entering.”
Ben grinned. “Technically, it’s just entering. The lock will still work once we leave.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The campfire was burning within ten minutes.
Sam cupped his hands, warming them by the delectable radiant heat. Having borrowed some blankets from the camp supplies, he and Ben stripped from their wet clothes and placed them by the fire to dry.
He stared out the window.
Red and blue lights flickered across the moonlit water of the large river from the opposite bank of the river to the one that the summer camp was based. It was the second wave of fire trucks and emergency workers preparing to defend the small township that resided within the Shenandoah Valley.
Sam asked, “Any idea the name of that river?”
Ben nodded. “It’s called the Shenandoah and it runs a farther fifty-six miles south of here before reaching the Potomac at Harpers Ferry.”
“Could you be any more specific?”
Ben pointed palms skyward. “Hey, you asked, I give the answers.”
“Really?” Sam met his eye. “How could you be that certain?”
Ben removed his cell phone from a zipped pocket. “Because I checked a few minutes ago.”
Sam blurted out, “You still have your cell phone!”
Ben shrugged. “Yeah, why? Did you think I threw it out after we crashed? It’s coming in quite handy, you know.”
Sam snatched the cell phone out of Ben’s hands and threw it into the fire.
Ben grabbed the stoker and tried to retrieve his cell, but within seconds the fire had already done its irrevocable damage. “Hey! What the hell did you do that for?”
“We’re supposed to be dead! Killed in a helicopter crash nearly five miles from here…”
“Yeah, so?”
Sam sighed heavily. Perhaps intelligence wasn’t a genetic trait passed on to Ben. “So, don’t you think it might seem strange that a dead guy’s phone kept walking after being killed?”
Ben avoided Sam’s penetrating gaze, as his flashed with fear and shame. “What difference does it make to you?”
“I don’t want to get caught any more than you do.”
Ben asked, “You’re staying with me?”
“I sure am.”
“Why?” Ben met his eye with incredulity. “I don’t have the gun anymore. I lost it when I jumped free from the JetRanger. You’re free to go. I have no way to keep you prisoner anymore, so why stay?”
Sam set his jaw. “Because someone picked a fight with the wrong person.”
“They sure did,” Ben said, his voice filled with gravel and defiance. “But it’s not your fight.”
“Yeah, it is.” Sam grinned. “They made that abundantly clear when they tried to kill me in the process!”
Ben asked, “You’re really going to stay and help me?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“We might get killed.”
Sam shrugged. “Whatever’s going on here, I think it’s safe to say someone will always be trying to kill us unless we get to the bottom of this, and fix it once and for all.”
“That’s the real question. How do we fix it?” Ben said, “I mean, we can keep running, but at some stage if we want to finish it, we need to find out what’s really going on and why.”
“Agreed. You’re right. We can’t just keep running forever. First thing we need to do once we’re out of here is work out who or what they think you are. Once we do that, we might just find out who exactly wants you dead, and why.”
“And how that person is connected to the long reach of the Department of Defense.”
Sam rubbed his thawing hands together in front of the fire. “So far, we know this has something to do with what your parents did — or someone thinks they did — back in Bolshoi Zayatsky. We know that you were born lucky, with the good fortune to rarely if ever, get sick, and never seriously unwell. You look young for your age and have naturally fast reflexes that would have put you in line to play sports at a professional level. Anything I missed?”
“Yeah, I have purple eyes.”
“Right. Purple eyes. As you pointed out, so did Elizabeth Taylor and a couple thousand other people throughout history, but it is an extremely rare genetic anomaly — and Special Agent Devereaux certainly seemed to have honed into that detail. It’s not a lot to go off.”
“Barely anything at all.”
Sam said, “We can search for terrorist events or any unique event for that matter in Bolshoi Zayatsky, particularly around the mid to late seventies. It’s a stretch, but even a simple Google search might point us in the right direction if there was a terrorist organization there at the time.”
Ben’s lips flattened into a hard line. “There wasn’t.”
“You’re sure?”
“Hundred percent.”
“How?”
“I already had a look.”
“But the first you’d heard of Bolshoi Zayatsky was when you were being interrogated at the Pentagon.”
“I checked on my smartphone — before you threw it in the fire.”
“Right.” Sam nodded, a slight grin forming on his lips. “What about your parents. Do you know where they were buried? It might sound a little ghoulish, but the only definitive way to determine the truth about your genetic lineage might be to exhume their bodies and crossmatch their DNA with yours.”