Pardners

by Roy F. Chandler

  Bravo had to stop because a bevy of beautifully tanned American college girls came swirling through.

  Alpha laughed. "You've been spouting that stuff for the last month, Tom. Look around you, this is almost paradise."

  He gestured toward the gaggle of pretty women. "Let's see now, you will give up this tropical heaven for," and he began to list on his fingers. "Earthquakes, brush fires, mud slides, smog, volcanoes, tsunamis, bad roads and heavy traffic, rampant crime, and . . ."

  It was Bravo's turn to hold up a restraining hand. "You've been all over that time and time again, Byrne. I am a rich man. I have more than three million dollars in the bank. I will invest that money wisely, and I expect to live well and profit handsomely."

  Byrne warned softly, "I would make small and quiet moves, Tommy. Eyes are always on anyone coming in loaded and making big waves. We will never want attention—particularly from government or the mob."

  Bravo groaned, "The mob? Geez, Byrne, what would those kind of people want with either of us? We're just ordinary guys. I made a little money gambling in Vegas, and you? Bravo smiled, "You will die with yours still in a bank."

  Shepard boarded his plane and was gone. They would keep in touch, but a time to be remembered (although never mentioned) had passed. Byrne turned his thoughts to his own projects.

  He, like Bravo, had more than three million dollars in a Cayman bank. He could live off the "more than" while gaining his degrees and for years thereafter.

  He had contacted Malcolm about buying the Noisy Oyster, and Malcolm was flying down to talk about it. Talk about the adventure just past, was a more honest explanation. Byrne would have to limit his descriptions and disguise the topography—even the part of the country involved, he decided.

  The boat had a permanent home in a nearby marina. Byrne intended living aboard until he felt a need to move ashore.

  He might justify his expensive boat by chartering to tourists wanting a sail around the bays and harbors. He doubted he would have much time for more than that. Despite wisecracks about offshore medical schools, the English school he planned to attend was demanding, and he would earn his paper.

  That would take years. Years in the sun with vacations in the states. Years of learning about things he was interested in, and there were the pretty college girls that flocked to the islands in the season.

  Then? Then Don Byrne, physician, would move north into the big sky country. He would establish or buy into a practice. He would hunt in the fall, and ski in winter before he fled back to his islands for lengthy vacations.

  Byrne visualized a log home with big game trophies on the walls and racked guns with gear in every corner and cupboard. Woods and mountains would rise behind the house, and he might want horses, or a lake—maybe.

  He also imagined the pleasure he would gain from securing his future with the best of survival storage and planning, but that was later and not for now.

  He liked planning and scheming—preparing, he preferred calling it—so he also worked out swift escape routes and secret retreats here in his tropical paradise, just in case something he could not name came down on him before then.

  Chapter 11

  Idaho 2008

  How in hell had it come to this?

  Don Byrne, physician, healer, decent, ordinary citizen stood over an enemy he had just shot and allowed to die as consciously uncaring as if it were all a game.

  Men dead in his yard—blown to bits by explosives he had placed years before, and this killer bled-out alongside his own truck? Who or what could have placed this team of murderers on a trail so old and so obscure that discovering or following it had seemed impossible?

  It had been more than twenty years since he and Bravo had shot up the drug lords and gotten away with their loot. Now Bravo was dead, and he, a middle-aged danger-to-no-one had been stalked and lethally attacked. That he lived was not due to alert and clever maneuvering. Only his often-enjoyable paranoia and Bravo's posthumous warning had saved him.

  For all of the years since he and Tom Shepard had shot into the drug lords, Don Byrne had pretended to expect some sort of retaliation.

  And pretended was the right word. There had seemed no possible way for anyone to have traced two unknowns from their virtually unobserved actions in southern Mexico to decades-later attempted multiple assassinations in northern America.

  For all of those years, Alpha had played at "being ready." He stored, and he dug at his mine secrets. He carefully disguised monetary expenditures, and he weighed possible as well equally impossible threats against him.

