by Ron Corbett
“Yeah, I thought you had the balls. But you’re a cowardly bohunk dick, aren’t you, darliiin? You’d let us kill your own mother if it meant you could save your ass. What do the men standing beside you think about that, Yak? Do they want this old woman to die?”
Bangles placed his gun on the back of Tremblay’s head. Like her husband, her head was uncovered, so her hair blew freely, coiled around the handgun like strands of seaweed in a strong current. No one on the porch moved. It seemed for a second as though they were posing for a photo.
. . .
“Are we really going to let this happen?” The tree-marker looked at the man crouched next to him.
O’Keefe kept his eyes trained on the porch. “You heard what the cop said.”
“I also heard him say he’d be back.”
“You heard him say he’d try to be back. He warned us he might not get back in time.”
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“You’re going to have to do this, kid.”
“Would you shoot me if I couldn’t?”
“I might.”
“Why would you do a thing like that?”
“To keep you from surrendering. To keep you from giving away our position. Because I don’t know you that well. Take your pick.”
“Shouldn’t surrendering be my call?”
“Almost never.”
“How can you do it? Watch and do nothing?”
“Might not be that hard. It’s doing nothing. Just like you said.”
The tree-marker thought it took courage for him to keep watching. Then thought it was something perverse and maybe it had nothing to do with courage. He was just starting to work his way through a mental list of all the ways courage and perversity were different when Bangles’ hand twitched.
Nothing more than that. Roselyn Tremblay fell over the body of her dead husband. A short woman, she was left perched on his chest, like a teeter-totter, rocking back and forth in the wind, her small feet kicking up drifts of snow you could almost see in the storm.
The tree-marker turned his head and threw up.
Bangles stood over Roselyn Tremblay’s body and after staring for a few seconds laughed, lifted his head, and shouted, “You’re a fuckin’ coward, Yak.”
His parka was unzipped and he was wearing long underwear underneath, red, no sweater, his upper chest exposed. He was hopped-up on adrenaline or something more synthetic, the tree-marker thought, hoping it was synthetic, that it was unnatural, because a man standing in a storm like this, killing and laughing and not seeming to notice the elements, was just not right.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised. Papa said you were a sneak-up-on-you-in-the-middle-of-the-night coward. Said he would have respected you if you’d brought him down like a man, drawn a weapon and stood in front of him. But it’s always a trick with you, isn’t it?”
Even from a distance, the tree-marker noticed Bangles’ body change right then. Saw it tense and become rigid. Saw the man’s mouth open and close a few times, and then Bangles spun around, moving in a 360-degree arc, scanning the countryside, as if such a thing could be possible in this storm.
“You mother-fuckin’ bohunk bastard. You’re not even there, are you? Always fuckin’ games with you, Yak.”
Bangles was kicking the body of Matt Downey as he screamed, full-throttle kicks that lifted the young cop’s body several inches off the ground each time, kicked and kicked until Downey was off the porch. Then he grabbed Holly by the arm and the two men ran inside.
The sound of gunfire crossed the distance from the lodge to the tree-marker and O’Keefe. They watched as Bangles and Holly reappeared on the porch, dragging the body of the prisoner from the freezer. After that, the body of the cook. After that, the body of the bartender. Holly dragged each man’s body across the porch and threw it off to land on the one before, Bangles kicking the bodies as they were dragged and making the job more difficult than it needed to be, kicking and stomping and swearing. The tree-marker and O’Keefe could see that Holly was frightened, keeping his distance, positioning himself on the porch so he could jump clear of it with one running step if needed.
“Fuckin’ bohunk bastard. You get half a fuckin’ hour for the waitress, Yak. Half a fuckin’ hour. Then we start the cook fires and hunt you down.” He turned and stormed back into the lodge, kicking at the bodies of Roselyn and Gaetan Tremblay before entering — though not with enough force to fling them off the porch. As though something inside him had been sated. Or the old couple belonged there. It was difficult to tell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
From behind a drift closer to the lodge than the tree-marker and O’Keefe, Yakabuski had also vomited after witnessing the execution of Roselyn Tremblay.
