Troop 18 Read online

  “Andy…look…” Les said.

  Shipman walked in through the front doors, hands shoved into his pockets, and went to stand with Petit, Awad, and Prewitt-Hayes. He didn’t look at the rest of the troop or the instructors. He simply held still. While Andy was processing Shipman’s suspicious entrance and body language, Foster arrived from down the hall with a wet jacket balled up under his arm. The troop shifted and made room for Foster. Andy thought of the way the troop had almost unconsciously made a barrier between themselves and the men’s basketball team earlier. Right now though, they seemed to consider Andy, Kate, Les, and Zeb the threat. Andy took a step to the side and just caught the look Foster was giving Shipman. A sharp shake of his head, a warning glare. Shipman gave the smallest of shrugs and looked away.

  “It’s five,” Zeb said tightly.

  Andy began a head count.

  Just as she did, the men’s basketball team arrived, this time moving en masse down the hallway. Their noise and movement filled the already crowded foyer as they headed to the doors with their gym bags slung diagonally across their broad shoulders. Andy felt the tension immediately, and she willed the team to just keep moving. But their momentum slowed and Troop 18 mobilized.

  Andy didn’t see it start. She heard a raised voice near the front, a short response, then a challenging question thrown carelessly into the crowd, and a low, threatening statement. Zeb and Andy both started moving, aware of the tight tension, the restless, nervous shift of thirty people in the lobby. As Andy was trying to move her way to the front, the troop suddenly shrank back and then surged forward as a shout rose up. Andy began pulling at cadets, moving them forcefully backward and out of the way.

  Behind her, Les called individual names, the warning in her tone sharp and clear. Andy was at the front now, watching Shipman fighting against Petit’s hold on him, cursing and challenging one of the basketball players. He was also being held back by his teammates. By the look on both their faces, the red welt under Shipman’s eye, and the bloody nose of the basketball player, they’d both managed to get a good hit in before being hauled off.

  “You fucking asshole!” Shipman yelled across at the other guy, even as he was being hauled farther and farther back by Petit.

  “Nice one, douche troop,” the basketball player sneered, pushing his teammates away but standing his ground. It took him just a second to register Andy’s presence. He seemed to calculate her height, her uniform, and her stance, and he settled for a smirk.

  “What’s the problem?” Andy said, keeping her eyes on the team in front of her while monitoring the troop in her peripheral vision. Shipman had finally shaken off Petit, but the large man continued to use his bulk as a barrier.

  “No problem, no problem,” the basketball player said, disrespect heavy in his tone. He wiped the small trickle of blood under his nose onto his sleeve. “Just a friendly disagreement.”

  Andy didn’t ask. It wouldn’t do any good to hash it out in front of everyone. She could see the desk clerk talking on the phone, her eyes wide. Andy hoped this would be done by the time campus security showed up.

  “Good, then you can go. All of you,” Andy said, indicating the whole team. Zeb edged his way to the front of the crowd, his body tense. She really hoped he would stay out of this.

  Clearly, the player did not like being kicked out of his own gym. His whole demeanour changed from disrespectful indifference to a reckless, seething mass of anger. He puffed out his chest, stretched to his fullest height, and balled his hands into fists at his side. Andy didn’t try to match his postural challenge. She waited him out and stared him down.

  “Fuck it,” he finally said, half turning to the rest of his team. “Let’s go.” He picked up his bag and swung it over his head, letting it fall heavily over his shoulder. The smirk was back, not aimed at Andy this time, but over her shoulder. Andy assumed it was meant for Shipman, but she didn’t turn to look. She monitored the progression of the basketball team as they made their way to the front door, a silent hostility hanging between them and the troop at her back.

  Just as they reached the large glass doors, Andy saw the guy lean in and say something quietly to Shipman. The cadet surged forward, but the basketball player moved easily out of reach, laughing. Andy moved to intervene but Foster was quicker, placing himself between Shipman and the front doors, pushing Shipman back toward his troop. Zeb suddenly yelled from the opposite end of the foyer, catching even Andy by surprise.

