by Bobby Adair
Summer shook her head.
“Then whoever is in that car is our enemy.”
Summer looked around, trying to see a way out of what Tommy was proposing. “Why does it feel like we’re planning a murder?”
"Like I told you before, it gets easier. Maybe picture those bodies in the barn, that'll help. " Tommy gave her a moment to digest his advice before moving on. "I can do this myself if you're not comfortable helping. I need to know, what’s it gonna be?"
***
It worked once.
Tommy rolled the dice on going with the bold charade for a second time and headed around the corner, casual, no trouble, no hurry, just a man wearing a 704 jacket, walking his beat or doing whatever the hell insurgents did when they weren’t kidnapping, murdering, and screwing America all to hell. In the road, not on the grassy shoulder, very visible, Tommy headed straight for the police car, waving again, and exaggerating a smile he guessed the guys inside could see with the moonlight and streetlamps as bright as they were.
As he drew in close, he was able to make out that the lumps on both sides of the front seat were indeed people, not just headrests. Neither reacted, though. The police cruiser’s spotlights didn’t illuminate him. The PA didn’t crackle to life and tell him to stop walking.
Nothing.
As if the guys inside were dead.
That worried Tommy. It made him feel a spark of hope, too.
And then it distressed him some more.
He looked around for signs that he might be walking into a trap—not by 704, but by Summer’s people or others who were organizing themselves to fight the takeover.
The windshield wasn’t cracked or holed. Certainly not shattered.
None of the glass Tommy could see was broken.
Maybe there’d been no ambush.
Tommy veered to his right to get a view down the side of the car.
No bullet holes in the fenders. No flat tires.
He looked around again and saw nothing but silent houses. He even glanced over his shoulder to make sure Summer hadn’t decided at the last second to change her mind and come along.
She hadn’t. All Tommy saw back that way was the beginning of the hedge where the two of them had hidden.
He stuck with his plan and kept walking toward the police car.
The closer he came, though, the funnier the situation started to seem, in a perverse kind of way.
Two men were definitely sitting inside, yet they weren't policemen. Both wore familiar-looking camo jackets with the big Battalion 704 patches sewn to the shoulders. Their eyes were closed, and their jaws hung slack. One was leaned back on the headrest, the other’s head was lolled over on one of those funny U-shaped airport gift shop travel pillows.
Both were sleeping.
That presented Tommy with an opportunity—one he didn’t want. It’s not that it would bother him any to walk up to the driver’s window and unload three or four rounds into the sleeping men—he’d already blanketed every 704 in the guilt for what some of them had done to the people in that barn—it was the noise and the attention he didn’t want. It was the bloody mess in the car. It was the witnesses who’d surely peek out the windows and tell the pseudo-authorities who came to investigate about a murderer who’d thrown the bodies on the street before stealing the car. Then, the 704 leadership would know somebody hostile had stolen a cop car, and every advantage there’d been to stealing it in the first place would be negated.
Tommy adjusted his plan.
He stopped at the driver’s side window, leaned on the door, and rapped on the window.
Startled awake, the driver jumped and cracked his knuckles on the steering wheel as he raised a hand involuntarily.
Tommy laughed, not loudly, but visibly, dramatically. He wanted the two men inside to see his big smile and make the guess he was a harmless joker when they turned their angry, just-woke-up eyes on him. Nobody liked to be laughed at, but Tommy knew nothing disarmed like a smile.
The driver’s window whirred as its electric motor rolled it down.
“Asshole,” spat the driver.
Still grinning, Tommy laid his elbow on the door, so he was level with the driver and the guy on the other side. "Sorry to wake you. What are you guys doing out here?"
The guy on the passenger side was rubbing his eyes with his palms. “What we’re told.” He pulled the neck pillow off and tossed it on the floor.
The driver confirmed with a nod.
“I hear ya,” agreed Tommy.
“You?” mumbled the driver through the cobwebs in his head.
“Same,” answered Tommy.
“Alone?” asked the driver, thinking clearly enough to be suspicious.
The guy on the other side leaned forward to get a good look at Tommy across the car. “What happened to your face?”
“The shit,” Tommy waved at his bruises like that was a sufficient answer. “My partner.” He pointed in a vague direction. “I stepped behind a bush to take a piss, and when I came out—” Tommy exaggerated a shrug. “Who knows where she went?”
“You try your sat-phone?” asked the driver. “You call her?”
“She’s been bitching since we got sent out this way,” Tommy told them. “I don’t know why they put us together. I don’t even know her. Sarge just volunteered us and sent us off.”
“Don’t know her?” The passenger was irritated by the idea of it. He punched the driver in a familiar way and said, “Told you.”
“Yeah,” the driver answered.
“What?” Tommy asked, thinking he almost had all the information he needed to proceed.
“’The three legs of operational security,’” said the passenger, apparently mocking some guy who’d impressed it on him when they were running through their paramilitary training. “’Know the man beside you.’” He slapped the driver on the arm again. “And already they’re breaking the rule. Hooking this guy up with somebody he doesn’t even know.”
