I looked at Rule, and he sensed my hesitation. “It’ll be okay,” he said.
“I’m not the enemy here, Jacob,” Uncle Happy said. “I want these guys taken down just as bad as you do.”
“We shouldn’t kill them,” I said.
“You need to,” Uncle Happy said.
“They’re our best lead to Rule’s family’s killers.”
“Jacob, you don’t understand. These guys have been trained in just about every hostage and torture scenario that you can think of. They’ll die before giving up who’s paying them off.”
“We have to at least try.”
“If you were in their shoes and you knew that you were a traitor to your country, would you talk to the people who have the ability to give you up to your own government? Their lives would be over anyway. Their names would be ruined. Their family’s names would be ruined. Their wives would lose their jobs and possibly not be able to get another one. Their children would be beaten up every day by their schoolmates. Anyone closely associated with them would be ostracized. And not to mention that the Russians would come after them as well. So, if you were in their shoes and you knew all of this could possibly happen, would you talk?”
I didn’t have to think long, “No, possibly not.”
“So, you have to kill them. Finding the killers won’t be difficult. As a matter of fact, you already had one in custody.”
“Viktor Borovsky,” I said.
Uncle Happy nodded. “And when you come back, remind me to tell you about Lev Oborski.”
I perked a little, “Who?”
“In due time,” he said, “but now you’ve got to get in your spots. Time’s ticking away.”
My heart skipped a beat as we turned to leave. In my ten-year career, I’d never killed anyone. Until the past year, when I’d killed twice. Both were out of necessity. One time was to save my life, and the second time was to save another’s life. I’ve actually been told that killing is like anything else: once you’ve done it enough, you become numb to it. The person who told me that was a psychopath I caught a few years back. As we crossed the rear sliding glass door to the outside woods, I said a little prayer to myself that hopefully killing was something that I would never become numb to. Because if that day came, I don’t know if there would be any difference between me and a psycho.
As I followed Rule, I thought about Uncle Happy watching us through the cameras and knew without a doubt that he already was psychotic.
Sixty-nine
Rule had been trained for moments like this by one of the best. His father. In every facet of his life, his father had been preparing him for survival. He knew how to kill. Whether it be from a distance or up close and personal, Rule knew in his heart that if it ever came down to it, he could kill. The only thing he didn’t know was if he would hesitate before doing it.
When he took the Barett M107 from Uncle Happy’s shelf, he knew, based on the gun’s size and weight that he could hit Small and Foxwood from about 6,500 feet. Rule and Jacob walked cautiously through the woods, hunched over with their eyes scanning every possible tree limb or leaf that came into view for any unnatural movement. Rule had his gun aimed toward the front; Jacob had his scanning side to side. In their ears was a listening device that allowed Uncle Happy to communicate to them.
Rule led Jacob to the first spot where Uncle Happy had told them to go. They kneeled down behind a large fallen tree.
“Cover me,” Rule said. He pointed to the spot where he was going to sit, about fifty yards to their right. “I’ll be over there.” He then pointed ahead of them. “The two bozos will be coming from that direction probably in about seven or eight minutes. Wait for my call. I’ll take down Foxwood, and you take down Small.”
“What call are you going to make?”
“Don’t worry. You’ll know. When you hear it, shoot to kill.”
Rule patted Jacob on the shoulder and then turned to his destination.
Seventy
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. Two CIA agents trained to deceive and kill were minutes away from eyesight, and here I was in an unfamiliar place, aiming a rifle, and waiting for Rule to give me the signal to shoot. I didn’t feel comfortable with this way of handling things, but deep down I understood that this was the only way to end this fiasco.
We were shaded from the sun by the trees, but it was still hot as hell. I had to keep wiping sweat from my forehead so it wouldn’t roll into my eyes. Every few seconds I’d look into the scope and then pull away, and whenever my skin touched the edge of the scope a ring of sweat would be left there.
I’d been kneeling low in this position for three minutes with the prong of the rifle resting on the fallen tree. My shoulder was still sore from the bullet I took from the Russian’s gun. My breathing was heavier than normal even though I wasn’t moving. I thought about Rule and wondered how he was holding up. I’d watched him walk away, but in my lying position, I couldn’t see him. I wondered if he was as nervous as me. I wondered if he could really kill. I had been in his position a year ago, and I did kill the man responsible for killing my wife. But I only did it because I was forced to, even though the burning desire to kill him flowed through my veins. For a sane person, there’s a distinct difference between wanting to kill and actually doing it. And right now I was walking on that thin line of distinction.
“Get ready, guys,” Uncle Happy’s voice came into my ear. “They’re about two hundred yards from you.”
I quickly looked through my scope and swept the end of the rifle from right to left in a slow manner. I tried to control my breathing, but my nerves were making me breathe harder. I thought about Rule and the call that he was going to make and wondered what he was going to do.
“They’re about a hundred yards out,” Uncle Happy’s voice came again.
