Watchers in the Woods

by William W. Johnstone

  “So arrest us!” Monroe yelled.

  “We have no facilities to hold you. Sorry, but you’ll all have to leave.”

  “Give us our guns, man. Give us a fightin’ chance!”

  “Sorry. None of you seems to have a valid license to carry a gun. And since it’s not hunting season, you don’t have any need to carry firearms. Why don’t you take up fishing?”

  “At least it’s a chance,” Jim Bob said, shaking his pant leg. Out of piss he had made a bigger mess.

  “I’d a soon they just go on an’ shoot me,” Seymour said. “Them links is the most horrible lookin’ things I ever seen in all my life.”

  “I’ll get out of this,” Monroe said. “And when I do, I’ll come lookin’ for you, CIA man.”

  “I don’t wanna go!” Oscar changed his tune.

  “Move,” the SEAL said.

  “Come on,” Monroe told his intrepid little band. “We’ll hang on the edge of the timber and after the choppers come in the morning, we’ll enter the tunnels and find enough guns and gear to fight our way out.”

  Matt’s expression did not change. The SEALs and rangers had already placed explosives in what remained of the tunnels. There would be nothing left of the mining complex moments after the last helicopter lifted off.

  “ ’At ’ere’s a good idea, Monroe!” Jim Bob said. He looked at the SEAL. “You ain’t got a fresh pair of britches you’d loan a man, do you?”

  “Move!”

  Reluctantly, hesitantly, the men began moving toward the darkness of the timber that ringed the old complex.

  “I just now got my feet dry, and now I’m gonna have to wade acrost that damn stream,” Jim Bob bitched. “It just ain’t fair. Cain’t them soldier boys see that all we’s tryin’ to do was save the U-nited States from niggers and Jews and other heathens?”

  “I’ve told you fifteen times, I’m Navy, you ignorant son of a bitch!” the SEAL team leader roared.

  “Whatever,” Jim Bob replied, and vanished into the timber with his buddies. “I just got to change my drawers,” was the last thing any of those at the mining complex heard from him.

  “You’re sending those men to their deaths,” Tom said. “And I’m going to testify to that effect.”

  “Lawyer,” Matt said, turning to face him. “I have just about had all the lip I am going to take from you. Traci, take the kids back inside, please.”

  “Regardless of what you think of me,” Tom said to Matt, “I am not a stranger to fighting. I was on the college wrestling team and was quite good at it.”

  The SEAL team leader looked up into the cloudy heavens and shook his head. The ranger lieutenant smiled.

  “And,” Tom continued, “I am very weary of your overbearing and arrogant attitude. I think the time has come for you to receive your comeuppance.”

  “I do believe the man wants to fight, Matt,” the SEAL said.

  “Suits the hell out of me,” Matt told him, then stepped forward and knocked Tom sprawling in the mud.

  10

  “Now that I have your attention, Tom,” Matt said, pulling on a pair of leather riding gloves, “I’ll just sweeten the pot some. We’ll make this a stand-up fistfight.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Tom said, sitting up in the mud hole.

  “Very simple, Tom. I know enough tricks to break every bone in your body. But I won’t use them unless you start pulling some off-the-wall crap with me. We’ll just box, if that’s the way you want it.”

  “Fine,” Tom said. He brushed himself off and tried a sneaky left at Matt’s jaw. Matt bobbed his head and busted Tom in the belly with a right, then stepped back. That was not something he’d ordinarily have done.

  “Does anybody want to bet on the lawyer?” a ranger said. “I’ll give great odds.”

  He had no takers.

  “You men on guard stay at your posts and keep a sharp eye out!” Lieutenant Davidson yelled.

  Tom rushed Matt and tried to bear-hug him. Matt spun around and broke Tom’s grasp, throwing the man to the ground. Tom plowed in, both fists flailing, but hitting only air. Matt backed up, all the while measuring the man. He saw a nice opening and drove a straight right in, catching the lawyer smack on the mouth and knocking the man back to the ground, his lips bloody and his eyes glazed.

