by L. J. Martin
The old adage of being able to tell a motorcycle dude because of the bugs in his teeth won't work on me, as it's dust and gravel peppering me every time I try and get close, and I don't have a helmet and visor and can't take the time to stop and put on my sunglasses. It's the shits.
We haul ass for over a dozen miles.
Then God smiles on me.
A fully loaded log truck rounds a curve, a wide turn and suddenly Rostov has a massive grill and the bulldog hood ornament of a Mack truck in front of him. He brakes hard, almost laying her down, then recovers and has to go on the inside of the huge truck. He shoots off into the brush, and I hope he's found a deep hole in the creek and his bike and he are underwater.
But I can't find out quite yet, as the truck driver has panic all over his mug and locks it up, and suddenly all I can see is a fully loaded log trailer trying to pass the tractor which is chattering my way with brakes locked.
Luckily I'm far enough that I can slide to a stop and manage to reach a standstill ten feet from his cab. He's an older guy, gray hair and beard, and his mouth is hanging open as he gasps for breath. He kills the engine, much to my dismay, and is fully blocking the narrow road.
I idle it down and shout. "Law officer. Chasing that guy. Can you ease it forward enough so I can get around?"
"Fuck you," he yells, "you guys are fucking nuts."
31
Again, my bail enforcement badge comes in handy and I dig my wallet out and flash it. "You're interfering with an officer in the line of duty. Ten years in the pen, pardner."
His face goes blank. I have no idea what I'm talking about, but it works and he cranks the engine back up and engages the gears and I have to fire it up and do a one eighty. As soon as I have three feet of clearance, I skinny around him and see where the V-Tec has cut a path through the brush and follow for twenty feet, bouncing over rocks and deadfall, to the edge of the stream. Unfortunately, there's no hole, in fact it's less than a foot deep and only twenty feet across, and I can see where he busted brush on the other side. Then I look up the hill and see there's a two-track road a hundred yards up the slope, twenty five yards above the creek, and there's a trail of dust disappearing into the heavy forest a quarter mile away.
I can't see Rostov and his bike, but I know where he's gone.
A two-track. Now the advantage should be mine.
It's time to make it end.
After a small hill climb I'm on the timber company road he's using, his tracks so easily followed he might as well have been trailing red paint. I bust out of a copse of lodgepole pine to see a fairly large drainage with the road fairly level in a horseshoe shape a few hundred yards across, and I see him kicking up dust a few hundred yards ahead of me on the road, but only a couple of hundred across the drainage as the crow flies. If I had the SASS I'd have a reasonable shot at him. Then he disappears into another deep dark forest of tall ponderosa, and I hit the throttle hard, leaning into the long slow turn until I, too, am nearing the huge stand of ponderosa.
I've passed a couple of drift fences, barbed wire, and there's one on the near side of the trees I'm rapidly closing on, with a speedometer saying sixty mph.
Too late I see that he's knocked the top strand of barbwire loose from a pull gate, and it's now an almost invisible garrote about neck high. I have to put on the binders, then lay it down in order to slide under the killer wire. And I do slide on the grass and dirt road, for at least sixty or seventy feet. Kicking free of the bike the last twenty.
I scramble to my feet in time to see him charge out of the trees only another thirty yards down the road, handgun spitting fire. I dive back to the ground and scramble away. The road is exploding all around me with plumes and I dive for the brush on the downhill side and roll and scramble, crabbing on all fours, into the trees and underbrush.
As soon as I feel I'm sufficiently out of his line of sight, I dig for the Glock at the small of my back…and it's not there. It must have pulled free as I slid down the road.
Fuck.
I get to my feet and run another fifty yards into the woods, downhill, then stop and, thank God, find the little five shot 22 mag in its ankle holster.
Let's see, I have five 22 mag shells against his sixteen shot 9 or 40mm, and he's probably got at least another magazine of sixteen…maybe two.
Then, to add injury to insult, I realize he's clipped me on the upper right arm, and I'm bleeding pretty good.
