Sycamore Bluff

by Jude Hardin

  Still others, some of the more ambitious Dishonorable Discharge or BCD recipients, became mercenaries, performing nasty little jobs in foreign countries for cash under the table. They used torture to interrogate prisoners, they poisoned water supplies, they performed indiscriminate bombing missions, and they torched villages. In short, they did whatever they were asked to do, and they did it well. They eagerly accepted an infinite number of illegal or unethical wartime ventures that would have been political nightmares for regular United States military personnel. The paychecks weren’t consistent, and life expectancy wasn’t that great, but the jobs were never boring and the men who performed them felt a sense of purpose. They could knock back a few at the end of the day and take pride in the fact that a goodly amount of pain had been inflicted and umpteen lives had been erased because of their actions.

  Then there were the Wesley Ropers of the world. The ones who turned to blatant lives of crime. These were the men and women Colonel Davidson was interested in, the ones he sometimes contacted and hired for a variety of tasks, everything from smuggling rare French cheeses to laundering large sums of black market cash.

  And, occasionally, murder.

  Davidson had hired Wesley Roper and his accomplice on two previous occasions, and both of those jobs had gone off like clockwork. Davidson expected no less on this one, but after two hours of static he was beginning to wonder.

  Then, just before the stroke of midnight, he heard a click on the shortwave that indicated a microphone had been keyed on the other end. It was about time, he thought. He sat up straight and listened intently, but the voice that followed was not that of Wesley Roper. The voice that followed belonged to Morris Nicholson, Wesley’s partner in crime.

  This was not the best case scenario. It meant that Wes had failed, and that he was probably dead now. It meant that something had gone wrong with the murder-suicide setup, and that Plan B had been implemented.

  Not the best case scenario, but not the worst either.

  Plan B was a lot messier than Plan A, but it was practically foolproof, and the sound of Mo Nicholson’s voice assured Colonel Davidson that it had been successful.

  “Aurora,” Mo said.

  Davidson smiled. Certain now that the operatives from The Circle were no longer a threat, that in fact they were no longer breathing, he turned off the radio and went to bed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Juliet doesn’t know what time it is, or what day it is, but she knows something is very, very wrong.

  She has always had something of a sixth sense. A woman’s intuition, some people call it, but it is more than that sometimes. Sometimes, she can actually tell when someone she cares about is in trouble, or when they soon will be in trouble. Some of these visions, as she calls them, turn out to be false alarms, but some of them are strikingly accurate. Accurate enough for her to pay close attention whenever she has one.

  Distance isn’t an issue. Once, not long ago, when she was still healthy, she bolted out of bed at two-thirty in the morning after a particularly horrible and vivid nightmare that involved a location half a world away from her home in Jacksonville, Florida. In her dream, her dear uncle Aaron, who still lived in the Philippines, had been driving on a narrow and winding mountain road when one of his tires blew out and he went careening off the side of a cliff. It happened so fast, he never even had a chance to hit the brakes. Juliet’s spirit was there in the car with him, and she could feel the tickle in her stomach as the car plummeted, the feeling you get when you drive too fast over a steep hill.

  The nose of the car tilted forward as it fell, from the weight of the engine. The vehicle didn’t explode on impact, like cars always seem to do in the movies and on TV. It didn’t blow up, but it came to an abrupt and violent stop in the top of a tree, soon after a sizeable branch crashed through the windshield. The branch splintered, and one sharp end of it entered through Uncle Aaron’s left eye socket and exited through the back of his skull.

  Juliet woke up then. She was sweating so profusely, and her heart was racing so fast, she thought for a moment she was going to have to get Nicholas to take her to the hospital. For a moment, she thought she might be having a heart attack. She got out of bed and walked to the kitchen to get a drink of water, thanking God that it was only a dream.

  Her body had started to calm down when the phone rang. It was her mother, calling from the Philippines, with some very bad news. Some crushing, weeping-and-wailing-and-buying-a-ticket-for-the-next-flight-to-the-islands news.

  Six hours had elapsed since the time of the accident, but the details were nearly identical to the ones in Juliet’s dream. There was no way she could have known about it, other than through her sixth sense.

  And now, there was no way she could know about what has happened to Nicholas—or what was going to happen to him—and yet she did know. She knows with clarity, as if she is there, seeing it with her own eyes.

  A man walks down a sidewalk, and then he turns and mounts a set of steps that leads to the front door of a two-story brick building. Once inside, he climbs a stairway to the second level. He is wearing hard shoes, and Juliet can hear them clicking down a long hallway. She sees what he sees, as though she is inside his mind and looking through his eyes.

  The man stops and unlocks a door that says COMM CENTER. He turns the light on and walks inside. He shuts the door and locks it. There is a two-way radio, the kind you see on boats sometimes, and an entire wall of black and white television screens. The man sits at a desk and types something into a computer keyboard, and the back of a little white house pops onto one of the TV screens.

  Juliet knows, for some reason, that this is Nicholas’s house, and that Nicholas is there in bed with another woman. It makes her sad, but she understands that, like any man, Nicholas has needs. Maybe it is time for him to move on. She gives him her blessing. She hopes he will be happy in this new house with this new love interest.

