Black Frog

  B.D. Smith

  © Copyright B.D. Smith 2019

  Black Rose Writing | Texas

  © 2019 by B.D. Smith

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  The final approval for this literary material is granted by the author.

  Second digital version

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Print ISBN: 978-1-68433-282-3

  PUBLISHED BY BLACK ROSE WRITING

  www.blackrosewriting.com

  Print edition produced in the United States of America

  Thank you so much for checking out one of our Crime Fiction novels.

  If you enjoy this book, please check out our recommended title for your next great read!

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  “This important, nail-biting crime thriller about MS-13 sets the bar very high. One of the year’s best thrillers.” –BEST THRILLERS

  For Mindy

  The love of my life

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Recommended Reading

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  EPILOGUE

  About the Author

  BRW Info

  PROLOGUE

  It was late spring, a few hours after sunset, and a full moon was high over the vast northern forests. Peter slipped out of his barracks building and quickly moved toward the perimeter fence of the prisoner of war camp. The camp had not been open long when he first arrived about a year ago, and the guards - all local men, were new on the job then and always alert. But that had gradually changed, and Peter knew that the guard manning the tower he was approaching was probably already asleep.

  The POWs didn’t have it easy. The hours were long and the work was demanding – felling, trimming, and hauling timber through the long brutal winters and working in potato fields in the warmer months. But the Geneva Convention was followed for the most part, Red Cross inspections were routine, and the prisoners were generally not mistreated. The barracks were cramped and poorly heated by wood stoves, however, and the potato-heavy diet and grinding routine of hard manual labor took its toll. The anticipated end of the war was on everyone’s mind.

  Escape attempts were not uncommon in the POW camps located farther south in more populated areas, but here there had only been a handful. It was not so much the guards that discouraged escapes at this northern forest camp as it was the surrounding wilderness that stretched away in every direction. Others had attempted escape before Peter, but rather than trying to break out of the camp itself, with its guard towers, barbed wire fences, and bright lights, they had simply walked away from their work crews in the forest.

  These walk-offs often seemed to occur on the spur of the moment, with little planning and little thought given to how to survive and where to go. Most of the POWs were city boys with no experience surviving in the wilderness. Peter suspected that the guards might actually have looked the other way in anticipation of a break in the tedium and a few days of entertainment tracking the runaways. None of the POWs had remained at large for long. Their absence was quickly noted at the mid-day or evening head counts and they were routinely recaptured. Tracking them through the snow was easy in the winter, and during the warmer months escaped prisoners were often relieved to be caught, preferring the solitary confinement they could expect to the clouds of biting insects they encountered in the endless expanse of forest.

  Peter, however, was no city boy. He had grown up on a remote northern farm and was used to hard manual labor, long winters, and the swarms of insects that summer brought. Like most of his childhood friends Peter was also an avid hunter and trapper, and his knowledge of wilderness survival skills had earned him a coveted award from one of the local youth groups he had belonged to as a teen. The award, a silver disc about the size of a fifty-cent piece, had his initials engraved on one side and an embossed lightning bolt on the other – the symbol of the youth group. He had carried this talisman with him throughout the war and managed to hold on to it even after he was wounded and captured during the early days of the Battle of Normandy.

  Peter slipped silently under the lowest strand of wire, and as he walked confidently toward the dark forest shadows, out of the glare of the bright prison lights, he rubbed the lightning bolt award for good luck.

  Unlike the previous “walk-off” escapees, Peter had been planning for months. Hiding his fluency in the guttural language of his captors, he listened in on their conversations whenever the opportunity arose. At first the thick regional dialect and slang of the rural woodsmen who manned the guard towers and oversaw the lumbering crews was difficult to understand, but he slowly picked it up, and learned a lot. Albert, one of the friendlier work crew overseers, was a particularly valuable source of information, and would often talk with other guards about his frequent hunting trips in the local area.

  It was from listening in on one of Albert’s conversations that Peter learned that his best chance for escape lay to the northeast of the camp, where a lumbering road and canoe portage trails converged on a small community on the banks of a major river. He wasn’t sure how many miles he would have to travel through the forest before hitting the portage trail, but thought he had a good chance of reaching the river in just a few days. Peter’s plan was to then pass himself off as a local and gain passage on a boat heading down to the coast. There he could try to contact sympathizers who might be able to smuggle him out to safety.

  And instead of walking away from a work crew, Peter decided to escape from the camp itself. If he could slip past the guard tower and under the barbed wire perimeter fence of the camp soon after lights out, he would have a good ten-hour head start before they discovered him missing at the morning head count.

