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September Third
An Estonian Bog
“Do not walk in that little gutter,” Marilin said with a smile that took the bite out of her words. “It is ant highway. You see?” The naturalist, taking the group on the same hike she’d been hired to provide for the executive retreat, was an affable woman with a no-nonsense presence that immediately put Halo at ease. She seemed completely comfortable with her surroundings as she made her way from the site where they had parked, through the woods, toward the bog. A series of vastly different ecosystems in an hour-long walk.
Average height for a woman, the team towered over her. And yet, she showed no signs of intimidation. As a matter of fact, she seemed amused by their group of four—Titus, Thorn, Gage, and him.
Last minute, Honey had switched directions, flying to some undisclosed location to negotiate the release of an Iniquus client being held hostage. Margot was fighting off Covid in Helsinki, and Nutsbe would be coming in tomorrow, bringing Max with him.
Apparently, Maxi had taken to using the dunny straight off. And he must have learned his lesson on the Virginia mountainside because he aced the snake aversion training.
Knowing Max would be getting in tomorrow morning, Halo had already talked to Titus about coming back on this trail and out into the bog on his own with his K9. With Titus’s permission, Halo wanted to turn off his shirt’s satellite connection to test how well he could rely on the data pack he carried. A truism that Halo lived by was the saying, “Never trust a gun you haven’t fired yourself.” And Halo applied that dictum to all equipment that went with him into life-and-limb-threatening circumstances. All equipment, he amended since he never knew what situations would present and how each and every item could help or hinder.
Equally as important, Halo needed to know how Max did in a bog. Out on a hike with the client was not the time to introduce his K9 to an untested landscape. The Virginia search had hammered that lesson home. Yes, Max was aces in the mountains in New South Wales. That didn’t mean that all mountains had the same set of challenges.
Gage stepped to the side of the four-inch-wide channel as the team watched the parade of ants moving along. “Wow.”
“Yes, very wow,” Marilin agreed, swiping her fingers through her short blond hair. “This is a good place to stop and look around. First thing—and important thing—you see this tree? This is the tallest tree in the woods. We are about to step into an area where it is impossible to have a known and consistent path. The bog changes with the rains. So, if you get lost and need to return to the trail, look for this grandfather tree, which will be your signpost. This is especially important if there is lightning.”
“Don’t get near the tree,” Gage said.
“This is true.” Marilin put her hand on the craggy trunk, and it seemed to Halo that the gesture was meant as a hello to an old friend. “Don’t stand under this tree in a lightning storm. But there is more to this. So, here we have two kinds of rain. One is mushroom rain.”
“What is that?” Thorn asked.
She rubbed her thumb over the pads of her fingers and then lifted her palm. She must not have the word. Or maybe “mushroom rain” was the word. It just wasn’t a term that Halo was familiar with. From the gesture, he read it to be a misting kind of rain.
“This kind of rain is safe,” she said. “The time that you need to move and move fast is if there is lightning when you are on the bog. It is important to get to the tree line as quickly as possible. Aim for this grandfather tree so you can find the trail.” She patted the trunk.
“Why?” Titus asked. “Is it a question of exposure?”
“When lightning strikes, the rain that follows is very heavy,” Marilin explained. “You will lose sight of grandfather. You will even lose sight of the woods.”
Having just been through a torrential rain with three-foot visibility, Halo imagined his time getting Mrs. Haze down that mountain in the make-do rain sack would be about a hundred times easier than getting a group of executives back to the safety of their vans from a bog.
“And most dangerous,” Marilin continued, “the bog will fill not only with the rain but the water that runs down the hills into that low-lying area. You will—how they say in English—get bogged down. You will not be able to get out or even know which direction to take, trying for safety.”
“Oh,” Gage said.
“Not only this, but more. There are the winds. The winds become aggressive. There are many trees in the woods that stand but are not alive. The strength of the wind will make them fall. With the sound of roaring in your ears, you will not hear them coming down until they are on top of you. The wind is very strong. Very dangerous. Very intense.”
“The client will be out here in three weeks,” Titus said, “at the end of September. Our research says that September and October aren’t in your rainy season.”
“Yes, historically, this is true.” Marilin started forward again. “I say this is a very good time to be here for the weather. Our rain season—the time when we expect the lightning rain—has been for most of my lifetime in June and July. Our heaviest rains come in November. But as things change with our climate, we no longer depend on this. Last year, in September, we had several lightning storms. Very bad. Trees in the road. Emergency vehicles cannot pass. Bad.”
“What about in the city? How do they do in the rain?”
“Tallinn?” Marilin shook her head. “Is not good in the rain. It is an ancient city not built for today. The roads become impassable. When it rains, stay in your chair with book, relax. It will pass. But when we are out here on bog, I will watch the sky and give warning to go back. When I say this, we act. We don’t argue.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Titus said.
“Go back to ants.” Marilin pointed. “See this pile of dirt that comes to my waist just below us on the hill?” She didn’t stop for an answer. “This is anthill.”
“Anthill?” Thorn asked. “It’s over three feet—a meter tall.”
“Yes, millions of ants.” They stopped. “Bears love to eat the larva. Sometimes, I come into woods and find anthill toppled over from bears having a feast. You see beside your foot?” she asked Titus.
Halo followed her gaze. “Bear scat,” he said. They didn’t hand out pepper spray at the beginning of this hike like they had done on the Mrs. Haze rescue. Once home from that mission, Halo had done some research into bears. And though the Virginia black bears were less fierce than grizzlies, they could still be ferocious and deadly. And the bears he’d seen in the movies were still the visual that came up for him. “So the bears, if we see them out here, we just get big and make a lot of noise?” Those were the instructions listed on the many state and national park websites he’d read through.
