Cobra Strike

by Sigmund Brouwer

  If there was something toxic in that shaft, maybe it had leaked into the underground river and been carried into Gram’s pond. That might explain why small animals were dying on Gram’s property.

  All of the pieces were nearly together for me. Except, of course, for discovering what the shaft held and how it got there.

  I hoped I would not have to find that out the hard way.

  After practice ended, I showered and changed as quickly as I could. When Waymen asked if I wanted to head out with a couple of the guys for a milk shake, I told him I needed to visit my grandmother.

  He gave me his all-star grin and told me to watch out for the Big Bad Wolf.

  I was still smiling about that as I left the high school.

  I was still smiling as I practiced my Shakespeare quotes into my tape recorder during the drive.

  I stopped smiling a mile later when I noticed a black car behind me. It stayed with me, even after I had taken two or three turns. The car was maybe a quarter of a mile back with smoked-glass windows.

  Normally, I wouldn’t have noticed. But after the weirdness with the county health inspector and the newspaper reporter, and with my mind on underground rivers and possible pollution from a big coal-mining company, the black car made me nervous.

  I shut my tape recorder off. I turned left at the next corner, turned left again a block later, and finally made another left back onto the same street I had started on. The black car stayed with me the entire time.

  It was following me.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  Would the driver try something crazy once I was on the lonely road up in the hills?

  I grabbed my tape recorder again. This time, however, I didn’t practice Shakespeare. Instead I said, “F-f-five-th-thirty-f-five PM.” I was so nervous my stutter made it hard to talk. “A c-c-ar is f-following. B-black. L-late model F-f-ord, probably a C-crown Vict-t-t-toria. I w-will k-keep rec-c-ord of events.”

  I felt stupid, as if I was in some sort of movie. But if something did happen—like the black car stopping me and the driver trying something—I would report as much as I could before hiding the tape recorder under the seat. Whoever found it later would at least know what had happened.

  As I drove, I had another idea.

  The car kept following me as I made two more turns, right to the parking lot of the sheriff’s office. Two squad cars sat in front. I stopped beside them and got out of the truck.

  Hands on my hips, I waited for the black car to approach.

  It slowed at the entrance to the parking lot, but then it kept going. I could not see inside the dark windows. I had no idea what the driver looked like. Or if there were any passengers.

  At the next corner, the car’s taillights blinked red and the black car turned.

  I waited a few minutes. The car did not come back.

  I got back in my truck and began driving again. I kept a close eye on my rearview mirror. I did not see the car again, and I made it safely to Gram’s cabin.

  When I arrived, I discovered the Johns Corporation had beaten me to her.

  chapter seventeen

  “Th-three-quarters of a m-million dollars?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if I trusted my ears with all the insects buzzing in the woods around us.

  Gram and I sat in the rockers on her front porch, watching the last of the day’s light. Fireflies glowed on and off around bushes in front of the cabin. It would have been a postcard-perfect moment of peace. Except for what Gram had just told me.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, “a feller in a black car drove up the lane this very morning and said he was from the Johns Corporation and—”

  I put up my hands as if trying to hold back a stampede.

  “B-black car?”

  “Roy, you seem particular hard of hearing today. Was it that you got banged in the head playing football? Tell me you’ve been wearing a helmet in practice.”

  She laughed at her joke. I did not.

  Black car. Johns Corporation. Where I had been yesterday. Where I had signed in and out with the security guard, leaving my name for anyone to read. It made sense. They knew what I was looking into. And in another way, it didn’t make any sense.

  “Roy?” Gram was asking. “I said, tell me you’ve been wearing a helmet in practice.”

  I nodded. “Th-this fellow...”

  “I tell you I smelled him for a polecat the minute he got out of that car. Wearing those shiny leather shoes, stepping light as if he were scared to get mud on them. Some weasel-faced guy with a missing tooth. He had a lemon-sucking grin across his face, and he flat out offered me half a million dollars for my cabin and land.”

  “B-but you just t-told me th-three-quarters of a m-million.”

  “Sure, I did.” Gram gave me a lemon-sucking grin of her own. “He started at half a million. I kept bumping him up to see how high he’d go. Just ‘cause I’m old, don’t mean my brains have leaked out of my head.”

  I grinned. “What d-did you t-tell him? I m-m-mean with that kind of m-money, you could b-buy a lot of b-bottled water.”

  She knew I was joking. “Sure, I’ll do that,” she said, “as soon as the wildlife around here learns to drink from bottles too.”

  I nodded grimly. Gram was always telling me that God gave us the world to take care of. If she let the company buy her off, the wildlife would surely suffer.

  Gram rocked for a few minutes, staring off at the low clouds. I knew better than to interrupt.

  “Roy,” she finally said, “I was tempted. Not for myself, mind you. I have all I need, and I don’t hanker none to die rich. But you know how bad I want you to go to college. That much money? A person could do a powerful lot of good with it.”

  She rocked a bit more. “Still, I asked myself what Jesus would do. And I remember how he was tempted in the desert when the devil offered him the whole world. Jesus didn’t tell himself that all he had to do was take the devil’s money, even though it would be enough to provide all the hospitals and schools and food and clothes the poor people needed. No, sir. Jesus looked that devil in the eye and told him to get lost. No amount of money would be worth losing your soul.”

