Buck Out

by Ken Benton

  Chad stared at Joseph for a long moment. Joseph didn’t let it bother him. He stood comfortably and observed Chad’s face, unsure of what his thought process was.

  “All right,” Chad said. “That’s a fair answer, and I’m deciding to believe you. For the record, I’ve always considered you trustworthy. I’ve even vouched for you with Duncan on occasion. So we’re cool, all right? But you still might have some convincing to do with Duncan.”

  “Not worried about it.” Joseph stepped closer to the couch. “Duncan has always been straight with me. And I’m not afraid of hard work. Guess that’s why I usually get the dirty jobs.” He looked back at the bodies.

  Duncan and Lanny returned. Duncan was smiling.

  “Damn that’s good work, Joseph. I couldn’t tell where the spot was. It’s out of sight from the house, so should be an easy job when we sneak back through the woods to get it.”

  “I can’t believe we’re burying treasure,” Chad said. “I feel like a pirate. Maybe there’s some rum in the house.”

  Duncan looked back and forth between Chad and Joseph, raising an eyebrow. “Glad to see you perking up, Chad.”

  “This guy’s all right, Duncan.” Chad patted Joseph on the back as he passed him on the way to the living room liquor cabinet.

  “I know he’s all right,” Duncan said with a distinct tone of relief in his voice. “Does good work. And for the record, Joseph, I know it wasn’t your fault you lost the load. Can’t get away from FBI helicopters in a bobtail truck, can you? Especially when you don’t know they’re on you. Sorry about that business in the warehouse, okay? It’s frustrating to lose a million-dollar load.”

  Joseph nodded. “I understand, boss. No hard feelings.”

  “There’s no bosses here. We’re a team. What’d you find, Chad?”

  “Good scotch.”

  “Great. Let’s all have some.”

  The four of them relaxed in the living room around the coffee table. Joseph took the lounge chair opposite of Duncan, facing the back door. One of his hands still held the shovel. Lanny and Chad sat on the couch between them. The scotch did taste good.

  “All right,” Duncan said. “Chad and I have the most experience riding motorcycles, so we’ll take the dirt bikes in the morning.”

  “Plus you’re the skinny ones,” Lanny said.

  Everyone laughed and took a drink.

  “Right.” Duncan pointed at Lanny and Joseph. “So you two take the ATVs. Everything’s all gassed up. Joseph, why don’t you take the one with the rack? You’re lighter than Lanny. Those gold bars weighing you down ought to make you guys about even in a race. If anyone gets lost, just keep going downhill through the trees, until you get to the gravel road. Then go west. We’ll leave around daybreak.”

  Joseph’s attention was drawn by what might have been a shadow near the back door.

  Duncan noticed. “What’s the matter, Joseph? Worried you might lose another load?”

  “No,” Joseph said. “I thought I saw something move in the backyard.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hannah saw Darian’s image reflect in the sliding glass door. Crap. Someone in the house might have seen him, too. That was sloppy work on Darian’s part.

  Hannah broke into a run along the side of the house. They were moving to cover both exits, but might not have much time now. The call for help had been made, but waiting for backup to show could be an option no longer available. Police were still responsive to law enforcement calls—just slow in arriving.

  As Hannah came around the front, the sound of the door opening brought her to an abrupt halt. So much for waiting on backup. She formed a stance on the far side of the dining room window and leveled her weapon towards the entryway. No way was Hannah getting shot through a window by these guys again.

  A figure emerged from the doorway. A wide one.

  He wasn’t as visible as Hannah preferred, with the front porch being on the dark side of the house in the waning moments of daylight. But Hannah saw the pistol in his hand. The suspect first looked left, then right—where he made direct eye contact with Hannah.

  “Drop your weapon!” Hannah said at a volume she hoped wouldn’t be heard inside the house.

  The big guy stepped backwards inside the doorway without raising his gun hand, without tripping the hair trigger in Hannah’s brain that would cause her to shoot. Damn it!

