Judas Horse

by April Smith

  Stone has made himself at home in a recliner with a glass of orange juice. A golf tournament is playing on TV. Toby is reluctant to take his eyes from the screen. During the commercial he asks Stone what he’s been up to.

  “Messing with people’s minds again?”

  Stone grunts, satisfied. “We had some fun. Tell Toby how we got right into the face of evil at the BLM.”

  I describe the midnight raid on Herbert Laumann’s family as Stone’s buddy listens politely, big brown eyes alert behind the glasses.

  “This dude Laumann is a bureaucrat,” Toby concludes. “He’s got no say whatsoever over the wild horses—that’s policy out of Washington, D.C. He can’t do anything about it, so why are you busting his chops?”

  “Laumann is a symbol,” Stone replies testily. “Symbols are important in political work.”

  “To hell with politics!” Toby smiles and waves a spidery hand. “Right, Darcy? Tell me, what do you think of boats?”

  I used to live in Marina del Rey, California, with a view of three thousand sailboats.

  “Never thought much about them.”

  Toby slaps his knees conclusively. “Doctor? What do you say we initiate this young lady in the pleasures of cruising our beautiful river?”

  Death by drowning. In those rapids, all it would take would be a nudge over the side.

  “No thanks, Toby. I get seasick. It’s embarrassing.”

  Dick Stone stretches out his legs and leans back in the reclining chair. “The boat looks fine.”

  “‘Fine’?” Toby clowns, popping his eyes. “How can you tell?”

  “Saw it in the driveway. It’s fine.”

  Toby shakes his head. “Julius, my friend, you are full of surprises.”

  “Always.”

  I’m looking around, sniffing the air. It is a comfy masculine nest, with a worn leather couch in front of a river-stone fireplace, kindling neatly stacked in a brass pot, driftwood and candles arranged on the mantel. A homosexual liaison between these two is not out of the question. A maple bookshelf holds magazines in plastic holders: Western Gunsmithing and Guns & Ammo.

  “Quite a collection.”

  “I don’t like guns,” Toby jokes. “I love them.”

  “Well then, you’re the one to tell me—what kind of a gun would you use to shoot somebody?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Because I’m going to kill that guy, Herbert Laumann. I said I’d do it for Julius.”

  Toby: “He’s one convincing dude.”

  “She can use my Colt .45.”

  To Toby: “Is that a good choice?”

  “It’ll do the job. Just make sure you’re close.”

  “Contact shot.” Stone nods, eyes closed.

  “Well then, no problem.”

  “How do you know so much about guns?”

  Toby grins charmingly. “I’m an old soldier. A tired old soldier.” He sits slowly on the leather couch. “Hear those old bones crack?”

  Dick Stone gets up and goes into the kitchen.

  Toby leans forward and confides: “He doesn’t like me to talk about Vietnam. He flips out, like he’s back in the jungle with us, which he never was. Julius has a way of appropriating other people’s stories.”

  “What do you mean by ‘us’?”

  “Me and his little brother, Colin. The boy died over there.”

  “Julius has a brother who died in Vietnam?”

  Toby nods. “There’s a park back east, named for his brother and his battalion.”

  I fumble, trying to assess what this means. Stone must have joined the FBI at the same time Colin enlisted. Both young men were patriots—too young to imagine such a thing as death by idealism, or the bitter, vengeful burden for the one who survives.

  I need air.

  “Nice view of the river.” I crane toward the windows. “Mind if I go down and look?”

  “You go on. I’m gonna see what our friend is up to in the kitchen.”

  I smile nicely and pull on the back door a couple of times until it becomes unstuck. Outside, the breath of the river is humid and fresh. My shoulder blades are tight as screws. Despite the coziness, there is a stale repression in Toby’s cottage. I look back at the pumpkin trim and perfectly pruned impatiens. What is going on in the kitchen? A gravel walk leads to a garage. There’s a stylish lantern mounted above a side entrance, indicating use. I open the door and wander in.

