The Daisy Ducks

by Rick Boyer

  At four exactly they contacted us, saying they'd found nothing. They were turning north, heading back up toward where we were. Kaunitz answered that we were going to work our way up the road, and we'd let them know if we saw anything. Otherwise, we'd be in touch again at five, which would be an hour from sunset and time to start back. We left that kudzu thicket on all fours, crawling on hands and knees for forty yards through the green tangles. It wasn't fun, but it was the only way out.

  22

  FRED KAUNITZ and I started making our way up the little winding road. We proceeded parallel to it, walking silently and slowly ten yards to the left of the shoulder. On this leg of our trek he instructed me to fall back and follow him at five yards. I noticed that he now held his rifle at port arms rather than slung across his back. Trusting his alertness and marksmanship, I kept mine slung. Twenty minutes later Kaunitz froze, then motioned me up with slow waves of his arm. He was looking at something just ahead of him on the path. A snake? He didn't move his head. I crept up behind and looked over his shoulder. He pointed his finger at something I couldn't see.

  "What?" I asked.

  He pointed closer and almost touched a pale filament that stretched across our path.

  "Monofilament fishing line," he whispered, "about eight-pound test. Damn near invisible, especially in the afternoon light. Shit. It's a good thing I know the guy we're stalking. Don't forget: Royce and I've been through exactly the same training. Let's see what it's connected to . . .”

  He followed the line to the left, where it was anchored to a locust tree. To the right, it terminated at a clip-style clothespin.

  Here was the setup: the clothespin was fastened securely to a tree by a tenpenny nail driven through the bore of the pin's coil spring. The jaws of the clothespin were facing toward the path. Two wires were fastened to the wooden pin: one along the top jaw, the other underneath. The exposed ends of these wires were crimped around the jaws but weren't touching because a wooden golf tee had been inserted in the spring jaws, holding them apart. The monofilament line was tied around the fat end of the golf tee. The two wires met at a coffee can wired to a tree. One of the wires ran through a dry cell battery.

  "Ha! What do you think, Doc? We pass through these woods at dusk and the point man walks into the line. The line pulls out the golf tee, the clothespin snaps shut, the two wires meet. Current goes through the wire and into the can. Let's look at the can."

  The back of the coffee can was stuffed with a puttylike substance that Kaunitz identified as C-4, a military issue plastique explosive. Stuck into the center of it was a detonator with both the wires attached to it. The can was originally blue, but now was mostly covered with swirls of brown spray paint.

  "In the bottom of the can, which is now the front end, are probably nuts, bolts, nails, or whatever. You can see it's aimed right at the trail. And from this distance, about twelve feet, I would guess it'd kill the point man and severely injure those following closely. Man oh man—that coffee is definitely what I'd call bad to the last drop. Okay Doc, from now on we increase our distance from each other. You've been following at five yards. We'll increase it to ten. That way, if I walk into one of these, at least you won't get greased along with me. And we'd better not try to come back this way in the dark. No telling how many of these nasty things they've laid out for us."

  Kaunitz considered the situation and decided to disconnect the wires from the dry cell battery, which disabled the device without destroying it. We walked on, even more alert than we'd been previously. No doubt Royce was confident that the booby traps would slow us down. And while it seemed rather odd that a man would try to kill his old war buddies, I considered what had happened to Bill Royce, especially his feelings of betrayal and abandonment and the fact that we were messing on his turf, and it became a little more understandable. But I followed Kaunitz with a growing lump in my throat. What would Mary think of that little booby trap? Roantis had promised both of us I wouldn't be involved when things "got hot." Maybe so, but I was apparently in some danger already, and things hadn't even begun to simmer yet.

