I veered off to the left and followed a small cleft in the rocks. I wormed my way through and emerged on a relatively clear hillside that led up about 45 feet to a solid wall of tall pines and boulders the size of refrigerators. I checked it intently for maybe 5 minutes and then picked my way across the open space to a steep path leading down and around the flank of the ridge under a huge stone overhang. I could walk erect under the rock shelf and followed it for more than 200 yards when a wrong noise brought me up short.
Ticking. The sound hot metal makes as it cools. The noise your car makes after you park it.
I sat very still and heard it again, coming from somewhere straight ahead and to my right.
I moved a few feet forward and looked down the hillside, checking for anything that looked out of place.
It was mostly luck that I saw it at all. I’d like to claim great skill or even good eyes but the simple fact is, yellow really stands out in the forest.
A single pine, little larger than a sapling, was bending out and down the hillside at a strange angle. There is the occasional freak of nature but, as a rule, trees grow upwards in search of light and water. They don’t try to burrow downwards like an ostrich.
A tiny flash of yellow was showing within the small pines outline. I climbed down and parted the outer branches.
A thin nylon rope was tied around the topmost end of the trunk. It had been there for quite a while, as the bark had begun to grown around it. There was no more tension in the tree. It was now trained to its new position and the rope could simply be removed.
Under the tree was a large gap in the rock. The sheen of polished, painted metal was visible under it.
I shinnied over the edge of the gap, chinned myself down off a tongue of rock, and landed lightly in the near dark.
The black Blazer wore Washington plates and both doors were locked. I circled around, hoping, to the hatchback and gingerly worked the catch.
The tailgate cleared the side wall by less than a half inch, and I had to wriggle into the cargo area sideways. I sat up and climbed into the driver’s seat and flipped on the interior lights.
The Blazer, for its age, was scrupulously clean. The glove box was completely empty but a bracket on the visor contained a Washington vehicle registration in the name of Joseph Warren Mathis, 1366 Peyton Drive, Enterprise, Oregon.
Above the passenger’s visor was a state map with some hurried notes scrawled in pencil in the legend box: “SLC4904SW 1247SPGF.” I was guessing about some of it; the writing was done quickly, with the map on an uneven surface.
I pulled out my cell. No signal. I wasn’t surprised. I was on the far side of the ridge, under tons of rock, away from any possible cell tower.
I memorized the message and quickly searched the rest of the interior.
A Desert Eagle very much like my own was in a complicated spring-load contraption under the radio. There was a small warp showing in the rubber floor mat behind the brake pedal, and I poked it firmly with my knuckles. The Eagle rotated down and out with a soft “snick” and slid out easily. I reached back under, found the ignition wire, ripped out the whole thing, and jammed it in my pocket. I pocketed the Eagle and climbed into the back. I sat and looked around me carefully. Something about the shadows at the top edge of the folding bench seat looked a little odd, and I ran my fingers along it until I came to a knot under the rubber gasket. I pushed in and the entire seat back swung out on the hinge that accommodates the fold panel at the bottom.
A Dragunov Romak 3/PSL rifle with a no scope was mounted in a foam-lined bracket. Just below it, in a cut-out in the foam, were three boxes of steel-jacketed long shells; the kind of high-velocity loads used for ultra long-range shooting.
I shouldered the Dragunov and pocketed a full box of shells.
There might have been more to find but I was convinced.
I climbed out and left the tailgate slightly ajar. My presence in the Blazer would be obvious, anyway. No point in being fastidious.
From the truck’s slow ticking, I knew Joe had left it long enough ago to be home by now.
I circled the hill until my cell showed a signal. I hit Jack’s number and heard it ring twice.
“Where are you?” he asked breathlessly. “Bettijean Moorage is about to kill me to get to you.”
“I’m about to meet our boy Joe,” I replied softly. “I’m about 100 feet from his house.”
“Let me get to this, then,” Jack said quickly. “Jane was…is a twin. Birth records from Ketchum, Idaho, show twin girls born to her mom and a Serge Dageneau back in ‘70. The mother’s name is listed as Kirkham, her maiden name. We got a marriage license, also issued in Ketchum, from two days later. Mom marries Gene Kasten. But, you follow the paper trail and the Kastens only enroll one kid in school in Spokane, Miz Jane.”
