Granite and Dry Blood

  For a moment he wondered if Connie could follow him. But even in the dark, it was a long way around the lake and even further around the swamps at each end of the lake.

  Strangely, he was suddenly asleep right in the middle of some deep thinking about his problems.

  Once in the night he got up to pee. Sometime later, he felt his forehead being nuzzled by something. "Go away," he mumbled, and it did.

  He woke up long before dawn, for a few minutes. The forest was full of noises; branches snapping and splashes in the water. His senses perfectly alert, he drifted back to sleep a few minutes later.

  When he woke up, the sun was just peeking between spruce trees somewhere down the lake. The lake surface was shining, covered with swirling mist. A dampness hung over the forest, and he could see his breath.

  He felt like he'd been dropped from a plane a couple of times.

  "About time you woke up," a voice said.

  He jerked his head up, putting a dent in the cedar gunwale of his canoe. When he opened his eyes again, he saw Connie. She was sitting against a tree, wrapped in her sleeping bag.

  There was nothing he could say. He took a couple of energy bars from his pocket and handed one to her. She took it, peeled off the foil wrap, and ate it without comment.

  On the way back to the campsite across the lake, he paused in his paddling to ask, "around the west end?"

  She shook her head. "Swam across." She drew a large plastic bag from her jacket. "Put everything in there, inflated the bag, and pushed it across."

  "Cold water."

  "Damn cold."

  "You knew where I was."

  "Sound carries, and you hit damn near every rock on the lake. When the banging stopped, I assumed you went to shore." She yawned.

  The camp was in bright sunlight by the time Tony edged the canoe up to the shore. Connie followed him up the slope, carrying her sleeping bag.

  The tent was still standing, and the campfire was burning brightly. Beside it sat a short man dressed in camouflage colors. He was holding a long stick and roasting a piece of meat over the fire.

  Tony looked at him carefully. The man had a bloody shirt wrapped around one arm and one leg, and had a rifle with a big scope leaning against the tree beside him.

  "Uh," said Tony. Connie looked up. Her eyes widened a bit but she didn't say anything.

  "Can I help you?" Tony straightened his back, painfully.

  The man managed a smile. "Oh, I rather think so, old chap. I've come here to kill you, you know."

  "Why?" Tony blurted. It seemed a reasonable question. Not that much was reasonable at this point.

  "Oh, probably for the same reason as your friend over there." The tattered man inspected the meat on his stick, then nibbled a bit of it. It made a sizzling sound against his lips. He looked up at Connie. "Last saw you in Budapest, I think. Just what are you calling yourself these days?"

  "Connie," Connie answered, her eyes fixed on the man and a blank expression on her face.

  The man laughed for some reason. "I like that. You can call me Mike this time. Or maybe Mad Mike, the way I look now." He waved the stick over the fire. "Want some meat for breakfast?"

  There was a long silence while Tony tried to comprehend the whole thing. Connie sat down and warmed her hands by the fire.

  "Bear meat," Mad Mike said.

  "You killed a bear?" Tony was contemplating carrying out a normal conversation or going berserk and beating both of these maniacs to death with a canoe.

  "Self defense." Mad Mike chewed off another chunk. "This is the heart I'm eating, but there's another hundred pounds or so you can hack off, out behind the cedars." Mad Mike indicated the trees behind the campsite.

  Tony threw the paddle and his sleeping bag onto the ground near the tent, then stumbled towards the hills. Behind the first hemlocks was a pile of black fur. A hole had been cut into the bear carcass, and one paw was missing. Even in the cool weather a lot of flies had found the dead animal and were crawling around the eyes and mouth.

  Tony briefly contemplated a run up the hill and into the woods. It didn't seem like a good idea.

  Back at the fire, Connie was cooking a packaged breakfast in a skillet. Mad Mike was now roasting a bear paw over the flames. Stripped of its fur, the paw looked uncomfortably like a human hand with four-inch claws.

  Once again, the idea of going berserk appealed to Tony, but he fought it down again, sinking into a gloom. Connie served him an omelet on a plastic plate. Mad Mike pulled a bear finger loose, removed the claw, then added the finger to his plate.

