by A P Bateman
Stone walked over to the body and nudged open the bureau door with his boot. The pistol was a revolver. Stone picked it up and checked. It was a .357 magnum. A Colt Python with a four-inch barrel. It bore a glossy blued finish, not nickel or stainless. Stone shrugged. Two for three. He checked the cylinder, saw it was loaded and tucked it into his waistband.
The safe was packed from top to bottom in bricks of one-hundred, fifty and twenty dollar bills. Stone had served time on treasury detail in the Secret Service and estimated that there was over ten-million dollars at a glance. He checked inside for paperwork and a better examination of the money bricks. When he was finished he closed and locked the safe and took the custom five-headed key and put it in his pocket. On the desk of the bureau a switchboard phone sat next to a fax machine, a laptop and a wireless internet hub. The switchboard bore names over buttons – Diner, Store, Surgery, Hotel, Hardware, Auto-parts… and every business or public building in Abandon including: Sheriff’s Office. A red button was labelled: Outside Line.
Stone looked at his watch, then sat down in front of the switchboard and started to dial.
After twenty-five minutes he replaced the telephone receiver, took a spare magazine for the AR-15 rifle out of the man’s jacket pocket and looked around the room. A sliver of centre-cut from a large log hung on the wall with a series of hooks holding a variety of keys. Stone could see there were vehicle sets and various sturdy looking heavy-duty keys. He thought they would be for the cells. He unhooked them all and put them in his pockets, which made them bulge like when he was a kid scrumping apples.
The cave entrance was lit and eerily quiet. Beth’s M4 was there, but his pistol rig was gone. Maybe the dead guy in Claude’s house had it? He hadn’t checked the body. Stone had a working rifle, and was almost too tired to care about his pistol. He would have to be careful, exhaustion was forcing him to make mistakes. He left Beth’s M4 where it was. He couldn’t see anybody, but that didn’t mean there was nobody around. He worked his way past the cell doors, opening the flaps as he went. He heard murmurs inside the cells. He made his way to the infirmary. But that wasn’t what Stone would have called it. The man with the scalpel in his eye was kneeling, his body slumped forwards. The scalpel was still in his eye, but it looked as if he had fallen on it, slipped in some blood, lost his footing and driven it deeper. There was a lot of blood around him and a trail down the passageway. Stone followed the trail to the infirmary. Claude Conrad’s body was on the floor; he had bled out by the look of it. Stone hoped he’d suffocated first, knew something of his own imminent death. The Ruger rifle was on the floor. Stone picked it up and made his way back to the cells. He tried the keys. He thought he’d found the right type for the locks but it still took a while to get the right match. The first lock opened and he pushed open the door, but he aimed the AR-15 cautiously through the doorway.
“My name is Agent Rob Stone of the United States Secret Service,” he said loudly, his tone commanding. “Do not rush forward. You will exit the cell and form an orderly line. We will leave the compound together. There are vehicles waiting. Do not break the line, or I cannot guarantee your safety. If you put the rest of us at risk, I will shoot you.”
The men emerged, dirty, bedraggled and broken. The cells were dark so they squinted at the light. The men were of all ages, and then Stone noticed young women too. He thought of Big Dave’s drivers picking up the waifs and strays in Oregon and beyond. The runaways, the drug-addled, the vulnerable. The cells smelled of sweat and urine and faeces. Of fear. Of degradation. Stone repeated his speech at the other cell doors, handed the keys to the stronger looking men and women, who sorted them, tried the locks and opened the doors for themselves.
Stone nodded to a strong looking man who walked taller than most. “Ex-military?”
“US Marine Corps, Sir,” the man replied.
Stone handed him the Ruger rifle. “Cocked, locked and ready to rock,” he said. The man took the weapon and handled it with the professionalism Stone expected, releasing the magazine, checking the stack and inspecting the chambered round. He would have done the same, never taking a weapon’s status on face value. “I’d like you at the rear, covering the group.”
“Yes, Sir.” The man made his way down the line.
