Badger Games

by Jon A. Jackson

  “But to have these suspicions raised in the same breath as your name!” Ostropaki said. “It’s outrageous. After all we did, with Franko. Oh, Colonel, that was a beautiful thing. Poor Franko. I felt so bad.”

  “Ah, I wanted to ask you about Franko,” the colonel said. “What did you hear about him?”

  “Don’t you know?” Ostropaki was saddened to have to tell him that he had heard, from one of his torturers, the monster Bazok, that they had captured Franko. “They lie, of course,” he said, “pretending to know more than they do. But it seems they knew some things about Franko that I didn’t. He was captured with some KLA terrorists, they said. He had resisted their persuasion for a long time, but eventually he told them everything. That’s how they discovered my perfidy.

  “I insisted that I didn’t know the man, but this Bazok, he said he knew all about our collaboration. Well, that’s how they talk, of course. But I understood, from what Bazok said, that Franko didn’t get out. This Bazok, even after what I had seen and been through, he made my hair stand on end, describing some of the things that Franko had endured. Still, you know … why did they continue to be so interested?”

  “I see what you mean,” the colonel said. “If they had gotten so much information … but I dare say, the rationale given was that they must verify one prisoner’s confessions with another’s.”

  “Precisely. But I must ask you, Colonel … please forgive me … but is there anything to this woman’s suspicions? I’m sorry—I’m a man of the world, you understand, a skeptic but not a cynic.” He looked the colonel directly in the eyes.

  “None whatsoever,” the colonel said simply. “Quite the reverse.”

  “I didn’t believe it for a second,” Ostropaki said. “But I felt that I must hear it from you. Franko affected me very much, you see. He was a good man, a decent man. That is why I contacted you about him. I felt that he was exactly the sort of man you were thinking about, when we spoke in Athens. An idealist. But in this world, in war, especially in the Balkans, an idealist is just … what is the idiom, ‘a fish in a barrel’?”

  “That’s … that’s close enough,” the colonel said. “Tell me, what else did this woman have to say about Franko?”

  “Nothing. She had the snapshot, but that was all.”

  “So you didn’t get the impression that she actually knew anything about him, beyond a name?” the colonel said.

  Ostropaki shrugged. “It didn’t seem so.”

  “And what was her name?” the colonel asked.

  “Sanders. A tall, slim young woman, with frizzy reddish hair. She seemed quite capable. Very efficient, cold. You see why I was worried. I thought I must tell you as soon as I had the opportunity, but privately. So, as there was a task to be done here, I took the chance of being arrested.”

  “It was a smart thing to do, but risky.” The colonel glanced at his watch. It was after four. His flight would not leave before seven. In Montana, it would be two in the afternoon.

  “This Ms. Sanders,” the colonel said, “she has worked for the DEA, in the past. But I believe she transferred to another agency. What agency did she say she worked for?”

  Ostropaki looked thoughtful. “She never really said,” he replied. “She showed me some identification, with a picture, and I think—foolishly it now seems—that I took it to be … well, I’m not sure what I thought. Some U.S. agency. You have so many, with different initials. I’m sorry.”

  “This was last week,” the colonel said. “Did she seem to know that you were coming to the States?”

  “No. But it was not a secret,” Ostropaki said.

  “How long will you remain in the U.S.?” the colonel asked.

  “Until the end of the week,” Ostropaki said. “I have to see about some refugees, provide the documentation they need to stay in this country. Here, let me give you my telephone number.”

  They exchanged numbers, and the colonel promised to call him before he left and, if possible, to return to New York to see him. He was very grateful to Ostropaki, he told him, and delighted that he had survived. They had feared that he was dead. It was possible that they could work together sometime in the future. But for now—the colonel glanced at his watch—he had to run to catch the shuttle.

