Breaking Cover (Tony Wolf/Tim Buckthorn)

by J. D. Rhoades

  HE STAGGERED slightly, his eyes wide, his mouth gaping in shock. He didn’t drop the gun. I shot him again. Now everyone was screaming. Johnny was howling in stunned rage and pain as he fell to his knees, the gun dropping from his hands. The mother and child were babbling something in Spanish that sounded like prayers. Even Florida Bob was yelling, “What the fuck—” I swiveled my weapon toward him. He hadn’t even taken his own pistol out of his waistband. “Bob,” I said, “get your hands in the air.”

  He looked as if he’d been poleaxed. “Get your goddamn hands up!” I yelled.

  His hands shot skyward. “You shot him, man,” Bob said in a voice filled with wonder. “You fucking shot Johnny Trent.”

  I could hear Johnny behind me, groaning. “Come here,” I ordered Florida Bob. He walked over to me slowly. “Turn around,” I said.

  “Johnny’s hurt, man,” Bob said.

  “I know that, Bob. I’m the one who shot him. Now turn the fuck around!” I shouted, my voice cracking with the strain. Bob turned around, and I snatched the pistol out of the back of his pants. Now I had a gun in each hand. “Get over there next to him,” I ordered.

  He complied, still shuffling like a sleepwalker. When he got to Johnny, he knelt down. “Johnny?” he said, his voice unsteady. “Hang on, brother. You’re gonna be okay.”

  “My legs,” Johnny moaned. “I can’t feel my legs.”

  Bob looked up at me. “You gotta call a doctor, man,” he said.

  I looked over at the cooker. He had gotten up off the ground. He and his family were gathered in a tight knot by the camper. “Get out of here,” I told them. They still looked shell-shocked. “Vámonos,” I yelled.

  “Axel,” Florida Bob said.

  “Shut up,” I snapped back. Keeping the pistols trained on Bob and Johnny, I walked over and scooped up Johnny’s gun. I had to stick Bob’s in my waistband to do it. Now I had all the guns except the ones in the truck. I looked at Johnny and Bob on the ground, then at the lab. I turned to the cooker. He was looking nervously at the Quonset hut where the lab was housed. “What’s the matter?” I said, laughing a little hysterically. “Leave something on the stove?” He rattled something at me in rapid Spanish. All I caught was the word fuego.

  “I don’t give a fuck if the whole thing burns down,” I snapped. I motioned with the gun. “Now get out of here.” They finally seemed to get the message. They didn’t even stop to get anything out of the trailer, just piled into an old Cadillac parked behind it. The cooker yelled something to me in Spanish as they drove past. It didn’t sound like “thank you.” I turned back to where Bob knelt by Johnny.

  “You’ve got to get him a doctor, man,” Bob insisted. “He’s gonna die.”

  I stood over him. “Johnny,” I said. “Tell me who your inside man is. Who’s the Fed, Johnny?”

  He coughed weakly. “Fuck you,” he whispered. “Traitor.”

  “I’ll get you a doctor if you tell me, Johnny. Otherwise I’ll stand here and watch you bleed out.”

  “Holy fuck,” Bob said. “You’re . . . Axel, are you a goddamn cop?”

  I ignored him. “Tell me, Johnny.” But Johnny’s eyes were closed. I could hear the rattle of his labored breathing, but he was either out or making a good show of it. I raised the gun and fired into the ground beside his head. The sharp report made Florida Bob flinch away. He tried to get up and fell on his ass. Johnny didn’t move. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of light. I turned to look and saw a glow of flames coming from the cracked windows of the Quonset hut. Then there was a sudden loud thump and the air was full of flying metal and glass.

  I GOT my arms up quickly enough so that a sliver that would have sliced my face open slashed my forearm instead. Bob screamed again. I bolted for the truck, my arm streaming blood. As I slid behind the wheel and started the engine, I looked over. The Quonset hut was like a portal to hell, billowing flames and smoke from inside. The trees nearby were starting to catch. Bob was dragging Johnny away from the inferno. Something else inside the building went up, blowing the entire front of the building out in a rolling ball of flame. I hit the gas and tore out of there. I looked at the gash on my arm. It was flowing freely but not deep, and not spurting as it would be if I’d hit an artery. I knew I needed to get a bandage on it, but first I needed to get the hell out of there.

