As day broke they emerged on the hill above the Cross family home. It was quiet, but the smell of smoke hung in the air. It appeared someone was there and had built a fire last night. It had died down and the smell was the remnant of a banked fire in a woodstove.
Buddy noticed a fallen cedar tree and pointed them in that direction. The cedar tree had been down for some time, the needles brown, and strands of bark hanging loose in delicate shreds. They made their way in that direction and eased down in the shelter of the tree. It provided a blind that concealed them from the house while allowing them to monitor it. In their camouflage, it was unlikely anyone would have been able to detect them until they tripped over them.
They made themselves as comfortable as they could and they settled in for a day of watching. For the first three hours they saw nothing. Then a door opened and a scruffy man staggered out onto the porch. He wore jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt that said Life Ain’t Easy When You’re Fat and Greasy. He was shoeless and walked to the edge of the porch, unzipping his pants and relieving himself into the grassless yard.
After he went back inside, there was nothing for another half-hour. Then a woman came out and picked her way through the trash-strewn yard to the outhouse. Buddy looked expectantly at Randi, his eyes full of the question. Randi looked back at him and nodded.
They watched until the sun was directly overhead. No one else ever came outside. After another hour of sitting, Buddy tapped Randi on the shoulder and gestured with his hand that they should leave.
He leaned close and spoke into her ear. “Follow me. Stay in the shadows. Watch where you step, and don’t move too fast.”
She nodded and began stretching her stiff muscles. After so long in one spot, even standing was awkward but she did her best to do it without making any noise. When she was on her feet, Buddy headed out. He moved so naturally through the woods that she could easily imagine him as a younger man doing this in foreign jungles.
They crept in silence, taking a step and listening. At each step they examined their next footfall, looking for anything that might crackle or give them away. In the silence of the hills sound carried a long way. The crack of a limb, the scuffing of leaves, was an unnatural occurrence and drew the ear. They’d gone a great distance before Buddy dared speak.
“I think it’s just the two of them. If no one came out to pee, I would assume they might be using slop jars. Since two came outside that makes me think that everyone would be coming outside to relieve themselves. Since no one else came, I would venture to guess it’s just the two of them.”
Randi nodded. “Any thoughts?”
Buddy walked in silence for a moment, grinding through scenarios.
“I think I’ll have to kill the man,” he finally said. “He’s a big old boy. I don’t reckon he’d stand by and let it happen. He’s going to have to die first. Then you can do what you need to do.”
“I want you to help me think of a way to do it,” Randi said. “I want it to be personal. I want her to see me doing it. I want her to know who killed her.”
“I’ll study on it,” Buddy said.
Chapter 34
The Valley
Later that evening, after the sheriff and his family had settled into their new home, Ellen convinced them to return for dinner. Even Ford came back after moving into a mobile home on a private lot. Both homes had woodstoves, and both had access to spring water which could be gravity-fed into the house with a little work. That would allow them to continue using the inside bathrooms throughout the winter. It was as comfortable and convenient accommodations as anyone might expect to have under the current circumstances, unless they had access to solar power.
The sheriff, with his wife and children, pulled his Tahoe into Jim’s driveway and parked by the house. He was hesitant to go in after the episode earlier, standing in the driveway shifting awkwardly from foot to foot and looking for an excuse not to go inside.
“You coming?” his wife asked. Her name was Holly and she was a serious woman. With her husband gone much of the time, she’d had to run the show at home. It required structure and planning, at least to the extent that the mother of small children can plan things.
The sheriff looked around desperately, trying to find an excuse to linger. He heard the sound of an engine and saw Ford’s vehicle approaching. “You go ahead,” he said with relief. “I’ll wait on Ford.”
Holly raised an eyebrow at him but went on. She was climbing the porch steps when the door opened and Ellen came out. Ellen hugged her and guided her inside the house.
“You get your mother settled in?”
The sheriff jumped. He hadn’t heard anyone come out. He found Jim standing on the porch. Jim had given up the load vest but still wore a sidearm.
“She was asleep when we left,” the sheriff said. “I hate to admit it but it’s kind of a waiting game with her now. She can’t speak, can’t feed herself, and can’t go to the toilet. She’s total care.”
“How long since she had the stroke?” Jim asked.
“A couple of months ago.”
“And you’ve been taking care of her the whole time?” Jim asked. “That’s a big commitment.”
The sheriff shrugged. “I wish I could claim credit for being that good of a son. Actually, she was in a nursing home until the lights went out. I went by to check on her and found most of the patients abandoned. The staff had gone home to be with their families. I moved Mom out and the department tried to get as many of the folks back to family as they could. Not all the families were so eager to have their elderly relatives coming back to them under the current conditions. Most of the families could barely take care of their own needs. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I can imagine that was a tough sight,” Jim said. “We have a nurse. She may be of some help to you. She’s not around right now. She’s off… taking care of some personal business.” Jim didn’t feel a need to mention she left with the intention of committing a murder.
“I appreciate that. I’ll talk to her when she returns.”
