by J. M. Hayes
“Maybe you boys should save us a lot of collateral damage and just surrender to Mrs. Kraus right now.”
Evans appeared willing, but Koestel straightened his back and found some bold words.
“My little band might prove a good deal harder to take down than you think, Doc. The traitors who fill those body bags may be the ones who try to seize the guns God and our forefathers gave us the right to bear.”
“Damn!” Mrs. Kraus said. “These fools really want to kill someone.”
***
The professional was finished. All manner of side effects from this artificial drug war might cause problems his clients were probably expecting him to deal with. But his contracts were completed now. He’d done what he’d promised. The war had started, and now it would run its own course. He was through helping it along. And he was through eliminating inconvenient politicians, even if flaying had proved especially enjoyable.
Now for party time, he thought. Now for Heather English. She’d had a lot of luck and help when she beat him. He’d arranged for her to have neither this time around. He knew what to expect from her. She was good. Very good. But he’d take her easily. Kill her, slowly he hoped, in a fashion his photographic memory could recall with delight whenever he wished.
The professional dropped the motorcycle’s kickstand and stepped off the Japanese crotch rocket. The front door of a rural Santa Fe-style house in Three Points opened and a pair of men in camouflage uniforms came out to meet him. A third man followed. This one wore blue jeans, boots, a green-flannel shirt that matched his eyes, and a Western-cut corduroy sports coat.
All three men were armed. The uniforms carried military-style automatic rifles. The butts of semi-automatic pistols protruded from snap-open holsters on their belts. The man in the sports coat wore a traditional Western holster strapped low on his right side. You could imagine him stepping into the street to defend his honor with that rig. Maybe heading for an appointment with the Earps or Clantons. His weapon was a huge Smith & Wesson Model 500, chromed, with pearl handles.
“Fifty-caliber,” the wanna-be gunfighter said, noticing the professional’s glance.
The professional preferred to work with his hands. “Have Mad Dog and the girl escaped yet?” he asked.
“No. Still in the barn,” the shootist said. “Not smart enough to discover we left them an unlocked door.”
The professional nodded. It could be difficult to free yourself from the flex-cuffs their prisoners were wearing.
“Then it’s time to send them a traitor. Someone who can be careful. Mad Dog may have arranged a trap for the first person to go through that door.”
The man in the sports coat laughed. The professional knew him as Lancer. It was what the secret service had called President Kennedy. The professional assumed it was no coincidence. That the designation had been adopted because the guy was commander in chief of this militia. And maybe because he considered himself a lady’s man. The professional didn’t care because the man was the channel for the real money today’s events would produce. Fifteen million, so far, wired to offshore banks. Drug money was big. Political money, in this case, was much bigger.
One of Lancer’s troopers smiled. The other met the professional’s eyes and snapped a nod. That was enough for the professional.
“Have they seen you?” the professional asked the serious one.
“No, sir.”
Sir. That was a nice touch. “Then you do it. Let them out. Make sure Mad Dog knows how close to home he is.”
“Yes, sir,” the man snapped. He loped around the front of the house and down the drive toward the metal barn out back.
“You want to watch?” Lancer said. “I had one of the cameras monitoring the brood mare stalls shifted to cover the door. That’s how we know they’re still in there.”
Lancer wasn’t the man’s real name. The professional wasn’t supposed to know it, but he did, of course. A professional researched his clients as well as his targets, and always knew the motivations of the people he dealt with. In this case, the professional knew the electorate wouldn’t be pleased to discover Lancer’s militia role. And he knew Lancer thought the evil they were doing was for the country’s greater good. The people behind Lancer, the ones who hadn’t told Lancer what results they really expected, were known by the professional, too.
The professional accepted the invitation and followed the two remaining men into the house. They passed through a monstrous great room decorated in traditional Western kitsch—animal heads on the walls looking over Hereford-upholstered wagon-wheel furniture. Half a dozen “soldiers” crowded an office at the end of a hall. Some cleaned their weapons. Some drank coffee. None paid much attention to the screens showing views of empty stalls and a closed door.
