by Ken Goddard
'Cause that would be pretty damned hard to do.
Wilbur Boggs took a deep breath to steady himself, determined to nail that particular thought down before he lost it.
You just go right ahead and send that brand-new Special Ops team of yours out here, and I'll keep an eye on them, and help you with your congressional problem… and then you can help me with mine.
Boggs felt himself starting to go, and grabbed at the wall with his good hand to catch himself, knocking the lamp to the floor in the process, but not giving a damn because it was one of the few things his wife left when she'd moved out and filed for divorce three years ago.
Never liked the damned thing anyway.
However, the lamp's demise plunged the room into darkness — which he considered a more significant problem.
Steady there, Boggs, pay attention. Do something.
He knew he should call somebody. Right now, while he still could. Tell them about Lou Eliot. About how Lt. Colonel John Rustman's foreman had offered to turn over his boss, and the Honorable Regis J. Smallsreed, and some sleazy political bagman named Simon Whatley, and the other one — what was his name? The trained killer Rustman hired to scare the shit out of everyone?
Damn it, what was his name? Something bizarre… cold… empty. Something about winter?
Wintersole.
Yeah, that's it.
Sergeant Wintersole.
The memory suddenly flooded the federal agent's numbed mind. Gunshots. Loud, high-velocity rounds. Rifle or pistol, not shotgun. Definitely not shotgun. He'd never in his entire career heard of anyone hunting ducks with a high-powered rifle or pistol. And there weren't any deer around the marsh during duck season because the gunfire drove them off.
Two shots, far apart. Execution style?
Christ!
He had to call somebody, tell them about Lou Eliot and Wintersole. Tell them they had to hurry because…
Because what?
Because Rustman probably figured out his foreman had turned snitch and shot him, the poor bastard, Wilbur Boggs reasoned.
So there probably wasn't any need to hurry after all. They probably shot him, weighted his body down, and dumped him into one of the deep sections of Loggerhead Lake, where no one would ever find him, even if they used hooks or divers.
Boggs's head started to spin again, and he grabbed the wall in the dark with both hands to steady himself, then choked back an agonized scream. But the excruciating pain in his right hand helped clear his head and reminded him of something important. Something very important.
Charlie Team. Help was on the way.
Only that didn't sound like such a good idea anymore, sending Charlie Team, he suddenly realized. Not a good idea at all.
He had to call Halahan back, right away, and tell him not to send the kids, send somebody else — one of the experienced covert teams — because the situation at Lt. Colonel John Rustman's private hunting preserve for wealthy and influential assholes was a whole lot worse than he'd thought when he'd cheerfully suggested that training exercise to Freddy Moore.
Gotta let Halahan know what's going on. Wilbur Boggs smiled through his split and bloodied lips. Goddamned stubborn Irishman. He'll take care of everything. Good old Halahan.
The dazed and nearly unconscious federal agent then tried to decide if he could really drive another five miles to the local hospital, or if he dared to lie down on the couch and go to sleep — which he really wanted to do more than anything else he could think of at that particular moment — in the unlikely hope that he might feel better tomorrow. Or should he just say to hell with it and dial 911 while he still could?
Wilbur Boggs's instinct for survival, more than anything else, told him to forget the car and the couch and call for help.
He clutched the phone and struggled to remember if he'd ever gotten around to programming the automatic emergency button or if he needed to punch in the numbers on the increasingly dim and curiously blurred keypad. But then he felt himself start to fall again and reached out to catch himself. Only this time, the darkness completely disoriented him.
Desperately trying not to hit his broken hand again, he missed the wall and spun, ripping the phone cord out of the wall and wrapping it around himself in the process. He stumbled, pitched forward, and his head struck the lamp table.
Hard.
Don't you worry about making my life any more miserable than it already is, David, old buddy, Boggs mumbled, facedown to the carpet as the darkness overtook him. 'Cause that's gonna be pretty damned hard to do.
