And the whole way down, the dog never let go.
***
Jessica was pacing behind the police barricades when Ramos came up from the dock to get her.
“Have you found my husband?”
“Not yet, I’m sorry, but Agent Burke got one of the men we captured to talk, and he gave us his probable position, it’s a few miles south of here.”
Jessica spread her arms wide.
“Then why the hell are you still here? Let’s go get him.”
“We’re waiting for the chopper to arrive. There was a violent storm here the other day that took down a lot of trees on back roads. Without all-terrain vehicles, a search from the air is our best bet.”
“When will the helicopter get here?”
“ETA, ten minutes,”
“Ten minutes? Oh God,”
To their left, two men loaded a pair of blanket-shrouded gurneys into an ambulance.
“Those two were dead when we got here, your husband’s work?”
“He was defending himself.”
“Yes, he’s very capable.”
“The men you say you’ve captured, is that everyone, the entire gang?”
Ramos hesitated for a second before answering.
“Our source, he told us that the two corpses over there were brothers. Their father, the leader of this group, he took off after your husband, looking for revenge.”
“Oh no, but at least it’s only one man,” Jessica said, and then saw Ramos break eye contact.
“What are you not telling me, Teresa?”
“The father, he’s not alone... he’s got four other sons,”
CHAPTER 21
After half-falling, half-tumbling down into the canyon, he lay on his side among a weedy, rocky landscape in a symphony of pain. He told himself to move, to get up, to defend himself against the damn dog that caused this misery, however, the misery itself proved too great an obstacle, and for the first few moments, all he could do was moan.
Then he heard it. Mixed in among his own sounds of misery were those of the dog, a whining yelp that actually caused him to feel sympathy for the beast and he turned his head to see what had befallen it.
One of the animal’s back legs was broken and also the opposite one in the front, plus, judging by the malformation on his left side, a rib as well. He remembered landing on top of the dog as they hit bottom and figured it was his bodyweight that had caused most of the damage.
As the radiating waves of pain subsided to the level of mere agony, he managed to pull himself up to his hands and knees and began assessing the damage.
His right arm was torn and bloody from the work of the dog, but bleeding very little, indicating that the dog’s teeth had missed any major blood vessels. The pinky on his left hand was pointing upward at an odd angle and the index finger refused to bend. His legs both looked fine and straight, however, the sweatpants he wore were now mottled by bloody tears and he realized that the rocky earth had cut him more than once.
He forced himself to stand, knowing that his parka-wearing pursuer wouldn’t just assume that the dog had finished him, and would soon make his way down into this valley, likely by driving through the field of mud he’d passed while he was running. He glanced up, and it was like standing at the bottom of a soup bowl.
The valley was surrounded on three sides by nearly vertical hills, while behind him was an endless field dotted by trees. The quickest way out would be to traverse the field of mud, but he had no idea how deep the mud went and if he were to step into a hole and break an ankle, the man in the parka would surely kill him.
He looked down and cursed the dog for causing his failure to reach safety. As it stood now, he had to face a mobile enemy who was also armed.
“I’m gonna kill you slow, mister.”
He looked up. Standing atop the cliff was the man with the parka, and he had his rifle pointed right at him.
“I ain’t gonna shoot you. You ain’t gettin’ off that easy. It’s gonna take days for you to die.”
The man’s voice was harsh, raspy, and underscoring it was a southern drawl. He looked to be about his height, but twenty years older, and his hair was combed forward, to hang slightly over his forehead.
“Them two that you killed? They was my sons,” the man then pointed beyond him. “And look, here come my other sons.”
He turned and gazed out at the valley floor, knowing that if the man meant to shoot him, he had plenty of chances already. Far across the plain were lights, headlights most likely, time was running out.
He looked back up at the man and saw that he was now grinning at him.
“You gonna die, mister, and you gonna die bad.”
And after saying that, the man disappeared from view, but he knew that he was headed back to the jeep and that he would soon be down there to kill him.
He heard the dog whimper loudly. He walked over and stared down at the injured beast.
“You’ll either starve or get eaten by something if I just leave you here like this.”
The dog let out a pitiful whine.
Nearby was a hefty rock, he lifted it up with both hands, walked back over to the dog, and raised it as he prepared to strike.
***
After taking care of the dog, he gazed across the valley floor at the oncoming lights and gauged them to still be miles away. He hoped he was right. On the left, about a thousand yards away, the hill sloped downward and offered an opening. That was where the muddy field bordered the valley, and it was where the man with the parka would be coming from.
He considered his options.
He could run again, but he was already tired and his pursuers had vehicles.
He could stand his ground and fight; however, without a weapon of his own, the odds didn’t look good.
He could outthink them.
Ahead lay the first tree of any real size, and beside it, a group of saplings, one of which was snapped in two at about the three-foot mark, its top half hanging by a thread and showing dying leaves. He stared at the tree as an idea formed and then rushed to it and pulled until the top of the sapling tore free of its stump.
He had just finished when he heard the first roar of the jeep as it fought its way through the mud, meanwhile, the lights of the other vehicle had grown significantly nearer and would be upon him soon.
