The Last Pursuit (4 page)

He caught his breath at a clearing that offered a sweeping view. He scanned it calculating that all he needed was to get to that road, get into a vehicle, and he was gone.

He saw patches of highway beyond the next ridge and grinned.

He was almost there.

Nancy Dawson set her suitcase in the passenger seat of her SUV, closed the door and got behind the wheel. She went through a mental checklist as she rolled along Little Timber Road to the highway and Seattle where her son was dying.

No he’s not! Don’t say that. Concentrate. Focus on the checklist
.

She’d already taken Tipper to AJ’s kennel, locked the house, and asked Leo, her neighbor, a retired firefighter, to watch over her place.

“I’ll say a prayer for Craig, Nance.”

On the highway, Nancy noticed her fuel gauge rested on “E” and wheeled into Grizzly’s gas station. As she filled her tank, she looked up at a helicopter thumping by, wishing she could use it to fly to Seattle.

Wishing for a miracle.

Garrett drew on all he’d learned from survival and tracking courses he’d taken near Yellowknife. As his blood warmed, he pushed himself harder, gaining speed.

He came to a clearing and studied the panoramic view, fixing on slivers of a highway in the distance. A few hundred yards off, he noticed a tiny burst of black near the sway of bush.

A bear?

Garrett locked on to the spot and saw another streak of black then a tiny flash of pale white.

A face. That’s him.

Garrett was close.

For Nancy Dawson, Seattle was some three hours away, but Craig was in her heart.

As her SUV threaded through the mountains, she bargained with God.

“Please don’t take him. Eileen and the kids need him. I need him.”

Hadn’t Nancy’s small family endured their share of hardship?

Chet, her husband was killed ten years ago while changing a flat on his pickup near Coulee City. A Freightliner hauling logs hit a deer and lost its load. Chet never had a chance.

Craig took it so hard.

Then five years ago, nine people were shot dead during a robbery of the Seattle bank where Craig was a junior manager.

He saw the whole thing.

They never caught the killers.

For over a year afterward, Craig struggled with the post-traumatic stress and during that time he was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. Gradually, the severity of the disease increased and now, despite radical treatment, it was reaching the final stage.

Then, just last month, the FBI said they needed to show Craig some sort of important new evidence.

Lord, wasn’t he under enough strain.

Nancy continued reasoning with God.

“If you have to take my son, please keep him alive long enough for me to get to his side; to tell him how much I love him. To say goodbye.”

Nancy was a brave woman but her fears were crushing. She broke down as she approached a two-mile stretch that curved around dense bush.

Stepping from the forest, Yacine exhaled and walked to the edge of the highway.

Bending over, breathing hard through a broad smile, he shook his head.
Nearly home free
. Gasping, Yacine kept his eyes on the lonely road and waited for a vehicle, ready to hitch a ride.

He’d be long gone before anybody got to the wreck and figured things out. He’d get to L.A. where he had support; cash, passports and contacts. He’d fly to Frankfurt, then Lisbon, then Algiers and back to work.

He had to be the luckiest sonofa-

Crack!

Stars exploded and Yacine thought a rock had fallen on him just as he recognized Dark Eyes, whose swing of a club-sized tree branch had landed on Yacine’s jaw, breaking it on impact.

Yacine staggered.

Garrett took the murderer to the ground, manhandling him to his stomach, driving his knee into the back of his lower neck, drilling his face into the pavement, reaching for plastic handcuffs in his jacket, turning to the flash of a massive grill.

Tears blurred Nancy Dawson’s vision when her SUV, traveling at seventy-one miles an hour, came upon Garrett and Yacine.

It ended when it started, before Nancy could react. Before her brain issued the command to take her foot from the gas to the brake, before her mouth opened and her hands spasmed on the wheel, Nancy felt the heart-sickening thud.

Something – a man? - streaked over her windshield as something grazed under her!

Nancy shrieked, her stomach clenched, ice shot up her spine, her skin tingled.

She stopped the SUV but it was too late.

Rooted in shock, Nancy’s memory of what followed came in rapid, staccato bursts. Two men, twenty-thirty yards apart bleeding on the road, other cars stopping, concerned faces, cell phone calls, blankets; the wail of sirens, ambulances, sheriff’s deputies, Washington State Patrol.

Garrett was lying on his back, alive, but frozen in moments scored by sirens and emergency radios.

A distraught older woman was sobbing near a police car.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t see them! What were they doing on the road? I have to see my son in Seattle. I have to go! Please I’m so sorry!”

