The sign the man had given was unmistakable. But the reality on the ground in West Tennessee had been changing for the better, and Stanley had lost some of his fear of the insurgents. He had even heard a rumor from one of his suppliers about a battle that had happened on Saturday down in Radford County. The Kazak peacekeepers down there were kicking ass and finally driving the troublesome rebels clear out of the state. It couldn’t happen soon enough for Stanley Fromish. Once this corner of Tennessee was pacified, the infrastructure rebuilding could get under way in earnest. This would mean greatly increased business for his service station, and maybe even expansion. He could finally get on with his longterm plan to purchase and reopen the old auto parts store across the street.
But then this old man shows up, giving the secret rebel hand sign, like nothing had changed! This man could even be a survivor of the battles down in Radford County, on the run and looking for help. But if the rebels were beaten, there was no longer a realistic threat of reprisal if Stanley failed to cooperate with them. So there was no reason to risk helping this one old man.
Or this could even be a trap, a setup by the new government to test his loyalty. They might have captured and interrogated some insurgents, learned about his clandestine arrangement with them, and even how they gave the secret contact signal. This could all be a trap, to expose him as a rebel sympathizer and supporter!
The stranger spoke again. “Come on, we’re wasting time. Let’s go to your office. We need to talk, right now.”
“I can’t,” Stanley bluffed. “I’m alone until six-thirty. I need to get the pumps turned on, and open everything up.”
“Stanley, don’t mess with me! I need a car that I can drive over the bridge, and I need it right now. A car with a valid stamp for crossing over to Middle Tennessee. I know you can do this, so you’re going to give me a car right now, and then I’ll be on my way. We’ll contact you about where you can pick it up on the other side. This is an easy job, Stanley, very easy.”
Stanley Fromish was overcome by a wave of fear, as memories of his midnight visitors flooded his mind, masked men with guns and bright lights. They had killed his two beloved German shepherds, and threatened his daughters. They were not to be trifled with. The only cars that he had that could be driven across the bridge were his own Nissan SUV and his wife’s Toyota. If this man was arrested in either one, they would be traced right back to the garage, and hard questions would be asked. His mechanic was working on his own Nissan Conquistador, but it wasn’t ready yet, it still needed the front brakes and wheels put back on. The Conquistador was in fact still up on the lift. This gave Stanley an idea. “Look, I can give you that black Pathfinder, but it needs another hour to be ready. After it’s ready, I can park it around the side with the keys in it. Once you’re gone, I’ll have to report it stolen. But I can wait until this afternoon before I report it. That’ll give you enough time.”
Carson shook his head “no” without pausing to consider this option. “I can’t wait an hour. What about your other car, Stanley? The blue Toyota Camry parked in your driveway? Just hand me the keys to the car and to your front gate.”
“But that’s my wife’s car.”
“Your wife is dead, Stanley; she doesn’t need it anymore. Don’t try to bullshit me again. We know everything about you.”
The stranger pushed Stanley backward into his garage and flipped off the lights at the switch by the side of the service bay. For an older guy, he was almost brutal in his speech and mannerisms. Just when they were inside, in the darkness, a vehicle pulled into the station and stopped by the diesel pumps. It was a desert-tan humvee, never repainted since it had come back from the Middle East. The three stars of the North American Legion were stenciled on its front door in black paint. The Mexicans. Stanley called this first humvee of the day “the dawn patrol.” They were often his earliest customers in the morning, a couple of soldiers with an officer or an NCO, making the rounds of outposts and checkpoints around the county. The soldiers and the officer were different every day, with their own rotating duty schedule. Fromish knew most of them by sight, but not by name.
“Look, I’ll help you, but I have to take care of those guys first. They’re regulars, and if I make them wait, they’ll just come in here looking for me, and then they’ll see you. I haven’t turned on the pumps yet, and I have to do it myself. Then I’ll be right back, and these guys will finish up and leave. Then we’ll get you a car, okay?” Stanley jingled a large key ring. “It’ll only take me a few minutes to open the pumps and get rid of these guys.”
The old man said, “I have a better idea—I’ll pump their gas.”
