Serve & Protect

by L. J. Breedlove

  “Promise me,” he said, pulling back.

  “Promise me you’ll stay alive if I do,” she counted.

  “Count on it.”

  She nodded. “OK, then,” she said. “If anything happens, I keep going, and get myself out of here.”

  Mac looked at Rand who was wiping a smile off his face. Mac rolled his eyes. “You got an idea of how we might get out of here?”

  “Maybe,” Rand said. “And I’ve got this.” He pulled out a brick of the C-4 and shrugged.

  Mac grinned. “Planning a visit to their camp? Or luring them into this one?”

  “I heard a boom last night,” Rand said laughing. “I suspect their breakfast was a cold one this morning. Don’t know how much damage you did, but apparently? A barbeque igniter will detonate the stuff just fine.”

  Mac looked at their own barbeque. “Surely they wouldn’t use it?” he said slowly.

  “For coffee?” Angie said.

  Rand looked at the sky. “We need to move out,” he said. “It’s getting light enough they’ll be coming for us. And I’m not liking the feel of the morning.”

  “Snow,” Mac said morosely. He’d take the desert heat any day. He didn’t like the cold and snow. And May was well within the snow season up here. What were they thinking bringing novices up this high into the mountains?

  “The guy that almost made it out was headed toward the Park Center,” Rand said. “Someone took him out at the last minute and dumped him. But he came close. I think we go that way.”

  Mac nodded. He frowned. “We’re looking at this wrong,” he said slowly. They looked at him. “We’re looking at it as if we are the prey. And I’ve never gotten anywhere thinking like that.”

  Angie and Rand just watched him. He opened up the back of his 4-Runner, and pulled out the spare tire. He stood there, studying the contents of his gun locker, until curiosity got the best of Angie and Rand and they came over to look.

  “Jesus, Mac,” Rand exclaimed. “You always have this? You ever get rear-ended it’s all over.”

  “Reinforced,” Mac said absently. “They’re safer than they’d be in any gun safe. Hell, it is a gun safe.”

  “You could take over a third-world country with this type of arsenal,” Rand said.

  Mac nodded and smiled. Probably. He’d taken over an Army-of-God-fortified isolationist community last fall with it. “Or a sheriff posse?”

  Rand grinned.

  “So, think like a cop, not a survivalist,” Mac said. “What do you need when we get back to the city to prosecute all of these idiots?”

  Rand considered that. “I need Norton,” he said. “And I need to know who the idiots are. I need evidence of what they’ve done, and that means the dead bodies, and ideally the weapons that killed them.”

  Then he looked at Mac. “So, think like a reporter, not a Marine,” Rand challenged him back. “What do you need?”

  Mac looked at Angie. Then Rand did too. “What?” she asked, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “The most important thing we need to get out of here is Angie and her camera,” Mac said slowly.

  Rand slowly nodded in agreement. “And the way we get out of here, Marine?” he asked.

  Mac smiled. It made Rand want to back up slowly. “We take their camp, of course,” he said. “And we play capture the flag.”

  “What’s the flag?” Rand asked.

  “Norton.”

  Rand started to smile. “Photographed,” he added. “Angie, did you happen to take a picture of Cleve when you found him?”

  She nodded.

  “And the other injured?”

  “That’s what I do,” she replied. “Whatever happens? I shoot it. Especially the bad shit. I can think about it — feel bad about it — later. But I photograph what happens.”

  Rand was smiling. Mac looked at him. “And she sees a lot more than people realize,” Mac added.

  Rand nodded. “Do we have time to circle around and photograph the guy that died in Ken’s group?”

  Mac shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “Once you realize that the way out of here isn’t a long hike where they kill and toss you in the ravine? We’ve got all day.”

  Rand laughed. “Now if you can figure out who Sensei is? This won’t be as big a clusterfuck as I thought it was.”

  “Oh, I plan to make it a big clusterfuck,” Mac reassured him. He also had a growing suspicion about Sensei. He set that aside for when he got out of here. “And I plan to let Angie photograph it all. It will be glorious.”

  He rummaged through his weapon stash and came up with detonators. He handed them to Rand.

  Rand laughed.

