Pardners

by Roy F. Chandler

  Dusk was approaching, and Byrne believed they should be finished for the day. He thoroughly washed his tractor and scoop before parking it close to the house. Bravo reappeared, and they examined the hole in the lawn with critical eyes.

  Shepard said, "Looks like you've cleared away everything incriminating, but you will have to put in a whole new lawn."

  Byrne saw it the same. "I've got ground to fill the hole, and seed to lay on the ground. We can pitch straw on top, water it good, and grass will grow quickly. It will look like a re-grading job." He grinned at his friend. "Lawns are poor up here anyway. No one will question."

  Before Bravo could intrude, Alpha said, "First thing we have to do is go camp hunting."

  Shepard shifted uncomfortably. "I don't see how camping out will be a help, what we have to do is . . ."

  Alpha groaned, "Not us, Bravo—them." His gesture took in the recent burial. "Those guys would not have wanted to leave a trail or a record of their stay. I figure they would have avoided the only motel we've got in this area, so they would have camped—probably in one of the two campgrounds doing business around here."

  Bravo snorted. "Hell, they probably just pulled off the road somewhere handy, and what do we care, anyway?"

  "We care because they may have left a caretaker in their camp."

  Bravo swore with intensity. "I hadn't thought of that. God, there could be a pair or more of them. Who could guess how many they might have in reserve?"

  Byrne's shrug was dismissive. "There won't be a crowd in their camp. Five men traveling around together is bad enough. Many more would attract real attention." He paused to consider. "There will be another car or truck—maybe two cars."

  Bravo got that immediately. "Yeah, five guys in a pickup with a four-wheeler crowding the two riding in back wouldn't be decent traveling, and anyone seeing them would remember." Shepard scrubbed at his hair as if it itched. "So, how do we find their camp, and what do we do when we find it?"

  He reminded Byrne, "This isn't Mexico, Alpha, and we can't just shoot them on the spot." His forehead wrinkled, "Can we?"

  Alpha laughed, somehow relieved by the thought of them stepping out of the sniper's pickup and pouring a magazine of .45 ACP hardball rounds from the M3s into the rest of the unsuspecting gang. Satisfying imagery, but maybe not the best technique.

  How to find them? Alpha led the way inside and went to a cabinet for a map that he spread on his kitchen table.

  "The best way might be to backtrack them through the woods, but that would take more than a little time. Those mountains are rugged, and even with their tracks to follow it would be slow going."

  Byrne drew routes across intervening ridges and along narrow canyons roughly depicting their way through the mountains to a distant hard road. He held his finger on that point and waited until Bravo's eyes caught up.

  Bravo repeated his question. "So, how do we find them?"

  Alpha tapped the map with his finger. "One of our two campgrounds is right beneath my finger. It is a state campground. The commercial camp is off this map and not too reasonable a choice.

  "My guess is that they set up about here, on a campsite that was not too noticeable, and just drove into the woods from right behind their tent. In fact, they used a map just like this. It is still in the cab of the sniper's truck. The forest service has them available in every campground and visitor's center, and they show most of the forest roads."

  Bravo had nodded as the explanation unfolded, so Alpha continued.

  "State campgrounds are primitive. They have pit toilets and cold showers. Rangers check them now and then to make sure whoever is camping is obeying the anti-littering and fire building laws and has dropped their money in the collection box. Registration amounts to listing a tent site and including the money. Otherwise, only an occasional cleanup crew is likely to be encountered. A team like this one could stay in there and hardly be noticed."

  Shepard was again scratching at his hair. "If there isn't an extra hand waiting, how will we be able to decide which camp belonged to these guys?"

  Alpha nodded as if wisely weighing Bravo's thoughts. "Why, we will just use our highly trained detecting skills, pardner. They've never failed us yet."

  "Detecting skills? Byrne, you couldn't find a McDonald's in a strip mall. I assume we will ask other campers as we drive around. God, what a terrible technique. We will probably end up being shot dead or arrested as roaming perverts.