  Matt kept his word. Ordinarily he would have ended the fight right then by kicking the man in the head. Instead, he backed away a few yards and waited for Tom to shake the chirping birdies out of his head and get to his feet.

  Susan and her daughter Traci stood nearby, undisguised hatred toward husband and father clearly evident on their faces. Tommy stood impassively, knowing with a child’s intuition that Matt Jordan would probably soon be his stepfather. The boy had never felt love toward his real father; Tom had never allowed it. The boy knew only fear toward the man.

  Tom got up and Matt smacked him again, staggering him. Tom swung and quite by accident caught Matt on the side of the head. The blow stung and Matt backed up, making Tom come after him.

  Tom walked right into the next combination, a hard left and right to the jaw and belly. Tom dropped his guard and Matt popped him on the mouth. Tom sat down hard in the mud.

  “You’re finished, Tom,” Matt said. “Give it up.”

  “To hell with you, Jordan!” Tom said, crawling to his hands and knees and with an effort, standing. He dived at Matt, trying to grab him by the knees and pull him down. Matt sidestepped and Tom fell face first back into the churned mud.

  “Gotta give him an E for effort,” a SEAL said. “He’s trying.”

  “Yeah,” a ranger said. “I don’t like the son-of-a-bitch, but he’s game, I’ll give him that much.”

  Tom got up and charged, a huge mudball running toward Matt. Matt tripped him, once more sending him sprawling to the earth. Tom rolled and came to his feet, a look of hate and fury clouding what facial features could be seen through the mud.

  Matt stepped in and busted the man a right and left to the jaw, staggering him, sending him back. Matt bored in, wanting an end to this nonsense. He hit Tom hard, knocking him down.

  “Damn it, man, stay down!” Matt told him.

  Tom crawled to hands and knees, steadily cussing Matt. He shook his head, and the mud and the blood flew with the effort. He got to his boots and raised his fists.

  Matt lowered his fists. “It’s over, Tom. A lot of things are over for you. Give it up.”

  “Fight me!” Tom screamed. “Fight me, you cowardly bastard!”

  Tommy looked puzzled at that. Cowardly?

  “Go clean up,” was Matt’s reply.

  Tom charged him and knocked Matt down, both of them rolling and cussing and slugging in the mud like oversized schoolboys. Matt was stronger and in much better shape, and he pinned Tom, sitting on the man’s chest and holding his arms to the ground.

  “This is stupid, Tom,” Matt panted. “It isn’t proving anything.”

  Summoning strength from a hidden well, Tom reared up and threw Matt from him, for a moment gaining the upper hand. He kicked Matt in the side while he was down, bringing a grunt of pain from him. Matt rolled away and came to his boots, a new and savage look in his eyes.

  “Okay, Tom,” he said. “Now all bets are off.”

  Matt suddenly spun a half turn, his left leg coming up high, the side of his boot catching Tom in the face and knocking him backward. Matt followed it with a spin in the opposite direction, his right leg smashing Tom on the other side of the man’s face. Tom went down, his face swelling and new blood leaking from his mouth.

  Matt popped him open-handed, flashing blows with the sides and palms of his hands, to the face, chest, and neck. Tom’s head whipsawed from side to side. Matt stepped in close and brought both hands in sharply, the palms open, impacting over Tom’s ears. Tom screamed as the pressure exploded in his head. Matt balled a big hand into a big fist and hit Tom on the jaw twice—short, hammering blows that sounded like a pistol discharging.

  Tom
fell backward and lay on the muddy ground, out cold.

  Matt bent over, catching his breath. After a moment he straightened up, hands on his hips.

  “Got interesting there toward the last,” the SEAL team leader said.

  “I wonder what the Sataws watching from the timber thought of all this nonsense,” Matt said.

  As if in reply, a hideous scream rose from the timber, from the direction the CWA men had taken.

  “I think they’ve been busy doin’ something else,” Nick said.

  * * *

  The SEALs laid out an LZ for the choppers and the first helicopter set down shortly after dawn. Simmons of the FBI and Richards from the Agency stepped out. Both were dressed in BDUs and carrying M-16s.

