The Box

by Jeremy Brown

  He still hadn’t said anything new, but he seemed to require some sort of confirmation.

  Bruder shrugged.

  “You want me to go back in time and kill the guys at the bridge?”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. If they come after us, we can’t go to Nora’s. We can’t lead them to her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they can’t know she has anything to do with this.”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Rison appeared in the doorway with a stack of three cardboard flats full of soup.

  He said, “Yeah, we know,” and handed the soup to Connelly.

  Connelly carried the load down the steps and handed it to Bruder, who slid the flats into the covered bed and followed them in to find the best spot.

  Connelly stood at the tailgate. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “What are we gonna do if they spot us?”

  “Whatever we have to.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Bruder climbed out of the bed and looked at Connelly.

  “Yes it is. What are you really asking?”

  Connelly frowned.

  “I’m asking what the goddam plan is.”

  “But it’s not what you want to ask.”

  They looked at each other, then Rison showed up in the doorway with another stack of flats in his arms.

  “Hey.”

  Nobody looked at him, so he dropped the stack at the top of the stairs and went back for another load.

  Connelly finally asked Bruder, “Do we have to go to Nora’s place?”

  “That’s it,” Bruder said. “And the answer is yes.”

  “Why?”

  “She said why on the call. She’s in the loop. She can give us real-time information about what’s going on in the town.”

  “So you’re going to talk to her?”

  “No. You are.”

  Connelly trudged over to the steps, slid the flats out of the doorway and carried them to Bruder.

  “And what, you guys are just gonna wait in the truck?”

  “You said the barn has some space in it.”

  “The barn? The old one?”

  “You said they’d moved all the equipment into the new ones years ago. We’re going to put the truck in the barn and stay there while you talk to Nora. Find out how we can get out of town.”

  “I can do that over the phone.”

  “No.”

  Connelly waited, then said, “No? That’s it?”

  Bruder shrugged.

  Connelly said, “I’m gonna need more than that, man. I know you’re in charge and all, but if there’s any sort of method to this madness, even if it’s half-assed, I need to know.”

  “We can’t stay here, so we’re going there.”

  “Why can’t we stay here? Wasn’t that the whole point of setting this trailer up? So we can lay low for as long as we have to, let everything settle down?”

  “That was assuming the trouble would eventually settle down. That was stupid on our part. We should have known better after seeing how the Romanians operate. The longer they go without finding the money, the worse it’s going to get around here. We have to move.”

  Connelly pointed under the trailer in the general vicinity of Claud’s corpse.

  “That asshole’s dead, and nobody knows where he is. If anybody else comes looking, Kershaw will let us know. I’ll call Nora and tell her I can’t get into town, and she can keep me updated on what’s happening, thinking it’s to help me get to her. But we’ll use the info to get out of town instead.”

  He spread his hands out: Viola!

  “No,” Bruder said.

  Connelly waited, clenching his jaw.

  “Come on, dude.”

  Bruder said, “What if the next people who come looking have ten vehicles with six guys in each one, with rifles and grenades? Where do we go? Into the woods, leaving the money here?”

  “There’s always more money, man.”

  “Not if we’re dead. I’m telling you, if we stay here, we’re trapped. We’ll lose the money and get killed. And if your face is still recognizable, guess who they’ll go see next?”

  Connelly didn’t say anything, but he knew the truth.

  “We have to move,” Bruder said again.

  “And it has to be Nora’s?”

  “I already answered that,” Bruder said. “Go get the soup.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Bruder keyed his radio and told Kershaw, “We’re coming to you.”

  Rison led the way with the truck, Connelly in the passenger seat. The truck bed was packed and had the surveying gear closest to the tailgate, good enough for any cursory examination, but they all knew if it came to that, the guns were probably coming out.

  Bruder followed in Claud’s car with the windows down, choosing the cold air over the stale smoke and fast food smells. He had the AR barrel-down in the passenger footwell, ready to lift up and point through the passenger window or windshield if need be.

  The vehicles stopped before the last curve and Bruder used the radio to ask Kershaw, “Clear?”

  “Clear.”

  The truck rolled around the curve and Bruder followed.

  He saw Kershaw standing by the post with the chain in his hand, watching the road.

  The vehicles turned right on the road and braked, exhaust coughing and drifting into the cold ditch.

  Kershaw reconnected the chain and swept the tire tracks with another branch, then walked backwards to the road while erasing his own tracks and tossed the branch into the woods.

  He stopped at Bruder’s window and peeled off the camouflage parka, eyeballing the Honda.

  “What are we doing with this thing?”

  “Looking for a lake to drop it in.”

  “Not around here, pal.”

  “Then we’ll find something else,” Bruder said. “If we see any Romanians, let me pull around front.”

  Kershaw was skeptical, but said, “Okay.”

  He got in the back seat of the truck and they moved out.

  They drove the mile south and turned left, eastbound, without seeing anyone on the road or otherwise.

  Everyone was either at work or hunkered down or in town, probably just as confused as Nora had sounded on the phone.

