CHAPTER ONE

Something wakened Dave Gilchrist and he immediately became alert. He lay still for a few seconds in his mountain tent, his eyes now wide open in the pitch darkness as he listened carefully, trying to identify what unusual sound it was that had disturbed his slumbers. The sound came again. Now wide awake, he was able to identify it this time.

After half a lifetime camping rough in the mountains, both as a mountaineer and more recently in relation to his job as a Forest Ranger in Northern Montana's Swan Peak Forest Park, Dave's body had attuned itself to ignore the usual night sounds of the wilderness, which did not usually waken him. But this sound was different. He quickly identified it as the sound of a small aircraft and, judging by the irregular popping of its engine, it was in serious trouble.

He sat up and listened more carefully. Dave was used to the sight of all kinds of small planes flying over the park, including float planes hired by organised parties of licensed hunters and anglers. But not at night, not in winter, and certainly not a small aircraft with a single engine, which it certainly sounded like. In the eastern foothills of the mighty Rocky Mountains the countryside here was currently encased in a mantle of deep snow, and with the outside temperature currently about minus ten degrees Celsius such a journey was, at the very least foolhardy and, at worst, courting disaster. No one familiar with this unforgiving terrain would have even contemplated such a rash excursion unless it was someone with an extreme emergency, or someone engaged in illegal activities and was trying to evade detection, or someone with suicidal tendencies.

As he listened the engine kept cutting out and restarting, the pilot repeatedly opening it out to an uneven full throttle in an effort to clear the problem and maintain height. He was being partially successful but there was no doubt this was definitely one very sick bird. The aircraft was still some way off but by the sound of its engine it was coming closer.

It was pitch dark, the air inside his tent frigid. Anticipating his help might be needed within the next few minutes, Dave quickly slid out of his down sleeping bag and retrieved his head torch from its normal location under the pillow section the bag. By its light he lit the small butane gas lantern and pulled his boots on over the socks he always wore in his sleeping bag in winter. He looked at his watch. It was 03.15. It wouldn't be full daylight for over five hours yet.

Almost fully dressed, he stopped what he was doing for a moment and listened again as the staccato sound of the misfiring engine increased in volume. The aircraft sounded as if it was now almost directly overhead and very, very low - almost down into the trees, Dave reckoned.

Poor bastard, he said to himself, there's absolutely no place he can land within miles of here. He was almost right. Except for the small Muskrat Lake nearby, Dave knew that for miles around there were only mountains, thick pine forest, and rocky outcrops. There was no flat land close whatsoever to offer an emergency landing place for any type of plane other than a helicopter, and even that was limited.

It appeared to Dave that the pilot was trying to reach the flat surface of the lake as the only outside chance he had of landing safely. With the two mile long Muskrat Lake iced over and the surface covered with over a foot of fresh snow it must have looked to the desperate pilot, in the faint moonlight, as his only hope of salvation. He would have known it was only a remote possibility but his chances of survival would certainly be absolutely nil if he tried to land anywhere else. The huge Douglas fir trees around the lake were decades old, the trunks of many of them over two feet in diameter. They would shred a light plane into matchwood if it crashed into them.

Suddenly the sick engine cut out altogether and a few seconds later came the sound of the anticipated crash as the plane tore into the treetops close to the lake. This was followed by an ominous silence.

"Shit. He didn't make it."

Dave now quickly struggled into his full winter outdoor gear and unzipped the tent door. The cold air hit him like a jackhammer. There had been another light fall of snow since he'd settled down for the night but it wasn't too bad. There wasn't much light from the moon here under the trees and he used his torch to recover his boots from the bottom of his sleeping bag. He always placed them there in a polythene bag during his winter patrols to prevent them from freezing in the sub zero temperature. It was an old trick he'd learned from his mountaineering and SEALS days.

At the age of thirty-four, Dave Gilchrist was six feet two inches in height and a superbly fit human being despite his slightly receding hairline. He had to be fit for his job. His weather-beaten face testified to the long hours and years he had spent in the open air, sometimes in the sun but often facing the icy winds so often encountered in these mountains in winter. His slightly long, sad face, incongruously had distinctive crows' feet at the corner of his eyes, signifying an innate, but not immediately obvious to those he'd just met, sense of humour. Handsome he was not but he had never had any problems pulling the opposite sex and had married fairly young. It was a short marriage which was destined for an abrupt and tragic end when his wife of a year had drowned in a rafting accident four years before. It was the main reason he was in his present job, still trying desperately to forget the trauma of her death.

