The Plan

by Shawn Chesser

  Steve-O looked to Riker. Voice taking on an inquisitive tone, he said, “I thought you were in the Army, Lee. Shouldn’t you already know how to shoot and clean your guns?”

  “I was a driver in the Army, Steve-O. I did very little shooting over there. And when I did get to put a few rounds through a Beretta or M4, it was at the outdoor range and under strict supervision.”

  Tara said, “You served your country honorably, Lee. You left a piece of yourself over there, too. And you have the Purple Heart to show for it. You should never, ever diminish your contribution.”

  Flashing Tara a pretend scowl, he said, “Coming or staying? I’ll leave the engine running and the A/C on if you don’t want to come with.”

  Tara craned to see the instrument cluster. “Tank’s full, I see. Let’s keep it that way.” She reached over and shut the engine down. “I say we all go in.”

  “I’m going,” said Steve-O. “I like looking at the antique guns.”

  “Not many of those in here,” Riker said. “It’s a retail store and indoor range. All the good antiques usually end up in museums.”

  Steve-O said nothing. Holding his hat with one hand, he elbowed open his door and exited the truck.

  As the door thunked shut, Tara said in a low voice, “You did get everything done on our list, right?”

  “Most of it. Which is pretty good seeing as how we’re bugging out two days early.”

  Again with the brow lift. “Did you fill the gas cans?”

  Riker flashed a sheepish grin.

  “Lee.”

  “I made the daily bank withdrawals. Stopped at the gold and silver place afterward. Every day, like we agreed. Did you?”

  Now Tara was the one flashing the guilty smile.

  “Well?”

  “Only twice,” she conceded.

  “Better than none. I’ll let it slide if you let the gas can thing go.”

  She nodded and winked, then pushed open her door.

  Riker and Tara caught up with their new friend a few paces from the front doors. The parking lot was half-full, with three more vehicles rolling in as they trooped across the lot.

  “Allow me,” said Riker as he reached past the shorter man and opened the door for him. As Tara slipped past him, Riker set the Shelby’s alarm and pocketed the fob.

  Riker watched Tara make a beeline for the waist-high glass display cases lining the left wall. Arranged neatly on glass shelves within the cases were all manner of handguns. Neon-green price tags affixed to white packaging string dangled from the trigger guards of revolvers, semiautomatics, and single-shot derringers. The weapons came in every finish imaginable. Most were black or blued. A few were flat dark earth—a fairly dark shade of brown. Others were desert tan—a brown lighter in tone than the ones done in FDE. Sitting on one shelf next to a number of chromed items—mostly revolvers—was a boxy semiautomatic finished in Cerakote nearly the same hue of hot pink as the flamingos on Steve-O’s tropical shirt.

  Remaining tight-lipped, Steve-O walked straight toward the rear of the store, where the entire wall was adorned with all manner of taxidermy: waterfowl posed in flight. A raccoon standing on its hind legs. A weasel of some sort slinking through artificial foliage.

  Centerpiece of the taxidermy was a Florida panther, its tan fur and yellow eyes lifelike. The way it had been posed on the faux rock base, coiled and ready to pounce, made it seem as if the pair of patrons handling long rifles below were about to come under attack.

  A number of forked antlers mounted to display plaques flanked the panther. Riding above it all was the rack from a bull moose. Riker guessed if the beast it once belonged to was at his level and charging, even with his wide wingspan he’d have a hard time touching both edges of the rack at the same time.

  A wiry Asian man wearing a camouflage ball cap on which Desert Storm Veteran was stitched in gold approached Riker from the right. He looked to be late forties. He wore some kind of tactical pants tailored from a sturdy tan fabric. They were held up by a leather belt on which rode a holster containing a boxy black semiautomatic pistol. Worn over a tucked-in white tee shirt was a red vest bearing the words Range Officer front and back.

  Smiling and extending a hand, the man said, “Mister Riker. Good to see you again so soon. Shooting today?”

  “Not today, Jon,” answered Riker as he and the man shook hands.

  “That grip,” said Riker, pretending to massage his right hand.

