The Hunted

by James Phelan

  “Yep,” she said, holding her hands out for the car key. Walker passed it over. “I know a place.”

  •

  The place turned out to be a motel on the western edge of Thayer, just north of the border. Even with the windows shut the sounds of the interstate could be heard, tires speeding by on coarse bitumen.

  The room was tired. Oatmeal-colored carpet worn and stained, ingrained with cigarette ash over a decade or two. The twin beds had mismatched floral quilts, the mattresses were lumpy and the pillows thin and cold. The heater worked, though, an electric thing blowing out hot dusty air, and Walker turned it to full while Squeaker sat back on her bed and ate crisps and sipped whisky from a chipped mug while watching a late-night chat show on television.

  “Nice place,” Walker said.

  “I came here after a date once,” she replied. “When my ma was still alive—we lived together, her and I, back at the clearing, so I had no decent place to go after the date. I mean, I didn’t want to use the car, and we’d been further up in Missouri headed back—so we stopped here.” She stopped herself, looked at her mug of liquor like it was some kind of truth serum. She took another sip. “The rooms with the big beds are nicer.”

  “Can’t be much worse,” Walker said, picking up his pack. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

  “Okay,” she said, not taking her eyes off the television. “Then we plan, right? For tomorrow.”

  “Right,” Walker said, smiling, and she shot him a mischievous grin with her lips moving to her drink.

  Walker went into the bathroom and closed the flimsy door, the warped plywood not shutting right in its jamb. He set the shower on hot and waited for it to steam while he stripped off, rinsing his bloodstained shirt out under cold water in the basin, scrubbing it with the pitifully tiny bar of soap. Once it was clean and wrung out, he hung it over the rail that held the torn shower curtain. He adjusted the shower and stepped in. As the water rained down, he washed the specks of blood from his neck, where it had splattered. Washed the cold out of his hair. Scrubbed at his stubble, getting rid of what he imagined were minute specks of Seabass’s last stand.

  The bathroom door opened. He looked out under his hanging shirt.

  Squeaker stood in the doorway, naked, and came right on into the shower, her hands up over her chest against the cold. She stood in the shower and pushed her body against Walker’s, nuzzling under the streaming hot water.

  “Look—”

  “Sh,” she said, wrapping her arms around his waist, her feet between his.

  “Susan—”

  “Squeaker.”

  “I’m an old man next to you.”

  “How old are you?” she asked, looking up into his eyes.

  “At least thirty-nine.”

  “That’s not old. I’m twenty-three.” She smiled.

  “Still. You’re too small—I’m throwing you back into the ocean.”

  Squeaker looked up at him. Walker looked down at her.

  “Fine. Just let me hold you awhile,” she said, turning her head and resting it on his chest. “Hold me too.”

  Walker rested his chin on her head, let out a breath and wrapped his arms around her. He felt her smile against him.

  •

  “We have a problem,” Menzil said to his crew.

  The four of them looked at him, silent, waiting.

  “The final target, Murphy,” Menzil said, looking at his guys. “He’s hot. There are Feds on his tail.”

  The tallest of the four said, “You sure?”

  Menzil gave him a look, like questioning him was not a good idea.

  “What kind of Feds?” another guy asked.

  “NCIS,” Menzil said.

  A couple of the guys snorted, but they stopped when they realized their boss, Menzil, wasn’t pleased and didn’t think any of it was joke-worthy.

  “So, what’s the problem?” the first questioner asked.

  “They have resources. And from what I hear, they’re ahead of us on this target.”

  “We have been busy.”

  Menzil shot the speaker another look that silenced him. These men had known his brother, and respected him before he was blown to pieces by an IED on patrol in Afghanistan with these men. And Menzil had become their friend, and later, their meal ticket. A big, fat meal ticket. They knew he’d been a cop, a detective in Detroit, but that was it. They didn’t know who he was working for, and they didn’t care. For them, a big payday while sticking it to Uncle Sam and the DoD trumped all else, and he was their conduit to that.