  Matt shook hands with both of them, then stepped back and eyeballed Richards. “Let me guess: I’m going to stay in here for a time?”

  “For a time,” his boss told him. He smiled. “If you have any good-byes to attend to, you’d better get them said.”

  Matt nodded and walked to Susan’s side. Together they walked down to the creek.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen to Tom, Susie. But you can bet he’s going to be kept on ice until this operation is over.”

  “I don’t care what happens to Tom. I just don’t want to lose you ... again. We’ve been invited to go back to Los Angeles with Milli and Dennis. I think we will. Of course, I’ll have to go back and close up the house sooner or later, but that can wait. Tom told me last evening he was going to start divorce proceedings immediately. I told him to go ahead.” She smiled at him. “My God, I feel positively grimy!”

  Matt laughed at her expression. “Without being mean about it, Susie—you are.”

  She laughed with him. “You have the Feldmans’ phone number and address?”

  “Yes. Dennis gave it to me last night. Would I be out of bounds if I kissed you?”

  “I’ve been waiting for that for twenty-three years, Matt.”

  * * *

  Matt had kissed Traci on the cheek and shaken Tommy’s hand. Then he stood and watched the campers board the choppers and lift off. When the last one had left and was no more than a dot in the sky, he turned to Richard.

  “What happens to Tom Dalton and his mouth?”

  “I’ll let Simmons answer that.”

  “We have proof that Dalton was helping bankroll the CWA. We obtained a warrant to search his house and found it . . . legally. The CWA has been ruled a terrorist organization. Aiding and abetting a terrorist organization is a federal crime. In exchange for Dalton keeping his mouth shut, we’ll be willing to overlook that little indiscretion on his part. He doesn’t have much choice in the matter. The evidence against him is overwhelming, and he’ll see that. His only other option is losing his ticket to practice law. I feel that Tom Dalton is going to be a very bitter, unhappy, silent man.”

  Lieutenant Davidson walked up to the men. “You fellows might want to see this,” he said. “Some of my people found what was left of the CWA men. They’re about a thousand yards in the timber.”

  The Sataws and breakaways and civilians had not been kind to the terrorists. Richard was the first to spot anything, an arm torn off at the shoulder and hurled to one side. They followed the trail of blood to the body of Seymour.

  Damell was found hanging upside down from a tree limb. They could not find his head.

  Oscar had been lifted or tossed onto a broken limb, the branch impaling him through the chest.

  Carl’s neck had been forced into a small V between branches about six feet off the ground. His face was black and his protruding tongue was purple and swollen.

  A long gray line of intestine led them to Jim Bob. The man had literally been torn apart from crotch to neck.

  “Get pictures of it all,” Simmons told an agent.

  The men widened the search, but the bodies of Luther and Monroe could not be found.

  “They might have made it out,” Nick said. He and Dan were guiding the others to the tribe’s home ground and staying until the relocation was complete. “If they did, they’re the luckiest men on earth.”

  “Is that going to be a problem?” Lieutenant Davidson asked Agent Simmons.

  He shook his head. “No. We have federal warrants out on both of them. They don’t dare surface. This’ll be old news by the time they get anyone’s ear.”

  “How about Trumball?” Matt asked.

  “He’s slick. We can’t tie him in directly with any crime yet. But it’s only a matter of time before we do.”

  “What do you want done with the bodies?” a ranger asked the FBI man.

  Simmons turned and with a bland expression said, “What bodies?”

  * * *

  When the charges went off in the tunnels, the bodies of the CWA men were forever buried under tons of rubble. Tom Dalton was flown out in the last chopper to leave, escorted by an FBI agent, and he did not look at all happy about the situation. But then, Tom never looked happy about much of anything.

  Matt waved. Tom spat on the ground and turned his back to him.

  “You should write a book, Matt,” Richard said, after witnessing Tom’s dislike.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. You could call it How To Win Friends and Influence People, Part Two.” He walked away chuckling.

  “Strange man,” Lieutenant Davidson remarked.

