by Bill Thesken
It’s a strange feeling that you get when you start to feel that something is wrong. Something bad is about to happen. A creeping feeling that starts on the back of your neck and makes its way to the top of your head and then down and into your chest and your heart. Your breathing slows and your eyes narrow to a focus and your ears turn up their volume and even your skin tunes in to the vibrations of the world like a living breathing radar system while you strain with every core sense that you have to identify the source of the impending doom. It’s not really a sixth sense, it was more like the combination of all the senses in hyper drive, there could be something that you ever so slightly see or smell or hear, something, or a couple of something’s on the edge of your peripheral senses trigger your entire being to go on alert, a survival mechanism from the caveman days when things that wanted to eat you would try to sneak up on your when you were sleeping.
An ancient warning.
The Indians used to say that the body did not have five separate senses, they were all one and the same with the world around us, and if you could relax your mind and let the force of nature blend with your spirit, then you would be invincible.
With the tree at my back I scanned the entire scene in front of me. There were hikers on the far ridge, joggers on the fire road far below, condors circling in the sky high above, riding the rising heat waves, their wings rigid and stiff while their feathers on the edges like fingers ruffled with the changing currents. There were squirrels everywhere it seemed, blending in perfectly with their semi brown fur and then becoming visible as they quick scurried here and there, short bursts of speed, rapid fire up and down trees and across roads, then back again. Black crows by the dozens screeching and cawing that blood curdling sound.
The picnic lovers were taking their sweet time wrapping up their luggage, and then on the edge of the horizon where the fire road went over the hill two figures appeared, a man and a boy it seemed at first, and then as they made their way down the road I could see it was a big man and a small man, both had long pants and t-shirts and running shoes, one with a black beanie and the other with a wide rimmed brown fedora, a cowboy type hat, walking close together and talking while scanning the road ahead of them.
The big guy lumbered as he walked, heavy feet and hands, with a thick neck that cradled a Neanderthal head, shaved hair with a pony tail at the back, with a tattoo on his neck that went all the way around it like a collar, a dog collar. The small man with the beanie, light and wiry, also with a shaved head but no pony tail or tattoo on his neck carried a soccer ball cradled in his heavily tattooed arm, and when they saw the couple at the picnic table they slowed their pace and the short one dropped the soccer ball on the ground and began to dribble it as he walked, passing it to the big guy who passed it back, and they laughed as they played the passing game while getting closer to the couple. The little guy even threw in a limp to his walk, dipping on his left side as he made his way down the dirt road.
Their demeanor had changed from quiet conspiratorial talking to happy feet and chatty faces. It was a small change, so subtle that no one would have noticed. No one should have noticed. But I noticed, I saw the change, they were lying bastards, trying to pretend they were something other than what they really were. Crooks on a mission. Their body language tipped them off, whatever mischievous deed they were planning was in full play now.
The picnic table was out in the open and when they passed by they waved and said hello to the couple who politely waved back. The boyfriend was necessarily cautious and waved with a frown. The soccer players passed by and continued down the road and around the corner while joking and passing the soccer ball. The picnic table was too out in the open, too visible. They would lie in wait around the corner and ambush the couple, of that I was certain.
I got a slow sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I realized there was no easy way out of this.
The sun was an orange orb sinking into the hazy west as I made up my mind on how I was going to handle the situation. There were a few different ways to play this hand, I could escort the couple out by walking behind them as though I was just another tourist, going the same direction as they were. I could go down and warn the couple to go out a different way, both of which would diffuse the situation peacefully. But that left the problem of the two criminals planning with bad intent to do harm, rob or worse. If not this couple it would be someone else, maybe even me who would get ambushed and beaten later on in the evening.
Time to take out the trash.
