Enemy Combatant

by Ed Gaffney

  With someone shooting at you.

  But I had no choice but to try to hang on, and to keep going. I was unarmed, and completely alone. If I didn’t escape, I was dead.

  The first two times the SUV hit me, the VW got shoved forward, and I felt a slight tug on the wheel, but I kept the car on the road, moving fast.

  It was the third time that got me.

  I think it might have been because the contact point with the VW was at the left taillight rather than directly in the center of the rear bumper. But whatever the reason, the car lunged forward and lurched dangerously to the left, threatening to fly directly across the road, into and over the oncoming lane. And as fast as I was going at the time, the guardrail would not stop me from sailing off the cliff and diving hundreds of feet to my death.

  I gripped the wheel tightly, and pulled back to the right. Instinctively, I had taken my foot off the accelerator pedal, so I was slowing down. But that was only relative—I was still going well over seventy-five. So as soon as I felt the car respond to the turn, I felt gravity pulling me against the door, as if it intended to flip the car over.

  I reacted by yanking back on the wheel to the left.

  While I swerved back and forth, desperately trying to keep my car on the road, and upright, the Caddy accelerated past me on the left. And just when I felt like I’d gotten control of the VW again, the big black vehicle pulled directly in front of me, cutting me off.

  I slammed on the brakes and turned hard right. Although I locked up the tires and the steering, and sent the car into a spin over which I had absolutely no control, incredibly, I avoided the collision.

  But what I also did was stall the engine. So that by the time the car finished its dramatic pirouette, it was now facing south, and going at exactly zero miles per hour.

  I heard a door slam. Landry had left his car and was coming over to me. If I could just get the car moving, I had a chance.

  What I needed was a wingman. A trusted buddy riding shotgun. Someone to magically appear in my passenger seat, ward off the threat that was coming, and give me a few extra seconds to escape.

  What I needed was Dale.

  But I was alone. Frantically, I grabbed for the key. Five seconds. That’s all I would need, and I’d be on my way back down the road, away from Landry.

  I turned the ignition. Three seconds.

  The window to my right exploded, sending pebbles of broken glass all over the seat and the dashboard.

  Two seconds. The car’s engine strained to come back to life.

  One second.

  The car door opened, and Landry dropped down into the seat next to me just as the car’s engine caught, and I shoved the gearshift into first.

  But it was too late. With his right hand, Landry slammed the car door shut, and with his left, he stuck the barrel of a gun to my temple.

  I closed my eyes. It was over. I was going to be executed in the Arizona desert, on my way home from the grocery store.

  And then I heard the homicidal cop’s familiar voice say, “Cheer up, Counselor. I’m not going to shoot you.”

  I opened my eyes. But before I could say anything, he continued.

  “Not yet, anyway.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  IN HIS FIRST letter home to me from Afghanistan, my brother Dale bemoaned the fact that so many of his fellow soldiers didn’t use their heads for anything except a place to put their helmets. “We really need people with your brains in this fight, C.R.,” was what he wrote. He alternated frequently between “Captain Rootbeard” and its abbreviation. “Nobody ever tries to think. All they want to do is shoot guns, or drop bombs. I always admired how you thought your way through problems.”

  I’m pretty sure that Dale’s overgenerous description of my intellect was principally thanks to high-school chemistry.

  I first became aware of the difference between our brains in my sophomore year in high school. Dale was a senior by then, and was taking chemistry—a class I’d had as a freshman. In and of itself, that was nothing particularly noteworthy. Students at our school had a lot of discretion about when they took certain courses. Dale wasn’t the only one to have put off chem until the last minute.

  But as I witnessed my brother’s daily interaction with the periodic table, valiantly battling with atomic weights and electron shells, I saw him bested by processes and theories that I had found quite easy to understand. Once I overheard him on the phone “explaining” the difference between oxygen and the inert gases to one of his football teammates. His stunningly simplistic and deeply inaccurate description virtually guaranteed the pair a failing grade on the following day’s test. I volunteered to assist, and he enthusiastically accepted, leading to a B-minus on the exam.

