by Bob Mayer
She was lying too. She had a little twitch on her left eyebrow. Mac had taught him how to look for tells. She’d have been a lousy poker player.
Doc knew he was lying, but he had a good reason; he had to keep secrets larger than himself. In his business, one learned that a secret could only be protected by lies. She was lying because she’d already made a decision to never meet him again. He’d known that from his first look, and he knew it was because he had not been paying attention, anxiously awaiting her entrance and not pulling out her chair for her.
Some women need that chair pulled out. She was one. She knew if he wasn’t focused on her from the start, she could never get that focus.
He did give her points because she’d accurately judged him so quickly and just as quickly made her decision. Decisiveness was good.
“And your credit score?” she asked after their salads arrived and before the meal, as the shuttlecock was drifting lazily toward the floor.
“My what?”
“Credit score?”
“I do not know.”
The tell was twitching and he knew that was the wrong, wrong answer. At that moment Doc would rather have been anywhere and, despite knowing what it meant, he actually was glad when his phone began playing “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”
* * *
“Good friends help you move,” Mac said. “Great friends help you move a body.”
“I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” Kirk said, pulling back slightly on the slide of his MK23, making sure there was a round in the chamber. It was a glaring sign of the nervousness held by the other three in the black SUV because they’d all supposedly checked their weapons before entering the vehicle.
But it was also a reminder.
“Eagle?” Mac asked.
Eagle sighed, but didn’t reply. Kirk reached across and drew Eagle’s pistol. He pulled the slide back and confirmed there was no round in the chamber. He pulled it all the way back, chambering one.
“Make sure it’s on safe,” Mac said, “ ’cause we don’t want Eagle shooting his dick off.”
“My finger is my safety,” Roland said, the refrain of all shooters in Special Ops. “And really, really good friends help you make a body.”
“And your dick is going to kill you,” Mac said. “How much did you blow in Vegas this time?”
“Not much,” Roland said, but he was shifting into action mode and even Mac couldn’t needle him out of that.
Eagle was driving, because Eagle always drove. Kirk was in the passenger seat because this was his turf, northwest Arkansas, just above the Ozark National Forest and below the loop of the Buffalo River National Park. Roland and Mac were jammed in the backseat, Roland’s knees shoved into the back of Eagle’s seat, which bothered him, but it wasn’t like Roland could make himself shrink. And Eagle needed as much legroom as possible.
If Nada was there, he would have made Roland and Mac switch places. But Nada was with Zoey, a story none of them believed, because no one believed Zoey was real, so who the hell knew where Nada was?
They’d left the Snake in an isolated field twelve miles back, a place Kirk said it would be safe, but like any good driver, Eagle had shut all the hatches and put on the security system. Anyone touched the Snake, they’d get zapped with enough volts to put ’em out but not kill ’em. They’d still be lying next to the aircraft by the time the team got back from its vacation mission.
If they got back.
“This is a town?” Eagle asked as they approached Parthenon.
“I thought Texas had some real shitholes,” Mac drawled, “but you boys up here got us beat.”
“Reminds me of home,” Roland noted with all sincerity and perhaps a twinge of longing, angling his commando dagger in the sunlight, checking the edge.
“This isn’t Senators Club,” Eagle said, referring to the gated community where they’d run their last Rift mission.
A sign warned that Highway 327 did a hard juke to the left at the stop sign. It was as best they could tell since bullet holes had chewed most of the sign off. The stop sign, which seemed to anchor the town to the intersection, was also riddled. The place was more an intersection than a metropolis.
“Take a right,” Kirk said, taking them off the two-lane hardball onto a one-and-a-half-lane paved road that had seen better days.
“I remember the plan and the terrain,” Eagle said, but gently, knowing Kirk was nervous enlisting them on a personal mission. But who better to help you than the comrades you entrusted your life to?
The paved road gave way to a single dirt-rutted lane.
“Mac?” Kirk asked.
