Patience County War (Madeleine Toche Series)

by Soren Petrek

  “Hold the pickle; hold the lettuce, special orders don’t upset us…”

  Sam yanked Henry’s head out of the grease. “You better not get any on my clothes boy!”

  “Okay! Okay!”

  Sam lifted the lid on the dumpster and pulled out some wadded up towels and napkins so the kid could at least wipe the grime from his eyes.

  “You could have killed me!”

  “I saved you. You passed out from that dope in your system and were unlucky enough to fall into the grease barrel. They’ll make me a hero, marching bands, girls throwing themselves at my feet!”

  The kid stood there with his mouth open, watching Sam gesticulate, spreading his arms like he was receiving an Academy Award. That was all he needed to see.

  “I got it from a Mexican guy who came into the restaurant, just a little to try. I gave it to those girls. I was hoping for a little action,” Henry said mournfully.

  “I didn’t hear that, Henry. Once you’re out of high school the buffet is closed. You guys are all the same. You drive the same beater Camaro, go to the same high school parties and try to hustle sophomores. You’re supposed to leave and go see the world.”

  “You did, and you came back.”

  “I just didn’t like what I saw. Besides, I have to keep the world safe from meth boys like you.”

  “Now what, Sheriff?” Henry said miserably.

  “I need to meet Pancho Villa.”

  “Who?”

  “Your Mexican friend,” Sam said.

  “His name isn’t Pancho.”

  Sam shook his head. “Pancho Villa was a Mexican bandit and freedom fighter. Just trying to lighten the mood for you a bit, no? No comprendo?”

  “He told me he’d have more for me next Friday after my shift, said more was coming in.”

  “Time?” Sam demanded.

  “After nine,” Henry said.

  “I’ll be here. Nathan too, we’ll sit out on the new patio. It’s better for Nathan to sit outside, puts some people off.”

  “Mostly jealous husbands and boyfriends when their women respond to my royal bearing,” Nathan rumbled.

  “Either that or the bone yard you create around your table,” Sam suggested.

  Henry looked past Sam at Nathan. That’s when he noticed the enormous spear Nathan had in his hand.

  “Now Henry, you tell anyone about our discussion and you’ll be lucky to survive arrest. I’ll put you in prison and tell your cell mate that you’re an informer and a child molester.”

  “I’m no child molester.”

  “I know, but so what?” Sam said.

  Henry was done. “Whatever you say Sheriff,” he said, defeated.

  “Good man. Now get yourself cleaned up, and pull that French fry from behind your ear. You’re part of a team here, at the Feet. Show some damn pride.” Somewhere along the line Sam had shifted into his George C. Scott, Patton impression. Nathan had started to dance, humming the Burger King jingle. Henry fled back into the restaurant.

  “Fine young man, fine young man,” Sam said sagely as they wandered over to the squad.

  Behind a pile of bones, Nathan chewed methodically. Sam and John had finished their meals, and sat sipping coffee and watching. The sight never got old. While the two of them were splattered and smeared, and had worn old shirts to dinner, Nathan remained spotless. The sauce never had a chance.

  It’s getting close to nine. Remember, we’re here to work,” John said looking at his watch.

  “That’s why we’re not drinking beer, Dad,” Sam said.

  “That water you Americans call beer,” Nathan laughed.

  “I like my beer to only have been in my mouth and nobody else’s,” Sam answered, referring to the Masai traditional brew, where the grain was pre-chewed by the tribe’s women to start the fermentation process.

  Nathan pushed aside his plate at last. “Alright, let’s go over the plan.”

  “Dad, you just leave and hang back and watch out backs. Please, nothing heavy, even if things get bad.”

  “This is just a snatch job, right? As I see it, the guy we grab will probably only have a little meth, but some info we need,” John said pretending not to hear Sam’s request.

  “Yes sir, but things seem to get hairy fast when meth is involved. I saw a few bad things in Detroit. These guys on it get dementia, they believe everyone is a cop and out to get them.” Sam didn’t have to mention that it had been a drug related bust that had nearly killed him.

