by Bradley West
* * * * *
Muller, Norris and Burns suffered through the night, each in his way. Muller wondered for the umpteenth time whether the dead doctor really had used dirty implements, since even Cipro hadn’t thwarted the infection’s spread. Norris’ recovery from Covid was rapid, though the clearer his head, the darker his mood as he learned the details of Muller’s incompetence. Burns suffered doubly, his facial wounds needing a doctor’s attention while his heart ached at the thought of Sal Maggio still alive. Through the night, the three men took turns watching Carla and the children huddled under blankets in the XLT’s bed.
Katerina finished the Dark Cure batch, referring to the laptop recordings for pointers from time to time. Katerina gleaned one important lesson—the Dark Cure components she’d put in the 40˚F RV refrigerator needed to be kept much colder. How her mishandling would affect the potency of the treatment, she didn’t know. The truth was, she didn’t care either. She could substitute dishwater for vaccines, and Muller and Norris would either successfully barter them for food, fuel and gunmen, or they wouldn’t. Either way, the showdown with the Maggios would come sooner than the new recruits would succumb to Covid-20. But she’d try to get it right, if for no other reason than to prove herself the equal to that Maggio bitch. It’s just that she was so damned tired and strung out.
* * * * *
The Wolves withdrew from the airfield and wished the Hunters good luck in Boise. Sal had them move their vehicles into an empty hangar and out of sight. Everyone was itching to get on the road, but if they stayed on course, it was open farmland for almost one-hundred-fifty miles until they reached St. Joe National Forest. Farther north, the woods were thicker and there would be more places to hide.
Kyle and Jeanie recruited several helpers to sterilize and re-box Matt’s stolen lab equipment. They’d set up shop under a tent once they arrived at Bonners Ferry. That would give them time to rewatch the process steps video on a PC. They thought they could do it, but Shorty’s future health would be the litmus test.
Jaime and Arkar taught small arms basics to the newbies. Stephanie and Pat were among those who stepped forward to learn, surprising their fellows. Only Barb and Dr. Almeida declined the offer. The former was stoned or drunk half the time and better left alone, while the latter was a pacifist, if today’s world even permitted such sentiments.
* * * * *
Travis, Tom, Tien and Shorty swapped off on the Harleys every hour. Without helmets, their exposed heads took a beating. Boise was four hours straight through and the Hunters didn’t arrive until after nine p.m. Finding someone alive who knew where the main police station was took another half-hour. They killed time until 10:09, when Travis and Sal spoke over the shortwave.
The desk sergeant barely noticed the wounded white man, a Chinese-looking fellow, a rancher, and a random white young adult in the station. Nothing fazed him anymore after the horrors he’d witnessed. Travis saw the inattention and started again from the top, emphasizing the urgency of involving law enforcement and the military in the hunt for the murderers and their child hostages.
Sergeant Allred had lost his wife and children to the plague and didn’t much give a damn. “I heard you twice the first time. Listen carefully—there’s barely a police presence in Boise. I’m here because I have nowhere else to go. We don’t investigate crimes; we don’t arrest people. We have no simple way to contact other cities or the state police. Try the Idaho National Guard base south of town off I-84. Just know that they had a bad Covid outbreak ten days ago, and I haven’t heard anything from them in three or four days.”
Tien tried his hand. “Bikers from an Oakland club called the Twisted Souls took our children. They deal in arms and drugs. Where can we find Boise’s outlaw gangs? They may have useful information.”
Allred smiled dryly behind his Plexiglas face shield and N95. “I’ll mark a map and you can check out the HQs for our three biggest gangs pre-Covid: Brother Speed, Bandidos and Highwaymen. They’re all bad news and, so far as I can tell, out of business. Bikers aren’t big on masks and hygiene; they were dying of Covid-19 well before Covid-20 hit.”
The officer pulled out a souvenir city map with advertisements printed around the borders and used a pencil to circle three spots. “Good luck on your Easter egg hunt, gentlemen. Along the way, if you find a cure for Covid-20, do let me know. We started 2020 with four hundred and fifty thousand people in metro Boise, and I doubt there are twenty thousand left uninfected today.”