  A quarter of a mile after the turn Bruder’s radio clicked.

  Rison said, “Incoming. Truck, I think.”

  Bruder eased across the centerline and saw it, just a boxy shape between the fields so far.

  He said, “I’m coming around.”

  “No, wait there,” Rison said. “It’s one truck, one guy. Connelly just checked him through the optics. If he’s a farmer, we’ll just cruise past. If he’s not, we’ll nail him before he can call anybody.”

  “He might be calling somebody right now,” Bruder said.

  That made the truck pull ahead, and Bruder pushed the Honda to keep up.

  Rison said, “Ah, shit. He’s flashing his lights.”

  Bruder saw it, then an arm came out the driver’s window and patted the air, wanting the truck to slow down.

  “What’s the call?” Rison said.

  “Stop the truck. Let him come to us. We can’t let him get behind us without knowing who he is.”

  Connelly said, “I’m gonna lock my radio open so you can hear.”

  “Good. If I need to go loud, turn on the right blinker.”

  “Yep,” Rison said.

  The brake lights flared and Bruder angled to the right, keeping the car somewhat hidden behind the DOT truck. If whoever was in the other truck hadn’t seen him so far, there was a chance he could stay in the blind spot, get out, and come around the truck with the AR before anything else happened.

  Rison stopped the truck in the eastbound lane, leaving plenty of room for Bruder to pull onto the shoulder and tuck in near the back right fender while the other truck coasted to a stop.
<
br />   Bruder left the Honda running, got out with the AR and stood next to the truck’s rear passenger tire and listened.

  A man said, “Morning!”

  Bruder could hear the voice coming around the truck and through the radio. It was hard to tell from one word and without seeing him, but he sounded local and middle-aged.

  “Morning,” Rison said.

  “You boys lost?”

  “Well, maybe. We got a little mixed up out here, we’re trying to get to 75 but hit some traffic around town, some kind of accident or something?”

  “Ha! Yeah, something like that.”

  He sounded antsy, a little too loud.

  Rison said, “We tried to loop around town, but all these roads seem to bring us right back in.”

  “Yep. That’s the way they are. We figure whoever made these roads back in the day had one leg shorter than the other, kept walking around in circles.”

  Everyone in the truck laughed.

  The man said, “You can get through town, eventually, you just need to be patient. But, ah, I don’t want to get into anybody else’s business, and to tell you the truth I’m nervous as hell right now.”

  Rison said, “Nervous? Why?”

  “Well, word has it the fellas causing the traffic jam are looking for a white truck with some other fellas in it. And I see that Honda back there behind you—I haven’t heard anything about that, but again, I don’t want to get into anybody’s business.”

  He was talking fast now, trying to get the words out before something bad happened to him.

  “But if I was to come across that truck, I’d tell the boys inside to be careful. I don’t have any respect for those men in town, and I’d like to see them get what’s coming. But there’s a reward out for anybody in town who sees the truck and calls it in, and some people might be willing to make that call.”

  “Is that right?” Rison said.

  “But I’m not one of them, sir, and I haven’t seen anything.”

  There was a moment of tense silence.

  Bruder watched the right blinker, still dark.

  So far.

  He checked the road.

  No other traffic.

  So far.

  Then Connelly said, “Out of curiosity, what’s the reward?”

  “One thousand dollars.”

  Connelly scoffed.

  Rison said, “If you did happen to see this truck, how would you recommend it get out of town?”

  “You can’t. I mean, it can’t. I wish I had a better answer for you bud, but it’s a no-go. They got the four main roads blocked. They even got some of the cops helping, which nobody likes. Our tax dollars at work, right? But everything else, like you said, it just winds around and ends up back in town somewhere.”

  “Huh,” Rison said. “Well, if we see that truck we’ll let them know.”

  “Okay, yeah. Okay then.”

  “Hey, just to be safe, why don’t you hand over your phone.”

  “My phone?”

  “Just in case you change your mind once we’re out of sight.”

  Rison wasn’t bothering with the facade anymore.

  “That won’t happen, sir. I guarantee it.”

  “Still. It would make me and the other guys feel better. Relaxed. We don’t want to cause you folks any more trouble than you’ve already seen.”

  “Yeah, okay. It’s just…I got a lot of important stuff on here.”

  “Tell you what,” Connelly said. “The next intersection we come too, I’ll put it on the side of the road, in the grass. You come by in a couple hours and grab it.”

  Bruder didn’t like the compromise, but he understood it.

  The alternatives were to destroy the phone and piss off the farmer and possibly push him into making the call from somewhere else or kill him and leave even more of a trail.

  They already had to get rid of the Honda.

  Another truck and body would just add to the hassle.

  The farmer said, “Which ditch?”

  “Right outside my window,” Connelly said. “So, let’s see…the southwest ditch at the intersection.”

  The farmer thought about it and Bruder’s finger crept toward the trigger.

  It didn’t matter how much of a hassle another body would be, they were taking too much time sitting out here in the open.