  "So, when do we go? Are we going to shoot those M3s to see if they will operate? What vehicle are we going in?" Bravo's words slowed. "How did I get in this part, anyway?"

  Bravo's voice died before he added, "God, Byrne, I haven't shot anything alive since Mexico." Ignoring the mounted game animal heads within the room, he studied his partner, "Have you?"

  Byrne's lips pursed. "Nothing human until today, Tommy." He seemed to consider. "But it wasn't hard this time either, pal."

  Bravo weighed Alpha's answer. "I've thought about what we did down in Mexico for more than twenty years, Don, but I've never had a bad feeling about it.

  "I've met combat vets who still mentally bleed from what they got involved in. I've heard about others who have never gotten back to normal, and there are cops who had to quit because they shot one man, but you and me? We just seem to have shrugged off the slaughter as if it were a boyhood ballgame or something."

  Alpha kept the tone serious. "I wonder sometimes myself, pardner. Who were we to send on such a half-assed, boogered-up mission, anyway, and why on earth were we saddled with a jerk like Charlie?

  "Hell, Bravo, Dewey Lavender couldn't hit his ass with either hand. He couldn't hardly operate the equipment he was lugging along, and when I suggested getting out, he damned sure wasn't eager to stick around and keep working until his last picture was framed."

  "Charlie has been at a desk ever since, hasn't he?"

  "Same extension number every time I've called, and he was almost always there to answer. He gave me his home number once, and I still have it on file. When we contact him, we might try there as well as his office. Yeah, Dewey is a desk man."

  Byrne thought about their long past journey into Mexico. "The way I recall him explaining was that he had to punch some field experience tickets to get ahead. Our trip was also his first—and his last as best I could learn."

  Byrne continued, "I have always suspected that Charlie made that his only trip because he discovered how ill-suited he was for field work."

  Bravo snickered, a sound Byrne believed he had heard a thousand times.

  Bravo said, "None of us were properly trained for that job, Donny. We just raised up and shot the hell out of everything we could reach. Training or planning had nothing to do with it. Geez, what an amateur night. It is embarrassing to think about."

  Byrne sounded more than a little indignant.

  "Wait a minute, Shepard, We planned fast, and we successfully carried out our plan. We adjusted to meet unexpected interference, and we got away clean. We moved on what we had learned and made ourselves rich—and we again got away clean." Byrne halted to reconsider. "Well, I thought we got away clean, but here we are twenty years later still deep in the mess we thought we had buried."

  Bravo was admiring. "You should write presidential speeches, Doctor Byrne. That was spin like I've never heard outside of Washington."

  Byrne said, "Let's eat something, and we will talk while I am cooking. The fact is, we haven't gotten to the big things we have to figure out, and the first is, how in hell did they find out about us?"

  Bravo said, "I've been thinking about it every second since I heard that I was dead, and so have you, Don. My bet is that we have paused at the same possibility. Hell, it is the only probability."

  Byrne was clattering at his stove. "We are having fried eggs, bacon, and toast, and I want to think and talk some more before we assume too much."

  Shepard complained, "Why are we eating a breakfast this time of day? You used to do that when we were on the Noisy
Oyster. You've always been peculiar Alpha.

  "Of course we are going to talk, and we can discuss the implausibility that someone paid huge money for someone else to dig into our puny little operation's long buried files to discover who we were.

  "That will bring up the valid question of, who would have suspected that anyone other than the guerillas and later the Mexican Army was even there?"

  Byrne said, "Any number of people saw me grab the Mercedes. Hell, they were shooting at me, and they might have seen you scrambling through the jungle getting out of there."

  "So, what did they see, Alpha? Two unidentifiable figures hauling out to save their lives—and you might remember that they were shooting in my direction as well, and I didn't have an armored car to hide in.

  "Explain to me how that translates into American agents engaged in an operation that killed off most of a very bad family?"

  Alpha pondered as he fried. Bravo poked around finding plates and choosing more soft drinks from Byrne's refrigerator.

  Alpha said, "It is possible that some file clerk at Langley, or wherever the records are kept, picked out something he thought might reward him by selling. He could have contacted some of the Santos clan and peddled us to them."

