“One thing you forget, Joe,” I replied. “The guy’s not good at figuring things out. See, the problem is, he did shoot those people. Proof won’t matter. Someone will come for him and, even if he kills that one, there will be an endless stream of someones. And, eventually, one will get him.”
“Then, what does the guy do?” Joe asked.
“He’s got three choices,” I said quietly. “He turns himself in and probably goes to prison for the rest of his life…or he runs, far and fast, and loses himself in some very remote place.”
“What’s the third one?” Joe asked, staring at his hands.
“He controls his own destiny,” I murmured. “You understand?”
“I understand,” he whispered. He cleared his throat. “What would you do, Colonel?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just know it wouldn’t be the first one.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that,” Joe stood and cocked the Ruger. “By the way, you oughta rethink that gun. Eagle’s a great weapon but it’s floppin’ around in your hand like a fish. Okay, let’s do this half-assed thing.”
We moved to the wall just past each of the front windows. I looked at Joe and held up three fingers.
“Three…two…one,” I mouthed. I pivoted into the window frame and snapped off four quick shots into the cleft in the rocks where I winged Simmons last. He returned fire too quickly. He had moved, somewhere.
“You got it?” I shouted.
“About 12 feet to our left,” Joe replied. “Ready?”
I nodded. Joe looked me in the eye.
“I got ya,” he smiled.
I took a deep breath, counted to three, and bolted through the front door. I jumped off the top step and hit the ground running, headed straight to the gap in the rocks where Joe had spotted the muzzle flashes.
I swerved left until I was clearly visible, if Simmons was looking, and then dug in and pivoted to the right.
As I hoped, Simmons couldn’t resist. As I passed out of his line of sight, I saw the barrel of the rifle come out of the gap and start to track my way.
Instead of letting me go, or moving to his left, with cover, to sight in, Simmons followed the barrel out.
A single discrete crack issued from the cabin; that trademark little Beretta bark that’s as distinctive as the sound of a real Louisville Slugger meeting a big-league fastball. I heard a muted snarl of pain and the dull clatter of steel and resin composites hitting the stony ground.
Simmons had fallen face down into a small patch of dirt and moss just within the rocky rim of the shelf. Joe walked over to him and kicked the sleek Dakota T-76 Longbow sniper rifle aside carelessly.
“Nice gun,” Joe observed mildly, to me, “Sniper rifle. 338 Lapua rounds, put a fine little hole in ya from a mile or so. Bolt action, though. About as useful at this range as throwing rocks at us.”
Simmons coughed, gasped, and sat up, clutching his bloody right shoulder. His right arm flopped uselessly at his side.
“You proud of yourselves, now?” he snapped. “This isn’t over y’know. You’d have been a lot better off if you had just stepped out and taken it like men.”
“Simmons,” I barked, “let me remind you of something. This guy may be a company asset for C.I.A. but I’m not. I don’t give a shit who ordered you to do what. You took something like 200 pot shots at me and I’m going to do one of two things. I’m either going to plant one right in your useless fucking skull or I’m turning you over to the Colville tribal police for attempted murder.”
“Shit, who are you kidding?” he sneered. “You won’t shoot me.”
I lifted the Eagle and snapped off a round next to his head. I deliberately nicked the outer shell of his ear, mostly because it doesn’t hurt all that badly but will produce impressive amounts of blood.
Simmons howled in pain and disbelief and clapped his working hand to the side of his ear.
“Perhaps you just didn’t understand,” I growled.
“You asshole!” Simmons helped. “Christ almighty, are you on his side, now?”
“I’m deciding,” I rumbled. “I’m sure as fuck not on your side. There’s something you need to understand here, dickhead. Almost nobody anymore thinks you idiots are James Bond. Mostly, we think you’re a bunch of bumbly, clueless assholes who dig up bad information, lie when you’re caught at it, and get our collective ass in a sling with these asinine plots you hatch all over the fucking planet… But mainly, I know what the folks in Langley hate most—exposure. That’s why I’m going to turn you over to the tribe, call the Seattle and Spokane papers, and contact my buddy, the CNN producer. I might have a little trouble but your little pitiful career is pretty much over, wouldn’t you say?”
