Last Son of the War God

by Clay Martin

  “Yes, I think we understand each other.” Bob’s heart rate was starting to subside. He had been found out, but he was going to survive. The badge had saved him, not the first time it had done so. He took a moment to admire the brilliance of his career choice, counter balanced with his hobbies.

  “Good. And your little circus in the woods is over. I might just come back and check on you myself. I get an inkling you have started again, and I’ll end it.” It was a weak threat, but Mike felt he had to issue it. People like Bob and Tim were beyond help, beyond redemption. But fear was a powerful weapon. If it just kept them out of the game for a while, it was better than nothing. Tim was going to be spending some time learning how to walk again anyway, so there was that. Feeling the burn of a failed mission, Mike finished his thoughts. Leaving two pieces of shit like this alive was going to hurt for a good long while. “I hope you understand that Bob. I’m not the kind of person to issue threats idly. You ran my records, you ought to know that. Goodbye.”

  Hanging up, Mike wiped Tim’s phone down, and tossed it across the barn. Didn’t need this pussy panicking and calling 911 or something. As a parting gift, he stepped back and kicked Tim in the face. It didn’t put him out, but it did crack some teeth. Small victories.

  Back in the Bronco, Mike headed North out of town. It wasn’t the shortest way to Montana, but it was the least likely to have an ambush set on it. Crazy people are unpredictable, and Bob might just have the stones to try one more go if he thought he could win.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Fayetteville, North Carolina, 15 months later……..

  Mike was tying off the last ratchet strap holding a late model Jeep Cherokee to the flat bed, late afternoon. A gentle breeze was in the air, keeping the temperature from becoming uncomfortable with constant humidity. A perfect weather day, the rarest of times in the South. In just a few days, the summer would take hold in earnest, making a task like this oppressive. The trailer was attached to a late model Diesel crew cab, taking up a plot of real estate at the end of the cul-de-sac, typical of the Fayetteville suburb. Some planner had clearly decided no one wanted kids playing on a through street, and now every new edition was a maze of dead ends, branching off a single main artery. Three identical sedans pulled onto the street, parking a vague distance from him.

  He half expected this, but was just starting to think he might have shrugged off further scrutiny. He knew they were there for him, but he still hoped the occupants went to a different door as he busied himself checking trailer lights and lug nuts. Fayetteville was a weird place. They could actually be here for anyone on the street. Not likely, but a man could dream. He didn’t turn and look, but he could feel a presence at his back, getting closer.

  Footsteps stopped right behind him, from the vibe Mike guessed the owner would be just outside his reach when he turned. Not looking for conflict, so not directly in his personal space. That would make for an easy assault charge to haul him in, but even easier to beat the rap with instinctive lash out.

  “Michael William Bryant?” a voice asked.

  Mike stood up and slowly turned about. No point in making these guys twitchy. From the number of cars, they had done enough homework to consider him dangerous already. Getting shot wasn’t on his agenda for the day. Facing the voice, Mike noted nine agents, spread out in a non-confrontational posture, that conveniently cut off any avenues of escape. Professional. Nine was a lot. That showed some serious commitment to whatever happened next. Mike looked at the likely source of the voice, front and center, but remained silent. A man about his age, maybe a few years younger. Dark grey suit, conservative monochrome tie, clean shaven. Blond hair combed to the side, posture that of authority, but not violence. Might as well be wearing a blinking neon light that said FBI. Mike made eye contact, but remained silent.

  “Sergeant First Class Michael William Bryant, more commonly known as Mike?” The agent implored again. His voice was steady, showing just a bit of irritation creeping in.

