by Dane Hartman
“Hell, let’s ram it,” Turk said, too impatient to contemplate any other course of action.
“Whatever you say,” Harry declared. “It’s your show.”
The bus didn’t like being moved. Turk aimed his pickup as if it were some kind of guided missile, and he took it, at twenty-five miles an hour, dead center into the derelict school bus. The school bus shuddered in reaction, the truck shuddered, but that was all.
“Once more!” said Turk.
This time he took the truck in at a higher speed. Harry dreaded to think what the result of this collision might be and kept his head down.
The truck slammed into the bus from another angle, closer to the front, and managed to jar it loose, forcing it farther back into the mud.
“I think if we got out and pushed,” Harry said, “we could do it.”
Several reluctant volunteers, who vastly preferred the shelter of their vehicles, were recruited. Together they strained and slipped and lost their grip again and again because of the wetness. The bus finally gave way and coasted gently into the mud, freeing access to the narrow road that would take them to their first destination, a marijuana farm said to be owned by a man named Harlow Gentry.
Turk, consulting his map again, stated that the Gentry farm was located only three miles down this secondary road. It was now a quarter to nine. Dislodging the bus had exhausted nearly an hour of their time.
No further impediment stood in their way, and the next three miles, along a torturous and sometimes nonexistent road, were conquered without incident. Off to their right lay a grassy expanse and a white structure on the crest of a faraway hill that Harry guessed was where Gentry kept his home and his marijuana.
“This is Xanadu One,” Turk said, speaking into his receiver. “We are at Mark One. Repeat: We are at Charlie Mark One. Prepare for strike.”
One by one the vehicles stopped. The men began to emerge, their weapons in hand, their heads wrapped in folds of raincoats or covered by hardhats that glimmered in the lights of their trucks.
“What do you know about Gentry?” Harry inquired.
“Nothing,” said Turk, “except that he lives here and grows rich dealing in weed.”
Whatever else Gentry did or did not do was unclear because his house was empty. The lights were off but not because he had gone to sleep early. He just wasn’t in. Harry inspected the bathroom. Opening the medicine chest, he was confirmed in his hypothesis.
He went downstairs and found Turk and two other law enforcement officials rummaging through the closets and bureaus, searching for evidence that might implicate the absent occupant.
“He’s split for a while,” Harry said. “Medicine chest’s empty.” When Turk didn’t seem to comprehend what he was saying, he added, “So much for surprise.”
Turk didn’t seem particularly dismayed, however. “That’s only one. You can’t tell. It could be just coincidence. Let’s see what our men have come up with in the fields.”
But there was little there that made Turk happy. There was marijuana all right but not very much of it. The vast majority of the plants appeared to have already been harvested, most likely for the shake weed—droppings from the lower portions of the plants—that was culled at this time of year.
Turk looked glum, no longer so confident that this was coincidence and nothing else.
Twenty pounds of mediocre grass was hardly much of a reward after going to all this effort. Especially when the grower himself had slipped away.
Nonetheless, it was obviously too late to think of turning back now even though Harry suspected that they would find only more of the same as they continued their half-assed odyssey up higher on Rain Mountain.
“Next farm’s another five miles up the road,” Turk noted. And they were on their way.
The road was more pitted along this stretch. Its many small gulleys and niches had quickly filled with water. Driving up it was something like driving through a swollen river. Water slapped against their windows, mocking the frantic attempts of the windshield wipers to restore any sort of visibility.
Just ahead of them, scarcely two miles from the Gentry farm, they heard a huge thunk.
“What was that?”
Harry didn’t know. But he counseled Turk to slow down quickly.
No sooner had he said this than there was a second disturbance, just as loud and ominous.
“A tree,” Harry said. “They’re felling trees to block our way.”
Turk peered into the distance, but there was just the rainy gloom. He did not have any reason to think Harry was wrong so he radioed back to his men and ordered another halt.
“I guess we ought to go out and take a look.”
They did exactly that. It was treacherous walking, and soon they were up to their knees in viscous water. Only after slogging for what seemed a considerable period of time did they come upon the new barriers.
The two downed trees were huge, with thick massive trunks that would require several men to move. Tied to the stumps Harry found strands of rope that had just been cut.
“There’s no doubt now that they’ve been expecting us,” Harry said.
He gazed out into the darkness, wondering just where they might be and what other ideas they had in mind.
“Fuck them,” Turk muttered. “We’ll move out on foot.”
In spite of Turk’s resolve, he recognized the need to get McPheeters’ opinion before continuing ahead without vehicles. Harry thought that surely McPheeters would refuse to sanction the abandonment of the trucks, but again he was surprised.
In a voice that was astonishingly genial, the voice of a radio talk-show host, McPheeters said, “Listen, Turk, you’re in the field, you have enough experience to judge the situation up there for yourself. If you think it makes sense to march out, by all means you certainly have my approval.”
