by J. M. Hayes
From the big electric motor and all the pipes, she thought this must be a pump house—irrigation, probably. Whatever, it was closed off from the rest of the warehouse by metal walls. It wasn’t very big, but a couple of lamps made it comfortably bright. The power came from an orange drop cord that had been patched into the pump’s wiring. The little TV the room’s occupants were watching was attached to the cord as well. A man and two women huddled around a softly playing soap opera. One of the women was patting out tortillas. The other was keeping an eye on something in a crock pot. Heather got a whiff that smelled delicious when the woman opened it to add some seasonings. And then it was closed and the pump house smelled of machinery and oil again, with only a hint of chili.
“Wow,” Heather said. “All the comforts of home.”
“This is our home,” her guide said. “I am Xavier.” Then he proceeded to introduce the others, his wife, his wife’s sister, and the sister’s husband. They all welcomed her profusely.
“You work for Galen?”
“Sí. Us, and some others. Or we did until a few days ago. When the ambulance came, he told us to go home and not to come back for two weeks.”
“But you stayed.”
“Yes and no,” Xavier grinned. “We went home, but Mr. Galen, he doesn’t know our home is so near.”
“So Galen Siegrist is staffing his farm with illegal workers.”
She’d muttered that aloud, but in English, and her only intended audience was herself.
“No, no,” Xavier protested. “We citizens, like jew.” He pulled out his wallet and showed her his driver’s license and a social security card. She’d heard of bad driver’s license photos, but if this one was Xavier, it made him look twenty years older and a hundred pounds heavier. It also suggested Xavier spelled his name with a “G”, as in Gilbert Hernandez.
“Look, I don’t care whether you’re here legally or not. You just saved me. Why were you out in that field, anyway?”
Xavier, or Gilbert, shrugged. “I was going shopping.”
It was almost ten miles to the nearest store. “You were going to walk?”
“Oh no, we have a car parked in an abandoned barn a little south of here.”
The car might come in handy. But what about Uncle Mad Dog and Hailey? They might need help sooner than she could hike and then drive to get it. Besides, that guy with the gun was probably still searching the field for her.
“You amaze me,” she said. “You have everything you need here. I think this is probably better furnished than my dorm room. But you don’t have the one thing I need.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Xavier said. “We don’t have a computer.”
“Not a computer,” she said. “A phone.”
All four of them reached for pockets and each produced a cell phone.
“Or I have a BlackBerry,” Xavier said, “if you need to check your email.”
***
For reasons she couldn’t explain, Heather English decided to approach the Siegrist farm from the long way round. Maybe it was because she had appropriated the Williams’ car. Maybe it was because her sister was keeping the place under surveillance. Or it might be because she’d started this day with a premonition and she wasn’t about to stop listening to her feelings now.
She turned north by the Gas—Food. This route would be slightly slower, a couple of extra miles of dirt road instead of blacktop. She turned again a mile north of the road that led by the Siegrist place. She had decided she didn’t even want to pass the place before she and Heather could talk. She needed to get a look at it and come up with some way to find out what was going on in there, and without getting themselves or Uncle Mad Dog killed.
Her cell rang just as she pulled off the blacktop. She flipped it open and answered, but there was no one there. She disconnected, then out of curiosity checked to see who had tried to reach her. Heather, the read-out told her. That was curious. Well, she’d meet her sister at her observation post in just a couple of minutes.
She had just put the phone on the seat beside her when it rang again. “Heather?” she said. She hadn’t checked to see who was calling. She’d just assumed. And, besides, you had to pay some attention to your driving. Using a cell at the wheel was something Englishman had promised his girls would get them grounded when they first started driving. He wouldn’t be thrilled about it now, even if her deputy’s badge and the demands of what was going on gave her some good excuses.
It wasn’t Heather, though, it was Chairman Wynn. “I hate to bother your daddy in the middle of all this,” he said. “So I figured I’d report to his deputy instead.”
“Report what?”
