by Mike Cooper
“CE-E-E-EASE F-I-I-R-E!”
A woman’s voice. Her side stopped shooting. The opposing fire trickled to a halt a half minute later.
“Poshel na huy!”
“Who the fuck are you?” the woman called.
I uncurled a bit and spat dust. “What do you want, Harmony?”
Silence. I hated giving that up so quickly, but I needed her off-balance.
“Yeah, we know who you are,” I called. “All of you, drop your weapons and walk out now.”
Brinker made a disgusted sound, but his arm apparently hurt too much for him to do much more.
“You think I’m an idiot?” Harmony said. “You’re alone. There’s nobody else for half a mile.”
Which was probably true. Brinker’s nearest neighbor wasn’t even visible from the road where I’d turned into his drive.
“Now what?”
“First thing, send out the dumb motherfucker.”
I glanced at Brinker. “I don’t think she means the horse.”
“Jesus fuck.”
“What’s up with your guys?”
“My guys?” He actually laughed.
“Yo!” I called. “Any legitimate law enforcement out there?”
Silence, except for the stamping and trembling of the horses. Neither seemed to be hit, astonishingly, but there was a strong smell of manure. Both had crapped all over the planks—I seemed to be lying in a puddle.
Could this get any worse?
Up at the road, no traffic. The moon was just at the horizon. The truck’s headlights had gone off or been shot out. Gunsmoke drifted through the air.
“Kto ona?” the Russian called.
“Hooy yeyo znayet.”
I scraped through my memory, then shouted as loud as I could, “Gde, blyad pivo?”
Brinker turned my way. “What?”
Okay, so I’d just called for more beer. “Trying to confuse things.”
More Russian yammering. When they stopped, I answered.
“Otyebis, pidoras!” It was an insult, if I remembered right. A crude one.
Assault weapons suddenly opened up again, aimed entirely at me. Brinker and I tried to disappear into the floorboards. The horses kicked, their hooves hammering as loudly as the bullets on the walls.
The firing stopped more quickly this time. Probably had to reload.
“Hey!” Harmony’s voice. “Who the fuck are you?”
The Russian responded, in English again. The accent seemed worse. “He is ours. Go away.”
“Go away?”
“We will finish. You go.”
“Walk out and show yourself.”
“Ne pizdi!”
They started arguing. Possibly this was a good thing—everyone had stopped trying to kill me, for example—but there was now twice as much trigger-happy firepower out there.
I looked at the muck door, then at the horses.
“Hey,” I said to Brinker, this time trying to keep quiet. “These horses—which one’s stronger?”
“What?”
“They look like good animals. You like one better than the other?”
He stared at me. “Bandit cost forty thousand dollars. He’s a great jumper—he’ll go through anything I point him at.”
“Hmm. Means he’s all short-tempered and twitchy, right?”
“Of course not!”
“This one?” I gestured to the horse Brinker had walked in. It was a reasonable guess—he didn’t seem like a guy who’d choose the cheaper nag for himself.
“Yes, but . . .”
Brinker was about my size, and that settled the question—his stirrups would be at the correct height.
“We’re not done,” I said. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Wha—?”
“More stupid, I mean. You can’t answer questions if you’re dead.”
I rose to a crouch, keeping as much of my profile behind the structural post as possible, and Brinker finally caught on. “Hey,” he shouted. “You can’t do that!”
“I think I can,” I said, and I stood, threw Bandit’s reins over his head and patted his neck. You can’t be timid with horses—they respect a firm hand. I got a foot into the stirrup and swung myself up. The shoulder bag swung around but stayed on my back.
Bandit sidestepped and skittered, making ready to throw me. I squeezed his sides with both legs and leaned forward, all the way down.
“We’re leaving, Bandit,” I murmured in his ear. “You and me.”
Then I eased the reins and kicked him harder . . . and we rocketed out the barn’s rear door like an Aqueduct thoroughbred leaving the gate.