  “Feds!” the man yelled from the dining room. Hannah could tell from the location of his voice that he had retreated from the door. She hunched over, ran past the window, and stepped into the open doorway, still crouched.

  The big man was waiting for her. This time he had his gun raised, and fired the second she appeared. His shot was high, obviously expecting her to be upright.

  Hannah returned fire. Three slugs impacted in his upper chest before he ever got a second shot off. His gun dropped to the floor. Seconds later, so did he.

  More gunfire erupted from the rear of the house. Some of it was particularly booming, probably from a shotgun. Yells and the sound of glass crashing followed. Then more gunfire, from slightly farther away.

  Hannah ran inside. No one else remained in the front rooms. No one alive, anyway. Two more bodies lay on the hardwood floor in the family room. The sliding glass door to the backyard was shattered.

  “Agent Smith!” Hannah yelled ducking behind a wall.

  “Out here!” Darian’s voice returned. “They ran out the back way! I couldn’t stop them.”

  The sense of relief in hearing Darian’s voice was matched only by the urgency Hannah felt knowing the rest of the gang was getting away again. She quickly made her way out the back, carefully stepping over the larger pieces of broken glass.

  “Where are you?”

  “Here.” Darian’s head popped up from behind a brick planter. Large sections of brick were blasted away from the front side of it.

  “They went straight down the back. I can give you a little cover fire from my current position. Be careful. There’s three of them. One has a shotgun. The others pistols. They’re running. You can outshoot them, Hannah.”

  “You’re hit?”

  “Yes, but not badly. Took some buckshot in the leg. Don’t worry about me.”

  Hannah hesitated, glancing back and forth from the woods to her downed partner, uncertain what to do.

  “I’m all right!” Darian insisted. “Go now if you want a shot at them.”

  The sound of a motorcycle starting fifty yards into the woods made up Hannah’s mind.

  “Okay! Stay put! I’ll be back!”

  More motorbikes fired up as Hannah sprinted through the trees towards the noise. The sounds began moving away, down the hill, at different speeds. Hannah realized she was too late—but kept running anyway, as one of the bikes wasn’t yet far off.

  She came to a parked Quadrunner ATV. At the same time another ATV, this one with a rider, appeared in a clearing eighty yards away. Hannah took careful aim and fired two shots before it vanished behind a group of trees.

  She looked down. No key in the ignition. No time to remove the panel and bypass the ignition wire. Hannah took off running again.

  She didn’t catch them. They were too far ahead now, and moving away at a faster speed. There must be a road down there.

  Five minutes later Hannah was behind the house again, kneeling next to her injured partner. Darian was lucky. His leg was full of pellets, but the bleeding was minimal.

  “Still hurts like hell,” Darian said.

  “I called for an ambulance on the land line. They assured me police response was already in route. Damn they’re slow. Can’t find your satellite phone. You sure you dropped it behind the back door?”

  “Positive. If it wasn’t kicked away, one of them must have grabbed it. Can’t imagine anyone having the presence of mind to do that during a gunfight, though.”

  Hannah looked around the yard a while longer for the phone. No luck.

  The police finally showed. They weren’
t happy about having three dead bodies to investigate on the busiest Friday night of their careers. An ambulance arrived a few minutes later.

  The local police vehemently objected when Hannah climbed into back of the ambulance with Darian.

  “You know where we’ll be,” Hannah said. “If you guys hadn’t been so slow to respond, maybe this crime scene would have been a little more manageable.” She slammed the door shut.

  * * *

  Malcolm and Hannah were married in the month of October. Malcolm remembered their Orlando honeymoon. Disney World transformed itself into a Halloween theme after dark. He had marveled at how spooky the trees and buildings actually looked.

  But the place he was in right now looked much spookier.

  “Where are we again?” he asked Ryan when they stopped.

  Ryan dismounted and took out his shovel before answering. Oh, no. Not more digging.

  “Directly ahead of us is a makeshift campground where we’ll be spending the night.”

  “There are No Trespassing signs all over this place, Ryan.”

