Covenant

by Jeff Gulvin

  Harrison said nothing, but held his gaze evenly. Sidetrack came between them. ‘Hey cool off.’ He looked at the driver. ‘Chill out, Rambo. Four-String’d eat you for breakfast.’

  The driver’s eyes balled then and he took a pace forward. Harrison tensed and clenched his fists. Sidetrack placed a hand against each of their chests. ‘We don’t want two old soldiers fighting. We want to shift this shit and haul ass to the skids.’

  The driver flared his nostrils and stood back. ‘Soldier?’ he said. ‘What service?’

  Harrison held his eye. ‘Marine Corps.’

  ‘Vietnam?’

  Harrison nodded.

  ‘OK. I’ll forgive you.’

  ‘You better,’ Limpet muttered from behind them. ‘Guy crawled the dirt like Six.’

  Sidetrack spat on the ground. ‘If you two ladies are done, let’s get this stuff shifted and get the fuck outta here.’ He looked sideways at Harrison. ‘Goddammit, Four-String. Wherever you go, there’s trouble.’

  They loaded the two backpacks of mortar shells, then Harrison shouldered his own pack and picked up his water bottle. Rambo, the driver, was still watching him and he had a quirky expression on his face that sparked new tension. He came over again.

  ‘Do I know you from some place?’ he said.

  Harrison looked beyond him. ‘Not unless you been to Angola in the last ten years.’

  ‘You been in the pen’?’

  ‘Well, there was fences and goons and shit, so I figured that’s what it was.’ Harrison leaned, spat and stood up. ‘Guess I just got one of those faces, huh.’ He walked away to where Limpet and Hooch were standing, but he could feel the driver’s eyes on his back.

  Limpet saw the look and nudged Harrison. ‘That dude’s looking at you like you’re bad kin, brother. You been screwing his wife?’

  Harrison smiled. ‘You figure he’s got one?’

  They camped in a stand of cottonwood trees fifty yards up the hill from the railhead. Sidetrack and the others had ridden this way many times in the past, and they told Harrison there was no train till the morning. He helped Hooch collect brushwood for a fire, and they sat huddled in sleeping bags and blankets against the chill Texas night. Sidetrack supped mescal and chewed on some strips of peppered jerky, and Harrison picked at the strings of his banjo. Limpet had a bottle of cheap bourbon and he broke it open, and handed it round the fire. Harrison took a couple of shots and let the liquor warm his chest, before taking a couple more. He rescrewed the lid and handed the bottle back to Limpet.

  Sidetrack laid down the mescal and looked across the fire at Harrison. ‘I wonder about you,’ he said. ‘Where did you get that attitude?’

  ‘Just born lucky, I guess.’

  Sidetrack shook his head. ‘That Rambo’s a mean motherfucker, Four-String. If I hadn’t told him you was in the service, he’d’ve kicked your ass.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Sidetrack snorted. ‘You sonofabitch.’ He took another long pull at the mescal bottle and chewed on the worm before swallowing.

  ‘Who is he, anyways?’ Harrison asked him.

  ‘He’s a sergeant in the Texas State Guard is who he is.’

  ‘Oh right. So he’s gonna make general in Randy Meades’s republic.’

  Sidetrack cackled then. ‘You’re really something, Four-String.’

  ‘I try.’ Harrison rolled a cigarette and looked over at Limpet. ‘How’s this place for snakes, Limpet? I don’t wanna wake up and find a diamondback cuddling up to me.’

  Limpet shook his head. ‘Way too cold, brother. You’ll be just fine.’

  Harrison bit his lip, thought for a moment, then said: ‘So Six don’t like the snakes either, huh?’

  Sidetrack was looking hard at him. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Nobody. Old Limpet made a crack, is all.’

  Sidetrack’s features softened again. ‘You’ll meet him one of these days, Four-String. You can ask him about snakes yourself.’

  ‘He knows about me, then?’

  ‘Oh, he knows about you.’

  ‘When’s he blowing in?’

  ‘Can’t say.’