  That was an act, and Mike knew it. Agents senior enough to command a team of nine don’t get flustered. This was a play, and everyone had their part. The agent would start with standard street hood posturing, because that was the default setting. And usually it worked, even against people it shouldn’t. Hell, dirty cops broke in the interrogation room all the time, and they were used to playing the game from the other side. But Mike had performed exceptionally well at SERE, absorbing all its lessons. And in several investigations since, a by-product of the uniquely American way of war, for war crimes, murder, and once stateside for assault. Each of the seven times he was dragged before a JAG officer and read his rights, a line from the classic Apocalypse Now would echo in his head. “Charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500.” It was all trumped up bullshit, and it flowed off him like water off a ducks back. Good luck playing CSI in a war zone if you want to make this stick. The neighborhoods Mike and his crew usually worked in, you would need an armored regiment to hold the block while you dusted for fingerprints. Especially after they had already kicked over the hornet’s nest with a lightening raid. Usually some fucking idiot new officer that didn’t understand how war was fought. Still sticking to his West Point ideals, or the fantasyland belief that the bad guys dressed in uniforms and always carried weapons. He had even been told once, by an attached JAG major, that sniping was premeditated murder since the target had no way of displaying hostile intent to a hidden gunman. That was kind of the fucking point, jerk off! Fair fights are for suckers and rubes. The way of the jungle is to kill with as little danger to yourself as possible.

  The best move Mike could make, in terms of his present situation, was to invoke the Fifth Amendment and not say a word after. Whatever slip up had brought them to his door, talking wasn’t going to make that evidence go away. They could also be here on a hunch, but that was reaching. The safest thing was to say nothing. If for no other reason, it is remarkably difficult to stop talking once you start. And career cops tend to have a mind like a steel trap. One slip in your story, one minute change, and they have a thread to pull. But invoking the Fifth right off the bat also lets them know you were absolutely guilty as hell. Assessing the danger, Mike decided to handle it like he would secondary at a foreign airport. Confirm nothing, pause long and hard before you answer, and try to talk your way out. While hopefully finding out what they know in the process. Besides, his identity wasn’t worth bracelets, not right this minute. They could run his plates, look at his wallet, and had undoubtedly seen pictures of him. Casually, Mike responded with a simple “Credentials?”

  The agent reached into his jacket and produced a folding leather wallet the size of a passport. His guess was correct, Special Agent Justin Moore, FBI. All in order, and as far as he could tell, authentic. Satisfied with the look, he turned back to the face.

  “What can I help you with Agent Moore?” Mike put on his best innocent face, golly gee, just a guy standing in his driveway.

  The agent stared at him, silent, hoping the uncomfortable situation would cause Mike to ask something else. This was another great tactic; silence will draw out all sorts of details while revealing none of your own cards. Most humans can’t handle an uncomfortable quiet, and will start talking just to break it. No such luck, Mike had played this game before.

  Mike turned to leave, taking one step toward his truck before he felt a hand gently press him back. Touch barrier was a big no no, and Mike resisted the urge to snap the wrist like a twig. Holding down the violence in his soul, he faced Agent Moore once again. “Am I being detained? Because if I’m not being detained, I’m leaving.”

  Mike stared hard now into his eyes. This was the play. They could arrest him, but it was obvious he was up on his constitutional rights. And if they had done a real background check, they knew he was going to lawyer up immediately. The next move would tell Mike a lot. If they put him in cuffs, odds were good the
y had some real evidence. The FBI is not in the habit of locking people up that are going to walk six hours later. And if they didn’t, it meant they had jack shit, and needed either a verbal clue from him or evidence in his possession. His fingerprints and DNA were on file in the Federal system, same as every other DOD member in the last thirty years. They wouldn’t book him just for prints or blood.

  “Right now we are just two guys talking Michael. Whether it stays that way depends a lot on you.” Moore retorted. This was a sticky spot. They hadn’t gone for the cuffs, which made Mike breath a sigh of relief. Whatever they had, it must be thin. But he was now engaged in an interview, which is a form of detention.

  “Seems to be your party. What are we talking about exactly?” Mike casually replied. He was good at keeping a poker face, but inside he felt the pressure. No matter how many times you have done this, it’s never simple.

