The Killing Season

by Mason Cross

  Nolan shook his head. “Day before. He’s a good boy. I told him to look me up if he ever got out, and that’s exactly what he did. Got things all ready for him coming home.”

  Something about that worried me. The Remington and the survivalist literature indicated a personality that interpreted “getting ready” in a very specific sort of way. Nonetheless, I doubted the homecoming would be what Nolan expected. He had started to back away from me slowly, moving in the direction of the cabin’s front door. I jerked the Beretta up, flicked the safety off with my thumb.

  “Sit down.”

  “You ain’t gonna shoot me,” Nolan said, and I could see that he knew it. “I ain’t done nothing wrong. You’d be killing an innocent man. You said it yourself; you’re here to protect me.” He put his hand on the door handle and pulled.

  I stood up. “Close that door and sit the hell down, Nolan. You’re delusional.”

  Nolan swung the door open wide, letting in the freezing morning air. He turned his head to the doorway and closed his eyes, inhaling a lungful of cold through his nostrils. “Shoot me.” He chuckled. “You don’t know what a killer is, son.”

  I got out of the chair and pointed the Beretta at Nolan’s head, cocking it. “Try me.”

  “You don’t know how . . . how goddamn glorious it is, killin’ a man. A pansy like you couldn’t appreciate it.” He opened his eyes again and turned his head back to look at me. “I’m gonna go and wait outside for my son to come home. He won’t be long. And when he gets here, I’ll show you a killer.”

  I let the muzzle of the gun drop and walked over to Nolan, then put a hand on his shoulder, gripping hard. “I don’t need to shoot you to make you do as you’re told, old man.”

  Nolan opened his mouth, but he never got the chance to say his piece.

  The right side of his head, the side facing away from the door, exploded like a water balloon in a microwave. I caught an absurdly detailed freeze frame of it: a flap of hair and scalp swinging up, skull fragments and chunks of brain and a gray-blue eyeball and a torrent of blood all expanding out from the epicenter in a multicolored starburst of gore. And then the world was red and I barely registered the crack of the gunshot as it caught up with its work.

  33

  9:28 a.m.

  For a moment, I was senseless. Nolan’s blood was in my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my nostrils. The coppery, viscous taste of it brought a series of involuntary gags from my throat. I resisted the overwhelming urge to lose it completely and dropped to the floorboards, praying that I wasn’t too close to the open door or to the window. If I was, I was a sitting duck.

  I clawed at my face, wiping blood and unidentifiable chunks of Nolan’s head away until my vision returned. I managed to hold off until I’d crawled over to the safe side of the cast-iron stove in the corner before I vomited. After a momentary spell of dizziness, my head cleared.

  Unbidden, my brain started trying to compute how Wardell was here at this moment when he’d dumped the van seven hundred miles away only a few hours before. Either that wasn’t Wardell out there, or Wardell hadn’t dumped the van. Explanations could come later, if there was a later. Right now, all that mattered was that someone had me pinned down. I felt my gut sinking as I became aware that my hands were empty. I’d dropped my gun at some point after Nolan’s head had exploded, probably while clearing the stupid ­bastard’s blood off of my face. I looked around.

  It lay on the floorboards about a yard from Nolan’s virtually decapitated body, just outside the still-spreading pool of dark red blood. And, unfortunately, in full view of the open doorway.

  I considered my options. The grisly manner of Nolan’s death told me that Wardell—it had to be him, didn’t it?—was probably still using the rifle. I had to assume that he knew I was there. He’d probably have seen me through the front window, and besides, it would have been obvious that Nolan had been talking to someone. The old stove would afford some protection, but I wasn’t sure it could stop one of those rounds. The biggest thing in my favor was that I was out of the line of sight. The other thing in my favor was Wardell’s frugality. He wouldn’t want to waste limited ammunition on blind shots. If I moved quickly, I could probably grab the Beretta before he could get a lock on me. Depending on how far away he was, of course.

