Serve & Protect

by L. J. Breedlove

  Whoever was shouting was smart, Mac thought. About every five minutes, another call. Kevin didn’t rush. He course-corrected a bit after the next call, and slowly moved forward. Mac gained appreciation for his skills, because he would not be able to navigate in this snow together with the dense forest. The snow wasn’t much different than a sand storm, but a sand storm didn’t hide pine trees the size of a man and taller, or shrubs that came up to your knees and could trip you. And all he could see was the swirling, wind-driven snow, and that orange fluorescent stripe. Whiteout was what they called it, Mac thought suddenly. He couldn’t see his feet even. He grimaced and kept his eyes on the orange stripe ahead and walked on.

  Kevin stopped and turned to Mac; he waited until Mac got close enough to grab him. “There!” he shouted in Mac’s ear, and pointed. Mac squinted. Slowly the dark shape ahead coalesced into a black SUV.

  “Are we near a road?” Mac asked, putting his mouth close to Kevin’s ear. He was puzzled. Kevin frowned, he looked around. He nodded.

  “Hairpin turn,” he said. “But they slid some.”

  “Will Rand come by here?”

  Kevin shook his head no. “Don’t know why they are here, to be honest. There’s a road, but it’s not the one we took to get here. Maybe they took the wrong fork a mile back.” He gestured to the left — east Mac thought.

  Mac tried to visualize the map and their trajectory on foot that got them here. He shook his head. Not that it mattered all that much. Here it was. And somewhere there was at least one guy. He studied the vehicle. There were no lights. No signs of anyone moving. It raised alarms. Kevin started to move forward. Mac put his hand on his arm, stopping him. “Wait,” he said. “Wait for the next call out.”

  Kevin looked puzzled, but he halted obediently. They waited. The call when it came wasn’t from the SUV. Kevin turned, almost like a dog might, Mac thought, suddenly amused. He headed to the left, to what looked like a stand of trees. Mac forced himself to move with him. He pulled the pistol out of his pocket.

  They were moving slowly. Mac didn’t like it. Didn’t like this at all. He heard something. Turned. Saw a dark shape moving behind them, and he shoved Kevin to the ground. He heard a shot.

  Shit! Mac thought. That stripe! Whoever had been sitting out here had seen it just as Mac had been able to follow it through the woods.

  “You hit?” Mac shouted at Kevin, even though they were maybe a foot apart. The wind had picked up, and it seemed to tear words from his mouth and fling them away. The sound of the wind prevented him from hearing anything either.

  He saw more than heard Kevin’s response: “Don’t think so. Felt like a mule kicked me though. So maybe?”

  Mac crawled up beside him, pulled off Kevin’s pack, and patted his back. Kevin grunted, but didn’t seem hurt. Mac opened Kevin’s pack found a small flashlight and pulled it out. He briefly shined it over the pack. “What do you have in there?” Mac asked, bending closer to Kevin’s ear so he could be heard. “Because that bullet tore along the fluorescent stripe and deflected off something. You are one lucky son of a bitch.”

  Kevin snorted. “It’s my son’s pack,” he shouted back. “He’s eight. The kids’ packs are all bulletproof these days.”

  Jesus, it was a fucked-up world when kids’ backpacks were bulletproof, Mac thought. This trip was going to make an anti-gun zealot out of him yet. He ripped the orange strip off the backpack and stuck it in his pocket.

  Still the call for help had come from ahead of them, the shot from uphill. Not the same person. Mac got into a crouch. Now he was wet too, he thought with disgust. He gestured toward the trees. Kevin nodded. And they moved slowly there. They could move slow or fast, their shooter couldn’t see any better than they could, Mac thought. Mac took the lead, and he didn’t feel guilty about it — he didn’t have a kid’s bulletproof backpack on. He couldn’t get over that.

  It was the quiet that Mac noticed first when they got to the trees. Partially sheltered from the blast of the storm, he could hear again. And gradually he could distinguish shapes. Not colors. He didn’t think there was much color to be seen. Dark trees, dark green branches, white snow on the ground. Black shapes that could be undergrowth shrubs or rocks. Or bodies, for that matter.

  And one of those black shapes groaned.

