Badger Games

by Jon A. Jackson

  Joe didn’t like the idea. “Boz could be out there, anywhere,” he said. “It’s just inviting trouble. But, if you feel you should …”

  They told the others where they were going, then set off in the Durango. “Maybe we should take the dogs,” Frank said. They were loping along next to the vehicle as it approached the gate.

  “In here?” Joe said. “No way.”

  “I just thought … ,” Frank said, apparently miffed. “If Kibosh is in trouble or something, they could help find him.”

  “We don’t even know if he is in trouble,” Joe said. “Besides, Helen spent a half hour cleaning it out when I just drove from the gate with them. She won’t have the car turned into a kennel, hair all over, scratching the leather—”

  Frank nodded, but Joe knew how it was. Out here people took their dogs everywhere, usually standing in the back of the pickup. “They’ll be more useful here,” Joe said placatingly.

  As they drove out both of them kept a close watch for any sign of a vehicle, or a man, but there was nothing. It was getting pretty dark by the time they reached the highway. But it was a quick run up the highway to the turnoff to Seven Dials. As it happened, they saw the light far up the mountainside as Joe pulled up to the stop sign at the bottom of the off-ramp.

  “He’s back,” Frank said, relieved. “Let’s go on up. He may have seen something.”

  Joe shook his head. It was a ten-minute drive up that bumpy road to the mine and then not much room to turn around. If this Kibosh had been fooling around in some old diggings all day—presumably where he’d been when they came by earlier—he’d not have seen Boz. Besides, it occurred to him now, if he drove straight back onto the freeway, he could run down to Garland Butte in less than an hour. He’d been thinking about the firepower he had stashed down there.

  He wished now that Frank was not along. All these people constantly around, needing to be directed, advised, placated … Joe wasn’t used to it. He didn’t care for it. When he told Frank what he had in mind, Frank immediately hauled out the cell phone to let the others know their plan. But he couldn’t get through—atmospherics, he said, or just the mountain, blocking them.

  “Never mind,” Joe said. “We’ll be back before they miss us.” He accelerated onto the highway. “Besides,” he said after a mile or so, “we didn’t have anything planned for tonight.”

  Frank was surprised. “Aren’t you expecting Boz to show up?”

  “Who knows?” Joe said. He sounded more casual about it than he felt. He was conscious of an unfamiliar feeling of guilt, as if he were running away from a problem rather than seeking the means to deal with it. It was easily suppressed: “I have a feeling he won’t be out and about until late,” he said. “That’s the time to go prowling, in the hours before dawn, when people are either asleep or guards are drowsy. But we don’t have any time to waste.” He put the pedal down, speeding up toward the pass.

  They had a fast run, but it was farther than he’d estimated. By the time he got to Garland Butte, trekked up to the old site, and brought down the stuff he wanted, they had already been gone nearly two hours. Part of the problem was that he was reluctant to expose the site to Frank. For one thing, there was a stiff in the cache where the guns were. How do you explain that? Especially when you have no idea who this stiff is, or was, yourself? He felt it was better to pretend that he was just a secretive fellow—Frank could understand that hypersensitivy to security, all right. But it meant hauling the stuff down himself in four separate trips. He brought down a couple of AK-47s, a Stoner rifle, a nifty little Heckler & Koch MP5A3, an Uzi, a couple of extra handguns, even a couple of shotguns. Plus ammo, of course. And a nondescript box of “papers,” which contained approximately a quarter of a million dollars in small bills.

  Frank was impressed with the armament. “You’ve got a regular armory here,” he said.

  Joe brushed it off as just a gun collection. “I’ve always been interested in unusual weapons,” he said.

  Frank was also impressed with the property. They discussed it on the way back. Joe explained why it was no longer so useful to him. The explanation had to do with the ruin of the dream house, lost in a fire, and the resulting depression. There were problems with water rights, too, he claimed. That always struck a resonant chord with Montanans. Water rights were things one could debate endlessly, even fight small wars over.

  They were making good time, and Joe felt more relaxed. Perhaps it was just getting away from the women. He could talk more freely. But he was anxious to get back and make sure that they were prepared in case of an attack. They wouldn’t be outgunned, anyway.