  My only other option was to stay put and hope he got bored of waiting. Somehow, I didn’t think that would happen. In a way, the situations where only one realistic course of action presents itself are the easiest. You just take a breath and do it.

  I pushed off my right foot, took two steps, and dived for the Beretta. As my fingers closed around the grip, the doorway slid into my field of view and I saw a figure approaching the cabin, a hundred yards away, carrying some kind of assault rifle, another rifle strapped to his back. I tucked my right arm under me and turned the dive into a roll as my shoulders hit the bloodstained wood.

  An assault rifle? I rolled past the doorway and up onto my feet in a crouched position as two things happened: A maelstrom of bullets tore into the space on the floor I’d occupied a second ago, and Eddie Nolan’s words repeated in my head. Got things all ready for him. So much for frugality with ammunition.

  As the firing ceased, I gripped the Beretta two-handed and launched myself back the way I’d come, not wanting to give Wardell breathing space. I fired four quick shots at the figure outside, but he was already diving to the ground. Was that Wardell? It was hard to tell at the distance. The height and build looked right for him.

  My lunge carried me past the doorway and back behind the shelter of the stove. It looked like he was toting an AK-47—assuming he wasn’t tooled up with armor-piercing rounds, the combination of the walls and the stove might be enough to protect me.

  Another rattle of gunfire and the beautiful sound of ­polymer-coated steel jackets ricocheting off cast-iron proved me right.

  They kept coming, though. When the hail finally abated, I guessed he’d emptied an entire magazine from that AK, which told me two things: one, that he wasn’t short of ammo, and two, that while Wardell was a purist when it came to long-range killing, he could be pragmatic when he found himself in a fight. If I’d nursed a hope that “one shot, one kill” was an absolutism that Wardell applied across the board, and therefore an exploitable weakness, the last thirty seconds had hammered a couple of hundred nails into the coffin of that hope.

  I took advantage of the brief lull to dive across the room and slam through what was left of the kitchen door. It wasn’t hard to do; the door now had all the structural integrity of a slice of Leerdammer. I kept low as I made the kitchen, a renewed burst of fire punching big holes in the drywall separat­ing the two rooms.

  The Remington was still there on the floor. Was it loaded? Going by the ten minutes I’d just spent with Nolan at the end of his life, I thought it was a safe bet. I grabbed it left-handed and glanced at the wide-open back door, praying that Wardell, or whoever the shooter was, didn’t have company. It didn’t really matter though. The fact was, there was only one possible way out. I took it.

  I hurled myself through the door, aware of another burst of fire ripping through the wall and hearing the dulled impacts on the stove from the next room. Outside, the sky had clouded over. I didn’t have time to scan the tree line, but then I didn’t need to. If there was a halfway-competent hostile up there, I’d be dead long before I knew about him. I swiveled left and approached the back corner of the cabin. My gun had a seventeen-round capacity. I’d loosed four already, which left me with lucky thirteen, plus whatever was in the Rem.

  I took the corner of the cabin low and hugged the west-­facing wall. The shooter was still at the front of the cabin. I could tell by the efficient, machined sounds of another magazine clicking into place. There was a pause of twenty or so seconds while nobody shot. Then mother nature decided to bump the table.

  A gap in the cloud cover rolled under the mornin
g sun, casting alien, elongated shadows west for the briefest of seconds, like somebody opening and closing a lighted doorway. It showed me the top of the shooter’s shadow, putting him around ten feet from the front door, roughly dead center to the house. The inevitable trade-off was that it gave him my position too.

  I didn’t hesitate, didn’t pause for conscious thought, just pointed the gun in the right direction as though there were nothing between us and fired a volley of six shots in a tight circle. The rounds went through my side of the cabin without complaint. I hoped they would pass through the other side as easily.

  Fools seldom differ. A trail of exit holes mushroomed in the wooden siding two feet to my right. One glanced off the barrel of the Remington, knocking it out of my loose grip. I fell back to the corner. Stalemate once again.

  Except that I had only seven bullets left. My opponent might have a thousand times that. All he had to do was wait me out.

