by Jeff Carson
He stopped, bent down to pick up a small can of lighter fluid, and stood. Locking eyes with the clerk, he walked to counter.
“How you doing today, Officer?” The clerk’s stench of natural oils and body odor spilled out of the glass pod he sat in.
McCall plucked a pink lighter out of a Bic display and set it down without moving his face or breaking eye contact.
The clerk lowered his gaze and itched his poor excuse for a beard, and then grabbed the can of lighter fluid from the counter with a shaky hand. He almost dropped it, and fumbled it against his chest.
McCall tilted his head a little and scowled. Like the clerk’s movement had somehow told him something.
The clerk scanned the lighter fluid with a beep, and then scanned the lighter. “Do you need a bag?” He asked, avoiding eye contact.
McCall dropped a five on the counter and waited for the kid to give him change. The kid set it on the counter when McCall didn’t reach for it.
He picked up his items with controlled slowness, and walked out without saying a word.
He got in the SUV, pulled out, and accelerated to cruising speed up the highway. Then he chuckled with a smile and shook his head. Then he sucked in a breath and felt his face redden as shame washed through him.
That was probably how his father would have treated that kid if he were in the same situation. He probably would have taken it all the way and beat the kid with a can of soda until he admitted he was high, and promised he’d never do it again. Then he’d go get hammered at the bar, and come home to his kids and his wife.
McCall vowed then and there that he’d take a portion of his money and open a center in Glenwood, or maybe in Carbondale. So all those rich kids, fucked up on drugs with terrible parents, could come talk with someone who would listen to them. To help them. Shit, who was he kidding, he could afford to open a center in the heart of Aspen. He really needed to learn how to think bigger now.
He continued north on highway 82 until he reached the outskirts of Aspen. As he cruised down Main Street, spying the clean buildings, the huge houses in the surrounding hills, the best money could buy all around him, he allowed himself just that—to think bigger.
A mile or so out of town, the traffic thinned, and he took a left on Juniper Hills Road, just past a large field with a huge industrial-sized barn. He made his way up and into the low plateau-like hills made of orange, gray, and brown earth. There were multi-million dollar houses on either side of the road, and Juniper trees, and sage brush, and blue-green grasses filled the hillsides. The scent came strong through the vents of his SUV.
After a couple miles of driving, he slowed at a dirt road and turned onto it. His truck vibrated and kicked up a plume of dust behind him as he drove for another half mile, up and over a rise. He meandered down to a point where the road passed through a dry gulch, and there he parked and got out.
The low hills on either side of the gulch blocked the wind, which whipped against the Junipers higher up the slopes. The sun was warming, but it would drop behind the hills in a matter of minutes. Insects buzzed everywhere and he heard the cry of a hawk, which flew stationary in the rushing air above.
He walked around the Explorer and opened the rear door, and then he put on a set of rubber gloves. He carefully chose six plastic canisters and put them in his pocket. Then he shoved a black marker, and the zip-lock bag in his jacket, and then closed the door. He grabbed the lighter fluid and napkins out of the front seat and left down the gulch for fifty yards, away from view of the dirt road.
Kneeling down, he opened the zip-lock bag, and set the bullet casing on the outside of the plastic, and opened the lighter fluid. He doused the casing with the pungent liquid and scrubbed it hard and thoroughly. Then he set it down to dry on a flat rock.
He then opened each of the full canisters and threw the dirt into a pile, dug out a small pit, and set them, now empty, inside it. He took out of his pocket the three empties, and scooped the pebbly dirt next to him into each. After screwing the lids on tight, he took out his marker and copied the labeling with his black marker, and sealed them all.
The casing went back in the bag, and the new containers went in his pocket, and everything else went up in flames, lit by a hot pink lighter. He stepped back and watched the fireball, and threw the lighter in. It exploded with a dull thud and the flames spattered out of the hole, and dissipated harmlessly after a few seconds.
Chapter 21
“So who’s the guy?” Wolf asked.
Luke looked left and right and pulled back onto the highway.
“I asked you something.”
“I know, I know. Listen, the guy is part of an investigation that we’ve had ongoing, and you just broke it open for us. It’s something that I can’t talk about.” She kept her eyes on the road, and reached down to turn on her headlights.
“This is part of my ongoing investigation now.” He stared at her. “My son was shot at more than ten times by these men, and I was hit. My son is currently in danger because of these men. He shot one of them. He can identify one of them.”
She shook her head. “Listen, so can I. And I know that these men are going to be long gone by now.”
Wolf frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means, they are going to be on the run. There’s a one hundred percent chance of that. And we’ll pick up the chase. And you can go on about your business.”
Wolf glared at her, and she squirmed in her seat, flicking sideways glances at him.
They passed an old pickup truck and then she looked back at Wolf with a pleading expression.
“Look. I can’t tell you about it,” she said. “I’m sorry, but if I want to keep my job, I can’t tell you. It’s a national security matter. Just know that you’ve flushed them out. They were in hiding, and you’ve flushed them out, and we’ll take it from here.”