“No horses?” the professional said.
“I hated not bringing some here,” Lancer said. “But I’ve kept this place clean of anything personal, the way you suggested. We can be gone in minutes and the rental arrangement can’t be traced back to me.”
The professional watched the screen on which the soldier he’d picked approached a door. The man tapped it lightly. Opened his mouth and said something—no sound—then twisted the knob. The lights inside the room were on. These pretend soldiers hadn’t kept as close an eye on their prisoners as they’d been instructed to. Of course, he’d known that would probably happen. And seen his opinion reinforced from the attitude he’d gotten out front and when he entered this room. He wondered if Lancer was right about how sterile and untraceable this place would be. No matter, he would disappear long before that could become a problem.
The soldier stepped into the room for a moment and came right back out. He looked straight into the camera. The professional could read his lips when he said, “They’re gone.” The man put his hands together and jerked them apart, as if ripping a cloth. Or tearing apart the seams of a metal building.
“What’s that fool trying to tell us?” Lancer said.
“Your prisoners left by another route,” the professional replied.
“That can’t be,” one of the men in camos said.
The professional ignored the foolish statement and turned to Lancer. “Time to send a team after them. And remember, I don’t want Mad Dog hurt. Just frightened enough to call for help.”
By now, the professional thought, that would be very specific help. By now, Mad Dog shouldn’t trust anyone but family.
***
Sheriff English drove a couple of miles toward town before he pulled over beside a little bridge spanning an unnamed stream. Half a mile north, the stream rose from a series of springs. The vegetation along its course was all brown and lifeless now. From spring through fall, though, this was a beautiful spot. As a boy he’d come here with friends. He remembered a beaver dam. And how good the cool water felt on a sweltering day when they’d taken a dip in a deep hole. The joy of it had slipped some when they spent the next hour removing leeches.
The sheriff drew his pistol and examined it. Before Mrs. Walker’s episode at the church this morning, he hadn’t fired it in ages. The old Smith & Wesson .38 Police Special contained five cartridges, as usual, an empty chamber under the hammer.
According to that message from Mrs. Kraus, men with automatic weapons waited for him at the courthouse. Maybe as many as ten. The Porters had speculated about the local militia’s make up and how many people they thought might join in taking the building.
His .38 wasn’t much of a match. He pulled an extra cartridge out of his ammunition pouch and fed a sixth round into the last chamber. And he tried to remember when he’d bought this ammunition. Seven years ago? Eight? He’d bought it because a couple of rounds hadn’t fired when he was doing a little target practice with his daughters. When had that been? They’d been in high school. Could this ammunition be old enough for that to happen again?
He shrugged. Against a host of automatic weapons, it probably wouldn’t matter.
For some reason the sheriff found himself remembering an old movie—High Noon. Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Katy Jurado, Lloyd Bridges, Lon Chaney, Jr.—all dead now. Just like he would probably be if he went back to town to face the guns in the courthouse.
In the movie, Cooper played a marshal who was retiring so he could marry Kelly, a Quaker girl opposed to all violence. At the last moment, Cooper learned a killer seeking revenge on the town would arrive with his gang on the noon train. Cooper, feeling responsible for the town’s safety, decided to stay and face the threat. Kelly wouldn’t support him. Nor would the townspeople or his former deputy. They all refused to help. In the end, Cooper went out to face the bad guys alone before getting the fantasy ending. Somehow, Sheriff English doubted there’d be a fantasy ending for him. This was no movie.
Who could the sheriff ask for help? He’d served this community for most of his adult life. But who were his friends? He could count on Mrs. Kraus. Doc Jones, the county coroner, too. But Doc’s skill was saving lives, not taking them. The sheriff’s family would have rushed to his defense, but none of them were here. Judy had lost a terrible battle to cancer years ago. Their daughters were grown up and gone. His brother lived a thousand miles to the southwest, not that he’d be much help anyway. Mad Dog would probably approach the militiamen with flowers to stick in their gun barrels.