  He did not catch the shuttle. Anyway, it wouldn’t leave for a couple of hours. But he had to get free of Ostropaki. Instead he went to the operations office, identified himself, and was allowed to use a private telephone. He tried Jammie’s cell-phone number. There was no response—“The party you are trying to reach is either out of range or otherwise unavailable,” said the voice. He really wanted to contact Joe Service, but, of course, Joe had not provided him with any contact number.

  He called the DDO’s office and, luckily, caught him before he left for the day. “You were right, sir,” he reported. “We may have to give Ostropaki a medal.” He went on to explain what had happened, but he left out any mention of Ostropaki’s need to contact him, attributing the false betrayal to a rival, as he had with the NYPD. Nor did he mention Jammie Sanders.

  “I just wanted to let you know right away, sir,” Tucker said. “I’ll have a full report for you, but I’ve been talking to one of my people, and it looks like I might not get back to Washington this evening.”

  The DDO said that was fine, the report could wait. He was obviously pleased.

  Next the colonel called Agnes and asked her to run down, if she could, a phone number for Frank Oberavich. While that was in progress, he called Dinah Schwind, in Seattle.

  “When you suggested Jamala Sanders for the Butte job,” the colonel asked her, “was that your suggestion, or hers?”

  “I didn’t suggest her,” Schwind protested. “You suggested her. Oh, you mean when I told her about the situation? Mmmm, let me think. I guess … well, you could say that she volunteered. Why? What’s happened? Is Joe—”

  The colonel cut her off. “Did she ever approach you about the L—about the group? Not by name, necessarily, but about groups like that?”

  Dinah had to think. “I’m not sure,” she said. “It was a topic of conversation between us, from … oh, way back. You know, when agents are grumbling about the bureaucracy, the politics…. But if the question is did she ever inquire about my knowledge of the existence of any such group? No, I don’t recall her doing that. When I broached the idea, though, she jumped right on it. I told you that.”

  Tucker quickly briefed Schwind on his meeting and conversation with Ostropaki. “Which raises the question,” he said, “what does she want with Joe?”

  “Joe?” Dinah said. “Don’t you mean Franko?”

  “Well, maybe it’s two questions,” the colonel said. “I was looking at the files on that operation this morning, and I don’t recollect any indication that she knew about Ostropaki. She could have. But she worked only on the receiving end of his intelligence.”

  He felt insecure about this telephone conversation, so he didn’t say what he was thinking: his impression was that Jammie hadn’t heard about Franko before she was recruited for this present mission. But Kravfurt seemed to know about Franko, and Sanders had worked with Kravfurt…. Only, what would she have heard beyond the name? Franko was ostensibly a straightforward, unnamed DEA asset, controlled by Ostropaki. It was impossible to know what the extent of scuttlebutt might be among agents.

  More to the point: if Sanders was investigating the Lucani, what would be the value to her of Franko?

  Dinah was thinking along the same lines. She had reported her conversation with Jammie to the colonel, with some omissions, to spare his feelings. Joe would interest Jammie, she thought now, as a potential weak link in the Lucani organization. Then another thought intruded: what if Jammie’s interest was, in fact, Bazok?

  Apparently, the colonel had reached that same point in his thinking. “Bazok?” he suggested, almost idly.

  The answer to that hardly needed to be spoken: Bazok would interest Jammie only if she was working for some other group, or
agency—say, the international tribunal. Or … Zivkovic. Such a possibility was breathtaking for Schwind.

  The colonel seemed to read her mind, three thousand miles away. “It’s not unheard of,” he said. “Theo and I were discussing something along those lines, in a slightly different context.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Presumably she would be known to Bazok.”

  The line was silent while they both pursued that thought.

  “Here’s a notion,” Tucker said, finally: “Say Bazok was … what’s the term? … a badger bait? Badger hound? You know, the expendable dog one thrusts down the hole—”

  Quietus

  “The responsibilities of command” was a phrase that Joe Service could not recall ever having employed, and yet it seemed unavoidable. Perhaps he’d heard it from Colonel Tucker, but he couldn’t recall the context. It sounded like something that Tucker might say. But at the moment it was an issue for Joe. He had a drunken, armed mass murderer wandering around inside a mountain, presumably lost and in a state of desperate panic.

