Broken Heartland

by J. M. Hayes

  The sheriff was getting close to Galen’s place. The kid had poured a lot of money into that farm since he came home from college. It was clear he had outside backing. Could he have built a transplant clinic into that new house of his?

  “What kind of car?”

  The sheriff took his foot off the accelerator and let the Chevy slow as it approached the last intersection where he could choose, unseen from Galen’s farm, a different approach to the Siegrist homestead. It proved a lucky decision. A car plowed around the corner, throwing dirt and dust and narrowly avoiding the ditch as well as the sheriff’s pickup.

  “White Ford Fusion,” the sheriff said, in tandem with Mrs. Kraus.

  “How’d you know that?” she said.

  “All of a sudden, I’m right behind it.”

  He got back on the throttle and stayed there, though he didn’t close the gap. The Ford was producing rooster tails of dust. He thought about trying to catch it and force it off the road, see if the corpse Doc was missing might not be in there. And see who was doing the transporting. But he didn’t have any backup. If he stopped them, what was he going to do with them while he went to see what was going on at Galen’s?

  “Call Heather Two. Tell her to stay where she’s at. Not to get any nearer the Siegrist place, no matter what.”

  “Ah, well….” He could tell Mrs. Kraus had bad news for him. “Chairman says he’s tried calling her. She’s stopped answering. And, you asked me if Heather One was covering the office for me. Well, she ain’t. I’ve not seen her since she was trying to break Lieutenant Greer’s finger this morning. And Chairman Wynn, he says he had the impression she planned to drive out and join her sister. We just tried her number and didn’t get an answer from her either.”

  “Shit. I told her to….”

  “Course you did,” Mrs. Kraus said. “And of course she didn’t. Girls that age, even with what happened to their mother, they think they’re immortal.”

  The sheriff disconnected. There was nothing more to say. And he wanted his .38 in his hand, not his cell phone.

  Immortal, huh. They better be right.

  ***

  Heather English felt her cell phone buzz, but she was a little busy. She had arrested the guy. That meant she couldn’t just go off and leave him. She had to secure him somehow. And that was beginning to look like it might not be easy. He was still in a lot of pain, but he was getting angrier by the minute. It wasn’t going to be long before he was willing to let go of the family jewels and start looking for a suitable way to kill her, even though she’d already slapped the handcuffs on him.

  She needed to tie him up somehow. Secure his legs or attach him to something. Baling wire would be ideal, but nobody used it anymore. When she was growing up, old baling wire was still the fix-all for every emergency farm repair. These days, it was duct tape. But neither was handy in Galen’s warehouse. Finally, she checked his office and found what she needed in his closet. Clothes hangers. Those, and the fencing pliers she’d seen hanging on a nearby wall.

  He was mixing curses with moans, now. She stuck the barrel of the gun she didn’t know how to shoot in his face and told him to lie down on his stomach. That meant he’d have to put pressure on a tender area. She had some trouble persuading him it would hurt less than getting shot. And then, securing his legs meant she had to put the gun down and use both hands.

  She was twisting the wire around his left ankle when he lunged for her. Even handcuffed, he got hold of one of her arms and might have torn it out of its socket except the effort strained his groin. He let go of her and huddled on the floor again, retching. She finished trussing his feet and then tossed the pliers on the far side of the nearest tractor. He’d have to do a lot of squirming across the floor to get to it. She was guessing it would be a while before he felt up to that.

  His communications device turned out to be on his belt. A wire ran up inside his jacket to where it had connected to his earpiece and microphone. She removed them while he suggested some things he’d like to do to her, none of which involved improving social relations. She reconnected the pieces, turned it on, and put the thing to her ear.

  “…receiving me? Able? Speak to me, Able. What’s going on?”

  She switched the thing off again and asked him, “Are you Able?”

  “Fuck you,” he said.

  She reminded him that he was in no condition to do that and she was responsible. She suggested she might be able to make it worse. He still wouldn’t tell her who he was.