  But then I caught a break. As though toying with us, the sun cast its beam over the earth again. Once again it was fleeting, rolling over the dead grass and the sparse trees on the incline before disappearing behind the trees on the western ridge.

  But before it did so, it glinted off of a wing mirror.

  I squinted and made out a green pickup truck, partially obscured behind trees. Virtually invisible to the casual glance, but clear enough once you knew where to look. I made the range around seventy yards, which meant I hadn’t a chance in hell of hitting it with the Beretta. But with the Remington . . .

  I glanced around the corner again fleetingly, just in case the shooter was there. It was clear, so I took a longer peek. The Remington was ten feet from my position.

  A voice rang out, sure and clear.

  “You can come on out, partner. I ain’t gonna hurt you.” The voice cleared one thing up. The smooth Southern delivery. The “partner” that sounded at once completely natural and carefully studied. It was Wardell all right. “Got to say, though,” he continued, “I’d be mighty grateful if you’d toss that weapon first.”

  I ignored him, knowing that the aw-shucks good humor was about as trustworthy as a crocodile’s tears. I got down low and inched around the corner again. My outstretched left hand reached for the Remington. Five feet, three. My fingers closed around the barrel just as a hawk screeched from somewhere back in the tree line. Another burst of AK-47 fire ripped through the siding as I scrambled back for cover. I felt a sting an inch below my right eye and reached my hand up, plucking out a thin splinter of wood half dipped in crimson.

  “What happened to not hurting me?” I yelled, covering the noise as I checked the magazine to confirm the Remington had been loaded with the Win Mag cartridges from the box inside.

  “My finger slipped. Come on out.”

  “If it’s okay with you, I’ll wait a few minutes.”

  There was a pause, and I wondered if that meant the seed I’d tried to plant was taking root. I braced the butt of the Remington against my right shoulder and found the pickup in the scope. The angle it was parked, I could see three out of four tires. I took a bead on each and practiced sighting and firing. One, two, three.

  When the voice returned, it was business as usual on the surface, but something was firming up beneath it. “You’re, uh . . . you’re starting to try my patience here a little, ­partner.”

  I didn’t answer. Not with words, anyway.

  One. Two. Three. All three visible tires on the pickup blew out. I put another round through the driver’s side of the windshield and two in the engine block, just for good measure. Six shots, all on target. I was no Caleb Wardell, but it wasn’t too shabby.

  I hit the ground again and switched back to the Beretta as I heard a surprised curse and the sound of running feet. I swung out from the corner again to see Wardell coming around the side, opening up with the AK. He was expecting me to be higher up, so his first burst went high. I flinched and the five shots I squeezed off went wide too. I saw Wardell roll behind the porch of the neighboring cabin.

  “Shit,” I said as quietly as I could manage. I was down to two bullets and one hope in hell. “Stick around,” I yelled. “I’m beginning to enjoy myself.”

  No snappy comeback this time, just the still silence of a smart man considering his options. And then the sound of another magazine clicking into place. I flattened against the ground and braced myself. There was a sustained burst from the AK. It was difficult to be sure, but it sounded like it was moving right to left. The poor, abused cabin took a few dozen more hits, the siding splintering a good four feet above my head. He was making no effort to actually hit me, which meant it was covering fire. Which meant that maybe, just maybe, my ruse had worked.

  By taking out Wardell’s vehicle, I’d turned the tables somewhat, made full use of an information deficit. Wardell had gone from a strong position to one of uncertainty. Without the pickup truck for a guaranteed getaway, he couldn’t afford to just wait me out, not when there was no way of telling how far away my backup might be. Maybe that’s what I had meant about waiting a few minutes. Maybe I was waiting him out.

  With an effort of will, I slowed my breathing and kept still, listened. A minute, two, five. I kept listening.

  I’m a pretty good listener. With a regular shooter, I’d be one hundred percent satisfied that the scene was clear, but with a Marine sniper, stealth is the name of the game. I started to wonder how long I was going to have to leave it, what it would take to convince me he’d bolted. And then, somewhere in the distance, I heard a starter motor catch and an engine roar to life. A familiar-sounding engine.

