Revenge of the Dog Team

by William W. Johnstone

  Sal, one of the crew, was on roving patrol in the jeep, circling the grounds. Havoc Renna and Bennett were in what used to be the chauffeur’s quarters, back in the day when one of the previous owners had had a chauffeur. The quarters were a couple of rooms on the upper floor of the stable-turned-garage. Renna and Bennett didn’t have to make any rounds. They were the two big guns of the crew, especially now that Sandor was defunct. Sandor had been a hot shooter, too, and whoever burned him down must’ve been pretty good. Moochie was hazy on the details, because Donny hadn’t exactly been too forthcoming about how Sandor and Vane had gone down. One thing Donny had made clear to all the crew, though. If they caught sight of a dark-haired, clean-shaven guy, a “stiff-faced guy with dead-looking eyes”—whatever that meant—they were to shoot first and ask questions later.

  Back in D.C., that description would fit a couple hundred thousand guys, but out here in the sticks, it was different. Moochie had no problems on that score. If he saw anybody out here, day or night, whose looks he didn’t like, he’d shoot first and ask questions never. If it was the wrong guy, tough. That was Mayhew’s problem. He was supposed to be a big shot. Let him square it.

  Anyway, Renna and Bennett were the hot rods now, and Donny wanted them posted close to the house as a main line of defense. So they could lounge around in the rooms above the garage and watch TV, listen to the radio, play cards, or do anything else they damned well pleased as long as they were on call.

  Big, oxlike Mace was in the main house, monitoring the reports. There was a woman in the house, too, but Moochie hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of her. She was Mayhew’s bitch, he guessed, if that white-haired old bastard could even get it up. He wondered what she looked like. Bennett said her looks were okay, but didn’t elaborate. That was Bennett, though; nothing much interested him except his guns and using them. Donny was spending a lot of time in the main house. Maybe Donny was getting some off the bitch. Donny was a real chaser; he’d go after anything in skirts.

  Moochie wondered what all the fuss was about to bring the whole crew out here in the middle of nowhere. Shouldn’t they be back in D.C., looking for the guy who burned down Sandor and Vane? But it looked like Mayhew was the target. That’s who they were protecting. Moochie had only the sketchiest of ideas of who Mayhew was and what he did. He was rich, going by the size of the estate, the big house, and the fancy boat. He must be into something dirty, or he wouldn’t be hooked up with Donny. He was supposed to be an ex-cop. Moochie hated cops, ex-or otherwise. Donny was an ex-cop, too, but that was different because he hadn’t been a real cop, but a crook with a badge, which was okay.

  Around one A.M., Moochie had gotten a start when he heard something moving about in the underbrush close to the wooden rail fence. The fields fronting the road were knee-high in weeds. Moochie leveled his rifle, dropping into a crouch.

  Something scurried around nearby. It sounded close, real close, like within a dozen yards or so, but Moochie couldn’t see a damned thing. He was ready to start blasting. The rustling continued, like whoever was making it didn’t give a damn if Moochie heard it or not. Nobody could have sneaked up on Moochie, he was sure of that, but what—

  An animal the size of a small dog suddenly broke cover, wriggling out from under the fence and into view on the blacktop. Moochie had to fight hard to keep from shooting.

  He had a clear view of it in the light of the gate’s lamppost. The creature had a long, pointy snout and a long, skinny hairless tail like a rat. It half waddled, half scrambled across the road, dropping into a ditch on the other side and out of sight.

  He was a city boy, but he realized it was a possum. The little bastard had given him a jolt, startling him. He wished now he had shot it, the little prick! But then Donny would have been all over his ass if he’d pulled a stunt like that, so it was just as well that he hadn’t. Christ, he’d never hear the end of it from the crew if a possum had panicked him into popping off!

  All the same, though, he pointed the rifle at the spot where the possum had dropped into the ditch and said, “Bang!”

  He laughed out loud, but it had a hollow sound, and he choked it off almost as soon as it had gotten started.