Tien started to reply, and Travis put a vice grip on his shoulder and steered the younger man away from the counter.
Subsequent investigations showed that the sergeant knew what he was talking about. There wasn’t a biker to be found, or anyone else at the looted and abandoned clubhouses. A drive by the National Guard camp revealed zero signs of life too. They’d struck out. They left poisoned Boise eighty miles behind them to the south before pulling off outside Cascade for a few hours’ shuteye. Tomorrow they’d try another half-dozen biker clubhouses.
* * * * *
Monday morning found Katerina asleep and the finished Dark Cure maturing in the colder fridge. Muller and Norris left Burns to guard the hostages and reconnoitered their surroundings. Norris wanted to see Ruby Ridge, site of the infamous 1992 standoff that pitted federal agents against a local man sought on firearms charges. It was a debacle from start to finish, resulting in the deaths of the man’s fourteen-year-old son and wife, plus a Federal marshal. Talk of coverups and conspiracies grew to mythic proportions. In Oklahoma City in 1995, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols cited Ruby Ridge as a justification for detonating a van loaded with a nitrogen fertilizer and fuel oil that killed one hundred and sixty-eight children, men and women. Muller was surprised that a walking sweat stain like Norris possessed encyclopedic knowledge of this trivia, but grudgingly respected the man’s wish to visit ground zero.
Ruby Ridge was outside Naples, Idaho, which was also the home of Jeff Neal, the 3M’s border guide. Muller had Norris drop him off outside Neal’s home to allow the former CIA contractor to determine the best observation points. Ninety minutes later, Norris returned from his quest and Muller showed him the best routes for concealment and preferred vantage points.
On returning to their hideout, Muller could barely extract himself from the cab such was the inflamed state of his infected stab wound. He needed a doctor in a hurry.
* * * * *
On Monday night, the Wolves drove past Naples and pulled off on the opposite side of Route 95 from where Muller & Co had stashed the blue ’Bago. Everything was fine, with the major exception of Tyson. Mona and Stephanie were very concerned that the baby’s appetite was failing and again he was listless. His head had swelled again too. Try as Stephanie might, she couldn’t recall any incident that could have caused a reinjury. The two women petitioned Sal, and he agreed that they’d take the baby into Bonners Ferry the next day to look for an OR and an anesthesiologist.
Kyle, Jeanie and Erinn worked through the night to produce a textbook Dark Cure batch.
The Hunters were in Spokane talking to biker gang survivors and not learning very much—no one knew any Twisted Souls, or had seen a platinum blonde with a lurid scar.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Cat and Mouth
Tuesday, July 21, 2020: Ruby Ridge and Bonners Ferry, Idaho, afternoon
Katerina held a mirror in front of the bound and gagged woman. “Look at you. No one will ever want to fuck you again.” Third-degree cigarette burns pitted Carla’s cheeks, forehead and nose as she struggled against her constraints. She closed her eyes and one more time jerked her head enough to keep the lit cigarette from burning through her eyelid and blinding her. She screamed into her gag as the stench of her burned eyebrow filled the RV. Carla flexed her muscles and could feel the bolts loosen in the plate anchoring the chair to the floor. The plastic cable-ties bit ever-more deeply into her already bloodied wrists and ankles.
“I’ll stop if you apologize for c
riticizing my lab technique. I’m listening, Doctor.” Five seconds passed with nothing from the captive other than a baleful glare. “I have a Stanford PhD. Your Cal doctorate will always make you second rate, and just because you used to be a hotshot in a bioweapons program changes nothing. It’s a fucking civil servant’s job.”
Carla stared back at her tormentor with pure malice. Earlier in the day, a bored Katerina had taken an unhealthy interest in twelve-year-old Schway, peppering him with questions that ranged from the innocuous to the creepy. When the tiny scientist asked the prepubescent boy if he’d ever played doctor or seen a naked girl (with a lurid look at seven-year-old Lupita), Carla had heard enough. It hadn’t taken long to divert Katerina’s attention, and Carla had paid the price. Carla clung to consciousness, focusing on her salvation: The longer they stayed on this hilltop and Katerina played with matches, the greater the likelihood that Travis would kill this monster.
