Badger Games

by Jon A. Jackson

  He began to think about what lay ahead. He was still baffled about this Frank Oberavich crap. There was always the chance that he’d made a big mistake, but he didn’t think so. The minute he’d heard the name from that dumb bartender he’d known this had to be the guy. That jerk had thrown him for a minute, with his description, but then he’d realized that it was just part of the crap the Home Guard always puts in your way. He should have shot the bastard, he thought. Maybe he still would, when he got back to town. That cheered him up.

  No, he was sure he had the right guy. And when he found him he could take care of business. Item number one: get the rest of the goods that the sneaky fucker had stashed. Boz could sure use the money. Item two: make sure the fucker didn’t testify to no goddamn war-crimes tribunal. Vjelko had made that clear.

  He came to the gate. It was locked. No sweat. He had one leg over the top rail of the gate when the lights came on, high up on poles. He was surprised, but more glad than frightened. He clambered over and set off up the road. He hadn’t gotten more than a hundred feet when the dogs arrived, barking madly. Boz got the gun out in time. They attacked and he clubbed the first one and shot the second one. The other two ranged off.

  Boz stood there, raging. His good coat was ruined. The one dog had taken a sleeve and nearly destroyed it, but the coat had saved him, Boz realized. The other two dogs stayed well away, racing about beyond the edge of the bright light, but occasionally showing themselves. It would be futile to shoot at them. He replaced the clip with a fresh one. Who knew what lay ahead?

  Incoming

  The dogs had accompanied them about halfway across the meadow before Paulie ordered them back. Away to the north were some dark, wooded hills; an owl was hooting over that way. “Strix,” Paulie said. He was walking with a steady sureness along a path, but paused to listen.

  “Who?” Joe said, and gave a low laugh.

  “Strix varia,” Paulie said. He gestured with the large, dry-cell light toward the distant woods. “Barred owl. You don’t know the birds at all, then?”

  “I know robins and crows,” Joe said, “and pigeons.”

  Paulie snorted, almost a laugh. He moved on. “What’s your deal with Tucker, Joe?” He spoke over his shoulder, slowing and looking back.

  Joe explained that it was a contract. He didn’t work for the DEA. “It’s a little complex.”

  “Ah. Yeah, I had the feeling that it was not, uh … well, you don’t seem like a federal agent. So, what kind of land are you looking for?”

  “Something just like this,” Joe said. “Not all this much. A few acres. What I was thinking, maybe we could strike some kind of deal. I’m a little concerned about Frank’s operation. It’s going to attract the law, if it hasn’t already. I don’t like that.”

  “Down this way,” Paulie said. He led Joe down the gulch again, but before they reached the stream, he set off up along the bench. “Why are you concerned about Frank?”

  “Who wants the threat of a raid?” Joe said. “Personally, I’m not bothered by him growing grass, but … it’s a bother. Maybe, if Frank isn’t too tied to this dope business, I could make it worth his while to drop it. I’d need his help, anyway, to set up my place.”

  “Just between us,” Paulie said, “I don’t think he makes much, if anything, off the grass. He isn’t really a dealer, if that’s what bothers you. Once in a while, he sells some to people he knows in Butte, or wherever, but he probably gives away more than he sells. The cops wouldn’t see it that way, I’m sure, but that’s the truth of it.”

  “What does he live on, then?” Joe asked.

  “He inherited some money from Gramp, like me, plus he’s got another little trust fund, from his maternal grandmother, so he doesn’t really need much, but he spent a lot on his infrastructure. Sometimes I think that’s what he’s really interested in, besides the plants, of course—fiddling with his ‘systems.’ A little capital might interest him, but so would the prospect of setting up another system. He’s got ideas about tapping into the hydrothermal potential around here for heating and power generation. He’d love the chance to dig some holes and lay pipe.”

  Shortly, they came to his camp. It was a large, wall-sided canvas hunter’s camp tent set up in a copse of aspens, well back from the stream on high ground but still within hearing of the tumbling water. Paulie led Joe in and lit a kerosene lantern. It didn’t give a lot of light, but Joe could see a camp table and a cot, a large footlocker that served many purposes, and a couple of folding camp chairs.