He had been late getting back. Despite his exertions. Despite some measure of success. He had not been able to get back in time and an innocent person had died. The way he had been trained as a soldier, he had done nothing to stop it. Which says something about the decisions you make as a young man, thought Yakabuski. To have ever been trained for such a thing.
But a soldier never added himself to a body count. Not willingly, anyway. You never make it easy on an enemy like that. A warrant officer who had served in the Vietnam War told Yakabuski this one day, when Yakabuski had asked questions about the training, saying he wasn’t sure if he could do it — stand down and do nothing when another person was executed.
The warrant officer had thrown his arm around the young light infantry soldier and told him in a cheery voice that sometimes soldiers can’t be in the saving-people business.
“Sometimes soldiers can only be in the paying-bastards-back business,” he said.
Yakabuski kept the warrant officer’s voice rolling through his mind as he crawled back to O’Keefe and the tree-marker. It helped a little. Not enough to take away the sadness that had overcome him. Just enough to let him focus on the mission ahead — pay the bastards back.
. . .
Lying beside the tree-marker and the Sport, Yakabuski looked at his watch. Ten minutes before the waitress was due to be brought out.
“What just happened?” asked the tree-marker, his voice frail and shaky.
“They’ve started the sweep,” said Yakabuski. “Looks like the cook and the bartender were part of the gang. Or were helping them.”
“Why kill them now?”
“Bangles doesn’t — the guy with the gun is Tommy Bangles — he doesn’t need them anymore. They’d just be in his way.” A second later, he added, “He also looked a little pissed.”
The next ten minutes could have been an hour. Could have been a hundred hours. The tree-marker thought he was floating for a while, time and other sensations vanished, an untethered feeling as he kept staring at the front porch of the Mattamy, which now resembled some back-alley boxing ring, blood and unidentifiable pulpy flesh scattered around; flint-eyed, indolent men running the show.
When the waitress was brought outside, Holly had her arms pinned to her sides and the young girl was screaming, a pitched lament you could hear easily above the storm. Holly was still wearing the black balaclava. Bangles came out behind them, not even wearing his parka anymore, his red long underwear bright in the falling snow.
Yakabuski had explained the plan, but only the parts they needed to know, so both O’Keefe and the tree-marker looked at him right then, the tree-marker with a quizzical expression on his face, O’Keefe’s face unreadable. Yakabuski didn’t say anything. He couldn’t ask either of them to do what needed to be done next.
If he had things figured out right, he wouldn’t need to.
“This is the last one, Yak!” Bangles yelled out across the snow. “The last one you can save. After this, we hunt you down like fuckin’ pigs. She’s young, this one. We know you don’t care about the old ones. What about this one?”
Marie was strugglin
g against Holly, trying to kick him in the groin. It seemed unlikely she would kneel before her executioner the way the Tremblays had. Yakabuski wondered if they had already worked out a plan to compensate for that.
“This one has much to offer, Yak. If we weren’t in such a hurry, we’d bounce her off a few walls, I think.”
Through his binoculars, Yakabuski saw Bangles leaning in to run his tongue down the waitress’s cheek, an action that caused her to scream as though scalded. She screamed and screamed and Bangles laughed, and while this was happening the tree-marker rose.
The tree-maker rose and stretched his hands above his head. Stood for several seconds with the snow swirling around him. Then he started walking toward the Mattamy.
O’Keefe reached for the rifle the tree-marker had left behind and then gasped in surprise when Yakabuski put his service revolver against his temple. He turned to see Yakabuski putting a mitt to mouth, motioning for him to be quiet. The two men stared at each other for a long minute, then Yakabuski lowered his gun. They turned to look at the tree-marker, who was taking slow, laborious steps through the high snow, his arms raised in surrender, not bothering to look behind him, his eyes fixed only on the waitress, not even noticing Bangles laughing and motioning with his free hand for the boy to keep walking.