His last act before seeking shelter was to strip off his white sweatshirt and tie one of its sleeves around the top of the stump, and then he scrambled to cover and waited for his chance.
***
The man in the parka stopped his muddy jeep beside the tree and stared at the sweatshirt blowing in the breeze. Afterward, he looked about at the sparse trees and bellowed.
“If this white shirt was your idea of a flag of surrender, well then, I got news for you, there ain’t no surrender!”
A moment later, he leapt down from a branch of the tree to land atop the man, and the two of them began to struggle for the rifle.
***
As the first faint tint of daylight seeped across the landscape, Jessica, along with Ramos and Burke, came upon a scene from a nightmare, as the chopper they were in flew over the trees and hovered above the valley floor.
Five men were huddled around a man down on his knees with his hands clasped together behind his head, the tallest of the men wore a parka with a fur hood, while the man on the ground wore a white sweatshirt with black sweatpants, exactly what her husband had been wearing when last she saw him.
The man in the parka pointed at the man on the ground, and the other four men raised their weapons and began firing.
Jessica let out an anguished scream, but then watched in amazed bewilderment as the man in the parka stepped back and began mowing down the other four men with his rifle. When he was done, the four men lay dead on the ground, but the man they’d been shooting, the man on his knees, was still on his knees, in seeming refusal to go down, and in fact, still held his hands behind his head.
“What the
hell...?” Burke muttered, but then he brought a pair of binoculars up to his eyes, and after adjusting them, he let out a loud laugh. “Oh, oh he’s a beauty this one, an absolute beauty,”
Jessica looked over at Burke with eyes of despair.
“What just happened?”
Burke handed her the binoculars.
“It’s all good, Doctor, take a look.”
Jessica gazed through the binoculars and watched as the man in the parka leaned the empty rifle inside the jeep, and then he turned around, and she saw the face of her husband.
A sound of absolute joy poured forth from her throat as she did a little dance in her seat, and then Burke told the pilot to take them down.
***
As Jessica bandaged his arm with supplies from the chopper’s first-aid kit, he explained what happened, and throughout the whole thing, Burke kept asking questions.
“So let me get this straight,” Burke said. “After you survive the attack by the dog and the fall down that cliff over there, you still have the presence of mind to come up with that?”
Burke pointed over at the broken tree, which now supported the impaled corpse of the parka wearer, whose hands were lashed together behind his head by the drawstring taken from his hood.
He stared at Burke, wondering if the man’s tone was truly one of wonder or an attempt at mockery.
“I had to think of something, Agent Burke, and this was the best I could come up with.”
“So after you lure him over here to the tree, you drop down on him and kill him, then what?”
“Then I switched clothes and positioned him atop the stump.”
“Positioning him atop the stump, how’d that happen?”
“From behind, I picked him up from beneath his arms and pressed him downwards, until the jagged end of the stump punctured him beneath his rib cage.”
Burke shook his head in amazement.
“So then the boys show up and see a man they think is their father, holding a rifle on the man they believe killed their brothers, then, you give the order to start shooting, and while they’re blasting the crap out of Daddy’s corpse, you step back and blow them all away, right?”
“That’s right,”
“You do realize that you wasted an entire family in one night?”
“It was them or me. I chose me.”
“Hey, I’m not criticizing; according to local law enforcement the Hitchen’s clan over there was responsible for half the serious crime in the area. None of these dudes were saints by a long shot, plus, we got to make a multi-million dollar drug bust.”
Jessica looked over at Ramos, who had just finished conferring with the forensic crew that had arrived in a second helicopter.
“Can we go now?”
“Of course, but we’ll need a formal statement soon.”
He walked Jessica over to the chopper, but then turned and began walking towards a group of small trees.
“I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
“There’s another passenger,”
When he returned from the trees, Jessica saw that he had the pit bull swaddled inside the parka.
“Oh, he’s a cutie, but look at his legs, and God he’s so skinny,”
“He’s lucky to be alive,” he said.
“Take us up!” Burke told the pilot, and they lifted into the air, and away from the valley of death.
PART SIX - RECRUITMENT
CHAPTER 22
He sat in his place at the head of the table and gazed over at their dinner guests.
Carly Zhang, their researcher, had brought along her boyfriend, Michael Hartmann. Hartmann was twenty-two, of average height and build, and blond. His dark-blue eyes were ablaze with intelligence and he seemed nearly as nervous as Carly was.
Michael looked back at him and smiled.
“Carly told me that you’re the one who developed half the Apps on my phone. I’d love to pick your brain sometime about software development, Mr. White.”
“My name isn’t White.”
“Excuse me?”
“Dr. White uses her maiden name for professional reasons, Michael.” Carly explained. “His last name is—.”
In his haste to apologize, Michael interrupted her.
“Sir, I’m so sorry. I meant no disrespect. I simply assumed, and I shouldn’t have.”
He waved it off.
“Relax, Michael, it’s a common mistake, I think half the people we know think of me as Mr. White.”