  The man smiled wide as he removed yellow-lensed shooter’s glasses and tucked them into a vest pocket.

  Riker said, “Did you get the Ithaca out to Indiana?”

  Nodding, Jon said, “It shipped this morning.” With a slight tilt of the head, he asked, “What kind of a favor does a guy have to do for you to earn a twelve-thousand-dollar over/under?”

  “Too long of a story to go into right now,” answered Riker.

  “Understood,” replied Jon.

  Hopeful tone to his voice, Riker asked, “Did my paperwork clear?”

  “As someone, somewhere once said,” said Jon. “Timing is everything. Your 4473 came back yesterday. You’re good to go, Lee.”

  “William Shakespeare,” interjected Tara as she materialized from a nearby aisle. “That’s who you’re quoting.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” said Jon. “You must be Lee’s better half?”

  “Ewwww,” exclaimed Tara. “He’s my booger-eatin’ brother half. At least he was still eating them in middle school. Can’t speak on it now.”

  “Ahhh … siblings.” Jon nodded. “My apologies for assuming. You’re both close in age.”

  “Quit diggin,” Tara said. “Lee is four years older than me.”

  “Again, please forgive me. I’m youngest of four. Two brothers and a sister. They all still live in Texas.”

  “That would explain the accent within the accent,” Riker said. Shooting his sister a sour look, he changed the subject. “Is there a rear door I can back up to so we can load up?”

  Jon shook his head. “No need. I’ll have Hector and Shane carry your purchases out for you.” He whistled to get the attention of a pair of men fixated on whatever was playing out on the small flat-panel TV on the wall behind the counter. It was flanked by a neon GLOCK sign and what looked to be an 8x10 headshot of Uncle Phil from Duck Dynasty. On the screen, a FOX News reporter was watching some kind of large-scale melee taking place. On the left side was a phalanx of riot-gear-clad police officers, or soldiers, no way of telling across the distance. One thing was clear—the civilians screen-right were having their way with the thinning ranks, splitting them here and there and taking a few to the ground. If the scene at Mt. Sinai Hospital was a “shit show” as Tara put it, this was a shit storm. Or, better yet, a shitnado.

  Simultaneously Riker’s attention was commandeered by Tara and Steve-O.

  She was saying, “I want that pink pistol,” and Steve-O was coming at him brandishing the largest Nerf gun he’d ever seen. It was orange and blue and fitted with a huge drum magazine and some kind of optics. “Can I get it?” he asked.

  Holding Steve-O off with an upturned palm, Riker answered Tara first. “We don’t have three days to wait.” Then, addressing Steve-O, he said, “Only if I get one too. And grab us a couple of hundred of those foam bullets and some batteries for the guns.”

  As Steve-O stalked off, Nerf rifle at port arms, Hector and Shane arrived. Both men wore overstuffed black Arc’teryx backpacks. Hector was pushing a four-wheeled cart loaded down with a pair of black Pelican trunk lockers containing the weapons, ammo, and gear Riker had ordered. Shane followed after, a Pelican Storm rifle case in each hand.

  Steve-O returned shortly after, armed for bear.

  Jon ranged around the counter and rang up Steve-O’s guns and ammo. Addressing Riker, he said, “Who’s your friend?”

  “I’m right here, dude,” Steve-O said as he went to work freeing the guns from their packaging.

  “Half cousin,” Riker lied. “And he l
ikes to speak for himself. Gets pretty pissy when folks talk past him or for him.”

  Jon apologized for a third time. Making small talk as he ran Riker’s debit card, he asked, “Where you going with all these goodies? You have a redoubt to stock or something?”

  “Or something,” replied Riker. Picking up his Nerf gun and batteries, he followed Steve-O and Tara to the front door and out into the harsh light of high noon.

  While the store employees lugged the gear across the lot to the Shelby, Riker disarmed the alarm, unlocked the rigid tonneau cover, and dropped the tailgate.

  As the men shrugged off the packs and stacked the Pelican cases on the blacktop beside the truck, Tara went to work manhandling the packs onto the tailgate and shoving them all the way to the front of the load bed.

