The Box

by Jeremy Brown

  “So you got yourself a moat,” Rison said.

  Nora blinked.

  “I suppose so.”

  Bruder had already looked to the east, across the road where another tree line waited.

  Maybe they could swing back north through the fields and slide around the neighborhoods and hit the highway.

  Maybe there wouldn’t be any checkpoints still up.

  And maybe no one would call Razvan and tell him about the white truck bouncing around in the fields behind their house.

  He looked north and saw a dark line right below the horizon.

  “Another ditch?”

  Nora nodded.

  “’With a fence. They keep horses.”

  He looked at the barns.

  “I know these are full. If we pull something out, is there anywhere inside we can hide the truck?”

  She chewed her lip.

  “They’re just big open spaces, like hangars. So…no?”

  “Show me.”

  She made a face but pulled out a set of keys and unlocked the sliding door.

  Bruder pushed it—much easier than he’d expected—just far enough to look inside.

  It was a hangar full of huge machinery, like a tomb for alien crafts.

  Rison looked past Bruder’s arm.

  “We can hide the money in there. If the Romanians don’t have any reason to go digging, they’ll stick their heads in, look for a white truck, and call it good.”

  “Find a good spot,” Bruder said.

  And to Connelly, “Keep the charges with the bags.”

  Connelly nodded.

  They started pulling the surveying equipment and camping gear and food and water out and tossing it on the ground to get to the duffel bags.

  Nora helped, and when she saw the wall of bags said, “How much did you take?”

  Connelly grinned.

  “All of it.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “We don’t know yet,” Bruder said, killing the conversation.

  They got the bags out and Connelly and Rison followed Nora into the nearest shed to find a good spot.

  Bruder stayed outside, looking around, and it crossed his mind that Connelly and Rison might decide, in there in the shed, they’d rather split the money two ways instead of four.

  It sometimes happened when part of a crew got alone with the money and started thinking too much.

  It also sometimes happened when a woman was involved.

  He didn’t find it likely from those two, or Nora, but he’d thought of it now and wouldn’t be surprised if it happened.

  He’d be ready.

  And though he didn’t appreciate irony, it was ironic how the Romanians might be the main factor in stopping any sort of double-cross—everyone was too preoccupied with not getting stabbed in the front by Razvan and his crew to come up with a backstab plan.

  The three of them came back out empty-handed.

  “Where?” Bruder said.

  He followed Rison inside, where they had to squeeze between the door and the front of something huge and green with a cab floating above Bruder’s head.

  “Combine,” Rison said, like he was proud of the wisdom.

  They got around the front and Rison led them down a narrow alley between the combine and a tractor with dual back wheels and a hopper wagon behind it.

  “Up there,” Rison said.

  Bruder stepped up onto the wagon and found a ladder built into the side.

  He climbed up two steps and looked over the top.

  The bags were there, in the bottom, among some loose corn kernels.

  Rison said, “We toss some more bags, then the charges, then the rest of the bags. Then cover all of it with a tarp, from over there past the back of the hopper. But me and Connelly thought of something.”

  Bruder turned and looked down, ready if Rison went for his gun.

  “What if we have one or two of us in here, hidden away, and we lure Razvan and whoever he has with him inside? We take them out, then the guy out by the road, if they run the same setup the lady on the phone talked about. That’s three more down. Which leaves two, if my math is right.”

  Bruder nodded.

  Rison said, “Then we just get in the truck and head for the highway. If we come across the other two, we put them down. Then we can go get a burger at Len’s. I’m kidding about that part, but you know what I mean.”

  Bruder climbed down.

  “Let’s talk outside. So everybody can hear it.”

  “Ambush,” Bruder said.

  Rison and Connelly and Nora stood by the tailgate of the truck, listening.

  “I’ve been thinking about it too, looking at the angles. I didn’t think about inside the shed. It’s a good idea. It might work. I don’t like bringing them to the one with the money in it, but maybe the other one.”

  “It would be harder to hide in there,” Nora said. “It’s mostly attachments, like discs and plows and sprayers. They take up a lot of room, but they aren’t very tall.”

  Bruder headed for the other shed and they followed.

  Nora unlocked the door and sure enough, the floor was packed but Bruder could see all the way across to the far walls. The tallest thing was an orange Kubota tractor that rose just past Bruder’s chest.

  No good.

  Bruder nodded.

  “The other one, then. We plan for it, but not on it. Understand?”

  Connelly and Rison nodded and started toward the truck to move more bags.

  “Hold on,” Nora said. “You guys are going to leave a bunch of dead bodies around my house?”

  Connelly said, “Whatever we do, it won’t come back on you. We won’t leave a mess.”

  She didn’t seem convinced but didn’t say anything else about it.

  Connelly and Rison got back to work, leaving Nora and Bruder standing in the doorway.

  “Don’t get him killed,” she said.

  Bruder shrugged.

  “That’s up to him.”

  “But you’re in charge. You’re management.”

  Bruder dismissed that and said, “When Razvan gets here, what will you do?”

