by David Dun
It had all been easy to obtain except for the stun grenade and portions of the bomb, a homemade concoction of potassium permanganate, glycerin, and a high explosive. A timer controlled the mixing of the potassium permanganate and glycerin, which would ignite seconds after coming into contact, causing detonation of the explosive. The high explosive and the stun grenade had both been stolen from an armory in South Carolina by someone selling in the black market.
On a sunny spring day, the side of Tiger Mountain, gateway to the Highlands Forest, appeared as a multitextured, bushy, green patchwork. Brush patches, three to fifteen feet in height, intermingled with clumps of Douglas fir, redwood, Sitka spruce, and alder. In coastal fog the landscape took on a desolate, mysterious feel, the kind that could put a chill up the spine. But tonight the place was just dark, cold, and lonely.
Despite her load, Corey was able to move swiftly. Because she was far from her target, silence was not yet required. She had established a rhythm and kept to it, her breathing in sync with the raspy crunching sound of her boots on the soil and rock.
She thought of her body as that of a warrior's. There was an animal toughness in her square shoulders; her stomach was as flat as a granite wall; her biceps, her rock-hard thighs, and her calves were fighting trim. Not a body, she thought, a living sacrifice, in the service of Mother Earth.
Bile had risen in her throat as she watched Anderson loggers fell ancient giant trees in front of helpless-looking activists. The demonstrators were treated as a mere nuisance, petty criminals on the fringe of sanity. The quiet of her Sunday morning had been disturbed by the call. The only person in the regular movement who still spoke with her had rambled on, telling her of the biggest logging show they'd ever seen. It was on Otran land. No doubt Maria and her new buddy Dan Young were in on it. As Otran's attorney he must have known, and if he knew, she knew.
After thirty minutes she arrived at the base of the last steeply pitched bank, fifteen feet below the lip of the makeshift parking area, a one-hundred-foot square of tamped-down earth where the loggers were guarding their equipment in the night. She stopped to listen to their drunken laughter, her breathing calm and her heart rate steady despite the strenuous hike. Slowly she removed her pack and placed it six feet up the slope, then laid the Weatherby alongside it and began to climb the last short distance to her goal. But as soon as she had started, she froze. Something was close: a rustling in the nearby ferns; no doubt an animal, stalking its natural prey. Soon teeth would sink into hide, grabbing mouthfuls of fur and muscle; warm blood would spurt from freshly torn flesh. The images paraded through her mind in slow motion. The unseen men above her suddenly stopped talking as the rustling grew louder.
"Did you hear something?"
The morons would no doubt come and investigate. Nothing to worry about. These men were untrained and unmotivated.
"I'll check it out," a gritty voice said in a resigned tone.
She pressed her body to the ground, putting her head flat to the cool, dark soil that had cascaded down the hillside from the loggers' road-building. The damp earth sent a chill through her, but she remained motionless. If discovered, she knew, she would have to attack. No other choice, with all the terrorist paraphernalia she carried-even these jokers would figure it out.
Twenty feet to her right, a flashlight beam jumped erratically over the brush. "It's just some critter," said the man with the light, his head and torso coming into view past the lip of earth above her, silhouetted by the spotlight behind him.
Holding her breath, she reached for the rifle. Quietly she pulled it to herself, then raised it, the thumb of her right hand automatically releasing the safety as the forefinger began the squeeze. Two quick shots, to the chest-it would happen the instant he saw her. To her right the light moved across the hillside, coming closer and closer. When the logger's light crossed her body, she waited for the cry, but there was nothing. The beam continued on.
Exhaling slowly, she reengaged the safety. Her right leg began to twitch. Adrenaline.
Then she began the last tiresome crawl, an inch at a time. Drawing even with the pack, she moved it quietly two more feet up the slope. Then she repeated the process. Then again. It took twelve minutes to move the fifteen feet-the silence of the night utterly undisturbed. Not even a whisper of foliage against fabric.
