“About thirty,” Connie replied, evenly.
“A nuke.”
“Yup.”
“I can see why Homeland doesn’t want it found.”
“For sure. We’re desperate for support from the Yanks. Last thing we need is for the American media to find out we stole an atomic weapon and then lost it in the bush up here.”
“Would have been better if it had stayed lost.”
“Which is why I was supposed to kill you, after making sure no-one else knew about it. Or was likely to find it.”
“So what’s changed?” Tony asked, watching the rifle, and remembering that she could kill him barehanded.
“Mad Mike. I don’t know who hired him, but when he saw me here, he probably figured the thing was close. Whether or not he knows what it is.”
“You think he wants it himself?”
“It would have been easy to get rid of both of us at the camp.” She nodded at the rifle.
“So who hired him?”
“I suspect, one of your favorite countries. Maybe one with a maple leaf on its flag.”
Tony’s eyes bugged out. “Why?”
“Same reason. If the Yanks found out Canada had portable nukes stashed among the birches, can you guess what might would happen to your borders and trade.”
“It wouldn’t be a pretty sight.” Tony sighed. He thought about it. “I’d kill me to keep a secret like that.”
“Now we’re sitting beside this unnamed little creek,” Connie said, “trying to figure out a way to get rid of the damn thing. If we can, then nobody will have to kill you. And Mad Mike won’t be able to do whatever he wants with it.”
“Actually,” Tony noted, “I named this Daigen Creek, after the friend I was with last year. We took the canoe up this creek.”
“You were here?” Connie said.
“I had to take a bio-break. I went over there.” Tony pointed at the hillside not far away. You’re about a hundred feet away from your objective, soldier.”
****
The plane had circled the area five times. With all the bare rock, they should have been able to see the yellow canoe, unless it was hidden in a dense patch of ground. The first aspens had started turning yellow, which didn’t help.
“I think maybe we should go back to the Sound and come back tomorrow,” Phil suggested.
“I think we should keep looking. You’ve got plenty of gas. And I’ve got a gun.” Mike pulled a tiny but nasty-looking pistol from a pocket, then put it back.
Phil gulped. “Remember, I’m the pilot.”
“I can fly this thing. Let’s land somewhere for half an hour and let them come out of hiding.” Mike pulled off one bloody bandage, and replaced it with a clean one. “And don’t think of fighting me; I could add your front teeth to my necklace.” When he turned towards the window, Phil reached under the dashboard and flipped a small, hidden toggle switch.
****
“I expected something bigger.” Tony was looking at a canvas-wrapped bundle not much bigger than a watermelon. They’d dug it out of a rock-covered hillside about ten meters from the carved symbols.
“Designed to be fired from a cannon.” Connie tore off the canvas to reveal an oxidized aluminum surface.
“From a cannon?”
“They had some funny ideas in those days. It was subsequently remanufactured a bit for a sort-range missile system. When that system became obsolete, it was scheduled for demolition and salvage. That’s when it disappeared.”
“And there’s a bunch of people that would kill me to prevent it being found.”
“Righto,” Connie said, “and some who would kill you to keep the theft from being found out, and a whole bunch who would torture you to get their hands on one of these.”
“I was never popular in high school.” Tony touched the cold metal thing. Birds chirped and a squirrel yammered at them. Wind made a hissing sound through the tops of the aspens. A sowbug crawled its prehistoric way along the bomb. “Is it likely to go off.”
“Can’t explode.” Connie rolled it over to check the underside. Fallen cedar branches snapped loudly. “This is just the core. You have to wrap it in some precisely-placed explosives to arm it. But if you broke it open, you could scatter some nasty radiation around. And die.”
Tony thought about backing off. “Is it radioactive?”
“Not much, but I wouldn’t sit on it for too long if you ever want children.” Connie disappeared, then came back with her backpack. “We can put it in here for now.”
“Then what?”
“Then we either put it where nobody can get it for a while, or we break it apart.” Let’s get it out of here.” Connie took everything out of the backpack, pushed the bomb into it, then picked up a flashlight. She fiddled with the flashlight, then stuffed it in beside the bomb.
