by Nick Thacker
The Natchez was known for its villainous flair. Many vagabonds and castaways called the trail home, subsisting on the scraps they could take from more legitimate travelers. It was a nasty reality, and yet it still remained the quickest and most direct route, so it remained the most popular.
Lucius was about to advance onto the property when he sensed movement. Across from him, opposite side of the cabins. Not on the trail — whatever it was, they had come up behind the property and taken up a place like he had, watching. Waiting.
Was it the enemy?
He couldn't be sure. It could be an Indian, or it could be nothing more than an animal.
He crouched, knowing it was useless next to a horse that was utterly incapable of concealing itself. Lucius watched with well-trained eyes, timing the movements opposite himself.
The person — he was sure of it now — was watching as well, though he couldn’t see their face. Were they watching me, or were they watching the cabins? They shifted on their feet once, tossing the cold off their body. That meant they didn’t know they had been spotted.
Lucius reached into his belt for the knife he had packed, not wanting to retrieve the rifle from the horse’s pack. It wasn’t much of an offense, but if the enemy reached the front steps he knew he could throw it a good distance, likely sticking them in the back.
Not a clean attack, especially with the variable of the high winds, but it was all Lucius could hope for at the moment. He slid forward, inching along the ground on his knees, tightening his grip on the —
Crack !
The sound of a gunshot rang through the trees. He ducked instinctively, unsure where the blast had originated from. Lucius backed up a few inches, even rolling sideways slightly, but noticed that the horse hadn’t moved. The gunshot hadn’t fazed the animal, so Lucius was still in the clear.
Then what had the shooter been aiming for?
He squinted, trying to beg more moonlight into his eyes, but couldn’t see anything beyond the darkened shadows of the enemy against his tree line and the outlines of the cabins themselves.
Has it grown darker?
Lucius waited, but didn’t hear another shot. The enemy across from him hadn’t moved. They both waited, a dark, silent standoff. Yet the shooter, a third person altogether, hadn’t revealed themselves either.
He wondered if the target had woken upon hearing the shot. What were they thinking? Were they alarmed? Were they trying to defend themselves? Had the target been the one shooting? If so, at whom was the target shooting?
These questions plagued Lucius as he lay prone on the cold dirt, gripping his knife. He wanted to get the rifle, the weapon he knew would protect him from such a distance as this. Yet he didn’t want to alert the enemy across the way that he was here, that he had arrived.
The enemy, however, started moving toward the house. Lucius gripped the knife tighter, watching the man’s every step. He could tell it was a man’s walk, the stretch of the legs and the careful yet forceful placement of each step. He was trying to be stealthy, to keep himself silent.
I was working. Lucius heard nothing as the man neared the porch of the second cabin. There was a door there, and the man stood in front of it, one hand on his side. On a pistol.
Lucius sat up, suddenly not caring about his being seen. The man on the porch didn’t turn his head, but Lucius could almost feel the man gazing at him through his peripheral vision. He didn’t move, and that fact terrified Lucius. He knew Lucius was there — Lucius had all but screamed his location when he’d sat up — but the man didn’t care.
The man waited, and Lucius watched. What is happening?
Suddenly the door opened and a thin line of light spilled out onto the grassy land in front of the porch. A silhouette appeared — the target? — and pushed the door open more.
Still Lucius watched. He couldn’t understand why the target — his target — would be conferring with the enemy. Especially after the gunshot, which surely originated from inside the cabin.
The man and the silhouette stood there a moment, as if deep in conversation, then Lucius saw the man outside the cabin nod. He stepped back, still facing the cabin, then turned fully and started toward the edge of the wood, where he’d come from. The silhouette pushed the door open farther and stepped out as well. In the briefest instant, in the faintest of light, Lucius could see who it was.
Or, rather, he could see who it wasn’t .
The target was still inside, and this was a second enemy.
Lucius’ blood ran cold, and he stood up and began to mount his horse as the second man walked the same path as the first and entered the woods.
Chapter Four
THE AIR HELD THE CERTAIN emptiness and sharpness of near-winter, and Ben sucked it in like it was his last breath.
Harvey “Ben” Bennett had left his cabin half an hour before, shouting to whomever inside would listen that he needed some fresh air. The workers, with their unspoken hierarchy and silent back-and-forth orders he couldn’t interpret had been smacking and banging hammers and driving screws all day, incessantly.
His fiancée, Juliette Richardson, had claimed busyness by working in the kitchen all morning and in the garden behind the cabin all afternoon. It was the waning months of summer, the last few weeks a garden was even possible in the remote Alaskan wilderness, and yet she had feigned interest in the project so believably the foreman on the job had turned to Ben to ask his input.
He hadn’t had input, as usual. His ‘input’ was for everyone to leave him alone. To go home, wherever that was, and leave him and his perfect little cabin and his perfect little fiancée to their perfect little fall retreat.
He couldn’t even remember what he’d told the foreman, but it had ended with something like, “I don’t care, just do it.”
A perfect way to give direction to a man paid by the hour.