  "Don, those files are two decades buried, why would anyone go back that far to find something he or she could make a buck on?"

  "Because it was big news when the Santos cartel was blown to bits. The papers were full of it, and intelligence agencies all over the world were interested—remember? The trials that put survivors in jail kept the thing going off and on for years, and Charlie told us that some of the Santos swore revenge and were trying to locate and kill the guerillas involved in the massacre."

  Bravo chose a seat at the table. Byrne told him to move because that chair was his favorite. Busily considering Byrne's description of the publicity the guerilla raid had fostered, Shepard shifted seats without grumble.

  Alpha dumped eggs over light on their plates just as the toaster popped two nicely browned bread slices.

  Bravo examined his eggs suspiciously. "You always make them too soft. They are probably runny." Alpha's bacon was pre-cooked, and the microwave took only seconds. Byrne sat across from his friend.

  Bravo helped himself to butter and peanut butter for his toast, and Alpha got up again to reload the toaster.

  Shepard sidelined the serious talk for a moment and admired the big game trophies hung on the walls of Byrne's home. Byrne had successfully hunted almost every animal the continent offered, and he had a decent representation of Africa's animal life mounted alongside the more familiar heads and horns.

  Don Byrne had chosen an open almost hunting lodge style for his home, and the kitchen was part of the great living room with its equally requisite stone fireplace at the far end.

  The house logs were two-foot thick ponderosa pines, flattened top and bottom, but most of the windows were high and could not be seen out of without standing. Bravo grinned internally at the window height. Paranoid Don Bryne would not have anyone looking in—or sighting rifles on him—through ordinary windows.

  At the moment, Bravo appreciated his friend's foresight. Two-foot thick walls might not stop heavy rifle fire, but they felt a lot more secure than the typical vinyl-sided, plywood sheathing with interior drywall protection afforded by normal housing—and it was powerfully good looking—in an outdoors, manly sort of way.

  Shepard, of course, could not let Byrne know his approval. He said, "With all of these dead animals hanging around, this is like eating in a morgue."

  Alpha was unsympathetic. "So, go outside and eat. I could use someone to draw fire."

  Bravo ate wondering more than a little at how easily Doctor Don Byrne had adjusted to being attacked by a five-man killer team, wiping them out, and then discovering his best (possibly his only?) friend was not dead after all.

  As if reading his thoughts, Byrne speculated, "I think we are all right for the next day or two, Tommy. Particularly if we can locate that camp and make it quietly disappear."

  Byrne chewed thoughtfully. "I cannot believe that whoever sent that team in here has another crowd only a few miles away waiting to rush in. Yep, we have time to plan a little, and to make tracks out of here, if that's what we decide on."

  Bravo said "We ought to check on Charlie," but Byrne heard a question in his voice.

  "Charlie." Byrne's voice was detectably cold, and Bravo accepted that his friend had pursued his own reasoning to arrive at Bravo's conclusion.

  "It was probably Charlie, Tommy, and I guess you already feel that, don't you?"

  Bravo suspected his voice was as cold as Byrne's. "Yep, Charlie is my best guess."

  His brow furrowed, Bravo asked, "But why, Don? Because they found out about him, and he ratted us out in some kind of save-his-own-butt deal? Or maybe he accidentally let it slip while bragging about his only field experience and got squeezed until he dropped a dime on us?"

  Bravo nodded to himself, "I can imagine Dewey Lavender making a lot out of his time as a field agent to anyone who would listen."

  Bravo again paused, "But why would he turn anyone onto us? The money from the Mercedes was never mentioned by anyone, and as far as Charlie ever heard, the guerillas did all of the shooting and got all of the money while we escaped just in time. That's what we told him, and that is what we reported both verbally and in writing."

  Byrne's answer came easily. "We will have to ask him, Bravo, but I doubt he explains the first time we speak with him. We may have to encourage him to tell us what, if anything, he has done."

  Byrne's cold eyes fixed on Bravo's. "That might not be easy to accomplish, pardner."

