He tried to give her a smile but there was no sugarcoating the situation. Bullet after bullet plinked into metal and glass, showering them with debris. Jackson kicked the gas pedal and the truck roared backwards. He heard indecipherable yells from the men firing at them. Grabbing the wheel with his left hand, he kept the truck straight in its retreat until a violent thump nearly threw him into Sara Beth.
The right front tire didn’t pop so much as explode as a rifle round went through it. The truck careened right before whipping left, the back tires falling off the edge of the road. The Ram had jackknifed across the small road, placing Jackson between the Lokos and Sara Beth.
He looked at Sara Beth, who was desperately holding back tears. They needed to move. No, she needed to move, and she could move faster than him.
Outside, the metallic roar of Bear’s M2 stopped and a quiet fell over the mountainside.
“I’m out of ammo on the MG,” Bear radioed.
“The girl, I’m sending her to you. Get her out of here,” Jackson replied.
“Both of you get your asses up here,” Bear said, “I’ll cover you with the rifle.”
“I’m sending her, Bear. I’ll cover her, too,” Jackson said, “No matter what, she makes it out. You understand?”
There was a pause before Bear answered him over the radio.
“You’re a good man, Jack,” he said.
Jackson grabbed the assault rifle off the floor of the truck and looked up at Sara Beth.
“Listen to me,” he said, “My friend is up that hill a ways. He’s going to make sure you get home. But you have to go to him, okay?”
Sara Beth nodded as she wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
“Now when I say to,” Jackson continued, “I want you to push that door open and run like you’ve never run before. Stay close to the side where the mountain goes up and keep your head low, okay?”
She nodded again, this time with some determination in her eyes. Jackson took a deep breath in.
“Now,” he said.
Jackson threw himself upright, pushing past the pain, and came gun up facing down the road. Solomon, Silas, and the two Lokos still alive had begun walking down the road towards him. Jackson opened fire, pulling the trigger as fast as he could, laying down a barrage of gunfire. The four of them ducked down as they returned fire. In between the two sides’ gunfire a loud crack rang out behind Jackson. Silas Ash jerked upright as Bear’s rifle shot threw his body backwards. Solomon knelt down by his brother as the other two fired in Bear’s direction. Jackson began to fire at them when a round ripped through his left shoulder, splattering the side of his face with blood. He leaned against the steering wheel, trying to take cover as he caught a glimpse of Solomon. He’d taken Silas’ rifle and was now staring down the scope directly at Jackson. He fired another shot, clipping Jackson’s ear as the round punched a hole into the passenger head rest.
Jackson yanked his rifle with one arm in Solomon’s direction and squeezed the trigger. But instead of the loud clap of gunpowder igniting as it sent a 45mm piece of metal down the barrel and towards its target, all Jackson heard was a metal click. The magazine was empty.
Jackson dove backwards deeper into the truck’s cabin as Solomon fired at him. He reached for a second magazine in the glove compartment as the other two Lokos resumed firing in his direction.
“I’ve lost them behind trees,” Bear radioed, “I can’t see them.”
“The girl,” Jackson growled through the pain, “Get her.”
Pulling himself towards the open passenger door, Jackson tumbled down and out of the far side of the truck. Coughing as he hit the ground, he loaded the new magazine into the rifle and slid a round into the chamber. His left shoulder essentially useless, Jackson nestled the butt of the rifle under his right arm pit and waited for the three to approach.
Almost in unison, they appeared from the other side of the truck, Solomon in the middle near the cab, the other two flanked out to the sides. Jackson fired at Solomon, missing as a second shotgun slug hammered into Jackson’s chest. He gasped for air, his own breath becoming deafening in his ears. He hardly heard Solomon tell the others to stop, that Jackson was his.
