Friendly Fire

by John Gilstrap

  Spike choked on a laugh. “Wait. Did you say Cletus?”

  “Right.”

  “What is he, a horse?”

  “Name like that, you gotta be tough,” one of the other guys said.

  “Do you want to hear this or don’t you?” Drew snapped.

  “Excuse me,” Spike said with exaggerated deference.

  Drew’s face reddened. “Cletus Bangstrom works in the property office, and he’s been noticing the equipment we’ve been skimming.”

  “Of course he has,” Spike said. “His job is to count things, right? If the numbers are wrong, it’s his job to notice.”

  “Yeah, but he’s asking the kinds of questions that make our contacts nervous. He’s starting to link events that could expose our plans.”

  Spike settled farther back into his chair. “What events are we talking about, exactly?”

  “He told my guy the he suspects a terror move, that people are going to dress up like police officers and start shooting people.”

  This was the most disturbing news yet. “Are those your words or Cletus’s?”

  “Those are the words of my contact who says they’re Cletus’s words. That’s too damn close for comfort if you ask me. My guy told me that he brought it up with the chief of the department.”

  “What did he say there?”

  “I don’t know. It was a closed-door meeting. But I know the chief never mentioned it to my contact, who would be the person to go to if they were planning to defend against an attack on the station.”

  Spike scowled as he considered that. “Isn’t that a good sign?”

  “My contact doesn’t think so. He thinks he’s not in the loop because he’s being watched. He wants us to move up the strike date.”

  “Does he, now?”

  “Before things get locked down too much. Before this Cletus character can stir up too much trouble.”

  “Okay, well, for sure, we make Cletus go away,” Spike said. “You and Vince take care of that. Nothing flashy, just effective.” He looked over to Vince and got a satisfied nod.

  “There’s another reason to hit the police station soon,” Drew said, clearly not ready to move on. He smiled. “The kid you want us to hit? Apparently he got himself beat up in the jail, and they’ve moved him to the holding cells in the police station itself. If we move in the next few days, we get a two-fer.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jonathan didn’t get up to Brookville very often, and among those few times, he’d never been to the historic district. The antebellum buildings here in the little town square had an undeniable charm about them. Built around a traffic circle that displayed a statue of a Confederate soldier manning a Napoleon gun, this section of Braddock County had been the site of several skirmishes during the Civil War, as well as a training ground for elements of George Washington’s troops during the American Revolution.

  The park he and Boxers sought lay two blocks off the circle, in a slot between two tall, narrow row houses that had been converted to businesses. Jonathan wondered if the lot had been the site of a fire back in the day, and that the town fathers just decided not to rebuild. The park—if that’s even what you could call it—was fully accessible from the front and the rear, and was really just a spot to display a few trees and flowers surrounding a couple of park benches.

  “Doesn’t look like much to me,” Boxers said as he piloted the Batmobile down the narrow street.

  Up ahead, just beyond an intersection with a perpendicular street, the road widened to allow angled parking. “We’ve got a good parking place,” Boxers said, pointing.

  “Not yet,” Jonathan said. “Let’s take in the whole block. I want to see what’s on the other side.”

  Boxers complied without objection. In a perfect world, they would have driven around the block a few times, but the Batmobile was such a conspicuous vehicle, more than twice would draw attention. “Okay,” Jonathan said. “Pick a spot you like for doing surveillance.”

  The original slot Big Guy had spotted was still open. It was located in front of an auto supply place that had a CLOSED sign in the window.

  With the engine turned off, Boxers activated the ventless air conditioner, and they moved into the back of the vehicle to begin their survey of the area. This would take some time. Jonathan’s biggest concern was that the cops had viewed the same patterns from Stepahin’s cell phone, and that they might be scoping out the area as well.

  Generally, local police did a crappy job of hiding their surveillance operations. It was as if they had all attended the same classes, and then did the same things. The taxpayers bought the police a vehicle, and they might as well have painted the words Surveillance Van on the side. The other strategy would be to observe from a distance, but from what Jonathan could tell, there were no commercial or residential windows that would give observers a great view of the area. A scan of the park with thermal imaging showed no one hiding behind bushes or trees.

