Chapter 27
I forgot all about taking a hike. I had another thought. If there was a military unit in the valley, even a secret operation, one might expect to see military personnel around town. Being cooped up on a military base would wear thin after weeks or months. They would want to get out and blow off some steam. Even secret bases must issue a pass or leave.
Soldiers on leave might not be in uniform, especially if there was some secrecy surrounding their mission. But a group of them, young fit men with their short haircuts, should make them easy to spot if one is looking for them. If I were a local, such newcomers would probably be recognizable on sight as not from around here, just like everyone seemed to know I didn’t belong here. Yet even though I was not local, I didn’t recall seeing anyone that might fit the mold of someone in the military.
Where do military guys hang out off base? Never having been in the military, I didn’t know, but could guess. Willow Run was not an entertainment mecca, though it was the only town within many miles. It seemed the most likely place to look was a bar or wherever they might find women. I did know where at least one bar was, just south of town on Highway 287.
I pulled out the phone book. This is one of the times I really missed not having an Internet connection and printer. I could easily pull up a listing of all the bars in the area and print out driving directions to them. As it turned out, though, all the bars within many miles of here were along Highway 287. I just had to drive north and south from the motel and find half a dozen joints that might attract soldiers on leave, assuming that they confined their leaves to the local area. If they ventured much farther away, then the options were probably too great to even consider exploring.
It was still early, as far as the bar crowds are concerned. Not even 9 PM. But I hopped into my car, and drove the half a mile south to the nearest bar. Snake Pit was emblazoned in bright red neon lights over the roof. There were a dozen vehicles in the lot, all parked in a line facing the building and all but two of them large pickup trucks. My foreign mini-SUV was small and very conspicuous next to this array of horsepower, so I parked at the end of the row, out of the glare of the lights streaming out the front windows.
Loud country music burst through the front door when I entered. Inside was a bar against the back wall, a few round wooden tables with wooden chairs scattered about the area in front of it, and a pool table on the far left. True to its name, the bar also held a glass aquarium containing rocks, sand, desert plants, and several rattle snakes. The fluorescent bulb above it flickered randomly. The snakes were motionless and curled in a corner.
The place smelled of stale beer and staler cigarette smoke. There was a blue haze in the air, and I saw that several patrons were puffing away. There were also plenty of others using smokeless tobacco, a wad of the stuff tucked between cheek and gum. I didn’t have to get close to see which people chose that form of nicotine intake. The outlines of round metal cans bulged in the back pockets of jeans, both male and female, and several held used plastic beverage containers into which they could spit.
Everyone wore cowboy hats, including the sole waitress. Part of the local attire. She was clad in white boots that peaked out from under tight-fitting jeans and a white blouse that seemed to have been sculpted to fit her upper body like a coat of paint. She filled out the outfit well, to the delight of the customers with whom she seemed to have a great rapport. Both of these attributes would likely contribute to some sizeable tips.
When I took a seat at an empty corner table, she hustled right over.
“Howdie. Welcome to the Snake Pit,” she said with a huge grim. “First-time customer?”
I felt like there was a neon sign over my head proclaiming stranger. Great for my planned undercover work. “Thanks. Yes, my first time here.”
“What are you drinking?” she asked.
I wasn’t much of a drinker, so had always been the designated driver ever since first getting my license. Now on my limited budget, I had cut alcohol out completely since it was too expensive. But I would stick out even more here if I ordered just a Coke, so I ordered a beer.
The waitress swayed her way to the bar to fill my order. She dodged between tables and chairs, deftly avoided groping hands, and arrived at her destination without dropping a single empty beer bottle from her overloaded tray.
I surveyed the room. With the loud music, the sharp clack of pool balls striking each other, and the dim lighting in the corner I had chosen, no one paid any attention to me. So I could scan the room without fear of being detected. I realized then there was probably another distinguishing feature of the military guys on leave, in addition to their youth and fit builds. They would likely not have cowboy hats. That should make them far easier to spot.
I stayed for 45 minutes, nursing my beer and scanning the room. A few customers left, only to be replaced by more guys wearing ten-gallon hats, jeans, and boots. A couple of women entered also, but they were in the company of more cowboys. No military guys that I could detect with any certainty. The waitress was getting annoyed with me, probably for not ordering another drink and thus not contributing to her take of tips for the night. And I was occupying a table that could be used by the next influx of customers. So I put a ten on the table and left quickly.
Maybe that bar was too close to home for comfort. They might want to put some distance between their base and where they entertained themselves. So I needed to range out further. Or maybe none of them were on leave tonight. Or maybe there were no military guys in the area at all, in which case I was chasing nothing. After all, I was relying on the report of Jake Monroe, an unstable individual at best. But I pressed on anyway.
I went to the next bar south, which was several miles further away. The red neon sign over this one read The Trough. It was much like the Snake Pit: large pick-up trucks, loud, filled with cowboys, stale smelling, smoky, and no military-looking guys in sight. I nursed another beer for nearly an hour, and then called it quits there.