The group was massing. Stone pushed his way to the front. “Josh Maloney!” he shouted. “Josh Maloney!”
There were murmurs down the line. Stone sighed, relieved when a handsome young man, or boy really, pushed his way through the crowd. Stone thought the boy looked like his father, but with none of the arrogance. He had his mother’s eyes. He was thin and ingrained with dirt. Stone put a hand on his shoulder, gave the sort of squeeze his own father had when he had been a teen after being on the losing football team. “Let’s go and see your mother,” he said.
It took an hour to get the trucks started, organise drivers and load the people aboard. The trucks were rock movers – 6x6 wheel drive, nine litre engines, twelve gears – not the easiest prospect for the uninitiated. Enough men stepped up and the rest of the people clambered into the tippers. It took a while for the vehicles to move out, and they moved slowly. Stone gave another two men the AR-15 and Beth’s sightless M4. He emptied out the spare magazine and distributed the loose .223 ammunition between the three men. He had an armed man riding shotgun in three of the four vehicles. The drivers were ordered to stick below thirty-five and obey the two-second distance rule. This would keep the convoy evenly spaced and avoid drama as much as possible.
Most had never seen the town of Abandon. But some were returning home. All were beginning the next phase of their lives. Stone knew that they would see life differently, that their experience would intensify their appreciation of what was to come. He felt the same way after his second tour of Afghanistan. There had been so many close calls on that tour, he knew when his boot left that country’s sun-baked earth and stepped on the ramp of the C-17 he would look at life differently. It was the same as reaching the top of the cliff earlier. Life would always be that little bit more precious and worth savouring.
Stone had retrieved his car and told Josh to travel with him. The convoy would follow Stone and wait on the road while he checked the lumber yard. They were exposed, but Stone had remembered the alternative route through the mountains that Big Dave’s trucks had taken. If there was trouble, the convoy was to head out of Aldridge Valley and make for the nearest town.
Stone drove the Mustang slowly up the access road. The fires were burning fiercely, turning night into day. There were wrecked and abandoned vehicles in the turnaround and five dead bodies had been lain out on the ground. Fifteen men knelt in a line, their heads bowed and their hands bound behind their backs. Two men covered them with shotguns. Gator marched over, his face beaming. Stone had seen the expression before on soldiers faces after their first successful contact with the enemy on deployment.
“We sure whooped their asses!” he exclaimed. “Now we’re kinda unsure what to do next.”
“I’d say you’ve got it covered. There will be people along to take them away soon.”
“Feds?”
“And then some,” Stone nodded. He looked at the men in the line. “Big Dave?”
“No sign of him.”
“Do you know if he went down to town?”
“Well, he wasn’t here. There’s no phone signal to check with anybody, hell, that’s why most of us don’t even carry cell phones out here.”
“Can you spare a few guys to ride shotgun into town?”
“As many as you need. Hell, these two have them covered. I’ll ride down with you myself. What have you got there?” He looked past Stone but could not see the trucks at the end of the road.
“People.”
“You mean… the missing?”
Stone nodded.
“Peter?”
“I don’t know,” Stone shook his head. “These people are pretty shaken up. There were some terrible things happening up there. How about you come down
and take a look and see who you recognise. They could do with seeing a familiar face.”
Gator smiled. “It would be a pleasure.”
37
Stone drove the Mustang hard. The winding mountain road, with its sharp corners and steep straights, meant that he had to constantly work the gear shift and feather the throttle. He was on the brakes so much that he could smell them getting hot. They did not fade though, he had retro-fitted Brembo carbon ceramic brakes, along with other modifications but although it handled and performed like a modern sports car, he was proud of the fact that it still felt like the sixties original. A finely tuned one at least. Gator had not short changed him too much with the rubber either, and it turned in and drifted when he applied both brake and throttle into and out of the corners.
Beside him, Josh Maloney held on tightly. He did not say much, but then again, it had been a hell of a night for him.