  “We’ll all be on our toes, Sam,” Nathan said. He had gone into his warrior mode and Sam saw it right away. There would be no more goofing around. It happened every time Sam referred to his Detroit days. It had been Nathan’s influence as much as anyone’s that had brought him home. He’d gone to the hospital in Detroit the night Sam was shot. The night Sam was supposed to die. The night John Trunce threatened to kill the priest who had come to give Sam’s last rites if he didn’t leave. When Sam pulled through, Nathan explained the misery that John had gone through and told him that if he was a man he would realize that finding oneself had nothing to do with where you were geographically, and that if he insisted on dying to save people, they should at least be people he loved and who loved him. John had been so grief-stricken that many of his friends, few of whom knew Sam, had come to visit him at the hospital.

  Nathan asked Sam if he didn’t want that kind of devotion from at least one man other than he. Nathan never had any problems expressing to Sam how he felt. They were warrior brothers, and those weren’t just words, not to the Masai.

  “You are my brother, Nathan,” Sam said, as he clasped Nathan on the shoulder.

  “You are Masai Sam.”

  “Remember your training, men,” John said.

  “Let’s go to work,” Sam said.

  Without any further discussion, Nathan found a dark spot and Sam blended into the shadows by the dumpster. Henry had already been instructed to come out and walk over to the vehicle that his supplier was driving. Before the meal, Sam had met with Henry, who told him that his supplier would be driving a nondescript blue sedan, the type of car that wouldn’t attract attention.

  After a few minutes, Henry came out the back door of the restaurant and slung a bag of trash into the dumpster. Sam saw a blue, four door Ford pull into the parking lot. Henry walked over to the driver’s side door. Sam watched closely as Henry exchanged a few words with the driver, who tossed a crumpled fast food bag in the direction of the dumpster. Henry walked over to the bag, picked it up and wedged it under the dumpster lid. The driver put the vehicle into gear and suddenly his rear end was lifted into the air.

  “Howdy amigos! Commo estas?” Sam said, leaning against the car and pointing a .9 mm pistol inside.

  “Nice night for a drug delivery,” Nathan bellowed.

  “We don’t have any drugs, Jeffe,” the driver claimed.

  “No drugs, Nathan,” Sam said.

  “Keys, please, and put it in park,” Sam said. It was then that the two men noticed that Sam’s gun had a silencer screwed into the end. That caught their attention. Few cops carried silenced weapons. In their experience, they were only carried by killers.

  “Drugs?” Sam said.

  “No Drugs,” the passenger said.

  “Nathan.”

  With what seemed to take no more effort than shrugging, Nathan simply rolled the car over, causing surprising little sound.

  “Shit, shit,” the driver said. “The only drugs were in that bag, man,” he said pointing to the bag Henry had pushed into the garbage can.

  “Well you better climb on out. If one of you makes any kind of move, I’ll shoot you,” Sam said, lifting his badge out from under his shirt.

  “Don’t make us go out there man, it’ll be bad,” the passenger said. The men seemed spooked and nervous.

  By this time Nathan had walked around to the passenger side, reached in, and yanked the passenger out by his right arm. Sam stuck the silencer in the driver’s ear as he was crawli
ng out.

  “I’m coming, don’t shoot.”

  Sam swiftly patted the guy down and had him lie on the ground. He looked over to see Nathan holding the passenger by one ankle and shaking him upside down, while he frisked him with his other hand. Change, a spare clip, a comb, lint, everything was spilling out of the terrified guy’s pockets. Nathan found a small automatic. He dropped the guy mostly on his shoulders and put his enormous bare foot in the small of his back. Both men were glancing around wildly.

  “These guys are spooked. Let’s get over to the squad.” As Sam spoke he heard a door slide open and the action of an automatic weapon being engaged.

