Chapter Thirty-Three

A screeched grind of metal on metal woke me. Before I moved, I reminded myself of where I was and why the hell my upper arm was in roiling pain. I forced myself to keep from yelping as I inched it from under my head. An equally agonizing lump was under my lower rib. Feeling for it, I realized the Glock had drifted underneath me during the night.

“Ah jeez, sometimes I’m such a loser,” I said to myself, then realized I’d better keep my noise level down. But sleeping on top of a loaded gun was not a brilliant career move.

Something odd was happening, so I quit the self-recriminations to pay attention and listen. No wind. But there were meadowlarks and truck engines. I sat up and concentrated on the trucks. More than one, that was for sure. And some of them had to gear down. So that explained the sounds that woke me.

I was certain nobody could see me because once inside the complicated Rocks, you could only be discovered if someone walked right up on you. I heard no footsteps. The trucks sounded like they were traveling the same route as the pickup from the night before. I’d wait until the sounds stopped before exploring.

I felt safe enough to down half a bottle of water, eat a granola bar and a blackened banana. By this point, I had to pee in the extreme. I wanted to move several feet away to do so and figured it would be a good time to do some initial reconnaissance.

Keeping to a crouch, I inched around some of the sandstone café tables, dropped my drawers, and took relief.

Just as I was finishing up, voices and footsteps thumped toward me. I had never been so compromised. Squatting with my pants around my knees, I prayed to every deity that I wouldn’t be discovered and I wouldn’t have a heart attack.

It came to me that they were walking along the outside edge of the formation and if I didn’t move, including pulling up my pants, they probably wouldn’t see me.

They were arguing. At first it was incomprehensible, then…

“Your guys don’t get it. My people only take orders from me. They don’t trust you foreigners, and they think you work for me. We gotta keep them thinking that or this whole thing will fall to shit.” I was almost sure it was Josh Martin.

“You people get all money from our people. We can’t help it you not understand that. We go with plan. You follow us or we go without you.” The accent was not European or Hispanic.

Then a third voice spoke, not in English. I’d heard that language before. It was odd, singular but familiar at the same time.

“What’s he saying?” demanded the Josh-sounding voice.

“We go as planned. Running out of time. No more stalls. Our leader…” The voices angled off to the west and became indistinct under the twinkle of meadowlark calls.

Still in the embarrassing squatting position, I waited several minutes until my calves and thighs begged for a change. With ginger, tottering movements, I arranged my pants and crept toward the edge of the Rocks. I could see nothing and made the decision to climb atop one of the stumpier stone café tables, at the same time realizing I had left my binoculars in the glove compartment of the Murano.

I edged around several formations before I found one that had climbing access. Being aware of my bandaged knee, I crawled and climbed atop the rock just in time to see another military-style cargo truck move from east to west across the path I had taken into the rocks during the night.

“What the hell? Do they have an entire army out here?” I said under my breath.

Then I remembered something that pissed me off. They were on my property! The whole thing, the Martin “township” and this, this…whatever it was, was all taking place on my land. My Montana landowner gene kicked in. I had to talk myself out of just tromping over there and firing a gun over their heads, screaming, “Git the hell off my land!” Thankful my reporter’s instincts to get a story kept me planted on that rock, I pondered what I had heard in the earlier conversation.

It probably didn’t matter in the moment, but I was baffled by the accent of the English-speaking foreigner and the language of the non-English speaker. I’ve traveled in more countries than I can count in one sitting. Language interpreters were some of my most valued assistants. I’d heard that language before, a unique kind of Arabic, tinged with something else. What was it?

I turned on my back and let the morning sun warm my face as I relaxed into memories of my Arabic interpreters. I could hear one voice, a woman’s, moaning and whispering in my ear. We were alone in a bathhouse and I was taking her under the cover of water. I could feel my fingers sliding in her as she murmured in Arabic and…French. Morocco. That was it. The foreign men with the Martins were Moroccan. I was disappointed with myself that I didn’t figure it out sooner. But I did get to relive an enticing little memory of that public bathhouse in Morocco. Who said quickies never pay off?

I shinnied down the rock and crouched back to my small “camp.” As I gathered my stuff and rearranged my pack, I reviewed what I knew about Moroccans and terrorism. I was pretty sure that one 9/11 hijacker was Moroccan. I also knew there was rampant extremist recruitment occurring in several Moroccan cities juxtaposed with a Moroccan monarchy that was friendly to the United States. So these guys, as far as I knew, were operating without the sanction of their government. Therefore, the “leader” I heard mentioned might or might not have been Moroccan. Probably an international terrorist group but, considering their interest in the ballistic missiles of Montana, well funded and highly organized. Way over the Martins’ heads.

I was cooked if they caught me. Beheaded on videotape. They loved icing reporters.