Mercy River

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  I scratched my scars reflexively. “Nobody wants to earn medals like I did.”

  “That I believe. But they are your kind of ass-kicker. Take a gander at Rivas’s shooting qualifiers. I’m surprised the Army team didn’t nab him.”

  “What do they do now?”

  “Hold on, I haven’t gotten to the really interesting part. After six years, Caton and Rivas were both discharged OTH.”

  Other than honorable. A strange result, for soldiers capable of upholding the regiment’s exacting standards.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Assault on a superior. Specifically, they were accused of aiming their sidearms at the head of a lieutenant in the regiment, as intimidation. The lieutenant had recently filed a report of bad conduct against Abernathy. Apparently Caton and Rivas decided to demonstrate just how bad it could get.”

  “And Abernathy?”

  “Slightly better. RFS’d out of the 75th, followed by a general discharge a couple of months later.”

  Released for standards could cover a wide range of performance problems, from not maintaining the required physical fitness to disciplinary issues. I thought back to Daryll’s sleepless night, abstaining from any pain meds despite his busted toes.

  “Abernathy spent some time in stateside hospitals before mustering out, too,” Ochoa went on. “I don’t have his medical records, but my guess?”

  “Drugs,” I said.

  “That sounds right,” he confirmed. “Or drying out if he was stateside and hitting the bottle too much.”

  Practically every combat vet I’d ever known had a history with their favorite painkiller. Even when you’re twenty-two years old and indestructible, the human body isn’t built to handle what the Army asks of it, all day, every day. Medics were liberal in passing out candy from what they called the morale pouch. Aleve had been my go-to. I would pop the little blue ovals like they were M&M’s. Vicodin was even better, but I had known the dangers and weaned myself off before the happy haze started to cook my brain. Not everybody was so lucky. Maybe Daryll Abernathy had become hooked.

  “What about Captain Fain?” I said.

  “John Fain’s a piece of work. I mean that in the good way. ROTC out of Tennessee. Did two rotations with the Hundred and first in Iraq before he applied for Ranger School. The Distinguished Graduate for his class. Three re-ups after his first enlistment.”

  “A high-flier. Like you.”

  “You would think. Fain hitched his star to General Macomber early on. Maybe that was a mistake. After Macomber was jettisoned, Captain Fain’s career tapered off. He finished out his fourth enlistment and resigned his commission.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  More typing. “Three years,” Ochoa said.

  A busy time, three years ago. Macomber had formed the foundations of the Rally. Fain had abruptly left the Army and a promising career. And the First Riders and their ilk had been unceremoniously ejected from Mercy River.

  “What about now?” I said. “Do you have anything on the four of them since they became civilians?”

  Ochoa chuckled. “Civilians like you are? Somehow I don’t picture you sitting in a cubicle, hoping to make middle manager.”

  “That isn’t my life,” I admitted.

  “Not theirs, either. The Army doesn’t have many records beyond some mailing addresses. They don’t lean on the system. No educational assistance, no applications for VA benefits—not that Caton and Rivas would qualify, with their discharge status. Not even job counseling.”

  The four men had already found a way to make a living. I wasn’t convinced it involved playing janitor for pharma company messes. Even private military contractors didn’t need to stay off the grid entirely.

  “I appreciate the help, Armando,” I said.

  “If all my favors were this easy, I’d be rich as well as brilliant. Listen.” Ochoa shifted so that he was closer to the speaker. “It is my professional opinion that you should get your ass away from this bunch. If they’re all hanging out together years after the Army decided their services were no longer needed, it’s not to throw back a few shots and reminisce. Right?”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  “Sure you will. That concludes our broadcast day. Catch you later.” He hung up.

  Before I resumed my tour of the rural hospitalities, I thought about what Ochoa had told me. There was a common thread running through the fabric of Fain’s men. Loyalty. Rigo Rivas and Zeke Caton, hamstringing their own Army careers to help Daryll Abernathy. General Macomber’s struggle and eventual exile after pushing too hard for veterans’ aid. I understood that kind of allegiance. It had nothing to do with nationality or armies or even regimental pride. It was about the guy standing next to you, the one who could be counted on to watch your blind side while you watched his.