  “Cover!” Sam yelled as he dove in the direction of a garbage can. Nathan dove in the other direction, rolling over the bottom of the car. Their immediate action saved them both, as at least two full on automatic weapons sprayed the area where they had been standing. The two drug dealers didn’t react as quickly and were both hit numerous times as they tried to scramble off the pavement.

  Both Sam and Nathan returned fire, as a white van with its side door open sped past, slammed on its brakes, and turned for another pass.

  Sam and Nathan were still exposed, and without any further thought, Nathan ran over and picked Sam up, threw him over his shoulder, and ran.

  John had seen the exchange from his vantage point. He watched in awe as Nathan scooped up his son and ran from the parking lot towards a hill covered with oaks and maples. It was like watching a big cat chasing down its prey. Nathan moved with alarming speed, hit the hill, and actually accelerated up the slope. The only other person John had ever seen accelerate from a dead run was Carl Lewis, in the hundred meters. Nathan could have taken Carl that night, carrying Sam, while being shot at. The soldier John Trunce acted while the man John Trunce took in the scene. Without hesitation, he flipped up the back seat of his jeep, took out a cylindrical object and sighted in on the van. Just as the van spun around in front of a corn field a short distance down the road from the access road to the restaurant, he fired. A rocket streamed out of the weapon and slammed into the side of the van and detonated. The van exploded into tiny pieces and rained down onto the corn field. John calmly packed the weapon back into its compartment, just as Nathan ran up, dropped Sam into the front seat and jumped in the back himself. John immediately turned the jeep uphill, away from the road, and took off.

  “Damn it Nathan, I can run you know!” Sam said, more as a statement than in anger.

  “Of course you can,” was all Nathan said by way of explanation.

  “What the hell was that Dad?” Sam said, obviously referring to the rocket blast.

  “Panzerfauste,” John said as the jeep bounced all over what was once a trail. His eyes were ablaze and mischievous.

  “That wouldn’t be a World War Two German anti-tank weapon, would it?” Sam asked.

  “Yep, the 60. Effective against all Allied tanks in the war, even the giant Russian bastards, the Stalins.”

  “Good to know they’re effective against heavily armored minivans,” Sam replied.

  “You were compromised, soldier. Didn’t you hear? Those were Kalishnokovs, AK 47 assault rifles. It would have been a one-sided firefight with innocent people around, so I took them out.”

  “You were not here, Dad. The official story is gonna be the old hot round in the gas tank excuse, because I know I’ll get a call from the sheriff over in Jackson County. I know him, and he’s a good man, but he’ll have something to say.”

  The next day Sam was sitting in the bunker when the phone rang.

  “Goddamn anti-tank Sam,” Sheriff Baker said in an almost pleading voice.

  “No, it must have been a hot round in the tank,” Sam offered.

  “Sure Sam. Just so you know, about an hour ago nine guys, that’s nine, Sam, in black suits and black Ray Ban sunglasses showed up for a chat. I know a damn spook when I see one. Hopefully these guys were from our government. They were everywhere; I mean we were scared shitless. These bastards were cold killers. If that wasn’t enough, after they were here for about twenty minutes, hands down the scariest dude I have ever seen walked into the station. He must have been their fearless leader. He was like six foot four, black hair, black eyes, no smile. I swear the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. I’m still not completely convinced that the guy wasn’t death himself, masquerading as a government agent to amuse himself and kill time until he grabbed his next million souls. He politely thanked me for turning over all data on the incident and informed me that as a matter of national security nobody would speak about it again. He said if there was a breach of security I could expect him back. I turned around for a second, and he was gone, just gone. Like smoke in a hurricane. Buddy of yours?”

  “I have no clue,” Sam lied. Jackson’s sheriff had just met his brother, Tracy.