Ford pulled in and killed his engine. He got out and looked at the other two men. “I hope you all weren’t waiting on me to show up before you started fighting again.”
The sheriff looked sheepish. “No, I think we’re good for now.”
“Nah, we’re good,” Jim said. “At least until the tequila shots come out.”
Jim said it so seriously that the men looked at him with concern. “Joking,” he said. “Just a joke.”
Ellen came out the door and looked at Jim. “You going to invite them in or make them stand in the yard all evening?”
Jim waved a hand at the men and they followed him inside. Without electric lights, the interior of the home was dark this time of day. The men stood around awkwardly for a few moments before Jim ushered them out onto the back porch. The men were more at ease there and settled into chairs. Had it not been for the state of the world, the persistent backbeat of violence, this could have been a normal Saturday evening cookout anywhere in the country.
Jim pointed to a nearby hill topped with a fallen tree and a scattering of rocks. “My son has a lookout up there. He’s become obsessed with maintaining watch over us.”
“Shit, I can’t make out anything that looks like an observation post,” Ford said, shielding his eyes again the sun.
“It’s pretty low key,” Jim said. “He built it himself while I was still walking back from Richmond. He kept an eye on the rest of the family from up there while I was gone. I tried to close his post up a few days back and let him pull duty at the other watch posts but he wasn’t too excited about it. He feels a strong sense of duty to be up there.”
“You let him go back to his spot, huh?” the sheriff asked.
“After what happened last night,” Jim said. “Until then, we hadn’t been too concerned about people coming into the valley on one of those old farm roads. Most people don’t know about them. Then those guys showed up last night in their UTV
s and suddenly Outpost Pete is back in business.”
“Fucking bastards,” Ford spat. “That gear belongs to the county. They looted nearly everything.”
“How did they manage that?” Jim asked.
“They pretty much just walked in and took what they wanted,” the sheriff said. “A lot of the guys have keys to the places where we store gear because you never know who’s going out on an operation. Barnes got to all those guys and rounded up all the gear he could.”
“What did he offer them?” Jim asked.
“Food and safety for the family men,” the sheriff replied. “Food and loot for the single men.”
Jim smiled. “The age old promise that took many a pirate to sea.”
“They got a lot of good stuff,” Ford said. “They got most of the department-owned weapons that weren’t generally issued, like the sniper stuff, the select-fire weapons, and the breaching gear. They got all the grenades, flash bangs, smoke, and tear gas. They got all the MREs and survival rations.”
“Don’t forget they stole all that amateur radio gear,” the sheriff added. “The county provided the amateur radio club with a place to store the gear that the county subsidized. It all went missing. Those guys were pissed.”
“The radio gear doesn’t do them any good without an operator,” Jim said. “That ham shit is complicated. Any of them know how to work it?”
“Oh, they have an operator,” the sheriff said. “They scooped up one of the members of the amateur radio club who was willing to work with them. Guy named Hugh. I’m sure they made him the same promise they made the other cops. Food, protection, and a roof over his head.”
“I used to work with a ham guy named Hugh,” Jim said. “Tall, lanky fellow who always wore a camouflage boonie hat.”
“That’s him,” Ford said, pointing a finger at Jim. “Kind of an intense dude, obsessed with all that radio stuff.”
“Yeah, that’s him for sure,” Jim agreed. “He’s definitely intense. We used to work at a radio station together. I was in high school and he was going to college. We got along real well. He was sharp as a fucking tack and understood everything about how the radio station worked on an engineering level. I haven’t seen the guy in years.”
“Well, we’re pretty sure he’s in there monitoring everything we say on the radios,” Ford said. “We’ve tried changing frequencies to maintain communications security but he’s always a step ahead of us. He’s made it dangerous to use the radios at all.”
“My guess is that Hugh doesn’t really have any allegiance to them,” Jim said. “He’s pretty much a loner. He also gets wound up if people start telling him what to do. He’ll be okay as long as they’re giving him a long leash. If they get too demanding, he’ll quit cooperating.”
“You think you know the guy well enough you could turn him?” Ford asked.
“I don’t know if I could get him to work for us,” Jim said after a moment of thought, “but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t work against me if he knew what was going on.”
“That’s a long-term play,” the sheriff said. “You might not have time to implement that strategy. Those guys could come back again tonight. They could come back anytime. They’re probably pissed about one of their men getting killed.”
“We lost someone too,” Ford spat. “It’s their fault. I’m not in too forgiving a mood right now. I don’t have any sympathy for them. They chose their side.”
“We didn’t have anything to offer them,” the sheriff said. “Barnes at least offered them something. It’s the same thing we’ve talked about over and over since this happened. If your family was starving, you’d make a deal with the devil himself if it let you put food in their mouths. You’d worry about your soul later.”
“Sounds like the problem is Barnes,” Jim said. “Those guys wouldn’t give a shit about us if Barnes wasn’t in the picture.”
The sheriff nodded. “That’s probably true.”