Time for another strategic retreat, so I run another fifty yards down the hill, dodging through two and three foot diameter ponderosa pines, with a carpet of thick ferns beneath.
I rip my flannel shirt off, then the tee shirt, and grab my five inch blade hunting knife from its belt scabbard and cut chunks from the tee shirt. The arm is creased, maybe a half inch deep, so I stuff it as best I can then wrap and tie strips from the tee shirt, binding the wound pretty well, having to use my teeth to secure one end. And then put the flannel back on.
"Hey, asshole," rings out from what I estimate is sixty or seventy yards up the hill.
And he thinks I'm dumb enough to answer?
Instead, I do the opposite of what he thinks a wounded man would do…and I'm sure he knows I'm hit as I must have left some blood trail.
I circle to the east, trying to get what advantage I can from the sun at my back and in his eyes. It's now ten or fifteen degrees above the horizon, so should offer some help as I go uphill, not the direction most wounded animals would take. Uphill, and away from the road and thick willows along the creek most men would head for.
"Asshole…," he yells again, stringing it out.
And I still don't answer.
Among the ponderosa are a few firs, some only a foot in diameter, and they have lots of low branches. I'm thinking of climbing one and getting out of his line of sight, with the hope he'll cross below me close enough that I can be assured of a head shot with the tiny 22 mag, but then I hear him breaking brush, only thirty or forty yards behind me.
No time to climb. He's almost on me.
32
No time to climb, but there's a thirty yard wide clearing ahead, and I'll never get across it before he breaks out and sees me.
Think fast.
There's a fist sized boulder in reach, so I grab it up and aim as far to his right as I think I can heave, and do so, landing it thirty yards from where I think his location to be. The little boulder obliges and hits and rolls, making plenty of noise as it bounces along.
There's silence for a moment, then noise through the brush as he moves quickly toward where the boulder landed.
I've another decision, but decide that courage and the unexpected is the only thing that'll win this confrontation. As quietly as I can move, I head toward him and the spot I heaved the boulder.
I haven't moved twenty paces when he rises up out of the underbrush, facing ninety degrees away from me and twenty five or thirty yards down the hill toward the last sounds of the boulder.
Deciding it's now or never I cock the little 22 and lay down on his upper body…too far for a head shot, and fire.
He flinches, and spins my way, and I realize he has my Glock in one hand and a semi-auto in the other and I dive in the brush as he charges, firing one weapon then the other. Bark's flying in my face as I try and scramble away in the thick ferns.
The wop wop wop of a chopper is suddenly so loud I almost drop the little 22 and cover my ears, then realize he's affected the same way.
At a dead run, I charge out of the underbrush and catch him looking up at the chopper that's buzzing him.
As fast as I can fire, I put the next four shots at his head, the last one from only ten feet.
He goes over to his back, but firing from both hands as he does, and fire lights up my inner thigh, but as I close the next few feet I realize he won't be shooting any more. There's a nice little hole just over his right eye, just under a scar that might have once made the ladies think he's tough, rugged and handsome. The fact is…was…he was pretty d
amn tough and I'm glad I didn't have to outrun the muscle fuck through the trees for another mile or two.
He was tough, but thank God again he wasn't the world's best shot, particularly after taking a 22 mag to the side, passing through his bicep and into his chest, then one to the forehead.
I re-holster the 22 in my ankle grabber and limp up the mountain toward where I can hear the chopper winding down. As soon as I spot a couple of guys wearing FBI vests and carrying assault weapons with thirty shot banana clips, I clamp both hands on my head.
"On your knees, " one shouts as they near, and I'm happy to comply. I wish he'd said "on your back," so I could get some rest, but he didn't.
"The bad guy is down the hill," I motion with my head. "But he's history."
"You Reardon?" the other fibbi asks, and I nod.
"Yeah, I'm Reardon and I could use a first aid kit."
"Move back toward the chopper. Keep ten yards in front of me. You armed?"
"Ankle holster 22, but the weapon's empty. Where's Many Dogs?"