“This from Bettijean?” I asked.
“Yep,” he replied. “How soon can you get back?”
“I don’t know,” I puffed. “I want you to do something, though.”
“What?”
“Three things: Call Southwest Airlines, in Salt Lake City and see if there’s a Flight 4904 arriving at 12:47 either tonight or tomorrow. It would connect with Orly, Heathrow, somewhere in Europe. Then call (212) 426-5507 and ask for Nat West. Tell him I sent you and I need everything on a Major Allen Simmons, about our age, Marine Corps. Now, here’s the tricky part. If Nat finds anything funny in Simmons’ service records, I want you to call me. Let it ring once, hang up, call back and let it ring twice. I won’t answer. Got that?”
“What are you doing?” Jack asked gravely. “Do I need to call for some help?”
“It’s a two-hour hike up here, Jack,” I said evenly. “Nobody would get here in time. Just do that stuff and then call Art. Tell him I need to see the Wrights and Karstens late tomorrow morning but here’s the important thing: if he meets with them tonight – and he probably will because of the thing with Jane earlier – he can’t discuss anything beyond her bank accounts and the resort. Got it?”
“I don’t like this, Tru,” Jack snapped.
“Another one of those things you can’t control,” I replied.
There was a stony silence.
“In case anything…happens?” he asked.
“Send in the F.B.I., State Patrol, anybody who shows up, to Joe’s cabin,” I sighed. “I won’t be there. Neither will Joe. But he won’t have gone far.”
I set the phone to vibrate only and slid it into the small watch pocket of my jeans. It made an uncomfortable lump there but I’d feel it if it rang.
I took out the Desert Eagle and thumbed off the safety. Basic caution. I was reasonably sure Joe didn’t know we were coming but there are a lot of reasonably certain men lying in cemeteries. If he did have some sort of perimeter alarms, I wouldn’t find them and my having gotten to within 100 yards of the cabin suggested there were none. That in itself was peculiar. Guys like Joe only become 50-ish guys like Joe by taking extraordinary precautions. If I was right about this, Joe’s C.I.A. handlers would already have decided that he was a liability. There’s only one possible resolution to that scenario. It’s the dirtiest of dirty little secrets for a democracy that lays claim to the moral high ground. It’s also unavoidable. The classic example of the good of the many outweighing the needs of a single individual. Our hilarious moral code dictates that a Joe-type can roam the earth shooting dozens of unarmed and possibly innocent people, get paid handsomely for it, and never need to question the rightness of his actions, unless he—the one with the ultimate moral culpability—begins to pick his own targets. Then, he’s a cold-blooded murderer. As long as it’s sanctioned by some faceless committee, he’s a patriot.
I didn’t begin to understand Joe’s reasons behind taking out the Pembroke board. Maybe it was as simple as the e-mails suggested—he just didn’t want hoards of vacationing dip-shits roaming his land. I was having a hard time seeing that as a less morally valid reason for shooting someone than some of what he’d done for his
bosses in the past.
The only way most Americans could live with a lot of what’s routinely done in their name is to know nothing about it. We need the C.I.A., god knows, and I have no desire to see it gutted, but I also have little sympathy for the things that blow up in their faces. If you’re going to play God, you’d better expect the occasional earthquake.
With all this bubbling in my subconscious, I was ready to do almost anything—short of getting shot—to avoid having to throw down on Joe. If what I suspected was true, though, using the Eagle was going to become a matter of necessity.
I was just hoping that pointing it would be enough. Pulling the little lever changes things.
I turned out to be more than 200 feet to the cabin’s broad shelf. Depth perception skews a bit when looking up a steep hillside and my estimated 3 minutes of tough hiking became 10 minutes of really laborious, hand-over-hand climbing. The entire distance, though, was as well-shielded as I could have hoped. I had no illusions; a good sniper could take me out within a second of stepping out from behind a rock. I thought about it, kept my movements as random as possible, but went on. Fear is normal. Quitting isn’t.