  She patted him down, looking for a wallet or some other ID. He wasn’t carrying any. She turned on the radio again.

  “…check on Able,” a voice said. “And see if there’s trouble with our new visitors.”

  “No trouble, Delta, I’ve got them,” another voice said. “Bravo, find Able, then come back to the house.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. Someone was coming to look for Able, and she was betting that “Fuck you” was actually Able. What she should do, she supposed, was disarm this next one, too, then go take on the voice in the house. But she couldn’t count on the next one taking her so lightly, especially not if he got a look at Able. And if there was an Able, a Bravo, and a Delta, there had to be a Charlie around here somewhere, as well.

  She thought about trying to hide him, but he was too big for her to drag anywhere, at least in the time frame she was probably dealing with. Instead, she decided not to do anything before she figured out how this gun worked.

  She flipped Able a mock salute and faded into the warehouse, passing a window that let her look out on the yard. An Able look-alike, but for the blond hair, was trotting across the gravel from the house, sweeping his machine gun back and forth in case he spotted someone along the way. He was going to hit the front door in under a minute. She thought it would be a good idea if she took another exit. The sooner the better. She headed back toward the door she’d used to come in.

  “Delta,” a third voice whispered in her ear. “I’m almost back. I got cargo and passengers. Also a truck on my tail.”

  “Truck?” the second voice said.

  “My passengers think it’s the sheriff,” the last voice said. “Let Able wait. Neutralize the truck.”

  Heather felt her heart flip. If it was Englishman, he was driving into an armed camp and he hadn’t a clue. God! This could be exactly the situation she’d been so terrified of all day. She had to learn whether she could make this gun work and she had to do it now. She blew through the back door and saw someone with a gun duck around the south corner of the building. She pointed the weapon that way and squeezed the trigger and nearly fell over.

  A line of holes appeared in the metal wall not far from where she’d aimed. They started about ground level and climbed fast. This thing had a hell of a kick.

  “Able’s gun,” the first voice said. “Either Able’s on to that girl or….”

  Heather switched on her mic and said, “Or Able’s dead. Special agent Starling, FBI. Your operation is surrounded. You will put down your weapons and come out of the house into the front yard with your hands up. And I mean now.”

  There was a pause, then one of the voices answered. “Is that you, Clarice?”

  Shit. She should have come up with a better alias than Starling, but Jodie Foster’s version of the FBI agent in The Silence of the Lambs was exactly who she wanted to be right now. Too bad the bastard had seen the movie or read the book.

  “That’s no Fed,” he continued, “but our intruder has neutralized Able. Commence fallback one. I repeat, fallback one. Radio silence begins now.”

  Heather sprinted for the nearest corner of the building, threw herself around it, and spotted the Able look-alike running for the front of the house. He was the one who was supposed to take Englishman out. She pulled the trigger again and tried to hold the muzzle down until she landed on her backside. The guy wasn’t there anymore, but there were all kind of holes in the window nearest the corner he had probably gone around. And a white
car was turning her way down at the corner, a blue pickup right behind it. An old Chevy pickup. It was Englishman. It was Daddy.

  ***

  The other Heather had been spending an altogether different afternoon. Her hosts had insisted she stay for lunch—chicken and beans and tortillas and salsa. She’d been raised to be polite and she and her sister had agreed to stay put and wait for the pros, so she accepted and discovered she was a lot hungrier than she’d thought. Not that she really intended to just hunker down and wait. But it seemed like a good idea to give the man with the gun a few minutes to stop searching for her. She ate quickly, though. Uncle Mad Dog was still a prisoner in that house, as far as she knew, and while the Highway Patrol might be on the way, she guessed her sister was out there, trying to save the day on her own. Heather Lane thought she could help.

  “Muchas gracias,” she told them. “That was wonderful. But I have to go.”

  Her announcement met with a chorus of protests. “Not now, señorita. That man, he could shoot you. He could shoot all of us, if he sees you leave here.”

