Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [13]
“What?”
“Over there.” Following Muldaur’s gaze off to the north, Zak saw a puff of dust working its way in their direction.
“The Jeeps?”
“I don’t know who else would be out here. And they weren’t all Jeeps. That first one was a Porsche Cayenne. It costs over ninety thousand dollars if you get the loaded model.”
“At least we won’t have to contend with them. Stephens said they won’t be able to get past the Spur Ten gate. The people who have fishing cabins up at Lake Hancock have a key, but nobody else.”
“I just wonder how they got past the guard.”
“What would you have done if they’d stopped?”
“I don’t know, Zak. Every time somebody risks my life with a four-thousand-pound vehicle when I’m on a twenty-pound bike, I get pissed. I know people who carry guns when they ride, but if I carried one I’d end up using it. So I don’t.”
“Shooting at a car wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“It wasn’t such a good idea trying to run us off the road, either.” When Zak turned to leave, Muldaur said, “Wait a minute. I want to see if they head back to North Bend.”
“They really bugged you, didn’t they?”
They watched the distant plume of dust wend its way south. From their vantage point Zak couldn’t make out the individual vehicles, but he knew there were four of them. For more than a minute the dust trailed off behind the trees, then reappeared, then vanished again. Finally it stopped at a point almost exactly in line with Seattle’s skyline. “They’re at Spur Ten gate,” Muldaur said. “Probably trying to figure out how to get through it.”
The plume of dust flattened and gradually dissipated. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere and I can still hear somebody’s dog yapping,” Zak said.
“This is America. Everybody’s entitled to at least one gun, one truck, and two dogs. Geez. Feel how hot that wind is?”
The breeze came at them from two directions, from above on the mountain and from the south, skimming the face of the hills they’d ridden up. “It’s so dry it sucks the moisture out of your mouth.”
“In California they call them Santa Anas,” said Muldaur. “Up here they call them Chinooks. The wind picks up heat as it rolls down off the mountains. And some of that heat is coming directly from eastern Washington. The pass acts as a bellows.” Suddenly he noticed that the vehicles were headed straight for the base of the mountain on a ribbon of dirt road. “Jesus. They got through the gate!”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. And they’re headed straight for our camp.”
They got back on their bikes and climbed for another fifteen minutes until they hit the crest of the foothills, where they turned around and headed back down. Muldaur estimated they’d reached the forty-five-hundred-foot level. They wouldn’t go a whole lot higher this weekend, though they would descend and climb these hills many times more. As they pedaled they drank from their CamelBak water packs. Even though Zak’s pack had held almost a hundred ounces when they started, it was nearly dry now.
Though they were both expert riders and had expensive high-tech mountain bikes with disc brakes and front and rear shock absorbers, on the downhill Zak easily sped away from Muldaur. The difference between them, Muldaur was fond of telling him, was that Zak hadn’t yet had his accident. “You get in a wreck where it takes six months to heal, you’ll slow down,” Muldaur said. “You’re just one crash away from going my speed.”
Zak laughed, let go of his brakes, and disappeared around a sharp bend. Later, Muldaur told him he must have been doing forty—an insane speed, really, when you thought about the unpredictable road surfaces and the drop-offs.
The trail was bisected by short sections of washboard produced by heavy truck traffic over the years. It had the added hazard of short, diagonal dikes laid across the path to channel off heavy rainwater. All of this on a bumpy road with unexpected twists and turns and the occasional rock smack in the center.
Zak bounced onto the dirt platform near their camp and purposely skidded his rear wheel, kicking up a cloud of dust. Giancarlo came out from behind the ancient