by Brad Taylor
I played to her strengths, stressing to her that her sole function in a fight was to do enough damage to get away. Never, ever to try to go toe-to-toe with another man—especially a man out to get her. She didn’t have the strength to do so, but she sure as hell had the flexibility and the quickness to escape, something I began to focus on.
We went through a few drills of rapid strikes, techniques that should, if executed correctly, allow her to break contact. Once she had the confidence, I went in harder, bringing her to the ground to see what she would do. I got on top of her and she went into the guard, cinching her legs around my waist and attempting to wrap up my arms. Just like I’d taught her. Only this time the position broke my concentration, the closeness of her body distracting me.
She swam out of my grip and flipped me over, ending up on top, and giving me a couple of pulled jabs to my head, her face glowing at the success.
I said, “Damn it. You need to get up. Get away. Don’t continue the fight on the ground. Pound the guy like you did, but don’t maintain the position unless he’s out of the fight.”
She said, “I could have pounded you. I chose not to.”
She was gazing down at me, a lock of hair out of her ponytail, sweat between her breasts, a grin on her face. I became distinctly uncomfortable. “Okay. Let me up. Let’s go again.”
“Let you up? No way.”
I wrapped my own legs around her waist, grabbed her arm and drew it out, then flipped her, trapping her elbow in an arm-bar. I stretched out and she tapped, shouting in pain. I let go and she rolled away, punching me in the shoulder.
“You asshole! You never know when to quit.”
She stood up and stomped away. I felt my face flush, wondering if she knew why I’d done it. Wondering if she knew my weakness with her. I said, “Jennifer . . .”
She said, “I’m done. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. I’ll take a cab to the hotel.”
She left the yoga room and I felt like an ass. Like I always did whenever we got anywhere outside the range of just business partners. I punched the mat with my fist and heard, “You trying to hurt that thing?”
I looked up and saw two men, both in jeans and T-shirts, both in good shape. One was bulky, with ropy muscles and veins standing out, his shirt a size too small. The other was tall and lanky. I stood, saying nothing. I wiped my head with a towel and walked to the exit. The bulky one blocked it, saying, “You the scientist doing the dig out south?”
I paused, reassessing. I said, “Yeah. As a matter of fact I am.”
He said, “Well, we’d like it if you just went back to Charleston. Head on home. There’s nothing to be found out there.”
“If that’s the case, then you won’t mind us looking. We’re getting paid, and I need to show something for the effort.”
He said, “Money isn’t worth it. Trust me.”
The other man circled to my left, closing the door to the room. I reassessed again, elevating my awareness. Preparing.
I said, “Okay. You got it. I’ll get out of here. I don’t like this damn place anyway.”
The lanky one said, “Unfortunately, we need to make sure of that. You understand. A small lesson for you and your little girlfriend. Just a taste of what to expect if you don’t leave well enough alone.”
The words slammed into me like a frontal punch. If they had two on me, they had someone on her. As I sit here. I gave up all pretense of defusing the situation, saying, “Get out of my way, right fucking now.”
They looked at each other, a small smirk going between them. They had no idea of the shitstorm they had entered. They fully expected to tap me on the head a couple of times just to see me roll over crying, and I might have even let them do that, given the circumstances, but they’d made the mistake of threatening Jennifer.
So it was too late. I fully intended to crush them with more violence than they’d ever seen. And I knew my intentions would bear fruit.
I skipped forward and lanky man looked away in a juvenile attempt at a fake, then threw a wild right cross at my face. I raised my left arm, forming a triangle against my head in order to protect it. I took the brunt of the blow and immediately wrapped my left arm around Lanky’s right, trapping his elbow. I brought my right arm underneath his elbow and wrenched against the joint with great force, causing Lanky’s elbow to splinter upwards, against the direction it was intended to go. Before the damage had even registered in his brain, I dropped down and swept his legs out from under him, causing him to crash straight down on his back.
From the ground I immediately lashed out with my right leg into the knee supporting the weight of muscle-man, doing the same thing with his joint that I had done with Lanky’s elbow. It gave with a crack and a subsequent scream from him as he hit the ground, writhing in pain.
I sprang to my feet, but the fight was over. It had lasted about three seconds. Lanky was shrieking with the keening wail of a wounded rabbit, looking dumbfounded at his destroyed joint and waving it around like a macabre pom-pom, his splintered arm looking like something from a Photoshop trick, the elbow backwards. Muscle-head was rolling around on the ground as well, holding his shattered leg like Joe Thiesmann. I stalked toward him and he screeched at me, the sweat from the pain rolling off his head. I cut off the yell with a roundhouse kick to his skull, knocking him out as if he’d been hit in the forehead with a ball-peen hammer. Lanky was now all wide eyes and fear. I said, “Give me your fucking wallet.”
He frantically used his good arm to dig it out, tossing it to the mat. I picked it up, put it in my pocket, then grabbed his hair with my left hand. I said, “If you’ve hurt Jennifer, I’ll be back to kill the both of you.”
He started to say something and I hammered him right above the lip, feeling his nose shatter. He flopped over unconscious.