  Moore smiled. “We can start with this warrant, authorizing a search of your home. Signed this morning in Federal Court in Raleigh.” A carbon copy was torn off and handed to him, Mike noted the case number and address. “Then, you can tell me your whereabouts on the fifteenth of March.”

  Bad form, Agent Moore, bad form. Mike couldn’t suppress a grin in his response. “Good luck with your warrant, this house closed two hours ago. It has new owners. But it’s unlocked, so not my problem.”

  Agent Moore flashed a hint of surprise, and rapidly locked it back down. Guess they didn’t see that one coming. He murmured to one of the other agents, who walked to the house and back.

  “Empty. Not a speck of dust, clean top to bottom.” The agent said upon his return.

  “That doesn’t change much. You know I can search your vehicles without a warrant just by them being on this street.” Moore quipped.

  “Do what you need to then Agent. If we are playing that game, I’ll need to go make a phone call.” Mike answered just as quick back. He left that the phone call would be to his lawyer as an implied.

  “Where were you the night of the fifteenth?” Moore shifted suddenly, hoping to catch him off guard.

  Mike leaned back on his trailer, folding his hands into a steeple in front of him. He could have thought through an alibi, but that would have required someone else to confirm it. And when the chips are down, the only person you can truly count on is yourself. There was no truer words ever spoken than Ben Franklin with “Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” He wasn’t touching an answer to that one with a ten-foot pole. He looked at the Agent, his expression his response. Not happening.

  Goddamn it, Moore thought, not the way I wanted this to go. His case was paper thin, even the judge had looked at him a little skeptical before he signed the warrant. If it wasn’t for Moore’s reputation for closing cases, they wouldn’t even have that. Moore knew he was right. This was his guy, without question. But knowing and proving are two different things. The stick hadn’t worked, maybe some carrot would. A little time to build rapport, maybe something would slip. If pressure didn’t work on guys like this, arrogance often did. Plenty of criminals thought they were so much smarter and craftier than the cops, they would play right into a trap. Get a little too friendly.

  “Alright, I see how it is. But I didn’t come all this way not to check. That’s my job. So we can either search your remaining property right here, or we can take it to our warehouse and not scatter your business all over the street. Choice is yours.”

  Mike considered. Right here was likely to be more uncomfortable for the agents, and they would have to keep traffic off the road. It was also going to take longer. There was nothing for them to find anyway. “Acceptable terms, your place is fine. Let’s be clear I am not consenting to search, you are exercising your warrant. But the second I get anywhere near an interview room, I am demanding representation.”

  They didn’t let him drive his own truck, no surprise in that. One of the other agents was given the task, and Mike herded into the back seat of a brown Impala. FBI cars were funny. No cage, and leather seats to boot. Just some friends out for a cruise. No one said a word on the way to the field office near downtown. And that is how he came to find himself in a waiting area, coffee and water in urns with Styrofoam cups, ten chairs but all alone. Presently, Agent Moore arrived with a grey haired, spectacled agent in tow. The man could have been his ghost of Christmas future. Moore introduced him as Agent Allen, local HMFIC. Curious, that confirmed Moore wasn’t from around here. Moore started into him with a passable good cop persona, shifting from “your in big trouble mister” to “we can help you, little buddy, but you have to help us first.” Mike hoped he could learn some more details from this change in tactics. An intelligence operative doesn’t miss anything, and cognitive leaps can spring from the tiniest fact.

  “Look, Mike, I know you prefer to be called Mike. In fact, I know an awfully lot about you. Military career, past relationships, I’ve even talked with some of your friends recently.” Mike new that part was bullshit. Any of his friends had a run in with the Feds, his phone would be ringing the second they drove off.

  “I know you came off a contract job three months ago in South Africa, and what you made for a year long stint. The IRS documents I saw made it clear you took a lower paying job than Iraq or Afghanistan would have offered as a contractor. South Africa is a curious choice. We technically have an extradition treaty with them, but it is common knowledge it’s paper only. South Africa doesn’t like us nosing around, and they have been quite blunt about that. Much more difficult to nab a man from there, than a place we own like the Middle East. Curious, don’t you think?”