  The truck bounced and rattled even worse going out as I gunned it down the road without regard to the ruts and gullies. A couple of times I was jolted so severely that I worried I’d snap the axle, but when I bounced onto the hard road, I was off. I needed to get away before Florida Bob brought the entire Brotherhood down on me. I didn’t much favor my chances if Nathan or Clay Trent got their hands on me. But first, I wanted to get to the Spellings. I wanted that list. I’d pile the entire computer rig into the back of the Suburban if I had to. Along the way I stopped and improvised a bandage out of an old T-shirt I found in the back of the truck. I also moved the two machine guns to the front seat.

  I slowed down as I got near the Spelling residence. I didn’t want to get stopped for speeding with blood all over the seats, not to mention a brace of submachine guns and . . .

  I slowed even further and looked back. I couldn’t see the two duffel bags full of cash in the cargo area, but I knew they were still there. I had no idea how much I was carrying, but it looked like a shitload. All of the liquid assets of the Brotherhood—and the Trents—were mobile right now, and I was carrying at least a high percentage of them.

  I pulled into the Spellings’ driveway. I tried to look as inconspicuous as possible as I walked to the door. It was no easy task in a leather jacket and boots, with one arm wrapped in a bloody rag.

  I stopped and drew the pistol, moving slowly. The front door was slightly ajar. I nudged it with the barrel of the gun. There was no sound from inside. The only sound from outside was the muffled burr of a lawn mower engine from down the street. I slipped inside.

  Chuck Spelling hung from a rope tied to one of the beams in the living room. His tongue protruded grotesquely from his mouth, and his eyes bulged from his head as if in horror. His weight had stretched the muscles and tendons so that his neck seemed absurdly long. His wife sat in the big easy chair, facing him. She was immaculately dressed as always, but she sprawled bonelessly in the chair like a sullen teenager, her head lolling to one side. She held a large-caliber handgun loosely in her right hand. There was a spray of blood and brains across the wall opposite. The smell of cordite, blood, and shit, the familiar odors of violent death, lingered in the air.

  I knew what I would probably find, but I checked anyway. The computer room had been stripped, cables and cords hanging like veins and tendons from a clumsily severed limb. Someone had gotten here before me. Someone who knew what the Spellings had. Someone who wanted to make damn sure it never came to light. I didn’t miss the irony of the fact that whoever had done this had accomplished exactly what I had wanted to do: tear the whole operation loose and rip it from the Internet. And they had made sure that Chuck and Linda wouldn’t be around to be interrogated. Whoever had done this knew they’d never last, that they’d spill everything. I didn’t know if the person or people who’d beaten me here had murdered poor Chuck and Linda and arranged it to look like a double suicide or if they’d offered them the out as an alternative to something much worse. I had a strong suspicion that Johnny’s cousin Clay had been here, and Clay would definitely have been able to convince them that there were far worse alternatives than death by their own hands. As far as I was concerned, it was an academic question. I was blown. Screwed. In the open. It was time to run.

  But it seemed that the day wasn’t finished with me yet.

  I WAS on my way out of town when I saw Clay’s truck coming the other way. I looked in my rearview and saw the taillights flash. The truck slowed and began to turn around. I thought about trying to outrun him, but that might not work. Or maybe I was still hyped on adrenaline, I don’t know. Anyway, I slowed, let him follow me
out to farm country. I pulled onto a narrow two-lane feeder road and sat there as Clay pulled out behind. He got out and started walking toward the truck. His companion, Stoney, followed. When Clay got a few feet away, I swung out and trained the machine gun on his chest. He stopped. “Axel,” he said calmly, “what the fuck are you doing? Where’s Johnny?”

  “I shot him,” I said. Then: “Don’t even fucking think about it, Stoney!” as I saw Stoney reach into his jacket.

  “You’re making a big fucking mistake here, boy,” Clay said. “Now tell me where Johnny is.”

