by James Tarr
“The fucking FBI? Do we know for sure this guy actually is FBI, and not just saying he is?”
Ringo nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, I’ve met him. He’s FBI.”
“Working for the mob.”
“Maybe, I don’t know.”
Aaron shook his head violently. “You know of any other reason somebody would want to kill him?”
“No, do you? Do you know anything about that accident? The hit and run of Paulo Bufonte.”
Aaron calmed down and looked at the detective. “Yeah. Dave mentioned it. I can’t say he was upset about it.”
“I can imagine. So you were working together at the time?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he own a dark-colored sedan at any time?”
Aaron shook his head firmly. “No. He never owned a dark sedan.”
“Do you know if he had access to one?”
“Seriously, dude? Is that why we’re out here? You still trying to pin that fucking hit and run on him? All this shit happened years ago. Look, apparently it doesn’t fucking matter whether or not he did it, Big Paulie’s dad thinks Dave killed his kid and hired the FBI to take him out.”
“We can’t say that for sure.”
“Hired, bribed, blackmailed, whatever, I don’t care. Shit, how long have you known this? Dave’s been out of contact for almost a whole week. How do we know he’s even still alive?”
“How would the FBI know about this place we’re going to?” Ringo asked him.
“Well shit,” Aaron said, “Dave fucking applied for a job with them guys. You need Top Secret clearance and all that. He showed me the application, it was a mile goddamn long. Have to put down every one of your relatives, if they have any criminal records, all that. I bet he had to tell them that he owned this house out here. Don’t you think so?”
Ringo sat and thought for a few seconds. Abruzzo was probably right.
“Fuck, how long till the counter opens?” Aaron checked his watch. “And then it’s at least an hour and a half drive. Shit.” He looked at the detective. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”
Ringo wasn’t convinced that they needed to be in such a hurry…..but he had sat on the file for over a day, doing next to nothing, even after he knew the FBI was trying to have the kid killed. If Anderson ended up dead…..hell, he didn’t want that guilt. “I can call the local PD. Ask them to do a drive-by of the house this morning before we get there, a welfare check, make sure there’s not a problem. But to do that, you’d actually have to give me the address.”
With only a brief pause, Aaron did just that. “And it’s Tohono County, that’s who has jurisdiction,” he told Ringo. “Call their Sheriff’s Department.”
“You sure?”
“Yep.” Ringo pulled out his smartphone and went about tracking down a phone number. The airport had wi-fi, and it didn’t take him very long.
“Yes, could I speak to your shift commander, please? My name is John George, I’m a Detective with the Detroit Police Department. What? Detroit, Michigan. Yes.” He looked at Aaron and rolled his eyes.
The sky above him was beginning to lighten, but it was not yet dawn. For being in the open, he was in a pretty good spot. The sun would rise behind him, and lying on the slope he’d stay in shadow for hours, probably until close to ten in the morning. Not that he’d be lying there that long. Something would have to happen before that, he was sure.
While there were a few weeds to either side of him, about a foot tall, he was pretty much in a completely exposed position. The guy on the other side of the slope behind him wouldn’t be able to see Dave until he came down over the ridge, and Dave would hear him as soon as he started to move. If there was anybody else out there… His only camouflage was silence and stillness—that and being where nobody would think to look.
Dave’s mouth was dry, and he had to piss. How unfair was that? Either he should be thirsty, or have to pee, but not both at the same time. Hell, now that the sun was about to come up, he was starting to get chilled, lying on concrete that had finally cooled.
Carefully and ever so slowly (his neck muscles were going to be sore as hell if he lived through this) he lifted his head to survey the small valley in front of him. No movement, as usual, and nothing to see, although his eyes were drawn to the gulley behind the house. He was increasingly convinced there had to be somebody there, in that narrow notch, if there was anybody else in the area. He hadn’t seen any movement down there, but he had a feeling.