Fromish knew the stranger wasn’t buying his stalling tactics, or just plain didn’t trust him. “You can’t pump their gas; these guys are regulars. They gas up every morning. They know everybody who works here, and they won’t believe it if they see you.” And they were only the first customer of the morning, Stanley knew. Soon more military vehicles from the NAL company would be arriving to fuel up, after they had finished their breakfasts in the old diner that was now their mess hall. Fromish had a sudden idea, and he gave the secret hand sign back to the stranger, tapping his crossed fingers on his chest. “Don’t worry, I’m one of you. I’m on your side. I just have to be careful, that’s all.”
“Okay,” the stranger said with reluctance. “Just get rid of them fast.”
Stanley Fromish walked out to the service island. One of the Mexicans was already standing outside the humvee, ready to fuel up the vehicle. The pumps were locked, and the handles were secured with heavy chains and padlocks. Fromish said, “Buenos dias, amigo. Do you speak English?”
“Jus’ leetle.” The soldier held his thumb and finger an inch apart. “El teniente, el lieutenant, he speak good Ingles.”
“Which one is the lieutenant?”
“Heem.” The NAL soldier pointed to a youngish soldier in the back, behind the front passenger seat. The driver, obviously the junior man of the three, was pumping the fuel in the cold predawn air.
Stanley worked himself between the pump and the military vehicle, unlocking the pump out of sight of the stranger lurking in his garage. While the diesel flowed, he rapped on the thick rear window with his knuckle. The door opened; these old humvees didn’t have opening windows. The laminated glass was inches thick; the door was like a vault.
“I don’t pay you, you know that,” said the young officer. A single vertical black bar on the front of his camouflage coat and on his blue beret identified him as a lieutenant. On his shoulder patch were three stars arranged in a triangle, the symbol of the North American Legion. He was smoking a cigarette and holding a steaming cup of coffee. The cup was the plastic lid from a thermos bottle that was on the seat beside him.
Stanley Fromish recognized the young officer, a platoon commander from the NAL barracks in the old Ford dealership. Their officers lived next door in the motel. He was kind of handsome, in a Latin Romeo sort of way, with a thin mustache. More Spanish-looking than Mexican, with very good English. “I’m not asking you to pay, Lieutenant. Listen, I’ve got a serious problem: there’s a guy in my garage trying to rob me. He’s waiting for you to leave. Can you drive away like normal, then park out of sight and come back and grab him?”
“What?” said the lieutenant. “All that just for one guy? He’s in there now?”
“Yeah, one guy. I’ve never seen him before.”
“What’s he look like, this one guy? Fucking Rambo? The Terminator?” The NAL lieutenant spoke clear unaccented American English. He was smooth.
“He’s old, kind of skinny. Over sixty, I’d guess.”
The young officer translated for the other soldier, a sergeant sitting in the front seat, who laughed and responded as if he found the situation highly amusing. The soldier in front had tattoos on his neck and hands, as many of the Mexican troops did.
“We don’t need to park out of sight and sneak up on one old guy. Who do you think we are? Fucking cowards
like you?”
Fromish ignored the insult. “Listen, Lieutenant, this guy, there’s something about him. I just don’t think you should…” Fromish stopped himself from mentioning the secret contact signal, or his previous dealings with the insurgents. He would only incriminate himself, even if he tried to explain that his cooperation had been gained by means of terror and blackmail.
The smiling lieutenant exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke and asked, “Does this scary old man have a gun, or at least a big scary knife?”
“Not that I saw, but—”
“No wonder you need Mexican soldiers to fight for your country!” The junior officer spoke rapidly in Spanish to the sergeant in the front seat, and to the soldier who was just finishing pumping the diesel. The sergeant grabbed an M-16 rifle and stepped out of the humvee, joined by the lieutenant. Together with the driver who had been pumping the fuel, and followed by Stanley Fromish, they walked toward the open service bay.
****
Phil Carson hid behind the inside wall of the open garage door. The machinery that raised and lowered the bay doors allowed him to remain concealed to the side. The gas station owner, Stanley Fromish, was supposed to have immediately fulfilled his demand for a car. Boone, hiding with Doug two miles away, had told him that they “owned” Fromish, who was an opportunist and a collaborator but also a coward. A single light on the front of the garage illuminated the humvee parked at the pump island, but left the inside of the garage in shadow. On the humvee’s front door were three black stars. Fromish was spending too much time at the pumps.