  “First,” I said, “you and Stoney are going to take those jackets off. Then you’re going to put your guns on the hood and go stand on the other side of the road.” They didn’t move. “Do it!” I screamed. Slowly, they shucked off the jackets and dropped them at their feet.

  “Guns out, between thumb and forefinger,” I said. “Use your off hand.”

  “My what?” Stoney said. His shaved head glistened with sweat. “Your left, Stoney,” Clay said. “The one you don’t shoot with.” With their guns on the hood, I motioned them over to the side of the road with the barrel of my weapon. I walked over to Clay’s pickup and took his and Stoney’s pistols. I was going to have enough stock to open up my own gun shop at this rate. I looked into the cab of the truck. There were two more duffels in there. I also noticed the gas gauge. The tank was full. I turned back to Clay and Stoney. “There’s two duffels in the back of the Suburban,” I said. “Get them out.”

  “You little pissant,” Clay snarled. “You think you can fucking rob us? You think we won’t find you?”

  I raised the gun higher. “I think you won’t be alive to find out, you don’t get moving right fucking now.” If looks could kill, Clay’s glare would have left me in a bloody heap by the truck. But looks can’t kill, and machine guns can, so Clay and Stoney did what I said. When they were done, I had them stand by the front passenger door of the Suburban.

  “I’m going to find you, you cocksucker,” Clay said. “I’m going to find you and I’m going to cut pieces off you and make you eat them. I’m going to make you last for fucking days, McCabe.”

  “I think you’d rather find Johnny,” I said. “Right?”

  Clay struggled to get the answer out. It was killing him to not know, but it hurt almost as bad for him to admit he needed something from me. “Yeah,” he finally choked out.

  “He’s at the lab on Fire Tower Road,” I said. “Florida Bob’s with him. He’s been shot. I don’t know if he’s still alive. You can maybe save his life. But you’ll have to call someone else to do it.” I raised the gun and fired. Clay and Stoney dove to one side. “Because you’re not doing it in this car,” I finished. They looked up from where they lay on the ground, staring at the shredded front tire of the Suburban.

  I got in the truck and drove away. I kept driving until I got to Pine Lake.

  THE ROOM was silent when Wolf had finished speaking. After a moment, Gaby asked, “And you hid yourself at Pine Lake why?”

  Wolf shrugged. “Seemed like a nice place.”

  “So how did you . . . I mean, you made a whole new identity for yourself.”

  “It’s not hard,” he said. “If you know what you’re doing. And if you mostly deal in cash, you don’t need much ID.” He laughed. “One thing I had plenty of was cash.”

  “And you could have stayed here forever, not drawing any attention to yourself . . .”

  “Yeah, well,” he said. “Things didn’t really work out that way.”

  “Because you saved those boys.”

  He shrugged again. “Didn’t have much choice.”

  “No,” she said thoughtfully. “No, I guess you didn’t. Not you.” She reached out and turned the recorder off. She put her hand on his. “What are you going to do now?”

  He looked at her without expression. “Probably die.”

  She pulled her hand away. “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not?” he demanded. “It’s true. I could come in, but wherever they put me, there’s somebody who’ll find out. And they’ll tell the Brotherhood. And they’ll find me, and then Clay will kill me as slowly and painfully as he can. It’s what he’s good at. He enjoys it. I could run again, but it’s pretty obvious I can’t hide. Not with my picture everywhere.” He took a deep breath. “No,” he said, “I’m pretty well screwed, thanks to you. You and your friend killed me as sure as if you’d put a gun to my head.” He picked up the pistol from the table and handed it to her, butt first. “Go ahead,” he demanded. “Finish what you started.”

  She was crying now. “Stop. Please stop.”

  “Go ahead!” he screamed in her face. “It’s a hell of a lot kinder than what the Trents and the Brotherhood will do to me.” He shoved the gun at her again. She jumped up and slapped it away.

  “What do you want me to say?” she screamed back into his face. “How the hell was I supposed to know? I was just doing my goddamn job!”

  They sat staring at one another, the tears running down Gaby’s face. Finally Wolf slumped back in the chair. “Fine,” he said. He sounded weary enough to sleep for a thousand years. “Okay. It’s not your fault. Your job. Right.” She kept sobbing. “Okay,” he said. “It’s okay. Quit crying.”