  “I don’t see a soul, Boss,” Boxers said, looking up from the thermal scope. “I call this one clear.”

  “Let’s get down to business, then,” Jonathan said.

  “How are we handling it?”

  “First of all, I want you to stay here and keep your eye on the monitors. Thermal and visual. I don’t want to wander into something that surprises me.”

  “You know I don’t like you doing these things on your own,” Boxers objected.

  “I promise I’ll be careful, Dad,” Jonathan said with a chuckle. He appreciated Boxers’ sense of protection. “There are couple of things working here. First of all, it’s entirely possible that there is active surveillance of the area that we haven’t yet seen. Thanks to my meeting last night with Detective Hastings, I have plausible deniability if I’m caught on somebody’s video. In the company of the very giant that the kid remembers from his rescue—no offense—that would be hard to explain.”

  “I don’t like you being that exposed,” Boxers said. “There’s something bad in the air, and over here, I’ll be too far out of place to give you any hands-on help.”

  “I have a solution for that, too,” Jonathan said. “I’ll clip on a body cam so you can watch, and wear an earpiece so you can tell me if it looks like I’m going to get company.”

  Boxers still didn’t like it.

  “It’s just not worth the risk, Big Guy. I promise I won’t take any chances.” Among the kit stored in locked compartments in the Batmobile—along with a stash of cash, a selection of small arms, both long and short, and a small assortment of explosives and primers—Jonathan stored various outfits for both him and Boxers, different looks to meet different applications. The tactical gear was inappropriate for the current mission, so he changed into a flannel shirt that was specially cut to conceal not only his Colt, but also an encrypted radio that would allow him to stay in contact with whomever he needed to stay in contact with. A tiny bud in his right ear would allow him to both transmit and receive radio transmissions hands-free. The body cam looked for all the world like the top button of his shirt.

  When he was dressed out and ready to go, he placed a phone call to Venice back in Fisherman’s Cove. After it rang six times and went to voice mail, he cursed lightly under his breath and hung up. “Where the hell is she?” he asked to no one in particular.

  “Did you ask her to wait by the phone?” Boxers asked.

  “No, but—”

  The phone rang. Venice. He let it ring three times just to be difficult, and then answered, “Joe’s Pizza, can I take your order?”

  “Hello, Scorpion,” she said with a groan. Despite the encryption, they used only avatars on the air. “I was helping the little one with his homework, but if phone games are the order of the day, I’m sure his grade point average can suffer.” A single mother, Venice was devoted to her thirteen-year-old son, Roman, but worried that her job—both the nature of it and the long hours—got in the way of her mothering duties. The good news was that she had the fallback of Mama
Alexander, who specialized in making Roman feel great, and occasionally made Venice feel small. Mama didn’t know what the covert side of Security Solutions did, but she clearly had her suspicions, and she even more clearly did not approve.

  “Sorry for the interruption,” Jonathan said, “but this one is official. We need your help monitoring the video feed from my body cam. I need you to record it.”

  “I can do that,” she said. “When are you going hot?”

  “Approximately now,” Jonathan said. “I’m leaving Big Guy in the van to monitor the area real time for intruders, and I don’t want him looking away from his scope to watch the screen.”

  “Might I ask where you are?” Venice asked. In the background, Jonathan could hear her shifting into position and booting up equipment.

  “We’re in the land of the big red dot,” Jonathan said. Since she had forwarded the images from the phone tracker, he knew she’d figure out what they were talking about.

  “Do we have suspicions?” she asked.

  “Not that we should discuss over the air. Let me know when you are set, and I’ll head out.”

  “I’m all set,” Venice said.

  Jonathan disembarked from the vehicle on the left side, the side opposite the park. The plan was to stroll around the block the opposite way, and maybe pop into a few shops to look around. In the unlikely event that people were indeed watching, his theory was that a long stroll would make them lose interest, whereas walking a straight line from the Batmobile to the park would draw attention.

