by Soren Petrek
Sam had told her he would meet her there. She pulled her vehicle into the driveway and parked on the far side of his barn, in the shade. She walked to the back of the house and went inside, as he had invited her to do so as he was going to be a little late. Sam had left the back door open for her. She walked in through the kitchen and noticed that it was neither Spartan nor cluttered. He probably could cook, although it wasn’t a passion or a hobby. Sam’s cat brushed up against her leg. She picked up the cat and snuggled it in her arms as she walked out into the living room area. Unlike many of the homes she’d seen in Patience, there were no animals on the walls, which was a big plus for her. She had trouble understanding why people would mount dead animals and fish on their walls. The hunting part was easy to understand when people did so for food. She herself was very fond of wild game, venison in particular. As she walked through the rooms, there was a sense of comfort and utility. The furniture was used but not worn, and a few pieces were newer, suggesting that he took pride in the appearance of his home. There were a few well-thumbed books on the coffee table, places bookmarked with scraps of paper. She seated herself in one of the comfortable chairs in the living room area and glanced through a National Geographic she found on the table.
A few minutes later she heard the loud roar of that crazy vehicle he called a car drive up the gravel driveway. She found her heart beating a little faster. Sam came through the front screen door with a small bouquet of wild flowers that he’d picked. She smiled and walked over to greet him.
“Missouri wild flowers I saw along the road,” he smiled and lit up the room, dressed for fishing, but clean for a date, powerfully built, confident but filled with a gentle humor.
“Thank you Sam…pretty.”
They both laughed a little over her broken English and his lack of more than a few French verbs and vocabulary.
“Nous mangeons, maintenant?” Christine said, motioning to the basket that she’d carried and set on the kitchen table.
“Oui, j’ai faim,” Sam said, testing the little bit of French he’d picked up from a how to book and a CD he listened to in the squad.
Sam thought it best to start his exploration of the French language with the basics. “I’m hungry” pretty much covered his constant state of affairs. He was working on “you are beautiful” and hoped to move onto other essentials like: “do you want to spend the night?” and other important communication tools for dealing with someone as beautiful as she. Christine found plates and napkins in the kitchen, while Sam went and got an English-French, French-English dictionary that he’d purchased second hand in town. He also had a little gadget that computed French phrases from English text and vice-versa. He thought that it would be fun to use while they ate. Christine had brought a simple lunch of bread, cheese, Pate, and fruit, and a light white wine from the restaurant. Almost immediately the two were having fun naming the objects in the room and writing things to each other through the little computer. The wine sat, the food was untouched, and they were totally lost in each other. She had never felt such undivided attention from anyone. He certainly had that quality and lived in the moment. She sensed that although he wasn’t shy, she was being handled with kid gloves, and that she would have to send the appropriate signals, to hell with that. She typed in, “embrassez-moi.” Sam didn’t wait for clarification. He put his hands on either side of her chair, gently lifted her face up to his and did what he had been waiting to do for a long time. When they broke they laughed together. Christine remembered the stairwell towards the front of the house that led upstairs. They could fish later. This was a man who cared for her, a virile, confident man. It had been a while, even longer during the weaning months of her marriage. She stood up and led Sam to the front of the house. There was no discussion. They moved as one and went up to the rooms above.
Stealth and concealment were Smith’s best weapons. He carefully walked through the woods towards his target’s home. When it came time to kill, he dehumanized his quarry by voiding the person from his mind. His actions became machine-like and focused.
Once he saw the home through the trees, he dropped to the ground and crawled on his belly using the natural cover and maintaining complete silence. He never varied in his preparation or planning, regardless of the difficulty of his mission. He was vigilant, expecting some form of exterior security system. He was surprised not to find any. That was a sign of overconfidence and gave him an important tactical edge.
When he reached the edge of the woods, he waited for several long minutes to ensure there was no outside activity. He noted two vehicles. He would have to assess if two kills were now necessary. He left the cover of the woods and made his way towards a main floor window that he felt gave him the best overall view of the home’s main floor.
