Curds and Whey Box Set

by G M Eppers

  With Ban holding onto Clara, who seemed to be asleep on her owner’s shoulder like a small, hairy newborn, Deb opened the door and let Eyedeneaux exit the bus, then closed the door behind him. A brief wave of frigid air swept through the bus, more noticeable to me after having removed two layers of clothing.

  Billings was on the verge of stopping me again. I could see it in his eyes. “Mom, maybe Sylvia or Roxy should go. At least they can fight if they have to.”

  “Which is exactly why it needs to be me.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  I didn’t follow me, either, but I didn’t dare tell him that. I wasn’t about to let him send valuable team members into such a hazardous situation when there was a clear alternative. I could see it. The better Billings got, and he was doing very well, the more and more redundancies cropped up. I was feeling pretty darned expendable. “Look at Gary. He’s a basket case. You guys didn’t really see. He waved that gun around like there was a buzzing gnat flying around his head.” This was kind of a lie. While Gary hadn’t shown particular skill with the weapon, he had shot out the radio with dead on accuracy and a steady hand. “No one is going to believe he captured Roxy or Sylvia. For Pete’s sake, Roxy is three inches taller than him. And he has no training in hand-to-hand.”

  “That’s mostly heel,” interrupted Roxy.

  “You got flats on you?”

  “No.”

  “And Sylvia is...” Well, Sylvia was Sylvia. She looked down at herself and her expression said she reluctantly agreed. “Unless you want someone to beat up on her to make it look more authentic, he’s not going to take her without leaving some marks. When they examine me, they are bound to find my broken ribs, they already know about them. It’s conceivable that I gave up without much a fight because of that.”

  “Are you forgetting the .38?” asked Fergie.

  Yes, I thought. “No. Same theory applies. Without an injury, anyone else would have put up more of a fight rather than get captured. Someone out to free Clara would be someone with guts, someone who might at least try to get by a .38.”

  “Then why would this unknown conservationist group send someone in who has two broken ribs to get Clara?” challenged Billings.

  “Because they,” and I was already uncomfortable with the vague ‘they,’ “weren’t expecting Gary to be there. They thought it would be a simple snatch and grab. You know, I don’t think it matters. The Herds aren’t going to analyze all the motivations here. These guys are going to want a prize of some sort and I don’t think they are going to question Gary much on where he got it.”

  “I could beat myself up a little,” suggested Sylvia. “If I leave the patch behind, they might be convinced he injured my eye to subdue me.” She flipped out her switchblade and opened it. “I’m good with this. I could cut myself a little. Helena, let me do it.”

  “Put that thing away,” I said quickly. She hesitated briefly, then followed my order. “I don’t want to escalate this. They see someone hurt that badly they will expect you to fight. They will be peremptorily violent to keep you in check. Again, my rib situation will lower their expectations. We’ll need to catch them off guard. I’m the best candidate for that.”

  Eyedeneaux came back with a handful of insulated wire and a roll of 1/2” gray duct tape. Gary began removing his jacket. A moment later he was bare-chested and Eyedeneaux went to work. “Ordinarily this would send a signal to a surveillance van with unlimited recording equipment. All we have is what’s on the chopper which will cover 6 hours of audio. If we hear what we need to hear, we can fly in within five minutes following Ms. Montana’s tracking signal.”

  “And if you don’t?” asked Billings with his eye on me. Right then, I’m sure he was wishing he could overrule me and go in my stead, but the arguments about a suitable captive took him out of the running as well.

  “We’ll fly in in 6 hours to recover your bodies,” said Eyedeneaux as he ripped off a strip of duct tape with his teeth and slapped it across Gary’s hairy chest, holding a tiny microphone about where his collar would be when he put his shirt back on. “Then we’ll have them red handed. Literally.”

  “Listen,” I said, “while we’re doing this, I want you to fly all these people back to the Mayo Clinic. Clara needs to go home. Now. It’s cold up here and there’s nothing they can do anyway. They can watch my signal from there just as easily.” I expected another round of objections, but there was nothing. The team probably thought they could talk Eyedeneaux out of it after Gary and I left. “I need your promise, Agent, that you will take my friends to safety.”