  It was a good plan, he thought, and if it failed he would just wait out the war in the camp. The food was marginal at best – heavy on starch, and the day-to-day existence was not easy – with long cold winters and hard manual labor. But he was healthy, and his leg, broken when he was captured, did not bother him much anymore. Navigating the rocky terrain of the forest floor at night would be hazardous, but he hoped that the full moon would help him to avoid falling and perhaps reinjuring his leg.

  Peter also was well equipped for a several days march through the dark forest. His small knapsack contained several baked potatoes and some heels of bread, along with a length of rusty window screen he had salvaged from an abandoned cabin a few months back and fashioned into a head net to protect him from the swarms of insects. He also had picked up a heavy flannel shirt that a guard had dropped on one of their work details, which he would put on before passing himself off as a local. And his prize possession, critical for his escape plan, was a crude compass he had fashioned out of a sewing needle, a magnetized electrical coil, and the tin top from a can of peaches.

  Peter paused fifty yards or so into the forest and turned to make sure that his escape had not been noticed. He then walked over to a small clearing where a tree fall had created an opening in the forest canopy and moonlight illuminated a small patch of delicate white lady slipper wild orchids. Smiling to himself and breathing in the crisp night air that carried the smell of tamaracks, Peter consulted his crude compass and then headed off toward the northeast.

  He made good progress through the forest for the first few hours, crossing several small streams and skirting a small beaver pond, but then the terrain became more difficult, with large rocks slippery with moss and the ground covered with a constant tangle of tree roots. Peter stopped about three in the morning at the base of a steep escarpment and tried to rest for several hours, but his leg had begun to ache, and a thick cloud of insects swarmed around his makeshift head net, making sleep impossible.

  With first light he walked along the base of the escarpment for several miles before finding a cleft and a way up its side. It was not too difficult a climb, but about halfway up a loose rock gave way beneath him and he fell hard on his bad leg, crying out with pain in the still morning air. He continued climbing after a few minutes, but his leg now pulsed with a dull and persistent ache. Progress was difficult after that, but by mid-morning he had found the canoe portage trail angling off toward the northeast, and even with frequent stops he was able to make reasonably good time. An abandoned campsite several miles up the trail yielded a valuable surprise – someone had left a well-worn canoe paddle behind, which would serve as an excellent prop supporting Peter’s claim to be a local looking for passage downriver to the coast. Using the canoe paddle as a crutch he continued along the trail and began to c raft a more detailed cover story. He knew from Albert’s stories that the southern terminus of the canoe portage trail was at the north end of a large lake. He could say that his canoe had been swamped in a storm and he had lost all his belongings except for the paddle, and was looking for passage down to the coast. It was a flimsy story, easily exposed, but it might work.

  By mid-afternoon several other trails had joined the one he was on, and it was now wider and seemed well traveled. Soon Peter thought he could smell wood smoke and hear the faint thudding of axes against tree trunks. As he reached the crest of the next rise in the trail the smoke from a settlement could be seen above the trees, and sunlight sparkled on the swift flowing river just beyond it. He had reached his destination. Now he would have to find a way downriver.

  Hearing a sound off to his left, Peter turned to see several men step out of the woods and approach him, one of them pointing a double-barreled shotgun in his general direction. He hailed them and was about to explain how he had lost his canoe and supplies when he recognized the man with the shotgun. It was Albert, the talkative guard from the prison camp. Peter’s shoulders slumped and he realized he would soon be back at camp and facing a month or two in solitary confinement.

  Albert gazed at him for a moment and then laughed.

  “Thought you were pretty smart didn’t you? Listening in on our talk. Thought I didn’t know you could understand us. I saw you steal the shirt and the window screen. I’ve been watching you for a long time now. Sneaking around with your big ears. Soaking up all the information I was feeding you - which direction to take, how far it was to the river settlement, and the escape route downriver. Took you longer than I thought it would to get here. We’ve been waiting all day. But you’re here now, right where I want you. You think you’re going back to camp don’t you? But you’re not. You’re finished. As soon as I found out you were in the Battle of Normandy, captured in the Bocage campaign, I started planning your escape for you, so you could end up right here. You bastards killed my baby brother in Normandy, and today I can even up the score.”

  Peter dropped the canoe paddle and raised his hands above his head. He hadn’t understood all of what Albert had said, but there was no mistaking the prison guard’s intent as he shouldered the shotgun.

  1.

  DOUGLAS

  Saturday

  Doug Bateman had made the trip up Route 6 to Greenville Maine from his home on the north shore of Sebec Lake countless times, and it usually took him a little over an hour. An early morning fog had slowed him considerably today, however, and he was relieved when it began to clear as he passed the Finnish Farmers Dance Hall just north of Monson. In a few miles he would be entering a stretch of road where large yellow signs warned drivers of frequent moose crossings, and the last thing he wanted was an adult moose suddenly appearing out of the fog in front of his Jeep Cherokee. Doug had been a Maine State Police trooper for more than a decade before being promoted to detective and he had seen too many examples of what a moose could do to a car and its occupants. The long spindly legs of an adult moose raised its body up above the hood of most vehicles, and seatbelts and airbags didn’t help much when a thousand-pound carcass came through the windshield.