I ran out of the yoga room, jogging to the exit, people staring as I passed by. I entered the parking lot and saw Jennifer on the ground, a man on top of her, his hand tangled in her hair, his other popping her face. I started sprinting and she flipped him just like she had done me, using her flexibility to swim against his hold until she was on top. She wasted no time pounding his head into the pavement, her fists driving through his skull as if she was trying to punch the ground. I reached the fight and saw he was gone. On the verge of being permanently damaged. I grabbed her arm. She whipped around, all feral and savage and I jumped back. She recognized me and quit fighting.
I hoisted her to her feet and said, “Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
We ran to our pickup. I fired it up, squealing out of the parking lot. Once in the city I said, “I thought I told you to run. Not continue fighting.”
She was still breathing heavily, the adrenaline coursing through her. She said, “I was afraid to give him the chance to get back on me. I’m not sure your advice was the best.”
I glanced at her and grinned. I squeezed her hand and said, “I’m not so sure it was very smart either. I told you you could think on your feet.”
Chapter 5
Jennifer woke up the following morning, finding a note from Pike on the carpet by her door. She read it and sat down, holding it vacantly in her hand.
Did some research. Going to check something out. Don’t meet Sweetwater until I get back.
She glanced at the clock. 0915. She dialed Pike’s number. The phone rang, then went to voice mail.
What is he up to?
Last night they’d come back to the hotel long enough to check out, then had traveled south to a much seedier place than the one they’d been in before. The motel made no pretense of having anything like a free breakfast and Pike had paid with cash. All he was concerned about was whether it had free WiFi.
Pike had been all business, running through his head what the attack had meant, positive it had something to do with their dig. She thought that was crazy, just as sure that it had bee
n a random mugging. He’d claimed that the men who had assaulted him had mentioned the site survey, but her assailant had just attacked.
She knew his past. Knew his secret world where nothing was what it seemed. She wondered if he wanted it to be something sinister. Wanted the mundane site survey to become an event that needed his skills.
She’d demanded they go to the police and report the attacks, but he had refused, causing an argument like those they’d had when they were back in Guatemala. Back searching for her uncle, when life and death were on the line and he hadn’t listened to a damn thing she had said. Infuriating her with his superior know-it-all air. He’d appeared to come a long way since then, but tonight had proved that a sham.
The last she’d seen of him was when she’d slammed her hotel door in his face, angry beyond words at his stubbornness. In truth, she should have gone to the police by herself, but she hadn’t. She was furious, but not to the point that she would deliberately go behind his back. Not yet.
And now he was out playing private eye.
Her phone rang and she snatched it up, hoping it was Pike. It wasn’t. She didn’t recognize the number, but identified his voice right away. Sweetwater.
He said, “Hey, where are you guys? I thought we were going to meet at nine? Here in my office?”
She said nothing, thinking about what Pike had said in his note about not going alone to meet Sweetwater. Then thinking about why they’d flown out here in the first place. She heard, “Hello? Anyone there?”
She said, “Hey. Sorry. Pike’s not here and he has our rental truck. We did find something yesterday, but we got run off by the owner of the land. I thought you said this was coordinated.”
“You found something? For real? Out at the site? What?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, we were run off before we could excavate it.”
“You going to write that up? Let me take it forward?”
“Not until I know what it is. It could have just been a buried log.”
“Well, when will you do that? I thought you said this would take a single day.”
“Hey, I just told you we got run off by a guy with a shotgun. Don’t blame us for your shoddy coordination.”
She heard nothing for a moment, the silence stretching out until it was her turn to say, “Hello?”
He said, “Yeah, I’m still here. Sorry about the rancher. I don’t know what happened. Must have just been a mistake. Is that excavation the last thing you need to do before writing your report?”
“Pretty much. We only had a little bit left to cover. If we had found something it would have settled the issue. The land would be worth protecting from the dam.”
“Well, can you go do it now?”
“I don’t have a vehicle.”
“I’ll come get you if you want. I can help. I’ve done these sorts of things before in my job with the Historical and Preservation Society.”
She thought one last time about Pike’s admonishment, then made her decision.
“Yeah, come get me.”
They were ten minutes out from the excavation site, still riding southeast on Highway 2, when Sweetwater’s phone rang. Sitting in the passenger seat, Jennifer only caught half the conversation, but it was enough to raise her interest.
—Hey, Chris. What’s up?
—No, they didn’t finish . . . Wait, wait. There’s good news. They found something.
—I don’t know. We’re headed back out there right now to check it out.
—Maybe twenty minutes.
Sweetwater looked at her, said, “Yes . . . yes,” then hung up.
She said, “Who was that?”
They pulled up to the cattle guard that led to the rancher’s land. Sweetwater put the truck in park and said, “I think we should stay out here this time. Walk to the site from the road.”
Jennifer said, “Why? If it was just a mistake?”
“It was a mistake, but I haven’t had time to correct it. Better not to have the truck raise a dust cloud.”
He opened the door and she said, “You didn’t answer my question. Who was on the phone?”
“A guy that’s interested in seeing what’s out here. A member of the preservation society.”