  We wound our way up and up, and the tiny road thirty feet off to our right was made almost invisible by the undergrowth and thick stands of timber. Kaunitz kept his rifle ready and seemed constantly to scan the hillside above us with his glasses. Finally, at the foot of a particularly steep incline, he paused and turned to face me, placing his open left hand over his face, clutching at it with a claw grip. He had taught me earlier what the sign meant: ambush ahead. I felt my skin crawl, my knees start to tremble slightly. He motioned me forward with very slow waves, and I proceeded accordingly. When I finally got up to him, he leaned right into my ear and whispered very low.

  "See that bright slab of granite up there? Now look through your glasses directly below it."

  I did and saw a strange motion in the trees: a brown circle that came and went, came and went, seeming to wave back and forth. I kept studying it until I suddenly realized it was a bush hat, just like the kind we were wearing. Next to the hat appeared a face, a young man's face, which had strawberry blond hair and small eyes. He looked young—too young, in fact, to be toting the bolt-action sniper rifle with long scope that he cradled in his lap. He sat under a pine tree, fanning himself with the hat. Kaunitz settled back against a tree and squinted his eyes.

  "Question is," he whispered, "do we go around him or take

  him out?"

  "What do you mean, ‘take him out'? Remember, we're only here to watch."

  "I won't hurt him. I'll just take him out," he said, laying his FAL on the ground carefully and loosening the big bandanna from around his neck. He removed his radio and backpack too. He stripped down to his clothes and knife. "Now don't you go anywhere, Doc. Stay low and quiet. I'll be back."

  He slipped away into the bush in a low crouch. I sat back against the same tree he had used, drew up my knees, and held my Colt across them. I pulled my hat down low, raised my binoculars, and watched the young sniper on the mountainside above me. I watched him for maybe fifteen minutes before a pair of hands flashed down over his head from behind and snapped backward with blinding speed. The sniper grabbed for his throat, which had the bandanna stretched across it. I heard the clatter as the rifle fell from his grip. In a second he had disappeared. Had Kaunitz killed him? No, because five minutes later he was back. He gathered his equipment and motioned me forward.

  "What happened to the kid?"

  "You'll see. I've got him right up here. Come on."

  We made our way up the mountain to where he'd left the kid. He was sitting on the ground, his arms thrust backward around a beech tree. Kaunitz had tied his hands, and the boy's mouth was gagged with the bandanna. Kaunitz put his hand on the boy's shoulder—the boy was plenty scared—and told him not to worry, that we'd be back to pick him up in a little while and we weren't going to hurt him.

  "That is, unless you don't answer the questions we're going to ask you when we get back, son. Then I'm going to hurt you real bad. You hear? I want you to think about this while we're gone."

  So we left, and kept climbing. I couldn't help feeling sorry for the kid, who looked as if he were about to cry. It was twenty to five and growing dark when we reached the top of the mountain, which was actually not a peak but the beginning of a long, flat plateau. The vegetation had thinned a bit toward the summit, as it tends to do, and the road off to our right was much easier to see. We crept along the fringes of the bush, keeping a sharp lookout. It wasn't long before we came up to an ancient railroad spur, which swung in from the right. We followed this along the flat ridge, keeping to either side in the thinning cover. I noticed that the very tops of the rails had a faint shine to them, a narrow band of fresh metal. That meant they'd been used recently, but apparently for light loads. But without a heavy locomotive, how did the wheels move?

  Just coming up to five o'clock, we spotted some ruined wooden structures up ahead. One was quite tall. We slipped up closer to the place and glasse
d it from the bush. Kaunitz worked the place over well, skipping nothing. We waited and watched, watched and waited, in silence.

  Finally he whispered, "Old log depot and sawmill. Spur goes down to town, I bet. Hasn't been used, but did you notice the rails?"

  "Yeah. Been used for something. Not trains."

  "Uh-huh. Let's go up softly. Keep your safety off, but don't shoot at birds. Make sure first."