“Well, first, that Ford I followed from the Siegrist place. It’s at Christ Risen here in Buffalo Springs. Fellow driving it came to talk to Pastor Goodfellow. They’ve gone inside, but it looked like they were arguing.”
“Interesting,” Heather said, though she had no idea what it meant. “But you said first. There’s something else?”
“Yeah. Real peculiar. Your daddy’s opponent and that friend of his, Neuhauser, they just left the church in a big hurry. Armed themselves with everything short of cruise missiles and then tore out of here in a black Chevy SS.”
“What’s that about?”
“Seemed like they were following Chucky Williams.”
“Chucky? You’ve seen Chucky?”
“Yeah. And that was odd, too, ’cause it looked like he was toting a gun and I think the car he drove off in belongs to Mrs. Kraus.”
“You don’t know about the school, do you?”
“Well, I know they seem to have dismissed classes for a hike to the courthouse. There’re kids and teachers all over, and lots of parents gathering, too. But I’ve been keeping a low profile so I can track that Ford when it moves again.”
Heather told him. She kept it short and simple and left out lots of gruesome details. As she did so, she turned the car south and began following the shelterbelt toward her sister’s surveillance spot. “Maybe you should call Englishman about Chucky and Lieutenant Greer.” Better if he did it. Then she wouldn’t have to tell her dad where she was and what she was doing here. Chairman Wynn could pass that information along, if he did the calling, and Englishman wouldn’t be able to read her the riot act. Except by phoning her. Maybe she should start screening her incoming calls. She’d rather explain after this was over, after she and Heather succeeded in solving this and keeping Englishman safe.
“I’ll tell Mrs. Kraus,” he said. “Here she comes, looking mad as a freshly shampooed cat. And I’ll stay on this Ford.”
Heather decided that would work. She agreed, and hung up. Her sister’s car ought to be parked along here, but she didn’t see it. And then she was at the end of the windrow. She pulled over to the edge of the road and stuck her head out. “Heather? Where are you?”
No answer. She stepped out of the car and shouted again. Still nothing. She looked across the field, half expecting to discover she’d counted the miles wrong and the Siegrist place was maybe another mile south. But there it was, right where she’d thought.
Now where would Heather have gone? One had told Two to lay back and wait. But that phone call…. Maybe something had happened and Two felt like she had to go do something about it. One climbed up on the jamb of the Taurus’ open door. It gave her a little more elevation. Just enough to see a glint of sun off the roof of a car a couple of hundred yards east of Siegrist’s driveway. Could it be…?
She got back in the Taurus and drove south. It was a Toyota, all right, the same model and color, and it was in a ditch. She turned west. The driver’s door was open. It was obviously her sister’s car. But no one was in it. In fact, there was no sign of her sister at all. Just, oddly enough, a man with short blond hair and wrap-around sunglasses and a good suit, standing a hundred yards deep in the adjacent milo field.
It wasn’t until she passed Heather’s Toyota that she noticed the bullet holes in the trunk.
***<
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To Lieutenant Greer’s surprise, Chucky Williams was difficult to chase down. Okay, impossible to chase down, and damn hard to follow.
First, Chucky didn’t take Main Street out of town. By the time Greer and Neuhauser spotted the boy’s car, he had a huge lead and was headed in a direction they hadn’t anticipated. The Chevy couldn’t make up the difference. And Chucky’s route slithered around a long curve lined with trees so when they emerged, Chucky was no longer visible. There was only a column of dust to show which road Chucky had taken. Greer followed the dust.