  “I’ve got a generator and lights,” Paulie said, gesturing with the flashlight, “but most of my domestic arrangements are outside. Frank would love to make it all interlocking and self-sufficient, but I’ve resisted. A certain crudeness and discomfort attracts me, I guess. The deer come around, and raccoons, so I’ve got to keep all the food in those coolers, inside. There’s bears, too, but I haven’t seen them. They’ll be going into hibernation soon, anyway. But so will I, up at Frank’s. I thought about trying to stick it out through the winter, but winters are just too brutal up here, even for my discomfort index. I should have used my time better, built myself a little cabin.”

  Joe looked about. “All the comforts of home,” he said wryly, “almost … cozy.” He made a shivering gesture with his shoulders. It had been warm enough hiking, and they were both adequately dressed, but the tent offered no real comfort other than a windbreak.

  “Exactly,” Paulie agreed. “It was fine when the days were long. Reading with mittens on isn’t so much fun. But I got well here, or at least I got better. Peace and quiet.” He began to pump up the fuel tank on a Coleman camp stove to heat water for coffee. “Frank tried to talk me into excavating into the hillside, with hot-water heating piped in from a thermal spring. But it seemed too … cavelike.”

  “You got well? Were you sick when you came back from Europe?”

  Paulie looked up. “I guess you want to know all about that.”

  Joe was only casually interested in Paulie’s adventures. As far as he was concerned, his job was done. He’d found the man. But, as always, there was more to the job than anticipated. Paulie was his ticket to reestablishing himself and Helen in this country. The more he thought about the possibilities, the more enthusiastic he got. Frank’s way of thinking was very congenial to him. If Paulie wanted to talk about what had gone wrong in Kosovo, Joe was content to listen.

  “Yeah, well, it seems a little odd,” Joe said. “You were doing okay, then everything goes silent. You come back here and spend months hiding out in the bush.”

  Paulie filled the kettle and set it on the burner. Then he sat down on the footlocker to grind the coffee beans with a tubular hand-crank brass device.

  “I haven’t talked about it,” he said, “not even with Frank. He never asked. I just showed up and he could see I wasn’t too … jolly. He helped me set up this camp. After a while things got better.” He cranked away as he talked.

  “What did you do?” Joe asked.

  “Went for long walks, fished, read. Had some long nights … woke up in sweats, that kind of thing. A lot of bird-watching. Thinking.”

  “What about in Kosovo?” Joe asked. “What were you doing there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Just looking around, fishing,” Paulie said. “I don’t know, maybe I was looking for a place to light. I guess you could say I was observing.”

  “Hell of a place for loafing,” Joe observed.

  “It was all right, at first. I had a good situation there,” Paulie said. “It couldn’t last, of course. The war was getting closer. We were up in the mountains, like this, kind of, only it’s a smaller place. Those folks, they don’t know remote like we know remote. But it was back in the hills. The war would get there eventually, but I tried to ignore it. Then I got involved with these smugglers, kids really. I should never have done that. I should have just left them to their …” He hesitated. “Games,” he went on. “I guess yo
u could call them games. It was their life, really.”

  Joe sat patiently in the camp chair, listening with half his mind. A breeze had come up, fluttering the canvas. He supposed one was more aware of it in a tent. He wondered what it would be like to live in a tent. It might get pretty old. But the Indians did it, full-time. They must have figured out how to make it comfortable but still portable, since they moved pretty regularly. How did they keep warm? You couldn’t have much of a fire inside a tepee, and most of it would go out the top … which would be why they were so tall, maybe …

  “… Bazooka, he called himself. He was trouble,” Paulie was saying. “I could see that right away. Coffee? It’s pretty strong, if you’re not used to it.”

