Sheep Dog and the Wolf

by Douglass, Carl;

  Sheep Dog jammed his gun in the old man’s face and shouted, “Out. I’m taking the car.”

  He jerked the door open and hurled the startled and bemused cabbie out onto the wet street. The old man watched helplessly as the car-jacker drove away in his livelihood. He made the sign of the cross and thanked God that he was—at least—still alive.

  Sheep Dog made a U-turn and drove away to the West putting ever more distance between himself and the hordes of law enforcement converging on the pitiful Lennox Palace Hotel. He made a right on 10th Avenue and drove to the exit leading to the Lincoln tunnel as the armadas of police cars raced into Midtown South. They paid him no attention as they focused on their police vehicles’ VDTs—Video Data Terminals—devices mounted on a swing-arm on the dashboard, with a bright orange screen which fades to black as it warms up, and an orange cursor. The officer in the shotgun seat punches in an access code, gets a menu list, hits a function button to get NCIC activated, while the driver tries to listen to his partner and to concentrate on not having a collision with all of the other police units heading towards the unmistakable crime scene illuminated even at that distance by the brilliant spot lights coming down from four police helicopters hovering over the corner of 31st and Fashion. There were too many flashing lights, orange cursors, and internal distractions for anyone to notice one of the thousands of Yellow Cabs plying its trade that night going in the opposite direction.

  Sheep Dog eluded any would-be pursuers without them having any idea that they had passed right by Public Enemy Number One without even a passing glance in his direction. He held to the speed limit and drove steadily north. He found a place to hide and crash in the dark shrubbery of Morningside Park and stayed there until it started to get light.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  The Next Day, 1800 Hours

  Office of DFBI, J.Edgar Hoover Building, Washington, D.C.

  Present: DFBI, ADFBI, DUSMS, DINTERPOL, DRCMP, COMMANDER IFO

  The six men sitting around the polished oak table were tired and glum. Sinclair Thompson, the DFBI, spoke first, “Gentlemen, we had a colossal SNAFU last night. We all but called out the National Guard, and Captain Caulfield still got away. One U.S. Marshal had a heart attack, and another took two in the chest. He’s sore, but he’s okay, just bruised up because he had on a vest. Civilian bystanders didn’t fare so well. Two habitués of this place they raided, uh…McGinty’s bar…got knocked around pretty badly; one died of a broken neck and another is in critical condition from a head injury. And neither of them had anything to do with the fugitive. In the excitement and confusion, an older neighborhood man was accidentally shot to death. The media are camped out at the bar, and it is the usual circus. I suppose you’ve had a chance to hear what they’re saying about us.”

  They all nodded. It was teeth-gritting time.

  “And the worst thing about the whole sorry affair is that Caulfield has vanished from the face of the earth. He has to have an army of co-conspirators. No one could move that far into the shadows without boocoo help. We have hundreds of leads we’re following, but so far we’ve got bupkis.”

  “This is CIA’s guy, right?” asked the commander of the Interagency Fugitive Operations office. “So, where are they today?”

  Oliver Prentiss glared. He wanted to say that The Company’s mandate only allowed them to work on foreign soil. He also wanted to say that his agents had been operating to the maximum degree possible during the whole manhunt, but they had to keep under the radar. He wanted to punch the IFO commander directly on his huge nose. But, he did none of that. Just glared.

  “Conniving, I suppose,” answered the disgruntled director of the FBI for Lang, giving Prentiss a reassuring sidelong glance. “Oh, that’s not really fair. They are using up every asset all over the world in this hunt. They can’t work here; so, Mr. Lang told me it would be a waste time for them to attend our get together.”

  Each director handed out a summary of his agency’s efforts over the night, and a bulleted, tersely worded list of the historical events up to that day. They parted with promises to keep in touch by conference each day at the same hour until Caulfield was either caught or something better came of their efforts.

