Culprits

by Richard Brewer

  It wasn’t that he didn’t trust O’Conner. The counting was a tradition. One that, on this particular morning, started not at zero, but at one million one hundred thousand. When he finished, he was surprised to find an extra ten grand in the bag, bringing his total count to one million two hundred and eighty-five thousand. Just two hundred and fifteen grand to go.

  After repacking the bag, he stretched out on the bed, put an arm through the duffel’s straps, and fell into a deep sleep.

  . . . “Norris,” she said, extending a hand. “Eva.”

  “Parker, Benny.”

  He’d just flown in that morning, and Eva had been sent to escort him to their squad.

  Attractive? Hell, yes. Five foot five with boots on, and a hundred and twenty pounds of lean muscle. Close-cropped hair, and skin tone and eyes that reminded him a little of Zoe Saldana.

  “Well, Parker. Hungry?”

  “Very.”

  They hit it off from the start, sharing the same sense of humor, and a similar view of the world. About their only difference was that Eva had a kid back home from a previous marriage. Benny had neither a kid nor a marriage, previous or not.

  There was no denying their mutual attraction, but neither ever acted on it. It was like they had an unspoken agreement that maybe, someday. But for now, the bond of their friendship was more important.

  “I got you, Parker,” she would say on every mission.

  “I got you, Norris,” he would fire back.

  . . .By noon the following day, he was in Oregon, off the interstate and driving the backroads toward home in Oregon. The moment the chain blocking the private dirt drive to his grandfather’s old cabin came into view he felt the sense of peace he always did upon return.

  The driveway wasn’t so much a road as a couple of tire ruts the forest kept trying to reclaim. Here and there, the trees encroached so close it almost seemed there was no room to get by, but he knew better.

  When Benny inherited the cabin, the place had been but a few winters away from falling apart. He’d been in the Army by that point, and used whatever leave he could get to go up and work on the place. He’d been thinking that after he finally got out, the cabin would be his weekend retreat from city life. Little did he know then that when he actually did leave the service, the cabin’s quiet and solitude would be all he wanted, and he’d make it his home.

  After parking, he slung the duffel over one shoulder and his travel kit over the other, and walked toward the cabin, road weary and glad to be home.

  Nearing the porch steps, he stopped and frowned. The thread he stretched across the middle step before he’d left had been broken. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. Of all the traps he’d set around the cabin to let him know if someone had been there, this one was the easiest to trigger. A curious squirrel, a hard wind, a bird wanting the thread for its nest. It could be anything.

  A quick check of the dirt in front of the steps revealed a waffle pattern created by a pair of hiking boots. Distinctive. Not his boots.

  So not a squirrel or a bird. A person.

  The prints didn’t necessarily mean trouble either. He’d had his share of hikers stop by and ask for directions. Likely, that was the source, but it was always better to err on the side of caution.

  He set the duffels on the ground, retrieved his pistol from his kit, and followed the prints. They led across the parking area and into the trees where they disappeared in the bed of pine needles and broken branches. A search around revealed another print on a spot of open ground. Not the same waffle pattern as the first, though. Two people? Maybe, or maybe they were made at the same time. He hunted for more prints, but came up empty.

  Back at the cabin, he checked his other traps. Nothing else had been tripped, so he picked up his bags and went inside.

  Like with the counting, he had a returning home ritual too. An order of how things were to be done.

  One: set his kit on dining table.

  Two: unlock the padlock and two deadbolts securing the basement door.

  Three: carry the money duffel down the stairs.

  Four: set it on his grandfather’s old desk.

  Five: detach the baseboard and remove the false wall.

  Six: open the safe.

  The safe was large, the interior a good three feet deep by the same wide and another five tall. Even at that size, though, the one point one million it already held took up most of the space.

  One by one, he added the new haul to the fund.

  “Almost there,” he said when he was done. “Almost.”