Wolf turned away and shook his head. Rather than explode in a fit of cussing, which he felt like doing, he stared out the window at the passing landscape and breathed slow. The valley was now cast in shadow and the eastern peaks blazed bright in the early evening sun. They passed a sign that read Rocky Points 13 miles, and pine trees began swishing by as they climbed in altitude up Williams Pass.
“How?” He asked, keeping his eyes out the window. “How are you going to chase them?”
“Don’t worry about it.” She answered quickly.
Wolf let the rush of anger evaporate from his veins, and ran through options in his mind as they drove up Williams Pass, and then dropped down the other side, and into the southern end of Rocky Points. He had connections he could check with. None in the FBI, but he had another connection. Maybe he could track down the guy in the picture himself. But it was little to go on, with just a neck tattoo, and a burn.
A burn. The burn was fresh, and the guy wasn’t burnt in the picture Luke had. That had to be a clue. Maybe he was hurt in an explosion, or a fire recently. In a recent EOD training exercise on a base nearby? Fort Carson, in Colorado Springs?
As they pulled down Main Street, the sky was orange, and only the tips of the eastern peaks were illuminated.
The SUV crunched and wobbled as they pulled into the RPPD station lot, and Wolf felt that the pain in his arm had returned with a vengeance, just as he thought it might.
She parked and looked at Wolf with a creased brow. “I’m sorry.”
Wolf got out, walked to the rear door of the Tahoe, and pulled it open. He pulled his orange pack out and slung it over his shoulder, and then threw it against the wall next to the frosted glass garage door.
Luke followed silently with the remaining two packs and set them down gingerly.
Wolf inserted his key to the side door, walked in, and shut it behind him.
Chapter 22
Kristen Luke sped out of Rocky Points in complete quiet. Her pulse raced as she thought about what had happened to Wolf, and to his son. A tear spilled down her cheek and she wiped it with the back of her hand so quick
it didn’t reach her chin.
“Fucking fuck,” she screamed through clenched teeth.
She took a deep breath, and then took more breaths, and after a few minutes she had changed her entire physical state. Only then did she pick up her phone and dial.
“What d’ya got?” Vickers, her special agent in charge, never did like greetings.
“Not much,” Luke exhaled. She could hear men talking in the background, and since the dashboard clock said it was after five o’clock, that meant he was probably at the bar.
“Really? It’s not our guy? EOD tattoo? Colorado? Are you kidding me?”
She huffed into the phone. “Yeah. Believe me, you know I want it to be, but I don’t think it’s our guy. I don’t think it was an EOD tattoo he saw. After I grilled him on it, he didn’t seem too sure, then I showed him the picture—“
Luke squinted and looked into the rearview mirror. There were headlights approaching so fast it was like she was standing still. She looked down at her speedometer. She was going sixty-five miles per hour.
“Jesus.” She said.
“What?”
“Nothing, just a second…” She shook her head as the headlights got brighter and brighter, closer and closer. But they never passed. They just sucked up against her back bumper, now so close they were out of sight behind her tailgate.
“What the fuck? I’ll call you back.” She hung up and dropped the phone on the passenger seat, and then gripped the wheel with two hands. Her body hummed with electricity. She breathed deeply to control her movements, and relaxed her face to calm her thoughts, just like she’d learned from her Sensei in college.
Was that what was going on? For a split instant, she was back at the University of Colorado—with hands groping her and slashing at her face—and she strangled the life out of the steering wheel. Was this another psycho? Was this it? She’d spent the last ten years of her life preparing for another moment like this. Preparing to never, ever, be caught off-guard again. Since then she’d trained thousands of hours in self-defense. She was a second-degree black belt, an expert in Krav Maga. A crack shot with a pistol.
She tapped the brakes, and then pressed them continuously, slowing down a good twenty miles per hour.
The lights stayed glued behind her.
She eyed the road ahead and saw a shoulder pullout on the next turn. If this asshole wanted some, he could have some. She and her SIG Sauer P220 would be able to settle this just fine.
She reached in her coat and fingered the safety off, then put both hands on the wheel and slammed the brakes as hard as she could without locking the wheels. At the final instant, she pulled over and stopped on the shoulder turnoff.
The lights followed her every move, staying just behind her, as if the driver shared her every thought.
She jammed the car in park, whipped off her seatbelt, and opened the door. As she twisted out of the Tahoe, she reached into her jacket and pulled the SIG. When her feet hit the pavement, she was cocked and aimed.
There was a figure already out of the door of the vehicle behind her, and the cab light illuminated a man with one hand up, and the other looking like it was tucked inside his waist.
“Freeze! Freeze!” She yelled, tensing her finger on the trigger. When the figure didn’t move, she almost shot, almost put a bullet in the tall man’s chest. But her peripheral vision took in the shape of the vehicle behind her and she comprehended who it was at the last instant. There were dark turret lights on top of the vehicle, and the man wasn’t reaching in his waist, his arm was in a sling.
She dropped her aim. “What the hell are you doing? Are you kidding me?”
Wolf lowered his hand and slammed the door of his vehicle shut. She squinted against the bright headlamps, unable to see his face as his silhouetted figure crunched toward her with fast strides.
She raised the gun again. “Just stop! What are you doing?”
