by Scott Blade
I shimmied along the wall and snuck up to a window. Then I crouched underneath it. I didn’t risk peeking in. This window was near the back door. You never pick the first window, near the door. Nine times out of ten, that’s the one where someone is waiting with a shotgun on the interior to blow off the head of the first person to peer in. So I moved at a steady, quiet pace to the second window.
It was dark. I peeked in.
The room was quiet and empty. I scanned around it. It was some kind of guest room or bedroom with no personal belongings. There was no sign that anyone lived in it. No pictures. No jewelry on the vanity. No sheets on the bed, just an old mattress.
The closet door was wide open. No shoes on the floor. No clothes hanging on the bar. Empty.
The door to the bedroom was open. I saw no sign of any life at all. It wasn’t clean, but it wasn’t dirty. This appeared to be just an extra building. Maybe they let their dogs play here instead of locking them up at night in a pen or shed.
The only distinct thing about this building was that animal smell, except there were no dogs. No cats. No animals at all.
I went around to the backdoor and tried the knob—unlocked.
I twisted it and opened the door in a quiet rush. I threw myself against the outer wall in case someone inside had a gun pointed in my direction. Nothing.
I entered the building with the CZ 52 drawn.
I’d been raised to believe that if you pointed a gun, you’d better be ready to fire it. I wasn’t ready because that piece-of-shit gun wasn’t worth firing. But in the dark, a gun barrel looks like a gun barrel and I could scare someone with it. So it was better than nothing.
Besides, rednecks tend to embrace the second amendment. And I was trespassing.
Luckily there was no one in the building; it took only a few seconds to confirm that. The structure had only four rooms total. And they were all small.
The only thing that I found of use was a Maglite. It was a foot long, black, shiny thing. Dangerous, as a club. So I grabbed it. It would be more use than the Cold War relic that Sheldon had given me, especially in close-quarter combat.
I left the little house and headed to the main one. It was the next closest one.
The fog began thinning. I saw the outlines of vehicles and the other buildings.
The main house was the only one with lights on.
In order to get there I’d have to travel through the center of the front yard. It was about 100 feet. I couldn’t be sure. Too dark. Too foggy.
I slipped the CZ 52 into the waistband of my jeans. No reason running with it. No reason in even having it out. The more I thought about it, the more it scared me just to have it tucked in my pants.
The Maglite would work fine.
I kept the light off.
I crouched down halfway in a low position and scrambled across the yard.
Halfway to the main house, I made out its red brick. From a distance, the house had looked brand new, but now that I was closer to it I saw that it wasn’t new. It was an old, two-story house. The newest addition was a grayish wooden deck that had been slung around the front.
A porch swing rocked and swayed at a medium speed in the breeze.
The porch lights were on, but paled by the fog. There was one light on in the house. That was all.
It was late at night, so all of the dead lights weren’t unexpected. I’m sure that no one expected Tega to visit. I’m sure that it was meant to be a surprise.
I had run through two-thirds of the yard when I heard a strange sound. It sounded like the bell from a buoy floating off in the distance.
The slow ding.
Ding.
Ding.
Sound was ominous in the silence.
I stopped and peered around to discover what the source of the sound was and then I realized that it came from above me, from the flagpole. I gazed up into the darkness. My eyes followed the giant steel frame of the flagpole. It towered over me. At this range it looked massive, like standing underneath the Washington Monument and looking straight up.
The top of it was hazy through the weather, but I made out the flag. It was drenched and flapped like a wet bag in the breeze.
They left it up?
That didn’t sat well for me. Rednecks were known for being fanatical, but also patriotic. Usually they were more fanatical about their patriotic beliefs than anything else, at least enough to have the flag and to raise it every day and take it down every night. But they left it up in this nasty weather? That seemed unusual.
I pressed on.
I scrambled for the porch and the front door. No lights came on. No signs of life.
I peeked in through a man-sized window. Still no signs of life. Then I reached for the doorknob and turned it. It was unlocked. The door creaked open with a high-pitched whiny sound.
No one came rushing out. No inhabitants. No guys with guns. None of Tega’s men. No one.
I clicked the Maglite on, brushed over the downstairs with it.
The house had an open layout. The stairs were big and wide. They curved up from the bottom of the house and led upstairs, traced by a snaking banister.
I spotlighted every inch of my line of sight with the Maglite. Nothing.
I walked upstairs. Not silently. Not loud. A medium effort. Medium pace. I wanted to go fast, but not loud.
At the top of the stairs, I saw that there were three doors. All bedrooms. All wide open.
There was no one in the house. Not unless they had hidden in the attic and in the cupboards. I couldn’t understand it. Where were they?
I returned downstairs. The light from the Maglite fell across the bottom steps as I descended and then it swept across the floor. I moved it around the living room to get a better look.
There was broken glass against the downstairs back wall and furniture was shattered and knocked over.
I’d been in too much of a hurry before to notice.
Dumb Reacher, I thought.