  With Hector and Shane helping, Riker loaded the cases, arranging them beside the backpacks and assorted camping gear he had picked up at a Dick’s Sporting Goods store two days prior.

  Riker closed the tailgate and squared up to the men. Extending a hand, he said, “Thank you, fellas.”

  The taller of the two men, Hector, shook Riker’s hand first. He stood a couple inches north of six-foot and came close to being able to look Riker in the eye. He ran his fingers through his long, black beard a couple of times and said, “What do you think of the Romeo Victor operation?”

  The question took Riker by surprise. Playing it cool, he shrugged and looked to Shane. “What do you think?”

  Shane said, “I think Jade Helm was a dry run for all of this.”

  Hands on hips, Hector nodded.

  Shane went on. “Me and Hector been talking. We both think Romeo is the precursor to a nationwide gun confiscation.”

  Hector nodded in agreement and worried his yellow ball cap. On the cap was a replica of the Gadsden flag, complete with coiled snake and, stitched in red, the admonition Don’t Tread On Me.

  “Only advice I have to give you,” Riker said, “is that you must believe everything you see. Don’t let normalcy bias dull your edge.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Hector. “Elaborate.”

  Riker shook his head. “It’s still very confusing to me, gentlemen. If I had the time to spare, I’d stay and tell you my story. Let you be the judge. But I don’t.” He paused long enough to start the Ford’s motor with the fob. “Just know that this place and who you’re with, you’re ahead of the curve if things do go sideways. Just trust your gut, fellas.”

  The men stood there contemplating the advice as Riker climbed behind the wheel. They were still rooted in place as he pulled forward and exited the lot.

  Riker pulled into traffic and didn’t look back.

  He retraced their route back to the 195, along the way passing the Shell station, where out front of the pumps two men were swinging wildly on each other.

  Next to the compact with Tennessee plates, two obese men and a tall, rail-thin woman worked together to hold the thrashing driver face-down on the blacktop.

  Looking to Tara, Riker said, “It’s starting, alright. And you, little Sis, win the award for Understatement of the Year.”

  Chapter 10

  At the juncture to I-195, things had gone from bad to worse. Motorists honked and jockeyed lanes to get past the flagger the F-DOT work crew had recently deployed. While the man in the orange vest held a hand out to calm the drivers he was detaining with a handheld STOP sign, the other workers were packing up tools and policing up traffic cones.

  The onramp to 195 West was blocked with unmoving vehicles.

  The rising tempest of shouts and blaring horns was reacquainting Riker with the unease that the successful stop at Jonny’s had helped to quell.

  Leaning forward and swiping the touchscreen, Tara said, “I’m pulling up the nav unit so I can reroute us to the second option that’ll swing us west to Naples.”

  Knowing where west was in relation to his direction of travel, Riker let his gaze roam his mirrors.

  Clear.

  Seeing a break in the approaching traffic, he hauled the wheel over and stomped the gas pedal.

  There was a whine under the hood as the Whipple turbocharger spooled up. Then the horsepower surge was transferred to the rear tires, which grabbed for half a heartbeat, sending the truck into a sharp turn to the left. In the back half of the beat, the tires broke free and the Shelby snapped into the adjacent lane facing west and partially obscured by a drifting veil of blue-white smoke.

  The sudden maneuver resulted in a flurry of honking from the cars in the lane previously occupied by the Shelby. One-fingered salutes accompanied the racket as Riker sped through midtown Miami, where traffic was getting worse.

  Two blocks west of the interchange, the reason became evident. Like the Shell station, a long line of vehicles waiting to get into a grocery store’s already full parking lot wound out into the street, causing traffic ahead to slow down as drivers began to pass in the center turn lane.

  Across the street, a convenience store was equally busy.

  As if a Cat-5 hurricane was bearing down on the city, Miamians were finally making a run on the stores.

  Tara tapped the touchscreen and cycled from the navigation screen to one that detailed fuel consumption. She put her finger on the available range listed there. Sounding rather encouraged, she said, “This says we can go a little over four hundred miles on the gas currently in the tank. That’s pretty good, right?”

