Signature Wounds

by Kirk Russell

  “Did he tell you what he’s doing here?”

  “Said he was hiding from his ex-wife’s lawyers.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “Naw, but until you showed, I didn’t care why he was here or who was after him. He’s paid up. I’ve got a big deposit and he keeps to himself. Lights are on at night. He’s up then and sleeps in the day. He looks like he’s from around here, but he’s not.” Coffina touched his left ear. “I got hit and this ear doesn’t work well, so I’m not good on accents anymore and can’t tell you anything about where he’s from. But like I said, his license plates were California.”

  “You used to be more careful.”

  “I’m getting older, Grale.”

  “How big a deposit did he give you?”

  “Five grand.”

  “Hope it’s enough.”

  “It’s three times the rent.” Then he got what I meant and said, “If you want in, I’ll cut off the lock he put on. I’ve got the tools to get through anything, so don’t do any damage.”

  “What about friends, other people here he associates with?”

  “Keeps to himself.”

  “You talk to him?”

  “Some.”

  “So what has he said?”

  “Not much. The ex-wife is trying to take all his money. He’s thinking about moving to Mexico. He’s got a kid he misses.”

  “A kid?”

  “Yeah, like four years old or something.”

  “How old does he look?”

  “Late thirties, maybe older.”

  That fit.

  The SWAT helicopter landed in a clearing to the side of the village as armored SWAT vehicles rolled down the washboarded road and emptied out. They were disciplined and fast surrounding Hurin’s place, guns ready, the road sealed. A bullhorn was used to call him out before charges were set, and with a short hard pop, the lock holding the door closed was blown off. The chain slithered to the ground. White smoke drifted away. The door swung open just like in the movies. We watched video feed from the first of the SWAT squad inside, a guy named Olsen. The SWAT commander wouldn’t let me go in with him.

  “I’m looking at an open room,” Olsen said, “with nothing on the metal floor except a throw rug, maybe twelve feet long by eight wide. On the east side there’s a workbench running almost the whole length. That looks like his shop. Here, I’ll give you a view of that. There are tools and a couple of shelves, along with an open laptop.”

  I nodded and said, “That’s what we’re looking for.”

  Olsen again. “To my left is an L-shaped kitchen with wood countertops, drawers, a sink, a small refrigerator, a microwave, and dishes drying in a rack. To my right are a metal-framed cot and two steel shelves welded to the side wall for clothes.”

  “Any personal effects?” I asked.

  “Looks cleaned out, like he’s gone.”

  “Don’t step on the rug or move anything.” I turned to the SWAT commander. “I need to go in.”

  “When I tell you that you can, you will,” the SWAT commander said. “Just hang on a little longer.”

  Olsen tested for explosive residue on the workbench. He wiped and then radioed.

  “I’ve got residue.”

  The SWAT commander turned to me and nodded. I put on a suit, joined Olsen, and two other SWAT agents scoured the exterior and shined flashlights underneath. The steel building had been jacked up on one end to level it and there was some room underneath.

  In front of the workbench along the wall, I squatted down and swept a flashlight beam along the underside of the bench and over the wiring and cords. A power cord was plugged into the laptop but nothing else. I straightened and, without moving, worked along the ceiling with the light, then moved into the kitchen and took inventory. The cooking area was small: a stove with a propane hookup, a small stainless sink, four or five feet of countertop and open shelving with a handful of glasses and plates. We weren’t going to open the refrigerator yet.

  My flashlight beam caught spiderwebs in a wall-hung furnace, and I felt disappointment that we’d missed him, and not by much. The bed was a folding cot stripped to the mattress. No covers or pillow, no clothes, no toothbrush, shoes, anything. We missed him and needed to find him and fast.

  “He’s gone, but he left us a laptop,” I said. “Why would he do that?”

  Steel L-bar welded to the side of the container held up the back of the desk and the long workbench. Chains at the corners held up the front. Where they’d been wiped for residue, the color was bright. C-4, Semtex, another plastic explosive, or dynamite had been here. In front of where the laptop sat on the bench was a wooden chair with long legs. I saw Garod Hurin in the late night in here, sitting on this chair as he built a bomb. Fluorescent tube lighting hung above the desk, everything neat and clean, tools oiled and lined up, things in their place.

