“You didn’t answer the question, Walt. Where are you?”
“Look, I just wanted you to hear it from me. I’m sorry you got caught up in this. I just wanted to tell you… well, I guess I never quit loving you.”
“Jesus, Walt, whatever you’re planning you have to stop it right now. You hear me? Just stop it and turn yourself in. We’ll fight this together.”
“Marcie, if it was that simple I would but the guy responsible for all this has to pay for all that he’s done. Lori’s dead and he has to answer for it.”
“Are you listening to yourself? You sound like your circling the drain. Don’t do this,” she pleaded.
“Love you Marce, always have, probably always will. You take care.” I didn’t wait for her to answer, I just closed the phone.
I sat there for a long while and stared at the wall, wondering when it was I had crossed over to suicidal. The people we were up against were in another league altogether. I knew I wasn’t equipped to handle this, but the rage I felt had taken over. If I died, then at least I had put what meager affairs I had in order. That’s the thing about a gunfight: those that have seen combat will tell you that the last thing you focus on are the adrenaline-filled moments when the acrid smoke fills the air and the bullets are looking for their mark. Instead, it’s the quiet moments before you embark on that odyssey, where your mortality creeps in, making you hyper-aware of how fragile your strings are that attach you to this life.
Checking the bedside clock, the hour was fast approaching. Then a strange thing happened. The fear and loathing that filled my guts receded like the tides. In its place, the strength I needed took its place. Standing up, I reached for the light switch, opened the door and stepped through it and into my future.
Chapter 38
Ronald was waiting for me in the living room. Sam was still tied up and looking very unhappy about it. “You ready?” I asked him.
He looked at me as if he was meeting me for the first time. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Ronald, that piece of shit in the corner stays tied up. When this is over, he’s going to do the same hard time as the other two. Now I ask you again, are you ready?”
He shrugged, “Whenever you are.”
“Then let’s go.”
“Hey man, you promised to let me go! Now untie me,” Sam yelled. His hands tugged at his bonds.
I pulled my gun out and pointed it at him. “You leave in cuffs or a body bag, your choice.”
He flexed his hands open at me. “Your fight’s not with me, I told you that.”
“At least two people are dead because of you, not to mention the fact that you tried to kill me. It’s the life you chose, now deal with it.”
He looked over at Ronald for support. He shrugged, “I’ve seen him like this maybe twice, your tough luck.”
I could see the venom of his anger crawling up into his face but he didn’t speak. Sam stopped moving, but the anger in his eyes stared straight through me.
I zipped up my coat, put my hood up and pulled my goggles over my eyes. “Let’s go,” I said, stepping past Ronald and reaching for the door. He turned and followed me outside, closing the door behind him.
The wind rushed past us, the ice crystals in the air biting at the exposed flesh on my face. I turned and looked over at Ronald. I had to raise my voice to be heard over the wind and the snow. “Just like we talked about, right?”
He nodded and then both of us started the long walk up the hill.
***
Jenny and Fritz had been busy all day preparing for what they knew would be an assault. They had stashed guns all over the house so that when the fight came, they wouldn’t have to worry about running out of bullets if they had to fall back into the deep recesses of the house. Jenny had decided the best defense would be to start out on the ground floor and if needed, they could move upstairs to the high ground. She was surprised at how efficient Fritz moved and the comfort he had with each of the guns they had laid out.
The incongruity of his actions made her hesitate as she watched him move effortlessly around the downstairs. Jenny wondered where she had gone wrong in her assumptions. The casual way he checked each weapon and then loaded it, placing the safety on each time without looking, made her realize that Fritz Washington had been less than candid about his background and experience. She thought about everything Pete had ever told her about Fritz, but nothing he had ever said coalesced with the man in front of her.
“Where did you…” she started to ask him, but her words inexplicably caught in her throat.
Fritz stopped loading the pump action shotgun he held and looked at her, “Where did I what?” He asked, his face free from guile or accusation.
She pointed at the gun in his hands, her head bobbing in question.
“Oh, this,” he said, his shoulders shrugging. “I don’t know, as a kid I guess, and then later, when Pete and I started working together.”
“Pete ever taught you about tactics?”
He shrugged again, his hands moving over the action as he continued to load the gun, “Little bit, I guess. He always told me I needed to be ready in case he wasn’t around to protect me. Guess it stuck.” He bent down and placed the gun behind a large wooden cabinet.
She looked at him again and asked, “You ever shoot at anything other than a target.”
Fritz’s jaw flexed at the question. “I’m not sure what you’re asking me here, Jenny.”
She pointed at the large glass window and said, “Later, they're going to come at us and I’m just wondering if you’re up to it or not. I mean, you handle a gun like you’ve been doing it all your life. Until now, I had it in my head that you’d never handled a gun.”
He shook his head and then turned away from her and moved to the stairs. He stopped with his back to her and with his hand on the railing. “I guess it’s like that old saying, you never really know anybody.”
Confused by his oblique admission, Jenny looked at him for a long time and then as he began ascending the stairs, she called out to him, “You wanted this to happen, didn’t you?”