“That’s a pretty big flashlight, for a camping trip,” Tony observed.
Connie grunted as she hoisted the pack. “Isn’t it ever?”
They made their way back to the canoe, then decided they’d had enough of dragging it over logs, and decided to make their way up the hillside, then across to the lake. An author with a canoe, a redheaded agent with a portable nuke, and a woods where the birds sang and the first yellow aspen leaves of fall danced in the morning breeze.
****
The old B-52 was on its fifth loop over the Ontario countryside, just passing over the city of Barrie. The pilot noted that the green light on the tracking device had started blinking a one-three code.
General Paul Glosser, the lone occupant of the plane, looked surprised. “She did it!” he said to himself. He radioed that he was going to do a couple more circuits before coming back to the airport. Then he began a long turn northwards.
“Just what do you plan to do with that thing?” Tony asked, setting the yellow canoe on the shores of Vicary Lake. He was breathing heavily from the trek through the brush.
Connie set her pack onto the ground. “Can’t leave it where Mad Mike can find it,” she said, looking out over the lake with the rifle under her arm. “And I don’t want to carry it too far, because it might be leaking radiation. It’s pretty old, you know.”
Tony looked around. There didn’t seem to be any good place to hide the bomb, at least no place a metal detector wouldn’t find it. “I suggest,” he said, “the middle of the lake.”
“You think so?”
“Even if he finds out what we did with it, he’ll have to come back with diving equipment. There’s usually a lot of mud at the bottom of these lakes, and some are quite deep.
Connie looked around. “It’s not a very big lake,” she said.
“You got a better idea?”
Without reply, Connie dragged the package over to the canoe, dropping it in, just behind the front seat. The canoe settled a little lower into the mud. A frog leaped out of the way. “Away you go,” Connie said.
“Me? Why me?”
“I’ve still got the rifle.” She waved it at him.
She had a point there. Tony thought. He stripped to his underwear, took his paddle, then waded into the black goo to push the canoe into the lake.
“Why the strip job?” Connie wanted to know.
“I figure I’d just tip the canoe trying to get the thing out. So I’ll get it to the middle of the lake, then roll the canoe over.”
“Good thinking.”
Tony wasn’t impressed by the compliment. He got into the canoe, a bloodsucker clinging to one ankle. He figured he’d worry about the bloodsucker later; he figured it might be the least of his problems once he tipped the canoe. There were nine bullets left for the rifle.
He was still pushing through the reeds and a couple of logs near the shore when the red plane came roaring over one end of the lake, then banked abruptly and began to lose altitude.
Connie swore louder than Tony. She retreated into a clump of swamp cedars. Tony stopped paddling. Whatever the plane was, and whoever was running it, there didn’t seem m
uch point in doing anything.
He sat there, in his Stanfields, his feet muddy, a bloodsucker attached to his ankle, and a nuclear device in front of him, his paddle across the thwarts. The plane circled the lake once, then came in for a landing. It touched down at the far side of the lake, coming right towards him.
In a spray of water, the plane settled in less than ten meters in front of the canoe. The canoe rocked in the reeds and Tony considered his options. There weren’t many.
The door of the plane opened, and the pilot got onto a pontoon with a paddle. he said nothing, just paddled the plane towards the canoe. When there was only a little distance separating them, the pilot leaped into the water, and began struggling to the shore, waist-deep and stirring up mud. He staggered onto the shore behind Tony, breathing heavily, and disappeared into the same cedars Connie had gone into.
Tony sat right where he was. You don’t want to go anywhere in a hurry in a canoe. Wrong form of transport for quick getaways.
A man stepped onto a pontoon, hands over his head. Then Mike appeared in the doorway of the plane, holding the pistol.
Tony looked behind him. Connie appeared for a brief moment, leveled the rifle, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. She disappeared into the brush again.
Mike shouted, “You don’t think I’d leave live rounds with the rifle, do you? There was one good one, and you used it up this morning.” He was smiling.
