by Vince Milam
“You’re looking fit and happy, Bo. I’m not surprised.”
“A reason for that, my brother. Weave left. There. Now right.”
The Ace maneuvered at a sedate pace through the tight passages, the low rumble of the diesel an intrusion, alien. Bo inspected the big toe on a bare foot.
“My condition rests on having not opted to burden myself with the weight of the world,” he said to his foot. “A release mechanism. One you should develop.”
“No argument here.”
A final turn, and his wooden houseboat came into view. Here and there, remnants of paint, evidence that once upon a time it had been white. A gray canvas tarp extended over parts of the deck, and Christmas lights wound around the small midmast that served no purpose other than to fly the Jolly Roger. Numerous solar panels hung from the boat’s side, along with tails of old rope and an extended-over-the-water wind chime. A ratty Kermit the Frog stuffed toy was tied around one of the guardrail stanchions.
“No excitement since last time?” I asked. Last time—ten weeks earlier—I’d paid a visit, and bad things had happened. Things of the killing variety.
Chapter 7
On that day two and a half months ago, Bo had met me at the edge of his turf. A battered aluminum canoe poked into the Dismal Canal, and Bo stood alongside, waist deep and bathing. Hot, sticky air and the buzzing of insects marked deep summer. His long hair dripped and his wide smile flashed as the Ace chugged closer. The scene was unusual, peculiar. He hadn’t met me at the edge before. Canoe tossed on the stern deck, he guided me past trip wires toward his home.
“Kinda wished you put on some clothes,” I said as we maneuvered.
“It’s hot.”
“How ’bout a loincloth, Tarzan?”
He moved on, other interests drawing his attention. He pulled his satellite phone from a rucksack, scanned the screen, and mumbled something indiscernible. He twisted around, locked eyes, and extended three fingers. “We ain’t fakin’. Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.” An event had taken place in Bo’s vast swamp. He’d reveal the details at his own pace.
We tied to the stern of his unnamed vessel next to a hummock of land, and Bo scrambled onto his home. “Movement and ill intent, Mr. Lee. Movement and ill intent,” he called over his shoulder as he disappeared down the steps. I clambered on board his boat, and the tinkle of wind chimes voiced my presence as his vessel shifted. They hadn’t sounded with Bo’s movements.
I meandered to the front deck and sidestepped a few T-shirts drying on a short piece of line. A bucket of wild greens occupied a spot near a hung wild-pig carcass. An old Weber charcoal grill, two of its three legs replaced with twisted cypress limbs, was poised at an angle and ready for the next meal. Three large pots held marijuana plants, thick and bushy. There were several old Clorox jugs, sealed and shoved toward the front of the deck. Each with fishing line and a large catfish hook attached. Trotlines. A once brightly colored hammock of South American origin stretched between two canopy posts.
Bo hummed from below and carried on a personal discussion with himself. His voice mixed with metallic clatter—clear indications of weaponry preparation. He called to me and raised his voice to clarify.
“They arrived sometime over the last few days. Now they stumble, foolish, toward my location. And their demise.” A mass of red hair and a smile painted with mirth and wildness poked up from belowdecks. “Three of them. Bounty hunters.” Declaration delivered, his head disappeared back into the lower cabin.
Damn. It had been a while, and the yearning thought of resolution and a world moved on had taken firm root within my mental makeup. Son of a bitch.
“Coming for me, old son. Excellent timing on your part,” he called.
“You sure?” False hope, and I knew it. When it came to kill or be killed, Bo didn’t make mistakes.
He climbed back on the deck—now dressed in fatigue pants and boots—armed with a scoped assault rifle and a semiauto pistol, silencer attached. His Bundeswehr combat knife, sheathed, hung from a belt loop on his jeans. He thrust the rifle in my direction. “You are writ large on the same hit list, Mr. Lee. Let us winnow the field.” His smile was matter-of-fact and calm.
I took the rifle. “Mind providing a few details?”
Bo pulled his satellite phone and wafted it before me. “I’ve got wild-game cameras set all over this place. Many miles. Hey, not a bad name for a jazz-rock band, is it? Many Miles.”