Solomon climbed up and into the truck’s bed and jumped down the other side, landing at Jackson’s feet. Jackson searched for the strength to lift his gun at him, but no strength came. Solomon stepped on the gun and kicked it away. He was saying something to Jackson, but Jackson couldn’t hear him. He had little interest in the man’s taunts. Maybe he wouldn’t see it, but Sara Beth would get home. She was gone, away from these monsters. She would go on. Survive. It didn’t matter that he wouldn’t. A dozen things in his life should’ve killed him. Fighting in war. Losing his son. Setting out to avenge his son. Truth be told, he might’ve done it himself long ago had it not been for that first child. The little boy. The first one he’d saved, who in turn saved him. Whatever all this had been between then and now, it had given his life purpose. He was good with that. Jackson closed his eyes and waited for the end to come.
But the end didn’t come. As Jackson lay there, he heard a muffled thumping in between breaths, shaking the ground beneath him. A shadow crossed over his face. He opened his eyes to see a helicopter whip around the mountain overhead, a man in the open door leveling a large machine gun at the four of them. He looked up at Solomon, but Solomon wasn’t looking at the helicopter or him. He was looking past him. All three of them were. Jackson arched his neck to look behind him. He watched almost in disbelief as a line of men in drab green tactical gear and body armor descended the mountainside, their weapons drawn. A large armored vehicle drove down the mountain road. Jackson read the yellow lettering on the side of it.
ATF SPECIAL RESPONSE TEAM
He looked back up at Solomon, who had dropped his rifle and raised his hands in the air. The other two men were already on the ground with Jackson, their arms and legs splayed out. In less than a minute, the tactical team was on top of them. Jackson watched as two of the men took Solomon into custody; five more had their guns trained on him. Jackson tried to get their attention. He pointed down the road and tried to speak. He couldn’t hear if he was actually saying anything.
“Sara Beth Parker,” he mouthed, “Sara. Beth. Parker.”
One of the men in green knelt over him. He looked at the hook-and-loop patch on the man’s body armor.
ATF POLICE MEDIC
He began looking Jackson over. Jackson continued to try and speak, but the man wasn’t paying attention. As Jackson tried to point, the medic would grab his arm and pull it in. A second ATF officer came and knelt down beside Jackson. Jackson looked at him and tried to tell him. The man was saying something to him, but he couldn’t hear. Again, Jackson tried. That’s when he noticed the man was nodding. He placed a hand on Jackson’s chest. Jackson stopped trying to speak and watched the man’s lips. He read them.
“We’ve got her,” the man said, “We’ve got her.”
74
Jackson awoke in a room so brilliantly white it felt as if the air itself was sterilized. He squinted, fighting the brightness of an unforgiving florescent light overhead. Lifting a hand to shield himself, he looked down at his body. Draped in a gown with wires running every which way, he recognized he was in some sort of hospital.
The last thing he remembered after being tended to by medics, was being carried by stretcher to the armored vehicle, which drove him out of the mountains and to an ambulance waiting nearby. Shortly thereafter, exhausted both physically and emotionally, he had closed his eyes and drifted off.
Now, Jackson took in his new surroundings. A monitor above read out real time updates on his vitals. His left shoulder was bandaged in a sling, his arm draped across his belly. He looked at the white bracelet on his wrist.
CLAY, JACKSON
ATTD PAUL ROTHWELL MD
“Expecting to see handcuffs,” asked a voice across the room.
Detective Cole sat in a chair pointed at his bed, a
cup of coffee in her hand. Weak and tired, Jackson strained to find the words to talk to her.
“Where am I,” he asked.
“Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital,” Cole replied as she got up, “In Roanoke, obviously. You were taken to Franklin in Rocky Mount originally, but they had you airlifted here.”
“Sara Beth,” Jackson said.
“She’s okay. They took her to RMH in Harrisonburg so she could be close to family and friends.”
“Good.”
Jackson used his good arm to lift a hand and rub at his eyes. He blinked, trying to shake off the sleepiness. Detective Cole tipped her cup towards him, offering, but he shook his head. Leaning on one elbow, he pulled himself up to a sitting position in the bed.
“Should I ask how an ATF Special Response Team raided the area,” Jackson asked.
