Rubin handed him water. They were going to have to move fast, but he needed Diego at full strength, and the concussion from the weapons had nearly knocked him out.
“She’s been doing research in laboratories at night for a couple of years on how to reverse what Whitney did to her. She was careful, but apparently not careful enough.” Diego got to his feet and slung his rifle in his scabbard. “Where are they taking her? We’ll have to get there first.”
“They have to have a plane to fly her out of here.”
“With those kinds of weapons, they could make a landing strip,” Diego said.
“True, but they won’t. They can do what they did here, destroy everything and dig big craters in the ground, but they aren’t going to be able to take off or land a plane. They have one somewhere. We have to figure out where and get there ahead of them,” Rubin said.
“Whitney hired several different brilliant scientists to help him with his experiments,” Diego said. “One was an American with way too much money, no morals and, unlike Whitney, no fanatical patriotism. He had ties to several of the men in the military and when he realized the GhostWalker program was successful, he wanted his own personal team. He also saw the potential to sell the abilities of his team for missions, especially when his main purpose for Whitney was developing weapons.”
There was little doubt that members of Jonquille’s recovery team would be waiting to ambush them when they came after her. There was no way for a group that size to cover their tracks, not when they were moving fast through heavy brush.
“They have a superior force,” Diego reminded. “They may not think they have to move fast. They may decide to send a few of their men after us. They don’t care who we are. We’re just in their way. They don’t want to harm civilians or engage with them if it isn’t necessary. They just want to take Jonquille and leave. They think we’re civilians.”
Rubin and Diego faded back into the trees. They didn’t need to track the men holding Jonquille. They needed to figure out where they would take her. Rubin considered that carefully. These men wouldn’t want to be seen. They were a large party. They liked to stay in trees. They seemed to be at home in the mountain environment, so much so that neither Rubin nor Diego had known they were anywhere near. The animals hadn’t tipped them off.
They would need the least-traveled way possible but one where there might be a very clear meadow out of the woods at the very bottom of the trails. There was only one place that he knew of. Old man Gunthrie lived at the end of a holler, down a dirt road few ever traveled. It was at the very base of the mountain trail, but so far in and covered over that it was long forgotten. No cars or bicycles ever used it and hadn’t for years. That suited Gunthrie just fine. Edward and Rory Sawyer had just mentioned that Gunthrie had even encouraged plants to cover the road further so that it had completely disappeared. According to them, there was no evidence of it off the main road.
Gunthrie had lost his wife six years earlier. They’d never had children. Neighbors moved away and he’d been forgotten. He didn’t drive. He walked everywhere he went, even for supplies. A recluse, he had few manners, was gruff and surly to everyone, even those at the grocery store. He mainly trapped and fished for his food and had his own garden.
Rubin and Diego visited with him on their way when they were leaving the mountains, checking to make sure he was still alive. They joked he would live forever. When they would talk with him, he would squat down in a crouch and give them his faint grin, remaining in that position for hours. He had no idea how old he was, but he was strangely ageless, with thick white hair that never seemed to thin. Rubin was suddenly very afraid for him.
Behind his shack, which was made up mostly of corrugated tin, and an outhouse stretched a long, inviting meadow. With a little work, one might be able to smooth it out, and if you had a good pilot, you could land a small plane in it.
“Gunthrie’s place,” Rubin guessed, a sense of dread filling him. The man might be old and strange, but he didn’t deserve to be murdered at the hands of a bunch of strangers.
Diego nodded his head and the two began to set a fast, steady pace, not running, but a pace they could keep up for hours.
Tell me everything you learned from squirrel man, Rubin encouraged. Even as they moved fast through the forest, they maintained a ten-foot distance apart, barely disturbing the limbs or bushes as they hurried past.