Long experience had shown it best to let him ramble. Bo Dickerson seldom squeezed into conversational boxes. He raised a finger to his lips and indicated it was time to lower the volume.
“Solar powered. Images taken, uploaded via satellite, and dropped into this little pretty.” He waggled the phone at me again. “Movement triggers the cameras. So I get lots of cool wildlife shots. Deer. Black bear. Bobcat. The occasional gator that crawls up on these slivers of land.”
“Great. Then get a Nature Channel gig. Meanwhile, kindly focus on the bounty hunters.” I checked the weapon he’d handed me—.223 caliber, semiautomatic, 4X scope with night-vision capabilities. I didn’t need to ask if it had been sighted for accuracy.
“Passing boats in these little sloughs also trigger the cameras. The rare kayaker or canoeist. I can’t imagine wanting to wander through the Dismal, can you?”
“No, Bo.”
“Yesterday a couple of cameras picked up a shallow draft skiff. Outboard motor. With three critters in camo. All well armed. Tourists, my son?”
“Probably not.” Damn.
“They bashed about in the dark yesterday and now—most unfortunately for them—make their way in this direction. Three. Tres Hombres. Love that album.”
Three men. Focused on finding and killing my friend. All for money. Their intel, acquired God knows how, had clearly been Bo Dickerson specific.
“We’ll chalk three off the pursuit list, have a fine meal, and discuss the ways of the world,” he continued. “Now, as to tactics.”
Three dead men walking, or rather riding in their small boat. The filter—the mental shield to separate me from the killing—descended. I’d asked the cosmos often for inflicted death to quit its participation in my life. I’d done enough. But these situations were them or us, and it damn sure wasn’t going to be us.
“All right. Tactics,” I said. “Let’s start with you not doing any crazy shit.”
Bo tucked the silenced pistol into a front jeans pocket and waggled both arms in a loosening-up motion, rolled his head, stretched neck muscles. Then he leaned close, nose-to-nose. His breath smelled of ginger. “And what’s my modus operandi, goober boy? What, pray tell, do I excel at?”
The sound of an outboard motor, distant, growled across the swampland, and I shifted my gaze to ascertain its relative position. A big sigh, and once more nose-to-nose with my blood brother. “Crazy shit, Bo. You excel at crazy shit.”
Chapter 8
The skirmish environment lay still on that day—punctuated by random treetop breezes, cypress needles shifting. The air had turned thick. Evening approached. The witching hour.
Our two boats nestled against a narrow brush and tree-covered plot of land stretched south. Three more small islands curved left, forming the shape of a question mark. Our location marked the bottom of the punctuation. The islands held tangled vegetation, shadowed and dense and uninviting. Thirty feet of dark, tannin-laden swamp water separated each small island from the next.
The outboard motor stopped, followed by the distinct scraping of an aluminum hull edging onto dry land. A bird flushed from the farthest island at the curved tip of the question mark, disturbed.
Bo leaned into my ear. “Situate yourself on the island next to us. You’ll have a ringside seat as affairs unfold.” He winked.
I returned a tight nod and slipped off his vessel onto dry land. Bo eased into the swamp water, noiselessly. A feral smile and excited eyes disappeared underwater. Combat commenced. Three of the enemy. With Bo and I together, they should have
brought thirty.
I crawled, silent, through thick brush—changing direction once. A fat copperhead snake lay curled underneath a palmetto bush. Two feet from my face, it puffed up, warning me. I acknowledged the message and crawled on. At the edge of my little island, a small opening in the vegetation provided a clear view of the operational area. Stretched flat, I raised the rifle and viewed events through the scope, safety off and finger on the trigger. Birds flapped, twittered, overhead. The moment held no emotion. Clinical focus, the kill switch on.
A single face, Central Asian, eased through the vegetation on the farthest island, fifty yards away. The assassin studied Bo’s boat and the Ace of Spades, then withdrew. Slight movement farther into the brush indicated he met with his fellow bounty hunters and revealed his findings.
Without a ripple, Bo’s head emerged from the water near their island. He slithered his way into the brush, unheard, unseen.