  And then Frank said, as they were descending from the pass, “I don’t see the light.”

  “Kibosh’s light?” Joe said. He was driving rather fast. He didn’t know exactly where to look anyway. “Are you sure? Maybe some low clouds have moved in.”

  “It’s clear as a bell,” Frank said. “Starry night. Something’s wrong.”

  Joe cursed silently. “Try the phone,” he said. “We’re still up high enough. Tell them we’re going back up.”

  Helen and Jammie said they felt like getting some fresh air. Paulie said he would keep watch. “Take the dogs,” he advised. “You’re armed?” They were.

  It was chilly out. The two women walked over toward the river. Helen thought she’d show Jammie the hot springs.

  Boz was droning on about his career in the militia. “I had my own outfit,” he said with pride. “I was the same rank as maybe a captain, in the army. The guys all looked up to me. We had our own uniform, special patches.” He described the patches. “Everything was going great, the guys—good guys, we had our own barracks—everybody looking up to you. The civilians were scared shitless of us, they’d jump out of the way when we walked down the street. Even the cops! The cops didn’t say shit to us. It was great. They were making a real good thing, there. It wasn’t a bullshit kind of deal like I seen everywhere else. They were doing it! And then,” he said with genuine regret and dismay, “that fuckin’ Franko fucked it all up. He should have come back. I had all those crazy skunks on my hands, that little whore was fuckin’ with my head—”

  He suddenly stopped and stiffened. “What was that? You hear that?”

  Kibosh listened in the dark, hope welling in his breast. He hadn’t heard a car, but he thought he heard a crunch of gravel underfoot, very faintly. Then utter silence.

  “What is it?” Boz whispered softly. “A bear?”

  “I … I guess,” Kibosh whispered. He strained to hear.

  Nothing.

  Boz released him, whispering, “Keep still.” He got quietly out of the crib and felt around in the pitch-black room. Then he padded away, stumbling against a chair so that it scraped on the dirty wooden floor. He moved on, to the door. Kibosh swung his legs out of the crib, tense. Oh, let it be Frankie, he prayed.

  The little window was so dirt-encrusted that it scarcely seemed possible that it could let in starlight. Yet in the blackness of the tunnel it almost glimmered. Kibosh could even make out the hulk of Boz by the window. He was peering out, but of course, he’d be unlikely to see anything.

  “Fuckin’ light’s out,” he whispered over his shoulder.

  “Musta burnt out,” Kibosh whispered back. “That bulb ’uz gittin’ purty old.”

  “You turned it out, you old bastard,” Boz accused.

  “No, I never. Ye want me to go out and change the bulb?” Kibosh said, hopefully. “I got a new one back here somewhere.”

  “Fuck no! Someone’s out there.”

  Boz returned to the crib, suddenly all business. “Come on,” he said. “We’re goin’ into the mine.”

  “Now?” Kibosh said. “It’s the middle a the night.”

  “What does that matter?” Boz said. He was putting on his shoes. “You got a flashlight? Get it. You got some kind of bag, a backpack or something? Come on, get going. But be quiet, or I’ll brain you.”

  Boz would permit no
lights. Kibosh gathered some gear together and put it in the old canvas forest service knapsack that he used when he was exploring. He threw in some Twinkies, a few things off the shelf, the whiskey, a couple jars of water.

  “How do we get into the mine?” Boz said. He was anxious. He carried the rifle and a box of ammo that Kibosh had located for him. He stuffed the shells into his coat pocket along with the remaining brandy and put that on. Somehow, he had a pistol in his hand.

  “We’re in the mine,” Kibosh said. “The entrance to the drift is behind that cupboard.” He indicated the large cupboard that Boz had simply taken to be the back wall. It had to be unloaded of canned goods and other items before it could be shifted. Boz prodded him with the rifle to get after it.

  Finally, it was bare. Boz slid it aside. It made a scraping noise that clearly bothered him. Behind it was a plywood-covered frame wall. One section of the plywood could be easily removed. Beyond it lay a dark hole.

  Boz peered into the darkness. Cool air whispered past him, with a dry but musty odor. He didn’t look eager to go in, but he was determined.