  Tony tossed the finger into the lake for the crayfish, then ate the omelet. When finished, he got up, then went to Connie's pack and dug out the copy of his book that she'd brought.

  "I'm saving the claws," Mad Mike said. "Damn bear tried to kill me. So I ate its heart, and now I'm going to make a necklace of the paw that she swiped me with." He unwrapped the bloody cloths around his left arm and leg. Tony could see that several large cuts had been sewn together with what looked like strips of bark.

  "I was planning on waiting for you back there," Mike pointed towards the forest behind the campsite, but the bloody animal jumped me. Had to kill it with my knife." He pried another claw loose from the cooked paw and set it beside him.

  Tony ripped the back page out of the book. Somewhere on this page was the reason these two people were here.

  Most of it was just biography, with a couple of paragraphs about his planning to write a book on canoeing Massasauga lakes. And one note. He read it out loud.

  On a preliminary trip, Tony happened on a nine-pointed star and the word, "Blue", both carved into a rock. If any readers know the meaning of this, write to the author.

  Tony looked up. I guess you two know the meaning of those marks.

  Mad Mike spoke up. He was trying to drill a hole into a claw, but was having trouble making his left hand work. "Connie probably does. Nobody told me. I've just been hired to kill you."

  "I saw some flashes of light as we came here," Tony said. "Reflection from your scope?"

  Mad Mike laughed. "Yeah, right." He dug into his pocket and came out with a small mirror. "Just teasing you a bit."

  Having drilled holes in the last of four claws, Mad Mike asked to borrow some twine from Tony, and used it to make a necklace with the claws. "Not bad," he said.

  "Want to make Mad Mike some tea?" Tony asked Connie, who hadn't said a thing for the last hour.

  But Mike laughed. "Oh I saw that little episode last night. Got to be the funniest thing I've had the luck to view in twenty years at least. No thanks to the tea."

  "Connie knows nine ways to kill me with one blow," Tony offered.

  Mad Mike looked at Connie. "You must be including the Krepshoff Hammer."

  Connie broke her silence. "Yes, but I don't use that one much any more. I've invented a new one."

  "Going to teach it to me?"

  "Just give me a chance. But you can't learn it - it's a woman thing only."

  "Sounds fascinating." Mad Mike stood up. "But I'll have to leave you, now." He turned to Tony. I'm still going to kill you both, but this has been the most fun I've had in years, so I'm in no hurry."

  He picked up the rifle, and Tony's heart stopped. Swinging it by the barrel, Mad Mike tossed it well out into the lake. As Connie got up, the knife appeared in Mike's hand. "Well, my friends, I'm giving you a half hour. Then it's hunting time." He laughed again, and strode into the bush.

  ****

  At Parry Sound International Airport, a pilot had just finished fueling a small red float plane. He tossed a copy of Tony's book and a map showing Creswicke Lake into the cockpit, and climbed in.

  A couple of minutes later, the plane climbed into the sky and headed west.

  ****

  Farther to the south, a crew of three expertly brought an aging B-52 bomber into a gentle landing at Hamilton's airport. After touching the runway, the gray-haired pilot reversed the eight jets to stop the plane, t
hen taxied to an edge of the field, where it was scheduled to sit through the weekend’s air show.

  As the other two got off, the pilot wished them a good journey home and a long life. He was planning neither for himself. From under the seat, he took an air map and a small tracking device. On the device, a single green light blinked.

  Mad Mike had been gone only a minute or two when Tony started for the canoe.

  "He's expecting you to do that," Connie said, "and probably waiting for you at the portage." She began taking off her clothes.

  Tony was at a total loss by this time, and began to get quite loud, waving his arms around, and telling the world that all he wanted to do in life was have a bit of peaceful canoeing and not run around the bush with a couple of double-naught spies or whatever trying to kill him.

  What he really said was a lot more complicated than that, and he used a lot of adjectives, verbs, adverbs, pronouns, and nouns to enhance the effect.