  That truly had been a game, and he had enjoyed it, but this well planned and murderous assault was something else. Hiring men of the sniper's abilities would have been expensive. Organizing and developing the attack appeared to have been almost military in design.

  Who? Who had sent the killer team? Who had ordered a six-man hit team to eliminate two or three sedentary, out-of-the-game targets?

  Byrne applied Ockham's razor and believed his first and simplest conclusion to be right. The attack had to come from the Santos family, but that almost certainty barely touched the "Who" question.

  The old men had died at the scene, all of them, as had their sons. Younger sons? Possible, of course, but neither Alpha nor Bravo had the slightest idea if such sons, such angry and vengeful sons, even existed.

  A few bodyguards had survived the massacre, but Charlie had reported that they had all been run down and jailed by the Mexican government. Would such men command the resources to launch international attacks, and at least as doubtful, would such hired help have been interested in studied, long-term revenge?

  Alpha shook his mind free. Now was not the time. All of that would have to wait. Right now, he had to dispose of the sniper's body and hide all hints of his presence. Then, he would clean up whatever mess had been made at his home.

  That cleansing might entail more combat. The sound of his trap's explosion had been powerful, but he found it hard to accept that all four of the assassins had stood close enough to be enveloped within the blast. His booby trap might not have killed them all. Wounded or undamaged enemies could be lurking.

  Even now, one or more of the killer team might be struggling back to their transportation. Byrne forced himself into motion. He again listened to the forest and allowed his eyes to study all that he could see. He was thankful that the mercenaries were armed with short-range sub-machineguns. To be certain of hitting with such a gun, a killer would have to approach within seventy or so yards. The open woods would not allow that close an approach to go unseen.

  First would be the sniper. Lifting a dead man is always difficult. With death's fluidity, weight seemed to double, and a corpse flopped awkwardly. When struggling with the shot-through and recently deceased, there was also the inconvenience of becoming blood soaked.

  Byrne placed one of the aluminum ramps used for loading the four-wheeler against the tailgate. He dragged the sniper into position by his shirt collar, and in a series of powerful jerks, he slid the body up the ramp and into the pickup truck's bed. He replaced the ramp and studied the killing scene.

  There was a lot of blood. Using a length of dead limb, Byrne scuffed the blood spill and mixed it within normal forest floor humus. Within hours the blood would turn black and be very difficult to notice. If discovered, any normal person would assume a deer had been taken. What sort of paranoid freak would suspect human blood? None such around, Alpha hoped.

  He tossed the bloody-ended stick into the truck bed, pushed the sniper's rifle out of his way, and climbed into the truck's cab. The Ford's engine turned as if it were new and Byrne began a twisty drive back to whatever waited at his home site.

  Chaos!

  Byrne stood above the hole blasted into his lawn. Earth had fallen back in on itself but the hollow was still nearly six feet deep. Human remains were scattered. He could pick out three torsos, most limbs, and a separated head. The sniper had seen his entire team wiped out in one devastatin
g blast. It was no wonder he had used great caution returning to his truck.

  Alpha also saw the four M3 grease guns. One was severely bent at the receiver, but although thrown about, the others appeared more or less undamaged. Byrne felt good about that. M3s were hard to find, and they might come in handy sometime.

  His booby trap, emplaced so many years ago, had worked just as he had planned—actually, better than he had planned. Examining the hole, and some broken house windows, Alpha judged that he could have used less dynamite, but there was nothing damaged at his house that he could not replace or disguise in short order.

  The sniper's pickup was safely parked within the trees, and Byrne had reconnoitered on foot. Nothing unusual lived near his house, and his count of the dead matched the kill team's roster. He was damned well pleased by that, but he had to sanitize the place and do it fast. First would be the bodies, all five of them.

  Byrne opened his equipment shed. He could afford and had bought the biggest John Deere yard kit made. His lawnmowers were ganged, and he could cut his grass in short order.