  The scene brought back a memory of a government-research cabin in the Wind River Range where a neo-Nazi bomb maker had holed up for months. Same as that guy, Hurin knew we’d get here. He knew enough about our approach to the situation to anticipate us. The open laptop drew my eyes, drew Olsen’s too. But if you want an open laptop as a trap, why not make it look like you’re still here? Leave some clothes hanging off a chair and dirty dishes in the sink. Otherwise, what the hell?

  “What do you think?” Olsen asked.

  “What I think is we gather touch DNA, then go out and check the storage box before we do anything more in here. We think first. We don’t do anything yet. We’re missing something. He left the laptop for us, and we don’t want to do what he’s hoping for.”

  “Okay, if you’ve got a vibe, let’s back out.”

  Ten minutes later, SWAT blew the door off the storage hut. Inside was gear that Coffina identified as belonging to a former tenant: a suitcase of old clothes, three cardboard boxes of dusty yellowing books, and two assault rifles and six boxes of ammunition wrapped in a blanket. The weapons looked cared for and Coffina explained another man had used them to train for the coming war, when the government would suspend the Constitution and join with the UN to confiscate all guns and make Americans slaves to the New World Order.

  “No shit?” I asked.

  “Swear to God.”

  Olsen and I went back inside. A SWAT agent who had looked beneath the house poked his head in and said, “There might be something in the area under the throw rug. Could just be rocks or debris. We can’t get a good enough angle to tell what it is. It’s more or less in the center so it could be a support for the floor.”

  “Let’s treat it as dangerous,” I said.

  I skirted the rug, moved back to the cooking area, and picked up on a faint solvent smell as I leaned over the sink. It was there on the dishes in the rack too. We’d tested for DNA in a dozen places in the kitchen and found nothing here. Hurin must have worked slowly and carefully in the kitchen, wearing gloves, wiping and re-wiping the counter and cabinet faces, the sink and every dish and glass with a diluted solution. He’d scoured away DNA, though not bomb residue. He left the laptop and guessed we’d focus on it, but not touch it. We were looking at a stage set created for us, and designed to lead us somewhere.

  “Let’s check the laptop again for wires,” I said to Olsen. “Only this time you do it. Maybe I keep staring at the same thing and am missing what’s important.”

  Olsen was younger, more agile than I was, so he got down lower. He balanced. He rocked on his heels and got on a knee and didn’t see anything.

  “There’s no wire coming off the laptop to anything underneath. There’s only the plug into the wall. If we hit a key, it’s not going to detonate anything.”

  “Yeah, but don’t touch a key yet.”

  I pointed at the exposed wiring that ran from the four-plug outlet the laptop was plugged into. The wire ran up and across to the kitchen ceiling and a junction box there. Other wires along the ceiling fed lights.

  “That’s where the electrical power for this place comes i
n. If that landlord walked in, as he would have done sometime soon, he would have seen it and seen the guy was gone. What’s he going to do?”

  “Take the laptop, lock the door, and keep the huge deposit.”

  I laughed. So did Olsen.

  “And what does Hurin think we’ll do once we figure out it had no leads running to explosives?”

  Olsen didn’t answer. He didn’t want to be set up.

  The other SWAT officer was at the door again. He didn’t step in but said, “They’re ready to cut power to the building.”

  When I heard that, it hit me. “Tell them no! Do not cut the power until we’re a hundred yards away. Relay that as fast as you can.”

  “Fuck, man, you’re scaring me,” Olsen said, and I felt sweat start as I listened to the SWAT officer radio and wait for the response.

  “There’s nothing we’d like more than his laptop,” I said. “So I’m guessing it’s a bomb. There’s no hard drive in there. I’m betting if we pull the plug out, it blows up. And when that happens, the power will short out, and if there’s another bomb in here, that’s when it goes off. Go ahead and unplug it. Let’s see if I’m right.”

