by Vince Milam
I would be at my most exposed the final thirty feet, the wall nearing vertical, the vegetation gone.
“Roger” came back twice.
Boot toes jammed into cracks, handholds at awkward positions, I climbed. I hated these moments, standing out like a moth on a mirror. It wasn’t just the two remaining below that created a major pucker factor. Four bogies either approached the cirque’s cusp or were already there. If the latter, I’d get blown off the wall.
The two below spotted me as automatic fire peppered nearby rock wall. It was short-lived as Marcus and Catch released a series of shots, raining down protective cover. Then the top. I hauled myself over the lip and crab-walked five paces, seeking a boulder’s protection. Ahead, the mountain’s final slope. Surrounding me was a moonscape of small rocks, medium stones, and large boulders. Minimal vegetation, the surface windswept. A quarter-mile away stood China Jim’s peak. Rifle unslung, I began the hunt, harsh breath easing, aware the enemy below had communicated my ascent. As I hunted, others hunted me. Twilight approached.
I could survey the cirque’s entire rim, but stones and boulders prevented further exploration. Downhill over my left shoulder, and with sufficient diligence, I could see Catch. He’d found a shooting position at the base of a mini-crease, the flooring flat, vegetation dense. I could just make out his prone position among the bushes. On my right and down a steeper slope, Marcus. He’d positioned similar to my former spot, with an array of sizeable stones across his flat spot’s edge. Both were vulnerable as hell from above, and mild panic set in. There were four killers along the rim seeking an opportunity to pick them off. I remained static, flipped on my scope’s night vision capability, and performed a constant one-eighty scan. Twilight became daylight with the scope’s light enhancement. High odds the enemy had the same capabilities.
Five minutes later, a three-shot burst toward my right. Bo. Now there were three Spetsnaz operators left on top. Bo’s MK18 came equipped with iron sights only—no scope, no night vision. It didn’t concern me. If full-on darkness arrived, he’d hunt with his combat knife.
Within a minute of Bo’s shots, Catch’s rifle sounded, the noise signature unmistakable as it echoed and rumbled down the cirque. Forty-five seconds later, Marcus fired once, then twice. I never stopped seeking the enemy in my midst.
“We’re clean here,” Marcus said. His voice came through the earpiece calm and matter-of-fact.
“Roger that.”
I couldn’t hide the relief in my voice.
“Dumb bastard number one poked his head out,” Catch said. “Adios, hombre. The second dumb bastard decided the odds sucked and made a run for it. Marcus cut him down.”
Absolute trust dictated actions. I trusted Bo’s pursuit of his remaining enemy on my right, above Marcus. So I focused toward my left. There were too many stones and boulders, too many hiding spots for an effective one-eighty scan. My position had one redeeming aspect—the barren five-yard strip along the rim I’d crab-walked across. A ribbon of open space and the only access for a downward firing location toward Marcus and Catch. Bo would hunt the ribbon on his half. I poured all my energies and focus at the rim semicircle on my left.
Stars by the bushelful began peeking out, the breeze minimal. Wonder about the friendly who’d taken down the spotter crept in, and I shoved it aside. It was a disservice to my teammates. They remained exposed, and anything less than one hundred percent focus wouldn’t do.
“How do we look from up there?” Catch asked.
“You stand out like a diamond in a goat’s ass,” I whispered back.
“Yeah, sure, but does my manly vigor still shine through from a distance?”
“I don’t like our position,” Marcus said. “Catch, let’s head downhill at a fast clip. We’ll at least present a moving target while we add distance. Right now, my back side gets itchy waiting for a bullet.”
“You want any help up there?” Catch asked me.
“Negative.”
“Aim true. I know you’ve got my back. Marcus, I’ll meet you at the vehicles,” Catch replied.
I heard loose rocks tumble behind me as they began their downward movement. I wasn’t the only one who’d picked up the sound. Two hundred yards away, a belly-flat figure inched his way from behind a boulder onto the barren rim. The night-vision scope collected and amplified twilight’s last ambient glow. On my knees and leaning against a boulder for a steady aim, I focused the crosshairs on the operator’s upper side. Catch would have taken a headshot. I wasn’t Catch and wanted assurance I’d deliver a decent hit. Exhaled half a breath, held it, and squeezed the trigger.
