Sheep Dog and the Wolf

by Douglass, Carl;

  The brush lying over the mound moved very slightly. Sheep Dog could imagine the discomfort of his enemy’s position. Maybe there were bugs annoying him. He moved towards the bundle of sticks hiding the man at the speed of an advancing glacier. He now had his K-bar knife in his right hand and ready. He stopped two feet from the mound and waited, as ready to spring as a praying mantis.

  And waited still more to be certain of his own security and the security that only a killing would give him. It was enough to drive him crazy. Two full hours passed. A family of fourtwo of which were noisy childrenpassed the mound going down the river to the cliff edge. The mound moved a little. Sheep Dog mentally envisioned the killer taking a better look to be sure that his quarry was not with the noisy family. Sheep Dog’s problem was that he could not tell sufficiently well how his prey was positioned to be able to attempt an attack on or through the amorphous mass of the camouflage. He waited.

  Just before nine, he heard and smelled the flow of a man urinating. The branches rustled. The man was stretching his stiff joints. The branches lifted enough so the killer could get a better look along the trail. Sheep Dog stopped breathing. A camo gloved hand moved cautiously out followed in half a minute by the man’s head which was covered by a camouflage patterned three hole ski mask. He was looking away from Sheep Dog, his gaze focused on the trail to his left. Sheep Dog tensed and concentrated on making his body into a coiled spring.

  It was apparent that he would not get another chance; so, he exploded off the ground landing where he envisioned the man’s body lay behind his slightly exposed head. The hole was deeper than Sheep Dog had anticipated and the man was protected by the deep pile of branches. He was also pinioned beneath the weight of Sheep Dog and the entanglement of the branches. He grunted from the impact and turned his head and neck to meet his attacker. Sheep Dog could only see that much of him and brought the point of the knife in a wide side-directed arc into the exposed neck. An arterial hemorrhage poured into the foxhole. The man had not had a chance. The element of surprise was far too great to allow either thinking or even an instinctual response. He died in a few seconds. And he died quietly.

  Sheep Dog waited until he was certain, then he carefully extracted the body from the foxhole and kicked as much dirt as he could to cover the blood and its smell. He replaced the branches and lowered the profile of the mound to prevent it from attracting any attention. He stabbed the dead man in the chest to deflate the lungs then dragged the body to the river. At that point, the current was six feet below him. He weighted the body down with rocks stuffed into the shirt, under-clothes, and every pocket and slid it over the edge into the Potomac. It disappeared with nothing more than a soft splash. Sheep Dog took a quick look around and satisfied himself that no one had witnessed the killing.

  He hurried back up the hill and retrieved his gear then headed in a zigzag through the trees to his hiding place to wait. It was eleven fifteen. If Ed Salinger was punctual, he had nineteen hours to wait. He ate and drank lustily having decided that this would be the safest time, and he would only be able to nibble thereafter.

  The wait seemed interminable. At two in the afternoon, a lone woman walked down the trail, stopped to examine the historical marker then turned and hiked briskly up the switch-back trail towards Washington’s old by-pass channel. A pair of teenagers passed by at five thirty. After that, no one came by. The rest of the afternoon, evening, and the night were quiet, lonely, and painfully boring. Crouched in his crevice, he checked his digital watch dozens of times to alleviate the boredom and to give his mind something to do so that he could stay awake. Ed could come any time, and Sheep Dog could not afford to be surprised the way his two victims had been.

  “The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.”

  —Tartakover, speaking about chess

  At twenty to six, he heard the out-of-place sound of a man whistling coming down the trail to his left. It was light out and crisply cool in the morning since the sun had not broken over the hills above. At five to six, he began to hear a man’s voice—Ed Salinger’s voice—speaking at a conversational level.

  “Hunter, it’s Ed. If you’re here and looking at me, see that I’m unarmed.”

  He was wearing a tee shirt, Bermuda shorts, and Tevas. He held his hands above his head and twisted his wrists to demonstrate that he, indeed, was unarmed. He repeated his demonstration and his audible message every ten feet or so.