  At three on the same day, Sheep Dog took a room at the Ritz Carlton Tysons Corner in McLean, Virginia. He had been able to get to a truck stop bathroom to apply the last bit of disguise material in his satchel to become an elderly tycoon. He completed the impersonation by walking into the highly touted men’s clothiers—James Limited—and bought a full dark suit, red tie, white shirt, dress tasseled black loafers for a rather obese and stoop shouldered man. He was able to be fitted off the rack without alterations being required. He presented his American Express Gold Card for the clothing and the hotel booking and made himself scarce, hiding in maximum luxury. His name for the occasion was Peter Alan Webster from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma—one of Chun Lam Kong’s creations. The first thing he did when he got into the room was to place the bag of his blood into the room’s mini-fridge.

  Immediately after eating a sumptuous early dinner, Sheep Dog checked his e-mails and found a note from “John I” requesting a meeting. Sheep Dog replied and agreed to meet his teacher in Loudon County. The message he sent to Ed, when decrypted, read:

  Meet Great Falls, Loudon County, Va, Monday 0600: Come alone or not at all. Presence of any other person will result in great harm, and you will never see me again. I will always be out there with my skills and my secrets. Drive to the end of Seneca Road, park on the shoulder in front of the locked gate. Pass the gate and walk down the paved road until it turns left 90 degrees. At this point turn north off the road and follow the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail [PHNST]. It is easy, just watch for the turquoise blaze marks until it goes into a passage through the large Lowe’s Island Golf Course. Southbound, the PHNST follows the old road toward the Potomac River, and then turns downstream. Where the cliffs drop directly to the river, the trail climbs a series of switchbacks to the ridge. Stop there and do not go up towards the ridge. You will find a small historical marker pointing in the direction of the switchbacks telling you that the trail leads to the old bypass channel constructed by George Washington’s Patowmack Company in the late 18th century and that this segment of the PHNST is now called the Ira Gabrielson Trail. Wear a bathing suit and water shoes. Set your clothes within sight of the historical marker and have nothing on but the bathing suit. I will be watching, and when you have complied, I will step out in a bathing suit as well. That way we will both be and feel safe. I look forward to seeing you and to getting something worked out with The CIA with your help.

  “After a bad opening, there is hope for the middle game. After a bad middle game, there is hope for the endgame. But once you are in the endgame, the moment of truth has arrived.” —Edmar Mednis, speaking about chess

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Sheep Dog had three advantages. He had spent most of the time he was courting Rosie in the very same area, hiking the very same trails. She was born and grew up in Sterling in a residential area just off Lowes Island Parkway and with a view of the golf course. He had played golf with her father and two brothers on the course and had taken some harrowing trips down the tempestuous river in a Combat Rubber Raiding Craft [CRRC]—best known as a Zodiac for its manufacturer—that he had managed to get listed as “excess equipment” and sent back to her parents’ house during one of his Viet Nam tours. The family was probably never in any real danger. The Zodiac is a 15-foot, heavily reinforced, inflatable rubber boat that that is tough, reliable, and difficult to sink. He earned a bucket full of kudos from her family, and some rewards from Rosie that he really cared about. His last hike into the area of the cliffs had been with the whole family just prior to his daughter—Donna’s—marriage. They had played hide-and-seek for hours, and Hunter came to know just about every hiding place there was along the river and in the dense adjacent woods and craggy rocks.

  His second advantage was that Ed Salinger t
rusted him; he had every reason to do so, and no reasons not to. The third advantage, he would manufacture for himself. After checking out of the hotel and stealing another car, he bought some things he needed at Loudon Guns in southeast Leesburg. Loudon Guns is a very large and well stocked shop which carried everything he needed, and he was familiar with it from years past. He then waited until deep darkness that Friday night. He drove to Seneca Road and found a parking place about a mile from the locked fence which he had told Ed about. There were seven other cars parked there, and he found a place in between two of them. He was paranoid, but in his recent experience it appeared that it was the paranoics who survived. He hoped this tactic would make it too difficult for a car bomb to be placed with any hope of getting the right victim.