After a few seconds, Yakabuski said, “Were you going to shoot that boy?”
“I was thinking of it.”
“It’s that important to you? Your own survival?”
“Don’t be precious with me. You watched that old couple get executed, same as we did.”
“That couple couldn’t be saved. That boy can be saved.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Yakabuski didn’t say anything right away. Kept staring at the tree-marker trudging through the snow like some sad supplicant. Then he said, “There’s a photo hanging in the hallway outside my room in the Mattamy. A bunch of men by the front gates of the mill. Some sort of banner on a smokestack. You’re in it.”
O’Keefe kept his eyes on Yakabuski but didn’t say anything.
“What was the celebration?”
“The one millionth roll of newsprint to come off the presses here,” said O’Keefe. “That was nearly twenty years ago.”
“It must have been quite the party. Old man O’Hearn came up for it. He’s right in the centre of the photo. I didn’t notice the resemblance until I saw the photo. You worked here at the mill?”
“Four summers. While going to university. A full year after I graduated. My dad insisted on it. Who have you told?”
“No one.”
“Why not?”
“I was still trying to figure it out. And you weren’t going anywhere.”
Yakabuski stood. Threw his service revolver into the snow. Raised his hands and turned to where the tree-marker was trudging toward the Mattamy, almost there now. He cocked his head and said to the man still hiding behind the snowdrift, “Come on, Mr. O’Hearn. We need to go in.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Yakabuski had been captured twice before. The first time had been in Afghanistan, his last year with the Third Battalion, clearing caves on a mountain called the Whale — third day of doing that, and they hadn’t found a single Taliban fighter. Just munitions and supplies left behind. Each cave and each tunnel between the caves — an elaborate system that would have rivalled anything built by the North Vietnamese — contained some sort of cache. Landmines and RPGs. 556 ammunition. In one tunnel, a fully equipped triage room. But never a belligerent.
There had been two days of air strikes before they had moved onto the Whale, and it was assumed the fighters had fled. Or been killed in the strikes and all that remained of them were the bone and scorched-skin fragments you found sometimes on the trails running between caves. Yakabuski was less than a hundred yards from the peak of the Whale when he found the entrance to one more tunnel.
Fifty yards east of him was a Special Forces platoon getting ready to clear a cave, two Browning .50 Cal machine guns already in position on the wings of the cave entrance, the company sergeant lying on the ground and about to fire a stun grenade through the opening. There would be no one inside. As there had been no one inside for three days. After firing the grenade and waiting a few seconds, the soldiers would march into the cave to see what supplies they would find this time. About as routine as it gets for a Special Forces platoon.
Yakabuski waved to a soldier holding one of the gun clips for the .50 Cal, and the soldier waved back. Yakabuski pointed to the hole, and the soldier nodded. The platoon would know a light infantry soldier was in the tunnel. Yakabuski turned on his flashlight and walked inside. He saw boxes of medical supplies right away. Plastic gloves and IV bags, gauze and bandages, penicillin and cortisone, boxes stacked six high and running down the tunnel farther than he could see. He started walking, counting boxes at the same time — four, five, six . . . eighteen, nineteen, twenty — was counting and walking like that when he rounded a corner and found himself staring at a dozen Taliban fighters.
It happened so quickly he never had the chance to yell. Never had the chance to raise his gun. Strong hands grabbed his wrists and pinned them beside his body, another hand placed the muzzle of a Beretta M9 against his left temple. He stared at the rag-tag soldiers at the other side of the tunnel, an old man in the centre. The man slowly brought a finger to his lips and blew upon it.
Quiet. Yes, let’s everyone be quiet. That’s a good idea. The two men who had pinned him took his rifle and sidearm and pushed him to the ground. A rope came out and his hands were tied. His rifle was given to the old fighter, who examined it, took the clip in and out a few times, the sort of things Yakabuski would have done if he had just been handed a gun.