  Eyedeneaux, who was crouching as he tucked the small transmitter into the seat of Gary’s pants, looked up at me impatiently with his high set irises. “It’s a two and a half hour trip each way, and the chopper needs to stay here.”

  “Agent.” I was very insistent. I knew the kind of firepower that a Sikorsky packed. The FBI wouldn’t have flown it up here unless they expected the possibility of some serious action. CURDS is good in combat, but I still didn’t want them around for what might be an air to surface assault.

  “I’ll call another chopper,” he said, reluctantly. “But it probably won’t have the capacity of the Sikorsky.”

  Billings spoke up, causing Eyedeneaux to spin his head around. “Priorities are Knobby, Ban and Clara. You have choppers that will hold two people and a raccoon don’t you?” Billings’ eyes flashed at mine. “The rest of us are staying here until Helena gets back.” He wasn’t going to take any argument from me on this and I knew it.

  Gary was buttoning up his shirt and reaching for his jacket. It was very cold by the looks of him. “The battery won’t run the heater that long,” he surmised. “Go on. Get out of here.”

  “Let us handle that, Gary. You know what you have to do?” Billings was in no mood for more dissention.

  Gary nodded, zipping up the jacket. “Yeah.” He gulped. “What about Ross?” He looked back at his brother, who was watching Clara climb around lazily on Ban like she was a jungle gym and trying to tempt her with more peanuts, some of which Ross ate himself, tossing the empty shells on the floor.

  “I’ve got him,” said Ban. “I promise.”

  “Make that three people and a raccoon, Agent Eyedeneaux. They all go.” Eyedeneaux had no objections.

  “He might hit himself while I’m away. He does that.” Gary reminded us.

  Ban smiled sympathetically. “I’ll take care of him. Don’t worry.”

  “One more thing, Ms. Montana,” said Deb. “Your plan was Gary’s bringing you in as a prisoner. You need to be bound.”

  Without hesitation, Eyedeneaux asked, “You got another one of those glarp things?”

  “Glarf!” protested Roxy. “It’s a scarf and gloves in one. Or it was. Before someone who will remain you chopped it to ribbons.” I think she also still miffed at him for taking her walkie talkie.

  Eyedeneaux harrumphed. He was not apologetic. “I’ll take that as a no.”

  After a moment’s thought, I reached into a pocket of my discarded HEP belt and withdrew my handcuffs. Gary already had a hand out to accept them. I pulled them back. “We’ll put them on when we land on the other side. Let’s get this show in the air.”

  Eyedeneaux led our small party off the bus and we walked the thirty yards or so to the Sikorsky Black Hawk. It’s an impressive helicopter, quite large. There was plenty of room inside. I could have done a cartwheel down the middle. The pilot, who had been resting with his feet up on the control panel brought them down quickly and sat up straight adjusting his headset microphone. Eyedeneaux climbed into the co-pilot seat and strapped in. I sat behind the pilot and Gary sat behind Eyedeneaux. We closed the doors. Gradually, the blades began spinning above us and in no time we were climbing into the air. The ground dropped away, and I watched the bus shrink down to Tonka toy size, Billings hanging out the door staring up at us. Eyedeneaux put on a pair of headphones and pressed some switches. “Say something, Gary. I want to test
this thing.”

  “Is this seat a floatation device?”

  “Loud and clear. We’re a go. Listen,” he had to speak quite loudly over the noise from the spinning blades, “we’re not landing very long. Can’t risk being seen. When we touch down, I’m going to need you two to get out fast and move away from the copter. We’ll head back to the bus and monitor your conversation from there. Ms. Montana, there’s another chopper on the way to take your injured party, Ms. Harris, Ross and the raccoon back to the Clinic, but the sooner you get a confession out of Andrew Herd the better for everyone.”

  “Got it,” I said back just as loudly. Gary simply nodded. He looked a little green around the gills, so to speak. “You okay, Gary?”

