Slumped in her bus seat, Elsa MacIntire was exhausted. She came once every other month to the tiny gambling town on the Idaho — Nevada border. On the run home she was always five hundred dollars poorer, she always smelled like an old ashtray, and her right arm always pumped pain into the rest of her. She loved it. At seventy-three years of age, Elsa figured she had done everything worth doing, had had all the fun allowed a person in one life, and these coach trips to Jackpot were an extra she allowed herself, and she would continue to make them as long as her right arm could yank the handle. She didn't mind the money she lost each trip, because the smidgen of character her trollop of a daughter possessed would not be improved in any way by inheriting her money.
The bus was filled with elderly Missoula women. They had an informal club, with its nexus the bus trip to and from their Montana homes. On the way to Jackpot they laughed and told stories and gossiped. On the way back they were quiet, utterly worn out, having stayed awake the entire night to pull the arms. Elsa napped on and off, but she tried to remain awake as the bus passed through the lovely Big Wood River Valley, from Ketchum on north over the Galena Pass. The views of mountains and the river refreshed her, made her feel as if she had taken a bath.
She was hungry, having had no time to eat while playing the slots. She always packed four sandwiches, saving two for the road home. She pulled a roast beef sandwich from her large handbag and unwrapped it. The bus unexpectedly began to slow. She raised herself to her full height in the seat to peer forward over the horizon of blue-gray hair. There was nothing to be seen, so Elsa bit into her sandwich.
The door hissed and a German shepherd climbed into the bus. Behind the dog was a large man wearing a black windbreaker with "FBI" imprinted on its front. A second FBI agent, this one carrying a rifle, followed them up the stairs into the bus. Elsa MacIntire didn't know a rifle from a shotgun, and certainly didn't know that the FBI agent's weapon was a Valmet assault rifle.
The agent spoke for a few seconds with the driver, then announced to the passengers, "The FBI will be conducting a search of this vehicle, looking for a fugitive. The dog will be searching by scent."
One of Elsa's friends shouted, "How's the dog know what the fugitive smells like?"
The handler replied, "We've got a few of his shirts. Found them in his hotel room. It's faster for the dog to vet all of you than for us looking at each ID and face."
"Especially our old wrinkled faces," a passenger cracked.
The agent smiled at the joke. The German shepherd slowly led him down the narrow aisle. The dog's head methodically turned left and right, sniffing at sleeves and dresses and purses. A few of the ladies petted its tan and black flanks as it passed. The German shepherd seemed happy in its work.
When the dog reached Elsa MacIntire, she asked, "Does he like roast beef?"
The FBI agent grinned again. "He's been trained not to eat while he's on duty. And he won't take food from strangers."
Elsa replied, "There's not a dog alive who'll turn down roast beef."
The agent's voice was condescendingly polite. "Go ahead and try. His name is Dooley. He won't even sniff at it."
She opened her sandwich and pulled out the roast beef, three palm-sized slices of Grade A with no fat at the edges. Dooley's ears lifted, and he squared his grand head fully to the old lady. The agent laughed confidently.
"Here you go, poochie." Elsa held out the meat.
The dog instantly grabbed the meat with its teeth, but carefully so as not to catch Elsa's fingers in its gleaming white fangs. Dooley ecstatically gulped the beef down and leaned forward on the leash for more.
Elsa asked sweetly, "Might he like my other sandwich, too?"
The agent growled, "Goddamn worthless cur." He yanked on the leash. "Get back to work, Dooley."
The dog began his sniffing again, looking back over its shoulder several times at Elsa. The girls laughed and laughed. When the search was done, the dog handler exited the bus, the back of his neck still red as paint.
Six miles northwest of the bus, high in the Sawtooths, Glen Reeves and Bob Valiquette hiked along a trail toward the base of Mount Ash where they were going to climb a crag known as Ben's Throne, a 5.11 bolted, four-pitch climb that would take them all day and would leave them twitching and stumbling and delighted as they returned at sunset to their car parked on a logging road below.
Reeves and Valiquette were laden with ropes, harnesses, cams, holds, chalk bags, and lunch. They were bringing many runners rather than quickdraws for the crux pitch. A tough semi-hanging belay was near the Throne's roof. Stunning views awaited them on top.
They climbed the steep hill of loose stones at the base of the crag, then slipped off their packs to ready themselves for the assault. They donned their climbing slippers and harnesses, then hung their gear on the belts' fixed racking loops. Their climb — the vertical pocked and cracked five-hundred-foot-high face — was two-thirds up Ash Mountain. Below them was a deep valley falling away to a narrow line of aspen at the valley's seam. Then the terrain rose again to ragged granite ridges two miles across from them.
Valiquette dusted his hands with chalk. "Know how I know I'm getting old, Glen?"
"New wrinkles around your eyes?"
"That, too. But mostly it's that I increasingly prefer the safety of a bolt at my feet."
Reeves rechecked his harness buckles. "What's the farthest you've ever fallen?"
"You were there. Seventy feet."
"That's right, on Mount Borah. You fell so far I couldn't see you." Reeves laughed. "I couldn't tell if you'd tumbled into the dihedral to our right or had simply fallen free."
Valiquette was going to take the lead, and Reeves would be second. Just as Valiquette reached for his first hold and slipped his rubber-covered foot into a crack, a deep fluttering sound poured into the valley, an extraordinarily foreign noise.
Both climbers instinctively ducked. Any strange noise was at first thought to be something falling toward them. A fist-sized rock would sound like a man screaming as it rocketed past them to the floor. But nothing fell.
An ugly metallic nose edged around the face's vertical horizon, a frightening piece of brown machinery suspended in the fine air.
"A helicopter!" Valiquette exclaimed. "What the hell is it doing so close?"
"Bastard," Reeves said, prepared to ignore it. "Some rich Californians looking for vacation property. A Ketchum realtor probably hired the helicopter to impress them. They do it all the time. Let's go."
Valiquette turned to face the copter. "That's no charter helicopter. Take a look."
The machine closed on the climbers, nearer and nearer, blowing up dust from the scree.
"You were in the army," Valiquette said nervously. "What is that?"
Reeves licked his lips. "It's a Huey Cobra."
"Jesus, what're those tubes with the openings?"
"It's a 40-millimeter grenade launcher with 300 bombs."
"And the thing under its snout?"
"A 30-millimeter chain gun that fires something like a million rounds a minute."
"All for us?" Valiquette asked.
The helicopter drifted closer, its blades beating the air and the turbine engines howling. Sun reflected off the windshield, hiding the pilot. A loudspeaker attached to its nose crackled out with "Please turn fully to the helicopter and present your driver's licenses or other identification."