  Back upstairs, he warmed a can of stew, ate it standing up, and then dragged himself to bed.

  . . .The wind always drove people crazy.

  The undulating howl and the sand in your face and the very air you breathed blowing so hard you had to fight it just to get where you wanted to go.

  Benny hated patrolling on nights like this. It felt as if an electric pulse bubbled under the surface of everything, like a buried transformer ready to explode. These were the nights better spent on base in a bunk, praying no one decided to lob a missile your way.

  The whole squad was on edge. Conversations stilted. The few jokes told falling flat. And in between, long bouts of tense silence.

  A half hour before midnight, the radio crackled through their APC. Gunfire reported. And since Benny and his friends were closest, they won the see-if-it’s-a-problem lottery.

  “Here we go, here we go, here we go,” T-Rod said.

  The others checked their equipment and remained silent. Nights like these, you didn’t want to temp the gods.

  When they arrived at the provided coordinates, Crane, their lieutenant, said, “Norris, take your team and see what you can find out,”

  “I got you, Parker,” Eva whispered as they piled out of the vehicle with Southside, Dolan, T-Rod, and their translator, Khaleel.

  “I got you, Norris.”

  It took a few minutes before they found a local who pointed them toward where the gunfire had originated.

  Eva sent Khaleel back to the APC, and then led the team into a quiet neighborhood of narrow streets. Deep in the maze, they came upon a partially destroyed factory. Bomb damage. Months old at least. No way to know which side was responsible.

  “Let’s check it out,” Eva said.

  “Ah, come on,” Southside groaned under his breath.

  “Thanks for volunteering, Southside. You, me, and Benny on point. T-Rod, Dolan, cover us.”

  After activating their night vision goggles, Eva nodded to T-Rod and Dolan. Once the two men had the doorless entry covered, Eva, Benny, and Southside swung inside, rifles ready.

  Room by room, they worked their way through the building. When Eva spotted the still intact door at the end of a rubble strewn room, she pointed to herself and Benny, and then signaled Southside to remain with Dolan and T-Rod.

  It opened with a shove from Benny’s shoulder. On the other side, a set of stone stairs led down. Benny went first, rifle butted against his shoulder, Eva following a few steps behind. When he reached the bottom, he swung out and scanned the area.

  A small room, its floor littered with toppled furniture and bits of broken building, but otherwise empty. There were two other doorways, one along the wall ahead and another on the one to the left.

  He crept over to the opening on the left and peeked through. A small room, empty except for the rubble.

  He shook his head as he returned to where Eva waited.

  Together, they approached the other doorway. Beyond it was a hall with four additional exits.

  Fan-fucking-tastic, Benny thought.

  The first two rooms were filled with toppled shelves. Storage space, apparently. The ceiling had collapsed in the third room, making it impossible to get inside. There was similar damage in the last, though not a total cave in. There the ceiling had broken roughly in half, creating a kind of cavern that could be reached through a narrow op
ening in the wreckage.

  They crawled in a few feet and scanned around. There wasn’t a damn thing of interest as far as Benny could see. He tapped Eva on the shoulder, and started motioning that they should get out of there when a rifle boomed, and a bullet ripping through the tunnel they were in barely missing Benny’s arm.

  A second shot when off right on its heels, but the bullet slammed harmlessly into the rubble. A moment later, they heard someone scrambling through the cavern ahead.

  “Shots fired! Shots fired!” Southside said over the radio. “Norris, Parker, are you all right?”

  Benny had barely replied, “We’re okay,” when he spotted a person streak across the cavern and pull up into a gap in the half-fallen ceiling. “Shooter coming your way! South of where we came down!”

  Benny squeezed through the last of the broken concrete into the cavern, and ran over to where the person had disappeared. As soon as Eva was through the tunnel, she joined him.

  “I don’t see anything,” he said, looking up at the hole.

  “Give me a boost,” she said.

  With his hands he created a step, and lifted her until she had a grip on the broken ceiling.