The cabin was built on a broad ledge of solid bedrock, flat as Kansas, that was set into a sort of natural bowl rising to a height of about 12 feet on my side but completely open on the other. It looked like the Paul Bunyan version of the way we used to kick our heels into the dirt to tee up footballs when I was a kid.
The sunlight filtering through the trees dappled the whole scene with a greenish half-light, broken, in splashes, by bright shafts of dusty sunbeams. It gave the place a Brigadoon-ish air of unreality; like some enchanted glade where man would be blissful but wholly incongruous.
I could see why Joe would fight to preserve this. I would, albeit without the guns.
I looked around the rim of the bowl. If Simmons was there, I couldn’t spot him.
I was drawing a breath to call out when Joe stepped out onto the porch.
“Come on in, Simmons,” he said mildly, “and bring the other guy with you.”
I laid the Dragunov on the ground and tucked Joe’s Eagle into my boot, slipping my jeans down over it. I stood and stretched and started down the steep slope to the cabin.
Joe glanced at me without any visible concern and then looked back to the opposite direction.
I was about halfway to him when I finally became convinced.
“Joe,” I said as quietly as I could. “Count to three and hit the deck.”
He gave me the tiniest nod, still staring off toward where Simmons should be.
I broke into a run, diving behind a pile of firewood at the end of the porch.
Joe dropped absolutely flat and rolled to his left, behind a couple of sheets of wallboard at the far end of the cabin.
The silence of the glade exploded with the curt crack of a large-bore handgun. The pile of logs above my head blew backwards through the window of the cabin as the shots walked across the pile and down.
“When I get up,” I yelled at Joe, “get inside.”
I leapt to my feet and saw the ragged end of a muzzle flash over to my left. A log burst in front of me and smashed into my ribs. I gasped, straightened and emptied the Eagle into the rocky cleft where the shots had originated. I heard the slugs whanging off into the trees and then a howl of pain that was almost certainly Simmons taking a rock shard in the face.
I ducked into the cabin. Joe was hunkered down behind a massive gun safe, calmly loading a Beretta 92FS.
“You with him?” Joe asked.
“No,” I replied, “I’m a private investigator working for the guy who’s building the resort. The guy out there is C.I.A.”
“I know,” Joe nodded. “I knew first time I met him. Nothing to do about it, though. Hadn’t been him, it’d have been somebody else.”
“You’re the guy from Laos,” I said slowly, “the sniper.”
“Were you there?” Joe asked.
“Naval Intel,” I answered.
“What’s your name?” he asked, eyeing me steadily.
“Truman North,” I murmured, reloading the Eagle. “Colonel, back then.”
Joe grinned broadly once, and then finished loading the clips.
“Tru North,” he smiled. “A pleasure, Colonel. I heard a lot ‘bout you. You’re not going to make me kill you, are you?”
“Probably won’t come to that,” I shrugged, “unless you’re planning to shoot some more paper salesmen.”
Joe looked at me closely.
“Always heard you were sharp,” Joe murmured. “But I’ve been right here, last two weeks.”
“Okay,” I chuckled, “one problem at a time.”
A hail of bullets struck the massive logs of the cabin, a sound like a wooden oar smacking a side of beef. They were too strong to come from the .38 Simmons had been firing. Somewhere nearby, he had a weapons cache.
“Your bosses seem to be convinced you were the shooter,” I observed. “Just out of curiosity, how’d you get onto Simmons?”
“He kept coming up here like he was an old friend,” Joe sighed. “It’s vintage C.I.A. They think the letters make them bulletproof. Walked around like he owned the place. I shoulda shot him, but…just too much trouble.”
He stood and looked at me closely.
“I’d hate to shoot you, Colonel,” Joe said seriously. “You were a great soldier. But I got a lot to do the next couple hours and I can’t let you get in the way.”
“Joe,” I said, shaking my head, “the girl’s not going to make it here. They’re onto her, already—picked up on her passport coming through Orly. And you can bet they’re sitting on Salt Lake.”
