Pack

by Mike Bockoven

  She was so hungry and desperate that she ate the cherries and upon doing so her mood improved. She still wouldn’t get close to the wolf, so he brought her more and she ate them and he got closer still. Finally, after several trips to bring the woman chokecherries, she touched the wolf/spirit, who was more happy than he had ever been. She stroked his fur and hugged him, then offered him some of the cherries. The wolf/spirit ate them, not knowing they were deadly to animals. Soon, the wolf died and the woman was left alone.

  The story, as told by the tribe, was meant to symbolize how changes to one’s fundamental nature never end well. As Goodchild wrote in his diary, “the moral was to be hearty and do your job.”

  This story was a favorite of Nicholas Caspersen, a founding father of the town, so much so that he had part of the story inscribed on a historical marker just off the highway. The marker, made of solid granite and weighing well over a ton, marked your entry into the town and it made Caspersen immensely proud, partly because of the name he chose and helped foster. Instead of naming the new burg “Wolfwood” or something similarly silly, he opted for “Cherry,” a simple, poignant reminder to the town of the fundamental nature of its founders.

  Or it could have meant, as Mountain Man Goodchild so eloquently put it, “do your job.”

  PART 9 – THINGS THAT WILL BITE

  It was not professional at all, the way Stander had forgotten about Stu, tied up in the Sheriff’s office. The fact that he had allowed him to escape was nothing short of negligence. To be fair, operations had never been his strong suit. To be realistic, that didn’t matter to those in charge.

  Stander had started as a “number cruncher,” which was a term he hated but wasn’t at all apt. His job had very little to do with numbers and much more to do with computer coding and pattern recognition, both of which were vital to basic intelligence work. “Number cruncher” denoted he sat in an office all day pouring over budgets when, in actuality, he led a team of intelligent, diligent programmers whose job it was to search for patterns when they emerged from a wide variety of sources. No one but Stander had the full picture of what they were looking for, exactly, but his team was not dumb and had caught on. A week or so ago, when his team had put together enough data points to present to upper management, they had given him a silver bullet on a necklace as a “going away present.” Everyone in the team had been awarded six-figure bonuses for interpreting the data so quickly in addition to their already-handsome salary, so champagne had been popped and backs had been slapped, which was a rare state of social affairs for a bunch of “number crunchers.” He had been told multiple times to “stay safe out there,” like he was going to some war torn nation. It had caused him to reflect on how he had gotten to where he was.

  When Stander had been recruited from Wall Street where he had headed one of the R&D Departments at a large bank, the process of interviewing with HartmanCorp included much more than your usual Non Disclosure Agreement. It included a battery of psychological tests, a physical test and veiled talk stretching the law, if not breaking it.

  Stander had gone along with it all and even embellished his bona fides because was bored. He was rich, his job was unfulfilling and an odd and exotic group promising adventure, if nothing else, had reached out to him. After agreeing to take a job analyzing data, he had been singled out for leadership, which meant learning more about the company, what it did and how it did it. The bottom line, Stander found out, was HartmanCorp was in the business of industrial espionage, among other services. If a company wanted something badly, like a sustained lobbying effort or a public information campaign, they could do that themselves. If they needed really nasty opposition research, there were places for that as well. If they wanted someone found, or lost, if a competitor was about to crush a company and they had no other option or if, say, a small town needed to shaken to its core in order to flush out a few special citizens, that was when you called HartmanCorp.

  Sure enough, it had been fun. Stander had trained for a “leadership position” by tagging along on several paramilitary escapades disguised as “safety and protection” services. He had learned and knew the game, but was never able to shake the feeling that, while he was in a leadership position, that he was seen as nothing but a ‘number cruncher”. His affinity for bow ties and straight posture didn’t help matters, so when the call came that he was under consideration to lead the Barter County operation, he lobbied, actively.

  •••

  He had convinced his superiors he was “the man” and the minute the party with his department was over and all the backs had been slapped, Stander had been whisked away to meet his Operations Team. In short order he determined he may have made a mistake as he was not his “intellectual safe space”.

  The problems started almost immediately with the “intel and prep” team. These men, who were a bit more physically intense than Stander was used to, were prepped and ready to invade the entirety of Barter County, knock on every door, beat every bush and get the information within 48 hours. Stander had said no. The operation could not, under any circumstances, draw undo attention unless there was no other option. He pared down the force and did a lot of the leg work himself, which prompted his first meeting with management.

  The organizational chart at HartmanCorp was more or less a mystery. Employees knew who they reported to and who those superiors reported to but only a select few could go far up the ladder, so it was to Stander’s dismay when a man calling himself Simmons called him on his company issued phone to discuss strategy.

  “What department are you from, exactly,” Stander had asked.

  “Unimportant,” Simmons said. “I’m talking to you because you are going against procedure and by going against procedure you are taking a risk, Mr. Stander. Either that risk pays off and you are rewarded or it does not pay off and you suffer consequences.”

  “I see,” Stander said. He didn’t know what it was, but the combination of the man’s stern voice, his use of language which mimicked corporate speak within the company and his insistence on results convinced him that the man on the other end of the phone did work for his employer. And that his threats were backed up.

