Masters of Mayhem

by Franklin Horton

  “Looks like they cut the horses loose and loaded them with the stolen gear,” Zach said.

  “There’s a trail going up the hillside,” came the eager voice of the man who’d gone up by himself. “We should go after them.”

  “I ain’t so sure it’s a good idea to charge up through there,” Zach said. “Whoever stole this shit is local. They know the area. We ain’t got a chance in hell of catching them on their own turf.”

  “Bullshit,” the man snarled. “I ain’t going back to Bryan and saying I wasn’t man enough to go after them.”

  “Suit yourself,” Zach said, motioning toward the trail. “I didn’t take you to raise. You can do whatever the hell you want to do.”

  Suddenly free to act of his own accord, the man looked uncertain. “Is anyone going with me?”

  Only one man accepted the challenge, another of Bryan’s Douthat crew. The men regarded each other, hardened their resolve, and took off. The first man unholstered his gun, kicked his horse, and let out a whoop as he raced up the hill. He ducked branches and held on tight as his horse knitted its way among the dense trees. The second rider mimicked the first, not wishing to appear inadequate in the face of the challenge.

  A gunshot rang out and the leading man fell like he’d been clotheslined by a tree branch. His horse, smarter than its rider, rotated on the steep hill and bolted back down. There were more shots and the second rider cried out, clasping his arm. He reined his horse, twisted it back around, and was heading back down when a second round caught him. It hit him in the back but pierced entirely through his core, staining the front of his denim jacket with a swell of crimson. He tumbled from the saddle and rolled beneath his horse, getting stomped multiple times as the horse tried to escape him.

  “Fuck!” Carrie shouted.

  The remaining horses skittered nervously, alarmed by the shots and the panic of their rider-less brethren. Zach surged forward, intent on snatching up the reins of the stray horses, when divots of earth exploded in front of him. He flinched, reflexively throwing up an arm in front of his face. His horse reared, jerked, and bolted back down the overgrown road from which they came. Zach was holding onto the saddle horn for dear life, unable to rein in the horse or attempt to steer it.

  There were more shots and Zach glanced behind him to see his companions riding hell-bent to escape the gunfire. Knowing there was no longer any hope of recovering the wagon or any of its contents, Zach gave up trying to slow the horse. The shooting stopped as they all retreated. The gunfire hadn’t been about killing them. It had been about discouraging pursuit.

  It worked.

  When they reached the rest of their group at the bridge, Bryan reacted in just the manner they anticipated. After a short tirade, he mounted his horse and returned to the burning wagon with the full support of his army. They charged the hillside, determined to find their property and the men responsible for taking it but there was no one remaining. Whoever had burned the wagon and fired at Zach’s party was gone now. The tracks showed each of the loaded horses headed off in separate directions.

  Bryan was intent on splitting his group and trailing each set of tracks but Zach talked him down.

  “These men know the hills,” Zach said. “They’ll lead us into places where we can’t defend ourselves and pick us off one by one. All your men will die, their horses and guns stolen. You’ve worked too hard to build this army to lose it now. I wouldn’t focus on what you’ve lost. I’d focus on replacing and rebuilding.”

  Bryan considered the trucker’s words. As much as it pained him to accept the man’s insights, he understood he was probably correct. They did not have the manpower to fight these people in their back hollows and on their ridgetops. He promised himself that he would, however, return to this place when he had an adequate force. He would set fires and scorch this entire region from the face of the Earth. Then, as the ashes settled on him with the lightness of rain, he would have the last laugh.

  13

  Barb was not excited about making the flyers.

  “We have a printer,” she complained. “Print the damn things.”

  “We’ve got the one ink cartridge that’s in the printer and that’s all,” Conor said. “I don’t want to use it all up on flyers. On the other hand, I have stacks of Sharpie markers and a plethora of free labor. You all can make the flyers by hand.”

  “You need the ink for printing coloring sheets to keep you entertained this winter?” Barb asked. “You going to sit in your jammies, nibble your crayons, and color pictures of dinosaurs?”

  “Maybe,” Conor said. “But remember if I go soft in the noggin that you’re the one who has to keep up with me.”