He continued, and now she noticed he was holding up a small square of paper in his free hand.
She stepped once to meet him halfway, to point the gun in his face, but before she knew it her hands were pinned up against the side of the Tahoe, and her pistol was wrenched from her hands.
There was a loud clank on the top of the Tahoe, and she realized Wolf had lobbed it up there.
Without an instant hesitation, she launched into a flurry of punches. She glanced one jab off his cheek, but he easily blocked the next three quick shots. Suddenly the square piece of paper was shoved in her face, and that was all she could see.
“Look at this!” He yelled.
She was too shocked not to. It was a picture of a child, maybe ten years old. A boy kneeling next to a soccer ball, smiling with a hole where a front tooth used to be, with a long mess of black hair.
“Take a good look.” He said, making sure the light shone on the picture. He continued in a softer voice. “Those men shot at my son. Were inches from killing him. Over and over, they shot at him. And I had to watch it, and hope to God they missed every time. I couldn’t help him.”
She shook her head and clenched her eyes. “I’m so—“
“Tell me!” He screamed so loud it hurt her ears. “Tell me about that man with the tattoo.”
A pair of headlights illuminated them, and a car drove by slowly.
They stood staring at each other, until the car disappeared into the distance.
“The man you saw on the trail has been assumed dead for seven months.”
Wolf didn’t respond.
“He went MIA in the mountains of Afghanistan. Seven months ago, and now you just saw him yesterday.”
“What?” Wolf frowned. “And he’s back here in the US?”
Luke nodded. “Apparently.”
Wolf narrowed his eyes. “But there were four of them last night. Him, two shooting at us, and the guy I shot at the fire.”
“His whole team went MIA. There was an explosion inside a cave, and they were believed to be inside.”
“How many team members?” Wolf asked.
“Four. Him and three others.”
Wolf stepped away and looked into the darkness.
“So I ask you,” she continued, “what do you think they are going to do? Come after you and your son? Why? Because you know they are alive, and can identify them? Well, if they do that, they’ll have to come kill all the FBI agents. And a large portion of the CIA. Because we’re on their ass now. They’re going to run. They were coming after you to keep their secret, but it’s too late now, and they know it.”
Wolf turned back toward her, but kept his eyes on the ground.
“And we’re going to catch them,” she said. “So you can go about your business as usual, and not worry about it. You have plenty of things on your plate. What, a music festival in two days?” She softened her voice. “I understand where you are coming from. You’re worried about your son. But please don’t worry. We’re on it.”
Wolf looked up at her and didn’t blink.
She shortened her breath under his intense glare, feeling like she’d just been hit with twin spotlights. His eyes were like knotted dark wood, glowing in the headlights of his SUV. His body was tall and strong. His hair was a thick chestnut colored mess. He had a handsome face covered with a two-day beard that was thick and perfectly symmetrical. He was good looking, in every sense of the word. Dangerous as hell.
Then there was the way he’d taken her gun. One handed. Or, if he’d used his other hand, she didn’t know how he’d done it, and she considered herself well versed in hand-to-hand. Suddenly, this small town sheriff was a much larger presence to her.
She looked away, realizing her thoughts had to have been showing. “All right,” she said, standing on her toes to look at the roof. “Now, get me my gun.”
Wolf walked to the rear and stepped on the back bumper, sagging the Tahoe down, and pulled it off.
He handed it to her without saying a word, got back in his SUV, backed up, turned around, and drove away.
&n
bsp; She watched his taillights recede and then disappear behind the pines, and listened to his revving engine fade into nothing.
“God damn it.” She said, and got back in the Tahoe.
Chapter 23
Wolf looked at the ticking football-clock on the wall, and at the phone sitting on his office desk. He contemplated making the call, and wondered whether or not the man on the other end would be at his desk. It was just after eight o’clock Colorado time, seven o’clock Pacific. And General Haines was the type of man to get to work early and stay late. There was only one way to find out if seven pm was too late.
Wolf dialed the phone, and a few seconds later a woman’s voice answered. “General Haines’s office.”
“General Haines, please.”
“He’s currently not available, sir. Can I take a message?”
“Tell him David Wolf is calling.”
“I’ll tell him you called.”
“I’d prefer if you told him I’m calling. You know, put me on hold and tell him.”
She chuckled softly. “I’ll tell him you called. Can I take your number?”
Wolf gave it to her and hung up. He’d run out of ideas already. There were a couple other people he could call, but they’d probably be off killing people in a foreign country at the moment.
He sat staring at the puddle of light on his desk, and the phone rang, splitting the silence.
“Sheriff Wolf,” he answered.
“Are you the one crank-calling my secretary?”
Wolf smiled. “Hello, General. How are you?”
“I’m doing well. You caught me just in time. I was about out the door for a drink.”
Wolf looked at the ceiling. “Let’s see. Wednesday night. That’s Popeye’s, isn’t it?”
“Ha! You remembered.”
Haines broke into a loud laugh that made Wolf smile as wide as he could. It was a laugh that had probably helped hoist the man up the ranks over the years, from a lowly First Lieutenant when Wolf had met him, to the three-star Lieutenant General he was now.