I made my way over the ridge behind me, crouching low so the couple wouldn’t see me exit the area. The other side of the rise was covered in dry brush and it hid me as I headed towards the curve in the road below. I could see that the road was empty even though by now the tattooed travelers should be right there in plain sight. I was careful not to make a sound, stepping lightly and avoiding the dry branches littering my path, and then I spotted them through a bush, crouching next to a jumble of boulders next to the road with their backs to me. The short thin crook held a gun loosely in his hand while the big guy had a knife. The barrel of the gun was dull black and square, a Glock, probably a .45 with a maximum of thirteen bullets in the magazine. I’d have to take him out first, and then the big guy with the knife.
When I was in basic training in the Army, our self-defense instructor always said that if you’re close enough for a karate chop, you’re too close, and every time I got into this sort of situation I thought of those words. No way I was gonna get close enough to a karate chop from the big tattooed guy with the knife.
I pulled my gun, checked the chamber and saw the bullet, and headed forward. There was a line of shrubs in front of me and I slid forward quickly while using them as a shield. Close enough now to hear them talking in low hushed tones. The big guy with a guttural mumble while the little guy had an inner city jittery slang.
“Whatchu tink huh Eddie?,” said the big guy. “Dey gonna hava lota money, prolly got a new car too.”
“Yeah,” said the little guy. “I’m gonna off that boyfriend of hers and ride around in that brand new car with her sitting right next to me.”
“Eh, whata bout me?”
“You can ride in the back Honcho, plenty of room to stretch out.”
“Maybe she wantsa ride inna back with me eh? Heh heh.”
“Don’t get stupid, she’s riding up front with me.”
Honcho boiled with anger. “Don’t call me stupid, I warned you Eddie!”
“Alright, alright don’t get crazy then. I’ve got a gun and you’ve got a knife, what are you gonna do?”
“I’ll cut you in half if you call me stupid again.” He gripped the knife tight, his knuckles turning white, while Eddie turned the gun and pointed it at the big guys stomach.
“You ever seen a guy die from a gut shot Honcho? Sometimes takes weeks, months even, but they die in the end, they always die.” It was a Mexican standoff in a way with the two of them face to face behind the boulder, and then far off in the distance around the bend of the road you could hear the sweet sound of a girl giggling with laughter.
“Here they come,” hissed Eddie. “Get ready.” And they crouched lower behind the boulder, peering over the edge of it, thoughts of battling each other gone for now as their prey approached.
I was close enough now to spit on them, and I raised my gun to shoulder height and whispered. “Drop the gun or die.” They both quickly looked back, eyes wild with fear at the barrel of my gun. The little guys eyes were dilated like pin pricks in the deep hollowed out sockets of his face, a meth head, and he was quick with his response.
“You might get one of us, but not both esse, drop your gun or die. Spread out a bit Honcho, make it harder for this punk to hit us both.”
While the big guy shuffled to the side Eddie slowly brought his gun around using Honcho’s movement as a distraction, and then tried to swing it quick and up towards me. I fired a shot hitting him square in the wrist and his gun clattered to the groun
d, the silencer on my pistol worked just fine and the only sound was a dull pop from the barrel.
Honcho lunged at me with the knife, too close and fast for me to get off a shot and I ducked under the blade that whistled over my head and caught Honcho flush in the jaw with my right elbow. He flopped on the dirt out cold while Eddie lunged at me from the other side trying to grab at my gun with his good hand. I jabbed him in the ear with my left fist and then with the gun barrel in my right hand broke his jaw in half with a straight right cross, and believe me you can feel and hear the bone break.
He fell face down in the dirt next to Honcho, who was trying to get up, his massive hands scrabbling at the dirt and shaking his head. I could have soccer kicked his head into oblivion but that kind of action can backfire, I could twist my ankle or sprain my big toe, plus it was unnecessary.
On the side of a human’s neck run two large ligaments and in between those ligaments is a carotid vessel that brings oxygen filled blood to the brain. There’s a pressure point there called the LI-18 that’s utilized in acupuncture and fighting. A needle will relieve pressure on the intestine and a karate chop will knock a person unconscious in a split second. I reached down and put my thumb hard into the LI-18 pressure point on his neck and Honcho was out cold again, breathing hard.