I swept from left to right again and didn’t see anything. With this scope, they should be in eyesight. I moved my head away from the scope and looked around but didn’t see them. Was Uncle Happy correct with their location? Of course he was. He could see them from the cameras. I looked through the scope again and moved the rifle slower from left to right, and then back right to left. I expected at any moment to see them come into view and then hear Rule’s call. My index finger hovered over the rifle’s trigger. In my head, I kept reassuring myself that this was the right thing to do. That these guys were traitors and if we didn’t kill them right now, they would kill us.
“Fifty yards out,” Uncle Happy’s voice came again.
Fifty yards. Why couldn’t I see them? And why couldn’t Rule? I was sure by now that Rule would have them in his eyesight and would have given the call to shoot.
“Where the hell are you?” I whispered to myself.
I continued looking through the scope until a thought popped into my head. Back at the house we couldn’t see from an aerial view where Small and Foxwood were because the trees hid their location. Uncle Happy only had a few monitors scattered around and two showed our location. So how could he see Small and Foxwood’s exact location now? My eyes widened and I quickly pulled back from the scope when I realized that he couldn’t see them. But he could see us. And it wasn’t us he was talking to, but them.
“Rule!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.
I quickly rolled to the right, and that’s when a bullet hit the tree where my head would have been.
Seventy-one
I ran toward Rule’s direction not knowing where Small and Foxwood were. I suspected that one of them was somewhere behind me from the angle that the bullet hit the tree.
“Rule!” I yelled again.
I kept my head low, all the while allowing my legs to run as fast as they could. My breaths came in short and quick intervals, and the rifle suddenly seemed ten pounds heavier than it had a few minutes ago. Another bullet struck a tree right as I passed it. I dove to the ground and landed on my sore shoulder, which caused me to yell out, as it felt like a lightning bolt had hit my arm. Just then, I heard Rule’
s voice.
“Jacob!”
I rolled and another bullet hit the ground where I was a second ago.
I gathered myself as I came out of the roll and aimed my rifle in the direction where the shots were coming. I squeezed off a round and rolled again. As I came out of the second roll, I saw a large, wide tree to my right. I crawled like a fast-moving baby until I got behind the tree.
“Rule!” I yelled again.
“Jacob, I can see you. Keep your head down.”
“Do you see them?”
“No.”
Rule was somewhere to my right, and it sounded like he was a good thirty or forty yards away. I took a few seconds to catch my breath, but I didn’t want to stay long because I was a sitting duck just waiting to be taken out. Problem was, they had the advantage because we didn’t know where they were.
“Fellas,” Uncle Happy’s voice came into my ear. “We can end this peacefully without any more bloodshed.”
Even though I knew I couldn’t see him, I looked around the woods as if there was a possibility that he might be standing near us.
“All we want to know is where the videotape is. Rule, if you tell us, I promise that we’ll just walk away.”
We weren’t given microphones to talk back, but even if we could, Rule wouldn’t have said anything.
“There’s no way out of this if you don’t cooperate. Foxwood and Small have your positions. Once I give the okay, they’ll shoot to kill.”
Uncle Happy paused for a few seconds.
“I’ll give you a minute to decide if you want to live or die.”
Another pause.
“Starting now.”
Seventy-two
“Starting now.”
Rule’s inner time clock started counting. He didn’t think about the fact that Uncle Happy, the man he’d known for most of this life and one of his father’s best friends, was a traitor. His only thought was getting himself and Jacob out of the situation alive.
Fifty-six seconds.
He didn’t think that Foxwood, Small, or Uncle Happy knew where he was. He’d buried himself deep in the woods debris. He hadn’t gone to the spot where he was supposed to go. When he’d looked at the video monitor from the house, he’d seen the limits of the camera’s angle and decided for safety purposes to find a spot outside of the scope of the camera’s range. He didn’t have an inkling that Uncle Happy would betray him, but he was taught by his father at an early age that outside of family, no one can be trusted. And that included someone like Uncle Happy.
Rule had his scope on Jacob and saw that he was bent down behind the tree. Unless Small or Foxwood were in a position in front of Jacob, he was safe for now. So Rule moved his scope in the direction where the shots came from.
Forty-eight seconds.
Rule’s breathing was calm. Even with the threat of death looming ahead, he needed to control his nerves if he and Jacob were going to make it out alive. What was he looking for? Something that wasn’t natural to the woods. Human interference. He moved the scope back to Jacob and then the last place where he saw the bullet hit the ground. His mind started racing. They were on flat land. There were no hills. A bullet eventually hits the ground due to gravity if it doesn’t reach a target, but not at a range close enough like Small and Foxwood.
Forty seconds.
The woods wouldn’t allow any of them to shoot from a range longer than fifty yards out due to the nature of tree clutter. So, how could a bullet hit the ground from a range no longer than fifty yards if they were on flat land? It didn’t take Rule long to figure it out. He raised his rifle and looked up in the trees.
He spotted Foxwood first. His rifle was aimed at the tree that Jacob was hiding behind.
“I see you, you bastard,” he said to himself. “Now where is the other one?”