  “This is the final target we have to get to,” Menzil said.

  “There’re others, under protection,” one of the team piped up.

  “Their protection list is compromised,” Menzil replied, reminding himself of the lie he’d told these men. “And anyway, that’s not our concern. This is the last target for us.”

  “How long have we got?”

  “Until 5:30 tomorrow, before the demonstration. We gotta get this last guy and then back here onto our objective.”

  A couple of the guys shared looks.

  “Too hard for you?” he asked them.

  “No.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Right. Now, pack your gear. All of it. We’re headed south. Within a couple of days you’ll all be on some sunny beach someplace, getting drunk and having your brains screwed out or whatever it is that you’re after.”

  The men left without a sound but the look on each one’s face was that of a soldier finally getting to complete the mission for which he had trained long and hard. Menzil remembered what that felt like, remembered his first kill as an undercover cop. Remembered the rush he’d experienced when, later, he’d taken down some serious gangbangers on his own, six guys, all jacked up on ice, and he’d smoked them with his Glock in one hand and his badge in the other. His Glock and his badge had been handed in. But a silenced 9-millimeter Sig was now strapped to his thigh, and his team of four ex-Army personnel were tooled up to the eyeballs.

  And in a couple of days for Menzil, hell . . . it’d feel . . . it would be like winning the Super Bowl.

  24

  Walker woke up and saw that Susan—Squeaker—was asleep sideways across her single bed, the quilt wrapped around her, a bare leg hanging off the edge.

  It was still dark outside. The digital alarm clock cut the darkness in the room with red numerals: 03:23.

  Zero-Dark-Thirty. A military term, for an unspecific time in the early morning. The time when shit went down. In Afghanistan it was a time of work for men like Walker and Murphy. Spec Ops teams would go hunting, the darkness their friend. All kinds of optical equipment would aid them in the field, making day of night. The enemy wasn’t nearly as well equipped or prepared. Tactical safety for the well-stocked attacker.

  It was also a time when the human physiology was at its lowest ebb. In the full dark the pineal glands of those who slept released high levels of melatonin into their brains. They’d slow. Deep REM sleep. Tactical advantage for the attacker.

  So, Walker was awake, alert. Old habits. He’d slept for three hours. He listened. Silence but for the trucks heading north or south on the 63, and the occasional and far quieter car. He again looked over at Squeaker, at her skin blue-white in the neon light that streamed through the gap in the curtains. He thought of Eve, asleep somewhere, protected. Then he thought of his father.

  Asleep somewhere? Protected?

  Part of this? Or perpetrator?

  03:29

  Walker closed his eyes. Rest, but not sleep. He listened to Squeaker’s breathing, rhythmic and deep. He couldn’t recall a time when he had ever slept that soundly.

  •

  At 04:30, near-on two hundred road miles north-northeast of Walker’s position, Charles Murphy, Chief Petty Officer US Navy, Ret., opened his eyes. He woke without an alarm, as he rose around that time every morning.

  It was hunting time.

  He left his warm bed, where his wife slept soundly
. His infant son lay in a crib at the foot of their bed, sleeping deeply and snoring through his tiny nose. Murphy checked on his two daughters, each in a single bed at opposite sides of their shared room. He smiled while looking them over. He pulled the quilt over his eldest, a four year old. The little girl squirmed and Murphy settled her with a hand on the chest. The ex-SEAL smiled again, remembering those weeks of leave he’d enjoyed when his first child was born. He’d missed that contact time with his second child, while he’d been working afar. With his eldest he’d had the chance to watch her as she stared into his eyes, slowly, day by day, week by week, focusing.

  Murphy dressed in the laundry that doubled as a mud room at the back of the house. He pulled on combat boots, took a rifle from the tall metal cupboard by the back door and ammunition from a locked box on the shelf.