I should’ve noticed. There were signs of a struggle all over the living room. I had skipped the details and went right to the open doorways.
A long Persian rug near the front door was stained in wet shoeprints. There were multiple ones.
I clicked on the Bluetooth. A female computer voice asked, “Call whom?”
I said, “Sheldon Eckhart.”
The voice replied, “I don’t recognize that number.”
Sheldon probably hadn’t programmed her own name into her own phone. So I thought for a second and then I said, “Call back.”
The voice said, “Calling.”
Sheldon had been the last person to call this phone, so it would dial her number back.
The phone rang and she answered.
I said, “We’re too late. The main house is a wreck. There are signs of a struggle. Broken furniture and glass.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“Stay back. I’m headed to check the barn.”
I looked around the house quickly. There were no guns. I thought that was unusual for a family of rednecks. I imagined that most had rifles perched across the top of the fireplace like trophies, but these had none. Just a big, hideous clock that ticked the time away.
I shrugged.
I clicked the Maglite off and held it in my left hand and then I pulled the CZ 52 out of my waistband and held it in my right hand. I clicked the safety to fire and kept the muzzle facing downward. I had to be careful tramping through the house with a loaded, untested gun. Matlind had said that there were kids here.
I turned the back corner of the house and saw the barn in the distance. A gravel track led up to it. It was over a hill and around some trees. Before, when I drove in with Hank, it had looked closer to the back of the house, but now I saw that it was farther back.
I moved along the track making little noise.
Halfway down the path, I saw other houses far in the distance. They looked like more family-style dwellings. There were backyards with swing
sets and animal pens.
Still I saw no signs of life.
I scrambled up the track and made it to the barn doors.
They were shut. The barn was a two-story building made of wood and painted a red color like the brick on the house.
Parked off to the side of the track, near the trees was another SUV. I saw the rear lights. They were off and the vehicle was empty.
I said, “Sheldon. Get ready. We may have to move. Quick.”
Her voice sounded crisp in the Bluetooth set.
She asked, “Why? What’s wrong?”
I neared the barn doors. They were about 20 feet in front of me.
I said, “The motion sensors. They aren’t coming on.”
I waved my left hand in the air to try to get their attention. The sensors clicked and rattled, but never came on. No bright lights. No sounds. Just moving darkness.
I switched on the Maglite and stared up at them.
“The bulbs have been shot out.”
I saw bullet holes in the machines. The motors whirred and sputtered and tried to switch the lights on, but nothing happened.
“There’s something else.”
She asked, “What?”
I shone the light across from me at the rear of the parked SUV.
“I’m staring at Grady’s truck.”
His Tahoe was parked right there in front of me. The light bar was as lifeless as the rest of the cold machine.
Sheldon said, “Oh, my God! Is he involved?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
She asked, “What’s in the barn?”
I stayed quiet.
I moved in closer to the doors. I left the Maglite’s beam on and scanned the door with it and then I reached out and rapped on the door. Not a loud knock, just a couple of moderate taps. No one answered and then I put the Maglite underneath my arm, cradled it tight in my armpit, and held the CZ 52 with the same hand. With my free hand I reached out and grabbed the barn’s door handle and jerked it open. The door swung out and jittered on along the swing.
Next I reached over and jerked the other one. It swung out the same. The two massive doors were light on their hinges.
I squinted my eyes, tried to adjust to the lack of light inside. Past the darkness, I saw several figures swaying and moving high above me.
I stood hard on the ground, burying my feet into the wet, muddy soil and jammed the gun outward, two-handed, ready to fire.
The Maglite dropped out of my armpit and sunk into the mud.
I shouted, “FREEZE! FREEZE! FREEZE!”
It was the way that I had learned all of my life. A powerful cop voice, like before, only this time loudness counted.
None of the men in front of me responded. I couldn’t make out details from this distance, but it looked as though they kept on swaying.
I shouted, “STAY PUT! STAY PUT!”
I dropped quickly to one knee and scooped up the muddy Maglite. Then I lifted it and scanned the men inside. I counted more than a dozen. I couldn’t tell who they were. I couldn’t see enough through the fog and darkness to tell if they were even armed.
I figured that they were obeying me because no one shot at me.
I got up from my knees and moved in fast. I stepped inside the wide entrance, took a few strides into the barn, and then froze.
Grady was there. So were the rednecks. The ones that I had met in Matlind’s room were there. It looked like all of the able-bodied men were there. The sheriff’s deputies were there. Lewis carried up the rear.
The air was filled with a stench. It was strong.
I shone the light around the room and scanned it. I saw on the sides of the barn there were different flasks, giant pots, and an expensive air filtration system.
The rednecks had definitely been cooking meth here. There was evidence of that everywhere. It looked like I had caught them all red-handed. It looked like that, but that wasn’t what I had actually found. Not at all. Not by a longshot.
I slipped the gun back into my waistband. I reached up to my ear and cupped it to block out the outside noises.
I said, “Sheldon?”
“Yup. Did you find the women?”
“Nope. I found the rednecks and Grady. And his deputies.”