The rifle’s sharp crack sounded across the now-silent battlefield. My target flinched, rolled, and received a second bullet. Just to be sure.
“Thanks, bud.”
Catch’s response accompanied his continued downhill slide as rocks tumbled before him, complete confidence in my ability on full display. I didn’t share his insouciance. There was at least one more, maybe two. Bo’s MK hadn’t sounded again since I’d made the top. And now my rifle’s sound signature had ID’d my position. I shifted location with a hunched-over dash, finding a smaller boulder as a hunting blind. The remaining Spetsnaz operators now knew my general location, so I stretched flat and nestled against the boulder, still focused on the rim’s left side.
I had no fear except for my brothers, and pressure to execute my duty was shunted aside. Do your job, Lee. It’s not complicated. With my face inches from the ground, I sighted through the scope and sought the enemy, every strand of being tuned and focused. Ten minutes passed, then twenty as full-on darkness arrived.
“We made our vehicles,” Marcus announced.
“I’m stretched across my ride’s hood, scoping the rim. Just in case,” Catch added.
I acknowledged their declarations with two quick ear mic taps. A quarter-moon and a million stars provided sufficient ambient light as the crosshairs swept slowly across the rim, seeking movement or anomalies. Somewhere in the night, adversaries performed the same lethal slow-motion dance, fingers on triggers. The adrenaline meter remained redlined, breath steady, seek and destroy the moment’s focal point.
“When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.”
Bo, two paces behind me.
“It seemed an appropriate moment for a Nietzsche quote,” he added, his voice at a normal speaking volume.
I lowered my face onto the stony ground as an ocean of relief washed over me. A mile-wide smile with eyes closed and breathed-in dirt my immediate moment’s mandate.
“What the hell is hippie-boy talking about?” Catch asked.
“We’re clear up here,” I said. “It’s over.”
I lifted my head and twisted for a backward glance. Bo squatted on his haunches, the MK slung across his back. His right hand twirled the fighting knife’s point on the hard surface. The bright night sky highlighted wild hair strands and flashing white teeth.
“We’ve talked about you giving me a heart attack, Bo.”
“Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.”
“More Nietzsche?”
“Mae West. Oh, to have rendezvoused with her back in the day.”
Somewhere in the night, out on China Jim Mountain’s moonscape slopes, two Spetsnaz operators had met Bo and now lay dead from knife wounds. It was well and truly over.
“You two get down here,” Marcus said. “This isn’t the time for lingering.”
We did. The rim’s bare ribbon provided a speedy path as we circled the cirque and made our way down. As we descended, our vehicle collection glinted under the moon and starlight. Much farther out, the Spetsnaz vehicles were visible. And farther yet, the unknown vehicle’s headlights appeared and moved in our direction. I passed the information on to Marcus and Catch.
“Keep me updated on their progress,” Marcus said.
As we continued our hike down, the mystery vehicle stopped at the KDB vehicles and waited, headlights still on. When Bo and I re
ached our rides, I shared the information.
“I don’t like it,” Marcus said. “An unknown in a strange situation.”
“They gotta be friendlies,” Catch said. “One of them took out the spotter.”
“They don’t have to be jack,” Marcus replied. “We’ll stop before we arrive at their position and approach on foot.”
Smiles all around, a few rude comments passed, but nothing celebratory. We had to scoot and put miles between us and thirteen dead men scattered across the area. Marcus exhibited a rare moment of acknowledgement when he approached Bo from the rear, slung an arm across his chest, pulled him tight, and whispered in his ear, “I swear, Bo. I swear.”
The turnaround was too tight for Jezebel’s trailer, so we unhitched it and horsed it around toward an exit angle. Then rehitched it to Bo’s pickup. He led the way out, a slow weave, headlights off, creaks and rattles sounding from all our vehicles. The air cooled, a night chill began, and four ex-Delta operators, well past their prime, exited another battlefield, victorious. No grand exultations, no high-fives. A mission performed, the enemy dispatched. There was no great internalized joy among us, either. We seldom celebrated death. Survival, sure, but rarely killing. The enemy had brought the fight to us at China Jim Mountain. We’d finished it. End of story.