  He went out the back door and locked it behind him. The squat log cabin was in the middle of the woods, twenty difficult miles from the nearest house, sixty from the closest town, but he locked the door, and the key was around his neck on the same chain that held his old dog-tags. He walked off the porch of the log cabin, which he had built with two friends a year ago, from rough-hewn green logs. The windows were laminated three-quarter-inch glass, bought from a pawn shop that had gone broke and the wooden walls fitted around them. The ventilation in the eaves was set in quarter-inch steel grates, surplus things he’d got from his cousin at the junkyard. The roof was corrugated iron, fixed with double the screws necessary, paid for with what was left of his Navy salary after purchasing the rights to this freehold. The cavity between it and the cement-sheet ceiling was full of un-spun lamb’s wool that he’d swapped a truckload of in return for setting up a professional-grade rifle range for a farmer-turned-tourist-rancher over in Tennessee. All of it built by his hand, doused with his sweat and blood.

  Murphy looked at his house, locked up tight in the middle of nowhere. He set off at a jog, light on his feet, his rifle over his shoulder, his daypack on his back. He took to his favored trail, headed east, toward a rise some twenty minutes’ hike away. He’d stop there, check for tracks and signs, then find a perch and settle in to wait for a deer to amble through the morning sunlight as it ate at the dewy undergrowth. He did that most days, trading anything beyond what his family needed. Twice in the past spring he’d come back with boar; they were still eating the jerky. As Murphy moved, he thought about what the morning’s hunt might bring.

  25

  “He’s with a young local woman,” Woods said, climbing back into the car after exiting the Sheriff’s office. He pulled a small notebook from his jacket pocket. “Named Susan Orlean.”

  Levine said, “Who’s she?”

  “She’s Murphy’s cousin.”

  “Shit.”

  “I know.”

  “How’s he know Walker was with her?” Levine said, nodding toward the office.

  “Last night, near midnight. Walker made a ruckus at a local bar.”

  “Nice. Cops involved?”

  “Didn’t say. Just said Walker was with this young woman.”

  “Well, in her he found a lead to get to Murphy,” Levine said. “You think he’s taken her hostage?”

  “Sheriff just said he was with her,” Woods replied. “Like they were friendly; he didn’t seem concerned about her whereabouts or wellbeing.”

  “Not that he said so, specifically.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. But he’d have said if she was hostage, right?”

  “Did you get an address for her?”

  “Her mother’s address, but she passed a few years back and the bills are still being paid.”

  “Then she’s at that address.”

  “That’s what the Sheriff figured,” Woods said, punching the address into the sat-nav.

  “Fifteen minutes from here,” Levine said, putting the Ford in gear.

  “The way you drive, it’ll be half an hour—maybe more.”

  “Oh?” Levine tore out of the Sheriff’s car park with wheels spinning on gravel. She saw the Sheriff in her rearview mirror, walking to his car and talking on his hand-held radio, watching them depart.

  •

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” Squeaker said, sitting up in bed and rubbing sleep from her eyes as she saw Walker standing beside her, dressed and his bed made long ago.

  “You looked like you needed sleep,” Walker said, putting a paper-wrapped egg-and-bacon roll next to her, along with a tall coffee in a Styrofoam cup.

  “What time is it?”

  “Six am.”

  “Six am!” she said. “Why did you wake me?”

  Walker chuckled.

  “God, what am I doing here?” Squeaker said, lying back down in bed and putting her hands over her face. Then she sat bolt upright. “And—and what did we do last night?”

  “Do?”

  “I mean . . .” She looked down. She was wearing his T-shirt, huge and oversized on her, and nothing else.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “You sound disappointed,” Walker said with a grin, sipping his own tall cup of strong coffee from the diner across the street. “Surely you’d remember it if something happened.”

  It took a moment for Squeaker to speak. When she did, it was matter-of-fact, the same tone he’d first heard in that bar, though quiet.

  “I came into your shower. You held me. It was warm, and safe. I remember that.” She put a hand to her head. “And whisky. I remember whisky.”