  Sheep Dog watched him as he stopped by the historical marker and ascertained that he was in the right place. He checked his watch to be sure he was on time. Sheep Dog waited fifteen minutes to be sure that he was unaccompanied.

  Finally, as Ed began to fidget, Sheep Dog called out softly from his hiding place, “Ed, keep your head down. I have an M-16 leveled at you. You don’t have a chance. If you have friends out there, I’ll kill you before they can get to me.”

  “I’m unarmed. I come in peace. Don’t get nervous. Guns are dangerous, you know,” Ed said in a friendly, mildly joking tone.

  “Strip down to your bathing suit.”

  “Is that really necessary, Hunter? I mean you no harm. I’m about the only friend you have left in the world. I have a peace offering from The Company. Come on down and let’s talk.”

  “Let’s see your bathing suit.”

  “You, too.”

  “You first.”

  Ed slipped off his shirt and shorts and stood fully vulnerable in his bathing trunks.

  “Turn all the way around slowly, Ed. No quick moves.”

  Ed complied.

  “Now let’s see you,” he said.

  Sheep Dog slowly stepped out of the crevice holding the .38 Chief hideway he had bought at Loudon Guns leveled at Ed’s mid-chest. He carefully stripped down to his own swim trunks. Ed stood stock still, the quintessence of benign safety.

  “Okay,” Sheep Dog said as he walked down to where Ed was standing. “Let’s talk.”

  Ed quickly told Sheep Dog about the deal Oliver Prentiss was making. He could come in out of the cold with full written immunity signed by the president. The manhunt would be called off with an announcement that it had all been an error. The news media would be fed a cock-and-bull story about an investigation having cleared him, and he would be able to ride off into the sunset and not have to look over his shoulder.

  “And you give your personal word of honor as my friend that the offer is genuine, no strings, no new Sheep Dogs coming after me next week or next year, Ed?”

  “I do. I’ll step back, and you can check in the right hand pocket of my pants. You’ll find a signed copy of the immunity guarantee.”

  Ed could not control his eyes perfectly. It saddened Sheep Dog when the CIA agent could not resist a quick look to his left at the expertly camouflaged mound where he knew that his ace-in-the-hole lay hidden.

  Sheep Dog bent down and felt for the folder in Ed’s pant pocket. He found a blue plastic folder envelope with the presidential seal. The immunity—written on embossed parchmen—was there including the famous signature of President Storebridge.

  “See, no tricks, no sleight of hand. Come on in out of the cold. No one can survive out there forever.”

  Ed’s cautious face betrayed a growing concern. He chanced another quick look at the mound. Seeing nothing except the haphazardly strewn branches, he made what he presumed would be a casual look up the trail to his right.

  Sheep Dog did a better job controlling his face and eyes. He hesitated, his face a picture of concentration as he mulled the decision over in his mind. After a few moments he extended his right hand.

  “Shake on it, Ed. I’m exhausted. You warned me about The Company betraying me, and I took what you said to heart. I want you with me when I go in. Deal?”

  “Sure,” Ed said and extended his hand.

  Ed’s eyes betrayed him. He looked quickly around in a 180° arc as quickly as possible; hoping Hunter would not notice but demonstrating a small but definite mixture of anxie
ty and hope.

  Sheep Dog clasped Ed’s hand firmly and pulled Ed towards him. Ed was not much of a man for hugging, but he moved in to clinch the deal with an embrace. From nowhere, Sheep Dog stabbed a knife hand strike into Ed’s vulnerable throat with his left hand stunning him with both surprise and physical injury. He fought for breath and found it extremely difficult. Sheep Dog drove his other fist powerfully into Ed’s solar plexus causing sudden nausea and a desperate fight to get air.

  Absent the surprise, Ed would have been every bit the match for the Sheep Dog, but now he was crippled.

  “Wha…?” he gasped.