  As he drew near the first corner, the grumble of a muscle car caught his attention, and he turned to see a red Corvette, top down, stopped at a traffic light. The driver, in his thirties, had that operator wannabe look, complete with a battle beard and a fitted ball cap perched just so, the Oakley sunglasses straddling the brim. Jonathan chuckled. The guy looked fit enough, so maybe he was the real deal, but Jonathan never understood the drive to look badass all day every day. If the guy in the car had walked the walk, Jonathan stipulated that he had the right to look the look—unlike the pudgy gun nuts who liked to pretend. He just never understood it. He knew better than most that some moments called for toughness, but to be in that space all the time had to be exhausting.

  The car was twenty-five yards away, but the driver seemed to sense that Jonathan was watching, and he looked over. Jonathan gave him a little five-finger wave, which the badass returned with a single finger. Dickhead.

  Jonathan chuckled. Nothing pissed off those guys as quickly or as badly as a show of disrespect. If Mr. Badass Soldier Boy wanted to pick a fight, that’d be fine. But he’d better hit first and hit hard. The confrontation defused when the light changed and the Corvette swung a turn away from Jonathan, toward the coffee shop.

  “Did I just detect some dick-knocking, Boss?” Boxers said in his ear. Jonathan could hear the smile in his voice.

  “He seems young for a midlife crisis car,” Jonathan said.

  Finally turning right at the corner to head down the far side of the block, Jonathan saw a storefront that intrigued him. Miriam’s Miscellany. If nothing else, it was a great name for a store. A spring-loaded bell announced his entry through the stout front door, clearly a replacement for its original. The frame was made of steel—did they have steel doors in the nineteenth century? —and the glass behind the mullions was more suitable for a bank teller’s cage than a store full of miscellany, whatever the hell that meant.

  Two steps in, Jonathan realized that miscellany did not mean recently dusted. The place was like the attic of a haunted house. Lots of weather-worn mannequins and parts of mannequins, an old rocking chair that might have held the body of Norman Bates’s mother, and a menagerie’s worth of mounted game heads. In a single glance, Jonathan noted a boar, a bison, and a deer-like beast with four-foot corkscrew horns. Intrigued, he stepped farther into the store, turning sideways to get past the assembled crap on the floor. A glass counter displayed an assortment of Nazi memorabilia, at which point Jonathan decided it was time to move on.

  “Can I help you?” a voice called from the back.

  Jonathan never saw the guy’s face, so he didn’t bother to answer.

  “Oh, don’t go yet,” Boxers said in his ear. “Don’t you want to see if they’ve got a mummy?”

  Jonathan exited to the sidewalk and pushed the door closed behind him. “With that door, I figure they’re either running a bookie operation or they’re cooking meth in the basement,” he mumbled.

  The rest of the block had lots of storefronts, but very little retail. He saw a tax adviser, an attorney, another coffee shop, and a contracting outfit. He continued to walk. At the next corner, he turned right again. Looking casual.

  “Break, break,” Boxers said. “Your buddy from the Corvette is coming this way. From his eye lines, it looks like he might be scoping the same park we are. You might want to pick up your pace.”

  “Is he a cop?” Jonathan asked.

  “How the hell do I know?”

  “How far out is he?”

  “Call it seventy-five yards. But his eye lines are hard. I give it a ninety percent shot that’s where he’s going.”

  Jonathan picked up his pace to a jog.

  “Okay,” Boxers said, “I’m ready to declare him not a cop. He’s too nervous. Too much time looking over his shoulders. How far out are you?”

  “Nearly to the corner,” Jonathan said.

  And then he was at the corner. Across the street, in the middle of the block, he saw the guy with the battle beard and the attitude. The guy walked casually, his hands in his pockets. Just like nothing was wrong, nothing on his mind. Jonathan recognized the posture all too well, and he slowed his pace so as not to attract attention.