  The sharp smell of cordite grabs me like an old friend. I am back in the basement shooting range at Quantico; in the gun vault at the L.A. field office. Toby’s shop is basically a Peg-Board and a bench, but at a glance, it has everything the recreational gun owner might need, including the wardrobe, all the clothes neatly hung: camo jacket, wind vest, rain togs, and polished black patrol boots.

  There’s a rack of common hunting rifles—7-mm ones and .308s, like the one Sterling McCord was using on the shooting range. The bench is organized for reloading cartridges—bright red cans of rifle powder, a mounted powder measure, a fancy single-stage press, and sets of dies, punches, lifters, wad guide, drop tube, the whole extravaganza for making your own bullets. The dies are organized according to size. A quick glance reveals .30- to .40-caliber ones, neatly stacked. God bless Toby’s obsessive-compulsion: at the bottom of the pile, exactly where it belongs—except it does not belong—is a die for making .50-caliber bullets.

  A highly unusual size for your average hunter.

  The same-size bullet that killed Sergeant Mackee.

  The same-size bullet that matches Dick Stone’s rifle.

  Toby appears at the door.

  “I see you found my love.”

  He offers me a glass of iced tea.

  “I didn’t mean to pry. It just looked so interesting in here.”

  Toby picks up a shotgun and handles it well. “I hope you weren’t touching anything.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Accidents do happen with firearms.”

  His big brown eyes are soft and slightly insane.

  “I’m getting some weird vibes, know what I mean? Like you’re prancing around in here, trying to pretend to be something you’re not.”

  “I’m not pretending anything.”

  “You’re not some prissy white girl,” he says. “What are you?”

  “Half Salvadoran. Got a problem with that?”

  “Yes, I do. My problem is this: What’s a homegirl doing way up here, no brown faces in the whole damn state?”

  I hold his look.

  “I could ask the same question.”

  “I got a job with the town,” says Toby Himes.

  “And I’m on a visit with Julius.”

  “You gonna shoot someone, just for kicks? Just because Julius says?”

  “For the movement. For the sake of animals.”

  “If you’re the Man,” he says, “I’ll kill you.”

  The chow is barking. Outside, there is commotion and the sound of voices and heavy boots on the gravel walk.

  “Whenever.”

  “You tell me.”

  Mr. Terminate crashes open the screen door of the ammo shed and marches through, along with another squinty two-hundred pounder with a full beard and red-checked shirt I call Mountain Man.

  “…You can use it underwater,” Mountain Man is saying.

  “Why in hell would anyone care? Hey, Toby.”

  “Afternoon.”

  “Hi, John.” Mr. Terminate ignores me.

  “It’s stable,” Mountain Man insists. “Safe to transport.”

  “Seriously, you don’t want to be around that shit.”

  “Me? I don’t want to get anywhere near that shit.”

  “Julius knows you can’t get that shit. The only place you could get that shit is the armory out on the base.”

  This is it. This is the Big One: They’re talking about meth. They’re running a methamphetamine operation out of a military base.

  I am beginning to get excited, when
Toby Himes breaks in.

  “I guarantee what the Doctor has in mind is strictly MOS.”

  And then, as we say in the Bureau, the hair goes up on the back of my neck, and I know what I know. In the language of bomb experts, MOS stands for military occupational specialties.

  The Army Corps of Engineers, whose job it is to locate land mines.

  Mr. Terminate, Mountain Man, Toby Himes, and Stone are not working some ordinary drug deal.

  They are talking about military-grade explosives.

  Thirty-three

  Donnato is waiting at the usual rest area off the interstate at the time of another of my alleged appointments with the dentist.

  “If the suspects were talking about explosives you can only get from military occupation specialists, it means they’re dealing in very powerful, restricted material. What the bomb techs call ‘high explosives’—dynamite, plastics, TNT, ammonium nitrate—stuff that can shatter things and move things around, like rocks and trees, which is how they use it in the Army, clearing landing zones.”