Carson grabbed the Glock from inside his field jacket, and slid back along the wall. The garage was so cluttered with tools, tables, parts and half-finished engine projects that it was easy to disappear. He crouched down low and looked out between the cinderblock wall and the steel guide track that sent the bay doors up and overhead. He took a quick peek across toward the fuel pumps, and saw the humvee’s doors opening and soldiers getting out. There were three of them, trailed by Fromish. One soldier had a rifle, one was holding a pistol, and one was empty-handed but had a pistol in a tactical leg holster. The unarmed soldier was the tallest of the four men. All three soldiers had blue berets on their heads, and were wearing ACU camouflage uniforms and parkas. The one with a rifle was the nearest to Carson’s hiding place, the one in the middle held a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other. They were no more than forty feet away and walking directly for the open garage door.
The realization of what would happen next was immediate. Carson avoided looking at their faces; the faces were what stuck with you. The faces were what you couldn’t get rid of afterward. Like Doctor Foley. That nighttime pistol shot had worked like a flash bulb on his brain, freezing Foley’s round face in the moment before his death. Like the faces of the foreign soldiers in front of the ASV, before they went under its wheels. Instead, he focused on their hands. Their hands held their weapons. Their hands were what killed you.
So much for simply giving Fromish a secret hand signal and getting a car in return! This wasn’t going remotely according to the plan, but since when did anything, ever, go according to plan? There was now no cute way to get the drop on them, no bloodless Roy Rogers solution. This was killing time, Carson knew it immediately. He needed steel in his guts now, but felt like they were full of broken glass and acid. A company of North American Legion troops was stationed only three blocks away. If these soldiers got off even one shot, the loud report would bring a hundred Legion troops at a dead run. Boone’s mission would end in failure, and the three of them would probably be executed as terrorists…if they were not killed outright.
Carson pressed himself against the grime-encrusted cement wall, hidden behind a rack of greasy aprons, parkas and mechanic’s coveralls. He held the Glock in both hands, at the low ready position. The three soldiers broke the plane of the open bay door at almost the same time. The nearest held his rifle horizontally by his hip and turned toward Carson’s hiding place, smiling as if he expected to roust a vagrant. The rifleman was backlit by the soldier holding the flashlight, who was standing behind him. Carson thrust out his Glock pistol and shot the rifleman once in the face at almost contact distance. A look of surprise was only half formed before the man was dead and falling backward, blood and brain matter blasted across the service bay. Carson swung the pistol a few degrees, toward the next soldier fifteen feet away, the one holding the pistol and the flashlight. He hardly reacted before Carson shot him twice in the torso, center mass, aiming above his flashlight. The .45 caliber Glock was no louder than a heavy book dropping on the floor, adding to the unreality of the scene. Its suppressor extended its muzzle like a long pointed finger, making it even easier to aim at close range.
The third soldier, the tallest one, had no time to absorb the nearly simultaneous deaths of his two comrades. His pistol was still holstered, and his body was not even turned in a direction where he could draw and fire in the instant it would take the gunman to kill him. He froze in place, and then his hands went up in the air, fingers spread. In his peripheral vision, Carson saw the station owner, who had lagged behind the soldiers, suddenly break out of his shocked stupor and turn to run. Carson made two more snap shots at the center of the man’s back, and he dropped onto his face just outside the garage. He swung the pistol back to the third soldier, who was still alive and standing, his arms up. Carson forced himself to scan the entire scene, fighting the natural inclination toward tunnel vision under extreme stress.
He had created three new bodies, one with a gory partial head. Lying motionless on the ground was the instantaneous wreckage of three lives. He avoided looking at the bloody horror show at his feet. Three men had just awakened and begun a fresh new day, when their lives were snuffed out. Images and memories spanning four decades ran in a kaleidoscope through Carson’s mind, faces in the moment before and after death. Bile gagged in his throat. He fought to bring himself back into the present, to this garage, these bodies, and this last living soldier. From a thousand shards, disparate parts formed a whole, and a new plan clicked together like the tumblers of a safe falling into place.