  Harrison nodded. ‘But he’s scared of snakes.’

  ‘Never knowed anybody sweat so much over one before in my life.’

  Harrison nodded again and the past grew up in his mind: soaking vegetation and holes in the ground, and the fevered features of Ray Martinez, as one of the deadly black serpents slithered over his arm.

  Paulie Caulfield, a.k.a. Rambo, was back at home: a trailer just outside the National Guard base at Wichita Falls. He lived alone, had never been married and would still have been a regular soldier if it were not for his ankle ligaments. They were too weak, after a bad break, to hold him up every day. He had had to settle for the guard. But that was ten years ago and things had altered radically since then. He had watched the events at Ruby Ridge, had been at Estes Park, and had petitioned the FBI at Waco: to no avail. Good, honest people had died at Waco, children among them, and ever since then, his own course had been set. He switched on his computer, connected with the Net, then took a can of Lone Star from the refrigerator. He snapped off the ring pull and beer bubbled in yellow froth over the top of the can, which he sucked through rubbery lips. Tonight had been a good night in many ways and the weapons they were holding were stacking up well. The old site was just temporary storage until others, like Sidetrack, freighted them on elsewhere. Pretty soon, the people would have as many and varied armaments as the military did.

  Sitting down in front of the screen, he scrolled through the menus, typed in his password and began to trawl the old website pages he sometimes kept for reference. He knew he had one somewhere, but could not remember where he had filed it. So he just sat there and searched until he turned up what he was looking for. The picture was bad, a grainy old black and white, and he stared at the screen for a long time. He could not be sure, but his instincts prickled and he printed a hard copy. Now, he stood under the light and looked at it again and, as he did, a cold sweat came over him. Back at his desk, he typed an e-mail message, closed it under encryption and sent it to Montana.

  BobCat Reece heard the little plink from his computer screen, which told him he had mail, and he got up out of his chair. He was not normally up this late and his wife had long since retired, but that black bitch from the FBI had been on the TV and he had to figure out what tactic she was employing. He moved over to the bureau where his computer was permanently switched on and he clicked into the mail. He looked at the scribble, selected a decoder and the words sprang to life on the page.

  He read it once, then again, and finally he sat back. Caulfield was talking about Idaho a couple of years ago, when the FBI had an undercover agent watching a militia compound. When it all came to light, a bad picture of the Fed had been circulated over the Internet. Reece read the message again, then looked at his watch and stood up. He went outside to his truck and took the cellphone he had bought in Mexico from his black leather attaché case. He sat in the cab, watching the darkness through the windshield, and dialled. He waited while the phone rang and rang. He would have switched it off had he been calling anyone else, but this length of time was no time at all and, two minutes later, a lazy voice sounded in his ear.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘This here’s the Lynx.’

  ‘Hey, what’s up?’

  ‘I think you got a problem.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘I just had word from Texas. There’s a fella running with the Southern Blacks who might be a federal agent.’

  ‘Ah, that problem.’ The voice was thin in his ear. ‘I know about that problem. I been watching that myself.’

  23

  WEBB WORKED WITH THE regional security officer Dan Farrow and the technical support unit. The only other person who knew what they were doing, apart from the US ambassador himself, was James Carragher, the FBI agent from Washington. Webb had been very careful and arranged for the TSU operatives to pose as elect
ricity board technicians, sending in a whole team of them, purportedly to check the wiring in the billet. Every single section was looked at over a period of a week and, during that time, the covert surveillance equipment was installed in Patterson and Stoval’s room. The job was done in less than an hour. At the same time, five other workmen were fiddling about in other rooms. Webb hoped it would be enough to assuage any suspicions on the part of their suspects.