  Finally, two A.M. rolled around, the end of his shift. Hell, his relief should have been here already. He reached for his cell to sound off about it, but then he saw a pair of headlights round a corner of the main house and appear at the far end of the gravel road. Sal, in the jeep. “About fucking time,” Moochie muttered, pocketing the cell. Something he’d never have dared to say to Sal’s face.

  The headlights neared, closing the distance, resolving into the outline of the jeep. The vehicle raised a pale cloud of dust in its wake, churned up from the gravel road. The glare bothered Moochie, and he put a hand over his eyes to shield them. He was damn glad to see the jeep, though. He was looking forward to some human company back at the main house—get some hot coffee and maybe a sandwich. What he really wanted was a couple of lines of meth, but the summons from Donny for the Mayhew gig had come suddenly, and he’d been caught short without a reserve of his favorite drug. Maybe it was just as well; if he’d had some, doing it out here in hickland would have had him running in circles like a hamster in one of those wire wheels they put in their cages.

  Nearing the gate, Sal slowed, slewing the jeep around in a half circle that put it sideways facing Moochie as it jerked to a halt. The maneuver kicked up a lot of dust, plumes of it wafting through the twin beams of the headlights. Moochie got some in his lungs and started coughing.

  Sal got out of the jeep and rounded the front of it, crossing toward Moochie. He left the motor running. Sal had a spade-shaped face and was short and chunky. He laughed when he saw Moochie coughing. Moochie forced himself to stifle it. Sal said, “Having fun?”

  Moochie hawked up a glob of phlegm and spat, clearing his throat. Some of it got on his mouth and he wiped it off with the back of his hand. “It’s fucking dead out here. Not even a car going by for hours. This is worse than being in solitary.”

  “How would you know?” Sal said, sneering. “You ain’t never been in solitary.”

  Which was true. Moochie had spent some time in reformatories and done a few short stretches in the county jail, but he’d never served time in a real penetentiary, as had Sal. Sal had done a two-year bid for theft and a separate, five-and-a-half-year term for manslaughter. He was known as a stand-up guy who’d never ratted anyone out, as he continually liked to remind anyone within listening distance.

  Moochie fired back, “That’s because I’m too smart to get caught.”

  Sal smirked. “Keep on thinking like that and you’ll be inside in no time.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be inside the house while you’re out here pulling gate guard. In fact, I’ll be on my way right now, thank you very much.”

  “Hold on, lemme call in first,” Sal said. He flipped open his cell and talked into it. “Hello, Mace? It’s me, Sal. I’m at the front gate now…Hold on, I’ll ask him.” He moved the cell away from his mouth. “Anything happening out here, kid?”

  Moochie said, “Not a fucking thing.”

  “All quiet,” Sal said into the cell. “What else would you expect? Okay, Mooch’s coming in now. I’ll report in in a half hour. Another thing, Mace. I ain’t staying out here no four hours. Two hours, tops…Don’t tell me your problems. I don’t care who you get, but send somebody to relieve me at four. How should I know? Tyrone can pull a stretch out here, or Karl the caretaker. Tell you what. You come out here and I’ll sit in the big house fielding the phone calls…I am not fucking kidding. Two hours tops. Talk to you later.”

  Sal closed the cell and dropped it into the right breast pocket of his gaudy sport shirt. “Fucking Mace. How come he gets all the soft jobs?”

  Moochie shrugged. “Donny likes to have him around.”

  “Yeah, like a pet dog.”

  “I’ll tell him you said that.”

  “No, you won’t, kid. You got more sense than tha
t.”

  Moochie decided to change the subject. “Anything going on back at the house?”

  Sal shook his head. “Donny and Mayhew are thick as thieves, Renna and Bennett are playing grab-ass in the garage, and Jimmy Mac is doing it doggie-style with one of his Rotties. He’s the one taking it up the ass.”

  “I’ll be heading in then.”

  “Can’t wait to get some of that Jimmy Mac action, huh? You’ll have to wait your turn, though. Karl’s on line ahead of you. So’s the other Rot tie, for that matter.”

  “Have fun out here, Sal.”

  “It’s nothing to me, kid. I like the peace and quiet. Especially since I’m getting paid for it.”

  Something rustled in the weeds nearby, and for an instant Moochie thought the possum had returned. His back was toward the source of the noise. Sal was facing it.

