Shake the Trees

by Rod Helmers

  “I know,” Sally answered while continuing to study the scene.

  Tillis smiled. “You’re sounding more like a cop every day.”

  Sally laid her binoculars aside and returned his smile. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  Rodger and Dustin had watched the jet roll to a stop and then saw a fire truck flood its underside with foam. They moved outside the terminal and onto the tarmac, but the milling people and vehicles obscured their vision. Somehow they both knew Sandi and Sam were all right, and Rodger gave the little boy a big bear hug. Just then a trim uniformed EMS tech caught Dustin’s eye and winked as she walked briskly past the pair.

  Dustin smiled and thought the young woman was pretty. It was the first time he ever thought a woman other than his mom was pretty. Probably for that reason, he would always remember her smile. And her eyes. The bluest eyes he’d ever seen.

  Rodger looked down and caught the smitten look on the young boy’s face. The old man’s bushy white mustache concealed any hint of a reaction as he nodded to the east. “It’ll be first light soon. Any minute now.”

  Tillis and Sally joined Rodger and Dustin on the tarmac. Smoke began to billow out of the cabin door of the jet, and they all moved closer. Tillis found a fireman and displayed his badge and ID.

  “What’s going on?” Tillis asked.

  “Infrared doesn’t show an active heat source, so we’re clearing the smoke with a high volume fan.”

  Tillis’ brow furrowed. “Where are the pilot and passenger?”

  The fireman nodded and Dustin began to run. Rodger, Sally, and Tillis followed at something more than a jog. They found Sam and Sandi sitting up on gurneys taking an occasional lungful of oxygen from masks held by EMS techs. Dustin literally flew into his mother’s arms. Rodger was right behind him.

  “Good landing,” Tillis said to Sam with a broad smile.

  “That?” Sam asked incredulously.

  “Any landing you walk away from is a good landing. Especially today.” Tillis gave Sam a pat on the back.

  “I guess you’re right,” Sam agreed with a huge smile of his own.

  Frac approached the group and displayed a small tin canister in a plastic evidence bag, which he handed to Tillis. “There’s your source of the smoke in the cabin.”

  Tillis set his jaw and spoke through clenched teeth. “Bodies?”

  “One. Late middle-aged obese white male.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Sally exclaimed loudly.

  Frac handed Tillis another clear plastic evidence bag.

  “Remnants of a red gel pack and a spent shell casing.” Tillis spoke deliberately as he described the contents of the bag.

  “Spent shell casing of a blank round. She may have suffered a slight powder burn. That’s it.” Frac added.

  “No! She’s dead. She died. I saw her die.” Sandi shouted angrily.

  Sam looked at Tillis with resignation.

  “Son of a bitch,” Sally spat out the words again.

  “There’s more,” Frac interjected and handed Tillis another clear plastic evidence bag containing a white piece of paper.

  Tillis studied the paper for a moment and turned to Sandi. “She’s gone. She’s gone for good.”

  “What? What do you mean?” Sandi challenged Tillis.

  “You think she’s dead?” Sally asked.

  “Ellen doesn’t exist anymore.” Tillis answered.

  “Okay. Elizabeth. Whatever.” Sally was clearly exasperated.

  Tillis looked all around and then let his eyes rest on the brightening horizon. “Elizabeth walked right past us - right under our noses.” Tillis paused, handed the plastic bag to Sam, and spoke with undeniable traces of admiration. “And she forgave you.”

  Sam studied the note for a moment, and then read the words out loud:

  Dear Sam: I have made a courtesy reduction on your account, and you may now consider your bill paid in full. P.S. Marc told me that Bubba was giving you lessons. I knew you could do it.

  “Son of a bitch,” Sally announced yet one more time. “Now what?”

  Tillis moved his head from side to side and shrugged.

  Sally looked stunned. “A lot of people fucking died, Tillis.”

  Tillis bowed his head and spoke softly, “Yes.”

  Sally raised her voice. “Just yes.”

  Tillis met Sally’s gaze and continued to speak softly. “A lot of greed. And a lot of people died.”