Another fighter came to stand beside the old man. This man took a curved knife from a scabbard and flicked his head in Yakabuski’s direction. The old man finished examining the gun and put it down. He shook his head. Took a scarf from his neck and gave it to the man holding the scabbard.
The man walked over and shoved the scarf into Yakabuski’s mouth. Then he motioned for the two men who had tied him to leave, and he stood with the muzzle of his Beretta pushed against Yakabuski’s head.
Maybe an hour. That’s how long they would have stayed like that, no one in the tunnel moving or talking or breathing any more than was necessary. They could hear the Special Forces soldiers moving on the other side of the rock, as though they were buried in stone, their muffled chatter and laughter coming from some other dimension. As Yakabuski’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he could see the tunnel they were in ran portside, away from the cave next door. They did not connect. This was a different tunnel from what they had been finding the past three days.
Was it more than an hour? Maybe. Certainly enough time to memorize every line of every face staring at him. Eye color, the shape of noses, the way the youngest was probably no more than thirteen, although he seemed the most alert. Enough time to see there was no anger on any face staring back at him. No fear. No curiosity. Just a weary sort of purpose, a grudging acceptance of tough work that probably lay ahead of them. It could have been half the town of High River staring at him right then, thinking it was time to start getting ready for winter.
Then the voices in the rock began to drift away. The old man held up his hand and everyone tensed. Waited for the voices to start coming down the tunnel. But the voices bled away and never returned. As Yakabuski knew they would. He had signalled the tunnel was his. No one would be coming.
When the old man finally brought down his hand, he jerked his head and the fighter next to him bent to a crouch, turned, and scuttled his way down the tunnel. When he was out of sight, another fighter crouched and made the same retreat. Then another, another, and so on down the line of fighters. A perfect retreat without a word being spoken.
When it was down to the company commander and the man holding the Beretta
against Yakabuski’s head, there was a pause in the rhythm. There needed to be a different move here. Yakabuski had seen it coming and had already run some rough geometry through his mind. He had decided at the first sign of his captor tensing in any sort of way that he would catapult himself toward the man. His best chance of survival would be a bullet deflecting the wrong way. There was no chance of a bullet missing him if he ran.
Yakabuski tensed his body. Shifted as much weight as possible to his knees. Got ready to lunge.
And the man walked away.
Slid his gun into its holster, crouched, and darted as fast as he could down the tunnel. The old commander gave Yakabuski one last look, waved a gun clip in his hand to show him the rifle was useless, then bowed and disappeared down the tunnel.
Yakabuski freed himself within seconds and ran down the tunnel in pursuit, calling in his position as he ran, but the fighters were never found. The tunnel went on for three miles, with other tunnels branching off, and no one could say later where the fighters had exited. Or who they had been. The best-trained light infantry company Yakabuski had ever seen.
The other time he had been on his knees with a gun pushed against his head was during the Biker Wars. An enemy of Papa caught him when he was leaving the Vandome night club one night. But he had been a sloppy man, not frisking Yakabuski properly, and so there was little challenge to escaping, nothing more complicated than slipping a .22 Derringer from his groin and shooting the man’s ear off when he bent to whisper something threatening.
So he had seen the best and worst when it came to forcible confinement. He looked around the bar of the Mattamy, wondering how this would compare.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
They sat around one of the tables in the restaurant: the waitress, the tree-marker, Yakabuski, and the man who had been calling himself Tobias O’Keefe. Their hands were cuffed to the high backs of their chairs, tavern chairs being perfectly designed for such a thing. They had not been beaten, and Yakabuski took that as a good sign. The man who had come with Bangles, who had been positioned in a window the past two hours with a Remington sniper rifle, keeping watch for anyone trying to move on the lodge, was Bobby O’Shaughnessy. Or Bobby Chance, as everyone called him, a cousin of Bangles.