  “Troop 18, in formation!” If Andy hadn’t been looking, she would have sworn it was Sgt. Trokof. “Now! I want you in formation now!” His voice echoed around the glassed-in foyer. The cadets fell into line, the command triggering an automatic reaction. Shipman had to be partially dragged, but even he pulled himself into position, breathing hard. The troop had fallen into four neat rows of four. Everyone was accounted for.

  After a brief conversation with the instructors, Zeb loaded the now-silent troop on the bus. Shipman avoided eye contact, his normally jovial face a mask devoid of any emotion. Shandly sat beside him and spoke quietly to him under her breath, a constant monologue he didn’t respond to. Andy thumbed out a brief text to Lincoln and Finns in the near darkness of the bus, Kate sitting silently beside her. Heath was going to have a field day with this one.

  Shipman was out of chances, she knew that. The thought caused anger and disappointment to war in her stomach. Andy stabbed at the send button on her phone, having to hit it twice in her haste to get it sent before they hit the dead zone back to camp. Kate looked at her silently, her concerned expression coming into sharp focus as they passed a street light then falling into darkness again as they drove up into the mountain. They both knew everything had just changed. Andy felt the spectre of failure rise up out of the darkness. She quashed it with an angry twitch of her body, shoving her phone back into the pocket of her coat. Andy knew Troop 18 could very possibly go down in flames, and she intended to be there every step of the way.

  Chapter Twelve

  Andy shouldered her way out of her wet storm coat, taking a moment to hang it on the rack in the front hallway of the main house. She was soaked from her long walk up the driveway where Zeb had dropped her off before taking the silent and anxious troop up to camp. She was also irritable and on edge.

  “Could you bring a little more water in with you, Andy?” Kurtz said, walking into the front hallway with her hands on her hips, a damp dishcloth slung over one shoulder. She still looked like a cop. It didn’t matter if she was wearing jeans and a comfortable looking grey sweater and she was clearly in the middle of doing dishes. Kurtz was a cop and always would be. And right now her cop instinct was obviously kicking in. “What is it?”

  Andy stood in the front entrance, unlacing and pulling off her boots while she filled Kurtz in on their episode at the athletic complex.

  “What do you need from me?” Kurtz said bluntly, not offering an opinion because Andy hadn’t asked for one.

  “The phone,” Andy said. “I need to take this to Lincoln.”

  Kurtz indicated the main room with a nod of her head, and Andy actually paid attention to the low rumble of quiet voices she’d heard since she walked in.

  “Guests,” she said. “Take the phone to the summer kitchen, if you want. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  It made sense, Andy decided as she grabbed the phone off its base and stepped across the soft, patterned carpeting. Kurtz opening a B&B in her retirement made perfect sense. She had always been accommodating, always more than willing to go to whatever lengths someone needed her to go. Always ready with a joke, advice, or an offer of shelter.

  Andy stepped into the unheated room off the back porch, which served as a store room for the B&B, but was also a place for Kurtz to escape to if her guests were driving her crazy. Andy settled in on an old, overstuffed chair beside a lamp on a small coffee table, took a breath, and dialled Lincoln’s number.

  Shipman was finished. The directive Lincoln handed down to A
ndy in the first thirty seconds of their conversation was not a surprise. They’d been more than fair, and they’d been perfectly clear with the cadet. Andy knew it made sense. She agreed fully with the decision. If Shipman was unable to handle himself during the six month training, he had no future with the RCMP. Still, Andy was angry.

  She sat stiffly in the armchair, staring grimly and unseeing at the boxes and bits of furniture around her as she listened to Lincoln and answered his questions. The decision had been made, and the committee would finalize the paperwork in the morning. But Lincoln wanted to come up himself to deliver the news. He asked a lot of questions about the incident, particularly about the rest of the troop. He asked for Andy’s best guess as to what the troop was attempting to hide.

  Andy could only offer her opinion that the troop had once again used camouflage and diversion to cover up something involving Foster and Frances and Shipman. But they hadn’t all agreed on it. Lincoln jumped onto the fight between Shipman and Foster. It was the only crack they had ever seen in the troop. Lincoln wanted Andy to exploit it. When Andy argued, her instinct telling her it was the wrong move, Lincoln quickly changed his language. Pressure, he said. Apply some pressure. And prepare for the fallout.