"He's coming along. He and your buddy are in a white van."
"Good, there's a cot in the back and I need to take a snooze. Something about a half-gallon of adrenaline coursing through your veins that tires you out."
"Soon as we shake you down and get a confirmation on your identity."
"Works for me," I say.
It's over a half hour before I'm bandaged up, shoulder and thigh. Had the thigh wound been a half inch deeper and clipped my femoral I'd probably have bled out and joined Rostov in Valhalla, or wherever I'm destined. But it seems it's not my time yet.
With Many Dogs driving, another agent in the van's passenger seat, and Pax in the back of the chopper with me and two agents carefully watching, we get a short ride back to St. Pat's hospital in Missoula. It'll take the van an hour or more to get where we'll be in ten or twelve minutes.
I can't convince them to let me bring my Harley Iron along, not that it would have fit. They assure me that their crime site guys and gals will take very good care of it.
The emergency room doc at St. Pat's does a great job in putting my leg back to almost one piece with three dozen well placed stitches and some staples, and stuffs the shoulder wound and assures me I can get a graft and you'll barely notice it. I assure him that among the hundred other scars on my beaten and battered old bod it makes little difference.
"You do look a little like you've survived train, plane, and rocket wrecks," he says, then adds, "you want a shot of morphine?"
"I don't imagine you got a shot of Jack Daniels?" I ask, and he shakes his head no.
"Then I'll wait."
The agent who's standing nearby gives me a tight smile. "You're not going to hit the bar for a while, sunshine. You're going to a holding cell until the boss gets in from Seattle, then you've got some explaining to do."
Pax, who's in a nearby chair, adds, "Yeah, Lucy, you got some 'splaining to do."
We're three days in and out of interview rooms in the Missoula Federal Building, the first two nights in holding cells, then a night in a Federal sponsored hotel. We did pass a couple of other rooms, one holding Hutchens and the other Maggie MacDonald. Many Dogs will be unhappy the bears didn't get indigestion trying to eat the pair.
The Doubletree Inn has a great restaurant, the Fin and Porter, and we waste no time denting the FBI expense account, until we're informed we're on our own. And we're also informed we'll be subpoenaed to testify in the trial of Hutchens and Maggie McDonald.
And I hate that fact, as the worst they'll get, even in Montana, is twenty five to life where they'll get three hots and a cot—unless they can prove Hutchins was on the knife that slit the kid's throat. I wish I could have pronounced sentence on them myself.
My Harley, at a contracted auto impoundment—which the feds also pay for—is in pretty good shape, considering. A little touch up on the paint and she'll be good as new. I suggest to Many Dogs that the FBI should at least let me have Rostov's V-Tec since we may have saved the nation from a terrible plague, but he is not impressed and informs me that what he owes me is a good old country ass whipping and if he sees me after he leaves the Bureau, I can rest assured that's just what I'll get.
I do not remind him that it was he, not me, sucking blood and kissing the floor the last time we met. Discretion is the better part of valor.
Now, to find Jane Jasper Remington and return her to daddy, and collect my million four.
33
I discover from the desk that Jane Jasper Remington was released from the Phillipburg Medical Center ten hours after she arrived, and no one in that town or Maxville has seen her since.
Pax returns me to Missoula where I buy myself a pair of relaxed jeans that don't rub my leg wound so badly, a couple of clean shirts, one short sleeved one as it's reported to be hot as hell in New York City, and a pair of low heel boots easier to get on and off than my cowboy boots. It hurts like hell to pull them on and the first time I tried I was certain I'd popped some thigh stitches, from what's a very ugly wound, full of hematoma so it looks as if my leg's about to rot off.
I place a call to J. Cornelius Remington and, I'm not surprised, he's not in and not expected for a couple of months. A photo safari in Africa, with his daughter, so some officious woman informs me.
Bullshit.
So I buy a ticket and Pax puts me on a flight to Denver then New York City. I've stayed at the Waldorf, so this time I give the YMCA a try and a top bunk and common bath. In the shower in the morning a skinny kid with a chicken chest asks me, "You get shot up overseas or what."