“You like it that way, it makes you anonymous,” Jessica said. “In fact, I’m surprised that you corrected him.”
“I usually only correct people I like, now tell me Michael, are you conversant in programming languages?”
“Oh, yes sir, and also assembly languages, logic-based, machine language and a few others, you have to be when you’re designing robots.”
He nodded. “We’ll talk more after dinner.”
***
After waving goodbye to their guests, they walked back inside and sat by the fire.
“Michael seems like a good man and I think he and Carly are in love,” Jessica said.
“The boy is a genius, but then, he would have to be to keep up with Carly.”
Jessica’s phone rang. She checked the caller ID and then showed it to her husband.
“Ramos,” he said. “I was wondering when she and Burke planned to strike.”
Jessica put the call on speakerphone.
“Hello?”
“Dr. White, this is Federal Agent, Theresa Ramos. Dr. White I need you and your husband to meet me tomorrow morning at ten in the federal building downtown. I’ll text you the address, and doctor, this meeting is not optional, goodnight.”
The line went dead.
“Well, that was very formal sounding. Do you think that they’re planning on charging us with something?”
“I don’t know. I’m just tired of playing a game when I don’t know the rules; perhaps tomorrow we’ll learn what they are.”
***
The following morning, as they approached the doors of the federal building, Agent Ethan Burke came at them swiftly from the right, while Agent Ramos closed in from the left.
He stepped in front of Jessica and faced Burke.
“What’s going on?”
Burke raised his open palms in peace as Ramos came to stand beside him.
“Whoa! There’s no trouble, we’ve just moved this meeting outside.”
“Why outside?” Jessica said.
“We’ll explain,” Ramos said. “Follow us please, our car is at the curb.”
“We’re not getting into any car with you. Now tell us what this is about or we’re leaving.”
Burke sent him an annoyed look, but then gestured to his right.
“There’s a park down the street. Why don’t we talk there?”
He nodded in agreement and the four of them began walking.
They traveled to the park in silence, once there, the foursome gathered around a wooden bench near a small man-made lake and, after glancing about, Burke got down to business.
“You two are vigilantes and we can prove it.”
“What is your game, Burke?” he said.
“You don’t deny the accusation?”
“I don’t care about the accusation.”
“Why not?”
“Tell us what you want, Burke.”
“Does the name Kari Shaw mean anything to you?” Ramos asked, and then she and Burke both smiled as they saw the look on Jessica’s face.
Kari Shaw was Sandra Jenkins’ friend, and when Jessica and her husband helped Jenkins get her daughter back from the pedophiles who had taken her, Kari was with them.
“That’s right, folks,” Burke said. “We have Kari Shaw and she’s willing to testify against you.”
“What did you do to that girl?” Jessica asked.
Burke chuckled.
“We didn’t waterboard her if that’s what yo
u’re thinking. She sold you out on her own. Ms. Shaw has a brother who was a member of a motorcycle gang. He gave up two of his fellow members in order to get ten years off his sentence. The trouble is, once he gets out next month, the gang will kill him. Ms. Shaw came to us saying that she wanted to make a trade. She said that she would tell us everything she knew about Sandra Jenkins if we would place her brother in the witness protection program. We took the deal and she talked.”
“She told you that we helped Sandra Jenkins?” Jessica said.
“No, she only knew your first names, but when she described you, Teresa here put two and two together and showed her your picture. She tried to lie, Doctor, but then we threatened to cancel her brother’s witness protection and she verified that it was you.”
“There is no witness protection,” he said.
Burke stared at him.
“How’d you figure that out so quickly?”
“If the deal was legitimate, there would be layers of bureaucracy behind it, but there isn’t, there are just you two. I’ll ask my question again, what’s your game, Burke?”
“My game, is catching vigilantes, you might say I have a knack for it, but you two, you in particular, you’re exceptional. When Shaw told us that one man did the damage we found at that house outside Atlanta, that one man had killed eight, I didn’t believe her, but Theresa did, and reminded me that you took down an armed serial killer at the tender age of seventeen. And then last week, in Bel Rey, the way you killed those men, well, let’s just say I’m impressed as all hell.”
He cocked his head as he scrutinized both Burke and Ramos, and then the truth struck him and he spoke it.
“You’re recruiting us,”
“Yes.”
“Recruiting us for what?” Jessica said.
Ramos walked up to her and took her hands.
“For justice, Jessica, for honest to God justice, you think that we don’t share your disgust for the way the legal system works? Well we do, we see the guilty walk free and the innocent punished all the time, and like you and your husband, we want to change that.”
“How?”
“By working together, that’s how. Ethan and I, we’re insiders; we see the real corruption, the power brokers, the politicians for hire. These people are the true evil in the world, their dereliction of their duties causes untold pain. The people that took Sandra Jenkins’ daughter were saints when compared to these people, they ruined lives one at a time, these people do it by the millions. Through legislation designed only to enhance certain corporate interest, through legalized bribery called lobbying, through ways too numerous to mention, people in and out of government are ruining this country and getting away with it, but not for long, not for long.”
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