by Vince Milam
He continued hand surfing. I headed northwest, a four-hour drive ahead.
“You mean the coming together? The four of us?”
A stab in the dark, but these interchanges were what made life around Bo so interesting.
“Name the last time we were together,” Bo said.
Well, he had a solid point. The answer—never since Delta Force days. After the Suriname job, Marcus, Catch, and I had come together in Montana. Bo, Catch, and I were together during the New Guinea job. But over the years we’d never assembled as a whole unit.
“A long time ago. During active service.”
“And you don’t think this moment, this convergence, holds cosmic significance?”
Driven through happenstance or a bizarre situation or a universal force—it didn’t matter. After years apart, we gathered. The first time as civilians. I had no clue about what it portended within the cosmos. Although I did know it spelled nothing but assured death for bounty hunters who decided to show up in Spartanburg County with murder on their minds.
Chapter 18
I texted Marcus and Catch about our travel plans. A four-hour drive plus a thirty-minute stop in Columbia for groceries. The short shopping trip was prompted by Catch’s reply.
The larder is empty. I’m hungry. May shoot a neighbor’s cow.
Grandma Wilson’s place had stood empty for months, and our stay might require several days. The drive solidified the importance of nabbing a hired hitter and prying information from him. Otherwise, we would end up beside a revolving door of appearances by an irregular stream of bounty hunters, each after the ten million. It would go on until the money’s source was removed. Not Krupp, although I had definitive plans toward him. No, the bounty master would have required delivery of the ten mil before word was released. Ethics among the murder-for-hire international community. So whacking Krupp wouldn’t stop the flow of hired guns.
While I had no idea about the nationality of the lava field hitters, the Albanians at Mom’s place weren’t a surprise. I had no idea why certain Eastern European countries—poor and underdeveloped—dominated the supply chain of killers for hire. But there it was.
“Does this jacket make me look fat?” Bo asked after we left the city of Columbia. “I fear insufficient time was spent with its selection.”
Bo, arriving from the Caribbean, hadn’t packed a warm jacket. As we left the coast and headed northwest, the night air chilled. The grocery stop had afforded him the opportunity to purchase southern winter clothing.
“Yeah, it does. Which is a good thing. You’re skinny as a rail after a steady diet of fish and rice. Don’t you and JJ cook?”
We chatted about St. Thomas life and his relationship with the FBI agent. I broached the subject of Jess Rossi.
“So the damsel is distressed by your strange and mysterious ways?” he asked.
“Can’t blame her. Our first date, if you could call it that, entailed the removal of two hitters. Not your normal dinner and a movie.”
“While it’s true I don’t recall Dear Abby covering such an eventuality, it certainly plops you into a different category of potential lover. Which may not be such a bad thing,” Bo said. “What are your prime attractors toward this lovely lady?”
“She’s sharp as can be. And makes me laugh. And she’s a looker.”
“Positive qualities, old son. Universal convergence will tell the tale.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Miles rolled past; leaves blew across the interstate under the headlights. Hardwood country, the trees bare as winter’s hold tightened. The challenge ahead was daunting. I couldn’t ask Mom and CC to return until the bounty lifted. One and only one way to make it happen.
“You’ve sunk into the goober blues,” Bo said as he fiddled with the AM radio dial. He enjoyed rural sell-or-swap radio programs. Late-night want ads on the air.
“Yeah. You can’t blame me.”
“Wrong. And I grow weary of helping you fight it. Shall we sing a song?”
A caller offered a fence-stretcher for twenty bucks. Or would trade for someone’s seldom-used kitchen blender.
“No singing. It’s a freakin’ mess, Bo. Any way you shake it.”
“Forget the shaking. It rolls and it tumbles. We’re along for the ride.”
Life. Bo’s oft-repeated philosophy of existence. Along for the ride with a hand on a wobbly tiller while the grand ocean of life called the shots. I couldn’t bring myself to be so accepting about the whole thing. Couldn’t ride the waves with a Bo-like insouciance. More than once I’d wished I could.
As we rolled along the final stretch of country dirt road, I stopped and texted Marcus and Catch.