The sheriff still had one deputy, but the man was so incompetent the sheriff no longer allowed him to carry a weapon. The deputy’s father, a former chairman of the Benteen County Board of Supervisors, wasn’t exactly a friend, but the man had risked his life alongside the sheriff before. Of course he was on a holiday cruise with his wife somewhere in the South Pacific.
Bottom line, the sheriff realized, he didn’t have many real friends. He knew everybody in the county and they knew him. But they had a professional relationship. He issued occasional traffic tickets, broke up fights, and served them with legal documents. In spite of that, they liked him enough to re-elect him, term after term, but he couldn’t think of a single person he could ask to put their life on the line in a situation like this. It was a lonely feeling.
Like Cooper, he supposed, he had every reason to walk away. To let the community face the problem it wouldn’t be willing to help him handle. But, when he took this job he took an oath. There wasn’t any clause exempting him when he faced overwhelming odds.
The sheriff sighed. He had not the slightest idea of how to deal with this. But walking away didn’t seem to be an option.
He put the Taurus back in drive and pointed it toward Buffalo Springs and the Benteen County Courthouse. He glanced at his watch. High noon had come and gone, but a lot more armament awaited him than Gary Cooper ever faced.
***
Once Mad Dog realized where he and Cassie were, getting home was simple. Deciding whether to go there was something else. Whoever had kidnapped them must know where he lived. They could be at his trailer in minutes. And it wasn’t like Mad Dog had anything there to use in defense. He didn’t own any guns. Didn’t want one, even now. He’d decided years ago he no longer wanted to kill things. He had a bow and arrows a Cheyenne friend had made for him. He had a baseball bat, a shovel, and an ax, and the hook and pitchfork he’d brought for “just in case.” But he also had Hailey. That became his deciding factor. That and the availability of his home phone. He could hardly ask a young girl to disappear into the desert with him for a few days until all this blew over. And he couldn’t let Pam come home from work into the middle of this mess.
Mad Dog followed the wash. It merged with a larger one, the arroyo that ran just west of his place. The sandy bottom was so churned up and soft that it made for hard walking. But there were also trails that wound among the trees—a few cottonwoods and lots of mesquite. Mad Dog often walked these trails with Hailey. He knew which ones would combine to take them home quickly, and keep him and Cassie hidden from the road.
The yard looked just the way Mad Dog had left it. He’d hoped to find it filled with squad cars, investigating the hand that had been delivered that morning.
No way. Not even any rolls of crime-scene tape indicating they’d been there. Instead, his yard was empty but for a cardinal taking a drink out of the tub he left by the front porch for Hailey. There was no sign of Hailey. Nor of the cardinal, as soon as Mad Dog and Cassie stepped onto the driveway that circled the tamarisk out front.
The front door was open. Mad Dog thought that meant Hailey had been the last in or out of the place. Opening doors didn’t seem to be a problem for her. But, since she preferred them open, she tended to leave them that way. Even in winter.
Mad Dog bent and whispered in Cassie’s ear.
“Wait here,” he said, showing her a place to hide in the brush. “Let me make sure the coast is clear.”
She nodded, burrowing into a clump of desert broom. Mad Dog trotted up the drive. He paused before mounting the porch. Listened. The cardinal scolded him from somewhere in the wash. A few other birds gossiped among themselves and Mad Dog wished he knew if they were talking about anyone following his trail. The double-wide was quiet. Mad Dog whistled a few notes of a favorite John Stewart song. Hailey usually greeted him whenever he’d been away from home. And she usually came for those notes, even when she was busy with something else. He half expected her to emerge from the front door, jump up and put her paws on his shoulders, and give him a thorough tongue lashing—in the literal sense.