  “Talk to him, I guess. Shouldn’t I?”

  “Yes. Will you be able to? By yourself?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, and her tone told him she probably would be. “What are you going to do about the truck?”

  Bruder asked her, “How deep is your pond?”

  They got what they needed out of the truck and left everything else inside with the side cap windows and tailgate open.

  Rison put all the cab windows down and drove it to the edge of the pond, then put it in neutral and hopped out, closing the door as the truck rolled forward.

  The pond was about fifty yards across, mostly round, and Nora had said it dropped quickly to fifteen to twenty feet deep.

  The truck slid into the water and kicked up a tan cloud of mud, like a trailer launching a boat, and for a moment it looked like it might hang up there, or even float, then it dipped down and water poured into the open front windows and the truck did a nose dive.

  The last they saw of it was the open cap and tailgate, like two tail fins waving goodbye.

  A few big bubbles roiled the surface, then some smaller ones rose and burst, then nothing.

  “Goddam shame,” Rison said.

  Connelly patted his shoulder.

  “It’ll be here. Depending on how things go, we give it a couple days, a few weeks, then pull her back out and see what we can do.”

  “A whole lotta nothing,” Rison said, like he was burying a friend.

  Bruder interrupted them.

  “This is a problem.”

  He showed them the tire tracks cutting across the grass from the driveway to the pond. The light dusting of snow had mostly melted in the afternoon sun, but the tires still left a set of railroad tracks pointing right where the truck went in.

  Nora looked at the tracks.

  “I’ll be right back.�
��

  She went behind the house and a few minutes later they heard an engine grow louder, then Nora came around the corner driving the Kubota tractor with a bucket on the front and some sort of mower deck on the back.

  Kershaw stuck his head out of the wooden barn to see what was going on.

  Connelly gave him a thumbs-up and Kershaw went back to watching the road.

  Nora moved some levers and the engine climbed and the mower deck dropped. She ran over the spot where the tire tracks started, then cut left and pulled around to come across the tracks at a ninety-degree angle, bouncing a little in the seat.

  After the mower passed, that section of truck tracks was gone.

  Bruder, Connelly, and Rison stood by the edge of the pond, watching her.

  “Is it me,” Connelly said, “or is this super sexy?”

  Rison said, “It’s not you.”

  Connelly looked over at him.

  “Alright, stop staring.”

  Nora aimed for a pile of dead leaves blown up against the base of the porch and sent them across the grass like a confetti cannon. Then she swiped across them, again and again, erasing tire tracks and boot prints and working the tractor through an area that looked like a natural section of the yard, not just a narrow runway.

  One of her passes sent a shower of grass and leaves onto the three men, peppering their coats and pants.

  “We should probably move,” Connelly said.

  They walked back onto the crushed stone driveway while Nora finished up and followed their path, just to be safe.

  She raised the mower deck and sped away toward the first steel shed, which had its door almost all the way open.

  Connelly said to the others, but mostly for Bruder, “That was good. She really helped us out.”

  “We’ll see,” Bruder said, and went to set up the ambush.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was close to 2:30 in the afternoon when Kershaw saw the trucks.

  “Incoming,” he said over the radio. “F-250 and another pickup, maybe a Tacoma.”

  He was out in the field under the camouflage poncho with dirt and corn leaves piled on top, watching the truck through the rifle’s optics. They only offered 5X magnification, but it was enough to see two men in the lead truck and one in the second.

  They disappeared behind the old wooden barn, and when Kershaw saw them again, they were slowing near the end of the driveway.

  “They’re here,” he said.

  Razvan drove his truck up the driveway, ducking down so he could scan the windows and doors and the old wooden barn on the right.

  “Watch the loft,” he told Benj, who had his AK pointed out the window, tracking everywhere his eyes went.

  Razvan glanced at the rear-view mirror to make sure Mihail was in place.

  He was, parked across the end of the driveway and standing behind the truck’s engine with the bipod of his M249 machine gun resting on a sandbag on the hood.

  From there, he could sweep the property left to right with bullets.

  When Razvan stopped in the driveway next to the steps to the porch he looked at the long garage and two big barns behind the house.

  Those would be blind spots for Mihail.

  He called his cell and told him what to do, then waited while Mihail backed up on the road until he could see every structure.

  Razvan said, “You can see the front of the barns? The steel ones?”

  “Yes. The wooden one is in the way, a little, but I’m good.”

  “Any movement?”

  “Just the woman.”

  “Mm,” Razvan said, and hung up.

  He looked out his window at the woman, Nora, standing on her porch in a sweater, looking like someone had just killed her dog.

  Razvan smiled at her.

  “Good afternoon, Nora.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to hold still.”

  He lifted the gun, a Pistolul model 1998, also called a Dracula, and pointed it at her face.

  It was a fully automatic machine pistol about the size of a Colt 1911, but had a spare magazine fitted to the rail beneath the barrel to use as a fore grip.

  It was a nasty looking thing, and it had the effect Razvan wanted.