You want to hurt a ladder-climber, kick ‘em in the career. Simmons slumped over grasping his shoulder and ear, and began to rock slowly, back and forth.
“Did you miss?” I asked Joe.
“No, I just clipped that tendon that runs across the top of the shoulder. Can’t lift your arm without that,” he said mildly, as though commenting on the weather. “I wasn’t tryin’ to kill him.”
“I don’t get it,” I responded. “You knew he was C.I.A. the first time you met him? You put up with him snooping around out here? Hell, I’d probably have shot him.”
“Nah,” Joe chuckled. “If he was one of them D.C. suits, maybe. Truth is, he’s just a glorified bellboy, like 90% of all their field agents. He’s more of a tool than I was. They all adopt this romantic ‘spy’ thing, so they can feel like they’re doing something special. But they’re just go-fers for the bureaucrats. I feel sorry for ‘em.”
“Fuck you!” Simmons spat. “I do what this country needs done. If it’s dirty work, so be it. I’m a patriot; you’re just a …”
I fired the Eagle past his other ear. He screamed and grabbed that ear until he realized I hadn’t hit him.
“Shut up Simmons,” I snapped. “Don’t you dare lecture either one of us on patriotism. I’ll have your service record soon and I bet you never even served in ‘Nam. You want that bet?”
“My records are sealed,” he growled.
“I have connections,” I chuckled. I looked at Joe. He walked to the porch and picked up a roll of duct tape.
“What happens now?” I asked. “I’m not anxious to shoot it out with you.”
“I’m gonna truss up the goose,” he smiled, kneeling and wrapping Simmon’s hands behind him with the tape, enclosing his fingers in the sticky cocoon.” It’s almost sunset …”
He looked off up the hill.
“No shoot-out,” he said quietly. He taped Simmons’ ankles to a spur of rock and laid a long strip across his mouth. Simmons screamed in frustration but it was lost in the tape.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Joe said softly.
Joe shoved the Beretta into the waistband of his pants, in the small of his back. I was right behind him going up the steep, narrow trail. I could have reached out and plucked it anytime. I think he would have gone along with it if that had been my decision.
To this day, I question why I didn’t.
We made the summit of the ridge and crossed over to a flat, west-facing boulder with several bowl-shaped depressions in it.
Joe pulled out the pistol and folded himself into a lotus position in one of the depressions. He laid the Beretta on the rock between us and nodded to the western sky.
I settled onto the rock and looked toward the sunset.
What I saw left me literally breathless.
The sun was a fat, dusty red ball lying atop the distant line of hills. It’s corona was a warm gold the color of a wood fire that kaleidoscoped into whorls of peach, indigo, lavender, blazing pink and a purple the color of a Damson plum.
Below it, the world was a velvet black with streaks of emerald, touched with fiery orange out toward the horizon.
My god, I thought. This is what he was fighting for. He looked down from this perch, saw encroaching “progress,” and faced
the loss of the Elvenglade cabin and the technicolor sky. How could you look upon this place and not be changed, in time, profoundly. How could it not inhabit your soul, seep into your bones, meld with your spirit?
The sense of grief I felt in that moment was as searing as any I’ve ever felt. To lose this would surely empty you out, leave you grasping for contact with the world.
“Joe,” I said quietly, “I want you to go. I’m not operating under any legal authority. I have no protocol to follow, no oaths to uphold, and no one to contradict my version. Go. I can’t look at this and imagine that anything society, the law, or C.I.A. could do to you would be any worse than losing this. If I stayed here one more day, I’d never leave. But, I can’t just sit idly by, either, and let six lives go unanswered. You know you’ve lost this. That’s your punishment…that and the girl. It’s enough. I’ll handle Simmons. Go.”
