by Don Drewniak
DESERT ASSASSIN
Don Drewniak
This is a work of fiction. With the exception of public figures, any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with those of the author.
Copyright © 2014 Don Drewniak. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS A CLEAR AND COOL APRIL NIGHT – one in a string of seemingly endless nights for Bill Williams, who was sitting on his starlit back porch staring out into the desert. His companions were a bottle of Merlot and a collection of over a thousand 1950s and 1960s doo-wop recordings. With the obscure 1955 “Dreaming” playing in the background, Williams noticed a faint streak of light plunging earthward in what appeared to be the immediate distance. The streak disappeared in a second or two. Assuming it was a small meteor which had burned up in the atmosphere, he quickly put it out of his thoughts.
The Merlot and the music served as counterbalances to the memories of his previous twenty-four years. Those were years of combat, killings, slaughter, sex and, finally, a year dominated by solitude.
“Dreaming” shuffled back several nights later. As the song began to play, Williams recalled that the 1950s group which recorded it went by the name of The Cosmic Rays. The group was fronted by Sun Ra, an enigmatic musician who claimed to have come to Earth from Saturn. Although he considered the thought to be nonsense, Williams could not help but wonder if the sighting of a few nights earlier, along with the simultaneous playing of the song, was more than a coincidence.
He placed a half-filled glass of Merlot on the reconstructed porch floor, pushed himself out of his recliner, walked into a small room which served as an office and retrieved his laptop. Back on the porch, he turned on the computer and waited. Once the internet was accessed via his little used satellite connection, he spent over two hours reading whatever he could find about meteors, including the potential value of meteorites.
A little more than an hour after dawn the next morning, the retired U.S. Army Special Forces sergeant major added six items to his fourteen-year-old jeep. Included were a gallon jug of water, one of his two 45 ACPs, a high-powered rifle, GPS, digital camera and field glasses. These were the six items which always accompanied him during rides into the desert, and to the hills and mountains beyond. He also added a twelve pound, short handle sledge hammer and a dozen hastily cut wooden stakes.
Williams had purchased the property on which he was living a year earlier. One of several reasons he did so was the view from the rear of the house. The desert stretched on for tens of miles imperceptibly merging with distant hills and mountains crossing from north to south. There was nothing man-made which was visible; just sand, patches of purple and white wildflowers, desert grass, shrubs and a smattering of stunted cactus plants.
He had the option of driving the jeep straight into the desert from the back of the house. However, to do so would mean disturbing nearby sand and vegetation. In addition, there were several hundred golf balls scattered two hundred to well over three hundred yards away from a makeshift tee located ninety feet behind the rear porch. There was no need to bury any more balls than those already covered by wind blown sand. Williams reminded himself to retrieve them before hitting any more out into the desert.
Driving out of his 200-foot, hard-packed gravel driveway, Williams turned left. This placed him on a lightly used road which connected his small isolated house to civilization. A mile later, he turned off-road to his left and drove an additional mile. After a final left turn, he continued until he was a mile directly behind the house. He paused briefly to look out at the desert – his backyard. “Here we go,” he whispered.
The plan was to stop at 500-foot intervals, stand up in the jeep and use the field glasses to scour the area in all directions. Searching done at stop one, he drove a stake into the ground and moved on, traveling west to the next stop. He once again methodically viewed the entire area, drove in a stake and continued the search. After completing the viewing and staking at stop three, he headed north for about 500 feet and stopped. There was nothing unusual in sight, so he reversed direction and repeated the process some 500 feet south of the third stake. Nothing.
Twelve stakes into the search, all the while keeping his jeep under ten miles an hour, Williams called it quits for the day. He had driven slightly more than a mile west and had extended the northern and southern searches out to a quarter mile in each direction. He wanted to press forward. However, he knew that to do so would probably increase the chances of overlooking his phantom target.
Back home just before eleven, he made an early two sandwich lunch. He then used some scrap wood to cut out twelve stakes for the next day’s search. The afternoon was used for a daily ritual, doing repair work to both the thirty-year-old house and a garage located off to the north side of the house. The property, which included four acres of sand covered land, had been unoccupied for nearly five years prior to his buying it and was a prototypic handyman’s special. Williams had spent the first few days on the property living in a tent while putting a new roof on the house.
Evening approached and with it came an eight-mile trip to a roadside diner, the main clientele of which were truckers. Mixed in were a few locals and tourists en route to El Paso, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Roswell or the mountains. The owner and cook was a mammoth sized character nicknamed “Killer Two.” At 6 feet 4 inches, he topped Williams by three inches in height and was at least ninety pounds heavier. Much of what was once muscle had disappeared. The dominant feature of his round face was a nose which appeared to have been slammed to wrestling ring mats a few times too many. Now in his mid-fifties, he had briefly trained over three decades earlier with the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s wrestling legend Killer Kowalski.