  Doug crested the final hill coming into Greenville at the Indian Hill Trading Post and pulled over in front of the old McDonald’s to take in the stunning view of Moosehead Lake that stretched out in front of him. In the mid-1800s Henry David Thoreau had likened the lake to “a gleaming silver platter at the end of the table,” and it had seen relatively little change in the past century and a half. Forty miles long north to south and ten miles wide, the lake has a rugged and largely undeveloped coastline. Thoreau’s “table” - the continuous and uninterrupted forest that stretches away to the north of Moosehead, remains one of the largest unbroken expanses of wilderness in the country. Dominated by spruce, pine, and fir, this forest zone of northern Maine, when viewed at night from space, stands out as a vast island of darkness.

  Doug pulled into the parking lot of the Maine Guide Fly Shop in Greenville just as his friend Jim Hancock stepped out the front door, holding up a small bag of what Doug knew would be a selection of new flies. Jim was tall and athletic, with an easy smile, prematurely gray hair, and a fashion model’s good looks. He and Doug had been friends since their undergraduate days at the University of Maine. Jim had gone on to study environmental law after graduation, and for the past decade he had been general counsel for The Maine Forest Alliance, an environmental group in Portland dedicated to protecting wilderness areas in the state. Over the years Doug and Jim had remained friends and went fishing together two or three times every summer. They always met here at the fly shop and often would just drive the short distance up along the west side of Moosehead Lake to the east outlet of the Kennebec River, which offered some of the best wild trout fishing in the country. Leaving Jim’s car at the fly shop, they continued through Greenville, and as Doug turned left at the light and drove west through town, past the Kamp Kamp store and the Black Frog restaurant, Jim opened the bag on his lap, showing Doug his new flies.

  “Dan and Penny have some great new Copper Johns and some Caddis larvae just in, and they say the fishing has been great this last week, with stream flow well below 2000.”

  Doug usually stuck with a few tried and true flies, mostly Shufelt Specials, created by the local fishing legend, Bobby Shufelt of Greenville. Jim, on the other hand, was always trying out new flies and would frequently switch to something different if the fish didn’t seem interested. He was always teasing Doug for his lack of interest in trying new things – saying it was the result of him spending his entire life, except for college, in Piscataquis County, Maine, which had a population density of four people per square mile.

  “Guess I’ll stick with the Shufelts,” Doug responded, eliciting a snort of disdain from Jim.

  “Let’s work the north side from the bridge downstream to the Beach Pool,” Jim suggested. “It’s eight now, we can pocket pick till eleven or so and then have lunch before I have to go to the town hall meeting over at the high school. You should come with me Doug. It’s on the Lily Bay development plan and could easily turn nasty. We might need a state police presence.”

  There was only a single pickup truck in the parking lot just north of the Highway 6 Bridge over the Kennebec when they arrived, and they had the river pretty much to themselves. For the next three hours they slowly worked their way downstream in the fast, boulder-filled river, looking for the small pockets of calm water that trout favored that were located just downstream from rocks and logs. It was a beautiful day, with the sun sparkling off the water, and only a few other anglers in sight. The morning passed quickly, with Doug catching a single reasonably sized brook trout while Jim had better luck with his new Copper Johns, landing three trout and a juvenile salmon, all of which he released.

  Breaking for lunch, they drove down to Kelly’s Landing at Greenville Junction and sat out on the deck. Over a pitcher of cold beer and burgers they watched seaplanes taxi and take off out of West Cove and talked about the town hall meeting that afternoon, called to discuss the massive Lily Bay development project recently proposed for the east side of Moosehead Lake. The Maine Forest Alliance, along with a wide range of other environmental groups, had been opposing such development projects across Maine for more than thirty years, and Jim had become a forceful and impassioned figure in their ongoing efforts to protect Maine forests.

  “It’s a battle for the soul of Maine, Doug, for our way of life, and ground zero right now is right here at Moosehead Lake. More than 90 percent of Maine is forested and 95 percent of our forestlands are privately owned. Logging and harvesting of wood products have been the economic engine of Maine for more than 200 years, and you could say the forests have managed to survive despite our best efforts to eradicate them. They endured the rapacious clear-cutting and resultant massive forest fires and insect plagues of the 18th and 19th centuries, and have survived the four decades of industrial management by large forest product companies following WWII. But now they face the even greater threat of human sprawl and development.”

 

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