  We got up to the place with no disturbance. I noticed two tall towers with big cables and drum winches fastened to them. At their base were the old gasoline donkey engines to work the winches. They winched the logs up and over to the mill, then loaded them onto flatcars or sawed them up. But all that had been a long time ago, according to the ranger, Jack Gentry. It was back in the twenties and thirties, before the logging gave out and all the toppers, buckers, and choker setters packed up their cork boots and peaveys and headed out to Puget Sound. Now all that was left were old forgotten railroad spurs and ruined sawmills, like the one we were looking at. Kaunitz raised Summers and Desmond on his field radio. They said they weren't very far from us, and moving closer. Kaunitz mentioned our sniper friend and the can of bad coffee.

  "Be careful as you approach," he said into the microphone, "especially in this falling light. Doc and I will be inside the buildings or off to the side in the bush."

  We had a look at the old buildings. There was nothing unusual about them. The only thing we noticed was against the outside wall of the largest structure: a big horizontal tank on a metal rack with a lever spigot. Kaunitz rapped the tank up and down and pronounced it half full. Of what? He opened the spigot for a split second and let the gold liquid gush onto his hand, which he sniffed. Diesel fuel, he reported.

  "Diesel? For what? The old engines are gas powered. And I'm sure the locomotives they used to have out here were steam."

  "I know," he said. "That's why it's interesting."

  "Where do you think the tracks lead in this direction?" I asked.

  Kaunitz gazed at the old right of way that disappeared into the pines, heading west.

  "Who can say? They might go all the way to Tennessee." He had put his boot on the rail and stood there, his foot cocked up, looking at the old rails as they converged far away in the trees. Then he looked down at his boot.

  "I think I feel something," he said. I knelt down on the ties and put my ear to the rail. A faint thrumming and clicking came through, and we jumped for the trees, went to earth, and waited. A few minutes later we both heard the growl of an engine, then saw motion through the trees. A strange vehicle ghosted into view. It was a small wooden flatcar, like the kind used by railroad work crews, that appeared to be homemade. The platform was mounted on a pair of standard boxcar trucks, but the engine was the interesting part. It was an old Minneapolis-Moline farm tractor. The cowling was still in place over the engine, but its wheels and undercarriage had been removed, and the spinning driveshaft connected to a drive wheel and chain drive that ran down through the platform to the truck wheels. The exhaust stack stuck up through the tractor's cowling. It was sooty black at the tip, and dark smoke chuffed out the top. And that, I realized, solved the puzzle of the half tractor I had spotted in Royce's barn. They'd pirated its engine and drive mechanism to power their little train. The wooden platform clickity-clacked by us, going about ten miles an hour. On the platform were two men in fatigues, each holding a rifle. They didn't stop at the mill, but rolled right by and disappeared around the bend, headed in the direction we'd just come from.

  "Don't like that," said Kaunitz. "One: they're probably going to relieve that sniper. And they'll find him trussed up, which will blow our insertion we worked so hard for. Two: that contraption with two more men, plus our sniper friend, means that Royce has a bigger operation than we thought. This isn't going to be a cake walk."

  "I've had that feeling for some time."

  We lay low until we heard a crow cawing nearby. Kaunitz waited, then blew into the crow call he had hung around his neck. The crow cawed back. Soon Summers and Desmond were with us. It was past five-thirty, which meant less than an hour of daylight left. I said we should head back. Night comes fast in the mountains; once the sun goes down, the valleys fill up with darkness quickly. We all agreed and had stood up for the trek back when the sound came through the trees again. We hit the dirt.

  There was that little trolley once more, huffing and chuffing back the way it had come. But this time there were three men on the little wooden platform. The third man's face was almost hidden by his bush hat, but the setting sun caught his face for an instant as the car rolled past, and I recognized the priest.

  "Jusue1o," said Summers under his breath as the iron wheels clicked and chuckled past our heads. I noticed that in addition to the extra man, the platform was also loaded with gear: olive drab ammo boxes and several wooden and cardboard cartons. Then it was gone, and only the dark wisps of oily smoke and the distant click-clack of the rolling trucks were evidence of its passing. We stayed put until Kaunitz got to his feet, looking warily around him.