Garrett felt nothing, saw faces, paramedics tending to him, getting a board under him, lifting him to a gurney, soothing him.

“Sir, your friend is going to be fine. He went under the car, just some scrapes. But we want to get you to a hospital fast.”

Garrett searched hovering faces; saw the Stetson of a trooper or deputy and grabbed her wrist hard. She had a kind face, smooth skin. Warm. His eyes bore into hers for a connection. He squeezed harder and she met him in the moment.

Garrett heard words – it could’ve been him – but someone said – “I am RCMP Corporal Garrett.” And recited his regimental number. Paramedics tried to quiet him but the trooper was making notes, her thumb holding Garrett’s badge and ID to her pad as she wrote.

The words continued.

“We were on a plane taking a prisoner to Seattle. We crashed up there. Prisoner escaped that’s him, Yacine. Dangerous. Put him custody. Alert FBI Seattle.”

Garrett repeated his regimental number.

Again, the paramedics tried to quiet him. The trooper’s eyes were green, intelligent. Absorbing his words, she reached for her radio.

Garrett lost consciousness during the ambulance trip to the county hospital. When he came to, a woman in a white coat was with him. Now she had his wallet; was studying it and flipping pages on a clipboard.

“John you’re in Ice Lake Memorial Hospital. I’m Doctor Niki Burton. Nod if you understand.”

Garrett nodded and Doctor Burton moved her clipboard closer. His ID, driver’s license, medical card, business card and a card with numbers he’d penned on the back;  records of his life.

“You’re hurt too badly for us to fix everything here. We’re going to airlift you to Seattle, is there someone back home we should call?”

Garrett touched his detachment number and the card with his ex-wife’s numbers. Then he brushed his license and medical card until the doctor understood then she glanced to someone; a nurse, holding another clipboard, who nodded and left.

Soon thudding shook the air.

The helicopter had arrived.

As they wheeled Garrett out, he glimpsed Yacine, on a gurney in the hall, complaining about tight handcuffs on his wrist and ankles to the half dozen deputies and troopers guarding him.

One of them looked back at Garrett with a sudden glance that telegraphed a mix respect and sadness.

The helicopter landed on the front lawn and a medical crew wearing helmets and headsets loaded Garrett through the clam-shell door.

Inside the hospital, Doctor Niki Burton was in the quiet of her office, studying a computer screen displaying Garrett’s vital information, accessed with the help of officials in Canada. Then she called a twenty-four-hour hotline for a national organ donor network, discussed Garrett’s situation, blood type, tissue type, age and consent. The network in turn, searched its databases and alerted a local transplant organization in Seattle, who assessed their waiting lists for a match.

Then Doctor Burton, thirty-five-year-old mother of three children, and local soccer mom, steeled herself to make another call.

As the helicopter ascended, Garrett saw buildings shrink into oceans of green forest, then the majestic slopes of the Cascade Range.

The sky cleared and he saw snatches of stunning blue sky then felt the warmest sensation of flying and falling through his life.

He smelled fresh baked bread, like when he was a boy and his mother took him to the bakery in his hometown and bought him jelly donuts, so fresh they were still warm.

Then the sky turned azure like Ocho Rios in Jamaica, where he and Cathy had spent their honeymoon.

Somewhere over the edge of metro Seattle within sight of the Olympic Mountains in the east, Garrett’s heart stopped beating.

At an elementary school, in a southern suburb of Calgary, Alberta, the vice-principal left her office and phone off the hook so Garrett’s ex-wife could take an emergency call in private.

“Yes, this is Cathy Pearson. Yes, John Garrett is my ex-husband.”

Cathy stared hard into the painting of the Rockies on the vice-principal’s wall as Doctor Niki Burton explained. The snow-capped peaks blurred through Cathy’s tears, she squeezed the phone hard, wishing she could reach John Garrett’s hand, she swallowed air and she found her voice.

“Yes, I can confirm he would have wanted that. We discussed it when we were marr- yes, you have my consent.”

In the adjoining office, the principal and vice-principal heard the thunk of the phone hitting the desk top, and a loud sob and rushed to comfort Cathy.

In Seattle, as the helicopter approached Harborview Medical Center and the specialists with the rapid organ recovery team prepared Craig Dawson for a kidney transplant, Garrett’s life slipped from him.

He’d found peace and the joy that comes at the end of a heart’s pursuit. His open eyes were staring, but at nothing of this world.

Billy Dolan and his little sister, Daisy, had been waiting for him. Smiling, they each took Garrett by the hand
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