Chapter Nine
A little past a quarter of five the next morning, Special Agent Wilbur Boggs regained consciousness and found himself lying face down on a carpet in almost total darkness.
A few seconds later, he became aware that he also felt dizzy, nauseous, cold, hungry, thirsty, and, as best he could tell, he hurt in every muscle and bone in his body, from the top of his head to the soles of his bare feet.
Unable to recall what had occurred during the previous twenty-four hours, Boggs initially thought that he must have hit the Jack Daniel's pretty hard the night before and now had the worst hangover he had ever experienced in his entire life.
That meant the best thing he could possibly do for himself was to get something in his stomach — a handful of buffered aspirin for a start — and he attempted to heave himself up into a sitting position to do just that.
Which turned out to be a terribly serious mistake.
However, once he managed to stop screaming and cursing and gently probing his horribly swollen hand, he discovered that his memory of the last twenty-four hours had returned in vivid detail.
And, in fact, the particularly vivid memory of cursing Lt. Colonel John Rustman and the Honorable Regis J. Smallsreed provided Boggs with enough energy to work himself into a sitting position with his more or less good hand and look around for the telephone — which he finally found at the end of the cord wrapped around his hips.
Once his still-muddled mind finally accepted that the phone really was dead, he felt his way all the way down to the opposite end of the phone cord, only to discover that he had somehow managed to rip all but the little square connecting-end out of the wall when he fell.
No problem, phone in the kitchen, he told himself, only to remember mere moments later that, no, there wasn't a phone in the kitchen, because he'd thrown it out months ago when the third telemarketer had called to solicit his opinion while he tried to eat his dinner.
Which definitely presented a problem, Boggs realized, because that only left the phone in the upstairs bedroom. And even in his muddle-minded state, he realized that he probably couldn't navigate a set of stairs since he could barely stand upright without falling over.
But he could still crawl if that's what it took to get help, he reminded himself. Either up the stairs or out to the truck, didn't matter.
In the end, it came down to pride: He would go for help himself.
After determining by trial and error that he could navigate pretty well using one hand and two knees, Boggs crawled out the front door.. and fortunately discovered that he'd left his keys in the lock, which immeasurably simplified the process of securing his home. Then he crawled down the steps and across the sidewalk to his truck which he, unfortunately, had locked.
With a great deal of effort, he raised himself enough to unlock and open the cab door, and then hauled himself into the driver's seat.
Exhausted by the effort, the wildlife agent rested his head on the steering wheel until the waves of nausea and dizziness ebbed. Then, after finally managing to pull the door shut, he sat up, looked over his shoulder, and noticed the boat trailer still attached to the back of his truck.
Wilbur Boggs knew that he lacked the strength to climb back out of the truck, unhitch the trailer, move it out of the way, then climb back in the truck again. So he simply leaned forward, braced himself against the steering wheel, fumbled the key into the ignition, started the engine, put the truck
in reverse, gave it some gas, eased out the clutch… and felt his head snap forward with dizzying speed when his foot slipped off the clutch, his right foot slammed forward on the gas pedal, and the truck shot down the driveway backwards.
A brief flash of blinding pain seared what little remained of his conscious thought processes when his already broken nose slammed solidly into the truck's unpadded steering wheel.
That gave way to a fleeting sense of rapid, uncontrolled, downward motion which then came to a sudden, metal-grinding halt.
Whereupon it all disappeared into merciful blackness.
The paramedics who responded to a neighbor's call at five-thirty that morning found Wilbur Boggs slumped over the steering wheel in the cab of his truck… unconscious, covered with blood, breathing erratically, and looking exactly like someone who had just been involved in a violent head-on collision.
Except that made no sense to the highly experienced and observant rescue team because, other than the damage to the back of the boat — apparently the result of Boggs backing his trailer directly into his new neighbor's very sturdy new mailbox post at a fairly high rate of speed, which the neighbor claimed had occurred at about quarter after five that morning — they saw no evidence that the truck had been involved in any kind of accident, recent or otherwise.