  The surveillance cameras were radio-linked to a van parked round the corner from the billet, which would be monitored and videotaped round the clock for three days initially, with the US ambassador wanting it reviewed after that. Webb could smell the wariness in the embassy. The last thing anybody wanted was Kibibi Simpson’s murderer to be a US citizen. Webb sat in the back of the van with Carragher, watching the screen and listening in on the headphones. There were long periods when there was nobody in the room at all, largely during the working hours, and they let the video run. But at shift changeovers and early and late evening, the van was occupied. At quarter past five, Dyer and Williams, the two marines who shared the room with Stoval and Patterson, were getting ready to go on duty. Forty-five minutes later, Patterson ambled in, changed into some sweats and headed for the gym. Webb sat and watched as Stoval came back, cracked a couple of jokes with the two men going on duty, then went to the gym himself.

  ‘Shoulda wired up the basketball hoop,’ Carragher said.

  Webb took off the headphones. ‘Jim,’ he said. ‘The sun was over the yardarm six hours ago, it’s time to slake my thirst.’

  They sat in a pub in one of the residential backstreets, close to the Eastcote barracks, and drank pints of Guinness. Carragher told him about life in the FBI, how he had been to England just once before, when he was part of the investigation looking into the African embassy bombings.

  ‘Osama Bin Laden,’ Webb said. ‘He’s been quiet for a while.’

  ‘I think the CIA have lost him. They tell us he’s still in Afghanistan, but I doubt it.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone’s got a clue where he is.’

  ‘We had a SWAT team land here,’ Carragher said. ‘Coupla buddies of mine from New Orleans. Washington was rotating the African guard as the investigation got underway. Their plane caught fire over the Atlantic and they had to land here. British Airways took them on to Tanzania.’

  They went back to the van and sat there in the heat, watching the empty screen.

  ‘They’re probably shooting pool somewhere,’ Carragher said. Just then the door opened and Webb sat up straighter. He put the headphones on and twiddled with the volume control. The tape would start automatically as soon as someone spoke. The angle of the camera was not good, but it had been housed high up and took in most of the room. The only area they could not see was the wall directly below the camera, where Dyer’s bed and footlocker were housed. Patterson and Stoval had their beds against the other wall, with footlocker space between them. They were laughing about two women in the pub and Webb again twisted the volume control. Stoval sat on the bed and pulled his sweat top over his head.

  ‘So the man ain’t asked to talk to you again,’ he said.

  Patterson shook his head. ‘Not since the last time.’

  ‘That’s cool.’

  ‘They don’t know nothing. How could they?’ Patterson stood up and stripped off his jeans, folding them neatly on his chair.

  Stoval bent to his locker and took out a packet of cigarettes. He lit one and flapped out the match. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘How could they?’

  In the van, Webb looked at Carragher, who was frowning heavily. ‘Who’s he trying to convince, us or himself?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Webb said. ‘But tomorrow, we lean on Patterson.’

  Weir joined them, together with Dan Farrow, in the office Webb used. Patterson was summoned from duty over at the naval building. He crossed the square to the embassy and came down the corridor. Webb was fetching some coffee and saw him, but did not nod or smile. Patterson’s expression was easy, though there was a flicker of consternation way back in his eyes. Webb motioned for him to go into the office and sat him down in the chair in the middle of the floor. No desk to lean on, nowhere to put his hands except his lap. Webb sat behind his desk, and Weir rested against it, with his arms folded, his face unsmiling as he worked chewing gum round in his mouth. Patterson looked awkward, incongruous in the chair, with his long legs and heavily built upper torso. He waited for somebody to say something to him, but nobody did.

  ‘You all wanted to see me,’ he said at last.

  Still nobody spoke, though four pairs of eyes were trained on his. He looked from one blank face to another, like the kid on his own looking for a friend in the playground.

  ‘You lied to us, Mr Patterson.’ Weir’s voice was soft yet cold.

  Patterson stared at him. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You heard. Why did you lie to us?’

  ‘When? When did I lie?’

  ‘The last time we spoke. You lied about what happened on the night Sergeant Simpson was murdered.’

  Patterson shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘OK.’ Weir leaned forward to look more closely at him then. ‘Tell us again, Alton. Tell us exactly what you did on that Saturday night.’

  ‘I was shooting pool with Dylan, is all.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the Foxhole and then at a coupla bars.’