Coming in.
High-powered night-scoped weaponry would point our way once we turned onto the old farmhouse’s gravel drive. I ensured they understood it was friendlies approaching.
Roger.
Bout time.
Marcus and Catch respectively. A large white SUV sat parked in front of the small clapboard house. The wooden front porch, repaired often over the decades, held two now-antique metal rocking chairs. The type once found outside rooms at motor inns where parents, requiring a break from the station wagon full of kids, sat and sipped a cold bourbon drink while their children ran about the place. Pieces of wooden lattice, rotting away, were tacked at the porch pillar and roofline intersection. Woodsmoke, unseen in the night air, delivered its pungent aroma from the pot-bellied sitting room stove or the kitchen stove or both.
A small shelf behind the stove always contained a box of strike-anywhere kitchen matches and a coffee can filled with bacon grease. Plus an old porcelain cat with a clock in its belly I’d never seen keep time. A permanent coffee percolator occupied the stovetop, its top glass knob a visual check that coffee prep was underway. Four chairs around a Formica-topped table. Kitchen floorboards that squeaked with the rhythms of food preparation and sit-down suppers. Grandma Wilson’s place.
I’d spent many a summer here, exploring the hardwood-covered hills with an old .22 rifle or swimming at the small creek behind the house. Before Grandad passed, he dug a decent-sized hole in the creek. Sufficient for a rope swing and a ten-foot drop into cold water. Pretty fine on a sweltering summer day.
Bo and I exited the vehicle as he yelled, “Hi-ho, my brothers! The grand court is in session.”
A nearby voice, deep within the surrounding woods’ darkness, sounded back.
“And you’re found guilty, hippie-boy.”
Catch ambled our way, the dark silhouette of a bear on hind legs. With a full jet-black beard and close-cropped hair and a mile-wide smile, he entered the porch light ellipse that spilled onto the gravel drive.
“You’ll squeeze me, and I’m here to tell you the body won’t take it anymore,” I said, grinning back.
“The wussification of America, right before my eyes. And the hug ain’t an option, missy. For either of you.”
His weapon slung across his back, he grabbed me before I could protest further and lifted me off the ground and shook me and tried planting kisses on my cheek.
I couldn’t stop laughing and fought back as best I could against the bear hug. Juan Antonio Diego Hernandez. Catch. He set me down but kept one arm in a tight lock around my torso and extended his free arm toward Bo who approached with a shine-in-the-night grin.
“Come here, you redheaded mullet. I haven’t seen your sorry ass since New Guinea.”
In typical Bo fashion, he pulled a sleight of body, slipped under Catch’s arm, and leapt onto the bear’s back. Now it was his turn, kissing Catch on the neck. Loud smacks while Catch fought him off and twirled with me along for the ride. Curses and yells and laughter filled the cold night air.
A Zippo lighter clacked and Marcus approached, firing a cigar. His grin was less ebullient but no less heartfelt. He extended a hand toward me. Throughout our history together, during and after Delta Force days, none of us hugged Marcus. Our team lead. And Marcus was more than alright w
ith that. We shook and we both added a side-pat. I’d last seen him several months earlier at his Montana ranch. A bird-hunting visit.
“Clearly you are still avoiding hard work,” he said, puffing the cigar. “You’ve chosen instead to wander about kicking hornet’s nests.”
“Gotta play to my strengths, Marcus.”
Said with a smile and a truckload of internal poignancy. Yeah, I’d kicked the nest, and surrounding me were men who’d heeded my call for help. They didn’t care what created the issue or who was the instigator. My blood brothers were here to finish it. I didn’t deserve such friends, and considered myself—at this time and at this place—the luckiest person on earth.
“Bo, it’s been years. Good to see you,” Marcus said, hand extended.
“And you, Marcus. It makes my heart swell. You look good.”
Bo held on to Marcus’s hand and hunched low, looking up. Marcus wore a black watch cap. Serious salt-and-pepper hair peeked out.
“Although it is disconcerting viewing the gray,” Bo continued. “Tempus fugit, indeed.”
“It’s called dignified.”