  Kevin ran forward, still carrying his pack. Mac followed, pulling his own pack off his back. He had the first aid kit out as Kevin dropped to the ground. He set the kit beside Kevin, who started rummaging for bandages.

  Mac pulled the man’s ski mask off and stared at the man it revealed. “Norton?” he exclaimed. “What the fuck?”

  “Hiya, Mac,” he said weakly. “Fancy meeting you out here.”

  Mac rolled his eyes.

  Another shape stirred and sat up. “About time you got here,” Craig Anderson said tiredly. Other shapes stirred. Mac counted five people besides those two.

  “Fill me in,” Mac said disgustedly, rocking back on his heels.

  Craig did the story telling. Norton was hurt. The others? Exhausted, mostly. Although one looked like hypothermia was going to be a close friend soon. And why weren’t they in the vehicle, where they’d at least be warm?

  Norton actually had taken a vehicle to meet Ken and the wilderness tour people as promised. Another reserve had gone along. They’d met up with Ken at the fork also as promised. But they hadn’t driven more than 30 minutes when someone started shooting at the second vehicle — Norton’s. Ken’s vehicle had gone on; Mac had to admire Ken’s determination to get those injured out to a doctor. Norton had taken a fork in the road to get away from the shooter. Then the storm started. The shooter started taking shots again. He took out a tire, causing them to slide into the ditch.

  “And why are you out in the storm instead of staying in the vehicle?” Mac demanded.

  “Because he was shooting at the vehicle,” Norton said. “And that’s how he got me — in the shoulder. That’s not bullet-proof glass you know. And the shots shattered the window. So, we ran for it — got here. But he’s not letting us go. We’re hunkered down here, and if we move out? He shoots. Just heard a shot. Was that at you?”

  “Yeah,” Mac said. “So, who is he? A deputy reserve who’s turned on you?”

  Craig snorted. “Could be. That was my guess. But Norton insists that can’t be the case. He thought it might be you. But I said you had been pretty adamant about not shooting at cops.”

  “Too bad that didn’t include don’t put C-4 in the barbeque,” Norton muttered.

  Mac grinned. “I’m not the one who packed in C-4 to the mountains,” he said virtuously. “You did. And what the hell were you planning to do with it, anyway?”

  Norton glared at him, but didn’t say anything more. Kevin had bandaged the gunshot wound, but there was little else he could do for him except get him to the doctor.

  “So, who have we got here?” Mac asked Craig.

  “One of Norton’s reserves and four of my clients who didn’t need a doctor’s attention,” Craig said. “Where’s Angie?”

  “She and Rand and another reserve are heading down the mountain,” Mac said. “We heard you calling. That was you?”

  Craig nodded. “Wild card chance, but what the hey? And here you are. But what good you can do, I’m not sure.”

  Mac wasn’t sure either, but he wasn’t quitting. Sitting here and freezing to death wasn’t on his bingo card. He had always figured he’d get shot someday. It used to be a running gag with his friends: Mac Davis was killed in a shootout with police today. Mac Davis died of gunshot wounds from an engagement with ISIS rebels in Afghanistan. Mac Davis was killed by an enraged husband who found him in bed with his wife — at 97, Mac would add.

  No, he wasn’t sitting around waiting to die in a snowstorm. He rolled his eyes. So, the shooter out there had to be dealt with. Well that’s what he did. But then what?

  “Is the SUV drivable?” Mac asked. “You’ve got a blown-out tire? Is that all? Is there a spare?”
>
  “Probably yes, to all of that,” Norton said wearily. “But that shooter isn’t going to just sit out there and let us change a tire, Mac.”

  “Shooter is my problem,” Mac responded. He considered the situation. The visibility was shit. The shooter knew where they were. He didn’t know where the shooter was. “So why don’t you think it’s a deputy reserve of yours?”

  Norton shrugged and then winced as he learned you don’t want to shrug when you’ve been shot in the shoulder. “My men are loyal to me or I wouldn’t have brought them out here on this war games exercise,” he pointed out.

  “And ordered them to kill,” Mac said. “And they did.”

  Norton shrugged, and winced again. Mac wanted to laugh. But he knew how almost subconscious certain physical moves were. Part of him wanted to see how many times he could make Norton shrug before he trained himself not to do that.

  “So, let’s talk about Sensei,” Mac said.