He shook his head in frustration as he leveled off onto a trail he and Julie had pounded into the earth over months of hiking and exploring. They called this trail ‘The East One,’ because it was to the east of his property and they were both feeling uncreative at the time.
Harvey Bennett was a simple man, an ex-park ranger who enjoyed the wilderness, the wildlife, and the simple life of subsistence living. It was the absolute worst invasion of his ideal life to have a team of know-nothing contractors and hired help banging away on the cabin he’d called home for over two years.
Two years ago he’d found the listing, and not long after that he’d bought the place. Two years ago it was another man’s property, now it was Ben’s.
But to Ben it had existed forever as ‘his’ cabin, as if it had suddenly appeared one day in one piece, under the ownership of a Mr. Harvey Bennett, through a bank in Anchorage.
To Ben it was home, and to Ben it was perfect as it was.
Or, rather, as it had been .
The workers were trying to build an addition to the cabin, another set of three rooms, one of them larger than the current living room inside the cabin. Ben enjoyed the one-bedroom, 700-square-foot living space he and Julie had occupied together for the last year, but Julie had complained of not enough space. He had to admit, being a larger man himself, having a bit more room to stretch his legs would be nice, especially in the winter months.
But hiring a crew of men who had absolutely no idea what they were doing? Having them work from half-baked plans written up by what he assumed had been a kindergartner with an architectural degree? It seemed insane to Ben. He could do the work himself if they’d just trust him with a hammer.
And that, he figured, was the worst of it. He knew more than they did, and he’d know more than they all did, collectively, for a lifetime. He wanted to show them the tricks he knew, the things he had already tested that could save money.
But that was the rub. Ben wasn’t in charge. He had signed away his little cabin — at least the 1,300 square feet that were in the process of being added — to a small company owned by a certain Mr. and Mrs. E.
The company was ‘small’ in a sense that all of the major decisions were made by the proprietors, but it was very much not small in the sense of the capital it was able to put toward a renovation like the one taking place at Ben’s.
This was one of the caveats of the deal he and Julie had made a few months ago. They had met with Mr and Mrs E, along with the rest of the new team that had been formed, in Colorado Springs after their return from Antarctica. Harvey, Julie, their friend Reggie, and Joshua Jefferson. Together they formed the Civilian Special Operations. The CSO, Mr. E had explained, was intended to ‘bridge the gap’ between the military and the civilian sector.
Chaired by each of them, as well as a member from each of the armed services, the goal was to provide a non-military solution to domestic and foreign problems that the United States might want solved. Problems that the military itself was unable to get involved in directly due to either political or resource reasons. Mr. E had not given them specific examples, but he had told them that the military heads of the CSO had envisioned a group that was not bound by the same rules of engagement, the same lines of funding, and the same prioritization of projects as the US military.
Ben had taken all of this to mean that Mr. E and his wife would be calling most of the shots, as he was the one who would be funding the group’s endeavors. He would focus on the issues that were either not important to the government or had simply gone unnoticed. Ben wasn’t exactly upset that the government wouldn’t be strong-arming the group to take care of its interests first and foremost. He was an American, but he was an American who enjoyed his freedom — including freedom from overbearing government regulation.
So he was torn between enjoying this new chapter and trying to find the sanity and solace of being alone. When Julie had found him back at Yellowstone, he had spent his entire adult life as a ranger, opting for a life of solitude and simplicity.
Massive additions and gigantic work crews buzzing around his home were not his idea of simple and solitary.
He sighed, kicking a small rock off the path. The trail twisted around to the right, and he picked up his pace. He knew what was coming — a gentle slope to the left, over a few small boulders, and then a hop over a trickling feeder stream — and he was once again riveted back into the present.
Ben took the right turn and the immediate left bend with a fast jump in his step, realizing that the months of working out and training with his friend Reggie were starting to pay off. He had already lost twenty pounds, and he figured he had at least another twenty he could stand to shed. He wasn’t interested in becoming a glistening hulk of a male specimen, but he had to admit Julie seemed a lot more interested in him lately. He could only assume it was related to the training regimen.
He barely let his feet hit each rock as he cleared the sloping path and landed on the other side of the stream. Ben’s heart rate hadn’t increased enough for this to be much of a workout, so he increased his pace again and started up the hill on the other side.
Reggie had taught him all about ‘high-intensity interval training’ and how it was supposed to be a great all-around strategy to working out, and that it could be used for just about any form of exercise. Ben decided to make this short walk a full-fledged workout, so he pulled out the humongous ‘phablet’ Julie had talked him into buying and opened a running app. He set his parameters and pressed the start button.
The ding seemed to ring through the trees and bounce back at him a thousand times, but all he needed to hear was the first one. He sprang into action and bolted upward over the last boulder on the hill. A narrow straightaway would be next, followed by another hill, this one a more shallow slope but a lot longer. Then he would be at the cabin once again.
It would be less than two minutes at this pace, but he knew it would be enough to get his heart rate up a dozen clicks. He breathed in another sharp early-fall breath, lifted his chin, and focused on his steps.
