Cold Winter Sun

by Forder, Tony J.

  We made our way across the spine of the ridge. I glanced down into the sawmill site as we came around above the battered old store and the shacks beyond. Outside one of the small wooden buildings, beside a confusion of tyre tracks, a male body wearing a navy blue FBI jacket lay sprawled out on the ground. There was a gruesome mess where one side of his head should be. I had no idea what had taken place here, but I knew I could not leave without first checking.

  I tapped Terry on the shoulder. ‘I’m going down there. He has to be dead, but I can’t walk away without knowing for sure.’

  He, of all people, would know what I meant. We were on the side of the good guys, and the FBI were included in that. I had no idea what their role in this had been, but that did not seem to matter with one of their own lying in a pool of his own blood and brain matter on the desert soil.

  ‘You get back to the Jeep,’ I told him. ‘I’ll be right behind you.’

  Terry nodded once. ‘Be careful. You don’t know who or what else you’ll find down there.’

  I made it down the slope quickly enough. I made a rapid assessment of every window and door and roof of every structure, but saw nothing to alarm me. Easing around the side of the store I ducked my head inside a cavity which at one time held a window. Lying on the floor was the man we knew as Barclay. He had taken a large round directly beneath his left eye, most of the damage to his skull created as it exited his head. I listened hard, scoured the area again. I had the overwhelming sense that I was now alone down there.

  I reached the fallen agent and checked his pulse despite knowing I would have been too late to save his life even if I had been standing right by his side when he was hit. You don’t recover from a large calibre bullet wound that blasts through the brain and decimates the cranium in such a devastating manner.

  As I made my way back up the hillside I wondered who had taken out who. But unless their bodies lay unexposed somewhere else – and judging by the lack of vehicles I doubted that was the case – then there was an FBI agent and the man in the snakeskin boots unaccounted for.

  Not to mention our follower.

  32

  Upon reaching the Jeep I discovered that Bruce Kelper was both unconscious and bleeding profusely. I had seen enough scalp lacerations before to know that this was what they did, even if the wounds were superficial. I was more dismayed by the fact that he was not conscious, because to my mind that was far worse than the cuts to his head. I looked across at Terry who was crouching down on the other side of Kelper, tending to his wounds.

  ‘He slipped and fell,’ Terry explained. ‘Cracked his head on a rock.’

  ‘Are we taking him to hospital?’ Van Dalen asked.

  ‘We are,’ Terry replied before I had a chance to respond. ‘We’ll make sure the staff there get him on a gurney, then you two go with him and stay with him. On our way we’ll figure out what you can and can’t say about what happened here today. For obvious reasons, neither Mike nor I can be mentioned. As far as you’re all concerned, we were never here.’

  There was no resistance. I knew the young woman had to be beyond the limits of her endurance, given everything she had witnessed over the past few days. Jackson seemed to be looking inwardly, still suffering from shock in my estimation. He held on to his girlfriend’s hand so tightly I could tell it would bruise her, but to her credit she made no complaint.

  Terry had just taken his seat behind the wheel and fired up the Jeep when my replacement phone rang. Only two people had the number, and one of them was sitting alongside me. I accepted the call and put it on speakerphone.

  ‘Drew,’ I said, injecting as much good cheer as I could manage. ‘I have good news for you. We–’

  ‘Mike, whatever you’re about to say or do, stop right there. Donna and Wendy are gone, Mike. They’ve been taken.’

  A fist-sized weight wrapped around my insides and started to twist. ‘Taken?! What do you mean? Taken where? By who?’

  ‘I don’t know. I got a text telling me to go home. When I got here there was a message waiting for me on the kitchen counter. It gave me a number to call – not the same as the one I got the text from. They didn’t give me their name, they just said they had been watching the house in case they couldn’t get their hands on Vern. I’m assuming things went south on them, so they snatched up the girls. Wendy was home on study leave. They’re gone, Mike, and whoever has them means business.’

  His voice had grown louder and more shrill, fear and adrenaline squeezing his throat muscles. I calmed him down and asked him to explain more about the call.

  ‘I was told I’d made a big mistake hiring someone to find Vern, because his own man had been getting close, and if that had gone as planned then there would have been no need to take Donna and Wendy. With Vern about to be rescued, that put me and the rest of my family in play. I tried asking questions, but was told to be quiet and follow instructions. When the call was over, I called my sister and told her to leave home and find a place to crash. But they won’t need her while they have Donna and Wendy.’

  I took several deep breaths. Drew was not the only one I had to keep calm right now. Because everything Terry and I had endured in order to rescue Vern had directly led to Donna and Wendy being abducted.

  ‘Okay, now listen to me,’ I said. ‘What do they want? They must have made some demands.’

  ‘They did. But it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, Mike. The man I spoke to told me the only way I would ever see Donna and Wendy alive again was to exchange them for what Vern had been hiding.’

  I glanced over my shoulder at Vern Jackson. I knew from the look of horror in his eyes that he knew precisely what was being asked of him.

  ‘Drew, Vern is safe and secure right now. Whatever it is they want we’ll get it to them. What arrangements were made for the exchange?’