  “They aren’t enforced.” Ryan stuck the spade in the dirt. “Allentown officials kicked everyone out of here once or twice, from what I’ve read, but have since given up—as they have no real alternative solution.”

  Malcolm knew where they were now. He saw something about it on a news show once. This was a homeless camp. Allentown and Harrisburg were known for them. Dusk hadn’t settled yet, so he could make out the shape of tents through the trees in the distance.

  “What are you digging for here?” Malcolm asked.

  “Our invitation.”

  After a short but furious excavation, Ryan lifted a square object wrapped in a plastic tarp from the earth. He removed the tarp, shook the dirt from it, then folded and tucked it on the back of his scooter before plopping the cardboard box it had been protecting on Malcolm’s lap.

  It was a case of wine.

  “Don’t drop that,” Ryan said. “Hold it with one hand. We’ll go slow.”

  Malcolm’s mental images of a haunted house were only reinforced as they gradually putted their scooters through the camp. Creepy trees drooped over torn tarps, aging tents of various shapes and sizes, and badly put together lean-to shelters. To think of these places as homes was a shocking contrast for someone who lived in Midtown Manhattan. Construction materials included wooden pallets, plastic milk crates, rotting plywood, patio umbrellas with advertising on them, and cord—lots of cord. Cord held structures together, kept tarps in the air, roped off perimeters, hung laundry, and even dangled cookware in places. Malcolm noticed American flags were planted in front of several of the shelters.

  The residents, for the most part, didn’t look especially happy to see new arrivals. Many of them stood with hands on hips and stares that could melt a rock as Ryan and Malcolm passed.

  Ryan found a small clearing and pulled into it. He was off his scooter and had the tent removed from his pack before Malcolm even turned his engine off. This was a little too foreign—and uninviting—for Malcolm’s taste.

  “We’re right in the center of the camp here,” Malcolm said. “If we must stay in this godforsaken place, wouldn’t a spot on the outskirts be better?”

  Ryan shook his head. “No. This is where I want to be. Nestled in the middle, nice and cozy. Come on. Help me pitch the tent.”

  They had two stakes in the ground when the first angry neighbor showed up; a thin man with smudged jeans, scraggly hair, and more scars than teeth.

  “What do you boys think you’re doing?” he said.

  “Checking in for one night,” Ryan answered jovially.

  The man didn’t smile. “Who do you know here?”

  “You, now. My name’s Ryan. This is Malcolm.” Ryan stood and walked to the wine box.

  “That isn’t funny, partner. This ain’t no hotel. We live here. It’s a community, understand? And strangers aren’t welcome. You can’t just roll in here and—”

  “Here you go,” Ryan said handing the resident a bottle of wine. “It’s a gift. Keep it.”

  That shut him up. He stared at it a minute before twisting the screw top cap off and taking a drink.

  “Welcome to the neighborhood, Brian and Manny.” The man sauntered away.

  It wasn’t long before the scene repeated. And then kept on repeating. The assortment of characters who came by to be bribed was entertaining. A few of them were clean-shaven and looked downright normal, including a woman with a dog who wore designer clothes and jewelry.

  Ryan’s tent ended up being considerably bigger than Malcolm imagined by its rolled-up size. So were the two sleeping rolls, which turned out to be water-repellent “mummy shaped” bags with soft polyester lining. Beneath them Ryan spread an all-weather emergency blanket to act as an additional layer of padding over the hard ground. Malcolm was impressed with it all. To him, this looked like the kind of gear someone climbing Mount Everest might bring—not east coast campers in late May. But, as Ryan had already warned him, winter gear was necessary as it could be quite some time before it made sense to go back to New York.

  “These last two are ours,” Ryan said after giving away the tenth bottle of wine. He handed Malcolm the box. Malcolm noticed beforehand that two of the bottles were different, slightly smaller and made of brown glass. Now they were the only ones left. He removed one of them and looked at the label.

  “Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA. Nice!”