Norris poked his head into the ’Bago and recoiled. “Knock that shit off! I thought I heard something. We want her alive and mostly intact. They won’t come charging up the hill to rescue a corpse.” Norris retreated and found Muller smearing yet another antibiotic crème in his stab wound’s angry mouth. “Our scientist is one vindictive bitch. She’s put a half-dozen cigarette burns into Carla’s face. I told her to stop.”
“She’s bored,” Muller said. “She’s not a soldier and doesn’t appreciate the strategic advantage that flows from patience, coupled with maintaining a superior tactical position.”
“I guess I don’t disagree with her,” Norris said. “Anyone who finds us can block the road off this hill and we’re fucked. There are sheer drops on two sides and no cover for the first hundred and fifty yards. I’d rather hide out in the woods, find out where they are and go after them.”
“You were in a coma the first time we tried that, and now all your men are dead. The foxhole I dug and the logs I dragged in front give us great protection. Next, we’ll cut down the scrub to expose anyone coming after us. We have night-vision goggles—”
“Which I can’t see through,” Norris complained. “There’s no peripheral vision and it’s still hard to see anything with no moon and—”
“I’ll handle the sniping, Burns sets off the IEDs and you lob grenades. Is there something in the plan you don’t understand?”
“It would be a lot simpler if they did what you said they would. It’s been almost two days. I don’t even know why we’re bothering at this point—we have the Dark Cure and should auction it in a big city somewhere, not sit out here in the sticks.” Norris hated losing his men to the Maggios, but at heart he was a businessman. He also thought Muller was paranoid to think that this family convoy would pursue them to avenge the murder of an unrelated brown girl.
Muller ignored him—they’d covered this topic many times before. He pulled up his shirt to inspect his wounds.
“Jesus Christ, look at that infection,” Norris said. “If there aren’t any doctors left up this way, you need to see a vet.”
“You’re right,” Muller said. “I’ll take the pickup into Bonners Ferry along with a few doses of the Cure and see what I can come up with. I’ll be back before you relieve Burns, but it’ll still be a few hours.”
“I’ll stay here and keep your girlfriend from killing her pet ashtray.”
* * * * *
Yonten drove a salvaged Chrysler Voyager into Bonners Ferry with his father beside him and Sal, Mona, Steph and Tyson perched in the back. Their destination, the Boundary Community Hospital, was on the north side of the Kootenay River, which bisected the town. The Boundary Community facility was shuttered, and a tour of the neighborhood turned up a smattering of abandoned home physician’s offices. Reversing course, Yonten recrossed the river and passed a strip mall with four vehicles out front.
“The lot was empty when we drove by thirty minutes ago,” Sal said. “Let’s take a look.”
Yonten parked away from the other cars across from a storefront with the door open and a large hand-painted sign on display: “Guns and Ammo Bot + Sold.” A face masked man wearing long sleeves, long trousers and latex gloves walked out with a shotgun clamped under his right arm. The other tenants of the 1970s-vintage row were a Mexican restaurant, laundromat, florist, nail saloon and veterinarian clinic. The last one had the front door propped open with a brick.
“Mona, come with me,” Sal said. “Maybe there’s an operating table in the vet’s that you can use for Tyson.” The neurologist followed him into the parking lot, both of them feeling the mid-eighties (29C) late-afternoon heat through the soles of their shoes. They hustled to the shaded storefronts, then slowed and ducked into the vet after Sal gave the front door a cursory knock.
“Let’s look in that shop,” Yonten said to his father. “Maybe someone knows a doctor.” Arkar and the teen confirmed that Steph and Tyson were asleep and quietly exited the Chrysler.
Inside the clinic, the veterinarian had disinfected Muller’s wound, put in a half-dozen stitches and given him a powerful shot of equine antibiotics. A shirtless Muller winced as the quack poked at his through-and-through and judged it to be healing well. An unfamiliar female voice sounded in reception, followed by one he recognized. I’ll be goddamned.
Muller put his finger to his lips and gave the horse doctor a menacing look. He pointed at the vial of Dark Cure on the side table and signaled a thumbs up, then drew his Walther and sidled to the connecting door.