“Roger,” Mac said. Eagle tapped the brakes and Mac was out the door with his pack and rifle case and into the underbrush on the north side of the road. Roland put half of the backseat down and assumed the prone position, trying to get out of sight. Combined with the tinted windows, it was a bit of overkill perhaps, but Roland was going into combat mode and the word overkill never applied.
It wasn’t easy, given he had body armor on and his combat vest. He’d argued he should be the one with the rifle on overwatch, but this was Kirk’s op. Kirk knew Roland would have more value standing behind him as a presence. He’d also be less likely to start shooting people by misjudging threats through a sniper scope. Mac was more levelheaded with bullets. He fired them like he owned them and each one cost a lot.
Eagle continued on and they reached a stream. There was no bridge and Eagle plowed into the water. They roared up out on the other side.
They reached a fork in the road and Eagle turned right. They switchbacked up a slight rise and then Eagle stopped the SUV. Not part of the plan, but there were two men standing in the road with AR-15s aimed at the windshield. They wore Arkansas formal attire, meaning they were draped in one-piece camouflage hunting outfits and wearing beat-up baseball caps.
Kirk got out, hands up. “I need to talk to Ray.”
“I remember you,” one of the men said. “You Pads’s oldest boy.” He walked a couple steps closer to the SUV and peered at the tinted windshield. “Who’s your friend?”
“Buddy from the army.”
“You got bad choices in buddies,” the man said as he spit tobacco into the dirt. “We don’t like his kind ’round here.”
“You mean intelligent?” Kirk asked.
“Don’t get smart with me.”
Kirk laughed. “That’s called irony.”
The other man spoke up. “What you want with Ray?”
“It’s between me and him,” Kirk said. “Family business which ain’t your business.” Kirk was falling back into the lingo of Winthrop Carter, the man he’d been before the Nightstalkers and before the army.
The first man shook his head. “Not if I don’t let you go talk to him.”
“It’s about the kid and your sister,” the other man said. “Ain’t it?”
Kirk nodded. “Yes.”
The second man shook his head. “You can go talk to Ray, but you gonna see he ain’t listening to people much anymore. No matter who it is or what they say. He ain’t the same as you remember. He ain’t the same as anyone remembers.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Kirk asked.
The second man shrugged. “Don’t know, but he’s in charge now and no one is going to ask him. He’s mean as a cottonmouth if you confront him.”
“You packing?” the first man asked.
“I am.”
“Leave it here.”
“I won’t.”
The man aimed right at Kirk’s face. “I said leave it here.”
“I was issued my weapon by the government and I won’t be leaving it here,” Kirk said. “And ask your buddy to take a look between your eyes.”
The second redneck glanced over and saw the flickering red dot resting between his buddy’s eyes. “You got a shooter out there?”
“Got a couple of shooters,” Kirk said. “I don’t mean any trouble for Ray but we have to talk. You know you can
’t stand between family.”
The man indicated for his partner to step aside and they waved for him to pass. As they went by, that guy pulled out a cell phone and made a call.
Kirk got back in and Eagle drove through the roadblock, Roland still crunched down in the back.
“I could kill them,” Roland said. “‘Don’t like his kind’? Let me kill him.”
“Don’t worry,” Kirk said over his shoulder. “He’s TDTL. Someone will do that soon enough.”
“TDTL?” Roland asked.
“Too dumb to live,” Kirk explained.
“I do appreciate the offer though, Roland,” Eagle said. Then he began humming the theme from Deliverance.
“Funny,” Kirk muttered, but he was focused on what was ahead. A large ramshackle house, which had obviously been added to bit by bit, sat on top of a small knob. A barn was to the right, except the barn looked to be in a lot better shape than the house, with a new metal roof and all the windows covered with heavy wood shutters. Several smokestacks punched through the roof, with smoke lazily drifting forth. “They’re cooking,” Kirk said. “And it’s a big operation. Bigger than what was here before.”
“I thought your uncle didn’t use?” Eagle said.
