Badger Games

by Jon A. Jackson

  “I don’t suppose you have some stun grenades or tear gas on you?” Joe asked her.

  Jammie laughed. “Is that your plan?”

  “It’d sure be handy,” Joe said. “Any other suggestions?”

  “Let’s get a look at the situation first,” Jammie said.

  Frank was relieved to see them. He was standing well back from the entrance to the mine, among some ponderosas. “No movement,” he told them.

  Jammie sized up the situation. It seemed clear. The obvious solution was to wait for Bazok or Kibosh to come out as they normally would, in the morning. If one or the other showed in some reasonable time, they could easily position themselves on either side of the door, with another shooter in good cover back a ways to one side. With any luck, regardless of who came out, they’d be able to take that man. If it was Bazok, that would be all that was required. If Kibosh, it would remain to flush Bazok out, and there would be no reason for restraint. Kibosh, of course, would be able to inform them how well, if at all, Bazok was armed. Frank volunteered that Kibosh, at least, had a .30-06 deer rifle that fired a single shot at a time.

  But, alas, the element of the tunnel system made it a different game. Frank explained to Jammie that Kibosh knew a route through the mountain with an exit at the river, not far from Frank’s place. Paulie, at the other end with Helen, knew the exit that Kibosh had used before. The question was, Where was Bazok most likely to be right now? Sleeping unawares here, or on his way to the other side?

  “I think we have to assume the tunnel is in play,” Joe said. “Maybe Kibosh hasn’t told him about the route, and even if he has, it probably wouldn’t be Boz’s preferred approach to Frank’s place. But if he knows we’re out here, that’ll be his escape hatch.”

  Jammie saw the point. They could wait here for hours, in the belief that Boz was unaware of their presence. Or they could force the issue, drive him toward the other exit.

  “I hate to give up the easy option, by letting him know that we’re here,” Joe said, “but we could sit here until ten o’clock, maybe later, waiting for him to wake up and come out. Without easy communication with Paulie and Helen, someone has to go back, and pretty quick, to man the other end.”

  Jammie agreed. The people on the other end would have to wait, too. The communication problem was critical. Also, where should they put their main guns?

  What was needed was a SWAT team. “I think it’s time to call the colonel,” she said. Then she waited patiently while Joe argued her out of that.

  “Okay,” he said, “that’s settled. Now, two reasonable assumptions: they don’t know we’re out here yet, and Kibosh is still alive. Boz will need Kibosh’s help to get through. Let’s say he is able to get that help, willingly or coerced. How long will it take them, Frank? The minimum?”

  Frank said that the best he could recall, Kibosh had told him that he could get through in a couple of hours. Frank was skeptical of that figure—that had been a few years back. There was no telling what the tunnels were like now. Two hours would be the absolute minimum. More like three or four.

  “Could they possibly make it in an hour?” Joe asked. “Just in theory?”

  “No way,” Frank said. “If it were a straight path, it would take an hour to walk it.”

  But he was not happy about Joe’s idea of starting the hare. He feared that Kibosh was in too great a danger that way. He was for waiting, on the chance that Kibosh would come out, probably quite early. “He’s an early riser,” Frank said. “For all we know, he and Boz are getting along fine in there. Probably snoring away. Kibosh is a friendly old cuss. He’d take in a wounded bear, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s about what he’s done,” Joe said. “Face it, Frank: your friend is in mortal danger just sitting next to this maniac. You saw how he was at the house. The longer we wait here, the greater the danger becomes.”

  Frank wasn’t sure. Waiting seemed such an ideal solution. “Let’s wait till dawn, anyway,” he said.

  “It’s not going to happen,” Joe said firmly. “In about five minutes I’m going in. If Boz is in there we’ll have an exchange of fire. If all Boz has is the rifle, Kibosh’s main danger will be from us. I hope Kibosh isn’t hurt. The chances are … fair. The chance of us nabbing Boz by waiting is only slightly better. If we don’t get Boz—or, God forbid, Kibosh—then Boz will have a hostage and I don’t like your friend’s chances at all.”

  Frank gave in.