  She hadn’t thought of that. It was one thing to put herself at risk. Something else, again, to bring danger to the people who’d rescued her.

  “Look,” she said. “My sister’s out there. And my uncle.” They would understand family obligations. “Isn’t there a way to sneak out of here?”

  They looked sheepish and tried to pretend they didn’t understand her, but she knew she was onto something.

  “You’ve got a way into this adjacent warehouse, don’t you?”

  Well, they did, but that wasn’t safe either. Who knew where the man with the gun might have gone?

  She wheedled and cajoled and they finally agreed to let her out that way. It was a matter of clearing away some blankets they’d hung like tapestries, and some lumber they’d used to block a door. Heather wasn’t concerned about how they’d rearranged things. She just wanted back out where she could size up the situation and decide what to do before her dad, inevitably, arrived.

  “I will go with you,” Xavier said. “Just in case. But we must be careful. And very quiet. You understand?”

  She tried to talk him out of it, but he was insistent. He’d saved her once, she supposed. Now she was his responsibility.

  “I understand,” she said. “I will follow you.”

  On Xavier’s instructions, his extended family turned off the lights and the TV and he spent an inordinate amount of time listening carefully after he cracked the door into the warehouse.

  “Please?” she pleaded.

  He put a finger to his lips. “Listen,” he whispered. “Someone is in there.”

  Just the wind, she thought, putting her own ear near the door. But then she heard metal scraping against metal in a way the wind wasn’t likely responsible for. And a voice. Not close, yet, but maybe coming this way.

  “Mark?” it said. “Where are you? The bin. That was just a joke.”

  It wasn’t the man with the gun. Not that she would recognize his voice. He hadn’t even shouted at her, just pulled the trigger and chased her. But this voice she knew—Galen.

  She didn’t understand what he meant about Mark or a bin, but Galen didn’t scare her all that much. Oh, she remembered he’d appeared to have a gun with which he’d forced Uncle Mad Dog into the house. But she thought she could handle Galen, if she had to.

  Before Xavier could protest, she pushed the door open just far enough to slip through and ducked into the dusky warehouse. Xavier wasn’t quick enough to catch her. That was good. She didn’t want to put him in danger. She melted into the twilight before he could find her and she watched him shrug his shoulders and return to his family’s home.

  She almost turned around and followed him when a burst of machine-gun fire tore through the afternoon’s stillness.

  God! What did she think she was doing?

  ***

  They had found the front door to the house locked, so Greer just kicked it in.

  He and Neuhauser had swung their guns to cover the big, mostly empty living room, then Dunbar, his campaign manager, came through a door and started shouting at them. The little man with the bad hair was not pleased to find them there. “I told you to stick around town. You need to get out of here. Go campaign or something.”

  The lieutenant hated being spoken down to. But Dunbar was the man who had persuaded him to run for sheriff, then organized the campaign and provided an endless channel of funding. That meant he had to be put up with.

  Dunbar’s shouting and the effort to hold his temper made Greer’s head spin worse than before. He had to wait for the little man to run down before Greer could get a word in.

  “Don’t you know what’s been happening in town?” Greer said.

  “Of course I know. And it was good that you helped stop the shooting. People are calling you a hero. That’s great PR. Go back and capitalize on it. You shouldn’t be here.”

  Hero? It felt more like he’d made an ass of himself.

  Dunbar put a hand to his ear, flipped a switch, and then spoke into his microphone. “No trouble, Delta, I’ve got them. Bravo, find Able, then come back to the house.”

  Dunbar went back to shooing them toward the door as he listened to the device in his ear. Another big man with a suit, sunglasses, and a machine gun went jogging past the front of the house.

  “What’s going on here?” Greer demanded.

  “We’ve got an intruder,” Dunbar said.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Greer said. “We’re not the only ones you don’t want here.”