  He shook his head. “Aren’t we too high? Feels like we’re too high. Does this thing have enough air in it?” There was a handle mounted above his door and he was gripping it like he intended to pull it off. I just hoped he wasn’t going to be sick.

  “Hang in there, Gary.” I patted his knee. “Yeah, the Herds are going to think you captured me. Right.”

  “You have no idea.”

  I didn’t respond to that. It was a sobering thought that Gary’s condition might not be due to the flight, but because he knew the Herds. He knew what we were flying into. Or it could just be acrophobia. I decided to go with acrophobia.

  A few minutes later we were descending. Just as Eyedeneaux said, the pilot touched down gently and we were out and away before the blades lost half their speed. No sooner did my left foot touch the ground and the helicopter was lifting up again. I ducked and ran to the open, then turned and watched the Sikorsky turn into a tiny black speck in the sky, without so much as a “good luck” or a “break a leg.” A moment later the buzz of the blades faded and Gary and I were alone.

  Less snow had fallen on this side of the lake. I could see patches of gravel and even a little green here and there. An unpaved road stretched away in the distance. Nearby was a small wooden shack with a globe light mounted over the doorway and a large sign that said “Thank you for visiting Northwest Angle and Islands” in large letters. A smaller sign directed travelers crossing into Canada to check in with a customs official via the telephone located inside. “This is the border crossing?”

  “Yeah,” he said, unimpressed. “Hand me the cuffs and turn around.”

  Absent-mindedly, still stunned by the unmanned shack, I gave him the handcuffs and key and put my wrists behind my back. “You’re not calling, are you?”

  “We’re not crossing the border,” he said, opening one of the cuffs and slipping it around my right wrist.

  I felt the cuffs snap shut, both of them, heard the click, and suddenly had the awful thought that Gary might have been lying about the whole thing. I winced nervously. It’s a bad feeling being handcuffed, even if you were expecting it. I shivered and even I wasn’t sure if it was the cold or the uncomfortable fear that I was now about as helpless as I’ve ever been. Wait a minute, I thought. I volunteered for this? I freaking insisted on doing this?

  “What’s the matter, not furry enough for you, Princess?” His voice had taken on a new tone suddenly. Sinister, deep, and mean spirited. My throat went dry. What if Gary had fooled us all and was going to hand me over to the Herds on a silver platter? So sorry. She’s not a raccoon, but I hear you need something to dismember. Have at it.

  Trying not to appear intimidated, I told him as coolly as I could, “Remember, you lose that key and you lose an appendage. I’m just sayin’.” He opened his mouth and pretended an intention to swallow the key. I stopped him with a look and an eyebrow. “You do, and you lose a testicle right now,” I said. While I talked, I wrapped my right leg around his left and brought his business to within easy reach of my manacled hands. I grasped his zippered fly and squeezed.

  He backed away, looking worried. “Hey, watch it. Okay, okay.” He slipped the key into his pocket and patted it into safety. “Listen, I’m going to have to act really tough and you need to, you know, take it. These guys aren’t boy scouts, but they will be prepared.”

  “I get it. So what’s the deal? Which way do we go?”

  He grabbed my left upper arm firmly, his large hand easily reaching around the sleeve of the parka. “We walk.”

  “How far?”

  “Until they find us or we reach the compound. We’re safer if we reach the compound first. His guys find me on their own and they might have orders to shoot on sight. Odds are we’ll both be dead before we know anything is wrong.” He pulled me forward and we started walking. I thought longingly of the phone in the shack and wondered if customs officials ever came out here to check it. We reached the unpaved road and kept walking.

  After a little while, looking furtively in all directions, Gary said, “Helena, I have a confession to make.”

  Here we go, I thought. He really was the one killing for the Herds and I’m next and he’ll pull out a butcher knife and gut me right here. Ha ha. Very funny.

  “I wasn’t entirely truthful back there.”

  That was a newsflash, I thought. “Really? How so?”

