Whack Job

by Mike Baron

  The place felt deserted. Hornbuckle had a bad feeling as he went up the steps. Somebody should have been there to greet him, and why didn’t Control know that there was nobody at the lodge? There were supposed to be agents on site 24/7 until the fugitives were apprehended.

  Hornbuckle entered the lodge and stopped cold, worst fears realized. A Larimer County Deputy lay on the hardwood floor sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, a pool of blood under his head. He’d been shot through the forehead.

  Hornbuckle drew his Glock and did a slow three-sixty. The big lodge was eerily quiet, a heavy blanket of hush which Hornbuckle dared not disturb. He quickly searched the main floor, going through the massive lobby, the dining hall, the kitchen, the rest room and the offices.

  Protocol demanded that he notify HQ immediately. Their security was breached with at least one dead. Hornbuckle had no intention of honoring protocol. He was a spook first and an agent second. He had to find White and fast. He had no doubt the other deputy was somewhere on the property dead. He systematically searched the lodge’s second and third floors. There were also twenty-eight cabins to search. On the other side of the lodge lay the bunkhouse and the garage. For some reason he couldn’t explain Hornbuckle was drawn toward those buildings.

  Gun drawn Hornbuckle searched the bunkhouse. Empty.

  Hornbuckle checked the rec room and casually flipped through the DVDs on the table. The Detonator. Pussy. Today’s movie stars couldn’t hold a candle to real men like John Wayne and Lee Marvin.

  Out the back door facing the lake and down the tarmac trail thirty meters to the garage, a big pole-barn with two sliding garage doors facing the parking lot and one facing the lake. Hornbuckle entered through a side door and found himself in the garage office, a one-windowed cubicle with a gun metal gray desk, a computer, a Rigid Tool calendar on the wall along with a hanging clipboard and a big bulletin board on which every Grove vehicle was listed and placed in its proper spot. Rows of keys hung from a key rack, each with a grimy cardboard tag identifying the vehicle.

  There were ten electric golf carts, two all-terrain vehicles and two 4X4s. Hornbuckle sat at the desk and cued up the computer, which had been left on. The Homepage belonged to the Denver Post. He scanned the headlines. FEDS LAUNCH TASK FORCE. Every government agency with a toe in security was cooperating with a new task force charged with identifying and neutralizing the spontaneous combustions. NSA Director Margaret Yee was in charge.

  Hornbuckle went into the guts of the machine searching for links to other computers. He went into the hard drive and searched for hidden files. Nothing.

  Hornbuckle went through the drawers. Aside from several issues of Hustler, there was little of interest. He went through the door into the garage. The electric golf carts were painted forest green with beige canopies. Two were plugged into a docking station on the near wall. Hornbuckle looked up. Massive ducts and steel beams crisscrossed overhead. Hornbuckle traced the ducts to a furnace room.

  The electric golf carts were lined up on opposite sides of the garage with the all-terrain vehicles and SUVs near the parking lot entrance. Hornbuckle methodically examined every golf cart finding a little over three dollars in change, two forgotten cell phones and a number of hats.

  He approached the vehicles parked just inside the parking lot entrance. First was a massive GMC suburban. It was unlocked with a clipboard on the passenger’s seat holding forms regarding mileage and service. Next to it was an ancient Toyota square backed Land Cruiser, similarly accoutered.

  The second deputy lay between the two all-terrain vehicles. He lay flat on his back with his legs splayed as if he’d been struck in the face with a two-by-four. It was a large-caliber round judging from the hole in his chin. Another lake of blood lay beneath his head.

  Hornbuckle looked from the deputy to where the shooter must have stood. He turned around and traced the splatter on the cement floor and ATV. The blood stretched an enormous distance into the middle of the garage. Hornbuckle looked up. There was blood on the underside of the duct. The deputy had been shot at an upward angle, as if the shooter had been lying on the floor.

  Hornbuckle walked five paces and saw where the dust had been disturbed. Scrape marks that abruptly stopped, erased along a perfectly flat line. Hornbuckle crouched and examined the floor closely. He saw a hairline crack with a tiny slot chink right before him.