  Juliet notices the angle of the picture on the television screen. The video camera must be mounted on a hill behind the residence, she thinks, maybe up in a tree. The man at the computer can see that all the lights in the house are off and that the car is in the driveway. From those bits of information, he deduces that the occupants are home and that they have retired for the night. He pulls a cell phone from his pocket, punches in a number, and presses the call button. There is a bright flash inside the house. The windows facing the back yard light up for an instant, and then they are dark again.

  Juliet knows what has happened. The man sitting at the desk in the communications room planted an explosive device under Nicholas’s bed, and he used the cell phone to detonate it. The blast was powerful enough to shoot deadly shrapnel through the box springs and mattress, and it had started a fire that would spread quickly through the house.

  Nicholas and his new woman are dead. Juliet knows this now, and she grieves for them. Especially for her husband. He was her soul mate. She still loves him very much. She hopes that they will meet again in Heaven.

  The man in the communications room switches on the radio. He dials in a frequency and keys the microphone. He says something. It is just one word, but Juliet cannot understand it. The vision has started to fade, and the man sounds as though he is talking underwater.

  Then, suddenly, another person enters the communications room. A woman. She’s wearing a black Nike warm-up suit and bright pink lipstick. She is barefoot. The door was locked, but this woman is strong and she kicked it open with no problem. She has a very strange expression on her face. Actually, a lack of expression. As though her personality has been sucked out of her. She is holding a baseball bat.

  And that’s where the dream ends.

  Juliet doesn’t know exactly what happened after that, but she has a hunch that the man at the desk got what he deserved.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Diana Dawkins felt a booming thump in her chest, as though someone had fired off a mortar round. It was a sound she’d heard many times b
efore, at various training installations, but it was a sound nobody ever got used to. She recalled the geographic coordinates The Director had given her for Sycamore Bluff, and she tried to remember if there were any military bases nearby. She couldn’t think of any. None close enough for their artillery to be heard.

  “Was that thunder?” Colt said.

  “The sky is clear. How could it have been thunder?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing else around here makes sense, so maybe the weather—”

  “Listen.”

  She grabbed his arm, and they stood there in silence for a minute. Faintly, the sound of a woman’s screams carried through the crisp night air.

  “Sounds like someone is having a rough night,” Colt said. “Maybe it’s Bill Lott’s wife. His widow, that is. Maybe she woke up and noticed he was missing. Maybe she looked out and saw the curtain where our garage door used to be, and maybe she got dressed and walked over and took a peek inside. Maybe she saw Bill—along with his blood and guts—on the concrete floor. That would be enough to make her scream, don’t you think?”

  That would be enough to make anyone scream, Diana thought, but she didn’t believe the wails had come from the direction of the house, back on Beaver Avenue where she and Colt had been. She thought they had come from the direction of the business district, up on Main Street where she and Colt were headed.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I’ve definitely had enough of this place.”

  “Me too. Let’s go home.”

  “That’s the idea. Let’s just hope The Director agrees.”

  “He better agree. If not, I’m going to start calling him The Circle jerk.”

  They walked on. Diana figured they were about halfway to Town Hall, and that they still had another mile and a half or so to walk. She looked at her watch. 00:35. If they jogged, they could make it there by one.

  “Feel like running?” she said.

  “Are you kidding? I don’t even feel like walking. Every time I take a breath, the mucous in my nose crystallizes. You trying to kill me or something?”

  “Never mind. I forgot I had an old man for a partner.”

  Colt stopped, zipped open his backpack, pulled out the jug of Old Fitzgerald bourbon he’d been keeping in the pantry back at the house. Diana couldn’t believe he had brought it with him. He twisted the cap off and took a drink.

  “Want some?” he said.

  Diana kept walking. “No. Why did you bring that? Why is it so hard for you to just follow the rules?”

  Colt laughed. “Rules?” he said. “We’ve already killed two of the residents here tonight. You think we’re going to get in trouble for a little whiskey?”

  “An old man and a booze hound,” Diana said.

  Colt trotted to catch up. “Want one?”

  He offered her a granola bar. Nature Valley, Oats ‘N Honey, in the green wrapper. Her favorite.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She tore the wrapper open and took a bite. It was good. Crunchy and sweet, and maybe the carbs would give her the energy boost she needed to get through the rest of this outrageously muffed-up night.

  She and Colt walked along without saying anything for a while, each of them focused on biting and chewing and swallowing and putting one frostbitten foot in front of the other.

  Diana thought about how close she’d come to having sex with Nicholas, and what a mistake that would have been. After the ordeal with Henry Parker, she couldn’t believe she had even considered that sort of involvement with another operative. Nothing good could ever come of it. Nothing good had certainly ever come of her affair with Henry Parker. It had almost ended her career. Maybe it still would. The jury was still out, in a way.

  She was thinking about the night Henry had spilled his guts to the guys interrogating him at the CIAO compound when Colt said, “Want another one?”