  That got a big grin and we left the laptop and backed out. We crossed down through the little dry creek and climbed the slope toward the armored SWAT vehicles. We were only fifty yards away when the stubborn son of a bitch SWAT commander cut the power. The first blast was a hard sharp bang that had to be the laptop. If you were standing in front of it you were dead. The second blast tumbled us into mesquite. Neither of us was hurt, though something big landed nearby.

  Olsen started laughing then said, “Dude, I owe you a drink. I would have unplugged it, for sure.”

  Or I think that’s what he said. My ears were ringing as we laughed with giddy post-adrenaline relief. We walked toward the officers running our way, and I looked past here at my fear at how far ahead of us the bomb maker was. Garod Hurin saw us coming and was ready. He was on the move again. We wouldn’t have much time.

  45

  July 12th, early afternoon

  The sound was small and faraway, a rapid pop, pop, pop. Beatty capped a gallon jug of water and set it down on the flat rock. He picked up binoculars and stood in the shade of the overhang scanning the airfield and trailers first, and then working his way out, pausing and lowering the binos as he heard more assault-weapon fire. From the echo off the mountains, they could be anywhere down there.

  He widened his scan and on a spidery gray desert track running south of the airfield along a rocky plain, he spotted the security dudes’ black Land Cruiser. A different vehicle raised a ribbon of dust as it drove away from the Land Cruiser and back toward the airfield. He focused in on the moving vehicle. At this distance it was difficult, but it looked like Bahn’s pickup. He followed its progress for several minutes before bringing the glasses back to the Land Cruiser.

  An hour later the black Land Cruiser was still sitting in the heat in the same spot, so he unpacked his spotting scope tripod and extended the legs. They were sturdy and tall enough so that he didn’t have to bend over much once he’d screwed on the scope. The scope was so sensitive that the trick was getting the legs set so they wouldn’t move at all. When the scope was ready, he started with the airfield, looking for Eddie’s truck and finding it parked near the trailers where the pilots lived, and then adjusting the scope to view the runway where the drones were lined up.

  A silver drone rose through his field of vision. He kept the scope there and a second drone rose through his view thirty-three seconds later. He timed the third as well, thirty-three seconds again, so not much room for error if there were a problem with the drone ahead. But enough time if you were experienced. Not many reasons to launch so quickly, though.

  He thought about that, then reached for his phone. He brought up Grale’s number, but didn’t call yet and adjusted back to the spidery thread of road and followed it to the small white rocks bright in the hot sunlight and to the black Land Cruiser still sitting there. He focused on the passenger window and with maximum magnification could make out a shape in the passenger seat. Large enough to be Big John but hard to tell with the tinted glass, and hard to tell what he was doing. His head lay against the window like he was sleeping, or maybe leaning that way and talking. Hard to tell.

  Beatty straightened. Without the spotting scope, the Land Cruiser was just a black dot and barely that. When he leaned over again, he brought the scope over to the driver’s side and slowly crawled up the vehicle until he reached the driver’s mirror. Tricky. Small movements jumped the scope. He moved the lens in tiny increments and still overshot the first time.

  He straightened again, feeling a little bit frustrated at overshooting, and rubbed a sore spot on his lower back and cleared his vision by looking out into the desert. He used to be really good with a scope. He leaned over again and got the lens on the driver’s side mirror and realized from the reflection that the driver’s window was down. That was lucky. He upped the magnification and adjusted the scope hoping the side mirror would give him a view of the driver.

  “Fuck.”

  He’d overshot again. He worked his way back and very slowly down the mirror. Now he was getting there. Just chill and do this calmly, he thought. Another tiny turn and there was the top of the driver’s seat. Don’t knock the scope. Come slowly down the seat. He came down from the headrest and still no driver, but another small turn and black hair showed and a scalp and forehead. He took his hand away from the lens adjustment when he reached the eyes.

  “Tak, what’s going on out there? That’s Big John in the passenger seat, isn’t?”

  Beatty leaned over again and moved down to Tak’s open mouth, chin, and neck. That was as far down as the side mirror reflection gave him. He worked his way back up to the dilated pupils. A fly landed on Tak’s left eye. He watched it crawl around until it made his stomach turn.