  “I’ll keep you in the chicken house,” Barb threatened. “It’s not like I can be turned in to Adult Protective Services anymore. I’ll charge the neighbors a buck each to gawp at you and poke you with sticks.”

  Conor shook his head and sighed. “You can’t be my real daughter. If you were, you’d be sweet like your dear old dad.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him, finding such utter bullshit unworthy of response. They both knew she was just like him.

  Conor smiled at her. “Just make the flyers. You know what to say, right?”

  Barb groaned but nodded. “Yes.”

  “Get Ragus and Shannon to help you,” Conor instructed. “Maybe if you spend some time hanging around the good kids it will rub off on you.”

  “You’re in danger of getting hurt, old man. Your time would be better spent changing your diaper or touching up your gray hair with one of those Sharpie markers you have such an abundance of. You better get out of here while you can still walk.”

  Conor hugged his daughter. “I love you too.”

  She elbowed him in the ribs and shoved him away.

  “I’m going,” he said. He pushed out the door into the cool morning and went toward the bunkhouse where Doc Marty and Shannon were staying. Smoke chugged from the chimney pipe jutting out the side of the building. He banged on the door.

  Doc Marty answered the door in cargo pants and a Hawaiian shirt. “Jesus, Doc, you can’t get any more stereotypical than that. Classic spook uniform. Since you already have the cheesy mustache, all you’re missing is the aviator shades.”

  Without a word, Doc Marty slipped his fingers into his shirt pocket and came out with a set of Ray-Ban aviator glasses. He slipped them on his face and regarded Conor.

  “That’s the look. They teach you that in spook school?”

  Doc Marty replaced the glasses in his pocket. “You probably had the same classes I did.”

  Conor shook his head. “I don’t think so. While you were taking tradecraft classes I was learning the dark arts. You were learning how to seduce old dowagers for intel. I was learning how to kill folks with a strand of spaghetti and a roll of toilet paper.”

  Doc Marty nodded. “Ah, yeah, I didn’t have much of that, but I’d love to hear about that technique.”

  “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

  “Of course you would,” Doc Marty replied.

  “I need you take a ride with me today. Hang some signs. Learn the country. Ride the fences, so to speak,” Conor said.

  The Doc threw a look back over his shoulder. “What about Shannon?”

  “I’ve got plans for her. She’ll be working with Barb and Ragus to write up some flyers I’m going to hand out to the local folks.”

  “Write up? Don’t you have a printer?”

  Conor frowned. “I’m a cheap bastard, okay? I’m not wasting what might be my last ink cartridge on a bunch of recruitment flyers.”

  “Got it,” Doc said. “What do I need?”

  “Body armor if you got it. See me if you don’t. Primary and secondary weapons, basic field loadout, and warm clothes.”

  “I’m a dentist. My basic loadout is a white jacket, a pick, and little mirror.”

  Conor smiled. “Then bring your pick and little fucking mirror. If shit goes down, you can take the
lead while I watch.”

  “Point taken. When we leaving?”

  Conor looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes.”

  “Guess I better be finding my little mirror then,” Doc Marty said. “Shannon and I will be over at your place in a few minutes.”

  It was ten minutes before Doc Marty and his daughter showed up at Conor’s place. Ragus brought two saddled horses around and helped Conor tie an awkward bundle of signs onto each of them. Conor gave Doc Marty a quick glance.

  “Glad to see you dressed like an operator again,” Conor said. “I was afraid you’d forgotten how.”

  Doc sniffed his jacket. “A little musty. Haven’t had it on in a while.”

  “Still know your way around guns or do we need to do a refresher?” Conor asked, his tone both sarcastic and provoking.

  “I remember the basics,” Doc said. “Ricardo made sure I still got my trainings and range time in.”

  Conor made a sound of uncertainty. “We’ll see.”

  “Are you going to need those weapons?” Shannon asked. “Is it safe to be going out there?”