Laying his head back down, Dave silently cursed. Should he move before it got fully light out? He’d surprise the hell out of the guy behind him. But other than knowing there was a man on the ridge behind him, he didn’t know anything—who he was, if he was armed, if he was alone, if he wasn’t alone, where the other guys were. Assuming he was going to die a violent death at a young age didn’t make Dave happy about it or eager to make it happen. Just because he’d survived two gunfights didn’t mean he was looking forward to a third. He decided to wait. If he had to move, had to do something, he hoped that surprise would be on his side.
Aaron cracked the window enough to let some of the cool dry air into the stuffy rental car. “Aah,” he sighed. “This is what I like. More desert, less people, and fewer ‘I’m With Stupid’ bumper stickers.”
It took Ringo a second to figure out what he meant. “You’re a real piece of work,” he said. “Die-hard Republican, hunh?”
Aaron shook his head. “No, I’m a Libertarian. Democrats don’t want anybody to have guns or religion, but the Republicans don’t want anybody to have sex or drugs. Everybody is always trying to control everybody else. I just want to be left the fuck alone.” He was happy to be armed again, loaded Colt back on his hip. “You want to let me drive so you can load your gun, you let me know.”
The last thing in the world Ringo was going to do was let this guy drive a rental car he’d put on his own personal credit card, but he just said, “I don’t think we’re going to have any problems on the drive up there, thanks.” Besides, Abruzzo was ready for war, he had a huge shiny pistol on his hip and two spare magazines on his belt. Even if he couldn’t shoot worth a damn, just pulling the thing out would probably scare off anybody giving them trouble. “No answer on his phone?” Aaron had just tried calling Dave again.
“Nope, but I think it’s turned on. I got a lot of rings before it went to voicemail.”
Mickey yawned, and stretched. The bedroom had thin curtains across its one window, but they did very little to block the light. He was sleeping later and later, adjusting to the time change, and saw that it was full daylight outside, although the light had the quality of early morning.
He climbed off the old narrow bed with a grunt and pulled on the sweatpants Dave had loaned him. That’s what they should do today, go clothes shopping. Mickey hardly had anything to wear, only had the clothes he’d been wearing when he’d broken into Dave’s house and the few he’d borrowed since them. Plus boots and that pack of underwear from Wal-Mart.
His ribs still gave him twinges of pain if he moved a certain way, but overall they seemed to be healing nicely. His neck still bothered him, though. Not the way it felt—the way it looked. Maybe he could get some cosmetic surgery on it one day, reduce the scarring.
He pulled on a borrowed “Bravo Company” t-shirt—whatever the hell that was—and opened the bedroom door. He shuffled into the bathroom, used the toilet, then flushed and came out. The couch was bare, and a quick glance around the one-room house showed him it was empty. Dave was probably jogging again.
Heading into the kitchen, which was an alcove barely big enough to turn around in, Mickey ground some beans and filled the coffee maker with water. Hip against the counter, he listened to the coffee brew as he slowly woke up. Another quiet morning.
If Arizona actually got enough rain for farming there probably would have been fields of crops all around them, but there was nothing surrounding the little cabin but rolling dry hills dotted with shrubs and trees. No
neighbors within shouting distance. He’d heard some dirtbikes the day before—or had it been two days, he couldn’t remember—but other than that the only sound were the cheeps and tweets of small birds and weird clickety-clacking sounds that probably came from insects. He kept forgetting to ask Dave what the hell was making those bizarre alien sounds.
Between the morning cereal and the coffee they were running out of milk. He put in a little less than he would have liked, a spoonful of sugar, and then drank it staring out the front window at the Cherokee sitting on what passed for a front lawn in Arizona—dirt and gravel. No movement on the driveway, which headed up to the right, cutting through the ridge and then ending at the pale blue sky. In Arizona, putting your vacation cabin at the bottom of a bowl was no big deal. No way you could have a house set up like this in any area of the country that got any rain, though, the foundation would end up underwater. The house would wash away. And the nearly flat roof would get crushed under the weight of Michigan snow.
The desert was interesting, that was for sure, but he couldn’t really say he liked it. Too foreign, too alien. He was an east coast kid. Indiana was about as far west as he’d ever gotten before this adventure.