“So maybe we try to lure him out alone,” Jim said. “Maybe we eliminate the problem without the rest of that compound feeling like they’re under attack.”
The sheriff furrowed his brow. “I don’t know about that. I’m not sure I could play a role in murdering one of my men.”
“I think I could,” Ford said. “I’m not volunteering to do it now, but if it came down to it, I think I could.”
Ellen poked her head out the French doors to the back porch. “Dinner is ready,” she said. “Hope you guys are hungry.”
There was a chorus of comments, all supporting that the men were indeed starving.
“We’ll be right in,” Jim said. He looked at the other men. “Any ideas what we should do in the meantime? We maintain a watch constantly but I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Maybe I’ll get on the radio and talk to those men later,” the sheriff said. “I’ll explain what happened.”
“It can’t hurt,” Jim said, knowing that it might not help either.
Chapter 35
Randi
They made a small fire that evening and heated a few of the canned goods they’d brought from the valley. While Randi cooked their dinner, Buddy removed a multitool from his belt and used it to cut a couple of feet of electric fence loose. It was smooth wire, flexible and strong. He tossed the wire down by the fire, then went to the barn and found a handsaw. He used the saw to cut a four-inch length off of an old broken broom handle that had been propped up against the barn wall.
Returning to the fire, Buddy used his pocketknife to cut a groove around the middle of the broomstick. He wrapped a couple of turns of wire around the groove, then tied it off. He now had a two-foot length of wire attached to a wooden toggle. He formed the length of wire into a snare and tested that the loop closed easily when the toggle was pulled.
“What’s that?” Randi asked. “You going to chase down our breakfast with it?”
Buddy shook his head. “It’s a garrote. You drop the loop around that girl’s neck, then you pull the handle and don’t let up until she’s dead.”
“Just like that?”
“I suspect not,” Buddy said. “She’ll be kicking and fighting but it’s more of a sure thing than a knife fight. With this, her entire focus will be on getting it loose. She won’t be able to run. She probably won’t even be able to think.”
“What if my hand slips off that handle?”
“We can tape it to your hand so it won’t come off,” Buddy said. “I’ve heard of assassins doing that with knives.”
“What about the man?”
“I’m going to try to lure him off,” Buddy said. “Maybe I’ll take a shot with my rifle down close to their house. He’d probably want to check that out and see if there’s a dead deer to be had.”
“You going to kill him?”
“I haven’t decided,” Buddy said. “Depends on how he acts.”
Randi extended her empty hand and Buddy hung the garrote delicately on her fingers. She examined it, pulling gently on the loop to see how it worked. She placed her wrist in the loop and pulled on the toggle. It closed easily. She pulled harder and the wire bit into her flesh. Her hand began to change color, the blood flow cut off.
“It’ll cut into her,” Randi observed.
Buddy nodded. “You want that. It makes it harder for the person you’re killing to get their fingers under it and try to loosen it.”
Randi looked at Buddy. “Will it cut her head off?”
“It’s not likely you can pull that hard. It will cut into her neck. There will be a trickle of blood. She might lose control of her bowels or bladder so don’t get distracted if that happens. Don’t let up until you know she’s dead.”
Randi studied the simple device and seemed to be considering the implications.
“You having second thoughts?” he asked.
She looked him in the eye and shook her head sincerely. He could see that she was telling the truth. “I just don’t want any surprises,” she said. “I don’t want to lose contro
l of my own bowels because her head pops off unexpectedly and rolls across the porch.”
Buddy understood that this was how Randi processed things. The humor, the sarcasm, were all part of her dissecting a plan and learning it. Everyone had their own way of dealing with combat, and this was combat. It was no different than many of the actions and operations Buddy had taken part in back in Vietnam. Well, it was a little different. There were fewer rules now. There was nobody second-guessing your decisions like they had in the war.
“What happens afterward?” Randi asked.
“I’ll circle back to her house and cover you,” Buddy said. “Once we confirm she’s dead, we’ll return here. If there’s any reason we get separated or everything goes to hell, then we meet up back here.”
“So when do we do this?” Randi asked.
“I think we should do it early in the morning,” Buddy said. “Maybe around 7 a.m.. If they’re not morning people, they won’t be on top of their game. It may give us an advantage.”
They bedded down early that night with plans to be up at dawn. It was a clear, warm night and they moved their sleeping bags outside of the barn, stretching them out on an old tarp. Randi thought of how the world had changed and taken her life with it. She missed her grandchildren. Part of her wanted to just roll everything up and go back home to them but she couldn’t. Her children wouldn’t understand. They were too modern. That was why she had asked Buddy to help her with this. Despite the difference in their ages, he was of the same world. He understood blood for blood. He understood that some people had to die to make things right in the world.
It took her a long time to go to sleep. She stared at the stars, wondering what her grandchildren were doing. She imagined her parents looking down at her. She knew they’d be telling her to change her mind but she wouldn’t.
Valley of Vengeance: Book Five in The Borrowed World Series Page 16