  Over the course of five brief minutes, Stander explained his strategy and why he had broken protocol. “Simmons” offered no encouragement or excoriation, waiting until Stander stopped talking to respond.

  “Your plan is acceptable for now,” he said. “The less you talk to me the better your operation is going. Endeavor not to speak to me again.”

  The moment he hung up he received a text message from an unfamiliar number saying his phone was to stay on during the entirely of the operation. Failure to answer the phone when it rang was a failure to be met with “consequences.”

  He had been warned, of course. During the training his instructors had explained the importance of protocol but far more importantly, the importance of success. Each “operation” had parameters and those parameters were the be all and end all of his existence during the time he was operation leader. Failure was not acceptable in the field, he was told. Now he was being threatened via phone somewhere, but the threats were starting to creep up Stander’s spine and were making way for his brain.

  Before he received the bad news that Stu had escaped, Stander had already convinced himself that if he failed, it would be the last thing he ever did. When he got the news, his anger took over, which was an exceedingly rare thing. The last time he had given himself over to anger so completely was in high school when his girlfriend continued to deny his physical advances. He had called her every name he could think of and made her exit his car in the middle of a busy intersection with no ride home. He had paid consequences for that lapse in calm and had vowed never to do it again.

  Vows were meant to be broken, apparently.

  “Let me ask you,” Stander said, speaking quietly and quickly, pacing around the room where an empty chair with a cut pair of zip tie hand cuffs on them were the central feature. “You’ve be
en trained by HartmanCorp, correct?”

  “Yes,” the man said. He was white, or possibly light skinned Latino, dressed in a Kevlar vest and other pieces of riot gear. Stander didn’t care, but did note the man didn’t address him as “sir,” which was part of their paramilitary training.

  “Forensic deconstruction is part of your training, is it not?”

  “It is.”

  “Then tell me what happened here, please.”

  The man looked from the cut zip tie hand cuffs to Stander and back at the cuffs.

  “How did he get out of them, you giant fucking idiot!” Stander screamed.

  “This was the first outward sign of anger from Stander, but inside, he was already out of control. The man stammered and his body language reverted to that of a child in trouble.

  “He …he cut them.”

  It took Stander significant restraint to not commit murder on the spot.

  “How?” he asked, his voice again quiet and fast. “How did he cut them.”

  “Well,” the man walked over to the cuffs and bent down, looking at them and the old chair they were on with a scientific eye. “It looks like he was able to rub them on something metal and cut them.”

  “So your answer is ‘something metal?’”

  The man in the riot gear looked up and gave a shrug.

  “I guess so.”

  Stander walked over to the chair and bent over in the same position as the man. He studied the cuffs closely.

  “What do you think it could have been?” he asked.

  Before the man could answer, Stander put both hands on either side of his head and started pushing his eye toward the edge of the wooden chair. The man jerked, but the element of surprise was firmly in Stander’s corner, and he quickly maneuvered the man’s head until his right eye socket was pressing hard into the edge of the chair. The man attempted to overpower Stander, but any show of force was met with sudden and unrelenting pain as he pushed the edge of the chair further into the man’s ocular cavity.

  The scream of surprise heard outside the room turned into a shrieks of pain and Stander’s anger took more and more control and the edge of the chair sank deeper and deeper, pushing the man’s eye further and further back.

  “Is there any reason …” Stander panted “that I shouldn’t shove your eye all the way into your incompetent fucking brain? ANY REASON AT ALL?”

  The answer was a pained scream as the pitch of the man’s voice continued to rise, giving Stander all the fuel he needed to keep pushing. This man was the embodiment of apathy, the embodiment of arrogance, the embodiment of why he was failing and in a moment he wouldn’t have thought possible a short few months ago, Stander punched the man in the back of his head, as hard as he could. There was a squish and a pop before the screaming started and the moment Stander released his grip the man bolted from the building, screaming and crying and carrying on.

  “Piece of shit,” Stander said under his breath. The other men in the room were actively trying to not react, which was a reaction in and of itself. He turned to one of them.

  “Do we still have the Sheriff’s sister in custody or are we too incompetent to detain a fat lesbian housewife?”

  “She’s at the town hall, sir,” the man said. This was the first time Stander had ever been called “sir” by someone not in the service industry.

  “Fetch her, please,” he said. “I need her here and I need Mr. Rhodes here as well.”

  “Right away, sir,” the man said. There was a hustle in his step as he started on his errand.

  Outside, the first man was receiving medical attention. There was gauze being applied and even through the window, Stander could see a man off to the side, filling out a report. The man with the eye injury was describing how he got the wound, and there were a few glances back at Stander. When the man with the papers and the man applying first aid looked, it occurred to Stander to do something even more out of character, even more brash, in some ways, than physically assaulting one of his own men.

  He smiled and waved. The crew quickly looked away.

  •••

  The minute Conall had driven away, Kenny Kirk’s mouth had started running and given his sheer word per minute output, there were bound to be some negative runs in there. By the time they pulled up on his storage unit, the whole pack was irritated.