  ‘None. I was told that when I had what they needed, I was to text the number first used to contact me. I would then receive a reply telling me which number to call next.’

  ‘Did they tell you what it was they were after?’

  ‘No. Only that Vern would know.’

  ‘Okay. Was there anything you picked up on, Drew? Anything at all that might give us a clue as to who these people are?’

  ‘Now that you mention it, there was. I don’t know how much this helps, but the man I spoke to was definitely a Native American. I could tell by his accent and the way he strung his words together.’

  Our follower.

  Had to be.

  Or whoever he was working for, perhaps. He was involved, though. He had seen everything, and in rescuing Vern we had set in motion the abduction of Donna and Wendy.

  I thought about how this might now play out. It didn’t look good. But it was hard for me to think straight, not with the knowledge of my daughter having been swept up in all this madness.

  ‘Give me some time,’ I said to Drew. ‘I’ll call you back after I’ve spoken with Vern and Terry and we have a handle on this.’

  ‘Let me speak to him, please.’

  ‘Not right now. Sorry, but I think this is a conversation only Terry and I need to have with him. I’ll call you as soon as I know more.’

  I cut the line before he had a chance to respond. I turned fully in my seat and looked hard at Vern.

  ‘I admire you for resisting whatever those men did to you back at the sawmill. I really do. But this just escalated. Men died today, and now my daughter and ex-wife are in trouble, and you need to tell us everything you know. The root cause needs explaining, and I need to understand it. Chelsea told us all about the scam with the software, but I don’t believe she gave up everything. You have a lot of people wanting your blood, but it seems to me they are after more than simply the money you stole.’

  He breathed out slowly. A slight, ineffectual-looking man, Vern was what might be classed as a ‘hipster’. His gaunt features hiding behind a straggly-looking beard that I reckoned had been neatly manicured before all this shit went down, spiked
hair long short of product, eyes downcast as if afraid to meet our gaze. He didn’t smell too fresh, and he remained bloodied and bruised. He had suffered, of that there was no doubt, but having twice taken part in the carnage today, I had little sympathy for the man who was in some way responsible.

  ‘The people who abducted us wanted answers we couldn’t give them,’ he said eventually. ‘The scam they knew about, so too how I’d gone about it. So yes, they wanted their money back, and I gave it to them right away. I swear I did. They sat me in front of a laptop and I put every dime back where it came from.’

  ‘So what else did they need from you?’

  ‘The software. Chelsea told you all about the scam, but what she didn’t know a thing about was the other coding I put inside our product. I know you probably think we were dumb to take on powerful people like that, but the truth is I thought we would be in and out before they even realised, and that by the time they did the software would have reverted back to normal and the scam code removed. But I added another layer of protection to be sure. These casinos rip off money of their own, especially from the IRS, so my code found all the wrinkles and siphoned the information off onto a separate device. I told the guys doing the questioning that if anything happened to any of us, and by that I meant any permanent harm, the code was pre-triggered to send the details out to the FBI and news agencies around the country. Truth be told, I lied about that part, but I did have the data on an external hard disk. Plus a copy on another disk. Or at least, I did have.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I buried them. While me and Bruce were out in the desert. Wrapped them in a freezer bag and sealed them first, then buried the bag. Those men were getting too close and I couldn’t risk carrying it around with me any longer, and it’s not as if I have anywhere safe to conceal it. I had to make sure we had an insurance policy if they caught up with us. Something to barter with. After Bruce and I were beaten black and blue and we realised our lives were in real danger, I finally gave it up.’

  ‘So what was the problem?’

  ‘The disks were gone. Only Bruce and I knew where I’d buried them. But the guys who were sent to look for it came back empty handed.’

  ‘Where was this, close to where you dumped the Kia?’

  He shook his head. ‘They checked there as well, thinking we might have been lying to them even at that stage. That, or we were mistaken about the location. But no, I buried it in a place I figured it could not be found because nobody was allowed to search there anymore.’

  I closed my eyes. Of course. ‘The crash site. The bloody UFO crash site.’

  He barked a quick, humourless laugh. ‘Yeah. Since the new owners took over that land they’d banned all tourists and enthusiasts, made it a trespassing offence to even set foot on the property afterwards. I guess it pricked both my sense of humour and irony to bury something so valuable in a place like that. We did it before we dumped the car.’

  ‘But now you’re saying they couldn’t find it. You think they just missed it somehow?’

  ‘No. I was too specific about its location. They told us it was gone, and I believed them.’

  As I believed him. Because I also knew who now had the disks.

  ‘Where does Al Chastain fit into all this?’

  ‘Chastain? I... I have no idea. Bruce went to meet with him. He wanted to ask him something about the overview the Gaming Commission has on casinos, who to deal with in terms of providing information. I think Bruce was looking to find a way to nail them if things went badly for us.’

  ‘Chastain is dead,’ I said bluntly.

  Vern hung his head but said nothing more.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said to Terry.

  He nodded and got the Jeep rolling. ‘What about Drew?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll call him as soon as I have a plan.’