Kowalski opened a professional wrestling school in Massachusetts following his retirement in the late 1970s. Killer Two was one of his first students. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Killer Two quickly realized he had no future in wrestling and quit after five months. However, the memory of those days lived on. The walls of the diner and about half of the interior surfaces of the windows were covered with autographed photos of Kowalski and newspaper clippings about the Polish Great One.
The pride and joy of Killer Two was a photograph of him in the ring with Kowalski. Suspended from the right side wall of the diner was a 42-inch flat screen television connected to a DVD player. A nephew of Killer Two had put together a DVD comprised of clips of matches featuring Kowalski which had been taken from YouTube. He then gave Killer Two several copies of the DVD as a Christmas present. From opening to closing day after d
ay, the clips were played on the television.
The only person in the area who Williams considered a friend was Killer Two. One of the reasons for the friendship was that Williams seemed to be among the few who enjoyed listening to the big guy repeat stories of matches that he had been told about by Kowalski. Williams, in return, shared very little about his past other than he had served with the Special Forces. With nothing to prove it, Killer Two nonetheless believed, or perhaps wanted to believe, that Williams had killed a fair number of enemies in combat.
Williams visited the diner twice a week for what he understood to be his two less than healthy weekly meals – a large steak, a double order of mashed potatoes smothered in gravy, the vegetable of the day, rolls and coffee. He always ate at the counter, paid cash and never failed to leave a sizable tip. Returning to his house from the latest visit to the diner, he spent two hours on the porch and then went to bed.
He moved forward approximately a mile each of the next eight days. Each day’s effort entailed a considerable increase in the area covered due to the conical shape of the search. Not for a moment did he question the odds were stacked heavily against the finding of a meteorite which had survived burning up in the atmosphere, if indeed what he saw had been a meteor. The odds were greater still against it having been large enough to be found even if it existed within his target area. The distance he intended to search extended fifteen miles outward from his house.
The years spent in the military taught him the values of determination and patience. As a result, he treated this quest as he did all the many missions to which he had been assigned. Despite the odds, Williams would continue on to a conclusion, successful or not.
Day ten was no different in weather than the previous nine – clear, warm and dry. About a quarter mile into the forward movement and a half-mile to the south, he spotted a dark object as he looked through the field glasses. Whatever it was, it seemed out of place with its desert surroundings. He pulled the jeep to within a hundred feet of it and then walked to within fifty feet. It was a dull reddish black, roughly spherical and appeared to be a little over a foot in length at its greatest diameter. Surrounding it was a thin, one inch crater wall of sand. He did not question for a moment that he had found his meteorite.
Williams returned to the jeep to retrieve the camera. Keeping fifty feet away from the meteorite, he slowly circled it taking over a hundred photos using multiple zoom settings. He completed the circle, sat down and stared at the meteorite for more than thirty minutes before making his way back to the jeep.
Back at the house, he downed a quick lunch, did a Google search and started a long drive north to Albuquerque in his biggest luxury, a fully-loaded Nissan Pathfinder. He arrived in the city over two hours later and proceeded to park one block away from a military surplus store. Williams found what he wanted, paid cash for it and walked back to his vehicle carrying a hand-held Geiger counter.
CHAPTER TWO
WILLIAMS RARELY DISCUSSED THE SPECIFICS of his time in the U.S. Army other than to say he was Special Forces and served for twenty-one years before retiring. Following the retirement, he spent six months playing golf in Florida and seeing on a steady basis a thirty-two-year-old biologist, Dr. Alice Fay Henderson. Then, just as suddenly as he had retired from the military, he left Florida and emerged in Africa where he worked as a “consultant” for two years. Read consultant as mercenary. One thing that no one who knew him seemed to doubt was that he was trained to destroy and kill.
Following his time in Africa, he flew to Miami, bought the Pathfinder and headed west. Fifteen meandering days later, Williams was in New Mexico looking for a place to call home. He found it after three days of driving through the mostly barren area well south of Albuquerque. A little more than two miles past the last house he had seen was a small faded for sale sign sitting about ten feet in from a back road on which he had been driving. There was a barely legible telephone number at the bottom of the sign. Well off the road were a dilapidated house and garage. After inspecting both, he understood that it would take months of work and a fair amount of money to complete all the needed repairs, but they were doable.
He dialed the number from his cell phone. After several rings he heard a female voice timidly say, “Hello?”
“Are the house and garage west of Route 25 still for sale?”