  “Here’s how we do it,” Joe said, glad the arguing was past. He was ready for action. He outlined his plan to them both. When it was clear and they accepted it, he told Jammie, “You stand on the near side of the entry, Frank on the far side. I’ll bring up the truck. You’ll be ready to fire at Boz, as soon as you’re sure of your target, Jammie.

  “Frank, just fire in the air, make some noise. If they’re not in there and we can be fairly sure that they’ve made an attempt to get through, at least one of us will have to stay here to make sure they don’t double back. I guess that’ll have to be you, Jammie. Frank can stay, if you like, and I’ll have maybe a half hour to get to the other side.”

  Jammie shrugged. “Let’s see what happens first; then we can figure out the rest. Somebody could get hurt.”

  Joe accepted that. He saw them stationed, then ran back down the hill. He set the H&K submachine gun on the seat of the Dodge Ram and stuffed extra clips into his pockets, Boz’s Glock into his belt. Then he revved it up. “Here we go,” he said to himself, and started his run. He raced the big truck up the road, the lights on, and at the little clearing before the entrance to the mine, he swerved and floored the accelerator. The big truck plunged into the frame structure of the entry with a splintering smash. Just before impact, he had a glimpse of Jammie jumping out of the way.

  The impact was greater than he had imagined. Having slipped the shoulder harness of the seat belt off so he could duck down to avoid any gunfire, he was thrown violently against the steering wheel. He could hear the shotgun blasting. Great! And there was, as yet, no fire from the AK-47. Momentarily dazed, he found the H&K and crawled out of the wreckage, incongruously thinking that the colonel was going to have to pay Frank for damage to his truck.

  The dust was totally obscuring. He decided that the best thing was to crawl under the truck, with its high clearance. Jammie was calling, “Kibosh! Get down! Get down!” The shotgun was still blasting, then stopped. Joe crept forward. Through the wreckage of the room he could see no sign of any movement. One headlight was still on, but the truck’s engine had died.

  He crawled on. Within a few seconds he was certain of what he had expected: the living space was empty. The entry into the drift was open. They had gone. But how recently?

  “Okay!” he called out. “They’re running!”

  Jammie appeared. She saw the situation. “They may not have gone far,” she said.

  “You want to wait here?” Joe said. “Or pursue them? We’d be in trouble in a hundred feet if Boz is waiting for us.”

  Jammie insisted on venturing at least a little ways into the tunnel. Unfortunately, they had only the single headlight of the wrecked truck for illumination.

  “I’ve got a light in my car,” Jammie said.

  “Well, get it,” Joe said. “Time’s wasting. I’ll stay here with Frank.”

  She was back in ten minutes with the car. The light she brought was sufficient for them to venture into the tunnel far enough to convince them that Boz and Kibosh had bolted for the other exit. The tracks of the two men were easy enough to follow. Jammie was all for pursuing them.

  “No,” Joe said. “For all we know, they’ve got an hour’s head start. That’s too much. I think you or I could hold this end, in case they double back. The place to wait is at the mouth, here. With any luck, we can maintain some kind of communication. But I’m for getting to the other end.”

  Jammie conceded the point. She would stay.

  Joe and Frank raced down the hill. While Joe drove recklessly down the mount
ain, Frank tried to call Paulie. He was unable to get through until they reached the freeway. “Keep a good watch,” Frank told him, explaining what had occurred. “We’ll be there as quickly as we can.”

  In fact, it took them more than a half hour. Joe drove straight across the meadow, bouncing over rocks and hoping he wasn’t going to rip out the transmission. At last, however, he had to cut the lights, and he stopped. They piled out of the Durango and raced over the ridge and down to the river.

  The river was freezing, much swifter and deeper than Joe had thought. It seemed only a foot or two deep, but once they were in the water it proved to have much deeper holes and was flowing quite fast. At one point, he lost his footing and was swept downstream, barely keeping the H&K aloft. But he regained his feet and saw that Frank was already on the bank.

  “It looked like such a placid stream,” Joe said, shivering when he caught up to Frank.

  “There’s places to wade, if you know the stream,” Frank said. He was wet only to his knees.