“Sucks ass,” Tommy told them with a snort. “How about you two? How do you guys know each other?”
“Brother-in-law,” said the driver with an eye roll.
“Your sister or his?” Tommy asked.
The driver looked over at the passenger. “His.”
Having had it out and dangling beside the door where the guys inside couldn’t see it, Tommy raised his pistol and pushed the barrel against the back of the driver’s neck. All humor gone, he said, “Don’t move.”
The passenger made an awkward reach for his gun, but apparently read the terror on his brother-in-law’s face and stopped.
Eyes locked on the passenger's, Tommy said, "You can't see what kind of gun I have aimed at your chest right through your brother-in-law's mouth, but if you saw it, you’d know it. You've known it since you got your first macho gun boner in junior high. It's a Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum."
Tommy saw recognition in the guy's eyes, and he saw the doubt, too, so he pushed the lie. "That's right, the same gun Dirty Harry carried. Now, I gotta be honest with you, I don't know if the bullet will go right through your buddy’s spine, fly out of his mouth, and blow a hole all the way through your chest. I've never fired this gun at anything but a target at the range. What I can tell you, though, is it kicks like a mule. So you gotta ask yourself, do you think, your buddy's head will stop this big bullet if I pull the trigger?"
The guy didn’t respond.
"On the other hand," Tommy continued, "if you want to bet your brother-in-law's exploding face on me being a liar, well, you try for that gun in your holster, and we'll see how quickly I can empty this magazine."
Neither of them moved.
“Good,” said Tommy. “I’m glad we all understand each other. Now, let’s get this next thing out of the way. If I’d wanted to kill you two, I mean if I really wanted to do that, I could have popped you both while you were sleeping, and you’d never even have known it. That would have been the easiest thing for me, don’t you agree?”
No response again.
“Answer me,” Tommy told them.
“Yeah,” said the driver.
The passenger nodded.
“Just so we’re clear, I’ll kill you if I have to, so don’t think my kindness is something it’s not. Clear?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the passenger.
“Yeah,” answered the driver.
“Here’s how this is going to work,” Tommy told them. “You see those zip ties scattered on the floor? Passenger, you’re going to put your right hand on the dashboard and leave it there like you glued it. I don’t have to tell you what happens if it comes off. With your left, you’re going to reach down and pick up a few zip ties. I’m going to have you two bind each other's wrists, then you’re both going to get out of the car. Now here's something we need to make crystal clear, are you listening?"
“Yes.”
“Uh, huh.”
"If at any time during this little exercise, if one of you moves too fast, disobeys my orders, or ever puts your hands where I can't see them, I'm going to start pulling the trigger, and I won't stop until I feel safe. No ifs, no buts. No second chances. Fuck up, and it's your life. Understand?"
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s get busy, then.”
***
Ten minutes later, both men marched around the corner and stopped in front of the bushes where Tommy first hid with Summer. She had already stepped out of the shrubs to stand beside Tommy and point her rifle at the men’s backs.
“We’re going in the bushes,” Tommy told them. “That’s where you two are going to spend the night. First you, passenger. You’ll walk through that gap, staying where I can see you, and when you get to the fence, you’ll kneel and lean your forehead on the boards. Driver, once he’s in position, you’ll do the same. Kneel beside him. Understand? Yes? Let’s go!”
Tommy watched as the first one walked between the tall bushes. That’s when the driver hollered a warning to his buddy and took off at a sprint.
With his pistol already pointed at the man in the bushes, Tommy fired two quick shots, and the man slammed into the fence and fell over. He swung his barrel around and fired three more shots, sending the driver into a face-first skid on the asphalt.
“Oh my God,” gasped Summer.
Tommy grabbed her hand to get her attention. “Go get the car. Pull it around here. Run!”
Tommy sprinted for the downed driver.
Chapter 16
It was a question with no good answers, that of disposing of the bodies. Leaving them at the scene where five shots had just been fired would have invited trouble. Of course, they'd be discovered. Of course, they'd be linked to the police car. Only bad things followed from that choice.
So, in the trunk they went, as Summer sat behind the wheel, looking pale and troubled. After that, they'd sped across town with driving directions being the only words passing between them. They arrived at another trailhead leading to a path up the steep face of the mountain just west of town and nearest the highway. Summer backed the cruiser up near the trees and Tommy hauled the bodies out and hid them in the undergrowth.
As they drove slowly away, Summer asked, “Were you going to kill them all along?”
Tommy noticed more zip ties scattered on the floor. The 704 guys were undoubtedly prepared to bind their share of wrists. "It doesn't matter, does it?"
“It does to me.”
“I wasn’t going to shoot them,” Tommy admitted, “but yes, I was going to kill them.”
“Why?” Summer threw her hands up, not caring for that moment that she was driving. “They were prisoners!”
Tommy scooped up some of the zip ties and put them in his pocket. They might come in handy later. “Setting aside the fact we’re in no position to be taking prisoners—”
“We could have left them there,” countered Summer. “Tied up. We could have put them in the trunk alive. We could have locked them in a shed or put them in someone’s basement. Tommy, we can’t just kill everyone we come across. My God!”