“Would you believe an anonymous caller reported shots fired nearby,” Cole asked back.
Jackson smiled, acknowledging the bad cover story. He reached to his bed side table and poured water from a plastic pitcher.
“Is that the story everyone’s going with,” Jackson asked rhetorically.
“It probably sounds better than one man brought down an entire armed cult, all under the watchful eye of federal surveillance,” Cole replied.
“I’m guessing they’re going to have one or two questions for me,” Jackson said.
“Probably, but don’t expect more than a slap on the wrist. Something about you handing them a RICO Case on a silver platter has them looking the other way for a number of your transgressions.”
The RICO Act allowed authorities to more effectively prosecute organized crime, specifically leaders of organized crime. It was made for a man like Solomon Ash.
“There is one thing they’ll probably want explained, though,” Cole continued, “The crime scene seems to be littered with large caliber rounds like a marine platoon tore through it. They found a bunch of shell casings on a bluff just off the road several hundred yards away, but no guns and no shooter. They interviewed a hunter in the area, an Archibald Beauchamp, who confirmed hearing the shots, but didn’t see anyone.”
Jackson smiled.
“Imagine that,” he said.
“Yeah, imagine that,” Cole echoed, returning the smile, “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“I’ll tell you what, Detective,” Jackson replied, “When I know something for sure, I’ll let you know.”
For the first time since they’d met, Cole laughed. She turned, tossing her cup in the trash, and walked towards the door.
“Now where have I heard that before,” she said.
The two of them held a smile for each other as the silence between them lingered. Detective Cole opened the door but turned back and looked at Jackson once before leaving. Her smile slipped from one of amusement to one of appreciation. Her voice was softer this time when she spoke.
“You did good, Clay,” she said, “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” he replied.
Detective Cole nodded and stepped out the door, shutting it behind her. Jackson slid back down in his bed and closed his eyes. She had put to rest what worries he still had. Somehow, in all this chaos, everything had worked out. He took a deep breath in then out and waited for sleep to come. When it did, there were only good dreams this time of his boy, Evan.
75
Three days later, Jackson was struggling to pull on a t-shirt as a nurse waited impatiently for him to finish signing his discharge paperwork. Jackson figured she was probably his age, with the same long, aging lines and slight frown of a life lived equally hard, though certainly in a different way. She tapped a pen on the clipboard in front of her as Jackson gingerly slid his recovering arm and shoulder into a sleeve.
“You sure I can’t just cut the shirt,” Jackson asked, “You guys did it to mine.”
“What are you going to do when you get home,” the nurse asked in reply, “Cut all your shirts open?”
“Don’t think I won’t,” Jackson warned.
The gear Jackson had worn the day everything went down had been cut off him in the back of the ambulance. With the ATF still coming around, he hadn’t wanted Bear to come by and bring more stuff just in case. Detective Jen Bailey had a state trooper she knew in the area drop off some gym clothes from the local division. The trooper must’ve been a fan, because in addition to the clothes he gave Jackson one of his signed Police Benevolent Association cards, a do-not-speak-about-this get-out-of-a-jam-free card to be presented the next time there were flashing lights in his rearview mirror.
With a deep groan, Jackson muscled the arm through. Before he had recovered, the nurse was shoving the clipboard in his face. Begrudgingly, Jackson signed the document and the nurse disappeared.
“So, I can leave now,” Jackson shouted as she walked away.
“Wait for someone to wheel you out,” the nurse shouted back, annoyed.
Some bedside manner, Jackson thought. He reached over to the table next to his hospital bed and grabbed the remote for the television and turned on the news.
They were covering Sara Beth’s case as they played a clip of Anne and Scott Parker in front of an array of cameras and microphones. Jackson couldn’t believe how much better Anne looked. The color had returned to her face and she was smiling as she answered questions. She looked nothing like the pale, distraught woman he had watched police pull off of the highway overpass.
“Good for you,” Jackson said.