  Hell, loyalty could be the sign hung around my neck, too. I was here to help Leo. And I hadn’t lost any sleep over my methods, either.

  The second motel along the edge of the forest was named Dixie Hot Springs. It consisted of only eight tiny and sorrowful cabins, set far enough apart for residents to park in between them. Four other lots along the same row had been torn down to their cement foundations. A faded yellow Caterpillar bulldozer sat off to the side, near a huge mound of broken boards and drywall chunks, like it was waiting to be unleashed on the survivors.

  The sign glowing vacancy was an understatement. Halfway down the row, a plain brown panel van with Idaho plates squatted between two cabins. The next door over boasted a rusty blue Camaro, more money in the tires than the body work, also with plates from the Potato State.

  Bingo. Those shitheaps looked exactly right.

  I cruised past without pausing. Tactically, the motel sucked. It was the sole business on a narrow forest road off the highway. No way I could stake it out unobserved, unless I wanted to climb a giant ponderosa pine tree. At least the other cabins appeared empty. No witnesses around, or potential collateral damage if things went slantways.

  Not that I intended any violence. I’d sneak close enough to confirm that the cabins housed a bunch of inbred mooks with shaved heads and narrow suspenders, and get the hell away.

  The sun had barely dipped below the horizon, but this close to the thick canopy of the forest, it was already as dark as midnight. Half a mile up the highway, I found a side road and a place to stash the Dodge behind trees. Before I left it, I slipped the Browning into my coat pocket. Be prepared.

  Back at the motel’s road, I stepped off the highway and began picking a slow path through the brush parallel to the road. Slow, but silent, and invisible from the motel grounds.

  By the time I reached the cabins, exterior lights had switched on automatically outside each door. The glowing bulbs just served to deepen the darkness behind the tiny buildings. I inched toward the brown panel van, brushing twigs and leaves aside with every step.

  The discordant sound of a television commercial came from the near cabin. A door opened, then closed again. I waited. No footsteps, or voices.

  The windows on the panel van were smoked. Peering in, I could distinguish a large rectangular shape, like a sarcophagus, concealed under blankets and bedsheets. I did some quick mental arithmetic, comparing the size of the red box I’d seen to the volume of the sarcophagus shape. Twenty-three boxes of the same size could fit under those sheets.

  The near cabin had a window on this side. I edged along the splintery wall until a slice of the room came into view. One bed, unmade. The front door, closed but unbolted. A backpack leaning against the wall. The TV shrieked. No other sounds, or movement. I risked leaning a little farther. The room was empty. The unlit bathroom was open, proving the case. Were they out? Or gathered next door?

  I backtracked to inch my way around the rear of the place, gently pushing branches aside, moving toward the blue Camaro and the second cabin. It wasn’t necessary to get close.

  As I watched over the roof of the car, two men in white tank
tops and white suspenders passed the window. Both of them were half as thick as they were tall, and their heights were substantial. I only saw them for an instant, but it was enough time to clock their shaven skulls and long scraggly goatees, and the crooked mess of gray and watery blue ink covering their arms and necks. Tattoos of swastikas and axes and crosses and numbers I didn’t have to read to recognize as skinhead code—shit like 23 for the letter W standing for white, 88 for Heil Hitler, 14 for some supremacist credo about a future for white children that I didn’t know or care to know.

  A third man, much leaner than the two nearly identical hulks, came into view and stood in profile to the window.

  He was a different physical type. Leaner, and older, with enough years on him that his buzzed hair and broad horseshoe mustache carried far more gray than brown. He was dressed simply, in a black collared shirt with buttoned sleeves and black work pants. As he listened to whoever was speaking in the room, he stood perfectly straight with his arms at his sides, not moving at all. No reflexive nodding, no expression on his face beyond focused attention.