“Anyone home?” Sal asked as he walked in, followed by Mona.
“Your worst nightmare,” Muller said. Mona spun around, and Sal clawed at his revolver. “No, no, no,” Muller said. “Two fingers on the butt and lay it on the floor. Who’s outside?”
“No one. Just the two of us,” Mona said in her doctor’s authoritative voice.
“We’ve just met, but your friend knows I don’t bluff.” Muller pointed his pistol between Mona’s eyes. “Who’s out there, Sal?”
Sal’s frenzied brain concluded that Arkar could take out Muller before the mercenary realized he was on the scene. “Steph’s baby is injured. We’re looking for a doctor. That’s it.”
“Let’s go,” Muller said. “You two first. Shut up and walk.” Outside the vet’s office, Muller saw nothing threatening. “What car’s yours?”
“The red van over there,” Mona said.
“Walk over slowly, don’t turn around and get in only after I’m gone. Sal and I are taking a drive.”
Mona did as she was told, wondering when Arkar and Yonten would spring to the rescue. Sal had the same thoughts.
Sal got into the XLT’s passenger’s seat and Muller sat behind the wheel with the Walther in his left hand pointed at Sal across his lap. “If you so much as fucking blink, I’ll shoot you, dump your body in the parking lot and take Stephanie and the brat instead. Got it?”
Sal nodded as Muller started the engine and put the XLT in gear. One hundred feet away, Arkar and Yonten walked out the gun shop’s door at the same time that Mona reached the Voyager and blasted the horn. The father and son team had their pistols out as the pickup sped away.
Muller whipped off his mask to reveal even white teeth and trademark scar. “Perfect! You can take off your mask since we’re both immune. I’m taking you to Carla—she’s changed since you last saw her.”
Sal cringed at that comment while Muller adjusted the rearview mirror and slowed down a tad.
Unarmed and with a crippled left arm, Sal had no chance of stopping Muller short of yanking the wheel and holding on like grim death until Muller killed him, or Sal crashed the pickup. If the road skirted a steep drop on the right, Sal vowed to take them over the edge. “What kind of American soldier shoots a little girl in the back? That’s something ISIS does, not us.”
“Oh, do I have plans for you,” Muller said. “Burns was right to describe you as a righteous prick. Before this is over, you’ll watch everyone in your family die, and then Burns and I will flip a coin to see who gets you.”
&
nbsp; * * * * *
Arkar took the wheel and floored it. They didn’t have a walkie-talkie or shortwave, so they were on their own. As they closed the gap, he regretted his decision to drive instead of manning the rifle. Mona recounted the chance encounter with Muller and asked if he was the same man who had executed the teenage girl on Sunday. Stephanie glumly confirmed her identification.
Arkar followed hard for twenty minutes, never gaining or losing much ground. He considered possible tactics. They could shoot out the tires and almost certainly capture Muller alive, but Sal probably would be killed. Furthermore, there was no guarantee Muller would talk even under torture. They could attempt to run the XLT off the road, but it was faster than the Voyager and again, Muller would respond first by shooting Sal. The only thing to do was follow Muller at a distance to his destination. Arkar noted the lack of evasive actions or attempts to outrun them and realized they were being led.
* * * * *
Muller powered the XLT up the hill, hoping he could reach the summit, exit the cab and either induce his pursuer to follow him, or give Norris a clean sniping opportunity.
All Sal knew was that he would rather die than see others harmed in a rescue attempt. The gravel track abutted a stump-spotted slope steep enough to cause mischief, if not mayhem. He lunged for the wheel with his right hand and Muller fired point-blank. The Walther’s roar deafened them both. Sal felt no pain as he wrenched the wheel to the right and the XLT lurched off the road. Muller dropped his weapon and grabbed the wheel with both hands, reasserting control over the pickup too late to stop the truck from hurtling down a twenty-five–degree grade across the deforested moonscape. Sal slumped to the floor, bleeding. Muller stomped on the brakes and slowed the vehicle to dodge the first and second piles of loggers’ debris before hitting a low stump at an angle, destroying the right front wheel.