  “Clear,” she said after a quick scan. She pulled herself all the way up and held a hand down to Benny, helping him through the opening.

  “Dolan, anything?” she said over the radio.

  “Can’t find the goddamn hole,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about the hole,” she said. “The shooter’s up already. Just look—”

  A sound. Grit scraping the floor under someone’s foot.

  She motioned for Benny to circle right, and then she headed left.

  “I see something!” T-Rod said. “I think it’s the shooter!”

  “Where?” Dolan asked.

  “In the other room. Through that break in the wall.”

  “What break?”

  “Right there!”

  The pause that followed lasted no more than two seconds. Then all hell broke loose.

  . . .Benny woke before dawn.

  Sit ups first. Five hundred, plus an extra hundred because he’d been away. Pull ups next, using the bar in the closet doorway. Two sets of fifty, and the promise of an additional set that evening. Again, as make up.

  He took a shower, and started a fire in the fireplace, then poured himself some coffee and headed to the front porch to watch the sun come up. A moment after he opened the door, though, he quickly closed it again. At the far end of the clearing, where the driveway began, moonlight had glistened off the windshield of a pickup truck.

  Crouching to stay out of sight through the windows, he crept over to his desk. He retrieved his Glock from the bottom drawer, then reached under the center of the desk and popped loose his Mossberg 930 shotgun from the clips holding it in place.

  With the pistol tucked safely into his waistband at the small of his back, he moved into the kitchen and peered through the back window, looking for shadows that shouldn’t be there. Seeing nothing unusual, he slipped outside and snuck into the woods behind the house. A wide arc through the forest brought him to within twenty-five feet of the unfamiliar pickup, and gave him his first good look inside the cab.

  A bearded man sat in the driver’s seat, leaning against the door as if asleep. Benny crept up to the vehicle and checked the license plate. California, with a frame touting a San Diego Ford dealership. A long way from home.

  He moved over to the driver’s door, and rose up until he could see the man’s face.

  What the hell?

  While the beard was new, there was no mistaking the rest of the man’s features. It was Dolan, his old squad mate.

  Benny tapped the Mossberg against the glass. Dolan jerked away from the door, blinking in confusion. When he caught sight of Benny, though, he grinned. “Parker!”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Dolan opened the door, and climbed out, then seemed to notice the shotgun for the first time. “You going hunting?”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Chill out, man. I’m headed to Idaho to visit my uncle and was in the area, so thought I’d drop by.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Took me longer to find this place than I thought. By then it was pretty late, and I didn’t want to wake you.” With a shiver, he glanced at the cabin. “Mind if we go inside? I’m freezing my ass off.”

  “How did you know where I lived?”

  “Seriously? You talked about this place all the time, remember?”

  “I don’t remember telling anyone the address.”

  “You’ve heard of the internet, right?” He rubbed his hands over his arms. “Can we continue the interrogation inside before I start losing circulation?”

  Benny wanted nothing more than to tell him to be on his way, but that might make Dolan curious as to why he was so anxious to get rid of him. “I got coffee,” he said, and started for the cabin.

  Dolan grabbed a bag out of the cab, slammed the door shut, and hurried to catch up.

  “You can’t stay,” Benny told him, glancing at the bag. “I’m not…set up for guests.”

  “Relax. Not planning on moving in. Just thought I could clean up a little. Change my clothes. I wouldn’t say no to a shower, though.”

  Upon entering the house, Benny hung his jacket on one of the hooks by the door. Dolan followed suit, then looked around.

  “So this is the grandpa’s cabin. Not bad. Cozy, even.” When his gaze landed on the fireplace, he grabbed a chair from the table, planted it in front of the hearth, and plopped down. “You said something about coffee?”

  In the kitchen, Benny set the Mossberg on the counter, and put the Glock into the junk drawer by the sink before pouring Dolan his coffee and heading back to the living room.