  ‘No.’ Weir shook his head. ‘You didn’t do that at all. Dylan wasn’t there all the time, was he?’

  Patterson blanched then. His expression sallowed and Webb moved in. ‘Hit a nerve, Alton? Your face is a dead giveaway.’

  Patterson was struggling. He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again like a fish. Finally, he looked at Farrow. ‘Mr Farrow, sir. I don’t know what these gentlemen are talking about. I’m not lying, sir.’

  Farrow did not say anything. He sat with Carragher and just looked at him.

  ‘Mr Patterson.’ Weir was talking to him now. ‘This is a UK murder investigation. Neither Mr Farrow nor Mr Carragher can help you.’ He worked the gum to the other side of his mouth. ‘Now, I’ll ask you again. Tell us what really happened.’

  Patterson looked at him, drew breath through his nose and lifted his shoulders. ‘Sir, it’s like I already told you. I played pool with Dylan Stoval all that Saturday night.’

  Weir suddenly smiled at him. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘If that’s how you want to play it. You can go now.’

  When Patterson was gone, Farrow squinted at Weir. ‘So it’s back to the van, then.’

  Weir winked at Webb. ‘Softly, softly, catchee monkey,’ he said.

  Webb had the headphones in place. Stoval and Patterson did not work together, which meant their optimum time for discussion was back in the billet. This time, both Weir and Carragher were crammed into the small hot space with Webb, and Weir had the second set of headphones.

  At six-fifteen, Patterson came back and tugged at the knot of his tie. Stoval was already there, ironing a shirt for the morning. He looked up sharply. ‘What happened?’

  Patterson sat down heavily on his bed. ‘The two cops told me I was lying.’

  Stoval stared at him. ‘Lying?’

  ‘S’right.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About shooting pool with you that Saturday night.’ Patterson got up again. ‘They just said I was lying. They said to tell them what really happened.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  Patterson shrugged. ‘I told them I wasn’t lying.’

  ‘They don’t know anything.’ Stoval pressed the iron to his shirt collar. ‘How could they know anything? We were both in the Foxhole, hundreds of people woulda seen us, and that pub was real crowded when I got there.’

  ‘It wasn’t earlier,’ Patterson said. ‘I’m a tall guy, Dylan. Maybe somebody said I was there on my own at first.’

  Stoval shook his head. ‘Who’re they gonna find as a witness? People don’t take th
at much notice. You are just another marine, Alton. There’s hundreds of us over here. Nobody gives a damn.’

  ‘Then how come they said I was lying?’

  Stoval was quiet then. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe they know you followed her.’

  Stoval shot a stiff glance at him. ‘How could they? Anyways, I didn’t follow her. I knew where she was going, is all.’

  ‘Well, they know something.’ Patterson flopped down on the bed again. ‘They wouldn’t be asking all these questions if they didn’t know something.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Stoval sat down now. ‘What could they have got, though, man? I mean she musta known hundreds of guys. She was screwing the RSO.’

  ‘Farrow?’

  ‘Naw. The other guy.’

  Patterson thought for a moment. ‘That fat guy—Webb. He picked up on the fact that I knew Kibibi at Wichita Falls. Did he do that with you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well maybe they do know something, then.’

  ‘Get a fucking life, man. How the hell could the British cops know anything about Wichita Falls?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m just guessing.’

  ‘Well quit it.’ Stoval shook his head. ‘I was real careful. I left nothing for them to find.’

  In the van, Webb looked at Weir. Weir lifted a finger.

  Patterson had got up and walked to the window, tension in the set of his shoulders. He spoke without looking round. ‘I told you we shoulda called her bluff.’

  ‘Well, it’s too late now. Bitch got what was coming to her. Poking her damn nose in. She didn’t know the half of it.’ Stoval rubbed a hand across his brow. ‘If we’d let her open that can of worms, man, then all hell woulda broken loose.’

  ‘It’s already doing that.’ Patterson turned to look at him. ‘Don’t you read no newspapers?’

  Stoval shrugged. ‘I don’t give a fuck about that. I got no allegiance any more.’