“Hey,” Mike said to Tony, as he got down onto the pontoon. “Let’s get that thing into this plane.” Tony started backing the canoe away, and Mike put a round through the side of the canoe, somewhere just past Tony’s waistline. “I’d hate to have to do it myself,” Mike smiled, abruptly reaching down and grabbing the front of the canoe. The other man made a leap for the shore, almost making it.
Mike stuck the gun into a pocket, then grabbed the packsack with the bomb with his one good arm, and dragged it into the plane. The plane drifted around in the wind. Connie stepped out and threw the rifle at the plane, but it bounced off the doorframe and the canoe, narrowly missing Tony.
The rifle was followed by a rock, which knocked Mike back into the plane. But by that time he’d got the bomb into the plane and got the gun out. He snapped off one shot at Connie, but obviously missed.
For a moment there was silence as the plane drifted away from the shore and Connie waded into the lake after it. Then the engine caught and the plane started to move. It was just Mike’s good luck that the plane was facing more or less away from shore.
In a matter of seconds the small red floatplane, climbed into the air. The plane circled once, then something was thrown out the window. It was the flashlight, which landed in the water where the plane had been. Then the plane rose a bit and was gone.
There was a deep silence on the lake. Tony was still in the canoe in his underwear and Connie was standing in the water, a rock still in her hand, when the pilot came out from behind a tree.
“He stole my plane,” the pilot observed.
Tony paddled the canoe in to the shore, and got out. He stood there, shivering a bit in his underwear.
“He stole my plane,” the pilot repeated. He was soaked from the waist down. And you have a bloodsucker on your leg.”
Tony peeled the parasite carefully but gently off his leg. It was the friendliest thing he’d met all day.
“You wouldn’t want that plane now,” Tony said. “It’s got a bomb on it.” Then he held out his hand. “I’m Tony.”
“Phil,” the pilot said, taking Tony’s hand, but half looking towards the horizon where the plane had disappeared. Then he looked around at Connie, who had waded ashore and was taking off wet hiking boots.
“She’s Connie,” Tony said. “Although that’s probably not her real name. She’s a double-naught spy who came here to make sure the bomb was safely hidden. And if not, she was supposed to kill me.”
“The rifle’s out in the lake,” Phil said.
“That’s no problem,” Tony said, getting his clothes and starting to put them on, “she knows forty-six ways to kill us with her bare hands.”
“There’s a bomb on my plane?” Phil suddenly came back to what Tony had said. “Was that a bomb the crazy guy took? Geez, they make nukes that size.” He paused. “That wasn’t a nuke, was it?”
“Only a small one.” Tony buttoned up his shirt. He turned to Connie. “Time to get onto your secret phone, spy.”
“But who’s the crazy guy?” Phil took his wet shoes off.
“Far as I know,” Tony said, “He was sent to kill me, then changed his mind and stole the bomb.” He watched Connie fiddling with her shoe, then turned back to Phil. “And are you out to kill me, or what?”
“Me? Heck, no.” Phil seemed a bit flustered. “I was supposed to take you to Owen Sound for an interview.”
“An interview?” Tony saw Connie look up.
“That’s what they told me. That the CBC was interested in an interview with you. About some book,”
“The CBC?”
“Well, they looked awfully civilized for CBC types. But they were making big promises to me if I could get you there.” He looked at his feet. “I said I’d try.”
Tony noticed that Connie had peeled the sole off one shoe and had extracted something. “Hey 99! You got a genuine shoe phone?” he walked over to her, Phil following closely and squishily. Astonishingly, it looked like that’s exactly what she did have - some sort of cell phone that had been hidden in the shoe.
“Hello Butterfly,” Connie said into the phone. She poked a couple of buttons, then tried again. “Hello Butterfly, this is Bimbo.” She scowled at Tony when he snickered.
It seemed the third time, she had some luck. A bit of static came from the speaker. “Butterfly,” she said, “the package is not with the signal.” She repeated the message several times, watching the sky.