—
I grew up in New Hampshire, and my last two foster families had farms, okay? I’d ridden bareback from age ten, done the 4H fairs in high school.
It’s like riding a bike.
Bandit was a hero. He wasn’t a combat horse, one of those hard scrappy beasts the SF guys had in Afghanistan, ride through mortar fire and never blink. He’d just suffered an assault of noise and terror worse than anything in his life, seen his owner fall and smelled his blood, and now a complete stranger had jumped on his back. But he was smart—smart enough to figure out where safety lay, smart enough to trust me—and strong.
We were a hundred yards into the fields before anyone realized.
“Sila-a-a-s!” Harmony’s angry shout and a few scattered shots followed us, none coming close.
But it was dark. The moon had only begun its rise, dim and haloed through the damp overcast. I had a vague sense of terrain—hills that way? open field this way?—but kicking Bandit into anything more than a canter would be to seriously risk a stumble and a broken leg.
He deserved better than that.
I aimed for the hill and its treeline, hoping to get out of sight.
Shouting continued back at the barn, indistinct but audible. A few more rounds, then nothing. Bandit’s breathing was loud but steady.
Thirty seconds later, nearing the trees, another shot cracked loudly. Much more loudly—and I heard the thonk as the bullet slapped into a trunk in front of us. I twisted around to look back.
A horse and rider in full gallop, gaining fast. The rider had one hand raised toward me, and I saw the flash at the same moment I heard the second shot.
“Halt!”
It was Harmony. Son of a bitch. She must have sprinted into the barn and taken the second horse.
This was like some lousy video game. Harmony and I were going to end up shooting it out at the edge of a chasm, volcanic lava below and everything on fire.
Bandit slowed, and suddenly we were among the trees. There might have been a path—he seemed to know where he was going—but I could see nothing in the dark woods. Twigs and branches slashed at my face and torso. I hunched down, one forearm in front of my head, urging him to keep going.
“Stop running, you motherfucker!” Her voice seemed a little hoarse now, but she was getting closer. She fired twice. I heard the rounds slapping leaves to my right. “Your Russian pals can’t help you here.”
My pals? I kept quiet, staring as hard as I could ahead of us. Was the ground rising or falling?
Bandit whinnied. Maybe he caught scent of his stablemate. He turned his head and I started to yank him back into line, fearing he’d decided enough was enough—but, no, the path curved. We went up a slight rise, then began to descend.
Good enough. With the thought, the deed: I dropped my stirrups, patted Bandit’s neck once, and hopped off his back, landing right beside him. Without pausing I slapped his rump. “Go with God,” I whispered, and ducked off the path.
Bandit leaned forward, confused. Harmony came crashing through the woods, fifty feet away—now that I was off Bandit, I could clearly hear all the noise she was making. I crouched behind a locust tree and froze.
Harmony must have seen my horse, but not clearly enough to realize I was no longer aboard. She fired once more, the gunshot close and loud.
Bandit lunged into
the forest.
“Harmony!” I yelled, but with the tree trunk between her and my face, dispersing the sound a little. “Stop there or you’re dead.”
Only her head moved, tracking my voice. In the dark I was pretty sure she couldn’t see me.
“Drop the weapon,” I said.
“No.”
It was in her right hand, which was on her side opposite me, so I couldn’t see it. “I can shoot you off the horse if you don’t,” I said.
“Silas Cade.” A normal tone, like we were at a dinner party. It was too shadowed to see much detail. “You are Silas Cade, right?”
“What do you want with me?”
“Some people want to talk.”
“You’re not working with those Russians, are you?”
“What do you think?” She laughed—and used the noise to cover up an arm motion.
“I said don’t move!” I shifted to the other side of the tree and went lower down.
“I think I saved your life, you know,” she said.
“From those guys? Nah. I was just getting ready to leave.”