Now, completely confident in his own high-country resourcefulness and survivability, he was personally responsible, during each two week patrol, for patrolling a fifty mile by thirty mile wilderness area of the park - approximately fifteen hundred square miles of territory which included mountains of up to seven thousand feet, lakes, and dense expanses of pine forest.

Twelve hours earlier, with his breath coming from his mouth in clouds of condensation in the frigid air, Dave had skied to a halt on top of a rocky bluff, several hundred feet above, and a mile from, his often-used tiny campsite close to the shore of the lake. Resting his mittened hands on the top of his ski poles and through his sun glasses, absolutely necessary because of the blinding reflection from the snow, he had surveyed the breathtaking, sun cloaked, and dazzling scene below him. It was a completely snow-encased landscape and from somewhere the eerie cry of an unseen kite echoed across to him on the still air.

From his elevated position the forest and frozen-lake-clothed countryside stretched as far as his eyes could see in the crystal clear air, broken only by the single and partially iced-up river running into the lake from his left, and by several criss-crossing, temporarily redundant, snow-filled fire-breaks.

He had his shortwave communications radio with him, linked to Ranger Headquarters in the little town of Somers, forty miles away to the west, but normally he only used it to give them his brief daily reports each evening. It was always available for unforeseen emergencies too, of course, but he had only had to use it for this purpose a handful of times during his years with the Ranger Service.

Until now, on this particular tour of duty he had neither seen not heard anything worthy of reporting immediately and satisfied that there was nothing to give him concern, and his mind relaxed by the beauty of the scene, he'd headed across the hillside to the nearest firebreak which offered a relatively easy run on his skis, down to the lakeside and his overnight stop. The following morning he would be heading back towards the Ranger Headquarters to complete his current two week term of patrol. Normally Somers was only about two day's skiing away from this point but unknown to him then, it would be considerably longer than that before he would see Somers and the Ranger Headquarters again.

Somers was a small logging town of some two thousand inhabitants, approximately one hundred and fifty miles west of the Montana state capital city of Helena. In the various seasons this population could grow anything up to seven thousand as it catered for a growing number of backpackers, mountaineers, overland skiers, and licensed fishermen and hunters. There were plans to turn it into a minor ski resort for the piste skier but this was for the future and a lot of tree clearing would be needed before then.

Arriving at the lakeside with the afternoon light starting to fade he'd lost no time in finding his usual camping spot beside a little partially-frozen stream which offered him the water he needed. His tiny orange-coloured, one-man, storm-proof, mountain tent was erected in minutes. To conserve his limited supply of camping gas he'd set a safe cooking fire a couple of yards from the tent's entrance, using dead branches from the surrounding forest floor. By the time he'd made and eaten a hot meal the light had faded fast and he'd had to wash his cooking and eating dishes and cutlery in almost total darkness.

By the light from his small gas lantern, he'd firstly contacted Somers Headquarters with a verbal report on his day's activities then written his brief and incident-free log for the day in the form merely of an aide memoire. This he would word-process into a more detailed two-week report on his office laptop computer after he arrived back at Headquarters in two days time. Then, pretty tired after a hard day, he'd settled down for the night in his high TOG sleeping bag, and had quickly fallen asleep. He was one of those people who could sleep almost anywhere and anytime, but he could waken up instantaneously when he needed to. That time had now arrived.

Lacing his boots up and fitting his snow gaiters over them, he moved out of the tent, re-fitting his head torch on over his balaclava helmet and taking his caribou-hide outer mittens with him. Slinging his small day rucksack containing his basic first-aid kit over his shoulders in case it was needed, he clicked his boots into his ski bindings and zipped up the front door of his tent. Then, pulling his mittens on, he grabbed his ski poles and headed, parallel to the shoreline of the lake, towards the area where he was pretty sure the aircraft had come down.