  Sal pulled a face, eyes popping, jaw dropping. His reaction was so comically exaggerated that Moochie had to caution himself to keep his own face straight. This was priceless, a tough guy like Sal being spooked by a possum.

  Uttering a wordless cry, Sal clawed for the gun at his side. A black blot the size of a half-dollar appeared in the center of his forehead. Simultaneous with it came a metallic chunking thud, like the sound of an engine slipping a piston rod.

  Sal’s head snapped back on its neck with a recoil comparable to its connecting with a swung baseball bat. He followed it, tumbling backward, hand still clutching the butt of the gun he hadn’t been quick enough to draw from its holster.

  Barely had all this registered on Moochie’s brain when the back of his head exploded, ending all awareness. It, too, was accompanied by that metallic thunking sound.

  He was flung forward, sprawling partly across Sal’s body, which already lay flattened on the gravel road.

  Steve Ireland knelt on one knee in the weeds inside the fence, about a half-dozen paces east of the gate. His right hand held a pistol with a metal cylinder attached to the muzzle. The attachment was about the size and shape of a canned energy drink, longer and thinner than a beer can. A wisp of smoke curled from bore in the center of the cylinder.

  The cylindrical attachment was a suppressor, what Sal and Moochie would have called a silencer. It had reduced the report of the two gunshots to a pair of metallic clunking thuds, and eliminated almost all of the muzzle flare.

  Steve was bareheaded, except for a pencil-thin communicator worn on the left side of his face, a headset transceiver that was a curved tube with one end terminating in an earpiece and the opposite end in a small knob near his mouth. A sleeveless utility vest was worn over a protective Kevlar bulletproof vest, which was worn over a dark T-shirt. He needed the utility vest, its multi-pockets holding mostly spare magazine clips and shotgun shells. The clips were for his guns and the shells for the sawed-off, twelve-gauge riot pump shotgun worn slung by a strap across his back. Baggy dark pants and hiking boots completed the outfit.

  Out here in the country by the bay, it was cooler and less humid than it had been in the city, but between the utility vest and the flak jacket and the hardwear, it was still hot as hell. Comfort is often the first sacrifice to efficiency.

  He’d been inside the fence for some time, an hour if not more. He’d low-crawled through the weeds with exacting slowness, worming his way toward Moochie. Moochie had preferred loitering under the gate lamppost to walking the fence line. The few times he’d walked the fence, he’d been mightily unobservant, unknowingly passing close to Steve each time.

  These seemingly open fields provided plenty of cover if you knew how to exploit it, rocks and shrubs, ditches and swells and hollows. And that’s not even taking into account the abundance of knee-high weeds blanketing the ground.

  Steve had made his final approach when the jeep drove out to the gate. Its noise had obscured what few small sounds were made by his passage, while its lights helped totally obliterate whatever night vision Moochie had managed to acquire during his vigil. Sal was even more clueless.

  Once Sal had finished reporting in, that had spelled his end and Moochie’s, too. Steve could have made the kills from the prone position, but he’d felt a little more secure making them from the kneeling position, so he’d knelt on one knee, using that position to steady his gun hand.

  Generally, he was a headhunter. The torso shot is the safest option according to the rule books; the bigger the target, the easier it is to hit. True enough, but in this day and age, you never knew who might be wearing a bulletproof vest under their garments, even a pair of hoods like these two he had just eliminated. Never underestimate the enemy. Besides, at this close range, making the head shots required no great feat of marksmanship on his part. Even with the suppressor. He was no great fan of suppressors. They could be tricky at times, tempermental. But he’d tried this one out earlier today and it met his specifications, so he felt comfortable enough using it to make the double kill. Silence and stealth were assets on this mission for as long as they could reasonably be maintained.

  Rising partly up out of the weeds, he’d tagged Sal first, drilling him square in the center of the forehead, then putting the second shot in the back of Moochie’s cranium. Kill the brain and instant death ensues, shutting down even any reflex muscular reactions.

  Steve reached for his headset communicator, switching it on. He’d had it switched off since beginning his final approach, not wanting any distractions while he was getting set to deliver the deathstroke.