  It was still very dark, but dawn was beginning to show in the east. Paulie appeared. “The entrance Kibosh used is up there,” he said, pointing at the cliff.

  The entrance was little more than a dark spot, apparently seventy-five or eighty feet above the gravelly talus that sloped up from the river’s edge, here, to the base of the cliff.

  “As soon as the sun gets up,” Paulie said, “in about twenty minutes, the rays will strike the ridge up there and then the edge of the sunlight will quickly begin to drop down, lighting up that whole cliff face. It’s quite a sight, just a blaze of red and gold.”

  Morning mist was rising off the river. It was cold.

  Helen was waiting in the sparse shelter of some low brush, about fifty feet downstream. She had the other Glock and Paulie had the little .410 shotgun. Joe wished he had thought to bring another gun; the guns were back in the Durango, across the river. He sent Frank back to get the other AK-47 and the Stoner rifle. “Be sure you get plenty of ammo,” he told him.

  Boz had never been so glad to see anything like that pale patch of sky at the mouth of the tunnel.

  “By God, Kibe, we found it!” he exclaimed. He ran to the opening and suddenly caught himself. “Jesus Christ!” There was a huge drop to the river. Another step and he’d have fallen to his death.

  “Now what?” he said as Kibe came up beside him.

  “Aw, don’t worry,” Kibe assured him, “there’s a path. Jist gotta take it easy.” He paused and looked out. He was dead tired, to say nothing of still being dazed from when Boz had knocked him against the rock back there. He felt a little shaky. “I believe I’ll set a spell,” he said, “till I get my bearin’s.”

  “Might be better to wait till it gets a little more light,” Boz agreed. He looked dubiously at the narrow path. From up here he could make out the top of Frank’s house, beyond the ridge. Daybreak was a broad swatch of deep purple and red, staining the sky beyond the black silhouette of the mountains to the east, and growing redder by the minute—you could almost believe it was a massive conflagration over there, a forest fire. The sky above was lighter, especially toward the east, but many stars were still visible. Everything nearer at hand was in deep shadow. The path, what Boz could see of it, was at least a couple of feet wide, quite manageable. But like Kibosh, he was leery of trying an immediate descent. He didn’t feel all that stable himself.

  He sat down by the opening and felt around for his remaining bottle of whiskey. He comforted himself with a long draught. He looked over at Kibosh, who was drinking from a jar of water. Now was as good a time as any, Boz thought, to get rid of this encumbrance. He unconsciously felt his pocket, where the Star automatic nestled. But then it occurred to him that he still had to get to the house. Kibosh might come in handy as a hostage.

  “Kibe,” he said, warmly, “you’re a good man. You got us through. I thought I’d die in there. But we still got a ways to go.”

  “Sun’ll be up soon,” Kibosh said. He’d noticed Boz’s gesture toward his pocket. He reckoned that his night of terror was not over yet. He wondered if he’d have a chance to push this bastard off the side. He would do it cheerfully. He was worried now, about his friends. Would they remember this exit? He hoped so. But what if they hadn’t come to Seven Dials last night, after all? There was a good chance that he and Boz had undertaken this trip through the mountain in the dead of night just from being spooked by a bear, or a curious nocturnal badger that had come snooping around the Seven Dials, drawn by the smell of the sausages in the smoker. It could have been nothing more than a curious skunk! Maybe no one had been outside the door of the Seven Dials at all. Maybe Frankie and Paulie were still sleeping over there, at the house.

  The sun was rising quickly but hadn’t crested the mountains. Kibosh knew it would soon illuminate this cliff face, a grand sight if you were out there on the meadow. The morning fly hatch would be coming off along the river, which he could now see was blanketed with mist, below them. The trout would be rising. It would be a great thing to be down there with a fly rod, he imagined. Probably, at this time of year, some kind of Trico hatch, followed by some Baetis, maybe some caddis. He could weep.

  “It’s getting pretty light pretty fast,” Boz said. “Time to go.” He hefted the deer rifle and gestured for Kibosh to lead.

  So there goes that chance, Kibosh thought. He picked up the backpack.

