by Nobody, Joe
They hadn’t spoken of Forest Mist, or Ketchum Jones for the last few days. Now, with the elephant charging into the room, her delicate, thin façade of normalcy suddenly shattered. Terri’s reaction was swift and strong, her breathing now labored, shoulders slumping in despair.
Bishop had never seen his wife so fragile-looking. “Are you sure about this?” she asked, her voice shaking as she spoke.
“I’ve arranged with Nick to have the best possible security for you while we’re back east,” he reassured. “I know the last place you’d ever want to visit again is Forest Mist, but I believe Diana might be right. I think you need to see this with your own eyes, Terri. It won’t be easy, but in the end, the discomfort will be worth it if we catch Blackjack Jones.”
She turned away from him, almost as if she was afraid he could read her thoughts. With her heart pounding, she tried to reconcile the terror that sought to overwhelm her.
Staying alone here, there, or anywhere, was out of the question. She was barely functioning the way things stood… jittery, jumping at every noise in the night, and eating only enough to keep from passing out. She hated it when her husband left for work in the morning. Yesterday, she’d locked herself and Hunter in the bedroom for hours, sitting beside the door, pistol in her lap.
No, staying anywhere without Bishop was out of the question.
Yet, the thought of going back to East Texas right now brought on an avalanche of the kind of memories that nightmares are made of. Fair or not, the community of Forest Mist didn’t leave a good taste in her mouth. She had refused to visit any of the sawmills in the Great Piney Woods after what happened to poor Nathan Hill, sending her general contractor instead. There had been a time when she might have enjoyed a cup of tea with Carly at her B&B were it not for the fact that the old Victorian home had been splintered by Ketchum’s henchmen. No, there was nothing good for her in Forest Mist anymore; she was sure of it.
As her mind raced with the possibilities the trip afforded, the one thing that surprised her was a lack of dread of Blackjack Jones himself. She realized she did indeed want to watch the life drain out of his body, wanted to stand over his carcass and stomp on his grave. Were Bishop and Diana right? Was closure what she really needed to feel better? To recover? To get back to the way things used to be?
“All right,” she conceded, “I’m going with you. Do I need to pack for another cross-country car trip?”
“No,” Bishop responded, shocked that his wife agreed to return to what had to be, her own personal hell. “We are flying. We can even take Hunter on his second airplane ride.”
“No,” she responded with a firm tone. “I don’t want to be distracted. I’ll leave him with Mrs. Ramirez. He seemed happy and content when we went to select our timber. In fact, he didn’t want to leave her house after we got back.”
“She’s feeding him ice cream every day,” Bishop grinned. “Poor kid. How does he stand it?”
“No,” the mother replied, tapping Bishop on the sternum with her finger. “It’s that cute, little granddaughter of hers. Hunter is just like his father, swayed by a pretty face.”
Bishop smiled broadly. It was the first time Terri had even tried to joke with him for days. What was even more important to him was the fact that his wife still had that fire in her belly. She wasn’t going to crawl in a hole or bury her head in the sand. She was going back in the fight, shoulders straight, head held high. “That why I love her so much,” Bishop whispered. “That spunk of hers… no doubt that’s why we’re both still alive.”
If Terri was surprised to see Grim, Kevin, and Butter strolling across the Alpha airport’s tarmac, she didn’t show it. Each man dropped his stuffed duffel bag of gear on the concrete, before waiting his turn to give Miss Terri a hug.
The flight to Verne’s airport outside of Forest Mist was only four hours, Nick having provided the nimble, twin-prop government plane that he insisted was heading east anyway.
After touching down, Verne stepped toward the airplane to meet them, both his Caddy and the Jeep parked next to the office. “I didn’t know if you would need more than one method of transportation again,” the former professor stated, pointing at his two personal vehicles.
“I can’t offer you another plane ride, sir,” Bishop apologized. “This aircraft has to be on its way to another mission. Are you sure you want to let us use your cars?”