A bit of the glow went out of his eyes. I couldn’t have explained why but I could actually feel his sense of loss in that instant. A grief real and acute as the death of a parent or sibling.
“Well,” he said softly, “probably wasn’t going to work anyway. I’ve been alone…too long.”
“What do you want to do about Simmons?” I asked, mostly so I wouldn’t go on feeling sorry for a guy who shot six people.
“He’s after you because you know about me,” Joe said simply. “Sneak out the back. I have a tunnel just past the tool shed. Get out; it’s not your problem.”
“Nah,” I smiled. “Pisses me off when somebody shoots at me. I’m gonna need a little closure.”
“We need a plan, then,” Joe nodded. I could tell he hadn’t really expected me to leave. “He’ll eventually get some help.”
“You got any ideas?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “I never have liked admitting this much but I’m…I’m not real smart about some things. I mean, I’m not stupid but…I make plans and they sorta…backfire.”
Jesus, I thought, who is this guy? His vulnerability, especially in a professional sniper, was astounding. I’ve met killers before. To a man, they’ve been cocky little psychopaths who would cheerfully mow down 20 innocent bystanders, rather than spend 10 seconds examining their own character.
This was the kind of baffled, hapless guy you find hunched over a tearful Budweiser in some sad little urban beer joint; the sort of buttoned-up karma victim who’s so much in need of release he’ll spill his guts into any semi-willing ear. It wasn’t any less pitiful here than it is in the bar…except that this guy had probably shot 200 people.
“Okay,” I sighed. “Planning is sorta my thing. Here’s what we do…”
He listened intently, nodding in agreement. I yanked the thing out of my ear and had serious doubts about whether it would work at all. If Joe did, he didn’t show it. He picked up the Ruger, jammed it into his hip pocket and laced up his boots.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “I gotta tell ya, that’s a crazy-ass plan.”
“We need it over quick,” I shrugged. “Can you do it?”
“I could do it left-handed,” he shrugged. “Question is, can you do it?”
“I’m betting the C.I.A.‘s c
lose-order doctrine is still the same—center of mass,” I sighed. “Been that for 40 years.”
“Unless he misses low,” Joe smiled distantly.
“Well, then I’m fucked,” I shrugged.
“Don’t like it, Colonel,” he said, shaking his head. “Gonna sound funny, coming from me, but I don’t like people getting shot for nothing. Too many good soldiers caught it because of a bad decision in a bad situation. Ultimately, this isn’t your fight.”
“Joe,” I said softly, “just out of curiosity, say it was you shooting the board of Pembroke Property Ventures, Ltd. Why might a guy—a pro, because he’d have to be to do those shots—why would he do something so…out of character?”
He looked at me for a long moment. Shots burst through both windows, spraying glass to our left and right. If Joe noticed it, I couldn’t tell.
“Okay,” he sighed, “let’s say this guy…I mean, he’s a misfit, right? Guy who does…that for a living he’d have to be. Say he gets older, starts asking himself what’s at the end of the road. Say he finds out what he wants most is something he can actually have—maybe even something he’s already got. All he wants to do is hang onto it, enjoy something…real, for once. Then say something happens that means the thing he’s got is gonna be taken away. Now, this guy, isn’t real good at figuring out solutions. He’ll ask people he trusts, right? So he asks two and the one says to do this, basically, nothing; let it happen, live with the loss of exactly what it was that made the thing special. Now, the other person knows the guy in a whole different way, has history with him, has…ties. That person says ‘hey, do what you know.’ Which one’s he gonna do? The go-with-the-flow thing, the surrender, or the thing he does better than anybody else? This guy, hell, that’s an easy choice.”
“But…maybe he does it and then realizes what he should have done…was nothing. Nothing. Just ignore the threat because he had a way out that was no more risky than either one and required nothing more than sorta…slipping on a mask and maybe building a couple of fences.”
“Now, the guy—he’s good. He knows nobody’ll ever prove he’s the shooter. He decides the mask and fences will still work. Maybe he even sees a way to change his whole life…maybe that’s why, Colonel. You ever find the guy, ask him. I bet I’m not far wrong.”
Call Me Joe Page 24