  Sheep Dog connected with a hard round house punch to the head and a pair of vicious kicks to each of Ed’s lateral thighs making his legs buckle. Ed mounted a feeble defense with an attempted knee to Sheep Dog’s groin, but Sheep Dog anticipated and deflected it. Ed’s attempt at a punch was knocked aside with a numbing punch across his exposed forearm. Sheep Dog bore in and wrapped his right arm around Ed’s back, swiveled his hips into place and held Ed’s right arm in a vice grip above his elbow. He hurled Ed through the air in a lightening fast Osae-Komi Uki-Goshi hip throw. Ed hit the rocky ground from four feet in the air which knocked out all of the air reserves he had left.

  Sheep Dog dropped his knee from three feet above into Ed’s unprotected solar plexus then pounded his face with six rapid-fire hammer blows. Ed was helpless.

  “Why? why?” he managed to get out, gurgling blood from the injuries to his nose and mouth..

  “I’ve been here since Friday, my old friend,” Sheep Dog said with maximum venom, “I killed your two ninja buddies and tossed them into the river.”

  Ed knew his deadly deception had failed and that there would be no last minute help and no mercy. This was his last moment alive, and he resigned himself. He could not mount a defense; so, he waited for the inevitable.

  It came with devastating swiftness. Their struggle had unearthed one of the knives Sheep Dog had hidden three days ago. He plunged the blade deep into the side of Ed’s neck and moved quickly away to avoid getting covered with the fountain of bright red blood. Ed’s body was lying on an incline; his heart had been pumping furiously before the stabbing; and he exsanguinated almost completely in a few seconds.

  Sheep Dog’s adrenalin subsided, and the blood red tint to his vision cleared. He looked around hurriedly and seeing no one, set to work. The work was grisly. He cut off Ed’s head and both hands, weighted the parts down with rocks and threw the head and one hand into the Potomac. He hauled the body up to his crevice hiding place and removed his gear and stuffed the headless handless corpse into the hole and covered it with branches. He opened his backpack and took out the bag of his blood which still seemed to be fluid and not severely deteriorated. He pushed the plastic bag in under the branches alongside Ed’s corpse. He went back to the killing site and scuffed dirt over the blood until it was covered. He put Ed’s other hand into a baggie and into his backpack along with his gear—including the two guns and the other knife he had buried for the upcoming fight—and took a final look around.

  He gave a last nod in the direction of the crevice and said aloud, “You were right, Ed; and I learned well. If you let yourself get into a fair fight, your tactics suck.”

  With that he hiked back to his car for the next and hopefully the final round in his fight—the last move in the endgame.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,

  The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

  —Rudyard Kipling, The Gods of the Copybook Headings

  It was midnight. Oliver Prentiss had sent Natalie to her mother’s house in Sterling and gave Cassandra a two week vacation to “thank her for her years of service”. He was taking no chances that Hunter would return.

  He was fast asleep in the master bedroom with the new double bolt lock system on his door engaged. He had had bars put on the windows. He was having a series of unpleasant dreams, but the Ambien he had taken was keeping him from his initial few days of insomnia.

  The phone rang. He heard it but could not get the sound to register properly. It rang again. He came to enough to see the dreaded caller I.D. notation of “Wireless Caller” on the LED screen. He cursed and picked up the receiver.

  He was about to give the telemarketer a piece of his mind when he heard, “Oliver, don’t speak. Listen. You are stupid. You risked Heather’s life. Our mutual friend and I had a meet. He brought two friends. Those two have taken a swim in the Potomac. Tomorrow morning you will receive a box delivered by courier to your door. In the box you will find all the evidence you need to confirm where our friend is and his condition. You will follow the instructions in the box about how to get to the next set of clues—sort of like a scavenger hunt, almost perfectly like a scavenger hunt. You will bring home the bag you find beside him, and you will then execute the plan I gave you when we had our last visit. Betray me again, and the next package will be the size of a hat box. You won’t need DNA or finger prints to know who won’t be coming back.”

  The phone clicked off as Oliver was stammering out his profuse apologies, his sincere promises, and his primeval panic.