  Somewhere on the lake, a loon laughed at him.

  Connie took the last of her clothes off, then strode out into the water. She swam out a bit, took a deep breath, and disappeared under the surface.

  When she came up, she had the rifle.

  Tony sat in silence as she dried it off. Then she dried herself, and dressed.

  "The scope's ruined," she said. She peeled a cartridge from the set that was taped to the stock, put it into the rifle, then fired a shot out along the lake. "That should make him a little more careful."

  "I figured the lake was too deep to dive in," Tony muttered.

  "He threw it in a shallow area," Connie said, dumping the contents of her pack onto the ground. "Found it last night when I swam across the lake." She started throwing some things back into her pack. "Get packed," she said. When Tony hesitated, she added, "There's about ten minutes left before Mike comes after us. Pack to travel light and fast."

  Tony did.

  Five minutes later, they were in the canoe, paddling quickly towards the portage. With the rifle in the canoe, Tony felt better, as long as they were away from the shore.

  Connie called out, "Hi, Mike. We got your gun."

  An arrow arced from the shore, the feathers just tickling Tony's nose as it went by.

  "Good shooting, for a guy with one bad arm," Connie commented. She added, "Don't worry, he can't hit much with a home-made bow and arrow. By the way, can you swing this canoe around about 180 degrees?"

  Tony had no idea what Connie was doing. On the other hand, he had no idea what else to do, so he dug in the paddle and turned the canoe around.

  “As fast as you can,” Connie said.

  “You think we can outrun… outpaddle… go faster than he can?” Tony paddled with a will.

  “It’s rough country here, and his leg will only stand so much." She leaned forward, increasing her paddle speed. "There's got to be another way out of this lake."

  Tony took a brief look at the map. There wasn't much he'd taken from his pack, but a map was always top priority. “Yeah, let’s get to the other end of the lake, and see if we can find a path to another lake.”

  They paddled past the campsite, moving at a good clip. Tony took a look at the campsite, as they glided past it. The tent was still up, and various articles of clothing were scattered around. He said goodbye to the most - ah -unusual campsite he’d been on.

  Because Creswicke is a pretty small lake, the couple reached the end in less than fifteen minutes. There were two bays; Tony pointed to the left, and they pushed through arrowhead plants and fine black mud, until Connie could step onto a log. Quickly they dragged the canoe up and into the woods.

  Tony pointed to a faint mark on a tree. “Portage.” He knew that there were few lakes that didn’t have some sort of path, even if only a duck-hunter’s fall route.

  There was only one pack, and they hadn’t brought the lifejackets. Tony started into the woods at a steady pace, while Connie followed with the pack and the rifle.

  Behind them, a red float plane circled the lake once, then came in for a landing. Tony looked back, and briefly considered waving for help, but it didn’t seem like a great idea. Heaven only knows, he thought; that thing might be after me, too. Anything seemed possible.

  They made the kilometer trek to Westphal Lake in under half an hour, which wasn’t bad, considering that they lost any semblance of a trail less than a hundred meters from the start.

  At one point, Tony paused and said, “He’s got to come around the north side of Creswicke, and now we’ve got a swamp between him and us. That should dampen his bowstring a bit.”

  “He’s probably thrown away the bow by now.” Connie said. “He’s going to amuse himself as long as possible.”

  “At least we’ve got his gun.”

  “We’ve got his rifle. But he’ll have a pistol; I’ve never known him to be without one.”

  “Ahhhh.’ Tony picked up the canoe and started on again.

  ****

  Back on Creswicke, the float plane came to rest just outside the campsite. The pilot stepped down to a float and paddled the plane to the shore. He looked puzzled; the yellow canoe was gone, and there was a man wearing a bear-claw necklace sitting by the shore watching him.

  The pilot took a small photo out of his shirt pocket, then looked up at the man on the shore. “You’re not Tony,” he said.

  “I’m Mike,” the man said, getting up. “From Ramore,” he added as an afterthought. he held out his hand.

  “I’m Phil,” the pilot said, taking Mike’s hand to pull the plane close to shore. “Any idea where this Tony guy is?”