Chapter 37
We halted at a tight curve, a hundred yards from KDB’s vehicles and the stranger’s lit-up SUV. An array of boulders separated us. Earpiece mics checked, weapons locked and loaded. We spread out and approached bright headlights, fingers on triggers. One sat on their vehicle’s hood, back rested against the windshield. The headlights created too much glare for a positive ID. The other stood at the driver’s side open door, the interior lights on, smoking a pipe.
“We are greatly outnumbered and outgunned, gentlemen. If a white flag were available, I would be frenetically waving it.”
Chambers, the British spook. Oh, man.
“Your partner wasn’t outgunned blowing that spotter away,” Catch said, his tone more of a growl. “We need to see some hands.”
Chambers sighed and raised his. His partner slid off the hood and strode into the headlights. Esma Mansur, hair tied back in a tight ponytail, a ball cap pressed on her head. And a long, long way from Bolivia. She stood with hands on hips.
“A woman,” Catch said. “How ’bout that?”
“They’re friendlies,” I said. “Sorta.”
“What does that mean?” Marcus asked.
“Spooks.”
We lowered our weapons, Marcus muttered, “Shithouse mouse, Case,” and Bo added, “Clandestine intrigue. An appropriate icing for this cake.”
The six of us gathered in the headlights.
“You’re the Brit spook we met in New Guinea,” Catch said. “The one who believed we didn’t stand a chance against that gaggle of Spetsnaz operators, as I recall.”
“It would appear, sir, they are your sweet spot in the realm of conflict.”
“Hi, Esma.”
“Hi, Case Lee.”
“Do me a favor.”
“I will certainly try.”
“Tell Mossad not to hire me again. Ever.”
She shrugged. I addressed Chambers.
“How long were you two in Montello?”
“Long enough, sport. The trailer we rented was less than one might expect in the way of accommodations. That said, I was unaware Montello housed an artist community. Our neighbor was quite fond of smocks. And wine.”
“An MD 20/20 connoisseur?”
“One and the same.”
“Did you bug my room?”
He shrugged as response.
“Did you bug the bar?”
“The sheriff’s soliloquy was worthy of a screenplay. Simply marvelous. It transported me into the world of John Wayne.”
“Our favorite goober leads an interesting life, does he not?” Bo asked Catch.
“Interesting isn’t the word I’d use.”
“That’s enough grab ass. Let’s patch Case and make tracks,” Marcus said as he turned and headed back toward our vehicles.
Marcus produced a field first aid kit and donned a headlamp. I stripped off my shirt, causing the coagulated wound to bleed again. Bo wandered over and lent a hand.
“It’s not serious. Broke the skin, and it will leave a scar, but we’ve both had worse,” Marcus said.
“Another totem, my brother,” Bo said. “A line plowed, seeds planted.”
“We have all had enough damn totems,” Marcus said. “I’ll stop the bleeding. We can do a more thorough job when we stop for the night.”
“Thanks, Marcus.”
“Are you capable of associating your chosen career with these wounds? Or do you see them as disassociated events?” he asked.
“I don’t ask for them.”
“That is not the point, and you know it. Do me a favor and wrap your head around the fact that one day in some godforsaken location you’re going to catch a bullet where it matters.”
“Nine lives.”
“And you’re on number eleven. And you’re an idiot. There, that will hold for a few hours.”
I donned a clean shirt and addressed Chambers.
“Are you following us out of here?”
“Lead on, sport. We are but passersby.”
I headed up the train. The pitted road became worse as we entered Utah. Two hours and thirty miles later, I stopped a couple miles short of an isolated hardtop highway. During the entire trip we hadn’t seen a single house light, vehicle headlight, or campfire. Magnificent isolation, and just what the doctor ordered.
“Let’s bivouac here until daylight,” Marcus said as we gathered. “Then we hit the hardtop and split up.”