  He carried a large MagLite in his hand and a backpack full of necessaries including food, water, and weapons for a long stay. He made his way carefully through the golf course and down along the rough winding trail. It was still dark when he arrived at the cliffs, but that was of no great concern since he was so familiar with the terrain. He found the crevice in the cliff walls that he remembered and set up camp deep inside it. He put down his new ghillie suit to ease his muscles and bony protrusions as he settled in that dark crawly den for a three day wait.

  At the first hint of light on Saturday, he opened his pack and took out his four guns and the four new hunting knives he had bought at Loudon Guns. He took great pains to hide three guns and three knives within a ten foot radius of the historical marker and made them disappear from the unsuspecting eye. He had no plans to use any of the eight weapons, but he also had no intention of being caught nakedly devoid of a weapon. He placed little tell-tale markers on the locations of the weapons that only he would recognize. Before full light, he retired back to his den to wait unobserved.

  School was back in session, and no hikers came down by the river, or visited the historical marker or went up to see the Ira Gabrielson Trail. The weather was overly warm, and he sweated up a healthy stink. He was wearing a bathing suit under his camouflage BDUs—as he had promised—and it was chafing his upper inner thighs like crazy. The bugs were bad, and it was an effort of almost heroic proportions not to scream or to flail at them. He could not make even the smallest fire; so, he ate all cold food as he had planned to do beforehand. For all of that, the worst thing was boredom. He forced himself to keep a lookout and to pay attention, but it was very trying. It was what he remembered from Viet Nam search-and-destroy missions: hurry up and wait; silently sing every song and recite every poem he had every memorized, and try not to think about sex. That—at least—was not an issue for Sheep Dog at this juncture in his life.

  “It’s always better to sacrifice your opponent’s men.”

  —Tartakover, speaking about chess

  It was not until close to midnight Saturday that he heard the first sounds of a man’s footfalls coming down to the area where the cliffs meet the river. He froze in place and peeped out from under his ghillie suit cover with his night vision goggles. The silvery light of the full moon reflecting off the river gave the perfect background of limited light to make the figure of the new man in the area between the cliffs and the water’s edge stand out in vivid green luminescent relief. The satisfaction gained from that positive finding was tempered by the fact that the intruder was also wearing night vision enhancing eyewear.

  The man opened a back pack and took out an entrenching tool and began to dig a deep foxhole in the moist clay of the river’s edge. When he had completed his digging, he spread a camouflage net over the opening and got inside to test the visibility of landmarks like the historical marker. He was not quite satisfied. He got back out and extracted a collapsible machete from his back pack and went along the edge of the river and into the brush hacking off a fairly large bundle of fresh branches. He expertly laid a haphazard roof of branches over his fox hole, replaced the camouflage netting over it, and slid under the camouflage via a clever sort of trap door he had included in his work. He rustled the branches a little, apparently adjusting his weapon.

  The distance to where Sheep Dog would be standing tomorrow was so small, that it would be almost impossible to miss. In the semi-darkness—even with his night vision goggles—Sheep Dog would not have been able to find the hiding and killing place. He was grateful for the intuition or paranoia or both that had persuaded him to arrive so early to the killing site.

  Around four in the morning, Sheep Dog dozed off despite the uncomfortable position he was in. He was aroused by the very quiet, but unmistakable squawk of a walkie-talkie. The sound of the river had become background by now, and the sound of the squawk was followed by a male voice reciting a series of numbers. The new player in this complex game of chess gave the code twice before the killer in the pit responded.

  “One,” he whispered.

  “Two,” the newcomer whispered back.

  “In place,” the man nearest to Sheep Dog—in fact less than twenty-five feet away—announced.”

  “I’ll set up in the trees at the last bend before your hole. That’s about 200 yards up, I reckon.”

  “Good hunting.”

  “A beer on it?”

  “Make it Michelob. Out.”