Harry was more convinced than ever that McPheeters, for whatever reason, dearly wanted this operation to fail. And Turk, who wanted the exact opposite, was clearly doing more to advance that objective than the most devious saboteur could possibly do.
The thirty-two men who had come along with this column were understandably loath to expose themselves to the drenching rain without any hope of returning to shelter for some hours to come. But they were under orders and wearily they adjusted their raingear, came out of their trucks, and clambered over the felled trees. Looking more like Napoleon’s army on its retreat from Russia than any kind of strike force, they followed Turk’s lead to Mark Two, a farm owned by Jason Milandra.
C H A P T E R
N i n e
For a while the rain subsided, fading to a constant drizzle. The humidity must have been close to a hundred percent. A thick fog was settling over the rise, making it difficult to see anything more than a yard or two in advance. No one was speaking, being too absorbed by the task of putting one foot in front of the other.
It was possible that the eradication team would stumble on the Milandra farm before they caught a glimpse of it.
Turk was still in the lead. All at once Harry heard him groan and double over. He ran to his side.
A series of chains had been strung across the road, and Turk had simply blundered into one. He was clutching his stomach and doing his utmost not to scream aloud.
The chains did not provide a formidable obstacle to men on foot and when Turk recovered enough, he order them severed. No one had an opportunity to carry out his instruction. At that instant several automatics opened up.
But the initial barrage did not come from the opposite side of the chains where the defenders could be expected to be dug in. The fire was originating from a point in back of them, and it was directed over their heads.
Turk wheeled around in confusion. “Who gave orders to shoot?” he yelled.
There was now fire from the opposite direction in answer to the first eruption.
They seemed to be trapped in a crossfire. The members of the eradication team appeared destined to be eradicate
d themselves if they did not take prompt and decisive action. Most of the men simply flung themselves into the muddy water. Others scattered off to the sides, seeking protection behind nearby trees that were rapidly becoming pockmarked with automatic fire.
Turk was still standing, trying to get a fix on the situation. Harry pulled him down.
At this point Harry realized that the fire was coming from only one direction—from directly in front of them. Whoever had discharged the first shots had abruptly broken off. There was no telling who was responsible or why. They now had to concentrate on the people who were still shooting at them.
“Open fire!” Turk commanded.
Harry did not see how this was going to do much good. All they could make out were successive blades of fire in the fog, giving them little in the way of targets. But the men complied with a fusillade from the M161As and AR15s they had with them.
Their retaliatory fire only invited a more heated response. An exchange continued for several minutes to no effect whatsoever. No one on either side had any idea where their shots were going. The defenders were just keeping the strike force pinned down.
Turk was completely baffled. “Nothing like this has ever happened before. One grower might put up resistance, yes, but to risk shooting on federal agents like this. I don’t understand it.”
“They didn’t show any hesitation about shooting down our helicopter,” Harry reminded him.
The shooting grew more desultory on both sides. Finally, Turk recognized the futility of maintaining the status quo and ordered a ceasefire.
Soon silence prevailed. It was impossible to know whether the defenders were merely waiting for the next round or whether they had slipped away in the fog.
“Turk, the best thing for you to do is retreat, go back to the trucks, and wait until tomorrow morning. No good is going to come of this.”
“Quiet. I’m thinking.” Turk wasn’t inclined to listen to anyone’s advice, however well reasoned.
He consulted his map again. “We can go around,” he announced. “We can circle around and hit them from the rear.”
“You don’t even know where the hell they are.”
Turk wasn’t listening. He’d made up his mind. Beginning to move about among his men, he alerted the squadron leaders to the strategy he’d just improvised.
Harry thus far had adhered to his role as observer. He had drawn out his .44 but had withheld his fire. But the way things were developing, he had a notion that he would be forced to employ it within the immediate future.
Half a dozen men of the eradication team, shadowy forms in the dark, raised themselves from the water where they’d been sprawled out and began to race forward.
They were heading onto an embankment off to the right of the road. Soon they were lost to sight.
A minute passed. Then there was a rapid series of shots followed by terrifying screams. More shots.
Turk looked into Harry’s face as though he expected to find the answer to his unspoken question.
Harry had no answer. He was waiting like everybody else.
There was silence. Then two men appeared. Both were running fast. “They’re killing us!” one of them shouted. He staggered toward Turk, looking as though he wanted to explain exactly what he meant. But then he stopped and looked around with dull unseeing eyes.
Turk approached him but the man failed to notice. He pitched forward, a big bloody hole under his right shoulder.
It took no time at all for word to filter through the ranks that five men had suffered critical injuries in an exchange of fire that could have lasted no longer than twenty seconds. Disgruntled enough already, the men openly began to talk of calling the entire operation off, defying Turk if necessary.
“There still may be men alive out there,” Harry said, “we can’t let them stay there.”
Turk seemed to have forgotten all about them. “What do you suggest we do?” he asked angrily, as though this fiasco was Harry’s fault, not his. “They’ll kill anyone who goes in there to recover them.”