  “Leave it,” Boz said. “We don’t need it no more. We’ll have to move fast, once we get down from here.”

  They stepped out into the still dim daylight. Above them, the sun was catching the top of the cliff. They began to move cautiously down the path.

  Below them, Joe saw the two men leave the hole in the wall and set out on the path. At last! Until this second he had feared the worst. It occurred to him suddenly that he could have been wildly, completely wrong, that Boz might not have been in the Seven Dials at all. The only evidence was the presence of Frank’s truck, but Boz could have abandoned it for any number of reasons. He could have allies, supporters he had contacted, who had come and picked him up. He shook his head, marveling at his failure to take that into account. But here they were, moving along the cliff wall like silhouette ducks in a shooting gallery.

  He hoisted the H&K. From this steep angle he could see only the head and shoulders of Kibosh and more of the upper body of Boz. The angle was miserable. It was too far for the H&K.

  Paulie had explained that the trail came down to their right, then switched back and headed toward them. From their position among the jumbled rocks they had very good cover. The trouble was, as the two men approached, Kibosh would be in the line of fire for much of the time. The best thing would be to wait until the hikers reached a point about fifty feet from the very base, the talus. At that point, they would be no more than a hundred feet away. There was a path that led down to the river that angled farther to their left. Helen was down there, well hidden in the brush. If the two men got that far, they would pass within touching distance of her.

  Joe looked at Frank, crouching nearby in the rocks. He was clutching the Stoner rifle gingerly, the tension evident in his face. “You okay?” Joe asked.

  Frank looked up and nodded at him. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” he said. “Do we just wait for them?” It seemed too easy.

  “He’s got the rifle,” Joe said. “If I can get to that rock there”—he pointed to a large rock at a point where the men on the path would pass, about three feet above—“I’ll be below him. I’ll shout for him to drop the gun. If he doesn’t drop it, I can take his legs out.”

  “You’d be in my line of fire,” Frank said. “I’m not much of a shot and I don’t know this gun …”

  “You’ll be all right,” Joe said. “Just remember what I showed you. When he gets to the farthest point of the descent, before the trail switches back, I’ll make a dash. If he sees me, Kibosh will be in our line. But maybe I can creep a little closer now. It’s worth the risk.”

  To Paulie, crou
ched a little farther down the trail, Joe called softly, “Hold your fire. That shotgun will be as dangerous to Kibosh as to Boz. It could be useful later, though.”

  Joe looked at the field of broken rocks between him and the covering boulder. It was in deep shadow. He crept out and began to make his way, in a crouch, across the space. Above him, now farther away than initially, he could see the two men carefully picking their way down the ramplike path toward the switchback. He scuttled forward, missed his step, and banged his knee painfully on a sharp rock. It was painful, but he didn’t cry out. Worse, however, the H&K had also banged against a rock. He saw Boz turn sharply, and Joe lowered his face to the rocks, afraid that the paleness of it would be visible. He waited.

  Boz heard a metallic noise. “What was that?” he said to Kibosh, stopping and crouching.

  Kibosh turned. “What was what? I didn’t hear nothin’.”

  “You didn’t hear that clank?”

  Kibosh shook his head. “Rock,” he said confidently. “The sun warms the rocks and they expand. They’ll be more falling.” He pointed upward. The sun was rapidly creeping down the cliff. As if in demonstration, a fist-sized rock came tumbling down, twenty feet away, struck a projection of the cliff, and spun out into space. “Little by little,” he said, “this mountain is falling down.”

  But he had heard the clank, all right. His heart bounded within him. Boz seemed convinced, however. He leaned back against the cliff and drank from his bottle.

  “Almost dry,” he said. “Hope they didn’t drink all my vodka back at the house.” He bared his teeth in his dirty, bristly face. It was a smile. He drank the last of the whiskey and then hurled the bottle out in a great arc. It smashed on the rocks below. He laughed. “No one there.” Suddenly a thought struck him. “You had another bottle in that pack, didn’t you? Damn! Go back and get it.”

  “You want me to go back?” Kibosh asked.