  “Thought you’d like that.” Ryan pointed a thumb at the woods behind him. “You stay here and guard everything while I gather wood for a fire. Don’t give those beers away!”

  “No need to worry about that, my friend.”

  An hour later it was dark. Ryan and Malcolm sat before a delightful fire eating asparagus and sipping 9% alcohol double-IPA from two ceramic coffee cups Ryan had thoughtfully packed in his seat compartment. This was not a beer you drank from a bottle. Joyful noises surrounded them in the camp.

  “Well, it’s Friday,” Ryan said. “So go ahead.”

  Malcolm tilted his head. “Go ahead and what?”

  “Tell me the tale of the two.”

  Malcolm snickered and shook his head. “You already know about TBT. You were there. Hell, it was your pick. I went kind of nuts from there and started compounding my winning position, betting everything on the meltdown.”

  “You must have done all right, then.”

  “Better than all right. Made a fortune. Or at least I would have if it wasn’t for the dollar—”

  Malcolm was interrupted when two residents approached to ask if there was any more wine. Ryan offered them some asparagus instead, not wishing to send anyone away empty-handed. Only one of them accepted it.

  “We also have a bag of peach-strawberry mush if you’re interested,” Ryan said.

  “What do you mean, mush?” the other resident asked.

  Ryan gave him the bag. “It’s ugly, but farm fresh today. We’ll probably throw it out. Should have known what would happen to soft fruit vibrating and being bumped around.”

  The resident scooped some out with his fingers and tasted it. “This is good, thanks. I’ll take it.”

  As soon as he left, a different resident came up to their fire. This one had obviously been by earlier. He carried one of the wine bottles, still unopened.

  “Is it wise giving alcohol to the homeless?” he asked.

  The voice surprised Malcolm. It was deep and commanding, not something you’d expect to come out of the mouth of such a short, thin man. Whoever he was, he appeared out of place here. This guy was one of the few who were clean-shaven, and better dressed than most. His question only confirmed his foreign status.

  “They seem to be enjoying it,” Ryan answered.

  “And that makes it wise?”

  “I don’t know about wisdom.” Ryan stood to face the confrontation. “But I know they like it. I’m no judge of what’s best for a person, so I’m happy to provide something that brings a little joy. Afraid I�
��m fresh out of homes and jobs, low on food, and money doesn’t seem to be worth much at the moment.”

  “Joy,” the man said raising the bottle. “Bless the Lord, oh my soul, who brings forth the wine which makes glad the hearts of men.”

  Malcolm exchanged a confused look with Ryan.

  “Mind if I join you gentlemen?” the stranger asked. “The bottle is too much for me, so I thought maybe we could share it.”

  “Sure,” Malcolm said looking into his near-empty cup.

  Ryan shrugged and sat back down.

  “What was that from?” Malcolm asked the stranger. “What you said about God making wine so men could be glad?”

  “Psalm 104. Not an exact quote, but an accurate paraphrase.” He opened the wine. “Can I fill your cup?”

  “Wait a second.” Malcolm finished off his ale. “Okay, now. You know you sound like a preacher.”

  “I am,” he said pouring the wine. “Name is Robert—or Pastor Green, to my flock.”

  “Oh. Wow.” Malcolm cradled his cup of wine with both hands.

  “Where’s your …flock?” Ryan asked, extending his cup for a fill. “And what are you doing here, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I’m on my way home to Carlisle. Was visiting family in Hartford when the financial meltdown came. Had some car trouble, so now I’m afoot. A friend in town offered to put me up for the night, but I felt …led here. My church does a lot of work with a homeless camp in Harrisburg. Similar to this place.” Pastor Green took a drink of wine directly from the bottle, now only half full.

  “I’m Ryan and this is Malcolm. We’re from New York, heading to West Virginia. Probably going to be living a lot like these folks for a while—but much more secluded.”

  Malcolm looked around and frowned.

  “It is better to live humbly with the poor than to share plunder with the proud,” Pastor Green said.

  Ryan laughed. “What’s the name of your church?”