“Not if we distract them.”
“Distract them?”
“Feign an attack on this front. I’ll go around and see if there are any survivors.”
“Alone?”
“If someone wants to volunteer his services, that’s all right with me.”
Turk was mulling this over.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“We haven’t much time. If there are any survivors out there, we might have to evacuate them quickly. Why don’t you radio back to Russian River and alert them that emergency medical aid should be ready?”
“Yes, you’re right, that’s exactly what I should do.” Turk did nothing, however. This whole business seemed to have overwhelmed him. He had drawn up no contingency plans, plotted no scenarios other than those that coincided with his perfectly imagined one.
“I am going to start out now. All right?”
Harry felt as though he were addressing a child, and a not particularly bright child at that. Turk looked at him with empty eyes and slowly nodded. “Yes, all right.”
Still uncertain, Harry left him. He then circulated among the beleaguered men to announce his intentions. To his surprise, he had little difficulty in enlisting three deputized volunteers to accompany him. It wasn’t the danger that concerned them so much, it was the man who was leading them. Harry was one thing, Turk quite another. They didn’t even know who Harry was, but at least he gave the impression that he knew what he was doing.
They moved out quietly, plunging into the woods where the ground constantly gave way beneath their feet and the air was filled with the scent of moss and decay. Sometimes there was so much mud that they sank nearly to their waists in it. The earth seemed hungry, ready at any moment to suck them in.
Harry kept listening for the sound of gunfire that would signal Turk’s diversionary attack. But he heard nothing. Was Turk so paralyzed that he could no longer dispense orders? Or had he forgotten the plan that they had only minutes before agreed upon? Anything was possible with Turk. He really wasn’t a well man.
Then, to Harry’s relief, the diversion came. But it was louder than he anticipated, a raucous and explosive affair that lit up the darkness with the sudden intensity of an electric storm.
One of the men with Harry paused for a moment and, observing the noisy spectacle, declared in amazement that now he would never have to rely just on old movies when he wanted to know what war was like.
Something was wrong. Harry couldn’t at first determine what it was. Then he understood. The battle was moving. The opposing forces weren’t retaining their positions as they’d been doing up until now but were coming closer together.
There was certainly no time to consider the implications of this. Harry had his own mission to attend to. They could not have much farther to go. The ambush had occurred only minutes after the six men had ventured into the woods.
They did find the four men who hadn’t returned but none of them was alive. If they hadn’t died immediately as a result of their wounds, then they had succumbed very shortly afterward. And it was possible that it wasn’t the bullets that had killed all of them. Some might have suffocated in the mud into which they’d fallen. They located a leg sticking up from the thick gooey blackness; they found a hand protruding from the muck. When they extricated the body and wiped the face clean, they looked into eyes filled with horror.
At first they could only discover three corpses. One of the deputies resorted to a flashlight to aid him in the search for the fourth. This was a mistake. His beam disclosed the fourth body, but it also signaled their presence to their enemies.
Two shotguns opened up but with so much gunfire that it was difficult to distinguish them. One of the deputies made a retching sound and toppled over into the mud. When Harry got to him, he was calling to his mother with a mouth engorged with mud. In the darkness it was impossible to detect how badly he was wounded. But as soon as he moved his stomach came p
ouring out of the gaping wound the blast had made. The deputy brought his hands down to stop the leakage, but it did no good. He shook his head in disbelief as if to say that such a thing could not be happening. Then, quickly, his eyes glazed over, and his body gave a short convulsive shudder. He lay still.
There were more shots, They took clumps out of trees and caused branches to shatter and go flying into the air. Leaves kept dropping, but nothing more lethal.
Harry was angry. The battle had been going on for perhaps half an hour, and at no time had he, or anyone else in the eradication team, gotten so much as a glimpse of the assailants.
He turned to the men who’d come with him—there were just two of them now—and instructed them to rejoin the main force. There was no sense trying to retrieve the bodies until the firing had ceased and the area was pacified.
“And what are you going to do?” one of them asked.
“I don’t rightly know as yet.”
“You watch out for yourself, you hear?”
Harry indicated he would. The two volunteers then proceeded on their way, headed in the direction of the battle that, far from subsiding, seemed to be gaining in intensity.
Harry began moving in the opposite direction. He was anxious to confront the men who’d just fired on them. When he had agreed to come along with Turk on this misbegotten expedition, it was mostly out of curiosity. But now he felt a personal stake in the affair. It might be a lost cause—Harry could not see how it could be anything but a lost cause—but it was important that he emerge from this with at least some shred of dignity left.
He didn’t move far from the site where they’d been fired upon, assuming that the attackers would expose themselves, if only to determine how much damage they’d inflicted.
To his satisfaction, one man did materialize after several minutes had passed, hesitantly weaving his way through the pines, his shotgun held at the ready.
Harry watched him, waiting for him to come closer. He was now standing over one of the men he had murdered. Then he knelt down, obviously ready to go through the man’s pockets.