Adventure. Shit. He shook his head. That’s the thing they never told you in the movies or books. Adventures were only great when they were over, or happening to other people. When you were in the middle of them, you were miserable. Adventures were uncomfortable.
Finished with his coffee, Mickey glanced over at the table by the front door and saw the flag still sitting there. Might as well, he thought. He could only spend so many hours a day reading, and there wasn’t a working TV in the whole tiny house. He set the cup of coffee down on top of the bookcase, slid his feet into the boots without lacing them up, grabbed the properly folded flag, and opened the door. He almost jumped back and shrieked like a little girl at the man on the porch, whose hand was raised to knock.
“Jesus Christ, you scared the shit out of me,” Mickey said with a nervous laugh. He’d startled the man as well. After blinking quickly, the guy, who was pretty big and dressed for the desert, smiled. There was a mini-van with Arizona plates parked next to the Cherokee, Mickey hadn’t even heard him drive up. The wood floor of the cabin squeaked like hell.
“Yeah, sorry about that.” He peered at Mickey. “Is, uh, Dave around?”
“Somewhere,” Mickey told him. “I think he’s probably out jogging. You a neighbor?”
“Yeah,” the man said. He looked at the flag in Mickey’s hands. Mickey followed his gaze.
“Let me put this up,” Mickey told him. “You want to come inside and wait? I don’t think he’ll be too long.” He unwound the rope from the tie down at the base of the newly repainted flag pole, attached it properly to the flag, and then raised the colors. It flicked and twitched in the fitful morning breeze. The wind was always stronger later in the day, it seemed.
“Yeah, if it’s not a problem. Sorry to stop by so early.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Mickey told him. He headed back inside, hearing the man follow him. Mickey turned to say something to him, and as he saw that the man had left the front door of the cabin open, the man struck him full in the face with his elbow, and Mickey went down hard, his head sounding like a coconut as it hit the wood floor.
The sun had been up for quite some time, and Dave was getting increasingly nervous. He was still in the shadow of the ridge, but for how much longer? He knew that once the sun got high enough, hit the right angle, the shadow would recede up the slope practically in the blink of an eye. Whether he wanted to or not, he was going to have to do something. He was going to have to move. But in which direction?
Running forward and down the slope would get him away from whoever was hiding back there, but he’d be exposed the whole way. Even if he didn’t trip and fall, he’d be an easy target for anyone with a gun for ten seconds or more. Running the other way, up the slope? Towards someone he could only assume had a gun? That didn’t sound any better, although it would probably surprise the fuck out of “Alpha”, whoever he was. Dave would be popping up right in front of him, like a jackrabbit.
He still hadn’t made up his mind what he should do when he heard the man hidden behind him quietly say, “Copy that, still no movement here.” It was the first thing he’d said since he’d arrived hours before. Copy what? What did he copy? And who was he talking to? It was less than a minute later when Dave heard the faint sound of a vehicle. A few seconds after that, a mini-van appeared in the driveway.
It coasted down and came to a stop next to the Cherokee, and a guy in tan pants and a button-down shirt got out. Dave didn’t recognize him, but he didn’t see any weapon, and the guy sure didn’t seem to be trying to be sneaky. Dave had a perfect view as the man walked up to the house and started to knock, then almost jumped back. There was the faint sound of talking. He was too far away to hear exactly what was being said. Mickey walked into view carrying the flag. Up the pole went the flag, and then the guy followed Mickey into the house.
Who the fuck did you call, Mickey? Dave wondered. What the hell? And then he saw the sliding door of the mini-van open and a second man climb out. He looked around carefully, but not too long in Dave’s direction as that was staring almost directly into the sun. The man then removed a heavy-looking gear bag from the rear of the van and carried it into the house. Dave heard the front door of his house shut. Seventy-five yards was a good distance, but with the sun shining directly on the man it had been easy for Dave to see the man was built like a heavyweight boxer and wearing a pistol on his hip. Probably a Glock.
