“George isn’t here. All inholding landowners were paid to vacate during the trainings. They all signed the agreement and accepted payment.”
She shook her head. “Your scope of work only included the property owners with inholdings on the lakeshore. George’s cabin is nowhere near the lake thanks to the cliffs. It was outside your Area of Potential Effect and this meadow was expressly excluded from being operational territory because of the site, burials, and proximity to the falls. Because of this, George was left out of the environmental process and ignored. You’d know that if you read my rebuttal when you went around me to ACHP.”
He had read her rebuttal, and he remembered something about a tribal member being vocal in his dissent, but an officer much higher in the chain of command than Xavier—who occupied a tiny realm that sat between enlisted and officers—had said the Navy would negotiate a deal with him. The permit had gone through, and inholding landowners had been paid. That was all he knew, and frankly, all he’d cared about. “I was told he was paid,” Xavier said.
“You were told wrong, because if George had received—and accepted—payment from the Navy, he would have told me. Not to mention his family would have gleefully moved him out of the cabin to winter with them on the reservation on the coast. But as far as I know, George isn’t on the reservation.”
“As far as you know.”
“Yes.” She pulled out her cell phone and showed him the screen. “I’ve left him—and his family members—several frantic messages in the last hour and a half. No one has called back.”
Xavier frowned. “Does George get cell coverage out here?”
She nodded. “Not so much in his cabin, but the meadow is within range of the antennas. There’s also a landline in the woodshop. He has voicemail on that line.”
In about ten minutes, all signals—radio, cellular, and satellite—would be jammed. George would be as hampered as the SEAL team. Worse, no civilians were allowed in the lodge complex for the duration of the training, so he couldn’t access his woodshop at all.
“Does he have electricity in his cabin?” If not, the next several days would be very uncomfortable for the man, if he were truly here. Unless he planned to do a very long hike up and out of the lake basin, he wouldn’t be able to reach the road without crossing the lodge complex or lake, effectively trapping him in the rainforest until the training was over.
“He lives mostly off the grid, but he has a generator to keep his phone and other electronics in power, and before winter set in, we hauled enough fuel to see him through the worst of it. Plus, he’s got power in the woodshop, which is right next to the blacksmith shop. He can always charge his phone there in a pinch.”
“But not this week. He’s alone out here?”
She nodded. “No one tells George how to live his life. His family tries, but they’d rather he respond to their calls than cut them off completely, so they’ve stopped fighting what he wants.”
“Cameras first, George second,” he said. But damn, checking on the elder would eat precious minutes.
Audrey led him to a tall tree on the edge of the meadow and pointed to the lowest branches, which were at least ten feet above Xavier’s head. “Three cameras are up there, two looking over the meadow, the third into the woods. It’s not a full three-sixty view from the tree, but close. There’s another camera in the woods, directed at the area that was looted in November.”
He scanned the moss-covered trunk, looking for the power line and not seeing it. “Where’s the cable?”
She circled the tree and pointed to a camouflaged line. It was well concealed under moss and paint. It wasn’t hard to figure out what happened when his gaze followed the cable to the base of the tree.
Audrey had seen it too. She cursed and pressed her palm to the trunk, as if thrown off-balance. “Well, there it is. Fresh cut.”
Xavier squatted to take a closer look and added a few mental curses of his own. From the gouge in the root, it looked like someone had taken an axe to it. He scanned the ground and spotted footprints in the marshy surface in an area where neither he nor Audrey had stepped.
If Audrey was right about having a close-to-three-sixty view, they’d have footage of the person approaching the tree. Maybe they’d have a face. “I need you to call your office and have them send me everything the cameras captured before they were cut off. What time did this happen?” he asked, pointing to the hacked root.
“Just before three o’clock.”
He checked his watch. Just over two hours ago. Thankfully, Audrey had gotten here in time to show him this, because while the team was in the air, it wasn’t too late to turn them back. He tapped the mic button on his radio and said, “Someone cut the camera line. We need to delay the training at least twenty-four hours. Abort the jump.”
The radio didn’t make a sound. Dead air.
When was the last time he’d heard chatter between the team? They’d been running through the checklist when he and Audrey reached the meadow. The last update had come from Cohen two or three minutes ago, when he’d given the countdown: ten minutes until the signal jammer would go online.
“I need to check the other camera,” Audrey said, turning for the woods.
Xavier followed, trying to raise Cohen and the others as they wove through the fern-and-moss-covered ground, winding around trees and stumps and dodging moss draping from low branches. “Send the team back to Whidbey. Abort the jump.” He checked his watch. According to the op clock, they had seven minutes before all communication would be shut down. Cohen wouldn’t have activated the jammer early, not without announcing it on the radio, and not when he was waiting for Xavier’s report.
He pulled out his phone. This close to the meadow, it should work, but it didn’t have a signal.
Somehow, some way, the signal jammer had switched on early.
He followed Audrey around a thick old-growth tree. She stopped short in front of him. “Well, now we know why they disabled the cameras.” Her voice was low. Pained.
Five feet away a large, uneven hole gaped open.
“But—it doesn’t look like a looter pit,” she said. “It’s too narrow and too deep—it goes past the cultural layers into sterile glacial till.”
Archaeology was her specialty, but this was Xavier’s. He’d seen pits like this before. Caught on a root, he saw evidence that told him everything he needed to know.
“This hole wasn’t dug by looters.” He jumped into the pit and grabbed the scrap of stray black plastic. “Something was wrapped in plastic and stored here. Whoever cut the cameras was here to claim their stash.”