  “Okay, let’s go,” he said. “Be careful with that light. Don’t shine it this way.” He followed Kibosh into the mountain.

  Noir

  The women could not resist the hot springs. Perhaps it was the liberating absence of men. They felt free to act like girls. Helen and Jammie were not friends, hardly sympathetic, but there was comfort in being alone together. Despite the general atmosphere of threat and tension, or perhaps because of it, they felt larkish in the veiling night. Let the men stand guard, play at heroes. They would soak.

  Helen was already half naked. Nudity was damned chilly in the night breeze, under the icy stars. Jammie laughed and followed suit. But she carefully set her clothing and her automatic on some rocks, close at hand.

  Helen was impressed by Jammie’s physique. She’d looked like a slim model dressed, but dancing around naked on her long legs, bending so that her breasts swung free, she looked like a noir Barbie, gun in hand. Her silhouette reminded Helen of the logo on the old Nancy Drew books.

  Helen showed her how to scoop out a tub, arrange the rocks. The incessant, gentle action of the seeping springs had already silted in the tubs they had made the other night. But it was quick work to make them deeper. The water felt hotter than before.

  They squirmed down into the hot, velvety solution of caressing sand and water, the steam billowing up about them, partly obscuring the stars then scattered by a breeze.

  “Oh my God,” Jammie said huskily, shifting her buttocks and thighs, feeling the water flow over her belly, “this is bliss. It’s cold on your face and hot, hot, hot on your bod. Mmm, mmm.”

  “There were deer the other night,” Helen told her. “It was incredible. They just stepped over us, daintily. We should have brought some of Frank’s grass.”

  “Champagne, you mean,” Jammie said. “I can’t believe those stars. I could reach up and break one off, like an icicle.” The barred owl hooted, very close by, in an old gnarled cedar. “An owl? I can’t believe it. It must be a male, a peeping Tom.” They both laughed, Jammie chuckling deeply.

  Something splashed out in the river, quite loudly. “What the hell was that?” Jammie said, sitting up and reaching for her Llama.

  “Trout,” Helen said. “A bull trout.” They both laughed again.

  “A big bull trout,” Jammie said, settling back. “Long and stiff and slick.” Their laughter was more like hoots. The owl laughed with them. But soon they fell silent, basking in the soporific heat.

  Neither spoke for a long while, merely sighing and gently moving their limbs, feeling the feathery heat caress them. Then Jammie said, “Women are water creatures … of the water. We’re nymphs, naiads.”

  Helen knew it wasn’t necessary to respond. “I could be a trout,” she said later, dreamily. “It wouldn’t be cold if you just lived in the water, lying behind a rock, under a mossy log … flashing across the current …”

  “A houri,” Jammie said, “a nymph of paradise, lolling in the steamy pools …”

  A light flickered past them, then came back. “Telephone!” Paulie called. “I’ll wait up here. It’s Joe.”

  Both women swore. “I’ll go,” Jammie said. “If it’s important, I’ll yell.”

  Helen started to protest, but then sank gratefully back into the warmth. “Tell him not to hurry,” she said.

  Jammie dragged herself out and slicked the water off her skin with the palms of her hands, shaking her hair like a dog. She glanced down at Helen, saw that she was all but submerged, so she merely picked up her clothes and gun and carried them up the path to where Paulie politely waited at the edge of the meadow. He had doused the light and stood staring up at the pierced black sky.

  Jammie paused for a moment, one hand on a hip, but Paulie did not turn to look. Then she shivered. “It’s too cold to play games,” she said, almost to herself.

  “It’s Joe,” he said, over his shoulder.

  She shrugged and pulled on her pants, then the shirt. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “They found the bastard. Why couldn’t he have stayed lost for another night?”

  “I’m not sure if that’s it,” Paulie said. “The connection is breaking up. We get that all the time out here, in the mountains. The best I could make out, they found the truck at Kibosh’s place. I was thinking … reception might be better up on the ridge, or out by the highway. I didn’t want to go off and leave the house unattended.”