  "C'mon," he said. "Let's get back to our gagged sentry and march him back to camp."

  We retraced our earlier route. There was the kid all right, just where we'd left him. Kaunitz unfastened him from the tree and let him take a leak. Then he retied his hands behind his back and took off the gag.

  "What's your name, boy?" he asked.

  The kid didn't answer. Kaunitz made a half turn away from the boy, as if he had given up and would continue walking. But then, quick as lightning, he spun around and swung with an open hand that was a blur, catching the kid's jaw with the heel of his palm. The boy, not expecting the blow, was knocked spinning into the bush.

  Summers reached down and picked him up by the collar. He shook him twice, the way a terrier shakes a rat, and set him on his wobbly legs.

  "Man ax you a question. What's your name?"

  "Why do you want to know?" the kid managed.

  Whap! Summers popped him hard on the face with the back of his big hand.

  "Don't gimme no mess-around," he said.

  "I . . . I —"

  Whap!

  "Don't gimme no jiveass," growled Summers, popping the kid again.

  There were two bright red streaks coming from his mouth and nose now, mixed with snot and tears. I felt sorry for the boy, who probably wasn't older than twenty. I stepped between Summers and the kid, wiping his mouth with my handkerchief

  "Listen kiddo, you can go either way with these guys. You can play it tough, like they do in the movies, and get the shit beat out of you. Or you can tell us what we want to know and save your skin. Believe me kid, they mean business. I want you to think about this on the walk back."

  He looked into my face and the tears came hard. He bit his lip to keep them back, but it didn't work.

  "My name's Darryl Royce," he said. "Please mister, don't let them kill me!"

  He was crying in earnest now and could barely stand. I was about to cry too, dammit. I couldn't help it; I saw Jack and Tony in the kid. Nothing like being a dad to make you soft. I turned the kid around and pointed him in the right direction.

  "We're not here to kill you, son," I said. "I think you've got a good idea why we're here, don't you? Now these gentlemen are going to ask you questions. For your sake, and for the sake of your friends, you'd better not hold back. As soon as we get what's ours, we'll leave these mountains. If you help us, we'll leave quickly and without hurting anyone, including Bill Royce. Is he a brother or a cousin?"

  "Cousin. How I know you're not lyin'?"

  "Unfortunately you don't. You'll have to take my word. Now march, and don't you forget what I said."

  So we walked on until we hit the highway. It was almost dark now, and we weren't worried about blowing our cover, since no doubt they would miss the kid anyway. We decided the best thing to do was to get back to camp fast. We marched the kid along the shoulder of the road, leaving it and going to ground when we heard vehicles. just before ei
ght, we caught sight of the camper through the trees. As we approached it, Kaunitz blew on his crow call. We got an answer from the trees, and Roantis appeared. As soon as he saw the kid, he went right by us, walking intently toward him. The kid stood on the old logging road with his hands tied. Then we were all standing in a circle around him, asking questions. Was Daisy all right? How many men were with Royce? Where were they? What were they doing? What did they want? The kid began slowly, but once started, droned on and on. He puked twice; he was literally scared sick. We left him there with Desmond, who was soon sitting with him under a pine tree, talking like an old friend.

  We went inside the camper and sat around the dinette table drinking coffee. There were several avenues we could take. Summers and Kaunitz wanted to repay in kind, holding young Darryl Royce until we got Daisy back. I knew it was time to speak up.

  "We could hold the kid, sure," I said. "But it's dumb. One: we'll need at least one man to watch him, and we need all of us. Two: up till now, they haven't hurt her, or me. And they've had reason to and plenty of chances to do it. I don't think they want any bloodshed, and I'm telling all you guys, I don't either. I say we march the kid into town and hand him over to Roger Penland. The law can question him and get some answers. That makes us the good guys, Royce and Jusuelo the bad guys. The law can get special teams to go after them. Helicopters, dogs, the works."