Earlier, the nurse practitioner at the Buffalo Springs clinic had suggested Greer stick around and take it easy and let them monitor him for the afternoon. Greer treated the suggestion the way he’d treated similar ones in Iraq. If he wasn’t dead or crippled, there was no reason he shouldn’t be out there killing the enemy. Over there, it was hard to tell who the enemy was. Here, it was just some stupid teenager who’d blown apart Greer’s favorite boots and made him drop his shotgun and lose some of his best grenades. The kid should be easy to take down. And doing it should make the lieutenant enough of a local hero to get him virtually every vote that hadn’t already been cast today. Of course he expected to win anyway, but taking out the little bastard ought to cap his victory and send a message to anyone planning to mess with the future sheriff of Benteen County. And, hell, the kid had made it personal by embarrassing him over at the school. That, and the resulting double vision that made it harder for Greer to see the kid’s car or keep Neuhauser’s Chevy on the road, were reasons enough for the boy to go down.
The dust led them to Galen Siegrist’s farm. Greer didn’t think much of Siegrist, but he was important to Pastor Goodfellow and the Buffalo Springs Church of Christ Risen, and they were the funnel for the PAC money that was going to get Greer elected.
He didn’t wonder why Chucky went to Siegrist’s. Greer didn’t care. He was hunting prey, not solving crime.
“There,” Neuhauser said, pointing between a couple of the Siegrist warehouses. It was the car the Williams kid had made off with. Greer should have seen it. He shook his head to clear his vision and then wished he hadn’t. His head still throbbed like insurgents were setting off IEDs every time his heart beat. Greer knew he should have let Neuhauser drive, but the lieutenant liked to be in control.
There were a couple of other cars around the place, too. A silver Toyota in the ditch with…shit, with a row of bullet holes stitched across its trunk. And in between another pair of warehouses, an old Ford Taurus.
“What’s going on here?” Neuhauser asked. “They having a convention or a war?”
Greer and Neuhauser were well equipped for the latter.
“How we gonna do this?” Neuhauser wondered.
From the streets of Fallujah to the plains of Kansas, Greer couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather have covering his butt. Newt was a natural follower, Greer’s perfect wing man. “When in doubt,” Greer said, “bust down the front door and go in shooting.”
They’d have to be a little more discriminating than that, but maybe not much. He turned into the driveway and his double vision betrayed him. He dumped one tire off into the edge of the ditch and saw stars—nothing but stars—for a moment. And then they were parked just off the road and Neuhauser was out and covering the west side of the car, including the front of the house. Greer did the same for the field of grain and the road toward that shot-up Toyota.
A man came jogging out of the field. He was big and blond and he was carrying what Greer’s impaired vision took to be a weapon.
“Bogey,” he said.
Neuhauser confirmed that the man was carrying a high powered submachine gun. With the suit, Greer was thinking FBI or some other federal agency. That didn’t stop him from whipping the M-4 he wasn’t supposed to have, complete with grenade launcher, to his shoulder and shouting, “Drop the weapon and show me empty hands.”
The guy in the suit didn’t comply. He just shouted back.
“Lieutenant Greer. Newt Neuhauser. Haven’t seen you guys since Ramadi. Good to have you aboard. Go inside and report to Delta. I’ve got an intruder to neutralize.”
The blond loped off toward the metal warehouses and left Greer and Neuhauser standing by the Chevy.
“What the hell is a private security contractor from Iraq doing in the middle of Kansas?” Neuhauser asked, even if the question might be asked of him as well. “And who’s Delta?
Greer shook his head and wished he hadn’t. “One way to find out,” he said.
***
Deputy Heather almost climbed through the roof when her cell rang. Vibrated, actually, since she’d had the good sense to turn off the ringer before entering one of Galen Siegrist’s metal warehouses. The bullet holes in her sister’s trunk, and the fact that the man in the field had aimed some kind of weapon at her, had persuaded her to duck the Taurus between warehouses, well out of view of the man with the gun. Then she’d abandoned the car in search of an inconspicuous spot from which a girl with a badge and handcuffs and a can of pepper spray could decide how to take on gunmen in suits, rescue her sister and her uncle, keep Dad safe, and otherwise save the day.
She fumbled the phone out of her pocket without taking time to see who was calling.
“Hello,” she whispered, ducking between a dump truck and a small tractor.
