26

Lake Garner / White Lake

Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Minnesota

Thursday, 20 September

At three-thirty in the morning I get sick of the sweaty heat of my sleeping bag and decide to get up. Violet’s still got her back to me.

Outside in the black-and-white-TV moonlight there’s a low-lying fog on the ground of the kind I thought only happened in discos and vampire movies. It’s all over the camp and out onto the surface of Lake Garner, exhaled by the warm earth and water. The moon’s a sliver again, like it was when Reggie and I were talking on his porch, although I suppose it’s facing the other direction now, if that’s how the moon works.

I hear soft voices and see a red ember on the far side of the campsite. For fun I sneak past Reggie and one of Palin’s security guys while they discuss why bears are the only animals that are grizzly.

“Tuna fish are the only animals called tuna,” the guard says.

“You’re right, son,” Reggie says. “It’s not like there’s a tuna bird.” For the record, I don’t actually see the security guy take a hit off Reggie’s joint.

Right before I enter the woods I notice someone else and almost hit the ground, but it’s just one of Wayne Teng’s bodyguards, watching me without comment.

★★★

It starts to lightly rain as I stand at the base of the spit, which extends like an arm into the fog coming off both lakes. I’m not sure what kind of bullshit face-your-fears exercise this is supposed to be, but as long as it doesn’t require getting back in the wetsuit I’m okay with it. I can’t even see the surface of the water. And if the clouds manage to cover the moon, I won’t be able to see anything.

I do hear something, though.

It’s a hum. Subtle—not much more than a change of pressure in your ear canals, like when the refrigerator goes on in the apartment next door.

I’m pretty sure that’s not what it is, though. I follow the beach north along the edge of the widening ravine that contains White Lake. The beach is narrow and uneven but easy to follow even in the fog: it’s got a granite wall next to it.

The hum gets louder as I go. After a while I reach the point where both the cliff wall and the whole ravine angle to the right, revealing a new stretch of water. On it something that has to be a boat: glinting of metal through the drifting mist, and a faint green glow.

I left my binoculars and nightscope back in the tent, of course.

The humming stops. The boat’s just drifting.

★★★

“What are you doing?” Violet says as I’m looking through my pack. “Did you find Bark?”

“Shh. No. There’s a boat on White Lake.”

“What?” She sits up on her elbows. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t really see it.”

“You’re going back?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I did.”

“I mean intentionally.”

“Because it’s probably just another opportunity to get shot at.”

Violet starts patting around for her clothing. “I’m coming.”

“It’s raining.”

“Who gives a shit?”

“We have to hurry.”

“Fine. I’ll take a shower instead of a bath. What’s wrong with you?”

Something. I watch her unzip her sleeping bag and, still lying down, pull her jeans up over the gooseflesh of her thighs. They snag for a moment on her mound. She has to pull them free to get them up to her bare stomach.

When I look up at her face, she’s watching me watch her. Not judgmentally, but still.

Not a lot you can say to that one.

I unzip the tent flap. It’s raining heavily now.

★★★

The boat’s a big Zodiac, twenty feet long or so with a fixed pedestal in the center for the steering wheel and metal fishing struts that angle up and out over the sides like construction cranes. Even with the binoculars it’s hard to see any more detail than that through the fog. My digital camera, which I also brought, is useless.

“Here,” Violet says, handing me the nightscope. The rain’s loud enough that we’re not worried about talking. “He’s still shoveling powder from the bag into the water.”

The first thing I do with the scope is sweep the beach behind us. I made Violet hold my hand as we snuck out of camp, so that anyone seeing us would think we were going off to fuck. But as she pointed out, some people wouldn’t consider that a deterrent.

In any case, having to talk someone into holding my hand didn’t make me feel like a creep and a six-year-old at all.

I use the scope to look out at the lake. Both the downpour and the fog are more opaque under infrared, but I can see that the boat has one fat, heavily treaded tire drawn up in front of it like the figurehead on the prow of a ship, and identical raised tires on both back corners. Next to the front tire is something that looks a lot like a loaded harpoon gun. On the fantail there’s a large motor leaned out of the water and a much smaller one with its prop still lowered. That must be the electric one.

“It’s amphibious,” I say.

“Yeah. Sorry, I thought you could see that through the binoculars. What’s he doing?”

“I don’t see him.”

There’s a cloud of glare above the steering structure, possibly from a sonar display, but I don’t see the guy until he stands up from where he was hunched between the wheel and what looks like a large built-in ice chest at the rear. He’s holding something in one hand like a shot put.

“Now I see him,” I say.

“Can you see his face?”

“No. He’s on the far side of the boat with his back to us.” Also, like Violet and me and probably everybody else who’s awake and outdoors right now in Minnesota, he’s wearing a hooded anorak. At least we can guess what he’s hearing: the drone of raindrops on Goretex.

I sweep the nightscope over the beach again and hand it to Violet.

“Now he’s putting something on a big hook that’s on a line on that thing that goes over the side,” she says after a minute. “I think it’s meat.”

A few moments later I can hear the winch motor, even above the downpour. It’s louder than the electric outboard was.

Violet hands back the scope, and I watch the man straighten up and turn toward us.

Where his face should be, there’s a searing spotlight.

“Fuck!” I say, jamming the front end of the scope into my jacket. Too late, though, I know.

“What?”

Without the scope, there’s nothing out there but darkness. The light coming off the guy’s face is invisible.

“He’s wearing active infrared goggles,” I say. “The same technology we’re using. He can see the light our scope’s putting out.”

“But can he…?”

“Yeah. He’s probably looking at us now.” I put the scope back to my eye.

He’s staring right at us, face still shining like a lighthouse. Now, though, he’s also holding a rifle.

Classic Remington 700, with a big scope and a rainguard. I’m not saying it’s the gun used to kill Chris Jr. and Father Podominick, but the two would get along.

So apparently this is the part where we get shot at again. If the rifle has night vision, it’s going to be a long fun run back to the woods silhouetted against the bare face of the cliff. It probably makes more sense for us to dive into the lake and try to swim for the boat.

The man doesn’t aim the rifle, though. He just holds it low across his body, like he’s showing it to me or trying to make up his mind. Then he tosses it into the front of the boat and goes the other direction to tilt the big motor into the water.

“What’s he doing?” Violet says.

I give her the scope. “Getting out of here.”

In the narrowness of the canyon, the gas engine turns over like a Harley. Deep blat-blat noises that continue even as other, higher-pitched noises build on top of them. Then the boat turns hard and retreats back into White Lake, trailing its hook line behind it.

It’s gone from sight around the next bend before the flashlight beams of the people picking their way along the beach reach us.

“What the hell was that?” Reggie says.

“There’s a boat on the lake,” Violet says.

Its wake is still rippling into our shoes.