  Bravo did not sound concerned. "Those five men you just buried made things personal for you, Alpha, and I have a friend who died with his tongue hanging from his slit throat. I figure we're ready to convince Charlie to tell us what we want to know."

  "Dewey Lavender works for one of our country's biggest intelligence agency, Bravo. He might be able to bring the world down on us."

  "So, what other choice is there? We have to find out who is sending the shooters, and unless we decide to run to some far country, we will probably have to get them before they get us."

  The toaster popped, and Bravo said, "The toast is ready, Alpha. Yours is the burned piece."

  Chapter 13

  Before the sun had fully risen Byrne herded Bravo toward the sniper's pickup. Still tucking in his shirt, Shepard complained, but Byrne said, "We'll eat breakfast after we check out the campground, and nobody will care whether you haven't shaved or showered. You always did get on the road late, Bravo. Try to pick up the pace."

  Standing behind the pickup, Shepard still delayed. "I'm not slow, Alpha, I'm just wondering if in your hurry to get shot, by who knows how many bad guys, you noticed that the towing ball on this truck is nice and shiny?"

  Alpha looked himself. "I'll be damned, he was towing a trailer." He nodded admiringly. "You are good, Bravo. Slow, but good. Now get in the truck."

  They wheeled onto the main road, and Alpha said, "He could have been pulling a camper trailer."

  "Yeah, that makes for more comfortable living than pitching tents, and that sniper was not a young guy who might have liked living rough."

  "This truck has Virginia tags, so maybe the trailer has the same. There aren't likely to be many Virginia plates in our little campground. We haven't found a registration for the truck. If they had been pulled over, the highway patrol wouldn't have liked that. Maybe we can get an address for the license plate off the internet."

  Alpha said, "They were traveling off road and didn't need a registration. Maybe there is one in the trailer."

  Bravo mused, "If we are lucky, we might be able to just cruise in, hook up the trailer, and motor out. I'd like that."

  He switched Byrne's 1911 pistol in his belt to a more comfortable position. "I think we should have brought along those M3 sub-machine guns.

  "Man, Alpha, do you remember whe
n we fired those things at Bragg? You could just hold them on the target and blast away as long as you could see through the smoke. No real kick and no barrel rise to speak of—and what a wallop down range!"

  "Bravo, those guns got blown up. We don't know if they will shoot, and we can't test them right this minute." Byrne sounded disgusted. "Wouldn't it be really cool to open up with machine guns on a couple of guys in the middle of a public campground? You always did shoot too much. If you have to use your pistol, and I hope you don't, for God's sake aim the thing. We can't have a firefight in the park."

  They rode in silence until, his voice accusing, Byrne asked, "Have you even shot a gun since we were in Mexico?"

  Bravo sounded slighted, "I'm a life member of the National Rifle Association, Byrne."

  "I'm pleased to hear it, so am I, but have you done any shooting?"

  "Probably more than you have, Alpha. You are a hunter that gets out a few times a year, and you probably putter around handloading and shooting some bulls eyes in your yard. I, on the other hand, am a competitive marksman with both rifle and pistol."

  "Oh, really? Have you been to Camp Perry? I don't recall seeing your picture or your name in any of the magazines."

  "I compete at a different level with other weapons."

  Byrne detected hesitation in Bravo's explanation, and he struck. "You shoot air rifles, don't you, Shepard. You . . ."

  Bravo's irritation showed, "I shoot cowboy action, Byrne, with rifles, pistols, and shotguns."

  Many fans of other shooting disciplines believed cowboy shooting beneath their dignity, which explained Bravo's defensive tone, but Don Byrne was impressed, and he expressed it.

  "Damn, Shepard, you are the man! I've always wanted to try that stuff—fast draw, short ranges, weird targets, and some of them moving. How come you never mentioned that shooting?"

  "Mainly because you were always blatting about someone's cow you shot in some strange place and hung on the wall."

  Byrne chose not to be offended. "Well, I'm glad you are practiced because sooner or later, we will get to shooting." He cleared his throat, "Let's leave that until later. There are a few things I would like to know."