  We were silent as Terry drove around the base of the hills and back towards the road, where he hung a right. A few moments later I felt a surge of relief at seeing the sheriff’s SUV sitting by the entrance to the mill, facing our way. He’d made it out, and I was glad of that. I jumped out and dashed across to the cruiser as Terry came to a hard stop.

  ‘Everything all right?’ I asked.

  The sheriff nodded. He had removed his hat, and I saw that his flattened hair was wispy and sparse on the crown of his head. He ran a hand through his moustache before he spoke. ‘I just drove up the road a ways to call this mess in, came straight back here to wait for you fellahs. There are a lot of bodies back there to explain away. Including the man I had to kill.’

  ‘I’m so sorry about that, sheriff. I mean that. I would never have wished that on you. But I’m also very grateful to you that you did, and in the days and maybe weeks to come, when the nightmares kick in, you will need to keep in mind that you took a life this day to save one. Now look, I know you will want us to stick around, but we have a problem.’

  I told him about the rescue of Vern Jackson and Bruce Kelper, Kelper’s subsequent injury, and the dead FBI agent. It turned out that he had seen the agent’s body for himself, and had also checked for signs of life. When I moved on to the call from Drew, I neglected to mention what it was the caller wanted, but I told him about the escalation which appeared to stem from our follower, the man we believed to be the Native American from back at the Weather Balloon. The moment I mentioned him, Crozier became instantly concerned.

  ‘Well, now ain’t this a fine thing,’ he said, shaking his head and squeezing his hat tight. ‘I got blood on my hands myself today, and a small battle back there at the mill to try and figure out. I’m guessing your first thought is to get that young man to a hospital, and your second is to find this Indian fellah.’

  I nodded, hoping he would not try to stop us. I did not want to confront the man who had saved my life, but now that my ex and daughter had been swept up by this avalanche, I knew I had to match its momentum. I could not allow him to slow us down. Before either of us could say more, we both looked up as a black SUV moved in towards us at speed from the east and pulled up behind the Jeep on sliding tyres spitting gravel. A woman exited the driver’s side. She wore a navy blue jacket with FBI emblazoned upon it, but still she flashed her credentials as she approached. Her other hand she left on her unstrapped gun holster.

  ‘Sheriff Crozier,’ she said, noting the others sitting in the Jeep, her eyes holding mine for a moment. The show of ID was strictly for our benefit. ‘Is everything okay here?’

  ‘No, things are far from okay, Agent Green. But if you’re asking if things are good between myself and these people here, then the answer is yes.’

  ‘Good to know. Are you aware of what went down here? And who these people are?’

  I heaved a sigh. ‘We haven’t got time to get into this,’ I whispered to the county lawman. ‘Kelper needs a hospital right now, and we have to get moving.’

  He nodded and held up a hand, eyes only for the newcomer. ‘Agent Green, I arrived at the mill in time to see a great deal of what went down. I know you just lost your partner, and I’m as sorry as I can be about that. I reckon it was those assholes from the bar in Corona.’

  She nodded once. ‘Yeah. They had us pinned down from the moment we arrived. Eugene covered my ass as I headed inside an old shack, but before I could do the same for him, one of those bastards shot him dead.’

  I knew she understood well enough that death was a part of life, and that in being an FBI agent the suddenness of one becoming the other could be both shocking and brutal. But by now she would also be aware that nobody is ever prepared for that moment when it comes around. I had seen what remained of her partner’s ruined face, and I knew that vision would remain with her for the rest of her life.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ I told her. She regarded me with deep suspicion, still uncertain as to our role in her ordeal.

  Crozier took a step forward and put a hand on each of her arms. ‘What happened to your fellow agent is tragic, but one of the reasons
you were able to get away – I’m guessing to call in reinforcements – was because of these two gentlemen here. Now, I shot my weapon for the first time a short while ago and I killed a man, so today is far from a normal day in the life of Dwight Crozier, and I don’t rightly know which way is up at the moment. I do realise what I should be doing, but somehow with all that’s going on, I’m having a hard job figuring out the difference between what’s best and what’s right. So, listen up and let’s try and make this work for the benefit of all concerned.’

  As quickly and concisely as possible, the sheriff explained what he had seen, outlining the role Terry and I had played in how things had transpired, that we were now both desperate to get Kelper some treatment and then be on our way to try and secure the release of Donna and Wendy. When he was through explaining, he looked up into the agent’s tight face full of sharp angles and grief.

  ‘I’m guessing you’d like nothing more right now than to avenge your partner’s murder, am I correct?’

  She was in a highly agitated state, but she nodded and kept her focus. ‘I have teams on their way here from the city, sheriff. I told them what happened, but they will need to speak to me as well. They will want to take me through it step by step, debrief me thoroughly.’

  ‘All of which can wait. The job ain’t over yet as far as I can tell. Right now, a young girl and her mother, both no doubt in fear for their lives, have been abducted. The men who shot your partner were in some way involved in how we all ended up here, and now someone else has two more innocent people and is holding them hostage. So rather than stand around here waiting for my people, Roswell PD, and your Bureau teams to swoop in and have us waste hours going over everything we saw, heard and did, I think we’re duty bound to help these men try and rescue the two ladies being held against their will.’