  They were just in the middle of arguing over the best action to take to accomplish this when Andy heard the creak of the summer kitchen door. Kurtz came in, and her blue eyes were intense, serious. She was holding the radio in one hand.

  “What is it?” Andy pulled the phone away from her mouth, reading the urgency in Kurtz’s stance.

  “We need to get up to camp,” Kurtz said. “Meyers just radioed down. Something’s wrong with Trokof. Kate wants to get him to the hospital.”

  Andy launched herself out of the chair, quickly relaying the message to Lincoln. Lincoln swore reflexively, worry heavy in his voice, then said he was leaving tonight and would be up in the morning. Andy disconnected the call and followed Kurtz back down the hallway, listening to the rain hammering against the roof.

  “It gets worse,” Kurtz said, handing Andy the radio as she swung a large rain jacket over her shoulders, shoving her arms in and zipping it up in one fluid motion. “The road’s beginning to wash out. A small slide opened up as the troop was making their way back into camp about twenty minutes ago. Meyers says the road could have stabilized or another four slides could have materialized by now. Hard to tell. He’s getting the troop together. I said we’d radio when we got to the top of the highway.”

  Andy zipped up her cold, soaked jacket, shoving her hat on her head before pulling open the heavy door. Kurtz reached into the bed of the truck, grabbed a beat-up plastic container and handed it to Andy before they pulled themselves into the cab. “There should be flashlights and flares, take whatever you need.”

  Andy tested each baton, throwing the dead ones on the floor. She shoved five flashlights and seven flares into various pockets before closing up the container. She tried to visualize their next steps. “If the road’s washed out, we’re going to have to get Trokof to the Yukon—” Andy started to say, but Kurtz interrupted.

  “Plan A is to get Trokof to the Yukon. Even that part of the road is a mess according to Meyers, so we’ll have to see if we can back the Yukon down to the highway. Plan B is to get the sergeant all the way to my truck.”

  Andy’s next question was cut off by the radio in her hand. “Camp Depot to Sgt. Wyles. Kurtz, you there?” It was Les, her voice stressed.

  “It’s Wyles. Go ahead, Sgt. Manitou.”

  “Andy, Kate says Trokof is deteriorating faster than she’s comfortable with. She wants an ambulance waiting at the highway. Can you put a call into Emergency Services before you’re out of cell range?”

  Andy cursed in her head, trying to scare away the worry in her chest. Kurtz pulled over, stabbing at the button for her four-way flashers, the yellow lights blinking on and off as Andy pulled out her notebook awkwardly, made notes about Trokof’s age, symptoms, and stats. Kate was in the background, calling out information to Les, her voice tinny and sounding very far away.

  “Did you copy all that?” Les said, her voice cutting out a little at the end.

  “Copy,” Andy said loudly into the receiver, not entirely sure Les had heard. Andy pulled out her phone, tilting it towards the light to see if they were in range. “Take us back half a click,” Andy said to Kurtz. Kurtz reversed down the side of the highway. Andy wasn’t sure exactly how she could see anything.

  “Try now,” Kurtz said, slamming the truck back into park.

  One bar. Andy hoped it would be enough. She called Kamloops emergency services, identifying herself, their location, and the vitals of the patient. The dispatcher was efficient and calm, almost bored, but police, ambulance, and fire would be dispatched to the scene. The dispatcher wanted Andy to stay on the line, but Andy explained that they needed to help the patient down from camp. When the dispatcher argued, Andy pointed at Kurtz to keep driving up to camp. Andy gave her own and Kurtz’s cell numbers then let the cell tower disconnect the call for her.

  Kurtz pulled into the entrance of the road to camp, killed the engine, and started to get out. Andy put an arm out to stop her.

  “We need someone to stay at the highway, Kurtz.”

  Kurtz looked supremely annoyed. Andy was not supposed to be giving her orders, but Andy didn’t have time to worry about Kurtz’s feelings. Trokof didn’t have time. “Take the radio. We’ll need a link to the outside world and someone to direct emergency services in when they arrive.”