  He straightened and looked down over the desert valley at the airfield, trying to make sense of it. When he looked again, the fly was still there and another was at the edge of Tak’s mouth. He left the spotting scope and found an old gray blanket he kept behind the truck seats. He draped it over the front of his truck and checked the clip in his gun before laying it down nearby. Then he picked up his cell and called Grale.

  46

  Desert dust and smoke drifted away from the container house. Debris from the blast glinted in hot sunlight. My ears rang. All I heard was a humming. Behind me the SWAT commander gave orders in a hard, sharp voice that I couldn’t bring into focus as I stumbled then walked back to the destroyed house.

  A weld that had joined the two cargo containers at the roof was peeled open by the blast. Sunlight streamed in. Smoke wafted out. I looked at blue sky, then at fragmented debris around me and out the windows where blast spray spewed into mesquite and scrub. Burn marks scored the metal wall behind where the laptop had exploded. The air smelled of C-4 and was acrid from scorched paint and burned bedding. In the tiny kitchen a severed water line bled into holes in the floor. I turned to the burned and shredded mattress and the smoking strips of rug. White porcelain fragments from a toilet or sink pocked a wall. The design of the primary bomb had spread a blast wave evenly across the space. A now-deformed steel box cut in and welded to the floor had held the bomb. No one in here, nothing in here would have survived.

  Yesterday, if I hadn’t told Nogales to drive past, we might have come here and found Coffina then Garod Hurin. I faulted myself for that and was thinking about where to go next as I walked out. Nogales hurried toward me as I stripped off the SWAT suit.

  “We got a call from a hiker about a gray Honda parked up a canyon out beyond the gypsum mine. Don’t know yet if it’s a Civic, but it sounds like it. I’m headed there. Do you want to come with me?”

  “I do, but let’s get lined up with everyone here first, just in case we find something. Ask your bomb squad to keep their dog here. If it’s his car, we’ll need a bomb dog first.”

 
; We drove rough desert roads out past the gypsum mine, me watching ahead, not talking much, Nogales filling the gap. I listened but was thinking about Hurin. Did he move because he was worried or because it was time? He could have left quietly rather than booby-trap the building. He didn’t do that to kill Coffina, so he knew we were close. That thought chilled me and I was silent as Nogales drove. The dirt road hugged bone-colored mountains. We were two miles along it when we rounded a bend, and I spotted a car up a narrow canyon ahead and to our right.

  “There. Between the rocks,” I said. “That’s a Honda Civic.”

  “Got it.”

  I turned and looked back. Agents following had fallen back as they navigated rocks an old flash flood left in the road. But probably for the best, since we’d kicked up a rooster tail of dust with Nogales driving hard. We lost them but they couldn’t miss us. We parked short of the tire tracks turning into the narrow canyon. The car was well up there. With the rocks strewn along the canyon’s floor and its narrowness, it must have been hard to get the car in there.

  “I’ll walk up and call the license plates down to you,” I said, and did that as the other agents arrived. I smelled decomp as I got close but didn’t see a body when looking through the windows. Seats were empty. The smell came from the trunk. Could it be Hurin? I circled the car and saw where it was dented and paint was scraped off getting it up here. The driver was motivated.

  When the bomb dog arrived with her handler, she worked her way around the car and didn’t scent on anything in the engine compartment or underneath. The officer handling her dog was patient. She let the dog run, then worked her back over each area of the car at least three times before saying she thought it was safe to open a door.

  Inside, the bomb dog scented explosive residue on the driver’s seat and floor mat but most likely that came from clothes. The dog didn’t scent on anything near the trunk and her handler was confident decomp odors wouldn’t fool the bomb dog. Nonetheless, everyone gave the car some room as I popped the trunk lid. It rose and a heavy wave of gases escaped. We let that drift away, then got a long look at a body, its back to us, knees drawn up, shoulders turned and the head facedown. Not a big man. Two entry wounds were clearly visible in dyed-blond hair at the back of the victim’s head.