  “Thanks,” Dolan said, taking the mug. “This place is nice and all, but man, talk about isolated. You don’t live up here full time, do you? I mean, what would you do for work?”

  Ignoring the question, Benny said, “How long did they keep you in?”

  For the first time, Dolan’s smile slipped. “Thirteen months.”

  His sentence had been almost twice that long.

  “And you went back to San Diego?”

  “They weren’t going to keep me in the Army. Besides, where else would I go? Great weather, no humidity, and the ocean. What’s not to love?” He took a drink, and then set the mug down. “You mind if I take off my boots? I can barely feel my toes.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Dolan tugged off his boots, and extended his feet toward the fire. “Oh, man, does that feel good.” He glanced over at Benny. “You ever run into any of the old gang?”

  “Gang?”

  “The squad.”

  “No.”

  “That was some crazy times, wasn’t it?”

  Benny grunted noncommittally.

  Dolan downed the remaining coffee in a single gulp, then said, “So, any chance I could get that shower?”

  “Sure. I’ll get you a towel.”

  After Dolan was set up in the bathroom, Benny carried Dolan’s mug into the kitchen and then went back to move his unwanted guest’s boots to the door. One of them lay on its side, and as he picked them up, his noticed the distinctive pattern of the tread. It appeared to be an exact match to the print in front of his cabin.

  Son of a bitch.

  He set the boots by the door and retrieved the Glock from the kitchen, slipping it back into his belt. To cover its presence, he grabbed his Oregon State hoodie from the rack and pulled it on.

  He contemplated leaving the Mossberg out where he could easily grab it, but he didn’t want to chance Dolan going for it first, so he secured it back under the desk. That way he’d be the only one to know its location.

  By the time Dolan strolled out, Benny was sitting at the dining table, ostensibly going through the stack of mail that had been sitting there since before
the Harrington job.

  “You been gone or something?” Dolan asked.

  “I only pick up the mail a couple times a month.”

  “Really? Huh. Don’t think I could ever get used to country life.” He walked back over to the fire, but remained standing. “Say, you never answered my question about what you’re doing to make ends meet these days.”

  Benny opened an envelope and pulled out an advertisement for life insurance. “A little bit of this and that,” he replied without looking up.

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  Trying not to show his surprise, Benny casually glanced at Dolan. “What did you hear?”

  “That you hooked up with that Army buddy you used to talk about sometimes. Not from our squad. You called him…what was it? Eel?”

  Benny let his arm drop naturally to his side, and began slipping his hand behind his back. “Who did you here that from?”

  “It’s true, isn’t? I also heard he’s into some pretty heavy duty shit.”

  Benny’s fingers closed around the Glock’s grip, and began to ease the pistol out.

  “Whoa there, Parker,” a voice from the hallway said. “You don’t want to do that.” The floorboards creaked as T-Rod stepped into the light, holding a Smith & Wesson pistol. “Hey, buddy. Long time.”

  Dolan circled behind Benny, lifted the back of the hoodie, and yanked out the Glock. “Well, look at this.”

  “The shotgun’s under the desk,” T-Rod said.

  “Is that so?”

  T-Rod locked eyes with Benny and grinned. “I’ve been watching you since you came home. You still snore like a freight train.”

  Dolan yanked out the shotgun, and then sat down at the table in the chair opposite Benny. He laid the Mossberg in front him. “Word around is that Estevez is in bed with some powerful people, and that he’s brought you in on their fun.”

  “Rumors have a way of not being true.”

  “I’m talking big scores.”

  Benny said nothing.

  “You remember Billy Carson? We’d see him around the base. I don’t remember what squad he was in.”

  Though Benny expression didn’t change, inside, he cringed.

  “I guess he knows your buddy Estevez too. Says Eel hired him for a job, promising a bigger one if things went well. I guess they didn’t because Eel never called him again. Carson was telling us the story…when was that? Last month?”