“The last ride you delivered was the thrill of a lifetime, young man. You have a permanent invitation to drive my old cars anytime you need,” Verne explained.
Soon afterward, the entourage exited the airport, the Jeep and Caddy in a two-car parade. Instead of taking the turn into the town, Bishop spun the wheel toward Jones Lumber, Incorporated. “You’re not going to check in with Allison?” Terri asked.
“Nope. She already knows we’re here.”
“Okay. And more importantly, you’re not going to torture me with fifty bad lumber jokes while we are on this trip?”
“No,” he shrugged in pure innocence, “Why wood I?”
Thankful Bishop was putting on his game face and didn’t offer any more quips, she rode in silence as they approached the sawmill. Her mind was trying to prepare for the emotional torrent that was sure to release sometime in the next few hours. If Blackjack showed up. If he came to his father’s business. It took all her effort to keep her racing thoughts in check, to maintain her composure and equilibrium.
The drive that day was almost serene as the Cadillac cruised through the Great Piney Woods among massive trees reaching for the sky, their canopies wide enough to shade the two-lane asphalt ribbon. A mile before the mill’s driveway split off, Bishop turned into the same lane he and Terri had used to hide their pickup their first day in Forest Mist. Terri recognized the road immediately. Her muscles tensed, and her heart began to beat wildly. Settle down , she told herself. It’s just a forest.
Just then, Bishop’s voice broke through her mental fog. “Déjà vu all over again,” he said, switching off the engine of the oversized car.
Seeing the sawmill again gave Terri the heebie-jeebies. An icy shiver originated at her crown and spread all the way to her toes, her body now shaking to warm itself. “Let’s hope that this lovely drive through the woods is the only thing that repeats tonight,” Terri grunted, the image of Nathan Hill swinging from a rope still fresh in her mind.
The Jeep pulled up behind the Caddy, all riders spilling into the parking lot. The team formed up quickly and then set off through the woods. Kevin, with his thermal optic, took point.
They had arrived at the mill just before dusk, Bishop positive that if Blackjack were going to take the bait, he would arrive soon. “He will be here,” he reassured Grim. “And it will be tonight. I walked the timeline backward. I plotted his drive time and accounted for how long it would take him to pack and gather his men. He can’t risk the Alliance finding the gold before he does, so he will search for it as soon as possible. That should be today. He’ll wait until it’s dark and then come in.”
Bishop had no way of knowing that on the opposite side of the mill’s substantial grounds, Ketchum and his people were already waiting for the sun to slip below the horizon. They had come in from the east in two large-capacity SUVs, utilizing a little-known logging trail to enter the property.
Blackjack knew there were only three places his father would have hidden that much gold. One location was so obvious, Ketchum had already eliminated it.
The mill’s safe, carved out of the concrete slab in his dad’s office, had already been crossed off the list of prospective stockpiles. While it had been years since he’d taken a peek inside, Ketchum was reasonably sure the unit wasn’t big enough to contain that much precious metal. Besides, the vault would have been the first place anybody would have looked, so Whipsaw would never have stashed something so valuable there.
The second possible hiding place he discounted as a contender was his father’s residence. Blackjack knew that since his mother had left,
Whipsaw rarely spent time there. It had become nothing more than a place to take a shower and then plop down after a long day’s work. Ketchum knew his father was not a trusting man and would want to keep any treasure close by, so the house didn’t qualify for a cache.
No, Whip Jones’s life had been the mill, and that was where he would hide his gold; his son was sure of that. So, Blackjack was chomping at the bit, anxious to get inside and search for what he believed was rightfully his. The cover of night couldn’t get there fast enough for him.
On the west side of the grounds, Bishop and his team advanced to the edge of the forest, keeping back far enough so as not to be detected. Pointing at Grim and Kevin, he signaled those two men to take up flanking positions.
Once his teammates had moved off, Bishop pulled Butter close and whispered in the big man’s ear. “You stick to Terri like glue. She’s on edge and might do anything. If something happens to her, you and I will have a very, very uncomfortable discussion. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Butter nodded.