We gathered firewood from a nearby cedar grove, opened back hatches, grabbed folding chairs, and produced ready-food and liquor. Marcus repacked my upper shoulder wound. Bo tied Jezebel to the trailer and fed and watered her.
“Why do you have a burro?” Esma asked him.
“Companionship and conversation. She takes the long view, a perspective I appreciate.”
He smiled while Esma stared back, unsure.
“Don’t even try to figure it out, lady,” Catch said, strolling past.
We arranged chairs, and the aftermath’s exhaustion set in. I was whupped, the relief valve wide open. As the fire blazed, a coyote pack howled nearby.
“I owe you this,” Chambers said as he produced a bottle of Grey Goose. “Allow us to celebrate a job well done.”
“Horseshit,” Catch said from across the fire. “His job had nothing to do with this.”
“A blood brother in need, for sure,” Bo added, gnawing on dried meat.
Marcus poured himself a stiff bourbon, sipped, pointed his glass toward the two spooks, and addressed me.
“What’s their play in all this?”
I delivered the basics but kept it at a high level. Marcus had shot and killed a Mossad agent who’d held a gun on me in California’s mountains. I’d enlisted his help when an Amazon gig threatened the US. Mossad hadn’t connected the Marcus Johnson dots, and I wouldn’t toss out any bread crumbs for them to follow.
“Exponent is a Canadian operation,” I said. “British mining interests are a silent partner. So are the Israelis, although, as usual, they stay buried deep.”
“What the hell is Mossad doing in Bolivia?” Catch asked.
“Ask her.”
Esma delivered a blank stare toward Catch, a visual “No comment,” clear.
“Protecting their national interests, bud,” I added. “I ID’d her as a spook but didn’t make the Mossad connection.”
Catch shook his head, sucked down a quarter-glass of Marcus’s whiskey, and addressed Esma.
“You’re a good-looking spook,” Catch said.
“I suppose that is a compliment.”
“Suppose anything you want. Do you make a habit of plugging dead bodies on the ground?”
“From what I saw on the Cha
co, yes,” I said.
“So says the subtle Mr. Dynamite,” Chambers added, puffing his pipe.
“Here’s a tip, Ms. Spook,” Catch said. “Once a man is dead, several more bullets don’t make him deader. It would save your outfit ammo costs.”
“Job exuberance, my brothers. We shouldn’t fault enthusiasm,” Bo said.
“I suppose,” Catch said. “Anyway, we appreciate you taking the spotter out. I couldn’t draw a bead on the bastard.”
“I was glad to contribute,” Esma replied. “But I am curious. I failed to hear the shots directed at two of the Russians. It was not until we viewed you two hiking along the canyon’s rim that we realized it was over. What happened to those two?”
Bo pulled a small pipe, container of weed, and sang a few lines from “Goodnight, Irene.” As he packed the pipe, he smiled toward Chambers, a fellow pipe smoker.
“Would you enjoy a blend?” he asked, offering Chambers the small container.
“A kind and gracious offer, but no, thank you. Speaking of exuberance, you chaps exhibit more than your fair share. Is there any concern over the carnage left at the mountain?”
“Coyotes,” Marcus said. “And cougars.”
“And carrion for buzzards,” Bo added as he exhaled smoke.
“And time,” I added. “Except for the possible discovery by a hunter—not a high-odds likelihood—there will be nothing but bones and rusted weaponry by next summer. Russian weaponry, which will add beaucoup confusion. It’s all good.”
Marcus tossed more wood on the fire, sparks flew, and we circulated liquor bottles. After all the trauma, death, and weirdness I required closure, a “The End,” for the job. At a minimum, Chambers and Esma owed me, and my teammates, answers.
“What happens now?” I asked. “Regarding the mining operations?”
“I rather imagine there will be a general reset,” Chambers said. “Signs indicate KDB won’t return to the Chaco. As for here, I would suggest operations will normalize. The sheriff’s stated goal of two successful endeavors may well come to fruition.”
“You’re saying they’ll play well together?” I asked.
“Perhaps not in the spirit of love and harmony. But at the end of the day, both are businesses. Both wish to make money.”