"Hey Albert," Dusty sang at him, finally. "How's Albert?" That was as much as he could manage for a few seconds and he concentrated on breathing, trying to put the throbbing pain somewhere out of reach.
Albert saw the black rifle on the ground and picked it up, admiringly.
"She's a beaut, ain't she?" Dusty gasped.
The Remington M24 was more rifle than Albert had ever seen or could possibly make use of. He leaned it against the tree.
"You alone, Dusty?" he asked.
"Hell yes, Albert...helll..."
He cried silently for a few moments and Albert just watched him. The blood pumping slowly out of his wound was almost black, sure indication of massive liver trauma. Dusty would be dead in twenty minutes.
"Where's George?" Albert asked him.
"You go see him," he almost laughed. "Over to Grogan's old farm, over-" and then he started gasping and bleating again and he coughed violently which pushed a bolus of blood and tissue against the rend in his side.
"Who was that kid you sent up here?" Albert asked.
"I told them he'd never come back. I told them you'd clip him like a spring bunny. You kilt him didn't you?"
"Ya," Albert said.
"That was the Farley boy, that kid whose father kilt hisself last year-"
That's where he'd seen him, Albert remembered. He was standing outside the big Christian Church downtown when Albert passed. They had just finished the service for his father and the boy and his mother were standing on the sidewalk as the coffin was carried out the front door. The boy looked around and glanced at Albert who nodded respectfully and then drove on when the light changed. Everybody knew it was a suicide though they pretended it was a gun cleaning accident so the widow could collect the insurance and the boy wouldn't be too embarrassed and the pastor would bury him properly. But for a few days everywhere you went in town, the barber shop or the hardware store or Pelley's Gas Station that had the tables set up so the town crews would take their break there and buy his coffee and chicken strips, men talked about Arnold Farley blowing his brains out after he lost his job at the cement plant.
"You can blame George for that," Albert said. "I didn't go looking for him. I just found him."
"You gonna help me here, Albert?"
"You're dead already," Albert replied. "The bullet took your liver, that's how come the blood's all black like that."
"And a hell of a shot it was, too," Dusty tried to joke but he had to grimace and bare down on the pain to try and squelch it somehow.
Dusty whimpered a bit and Albert saw the tears rolling down his filthy cheeks.
"I can't figure you," Dusty said after a few minutes.
You are dying too easy, Albert thought as he went through Dusty's kit. He took the rifle and pistol and Dusty's binoculars though they weren't as good as the ones he already had. There were a few smaller pieces of hardware, a folding knife, a compass, though what for was anyone's guess, a notebook with a few scribbles in it and a half dozen MREs. He must have planned to stay until he could get that shot, that magic shot that took Albert out and delivered a new headquarters to George. George would really be surprised, wouldn't he? Maybe he should have told George what he was doing. This was a significant loss for George Griggson. Dusty was loyal as a dog and would do just about anything George asked him to just for a pat on the head. What will they try next? All out assault? Night attack? Maybe they are stupid enough to come up here looking for a parley. Maybe he shouldn't just wait around for them to come and kill him. Maybe he should go see them.
"Where are you going, Albert?" Dusty sobbed. The low growl of the pack could be heard just beyond the tree line. They were moving in, circling around the tree. Dusty twisted his head but the movement almost caused him to black out. He closed his eyes, panting wildly as the fear started to mount in him.
Albert shouldered the kit and picked up the rifle.
"Oh God, Albert...please," he wailed. The dogs had smelled the blood now and they were already fighting among themselves for a place at the table.
Albert started walking towards his house as they closed. Dusty's screaming did not last long. At least not long enough, Albert thought.