Peeking over the lip, she saw the three men. The murderers were bundled up against the cold night air, so laden with insulated sportswear they couldn't have bent over to tie their shoes. They sat in a group next to the cold steel blade of an immense D9 Cat, warmed by camaraderie, booze, and a card game. Obviously, by their presence, they suspected that her kind would come snooping around, but they had probably concluded that three armed men would be sufficient to scare off any monkey-wrenching enviro without a fight. A smile played at the corners of her lips; the floodlight they'd installed on the Cat made them such an easy target.
She fingered the stun grenade. First she would take out the light and plunge them into darkness. After inserting her earplugs-the Weatherby was a loud and powerful weapon-she slid the rifle into place, exhaled slowly, and squeezed the trigger.
Flame roared out of the barrel; the concussion seemed like a cannon in the still night air. With the loggers engulfed in total darkness, Corey made her next move, rolling the stun grenade to their feet. In a couple of seconds, a blinding white light consumed the darkness. With her head down and eyes closed, Corey didn't see the overpowering brilliance of the grenade burst, but its shock wave made the rifle shot seem trivial. Then she sat up, removed her earplugs, and pulled on her night-vision goggles. The men, she saw, were walking around in small, confused circles. To them, she knew, the night appeared psychedelic, full of dots of light dancing madly in front of their eyes. They were effectively blind and nearly deaf.
Climbing over the lip, she walked calmly across the clearing toward the trio. Each held his face in his hands, screaming and moaning into the night. Already they were whining, she mused. She wondered how these men would react to real pain.
Moving to the largest man first, she put a hand on his shoulder. He jumped at the touch.
"Just relax and take it easy," she said reassuringly into his ear. "You'll be able to see in a minute. That's right, just lower your hands. Now, look at me." Mouth agape, the man turned to her, eyes wide but seeing nothing.
With a smile, taking her time now, Corey pointed and fired the military-grade pepper spray in the man's face. An ax might have taken off his legs at the knees, the way he dropped. The air whistled in his throat as he struggled to breathe, sounding like a death rattle. Reading his face, she was certain he knew, in the way a man knows about gravity, that he was about to die.
Next she turned to the other two men, who were moving their heads from side to side as if that might somehow shake off the blackness or restore their hearing. Such easy targets, Corey thought. The now-unguarded face of each turned crimson with the spray, and they, too, dropped to the fetal position on the ground.
The captain of her army stockade had once told Corey: "It's like sucking up hot lava."
Corey retrieved the sugar and sand, pouring both into the Cat's engine, along with soil from the landing. Then she moved to the other eight pieces of heavy equipment. It took twenty minutes to accomplish her business, including the time required to start all the equipment and attach the timed explosive device to the gas tank of the pickup.
The pickup truck was a nice touch. It'd look like a hulk from a war zone. They needed to know they were at war. Not some patty-cake war, with civil, orchestrated news releases gently chiding the timber barons for making a mess, but a real war, with broken bodies and twisted metal.
She approached the big one, who was now on his hands and knees, trying to stand. The captain, nicknamed Ivan the Terrible for good reason, had showed her how to subdue and calm "special" prisoners. This had been after telling her he realized she and he shared something the others lacked-something that people usually discovered only a
fter years of being around "funny people" in cold little barred rooms smelling of vomit, excrement, and Lysol.
She told herself to concentrate on the kick. A little too hard with a steel-toed boot, and she would puncture a lung. Just about like a twenty-yard field goal, maybe a little softer. There was a thud at impact and the man gave a gut-wrenching groan that told her she'd probably snapped three ribs clean.
When she was through, the men sat groaning and barefoot, their breathing raspy and tortured. "It's a shame I can't kill you," she said, meaning what she said, feeling the power of the words flow through her. "But dead men can't talk. And I need you to tell the world how you suffered for your sins against Mother Earth."