  At eight o’clock sharp that morning, the doorbell rang; and a Fed Ex delivery man presented Oliver with a neatly wrapped box for which a signature was required. They exchanged pleasantries, then Oliver calmly shut his door. He raced into the kitchen and tore open the box. It contained a neatly typed note of precise instructions and a severed hand. By noon, he had a match on the fingerprints and DNA. Oliver was on the verge of hysteria after he received the call from the CIA’s lab. He called covert ops.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  Five Days Later

  Jean-Luc Le Croix sat on the veranda of his plantation home in Hué perusing the two day old copy of The New York Times that his houseman had fetched him from the airport newspaper shop.

  The front page headline told Sheep Dog what he needed to know:

  MANHUNT OVER

  Most Wanted Fugitive Identified in Fiery Crash

  The article told of “a massive firefight between federal officers and the fleeing fugitive traitor, U.S. Navy Captain, Hunter Caulfield. Caulfield was finally stopped by a hail of machine gun bullets outside the nation’s capital which had turned his escape car into a roaring inferno. The bullet ridden charred corpse was identified by dental records and DNA obtained from some blood that had escaped incineration by seeping through the destroyed floor boards onto the automobile’s frame. The D.C. Medical Examiner who performed the autopsy listed the cause of death as gun-shot wounds to the chest and head, and expressed his gratitude to federal officials for providing finger print and DNA data to confirm the identity. The long saga of one of the nation’s—even the world’s—most celebrated manhunts came to an end during the night of September 23rd. No officers were injured or killed, which—as one senior officer put it—was ‘nothing short of a miracle’. Except for the federal officers involved, there were no witnesses. One senior federal officerspeaking on condition of anonymitydescribed the final encounter as ‘spectacular as the ends for Bonnie and Clyde, and John Dillinger put together’, but would not elaborate on details of how the fugitive was found.”

  The article gave a lengthy and detailed account of the extensive worldwide manhunt and of the massive efforts on the part of federal, state, and local U.S. law enforcement and by their counterparts throughout the world. The director of the FBI was quoted as saying that his bureau “could not have done it without the tremendous level of cooperation that the FBI—as lead law enforcement agency—received.”

  President Storebridge extended his hearty congratulations to the members of the law-enforcement community and to the regular citizens who had been so beneficial to the FBI’s efforts. The world is “a safer place today”, the p
resident said.

  Muslim leaders from five countries joined in praising the work of the Western police agencies, an almost unprecedented communication for nations usually considered hostile to most military and law enforcement activities in the West. The Times took special note of the fact that Iran joined its neighbors in extending its congratulations to the FBI and that this was—perhaps—one more evidence of the welcome thaw between the U.S. and Iran.

  Sheep Dog had arrived in Viet Nam the previous afternoon, having traveled from Paris under the name of Asian art importer, Douglas Conroy Weaver from Atlantic City, New Jersey, whose set of identification papers he destroyed before leaving the Tan Son Nhat Airport. As he now sat on his own veranda, he mentally reviewed the instructions he had given Oliver. By now—he assumed—Oliver would have found Ed’s body and Sheep Dog’s blood and had been able to use his covert-ops resources to obtain a cadaver from somewhere, fake a firefight for the media, and to burn the corpse beyond recognition. Knowing the careful and incorruptible work ethic of the D.C. coroner, Sheep Dog’s blood would have had to have been placed very carefully. Sheep Dog had been certain that Oliver would find a way once he had sufficient incentive to apply his sharp mind to the task.

  He finished his martini and went inside to send an e-mail message. He let Steffan Johannson know that he would meet him in Quesnel in a year. That trip would provide full closure to the Sheep Dog saga. He arranged a wire transfer of funds to support Heather Prentiss for the year she would have to remain in Canada.

  One Year Later

  Quesnel, British Columbia

  Candy sent Tran out to fetch Heather Prentiss when Hunter Caulfield landed in the back pasture of the ranch. Steffan, Xe, Tran, Heather, the Dakelh Indian ranch hands, and nine children watched the final approach. Heather was as excited as she had been for her fifth Christmas morning. Steffan and Candy had promised her for a month that she would be released the day the man the ranch workers called Hi Poindexter came back. Most of the hands knew next to nothing about the man on the helicopter, except that he had been there once before—a year or so ago—and that; on his account, they kept the location of the ranch a complete secret from the American girl, Heather.