  After high school, Dale joined the R.O.T.C. at Arizona State, and became an officer in the army. I never got a chance to help him out academically again, but he never forgot how I pulled him back from the brink in high-school chem. Yet to me, Dale remained the role model. Especially when he met and married Amy. It was obvious to everyone that they would be a great couple, and great parents.

  And then 9/11 came, and Dale went off to war. And he died.

  “You gonna ask me why I don’t kill you, or you gonna sit there like a silly little bitch,” Landry said, poking me in the leg with the gun.

  I blame myself for a lot that went wrong during that week of insanity around the Gomez trial. But I have never felt guilty about the fact that I couldn’t speak for several moments upon Landry’s invasion of my car.

  I kept wondering how he found me. And whether he knew where Amy, Erica, and Henley were. Not to mention the shock I was still experiencing from his attempt to gun me down on a deserted road, and by the cold fact that he now held a pistol to my leg, and was apparently threatening to kill me.

  I was unarmed, sitting in the driver’s seat of an idling VW on a virtually deserted road in one of the least populated areas in the country. I was being held at gunpoint by a sociopath. I was completely on my own, with no hope of rescue. So I chose to believe what Dale had said about me—that I could think my way out of anything.

  This time the cop didn’t poke me in the leg with the gun. He hit me with it, hard. “Is that all you got for me? A stupid look on your ugly face, Attorney Carpenter?”

  The trooper’s trademark disarming smile had been replaced by something twisted—neither friendly nor pleasant. His eyes were bloodshot, and emotionally disconnected from his sick grin. It looked like he had been wearing a mask before, and what had been revealed was quite ugly.

  “I don’t get it,” I said, feeling the bruise on my knee forming already. “Why are you doing this? What happened—”

  He cut me off. “Shut up, little girl.” His expression was devoid of all emotion except scorn. “You don’t get answers. You have no idea what’s important. And right now, what’s important is that we’ve got Amy and Erica, and if you want us to keep them alive, you’re going to need to give up your father.”

  I knew he must be lying. If he had really grabbed Amy and Erica, he would have had Henley, too. Even so, I didn’t have to fake the terror in my voice.

  “What?” I choked out.

  Landry exhaled in disgust, and shook his head. Then, suddenly, he screamed in my ear. “I just told you, you deaf son of a bitch! We have Amy and Erica! If you want them to live, you need to tell us where your father is!”

  “But why do you want Henley?” I asked. I really didn’t care—I was just stalling. Landry’s abuse and his mention of my niece and Amy were all I needed to turn my fear into resolve. I didn’t have much hope for myself, in the long run. But I would be damned, and I mean that literally, if I let this monster get hold of my family.

  “Didn’t I just tell you that you don’t get answers?” he screamed. “Where is your father?”

  Just then, I figured out what I was going to do. I just needed a few more seconds to compose myself before acting. So I took a gamble that I could keep him talking. “Are you Beta?�
�� I blurted.

  I knew it wasn’t true. But I thought this might be the kind of thing that would get Landry thinking.

  As I had hoped, a subtle shift came over my captor’s face. The exaggerated and patently false expression morphed into a leer. “So?” he answered, ambiguously.

  My plan was to feign anger. I did a pretty good job. “So if you are Beta, what the hell are you doing shooting at me?” I asked.

  “Uh, you know I can’t confirm or deny that I’m Beta,” Landry said, slyly.

  Then I really let it rip. What I was actually doing was making my final calculations, but for Landry’s sake, I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Well, whoever you are, you damn well know that you already burned down my house, and killed my father in the process.”

  As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew that I hadn’t sold the lie. I saw the cop come to the same conclusion. And then, fast as a cobra strike, using a backhand motion, he whipped the pistol into my face, hitting me with a real good one in the forehead, above my right eye.