  Angie shook her head. “Do we have time for another cup of coffee then?”

  “Sure,” Rand said. “We’ve got time for another pot. And bacon and eggs even.”

  “I could go for a hot breakfast,” Mac admitted. “But the situation still isn’t dire enough to make me drink coffee.”

  Angie frowned at him. “What do you have against coffee, anyway?”

  “Bad coffee is a Marine staple,” Mac said morosely. “When you’re on base, or any camp set up, the coffee pot goes up first, I swear to God. And I don’t know how they do it, but they can make day-old coffee from the first cup. When you’re in the field? You get a packet of instant Nescafe in your MRE. People do all kinds of things to make that shit palatable. Use it as chewing tobacco to get the caffeine hit. Mix it with the sugar and cocoa and instant milk to get a mocha drink that can gag a person — but damn, you got a hit from the caffeine, cocoa and sugar all at once.

  “It’s not the taste,” he continued. “It’s the smell. I smell that shit, and I’m back in a field camp in Afghanistan.”

  Rand was fixing the breakfast he promised as he listened to Mac. “And the Mountain Dew? Don’t get many Mountain Dew fans out here.”

  “No, it’s a Midwest and South hillbilly drink,” Mac agreed. “Picked up the habit from one of my team members who came from Louisiana. He always found some somehow. As an alternative to coffee? More sugar and more caffeine that a Coke. Got me hooked on it.”

  Mac didn’t add, he’d gotten hooked on it when he was sobering up. One barfight too many — and even the Marine Corps was looking at him skeptically. So, he started doing AA and all that shit. And what he found was that he craved sugar after that. And Danny gave him a Mountain Dew and said, “Drink.” And he kept feeding Mac Mountain Dew every time the craving for alcohol or sugar got to be too much.

  He was glad to be sober. He missed Danny, even though the man could talk a person to madness. And somehow Mountain Dew was a part of all of that. It was his lifeline to sobriety. And a fond remembrance of a friend.

  Even if it did taste like maybe they had added gasoline for a punch. It still beat Nescafe any day.

  “Eat,” Rand said, and sat a plate down in front of him. He dished up more food for Angie and for himself. Angie poured coffee, and she rummaged around in the storage tent and came back with a six-pack of Mountain Dew.

  “One now, the rest put in your pack,” she said laughing.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mac said, as he ate the bacon and eggs. They tasted really good. Food always did when you knew you were headed into a firefight. He even had seconds.

  Chapter 24

  So, the first task was to backtrack Ken’s route from yesterday and take some photos of a dead guy. Rand led the way. Angie followed him, while Mac brought up the rear. He was tired. He could have used a couple more hours of sleep. And yesterday had been a hard one. His legs hurt. His back hurt. His pack seemed heavier. Well actually it was heavier, he reminded himself. He’d stocked it with weaponry. He added to Rand’s personal collection.

  He looked at Angie consideringly, and then shook his head. “Stealth is your best friend,” he said. “You’ve got the Ruger if you need it. But you’re quiet, you know how to move through the woods. You’ve got a compass. Your job is to get your photos to Janet. And more weaponry will just weigh you down.�
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  “And besides, I can’t shoot worth shit,” she said equitably.

  “And there’s that,” Mac agreed with a laugh. He had pulled out his phone and gave her a couple of extra numbers: Janet’s complete list, Stan Warren’s cell phone, Rodriguez’s cell, even Dunbar’s. And then just to be safe — because Mac knew without a shadow of a doubt he’d come — he gave her Shorty’s number.

  “If you get out? Don’t go to Ken if you can help it. Don’t go to anyone local. As soon as your phone has service, you start down that list, until you get someone who can come to you and then you hide out until they get there.”

  “What about the rangers?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No, not even them,” Mac said adamantly. “Something’s not adding up right.” He considered it. “If you have to? Go to Ken. Or call Mrs. Jorgensen. She might help. But Angie? You can’t trust anyone local. There are pressures that they may be under that we don’t know about — an uncle who is a reserve, for instance.”

  “OK,” she said. “But don’t forget. You promised. If I have to head down alone? You two have to be right behind me.”

  “Count on it,” Mac assured her.