  “You criticizing our security?” Dunbar sputtered. “After you’re elected, maybe we’ll consult you on matters like that. Today, it’s not your business. Now be a good soldier and go back to town. Shake some hands or kiss some babies or catch that kid who shot up the school. Just go.”

  “That’s why we’re here, damn it! We followed the boy who hit the school to this farm.”

  Dunbar’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”

  “I don’t kid. That boy’s here and he brought an AK-47 with him.”

  “No way,” Dunbar said. “Our security would have….”

  Before he finished, someone let loose a burst from an automatic weapon. Inside the living room, it was hard to tell where the shots had come from, but it was close. Dunbar looked shocked.

  “That was no AK,” Neuhauser said. “Maybe your security got him.”

  “There’s someone else here, claiming to be an FBI agent,” Dunbar said. The little man paled, then relaxed a little. “She’s not for real, but one of our men isn’t reporting. We don’t know who fired those rounds.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Greer said. They turned toward the door.

  “No, no!” Dunbar said. “You really have to leave this place.”

  “After I get Chucky Williams,” Greer said, over his shoulder. That was a mistake, because it cost him his balance and he literally fell through the front door. Just as well, perhaps, since it kept him from shooting the armed man in the suit who came flying around the corner of the building. And it kept him from getting hit by the stream of bullets that followed.

  ***

  The sheriff did a power slide that only lost a little ground to the Fusion at the corner east of Galen’s. With the turn, the dust that had kept him from a clear view of the car he was following was carried away by the south wind. The Fusion continued to make fresh streams, but these blew across the road out over a plowed field.

  The sheriff finally had a clear view of the Siegrist farm, too. There were people in Galen’s front yard. Two hitting the ground. A third, throwing himself toward the front door. Armed men. And he recognized the chatter of an automatic weapon.

  He didn’t recognize the men. He didn’t have time because he had to maneuver around a silver Toyota that had gone nose first into the south ditch. Heather Two’s Toyota. The doors were open and he managed to get a look inside as he flew by. She wasn’t there. Nor was the
re any blood. But those were sure as hell bullet holes in her trunk.

  One of the guys in the front yard rolled, trying to bring his gun to bear on the sheriff’s truck. Or maybe on the Fusion. The sheriff couldn’t tell. The Fusion slowed and made the turn into Galen’s driveway. It went through an open garage door too fast, probably doing no good to the back wall or anything stored against it. The door started closing and the sheriff concentrated on getting the Chevy in the same driveway. He didn’t aim for the garage, though. He went for where the gunmen were. Or had been. The three of them dove for the front door, went through as the sheriff’s left front fender tried to follow. The fender was a bad fit, though it had been a convincing argument against staying in the yard and drawing a bead on him.

  The sheriff slammed a shoulder into his door as he pulled the handle and rolled out onto the concrete, .38 up and ready to return fire from the house. None came, but he didn’t like all those mirrored windows reflecting images of himself and giving no clue of who might be watching or aiming from the other side. The front door was not the place to go. Not with three well-armed suspects having just preceded him there. The garage was out, too, because all the doors were down and closed and there were likely armed men piling out of the Fusion just as he’d piled out of his Chevy. The front of the house didn’t offer many options. There was only one other entrance, a window that had been broken out. He scrambled to his feet and made for it, expecting a line of bullets to climb his spine any second. They never came. He got a hand on the sill, leaped, dived, and landed rolling, ready to take on whoever was inside the room. It was empty.

  Move fast, he told himself. You’re seriously outnumbered. That means you’ve got to use the element of surprise. They probably knew this window was out. Though they might not have seen him come in here, they’d soon realize this was the most likely place for him to get in. So he had to move someplace else. Maybe find some of them before they got organized—start thinning the opposition.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but you worked with what you had. He grabbed the door handle to start implementing it and discovered it was locked. And when he took a good look, he knew it was time for that backup plan he hadn’t gotten around to yet. All the hardware, including a deadbolt, was on the other side. He hadn’t found the perfect entry to Galen’s house. He’d found the perfect trap.