  Good news, bad news. I was now pretty certain Caleb Wardell was no longer on the scene. I was pretty certain, because the son of a bitch had just stolen my car.

  34

  10:00 a.m.

  Who in the hell was that? The question rode alongside Wardell like a nagging bitch wife as he forced the elegant Cadillac to traverse the rutted country track as though it were a well-used Jeep.

  The man in the cabin had been a white squall at the end of a long period of plain sailing. From the moment Wardell had departed Fort Dodge, everything had gone like a dream. Better, in fact. He’d expected that it might be a little difficult getting to Nebraska, that he might be expected when he got there. But no; the feds were apparently hundreds of miles away with their thumbs wedged firmly up their assholes.

  So who in the hell was that, then?

  Probably not FBI; that was Wardell’s first thought. Feds, like cops the world over, traveled in pairs. They tended not to move with such practiced ease under fire, either. Despite all the training, being fired upon just isn’t a common enough occurrence for a federal agent to get used to. This guy, though . . . this guy moved as though he had been born into a gunfight and hadn’t backed out of one since. Wardell had had everything on his side: the element of surprise, a choice of OPs, multiple weapons, and plenty of ammunition courtesy of Nolan. And yet this other man had held his own, put Wardell on the back foot, and achieved a stalemate. Not a fed or a cop, so who?

  Wardell put the thought on hold again as he slowed on the approach to a larger road and swung out to the right, the Cadillac’s tires gratefully receiving the smooth asphalt. It seemed to Wardell that there were three possibilities.

  One: The man in the cabin was completely unrelated to the manhunt. He was meeting with Nolan for his own purposes and just happened to get caught up in the execution of Wardell’s business.

  Two: The man was a free agent. Some kind of bounty hunter looking to bag Wardell and claim the big reward. Was there a reward? Wardell hadn’t had time to check.

  Three: The man in the cabin was not FBI, but he was working with them. And, by the looks of things, showing them up pretty handily.

  Wardell glanced down at the speedometer, realized that this automobile was deceptively fast. He’d thought he’d been taking it reasonably slowly while he
composed his thoughts, but the needle was way past sixty. He took his foot off the gas as he considered his three scenarios.

  Option one was probably the most unlikely. He didn’t discount the possibility that a man with a gun might have wanted to pay Eddie Nolan a visit—besides himself, of course—but everything in Nolan’s life had been strictly small-time, and so he’d have expected a very low-echelon gangster at best. This man had not been that. Besides, how would anyone else have known precisely where to look for Nolan? During the brief call from the pay phone at the Kentucky truck stop, Wardell had suggested an out-of-the-way place for a reason. No, this was not a coincidence.

  Option two: a bounty hunter. This was a possibility, but in Wardell’s experience, your average bounty hunter had a great deal in common with your average low-echelon gangster: a lot of guns, a lot of unresolved anger issues, not too much upstairs. But still, a possibility.

  Wardell’s hunch, however, was the third option. An opera­tive working with the FBI, with enough knowledge of the investigation to be able to track Wardell, but without the fast ties to the Bureau that would have seen him dragged down to Missouri with the others. The fact that the man had been alone suggested that either he had kept his paymasters out of the loop, or more likely they hadn’t given credence to his line of inquiry. Their mistake, it would seem.

  Wardell turned the radio on for some background noise. He found a news station, caught the tail end of a report from Missouri, where everyone seemed to think he was. Wardell hadn’t paid much heed to the messages purportedly from him in the media, but by the sounds of things, this red van business went way beyond a simple hoax. He mused on it for a while before deciding to let it lie for now. He’d stay cautious and wait and see what, if anything, developed from it.

  A sign for US Route 34 appeared ahead, informing him of the distance to the destinations at either extremity of the highway: Berwyn, Illinois, at 760 miles, or Granby, Colorado, at 320. East or west.