Silence fell over the connection. Then she asked, “You found them? So Grady is involved?”
I said, “No. He’s dead. They’re all dead. They’re in the barn. Someone bound their hands and feet and hung them from the rafters.”
She paused and gasped.
“They’re all dead? All of them?”
“Yes. Dead as anything. It was done recently.”
“I thought that you said that Oskar Tega had just arrived. How could he have gotten here so fast?”
“He must’ve had help. Like guys already here. He sent a guy into my jail cell to kill me. I’d thought that he was a lone man like a hit man, but maybe Tega had a group here already—a kill team. Like they knew that they were coming here a week ago.
“The day before the DEA raided his house in Mexico, I bet he had already sent guys here ahead of himself. The sheriff and the rednecks are casualties.”
She asked, “So the sheriff wasn’t in on it?”
“Neither were the rednecks. From the looks of this barn, they were busy with their own operation.
“Grady probably had stock in their meth business.
“I was wrong. Someone else was taking those girls. We’re looking at two separate operations. The rednecks dealt in meth and Oskar Tega dealt in humans. That’s why Grady was reluctant to call in outsiders. He was protecting the rednecks. Everything must have gone sour between them.”
She was silent.
I looked at the dead faces.
I said, “Tega is here and now it’s time to clean up and that’s what he’s doing. His men killed these guys to cover his true operation or to get rid of loose ends. I don’t know. Probably, he wants the cops thinking that he’s a drug dealer. That’s what has worked for him so far.
“He’ll be taking the girls international. We have to find them before that happens or no one will ever see them again.”
Sheldon stayed quiet.
I walked out of the barn. I returned the CZ 52 into my waistband and lowered the Maglite. I stopped cupping my ear.
I stared off into the distance.
I said, “Where else could they be?”
From the main house, I hadn’t been able to see the lake, but now the fog was rolling out like a living creature, like somewhere there had been a giant inhaling it. Like smoke. It was now low to the ground. The storm clouds still hovered in the air, but the thunder had quieted.
I stared across the lake. My jaw dropped. I saw bright orange and red lights rising toward the sky. It was a fire. Across the lake, it roared and burned high above the buildings.
Orange hues tornadoed up into the sky. Black smoke floated up and merged with the storm clouds and then there was an explosion. The fire had reached a gas tank or a propane tank and exploded. It ripped across the horizon and burst upward into a ball of smoke and flame.
I looked on in horror as the fire consumed the Eckhart Medical Center and I thought one thing to myself. One idea came to mind. One condition burst into my head—asthmatic.
Faye Matlind had severe asthma.
Chapter 46
The rain started again. It was slight. A sprinkle. No thunder. No lightning. Just the raindrops. I had been standing there for a long time without moving, without flinching. I had lost track of the time, but it must’ve been 15 or more minutes.
I stared at the roaring fire across the lake. It grew and spread. It devoured the buildings in the Eckhart Medical Center and moved to the perimeter fence.
Steel wires from the barbed wire snapped and the sharp sounds jetted across the water. Then the wires whipped up into the air and down again like giant tentacles.
The fire grew and roared and consumed the neighboring buildings.
A trans
former exploded from the heat and sparks of electricity fired into the night sky like a fireworks show with only one color—the sharp white flash of electricity.
I spoke into my earpiece.
“Sheldon?”
She didn’t respond.
Instead, a voice within earshot and with a thick Latin American accent said, “Mr. Reacher.”
I turned to my left. My right hand went straight for the CZ 52. It came out fast and I aimed it in the direction of three short men.
I’d been distracted by the explosions across the lake and the thoughts of Faye Matlind’s asthmatic condition, so I hadn’t noticed them. They got the drop on me, not an easy thing to do. They had snuck up on me in the darkness.
Careless.
They saw the CZ 52 in my hand, but none of them reacted.
I didn’t fire.
The guys were dressed all in black. Black jeans. Black rain slickers with hoods slung back. Their heads were exposed and the rain misted down on them. I saw their faces.
The guy in the middle, the one who had already spoken, said, “Toss the gun.”
An idiotic move for any man to make, even when he is outgunned. If I tossed the gun, then I was as good as dead. No way was I going to get rid of my only leverage.
Except one factor. These guys had one thing that was better leverage than what I had.
Besides two of the men armed with FN-P90s, which is a great submachine gun. Accurate. Reliable. Deadly.
The one extra factor of leverage that they had was that the guy in the middle had a Five-seven pistol in his hand and it was pointed at Sheldon Eckhart’s head.
Chapter 47
The three guys in front of me were Mexican. Short, wiry, and deadly. They had me dead to rights and they knew it.
The sprinkle turned into a drizzle. Water trickled harmlessly from the sky in a kind of mist. The wind blew and the treetops swayed and sagged under the pressure, but the thunder and lightning had stayed quiet.
The middle guy said, “I am Oskar Tega. You are Mr. Reacher.”
I wasn’t sure if he was asking me or merely stating a fact. So I nodded.