Sentinels

by Bill Pronzini

  The gate in the fence, I saw as I neared it, would open electronically—by means of a remote control unit in the guard’s possession, no doubt. The strands of barbed wire and the amount of fencing argued against electrification. As threatening as the coils of wire were, a man could climb up and over without ripping himself too badly—even a man my age—but he’d make a damn fine target while he was doing it. Nobody with any sense would try to get in or out of the camp that way.

  I wondered if the fence ran all the way around it. Probably not; a compound as large as the one Cermak had indicated would require a prohibitive amount of chain-link fencing to completely enclose it. They’d only fence the more open areas, I thought. There would be ways to get in and out through the denser patches of forest, but you’d need to be a wilderness tracker to find them without getting yourself lost.

  I turned away from the fence. And I wasn’t alone any longer. A guy was running toward me from the trees on the left, in a crouched posture and with the stealth of a commando. The hackles lifted on my neck. He looked like a commando too: camouflage jacket, plain fatigue trousers, heavy black army boots, walkie-talkie clipped to his belt, soldier’s cap worn backward the way the Colonel’s Jeep driver had worn his, as if in some kind of protest against standard military procedure; and clutched in both hands, the muzzle tilted up in front of his body, a semiautomatic assault rifle with a clip that looked a foot long. The weapon wasn’t aimed straight at me because it didn’t need to be. He could spray enough bullets with that thing to cut down a dozen men in a matter of seconds.

  I walked forward slowly to meet him, my hands down at my sides and my spine and posture stiff. I had a crawly feeling of other eyes on me, eyes and more weapons, but it was a reaction to the surroundings, the sudden heightening of tension. They would not have stationed more than one man out there. Others patrolling inside the compound, sure. But more than one guard to open and close the gates, when they had no cause to expect trouble, was a waste of limited manpower.

  Just this one and me, then. For now.

  He stopped moving when he was on the road and some ten feet separated us. He growled at me, “What the hell you want here, mister?”

  Instead of answering, I halved the distance between us, to send a message—only about half true—that I wasn’t afraid of him. He was young, no more than voting age, if that; fair-complected and ice-eyed. Pure Aryan storm trooper, I thought. Adolf the house painter would have loved him.

  He didn’t like what he was seeing any more than I did. His face pinched up and an ugliness came into his eyes. I’m an olive-skinned Italian, and he’d been conditioned to hate anybody with skin darker than his own. I told myself I wasn’t dark enough to make him positive of my ancestry, that he’d be too disciplined to act on impulse, that I was smarter and more experienced and I could bluff him all right if I held on to my cool. But how could you be sure of anything when you were up against a gun-bearing white supremacist?

  “What you want here?” he said again. Hard, clipped, but with an edge of nervousness that could be bad or good, depending on how well I worked him.

  I showed him a flat, cold stare of my own. If there was one thing a kid like him would respond to, it was authority—the tougher the better. “Put that weapon up, soldier. You don’t deserve to carry it.”

  “. . . What?”

  “You heard me. Why weren’t you at your post?”

  It was six or seven ticks before he said, “I don’t know you, mister. I don’t have to answer to you.”

  “Then you’ll answer to the Colonel.”

  “The Colonel? Listen—”

  “No, you listen. You deserted your post. Either give me a satisfactory explanation or I’ll put your sorry ass on report.”

  He ran his tongue along the underside of his upper lip. “I don’t know you,” he said again, not quite as hard this time. “You look like a dago . . .”

  “Is that right? Say it once more.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Call me a dago once more.”

  “I didn’t call you a dago, I said you looked—”

  “My name is Anderson,” I said. “You hear me, you little shit? Anderson. I served with Colonel Darnell in Vietnam, in Africa. I trained with him at Hayden Lake. I’m here at his request, soldier, you got that? The Colonel’s request!”