  Hornbuckle got up, walked to the work bench and found a flathead screwdriver. Inserting it in the chink, he levered up a square trap door that was 15 cm thick and canted inward at the bottom so the door could be opened and closed without binding. A whiff of strange cool air exploded in Hornbuckle’s face. He pulled a penlight and shined it down.

  Steps led into the darkness.

  ***

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  “Scoobie Snack”

  Wednesday afternoon.

  The crash of gunfire filled the cave as slugs careened off millennia-old stalagmites, off the limestone flow and caromed around the chamber like a pack of livid hornets. Otto and Alvarez sought shelter beneath a limestone ledge, Otto hanging onto Steve’s collar and pulling him close.

  The fusillade lasted four seconds but it seemed like forever. The gunman stopped firing and a roaring filled the chamber along with the smell of cordite. Otto’s ears rang with tinnitus. Every time this happened, he feared he would suffer permanent hearing loss but gradually the ringing subsided and he heard Steve’s rasping breath.

  Alvarez was prone on his belly with pistol in hands. Otto scoped the terrain. The cave floor undulated like a frozen sea with water in some of the depressions. Otto whispered “stay” in Steve’s ear and crawled to his left into a depression that surfaced five meters away behind a fat stalagmite. Water seeped into his shirt chilling him.

  He crawled up behind the pillar tearing his shirt and peaked around the base from the left. The chamber was the size of an aircraft hangar with numerous protuberances caused by dripping lime. The shooter could be behind any one of them. He thought about sending Steve but he didn’t want to lose his dog.

  He could retrace his steps to the ordnance room and grab a couple of grenades but he wasn’t certain he could find the right route, it would take too long, and who knew what effect grenades would have down here? Images of the mountain crashing in on them clouded his brain. He had vivid memories of a Li’l Abner adventure wherein the hapless hillbilly was sealed inside a mine for a month with nothing to eat but mushrooms. He had gained a great deal of weight.

  Otto had known a tunnel rat who used to get drunk and tell Otto the most harrowing stories of soldiers trapped underground, skewered with punji sticks dipped in human feces, rabid foxes and monkeys turned loose in the tunnels.

  Those tunnels had been barely big enough for a man to squeeze through. The cave was enormous. But the atavistic fear was the same.

  Otto looked back. Lying behind a ridge Alvarez signaled that he was going to try and circle behind the shooter moving counter-clockwise. Otto gave him the thumb’s up.

  Otto inched clockwise keeping stalagmites and columns between him and the shooter. He heard a ka-chunk. The shooter was reloading. Otto ran up a smooth slope and hunkered behind a series of stalagmites that resembled a dog’s lower jaw. He looked through the gaps and there was Casey crouched in a natural bunker scanning the cave to Otto’s right. Casey was ten meters away. Otto was confident he could nail him with the Ruger.

  A minute glimpse of Alvarez’s tan shirt alerted Otto to the agent’s presence at 160 degrees from where Otto stood. They had Casey in a crossfire without endangering themselves.

  When all else fails, follow the rules.

  “Casey!” Otto shouted. “Federal agents! Throw your weapons over the ridge and lie prone on the ground with your hands behind your head!”

  Casey swiveled and squeezed the trigger. Three-oh-eight slugs slammed all around Otto sending cave chips flying. Alvarez fired three times striking Casey twice in the back. Casey staggered and went down. Vapor spew
ed from his mouth.

  “Shit!” Otto exclaimed popping his head up and looking around. The nearest man-sized pond was twenty meters back. They’d never make it in time.

  “GET DOWN GUS!” Otto shouted through cupped hands. Alvarez moved out of sight. They waited. A minute passed, then another. Otto was about to get to his feet when Casey went nova like one of those secondary IED bombs designed to catch first responders. An inner sun erupted turning the cavern into a dazzling light globe, blinding Otto who stupidly looked. A wave of heat washed over him growing in intensity. There was a fat crackling sound as the flames consumed flesh and sinew.

  Then came the disturbing smell. Otto’s stomach rumbled. Steve growled and his hackles rose.

  “You okay?” Otto shouted.