Preparations for his trip to Grogan's farm took two days. He spent the time laying in more mines around the property, starting with the south end near the driveway. He planted a dozen in the woods along a faint trail that would appear inviting to anyone coming up from the road. He planted a mine and then he looked around for a place that the next man would likely run for cover once the mine went off and he planted one there, too. He set small wire traps loaded with a single 12-gauge shotgun shell that would blow a foot clean off and some he angled higher that would fire a load of 000 at about the six-foot level, good for faces, throats, the back of the neck.
The house and work shed were also wired with trip switches that would completely destroy both buildings if anyone entered either one. There wasn't really much to it, he realized after the fifth or sixth device had been built and planted. The materials for pipe bombs and other small-scale explosives were available everywhere and anyone, any one at all, could build a serviceable weapon without special training or knowledge. The detonators could be tricky, but if all else fails, a fireworks fuse will work.
When he was finished, be made himself a large meal and ate it reading a copy of Arizona Highways from 1968, dreaming about a long lost world. He had loaded the truck and checked it again before the sun went down and then he lay on the bed and slept in twenty minute increments until midnight or so. He did not expect to ever see the house again and it made him wonder for a moment if it wouldn't be better to just wait them out and die here, except that might deprive him of the gratification of watching George Griggson bleed to death from a slit throat in front of a mirror.
Grogan's farm had been one of the largest operations in the county for several generations, comprising more than three thousand acres of prime corn and soybean land and a square mile of virgin forest with trees three feet in diameter and limestone caves that had been inhabited since the paleo-Indians arrived in the state, ten thousand years before.
The road is straight south from the county line and he rumbles along the shoulder, lights out, led on by the moon which seems to be watching from a high point above the southern horizon. There has been no one for weeks now, no one, not even a hobo on these roads but he is careful and drives as far out of the light as he can, trying to hug the shadows of the shoulder, ready for a fire fight at any time from any direction.
There is a place on the side of the road about a quarter mile from town where an old overgrown driveway allowed him to store his vehicle. He pulled back into the overhanging branches and thick, budding fascia of willow and wild apple. He had installed a circuit breaker in the ignition line and hidden the switch in the stuffing of the seat. Unless that switch was thrown, even a car thief couldn't get the truck to start. Now an educated man would trace the wires and eventually figure it out but how many educated men roamed the earth in these times? How many could even wire an ignition if they had to, never mind one that had been transmogrified into some kind of mysterious Rubic's cube of switches and diodes and a pulse modulator that looked like a bomb and was completely irrelevant but terribly intimidating.
Then he began to walk, carrying a full combat pack as he saw it, including his AK and two hundred rounds, the .45 And five clips, the .22 Magnum belly gun, knives, garrotes, brass knuckles, shivs, energy bars, water, some basic first aid, binoculars, night goggles and anything else he thought he might possibly have a use for. The pack weighed seventy eight pounds, at least half again as much as any fit regular soldier would be expected to carry. He had to pass around Provost and pick up 61 again and followed that for almost ten miles until he came to the crossroad at Granston Trace where Grogan's farm began. The cluster of buildings - the house, the drive shed, the big barn and half a dozen smaller structures- rested on a hill a mile from the highway. So now it was eleven miles, carrying seventy eig
ht pounds and the mule in this case not some grinning, hubristic twenty-year-old but a man near fifty, in good shape but not that good and having almost no reserves to call on if he should suffer any setback at all. A twisted ankle, a Charlie horse, a stomach cramp could finish him. He regretted not having had his appendix out. Only unmitigated hatred allowed him to endure the pain and the discomfort and keep moving, stopping religiously every hour for ten minutes for water and air, making about two miles an hour.
He was panting heavily and his legs ached as he climbed over the fence into Grogan's pasture and lay down in the new grass, ignoring the damp cold that it released into his back and legs. He fell asleep almost instantly, not even fighting it, not even caring.
The moon was fully dilated in the western sky when he woke, shivering madly and the muscles in his legs aching and crying out as he stood up and shouldered the pack one more time.
The last mile was relatively easy over soft ground, the new grass swishing against his boots and the moon pooling in the depressions.