Scanning the edge of the woods at the back of the clearing with her night-vision goggles, she located a small-diameter log that looked like it weighed somewhere around 150 pounds. Taking some tools from her pack, she walked over to the log, leaned over, and pounded three spikes into it, each through a heavy metal ring to which a pair of handcuffs was welded.
In two minutes all three men were sprawled around the log, handcuffed to it. She checked her watch. Twenty minutes since they had been sprayed-ten more and they would be more or less functional. Behind her, the machinery was starting to vibrate, engines beginning to cough as though infected by an angry virus.
"Pick up the log," she demanded.
The men, each in shock, stirred, tried to move, to obey. But not fast enough for Corey.
"You're not listening. You will each lose an ear." She said it without a thought, then stopped to consider the words, which dangled in the air like a spider on its thread. A chill of excitement ran through her and the blade shot from its handle with a quiet, cold click. People would talk about this; broken ribs would heal, but severed ears… These would be permanent offerings to Mother, more permanent than anything she'd done to them before.
On the ground before her, the men grasped desperately at the log.
"Too late. Stay where you are. The ear comes off first." The fat one. She grabbed his ear and made a clean, lightning-fast slice. The man's legs started shaking, and he stamped his heels on the ground involuntarily. The bleeding was profuse. She discarded his ear in the brush.
After watching this, the other two men became hysterical.
"Please don't," one of the men said. "Please don't." But before he could finish, his left ear was gone.
Then she turned to the third man and smiled at the look of resignation on his face. It was exhilarating-the knowledge that she could commit such violence, as much as the violence itself. The power was hers now. She would have to work fast, but she would get them all.
The men had learned to concentrate on this quiet, lethal voice, for behind it was a matter-of-fact malevolence like that of an eager butcher doing the spring lambs for sport. A creature that seemed capable of tearing muscle from sinew, bone from meat. Each man's vision was a mess. Through the flood of tears, points of light shimmered, wheeling and turning. Their remaining ears rang with the sounds of a thousand sirens. Struggling, the men lifted the log, the fractured ribs of each twisting in wounded flesh like battens in a wind-rent sail.
"Do not sit down until you get to the county road," she said when the men were standing. "If you sit down, you are liable to die of shock and exposure."
She went to the first man. ''Don't sit down until the county road," she said. "Repeat it."
"Don't sit down until the county road."
"All of you together."
"Don't sit down until the county road," they chanted, barely able to make themselves audible.
"Move." They hobbled off into the night, blood pouring from the sides of their heads, their soft, bare, lily-white feet padding over the crushed rock of the roadway.
Corey Schneider turned and began moving down the hill. The exhilaration was ebbing, but it wasn't giving way to any uncertainty or remorse. This was her calling. She had been summoned by Mother Earth, who had led her to Uncle Sam to be trained. And who had then led her here, to this night, to repay with ruthless violence those who would destroy Mother Earth. Those who would dismiss her as a mere nuisance.
As she jogged down the hill, Corey pondered what she had done, wondering if it was enough. For what she had done had been nothing, really, compared to the magnitude of their crime.
Corey went straight to her refrigerator for the orange juice. Most of the vodka was in the living room with the two couples who came to party, but there was just enough remaining in a bottle on the counter for one mixed drink. The music was turned up so loud she could feel the vibration in her teeth. There would be time for only a few hours' sleep before she needed to rise and be about her business. For the morning she would need a much better alibi than these potheads could provide. As she guzzled the orange juice and vodka, she hunted for her speed. First thing in the morning, she'd need it.
Walking into the family room, she felt a sense of relief. This time they hadn't trashed the place.
"OK, boys and girls, everybody out. Your hostess needs her beauty rest." She shooed away the smoke with a hand in front of her lips. A person could get fried just standing in the room.
Once the music was off, it took only a couple of minutes to clean up their mess. They were so spaced that they probably truly believed she'd been home the whole time. She closed the door when the last in line walked out.