  “We’re trying to make it safer,” Conor assured her. “Better to be armed and not need the firepower than to need it and not have it. Bad things can happen so stay ready all the time. You may even want to consider wearing a weapon inside the fence. We’ve never had an incident here at the compound but that’s not to say it couldn’t happen. These are unpredictable days.”

  “I’ll be fine, baby,” Doc Marty said, giving his daughter a quick hug.

  “She won’t have time to be worried about you,” Barb said. “We get to make flyers.” She said it with a lilting, syrupy voice, then shot Conor a sarcastic look.

  “Are you sure I can’t go with you?” Ragus asked.

  Conor started to respond but Barb cut him off. “If I’m making flyers, you’re making flyers.”

  Conor turned to Doc Marty then gestured at the horse. “Can you get on the damn thing or do I need to fetch a ladder?”

  Doc Marty gave a smug look, then efficiently mounted the horse. In fact, he did so with an ease that Conor envied. “A patient of mine in Dubai had a horse farm. We rode a lot.”

  “Horse farm in Dubai,” Conor mocked. “Some of us were out here trying to fight the good fight. Nice of you to make sure the Middle Eastern elite were able to maintain their winning smiles.”

  “There was more to it than that,” Doc Marty said.

  “I can hardly wait to hear about it.”

  The pair said their good-byes and Conor continued to shout last minute instructions the entire time he was riding away.

  “If you don’t quit barking I’m turning the hose on you,” Barb finally said.

  “Fine,” Conor muttered, riding out the gate.

  Ragus locked it behind him. “Parents are gone. Party!” That earned him a sharp glance from both Conor and Barb. The word party was not in either of their vocabularies. It made him wish he was going with the guys and not stuck behind.

  The men were riding west, in the general direction of Johnny Jacks’ house and Pastor White’s church. Conor had placed his double M marks on a lot of trees and fences to the east but not so much in this direction. Today’s goal was to change that. To put up a few signs and increase his presence in hopes it might encourage the locals to see a benefit in banding together for security.

  “So what were you doing in Dubai?”

  “I had a dental practice,” Doc Marty said. “It was a pretty plush gig.”

  “I have no doubt. Haven’t all your assignments been plush gigs?”

  “Not all of them. In fact, those you and I went on together were guaranteed to never be plush gigs. This one was risky. I was concerned for Shannon much of the time. My patients were some of the richest and most powerful people in that region of the world. If I’d been found out there’s no doubt that the two of us would have died ugly deaths.”

  “What was there to find out? What did they have you doing?”

  “Ricardo set me up in a dental practice in a very exclusive neighborhood. The office was posh in a way that would appeal to wealthy, powerful folks. There was no waiting. I scheduled one client at a time and they were treated in the manner they expected from the moment they arrived.”

  “What was the point of that? Trying to develop assets?”

  Doc Marty laughed. “Nothing that crude. This was way more evolved than that. Some of the science guys came up with a technique that allowed me to cause cavities.”

  “Cause cavities? That’s every dentist’s fucking dream, bunch of cruel bastards.”

  Doc Marty nodded. “It served a purpose.”

  “How fast did the cavities form?”

  “Not fast enough to raise suspicion but over a matter of weeks. It involved applying an acid to the tooth while I was doing a cleaning, then sealing it beneath a polymer layer. The polymer kept the acid in contact with the tooth but prevented it from causing any collateral damage inside the mouth. Over a couple of weeks the polymer would wear away and the acid would be neutralized. People would notice the crater forming on their tooth when their tongue hit it. Then they’d come see me for a filling.”

  “What’s the point of that?” Conor asked. “You trying to choke off the funding of terror networks by compromising their oral health?”

  Doc Marty chuckled. “Always the smartass, aren’t you?”

  Conor shrugged, guilty as charged.

  “You’d be totally jealous of this gear but the tech guys and I developed tracking devices that fit inside a human tooth. When I’m filling the tooth, I implant the device. Over a three year period I probably did about fifty or sixty of them.”

  “How can you make a transmitter that small with any range to it?” Conor asked. “There’s no antenna.”

  “Simple. It doesn’t have to reach any further than the target’s phone. It makes an invisible, untraceable connection via Bluetooth technology, allowing us to track them.”