“Colonel,” he said evenly, “the Colville Indians used to believe that, when you killed an animal, its spirit became a part of you. It’s why the hunting was always done by the young men. There came a point, as the hunters became older, when they came to believe that so many spirits were a part of theirs that hunting was like killing a brother. It’s why some of the Western tribes wouldn’t kill white men. They didn’t want us as part of their souls.”
“Like I said, I’m not smart about some things. I found a guy, very early on, who did the things I couldn’t; the planning, the thinking, the reasons to do…what I did. He was a doctor, a field medic. I got shot my second mission, and he patched me up. We talked a lot. C.I.A. was worried I told him stuff when I was under the morphine, so they recruited him. All he does is handle me, pass assignments, do the planning. I had the skill, he had the brains.”
“I’ve shot a lot of people, Colonel. I don’t keep track, but it’s over 300, counting ‘Nam and Laos. What if…what if the Colvilles are right? What if all those souls became a part of mine?”
“I’ve never enjoyed the job. I was just good at it. But lately…lately, I can almost feel…something in me, something that feels…open and vast. I have thoughts I can’t put down; thoughts about the world…the universe, maybe, maybe God. I don’t know. God, fate, karma, destiny, some damned thing like that. It happens a lot when I sit up here. This…this is the pure stuff of the world. The cave men saw this, just like we do. It never changes, never fails us, never is anything but perfect. Even when it’s cloudy, it’s still there. I still sit here and just…remember it.”
“I’m not a good thinker, Colonel, and the doc can’t help me now,” he said, his voice quavering. “Believe me, if a gun could solve this, I’d shoot you where you sit, much as I’ve always admired you. But…I can’t shoot enough people to fix it.”
“Joe,” I said gently, “I have a plan. Sell me this land. Sell it for a dollar. I’ll make sure it never gets away. Every year or so, you can sneak back, see this, patch your soul a bit. You may not believe it, but this was found on your property.”
I fished the gold nugget out of my pocket and laid it in his hand.
“It’s real, Joe,” I said urgently. “It’s gold. There’s a lot of it—enough to buy you a sunset anywhere in the world.”
“What’s your cut?” he smiled.
“No cut,” I said firmly. “I’ll put that in writing with Portale, Meeks, if you want.”
“You know everything, don’t you?” he chuckled. “God, I always suspected it could happen…I was just hoping it wouldn’t be this soon.”
“I’m hearing that a lot, lately,” I sighed.
“I’m a wealthy man, Colonel North,” he murmured. “The gold is just another problem. Imagine what happens to this land when word gets out about a gold strike…”
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Yeah,” Joe nodded.
We were quiet for several minutes. I could think of a thousand questions but not a damned thing to say.
“Colonel,” he said finally. His voice could have been any age. I could hear a lonely, different little boy in it; a quiet, brooding teen; an earnest young recruit lost in the fractured neverland of Viet Nam; the hesitant 30-something; the ambitious 40-year-old; and the 50-ish seeker sitting beside me. They were all still there, I realized. He probably wasn’t introspective enough to shed skins. He simply wore them all in layers, walking amongst them like a man lost in a blizzard. “Colonel, was I a good solider? Or was I just a dupe?”
“Good god, man,” I sighed. “I’m still trying to work that out about myself. What’s a good soldier? The simple view? You follow orders. So, did you?”
“Always,” he replied. “To the letter.”
“Then you were a good soldier, in most people’s eyes,” I nodded. “So was I. That works until you start to ask if what you did was right. I’ve got a lot of blood on my hands, too, Joe. What for? Did it improve the planet? I made widows and orphans, Joe, and then came home and bought a jet ski.”
“I’ll never know, will I?” the lovely, different kid asked.
“No,” I answered. “Neither will I. But, the truth? It’s too big a question. Lotsa people believe they did the right things but belief and knowledge are two different things. All I can say with a certainty is that, after all the thinking and worrying are done, you still have to look at yourself in the mirror every morning while you shave. And it’s kinda hard to shave a monster.”
The distant horizon was swallowing the sun. It was making a last desperate stand, painting the descending blue with shafts of orange and gold flame, bursting from the purple soup of the far hills.