As I sighted through the scope, brushy holes allowed quick glimpses of three headhunters advancing toward the adjoining island, intent on closer proximity to our boats. Each armed with assault rifles and pistols. Each bearded with camo of the unprofessional variety, purchased off-the-shelf.
I sang. The selection and delivery of the song mattered little. The goal—keep them headed my way. “Hear—that lonesome—train go by.” I sang into the ground, voice muted, still sighting through the riflescope. Loud enough to draw their attention. They couldn’t pinpoint my location and would assume the off-key noise came from one of the boats. Their target, unconcerned, singing.
“You used—to love me—night and day.” I was just some guy putzing around on his boat, singing off-key. But these killers weren’t music critics.
The lead man again poked his head through the brush at the island’s edge, checked our two boats, and entered the small stretch of water separating him from the next plot of dry land.
“Now—that love—is gone.”
Waist deep, he pushed ahead—focused on the two boats and my singing. He created a wake. Splashed. Amateur hour. One of his fellow bounty hunters followed suit, weapon at the ready, eyes glued to the two vessels. The third never emerged from the brush.
One down, two to go.
“It tears me up—to see you—this way.” My voice, directed toward the soil inches away, remained muted. The earth returned rich humus smells.
Several minutes passed. The two who had crossed, back inside the dense brush of the second island, waited for their third. A flock of wood ducks whistled among the swamp trees and splash-landed out of sight. I could discern a tight, quiet, and emphatic discussion from the remaining two. Perhaps they figured their partner had pulled back. Perhaps they knew of Bo Dickerson’s unique talents and sensed a silent violation. A touch of doom.
“Coming at me—with vengeance—in your eye.”
Vegetation shifted and indicated their movement toward the third island. Advancing toward our boats and my voice. I couldn’t determine Bo’s presence or location. No surprise there. Bo hunted, and the remaining two bounty hunters—if they had any sense—should have been scared witless.
A wake appeared in the tannic water separating the third island. With leathery back and tail, an alligator moved away from the vicinity. Something underwater had disturbed it. Bo. The most seasoned eye wouldn’t have picked out any sign of him.
The first man peeked in my direction, crossed the watery gap, and waded onto the third island. Crouched, committed, his weapon aimed at the boats. His remaining partner followed, and waded the thirty-foot section backward, weapon trained on his trail. Halfway across, Bo slipped the water’s surface at the second man’s back, slapped a hand over his mouth, and drove his blade deep. They faded, slid back underwater without a ripple or sound. Bo had twisted the man’s head so their eyes locked as the dark water covered them.
A blue heron parachuted on wide wings to nearby shallows and walked, one leg lifted and held suspended before the next step. It, too, hunted. Any remnant of bright daylight had passed. The grind of insect calls increased. Frogs joined the chorus. The Great Dismal Swamp began its shift toward primal nocturnal nature.
The final assassin, frozen deep in the brush, became sure of his circumstance and screamed for his comrades. The heron flapped, grabbed air, and flew off—soon lost among the deep dark of the cypress trees. Frogs fell silent. He howled in Tajik, frantic, alone. Silence answered.
He attacked, shrieked a battle cry, fired at random. The man from Tajikistan crashed through limbs and vegetation, toward the third water channel and my position. Fatalism, courage, insanity, or a mixture of traits—I never would understand—led him to the water’s edge where he died. The single shot of my rifle rang and reverberated across the Dismal. Then silence, the quiet of death.
I pushed off the ground and stood.
“Dammit, Case!” Bo stomped out of the brush behind the dead man, waved his knife. “What the hell?”
He glared my way, then fished through the dead man’s pockets. Wallet and papers pulled, he extracted similar soggy items from his pocket and added them together. He waved the bundle at me and bitched. “You were invited to the party as a freakin’ observer. Not as an active damn participant!”
He paused and used his free hand to drag the body into the water. Alligator dinner. Then his body relaxed. “Although the singing was a nice touch. Good on ye, brother. Good on ye.”
The internal Bo switch flipped back to his regular self, the irritated stone-cold man hunter shoved into the background. He waded toward his home, the papers and wallets held high. It pleased me to note he hadn’t collected any body parts—at least none I could see.