  To apprehend this maniac, he had a crew of three men and two women. Two of the men were willing but less than competent for the task; one was willing and competent, definitely useful, but aged and exhausted. The women were competent, but at least one of them was overmatched physically, while the other had ambiguous motives.

  He had a communication problem between the elements of his crew. There were also ominous, omnipresent dangers of public exposure, complications of law, and … what else? Oh yeah, they were all dangerously tired, from both their morning’s exertion and their lack of sleep. Joe was no exception. Maybe that was why he had shunted aside the problem of multiple exits.

  To be sure, Joe was aware of the exit problem, but he had largely discounted the possibility that Bazok might backtrack to the Seven Dials entrance. Kibosh had convinced him that Bazok was so confused, so demoralized that he would never attempt to go all the way back, and even if he did, he’d never find his way. Joe wasn’t so sure, on reconsideration. The man was desperate, and desperate men do things you can’t predict.

  The communication problem was keyed to the exit problem. There was no response on the cell phone from Jammie. Joe felt that he’d made a mistake in leaving her on the other side. He could use her more effectively here. But then if she were here, one of the incompetent men would have to take her place over there. Damn the pressures of command. Joe longed for the days when it was just him against a quarry, or at most him and Helen.

  There was nothing for it: he’d have to send Paulie or Frank to find out what was amiss with Jammie. One of them, or even both, could take Jammie’s place and send her back to this side, where the action was most likely to be played out.

  Frank had a suggestion: why not use the dogs at the Seven Dials entry?

  “You mean, to track Bazok?” Joe asked. “Would they go in?”

  Frank said they would. They weren’t trained tracker dogs, but they would go after Bazok. “They’ve got a taste for his blood,” he said. “He killed their brothers. Dogs don’t forget that.”

  Joe didn’t quite believe this. He thought it was attributing human feelings to dogs. However, he didn’t know anything about dogs. Maybe it was so. “But,” he said, “what if they get lost? Then what? What if you get lost, assuming you’d be with them? Then we’d have to look for both you and them. I don’t know …”

  Still, there were attractive advantages to the scheme. It would expand Joe’s available manpower. The dogs might drive Bazok out, or at least keep him from backtracking. “How about this?” he suggested. “You take the dogs into the tunnel, on a leash, but no farther than the first side tunnel. That ought to prevent Bazok from using that exit, and there would be no risk of anyone getting lost.”

  Frank was convinced that the dogs would follow Bazok’s scent. They wouldn’t get lost. But he had no appetite for accompanying them deep into the mountain, so he agreed to Joe’s suggestion. Only now Paulie volunteered for the job. He claimed to have better command of the dogs—Frank conceded that—and anyway, it might be better if Frank manned the house, to answer phones, either from the searchers or from outside.

  Joe sighed and agreed to that. Once Jammie returned, she and Helen could cover the exit from which Kibosh and Bazok had emerged, now more than an hour ago. Joe and Kibosh could explore some of the other possible exits on this side. In the meantime, they could all get a little rest, keeping a watch on the exit, until Jammie returned.

  Frank and Paulie went off to get the dogs and rustle up some food and drinks for the searchers. Kibosh slept, curled up in the shade of some pines along the river. Helen crouched just inside the mine exit, waiting and watching. Joe lay down for a while near Kibosh, but he only dozed. They were within visual range of the other possible exits—Joe kept an eye on them.

  Soon enough, Frank returned with sandwiches, coffee, beer, and some cookies he’d found in the pantry. “They’re only store-bought,” he apologized, meaning the cookies. Joe ate his share anyway, without complaint. He glanced at his watch. Paulie had been gone for forty minutes. It was a little early to expect Jammie, but Joe asked if she had called in. Frank said she hadn’t. He hiked off to take lunch up to Helen.

  On his way back down, Joe told him to let him know as soon as he heard from Jammie. He was getting restless, now, eager to wake up Kibosh, snoring in the shade, and get started on their part of the search.