  I thought I had him now—maybe. Uncertainty in his eyes, the beginnings of anxiety. He had been away from his post; and if there was one man he feared, it would be Colonel Benjamin Darnell, whether Darnell was presently in the camp or not.

  He did the lip-tonguing thing again. After which he said, “Your badge?” I saw the word “sir” start to form, but he wasn’t quite ready to go that far yet.

  “Right here.” I fished the blue and white triangle out of my pocket, held it up for him to see. “Well?”

  It was the convincer. “I’m sorry, Mr. Anderson,” he said in a softer, backing-down voice, “but you weren’t supposed to leave your vehicle—”

  “I was looking for you, soldier. Now answer my question: Why’d you desert your post?”

  “I . . . had to relieve myself.”

  Right. “That’s no excuse. Why didn’t you piss behind the sentry box?”

  “I don’t know . . . I guess I needed to stretch my legs . . .”

  “Get over there and open those gates. I’m late enough as it is.”

  One more obstacle: the walkie-talkie. If he decided to check inside before letting me pass . . . but he didn’t. He said, “Yes, sir,” and went to work the lift bar. As I’d figured, he used a remote device to open the gate in the fence.

  I walked around him to the car, pinning the badge to the front of my jacket, then drove ahead to where he stood more or less at attention and stopped and slid the window down. “Don’t leave your post again, soldier. For any reason. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir. You won’t report me to the Colonel?”

  I just looked at him. Let him stew in his own sour juices.

  “I’m . . . I shouldn’t have said you looked like a dago. You don’t, Mr. Anderson, not really . . .”

  Christ. Vicious on the one hand, pathetic on the other. Stupid little boy who didn’t know how to be a man, playing a deadly man’s game. I ran the window up and left him standing there, clutching his rifle in the rain.

  So now I was in. Fine, rum dandy. All I had to do was get back out again in one piece.

  Well, I didn’t need much time to accomplish my mission. I had that in my favor, and I also had some leverage if I needed it: Cermak knew I’d gone out there and I could claim that DeFalco knew it too, and the Sentinels and Colonel Benjamin Darnell in particular couldn’t afford the kind of heat my sudden disappearance would bring. I’d be all right. Sure, I would.

  Sure . . .

  The nest itself was half again as large as Cermak had led me to believe—and chillingly impressive when you came out of the trees and saw it all at once. There were a couple of dozen buildings scattered around ten or twelve acres of treeless terrain, about half of them prefabs and the rest made of untrimmed logs and slab wood. The largest, about the size of a small gymnasium, stood by itself off on the right. Meeting hall, I thought, and the annex on one side a kind of administration building. The windows in both were short and narrow, like embrasures; that would be where they’d figure to fort up during a siege. The annex would also be where the Colonel and Dale Slingerland had their offices and planning rooms. A place for me to avoid.

  Light brightened the windows in the annex, those in several of the other buildings. Electric light, supplied by heavy-duty portable generators; I hadn’t seen any power poles along Timberline Road and I doubted the county would have strung lines anywhere close enough for them to tap into. No water or sewer facilities out here either, which meant wells or cisterns, privies or chemical toilets. Primitive. But nonetheless efficient. U.S. soldiers in war-zone camps had had to make do with a hell of a lot less.

  Directly ahead was a rectangular, mud
-churned parade ground the length and width of a football field. It lay empty now, and the rain and the ripped-up surface gave it a bleak aspect—a surrealistic battleground after the dead and wounded had been removed, the surreality provided by the row of Porta Potties squatting at the far end. The weather was another point in my favor. I could see sporadic activity, people and vehicles moving here and there, but most of the camp’s occupants were busy indoors, where it was warm and dry and I wouldn’t attract their attention.

  At the parade ground the road forked into two branches that I thought would circle the compound and then rejoin. It would also connect with a second exit road somewhere at the rear. A man like Darnell, with his military background, would not permit a camp like this to be built without more than one way in and out, particularly with the Timberline Road route passing through Creekside before the highway could be reached. The second road would be an escape route, connecting with other backcountry roads and then the highway at some uninhabited location farther south. Probably little used except when they were bringing in large shipments of goods that might snag someone’s attention. Illegal weapons, for instance.

