by BJ Bourg
“Get to your feet, big boy,” said the man behind him.
Following the man’s orders, Orville stood and winced in pain as the man jerked his arms behind his back and cuffed his wrists together. “Now get your ass in the house,” the man said.
Orville walked inside, allowing himself to be shoved through to the living room, where his parents and brother were seated on the sofa, all of them also handcuffed. His handler pushed him into the lounge chair and stood back, surveying the group.
“What the hell do you want?” Frank Simoneaux asked. “Why are you in my house?”
“Dad,” Orville cautioned. “Go easy.”
“To hell with that! This is my house and they have no right to be in here.”
One of the men took his leafy headgear off and placed it on the coffee table. He then shrugged out of his ghillie suit and removed an envelope from inside his coveralls, held it so Frank could see. “We’re with the FBI and this is a warrant to search the premises.”
“Search? For what? My son was a victim. We’re all victims!” Frank’s face was the color of blood roses. “I demand that y’all leave my house right this moment!”
The man, whom Orville took to be the leader of the group, sat on the coffee table in front of Frank and folded his arms across his chest. “Mr. Simoneaux, do you remember your arrest in North Carolina for violating the Lacey Act?”
“That was years ago.”
“That was a big alligator you killed, wasn’t it?” The man shot his thumb toward Orville and Quentin. “It seems your boys are taking over the family business.”
“My boys had nothing to do with what happened in North Carolina,” Frank said in a low voice. “I was a kid back then. I didn’t know any better.”
Orville frowned, feeling bad for his dad. He’d heard the story of how his dad had taken up with an alligator hunter in North Carolina when he got out of the military. His dad hadn’t realized it, but the alligator hunter was a fraud, and they ended up selling illegally harvested alligators to undercover federal agents.
Two men appeared from the back rooms of the house carrying shotguns and rifles. “Look what we found, Mule.”
The leader nodded his head. “That’s what we thought we’d find. Frank, you’re under arrest for being a felon in possession of a firearm.”
Orville gasped. “My dad can’t go to jail at his age!”
“But I got my rights back,” Frank protested. “It’s been over thirty years since that arrest.”
“You committed the felony in North Carolina,” Mule said, “where they never restore gun rights for felons. Sorry, but you’re going to prison.”
Hearing his mom cry, Orville turned to Mule. “But why’d y’all come here? Why target my dad? With all the criminals out there—the murderers and drug dealers—why come after an old man who’s not hurting anyone? He hasn’t done anything wrong. It was Quentin and me and Norris…no one else.”
“Your dad put a big bull’s eye on his forehead when he made that statement to the news reporters.” Mule turned to a man on his left. “Taz, do you remember what he said to the press?”
Orville grunted when Taz pulled out a newspaper clipping with a picture of his dad holding a double-barreled shotgun. I knew that was a bad idea, he thought.
“Yep,” Taz said. “I remember. The old man said he’d be waiting with his shotgun and would shove both barrels up the killer’s ass if he stepped foot in his swamps again.”
“This is that shotgun,” said one of the other agents, holding up the same shotgun that had appeared in the picture.
Orville’s heart raced in his chest. He had to do something. He couldn’t just let his dad go to jail.
“Either you spend the last of your good years in prison, Mr. Simoneaux,” Mule said, “or you work off the charges.”
“He’ll work off the charges,” Orville blurted out. “Just name your price.”
“There’s no price,” Mule said. “This isn’t a bribe. It’s an undercover operation.”
Frank looked at Orville and glowered. Orville knew his dad was like a wild animal and couldn’t survive in a cage. He’d die within a year. He stared earnestly as his dad and mouthed, Do it!
Frank’s gaze was hard and steady for a long moment, but tears came to Orville’s eyes and he saw the hard lines on his dad’s face soften. “Please, Dad,” he said, “just do it. For all of our sakes, just help them out.”
“Okay,” Frank said, his voice revealing his resignation. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do. Just don’t mess with my family. They only do what I tell them to do.”
“I’m authorized by the federal prosecutor to make this arrangement,” Mule said, “and I’ll get it in writing at the appropriate time. All we need from you is to allow us to use your home as a base camp while we conduct operations on your property and the property of Wellman Boudreaux.”
“That’s it?” Frank asked.
“That’s basically it,” Mule said.
Orville’s brow furrowed. “What kind of operations?”
Taz smiled. “That would be confidential.”
“What about my family?” Frank asked. “What are we supposed to do while y’all take over my house? We’ve got no place to go.”
“We’ll need you guys to stay here, acting normal and making things look normal,” Mule explained. “I want you guys coming and going as you normally would. Pretend we’re not even here.”
Orville’s mind raced. “Are y’all hunting the man who killed my brother?”
Mule was thoughtful and Orville felt a chill reverberate up and down his spine as the man turned black eyes in his direction. “Didn’t Taz just tell you it was confidential?”
Orville didn’t want to cause any problems with these guys because they looked like they meant business, so he quickly apologized and looked away from Mule’s glare.
“Now, we’ll need some assurances that you won’t try anything foolish,” Mule said. “Or the deal’s off.”