  Silence returned, and the waiting game went on. “One” was almost as good at playing the game as Sheep Dog except for two things: Sheep Dog knew “One” was there, and “One” did not know that his opponent was there in the shadows. The second thing was that “One” had not been blessed with the fine bladder capacity enjoyed by Sheep Dog. As the pre-dawn first light began to be manifest, he slithered out of his hole and crawled to the water’s edge to urinate. Sheep Dog admired the force of his stream. The man would probably be able to pee over a six foot fence.

  “One” crawled back to his fox hole and began to lift his makeshift trap door to slither back into his uncomfortable place of safety. His vigorous bladder emptying and the sound of the strong urinary stream hitting the water had dulled his appreciation of his surroundings. By the time he was lying prone and beginning to lift the branches, he was unaware that another figure was lying along side him in the small adjacent clump of bushes. It was awkward working himself in under the branches, and he was moving head first like a centipede. Sheep Dog drove a hunting knife blade into the midline of the base of his neck between the sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae. The aim was perfect. A single hard thrust drove the knife through the space between the posterior elements of the spinal column and transected the man’s lower cervical spinal cord with a surgically clean cut. The knife veered to the side and transected the left carotid artery for good measure. There was very little bleeding; the bulk of the hemorrhage occurred in the anterior part of the neck. Despite the transaction of the carotid, the bleeding was limited also because the hunter/killer was already dead from the cord injury before the artery was severed.

  Aside from a muffled grunt, the murder had been very quiet. Sheep Dog pulled on the man’s legs and dragged him out of the hole. He stabbed both lungs to facilitate sinking and tied the man’s backpack, gun, food bag, and a couple of rocks to the corpse and eased it into the rushing water. In less than two seconds it was gone somewhere down river, likely to be missing for a fairly long time. Sheep Dog tidied up the camouflage over the hole, put on his ghillie suit, picked up his bag of weapons, and began his deadly cat and mouse game with “Two” who did not yet suspect that he had become the prey instead of the predator.

  Sheep Dog moved fairly slowly along the trail for the first hundred yards, half the distance that “Two” had said he would be waiting for his and “One’s” intended victim. He then moved into the trees walking very slowly, very carefully, and silently; it was the jungle highlands of Viet Nam all over again. It would take infinite patience, but he had a full day to go a hundred yards to get to the other predator. His night vision goggles made the going easy. There was very little dead-fall, and the ground was soft from millennia of accumulated fall leaves and from the frequent rain.
It was too early for this year’s leaves to fall and litter the ground with crackling debris.

  It was getting light when he caught the scent of cologne. It was incongruous in the forest. He slowed down to a near crawl and squinted into the gathering light. Finally, his eyes fixed on a low mound among a collection of four large trees. Sheep Dog envisioned the view of the trail that passed below the mound and decided that this was the killer’s vantage point. He now crawled on his abdomen, toes, and elbows, softly, silently, patiently, and inexorably as the morning light increased. Good as the camouflage was, the mound was still artificial, crafted. From the trail, no one would be able to see it, but Sheep Dog was on a level ten feet above in height and fifty feet further along the trail, the opposite direction from which the killer would expect him to come.

  The cologne smell increased and was intermingled with the odor of sweat. No sound came from the mound. The man was good except for the foolish vanity to wear cologne. He was probably young, and maybe this was his first real field assignment, Sheep Dog imagined. He envisioned a young man full of piss and vinegar and his own invincibility. He took four hours to move forty feet. He was getting weary, and his concentration was beginning to wander. He bit his tongue hard to clear the cobwebs of his mind and relentlessly inched closer.

  Eight feet…six feet…four feet. Slowly closer. Never a sound from the hunter. There was not a movement in the mound. It was now eight o’clock in the morning, and the sun was visible through the trees to the east. He had stripped to his shirt and pants and left the back pack and night vision equipment behind him at fifteen feet away. He made a calculation of risk. He could not afford the attention that a gunshot would bring. He would have to depend on surprise and his knife.