  Joe tried it. Paulie served it in a tiny cup. It was strong all right. You could float an axe in this. It was also very sweet. He sipped and nodded. Handy way to make it though. You’d have to develop these kind of systems, he thought. Grind your coffee by hand, get used to fetching water. It was primitive, in a way, but Paulie wasn’t a slave to it, he could see. He’d gone to the trouble of finding good equipment, like that lightweight but sturdy cot, a really good sleeping bag, maybe take your clothes to be washed at Frank’s.

  Joe had caught a glimpse of a bike of some sort, probably a top-of-the-line mountain bike. Laptop computer. Run on batteries, but not for long—generator. Have to have some kind of converter, don’t you? For direct current. Maybe not. Frank would know about that.

  “… do you? I mean, privately?” Paulie asked.

  “Privately?” Joe said. “Well, yeah, basically. I always worked for large outfits. This deal with the colonel is private. That is, I’m not a government employee. Just a contractor. Contract for Service, that’s me.” He smiled. “But I’m not like a private detective, with an office, taking clients who walk in off the street. What’d you have in mind?”

  “Bazooka,” Paulie said.

  “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with all that, just peace and quiet,” Joe said, recalling the story he’d half-listened to.

  “I’ve had the peace and quiet. Now I’m able to think about it again. Just talking to you has cleared up my thoughts on it,” Paulie said. “But I can see I’d been coming to this. I made a mistake getting involved over there, but once you intervene it seems like you have a responsibility, to see it through. I was thinking we could work out a deal—for the land, I mean.”

  “I thought the deal was I wouldn’t say anything to the colonel, about finding you.”

  “That’s for openers,” Paulie said. “We haven’t discussed how much land you want, or where. An acre by the gate? Ten acres up in the woods? On the creek? There’s lots to talk about.”

  “So, we’re talking,” Joe said. “No hurry, the colonel can wait. I was just thinking … what if you didn’t really want a fixed living site—just to move seasonally? Low-impact kind of thing. How much land would that entail?”

  Paulie didn’t know. He said it would depend on how comfortably one wanted to live. A person could drag a trailer from one site to another, put in some minimal facilities like solar-power support, maybe septic tanks. But he wasn’t interested, Joe could tell.

  “What about this other guy?” Paulie asked.

  Ah, thought Joe, that’s what’s bugging him. “You thinking it might be this Bazerk character?”

  “It sounds kind of like him,” Paulie said.

  “Why would he be looking for you? Isn’t it the other way around? You want to find him?”

  “Yeah,” Paulie admitted, “now. You’re right, it wouldn’t make sense for him to come looking for me. You’d think I’m the last guy he’d like to see.”

  “I’ll say,” Joe cut in. “The guy screws up your act, waltzes off with your goods …” Joe hesitated. Paulie’s story hadn’t quite gotten to that point. It seemed headed that way, though. You don’t ever want to leave a guy alone with your goods. “Did he?” he asked.

  “Oh yeah, he took the goods,” Paulie said. He got up and went to the tent flap. He stepped out, partially, listening. “You hear something? I thought I heard the dogs. I hope they’re not running deer.”

  Joe hadn’t heard anything. “Maybe it was Strix, the owl,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Paulie said, but he didn’t come back in. “He killed them all,” he said. He spoke it to the wind, to the night.

  Joe wasn’t sure he’d gotten this right. “The people in the cave, you’re talking about?”

  Paulie came back inside. His face had a new look. It was haunted, but determined. “It took a long time to get that out,” he said. “Another mistake. I tried to hide it, even from myself. It’s a shameful thing, to be a part of that.”

  “You weren’t a part of that,” Joe said. It irritated him when people took responsibility where it didn’t belong to them.

  “I left him in the cave,” Paulie said. His eyes were glowing. “Those people were there because of me. Because Fedima thought they’d be safe, with me. He butchered them.”

  “All of them?” Joe was surprised to find that his breath felt short.

  “All but Fedima. He took her with him,” Paulie said. “I don’t know what happened to her. He probably killed her somewhere on the mountain, or he may have traded her to brigands, to help him get out. There are a number of possible scenarios. I’ve had a while to think them all out.”