As Fritz got to the top of the stairs, he turned and looked down at her. He grinned at her, except the smile never made it to his eyes. “All I ever wanted was justice for my family and very soon I’m going to have it. One way or another, all the pain that son of a bitch caused is going to render itself to me. He’ll be on his knees and begging me for relief. And if I’m in a good mood, I’ll give him my other cheek and then treat him to Mathew 5:38; a life for a life.” With that, he turned and walked down the hall towards the master bedroom.
She watched him recede into the darkness of the hallway, unsure of what she had allowed herself to be pulled into and whether or not the Devil himself was upstairs cloaked in luxury or outside in the dark with the boogeyman.
***
The wind tore at both of us without mercy. Snow swept all around us, sticking to our clothing and robbing us of our ability to breathe normally. Even though our noses and mouths were covered, the biting wind found its way into our lungs. The going was slow, our feet plodding forward, the weight of our weapons dragging us down deep into the snow. The ammo we had packed into the cargo pockets of our pants threatened to de-pants us with every step.
Ronald and I were both sweating profusely from the effort. I knew if we stopped for any length of time the cold would seep into our bones and very soon after that, we would both die of exposure. With every step, I alternated between regret, anger and despair. For reasons I could not fathom, I was continuing down my path of self-destruction. My need for blood toiled with self-loathing and then crossed into the delusional belief I was doing the just thing to ensure justice would prevail in the end. Mostly though, I was just cold, wet and miserable.
When we had left the warmth of the cabin, darkness had been lurking on the horizon and now, a full ninety minutes into our hike up what I had come to view as Mount Purgatory, the ebb of daylight had given way to coal blackness. Wha
t was worse, we hadn’t made it very far. Before we had started out, we had both agreed the best route was going to be the switchback road that led to the top. We could at least follow the ruts in the road and stay between the edges of the road. It should have been quick and easy but it was a far cry from either of those things. Ronald and I stayed within arm’s reach of each other, ensuring that at least we would both make it to the top, or get lost until the summer heat had melted the snow from our frozen corpses.
The night vision goggles we both wore almost made it worse. The blowing snow was so bright as to be blinding but to take them off would have been suicide. This was funny to me when I thought about it. I mean, if we took them off then the biting snow would tear our eyes out, but leaving them on was almost as bad. Maybe this is why I never got the hang of the great outdoors. The good news for me, I guess, was if I lived I wouldn’t have to worry about blinding snowstorms or hiking to the top of a mountain to attack a fortified mansion. Not a lot of mountains or mansions in prison.
Ronald continued to lead us to the top of Mount Purgatory, his movements moving in and out of my line of sight because of the snow. I both admired and loathed his fluid movements. The weather didn’t seem to bother him as much as me and all I could wonder about was how in god’s name we were going to pull this off. The plan was for Ronald to work his way around to the side of the cabin and break in through the secret door Sam had told us about, while I shot out the back windows with a rifle. It wasn’t completely original, but it was all we had as far as criminal planning went. The snow and wind would make shooting almost impossible and what was worse was going to be the coordination between the two of us. Ronald had picked up a couple of radios, but the wind would make it almost impossible for either of us to hear, much less understand what we were trying to communicate.
I thought about signaling him to stop and turn back, but then changed my mind. Bringing this to a close before the cops showed up and arrested both of us was paramount, or so I told myself. In the next half hour, we managed to move an additional hundred feet or so. Ronald stopped suddenly and looked back at me. He pulled the cover off of his face and mouthed the word, “Rest.” I nodded and we both took a minute to rest and try and gauge our effort against how far we still had to go. I estimated we had covered about a quarter of the way up the hill, which left another three-quarters of a mile to cover.
We had been resting for about five minutes when we noticed the wind beginning to slow down. Ronald and I both looked around, as if Mother Nature were playing a bad joke on us. He turned to face me again, giving me the thumbs up gesture. I gave him the finger in response. His lurching shoulders told me he thought me amusing. Shaking my head at him, I pointed up the hill and then waved my hands in a shooing motion to get him moving. He shrugged and then turned around and began marching again. I followed him closely so as not to get separated.
An hour passed without any more snow or wind slowing us down. In places where the snow was deep, Ronald’s leg would sink all the way to his crotch. He had fallen forward into the snow a few times, when he had found a soft and deep bit of snow. Each time I helped to pull him erect again. When we had covered almost the entire remaining road, we stopped at the end of the last turn just below the house and rested again.
Ronald pulled his face guard off and said to me in a whisper, “Okay, from here, I’m going to work my way over to the west side of the house. You get in position out the back. Radio me when you’re in place. If we’re lucky, the weather will hold out. Don’t start shooting until I’m in place.”
“What happens if I they don’t take the bait and decide to wait it out or worse, they’ve already gone?”
He ignored me and said, “I know you want them alive, but don’t hesitate to kill them if you have to. Aim for the legs or arms. If they can’t walk or raise their arms, they can’t shoot back, understand?”
“I’m not an idiot, Ronald. I know how to shoot to wound, you know.”
His face hardened into an unreadable mask, then he turned and moved off towards the house. “You’re in my world now and on my turf. Do like I tell you and we walk out of here alive,” he said over his shoulder.