  Everyone living far from town had similar vehicles for mowing grass and snow plowing. This job would be earthmoving, and he had the tools needed. Byrne attached his biggest scoop to his over-large garden tractor. His backhoe and his scoop were big enough to dig fast and jerk tree roots from the earth.

  Alpha's useful paranoia tightened. Someone would come looking for the missing team—although that might be years from now.

  Searchers would, of course, suspect the silver mine, but that at least for this tme, would not be his burying place. The countless tons of spoil excavated by mining had been used to create a long ramp from the prairie floor to the mine entrance. As the mine deepened, the road had been widened and re-widened until a graveyard of dirt and rock covered a hundred acres.

  Doctor Byrne's first improvement had been to spray Crown Vetch seed with fertilizer attached across the ugly diggings. Since then, he had regularly planted trees. Now a lush crop of animal-edible Vetch thickly covered the once barren spoil with native trees growing strongly here and there.

  Detectives might also suspect the spoil field, although such a search appeared to Byrne as financially impractical. Alpha's body depository was better.

  Byrne drove his tractor well up the mine's long approach ramp, dropped his bucket and began scooping a deep hole from the roadway itself. He went down nearly ten feet, setting the tailings aside for later refill.

  The digging took an hour, and Byrne was returning to his house to gather and permanently bury everything undesirable when an unrecognized automobile turned from the highway into his long driveway.

  Byrne cursed to himself, but continued on and parked the John Deere before entering his home. Inside, he moved quickly. Byrne could not believe his visitor was somehow connected to the bodies lying around his property, but whoever was coming could not be allowed beyond the front porch. He focused his binoculars on the approaching car. He could see one occupant, but behind the tinted glass the figure was unrecognizable.

  Byrne continued watching until the car stopped in the normal parking area. The driver's door opened, and a familiar figure stepped forth.

  Byrne's knees weakened and his binoculars wobbled. His voice sounded strangled, and he managed only two words. "Holy Hell!"

  Steadying his nerves and wiping astonishment from his face, Don Byrne went through his front door and onto his porch.

  The visitor spoke first. Bravo said, "It doesn't look like you took my warning very serious, Don." He extended his hand for shaking, and Byrne took it with genuine spine-tingling pleasure.

  Byrne wished to play out the game, maybe asking with exaggerated cool, "What warning was that, Tommy?" But he felt beyond gamesmanship. Instead, Byrne said, "Honest to God, Shepard, I thought you were dead."

  Unabashedly, the two friends fell into a backslapping embrace. "Bravo said, "The rest of the world thinks I am dead, Alpha, and you had better start living smarter or you and maybe both of us will be."

  Byrne had to know. "I got word from your lawyer. He said you were murdered and given a Colombian necktie. How . . .?"

  Bravo pushed Byrne back inside his own doorway. "Right now, I don't like standing with my back exposed, Don. Let's talk inside—with the door closed."

  Byrne said, "Never mind all of that. If you are alive, who got killed? Who knows you got away? Do you know who attacked your home? Do . . .?"

  Bravo was at the refrigerator. "You got any soft drinks, Don?" He found the cans. "Yeah, your latest favorite, Diet Mountain Dew."

  Byrne said, "Damn it, Tommy!"

  Shepard threw up his hands defensively.

  "All right, it's just that I am so pleased and more than a little surprised, to find you on your feet and thriving that I can't get down to telling."

  Bravo gathered himself. "I've been up in the Cascades looking over a couple of pretty nice real estate deals. I've been enjoying myself for more than a week, but when I called in, my lawyer about collapsed on the phone. He told me that I was supposed to be dead, and that someone else, obviously, had died instead of me."

  Bravo pulled at his soft drink. "I told him to tell no one that I was alive until he heard from me, which would not be today. I called you, but got no answer, so I piled behind the wheel and came here to see how you had made out."

  Shepard looked about, finally noticing the broken glass on the floor and three shattered windows. "I guess someone did drop in for a visit."

  He nodded at the window damage. "I thought you would be dug in deep, but here you are riding around on your tractor like nothing was happening."