Nothing. The tamarisk swayed in the breeze and the birds continued their conversation. No Hailey.
Mad Dog mounted the porch and cautiously stuck his head in the front door. There was no indication that anyone was there. No suspicious heavy breathing or sounds of guns being cocked. No bloody footprints. He stepped inside.
The possibility that someone waited for them was reason enough to leave Cassie in hiding. But Mad Dog also wanted to make sure she didn’t see the hand. He didn’t think it belonged to her missing father, but the girl had plenty of reasons to be traumatized already. The hand, however, no longer decorated his Christmas tree. Had the deputy found it? Not likely, not without crime tape all over the place. Maybe Captain Matus or Heather. Maybe the guy in the delivery truck had realized his mistake and come and taken the hand back. Maybe Hailey had hidden it. Maybe he’d even imagined the whole thing—the hand, Anjelica Grijalva, the kidnapping, Cassie….
He left the pitchfork and the baling hook in the living room and grabbed one of the house phones out of its charger. He stepped out on the front porch, waved Cassie in. She proved real by emerging from the bushes and running to join him. He dialed Heather as he led Cassie inside.
“Uncle Mad Dog,” his niece answered. “Where are you?”
“Home,” he said. He could hear a vehicle coming. Fast. He slammed the front door. Wondered if he had time to get to the pitchfork and hook. Decided he didn’t and opened a closet, searching for his baseball bat. “I need your help and I need it now.” The vehicle slowed and pulled into his front yard. “How soon can you get here?”
Footsteps mounted the porch. The only thing he could find in the closet was Pam’s umbrella. A short, collapsible one with about the same ability to damage bad guys as a feather duster.
The front door flew open and Mad Dog threw himself out of the closet, umbrella raised, prepared to seriously muss someone’s hair.
“Is this soon enough?” Heather said, both on his phone and from where she stood in the door safely beyond the umbrella’s reach.
He heard another vehicle coming down the road. From the opposite way this time. From the direction of that Santa Fe house.
“I hope so,” Mad Dog said.
***
It wasn’t part of his plan, but the sheriff went by his house on the way to the courthouse. Actually, he still had no plan. That was the proble
m. He knew he should call for outside help from the state. KBI or Highway Patrol. But outside help was exactly what the men in the courthouse expected. Outside help was almost certain to start an all-out war. However angry he might be at the men who’d seized his courthouse, they were people he knew. Just a collection of frustrated farmers who worked their tails off in a system that never seemed to make them a profit. He didn’t want to get them killed.
His house was a more comfortable place to try to come up with a plan. Warmer, anyway. And he had a shotgun at home. His mother’s old twelve gauge. A Remington Model 11 semi-automatic, almost a century old. She’d supplemented their larder with duck, geese, pheasant, quail, and the occasional deer. That’s why he’d also inherited a nearly full box of rifled slugs—for the deer hunting. But talk about aged and questionable ammunition.
The English house was on Cherry, near the east side of town. It wasn’t visible from the courthouse. Well, his roof could be seen from atop the courthouse’s rickety tower, but that was all.
The sheriff parked on the street and let himself in through the unlocked front door. It occurred to him, as he turned the knob, that this might be the day he’d regret failing to lock up when he left. The house was empty, though. None of the militia from the courthouse had dropped by to take over his home. The place was as quiet and empty as usual these days.
The sheriff sat in the easy chair Judy had gotten for him soon after they were married the first time. It had taken one divorce and a second try to get their marriage right. He put his feet up on the ottoman. Her wingback stood on the other side of the end table that held their reading light. The novel she’d started the last time she sat there lay on the table, bookmark in place. Between pages twelve and thirteen of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. An old favorite that Judy had tried to lose herself in. The chemotherapy and the cancer had made that impossible. Judy hadn’t been able to concentrate. And so she’d picked the book up and started it, over and over, until she couldn’t pick it up at all.
