An American Bullet

by John Stonehouse

  “Would you rather be up in that cabin?” Belaski says.

  Scardino looks at him.

  “With somebody outside, waiting. Somebody like me.”

  On the army cot along the log wall of the cabin, Lauren DeLuca lies sideways, her head on her hands.

  The canned chili and tamales are finished. Whicher feeds a split log into the wood stove, closes the iron and glass door, twists the handle against the latch.

  He steps into the kitchenette, lifts a chair from the table. “Two kinds of people wind up in witness security,” he says. “Family members of people that agreed to testify—and the witnesses themselves.”

  He sets the chair down by the iron stove.

  She sits up on the cot. “I told you already that’s what I am.”

  “Nobody gets in WITSEC over nickels and dimes.”

  She takes a breath through her nose.

  He lets his eye rest on hers a moment. “For a federal prosecutor to take an interest, only key testimony is enough. I know you're going to a major trial, a mob trial.”

  She blinks, slowly.

  “So you're high-level. An insider.”

  The wind blasts against the cabin walls, rattling the wooden shutters at the window frames.

  The marshal stands. He listens a moment, eyes the slit window on the wall in back.

  He takes the Ruger from the table top. Sits again, rests the big-frame revolver against his lap. “How long have you been in the program?”

  She looks at him, the fire’s shadow flickering across her face. “A little over nine months.”

  “How long with your previous protection officer?”

  “Corrigan? I never saw him. I only saw people if they told me I had to move...” She stops—composes her face into a practiced mask.

  He tugs at the collar of his shirt.

  “They told me not to talk.”

  “They told you that?”

  “To anybody.”

  He listens to the sounds of the cabin, hears only the wind outside.

  In fourteen years on a two-man police department, Kyle Guillory can't think of a single occasion necessitating a night in a hunting lodge—with a woman like her.

  He peers through the snow driving in across the Comanche Grasslands, steers the Ford Explorer to the end of the county road.

  The junction with the track is marked only by white-over fence posts sweeping downhill from the line of trees.

  He could apply to the sheriff’s department, Las Animas County Sheriff. Get a job with them, he tells himself; find himself something new. Fourteen years ought to count for something. Marshals Service—maybe he could apply to that?

  The man, McBride, had called the station house—the call diverting from there right to Guillory's place. The station phone was set up that way, he'd been about to go on up to bed, coming on midnight. Guillory shakes his head, moves the shifter into low.

  The tire chains bite in the hard packed snow.

  McBride had said he was an inspector with the US Marshals Service. Insisted on talking with the other marshal, even when Guillory explained he wasn’t there. He’d said it was urgent; Guillory would've left it till morning, the storm the way it was, only getting worse.

  There was no way to call the hunting lodge, not a hope in hell of getting any signal.

  Ahead, the track dips through a hollow near the edge of the woods. Guillory sees the glinting snow reflected in the headlights. It could be deep there—the kind of dip that could hold a drift.

  He keeps his speed steady, wary, ready for the feel of slipping wheels. Thinks of Comanche braves, hunters, men lost in the night, men like him. Lit by camp fires, the hides of their tepees weighted down with chunks of stone. The Ford chews its way through the dip—and out the other side.

  He steers on into the woods, darkness enfolding, headlights glaring back from low slung limbs of trees.

  Through the wheel, he feels the thump of chains on the winter tires.

  He thinks of coming up, coming to the lodge again, kicking back, once the weather shakes out.

  His foot comes suddenly off the gas.

  He straightens, sits up in his seat.

  A shape is out there—a shape in the truck's main beams.

  Where the track kinks left into the woods, there’s a vehicle. A parked vehicle, just sitting—lights out.

  He lets the Ford slow, listening to the rhythm as the chains strike the ground.

  He can see it's a pickup, now—a Toyota. No way anybody's going to be out—not in this, not in the middle of a winter storm.

  Behind the glass of the driver window he sees movement—a face turning to look.

  He feels his heart rate climb in his chest.

  Tells himself it's okay.

  Chapter Nine

  Jerzy Belaski stares back down the track, past Jimmy Scardino’s head, at the lights in the woods.

  “It could be hunters,” Jimmy says.

  Belaski reaches for the overhead dome light—moves the switch to stop it from coming on.

  He leans his weight forward. Takes out the suppressed SIG.

  The lights approaching are thirty yards away.

  “Maybe they won’t stop...”

  Above the glare of headlamps, more lights begin to flash, colored lights—red and blue.

  “We’re not in Garfield Park,” Belaski answers.

  The vehicle’s stopped moving.

  A door opens, the driver’s door.

  A man steps out.

  A tight, white beam snaps on, a flashlight.

  Scardino reaches to a door-pocket, he takes out a mid-size Springfield XD.

  “Put that away.” Belaski eases open the passenger door. “Just get him talking.” He drops, crouches to the ground.

  Moving down the side of the pickup, hidden from the headlights, he reaches the tailgate.

  He risks a look at the vehicle down the track.

  He can't see a partner.

  Rural cops, he tells himself—they'd work alone.

  The flashlight shines directly into the cab of the Toyota.