  Mac was beginning to like the mountains. The plants were amazing, lush with huge leaves, or delicate like the trilliums Angie stopped to photograph: three petals to the flowers, three leaves to the stalk. Rand knew where he was going, and he knew how to pace himself and them. And Mac could feel some of the tension seeping out of his muscles. These were people worth being with, he thought. Partners. Peers.

  Squad.

  Didn’t mean he didn’t need to be wary. He did. That’s why he was at the back. Didn’t mean he might not have to fight to protect them, he expected he would. But he also realized he trusted these two to be fighting there with him. To guard his back — not people he had guarding his back in Afghanistan, even while fighting alongside them. And he’d had some teams like that. Squirrelly fuckers who couldn’t be counted on. Couldn’t be trusted.

  Rand held up his hand and they stopped. He motioned them up beside him, and he crouched down. Mac crouched beside him. Angie stood at his shoulder, her camera out.

  “They’re hauling the body out,” Rand said softly. Mac looked at the two deputies who were loading up the body. He heard the soft click of Angie’s camera, and hoped it wouldn’t carry. Not that these deputy reserves were paying any attention to their surroundings.

  He frowned. What were they up to?

  “Shit,” he said, remembering in time to keep his voice soft. “They’re going to blame us for the deaths.”

  Rand frowned. “How will that work? Their word against ours?”

  “Dead men tell no tales,” Mac reminded him. He shrugged. “And maybe they figure their word against a couple of reporters and a part-time crew member, would be believed.”

  Rand’s smile grew slowly, and he choked back laughter. “They don’t know who I am.” He said. “You think Norton never ran background checks on Ken’s people?”

  “Nope.”

  “Still, dead men tell no tales seems more likely.”

  “Depends on how pragmatic Ken is,” Mac said. “If we’re dead, and we take the fall, would he try to clear our names? Or would he keep his head down and stay quiet?”

  “Pragmatic,” Rand said slowly. “If we get out? He’d back us. If we don’t? He’ll do whatever keeps him alive and in business.”

  “And I don’t fault him for that,” Mac said. “I’m just saying, Norton may be counting on it.”

  “Mac,” Rand hesitated. “I count Ken a friend. If it wasn’t for Angie here, I’d be in the caravan out of here to guard his back. I want to see him make it out of here alive, you know?”

  Mac nodded. “And I suspect Ken knows exactly why you stayed behind. So, we’ve got to clean up this mess, and catch up with them before Norton loses the rest of his God-damn mind and takes out everyone — even his own.”

  He looked at Angie. “You take the photos?”

  She nodded.

  “Then let’s go. You’ve got the compass,” he said. “Can you get us to their camp from here without using any known trails?”

  She hesitated, pulled out the map from yesterday, and looked at it. She frowned. “Need to go around that ravine Mark got himself trapped in,” she muttered. She traced a route on the map with her finger. Rand looked at where she pointed.

  “Stream in there,” he said briefly. “Be pretty wild these days. Too wild to get across, I’m afraid.”

  She found the thin blue line that indicated the stream and traced it. Mac liked watching her. It was as if she used touch to help her convert the map into a 3-D version. “We’re going to have to go almost all the way back to camp,” she said with a shake of her head. “Or follow them back.”

  Mac considered that. Looked at Rand. “There’s just the two of them,” he said. “We could take them.”

  “And do what with them?” Rand asked. “I’m not going to be party to killing them.”

  Mac rolled his eyes. “I was thinking zip-ties,” he said.

  “Sorry. It would be nicer to ride in than to walk,” Rand conceded. “Fine. Let’s do it.”

  “What are you going to do?” Angie asked anxiously.

  “You stay here,” Mac said. “Photograph and watch. If you see anyone else? Sing out. You’re our spotter.”

  Rand had already headed out to get around the two men who were loading the dead man into the SUV. Really, they’d caught them at just the right time, Mac thought. He watched for Rand, and when Rand gave him the high sign, he stepped into the road and pulled his pistol out of his sweatshirt pocket. He aimed, nodded at Rand, and waited.

  “Stop what you’re doing, put your hands up,” Rand said authoritatively.