Stone hadn’t driven further than this on the road; the last time stopping and talking with Bart Conrad among his lines of trees in the orchard. The road carried on another half-mile before turning sharply back on itself and climbing steeply to Bart Conrad’s stone-built cottage. The Mustang’s bright halogen lights swept across the house, revealing Bart standing in the doorway, his M4 rifle in his hands. Stone told Josh to stay where he was and got out. He had the Colt Python in his waistband, and he adjusted it as he stood up.
“It’s done then,” Bart Conrad stated flatly.
“Almost,” Stone replied. The Mustang’s engine was running and the lights shone brightly on Stone’s Back. Bart Conrad squinted against the light. “Claude’s dead, but nobody can find Big Dave.”
“Figures,” Bart said. “Forgive me if I don’t jump for joy. My brothers weren’t always bad.”
“Oh, I’m sure they were. They just got better at it, that’s all.”
“When did you know?”
“About you and Beth? Last night, for sure. She threw a few comments out there. I suspected you couldn’t have gone along with what they were doing. Not when I realised veterans had come out this way to work the silver mine. When I saw you and her kissing at her office last night, well, that kind of confirmed it.”
“Hurt, did it?”
“Old news. So how long?”
“About three months. We kept it quiet on account of Claude. He was the mayor and my brother; he would have felt I had a foot in both camps.”
“So what about Josh? You help Claude out with that?”
Bart glared at him. “Shut your mouth! Him doing that to her was the last straw!”
“But you didn’t stand up to him?”
“I owed him everything I have! I thought he’d see sense, let the boy go after a while. I talked with Big Dave, tried to get him to do something. He’s the middle brother. He was so much closer to Claude than I was. I was just the dumb kid in the background. Right up until I grew up and joined the military. Then I served my country, three tours in the sandbox and stationed all over the world the rest of the time. I wasn’t around here for years. Claude set me up in business after I left the marines.”
“Set you up with slave labour!”
“I pay my workers! He helped me out at harvest time with workers from his mine and the lumber yard he owns with our brother! I never knew anything about what he did at that damned mine until Josh went missing!”
“And how much do you know about the mine?”
“They use cheap labour, use them like slaves, I suppose. I tried to talk them out of it, I was meeting Dave for breakfast and a talk about it the day you showed up.”
“And you knew nothing about organ harvesting and their plans to shut the mine down and kick off their new venture with the workers?”
Bart frowned. “What?”
“You heard.”
“No! Fuck, that’s sick!” He shook his head. “Oh Jesus! Josh, is he alright?”
Stone studied the man’s face in the headlights. He liked to think he could spot a liar, his job in the Secret Service depended on it, as had his life and the life of the President in the past. “No, he’s with me. He’s in the car.”
Bart visibly relaxed. “I love Beth,” he said. “But I couldn’t kill my own brothers.”
Stone nodded. “I know. But Beth remembered me, and she knew I would help her.”
“And you did.”
“Hell of a woman.”
Bart sneered at him. “And you came and did our dirty work for us.”
“Like I said, a hell of a woman. So who shot the guy at the grave, on my first night in town?”
“That would be me. I thought she had backed the wrong man, but you got back in the game afterwards. You’re welcome, by the way.”
Stone shrugged. “And I suppose she was acting while she was all over me these past days? Last night? I turned her down, of course. She didn’t know I’d just seen you both together.”
Bart looked at him, shrugged. “She loves her son; I guess she’d do anything.”
“Yeah,” Stone said. “Nothing like the love between a mother and her son. I expect she’d do absolutely anything and more for him. She’d have no qualms about sleeping with the brother of her enemy, for example. Hell, women have given themselves for far less. Interesting that you’ve been seeing her for three months. The same amount of time her son has been missing. I guess you could check, but I’ll give you the keys to my car and its pink slip if you were seeing her before he went missing. Hell of a woman, like I said. Resourceful.” Stone backed away, kept his eyes on the man and the weapon cradled in his arms as he reached the open door of the Mustang. “You have a nice life out here with her, Jarhead. But I don’t think it will last somehow. I’ve got a feeling she’ll be cooling off things between you pretty quickly after tonight. Now that she’s got her son back and all. Now, I’m off to do what you weren’t man enough to.”