As he travelled he had occasionally to use the ski poles to test the uneven ground for hidden dips or drops. Emergency radio or not a broken leg this far from help was not a pleasant thought, especially in the dark.

Although there had been a bright half moon it was now fairly low down in the west, behind him and it was impossible for him to make quick headway over the rough, snow-clad terrain between the trees, using only his relatively low-power head torch to identify and evade dangerous obstacles. As he struggled through the rough terrain he began to wonder if it had been worthwhile fitting his skis on at all.

The density of the forest gradually eased off and he started looking for signs of the aircraft's plunge to earth. He didn't have long to wait. It hadn't quite made the lake. Not in one piece anyway. Had it done so he was doubtful if the ice would have supported it anyway since the current cold spell had only lasted for a few days. The ice under the snow would not yet be thick enough to withstand the heavy impact of something the size of plane, even a small one. If the plane had landed on the ice and the ice had given way there was no way Dave would have been able to save anyone from the icy water.

In the beam of his torch Dave now began to see the white of fractured pine branches all around him, then a complete but badly-damaged red wing, then another wing, then the tailpiece and other parts of the plane's bodywork. A couple of minutes later he found the fuselage itself or what was left of it, partly submerged in shallow water near the lake's edge. The force of the impact had shattered the ice adjacent to the shoreline and judging by the amount of damage the fuselage had sustained it was obvious to Dave that anyone who had been in it was almost certainly dead. It had been opened up like a sardine tin.

He unclipped his skis and rested them against a tree then, scrambling down the shallow banking onto the pebble beach, he apprehensively approached what was left of the aircraft by torchlight. Fortunately there was no fire to worry him. It was a four-seater aircraft, a decal on the nose section identifying it as a 'Beachcraft'. Well, Dave thought, it's certainly ended up on home territory.

The rear passenger door was still closed on the beachward side nearest Dave but when he tried to open it he found it had been badly distorted in the crash and he was initially unable to do so. It took all the strength of both his arms to force it open and on looking inside he almost threw up at the horrific scene his torch revealed.

There were three bodies in the cabin, all still wearing their safety belts, the pilot in the left hand of the two front seats and two dark-overcoated men in the rear seats. Most of the damage to the plane had occurred on the starboard side of the fuselage, the whole side of which had been completely torn off. A large branch had come through the gap and decapitated the two passengers but a quick glance, with his hand over his mouth in horror, showed no signs of their heads anywhere inside the compartment.

There was blood everywhere - on the seats, on the roof, on their clothing, probably mostly from the severed carotid arteries of the two passengers. Retching violently, Dave certainly had no intention of looking more closely for the missing heads. The cabin looked like a slaughterhouse.

He reckoned it was possible there had been a third passenger in the right front seat but he could have been torn out of the now missing right side of the fuselage and would therefore have fallen into deeper water. If there had been one Dave decided someone else would have to look for him.

The pilot was also dead. Although he had not quite been decapitated his face and head had been pulverised by another branch of whichever tree or trees the plane had struck first and which had destroyed the windscreen. Again, there was blood everywhere over the instrument consul and front seats from his injuries.

Trying to come to grips with his heaving stomach Dave stepped back from the horrific scene, withdrew his short-wave radio from his rucksack and called his headquarters in Somers. There was always someone on duty there, day and night in case of emergencies.

"Hi, Morag. Dave here. I'm out at Muskrat Lake at the moment, about four hundred yards along the beach from my usual overnight campsite."

"Hi, Dave. What the hell are you doing out of your cosy sleeping bag at four o'clock in the morning? Couldn't sleep for the wolves howlin', eh? Beachcombing?" He could hear the humour in her voice, even at that unearthly hour.

Morag McLaren was the daughter of a second generation Scots immigrant to America. She was one of the two shift controllers in Somers Forest Ranger Headquarters. Weighing in at the best of two hundred pounds she had a pretty face and was very good-natured. Although she was married to one of the other Rangers, Danny McLaren, she was always flirting unashamedly, but jokingly and harmlessly, with all the other males in the office. Both she and husband Danny were very popular with everyone who knew them.