Unless Patty McCafferty had gotten even softer, there would be a court fight this morning. And industry would come out in force. It would be her chance.
The phone rang. It was 2:30 in the morning; must be a wrong number she thought-or him.
"Yeah," she said.
"You were brilliant; you showed them, but cutting off a few ears isn't gonna do it."
"It was good, though, wasn't it?" she said. "A good distraction for the main event, like you said."
"A brilliant distraction. And now it's time for the main event. Are you scared?"
"Fuck no."
A chuckle. "We have done good things. Now you and I will do some real good."
"Yeah, well, wait until tomorrow." Instantly she hated herself for saying it-for falling in with this German, shoulder to shoulder, as if she had given herself over to this man.
"Have you had any dreams, Corey?"
"None worth talking about."
"You can tell me."
"There is a man. He's faceless. He waits for me in the shadows outside my forest."
"Maybe the dreams will stop if you get this done."
"I don't know. I'm tired of the same dream over and over."
"Corey, using dope freaks for an alibi isn't the best. That little party-is that really the way to go?"
"You had someone here? At my house?"
"It's for your own good, Corey. You need extra eyes and ears." He hung up.
They had her place bugged; they watched her. She knew it. But she'd gone crazy tearing up the house and never found a thing. She shivered. Then told herself that maybe it wasn't so bad. The German knew things. Amazing things. While she was collecting her thoughts, the phone rang again.
''Maria Fischer and Dan Young will both be at the courthouse at nine-thirty for the hearing. Traxler's courtroom."
"How do you know that?"
"We just know. And we know that Mother can count on you to get the job done."
Shohei arrived at her house early Monday morning after hearing about the loggers. His interest in Corey Schneider grew with each day. He would have loved a tap on her phone. Unfortunately, it was also impossible to tap Groiter or Kenji because Groiter swept the executive offices for bugs weekly and at random. Something was making Groiter cautious.
As Shohei contemplated the possibility that this Schneider woman might be linked to Groiter, he decided to ask Yoshinari if a bug of her phone might not be in order. It was highly illegal, and that might cause Yoshinari to balk. In fact, he knew it would.
A Mustang exited Corey Schneider's garage. Since he was in the bushes, a half mile away from his car,
a hopeless feeling came over Shohei. Nevertheless, once she had passed, he sprinted up her driveway back to the road and back to his car. Driving flat out, he caught sight of her just as she entered Palmer.
He followed her to a video store, where she got out of her car and strutted like a peacock in her short skirt. This seemed highly out of character. He would wait.
Only hours after she left the earless loggers, Corey walked into Old Town Video wearing shades, short skirt, high heels, and a flashy blouse. It was a locally owned Palmer store that used to be a pool hall. A large rectangular room, it had high racks running its length. Along the back wall were small rooms, each with a video player and a TV that could be rented. The girl behind the counter, name of Macy, used to work for Jack Morgan, the pot farmer, and knew Corey. Macy was a faded blonde with a lot of miles on her, out-in-the-sun weathered skin, a pot slowed brain, and too long without vitamins. Corey thought she looked like she lived on Twinkies.
"Hey, long time no see."
"That's right." Corey took off her sunglasses to look at a young couple at the counter. "How are you folks today?"
"Oh, fine," they said, maybe a little self-conscious at the familiar attitude of this stranger.
"Do I know you? I could swear I know you. Corey Schneider is my name."
"Don't think so," the young woman said.
"Well, anyway, it's nice to see you."
A thirtyish man came out of the stacks, looked her up and down. No wedding band. He was tall and flat-stomached with good shoulders. He flashed a kind of sneer smile that reminded her of the heavy in a Grease sort of movie. Definitely the man thought he was cool. Heavy beard, lots of testosterone.
"Hi there." Corey gave it her best.
"Hi there to you," he said, looking intrigued. "You live around here?"