“There’ll be no trouble from us,” Frank said. “And if y’all are really hunting down my son’s killer, we’ll give y’all all the help you need.”
“Just to be sure, you’ll have to remain here in the house under guard while the rest of your family goes about their daily lives.” Mule turned back to Orville. “And if any of you do anything to jeopardize our operation, your dad goes to prison for the rest of his short years.”
Orville gulped and shook his head. “We won’t do anything to jeopardize the operation. I swear it.”
That seemed to satisfy Mule and he waved his hand in the air. “Release them and let them go about their business. Remember, Frank, we want your family to look as natural as possible.”
“What about their guns?” asked a short and stout man with a semi-automatic rifle slung across his chest.
“Lock them up until we’re done here,” Mule said. The man nodded and started to turn away, but Mule stopped him. “Oh, and Pit Bull, I want you guarding the old man.”
CHAPTER 29
London Carter’s home
I awakened at seven, an hour later than usual. After showering and dressing into my drab green coveralls, I did what Doctor Fitch was doing that morning—I headed off to church. Only, my church was the shooting range and my Bible was my data book.
After setting up a hostage rescue target at one hundred yards, I stretched out behind my rifle and attained proper eye relief, my cheek resting comfortably on the stock with the butt of the rifle pulled snuggly into my shoulder. My left leg was extended in a straight line behind my rifle and my right leg was cocked slightly to lift my chest from the ground, reducing the amount of heartbeat I saw in my crosshairs.
I took a deep breath and my crosshairs fell slightly, just below the tip of the bad guy’s nose. I exhaled slowly until I reached my respiratory pause, at which point the crosshairs settled naturally on my desired point of aim. Without hesitation, I pulled the trigger and the rifle bucked in my hand. Almost instantly, I bolted anoth
er round into the chamber and peered through the scope, ready for a follow-up shot if necessary.
I knew without looking that my cold bore shot was dead-on, like it was every time I took that shot. I’d been doing the job for so long that I could call every shot I took. The exact position of my crosshairs at the very moment the shot broke was burned into my brain like a photograph, and I knew it had drilled the hostage taker right through the tip of the nose. Had he been an actual human, he would’ve been dead instantly—like Norris and Joyce. I frowned. Who’s killing people in my parish?
I retrieved my spent casing from the ground and tucked it into the breast pocket of my coveralls. I’d taught all of my snipers to be like ghosts, coming and going without leaving a trace that they were there, and that included recovering every spent casing they fired. Not only did we need it for court purposes, but we didn’t want to leave litter behind. A question suddenly occurred to me. Why’d the sniper take his spent casing with him? Had he also been trained to be a ghost and it was force of habit, or did he possess a criminal mind and removed it because he knew it could be traced back to his rifle? Whatever the reason, we were dealing with a cunning and dangerous foe.
As I pondered the details of the case, I felt a sense of déjà vu come over me. It had been a little over a year ago that my fellow deputies had come under attack from a mystery sniper, and the carnage had lasted longer than any of us had ever imagined. I was the first to admit I was better at sniper work than investigations, so I often wondered if a more seasoned detective might have been able to pick up on some of the clues earlier on. What if I’d been able to solve the case sooner? How many lives would I have saved? Can I catch this killer before others have to die?
A gust of wind rustled the brown hair on my forehead and I realized I’d been staring blindly through my scope. I closed my eyes and cleared my head. It took everything in me to push the case out of my mind and concentrate on training. The image of that poor girl’s face kept creeping into my thoughts and I wanted to know who did that to her. I wanted her killer’s head quartered by the posts of my cross-hairs, but in order to be ready for the day I might meet her killer, I needed to finish my training. I needed to be sharp.
Now that I’d verified my cold bore shot, it was time to put some rounds downrange. I’d missed part of Thursday’s training, so I had a bit of catching up to do. Being a sniper leader didn’t mean I got to take it easy from time to time—it meant I had to be harder on myself than I was on anyone else and I had to be more prepared than the snipers I supervised. To lead by example was not a slogan for me, but a way of life, so I spent the next four hours running myself through drill after drill.
I set up single hostage targets, multiple bad guy targets, and multiple hostage targets. I shot in every position from standing to prone, from distances of twenty-five yards to five hundred, and included intense exertion drills that would make a professional athlete puke.
I shot men, women, and children suspects, and then went through some of the mug shots of my fellow deputies. I shot photos of deputies of every rank and even took out the sheriff, but I paused when I came to Dawn’s commission photograph. She looked so young when she’d first started. Her hair was pulled back and she was smiling brightly, like a kid who was about to embark upon an exciting and rewarding journey to save the world.
I frowned, wondering if she still felt as optimistic as she had on that first day. Nowadays, people gather and riot nearly every time a cop shoots a suspect. They called it protesting, but protests didn’t involve burning buildings and attacking people. And half of them didn’t even know the facts of the case before showing up with their hateful agendas and bad attitudes. It didn’t matter to these people that the suspect who died was trying to kill the cop who stopped him and that the shooting was one hundred percent justified. It didn’t matter to these people that the suspect had a long history of hurting innocent people and would’ve killed anyone at the “protest” given the opportunity. It didn’t matter to these people that cops were the only thing standing between good and evil—it didn’t matter because they were the evil.