  “He’s gonna get there first, Boss,” Boxers said. “I’ve got an eyeball on you, too.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Jonathan said. “Keep an eye on what he’s doing.”

  Battle Beard took the tactical look the whole way, as it turned out. Now that the man was out of the car, Jonathan could see the desert tan tactical pants and boots, and untucked khaki shirt that no doubt concealed a firearm.

  “Do you think he’s servicing the dead drop?” Venice asked. So she’d figured it out.

  “It’d certainly shorten the learning curve,” Boxers said.

  Jonathan wasn’t sure how to handle this. If he hung back and just watched the guy do whatever he was going to do, they’d have a recording of it, and then maybe they could follow him. That seemed inefficient as hell. On the other hand, to confront the guy out here would likely cause a fight, and nobody wanted that. Certainly not out in the open like this, though the street was empty.

  He decided to keep walking and play it by ear.

  Battle Beard seemed to know exactly where he was going. He made no feint or diversionary move. Instead, he made a beeline to a plot of garden in the center of the space, where he stooped to his haunches and started poking around the blooming flowers.

  Jonathan had closed the distance to only a few yards, but Battle Beard was so engaged in what he was doing that he didn’t notice. This was why it was always best to work in a team. It’s just not possible to watch two things at the same time and pay any attention to what you’re seeing.

  Jonathan was almost on top of him when he saw the guy lift a rock from the dirt and from beneath it excise a piece of paper. He still had it in his fingers as he stood.

  “Good afternoon,” Jonathan said.

  The guy jumped a foot and whirled, his feet set in a fighter’s stance.

  “Whoa,” Jonathan said. “Didn’t mean to startle you. What you got there?” He kept his tone light as he pointed to the paper.

  “You need to back off,” Battle Beard said.

  “Why? What’s going on? What’s on the piece of paper?”

  Battle Beard slipped the paper into his front right pocket. “Nothing for you to be concerned about. Just leave and there’ll be no trouble.”

  “Well, I ce
rtainly don’t want any trouble,” Jonathan said. He widened his stance. “But I’m not going anywhere. I really need to see what’s on that paper.”

  Battle Beard’s eyes hardened. “You really think you’re ready for a fight, old man? Because that’s where this is headed.”

  Jonathan smiled. “Tough talk for a guy who drives a big penis.” He’d been called way worse things than old man, but he pegged this guy as one who took his wheeled penis very seriously.

  Battle Beard reached behind him, and Jonathan’s hand twitched toward his Colt. When the other guy’s hand reappeared, it held a wicked-looking T-grip knife with maybe a three-inch blade protruding from the space between his knuckles.

  “Oh, shit,” Boxers said in his ear. “I’m on my way.”

  Jonathan didn’t think he’d need Big Guy’s help, but he didn’t turn him back, either. Knife fights could get very messy very quickly.

  “Is it really worth this?” Battle Beard said.

  “You’re setting the price, pal,” Jonathan said. “And if I were you, I’d think twice before you get in way over—”

  The guy made his move. Fifteen, maybe twenty feet separated them when he initiated his lunge, leading with the knife. Jonathan reacted instantly, pivoting a half-step to his left, even as he drew his Colt from its holster. The trick to surviving a knife fight was to stay out of the blade’s arc while punishing the hand that was wielding it. Jonathan used the steel muzzle of the Colt to smash the knuckles on Battle Beard’s knife hand, loosening his grip on the T-handle. Jonathan took control of the attacker’s hand with his left hand, and then brought the muzzle of the pistol hard across the man’s exposed ear and temple. Battle Beard’s legs wobbled a bit, and then Jonathan sealed the deal with a hard blow to the back of his head. Out and done.

  Total combat time: less than five seconds.

  “Are you okay?” Venice asked in his ear.

  “I think so,” he said. “Big Guy, get the Batmobile fired up. I want to be out of here like now.” Dropping to his knees, Jonathan rolled the unconscious man onto his side to expose his front pocket. He fished out the piece of paper and stuffed it into his own pants. He could read it later. For now, it was time to disappear.