  I have brought a cooler this time, and we sit at the same picnic table around back—just a couple of tourists eating tuna sandwiches.

  “But those kinds of explosives don’t fit the signature.”

  “No.”

  “The devices that blew up Laumann’s house and killed Steve weren’t military-grade.”

  “Correct. Now we’re thinking your friends at Toby’s were talking about a special order. For a special mission.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Neither does headquarters. Toby is obviously the link. He’s the reloader who made the bullet that killed Sergeant Mackee. He’s the munitions expert getting ready for the Big One. We’ve installed a listening device at his house and put the other individuals under surveillance. Agents are visiting explosives manufacturers in the region, asking for cooperation in reporting anything gone missing.”

  “How do the bad guys get restricted matériel?”

  “Steal it from the base and collect it over time.”

  I nod. “That sounds like Stone. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s been planning the Big One since he split the Bureau.”

  “I really wish you’d been wearing a wire when he handed you that jive. I’d give anything to hear his version of events.”

  “Here’s what I think: We drove him crazy.”

  Donnato believes I’m joking and cracks another potato chip.

  “We didn’t know our ass from our elbow, and the country was in a revolution. Dick Stone is a casualty of war.”

  “I’m glad you’re not wearing a wire.”

  “Is it treason to tell the truth?”

  An immaculate RV has pulled up, and a portly gentleman wearing a bow tie has disembarked, along with two magnificently groomed Cardigan Welsh corgis, who hop down the ladder like a pair of princes. Show dogs, rehearsing their stuff. The trio trots ludicrously around our table, the dogs keeping stride with their master’s swaying gut.

  As they pass, Donnato switches to upbeat gossip.

  “Kyle Vernon’s son is moving back from Virginia.”

  My mood perks up, hearing of old buddies on the bank robbery squad.

  “Didn’t his son just graduate from UVA?”

  Donnato nods. “He’s moving to California. Looks like he sold a script to the movies about a black kid whose dad is a black FBI agent….”

  We sit for a while at the weathered picnic table under the shimmering boughs of pine, while the dogs rebelliously bark at squirrels, and Donnato does his job of bringing me out of the dream I’ve inhabited on the farm, back to my grounding in the Bureau family.

  “Your friend Barbara Sullivan is pregnant again. They did the test. It’s another girl.”

  “That’s great. Will she quit?”

  “It’s doubtful she’ll come back from maternity leave. You two ever talk?”

  I shake my head. This will be our final passing. Barbara Sullivan will retire just as I reenter the Bureau, and we will let each other go.

  The RV pulls away. I get up from the table, but Mike Donnato stays where he is. He is looking at his fingers, which are peeling the bark off another twig. I notice there’s a pile of naked twigs on the ground between his feet.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “We have a situation, Ana.”

  I sit back down.

  “I had lunch with Rosalind.”

  “Oh, really? Where’d you go?”

  “Factor’s Deli.” He squints in the wash of sunlight. “Do you have to know what we ordered, too?”

  “I know what you ordered. A grilled chicken sandwich.”

  Donnato goes on, beleaguered. “Rosalind had good information. Dick Stone had a brother who died in Vietnam.”

  “I know. I’m a few steps ahead of you, bud.”

  “What you don’t know is that Toby Himes and Peter Abbott served together in Vietnam. We were going to tell you.”

  No need to answer that.

  “Rosalind said Dick Stone’s brother served on the same squad as Himes and Abbott. All three of them. Only two made it back.”

  “Does Peter Abbott know that Toby Himes is a person of interest to Operation Wildcat?”

  Donnato hedges. “He reads the reports young Jason Ripley sends out.”

  “Why didn’t Peter Abbott tell us about the link between himself and Himes and Dick Stone’s brother? Why’d we have to find it out from a secretary?”

  “Believe me, Galloway is asking the same questions.”