It took him a few more seconds to find Small, but he did. They were on opposite directions of each other. Small was looking for him as his rifle zigzagged back and forth. The problem that Rule immediately saw was that Small had a better angle on Jacob than Foxwood did.
Thirty-four seconds.
Small needed to be taken down first. Rule calmed his breathing even more and steadied his aim. He placed his finger on the trigger and held his breath as he squeezed. The bullet crashed into Small’s chest, knocking him backward off the tree.
Rule turned his aim back to Foxwood, who now had his gun pointed in Rule’s direction. Foxwood started firing blindly, and the bullets sailed over Rule’s body. With the same technique, Rule squeezed off another shot that hit Foxwood in the heart, and he fell from the tree.
Twenty-five seconds.
Seventy-three
The shots came seconds apart. Small fell from a tree first and then Foxwood. I aimed my rifle and looked through the scope at both of their bodies and saw that they weren’t moving.
Rule is better than I thought.
I turned around and looked for Rule through my scope, but I couldn’t find him. Where was he?
Then I heard his voice, “Jacob, stay low and come toward my voice.”
I looked back toward Small and Foxwood to make sure they weren’t moving and then made my way toward where I heard Rule’s voice.
“Keep coming,” he called again.
His voice sounded closer, but I still couldn’t find him.
“Where are you?” I said after walking a few more feet.
He startled me when he touched my foot, “Right here.”
I looked down and Rule was lying on the ground with tree debris over top of him. He blended into the woods perfectly, and I would have walked right by him had he not said anything.
“What about Uncle Happy?” I said.
Rule looked around and then stood up, brushing the debris off. “He’s probably gone by now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Not really.”
Both of us bent back down and then made our way to the next large tree for cover.
“He must have been in it from the start,” I said.
Rule shook his head but didn’t answer. I couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind. Another person that he’d known most of his life had betrayed him and his family, but more importantly, his country.
Rule stared into the sky as if he was alone with just his thoughts. We sat on the ground, shoulder to shoulder, with our rifles in hand. My nerves were starting to calm a little, but I was still feeling jittery. I felt at the moment that, even though I was the detective, I needed to lean on my friend for support. It just hit me that if I hadn’t figured out that Uncle Happy was really talking to Small and Foxwood, my head would have been blow off and I’d be dead.
I took in a deep breath. “That was a little too close for comfort.”
Rule nodded, “Yeah, this shit sucks.”
“Sorry about all that’s happened. I know you’re probably wondering who the hell you can trust.”
“Something like that.”
“Well, you know that I’m not after you. I nearly got my head taken off a few minutes ago.”
Rule smiled, “You’re about the only one I can trust.”
We sat quietly for a few minutes and just allowed the sounds of nature to fill our ears. I was trying to think of our next steps. Where did we go from here? The one person Rule thought he could trust ended up trying to kill us. The wife of his father’s business partner had sent two rogue CIA agents after us. In D.C. there was possibly another Russian gangster after us. I shook my head just thinking about what we’d been through over the past twenty-four hours and thought that this was the kind of stuff novels were made of.
“In D.C. I can get us some help,” I said. “There’s a few cops that I trust with my life. I can get them over to the house and we can game plan our next move.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Jacob, but I don’t think I want to trust any more authority figures. There’s two lying dead on the ground back there who we thought we could trust.”
“I feel you.
But you trust me. So trust that I’m trying to get us both out of this alive and get down to who killed your family.”
Rule hesitated before responding, “You know we’ve got to find that videotape. Uncle Happy obviously believes it exists. Small and Foxwood believed that it exists. And the Russians believe it exists. Who knows who else will come after us looking for it?”
“I was thinking the same thing. But first we need to deal with the immediate problem. We need help. We can’t get out of this alone.”
“Yeah, I know. We’ll call your friends and then we’ll find the bastards that killed my family, and then we’ll find that videotape.”
I nodded and looked around. “Do you know a different way to get back to the car without going through Uncle Happy’s camera yard?”
“I do. It’ll take us a while to get there, but it’ll be safer.”
“So you think he’s really gone?”
“We’re still alive, so he’s gone.”
“Okay.” I stood up, but Rule lightly pulled at my arm.
“We’d better stay low just in case.”
“I thought you said he was gone?”
“In theory.”
I quickly knelt back down. “How about you lead the way.”
“Okay.”
We started moving away from the big tree like cat burglars in a dark house. “Please don’t let Uncle Happy be out here,” I said.
“I don’t think he is.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Seventy-four
We were about a half hour outside of the city. I called three police friends of mine who were as loyal to the force as possible and who I knew I could trust. They were already en route to my house to discuss a plan to help protect us and end this investigation.
Rule was quiet most of the ride home. The few times we spoke, his responses were short and brief. I got it that he didn’t want to talk. I was essentially the only person left in his life that he could trust, and I could only imagine what something like that must do to a person mentally. So, while most of the ride I was sure he was thinking about his family and Uncle Happy, I was trying to figure out what our next steps were going to be and who they were going to be against.
The Game of Life or Death: A Detective Series of Crime and Suspense Thrillers (The Jacob Hayden Series Book 3) Page 17