“Something really weird is going on at the Siegrist place.” It was Heather, Two of Two.
“You’re all right? I saw your car.”
“You saw my car? Where are you?”
Heather explained, then the other Heather did the same.
“Maybe you should call that highway patrol captain,” Heather Lane suggested.
Heather English, with recent memories of having her own car shot at by one of those highway patrolmen, wasn’t so sure. But Englishman would hear about Mad Dog and the Siegrist place very soon. He was almost certain to put in an appearance right after that. Englishman would come armed, but he’d be seriously outgunned by the guy in that field. Heather One told her sister she’d make the call.
Heather Two, sounding more like an identical twin instead of an adopted one, read One’s mind. “You’re going to look around, first, aren’t you? Maybe I should slip out of here and help.”
It was hard to suggest that what was good for One would be stupid for Two. “You’re right,” Deputy Heather said. “I’ll hole up and call the captain and we’ll let the professionals take care of this.”
“That’s smart,” Two said.
One guessed her sister wasn’t planning to stay put any more than she was. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I talk to the troopers,” she said, “and then call Daddy and try to make sure he gets here after they do.”
The girls promised each other they’d stay someplace safe until the state officers arrived. Then they disconnected. Heather English stuck the phone back in her pocket and pulled out her pepper spray and peeked around the dump truck.
She was near the middle of the warehouse, a big, dusky expanse of parked machinery with occasional work benches and tool boxes where things got repaired.
She wanted to get nearer to the house. Actually, she wanted to get inside the house to search for Uncle Mad Dog and figure out what was going on here, so she’d know if outside help was really needed. A blown-out rear window and the news that Chucky Williams was still armed and had stolen Mrs. Kraus’ car didn’t do much for her confidence in the state boys. Maybe she could find out where these guys in the suits kept their armaments, get the drop on them, and have everything nicely sewn up before Englishman or the troopers got here.
She found Mad Dog’s Mini Cooper in the warehouse. She recognized the license number, not that there were any other Minis in the county, especially red ones with bumper stickers that read, “It’s a good day to be Indigenous,” and “Jesus would use his turn signals.” So, Two was right. That was Mad Dog she’d seen being led into the house at gunpoint.
Deputy Heather angled for the wi
ndow across the building, the one nearest the house. Her path took her past a small office. She thought about investigating it, then decided to put it off until later. She had just passed the door when it opened and the blond guy with the suit and the gun came out.
“How’d you get out of that field and into that Taurus?” He seemed more puzzled about that than concerned she might be a threat. The pepper spray was already in her hand and he was close enough for it to be effective.
The mist caught him by surprise and square in the face. And then she realized he was wearing wrap-around sunglasses and thought she maybe should have called the highway patrol after all.
***
“Don’t be alarmed,” the doctor said. “You’ve just received a dose of an extraordinarily effective neuromuscular blocking agent. A little something I developed myself. The drug causes paralysis without interfering with your level of consciousness.”
And I shouldn’t be alarmed, Mad Dog thought. He was lying on the floor and he couldn’t move. Paralysis seemed to be an accurate description. Hell, he couldn’t even make his eyes look at anything but the tiles immediately in front of his face.
“You’re not a young man,” the doctor continued. “But you’re quite large and I was disinclined to join you in a wrestling match. Besides, if we get back on schedule, you’re due for surgery before long.”
This wasn’t any more reassuring than the first statement. If he could have done anything other than quietly drool on the floor, he would have asked for more details about that surgery. Was he to be a liver donor the way the nurse had hinted? Or heart and lungs? Either way, he’d really like the chance to do a little wrestling with this man. Or pummeling, maybe. Or just plain beating the fellow to death.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you on the floor for now. You’ve got our security team running in circles looking for you and that girl, and now I understand we have some other visitors.”
Mad Dog felt hands on his right shoulder. His view of the world shifted as the doctor turned him face up. Well, face sideways, since his head lolled in the direction from which it had come.