  Gram turned her wrinkled smile toward me. “Believing ain’t really believing if you don’t practice it. I told that polecat I had no interest in dealing with the Johns Corporation. When I asked him if his offer had anything to do with my water going bad, he jumped like a snake had latched onto his hind end.”

  Gram never failed to impress me. To figure out that connection, I’d had to deal with the county health inspector and the newspaper reporter, test the water myself, and look at a detailed map showing how the water that fed her spring flowed past a nearby Johns Corporation mine shaft.

  I told her how impressed I was.

  She shook her head sadly. “A bag full of hammers would have been smart enough to put the Johns Corporation and my bad water together. Why else would someone from there offer me ten times what the property is worth?”

  I suddenly realized my questions about the water had reached someone important in the corporation. Someone who could send a man in a black car to follow me. Someone who could send a man out to Gram’s cabin with an offer of money.

  I told Gram about Fred, the county health inspector, and how he had discounted my tests on the water.

  “Shoot, Roy,” she said. “Everyone knows Fred at the county office has a weakness for betting on horses. That, plus he’s third cousin once removed from the Johns family. Wouldn’t be hard for them to get him to turn a blind eye. My guess is that he saw something in the water, went straight to the top of the company and flat out asked for a payoff to keep his mouth shut.”

  I told Gram about Eldon Mawther.

  She clucked her tongue. “Roy, you’re a babe among wolves. The Johns Corporation owns the Journal. A good old boy like Eldon, he ain’t interested in causing trouble with the people who butter his bread.”

  I took out the map and showed her what I had learned.
<
br />   “Young man,” she said after I showed her the underground river that fed her spring. “It’s a miracle you got this map. The man who gave it to you must not have known why you wanted it. And he must have taken a shine to you.”

  I smiled. I’d tell her that story later.

  “Look,” she said, “I don’t want you giving up on this. If a wrong has been done, it’s got to be fixed. And if no one is going to help you fix it, you’ve got to do it yourself. This here is almost enough to call a state authority. Maybe even the FBI. They ain’t afraid of the Johns Corporation.”

  “A-almost enough?” I asked.

  “Almost,” she said firmly. “What you really need to know is what’s in that mine shaft and how it got there.”

  I was afraid of that.

  “‘Course,” she said, “that ain’t nothing I want you to do. Not in a place as dangerous as a mine shaft. I’ve got some kin around here that owe me favors. Folks that work in the coal mine and know their way around the shafts. I’ll ask around real quiet and get them to find out.”

  She looked me straight in the eye. “Promise me now that you’ll sit pretty and wait. I don’t want you trying anything as foolish as doing it yourself.”

  “I promise,” I said.

  I meant that promise too. I wondered if I should tell her how that black car had followed me.

  I decided not to.

  No sense in two of us worrying.

  Besides, I told myself, this was just about money. Not about hurting people.

  Right?

  chapter eighteen

  Friday night. Game three of the season. Back home.

  The stands were jammed with people. As we trotted onto the field, I found myself looking for Waymen’s sister, Elizabeth.

  Waymen came up beside me and knocked on my helmet. “Someone special is watching you,” he said.

  Was he reading my mind?

  “Wh-who?” I said.

  “A scout from Notre Dame University. And another from North Carolina. And one more from Oklahoma.”

  “Wh-what?!”

  He grinned. “I can see no one has tried to recruit you yet. All three of them have been calling our house since early last year. Dad heard they’re all interested in watching you play now too.”

  He banged my shoulder pads. “Just think. We could play on the same university team. Cool, huh?”

  I grinned back. That would be cool. Having a friend sure beat not having one.

  But for me to get to the same university as Waymen, I needed to play well.

  Tonight we were up against the Cardwell Cardinals, one of two undefeated teams in the league. If we beat them, we would go to two and one, and so would they. Which meant if our record was still tied by the playoffs, we would have the advantage because we had beaten them.

  Unfortunately their offense was as good as ours.

  For each of our touchdowns, they answered in return.

  The game became a shootout.

  They couldn’t stop Whalin’ Waymen Whitley. But we couldn’t stop them either.

  When the dust began to settle at the end of the fourth quarter, we were on the losing end of a 42–35 score. I had made twenty receptions and scored two touchdowns. That wouldn’t matter, though, unless we won.

  We got the ball on our five-yard line with less than three minutes left in the game.

  Waymen faced us in the huddle. “John Elway,” he said, “in the ‘86 AFC Championship against Cleveland. Down 20–13. Ninety-eight yards to go with less than two minutes in the game. And Denver won.”

  Waymen gave us his big grin. “Do you believe?”

  “We believe!” we shouted.

  “All right,” Waymen said, “Coach wants us to run a crisscross with both outside slants coming back in. Got it?”

  We got it.

  And so did Waymen. He fired a pass up the middle as I stretched my hands over my shoulders. The ball grazed my fingertips and popped off the helmet of their cornerback. The ball popped up, and then it settled in my hands like I’d had a string attached to it.