"Nope, car wreck," I say, and it seems to satisfy him.
It's a hot muggy morning, with a flat gray ceiling that the Empire State pokes up into. The Upper East Side building with the discreet J. Remington Printers sign has a small parking garage next door. As the New York Giants' size doorman is already on duty, and can plainly see the entrance to the parking garage from his station near the door, I work my way to the back of the garage. With some difficulty I climb up on a garbage container the size of a Volkswagen, and jump the wall and am inside. On the third floor, next to a door that enters the building, is a parking space clearly marked J. Cornelius Remington. A car and a half away is a column next to the building, and it's just deep enough and dark enough that I can lean on the wall and wait out of sight of the slot, so I do.
It's forty five minutes with me reading a good mystery on my Kindle app on my iPhone when a tidy little refrigerator-white Porsche squeals the tires rounding the turns, then slides into the private parking space. Just peeking around the concrete, why am I not surprised to see J. Cornelius himself slip out of the little car, and why am I surprised to see Jane Jasper exit the passenger door?
They seem to be getting along famously and I don't quite let the building entry door close, and catch it, and follow them in. Realizing someone's behind them, both stop and turn.
"Good morning," I say, in my most pleasant tone.
Cornelius goes stark white, sucking air with his chin on his chest, but Jane Jasper attacks…in a good way, and flings her arms around me and hugs me so tightly I about have to scream out as she's got my arm wound under a half ton of pressure.
But she releases me and steps back, her eyes sparkling with excitment. "I'm so glad you're here and I get to thank you. They told me you brought us in. If it hadn't been for you…."
"I'm calling security," Cornelius manages.
I have my hand in the pocket of my loose jeans, simulating a gun, and give him a tight smile then suggest, "I wouldn't do that, J.C., if I was you." He goes even whiter, which I didn't think possible. So I continue. "What I would do is hit the button on that elevator and we're going up to your office to have a little chat."
Jane is looking back and forth from one of us to the other, then asks, "What's the matter, Daddy?"
I smile at her. "Can we go up. We need to talk over old times."
"Daddy, hit the button."
He does so, reluctantly
. We exit, cross the outer office and enter his secretary's sanctuary. She looks up. "Good morning, Mr. Remington…Jane…and, why, look who's back."
I smile and nod and follow Remington into his office.
"Coffee?" the svelte good looking secretary calls after us.
"No," Remington snaps.
"I'd love some water," I call out and she smiles and shuts the door behind us. It was hot in the parking garage awaiting what I hope was worth waiting for.
As soon as the door closes, Remington rounds his desk but doesn't flop down in the chair. Instead, he leans forward, both hands fisted and leaning on the desktop. "You'd better leave, Reardon."
I turn to Jane. "Did you tell him what they tried to do to you?" I ask her.
"Why, yes, I told him they doped me up."
"And tried to burn you up?" I add.
"What do you mean?" she asks, puzzled.
34
"Yes, burn you up. You didn't get the whole story?" I ask.
"What?" she replies.
"They had you three girls doped up and set the building on fire. You weren't supposed to get out. Pax..you don't know Pax..and I pulled you out."
Cornelius is indignant. "And how many people got killed in your little escapades?"
Jane looks at him with indignation that trumps his. "You call saving me an escapade?"
"That's not what I meant," he mumbles. "He's a violent man, with no thought of who gets hurt."
"Put your ass in that seat, Remington," I snap, and he does, like he's afraid I'm coming over the desk top. I turn to Jane, "And you take a seat also, please." And she does.
I begin unbuttoning my shirt.
"What…" he says, getting a little wide eyed.
"Shut up," I say, and pull the shirt off and unwrap an ace bandage from my arm, exposing the smaller of the wounds. He looks a little wide eyed, then gets even more so as I snap my NRA belt buckle loose, unbutton my jeans, and drop them to my ankles. Good thing I don't have holes in my boxer skivies.