  “Pretty damn smart,” Conor acknowledged.

  “It was a sophisticated operation. I’m sure it cost a fortune but Ricardo said the intel was useful. I never knew why they chose the targets they did. I joined the best clubs, ate at the best restaurants, and built social connections with wealthy residents and travelers. Ricardo would send me a dossier, then I did my job, inserting myself into the target’s life and luring them to my practice.”

  Conor snorted. “You’ll have a job to do here too, but it won’t be quite as glamorous as Dubai. No fancy restaurants, no indoor ski resorts, no shopping.”

  They rode in silence for a few moments, the only sound the clatter of hooves and the occasional gusts of cold fall wind whipping through bare trees.

  Doc Marty chuckled, still thinking about the luxury of Dubai. "Yeah, this is a far cry from Dubai but it already feels like home."

  "That's quite the experience for Shannon, getting to live all around the world. I’m sure she enjoyed it."

  Doc Marty shrugged in a manner that indicated he wasn't so certain he agreed with that.

  "You missed home?" Conor asked.

  Doc Marty nodded. "Maybe you had the right idea here, old buddy. Keep a foot in the business, in operator life, but have a place stateside to lay your head. This has to be more relaxing than wondering if the door is going to burst open in the middle of the night. Wondering if you and your daughter are going to end up in someone’s basement with hoods over your head."

  "Eh, the place has its moments, though it’s not as relaxing now as it used to be. I guess I'm like me mum. I never had trouble making decisions. I’m not the kind to second-guess everything I do. When I accepted Ricardo’s offer all those years ago, I knew what I wanted from it. I knew it was a deal with the devil but I went in with both eyes open. I have no complaints. I’ve milked it for all it’s worth. I’ve done well for them, they’ve done well for me."

  "Maybe I'm different, or it's just old age, but I’ve been second-guessing my life a lot lately. I've been wondering if
I made the right call. Maybe I should have turned Ricardo down. What values have I passed on to my daughter? What kind of childhood did I give her? My situation was a lot like yours. Shannon grew up without a mother and I think that’s why you and I always hit it off. I wonder if she wouldn’t have been better off with another family. Another dad."

  Conor dismissed that with a toss of his head and a string of profanity. “That shit doesn't keep me up at night. You had to do something with your life. Everyone does. You did what you did and I did what I did. It was all we knew to do at the time. It’s too late in the game for me to change strategies. I’m not about to become a phlebotomist, a petroleum engineer, or a golf cart salesman. I am what I am and I own every fucking inch of it. No regrets. No apologies."

  There was a stirring in the leaves somewhere far to the left of them. Conor dropped a hand to the grip of his M4 but the bounding steps told him it was a deer. He listened until he was certain there was nothing else then nudged his horse back into motion.

  "I know you saw more violence than I did,” Doc Marty said. “It’s clear in the way you react to things. We’ve all killed. We’ve all had those moments in the field where we did shit we have to live with forever. I’m sure you did more of it just by nature of the kind of assignments you got. Your job was killing, or helping others do it. You're okay with all that? It doesn’t keep you up at night?"

  Conor shook his head. "There’s work and there’s the rest of your life. I keep them separate and I sleep like a fucking baby."

  "I wish I could say the same," Doc Marty said. “I can’t.”

  Conor snorted. “You’re growing into a whiny bastard in your old age, Doc. You may have heard this from me before but I'm getting older too, and I'm prone to repeating myself. I'm tired of all this complaining and indecision that people go on about anymore. They have way more opportunities than any generation before them and all they can do is bitch and moan. When I was a kid in Ireland, people had fewer paths available to them but everybody had a role and every role was valued. I'm sure it was that way here at the time too. It was a different age. But you had the tinker, the butcher, the paperboy, the junkman, the carpenter—all these bloody professions—and those people were proud of what they did. They held their fucking heads up. Hell, even the town drunk and the town whore served a purpose because they could be used as bad examples. They were cautionary tales about not living up to your potential. But me? I prefer to live with boldness and certainty. I drive looking ahead and not in the rearview mirror."