  “I remember the last time you rode a motorcycle it did not go well, man. It did not go well. I remember you wrecked that one time, you remember, it was a clear day and it had rained just a little and you ate it, hard, on one of those turns down by Rural Road 104. That was under the best conditions, man, so I don’t know how you think you’re going to pull this off, especially since you haven’t been riding in, like, a year.”

  “I got it,” Dave said. “If I don’t got it, you have my permission to tell me ‘I told you so’ after you save my ass.”

  “Well that’s just it. I don’t want to tell you ‘I told you so.’ I want this to work and a big part of it working is you driving that motorcycle and not wrecking the damn thing if there’s a puddle or a slight gust of wind or something.”

  Kenny and JoAnn had made a quick run to a friend who lived not far from the hotel and had borrowed a Suburban from his house. The seven of them in two cars were barreling down the highway, and Dave had done the chivalrous and honorable thing and volunteered to ride with Kenny.

  “Let’s worry about that in a minute,” Dave said. “Right now let’s just get the vehicles and go from there.”

  “I’m more concerned about your wife, if you don’t mind me saying,” Ron said from the shotgun seat. “I mean, she’s bad ass, don’t get me wrong, but she’s got a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it.”

  “She knows,” Dave said.

  “That’s not reassuring, man, not in the least,” Kenny said. “I don’t know how she’s going to pull it off and I’ve been thinking about it. I mean, we don’t even know if they’re going to bite, much less how many guys they’re going to bring. And then what? How is she going to …”

  Dave cut Kenny off. He had been supremely patient up until this point but it was getting harder and harder to deal with the yammering.

  “There are parts of this that are going to be rough,” he said. “But let’s get the bikes and go from there, please.”

  Kenny took the hint and they rode the last half mile in silence. The first part of the plan involved getting hold of two motorcycles and three cars, all of which were stored in Kenny’s shed about eight miles outside of town. The shed was purposefully remote but off the highway, so they didn’t know whether or not any of Stander’s men would be staking it out. A quick glance of the road around the place showed that they weren’t. There were no tracks in the dirt surrounding the shed.

  “Looks good,” Ron said.

  “I don’t know, what if they came in by helicopter or something,” Kenny said. “I’ve heard of, like, really big companies having those helicopters with four propellers, one on each end, what do you call them?”

  “Quadcopters,” Ron said.

  “Yeah, man, quadcopters. I’ve heard of those things equipped with guns and cameras and lasers and all sorts of shit,” Kenny said. “If I hear a buzzing when I go in there I’m throwing one of you down and making for the truck.”

  “Why would you throw one of us down? It’s in the sky, Kenny, it’s not a bear,” Ron said.

  “I’ll use the time they spend shooting you on the ground to get to the truck. Why is that so hard to understand?” Kenny said, unlocking the shed and pulling open the door. The contents inside were covered in dust, but they were there – one 58 Ford Mustang with a growl so loud the filter was just a formality, 82 Corvette that Kenny had spent years restoring and one big ass Harley Davidson motorcycle, twin cams and not enough to be garish.

  The three vehicles were loud. That was the important thing.

  “They got gas in them?” Ron asked.

  “Gas and I put new tires on them not all that long ago,
” Kenny said. “They ought to work.”

  “They’ll work, Dave said, and walked over to the Harley. He ran his fingers along the black leather seat, tracking a think line of clean in a cloud of dust. The bike had been Dave’s and for years he loved riding it, giving it up only when Dilly had been born. He’d sold it to Kenny for a couple hundred dollars and though he never regretted it, seeing the bike in a minor state of disrepair was enough to hurt.

  Dave took a second to let his mind drift on how it was kind of fitting he might go out sitting on top of his motorcycle. He had started riding when he and Josie had been newlyweds. She had no interest, but one Christmas had conspired with her family and friends to buy him a beaten up old bike, and he had spent time in the garage getting it up and running. By the time he sold it, he had spent more to restore the thing than a new motorcycle would have cost, but he knew every crack and shimmy the machine would dish out. At least he did. He didn’t regret giving it up when the kid was born but he never felt quite as good as when he was riding it in those early days. Dave breathed a noticeable sigh at how complicated things had become.

  “Hey, I took care of her,” Kenny started. “It’s just dusty is all. I’ve got some Armor All in the corner over there …”

  “Keys,” Dave said. “We’ve got to meet up with the others.”

  “I call the ’Vette,” Ron said.

  “You don’t get to come in to a man’s garage and start telling him what’s what,” Kenny said. “You’ll ride out of her on my nephew’s tricycle if you keep that shit up.”

  A few admonitions from Kenny later, and they were on the road. Dave had found a helmet that sort of fit, but had thrown it off when they started riding. The wind felt amazing in his hair and if he crashed and died before getting to where he was going, that would just have to be the way of things.

  •••

  The zip-tie holding Stu’s hand had been cut by metal molding on Grey Allen’s old desk. Stu had first noticed it after he had been worked over the first time, his whole face throbbing in pain and one of his eyes already starting to swell. The metal molding, sometimes seen on very, very old desks, looked worn and Stu had theorized there might be enough wear to create a couple of wicked sharp spots he could use to cut the cuffs.