A cautious examination of Boggs revealed a grossly swollen hand, a smashed nose, severely split lips, and a wide assortment of head and facial bruises, most of which — judging from the degree of discoloration — he'd sustained at least several hours earlier. And when they finally got him out of the cab and onto a stretcher, they discovered that in spite of the decidedly frosty temperature that morning, their patient was dressed — if that was the proper word — in nothing but a pair of damp jeans and a down jacket. No socks, shoes, underwear, or shirt.
A careful search failed to locate a wallet or any other identification on the victim. However, the truck was registered to a Wilbur Boggs at a Loggerhead City address located directly across the street from the now mangled mailbox post. Unfortunately, the reporting party — a new arrival in the neighborhood the previous weekend — had never actually met his neighbor, only saw him come and go in a different vehicle, a Ford Explorer with some kind of government plates, he thought. And though it was hard to tell with all the swelling and bruises, this man did sort of look like the guy he had seen.
In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he decided he hadn't seen his neighbor at all the last couple of days, and the boat and truck had been parked in the carport all that time.
The reporting party's eyes widened when he came to the perfectly logical conclusion that the man who flattened his mailbox — presumably his neighbor — must have had a drinking problem. After all, he reasoned, what else would anybody dressed like that and driving like that — he added, giving his mailbox post a meaningful glance — being doing at five-fifteen on a cold winter morning?
The paramedics had to admit that the reporting party had a point there.
But that wasn't their problem.
The man in the truck obviously had sustained serious injuries in some kind of accident. And he equally obviously was in dire need of professional medical attention. At this particular moment, who he was and what he was doing semi-naked in the cab of a truck that might or might not belong to him, at five-fifteen in the morning, really didn't matter.
So after carefully strapping him down on the stretcher, taping a series of spinal-cord-protecting pads and blocks around his neck and head, and securing a similar set of pads around his swollen hand, the paramedics radioed the Jasper County sheriff’s deputy that they were transporting a John Doe with serious injuries to Loggerhead City Hospital immediately.
They'd leave it for the cops to figure out the who, what, when, where, why, and how.
When a thoroughly fatigued deputy finally arrived at the scene of Wilbur Boggs's accident — almost an hour later, because a frantically waving woman standing in the middle of the road forced him to stop and assist when she couldn't find her child — he found himself in possession of three significant pieces of information:
First and foremost, he now had four calls waiting, including a report of a man with a gun acting suspiciously outside the local 7-Eleven.
Second, the odds greatly favored the "injured party in a vehicle" situation being a simple, single-party-accident insurance claim requiring little if any investigation on his part.
And finally, a note — written by the reporting party to "whomever it may concern at the Loggerhead City Police Department," and taped to the partially destroyed mailbox — had informed the deputy that the reporting party had to go to work and couldn't wait any longer, so he'd backed the vehicle into his neighbor's covered carport to get it out of the street, and locked the truck so no one could steal it or the boat… and would keep the keys for safekeeping until someone came for them, if that was all right with the police.
Deciding that was perfectly all right with the police as far as he was concerned, especially since there was no such animal as the Loggerhead City Police Department in the first place, the overworked deputy sheriff quickly scribbled the reporting party's address on the note, folded the scrap of paper, stuck it in his notebook, and decided that was enough paperwork for a single-party accident on this particular morning.
As he did so, the deputy had no way of knowing that the emergency room doctor at the local hospital who examined Special Agent Wilbur Boggs, AKA "John Doe," had just ordered him transported to Providence Hospital in nearby Jackson County, where they were better equipped to handle potentially serious head injuries.
The deputy reached for his mike and notified the dispatcher that he was clear on the "injured party in a vehicle" call, and would respond immediately to the "man with a gun acting suspiciously" call — that was, by his calculation, at least twelve miles and a good fifteen minutes away — ideally with some backup, if any of the other units might possibly be available and in the area.
The dispatcher acknowledged the clearance with a chuckle.