  “I didn’t meet Harry Herd in Tennessee. I met him in high school. I’ve known him for years. He’s Andy’s third cousin twice removed or some such thing. And I’ve known from the beginning they were pushers. Back then it was heroin. I think there are some branches of the family that still deal with that, but most of them dropped it like a hot rock in favor of Uber. Harry introduced me to Andy in Tennessee.

  “Why didn’t you tell us that at the bus?” I didn’t remind Gary that he was wired, and that if he didn’t want to tell everyone about it, he just did. I could hear Eyedeneaux swearing from here and half expected him to start up the chopper, come back over the lake, and shoot Gary down from 100 feet in the air. I listened for the sound of approaching blades, but there was only silence. In fact, there was no sign of life here at all.

  “Because they’re FBI. I’m neck deep in this. Bigger fish or not, I didn’t think they’d let me out of sight if they knew how connected I actually was. They think I’m the bobber on top of the water. I’m closer to the lure that’s already anchored in Andy’s gills.”

  “Are you saying you’re on their side?” I stopped walking and looked him in the eyes. “Are you saying you were in on the murders? Am I a dead woman walking, for Pete’s sake?”

  “What if I said yes?” His eyes broke away from mine and moved to the ground, then came back up again. His hand around my arm closed tighter until he could have taken my blood pressure.

  We stood there in the road, staring at each other, for at least a full minute. “Are you going to kill me, Gary?”

  “No.” He pulled me to start us walking again. “I’m not on their side. Until I’m in a room with Andy, you get me?”

  I let out a long breath. “You want out.”

  “Yeah.” I felt better. “But people at my level, they don’t really get out. You know what I mean?” His eyes spanned the road ahead of us, moved side to side, and even turned back to the way we had come. “I even hint about that and I’ll, well, let’s just say you’ll be taller than me for the few minutes between my death and yours.”

  “You really think Andy is going to buy this story? You think he’ll talk about his criminal activity with you?”

  “Oh, he’ll talk.”

  We cleared the curve and a new stretch of patchy road was ahead of us, still with no one in sight. “Where is everyone, Gary? I know not a lot of people live here, but this is downright eerie.”

  “They’re at the compound,” he said casually. “If we see anyone it will be someone sent to find me. No one leaves without Andy’s say so.”

  “Everyone? The entire population of the Angle belongs to the Herds now?”

  “Naturally. Why do you think they came here? That’s what makes him so bold. Before he found the Angle, he kept to himself. Since he moved the operation here, he can’t stop talking about it. This place is his paradise.”

  I was quiet a
fter that. There was too much to think about. The first people to breach Auschwitz might have felt like this. Except they had an army behind them. I had a thin wire that wasn’t even on me and two FBI agents in a helicopter 15 miles away. I hoped Gary didn’t forget the plan of recording a confession and catching these guys. It would be all too easy for him to turn on us. Of course, if he did, Eyedeneaux and Alaska, listening in on the Sikorsky, would storm the compound and start a bloodbath. Because that’s what the FBI does. With the handcuffs on, with my hands useless behind my back, I could imagine things going in either direction. It wasn’t like Gary was high on my trustworthy meter. I focused on stopping the Herds from disseminating any more Uber and kept walking.

  Up ahead was a sharp right turn around a bunch of trees. They were bare now, branches sticking out like skeletal fingers from trunks as thick as a grain silo. There was a sudden, brief gust of wind that ruffled the fur lining on our parkas. I couldn’t help but shiver again, but managed to stop my teeth from chattering. “How much farther?”

  “Not far. Around that corner and another hundred yards or so. There’s a checkpoint.”

  We turned the corner and I saw in the distance a small shack, similar to the shack housing the customs telephone, except that this one had two men next to it holding rifles. Bundled in light tan parkas, they saw us instantly and raised their rifles. Gary waived one hand in greeting, but slowed his pace. As soon as we were in earshot, he called out, “Gary Nonegan! And guest.”

  When we got close enough, they seemed to recognize Gary and lowered their rifles. “Andy is looking for you.”

  “Tell him I’m here.” Gary tightened his grip on my upper arm. “I have a present for him.”

  One of the guards ducked into the shack while the other raised his rifle once again, leveling it at me.