  “And that was that.”

  “That was what?”

  Walker smiled, said, “We showered, Squeaker, that was it. We stood there, and then we each went to our separate beds.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Why—why didn’t we do anything?” Squeaker opened her breakfast and paused and then looked up at him. “You don’t find me . . .”

  “You asked me that last night,” Walker said. “Look, you’re great, pretty, cute and tough—all at the same time. Which is awesome. But I’ve got a mission I need to focus on. Stuff going on.”

  “To find my cousin. Save him and save the day. And stuff.”

  “That’s about it.” Walker sipped his coffee. He was aware that they should be moving, on the road by now.

  “Sorry. I was tired, last night. Maybe a little drunk from the bar. And then the whisky . . . God, what do they say? Whisky after beer, never fear?”

  “I think it’s beer before whisky always risky.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “You shot well, for a drunk girl. Unless you were aiming for Gus’s head.”

  “Ha. Well, you should see me sober,” she said, then sat up, sipped her coffee. “Turn around.”

  “Huh?”

  “I need to get dressed.”

  Walker paused, said, “You know, I’ve seen you naked.”

  “That was last night. Last night was insane. Last night is history, gone, disappeared.”

  “Like your cousin.”

  “Would you just turn around already?”

  “Okay.” Walker turned around and smiled again and drank more coffee. He really liked the girl—she had spunk and then some. And he felt good about the day.

  26

  Walker drove while Squeaker navigated and ate her breakfast, then finished her coffee, then told stories about her upbringing and her cousin. They were headed north, slightly to the east, the road not quite a highway and not quite a rural road. Some places were dead straight, and he’d wind the Tahoe out to sixty-five, and next thing there’d be a blind intersection or bend in the road and he’d have to slow to a crawl.

  Outside the trees were tall and spindly, mostly pines and spruce upturned to the cold and ready for snow. They passed a couple of general stores that sold gas and supplies, but they’d filled up and the Tahoe still had half a tank by the time they passed a sign welcoming them to a town: West Plains, Missouri, population 12,000. It looked about the
same as Thayer but maybe double the size. Same rows of grocery stores, barber shops, post office, pizza joints, liquor stores, gun stores, sport stores—just double the number of them.

  “I haven’t been here since I was a kid,” Squeaker said. “And this is the last place anyone I know saw Murphy.”

  “Where do we start?” Walker asked, slowing to thirty as he turned right onto the main street. It was full of pick-ups and four-by-fours, old and new, lined with squat one- and two-story buildings either side of the wide street. His pick would be a bar again. He figured, towns this small, barmen knew most people’s business. Plus, Walker knew, most military personnel liked bars. So, of all the places to check, there was a high probability that they’d get some information there. But it was too early; they were still shut up.

  “Casey’s,” Squeaker said.

  “Is that a bar?”

  “Nope. That’s another cousin of ours.”

  “Is everyone related out here?”

  “Everyone out here’s related to someone,” Squeaker replied, deadpan as she watched out her side window.

  “Right,” Walker said through a grin. “Where is she?”

  “He’s way through town, left at the sign that points to the garbage dump.”

  “Got it,” Walker said.

  They passed a small police station, two cruisers parked out front. Probably not much for them to do around here. He kept on the gas.

  “So,” he said, “this is some other family’s meth territory?”

  “Yep,” Squeaker replied. “This isn’t just a clash of two families over drug turf, though. It goes waaay back before that. That’s recent news. There’s a bigger story in this. It’s really about the battle for America.”

  “Oh?”

  “One side’s rooted in traditional ways. And another side, up here in Missouri, they want progress and things to change. It’s been going on forever, a never-ending battle, and that’s what this is really about. Not drugs. Well, it is now, but only because there’s stupid money to be made. Really it’s about power, a struggle between the families, real deep-seated. On one side is Barbwire Barb and her crew—you’ve met them.” Squeaker looked sideways at Walker.