Christine and Sam lay in the big king sized bed and held one another as a rare summer breeze blew through the open window and across their bodies. They communicated without language and clung to each other as if they were afraid that if they let go, the whole thing would go away. Finally, Christine’s stomach rumbled and Sam put his head on her perfect belly, cupping his ear as if listening for something inside. Laughing, they dressed haphazardly. He threw on some gym shorts, and she grabbed a pair and a loose tank top out of his drawer. He whistled, in no way teasing. She looked fantastic. Lunch wouldn’t last long if he could help it. As she walked past him she playfully slapped him on the butt and trounced down the steps. Sam followed close behind. As they got to the bottom and started to cross the room, he saw something out of place. A shadow, clearly of a man by the window raising what could only be a pistol. He tackled Christine as a shot whined over his back. He scrambled and pulled her away from the shattered window. Just as he was scrambling for the gun he had hanging on the coat rack, the whole house shook with a thunk, as if something large had been thrown against it. He then heard a huge primal roar, and his whole body relaxed. Christine held him and he looked at her. There was no fear in her eyes, just astonishment and anger. They stood together. Sam grabbed his gun belt and cautiously walked out the front door.
“You had a visitor,” Nathan said as Sam followed his pointing finger to the man, clearly dead, impaled on the side of Sam’s house.
“I see you greeted him for me,” Sam said as he walked over to the man on the wall.
“Kind of quiet, this guy,” Sam went on.
“I only had a second. I didn’t see you at the swimming hole, so I thought I’d come by to see if everything was alright.” Nathan smiled a huge grin at both of them.
Christine, walked over to Nathan, reached up, and laid a hand on his shoulder, “thank you”.
Nathan laid his huge paw on her shoulder and nodded that was all he had to say.
“Anyone else in the area?” Sam said.
“Not that I saw. I didn’t see a car, so I was surprised to see him on your porch. And he was looking in your window, and being sneaky about it, and then I saw the gun. I didn’t have time to invite him to put down his weapon. Besides, he didn’t look like he came over for a social visit
“You did what you had to, and I’m glad you did. These guys don’t stop trying. That worries me. What’s next? Each time they’ve tried a sneak attack. I’d rather a more direct confrontation, but I’m not running the show just yet. I’ll drive Christine’s car back home. We need to get this guy out of sight. We’ll try to ID him later. Thanks again, Nathan.”
“Just as long as you catch up on the lifesaving if I need it in the future.”
“As a rule. Do you think you could pull the guy off the side of my house?”
“Don’t you want to leave him there as a warning to your enemies?”
“I can see the headline now: Man pinned to side of Sheriff’s home, seeks asylum.” Besides, from the look of it, Mr. Killer and I could both hang from your spear and it still wouldn’t come down.”
“He might just start to ripen, Sam. We could always eat him.”
“Take it easy, Nathan. Christine may not s
peak much English, and she’s holding up better than I would if I was looking at a guy pinned to the side of her home in France. Looking at you pointing at the guy and saying “eat” can’t be good.”
Nathan nodded, knowing that he had a lot of stock with Sam. He had seen a subtle change in Sam and knew it was due to his relationship with Christine. Even in this time of danger, he saw that Sam had found some peace with Christine. It gave him a sense of hope and deepened his feelings for the man he considered more than a brother.
“Sorry, just blowing off steam. Is it time to get everyone together?”
“As fast as we can. I’m betting this guy is solo. When he doesn’t report back, he’ll be missed.”
Sam steered Christine towards her vehicle, the old farm truck Madeleine used for hauling vegetables to the restaurant and jumped into the driver’s seat. Christine slid over in the seat next to him. When he wasn’t shifting gears, he held her hand. He felt real fear, not for himself but for her. He felt just awful. He took a chance and pulled over to the side of the road.
“I love you Christine,” Sam said as he looked her in the eye.
That didn’t require any translation. She looked straight back and said, “I love you Sam.”
Their world had just changed, and they had just taken the first step down a new road. Something had been settled. They both relaxed a little, and Sam felt a little better.