“Stay down,” I whispered. The flurry of action had taken less than fifteen seconds and I could hear the young couple walking past on the other side of the boulder, oblivious to what had taken place, lost in their own little world together, their shoes scuffling on the dirt road, she giggled and he teased her till they were well out of earshot, their voices fading away down the dirt road.
I picked up Eddie’s gun and Honcho’s knife and searched them for more weapons. Both had knives strapped to their ankles, and Eddie had a pair of brass knuckles in his pocket along with a metal pipe and a bag with grains of salt, or meth, a few one dollar bills waded up and bits of change. Eddie didn’t know that drugs were bad for your health. Honcho was penniless, his pockets full of crumbs and old empty food wrappers. They both stank to high hell and probably hadn’t taken a bath in years.
These guys were bad news, and needed to be locked up and out of the free world. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to help them into a paddy wagon. I was in a hurry and needed to get my stash and get the heck out of here. I had no rope to tie them up, and no matter what knock out technique I used on them, they’d eventually wake up and stagger out of here and cause some sort of mayhem in the future.
I slapped Eddies face back and forth till his eyes fluttered and I held the barrel of the gun at the bridge of his nose till he woke up and saw the trouble he was in.
“You see this hombre?” I whispered and he nodded ever so slightly, his eyeballs wide with fear, fluttering in their sockets, jaw throbbing in pain.
“I’ll be watching you, and your buddy Honcho over here, wherever you go for the rest of eternity. I’ll be in the shadows, waiting for you to mess up again and then I’ll put a bullet right between your eyes. You got that? For the rest of time hombre, I’m watching you. Understand?” He nodded and I pushed my thumb into the side of his neck and he went limp. I did the same thing to Honcho but it took a little while longer to get the point across to him. When he came to and saw the barrel of the gun pointing between his eyes he tried to get up and I had to put my knee on his chin till he quieted down, and when I had his full attention I warned him, and he listened and then he went to sleep again with a thumb in his neck.
I had about five minutes till they would come out of their knock out daze and try to walk out of here. Someone would probably see them stumbling around, and call for an ambulance and the police, and then they’d be all over this place.
I jogged to the top of the hill, found a medium sized rock in the middle of a clump of sage brush, rolled it over and dug a small hole, put the knives and Eddies gun into it, filled it with dirt and rolled the rock back in place. A hundred years from now someone might find the weapons and wonder how they got there.
From my vantage point I listened hard, chickadees clicked in every direction and the sound of an odd crow here and there filtered in the breeze. On the hill opposite the dirt road was a large mesquite tree, it’s trunk twisted from a storm long ago, twisted into a sort of S shape. S for stash, my stash. My stash of weapons and money.
Dusk was settling in when I got to the S tree. I stood with the back of my heel against the trunk and counted twenty five paces straight north and started digging with my hands. My fingernails scrabbled onto the metal case, grabbed the handle on top and lifted it out of its hole. It was an Army photography equipment case I found at a thrift store, it’s amazing what you can find at those places, two cubic feet, waterproof and built for combat action, like being thrown out of planes and run over by tanks on the battlefield.
The latches opened without a hitch and I could smell the oiled metal of my pistols wrapped in towels. There were four of everything, four Glock thirty fives, four cans of mace, four boot knives, four stun grenades, four hundred rounds of ammo, four mobile phones, four night scopes, and four thousand dollars in assorted small bills. I took half of everything, sealed the case, put it back in the hole and covered it with dirt again, safe keeping in case I needed it again. Then I went back to the mesquite tree, broke off a low hanging branch and carefully swept the area of footsteps, scattered some little rocks across the whole area and headed back down the hill.