“He didn’t, but a lot’s changed here since I been gone.”
Nodding at the house, Eagle said: “I bet you the inside looks better than the outside.” The SUV stopped in front of the house. Kirk got out while Eagle stayed in the driver’s seat, engine running.
“I got two shooters upstairs,” Eagle informed Roland, looking down at the display. Instead of a GPS it showed the input from a thermal camera mounted into the molding on the front bumper. “Windows A3 and A5.” Kirk had laid out the building to them the previous night and they’d designated sides, floors, windows… everything, so that they could quickly designate targets.
Google Earth helped.
The front door swung open and Kirk’s uncle Ray came out, his left arm looped over the shoulder of a woman. Three men fanned out behind him, staying on the porch, their boots creaking down the worn wooden planks, two ARs and one pump-action shotgun being brought into play. The barrels were pointed down.
For now.
Ray had a large .357 Magnum tucked in a holster on his left side. The woman helped Ray down the three stairs to the dirt path. An incongruous white picket fence about three Mark Twain stories short of a new paint job separated him from Kirk, who halted at the gate.
“Ray.”
The older man had his head cocked slightly to the left. He nodded. “Winthrop. Been quite a while since you’ve been home.”
“I’ve been busy, Ray.”
“Fighting other people’s wars,” Ray said. “Told you it was dumb. Fought in Vietnam. For what? Now we buy furniture from the same gooks we used to bomb.”
Kirk spread his hands. “What’s going on, Ray? What are you doing up here in Woodrell’s place?”
Ray laughed. “Ain’t no more Woodrell. He’s in the swamp. Got tired of him pushing, so I pushed back.”
Kirk shook his head. “I don’t get it, Ray. Meth took my dad and you helped keep it away. Now you’re running it?”
“Meth didn’t take your dad,” Ray said. “Being stupid killed your dad.”
“You told me you’d take care of—”
Ray cut him off. “Never said such a thing.”
“Ray, listen—”
“You got shooters out there in the woods?” Ray asked.
“Yes.”
“I got shooters too,” Ray said.
“You promised to look after my sisters and brothers.”
“I am,” Ray said.
“You got Parker working up here,” Kirk said. “How is that looking after him? Dee said you slapped her when she came here to get him. You don’t slap women, Ray. You know that. Especially not my sister.”
Kirk could see the woman wasn’t window dressing. She was supporting a good portion of Ray’s weight. She was like many women in the hills, possibly aged beyond her years. She could have been an old twenty-five or a young fifty.
“What’s wrong with you?” Kirk asked.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Ray said. “Tell your nigger friend to get out of the car.”
Kirk blinked. His uncle had never used that word even though it was more than common in the area. Deep in a dark drunk, Ray had told Kirk several times how his life had been saved twice in Vietnam by his best friend, an African American (which is the term Ray had always used) from Atlanta.
Eagle got out of the SUV and walked up beside Kirk.
“Couldn’t find the shooters,” a voice called out from behind as the two men who’d been blocking the road broke out of the tree line on the right, twenty yards away. “We looked, Ray.”
“You didn’t look good enough,” Ray said.
“I know he’s kin,” the man continued, “but look who he come down here with. We don’t”—the man didn’t get another word out as Ray pulled the Magnum and fired. The bullet hit the man in the shoulder, the large round pirouetting him 360 degrees.
At the sound of the gun, Roland came out of the back of the SUV, his M249 at the ready. A red dot centered on Ray’s forehead as Roland aimed at the house.
Kirk held his hands up. “Hold on, hold on! Everyone just calm down.”
“I never promised you nothing,” Ray said.
“He thinks he’s telling the truth,” Eagle said in a low voice to Kirk.
“What?” Kirk was confused, but Roland was ignoring both of them, his light machine gun at the ready. And the red dot was steady on Ray’s head.
“Ray,” Kirk said in a louder voice. “Come on. This isn’t you.”