  It was a beautiful early-fall day in Montana, just a few fluffy clouds drifting over the mountains, an idle breeze stirring the brittle leaves of the alders. Joe lay back and watched a large hawk, or possibly it was an eagle, drifting lazily a couple of thousand feet above the river.

  Man, oh man, he thought, I love this country.

  Boz had found a hole. He had begun to fear that his light was dying. He was sure that it was much dimmer. Fortunately, there were some extra batteries in the pack that he’d made Kibosh leave behind. And, of course, he had Kibosh’s flashlight. That comforted him. He was lost, however. He hadn’t seen anything that looked like a chalk mark on a stone facing, or any of the scratches or other signs that Kibosh had pointed out, in quite a while. He had no idea when he’d quit noticing them. He still felt that all he had to do was backtrack a little ways and he’d come across a mark. But first he had to rest.

  He sat down with his back resting against a wall. He drank some whiskey, then some water. He was amazed to find the gherkins that Kibosh had packed. They were delicious. He ate several. Then he rolled on his side, curled up, and fell asleep. He slept for only a few minutes, although it seemed longer. He awoke because he remembered he’d left his light on. That was foolish. The sleep was a good idea, he realized, but it wouldn’t do to simply crash right here in the middle of the passage, in case pursuers came along, as he was certain they would.

  A canny idea popped into his head: he could find a niche, or a little gallery, and take a nap. He needed the rest, and with his light off he wouldn’t be seen. Joe Asshole and his pals would come along and he was bound to wake up in time to ambush them, and then they’d guide him out! It was perfect. He got to his feet and began to look for the ideal spot. Within ten minutes he found it, a little chamber not much bigger than old Kibosh’s crib, just off the passage.

  He crawled in there and made himself comfortable, turned off his light, and fell deeply asleep. His last conscious thought was that this was bliss, real peace. After a short time, he began to snore loudly. This was not something he had considered, but of course, he wasn’t aware of it. At first he slept as profoundly as he had ever slept in his life, but soon he began to dream.

  His first dream was very good, an erotic dream. It involved the Muslim girl. She was being very accommodating, eager, and as aroused as he was, which was totally. But when he was close to ejaculation, the dream inexplicably but relentlessly turned ugly—he was slipping in a morass of slimy bodies, corpses and snakes and worms. He almost awoke but instead managed to segue to another dream, concerning railcars and then
a campfire under a bridge, with other hoboes about. Very chummy and cheerful, at first. But one of them was bothering him, an old man making lewd suggestions, then groping him, and he was rolling closer to the fire. He escaped that development by running the dream back, but inevitably it deteriorated: the fires getting closer, threatening dark figures, the gropers and callers, some of them dead people with ugly, slashed throats and tongues coming out of their wounds…. There were animals here, too, snakes and rats, spiders, and a clawing, snarling beast with shaggy hair and ferocious teeth, tunneling after him. He couldn’t escape this implacable, persistent creature. He woke up in a sweat.

  It was utterly dark. He panicked, but gradually he got a grip on himself and found his flashlight. He was in the mountain. He was drenched with despair. He opened the pack and drank some whiskey, then water. He was extremely thirsty, but he knew better than to drink all of the remaining quart of precious liquid. The whiskey calmed him.

  When he could think, he realized that he had to go back to the exit. It no longer mattered what awaited him outside. He couldn’t stay in here any longer. This decision steadied him further. He would go on out and, if it worked out that way, he would surrender. At least he would be safe. But there was always the chance, he thought, that he could still win. He’d make it out and his pursuers would have gone, or he could elude them. Regardless, he was coming out.

  He set off back the way he had come. Focusing now, he could see signs of his passage, footprints, an overturned rock. He thought he recognized the route. He felt more confident. It occurred to him that he might have slept for twelve hours, perhaps longer. By now it would be dark again. Joe Asshole could well have given up. Why wouldn’t he?