It was dark now, not pitch black but the world around me barely visible, the other side of twilight and just the way I liked it, my time of the day. I sprinted down the dirt road, past the big boulder with the crooks laid out on the other side and kept going till I was at the observatory. The place was bustling, star gazers lining up at the entrance for a chance to look through the telescopes, scout troops, families, couples. I spotted a taxi dropping off a couple of Japanese tourists and I jumped in the back.
9.
“How’s your eye?”
“It’s fine.”
“It looks like shit, you should put some ice on it. They say ice is the best medicine for an injury. It takes down the swelling and lets the tissues heal themselves.”
“I said it’s fine, now mind your own damn business.” Jerry Smith AKA the Eraser put down the pen he was writing with and rubbed his forehead near his eye socket that was causing his partner so much concern. He’d been popping aspirin for the past few hours and the throbbing headache near his temple was still there. His partner AKA ‘also known as’ the Bulldog wouldn’t let up.
“If I’d been minding mine as well as your business back at the hospital,” said the Bulldog. “We wouldn’t be in here writing reports, we’d be outside. You let Badger knock you upside the head and get away. I thought you were smarter than that.” He shook his head. “I was wrong.”
The Eraser’s eyes glazed over while muttering something in another language, then turned to the Bulldog and measured the distance to the tip of the offending chin. He’d have to lunge three feet over the table to connect with a knockout punch. He figured he could get some extra speed and leverage by pushing off the table with his left hand and kicking the chair away with his right foot. It was still a little too far though, it gave the Dog way too much time to block the punch.
“If you’d been watching the door like YOU were supposed to, he never would have skipped, and now we look like a couple of punk rookies who can’t even keep watch over a half dead and drugged guy on a gurney in the middle of a crowded hospital.”
“One thing I can’t understand is how he got out of there so quickly. I was in the bathroom for three minutes tops. Three minutes Jerry. I come out, the nurse tells me that she saw you head out the ward entrance and that was that. I check on the patient, he looks like he’s sleeping peacefully, then I notice a little blood near his forehead and I get down and look closer and it’s you. I almost jumped outta my shoes. Scared the crap outa me like a horror movie seeing you there.”
“Yeah? Imagine how I felt coming out o
f that drug induced coma that son of a bitch put me in. I thought I’d died and couldn’t wake up. I was a zombie for two days. Some kind of horse tranquilizer in that drip.”
“The kids pretty crafty though, you gotta admit it. But I hear we got a lot of assets looking for him . He won’t stay lost for very long.”
Eraser shook his head and looked square at his partner. “They sure better find him before I do. When I get my hands on him, I’m gonna squeeze the life out of him.”
“How could he knock you out, change into your clothes, put you in the bed with the needle and get out of there in three minutes, that’s what I can’t understand.”
“How do you know it was only three minutes? Do you run a stopwatch when you go to the toilet? Maybe it was four minutes, maybe it was five. Maybe you were in there for ten minutes or more, looking at yourself in the mirror and telling yourself what a handsome bastard you are.”
“We’ve gone over this Jerry. I went through the motions so to speak and timed myself as I remember, and we interviewed the nurse who confirmed it was around three minutes. The kid is good, you have to admit it.”
“I’m gonna kill him when I find him.”
They were sitting in a ten by ten room in one of the corner offices. Windows looking out onto the city and the adjacent offices, except for one side where the plane glass was replaced with mirrors. It was more like an interrogation room than an office.
The agency was run like a division of the FBI. Housed on the entire third floor of a gleaming building near the center of the city with glassed in offices and reception areas.
The building was brand new steel and reinforced concrete, windows mirror glazed so you see out, but no one could see in, sniper proof, and the third floor location chosen specifically since it was high enough to prevent an outside intrusion, but not too high to quickly escape in the event of fire or attack. It was swept for surveillance bugs twice a day since the information on who they were protecting, the where and when and how they were being protected could wind up in the wrong hands and get someone killed, or worse. A security firm’s first order of business was securing itself. Triple background checks were done on all the employees and was continually updated,an entire wing of the firm was devoted to tracking its own employees.