  Jaeger. I was sure of it. Even setting aside his seniority, he looked like someone in command. His strange stillness reminded me of a snake, waiting to see what prey might cross its hiding place. Eerie.

  Three men in the cabin, maybe more. I could fade back to the highway and call Fain, and let him deal with Jaeger and the rest.

  But that would surrender any leverage I had now. I didn’t completely buy Fain’s story of being hired to recover the Trumo for the drug company. Maybe he and his team were dealers themselves. I couldn’t trust that Fain really held evidence that could clear Leo.

  I needed something more to bargain with.

  I needed the drugs.

  Spike the Camaro. Boost their panel van. Drive off. Simple.

  Unless the van didn’t start on the first try. It didn’t give the impression of a vehicle that enjoyed regular maintenance. Jaeger’s men would hear its engine turning over. A few seconds’ delay at the wrong moment, and I could catch a bullet right through the windshield.

  Okay. So I needed to keep the skinheads occupied for a few moments. What did I have to work with?

  My eyes alighted on the Caterpillar bulldozer, sixty yards away at the end of the row of cabins.

  Hello, beautiful.

  I retreated to unlock the van and strip its wires for a quick jump, before slipping back into the brush and making my way to the mound of demolition debris. Fishing through the pile, I found broken pieces of two-by-four with nails still extruding at weird angles, twisted and bent when the heavy tractor had torn one of the cabins apart. I took the boards to the Camaro and jammed them up into the car’s rear wheel wells, wedging the shiny sixteen-penny nails into the treads of the tires.

  At the bulldozer, I picked the simple lock on the battery box above the broad mud-encrusted treads. I’d driven tractors before. Small ones first, as a teenager while working construction with Dono. Years later, bored during days off rotation at Fort Benning or on base while in theater, I would wheedle or bribe the Army equipment operators to show me how the bigger machines worked. I had enough experience to get the Cat moving, which was all I needed now.

  The dozer’s fuse box was in with the battery. I tore out the fuses for the horn and running lights before unlocking the driver’s compartment. The operator had been kind enough to leave the key for the engine, attached by a string to the dash.

  I checked the cabins again. No one had emerged. This would be the tricky part. I had to hope I was far enough away that the sound of the Cat starting would be lost in their conversation and the racket of the TV.

  I turned the key. The engine caught with a low rumble as the gauges on the dash swept to full, but no horn sounded or lights blazed. I let out the breath I’d been holding.

  Still no movement at the cabins. A thumbwheel on the Cat’s controls set the speed of the machine. I dialed the wheel to a single mile an hour, pulled the right-hand stick to bring the blade up a few feet, and pushed the left stick forward. The tractor eased into motion. I angled the stick, and the treads responded by turning a few degrees, straight toward the cabin with Jaeger and his crew.

  I thumbed the speed to its maximum and jumped out the open door, as the engine roared and the Cat lurched forward.

  At a little under four miles an hour, the bulldozer wouldn’t win many races, but it ate up the distance with startling haste. I sprinted to the van, yanking open the door and leaning in to touch the stripped wires together. The alternator clicked rapidly. Come on, dammit.

  Someone shouted from Jaeger’s cabin. I tried again, and the engine stuttered and roared to life.

  An almighty crash and ripping sound echoed through the forest, like a tree being torn out by the roots. I was in the driver’s seat and popping the brake in a hot second, the van rolling even before I floored the gas. I swung hard right, driving over the tracks ground into the soil by the bulldozer as it pushed the entire cabin off its cement foundation. The shattered one-room box sagged to one side while the machine lumbered into the thicket beyond. One of the beefy thugs fell clumsily out of the hole that had been a window.

  Jaeger was already outside, picking himself off the ground, caught in the light spilling from the next cabin over. Our eyes met. His were a very pale green. Almost more clear than colored.