Sam fished in his pocket for his cell phone and speed dialed his father.
“Dad, we’ve been attacked. Advance assassin killed, meeting at Chez-Toche.”
“Understood, any wounded?”
“None.”
“I am on my way”
Just hearing his father’s commanding voice say those things gave Sam courage.
“Bring it on you scumbags, let’s dance,” he muttered under his breath, as he turned towards town.
As soon as John Trunce got the message he pushed a send button on his phone and a message was instantly sent out. He walked into the house and found Karen in the kitchen.
“Karen, get your Winchester. We need to go,” John said.
She didn’t say a word; she could ask questions in the jeep. She reached over the top of the kitchen door and took down a well maintained Winchester, Model 1870 lever action, cocked it, settled down the hammer, and followed John out of the room. He was all business, and on the rare occasions when she’d seen him in this mode, he was a sight to behold.
She couldn’t help but ask, “Sam okay?”
“He called,” he said, as he reached over and pulled her to him as they walked side by side. She exhaled forcefully in response and relaxed a little. They jumped into John’s jeep and drove away from the main road, along the trail that was their shortcut to town.
“Sam knows what he’s doing, and Nathan’s been watching the house. Didn’t tell Sam, but he’s been camping out under the trees, just into the woods along the side of the house. Sounds like someone ran into Nathan or Sam under the wrong circumstances.” John knew better than to use words like assassin or killer. While Karen was strong, that would be too much, too soon.
As they drove, their minds wandered back to a time when Sam was only twelve years old, scrawny, all bones and a carefree attitude. He had met Nathan while simultaneously saving his life. Promptly upon his arrival to the USA, Nathan had wandered away from his father’s farm, taken a trail that led up a steep ridge and gotten too close to the edge, causing the ground under his feet to crumble and slide over the edge of a good one hundred foot drop down to rocks. He’d managed to grab onto some roots, and was dangling and started to yell. Sam was out in the woods as usual, and heard yelling in a strange language, obviously someone in trouble. He’d run like only a southern wood-rat kid can and found Nathan. Sam laid over the edge and said “Don’t move,” motioning with his hands. Sam could see that the roots the man was holding onto weren’t going to last long. He pulled out his old Barlow knife that had been his grandfather’s and cut a vine off and tried to position it over the man so he could grab on. Even the slightest movement from the man to try to get the vine and the roots slipped more. Sam could see the man was duly frightened, but he wasn’t blubbering or shouting anymore. Sam didn’t hesitate a second, he went down the vine to the man. The closer he got he could see it was a kid, not a man. Sam got alongside and wrapped his legs around the kid’s waist and held on. Nathan then reached out for the vine, the roots broke, and for a long second, Sam remembered it as days when the two joked about it, Sam held his own weight and Nathan’s then 250 pounds. They then both climbed up the vine and scrambled to the top. Just as soon as both were over and safe, the vine crashed down out of the tree that it had been attached to and slid over the side of the cliff. They were both stunned for a second, and then started to laugh uncontrollably, slapping each other on the back and mimicking the sound of the vine and pretending to have vines slip through their fingers while yelling like they were falling.
They had spent the rest of the day crashing around in the woods and made their first trip to the swimming hole after a quick stop for Nathan to check in. Neither said anything about what happened. Months later, Nathan had mentioned it to his mother when they went for a walk, learning what grew wild in their new land. She had mentioned it almost casually to a shocked Joseph, who felt duty bound to tell John. They decided that it was done, and was Sam and Nathan’s business. After that they were inseparable, and spent their teen and young adult years together, until Sam ended up in college and the military and Nathan went to college for botany. Sam was home now and not going anywhere. With Sam there, Nathan was home too.
Sam sat in the dining room at Chez-Toche and looked around at the people sitting at various tables all turned towards one another. They were all men and women who had each played a pivotal role in driving out the drug dealers when Sam returned from Detroit. TJ, Moon, Crockett, Madeleine, Christine, John, Karen, Nathan, Joseph, Ua and John’s friend Cecil Tripoli, a retired pilot, turned to look at John as he spoke.