  If the Romanians came now, a hassle would be welcome.

  Then the farmer said, “Okay, that seems fair.”

  After a moment Connelly’s arm came out of the passenger window with the phone in his hand. He gave a thumbs-up.

  Bruder stepped back to the Honda and got in.

  Rison said, “You got a CB radio in there or anything?”

  “No sir, you can tell by my antennas. I just got the radio, the music one. That’s it.”

  “Okay. Hey, thanks for the heads-up about what’s happening in town.”

  “You’re very welcome. Like I said, I got no respect for that group. Nobody knows what got them all stirred up, but we all know it’s collection day, so I’m guessing it has something to do with that.”

  Nobody in the truck said anything.

  “Okay then,” the farmer said with a nervous laugh. “Best of luck to you.”

  He pulled forward and glanced over at Bruder in the Honda. They locked eyes, then the farmer immediately looked away and stared straight ahead, as if to let Bruder know he hadn’t seen him and was too busy minding his own business to do anything else.

  The white truck pulled forward and Bruder followed it, watching the farmer in his mirrors.

  After another quarter mile Bruder hit the radio.

  “Stop.”

  They pulled onto the shoulder and Bruder got out and went to talk to them without the radio.

  “We can’t do that again. Too risky being separated like that. We need to dump this car.”

  “Just leave it here,” Connelly said. “We’re far enough from the trailer, aren’t we?”

  “Maybe,” Bruder said, looking around.

  Kershaw said, “What if we torch it? Get a nice plume of smoke going, bring the Romanians to it.”

  Bruder shook his head.

  “If they act fast, we’ll get trapped between them and the fire. Run right into them.”

  He pointed east along the road, to a field full of something tan on the north side.

  “Is that corn?”

  Kershaw leaned out the window and used the optics on his AR to check.

  “Looks like it. Feed corn that hasn’t been harvested.”

  “Why not?”

  Nobody said anything, then Rison said, “I bet that farmer knows.”

  Bruder said, “Let’s go.”

  He took the lead and pushed the Honda as fast as it would go for the half mile to the field, then coasted while he scanned the side of the road. There was a drainage ditch running parallel to the asphalt, shallow but deep enough to bottom-out the Honda.

  Then he saw it.

  An access point from the road to the field, just a narrow strip of dirt and gravel and scrubby grass with a culvert running underneath it to keep water flowing in the ditch.

  He took the Honda across, then turned left and drove parallel to the road back the way they’d come, bumping over tractor tread ruts and clumps of dirt toward the corner of the field.

  Out his passenger window the corn was higher than the car’s roof. Dry, tan leaves as big as his arm occasionally slapped the windshield and rustled along the side.

  Rison kept pace on the road in reverse, a small, amused smile on his face from watching Bruder jounce around in the car.

  When he got to the corner of the field Bruder turned right, willing the car to keep going when the grass got taller. No one had bothered to mow here, which was good for hiding but bad for foreign cars with no ground clearance.

  The car was working hard though, and Bruder kept it going until he knew he was pushing his luck. Then he cranked the wheel hard to the right and pressed the accelerator, bulling
his way into the feed corn.

  Stalks scraped along the doors and undercarriage and cobs thumped against the hood, like he was driving through an automatic carwash made of corn, and after ten seconds Rison came through the radio.

  “You’re good, we can’t see a thing.”

  Bruder stopped and killed the engine, waiting to see if anything pressed against the exhaust under the car was going to catch fire right away.

  He didn’t smell any smoke or hear anything crackling, so he grabbed the AR and followed his path of destruction to the edge of the field and looked at the road, then at the hole he’d made.

  The angle wasn’t great.

  Anyone coming eastbound would be able to see the path into the corn, but maybe it was a common thing. Kids messing around, farmers checking on…whatever they checked on.

  It didn’t matter now, because the car was staying there.

  Bruder walked to the road and got into the back seat of the truck with Kershaw.

  They had three ARs in the back—Rison’s along with Bruder’s and Kershaw’s—Connelly had his in his lap again now that the farmer was gone, and Rison had a Glock 19 stuck in the inside handle of the door.

  Bruder reached into the front seat and pulled the three remotes for the remaining explosives out of the middle console.

  “The charges are armed?”

  Connelly nodded.

  “Charges are armed, remotes are off. Let’s keep it that way, huh?”

  Bruder handed him one of the remotes, gave the second to Kershaw, and tucked the last one into his coat pocket.

  Rison got the truck rolling and said, “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a crew using the money as a hostage. But hell, if we get in a standoff with these guys, it might be the only play we got.”

  “Unless they want to kill us more than they want the cash,” Connelly said.

  “Fourteen million dollars? You’re not that big of an asshole.”

  Kershaw said, “You didn’t hear him play Little Pink Houses.”

  Bruder let the chatter go.

  He preferred silence in moments like this, when everything could go to hell in a heartbeat, but some guys needed to keep talking, using it like a reminder they were still alive.

  He ignored the banter and watched the road, front and back, with his finger relaxed on the trigger guard.