Another one. Dead. I’d stopped counting years ago, but the number was too high. No adrenaline rush of battle, no great exultation of victory, no sense of satisfaction—and no remorse. A part of me, insulated and tucked away, had emerged, taken care of business, and retreated to dark corners. There to lurk, cold and callous. Years long gone, I’d tried to salve the emotion with rationalizations of “Fewer of them to worry about,” and “Better him than me,” but such musings had become shallow, disconnected. There would always be more. And my dark killer would emerge, efficient and final, again and again.
I climbed back on Bo’s boat and met him on the foredeck. He tossed the bundle of documentation my way and stripped off his clothes. Buck naked, he went belowdecks for dry attire. The ordeal over, he’d moved on.
The wallets and papers, many of the latter too soaked to pull apart, confirmed the men as Tajik. Our Delta team had conducted operations around Kunduz, Afghanistan, against the Taliban—close to the Tajikistan border. Nothing unusual. Nothing to raise the ire of the Tajiks. Odds high, these men were simple bounty hunters, sent by an unidentified source. I’d let the papers dry on the Ace and pick through them the next day. Seek sponsorship. Funding. Kill the funding—the price on our heads—and perhaps the pursuit would stop. Maybe. Fanaticism didn’t always need monetary fuel.
The papers revealed nothing. A dry hole. And out there, somewhere, they planned to come again.
Chapter 9
But this trip to the Dismal held no dangers. Only tales, laughter, brotherhood, and honest, heartfelt communication. Bo flicked on the Christmas lights wrapped around the midship mast. They provided us enough light for the evening. He fired up charcoal in the old Weber grill, proceeded to cut steaks from the backstrap of the gutted deer.
I wandered onto the Ace, grabbed a bottle of Grey Goose, and returned to occupy a duct-taped-together lawn chair. An upward cut of his knife removed one steak. He worked on the next.
“I note you’re carving our dinner with a more than vaguely familiar instrument. Hope you cleaned it since I observed its previous use.”
He turned and grinned. “Ritual and protocol. Let’s not spoil the moment.”
Bo slapped the venison steaks on the hot grill, balanced on his rock-hard belly across the top railing, and washed his hands in swamp water. He sat across from me, shifted position,
and produced a pipe and lighter from his jeans. The pipe bowl, already stuffed with dried pot buds, flared. “Want some?” He lifted the pipe in my direction, his voice choked, smoke held.
I waved the vodka bottle back, took a long swig. Night fell, and we sat alone, singular. As warriors. As brothers.
“You heard from Tango Bravo Bravo?” Bo asked. Seared meat popped on the grill. He referred to Marcus Johnson, our former Delta team leader. Tango Bravo Bravo. Marcus’s Delta Force call sign. It stood for Tough Black Bastard, an appropriate appellation. Tough as nails and an excellent leader.
“Still in Montana. Ranching. Fishing.”
“Well, give the man credit. He’s hardly hiding. There aren’t a whole lot of black ranchers in his neck of the woods.”
Marcus lived ten miles down a gravel road near the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. I visited him with regularity and knew for a fact anyone after the bounty on his head would be seen from a long way away. Besides that defensive tactic, Marcus genuinely enjoyed the big skies and isolation of his ranch.
“Does it bother you?” I asked. “That little soiree a couple of months ago?”
He took another deep hit of pot, stretched. A shoulder popped. “You’re asking about those three.” A statement, tinged with mild resignation.
“Subject de jour.”
“No, it’s not.”
The vodka swished, twirled, and burned hot on the way down. Bo jerked up, flipped the steaks.
“We killed three men, Bo.”
“No.” He took another hit of weed. “No, we didn’t.”
“And what world do you live in where three gator-bait Tajiks aren’t dead?”
“They committed suicide.”
The world according to Bo. I didn’t live there, but part of me desired his address change.
“Hard to shovel it aside.”
“Bullshit. Chapters or flow or random pings—it doesn’t matter. Life. Move on.”
He scuttled away and disappeared into the bowels of his boat. I didn’t have his capacity to let go. Death mattered. A point, a flash in time, but there and real and deep. None of the circle of life horseshit resonated. Death and killing. One lives and one dies. Memories matter, past actions count, not to be dismissed as a damn speed bump.