38
Stone drove the road down into Abandon a little slower and steadier. Behind him, the faintest glimmer of dawning light shone into his rear view mirror, golden and full of promise. Josh didn’t speak, other than to say he missed his mom and that he was hungry. Stone promised him one of Deborah’s winning burgers. The boy had smiled at the thought, licked his lips. He looked thin. Not healthy, emaciated. In fact, there would be a lot of hungry people tonight, or this morning as it was now. And most of those people looked malnourished too. He guessed the diner, sports bar and hotel would be busy putting on breakfasts very soon. Maybe they’d all be using different suppliers when they replenished their stocks this time. Stone figured the Conrad’s establishments could cover the check.
As agreed, Gator had led the convoy through town and to the Dutch barn where he had previously stored Stone’s Mustang after changing the tyres. For the moment, Stone and Gator agreed it better to keep the people contained until they found out Big Dave’s whereabouts. Dr Fallon could see to the people in dire need of medical attention, check them over and either administer treatment or make them comfortable until the authorities arrived. If it looked quiet and safe enough, they could start getting the people fed.
Stone turned right on main and followed the road around to the quiet, almost abandoned cul-de-sac where the Sheriff’s office nestled near the fringe of dark trees and the thick forest at the foot of the mountain. Down here, below the mountain road and the valley above between the two peaks, the town was dark. Still another hour from dawn. Stone could see Beth’s police SUV parked backside in. Next to it was a large domestic pickup. It was parked nose in and mud covered the license plates and the make and model. The pickup looked grey, a newish model.
Stone parked the Mustang in the middle of the parking lot. He looked at Josh and said, “Wait here, we’ll get you mom and go get some breakfast.” Josh nodded, and Stone opened the door and got out, leaving the engine running, and the door wide open behind him.
He was halfway across the parking area, his feet crunching noisily on the gravel when Big Dave Conrad rushed out of the smoked glass door to the building and f
ired at him. Stone dropped low, pulled the Colt Python out from his waistband, but Conrad was firing rapid shots and they were getting too close for comfort. He dodged right, forcing Conrad to adjust his aim. Stone fired a single shot and the revolver sounded like a cannon compared to the 9mm Conrad was firing. Conrad ducked, scrabbled on the loose chippings almost losing his footing and ran to the pickup. Beth appeared in the doorway. She had blood on her face, her nose looked like it was still bleeding. Whatever had happened inside, she had taken a blow from Big Dave for sure. She ducked back inside, slamming the door closed.
Stone looked at the truck, then back at the Mustang. He was closer to the truck, and getting closer by the second as Big Dave slewed out into the parking lot and swung the truck around. The truck was a typical big V8 and it reverberated through the quiet cul-de-sac as Conrad floored the throttle and aimed directly at Stone.
Stone had the best weapon for the task, and the .357 magnum was famed for being able to penetrate an engine block. Hitting the speeding truck and keeping his nerve as it rushed towards him was another matter. Stone dropped onto one knee, aimed the weapon at the grill in a double-handed grip and fired two single shots. The truck raced on and he fired twice more. He dived to his right and the truck missed him by mere inches. The engine pitch changed, then sounded like it was being fuelled by nothing more than gravel and sand. There was steam and smoke and the truck rumbled to a halt twenty metres further on. Stone got up. He had hurt his knee and he walked stiffly around the vehicle in a semi-circle, keeping the driver’s door of the truck in view and at the same distance. He had one live bullet left in the cylinder.
Big Dave had slipped out across the passenger seat and stood, his hands partially raised, the truck affording him some cover. He looked at Stone and smirked. Stone thought his features in the dull backlight of the truck’s headlights made him look like a corpse. Only the twitching movement of his eyes broke the illusion.