“It’s perfect,” Joe said quietly. “The best I’ve ever seen.”
“Amen,” I nodded.
“Back in my cabin,” Joe murmured, “floorboard to the right of the hearth. You’ll see nail heads but they’re fake.
“Joe,” I said firmly, “get up, walk down to the Blazer, get in and go. Don’t even pack a bag. You have cash at the house, take that.”
I handed him the ignition wire. He laughed softly.
“Colonel,” he said without moving, “I wish I had met you in Laos. I’d like to think we would have been friends.”
“We’re friends now, Joe,” I implored. “That’s why I want you to go, now.”
“That’s good,” Joe smiled, the quiet, brooding teen and the seeker rose through the smile and infused it with wonder. “I made a friend.”
I was just turning to say something else, something desperate, desolate, half-baked, unconnected to his destiny. It certainly wouldn’t have amounted to anything useful.
His hand came up in an almost leisurely way but incredibly fast. The Beretta made its genteel bark as I looked into his eyes, at the dying sun reflected there.
He didn’t even flinch. He nodded slightly sideways and his hand, still gripping the gun, fell straight into his lap. His head came back to vertical but the sun was now reflected by closed windows, blank walls, a drying pool.
He slumped forward and then found balance and sat like a man who had nodded off while doing yoga.
I started to remove the gun, to do something to tidy up, improve something, commemorate a passage. Some gesture.
Finally, I settled for watching the last moments of his sunset, from his aerie, struggling to do it through his eyes.
I left him there, the only place he ever really wanted to be, and stumbled down the trail to the cabin.
The floorboard came up easily. A black leather satchel was wedged into the space between the support timbers. I lifted it up and out. A pair of keys on a blank ring dangled from the handle. Beneath the satchel was a brand new Beretta, same model, in a wooden presentation box. I lifted it gently out and sat with it in my lap for a few seconds, thinking. Then I laid it into the valise and got up slowly, suddenly feeling very old and tired.
I helped Simmons to his feet and led him down to the Blazer. He grunted and squealed until we were past Colville and then subsided into a sulky silence.
I drove up to the federal building in Spokane and reached acro
ss him. I popped the door, stuck two hundred dollar bills into his pocket and shoved him out.
He sprawled on the sidewalk, glaring at me malevolently.
“You got what you wanted,” I growled. “As you’ll find when you go back there. For the record—and tell your buddies in D.C. I said this—he was worth the whole fucking lot of you. As for me, you make a deal out of this, I’ll go straight to the Colville cops, the state patrol, and any newsroom that’ll listen. You’re getting a break here and it’s more than you deserve. From now on, you see me coming, you run the other way. We get face to face, you’ll leave in a bag.”
I slammed the door and drove to the airport. I abandoned Joe’s Blazer in the long-term parking lot and walked the quarter-mile to private aviation. I chartered a plane to Salt Lake and sat up front next to the pilot.
As I strapped in, my cell vibrated once, stopped, and then vibrated twice.
“No shit,” I whispered. “No shit.”
In Salt Lake City, I had about two hours to kill, so I holed up in a lounge in the main terminal and ordered a burger to go with my double Glenfiddich. When it got down to about 30 minutes, I went to the Enterprise counter and rented a Toyota RAV4 on a dead-end to Spokane. It cost a small fortune but I didn’t figure Jack would mind if it would help me wrap up this whole mess within the next 24 hours. I picked it up at their holding lot and drove it back to short-term parking, getting as close to the terminal as I could manage, and left it with the doors unlocked. If everything went right, I’d have my hands full and would need to hit the road immediately. After driving Jack’s rental Blazer, it felt like riding in a covered wagon but as long as it would cruise at seventy, I was willing to put up with it.
The 12:47 from Dallas was right on time. There were six women on it; three were over 70, one was in a wheelchair, and one was about eleven.
I walked up behind a slim woman with reddish-brown, spiky hair and ripped jeans and shoved the Eagle into her ribs.
“What…” she gasped.
Call Me Joe Page 25