There was a long pause before a response was forthcoming. “Yes, yes, they are.” There was more than a hint of excitement in the voice.
“Good. How much land is there?”
“A little more than four acres.”
“Excellent. I’m at the property now. I want to buy it. Is there any chance of meeting with you today?”
“Well, I’m in Albuquerque.”
“I can be there by one this afternoon.”
Again there was a long pause before she said, “I can meet you at the Albuquerque Public Library on Copper Avenue.”
“I will be there at one. My name, by the way, is Bill Williams.”
“I’m Mary Landry and I will be at the front desk.”
As Williams began his drive, he realized he was dealing with a woman who was obviously very apprehensive and in all likelihood picked the library for safety. He was also willing to bet that she spent a fair amount of time there and knew most, if not all, of the staff.
He arrived in Albuquerque with a half-hour to spare and used the time to get a container of black coffee from a dingy convenience store located at the edge of the city. From there, guided by his GPS, he drove straight to the library, parked his vehicle and walked through the library entrance at exactly one o’clock.
Standing off to the right side of the main desk was undoubtedly the woman he had come to meet. What immediately struck Williams about her was the clothing she was wearing. Her dress was faded blue. The purse showed signs of having been used for years, and her shoes were worn down. All three items might very well have been purchased at a thrift shop. It was obvious she was in financial distress.
She was slender, about 5 feet 6 inches tall, fair-skinned and most likely in her mid-forties. Her short, straight dark-brown hair showed traces of gray and seemed to be self-cut. With round, light green eyes and full lips, she appeared to have once been a most attractive woman.
Passport, Florida driver’s license and DD214 in hand, he walked up to her and said, “I’m Bill Williams.” Offering her the documents, he continued, “Please inspect these and then please pass them to the young lady behind the desk. She may photocopy them if you wish.”
Much of the nervousness that he had noticed in her seemed to disappear as she briefly looked at the documents. She handed them back to him and said, “That won’t be necessary.”
“Let’s sit at the nearest table,” said Williams.
As Landry looked at Williams after having seen the DD214, a good measure of her anxiety had indeed dissipated when she saw that he had been high-ranking career military. He was self-assured, clean cut, well-dressed, tall, extremely well-built with modestly good looks. The documents revealed his age was forty-two.
Williams got right to the point. “As I said during our phone conversation, I want to buy your property. What are you asking?”
“Well, I’d like to get fifteen thousand.”
“Fifteen thousand?”
She looked disappointed. Williams picked up on this and quickly said, “That’s more than a fair price.”
Landry was surprised. “You do know that the land is all sand, and the house and garage are falling apart?”
“It’s nothing that can’t be repaired. I will have plenty of time to do the work. Do you know a lawyer?”
“If he’s still alive, the one my husband used before he passed away.”
“I’m sorry,” said Williams. “How long ago?”
“Six years.”
“If you don’t mind, please go to the main desk and ask the librarian to find the lawyer’s number. I’ll pay his fee.”
Fifteen minutes later a meeting with
the lawyer was scheduled for ten the next morning. That settled, he looked at her bruised right arm and in a soft voice asked, “Who hit you?”
Stammering, she replied, “No one. I tripped and fell.”
“Mrs. Landry, I spent twenty-one years in the Army. I know when someone has been hit.”
Slowly and tearfully she told a horror story of having come to Albuquerque to look for work a year after her husband’s death. She worked as a cashier in a supermarket for three years until it closed. Since then she had depleted what little savings were left and was living off her husband’s small Social Security deposits and an EBT card. A year earlier, she had been forced to move into a one room apartment in an old building that had once been a motel.
“Let me guess. The landlord comes by once a week to collect the rent and then expects something more.”
She looked away from Williams and said nothing.
He knew that he had no choice but to help her.
They sat in silence for the better part of three minutes before he said, “Let’s check you into a good hotel until we can find a permanent place for you to live. I’ll book two rooms as I need a place to stay until we meet with your lawyer tomorrow.”
Landry continued to say nothing, but she had no doubt he was sincere and would do what he said he would. From the library, they drove to the one-time motel. She gathered up her belongings while Williams surveyed the neighborhood from the parking area in front of the building. Although he expected to find the building in a slum area, it was far worse than he had imagined. Shortly thereafter he had her safely in a room at a downtown hotel. He then ordered a full meal to be delivered to the room, guessing that it was to be her first decent meal in ages.
After eating lunch at a nearby delicatessen, he returned to his room and called her. “Mary, dinner will be delivered to you at six and breakfast at eight tomorrow morning. I’ll meet you in the lobby at nine-thirty. Was your husband ever in the service?”