  “I’m good!” Alvarez responded.

  Otto dug his fists into his eyes as the intense combustion blazed once more and faded down to a glowing white worm. Otto stood and carefully made his way over the slippery rock toward the smoking remains. Alvarez approached from the other direction holding his pistol in both hands.

  They stared at the blackened cave floor. The flames had not entirely eradicated Casey. His right leg from the knee down looked perfectly normal, except for the blackened point of bone protruding from the cauterized flesh. The remaining pant leg looked clean and creased.

  “Steve, come!” Otto said.

  The big dog loped up, gave Otto a courtesy lick, seized Casey’s leg in his jaws and retreated behind a stalagmite.

  ***

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  “The End of the Affair”

  Wednesday afternoon.

  Stella landed at DIA at eleven-thirty. At the airport, she went to the bottom level where the storage lockers were and retrieved her pistol and a box of nine mm shells. By the time she’d picked up her rental and headed north on the Interstate it was twelve-thirty. She’d tried calling back the number in her phone several times and each time it went to Pawnee Grove’s voice mail.

  A very dry voice saying, “You have reached Pawnee Grove. We are unable to take your call right now so please leave a brief message and a number where you can be reached.” It sounded like a Shakespearean actor. Ian McKellan or somebody.

  She took Baseline to Boulder, cut through town on Broadway and headed north through Lyons on 36. She found a Clear Channel station and listened to the news, recognizing the fiction surrounding Tyler’s death.

  Fall my peach-shaped ass, she thought. He burned.

  An anti-terrorism expert spoke about the frightening phenomenon spreading among the world’s wealthiest nations: The U.S., Russia, China. Professional rabble-rousers parroted eschatological soothsayers in that whoever was incinerating capitalists and politicians was delivering justice on nature’s despoilers and exploiters of the poor.

  Stickin’ it to the man!

  Up against the wall, motherfucker!

  Less sophisticated cultures went boogie bullshit. Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria Zimbabwe declared states of national emergency sending thugs swarming through villages and tenements looking for witches, seers, shamans and Satanists. Lynch mobs sprouted in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and the Philippines. The specter of a new Dark Age loomed, driven by fear, superstition, and black magic.

  That’s what we’re up against, Stella realized, Black magic. What was magic but technology you didn’t understand?

  It was the shape of the thing that frightened the most. Death by burning, traditionally reserved for heretics, warlocks, and witches, exploded throughout the third world. Only the Arab world seemed to escape the scourge.

  What if they apprehended the perpetrators? Could she defend them?

  Would she defend them?

  Stella smiled ruefully. No, of course not. And she wouldn’t be asked, thank God.

  Sam’s death had left a Colorado-sized hole in her heart. She was not unaware of the shady deals, back-slapping and outright lies that were the stock in trade of every politician, but Sam had never personally short-changed her. He had always been honest about what he did and what he thought.

  “Honey, I’d rather see you become a crack whore than a politician. ‘He brings disaster upon his nation who never sows a seed, or lays a brick, or weaves a garment, but makes politics his occupation.’ Kahlil Gibran. He was one smart A-rab.”

  She saw with her own eyes the ever-revolving door of women in and out of Sam’s life but he had left her standing tall and unafraid. She patted the purse on the passenger’s seat feeling the hard metal inside. Otto had been predicting the collapse of civilization since they’d met. She wondered if he secretly longed for it. Men like Otto were no good in peace and times of plenty. They only rose when society fell.

  At least Otto wasn’t the jealous type. She looked forward to seeing both her boys.

  Estes was a clusterfuck. It took longer to get through town than it had to drive from Lyons. Eventually she turned north on Devils Gulch, the site of the grove circled in red magic marker on the map next to her. She hadn’t trusted GPS since it had directed her to a Baltimore neighborhood that looked like the aftermath of Dresden. She’d barely escaped with her life and a cracked back light.

  It was three o’clock by the time she reached the Grove. She drove past the closed gate once without stopping and had to turn around. Yes, there was the gate and the correct mileage fencepost, but there was no one guarding it. She pulled off the narrow road and pulled up to the closed aluminum gate. She took out her cell phone to call Director Yee and alert her to the lack of security, but of course there was no service in the mountains. There would be a land line at the lodge.