  “Jesus,” Sally replied and turned back toward the plane placing her hands on her hips. Finally she kicked at a loose pebble on the tarmac. “Son of a bitch.”

  PART 3

  SUMMER/FALL 2008

  CHAPTER 58

  Hiking had become an early morning ritual for Sam. Sandi refused his help with the maternity ward, and all the rich food and time behind a desk in Florida had caused love handles to bloom. He thought walking was for old people, and running was for city people. So he hiked.

  The hikes had become more and more depressing as the summer progressed. Rodger and Sandi had found high country pastures for most of the herd, but several head remained on Rimes Ranch. They had grazed the bone-dry low pastures to a nub. Then the animals were moved to the highest pastures, which received a few precious sprinkles of rain as the afternoon thunderclouds collided with the mountains to the east and were forced to shed moisture. But even there the grass was thin.

  The high country received drenching rains from the monsoons, which is what the locals called these afternoon thundershowers. But the clouds bunched up against the mountains, and every drop in elevation was accompanied by a steady decrease in precipitation, until no rain fell at all. It was literally a line in the sand. And the line was depressingly near the fence that separated the Rimes Ranch from the Circle M.

  The cattle strained every muscle of their now lean necks to reach the grass on the other side of the taut wires. The Circle M hadn’t been grazed at all that spring or summer. The contrast with Rimes Ranch was startling. Rodger had told Sandi that without irrigation their pastures would revert to sagebrush within a year. At the time, Sam thought he was exaggerating, but the process had already begun. Every morning it got worse. And every morning Sam hiked.

  Sam was a creature of habit. He usually hiked the same route, stopped at the same place to catch his breath, and took a five-minute break on the same comfortable rock near the fence line with the Circle M. This particular summer morning had started out the same as all the others, but as he sat on his favorite rock and dejectedly studied the chamisa that had sprung up on a nearby ridge, something new appeared. Its red eyes penetrated the undergrowth and were pointed his way.

  Sam reached for the little .22 caliber pistol he carried on his hip. Although it offered little protection against the hungry bears that roamed the foothills this time of year - other than as a noisemaker - it still made him feel better. But his hand stopped in mid-air as the canine looking animal rose up. Sam immediately realized that there was something very wrong about the beast. He looked down at his chest and noticed two red dots. When he looked back up, a rumpled form appeared on the ridge next to the thing.

  “Dude! Don’t shoot my dog.”

  “Dr. Bob?” Sam barely croaked out the words.

  “In the flesh. Well, just me. Not the dog.”

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “I kinda am.” Dr. Bob replied.

  “What is that thing?”

  Dr. Bob reached down and patted the thing’s head. “Big Dog. The premier example of biodynotics in the world today. He can run, jump, climb, and carry a soldier’s load. An OCU camera allows a remote operator to deliver lethal force to multiple targets.”

  “What are you doing with him? It?” Sam asked.

  “Sensors measure force, gyros measure motion, lasers and stereo cameras determine terrain features and threats, and computers analyze and integrate the information and control the hydraulic actuators. I’m tweaking the software. He should deploy to Special Forces next mon
th.”

  Sam could barely put his thoughts into words. “What? Where?”

  “The far side,” Dr. Bob answered, and then thought to explain further. “The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”

  “You work for DARPA?”

  “Yeah.” Dr. Bob sulked.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “Like I said, I kinda am. It’s a long story.”

  “You better start at the beginning, because you’re not my favorite person right now. And I’m armed.” There was no humor in Sam’s tone.

  “Be cool, dude. I can explain. And you’re not armed.” Dr. Bob studied the little pistol and then nodded down at Big Dog. “Trust me on this one. You are not armed.”

  “Start talking,” Sam ordered.

  “The Judge was the only father I ever had,” Dr. Bob explained dejectedly. “He gave me a second chance. He believed in me. He believed in me when everyone else was ready to throw my ass out with the trash. I trusted him. Blind trust. That was my mistake. I was stupid.”

  Sam was confused by the tumble of words. “What happened?”