When he was about three hundred yards from the main driveshed where he expected they would congregate, he looked around for a place to hide. The best he found was hay feeder that still had three quarters of a bale inside the tubed frame. That wasn't good enough. He had to get into shelter before daylight and the nearest possibility was all the way over across the gravel to an implement shed housing a rusting New Holland round baler.
He crawled in behind it and sat with his back against the shed wall, the AK across his lap. He began to nod off again and he allowed himself the luxury of uninterrupted sleep for almost two hours until the sky began to lighten and woke him. By now they would realize Dusty wasn't coming back and the speculation that he had set off on his own to deal with "that fucker, Smythe" would take firm hold as the only realistic explanation for his absence. George would be enraged, cursing Dusty's memory for getting himself killed and Smythe for being such an uncooperative sonofabitch. But it would never occur to George that Albert would be crazy enough to attack him. And any movement at all on 61 would have been reported somehow. There were people all along the road, who, out of fear or in exchange for favors would have told George if any vehicle of any kind whatsoever had left Provost heading south. As far as George and his glee club were concerned, Albert Smythe was sitting up there on the top of his mountain, drinking whiskey and eating steak and waiting for the next fool to try and pry him out.
"You don't just want to know what they are thinking; you want to control it."
He was able to observe the house, the drive shed and some surrounding fields from behind the baler using his fancy binoculars. He thanked the Farley boy for being so generous. He watched all morning without seeing any movement at all until around noon the front door of the house opened and a woman stepped onto the veranda. She was about thirty five or forty, dark hair, wearing a cardigan sweater and jeans. He focused on her face but couldn't tell if he knew her or not. He knew Grogan, who sold a lot of cattle and he'd purchased a steer from him the first year he lived in Provost. The man was dour to the point of rudeness and did more to discourage repeat business than anyone Albert had run into so far. Like many whose wealth was inherited, Arthur Grogan was a man who both considered himself entitled to his fortune and at the same time was embittered that people sneered at his alleged contributions to his wealth.
Three men in a collection of uniforms from Vietnam to Operation FUBAR came out of the house after her and moved in a group down the driveway to the shed. George was not among them. Perhaps he was off somewhere with the other half of his gaggle. He didn't recognize Grogan among the men, either and he had clear look at each face as they wended their way down the driveway.
He watched them until they all disappeared into the shed and then he retreated back behind the baler and opened an MRE. He ate and then dozed intermittently, shivering sometimes and waking up other times in a boiling sweat. He thought he was getting sick, which wouldn't surprise him considering the chill he got the previous night. In his dreams he repeatedly felt the surge of terror as a detonator slipped through his fingers. He would wake, still caught in the dream and then calm himself, fall back to sleep and almost immediately feel the pin slipping...
He guessed by the sun it was about three o'clock when he heard the diesel Humvee coming north on 61. He recognized the clatter of the 6.2 liter Turbo that always seemed to have to work too hard at the top end. He crawled back to the front of his baler and watched the driveway. In a moment the jet black vehicle arrived and slammed to a stop in front of the shed. He saw George and three of his associates exit and at the same time the shed door opened and several came outside to see what was going on.
Through the glasses he could see their smiles and laughter and almost hear their admiration as they walked around it like a bunch of regular American college boys at a car show. He drew the glasses slowly down the length of the vehicle but the men were standing in front of the doors and he couldn't see if there was a logo or identification mark anywhere. Finally one moved out of the way and he saw the white decal on the door, but he didn't recognize it. George towered over his "boys," grinning as he stroked the sleek flanks of the nearly perfect machine.
They were very involved with congratulating themselves and he saw it coming first. Heard it, in fact. It was just a speck, but it was growing rapidly and soon enough they heard the flop-flop-slop of a helicopter gunship growing with steady certainty as it headed their way.