  Stella got out of the car and looked around. “Hello?” she called. Her words echoed back to her faintly. Something glinted in the grass. She saw the clipped padlock. She pushed the gate all the way open, drove through and put the vehicle in park. Shutting the gate behind her Stella got back in her car and drove through the pine.

  She came around the bend and saw the lodge glowing gold in late afternoon sun against the blue lake, a postcard of how the world ought to be. There were a handful of official vehicles in the lot and a couple unmarked. Stella drove slowly toward the main lodge noting the Jeep in the handicapped spot. Seeing healthy people park in handicapped spots had always irritated her.

  Gabe came out on the deck in blue jeans and a blue knit shirt with Pawnee Grove stitched on the breast in gold, grinning with his hands on his hips. He appeared to be the only one there. He stood at the top of the stair while she parked the car in a visitor’s spot, slung her purse over her shoulder and got out.

  Why didn’t he come down the stairs?

  She stood by her car for a minute. “Gabe!”

  “Lookin’ good, babe! Come on up here!”

  Something in his voice, a false note of bonhomie made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She’d dealt with enough psychopaths to identify unnatural inflections, a certain glibness.

  Gabe was a better actor than that.

  She stayed where she was, “What’s going on?”

  “Come on up here and I’ll show you,” Gabe breezily replied.

  “Where is everybody? Where’s Otto?”

  “Otto’s up the mountain! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Come around to the veranda you can see him through the telescope.”

  “Okay--let me grab my purse.” She slid back into the car, slipped her hand into the purse and found the Sig.

  Stella went up the stairs eyes fixed on Gabe. As soon as she gained the veranda, Gabe wrapped her in his arms, drew her close and kissed her passionately, his erection obvious, hands slipping to her ass.

  “Come on, beautiful,” he whispered huskily. “We have to make up for lost time.”

  He took her arm and steered her toward a corridor. Stella twisted free.

  This wasn’t Gabe.

  “What’s the matter with you? Where is everybody?” she said calmly, slipping her hand into the purse.

  Anger flashed behind the actor’s blue eyes and he
grabbed Stella’s left wrist in both hands, dragging her down the corridor. Stella choked up on the purse strap and swung it at Gabe’s head as hard as she could. The pistol made a dull bonking sound on impact. Gabe staggered and let go.

  Stella’s hand slipped into the purse, seized the Sig and thumbed off the safety.

  Gabe stared at her as if she were an alien creature. His eyes flared yellow from within.

  He charged.

  Stella kicked him in the nuts and backed up several feet. An expression of shock appeared on Gabe’s face and he froze. Stella brought the pistol up and jacked a shell into the chamber. Gabe snarled. Vapor issued from his mouth.

  He lunged.

  Stella shot him five times in the chest.

  ***

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  “Down the Rabbit Hole”

  Gabe flipped backward exploding into flame. Something sharp zinged across Stella’s scalp drawing blood. She sagged and put a hand to her head. The fireball filled the corridor and physically shoved Stella down the hall, and for an instant time stood still and she felt as if she were floating near the ceiling looking down from above. The blast knocked her four meters through the air and rolled over her leaving behind a rancid pong of burning flesh and a layer of slimy soot.

  Gagging, she crawled on hands and knees through blinding smoke. The sprinkler system rained water. Gasping, she dragged herself into the lobby, pulled herself up the side of an overstuffed leather chair and collapsed coughing. The sprinkler system was site specific and did not affect the rest of the hotel.

  She still had her purse. She opened it up and took out a tissue she used to rub the grit from her eyes.

  Gabe, Gabe, Gabe. What have they done to you?

  Stella was numb. She was sick at heart--beyond crying, in a state of shock. She ran a hand through her savaged hair and it came back red. Shrapnel. Her skin was sticky with Gabe’s incinerated remains. The gorge began to rise and she barely made it to the big bathroom off the lobby where she knelt before the porcelain god and heaved and heaved until there was nothing left but a bilious yellow fluid.