“We don’t do what we do for those barbarians who contribute nothing to our society and who only seek to destroy our cities and our way of life,” I’d told a recent graduating academy class. “No, we do it for the silent and vast majority who lace up their boots and get their asses to work each and every day to provide a decent and honest life for their families. Those are the unsung heroes who keep our country moving forward while these bastards are out there doing everything they can to tear it down. But they won’t succeed, because they’re cowards and they lack conviction. We will win this fight and will restore order in all of our communities, because the good citizens we serve deserve nothing but our best effort—and I intend to give it to them. Who’s with me?”
It had been the longest speech I’d ever given and I did it with much reluctance. I wasn’t a fan of public speaking. I started to turn down the invitation to address the graduates, but Brandon Berger had called me personally to ask that I do it, so I’d relented.
I tossed Dawn’s photograph to the side and grabbed the next photo. After stapling it to the target, I returned to the firing line and settled in behind my rifle. As I prepared to take the shot, I prayed I’d never again have to shoot another cop, but I knew I had to be ready. The citizens of my community deserved only my best.
CHAPTER 30
The Simoneaux Camp
The kitchen and dining area of their camp was crowded, so Orville took his lunch of fried shrimp, rice, and corn to the porch and sat in Norris’ rocker. The second in command of the FBI’s team, the guy named Taz, was sitting in his rocker, but he figured it would be better not to point out that the Simoneaux family had assigned seats.
Orville nodded when Taz looked up, trying to be cordial. Taz nodded back and then turned his attention toward the forest, where he stared intently, not moving a muscle. When he’d blink, he would lower his eyelids slowly and then open them just as slow. Orville wanted to ask why he did that, but figured it best not to interrupt the man.
Orville had finished eating and was about to stand when he saw movement from the trees. As he watched, four leafy figures seemed to just appear out of thin air. They moved closer, but they seemed to do it in increments. He couldn’t track their movements. It was as though they were in one spot one moment and then would disappear, reappearing a few feet closer. He rubbed his eyes and looked up. Suddenly, the figures were on the landing to the steps and were talking quietly to Taz.
Orville couldn’t make out every word they said, but he heard enough to know they had set up spy cameras all over the woods. “If he’s out there, we’ll get his ass this time,” one of them said.
Taz turned to look at Orville, and Orville quickly lowered his gaze, hoping they didn’t realize he was eavesdropping. “You,” Taz said, pointing at him. “What’d you say your name was?”
“Um, it’s Orville. Orville Simoneaux.”
“What the hell kind of name is that?” Taz shook his bald head. “Never mind, I don’t want to know. Look, can you take us to the exact spot your brother was killed?”
Orville’s heart began to race in his chest. He’d never even considered going back to the location. If he had his way, he’d stay out of that part of the swamps forever.
“Well? Can you take us there or not?” Taz sounded impatient. “Do I need to just fold up this operation and send your paw to prison? Is that what you’re saying to me?”
“No, that’s not it. I…I guess I can take you.”
“What do you mean you guess? Can you take us there or not? Is your dad going to prison or not?”
“No…I mean, yeah, I can take y’all if…”
“If what?”
“Is it safe?” Orville felt his voice slip out from under his words when he asked the question, and it sounded shriller than he meant. He cleared his throat. “Will I be safe?”
Taz grunted and pointed to his feet. “
This spot where I’m standing…it’s currently the safest place in the world.”
The man was so confident that Orville couldn’t help but feel better. He nodded. “Yes, sir, I can surely take you to where it happened.”
Mule appeared in the doorway and Taz told him they were about to head to the location of the first murder. Pointing at Orville, Taz said, “He’s agreed to take us to the spot.”
Orville felt naked as Mule looked him up and down, appearing to size him up. He wished he could find a hole to crawl into and hide his large frame, but he had a sneaking suspicion there wasn’t a hole big enough to hide from Mule and his men.
Mule grunted and turned back to Taz. “Take Lizard, Grizzly, and Croc with you.”
Taz nodded and snapped out some orders. The three men hurried into the house behind Taz to gather up more gear, leaving Orville standing there wondering why they all had animal names. “Maybe they’ll call me Gator if I do a good job,” he said out loud to himself, and then settled into his rocker to wait for them to return to the porch.
Orville studied Mule from the corner of his eye as the man pulled out binoculars and scanned the trees. What are you looking for? Orville wondered. Why are you here? Are you really hunting the killer or—
Holy shit! He started to panic. What if you are the killer?
“Stop staring sideways at me, boy,” Mule said without turning his head. “Or I’ll come over there and poke your eyes out with my thumbs.”
Orville gulped and jerked his head in the opposite direction. “Sorry. I…um…I didn’t mean nothing by it.” Thinking quickly, he continued. “I was just wondering if I could have one of those bullet proof vests y’all use. You know, just in case we get shot at while we’re out there.”