  If you had felt the force of that blow, you would have known that provoking this maniac to an immediate physical reprisal was not my plan. I was momentarily dazed, and blood began to pour down my face, dripping all over my shirt and pants. My eyebrow was the only thing keeping me from being blinded by the flow. I still have the scar.

  The pain in my head had two features—a sharp, burning feeling where the cut had been inflicted, and a dull, growing ache that ringed my entire skull, like an instant migraine.

  “How stupid do you think I am, punk?” Landry spat. “I saw the ax head next to the broken handcuffs. Why don’t you stick to things like defending murderers?”

  The comment about the ax shook me up. I had never even thought about the killers returning to the house to find Henley’s remains. Then I realized that they’d probably assumed that Henley would die—they’d gone back to see if they could find my dead body. And I had entirely forgotten about the ax, but none of that really mattered now. I tried to adopt an expression of defeat as I turned to face the state trooper. The next three or four seconds were going to determine everything.

  He was still sitting sideways on the passenger seat, facing me. Landry was a lefty, which is why he held the gun in that hand. His right hand rested on the dashboard, above the glove compartment.

  My best chance was for him to think that I had lost all hope. I waited for the leering smirk to return to his face, and then I pulled the car into second gear, yanked up hard with my right hand while grabbing his left, pinning both to the windshield. Simultaneously, I slammed the car’s accelerator to the floor, and popped the clutch. The tires spun madly before they finally grabbed the blacktop. The engine screamed insanely. And seconds later, we were tearing down the road.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “WHERE DO YOU think you’re going, brainiac?” Landry shouted over the engine’s roar. I was watching the road accelerate toward me, so I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I heard amusement tingeing the cop’s voice. The swirl of emotions that were storming through me included a healthy measure of anger, and his smug attitude only increased the dose. I concentrated on the muscles in my right hand, and I snaked my index finger over his, and squeezed down hard, forcing him to pull the trigger.

  The gun discharged with a loud bang, shooting a hole in the windshield, surrounded by a large spiderweb pattern of cracks.

  Landry laughed.

  “You can’t call the cops, ’cause I’m the cops. You can’t call the feds, ’cause you know they’re in on this, too. So, what? You’re gonna shoot your own car?” Landry sounded genuinely amused. “Hey—I’ve got an idea,” he continued, in a mocking tone. “Why don’t you run away? Oh, that’s right. I’m sitting right next to you, asshole.” More laughter. “I thought you were supposed to be smart.”

  I wanted him laughing. I wanted him gloating. I wanted him thinking about everything except what I was going to do to him.

  The car’s acceleration had pinned us both back against the seats. My right hand and Landry’s left were still wrapped around the handle of the pistol, and pressing it up against the windshield.

  We were heading back south on the main road of the reservation. The cliff now was to our right.

  Landry was straining to bring the weapon down so he could point it at me again. And even though he was no weakling, I had the advantage.

  The problem for my assailant was that my right hand was under his, and to pin the gun to the windshield, all I had to do was to pull upwards. He was trying to pull down against me, and I had plenty of upper-body strength. I was using my biceps against his triceps. It was no contest.

  I squeezed against Landry’s finger again, shooting off another round. Another explosion, another hole in the windshield. The pattern of cracks of the second one overlapped the first.

  I was running out of time. I pulled against his finger again, and a third shot blew another hole through the glass. Up ahead, the road bent slightly to the left.

  “If you’re trying to empty the magazine, I got more bullets, you know,” Landry taunted. Then he finally gave up trying to control the gun with just his left hand, and he twisted around so that he could get his right hand into the fray.

  That was my cue. Squeezing off one more shot, blowing out more of the glass, and forming one more pattern of cracks in the windshield, I gripped the steering wheel tight in my left hand, keeping us headed straight, instead of bending with the road to the left. We were heading for the cliff.