  “Give me a break,” Norton muttered. “We’re out here freezing to death with a shooter. And you’re asking me about a mysterious online man?”

  “Well, you came out here on his orders, didn’t you?” Mac asked. “Who else was there to stage this?”

  Norton was silent. He sat huddled over, his eyes closed as if his head hurt. It probably did. Mac didn’t care.

  “Yeah, I was going to come out with Craig,” Norton said finally. “Got an email suggesting instead that it was time to test each other and ourselves. And that I should take out a dozen or so deputies. And he gave some instructions about where to find the teams.”

  “OK,” Mac said. “Did he tell you to shoot at us?”

  Norton started to shrug his agreement, and stopped mid shrug. He sighed. “Yeah.”

  “Did he tell you to kill?” Mac pursued.

  Norton was silent. “Those weren’t in my instructions,” he said at last. “To wound, if opportunity presented itself. But... Craig tells me there are several people dead, and that he’s sure you didn’t do it, because you were with him.”

  “Not me,” Mac agreed. He didn’t bother to get indignant that they could think such a thing, or any of that shit. He was perfectly capable of killing, and everyone here knew it.

  “So, are there other deputy reserves who are part of Sensei’s inner circle who might have received different instructions?” Mac asked. “Or did a couple of your guys go rogue and kill because the kill-lust got to them when they started hunting humans?”

  Norton was silent, then he said, “It’s that or there’s a third party out here. Because after all? Why have a party with two factions when you could add a third?”

  Mac rocked back on his heels as he considered that idea. He had been wondering if this shooter was someone separate. He suspected it might be Sensei himself. Just as he thought that the coup d’ grace of the almost-escaped hunted man two weeks ago was done by Sensei. But he wasn’t sharing his theories. Not yet. Not here. And not with these men.

  “So, what about the rest of your deputy reserves?” Mac asked, still trying to figure out who was out there and what he faced if he went after him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re missing about six men,” Mac said. “Seven? You brought in 10 guys. You left with one, who is here. I brought out two, one is with Rand and one is here with me. Jesus, this is like those damn story problems in eighth grade math. If the train leaves at 10 a.m. going 60 mph and the car leaves from the other direction going 70 mph.... So, Norton? You sent seven men out chasing me after you thought you had Angie and I isolated. The reckoning is still due you for that by the way — me? Fine, but including Angie? That was not OK.”

  “Sensei’s orders, last night,” Norton said. “Your camp is too far out for Internet, but my camp has phone service. He said to let everyone go but you and the girl. And then...,” he trailed off.

  “And then it was a Sunday hunt like usual?” Mac asked. “How many of your missing men have been on your Sunday hunts before?”

  “All of them,” he said.

  “So, they also got instructions from Sensei,” Mac concluded. “Something different than what you were told. Taking the car to Ken? That was your idea?”

  “Yeah, Ken argued that he had wounded who wouldn’t make it if he didn’t have a second vehicle.”

  So, then the question became what did Sensei tell one of the missing men? Mac thought about it. If he were Sensei, what would he do?

  Well, that depended upon Sensei’s goals and how much of a threat he thought Norton had become to his control over his followers.

  “What did Sensei tell you was the point of the war games?” Mac asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What was the point? What made you the winner? Or Craig? Or me? Wars have goals, man. Not always the goals that the public is told, but they have goals. And good commanders know how a win is defined. If you don’t, you end up in Afghanistan for 20 years. So, what was the point?”

  Norton considered this. “I don’t know what Sensei’s point was,” he said slowly. “I know my goal was to beat the crap out of you, preferably with my hands, and to still be sheriff come Monday. And coming along with Craig would have suited that goal much better than this fucked up mess.”

  Mac grinned. “And if we both make it off the mountain? I might let you have your chance. I won’t be the one getting beaten, but I’ll let you try. So why did you go along with changing the game?”

  “Because he’s been doing the Sensei’s bidding for nearly two years, Mac, and you know as well as I do, following orders becomes a habit,” Craig said with disgust. “We’ve both seen that.”

  “So back to where are your missing seven men, Norton? They didn’t even break radio silence when I blew up your weapons stash. And there was still one vehicle in camp.”

  “Jesus,” Norton muttered.