They scattered like mice and three reentered the building, presumably to collect weapons but they never got out. The Big Chinese Z10 complete with phony UN logo and lovely Canadian-built Pratt-and-Whitneys reared like a bronc, stopped, hung in the air and sent a Hellfire missile, graciously supplied by the United States government in its unceasing efforts to keep Americans safe, into said shed at about Mach 1.5, causing said shed to erupt in a geyser of flame and burning debris. Albert thought he saw a hand turning slowly in the smoke. The waves of heat reached him and rattled some old license plates hanging on the wall.
George and his remaining crew managed to find shelter on the banks of a cattle pond and opened up on the ship with concentrated fire of ping pong balls and jellybeans which just seemed to irritate the beast and it raced overhead spitting 23 millimeter ordnance everywhere at about two thousand rounds a minute. The ground spouted all around them but they survived the strafing by flipping over to the other side of the bank as the machine turned and came in for a second pass, sending spouts of dirt and water fifteen feet in the air. They flipped back over the shoulder of the pond and watched the bug perform it's ballet with dolphin-like elegance, turn and rear again for a third pass. Someone got a lucky shot with something hard, maybe a steel core round from a Garand or maybe even some of the high speed .223 armor piercing that had appeared briefly at the end of the decade. It didn't bring the helicopter down, but a burst of twenty five or thirty steel core bullets that followed at fairly close range did hit something and black smoke, probably burning hydraulic fluid streamed from one side. The ship let go another dart that flew high over the pond and detonated in the ground and then turned and raced back to wherever it had come from.
The group climbed up from the shoulder of the pond and watched the machine churn its way out of sight. There was no cheering or even conversation. He watched their faces through the field glasses and was struck by how dirty and bedraggled they appeared. They were more or less bearded, according to their genetics and there wasn't a fat man among them. The drive shed was in full flame and had collapsed in on itself. They watched the smoke carry ash and debris into the air. He panned to the house and saw the woman standing in the window.
But they barely had time to recover from the air attack when the sound of motors drifted down the highway. They stared in disbelief and then dismay as two Humvees, clones of the one George had stolen appeared on the road, heading for them at top speed. The lead vehicle began playing with the .50 caliber machine gun when they were still a mile away and the big
slugs hit the ground and everyone dived again except for the man who caught some and he fell in two parts.
The UN vehicles skidded into the driveway and eight marines or possibly contractors leapt out and crouched behind the vehicle doors firing non-stop at the shoulder of the pond, gradually eroding the dirt. The .50 continued to hammer them and the noise was deafening. Albert saw three men make a move to flank George's troop and it was clear they would head right for this tiny shed in the process. He felt his stomach surge as he rolled to the edge of the building and by the time he got there, the diarrhea had squirted down his legs and he could smell it. Two of the men heading his way were white, but they looked Slavic with broad cheek bones and widely spaced eyes. The third was a Pakistani wearing a sergeant's patch, presumably because he was a genuine hero and wanted to draw enemy fire away from his men.
Albert tried to calm himself, but he couldn't. He was shaking violently and found his hands wouldn't coordinate with his brain. He dropped the AK and fumbled with the selector before he managed to get it onto automatic. And then he realized he had only the one clip because he'd left the rest in his pack. So he scrambled back, the fire from the defenders now starting to ping the baler and fumbled with the latch.
He heard the first man arrive outside his building and he could see him move as he flickered in the spaces between the barn board. He did not feel sad, but tears were streaming down his cheeks. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply and let it out. The UN soldier was moving to the entrance of the shed and as soon as he turned he'd see Albert. The man's M16 chattered incessantly as he moved. Albert waited until the man's arm appeared around the corner and he emptied the clip from his AK. The terrible racket warbled against his ear drums and he continued to shoot after the man had fallen. Then something kicked in and he calmed slightly, replaced the magazine and waited for the next man who probably hadn't quite figured out yet where the lethal fire had come from.
As Wind in Dry Grass Page 22