  The cop nears the side of the pickup—gun trained on the driver-side window.

  “Police officer...”

  Red and blue light fractures the dark.

  “Open up. Step out of your vehicle.” The sound of the man’s voice is dull, flat in the noiseless woods.

  Scardino opens the driver’s door an inch.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them,” the officer shouts.

  The door of the Toyota creaks on its hinges.

  Belaski edges around the back of the pickup, still crouched—he studies the man now standing at right-angles to him—a police cap on his head, a padded jacket. Heavy face. Like an Iowa pig-farmer.

  Scardino gets a boot on the ground, his hands out in front of him, no gun.

  “Step out, turn around, put your hands on the roof of the truck.”

  Jimmy gets out, straightens.

  The officer steps sideways to the front of the Toyota. Moves the flashlight onto the registration plate. “Chicago?”

  “Uh?”

  “You're from Chicago?”

  “I was just driving, man. I needed to get out of the snow.”

  Belaski crouches at the tailgate. For a moment, he thinks of the control, the absolute power—the lives of both men in his sights. All he has to do is squeeze on the trigger. He feels the beating pulse in the muscle of his thumb.

  “I want to see driver’s license and registration,” the officer says. He steps back directly behind Scardino.

  Jimmy turns his head a little. “My license is in the truck there...”

  Belaski hears the lack of any clue in the man’s voice.

  “Put your hands behind your back,” the cop says.

  “What? What for?”

  “Just do what I tell you.”

  Raising the pistol, Belaski takes a shallow breath. He stares into the side of the cop’s head.

  Squeezes off two rounds. />
  The man’s head snaps sideways—blown out.

  He falls, deadweight, into a crumpled heap.

  The blunt thump of the gun echos in the mass of trees.

  Jimmy stares at Belaski.

  Belaski marches to the cop’s body.

  Scardino fumbles out a Camel from his jacket—lights the cigarette, draws the smoke down deep. “Are you fucking crazy?”

  “Waiting game is over.” Belaski glances at the lifeless form.

  Turning on his heel, he walks down the track to the man’s vehicle—the Ford Explorer from before. Pausing by the open door, he listens—nothing from the radio, no sound.

  “Drag him into the woods and get in the truck,” he calls back. “Follow on behind me.”

  “What're you talking about?”

  “Just do it, Jimmy, for Chrissake. Get the guy’s hat. Get in the truck, drive up behind me. You see me stop, you stop. That’s all you have to do.”

  Chapter Ten

  Smoke is swirling in the clearing, wood smoke in the snow-filled air. Fifty yards back on the track with the Ford Explorer, Belaski watches Jimmy Scardino work his way around the forest’s edge—around the back of the cabin, out the other side.

  He shakes his head at the man’s efforts; labored, stumbling—Scardino had just enough luck to be born into family, the family of a made man. He never would’ve made it from the streets.

  Jogging slow along the side of the clearing, Scardino reaches the Ford. “Only thing I could see was a strip of light around the back. On the wall, up high.”

  Belaski nods. “There's no way of getting in.”

  “No way quiet...”

  “So we drive up in the cop's SUV.”

  “Right up to the cabin?”

  “They hear us, they’ll have to check it out.” Belaski takes a final look. “If they don't, I'll stick the cop’s hat on, I’ll go on up.” He yanks open the door of the Ford, swings in behind the wheel.

  Jimmy glances at the Toyota, another fifty yards back along the trail.

  Belaski starts up the motor, puts on the lights.

  Jimmy looks at him, grim faced, he gets in.

  The tire chains bite on the soft ground. The vehicle starts to move forward.

  Jimmy takes off a glove, pulls the Springfield from the pocket of his jacket.

  The headlight beams reach ahead through the frozen air.

  “How they going to know it’s cops?” Jimmy says.

  Belaski reaches up to the switch to turn on the light bar.

  Jimmy nods, teeth glinting in the light from the dash.

  “I park up, they see this, they ought to recognize it,” Belaski says. “Tell you what, though—the guy in there with her has already seen me. Back on the train. He got a look at me.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “How about you do it, you put on the cop's hat? I’ll pull around so you’re facing the cabin. When he looks out, he's never seen you before.”

  “Man, I don't know...”

  “I got you covered, Jimmy.” Belaski hands the man the dead cop’s cap.

  Sitting by the wood stove he can see both doors, front and back. At first it's just a flicker that catches Whicher's eye.

  Lauren's resting on the army cot, knees drawn up.

  The marshal studies the propane lantern on the wall. Maybe the gas is running out?

  From the edge of the shuttered window is a snatch of red light. A snatch of blue.

  He stands, picks the Glock off the kitchen table.

  Lauren shifts on the cot.

  “Put out the light,” he says.

  She looks over at him.

  Above the wind is another sound; a motor. The marshal moves toward the front of the cabin.

  Lauren slips off the cot, reaches for the lamp, turns down the dial.

  The gas putters, dies. Only the wood stove lights the room.

  Whicher steps to the door, slides back the cover on a four-inch square of glass.

  Outside, the clearing is filled with bursts of red and blue light. Popping, swiveling.

  A white Ford Explorer is twenty yards from the cabin. “That’s Guillory.”