She exited and loaded her arms with paintbrushes and chicken-wire makeshift sieves, leaving the shovels to him. She said, “It sounded like he was yelling at you.”
Trudging toward the dig site, she saw Sweetwater’s face flush. Just a small bit of red and a sliding of the eyes that made her wonder what he was hiding.
Made her wonder if she should have heeded Pike’s warning.
Chapter 6
I watched the convoy of trucks enter through the gates and got an idea. Not the smartest one, but an idea nonetheless. Actually, outside of an Indiana Jones movie, the odds of it working were pretty much nil, but there was no other way to get closer, and I’d seen everything I could from outside the perimeter. It wasn’t like they were going to shoot me if I got caught.
I hope.
Before something like that happened, I would at least like the chance to make up with Jennifer. Last night hadn’t been exactly pleasant. She’d wanted to report our attack immediately to the police, but given the threat the men had said to me in the gym, I wanted to find out what the hell was going on, and the police would do nothing to break that down. Instead, we’d simply get tied up with some Barney Fife who wanted to know what we’d done to provoke the attack.
We’d had it out and she’d ended up slamming her door in my face. Pretty much like I was back in Guatemala chasing after her uncle.
I’d stomped off to my room and, using the wallet I’d taken off the lanky man, I’d started drilling down on the Internet to find out who our attackers were. I’d found lanky-boy on LinkedIn and it turned out that he worked for a security firm called Blackhorse Tactical. He was ex-military, but I couldn’t get to his records to see what he’d done. The company website showed the usual outlay of such firms: flat range tactical firearms instruction, close quarters battle courses for law enforcement and military, protective services, and an assortment of other training venues.
So I had the company he worked for, but no real linkage as to whether that was just a coincidence or actually tied to what had happened in the gym. Since the company was based out of North Carolina, on the surface it looked like coincidence. The guy was an independent contractor, so maybe he lived in Roswell in between jobs. Maybe.
I didn’t buy that, though. Jennifer was convinced I was forcing something so I could go play commando, but it was just the opposite: Playing commando for years had given me a sixth sense about these types of events. I had a skill at sniffing out bad things. And this positively stank.
Since I was at a dead end, I’d called the Taskforce, telling the intel weanie who answered to figure out if there was any connection. Within minutes, I’d gotten a call back from Kurt Hale, wanting to know what I was doing freelancing his intelligence cell. I laid out what I had and I’ll be damned if he didn’t side with Jennifer, saying I was seeing ghosts that didn’t exist.
I’d gotten aggravated, saying, “Sir, just tell me if Blackhorse has any contracts in Roswell. I can’t find that out, but you can. If it’s nothing, it’s nothing.”
He said, “Is this something to do with Jennifer? Are you trying to build up her resume with some contrived shit?”
That really poked a sore spot. “Sir, I don’t have to build up her resume, damn it. You let her have a slot at Selection and she’d show you that.”
“Pike, it takes more than a pretty face.”
My voice low, I said, “You don’t think I know that? She’s smarter than anyone on the teams, but you’re just as big a fuckin’ hater as the rest of them. Too blind to see it.”
I heard nothing for a second, then, “You’d better take a step back, sergeant-majo
r. You keep talking about Jennifer, but I’m not even sure I want you back.”
I hammered my hotel room wall with the edge of my fist. Like a twelve-car pileup on an icy road, I saw the damage all around me but was powerless to stop what was happening. I was sliding inexorably into the wreckage. I said, “Sir. Please. I’m sorry. Look, don’t make this about me. And whatever you do, don’t let my big mouth hurt Jennifer’s shot.”
I heard him take a breath, once again becoming the commander I knew he was. “Okay, Pike. If you can show me that Jennifer’s got something to offer that I can’t get anywhere else, I’ll think about it. Maybe.”
“That’s all I ask. Really.”
He said, “Fine,” then nothing else. I waited, the silence drawing out to the point of becoming uncomfortable. Not knowing what else to say, I asked, “In the meantime, can you at least tell me if Blackhorse has a contract around Roswell? Something’s going on out here, and it stinks of government.”
I heard, “You are killing me.” Then, “Crabtree, get your ass over here. Pike has some questions.”
After five minutes with Crabtree, I’d learned that Blackhorse was a fairly small organization, without any cool-guy contracts. Far from what their website showed, they spent most of their time snapping up the refuse of government jobs. In this case, they had a perimeter security contract for a company called Aegis Solutions. An aerospace firm that did a bunch of top-secret things only alluded to on their website. And they were doing something in Roswell.
Setting up shop on the old Walker Air Force Base south of town, Aegis was hip-deep inside the contracting world of the US government, but the Taskforce stopped trying to get details when they saw how classified the project was. Something “Top Secret” and “Eyes Only,” which in the aerospace industry usually meant a ton of money being dropped for very little return. Crabtree could have poked harder, but it would have meant risking exposure of our own organization. Ironically, Aegis would probably call our unit a ton of money being dropped for very little return. They might have an argument except for the fact that we actually prevented people from dying as opposed to simply paying for congressional votes.