“No argument from me, Charlemagne.”
“Speaking of hair,” Marcus said, surveying Bo’s wild mop of red hair and unkempt beard, “Don’t they have barbers on your island?”
“I’m unsure. Yet there be passion and love and electric-blue fish in abundance.”
“Okay, Bo.” Marcus donned the team lead mantle. “We take four-hour watches. Case, you and Bo start. It’ll give Catch and me an opportunity to go inside and warm up. Your weapons are arrayed on the kitchen table. This extra vehicle is a solid attractant. Let’s get those groceries inside.”
We did. Our weaponry consisted of two Colt semiauto rifles chambered in 5.56 NATO, each with an Elcan Specter scope wired for night vision. A familiar and fine weapon. Catch had brought his Remington .300 Win Mag M24 sniper rifle with a Marauder night-vision scope. Given Catch’s training as an expert sniper, the weapon system he toted would reach out and touch someone, in the dark, at well over five hundred yards. Marcus had also brought several HK 45 pistols, semiautomatic, even knowing full well that Bo and I preferred Glocks. He never stopped his weapon conversion attempts. He’d also packed six small radios with earbud mics for communication. He and Catch each wore one. Two more for Bo and me and two extras because, well, Marcus came prepped.
I filled the team in on earlier events at Mom’s place. A few questions were asked, Albanian papers and passports perused and tossed into the pot-bellied stove’s flames.
“What I’m hearing,” Catch said, “is you two suck at capture.”
“A harsh assessment, my brother,” Bo said. “But our drive here has afforded time for reflection. You see, we must capture their minds. We may have focused too much on their bodies.”
“Oh Lord,” Marcus said as he shook his head and tossed more firewood into the room stove.
“Willa actually misses hearing that crap,” Catch said.
Willa—Catch’s live-in Portland partner—loved Bo and relished her time with him. A few clarifying questions regarding my Hawaii activities were posed. Marcus focused on Krupp and the triggers that had created our current situation.
“The man who posted our bounties all these years would have demanded the cash from Krupp before raising the ante on your head,” Marcus said. “How did Krupp avoid leaving a paper trail with the transaction?”
“Cryptocurrency,” I said. “Bitcoin, etc. Funnel it through a couple of cryptocurrency middlemen and it’s buried too deep for excavation. Nowadays, it’s how these hitters are paid, as well.”
“You live in a strange world, son,” Marcus said as he stretched out on the couch, an old tin can as ashtray for the cigar. “As noted multiple times in the past.”
“Cryptocurrency,” Bo said. “It adds an ephemeral quality. Nice.”
“Yeah, nice,” Catch said, rolling his eyes. He turned toward me. “Tell me more about the lava field. I mean, how cool was that? Using molten terrain as an ally.”
“Wish I could say it was an ally, bud. But it weirded me out. That environment makes a man feel puny. Insignificant.” I turned and addressed my three brothers. “But back to this whole capture thing. I didn’t pull you guys in for anything but covering my family. Anything else, including actions subsequent to the bounty master discovery, is on me. I mean it.”
We’d danced around next steps. Time to address the elephant on the table.
“Don’t start your usual horseshit,” Catch said. “We lost an opportunity in New Guinea for an answer. Not this time. And when we get an answer, we lock and load and go nail his ass. End it.”
“We’ve been blown onto this path,” Bo said, his expression angelic. “Cosmic winds rule the day, our collective sail is set, and grand adventure awaits.”
“Which reminds me,” Marcus said, poking his cigar toward Bo as emphasis. “No smoking weed while on watch. As for next steps, it’s white noise at this point. Let’s accept the spigot is open, and it won’t stop. So we focus on the mission. Capture one of these sons of bitches. We’ll get him to talk, then define strategy and tactics for next steps.”
“A sound approach, bwana,” Bo said. “A tad too linear for my taste, but it will do for the moment.”
“The sooner you two get your linear asses through the door, the sooner I can catch some shut-eye,” Marcus said, using one boot toe on the heel of the other. The footwear clomped to the floor. “Cell phones on vibrate and stowed in chest pockets. Call or text if bogeys show. Catch, take the farthest room. I’m pretty sure you still snore like a water buffalo.”