  “Well,” Mike said, I know which way he went. Maybe we can use this plane of yours to go find him.”

  Phil looked a little dubious. “I think we should get you to a hospital. You look like you danced a couple of rounds with a grizzly.”

  “I’ll be okay, but if you have a medical kit, I could use a couple of bandages and some antibiotics.”

  Phil nodded, and Mike crawled into the passenger seat. Phil pushed the plane offshore, then got in beside him.

  ****

  Westphal Lake turned out to be a shallow, marshy lake. Tony dropped the canoe in among the bulrushes and asked, “Which way now?”

  Connie looked at the map, then said. “You choose. We need a bit of distance.”

  Tony headed the canoe north, away from the obvious route back to cottage country only a couple of kilometers away.

  On the north shore of the lake, Tony steered the canoe into a narrow creek. When it narrowed, they got out and pushed upstream a bit, before coming to a series of large trees fallen over the water.

  “Excuse me,” Tony said quietly when he was forced to pause for breath. “But what exactly did I discover to have a whole bunch of people chasing me. People,” he added, “with licenses to kill.”

  “We don’t really have licenses,” Connie laughed, “although someone made one up for me one time. I’m going to tell you.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to you to take me to the place you found; the place you mentioned in your book.”

  Overhead, a red float plane went by. They looked up, but Tony figured they were invisible under the tree cover.

  “You want to make sure no-one else will find it. That much I figured out. Then, of course, you can kill me.” Tony stretched his aching arms.

  “Not any more. The plan’s changed a bit.”

  “Of course I believe you.”

  “It’s true. Nobody was counting on Mike, when they gave me my assignment. Now your life or death is irrelevant.”

  “Not to me.”

  “How many times have I heard that before.” Connie looked around. The red float plane went by, some distance away. “Let me tell you a story,” she said.

  “Go ahead. This is one of the least likely places Mike would look for us.”

  “Why is that.”

  “Nobody tries to drag a canoe up a creek that joins two small lakes. Not a creek this size. There’ll
be a portage somewhere, and it’ll be a lot easier.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Connie worked at the rifle again. This time she managed to twist the scope off. The scope went into the creek. “Picture a country,” she began. “Let’s call it ‘Homeland’, to protect the innocent and the guilty.”

  “Go ahead,” Tony said. “I have a feeling we don’t want to be found by that plane.”

  “Many years ago, before I was born,” Connie said, “Homeland was being threatened by its neighbours. Badly threatened, to the point where its survival was in serious doubt.”

  “Would this ‘Homeland’ be….” Tony started.

  “It wouldn’t. Don’t ask.” Connie thought a minute, then went on. “Sometime before a major conflict seemed inevitable, an offer was made. Some military hardware was offered by a sympathizer from a great and powerful country to the south of us.”

  “As powerful as the United States?”

  “You’re catching on. Anyway, this was an offer Homeland couldn’t refuse. So it sent in a couple of agents to pick it up.”

  “And that had to be done on the quiet.”

  ‘Of course. Delivery was made to a pleasure cruiser on the shores of Lake Michigan. It was to be taken to a freighter docked in Sarnia. Unfortunately for all concerned, someone found out about the delivery, and a pursuit began.”

  “Spy vs. Spy, as in.”

  “Closer than you think. When it was all over, Homeland’s agents were dead. But we know military hardware wasn’t captured.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “We’d have known. For sure we’d have known.” Connie walked around, a bit. The plane came by, again, this time a bit closer. “We’re pretty sure Homeland’s agents hid it somewhere on the east shores of Georgian Bay.”

  “That’s a big area,” Tony observed.

  “Too big. We’ve had a lot of people looking for it.”

  “And you think I found it.”

  “The symbols you noted ‘a nine-pointed star and the word, Blue’, make it dead certain.”

  “You’ve come to get it.”

  “I was just supposed to make sure it was well hidden. Homeland doesn’t need it any more.”

  “How big is it?”

  “In kilograms?”

  ‘No,” Tony said, “How about in kilotons.”