  He offered her a second granola bar

  “No thanks,” Diana said. “Did you bring anything to drink besides the whiskey?”

  “No, but you’re certainly welcome to have a slug if you want one. I promise I don’t have cooties.”

  Diana was very thirsty after eating the dry and syrupy-sweet granola bar, but she didn’t want to risk slowing down her reflexes with alcohol. She was still on the job, and drinking was strictly forbidden.

  “It’s not cooties I’m worried about,” she said. “How do you drink like you do and still function at such a high level?”

  “Years of practice,” Colt said.

  He grabbed the bottle and took another swig.

  Diana heard another scream in the distance, ahead on Main, she thought, and a siren trailing off in the other direction. She reached down and drew her pistol from the ankle holster.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “But it can’t be good. I think we better be ready for some action when we get to Main Street.”

  “Let’s see,” Colt said. “You killed the first bad guy, and I killed the second. That means it’s your turn.”

  “I’m serious. Get your gun out.”

  Colt crammed the last bite of a granola bar into his mouth and washed it down with more of the bourbon. He balled up the green Nature Valley wrapper, tossed it over his shoulder and said, “Now you can write me up for drinking and littering.”

  Diana stopped. “Pick it up,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Pick it up. Now!”

  “Why are you being such a—”

  “Look, I’ve got a lot on my mind, Colt, and you’re not making things any easier with your nonchalant attitude. Grow up, okay? We have work to do.”

  “I drove a wooden stake through a man’s gut a while ago. Is that grownup enough for you, Di? Isn’t that enough work for one day?”

  Diana just stared at him, waiting for him to say something else. Daring him to say something else. He didn’t. He bent down and picked up the granola bar wrapper and shoved it into his left coat pocket. His hand came back out holding a white envelope.

  “What’s that?” Diana said.

  “More welcome-to-Sycamore-Bluff stuff, I guess. It was taped to our front door.”

  “Open it.”

  “That would involve taking my gloves off, and my fingers are already so stiff I can barely move them. You want it opened, you open it.”

  Colt slapped the envelope into Diana’s hand. He stomped away shaking his head. Diana couldn’t really blame him for being angry. She knew herself, knew that she could be overbearingly aggressive and bossy sometimes, especially under pressure. While not one of her more endearing qualities, it was a trait that had kept her alive as an operative, and it wasn’t likely to change anytime soon. Colt would just have to get over it.

  Diana took her gloves off and opened the envelope. There was a letter inside, a single page with a set of instructions. She skimmed over it quickly, and then she ran to catch up with Colt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  It was after midnight when the call came, but Leonard W. Daehl was still awake. Lenny was a night owl—an insomniac, actually—and he’d been watching the Blu-Ray version of a film called Altered States. It was his favorite movie, one that he’d been enjoying since his undergrad days at Indiana University.

  The caller ID on Lenny’s cell phone said Stedman. Lenny’s pulse quickened. He stared at the little display screen for a few seconds while the phone vibrated urgently in his hand. Something was terribly wrong. Stedman never called unless something was terribly wrong. Even then, he was supposed to call Dave. Lenny was just a backup.

  When one of Dave’s inside guys dialed in Stedman’s frequency on the Town Hall radio, it was like calling 911. In maritime terms, it was like putting out a mayday to the Coast Guard. Stedman was the man with a direct line to The Man—to Colonel David A. Davidson himself. When someone radioed Stedman, it meant there was a serious problem, an emergency that warranted immediate attention.

  Lenny turned down the volume on the television set and answered the ca
ll.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “Big trouble, Mr. Daehl.”

  “I figured that. What’s going on? Why didn’t you call Davidson?”

  “Couldn’t reach him. I just got a call over the radio from Sycamore Bluff. Guy named Morris Nicholson. You know him?”

  “No,” Lenny said. “Should I?”

  “He’s one of Colonel Davidson’s guys, one of the outlaws he put there to keep an eye on things.”

  “Okay. Yeah, I remember the name now. Why did he call you?”

  “Well, I only caught some of it,” Stedman said. “Nicholson sounded like he was in bad shape to begin with, and then the radio went completely dead. Nothing but static.”

  “Get to the point. What did he say?”

  “Oh, he said plenty, Mr. Daehl. It was like he was making a deathbed confession or something, you know? First of all, he told me about something that happened back in November. Apparently, one of the residents went nuts. Guy named Kyle Lofton. He killed a woman named Betsy something or another, and then he killed himself. And get this: he not only killed this woman, he tore her throat out with his teeth, and consumed some of her flesh. He did all that before slitting his own wrists.”

  November. Lenny was flabbergasted by this little bit of news. Something like this could ruin the entire project. His life’s work. November was two months ago. If he had known about the problem sooner, he might have been able to do something about it.

  Lenny’s fingers started trembling. He was shaken, but he was also terribly angry.

  “Why wasn’t I notified about any of this before?” he said.

  “I don’t know, sir. I wasn’t notified about it either. But according to Mo Nicholson, Colonel Davidson knew all about it.”

  So now Dave was hiding things from Lenny? This was outrageous.