The news program cut back to the anchor quickly before playing footage of Solomon Ash being brought into court. Two police officers held his arms as he was taken out of a van and marched in shackles through a door, his orange prison jumpsuit covered with a bullet resistant vest. The authorities were showing more regard for his life than Solomon had for his victims.
The next footage played showed a different man being led away in handcuffs somewhere else. Jackson recognized the face but couldn’t place him until a headline popped up on the screen.
TELEVANGELIST JERRY JOHNS ARRESTED
He was being led out of an impressive looking mansion. A man in a suit quickly ran up and draped a coat over Johns’ head, trying in vain to conceal him. It was too late, though; the cameramen had gotten their shot.
“Evangelist,” Jackson said, putting together the user he had seen on Silas’ phone.
He had been just one of a handful of people in contact with Silas trying to buy young women like property. Jackson wondered how many more arrests would follow.
There was a knock at the door and Jackson looked up. A different, much friendlier-looking nurse stood in the doorway with a wheelchair.
“Are you ready to go, hon,” she asked.
“I am, but I can walk out, thank you,” he replied.
“Oh, that tough guy routine doesn’t work with me, mister. You sit that rump right here in this wheelchair,” she said.
Jackson shifted over into the wheelchair. The nurse took him to the elevator, down to the main floor, and pushed him towards the lobby.
“So, if I’ve got to call a cab, do I sit in the wheelchair and wait,” Jackson asked.
Confused, the nurse looked down at a piece of paper.
“It says here you have someone picking you up,” the nurse replied.
Now Jackson was confused, as well. Had Detective Cole come back down? Or perhaps Detective Bailey had arranged for someone else she knew to take him where he needed to go. Jackson was running through the possibilities in his head when he saw an old red Suburban parked out front. Jackson snorted. He should have known.
“Jackie boy, we sprung ya,” Bear said with a goofy, childish smile.
“Pretty sure this nurse behind me did all the hard work,” Jackson replied.
“Hard work? Just wait until we get back to my place and I have to give you a sponge bath,” Bear said.
“You do that, and you’ll be the one in here with gunshot wounds.”
“I’ve seen your sho
oting, I’ll take my chances.”
Bear opened up the passenger door and gave Jackson a hand in. Hopping into the driver’s seat, he waved at the nurse as he started the engine.
“She’s cute,” he said, “What’s her deal?”
“Probably tired of backwoods hillbillies hitting on her,” Jackson replied.
Bear let out a breathy chuckle as he put the truck into gear and pulled away from the hospital.
For most of the drive back to Bear’s place outside Martinsville, Bear was a play-by-play man recapping his personal highlights of what went down on the mountain road. Not up for talking much, Jackson listened and let him do the leg work. He stared out the window at the endless miles of rural highway. There was a peacefulness to the passing wilderness. As the sun started to hang low in the sky, Jackson closed his eyes and basked in its warmth. Bear saw him with his eyes closed and let his stories trail off.
“Don’t stop on my accord,” Jackson said.
As they pulled in and drove down Bear’s driveway, Jackson saw Bear’s Dodge D100. Freshly washed and waxed, the black paint showed a beautiful depth and the metal trim shined with a luster as if it were brand new. It probably looked just like this the day it drove off a lot in 1985.
“You detailed the D100,” Jackson said.
“Course I did,” Bear replied, “I had to get it ready for ya.”
Jackson looked at him skeptically as the two of them hopped out of the Suburban. Walking around to the front, Bear tossed him a set of keys.
“I figured you could use it while you work stuff out over your truck with the insurance company,” he said, “Don’t know what your policy says about bullet holes.”
Jackson looked down at the keys.
“Thank you, Bear, I really appreciate it,” Jackson said.
“No problem,” Bear replied, “Come out hunting with me when you bring it back and we’ll call it even.”
“Don’t you think we’ve done enough hunting recently,” Jackson asked.
“Something else then. Plenty of stuff to do out here in the woods.”
The Woodsman (The Jackson Clay & Bear Beauchamp Series Book 1) Page 28