  “And here I thought you had come up with a clever ruse,” Jammie said. “Oh well, I better go.” She sat down on the grass to pull on her boots. “If it isn’t better, how do I get to Kibosh’s?”

  Paulie explained. He seemed uneasy.

  “What is it?” Jammie asked.

  “I was just wondering,” he said. “Did you ever know Boz?”

  “I don’t believe I ever had the pleasure. Why?”

  “Just curious,” Paulie said.

  “How well did you know him?” she asked.

  “Too well. But … you mean, like, well acquainted? No. Actually, I just met him the same day he … well, not very well. Until the other night … that was only the second time I saw him.”

  “How about Colonel Tucker?” she asked.

  “I never met him. I heard about him, from Ostropaki.”

  “And Zivkovic? Did you meet him, too? In Belgrade?”

  “No. Ostropaki was the contact,” Paulie said. “Why?”

  “Just trying to put everything into focus. Well, I better get going. Maybe you better go down and get Helen. Don’t get wet. If I’m not back right away and I can’t get through to you, I’ll have gone on to see what’s up with Joe. What’s the problem with these phones out here?”

  “Mountains,” Paulie said. “You know how it is. And atmospherics. You can call halfway around the world, but not from one side of the mountain to the other, sometimes. What did you mean, ‘Don’t get wet?’”

  “Women in their baths,” Jammie said. “Naiads can be dangerous.” She set off for the house before he could respond.

  Boz didn’t know what he’d expected, but this wasn’t it. The drift wasn’t anything like the living quarters that Kibosh had made for himself in the mouth of the mine. This didn’t have a wooden floor, dirty as Kibosh’s was. This was a jumble of rocks that you had to negotiate. The floor, if you could call it that, was muddy and sticky in places. His shoes were already a mess, wet and inadequate in support. Generally, he could walk upright, but at times that wasn’t possible. In places where there had been a partial cave-in, he had to go on hands and knees.

  But the worst thing was the feeling that it was all closing in on him. The ceiling dripped water, little rills of sand came cascading down, there were creaks of aging, rotted timbers. He had begun to hear distant rumbles, even feel the earth shift, then settle and compact. At first he was sure it was his imagination, but finally he had to stop. He listened, open-mouthed.

  He had nev
er experienced claustrophobia. Not the real, breath-crushing claustrophobia. Most of the time he was able to keep a grip, hold it at bay. But he could not suppress a hideous feeling of imminent entrapment. This place was falling down. This mountain was settling, constricting like an anaconda. Like a living, contracting nightmare.

  Why would it fall down now, just as he had entered? It didn’t make sense. These timbers had been here for generations, some of them, the tunnels and shafts had survived. But now they were collapsing! Could it be the movement of himself and Kibosh?

  “What the fuck is going on?” he demanded of the little man who led him, hopping like a spry elf through the tumbled rocks and over broken posts and lintels.

  Kibosh didn’t know how to respond. He was pleased by Boz’s fear, but he dared not show it. At an early point, when they had traversed scarcely two hundred feet, Boz had asked him how far they had come!

  “Why, we ain’t hardly started,” he’d told him. But the dark look on the man’s face should have been a warning. Boz had grabbed him by the collarbone and threatened to cut his throat. “You little son of a bitch,” Boz snarled, “I’ll kill you right here and no one’ll ever find your bones.” Then he’d hauled out a bottle of the brandy that he’d stuffed in his coat pocket and taken a heavy draught. That had seemed to stabilize him.

  They stumbled on. Kibosh’s route markers—the chalk marks at junctions with other tunnels, the arrows scratched in posts—were all but invisible to Boz. Kibosh pointed them out to him, but it was clear that Boz, on his own, would miss most of them. Kibosh began to think that it might be possible, at some point, to run ahead, to hide, and lose this insane oaf inside the mountain. But at one point, when he had begun to edge farther and farther ahead, a bullet spattered past him, on the rocky edge of the drift. He looked back, hearing the heavy, shocking boom, to see Boz brandishing the automatic pistol, eyes blazing in the glare of the flashlight.

  “For God’s sake, don’t do that!” Kibosh exclaimed. And almost immediately, there was a blinding cascade of sand and grit, dislodged by the shock of the weapon firing.