Tony and Phil looked up. It was the pilot who spotted it first, and pointed it out to the others. “A plane,” he said, “coming this way.
“The signal.” Tony looked at Connie. “The flashlight had a transmitter in it.”
Connie nodded, and kept repeating the message.
As they watched, the dot in the sky grew larger. Suddenly Tony got the feeling that it was coming right at them in a dive. He got a bad feeling about it, as Phil started to move along the beach. Tony could see wide wings and a large tailfin on the plane.
“Nicholas!” Connie said. “The package is not with the signal. The package has gone on a red floatplane.” She paused to hear what sounded like gibberish on the phone. “August 19; sunfish. Yes, this is Bimbo. The signal is here, but the package is on the float plane that just left the lake.”
The rest was drowned out as the sky filled with a plane. It skimmed the lake, flew just over their heads, and trimmed the tops of a couple of trees. It took a bit for the echoes to die away.
The three people on the shore got up. Tony checked that he didn’t need to change his underwear. “What was that?” he asked.
“B-52, I think,” Connie said. “With a poor schnook out to resolve some guilt about a gift he made a long time ago.”
“He could have killed us,” Tony said.
“Oh, I think that was irrelevant. I suspect he just wanted to scatter the evidence.”
“Now what?” Tony asked. He noticed that it was late afternoon and he was still alive. “Are we going to go back to civilization, or should I just hide underwater the rest of my life, breathing through a straw?”
Connie smiled, which was a change. “Oh, I think you’ve become irrelevant about now.”
Irrelevant sounded really good. Tony picked up the canoe. “Let’s go back to camp.”
“Excuse me,” Connie asked. “Is Owen Sound a logical place to take a guy for a CBC interview?”
Phil and Tony looked at each other. “No way,” said Phil. “I assumed they were going to arrest him for something when we got there. Or something like that,” he added.
“The flig
ht would be over the lake?”
“Over Georgian Bay.”
“Then,” Connie said, “things may work out just fine. Here,” she offered. “I’ll carry the canoe.”
They portaged back to Westphal and started across the little lake. With three people in the canoe, it sat lower in the water, and they had to whittle a stick to put into the bullet hole in the side. Connie’s communication device beeped, just before the B-52 reappeared in the sky. Tony was glad to see it was well above the hills this time, but he kept his eyes on the bomb bay doors.
“Bimbo, here,” Connie said. She listened for a couple of moments. “Thanks. We appreciate the information. Have a good flight home.” She waved as the bomber made one turn over the lake, then headed south.
She looked back to Phil, who was sitting behind her, on the floor of the canoe. “Your plane,” she said. “It’s gone.”
“The B-52 downed it?”
“Said he didn’t have to,” Connie said. “Seems to have run out of fuel and come down in Georgian Bay. Sank.”
“Right,” said Phil. “Makes sense. I had a secret Denver switch installed. Cuts off the gas after a while.”
“You get hijacked often? Tony asked him.
“People steal planes sometimes from the airports.”
“I’m getting to understand paranoid people,” Tony told Phil, as the canoe reached the shore of the lake.
Connie got out of the canoe, then dragged the prow onto the muddy shore. “Is it deep water out in the bay?”
“I think so.” Tony followed Phil out of the canoe onto the shore.
“Then you’ll probably be off everybody’s hit list, once I pass the word around.” She turned to Phil. “If I were you, I’d just tell authorities that a crazy, wounded guy hijacked your plane. I wouldn’t mention the bomb.”
“Who’d believe me?” Phil asked.
“Take it from me,” Tony said, shouldering the canoe for the portage, “you really don’t want anyone to believe you. Bad for your complexion, like.”
“No problem, then.” Phil stumbled along the portage in the late afternoon light. A couple of cicadas ramped up their mating cries in the trees. A white-throated sparrow sang its “oh, sweet, Canada-Canada-Canada” song in the cedars. The wilderness returned to wilderness as they walked.
They reached Creswicke Lake as the sun was low over the trees, and in their eyes.