  I followed the left fork, past three long, low structures that had the look of barracks. Unpaved lanes branched off at intervals, giving access to the various buildings and creating a loose grid pattern. I saw small individual cabins, a recreation field complete with a baseball backstop, two large windowless buildings that might have been warehouses, and then—in a way the most disturbing of all the components in this odious little enclave—a rough log church with a cross jutting high above its entrance. The cross was plain, unpainted, and there was nothing religious about it laid up there against the gray sky. It looked exactly like one of the crosses men in sheets and hoods would douse with kerosene and set on fire.

  Beyond the church, as the road began its loop around to the rear of the camp, I jounced past a big open garage and motor pool. At least a dozen vehicles—Jeeps, military surplus trucks, vans with smoke-tinted windows, three nondescript passenger cars—were visible inside and outside the garage. The passenger cars were a small relief; mine blended right in with them. None of the three men working the motor pool paid me the slightest attention.

  I spotted the escape road easily enough—wide and graveled, angling away into the trees. On the far side of where it branched off, another windowless building squatted like an islet in a sea of trampled grass and mud. It was too small to be another supply warehouse. But it had a set of wide double doors, and next to them a normal-sized door. All three doors were shut and there was nobody around outside that I could see.

  Armory, I thought. Has to be.

  Now or never. I’d gone far enough anyway; I could see the meeting hall and annex from there and I didn’t want to drive past it, or to get within recognition distance of it.

  There were no other vehicles on the road in either direction. I made a tight U-turn, parked on the near side of the escape road, then walked back across to the motor pool. One of the mechanics was outside, well apart from the other two, doing something inside a canvas-topped Jeep. I went straight to him, putting on a hard face as I walked like an actor getting into character.

  The guy was hunched over under the Jeep’s wheel, probably working on the ignition system. I stopped by the open door and said, “Question for you, soldier.”

  He twisted his head to look up at me. Thirtyish, heavy beard stubble flecking his cheeks, brown eyes that didn’t have much going on behind them. Another pea-brain. A frown began to reshape his mouth; they’d all know each other here, and he didn’t know me.

  “Yeah?”

  “New in camp,” I said. “Just got in. You seen the Colonel?”

  He glanced at the badge pinned to my jacket, and the frown smoothed away. If he’d said the Colonel wasn’t in the compound, I had an answer ready to allay any more suspicions he might have. But that wasn’t what he said.

  “Not since this morning. You been to his office?”

  “Yeah. He’s supposed to be at the armory.”

  “Not there, huh?”

  “Not there.”

  “Who’s on watch? Matt?”

  “He didn’t tell me his name.”

  “What’d he say about the Colonel?”

  I shrugged. “He didn’t know either of us would be there.”

  “Somebody screwed up then. What’re you? Another ordnance man?”

  “Supplier,” I said. “Fresh shipment coming in.”

  “What we got this time?”

  “What do you need most?”

  “Hell, I dunno. AK-47s?” As if he were asking me.

  “That’s what you’re getting.”

  “Good. Man, that’s good.”

  “What else you got in there? Plenty of everything?”

  “Sure, plenty. Didn’t Matt show you?”

  “No. Waiting on the Colonel.”

  “Well, you go on back over. Colonel’s supposed to meet you, he’ll show up before long.”

  I nodded and returned to the road. Two choices: keep going to the car and out of here, or a quick check of the armory first. I knew for sure now that Darnell was still holed up in the camp—one piece of hard evidence for the feds. I knew there was a weapons stash too, but what I didn’t have was a clear idea of how extensive it was. I hadn’t wanted to risk pressing the mechanic, but it was possible I could fast-talk the guard named Matt. The more definite the information I had to pass along . . .