  Tracy Trunce set down the phone in his office at NSA headquarters in Washington and shredded a small file that contained all references to the incident in Jackson County. Tracy was a senior NSA officer and intervened in modest ways in his family’s doings in Patience, mostly gathering information and coordinating with Bill “Moon” Meyer, one of his former NSA agents, now relocated to Patience in a quasi-witness protection situation. Moon would have been a valuable capture by any foreign government, friendly or not, not so much for what he knew, but for what he could do. There simply weren’t any other cryptographers of his caliber. He was a genius at most disciplines that he applied himself to: math, computer science, chemistry and physics. The list of sciences that he’d conquered was lengthy, but his true passion was weaponry. He and John Trunce had become fast friends after his move to Patience, often sneaking off like two kids to play with fireworks, except that their fireworks were things like Panzerfaustes.

  “Sam,” Tracy said into the phone connected to a scrambled line.

  “Trace!” Sam said with great enthusiasm.

  “A Panzerfauste?”

  “I swear I had no idea. All we were trying to do was roust a couple of Mexican meth boys and show them the error of their ways. Their display of firepower means they were heavy hitters.”

  “We’ll check the usual sources to see if there’s been any discernible communication pattern increase to any of the known Mexican mob heads. Sometimes they have little idea of what their people are doing on the ground. Meth is a big export from Mexico, and like most really bad drugs out there, the guys who are making it in quantity and moving it don’t use it,” Tracy said.

  “That should be the biggest clue to the people attracted to it: the people who have an endless supply would only use it at gunpoint. It must be a great source of amusement to them to sell so much of it to the Anglos,” Sam pointed out.

  “Tell dad to try to avoid further use of ordinance, although I suppose it’s a good thing that he wasn’t up in his thunderbolt at the time.”

  “I’ll try to discourage any possibility of it,” Sam said.

  “I think you guys should formulate a defensive plan. Whoever tried to put holes in you isn’t going to like the loss of personnel, weaponry, product, or money.”

  “We’re getting the word out. I think they’ll have to do a little recon. I’m sure they’ll get to Henry the Head; he’s gondi.”

  “I might bug out too, after I see a Panzerfauste take out a minivan, must have been a sight, Tracy said.”

  “The pieces are still falling.”

  After his call with Tracy, Sam called the station and spoke to Lisa.

  “Spread the word, meeting at Madeleine’s. I want all the deputies to be told and to round up the usual suspects.” That was Sam’s fun way of saying to round up their friends who represented decades of combat experience.

  Sam hung up the phone and dialed Madeleine’s number. More than once, important meetings were held in the basement of her restaurant. When Sam and his friends were ridding Patience of the meth dealers who had sprung up prior to his return, strategy meetings were held there. Sam knew that this time they were deali
ng with an unknown entity. Before, it had been disorganized thugs who were dealt with. Someone had upped the ante this time.

  “Madeleine, Sam here. We have a situation; we need to hold a meeting today.”

  “Eight o’clock in the basement. We will not be disturbed.”

  Sam was always surprised that she acted in such a business-like fashion when it came to these potentially dangerous situations. Sam’s family and friends took their way of life and safety very seriously; this extended to their community. It was an unspoken, collective effort to create some kind of haven of right in a world of increasing wrong. They fought back.

  Madeleine hung up the phone and sighed. She had been struggling her whole life against oppression. She stood and looked out the window overlooking the brook, thinking back to the years of her youth when she glowed with the physical beauty that her granddaughter shared. Aside from that, their lives had been very different. She had been a young, carefree girl living a modest but comfortable life with her parents when the German army suddenly took France and the life of her brother, for whom she still cried. When she was sad she still remembered swimming with him and playing on the beach in La Ciotat on their summer holidays. When he died, summer was over and she found her way into the Resistance. She was trained by the British Special Operations Executive, boys whose country was being turned to rubble by the Germans. She learned to kill without hesitation or remorse. Learning to fight and to use a knife and other weapons came quickly. She never had to learn not to hesitate. Every face of every German was an insult to her brother and to France. She participated in countless raids, blew up supply trains, and killed German officers. She was the most proud of her work hiding Jewish children from the Nazis. After the war many of these children tracked her down, all the way to Patience. During the war she had been hunted by the enemy relentlessly and was constantly on the move. She had earned the nickname ‘The Angel of Death.’