  To Kurtz’s credit, she immediately slammed the door shut again and snatched up the radio. “Keep me updated, Wyles,” she said, her blue eyes hard.

  Andy nodded and opened her door, pulling out one of the flashlights. Andy started at a run, her footfalls landing wetly but solidly in the hard-packed gravel at first, but she soon bogged down in the softness of the loose rocks, the structural weakness just holding the road together. Her flashlight picked up the first wash-out between the highway and the Yukon. She jumped it, her brain working overtime thinking about getting Trokof back down this path.

  Andy slowed, gravel and mud now sucking at her boots. The second wash-out was larger, the edges crumbling before her in the bright beam of the flashlight. She was pretty sure both these wash-outs were new since the troop had come down, and alarm rose in her chest as she calculated how quickly they were losing the road. Andy kept slogging through, wiping rain impatiently out of her eyes.

  When she saw the third wash-out, Andy’s heart sank. She stopped at its edge and aimed the beam of light up to see its origin. The torrent of water rushed down off the hill, diverted on one side by a boulder and on the other by a tree with massive, smooth roots that looked almost like a water sluice. Andy swore, her voice lost in the rain. The culverts never had a chance. She looked back to the wash-out in front of her, stamped her feet in the gravel a few times, and then backed up a couple steps and took a running start.

  She launched off her right foot, but as the muscles in her thighs propelled her body up and forward, the ground softened and started to give way. The shifting weight of the flashlights and flares also unbalanced her, and she barely managed to clear the stream of water. Andy landed awkwardly and painfully on the other side, but she didn’t stop or look back. She was too busy coming up with Plan C. Getting Trokof back down the road was impossible.

  Andy arrived in camp moments later, briefly confused to see cadets ripping apart picnic tables in the quad, tossing two by fours into a haphazard pile. The cadets looked up as Andy approached but didn’t stop what they were doing. Andy could make out Zeb, Mancini, and Awad through the blur of rain and dark.

  “Where’s Sgt. Trokof?” Andy said to Zeb.

  Zeb pointed with the hammer he was using to pull nails free. “With the doc, medical cabin,” he shouted over the rain.

  Andy pointed to the pile of wood. “Traction?”

  “Yep, and to bridge the wash-out.”

  Andy shook her head. “We can’t go
that way. New plan. We’re going to have to take him down the mountain to the main house. Keep going though, we’ll embed those boards in the mud for the upper part of the path. Hey, pass me your radio.”

  Zeb gave her his radio and went back to his task. Andy radioed Kurtz as she walked and told her about the road. She instructed her to drive back down to the house, call emergency services, and update their location to the main house. Kurtz swore, copied, and signed off. Andy shoved the radio into her pocket beside a few of the flares and took the steps into the cabin two at a time before pulling the door open.

  Trokof had his eyes closed, in a half-sitting position on the bed, his skin an unhealthy grey colour. Kate instructed him to breathe in and out as she listened with her stethoscope pressed against his back. Trokof opened his eyes briefly when he heard the door, then closed them again, but not before Andy could see pain and a sad humiliation in his eyes. Trokof’s jacket lay across his knees. His rumpled shirt was unbuttoned, and Andy could see the man’s thin chest covered with light grey hair rising and falling as he strained to breathe.

  Andy stood dripping on the mat, taking in Trokof’s sad appearance, feeling awkward seeing him half-dressed, diminished, and ill. When Kate finished, she looked up at Andy and gently pushed Trokof back to a lying position, moved aside his shirt, and listened to his heart. Andy read the signs of Kate’s stress. Kate wasn’t panicked but definitely worried. Andy felt her own body calm slightly, felt the adrenaline in her body kick back down to a normal, functioning level.

  Before Andy could say anything, Les came out of the back room with Kate’s medical kit gripped in one hand.

  “Andy, thank God you’re here. Kate’s got everything prepped, Trokof says he’s ready to move, and Zeb and Meyers are mobilizing the troop, coming up with a plan to get him down the road to the ambulance—”