Two units responding to a call for a man with a gun, no shots fired, in Jasper County, Oregon, where pretty much every man, woman, and child owned at least one gun, and the entire graveyard shift amounted to three patrol units when everyone was actually on duty?
That would be the day.
Chapter Ten
At precisely 0700 hours that same Monday morning, eight individuals dressed in jeans, boots, and flannel shirts gathered around a large octagonal table and waited for the waitress/owner to finish putting out the steaming stainless-steel pans filled with scrambled eggs, sausages, fried potatoes, and rolls in the secluded meeting hall.
She examined the buffet table critically, making sure that blue flames still glowed in all of the Sterno® cans, and that she'd provided sufficient plates, cups, and silverware to accommodate the group's needs.
"Okay, fellows, here's the way it works," she announced, scanning the buffet one last time. "The coffee's fresh — forty cups and plenty more where that came from — the food's hot, and the bathroom's clean. You want anything else, more food, coffee, cleanup, whatever, pick up that phone and dial '5.' It may take us a while to get here because my husband and I are all by ourselves today, but one of us will come eventually. If it's important, come get one of us. Otherwise, the place is yours until three, when I've got to start cleaning up for a card game this evening. We built this place off by itself, so feel free to make all the noise you want. Just don't break anything, or it comes out of your deposit."
"We'll be fine." Lt. Colonel John Rustman politely dismissed her, then waited until she retreated down the hill to the small bed-andbreakfast lodge before securing the door.
"Okay." He motioned toward the buffet. "Everybody grab something to eat. This may be your last chance for a decent meal for the next week or so."
Rustman waited until the entire team reassembled around the table with filled plates and cups of coffee. Then he walked over to a four-foot-squa
re piece of black cloth covering a section of the far wall, carefully lifted the bottom edge of the fabric, and pinned it to the upper portion of the wall.
The retired military officer's actions caused one of the men to stop eating and stare at the block letters printed at the top of the suddenly exposed map.
"Jasper County?" Wintersole's voice sounded distinctly cold and foreboding. "You're bringing the operation into your own backyard?"
"That wasn't the original plan," the retired military officer replied evenly as he picked up a wooden pointer, "but some opportunities presented themselves which will provide us with some extremely useful advantages — the primary ones being time and terrain."
Rustman indicated a large circular area in the upper-right-hand corner of the map with the pointer.
"You've been conducting training exercises in this area for the past four weeks. You know the lay of the land, the local fauna and flora, the weather and traffic patterns, and the minimal local law-enforcement patrols."
He moved the pointer to a spot just outside the circle.
"The proposed ambush site is located here" — he tapped the map with the end of the pointer — "twelve klicks out from one of your existing hideaways, and within twenty-five klicks of two others and all but two of your reserve ammo and supply caches… which means we can simply leave all of that material in place.
"The surrounding mountains are high and close together with superb tree cover, which effectively negates any air-search capability. That's not a particularly relevant issue, because the nearest military base is in Klamath Falls, and the air-search capabilities of the local federal and state law-enforcement agencies are extremely limited and otherwise undependable. But we need to be thoughtful about the escape routes in any case, and local terrain might turn out to be a critical factor if we were ever to lose control of the situation.
"The ambush site is a small, mountainside compound near Loggerhead City occupied by an antigovernment, quasi-religious paramilitary group known as the Chosen Brigade of the Seventh Seal. They've been dug into the hills about twenty years waiting for the big curtain to go up. The group consists of approximately fifteen adult males, thirteen adult females, and a handful of kids. None of the adults are known to possess any formal military training, but they've had plenty of time to memorize their library of basic field manuals. All of the adult males hold the self-assigned rank of full colonel, lieutenant colonel, or major. Two young men above the age of fifteen are designated captains, and all of the adult women hold the rank of lieutenant. As far as anyone knows, they have light arms only — shotguns, pistols, and a few scoped hunting rifles — no night-vision gear, a few military surplus grenades that may or may not be functional, and almost certainly some rudimentary traps and trips out on the perimeter, if they haven't all been set off by animals or their own people by now.