“A beautiful water buffalo. A lumbersexual water buffalo.”
Catch had adopted the Portland look—bushy beard, trimmed head hair, plaid shirts. He called it a lumbersexual look.
“C’mon, Bo,” I said, donning the earpiece radio. “Let’s let these elderly gents catch their beauty sleep.”
The next-steps issue still lay there, unanswered but at least acknowledged. The obligation to handle it myself, alone, pulled strong. The ten mil sat on my head. I’d kicked the anthill. And I was capable of ending it. Sure, backup would be preferable in whatever gnarly part of the world I’d head. But this was on me. I’d spare my blood brothers the inherent high risk of bounty master termination. But their response was expected. Appreciated but expected. They’d emphasized numerous times before that we’d saddle up together when the time came. And the time might be around the corner. Wasps swarmed. Yeah, well, screw the wasps. They’d point toward the paymaster. Where swift and sure finality would rule the day.
Chapter 19
There were no incursions, no enemies that night. Nor the next day and night. We altered shifts, allowing us eight hours rest at different stretches. Not a mention or a hint of grumbling about the possibility Krupp hadn’t connected the dots, hadn’t followed the trail to Grandma Wilson’s place. They trusted me. Period. At some point, the bad guys would show. I had no doubt. Which meant my brothers didn’t either.
On the third day, late afternoon, it happened. Marcus and I stood watch. He was positioned near the farmhouse along a small rise, tucked into brush among bare winterscape hardwoods. I occupied a small gulley near the gravel driveway’s bend with a view of its intersection with the county dirt road. It was gray, overcast, with a ground dampness from the previous night’s sprinkling of snow, now melted.
We were a mile-and-a-half from the nearest neighbor, but there were neighbors, and they would traverse the dirt road at lonely and irregular intervals. The county road had ruts and washboards and wouldn’t receive a county grading until springtime. The road’s condition ensured we could hear the creaks and groans and rattles as pickup trucks passed. Even newer vehicles sounded muted protests as they traversed it. It was this sound that alerted me. The vehicle stopped somewhere back on the road, hidden behind a small hill. I could just discern the engine sound as it sat idling, and at least one car door opened.
Maybe some guy wa
s taking a leak or had seen something that caught his interest. Or maybe they were killers, whose GPS and satellite image had alerted them that a gravel drive approached. A drive leading to their objective.
“Got a vehicle stopped on the county road, south of us. Might be nothing.”
Marcus responded into my earpiece.
“Catch and Bo haven’t stretched out yet, so I’ll send them a text.”
“Standby one. Could be a guy taking a leak.”
We waited. Minutes passed, two doors shut, and the vehicle began moving again. It approached the gravel road, slowed to a crawl, stopped. A black SUV, large, with tinted windows. Zero visibility of the occupants. The first half of the drive from the county road supplied no farmhouse visibility until the small bend in the drive. They turned, drove along the drive, and approached the bend. Their vehicle peeked far enough for a windshield view of the farmhouse. And provided a windshield view for me. Three men. In hunting clothes. They eased their SUV into reverse and backed away, out of sight of the farmhouse.
“We got bogeys. Three. Black SUV.”
“Roger that.”
Marcus would alert Catch and Bo via a vibrating text message while I kept an eye on the occupants from my gulley position. I cranked the magnification on the Colt’s scope down to 3x and eased the weapon’s butt against my shoulder. They exited the vehicle, armed with semiautomatic rifles. An AR variant, make and model and caliber unknown. They each carried semiautomatic pistols in hip holsters, visible against thick, drab, green pullover sweaters. Each wore camo pants, boots, and black watch caps, pulled low over the ears.
I fought to maintain clinical assessment of the scenario while every fiber screamed, “Bring it on, you SOBs.” Ex-military from an unknown part of the world. Hitters, stone-cold assassins, were invading my personal turf. My grandma’s turf, where Mom and CC would go and hole up at my distress calls. Three dead men, intent on delivering terror for a bundle of money. Nothing more.