“You speak English? Habla Ingles?” he demanded of the soldier, still standing above the bodies of his comrades. The man didn’t respond, except by shaking more violently. “Snap out of it if you want to live, amigo.” That’s what I need to do too, Carson thought. Snap out of it. Both of us. But I’m holding the gun…so I get to give the orders…for now. For just as long as I can pull off my act. “Can you speak English? Hablas tu Ingles?”
After a moment, the terrified soldier replied with a quiet “Yes sir, I speak English.” Carson stepped out from his hiding place, to see if anyone else was outside the garage, and then he took his first detailed look at his prisoner. He had a long, pale face, and a pencil-thin mustache. He noted the single vertical black bar insignia stuck to the front middle of the soldier’s camouflage rain parka, and on his beret. “Oh, an officer—the smart one. No wonder you’re still alive. Okay, Lieutenant, reach around with your left hand and pull out your pistol with just your thumb and one finger. It’s awkward, but you can do it. Good, now lay it on the ground, nice and easy.”
He advanced toward the officer like a cat, the Glock extended. The officer was a little taller than Carson, around six feet. “We’ve got some work to do now, and it has to be fast. Turn around. See that civilian? The station manager? Grab him by his feet, drag him over to that oil-changing pit and shove him in it.” A large rectangular hole in the cement floor allowed grease monkeys to work beneath a car. “Are you fucking deaf? Drag him over there, or I’ll shoot your ass where you stand and drag you there myself. Lieutenant, if you want to live, you have to start listening to me, understand? We don’t have time for pity parties right now.”
With three men shot dead around him in the last minute, the NAL officer obviously believed Carson. He broke from his trance and scurried the dozen feet to Stanley Fromish, seized him by his ankles and dragged him fac
e down across the concrete, until he was alongside the grease pit. He rolled the body into the open hole, where it landed with a thud. While Fromish was being dealt with, Carson scooped up the pistols, the flashlight and the M-16A2 rifle. The scuffed and dinged rifle had obviously seen decades of hard service; the stenciled armory numbers on the stock were barely legible. He slung the rifle over his shoulder by its sling; the pistols and light went into the outside cargo pockets of his field jacket. One of the blue NAL berets on the ground was still free of blood; he grabbed it and jammed it in a pocket.
“Next, your two compadres. They can get a decent burial later. Oh, pull off their insignias and badges first.” The cloth rank and unit badges were attached with velcro like those on U.S. Army uniforms.
Even in the dim light, the head wound of the first soldier he had shot was hard to look at, and impossible to ignore. His face was mostly gone above the nose, and it looked as if he had bled gallons onto the floor, along with bone and brain matter. The young NAL officer threw up, retching violently, dropping to his hands and knees. A shout from Carson got him moving again. The corpses left shiny black trails on the concrete floor as they were dragged over to the pit. In the dark interior of the garage, the blood might be mistaken for an oil spill, at least until it was fully light outside. Stanley Fromish, who had been shot just outside the garage, had been wearing a thick coat, and most of his blood was contained. His bullet wounds were in his back, now on top. After pushing the first soldier into the pit, the NAL lieutenant stammered, “I’m not helping you anymore. You’re just going to kill me last.”
Carson was ready for this reaction. Remembering Sergeant Amory’s incapacitating fear immediately after the death of the Mississippi Guard officers, he adopted the most avuncular tone he could muster, almost smiling. “No I’m not. I need you alive, LT.” He pronounced this “el tee,” the enlisted man’s colloquial term for the military abbreviation of lieutenant. This was part of Carson’s deliberate campaign to reassure the terrified junior officer. “Lieutenant, you’re going to be my driver today. In a few minutes, we’re going to be crossing the bridge in your humvee, and I need you alive and well for that. So here’s the deal: you drive me and two of my friends across the river, and you’ll live. If you don’t betray us, I promise I’ll let you go on the other side. I give you my word of honor as a soldier. But if you try to pull some tricky shit like this gas station guy did, then I’ll kill you just like I killed him. We get across the bridge, you live. If we don’t, you won’t either. It’s that simple. You got it?”
Foreign Enemies and Traitors Page 55