  Landry saw where I was directing us, and sneered. “You gonna jump the rail? I don’t think you have the balls, Tommy girl.”

  I shot the pistol once more, praying that I had done enough damage.

  Then I slammed on the brakes.

  Centripetal force threw me forward, but my seat belt locked me in place instantly. Landry, however, had never put his seat belt on.

  In fact, his weight was shifted as far forward as possible. He was sitting sideways, with both hands reaching up to control the gun which was pressed against the severely damaged windshield.

  When the car’s brakes locked up, Landry’s body continued at its previous speed of about fifty miles per hour. His flight forward wasn’t impeded at all. And thanks to the damage we’d inflicted onto the glass, he went sailing out of the car like the windshield wasn’t even there in the first place.

  The car had begun its skid on the shoulder of the road, and then had slid off onto the dirt, veering toward the guardrail that protected vehicles from going off the cliff. I had hoped that the cop would just fly right over the rail, but even if I’d had the time to check whether that’s what happened, I couldn’t risk the vertigo. As soon as he made his unconventional but emphatic exit from the car, I got off the brake, turned hard left, pulled the VW back onto the road, and fled.

  It was hard driving at life-threatening speeds without much of a windshield. The tiniest specks of dust and sand—heck, even the wind itself—affected my eyes. I didn’t care about the stinging so much. Shoot, over the past two days I’d been pistol-whipped and nearly burned to death. A little irritation to my corneas was nothing.

  The problem was that my eyes reacted to the pain by watering. And I might even have been able to cope with that, except that the blood that was pouring from the cut over my right eye was now flowing into the eye itself. In short, I was barely able to see. At sixty miles per hour, that posed a significant problem.

  I was in the middle of trying to work out some kind of system, a wholly ineffective rotation of holding the bottom of my T-shirt to the cut on my head, followed by shielding my eyes with my hand while ducking down behind the remaining fragments of the windshield, when I saw Cliff’s friends, David and Jack West, heading in the other direction in their pickup truck.

  As we passed, I saw clearly that they noticed what had happened to my car. I couldn’t afford to stop, but I did watch in the side mirror as they crested a small hill, and stopped their truck, pulling it across both lanes of the road. T
hen they both got out, with shotguns.

  I felt better, but only slightly. I was able to slow down now. There was no way that Landry and his driver were going to be able to get past the West brothers without significant delay, if they even tried.

  But I didn’t know who else knew where I was. Or if I was being followed. The roads around the reservation were deserted, but somehow, Landry had found me. How many others were there?

  I had to assume that I was still a target, and that anywhere I went I would be followed by whatever group Landry was a part of. I couldn’t afford to go back to the cabin—I had to run from it. If I was being chased, I needed to lead whoever was following me away from my family.

  I called Amy on my old phone. She answered on the first ring. “Hey, where are you?” she chided gently. “We’re hungry!”

  I was so caught up in the need for them to get out of there, and in my need to run in the other direction, that I didn’t realize this might be the last chance I ever had to talk to her. All I did was say, “Amy, I have to be fast—I don’t know if they’re tracing this, and the phone’s almost out of power. You need to get away from there as soon as possible. I was followed, and I’m afraid I’ll bring them to you. Talk to, you know, those people who, you know. Get help from them.” I was afraid to say Cliff and Iris’s names out loud, even though I was sure that whoever was attacking me must have already known about them.

  Amy was silent on the other end of the phone. “You aren’t going back to the trial, are you?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “They’ll kill me there.”

  “I love you” was all she said.

  My headache got suddenly much worse. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this woman, and the only way I could make sure she would stay out of harm was to run away from her. “I love you, too,” I replied. “Be safe. I’ll find you.”

  “Run,” Amy said. “Run fast.” And then she hung up.

  To be honest, I can’t say that the sixty-five-mile-per-hour wind I was getting in the face was the only reason my eyes were stinging right at that moment. I was miserable. Virginia? North Carolina? I didn’t even know what country Amy was going to.