  “Who are you to give us orders?” One of the men said, looking over his shoulder. He saw Rand, and frowned. “You’re one of Ken’s men,” he said. “I’m a deputy sheriff. I’ll give the orders.”

  “Deputy reserve,” Mac said. His voice coming from the other side of them made the two men freeze. “You don’t have any police powers. So just do what he says.”

  “Shit,” the second deputy reserve muttered to his buddy. “That’s the one Norton is looking for.”

  “And you’re the ones who found him,” Mac said dryly. “Congratulations. “Now do what Agent Rand said. Hands in the air.”

  “Agent?” Deputy Reserve 1 spluttered. “Agent of what? He’s a part-time trek guide!”

  Rand kept his pistol trained on them with one hand, and pulled an FBI shield out of the cargo pocket on his pant leg. “And this tells you what I do the other part of the time,” he said with amusement in his voice.

  Mac grinned. It was kind of funny, he admitted. The two men looked at each other, and put their hands up. Mac cuffed them using the zip-ties. Should have waited until they got the man loaded, he thought sourly. He put the two cuffed reserves in the back seat of the SUV, and then he and Rand got the dead man wrapped in plastic and stored in the cargo hold.

  Angie got to ride in the center of the front seat while Rand drove. Mac kept his gun trained on the two men in the back.

  “So exactly what were you told you were doing this weekend?” Mac asked. Rand glanced at him, and kept driving.

  The men didn’t say anything. “No really,” Mac persisted. “Did you know that Norton was going to take you up here to play war games? Do you follow Sensei on Facebook? What were you told?”

  “As if you would know anything about Sensei,” Reserve 2 muttered. He was a sullen man by nature Mac thought and being captured by the men they were supposed to be hunting hadn’t improved his mood. Probably early 30s, a small man, with a chip on his shoulder.

  “Inner circle,” Mac said with a shrug. “I get his inner circle newsletter daily. And I’m pretty sure you all aren’t following instructions. Because he hasn’t mentioned a need for killing his own men.”

  The two men looked at each other worriedly. Reserve 1 was a bit a yo
unger, maybe mid-20s, spent a little more time in the gym. He had military short brown hair, although Mac doubted he’d ever served.

  “So, what did Norton tell you?”

  “He said one of the men on this trip was a wanted man, and he — you — had infiltrated the trip,” Reserve 2 said.

  “Wanted for what?” Mac asked.

  “Killing a man,” Reserve 2 answered. “That dead hiker in the morgue. And we needed to stop you before you killed again.”

  “Obviously, we were too late,” Reserve 1 said with a gesture toward the body in the cargo hold.

  Mac turned that story over in his head. It didn’t hold up, of course, but Norton needed plausible, not truth. “And is this how you normally bring in a suspect in a murder case?” he asked. “How many reserves are out here? And why were you shooting at members of the trek yesterday?”

  “Us?” Reserve 1 said startled. “We weren’t shooting at anyone!”

  “Who was? Ken carted four injured out early this morning,” Mac said. “And there’s another dead body besides this one. Cleve? You all know him?”

  “Went to school with him,” Reserve 1 said. Mac judged it was news to him.

  “A man sat in a tree and held a group of the trek clients pinned down yesterday after killing Cleve. I was the one that chased him off. And Mark can testify to that. So, unless you can figure out a way that I was firing into the ravine and out of the ravine at the same time? Your crew killed him.”

  Mac watched the two, studying them. He didn’t think they knew what Norton and Sensei were up to. They glanced at each other. Reserve 2 chewed his lip.

  “You really an FBI agent, Rand?” Reserve 2 asked.

  “Yes,” Rand replied. “And I really am up here to find out who is killing hikers and homeless men — it’s been going on for a couple of years, matter of fact. Norton tell you all that?”

  “No,” Reserve 2 said slowly. “Just heard about this last one.”

  “So, here’s the truth of if it, guys,” Rand said. “You’re in trouble. Your boss has gone rogue, and he thinks he’s playing wargames with Ken and his tour group. Then this morning, Sheriff Norton offered Ken a chance to leave with his tour group and the wounded if he’d leave these two reporters behind for Norton to hunt down and kill. And if you don’t want to be serving a prison sentence along with him, you need to tell me what you know. Starting with the call out for the weekend.”