  He didn’t look furious, or even perturbed by the destruction of the cabin. It was as if something behind his intense gaze clicked at that moment, capturing an X-ray of me as the van rushed past him. Marking me with cold detachment.

  His stare stayed with me as I sped down the road and out of sight.

  Twenty-Five

  Two miles up the road, I risked pulling over for a minute to verify my cargo. I climbed into the back of the van and yanked the bedsheets aside.

  Red boxes, identical to the one I’d found at Erle’s, their stacks held together with bungee cords and thin rope. I counted. Twenty-three boxes, as expected. Splitting the tape seal on the nearest lid with my knife, I popped it open to find trays of Trumorpha neatly arranged inside.

  I laughed, releasing tension I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding. At least I hadn’t gone to all that risk to steal someone’s old furniture.

  I couldn’t drive around in a stolen van carrying thousands of vials of first-degree-felony narcotics for long. Step one was to transfer the cargo to my truck. Step two would be tricky. I didn’t want to bring the Trumo into Mercy River. Too many eyes, some of them familiar with the red boxes. I briefly considered using Erle’s hiding place in the woods, but I couldn’t be sure that was a secret known only to me. Ideally, I could arrange to send the drugs far away, quickly and quietly, without getting my ass busted.

  I had a friend who knew something about that line of work. Hollis Brant.

  Hollis had been my grandfather’s closest confidant for half their lives. Dono thought up the plans, and Hollis was the guy who could deliver when it came to smuggling and all manner of transpo. Somehow I’d fallen into that same role when it became void after Dono’s death. I suspected that Hollis confused the two of us occasionally, Dono and me. Not that Hollis was senile. But my grandfather and I were alike in many ways.

  Once when I was about eight years old, Hollis had come to our home for a late dinner and to plan something with Dono. I’d been living with Dono for two years by then. Long enough that the memories of my dead mother had started to fade, but not so long that I was comfortable being around my granddad. I never became completely comfortable, to be honest. It wasn’t in Dono’s nature to put people at ease.

  After our dinner of beef potpie I was sent upstairs to bed. Sleep was out of the question, full belly or not. Besides my fascination with whatever the two men might be talking about down in the front room—this was well before Dono would allow me a hint of his true profession and begin teaching me the tools of his trade—I was too scared to close my eyes.

  Earlier that day I’d been poking around my grandfather’s
books. He liked history and books on home construction, and I could usually find something in the tales of pirates to interest me. Granddad encouraged it. A few of his books were in the Irish language, which we regularly spoke at home. I liked practicing. It made me feel closer to my mother, who’d sung Gaelic lullabies to me about blackbirds and robins. Knowing words that none of my schoolmates or teachers would understand felt like a secret I shared with my granddad.

  But that afternoon I’d found a different book. Bound in green cloth, it felt very old, with thin crinkling pages that threatened to split each time I touched them. It smelled even older, like when Granddad had cleaned the dust out of the attic vents. A book of Irish legends and folk stories.

  And it was illustrated. I realized that when I opened it and was struck by a drawing of a ragged woman flying through the air, her eyes wide and staring and her impossibly elongated mouth open in a horrible scream. I’d closed the pages immediately, only to be drawn back, frightened to see it again, but knowing she was still there.

  Finally I screwed up my courage to open the book and quickly cover that page and its ghastly picture with a comfortingly thick volume on plumbing repair. From the facing page, I read about the ghost. The bean sí, it was called. She wailed mournful songs to foretell the death of a family member. The evil wraith was often seen washing the garments of the soon-to-be-dead in the waters of the river. Each family had a bean sí of its own, the book said.

  The weather had been high that night. Most parts of our home were over a hundred years old. The house moved with the strong wind, adding its groans to the whistling outside my window. Foretelling.

  I got up. Rules or no, I had to go downstairs.

  “What are you doing?” Granddad said, before I’d made it halfway. He was out of sight around the wide entrance to the front room. I could hear the fire in the fireplace snapping and hissing. My hand edged down the bannister.