  Nora took a step back and put her hands out in front of her.

  “No, wait!”

  “I said hold still.”

  Razvan kept the machine pistol on her while he opened the door and unfolded himself from the truck.

  Benj got out the other side and walked toward the wooden barn to check it.

  Razvan could hear him talking to Mihail over the phone, keeping each other updated in case Mihail saw movement, and so he wouldn’t shoot Benj if he happened to poke his head out a window.

  Razvan asked Nora, “Is anyone else here?”

  “No. Put the gun down, please.”

  “You first. It’s in your pocket, yes? I can see the bulge.”

  She brought her right hand toward the pocket.

  “Slow,” Razvan said. “I know you’re not going to shoot me, but my men are a little upset right now. They might not be as trusting.”

  She used her forefinger and thumb to lift the compact pistol out of her pocket and let it dangle out at her side.

  “I’m coming to take it from you,” Razvan said.

  He climbed the steps and stood next to her for a moment, forcing her to crank her neck up to look up at his face.

  The Dracula pistol was still pointed at her face.

  He took her gun away and stuffed it into a back pocket and stood there, staring down at her.

  She looked away and tried to take a step to her left but Razvan hooked her arm with his free hand.

  “Do you know why my men are upset?”

  “No.”

  “We found a truck, north of here. Grigore’s truck.”

  “So?”

  “Grigore and Pavel were with it. Both of them shot dead.”

  She blinked but wouldn’t look up at him.

  He said, “And we haven’t heard from Claudiu for hours now. He’s just vanished. What can you tell me about these things?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know anything about them.”

  “No? You didn’t shoot them with this gun of yours?”

  “Of course not.”

  Razvan took her gun back out and sniffed the barrel.

  “No, not with this one. Maybe another gun you have here?”

  “No.”

  “You tried to shoot Grigore once already.”

  Nora shook her head.

  “That’s…no, I didn’t. I was defending myself. I just wanted to leave.”

  “Just defending yourself,” Razvan echoed. “You and, who was it…ah, your boyfriend. What’s his name?”

  “Adam.”

  “Adam. You were defending him, yes? Because he was about to get his ass beaten. Because he was causing trouble.”

  “I didn’t shoot anyone,” Nora said.

  “Is your boyfriend here now?”

  “No.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No? Why not? Did he leave you?”

  “He’s just not here.”

  “Hm.”

  Razvan looked at the house, the wooden barn, the front yard.

  He studied the fresh tracks and sniffed the air, noting the smell of cut grass and wet leaves.

  “He should be here to help with the work.”

  “I don’t need any help,” Nora said.

  “Then he should be here to make sure you are safe. There are dangerous men on the loose.”

  She cast a glance his way.

  “I’m fine. I’m safe.”

  Razvan said, “Are you?”

  Connelly whispered into the mic, “What’s happening?”

  No one answered.

  “Can anybody see?”

  Rison said, “I can’t see shit. Just the doorway. Now shut up.”

  He was in the back ri
ght corner of the shed, in almost complete darkness, standing behind the cab of a tractor.

  Connelly said, “Turkey hunter, what do you see?”

  No response.

  Connelly was in the front left corner of the shed, tucked under a trailer with an empty fertilizer tank on it. His line of sight paralleled the front door of the shed, so he’d have a good shot at anyone who stepped inside, but other than that he was blind.

  It was driving him crazy.

  “Turkey hunter, status update.”

  He willed Kershaw to answer.

  After a moment, he did, and he sounded unhappy about it.

  “One guy in the wood barn, AK-47, knit cap, beard. Second truck out on the road. One shooter there, long gun on the hood, possibly an M249, giving overwatch.”

  Connelly said, “A fucking machine gun? What about Nora?”

  “Front porch. Talking with Razvan, based on his height.”

  “She’s okay?”

  “Yes. Fine.”

  “What’s Razvan doing?”

  “She’s fine,” Kershaw repeated. “Now shut the fuck up.”

  “What—”

  The large hand clamped over Connelly’s and held it while the other hand plucked the mic away from him.

  Connelly looked up and saw Bruder kneeling over him, his eyes grim inside the balaclava.

  Bruder yanked the mic cord out of the radio, leaving Connelly with just the receiver and earpiece, then disappeared into the gloom of the shed, back to his spot in the rear left corner.

  In the earpiece Bruder’s voice said, “No more chatter.”

  Connelly fumed in silence, glaring at the patch of sunlight coming through the doorway.

  He begged Razvan to step inside and catch half of a magazine from all three shooters inside the shed while Kershaw opened up on the man on the road.

  The one in the barn, they’d just shoot him through the cracks when he moved.

  Connelly watched the patch on the floor, waiting for a shadow to fall across it.

  Rison or Kershaw would let him know if it was Nora coming in first.

  Bruder could see as well, but Connelly didn’t think he’d mention it.

  The prick.

  Connelly wiped the sweat out of his eyes and compelled Razvan into his line of fire.

  Then Kershaw’s voice said, “Nora and Razvan are going inside the house.”