For an hour they waited, resting against tree trunks while they swatted bugs and observed the mill. Every few minutes, Bishop would scan the facility’s multiple outbuildings and equipment sheds with his night vision. He knew Grim was doing the same, as was Kevin with his even more prying thermal. A mouse could not have gotten by them.
It was just over one hundred minutes after sunset when Kevin’s hushed voice crackled over the radio. “Movement. Thirty meters north of the office.”
Inhaling deeply, Bishop whispered, “Showtime,” and began scanning with his optic.
“I have five males, four armed with long weapons. Two females. I’m ninety percent sure it is Ketchum Jones,” Kevin reported a moment later.
Realizing Terri didn’t have a radio, Bishop leaned close and whispered, “He took the bait. Blackjack is here.”
She didn’t react, at least not externally. The only thing Bishop noticed in the darkness was her grip tightening on her rifle. That, all things considered, was to be expected.
The first surprise of the evening came a minute later. Bishop would have predicted that Ketchum was going to break into the mill’s main office and start ransacking the place in his search for the precious metal. He didn’t.
“Movement toward the first small outbuilding on the left,” came Kevin’s report. “I’m sure now. It is Blackjack. Four security types. The females, as far as I can tell, are unarmed.”
At that point, Ketchum’s party appeared in Bishop’s view. The moonlight was already bright enough to cast a shadow on the East Texas dirt. He was sure Terri could see them now, even without night vision. His hand reached for her, a signal that she wasn’t alone. She gladly accepted his grasp, a quick squeeze announcing that she was okay.
Bishop watched as Blackjack headed toward the shed that covered the truck scale. He had spotted the feature on their first visit there to buy timber, a line of log haulers lined up, waiting to be weighed.
Ketchum strolled to one corner of the platform and bent low. Bishop noted the screech of rusty metal parts being rubbed together and then smiled as Blackjack raised what appeared to be a maintenance access panel, probably used to calibrate or repair the scales. A flashlight beam appeared, and then the upper half of Whipsaw’s boy disappeared below ground.
Using his best leprechaun-approved, Irish accent, Bishop whispered, “No pot of gold there, my friend.”
Ketchum emerged a moment later. He and his search party were close enough now that Bishop’s men could hear voices talking, but they couldn’t make out the conversation. However, it was obvious from the harsh tones wafting over the property that Blackjack was more than a little disappointed not to have discovered his prize.
Only momentarily deterred, Ketchum made a beeline for the main equipment barn, his cohorts in tow. A long, stainless steel structure, it was designed with eight, large overhead doors facing the main compound, all of them were closed. It was the sort of place that housed front-end loaders, bulldozers, and other substantial machinery. At the near end was a single “people” entrance, obviously Blackjack’s objective. Bishop made the decision to deny admittance to his archenemy.
“Take out the security team,” the West Texan transmitted to his team. “S1 through S4, clockwise order.”
“Acquired,” Kevin responded a moment later. “Guard in the jean jacket.”
“Acquired,” Grim announced next. “Man without sleeves.”
“Acquired,” Butter transmitted, “Point man.”
That left Bishop with security guy number four wearing a white shirt, the red dot of his holographic optic already centered on the back of the man’s head. “Go!” he ordered.
Four spitting noises joined the nighttime chorus of chirping crickets, the 78-grain lead bullets traveling at just under 1,100 feet per second. Their subsonic speed was much slower than normal, yet still substantial enough to deliver a deadly dose of kinetic energy to the targets. Each SAINT member fired a second round, just to be sure, but none were necessary. Ketchum’s men crumpled on the ground after the first shots, the impact of their bodies making more noise than the weapons that had killed them.
Before his last man hit the ground, Blackjack was darting toward the doorway. Bishop’s nemesis might have been big… and was most definitely evil, but Ketchum was not slow. The former Ranger had served in a combat zone and had realized instantly that he was under attack.