  Donnato finally reveals their suspicions. They put a trap on the deputy director’s phones and discovered Toby Himes has been calling Abbott on his private number. This is so explosive that neither of us moves. My partner remains seated at the table, elbows on knees, in profile. The sun glints off the top of his wavy hair and the short curve of his forehead.

  “Stone’s a former agent; I know his game. But Abbott scares me. What’s he up to, and on what level?”

  “I promise we’ll find out. Let us face the task before us. I’m here to tell you that headquarters has authorized the hit on Herbert Laumann.”

  “How can I go through with it after what you’ve just said?” I lower my voice. “That the boss could be involved in a conspiracy?”

  “You’ll have full backup. I’ll be there, Ana. I’ll be running the show.”

  But deep uncertainty has hit me in the gut. Not just about them but about myself, too. My ability to pull the trigger. Already I am feeling queasy. I kick at a mound of sawdust at the base of a tree stump, chewed up by bugs. It takes a moment to refocus.

  “Laumann. Okay.”

  “You specified a Colt .45?”

  “Stone’s gun, right.”

  “Jason got this for you.”

  Donnato fishes inside his pocket. A family with three little kids comes screaming toward the restrooms.

  “How good a shot are you?” he asks, his voice clear despite their earsplitting shrieks. “Because the first bullet in the chamber will be live.”

  He holds out his hand. I hold out mine. Our palms touch in slow motion, and the magazine for a Colt .45 is transferred. I slip it smoothly into my pocket.

  Jason provided a magazine filled with blanks. When Dick Stone gives me his gun, I will switch magazines. But the gun will have already been loaded, one live bullet already ejected into the chamber, requiring my first shot to be precisely accurate. When I approach Herbert Laumann—on whatever darkened street, or maybe in the middle of the day—I must hit him squarely in the bulletproof vest.

  The parking lot in the rest area seems filled with smoking vehicles, each exuding a black cloud of burned brake lining. The noise of the engines is raw. The tuna fish was bad; it’s making me sick. The sun is hot; it’s making me weak. My mind unhooks and ruminates on the detective I shot. The world fragments and he is everywhere. My heart pounds. The magazine of blanks in my pocket is heavy as the weight of original sin. Donnato is throwing the garbage away. I’m back in the spin
ning car, bloody and gruesome, looking at the detective’s unseeing eyes. The blind foal is nursing. Sirocco’s tail whips the flies and the pasture vibrates with bees. The cicadas are singing on the battlefield.

  When young boys came home from the Civil War and lay at night in the safety of their featherbeds, their pulses would still race unaccountably. It was a condition doctors recognized, even way back then, as “soldier’s heart.”

  No bad judgment.

  No mistakes.

  No cowgirl stuff.

  Thirty-four

  On his last day on earth as BLM deputy state director, before a radical animal rights activist named Darcy DeGuzman murders him in front of his own house, Herbert Laumann is still fighting the fight—not just the massive traffic over Portland’s Broadway Bridge but also call after call through the headset as the droning voice of his assistant bombards his brain with end-of-day problems at the office. Idling on the bridge at rush hour, trucks and buses blocking the river view, he must be wondering if the FBI, an agency he believes in, is leading him into an even worse predicament.

  Can he trust anyone? He must be insane. Yes, that’s fine. Walk up and shoot me, whatever fits your bill. But he has no right to question. He has failed to protect his family. He is a hollow man in the wrong skin—his son’s skin—that has become a searing penance, night and day. It was the promise of world-class medical treatment for Alex that sealed the deal with the all-too-understanding FBI men. But they still won’t say which burn center he will be admitted to, in which part of the country. Or what type of new job Laumann will be given.

  They keep promising a painless death and peaceful afterlife.

  Maybe secretly he wishes the bullets would be real.

  We, the assassins, follow.

  Dick Stone, down to fighting weight and back on his meds, is a force of nature, like those glacial rivers roaring down from Canada. I never saw until today how the fragments come together—the loyalty that made him an FBI agent, and the demonic intelligence that opens the soul’s unwilling gate to murder.