"No, I'm afraid it's much worse that that, Morag. You'd better brace yourself for some bad news. I'm at the site at the lake where a small, single-engined plane crashed about an hour ago. I heard it come down. It wakened me. What's left of it, and I mean, 'what's left of it,' is partly in shallow water at the edge of the lake and partly on the beach. There appear to be three people in it, including the pilot, but I'm afraid there's no survivors. There may have been a fourth person in the front passenger seat but the whole of one side of the plane has been ripped off. That side of the plane's in deeper water and I can't get round the fuselage to check. Why the hell they were flying over this type of terrain, in a single-engined plane, at this time of night, and especially in winter, sure beats me."

There were a few seconds of shocked silence from the other end of the line as Morag took in the horrendous news.

"My God, Dave. I'm sorry. I didn't realise."

"Morag, can you let Alan know and get him to inform the local police and our Head Office in Helena. They'll both need to send people out here ASAP. My radio won't reach as far as Helena." Alan Corbett was the Manager of the Ranger Headquarters in Somers but would be at his home now.

"Yes, I'll do that Dave. Can you give me a map reference?"

"Yeah, hold on. I'll need to give it to you off the map. I've left my GPS unit back at the tent. I'll confirm the position when I get back there." His newly-issued GPS unit would be able to give Morag the crash position within about ten meters. He removed his large-scale map from his small rucksack and, using his head torch, gave Morag the map reference of the wreck.

"Dave can you hold on there for a few minutes while I contact Alan and ask him for permission to get on my radio for help? I'll get back to you shortly and let you know what's happening."

"Yeah, OK, Morag. I'll wait for a short time but remember, it's well below zero here. It's brass monkey weather and I won't be able to wait here at the crash site for much more than half-an-hour tops." Despite the situation she chuckled at his reference to brass monkeys.

"Don't worry Dave, I'll get back to you much sooner than that." They signed off.

Within five minutes Morag was back on the radio.

"Dave, I've contacted Alan Corbett and he phoned Ed Hay." Ed Hay was the Police Chief in Somers. Her voice took on a puzzled note. I've also radioed for help from headquarters in Helena." Her voice then took on a puzzled note.

"Ed Hay contacted someone else, who contacted someone else. I don't know what the hell's going on but, believe it or not, the CIA seems to be involved somewhere along the line. They had apparently previously contacted the police station here in Somers, and a number of other Police Stations from here, all the way back to Helena, to ask about a plane whose pilot should have called in some time ago, but hasn't. If it's confirmed as their plane they're arranging for a helicopter to fly out from Helena to here early tomorrow morning with two Agents, to arrive here at first light. They've asked us to arrange for refuelling here in Somers before flying out to the lake. I've to phone Jake Muldrew at the garage to expect them. He has a gas pump for aviation fuel for the anglers' and hunters' planes and, even if he is wakened up in the middle of the night, I'm sure he'll be only too pleased to get the unexpected custom. Ed's now arranging for his own police helicopter to go out to the lake, also at first light. And by the way, the CIA have apparently also given instructions that, and I quote, "under no circumstances has anyone to touch anything at the crash site until we arrive" - unquote. They've asked that someone stay with the wrecked plane to ensure this. They were most insistent on this. It'll be at least five hours before they get there though. I tried to tell them that you couldn't possibly wait that long out in the open but they kept insisting. I've managed to put them right regarding the weather conditions around here and they've reluctantly backed off."

"Jesus, Morag, there's no way I could stay out here all that time but I'll tell you what, check up with Ed Hay and ask him for an estimate when his own police helicopter might be arriving in the morning, then call me back. I'll need to go back to my tent for a heat and some sleep in the meantime but I'll return to the crash site to liaise with them when they arrive. I'll return to the crash site only when I hear their helicopter. If necessary I'll do the same when the CIA helicopter arrives, and you can tell that to their people too, if they contact you. No arguments from them. They're probably city people and won't have any idea what the weather conditions are like here. In any case, after I hear the police 'copter's engine I can be back at the site from my tent almost before they've landed. Let everyone know that there's a wider part of the beach about a hundred yards north of the crash site where I think they can put their birds down. They can take it from there."

"Right, Dave, I'll get Alan to call Ed Hay and explain the situation. He can contact the CIA to let them know what's happening. Then I'll come back to you. Speak to you later." They signed off.