I never was much of a drinker. Even small quantities of alcohol affected me quickly. And since I had not imbibed in a long time, my tolerance was diminished even further. So I felt light headed from the beers and lack of dinner. Before leaving the bar, I paid for a couple bags of pretzels to help ease my hunger and the effect of the alcohol. I didn’t feel too impaired to drive, but that is probably what every drunk thinks when getting behind the wheel. So I sat in my car in the parking lot eating the salty snacks and downing a bottle of water from my cooler. I took it slow and gradually felt my head clear.
I decided to not stray further from my motel since my driving skills were probably still diminished. At The Trough, I was nearly ten miles south of the motel. I headed north and would stop at the first bar up there in search of my quarry. After nursing a beer there, if I had no luck, then I’d call it a night. I zoomed past my motel and continued north.
I pulled over. Not because I had reached the next bar, but because the flashing lights of a patrol car close to my rear bumper compelled me to. I suspected why I was being stopped. My speedometer had nudged well past the speed limit. But my concern was the alcohol I’d consumed. I popped a stick of mint gum in my mouth, chewed, and opened the car window. Saying as little as possible seemed the wisest move since I didn’t know how much the alcohol might have affected me. So I would only speak if asked a question.
In my rear view mirror, I watched the officer approach. He strode with a confident swagger up to the driver side of my car, and shone his flashlight into the interior and across the side of my face. I squinted my eyes to avoid the blinding glare.
“License, registration, and proof of insurance,” he said, skipping any introductory comments. I could not see any of his facial features, just a tall dark form back-lit by the moon. I handed him the requested documents and noticed there was a Teton County Sheriff Department patch sewn on the upper left breast of his shirt. The name plate und
erneath read Wells.
I started to ask if he was Allison’s brother, but he cut me off.
“Please stay in your vehicle. I’ll be back,” he responded curtly.
He returned to his patrol car, surely to check out my vehicle, my documents, and me. He was there for several minutes, then finally came back and returned my documents.
“You were speeding,” he stated flatly. “I’m just giving you a warning this time. Slow down or the next time you’ll get a ticket.”
I turned my head to thank the officer for giving me only a warning, but he was already gone back to his vehicle. Then he sped into the night heading north.
I continued north for another 12 miles until finding the next bar. The name over this establishment was Montana Moonshine. It looked much like the other two bars and had pretty much the same type of patrons. I stayed only thirty minutes and gave up.
Hell, even if I drank at every bar in Montana I might not find what I was looking for if it wasn’t there to be found. Maybe the guys never left the base or maybe there is no secret base. I could simply be way off base.
But I wasn’t ready to give up. I didn’t find them at a bar, but maybe I could sight them returning to the valley after a night of drinking. On the way back south, I parked in some dense growth across the road from the entrance to the National Forest. It was the same area I had parked in on Tuesday evening. This time, I embedded my car deeper into the trees so that it would not be visible even in the glare of lights from passing vehicles. I could still see the National Forest entrance through openings in the tangle of tree branches, though the view was very limited. But it was sufficient for what I needed.
I killed the lights and engine and waited. I waited a long time: ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes. I stared at the luminous numbers on my cell phone screen. The minutes ticked by so slowly as I sat quietly in the dark, alternately staring at my phone, at the rear view mirror, and then out the car’s side window. I had to keep this rotation to remain alert. The lateness of the hour and the alcohol were affecting me to the point that I might doze off if I let my vigilance drop.
Occasional vehicles blew past me going north or south. I didn’t pay any attention to them. Only a vehicle that turned into the National Forest entrance would be of interest to me.
I sat there for a long time. No one entered. No one even slowed on passing by. I just sat there waiting and watching. I began to wonder if I should give this up. It was well past midnight. How long should I wait? I decided another forty-five minutes, at which time I knew I would wait even a little longer just in case. So I set a new limit of another sixty minutes.
For cars going north, I had started counting the number of seconds it took for the beam of headlights to first become visible as a faint reflected glow on the dark pavement until the red taillights were facing me. That interval was four or five seconds depending on the speed of the passing vehicle. At the fifty-two minute mark, I started counting again as the next car approached. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven….. The approaching vehicle was slowing down. In a few more seconds, a car pulled into the entrance. It swung around and pointed south. It was probably someone just turning around. But the vehicle then stopped. A tall thin man emerged, unlocked the gate, and swung it open.
Within seconds, the glow of headlights from the north swept across the entrance, and I could see who the tall thin man was. Ranger Andrew Pine. The glow of the headlights neared, and a camouflaged Hummer turned into the entrance. There were two heads poking above the seats.
Not far behind the Hummer was another vehicle. Its headlights were widely spaced and high off the ground. A truck. I could see it was boxy, drab-colored, had two wheels in the front and four in the back, and a canvas tarp over the cargo bed. A typical military-style truck one sees at reserve facilities all over the country and often on the highways chugging along alone or in convoys. There was a driver and a passenger in the front seat. The truck rode low, as if its cargo bed was loaded. The truck slowed, lurched through the gate, accelerated, and roared off into the forest, following the Hummer. Ranger Pine closed and locked the gate, jumped into his car, and sped back south toward Willow Run. The whole process took less than thirty seconds. Then the night went quiet again.
I was tempted to follow the car to see where Ranger Pine was going. But it seemed logical he was simply going home. Instead, I got out of my car to follow the vehicles into the forest.