I couldn’t see any percentage in starting another shootout. For one thing, I might very well lose. Harmony had the horse, her weapons—more than one, I was sure—and no doubt plenty of reloads, while I was down to four rounds. If I’d counted correctly. And if by some unlikely chance I did come out on top, she might not be able to talk, and explain to me exactly what the hell was going on.
“Exactly what the hell is going on?” I said.
“I told you. Some people hired me. They want to talk to you.”
“Sorry, booked up right now. What’s their number?”
She didn’t respond. Trees rustled invisibly in the dark. Bandit was still nearby, whuffling quietly somewhere.
“I think we’ll have to finish up later,” Harmony said.
“No, wait a sec—”
Too late. She yanked the reins, turned her horse and kicked him into a run, leaning down to present a minimal target. I stood and aimed, but didn’t fire.
The sound of their progress through the woods faded, but not before Bandit took off after them. I suppose he wanted to go home, and figured they were his best bet.
Their crashing diminished, farther and farther away. After fifteen seconds it was gone completely. I slowly stood up.
The ground was damp, and I could walk without making too much noise. It was still dark, but my eyes had finally begun to adjust, and I could see most obstacles before I ran smack into them.
Most. Not all.
Fifteen minutes later, scratched and tired, I was back at the edge of the woods. I’d come out farther down, several hundred yards from the barn. It was hard to tell from a distance, but the truck seemed to be gone. Someone, perhaps Brinker, had turned on an exterior light mounted below the barn’s eave, and I could see the vague lump that was the wreck of my Lincoln. The Russian’s crew had either departed in their own vehicles, or they were parked too far away to see.
I pulled out my phone and pressed the keypad, illuminating the display. Four bars, this time. I dredged a number from my wobbly memory and dialed.
“Yello.” Background noise—music, voices, crashing. A bar, maybe.
“Dave?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“Silas.” I sighed. “You think you could give me a ride?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I was getting somewhere,” Dave said.
“Yeah, sorry.”
“She was coming around.”
“What was she even doing in a bar with you? And without Brendt?”
“No, he was there, too.”
“He was?”
“I kept buying him pitchers.”
Dave seemed to have been buying himself pitchers, too. He had that excessively careful enunciation of the self-aware drunk, and he wore only a T-shirt despite the evening’s deepening chill.
But his driving was, as ever, totally controlled. I tightened the harness once more, against the sway of centripetal acceleration, as we took an S curve at some ungodly speed. The country road was dark, and the Charger’s headlights lit up the trees flashing past.
“So let me get this straight. You were trying to get Brendt, your friend since grade school, drunk enough that he didn’t notice you were hitting on his girlfriend?”
Dave laughed. “It doesn’t sound good that way.”
“I hate to ask, but where were you planning to sleep tonight? I’m sure there’s still police tape at the shop.” I paused. “And don’t say in her bed.”
“I don’t know.” His mood dropped. He was open as a six-year-old, you could read every emotion plain on his face: Oh shit I forgot, my shop got blown to rubble and my life is totally fucked up. Damn. “What about you?”
“I’d hoped to be leaving town.”
“Yeah? Drop you at the bus station?”
“It’s not working out that way.”
When Dave found me at the side of the road, thirty minutes after I’d called, we drove past Brinker’s gentleman farm. It was completely dark: no lights in the house, the yard or the barns. I hoped that Harmony hadn’t crippled the horses, or killed them, galloping through the black forest. I hoped the groom had been able to leave, uninvolved—he seemed like someone who might have trouble with his documentation. I hoped Harmony and the mad Russians had cleaned up after themselves, so the police didn’t hear anything.
The Lincoln, well, Morgan Bancorp would get a phone call eventually. I’d taken it out for an entire week, so Hertz shouldn’t get concerned until long after I’d finished up here.
Assuming no one noticed the wreck.
“Look,” I said. “I need a place to stay. So do you. There must be a truck stop or something. I’ll pay for the room—I feel sort of responsible.”