Chapter Five
BEN HIT THE OPEN AREA behind the cabin and decided to keep going, heading out on the western trail for a bit. The western trail was longer, took a more circuitous route through the forest, but was flatter. It was a great running trail, even though Ben despised the idea of running.
Unless someone was chasing him, he preferred to stay in one place.
Today, however, he was feeling more inclined to work himself a bit harder. Maybe it was the season, maybe it was the thought of Reggie pushing him tomorrow at their next training session and Ben not being ready.
Or maybe it was just that Ben wanted to run away from all the insanity happening at his home.
He stopped, talking himself into a short break from his workout. He rested for a moment, letting his breath slip back into its normal rhythm.
He picked up the phone and pressed on the phone app, then scrolled through the numbers until he reached the one he wanted.
“Mr. E?” he asked.
“Speaking.”
“I — sorry, it’s Ben,” he said, pausing.
“I know that, Mr. Bennett, these phones have Caller ID.”
“Uh, right. Hey, so, I was thinking. This addition to the house. It’s… it’s a little…”
“Big?”
“Yes, exactly. It’s big. Huge, in fact. I didn’t really know what you had in mind, but this —”
“It is a bit larger than your existing infrastructure, I do admit,” Mr. E said, “but I truly believe your mind will be changed when you see the completed renovation.”
“I liked things the way they were,” Ben said.
“Ah, yes, that is the Harvey Bennett I know. However, I assure you the renovation will be up to your fine standards.”
Ben stopped. He looked around, taking in the pristine peace of the deep woods surrounding him. He wondered if this was really what his life had come to, arguing with a man he’d never met in person. It seemed like every other day the only peace he got was found in the massive stretch of trees and wilderness that separated him from normal civilization. He longed for nothing more than to take this walk every day, with Julie, not burdened by the pressures of his new job.
For the thousandth time in the last two months he wondered if he had made the right decision. Julie seemed enthralled by the idea of the CSO, but — as usual — Ben had been more reluctant.
“Your new role in the organization we are building is going to be a simple one, Mr. Bennett,” the man said.
“Yeah, but it’s one that I don’t have control over.”
“You can opt out of any of the assignments we will be giving you, Mr. Bennett. We told you that up front, and we told you that again in the contract.”
“But Jules is always going to jump in headfirst. She’s… you know…”
The man laughed. A weird, staccato thing that made Ben think the man on the other end of the phone had just pressed ‘play’ on a recording of a robot laughing. “Mrs. — I’m sorry —Juliette — is certainly a bull-headed woman, and one of great drive. But that is part of your attraction to her, is it not?”
“It’s… I don’t… yeah, I guess.”
“And Juliette has assured me that you are more than willing to help us with our upcoming projects, no matter the nature of the assignment.”
“She… said that?”
“Indeed. And as a matter of fact, we have one such assignment that might prove to be lucrative for the company. And for both of you. You called at an opportune time.”
Ben had never in his life been attracted to money for money’s sake, but the last few months seemed to have been working in him, changing him. He perked up, against his better judgement.
“What is the assignment?”
“Gareth and Joshua are returning from their engagement tomorrow, and they will deliver the assignment in person. They will receive the details tonight upon entering United States airspace once again, and I have scheduled them for a redirection to your estate immediately after they land.”
“Geez, you aren’t even going to let them hang out
for an hour? Get a drink or anything?”
“Reggie will be flown by private jet to Anchorage, which will allow him ample time to rest and — if he so desires — engage in the debauchery you are implying. Joshua has an appointment in Anchorage that will cause him to be a bit later.”
Ben started walking again, trying to piece things together. Over the last month, random workers had descended on his small and insignificant cabin in the wilderness, paid for and directed by a man he had never met in person to build out and finish an addition to the log home he had purchased two years ago. The same man had orchestrated the overthrowing and disbandment of a large corporation that had plagued Ben’s life ever since he had been a park ranger at Yellowstone.
Now, the same man was bringing them all together for another mission.
Chapter Six
OCTOBER 11, 1809.
LUCIUS COULD HEAR THE GROANING as soon as he reached the porch. The ‘porch,’ really nothing more than a section of grass around the bottom step of the log cabin, was still damp with early dew and a late morning rainfall. He stepped up and entered the cabin.
The smell of a small fire, recently smothered, wafted to his nose, mixed with the smells of pine and leather. A glass of whiskey sat on a small rickety table on the opposite wall, and the bottle next to it. There was no label — probably a bit of Griner’s moonshining work — but he could see through the deep amber of the bottle to see that it was half-empty.
Next to the table a pair of boots and a saddle sat on the bumpy floorboards, and beside that a packsaddle. A rifle leaned against the wall, nearly an exact replica of Lucius,’ and beside that the wood-burning stove sat with its door open in the corner of the room. The corner adjacent to the wood-burning stove housed a small chair, on which was laid a few pistols, some ammunition, and a tomahawk. Next to the chair, on the floor, a spread of buffalo robes and bear skins. On the skins was Lucius’ target.