I watched him go and then began working my way into position. His words had cut deep and again gave me the feeling I was an interloper. I tried shrugging it off, but his words stayed with me. How many times had I told him how this had to end? And how many times had he just shrugged off my requests? I felt the anger again at how I had come to be involved in all of this. The heat of my anger fired off at both Ronald and Fritz Washington. My feet carried me past the cabin and around the back where we had been yesterday afternoon.
Shrugging the backpack off my shoulders, I began to get ready. We had packed the breakdown rifle into the pack I was carrying. Pulling it out, I began to assemble it. When it was together, I took the rounds out of my pockets and began feeding them into the carriage of the rifle. I looked down at the snow and thought about lying down to get a good bead on the back of the house, but decided instead to stand and use a small tree behind me as a sniper post. Moving cautiously behind the tree, I put the rifle to my shoulder and peered through the night scope Ronald had tossed in at the last minute.
The cabin itself was quiet, or at least what I could see of it was. They had tried to cover the glass door with blankets, but the wind and the snow had torn them down. Moving the scope back and forth across the back of the house, I looked for the tell-tale movement of the occupants inside. Seeing nothing that looked like a target, I set the rifle down and dug around in my jacket for the two-way radio that Ronald had given me.
Keying the mike, I called Ronald to see where he was. “I’m in place. You ready?”
I listened for a few minutes and tried again. “Hey, good buddy, you got your ears on?” I said using my best trucker voice.
After Ronald had left Walt, he moved slowly across the face of the house, careful to keep his silhouette small and concealed as much as possible. Despite what he had promised Jess and Walt, he knew that there was no way everyone walked away from this alive. He would try to keep from actually killing anyone in his presence, but he knew that was largely a faux promise he couldn’t keep.
Sam had given them pretty good intel on the layout of the house but for the most part, he didn’t trust it completely. His partner, Jenny, clearly meant a good deal to him and he was smart enough to try and hide some of what he thought was valuable to himself. The small trapdoor on the side of the house was part of it. When they had begun talking to him, Sam had said he jumped off the balcony in the back of the house. Ronald had asked him why he didn’t just use the trapdoor instead of risking a fall. Sam had just shrugged and said it was blocked by snow and was too heavy to move.
Ronald had nodded at the explanation as if he believed him, but he doubted it was the reason. He had seen these kinds of escape doors before. Sometimes they were installed in embassies, other times in the houses of cartel leaders. The one thing they had in common is they were placed in areas where things like snow and water didn’t prevent anyone from using them if they really needed to.
Ronald had moved to the west side of the house and was now in the process of locating the escape door when he heard his radio chirp at him. He stopped and turned the volume way down and listened. He could hear Walter’s voice, but his voice was so garbled, he couldn’t understand it. Pushing on, he moved from tree to tree until he was next to the side of the house.
If the door actually existed then Sam was right, the snow had climbed half way up the side of the house. Standing still, he let his eyes roam over the snow, looking for just the right indentation that would allow him to dig. His eyes settled on a patch of snow that seemed to stand off the house. He began moving slowly towards it when he heard his radio chirp again. This time, however, he heard Walt’s unmistakable voice. He grimaced at the lousy trucker accent. Ronald took his radio out, keyed the mike and whispered harshly, “Keep it down knuckle nuts they’re going to hear you.”
“Omaha,” Walt said happily.
“Keep it down, sounds carry!” He whispered harshly.
“You're there then?” Walt asked, his voice dropping the trucker imitation.
“Need a couple of minutes. I’ll key the radio twice when I’m about to breach,” he whispered”
Walter keyed his radio once in response.
Ronald put the radio away and began moving towards the snowbank that looked like it was disconnected from the house. His first step sank him all the way to his waist in snow. Cursing under his breath, he began to move like a swimmer through the snow. His guns bunched up around his chest as snow found its way beneath his clothes. Minutes later, he was chest deep in the snow and was now forced to stop from moving forward. Turning around, he wormed his way back the way he had come until he was finally free.
Breathing heavily from the excursion and the cold and wet, he fought to catch his breath. His radio chirped again.
“How’s that front door coming, pig pen?”
He dug it out and keyed the mike. Taking in a deep breath, he said, “Slow. Call you in a few, then we go. Until then, stay off the radio”
“You alright?”
“Shut up will you, I’m fine,” he whispered heavily. “Just give me a few.”
“Well hurry up, it’s not getting any warmer out here.”
He stood up straight and nearly laughed at the stupidity of it all. He was the expert killer and it was he, not Walt, that slowed things down. Taking a minute to compose himself, Ronald dug the snow out of his pockets and did his best to try and dry off. He began to shiver from the cold and knew if he didn’t find a warmer environment soon, he would have bigger problems than Walt and Jessica being mad at him.
Exhausted from his time in the snow, he thought about his next move. Then it came to him. The front door Walt had mentioned a minute ago. When the shooting started, he would set up near the front and while they were worried about Walt and his rifle, he would mitigate the response from inside.
On The Devil's Side of Heaven Page 39