  Mike remained silent. It didn’t exactly take Sherlock Holmes to figure that part out, and he’d paid his taxes.

  “And then we have a curious set of circumstances way out in Goose Neck, Idaho, three weeks after you step foot back in the States. Ever been out to Idaho? Beautiful country, world class fly fishing.” Moore was studying him for any hint of recognition. Mike remained passive.

  “A female bartender remembers a guy about your description, North Carolina plates on a black Ford Bronco, about this time last year. Must’ve made quite an impression to stay in her memory this long. Her boss goes missing for a while, then shows back up missing a leg. Hunting accident he says, got hit by a 12-gauge slug. Rehab in Boise, takes a long time to get back to functional. The fifteenth of March, he winds up dead. Real gruesome. Kind of a funny set of coincidences right?”

  Fuck. Mike hadn’t calculated the bartender remembering shit. Or even still working there. Small town America he guessed. Not like she had a lot of other prospects. Movie star contracts didn’t fall out of the sky places like that, or winning lottery tickets. As Moore continued to talk, Mike walked back over the operation in his memory, searching for a detail he had overlooked.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Driving across the country as fast as he could manage, Mike plotted his next move. His paranoia was so high at the moment, he wouldn’t even check into a hotel. Too many possible questions, to many logged plate numbers, to many walls. He slept in rest areas when he had to, or on back roads when available. He calculated the ways the Sheriff could plot against him, how evidence could be fabricated to implicate him for the entire mess. They might not, but then again they might. Arriving home, he stashed some of his hardware in a place it couldn’t be found, and dove into his network of contacts. Time to find an overseas job, a good place to be out of reach of any US law enforcement. Iraq and Afghanistan were out, the FBI maintained a presence in both as part of its counter terrorism mission. He would be trapped if they came for him. It wasn’t like he could slip the walls and disappear into the local population. That would be trading a trial in US court for an immediate sell out to a beheading cell, the highest offer standing for captured American contractors or soldiers. Eventually a British friend turned him to a contact in South Africa, looking for his skill set to use against poachers. The work was hard and the pay c
omparatively low, but the Boers weren’t keen on selling out a friend to anyone. If the long arm of the law reached out, he was likely to hear about it. And with the money he was making, he could live semi-civilized in Africa for a very long time.

  Two weeks later he was in Johannesburg, and threw himself into the task of being useful to his new employers. A long year of waiting for one of his trip wires to go off produced nothing. In the meantime, he made it his business to rediscover the gym, and take training seriously for the first time in many years. He helped develop a sniper capability for his hosts, and learned a great deal more than he already knew about bush craft and man tracking from an ex-Rhodesian SAS trooper on the team. In between stories of slotting floppies of course. When his time was up, it was hard not to renew for a second. But there was something he needed to finish. The men he had left standing back home were in his thoughts every day. Sons of bitches walking around free and breathing his air. Like an itch that couldn’t be scratched. He had looked evil in the eyes, and he knew he could never rest until it was extinguished.

  Flying back into Raleigh, he was pleasantly surprised he wasn’t detained at customs. A reasonable assurance no one had come looking for him. He had his Bronco tuned up by a mechanic in Greensboro, this wasn’t the time for a timing belt to go bad. Long hours spent in planning back in Pretoria were set into motion. A few bank withdrawals of $5,000 each might be abnormal most places, but Fayette-nam was an exception. With the number of deployed troops returning and contractors to boot, cashiers didn’t bat an eye. Many a fresh-faced paratrooper had burned an entire enlistment bonus at strip clubs in a weekend, a story as old as soldiers. Fifteen thousand dollars in cash was enough to handle any contingency Mike could think of. He would prefer to buy his way out of problems on this one, but shooting was always an option too.