Tommy didn’t bother arguing the point that the two men had tried to escape, and that led to their being shot. He’d already told summer the truth. He’d seen no way around it then, and he had no regrets about it now. He pointed to a street coming up on the left. “Sheriff’s office, that way.”
Summer took her foot off the accelerator and let the car roll. She didn’t make the turn.
Tommy sighed.
The police car didn’t stop at the intersection. It proceeded on, slowing down. Summer dropped her hands to her lap. “I killed people today, Tommy. At the ranch.”
Guessing anything he said was going to be a waste of time, Tommy spoke anyway. “I told you it gets easier.”
She shook her head.
Tommy reached over and turned the wheel to guide the car off the road and onto the shoulder. “Put the brake on.”
Summer was losing herself to her inner turmoil.
“Put the brake on,” Tommy told her firmly.
She did.
Tommy reached over and put the car in park. He scanned the darkness for anyone who might be out and taking an interest in them. “Listen.”
Summer stared out over the hood.
“Look at me,” Tommy told her, not harshly, but firmly again. “We need to talk.”
Summer turned. Her eyes were glazed in tears she wouldn’t let free.
“I never put on a uniform for my country or went off to fight in a real war, so I’m not going to make up a bunch of shit about what I think it’s like. I’ve told you what I used to do back when I was a dumbass kid trying to ruin my life. I did things I wish I hadn’t, and I’ve been trying to live my life right ever since, thinking I could make it up or, I don’t know—”
“Get into heaven?” Summer’s words came dripping in acid.
Tommy shook his head. “I don’t believe in any of that. What I did, I did for me, and eventually my daughter. I wanted to stop doing things I knew were wrong and start trying to live right. That’s the best I have for my reasons. What I’m trying to get around to saying is we went to war once and—”
“Like today at the ranch?” asked Summer.
"Not all at once, but yeah, a lot like that.” Tommy gathered his thoughts before going on. "I lost friends, I lost associates. We tried to make peace, only to see it broken again, because, as I came to learn, war only ends one way, when you've annihilated the other side. If you don't do that, then all you've done by agreeing to a truce is you've given your enemy a chance to rebuild their strength, so they can stab you in the back when they think the time is right."
Summer was distant, thoughts on her regrets and guilt. “That’s what happened in your drug war?”
“Exactly.”
“Are you saying there’s no way we’ll ever be able to bring this to a peaceful end? That’s your lesson?”
“With what we saw at the barn this afternoon,” said Tommy, “do you think you could ever sit across the table from the people who did it and forgive them?” Tommy shook his head because his answer to the question was a decided ‘no’. It was a ‘never’. “My lesson from that meth war was this—there comes a time with people when the only way to cure them of their hate is to put a bullet in their head.”
***
Summer rubbed her eyes, and she groaned. "I'm not cut out for this."
“You don’t have to do it.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No,” Tommy countered. “You don’t. You’re not married. You said yourself, your son will despise you when he finds out you’re on our side because your ex already indoctrinated him to his way of thinking.”
“Our side?” asked Summer. “You’ve decided you’re with us?”
Tommy ignored Summer’s comment. “You don’t have anything holding you here. You should hop a plane to Costa Rica or find a safe route to Canada. Go somewhere peaceful and let this tragedy play out with other people’s blood and tears. Tr
ust me, it’s not worth it. It never is.”
"Did you learn that in your drug wars, too?" asked Summer. "Is that why you got out?"
“Getting out of this country is what I’m going to do as soon as I find Faith and Emma.” Tommy put a hand on her arm. He squeezed gently. “You should come with us.”
Summer thought about it for a minute, yet her answer came out silently as she shook her head. When she found her voice, she said, "If I ran away, it would make me a hypocrite and a coward. It'd be like accepting that every conviction I hold is a lie.” Summer's jaw clenched down on that word. "I have to stand up and fight. It’s my duty as a decent American."
“And die?” asked Tommy.
Summer’s eyes glazed over again.
Tommy knew she now understood that dying wasn't just a word. It was real, and it was ugly. And it could come for you and snuff you when you didn't expect it.
“Yes,” she whispered. “To die.”
"And to kill," Tommy added softly. "If you're not going to run, you need to find a way to tuck your humanity away until all this is over. Maybe if you're lucky, you can pull it back out one day when it's done, and you can be a normal, loving person again, but until then—" Tommy shook his head to finish the thought. "The ruthless and the vicious will win. That's something I learned. If you want to live through this, if you want to win, that's what you need to be."
“Killing those two men back there was ruthless and vicious?” asked Summer. “Is that what it looks like?”
“That was just ruthless. You haven’t seen vicious yet.”
“The people at the ranch? The man with the knife in his head. The boy in the garage.”
Tommy shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”
Summer closed her eyes and massaged her temples. She stared out the window for what seemed like a long time. Finally, she came to a decision or acceptance or whatever. She drew a deep breath to gin up her courage, put the car in drive, and headed down the street.
Chapter 17