  Taking the wind from her sails, Riker said, “Dolly’s tank holds thirty-six gallons.”

  Tara’s brows rose an inch. She said, “What’s that … a whopping eleven gallons per mile?”

  “Twelve or so. It’ll go up by a mile per gallon as soon as we get out of this stop and go traffic.”

  “Well, well,” Tara said. “That almost gives us a whole forty extra miles.”

  “Thirty-six,” corrected Steve-O.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Riker said. Slowing considerably, he slipped the Shelby over to the right lane.

  A second later a pair of matte-black Cougar Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles rolling on six massive tires came barreling around a corner. Bumpers nearly touching, a column of six blacked-out Suburbans following the MRAPs blew the red light to make the turn.

  “Looks like Johnnys,” Steve-O said. Adding his own gunfire sound effects, he leveled the Nerf rifle at the passing vehicles and pretended to engage them.

  Riker said, “Keep it low, man. We don’t need that kind of attention.”

  Coming to Steve-O’s defense, Tara said, “These windows are tinted darker than you, Lee. Cut the man some slack.”

  Riker bristled at the quip. If spending time with people he cared about was teaching him one thing, it was how to pick and choose his battles. And this was one he didn’t want to wage. Not now. Not ever. Because Tara’s temper belied her stature. If you asked anyone who knew her, they’d declare her a worthy opponent in most arenas—verbal jousting, notwithstanding.

  So he bit his tongue and drove on.

  ***

  In less than an hour they were beyond the Miami city limits and pushing west on Interstate 75.

  On the outskirts of Miami, the Florida Highway Patrol had been having a field day. Just before the county line they saw three different motorists pulled over. The first two they came upon had been caught by helmeted troopers riding futuristic-looking motorcycles. The third unlucky driver was behind the wheel of a topless, canary-yellow hypercar of Italian heritage. The patrol vehicle parked at an angle behind the million-dollar sports car was a blacked-out Dodge Challenger Hellcat. Only giveaway that the seventy-thousand-dollar American muscle car was a police cruiser was the red and blue lights secreted behind the slatted grille. Flashing rhythmically, the lights seemed to be taunting the bigger fish currently on its hook.

  The heightened law enforcement presence kept Riker honest in the speed department until they were forty miles outside of Miami. Here the interstate went laser-straight as it cut into Big Cypress National Preserve,
where places to hide a cruiser were few and far between—especially during the day.

  Feeling confident, Riker let the Shelby Baja stretch its legs. With passing mangroves and cypress trees becoming a green blur outside the windows, he said, “Keep your eyes open for a gas station or a sign pointing to one.”

  “I bet stations are hard to come by out here in the sticks,” Tara replied as she leaned over to consult the navigation unit. After cycling through the different screens, she made a face, then looked over at Riker, who had the speedometer needle holding steady at ninety miles per hour. “The faster you drive,” she added, “the more gas it burns per mile, right?”

  “She burns gas,” said Riker. “It’s proper to refer to ships, aircraft, and vehicles as ‘She.’”

  “OK, smartass. Why are you riding Dolly so hard?”

  He smiled. “That sounds kind of nasty.”

  As the Shelby roared past a pair of SUVs loaded down with camping gear and bristling with bike racks and rooftop gear boxes, Tara stole a glance into the backseat area.

  “His ears are no longer virgin,” Riker said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she shot back. “He’s fast asleep.”

  “That pisses me off.”

  Tara said, “What pisses you off?”

  “That he can just switch off like that. That anyone can just fall asleep at the drop of a hat.”

  Tara didn’t respond to that. She craned and leaned forward. Then, belt tight on her shoulder, she said, “We’ve got company.”

  Riker’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. “What kind of company?”

  “More patrol cars. Up ahead on the right,” she said. “They may be setting up a roadblock. They’ve already got a couple of cars pulled over. You better be ready to stop.”

  “Seeing as how they’re not in my lane, I think I’ll play it by ear.” Still, Riker braked hard and craned to see what was going on. As their speed dropped below the limit, the nearest patrol car, which had the squat profile of a Dodge Charger, moved to close off the fast lane.