“Thanks, Silas.” He reached over to clap my shoulder. “But it ain’t that.”
“What?”
“You’re my brother. That’s all that’s necessary.”
—
Closing in on midnight, I gave up on the pile of scratchy, filthy wool blankets, threaded the belt back through my pants and went outside. Dave snored on the floor by the fireplace, heedless of the damp and the cold, rolled up in what looked a lot like a nylon shower curtain.
Off the grid. Good for evading pursuit by heavily armed criminal gangs, but bad for comfort, sleep and decent food.
We weren’t in a motel because Dave had remembered visiting this hunting cabin years ago—it belonged to a friend of a friend, but they never used it much and the son was at Houtzdale anyway, five months into a one-to-three. Something about meth, probably. Dave couldn’t remember exactly. It didn’t sound like a preferred option, just better than registering at some public establishment.
The drive into Monongahela National Forest, across the border into West Virginia, had taken forty-five minutes. Dinner was peanut butter crackers and beef jerky from the gas station we filled up at, off I-79. Dave insisted on a couple more six-packs, one of which was gone by the time we arrived at our upcountry hideaway.
Okay, I admit I was helping by then.
It felt like a hundred miles from civilization but phone reception was nice and clear. Away from the cabin, standing near the edge of the bluff it overlooked, I listened to the ringing.
“Hello?”
“Hey Clara. Didn’t wake you, did I?”
“Of course you did.”
“Sorry. Really?”
“Only by half an hour. What’s going on?”
“I’m in the countryside,” I said.
“Having a nice vacation?”
“Friendly people everywhere. Listen, you hear anything on Clayco?”
“Not much. I’ll say this, the Pittsburgh division seems completely anomalous. The rest of the company’s doing defense, but Clay Micro’s product line is seismographic tracking equipment.”
“Missile tracking, underground monitors—they’re both remote sensors.”
Clara sounded skepti
cal. “Sort of related. Maybe.”
“No, you’re right. It’s a different field entirely. Different customers, different requirements, different economics. So it makes sense they’d be selling it. Clay Micro’s not a core competency.”
“Wait. Selling? They’re on the block?”
“The CEO told me so himself a few hours ago.” Brinker had said acquisition, and that made my own assignment a little clearer: if a deal was in the works, the last thing senior management needed was a restatement-level accounting issue. Ryan had been hired to sweep dirt under the rug just long enough to close the sale. “And here’s the thing, I think the buyers might be Russian.”
“Whoa.” Clara perked up. The sale of a small division by a private company wasn’t normally news—the only really interested parties were Clayco’s immediate owners. But if a foreign buyer was involved, especially a frenemy like Russia, things got complicated. “Tell me about this.”
“I can’t say much.”
“Hypothetical.”
“No, really.”
“Let me guess.” She was off and running. “You don’t know the buyers for sure, so you’re working for the sellers. Right? If they hired you, they’re worried Clayco’s books are seriously fucked.” Clara was no dummy. “Fraud? Or are the numbers just a little too shiny?”
“Like we said, Clayco’s big. Clay Micro is one small part, run by a guy named Brinker, and they must have figured it would be easy to spin off. But headquarters seems not to have been paying enough attention to Brinker’s numbers, and when they finally got around to due-diligence prep, they found some problems. Not big enough to kill the deal, I don’t think, but big enough to change the terms substantially.”
“Headquarters . . . ?”
“What?”
“You mean Markson?”
I’d been thinking about that. “No. I can’t see it. If he knew about this, he’d probably be talking to a federal prosecutor, don’t you think? They call him the Buddha, for Christ’s sake.”
“You sure?”
I couldn’t see it. “Wilbur Markson would never stand for the kind of general lawlessness at Clay Micro.”
“Fine. So whoever’s trying to tidy up the mess, they’ve got double incentives. They can’t let Markson or the buyer find out what’s been going on.”