  “I tried to tell Marc that his plan for American Senior Security wouldn’t work. That the numbers didn’t add up. But he wouldn’t listen. It was gonna be a bad scene. So I told the Judge about it, and he came up with the plan to steal the money. He convinced me that no one would get hurt. He said he wouldn’t allow the oldsters to get hurt. So I agreed to help him. I know better now, but I didn’t really think I had a choice at the time.”

  “What about me?” Sam demanded.

  “I didn’t expect to die. I mean I was worried about it a little. Which is why I set that e-mail file up. In case anything happened to me. I hope that password thing didn’t mess you up too bad. But I had to be careful and I thought you’d figure it out.”

  “It was touch and go for a while.”

  “I would never have let anything happen to you, Sam.” Dr. Bob added sincerely.

  “I was almost raped in prison.”

  “I know. I’m sorry about that.”

  “You know about that?” Sam asked with bewilderment.

  “Yeah. Reggie told me. Reggie’s how I got roped into this Big Dog thing. This isn’t my usual gig. But I was new and didn’t have a lot of pull. So I made a deal.”

  “You arranged for Reggie to protect me?”

  “Yeah. But things still got out of hand. I’m sorry. It’s hard to cover all the bases when you’re flying under the radar.”

  Sam shook his head. “Sandi suffered too.”

  “Well, I didn’t know about you and Elizabeth Ellen Hughes Hayes. Man, you pissed her off big time.”

  “You know about that too?”

  “Oh yeah.” Dr. Bob drew out the words. “That chick was a big surprise all the way around. Sick minds think alike - she came up with the same scam the Judge did. So he used her.” He shook his head. “That should have been my tip-off.”

  Sam wasn’t really listening. “I was shot, you know.”

  “I know. Marc flipped out. I’m sorry. I should have been there. Like I said, I didn’t expect to die.”

  “You didn’t die.” Sam pronounced out each word slowly and distinctly.

  “I kinda did. It was Bubba. Boy, did I have him pegged wrong. Sick dude.” Dr. Bob was big-eyed. “He had issues.”

  Sam finally noticed two fingers missing on Dr. Bob’s gesturing left hand, and nodded toward the remaining three digits. “What happened?”

  “He drugged me and took me down to the swamp in Ten Thousand Islands. He tortured me until I transferred all the money. Then he threw me to the gators. But he screwed up.” Dr. Bob had a faraway look in his eye.

  “How’s that?”

  Dr. Bob was momentarily startled and then began to explain. “After he pushed me in the water, he shot this big gator. He thought it would make it worse for me, but gators hunt by vibrations - not really by sight or smell. And that big gator thrashing around messed things up for his pals. I held my hand above my head to slow the bleeding and barely moved. It took forever to get back on shore, but I made it, found my BlackBerry and climbed a gumbo limbo tree.”

  Sam looked perplexed.

  “Oh, yeah. And called this guy.” Dr. Bob added.

  “What guy?”

  “This guy from the far side. He found me at the Green Parrot one night. He gave me his card, and for some reason I kept it. It was a weird card. It was laminated, which turned out to be a good thing. It was basically a passive radio identification tag embedded with a miniature gps-tracking chip. But I didn’t know about that.”

  “So you called him?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” Dr. Bob groaned. “I was getting light headed. I’d lost a lot of blood. I was bleeding to death, dude. They sent a chopper for me.”

  Sam shook his head in disbelief. “What about the body? They found your body.”

  “Some Cuban kid who’d drowned trying to swim to Key West that morning. Apparently we all look alike.”

  “Wet feet dry feet.” Sam added.

  “Wet feet.” Dr. Bob looked at Sam with sad eyes.

  “Yeah. That’s too bad. He was willing to trade his life for freedom.”

  “Guess I’m the lucky one.” Dr. Bob replied.

  “Guess so.”

  “Anyway, they removed the kid’s hands like they’d been gnawed off by the gators and left my fingers there. They figured the prints off my fingers would satisfy the cops, and nobody would bother with DNA testing.”

  Sam understood. “So you made a deal.”