  Bravo again paused, so Alpha said, "So who did they kill, Tommy?"

  Shepard said, "Well, I've got a cat." He registered Byrne's surprise. "I know, I am allergic to cats. I guess I don't really have a cat. He just wandered by, and I got into the habit of feeding him, and he sort of depends on me—I think. You never know about cats."

  Byrne snarled, "Tommy!"

  Bravo went on, "I have an acquaintance who also comes through once in a while. He's an old soldier who didn't adjust too well after the Vietnam War. He agreed to live in, take care of the house, water the plants, and feed the cat now and then. I don't know for sure, of course, but I guess it was him."

  Bravo shook his head, and his voice turned to ice. "I'll want whoever killed him, Don. He was just a worn out old veteran who was no danger to anyone. Nobody deserves dying like that."

  Byrne said, "Well, he had something left because he killed one of them."

  Bravo's eyes popped, "He did?" How do you know that? My lawyer didn't say anything about anybody else being killed."

  Byrne waved his friend toward the back door, and they stepped out into the back yard.

  Tom Shepard froze in his tracks. His head swung across the bomb crater, and Alpha saw him hesitate and stiffen at each destroyed body.

  It was a short silence before Bravo said, "You must figure you got 'em all, Don, or you wouldn't be out riding your tractor." Then words failed. It was Bravo's turn to exclaim, "Holy Hell!"

  Byrne sighed aloud. "Five of them, Bravo. There's one more in a pickup back in the trees. That one said they had killed you and lost one of their team doing it."

  Shepard said, "Yeah, but how did you, I mean, why did they all stand together and get blown to hell? Don't . . ."

  Alpha said, "I'll explain while we bury these sorry bastards, but I will tell you right now, that your lawyer just barely got to me in time. An hour later, and I'd have gone down for sure."

  "He told me he was slow in calling, Don, but you were all right when he talked with you. When was that, this morning?"

  It did not seem possible that the lawyer's call had come only hours before—all of this in one daylight? Byrne felt his senses rebel, but there was work to be done. They could talk while they labored.

  Byrne outfitted his friend with work clothes from his closet. They were about the same size, Byrne a bit thicker, Bravo an inch talle
r. They wore thirty-six waists loosely, and their feet fit comfortably in nine and a half boots.

  Alpha opened a gun cabinet and suggested, "Pick yourself a pistol, Bravo. We shouldn't be caught empty handed."

  Bravo snorted, "I'm never empty handed, pal." He showed his belt-holstered pistol. "Took me a year and too many bucks to get a concealed carry permit in California, and I might be carrying illegally up here, but even this puny nine millimeter beats trying judo."

  Byrne said, "Pick something that will stop somebody and load a pair of magazines. I can't believe that another mob will rush out of the woods, but we should be ready."

  Byrne added, "I'm getting back on the tractor. The quicker these guys are out of sight, the safer I will feel. Hell, injured people show up here all the time. Office hours don't mean much in this country."

  He finished saying, "It might be best if, after you change out of those citified clothes, you took one of those scoped rifles and made yourself comfortable outside where you can see around.

  "I know we need to talk a lot, pardner, and we can do that as soon as I've finished burying."

  Alpha closed saying, "You want to say a few words over them before I start covering, Tommy?"

  Bravo's grin was as cold as Alpha knew it would be.

  "Yeah, Goodbye!"

  Chapter 12

  Byrne frisked then dumped the bodies into his burying trench and used the back of the John Deere's bucket to pack them firmly. He covered the corpses with layers of contaminated soil from the blast area. Then he loaded on mining spoil and shifted to the sniper's pickup to compact the covering.

  Byrne rolled around on the rocky covering until it felt solid. He looked around for Bravo, but his partner stayed disappeared—keeping an eye out, Alpha assumed.

  When the road was refilled to its original grade, Byrne compacted an extra two inches of spoil over the new graves to allow for settling and hauled anything not used to his gravel pit where it blended in with other extra material.