  She took a tissue out of her purse and dabbed at her eyes. “Go to hell,” she said, then blew her nose.

  “Look, I’m sorry, okay?” he said. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been under a little bit of stress lately.” He sighed. “You’re right, though. It’s not your fault. It’s the Trents.” He thought for a moment, then stood up. He bent over and picked up the gun from the carpet. “If I’m going to die, all that’s left for me is to pick how to do it. And it won’t be screaming for mercy.” He racked the slide on the weapon. “I’m taking the truck,” he said. “You’ve got a phone here. Do me a favor and wait an hour before you use it.”

  She looked up at him, startled. The man who had a few moments ago been slumped in his chair, defeated, was gone. He seemed to have never existed. “What . . . what are you going to do?”

  His smile chilled her. “Break cover.”

  SO ARE we going to talk about this?” Brett Harper said.

  Kendra Wolf thought of a number of evasive replies:

  Talk about what? Or We have been talking about it, referring to the investigation. But she knew it wouldn’t work. Brett could be sweet, but he was dogged. Once he set his mind on something— the solution to a case, a promotion, her—he would keep going until he got it. She could tell from the look in his eyes and the set of his jaw that this was the conversation he wanted to have and by God, the conversation she was going to have.

  She sighed and laid the transcripts of the witness interviews on the table. They were in her room in the old mom-and-pop “motor court” that was the best Pine Lake had to offer in the way of accommodations. It wasn’t a bad place: Everything was clean, if a bit worn around the edges, and the proprietor had a plate of warm ham biscuits on the office counter every morning. The agents who’d taken over the place made jokes about Mayberry and Aunt Bee, but they always took the biscuits. The rooms, though, were tiny. Two people in one room with the curtain drawn felt as if they were right on top of one another.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” she said slowly.

  “Just tell me how you feel about this,” he said. “You’ve been totally shut off from me since the news—”

  “I don’t know how I feel, Brett!” The words came out more vehemently than she had intended, more angry. She could see his jaw clench. Great, she thought. This is really helping.

  “Look,” she said a little more calmly. “Four days ago, I was convinced my husband was dead. Now I know he’s alive. But I have no idea why he hasn’t contacted me in four years. So I’m angry. I’m hurt. I’m worried. I’m confused. And the confusion makes me angry again because I don’t like being confused.”

  He nodded. This last was something he could understand. Unanswered questions, he
had always told her, seemed to bother him more than they bothered other people. They nagged at him, robbed him of sleep, made him irritable. It made him a good agent. It also made him a bit of a pain in the ass to work with. But Kendra had always had the same feelings. He was one of the few people, she felt, who really got that part of her. One of the other ones, of course, was Tony. Which brought her back to square one.

  “I understand,” Brett was saying. “You really need to know more facts before you know how to feel.”

  At first, she was appalled. What a bloodless way of looking at things, she thought. Not knowing how to feel until you had all the facts . . . that sounded like something an android would say.

  Again, she thought of Tony. One thing he never had trouble with was knowing how he felt. It was one thing he had never had any trouble telling her, either. She had often wondered how two people so different had ended up together. She knew she had a reputation as an ice queen with her co-workers, while Tony had had a natural talent for being at ease with people. He had put her at ease with herself.

  Suddenly, she missed him so badly it seemed as if her heart would burst. Not now, she said angrily to herself. Not here. You have one more thing to do.

  “Brett,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady despite the lump in her throat, “there’s something you need to know.”

  He caught the tone in her voice and sat down in the rickety chair opposite her. “What?”

  She couldn’t look him in the eye. “I think I might be pregnant.”

  He didn’t answer right away. She looked up. His face was still and expressionless, but he was blinking rapidly. Processing the information, she thought. Trying to decide how to feel. The flash of hatred she felt for him was brief, there and gone in an instant, but it staggered her as much as her earlier yearning. It vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving a burn of resentment behind. How can you be so calm? she thought. For God’s sake, react. Yell yippee! Scream at me. Punch the wall. Anything.