  “Yeah, I made a deal. I traded my freedom for my life. Like I said, I did kinda die that night.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Dr. Bob shrugged. “I brought it on myself.”

  Sam looked over at Big Dog. “So what is your gig? With the far side?”

  “Satsurv.”

  “Huh?”

  “Satellite surveillance,” Dr. Bob explained. “Basically it involves the capture of low voltage electronic signals by satellite. I’m working on the software and the filters. I’m at the cutting edge of the war on terror, dude.”

  “But you were the guy with the peace sign and the ‘make love not war’ bumper sticker on your VW bus.”

  Dr. Bob looked vulnerable - almost pitiful. “I can’t think like that anymore, Sam. Unless I feel like I’m doing some good, then what’s the point? Why go on? This is all I have now.”

  An awkward silence hung in the air until Dr. Bob changed the subject. “Are you still having that dream - about your Mom?”

  Sam smiled. “They stopped.”

  “That’s cool.”

  Another uncomfortable silence settled on the two men until Dr. Bob cleared his throat and straightened his spine. “Sam, I came here to tell you I’m sorry. And to tell you that I’m happy for you. I think it’s really cool about you and Sandi.”

  “You know about that?”

  “I have a little wedding gift for you. It’s over there.” Dr. Bob cocked his head to the side. Toward the east.

  Sam looked across the fence and then back at Dr. Bob with a questioning expression. Dr. Bob nodded.

  “The Circle M?” Sam finally asked.

  “Use it. Maintain it. Put cows on it. Fix the fence. Do whatever an owner would do with it. And pay the property taxes. You have to pay the property taxes. Every year. In ten years you can bring a quiet title action. I guarantee you that Ned Ron Incorporated won’t respond. Ned Ron will default and it will all be yours. Tax-free. Even the taxman can’t think of everything.”

  “You mean acquire title by adverse possession?”

  “Exactamundo.”

  “I didn’t know you were a lawyer too.”

  Dr. Bob shrugged. “Most legal concepts are relatively simplistic in theory and application.”

  “How do you know that the owner won’t dispute the claim?”

  “Trust me. Ned Ron won’t fight this thing in court.”

  “What if Ned Ron sells
the Circle M to someone else?”

  Dr. Bob grinned. “I’ve filed a lien against the property and clouded the title. Ned Ron would have to file suit to clear the title first, and it’s not going to do that either.”

  “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “We know things.”

  The two men fell into silence once more. Once again Dr. Bob was the first to speak. “Marc actually thought you might make American Senior Security work, you know. You blew him away. You really were ‘the dawg’. You still are.”

  “It was actuarially unsound. I was kidding myself. I wanted to succeed so badly that I lost sight of reality. And I think I’ll pass on the dawg thing. I’ll just stick with Sam.”

  “I understand, dude.”

  “Or dude.”

  A pervading sense of loss had settled into Dr. Bob’s eyes. “I better go. They’re expecting me. And, again, congratulations on getting married. I wish I could have been there.”

  “It was just a small family thing.”

  Dr. Bob nodded.

  “Will I hear from you again?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t know, Sam. It’s the job, you know. Oh, by the way, Big Dog and that other stuff are classified. You can’t tell anybody.”

  “Sandi’s pregnant,” Sam blurted.

  “What?”

  “Sandi. She’s pregnant.”

  “No way!” Dr. Bob exclaimed with childlike excitement.

  “We’ve already had a sonogram. Its twins. Boys.”

  “You’re blowin’ my mind, dude.”

  “Sandi gets to pick one name, and I get to pick the other. Sandi’s already picked. Rodger Tillis. We wanted to use Tillis as a first name, but it’s too weird.”

  The two scratched at the dirt with their shoes, but the silence wasn’t awkward like before. “What about Jefferson Davis Brown?” Dr. Bob asked.

  “What about him?”

  “No. I mean as a name. He won your case.”

  “He’s a lawyer.” Sam spoke as if the Dr. Bob’s suggestion bordered on the absurd.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you should have seen his bill.”

  “I bet.”

  Sam studied Dr. Bob for a moment. “Besides, I’ve already chosen a name.”