  “That was his idea of a joke,” Matt said.

  “Like I said: strange.”

  * * *

  Matt, Simmons, and Richard rode in with Nick and Dan, while the rangers walked in, spearheading and guarding both flanks and the rear. They saw no sign of the breakaways, Sataws, or the civilians who had come in to help them.

  “We won’t, either,” Nick said. “Too many of us for them. They’ve pulled back and will sit this one out. If their plan had worked, Matt, to isolate you here, without radio contact, they might have managed to convince the leaders of the tribe not to relocate. I don’t think so, but there was a chance. Now they know we’ve won this first round. I’m lookin’ for a bloodbath on the outside in round two.”

  Richard rode silently and properly, even though he was unaccustomed to the Western saddle. He bounced up and down as he had been taught to do in equestrian school.

  Matt looked behind him at Richard. The face of the number-two man at the Agency was bland. “You know something that maybe I ought to know, Rich?”

  “Not until the President makes up his mind, Husky.”

  The use of his code name was to warn Matt not to pursue this line any further.

  As usual, Matt ignored the warning. “Until the President makes up his mind about what, Rich?”

  Richard sighed. “We cannot allow a bloodbath, Husky.”

  “How the hell am I supposed to prevent it?”

  “Must we discuss this now?”

  “Yes.”

  “What he’s trying to keep from telling you, son,” Dan said, “is that he wants you to head up one of the teams that I’m sure the government is putting together as fast as they can, to go hunt down and destroy those tribe-related civilians on the outside who can’t control the urge.”

  “Richard?” Matt said.

  “Yes, Husky.”

  “No!”

  “Don’t make a hasty decision, Husky. Those people are dangerous. They have to be dealt with.”

  “Then round them up and vaccinate them. Goddamn, Rich, you’re talking about a wholesale slaughter. Jesus, they can’t help what they are anymore than a bear or a wolf or a lion or an eagle. Who came up with this brilliant idea?”

  “Not us, Husky,” Richard said. “And you can take that to the bank. I am on record as being adamantly opposed to us taking any further part in this . . . mess.”

  “Then why are you here? You’re supposed to be running the shop.”

  “Because the President told me to come here, that’s why. When the . . . creatures are safely relocated, he wants to see you.”

  “Who wants to see me?”r />
  “The President! Who are we talking about here, for Christ’s sake, Winston Churchill?”

  “Why does he want to see me?”

  “Husky! I don’t know!”

  “You’re lying, Richard. Everytime you lie to me, your ears get red.”

  “They do not!”

  “Yes, they do. I’ve noticed that. I will not, repeat, not be a part of any Iceman team going around killing men and women and children who can’t help being what God made them. But I’ll seriously consider being a part of any team who’ll at least make an effort to take these people alive in an attempt to save them. That’s firm, Rich. Pass that along to your boss.”

  “I keep changing my opinion of you, Matt,” Simmons said. “Sometimes reports don’t do a man justice. I apologize for all the bad things I thought about you in the past.”

  “Just as long as you don’t kiss me.”

  The group rode on, laughing... except Richard. Richard did not like crude jokes.

  Book Three

  Of all the creatures that were made he [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood he is the only one—the solitary one—that possesses malice. That is the basest of all instincts, passions, vices—the most hateful. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.

  Mark Twain

  1

  They rode and walked for two days, camped and cooked and slept without incident. Matt radioed in to his contact twice a day and was told that the press were all about to shit a brick.

  “I hope they do,” Matt replied. “And it gets hung up.”

  The old NG base was ready to receive the Unseen.

  “Wait here,” Nick told the government men and the rangers on the morning of the third day. “We’ve been bein’ watched since last night, so don’t anybody get spooked and get an itchy trigger finger. These folks are not going to hurt you unless you start trouble with them. Lieutenant, stand your people down and tell them to relax. Come on, Matt. They trust you, so you go in with me and Dan.”

  “Trust me? How do they know they can trust me?”

  “’Cause I told them about you last night. About your refusal to be a part of unnecessary killin’. They liked that. Come on. The rest of you, stay put!”