“There’s been another attempt on Sam’s, life and I have every reason to believe the killer would have taken out Christine as well, simply for being in the wrong place wrong time… ” Just as John was about to continue, Tracy walked in from the kitchen.
“Mon Dieu,” Madeleine exclaimed. “You come and go like the north wind.”
Tracy greeted everyone around the table and sat down, “Please continue, I’ll tell you what I know when you’re done.”
John continued and laid out each person’s assignment and fall back positions. Sam thought the plan seemed simple. It was designed so each person knew where they were supposed to be when the fighting started and their assignments.
“Anything or anyone out of the ordinary has to be reported. Anyone of you can send the code. I would rather be safe than sorry. You are all prudent, reasonable people, some with extensive training and others with less. That doesn’t matter; it’s only a mistake not to notify. If you’re wrong, we’ll call it a dry run, no harm done. If it isn’t, I think the shit will hit the fan fast. Tracy, what do you have?” John said.
“My sources tell me that the man Nathan ventilated is probably an individual known as Smith, a highly trained, first-rate hit man. He’s for hire, but not for little stuff. He won’t take out a spouse for you or do a simple witness-type matter. He is generally political. How he got here is not yet known, but it makes me nervous.” Nobody asked how Tracy could have identified the man so quickly; they just took it for granted that Tracy had been close by.
“What about our Mexican dog walker Junior eyeballed,” John pressed.
“He’s a local representative of one Manny the Farmer, Mexican mob. Manny’s a real businessman type. His men never talk and are rarely caught in the act of anything. He kills when necessary and plans down to the minute detail. He has connections to Cuba and the Cuban military. The DEA can’t get him, he basically might as well be the authorities in Mexico, and he never sets foot in any country with an extradition treaty with
the US, which doesn’t matter, because we don’t have anything on him anyway.”
“The dog walker, who is he?” Sam asked.
“Best we can tell, Manny’s nephew. He couldn’t find his ass in a hall of mirrors and loses more money than he makes, but he’s loyal to Manny. Manny has that aura, that skill; people do his bidding because they love him, not because they fear him. It is impossible to get into his inner sanctum. DEA lost a couple back in the 80’s trying to get in. Manny probably doesn’t even know about it. He is an idealist, a rags-to- riches story and he’s not a thug. I think this is a personal war against the United States, and he sees poisoning the people as a means to an end, paving the way for the immigration of workers who will do the jobs that the people of the United States will no longer do, at a pay scale that they will not accept. He doesn’t see migrant fruit picking as the future of the hardworking Mexican immigrant as fair or safe. He wants health care for his people, pensions, security, housing, and education. He is winning his war. Soon, American business will be completely dependent on Hispanic workers. The Meth epidemic makes it more likely to happen sooner. I’m not taking a position on it either way, other than the Meth problem is horrible and an absolute crisis. Secondly, we as a nation need to decide what we want to do or not do about the influx of workers from Mexico and all points South. We can embrace it and have a plan for the future, or we can fight it, but we can’t pretend it isn’t happening. I believe it’s not immigration from Mexico that is the problem, it’s the fact that 80% of the Meth available in this country comes from Mexico.”
Nathan spoke up, “How does that translate into what we can expect?”
“It will be a military attack,” Madeleine said from her table at the back of the room.
Everyone turned to Madeleine as she spoke, having broken her silence. “It will now be about honor for this Manny the Farmer, an eye for an eye. He comes, as it sounds, from humble beginnings. It seems that few men born to wealth ever have the kind of social conscience that is obvious here. People born to wealth and privilege may commiserate with ‘ordinary people,’ and genuinely try to help as they see fit, but they do not understand the people, their lives, concerns, or politics for that matter. The connection to Castro, another man from the rank and file, although far from ordinary, is much the same as this Manny the Farmer. I will venture a guess that they are friends.” As she said this she looked meaningfully at Tracy. He spoke no words, but gave her a slow nod of agreement.