  I carried the ball ten more yards before both their safeties slammed me down.

  Back in the huddle, Waymen grinned again. “Not often you see a quarterback play a pool shot like that, huh.”

  That was one of the good things about Waymen. He kept us loose. And as he promised, he took us down the field, just like Elway did against Cleveland in ‘86.

  The final play—with five seconds left in the game—was a quarterback sneak that Waymen took across the line untouched.

  Now we were down only 42–41. All we needed was the extra point to tie the game.

  The crowd screamed and cheered as Waymen took advantage of the break to trot over to the sidelines. When he came back, he met us in the huddle.

  “Boys,” he said, “I talked Coach into letting us go for the two-pointer. I mean, if we go into overtime, they get the ball. And they’ve been going through us like...um...food through a goose. I don’t want to give them that chance. What do you say we beat them right now?”

  “Yeah!” we all shouted back.

  “We’re gonna give them a play-action fake,” Waymen said. He looked at the offensive linemen. “Think you can explode off the line like we’re going to run the ball?”

  He didn’t wait for their answer. “I’m going to need two receivers in motion on the left side. And Linden, you trip and fall over the goal line.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “See,” he said, “I’ll fake the handoff. That should draw their cornerback at least a step toward me. If you fall, he’ll relax. As you get up, angle toward the goalpost. Stop in front and spin toward me. The ball will be in your hands.”

  And that’s how it went.

  Our center snapped the ball. Waymen tucked it into the running back’s belly, and then he pulled it away. The running back burst for the goal line as if he had the ball, drawing their players toward him. Waymen held the ball down at the side of his leg.

  As I reached the goalpost—with no one on me—Waymen brought the ball up and fired it into my hands.

  Two points! Putting us ahead 43–42! End of game!

  It was sweet enough as a victory, but it got even better after I had showered and changed.

  A man wearing a Notre Dame jacket was waiting outside the locker room for me. He was a short skinny guy whose handlebar mustache curved under his big nose.

  “Roy Linden?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “You played a big game,” he said. “Any chance I can make arrangements to talk to you and your folks sometime?”

  Wow.

  I wondered if I was dreaming.

  Then, less than ten minutes after he had finished talking to me, I wondered if I was living a nightmare.

  chapter nineteen

  I had parked my truck in the corner of the parking lot. The light above it was out, and that put the truck in shadows.

  That should have made me cautious. The light had been on when I parked there. I didn’t think about that until it was too late and someone stepped out of the shadows.

  He was a tall man with shoulders as wide as a cement truck. He wore a black jacket and a black ball cap that made his face impossible to see. I wished I had a flashlight.

  “Boy,” he said, “you and me is going to have a talk.”

  He spoke country, his voice a drawl that made the word “talk” sound like “taw-uk.”

  “And don’t do anything stupid like try to run,” he said. “I’d hate to have to get rough.”

  I looked hard. He was still in the shadow of the truck. His hands were out of sight. Did he have a gun?

  He answered my unspoken question.

  “I don’t plan on getting rough with you,” he said. “I ain’t so stupid as to try anything here in the parking lot. Fact is I don’t even have Kentucky boxing gloves in my pocket.”

  Kentucky boxing gloves. I shivered at the thought. Some places in the hills, knife fights were so common tha
t knives were known as boxing gloves.

  “No, sir,” he said. “But your gramma, she lives alone. Isolated, if you get my drift.”

  “Y-y-you h-hurt h-her and I’ll sp-spend my l-life h-hunting you d-down.”

  “I won’t have to touch a hair on her head if you just git in the truck and sit and talk with me.” He shook his head. “‘Course, the way you talk, it might take us till dawn.”

  He laughed. Not me. My hands were clenched so tight my palms began to hurt where my nails were digging into them.

  “Come on,” he said, “I jest want to talk. If I was going to hurt you, I’d have found another place and used other ways. And believe me, I know ‘em all.”

  As he walked to the passenger door, I got into the truck on my side and saw the tape recorder sitting in the center of the seat. The tape recorder I had used to report the black car that followed me. I didn’t want this man to see it.

  I casually tossed my jacket over the tape recorder. Then I took a deep breath.

  What now?

  The passenger door was locked. All I had to do was lock my door, start the truck, and drive away.

  But then Gram might get hurt. And no matter what I did to him after—because most surely I would hunt him down—it wouldn’t make up for Gram getting hurt.

  I looked over at the passenger side. He was waiting. I took so long to decide, he finally bent down to look at me.

  I rolled down my window so I could shout for help if I needed to. Then I reached over and unlocked the other door. He slid onto the seat. The collar of his jacket was up and his cap was still pulled down low. I couldn’t see his face.

  “You were thinking of leaving me behind, weren’t you?” he asked.

  My silence was answer enough.

  “Good to see you were smart, boy. That should make this talk a lot easier.”

  “Wh-hat d-do you w-want?” I was mad that my stutter made me sound afraid.

  “I want you to stop messing around with this water thing. You just sit tight and listen while I spell things out.”

  Before I could answer, a voice rang across the parking lot.

  “Hey, Roy!” It was Waymen, jogging toward the truck.