  A tingling throb in the tube running along his jawline and a faint, tinny buzzing in his earpiece told him the device was functional.

  “Eye here,” he said. “The gate is secured. Over.”

  He spoke no louder than a whisper. The transceiver components were microminiaturized, the tiny beadlike condenser microphone as remarkably sensitive to transmit the softest sounds as the earbud audio pickup was to receive them. A thin flexiplastic earpiece circled the base of his left ear where it met the skull, anchoring the headset in place.

  The replies followed:

  “Oh here. Acknowledged.”

  “Bee here. Acknowledged.”

  “Enn here. Acknowledged.”

  “Emm here. Acknowledged.”

  The mission had drawn a five-man unit. For the sake of verbal shorthand, each member had taken the first letter of his last name for a call sign. None of them shared the same last initial.

  Steve was “Eye” for Ireland.

  “Oh” was Osgood, the driver.

  “Bee” was Bryce, like Steve a member of the assault squad going in.

  “Enn” was Nevins, also an assault squad member.

  “Emm” was Mantee, the boat-handler covering the cove.

  The jeep was parked parallel to the road, facing west, its headlights throwing long twin cones of radiance in that direction.

  A patch of woods about fifty yards away inside the fence and east of the gate yielded two figures. Bent almost double to minimize their profile in the open field, they hustled over toward the gate, joining Steve. Like him, they crouched behind the jeep, keeping it between them and the house.

  They were Bryce and Nevins. Bryce, a black man with a shiny, clean-shaven scalp, had a heavyweight fighter’s build. Nevins had short wavy hair with a widow’s peak and a long-muscled swimmer’s build. They were similarly outfitted like Steve, except that Bryce was armed with an assault rifle and Nevins with a Swedish knockoff of an M-4 machine gun.

  That was part of the cover story, the legend, going in. The Dog Team higher-ups didn’t want this to look like a military operation, didn’t want any hardware used that could be traced back to the military in general and the Army in particular. Not even weapons that were officially listed as having been lost, stolen, or strayed from arsenals or National Guard armories, of which there was no shortage. They wanted it to look like gang-related activity. That would play right into Piersall’s crew’s background. They were homegrown thugs with no international connections.

  Considering the state of crime today, a
lot of gangs were armed with heavy firepower. Bryce’s weapon was a foreign-made knockoff of an M-16. Ditto for Nevins’s piece, a Scandinavian arms company’s clone of an M-4. Steve’s riot gun actually was American made, but there were plenty of them in circulation and the weapon had no particular military connotation. More of a police connection really. That would jibe with Mayhew and Piersall’s ex-cop background.

  All the hardware was sterile; that is, their histories tracked back to a dead end with nothing to incriminate their actual source—namely, the Dog Team’s munitions supplier. That went for the handguns with which the squad was supplied; the ammunition, too. Just in case the operation went sour and weapons were left behind with their dead wielders and not secured by the survivors, if any.

  The only really high-tech equipment they carried consisted of the transceiver communicators. Costly and sophisticated though they were, they were commercially available. A trace on the serial numbers would reveal only that they were part of a lot stolen from the inventory of a Chicago “spy store,” one of those outlets where the public can buy all kinds of electronic eavesdropping equipment to snoop on errant spouses, business rivals, and so on.

  Steve spoke into the communicator. “Eye to Oh, Eye to Oh. Come in, please. Over.”

  “Oh here, over,” replied Osgood.

  “You can move up here now, over.”

  “Roger, over.”

  “Eye, over and out.”

  Osgood was the driver. Four of the five-man squad had arrived by land. Their vehicle was a Klondike, one of the largest of all SUVs. The model had been discontinued by the manufacturer because it was such a gas guzzler that none but the extremely well heeled could afford to keep it fueled, but that wasn’t a concern to the Dog Team. The Klondike was on the far side of a rise on the road to the east, about a quarter mile away, standing in an off-road glade. Earlier, Steve, Bryce, and Nevins had disembarked from it to make their way through the woods to the front fields inside the fence at Arnot’s Acres. Osgood had stayed behind with the vehicle.