  “Spit it out,” Mac said. Norton said nothing more. Mac studied the sick expression on his face.

  “You think they’re dead,” Mac said slowly. “Why?”

  “Because nothing else explains the radio silence, does it, Pete?” Craig said coldly. “You think our shooter out there took out your men before heading after us.”

  “We didn’t hear shots,” Mac said.

  “Using a suppressor?” Craig asked.

  Mac shrugged and nodded. Could he have done it back in the day? With the proper equipment, sure, he conceded. Hell, he had done it back in the day. In a different country. Mostly.

  Didn’t matter right now, he thought, except that it spoke to a highly skilled shooter out there. That might matter. And maybe, they weren’t dead, just secured somewhere? But he doubted it. He had thought this felt like a cleanup operation. He’d just been wrong about which group Sensei wanted to clean up.

  “So, if I take out the shooter, you can get the vehicle running and head out of here?” Mac asked, reverting to more immediate issues.

  Craig rocked his hand, maybe yes, maybe no. “I think so,” he said. “We can probably push the sucker back onto the road. Hell, we can run on a bad tire in this snow for a ways. Then change the tire when we get back on the main road out of here. Probably our best option. But that means you’ve got to get that shooter. Or at least chase him out of here.”

  Mac nodded absently, thinking about the problem. And thinking about the number of people that had to be crowded into one vehicle. If he got the bastard, he expected he was going to have to hike out. He looked at Kevin considering. “Kevin, you with me on this?” he asked.

  “Me?” the young man asked startled. He was checking over the other men. He’d managed to get the one man in the center of a huddle to get him warmed up a bit. While Mac had managed to get wet — wetter — than the others. And he was the least dressed for it.

  “Norton’s shot, and I don’t trust him anyway,” Mac said sourly. “Craig? He’s the only one those clients will listen to — other than Sensei, which means they’re not trustworthy either. And they’re hopeless, as you must have guessed
by now. So, I could go out after the shooter by myself, but these guys are going to get the SUV out of the ditch and head out. And they’re not going to wait for me, because it’s a full rig as it is. So that means I’m hiking out of here. And you’re the best bet I have of making it out alive.”

  “I thought you told that guy Rand to wait for you?” Kevin protested.

  “That was a long time ago,” Mac said. “And he’s got a job of his own to do. He’ll catch up with Ken, I hope, and Ken’s going to need his help. And he’d damn well better keep Angie safe.”

  “Out is a long ways from here,” Craig said slowly.

  Mac didn’t say anything. He was actually planning on circling back to the sheriff’s camp and that rig they’d left there. Hope to God, his desire to get rid of the weapons hadn’t damaged it. But they’d still be better off to ride the storm out there. But he didn’t trust Craig enough to tell him that, and he most certainly didn’t trust Norton or the rest of these yahoos.

  “My problem,” Mac said briefly. “Kevin?”

  Kevin shook his head once. “You aren’t going to make it without me,” he said. “But shooting a man? I don’t think I could. And doubt I’d hit him if I tried.”

  “What the hell are you doing as a deputy reserve if you can’t shoot at a man?” Norton demanded.

  “I told you when I signed up! I think we need to do more search and rescue!” Kevin shouted at him. “And instead? You’re out here shooting at people? And you’re yelling at me?”

  Craig’s eyes crinkled with amusement, and Mac looked away before he’d start laughing and not stop. “Kid’s got a point, sheriff,” Craig murmured.

  “OK, then,” Mac said, still trying not to laugh. He fingered the strip of cloth in his pocket and remembered what it was. And he smiled. Craig jerked away from him.

  “Jesus, Mac,” Craig muttered. “What did I do to deserve that look?”

  Mac didn’t answer. He thought about the fluorescent strip and how to put it to use. Then he took a deep breath. “OK, then,” he said. “Listen up you all! Here’s how this works. I’m going after the shooter. You’ll hear my shot. Wait for a 30 count. If there’s no return fire? You push that vehicle out of the ditch, and pile into it, and head down the hill. You’re not on the right road, so you’ll need to backtrack?” He looked at Tim who nodded. “Tim will be the navigator. Then you head out of here. Find Rand at Ken’s place. He’ll take it from there. Make sure you introduce Norton here to Rand personally. You hear me, Tim?”