Ray laughed and tapped the side of his head. “I see things now, Parker. I see the way things need to be.”
“I’m not Parker,” Kirk said. “I’m Winthrop.”
Ray blinked, and there was a window into him through his eyes. Kirk looked at the woman, then the other gunmen. “You let him do this? To all of you?”
The woman spit. “Shut your trap, boy. Your uncle is the toughest son of a bitch this here county ever made. You don’t be talking trash about him.”
“He doesn’t know reality,” Eagle said in his low voice. “Prefrontal cortex is fried. Wet brain, given what you say about his drinking. They all don’t know it. He’s fabulating.”
Roland caught that last part. “He’s what?”
“He’s inventing his own reality,” Eagle said. He took a step closer to Kirk, but spoke in a voice they could all hear. “You would never hit Dee, would you, Ray?”
Ray blinked, more twitched. “I never hit Dee.”
Kirk closed his eyes briefly. “Dee would never lie to me.”
“It just gets worse,” Eagle said to Kirk. “There’s no cure.”
“Get away from him!” Ray yelled as a young girl ran to the man he’d wounded, trying to tend to his wound.
“Ray!” Kirk caught his uncle’s attention. “You’re sick. Let me help you.”
“Girl,” Ray said, lifting his pistol toward the young girl who was pressing down on her father’s wound. “You git, or I’ll—”
Kirk lifted his arm and fired before anyone could react. The bullet hit Ray in the left thigh and knocked him down like a hammer.
No one else fired as Roland swept the muzzle of his machine gun back and forth.
Kirk walked forward. He knelt next to his uncle. “You’re sick, Ray. I’ll get you care.”
Ray was shaking his head, eyes blinking in confusion. “I didn’t do nothing wrong. I didn’t.”
Kirk cradled his uncle’s head in his lap. “I know. I’ll get you care. The—”
His next words were cut off as Roland’s cell phone began playing “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” followed by Eagle’s, then in the distance Mac’s, and lastly Kirk’s.
“We got to go,” Roland said.
“I’ve got 911 on the way,” Eagle said. “He won’t be hurting anyone, anymore. And it
isn’t his fault.”
* * *
“It stinks,” Zoey said.
Nada couldn’t argue with his niece’s assessment of the La Brea Tar Pits. He felt uncomfortable in his civvies, never mind not having body armor. He did have his MK23 in a hip holster under his loose jacket because he’d as likely go somewhere unarmed as not breathe. They were seated at a bench facing the pits. It was a sunny, Southern California winter day.
“It’s got history,” Nada ventured, glancing at the brochure he’d taken from the museum lobby. “A lot of animals have died after getting stuck in there. They still do. Birds and things.”
“Gross,” Zoey said while Nada considered a tar pit as a weapon. He looked out at the black goo and imagined camouflaging it with a layer of sand and leaves. Static, but effective as an obstacle. A person could channel an attacking force using such an obstacle. He remembered the quicksand in Malaysia where he’d been sent from Delta Force to go through a tracking school run by former headhunters. They had pointed out how game moved around such obstacles in predictable patterns.
At least they said they were “former,” but Nada had had his doubts. Lots of people said they were former whatever, but in the long run, one tended to go back to one’s roots.
“I’m hungry,” Zoey said in a voice pitched about a year less than her five, which any parent would take as a warning sign. But Nada wasn’t trained in those familial arts. He had picked up that his brother hadn’t wanted to let the two of them go out alone, but it had never crossed his mind it was because of him, not Zoey.
As she got up and began spinning and twirling, another sign of wanting to move on from the bubbling black graveyard, he thought of Scout and he felt a pang of something.
A more normal person could have told him he missed the young girl from North Carolina who’d helped him on their last mission. Nada figured it was the hot dog he’d eaten.
“Can you do a cartwheel?” he asked Zoey.
She paused and looked at him. “I think so.”
“On the grass,” Nada said, having at least that much kid-sense to get her off the paved path.