  Decision made: I was already past the car. I quit the road and slogged at an angle through the grass and mud to the normal-sized door in the armory wall. When I rapped on the panel I got no response. I tried the knob; it turned under my hand. So I pushed the door inward, stuck my head inside.

  Office cubicle, empty except for a steel desk and a couple of folding chairs. On the left was a partially ajar inner door; through the opening I could see a small section of floor space brightly lighted by overhead fluorescents. I listened, didn’t hear anything, and went all the way into the office, leaving the outer door open. When I pushed on the inner door it made a faint creaking sound; I took my hand away. The opening, now, was just wide enough for my head and shoulders.

  Christ.

  The building must have been a hundred feet long by sixty wide, with a twelve-foot ceiling, and ninety percent of the floor space was taken up with crates and boxes stacked high. A few of the crates were huge: mortars and mortar shells. Short, squat boxes: handguns of different calibers and assorted ammunition. Oblong wooden crates: assault rifles, automatic weapons. Enough firepower to start a small and bloody war.

  Across from where I stood was a cluster of gray metal cases, one of which had been opened and the top left off; excelsior dribbled out over the near side. I stayed put for a few seconds, listening to the wind and rain. Then I walked over quick and soft for a look inside the box.

  Fragmentation grenades. Government issue. The side of the case was stamped with the words U.S. ARMY—

  “Hey, you there! What the fuck you think you’re doing?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The voice was harsh, edged with violence; it bunched the flesh between my shoulder blades, created a feeling of constriction across the top of my skull. I turned in slow segments, with my hands in plain sight. He stood a dozen feet away, legs slightly bent and both arms extended—a shooter’s stance. A military-issue .45 automatic was this one’s weapon of choice, and it was aimed straight at my belt buckle.

  The inside of my mouth had gone dry, but I did not want him to see me working up spit to moisten it. Just as well, because when I spoke through the dryness, my voice came out sounding as harsh as his.

  “Banged on the door but nobody answered, so I walked in. Where were you?”

  He ignored that. He’d come out from behind a pile of ammunition boxes opposite. “Don’t you know no better than to come waltzing in here without permission?”

  “Nobody told me. I just got into camp a little while ago. Your name Matt?”
/>   “What if it is? How’d you know that?”

  “How do you think? The Colonel sent me over.”

  No reaction. His eyes were all over me, missing nothing including the badge, but the suspicion in them didn’t go away. He was about thirty, fair-haired like the one out at the main gate, built like a pro halfback. He wore olive drab fatigues, the blouse short-sleeved in spite of the weather; knots of muscle were visible along his forearms and upper arms. But the worst thing was, his eyes and face displayed more intelligence than the other Sentinels I’d encountered.

  “What’s your name?” he demanded.

  “Anderson.”

  “Why’d the Colonel send you over?”

  “See what you got stockpiled. I put together a shipment of AK-47s for him, and I can lay hands on plenty of other ordnance where they came from—Browning machine pistols, M79 grenade launchers, like that.”

  “So?”

  “So he said he didn’t need anything but the AK-47s. I told him you can’t have too much firepower, he said come down here, see Matt, take a look for myself. I’m impressed. But I still say you can’t have too much.”

  The guard stayed wary. He said, “Why didn’t he call ahead?” and patted the walkie-talkie attached to his belt.

  “How should I know? He was busy, maybe that’s why. Listen, you don’t want me here, that’s fine by me. I’ve seen enough.” I started away from the box of grenades.

  “You just hold it,” he said.

  I stopped again. “Why? What the hell?”

  He kept looking at me, thinking over what I’d told him; the .45’s muzzle was still on my belly. I stood there meeting his gaze, trying not to think about what a round from an automatic that size could do to a man’s insides. Trying not to sweat.

  Pretty soon I said, “Well? We gonna stand around here like this all frigging afternoon?”

  “Go on in the office.”

  “Yeah, sure. What for?”