Dave’s head was spinning. He wasn’t exactly sure what was going on in the house, who those guys were, if Mickey had called them, if they were somehow connected to Alpha on the ridge behind him, but he knew he didn’t have much time, and the situation had just gotten a lot more complicated.
The skinny guy, whoever the fuck he was, went down hard with the elbow strike, and Marcus put a knee on him and pulled out the Glock from under his shirt. He swept left and right, but there was nothing to see. There was a tiny bathroom to the right rear, and he could see most of it from where he was. Empty. The only areas of the cabin he couldn’t see were behind the small kitchen counter, and the back room. He suspected it was a bedroom, and the door was open. He kept his Glock 19 trained on the open doorway as Kyle came in behind him. Kyle set the bag down with a thump, pulled out his Glock, and advanced without a word. He cleared the counter, then the back room.
“Clear,” he said, coming back to Marcus. “What the fuck are you doing? Why didn’t you drop him?’
“”Cause it’s not him. Couldn’t you hear?”
“No.”
“He’s the only one here, and it’s not him. Check his face against the picture.”
Kyle squatted down. “No, I can see that. So where the fuck is the target? Hey.” He pointed, then stood up and walked over to the wall. There was an AR-15 leaning there, and it wasn’t one of theirs. Kyle unloaded it and stuck it on a shelf.
Marcus flipped the mystery man onto his stomach. Knee on the man’s back, he dug zip-cuffs out of the bag and secured the man’s wrists, then went to work on his ankles. He grabbed a radio out of the bag. “Alpha, Bravo, are you fucking napping out there? I’ve got a guy in here, not the one we’re looking for, who says our guy is probably out jogging. Car’s still here, but nobody else is. How’d you geniuses miss him leaving on foot?”
“Bravo is negative on any movement since arrival.”
“Alpha is a negative on that as well. Are you sure of what you’ve got?”
Kyle came in from the back room, held up a small pistol with one hand and handed him something else. Marcus looked at it and shook his head. What the hell? “Roger that, I’ve got federal ID on this one. Bunch of hardware lying around in here.” They were using unscrambled commercial radios, so even if their range was short he didn’t want to say ‘FBI’.
“This is Bravo One,” Smith said quietly in
to his mike, crouched in the notch behind the cabin. “Federal ID?”
“Affirmative. With a capital F,” Marcus informed them.
“Bravo One, everybody hold in place,” Smith told them, until he could figure out exactly what the hell was going on. Anderson wasn’t there, but an FBI agent was? Was this some kind of setup, a sting or ambush? “Cover six,” he murmured into the mike, and glanced over at Bailey. Bailey nodded and spun on his knee, now facing away from the small valley.
“This guy wasn’t expecting company,” Marcus said over the radio. He also couldn’t take a hit. One to the face and he was down for the count. Kyle wrapped duct tape around his mouth and tossed him into the back room, out of the way, while they figured out what the fuck to do. They pulled their rifles out of the bag. Marcus set up on the front door, and Kyle moved to where he could see out the front window.
“He wasn’t acting like he was expecting company,” Smith corrected him distractedly.
Mickey never lost consciousness, but it felt as if he had been disconnected from his body. After the hit—which for some reason didn’t hurt—he found himself on the floor, unable to move, eyelids at half mast. Like a passenger riding in the plane that was his body, he felt the man flip him onto his chest, zip-tie his wrists and then ankles, then wrap a piece of duct tape around his mouth. It wasn’t until he was heaved into the back bedroom like a sack of potatoes and landed on the wood floor that he came fully to.
Squinting against the blinding pain in his head and ribs—so much for the healing—Mickey fought the panic rising in him. Reason, logic, reason, logic, think, think! he told himself.
The back bedroom was dim, but he didn’t need bright lights to know that he was lying on his left side, facing away from the door, his wrists were zip-cuffed behind his body, and his ankles were secured as well. The duct tape around his mouth was more of an annoyance than anything else, but it helped him fight the panic—panicking required panting, and panting worked a lot better when you could open your mouth.