Wanting to prevent his quarry from taking shelter, Bishop launched a stream of lead Ketchum’s way. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks to subsonic ammunition is that you can’t fire rounds on full automatic. That restriction saved Blackjack’s life as he dove through the equipment garage’s entrance.
Stunned, the two women in the party chirped with surprise, one of them having the wherewithal to scream out a warning, and then both of them began to run. They instinctively followed Blackjack through the threshold of the now-open barn.
Bishop was helping his wife up as Grim and Kevin rushed out of the woods. Butter, as ordered, was right beside Terri.
Grim let Kevin take the doorway while he hustled to the back side of the oversized structure, just to make sure there wasn’t another exit.
As the Alliance team took up positions to cover the entrance, Grim returned and motioned that this was the only door.
“Bangers!” Bishop ordered, pulling a metallic cylinder off his vest. After Grim and Kevin both produced similar devices, the team leader pointed to himself and said, “Long,” then his finger indicated Grim while grunting, “Short.”
Rolling his eyes at the implied insult to his manhood, Grim nodded his understanding. Bishop gave a countdown using hand motions, and then all three of the flashbang grenades flew through the doorway. Bishop threw like a Major League Baseball pitcher, or long, Kevin tossed his with medium force, Grim’s barely making it inside the threshold.
“Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!” rocked the inside the building, all three devices generating blinding light and deafening thunder. They were nonlethal, designed to overload human sensory input and temporarily scramble motor functions.
Before the roaring report had stopped echoing through the Great Piney Woods, Grim and Kevin had entered the door, weapons high, sweeping right and left. Bishop followed a second later, followed by Terri and Butter.
The two girls were thrashing on the floor less than ten feet from the entrance, rolling left and right, holding their ringing ears, completely disorientated. Turning to Butter, Bishop hissed, “Tie them up and stay here with Terri.”
Reaching for the nylon zip ties on his belt, the big man bent to secure the clueless women while Terri stood nearby watching her protector work.
Bishop motioned for Grim to go left, Kevin right. “I’m high diddle-diddle, straight up the middle,” he whispered.
No surprise, the interior was filled with machinery. Bishop saw a tractor with a plow blade first, that machine next to a pair of log trailers that were obviously under repair. Peering down the l
ine, he spotted a bulldozer, a truck, and a couple of machines he couldn’t identify. The place reeked of diesel, grease, and “past its prime” engine oil.
Ketchum knew the layout of the land, this familiar building offering a thousand nooks and crannies for him to hide in, but Bishop wasn’t concerned about that. With their night vision devices and thermal capability, they would see him or his body heat, long before their adversary could identify their position.
Slowly, methodically, the trio of hunters progressed, ready to pounce on their prey. Each piece of equipment was carefully pied, searched, and scanned as they advanced, leaving no wrench, toolbox, or cab unchecked.
Behind the bulldozer, Ketchum was trying to regain control of his thoughts. Just like he’d been trained in Ranger school, he knew that cool, calm, collected thinking was the only thing that was going to save his ass. He was sure it was Bishop who was stalking him, and that prompted a mixed bag of emotions. Had the demon from West Texas heard about the gold?
Blackjack couldn’t fathom any other reason for Bishop to have returned. The man had extracted his revenge in the battle with Forest Mist. He had his wife back. Whipsaw was dead, and the funeral pyres for Ketchum’s men lite up the night for days. What more could that bastard want?
For a brief moment, Ketchum considered offering Bishop a bribe. He would make him an offer, promising half of the booty in exchange for his life.
That idea was quickly dismissed, however, when Blackjack considered that there was no reason why the Alliance gunmen would settle for just half. Why would they? Once they found out the treasure’s location, they could just kill him and take it all for themselves.
Holding his breath, he listened intently. He could hear them as they cleared the building… a footfall that grazed the wall, the scrape of cloth passing too close to a muddy tire. He counted at least three men. He assumed they maneuvered using night vision.