  I bet you have, Joe thought. “Are you sure he got out?”

  At that moment they heard the shots.

  “Uh-oh,” Joe said. He followed Paulie out of the tent. They looked off into the night. There were no further shots, but there was barking, very urgent barking with a keening sound.

  Paulie grabbed the bike, but Joe stopped him. “Forget it,” he said. “You can’t go rushing back there. It’s better if we go together. Have you got a gun?”

  Paulie had a shotgun. He fetched it hastily. “Maybe you should take the bike,” he said. He was leaping with impatience.

  “No, you lead the way,” Joe said. “I wouldn’t get twenty feet on that thing in the dark. But watch that light. We don’t want to be seen.”

  They set off as fast as Paulie could go, with Joe loping along behind. Clouds had moved in, at least partially obscuring the stars and diminishing the available light. That slowed their progress, considerably. Both fell more than once, but they quickly ran on. It took them at least twenty minutes, Joe estimated, to reach the crest of the meadow, from where they could see the house. They’d had to douse the light earlier, so as not to alert anyone to their coming.

  From the crest they could see lights on at the house, including the orangish-pink yard light that Frank had turned on when they left. Nothing seemed amiss, except that one of Frank’s vehicles was gone. Joe thought it was the older pickup that had been parked next to where Helen had pulled up the Durango. Paulie noticed it too.

  “Somebody must have shown up at the gate,” Paulie said. “Frank must have gone to check.”

  But the shots? That gripped both their minds. They raced to the house, but as they approached, Joe held Paulie back. “Wait,” he said. “I’ll check it out. You cover me from here.” He pointed to another of Frank’s vehicles.

  Joe didn’t like entering the ring of light provided by the yard light, but he felt he had to arm himself. He raced to the Durango and rolled under it. He peered at the house and surroundings. There was no sign of any activity. He crawled to the back of the vehicle and opened that door as quietly as he could. He dared not open one of the side doors, as that would turn on the interior light. The back of the SUV was jammed with gear and Helen’s damned chain-saw sculptures. But he found his canvas gun satchel and dragged it out.

  He scurried back into the shadows, away from the car, and extracted a couple of favorite pieces. One, a nice flat Smith & Wesson .380 automatic, he jammed into his waistband at the small of his back, after making sure it was loaded. The other, a big, hulking Dan Wesson .357 magnum, he carried in his hand.

  Joe crept around the hou
se, keeping to the shadows, moving cautiously. He was almost to the greenhouse part when he thought he saw something inside the house. He sat and watched, praying that Paulie would not become impatient and do something stupid. At last what he took to be a human figure moved enough that he was sure it was Helen. She was standing against one of the huge posts that supported the beams. She was in shadow, but he could see a gleam of metal in her hand, held down along her leg. Very smart, he thought. It was also encouraging. It indicated that she was alone in the house, that she was not under the control of another, hidden, person. The problem was to prevent her from firing at him, if he appeared.

  He picked up a pebble and tossed it at a window, well away from himself. Helen instantly turned her head. He tossed another pebble. She understood. She said something, or at least her mouth moved, forming an “O”. He thought it was his name. But she hadn’t said it aloud, or the heavy, double-glazed windows had muffled her exclamation. Joe felt it was safe to show himself. He stepped into the light, just for a second, long enough for her to see him, and then stepped back.

  A moment later she was out of the house and around the back. Joe called to her softly. They embraced briefly. She quickly filled him in.

  The alarm had sounded, she explained. Frank had come to where she had already turned in. He had still been up, puttering with his plants. The dogs were out. Normally, he’d have put them in the pen to keep them from running deer at night, but they had gone with Joe and Paulie, so he’d assumed they were still with them. On the monitors he’d seen a man inside the gate. The lights at the gate had gone on automatically. Just a guy, apparently alone, and no car. Maybe a lost drunk.

  “A drunk?” Joe said, skeptically.

  “Well, he was staggering, Frank said. The dogs had come up and attacked him and the guy had shot one and clubbed another. Frank took the pickup to go sort it out.”