  The SUV is side-on, he can barely see the windows, they’re covered in snow and ice.

  “It's gone midnight,” Lauren says.

  “He's got everything lit up.”

  “Is he coming in? He was coming in the morning...”

  Whicher nods. “He’s not getting out.”

  Something could’ve happened, the marshal tells himself—the sheriff’s office were going to be boarding the train at La Junta, maybe they found something. They could’ve picked up the guy that jumped.

  “He’s lit up like a Christmas tree,” Whicher says, “I guess he wants us to know who it is.” He reaches to the top of the door, unfastens a bolt.

  “Are you going out?”

  He opens the door, steps off the porch. Walks out into falling snow—wind scouring, whipping ice crystals into his face.

  Nearest to him, a cop in the passenger seat grins.

  Guillory, at the wheel, is in darkness.

  Whicher checks step—the passenger’s not the chief of police, not the man from the office photographs.

  He senses movement.

  The grinning man starts to raise something.

  Whicher dives left as the window glass explodes.

  He rolls to the back of the SUV, holds up the Glock, fires three rounds into the rear-hatch glass.

  The Ford’s wheels spin—it lurches, rips away out of the clearing.

  Whicher stares as it races down the track, lights flashing through the trees.

  He squeezes off two more rounds.

  In the door of the cabin, Lauren DeLuca's staring.

  He gets to his feet. “Stay there, get back inside...”

  Sprinting across the clearing, he reaches the track to the woods.

  Beneath the trees, the ground is firmer—he runs into the black, cold air knifing his lungs.

  He stops.

  A shape is out there, looming.

  He stares down the sights of the gun.

  Chapter Eleven

  The dark form of a pickup truck sits to the side of the track beneath the trees. Whicher scans the blackened woods, chest heaving, sweat breaking on his skin.

  Approaching, he can see it’s a double-cab Toyota. Nobody inside.

  He steps to it, grabs the door on the driver’s side—it opens.

  Keys are hanging from the steering column.

  The cab smells of cigarettes.

  He jumps in, starts the motor, turns on the lights. The fuel gauge shows the tank half-full.

  Shifting into drive, he presses down on the gas, steers out onto the track, toward the clearing. The wheels of the pickup hit the churned-up ruts of snow from the Ford. He pulls up in front of the cabin, leaves the motor running.

  He steps out. “Lauren,” he calls.

  The cabin door is closed. He jumps up on the porch.

  He puts a boot against the door.

  Inside, in the light of the wood stove he sees her—she’s at the back of the cabin. The glint of a long blade at her side.

  She holds up a butcher’s knife.

  “We have to go,” he says.

  He takes the boxes of ammunition from Corrigan’s tote.

  “Put on my coat. Where’s your case?”

  She points at the floor by the cot.

  Whicher grabs the case, grabs the plaid hunting coat.

  Lauren sets down the knife. She looks at him, face pale, her eyes rounded.

  He steps from the cabin, jumps down off the porch, throws the case into the back of the crew cab.

  Lauren follows him outside, shivering. She stares at the Toyota.

  “Get in,” he tells her. He climbs inside, behind the wheel.

  She steps up into the cab, pulls the door closed.

  “We need to get the hell out of here.”

  Lauren puts both hands to her face, sprea
ds the skin taught across her cheeks.

  The marshal shifts into drive, steers out into the track in the woods.

  “Where are we going?” she says.

  He strains his eyes to see beneath the overhang of trees—the world down to the width of twin headlight beams. “Somebody knows where we’re at,” he says, “that's all that matters.”

  “How can anybody know?”

  Jimmy Scardino's blood is wet on the seats of the Ford—broken glass all over the cab.

  Belaski hears the sound of a motor, sees lights moving, flickering in the trees.

  A split second—all it’d taken. The big man went down, shots were coming through the back, glass everywhere, blood flying—blood and pieces of bone.

  The last shot caught Jimmy in the back of the head.

  They were fish in a barrel, he'd gotten them out.

  He thinks of dragging Jimmy from the cab—he was passing out, blood gurgling from his mouth. Nothing he could do, he tells himself; nobody’s going to know.

  He pictures holding the muzzle of the SIG to Jimmy’s temple. Squeezing. Making sure.

  He feels the rush in his veins, now—the surge of anger. Everything going to shit; the whole damn thing. He sits in silence, in the darkness, motor shut down. Watching the lights moving ghost-like. Jimmy’s Toyota coming down the forest track. A bright phantom.

  It draws level with the off-shoot in the woods. Speeds by.

  He starts the motor in the Ford, leaves his own lights extinguished.

  To follow the tail lights—trailing red into the dark.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lauren DeLuca pins a finger on the open page of a road map—the land is a whiteout, smothered. “There’s supposed to be a highway at the end of this.”

  Whicher steers through an alien landscape, amorphous shapes, indistinct, trying to pick out fences, power lines, signs of the road.

  “We have to keep heading north,” Lauren says.

  The marshal squints into the glare of white, thinks of sandstorms overseas in the desert. “Hard telling which direction we're headed...”

  She looks up.

  “We're going north,” he says, “near enough.”