So far, all the information Brandon Ellison had supplied, checked out. They hadn’t found Mark Ellison, but the locations were places where he could have been holed up. Unfortunately, they were all spread out across a three-hour radius around Minneapolis.
“Is everything okay?” Wilson asked Burke when he re-entered the vacant restaurant. He knew Burke had stepped out to call Donna.
“Yes. Smith hasn’t come up with anything concerning on that cop. Donna’s still at her mother’s house but will be heading home in a bit. I’ll probably reach out to her again after she gets the kids to bed to make sure everything there is okay.” He glanced around the room. “Are we done here?”
“Yes,” Wilson said. “Nobody’s been hiding out here, just like the last place.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and brought up the location of the next target. “Okay, looks like the next place is a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, near some lake. Drive time is just over two hours north of here.”
“Don’t sound so excited,” Tessman teased him. “And given that this is known as the state of ten thousand lakes, it’s not surprising that this cabin too is near a lake.”
Two of the locations they’d checked out the prior day were a few hours’ drive out into the middle of nowhere near a lake.
“Is the drone fully charged yet?” Burke asked.
“Unlikely,” Wilson said. They’d used it to surveil all the locations before going in.
“I’m getting hungry,” Burke said. “It’s dinner time. Let’s find a steakhouse and bill a good dinner to Shepherd.” They’d eaten pizza at the hotel when they’d arrived back the previous evening at twenty-three hundred. “That’ll give the drone time to charge, and we can hit the next location after.”
Tessman chuckled. “A steakhouse, looking to max out our food allowance.”
“Just saying, we have eaten on the cheap the last two days,” Burke said. “And we do need to give the drone time to charge. If we’re heading into another remote forested area, I want that drone in the air, so we know what’s around us. We haven’t hit on a place that has a lot of militia members yet, but I think it’s bound to happen.”
“At least we can go in with NVGs,” Wilson said. “I prefer night recon. I think Burke’s right; wherever Ellison’s holed up, he may be surrounded by militia members.”
“And I’d expect there to be active surveillance on all approach points and maybe even some booby-traps,” Tessman added. “By now our boy has to know his group is being rounded up.”
Burke chuckled. “Not quite the Christmas gift he was hoping for, I’m sure.”
Tessman stepped toward the door. “Come on, let’s go find a steak joint.”
***
It was several hours later when the team turned off the narrow, paved road onto the gravel path that was labeled a road in the maps program. It was only wide enough for one car at a time, not that that would be an issue as they hadn’t seen another car in over a half hour. They’d seen nothing but trees all around them for the last hour. No homes, no stores, nothing since they’d exited the interstate. And thankfully, it was pitch-black out. A heavy cloud cover blocked all celestial light and darkened the entire area.
The four men had eaten a big meal at a steakhouse as planned and were ready to spend several hours checking out this new location. Burke didn’t vocalize it, but he had a gut feeling this was where they’d find Mark Ellison. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking.
A mile in, Wilson, who’d been navigating, said, “Pull over here. The cabin’s about a quarter mile due east.”
Burke, who’d been driving, pulled over enough that if another car came, it could get around them. “Wasn’t there a little access road into the general vicinity of the cabin?”
“Yeah, we can call it a driveway. It’s up ahead. I’d rather launch the drone from here.”
The men exited the vehicle and launched the drone. They all huddled around the screen of the monitor as Wilson piloted it over the trees. On the first pass, they picked up half a dozen human-sized heat signatures near the cabin, which also showed an inside temperature higher than the surrounding area.
“Paydirt!” Wilson exclaimed quietly.
“Someone’s here,” Tessman said. “Not necessarily, Ellison.”
“Members of the militia,” Burke added. “If Ellison isn’t here, one of them may know where he’s at.”
“If one talks, unlike those two guys near the Dells,” Rogers said with disgust.
“They’re both hardcore members,” Wilson said. “I’m not surprised they gave nothing up.”
“If we didn’t have to turn them over to the feds, we could have gotten them to talk,” Tessman said.
His three teammates knew what he was suggesting.
“If we can pull it off,” Wilson said.
