Walt Longmire 07 - Hell Is Empty

by Craig Johnson

  Following the tree line around the meadow, I found a pretty good spot where I could approach the Thiokol Spryte from the rear where it had no windows. One side mirror hung crookedly and the other was completely encased in ice, so if they were going to see me they were going to have to stick their heads out or open the rear doors.

  The closer I got to the thing, the more it reminded me of one of the old APCs we’d used in Vietnam, the one with the clamshell doors. Still a good fifty yards away, I could see the handles and figured the direct approach was the one I would use—simply yank the doors open and lead with the Colt. I certainly didn’t see any reason in yelling out who I was and, more important, where I was until I had the drop on them. I was walking slowly, but the snow was so dry and cold it crunched even under the snowshoes; hopefully, they couldn’t hear it.

  I’d left the backpack at the edge of the clearing but had the Sharps cradled under one arm, the binoculars still hanging from my neck. A gust of wind carried over the western ridge, causing the pines to sway and giving me a little white noise with which to work as I traversed the last fifty feet and stopped only a few yards from the Thiokol. I stood there, not moving and listening for any sounds that might escape from the Spryte, but could hear nothing. If my calculations were correct, it’d been about fifteen minutes since I’d watched someone inside light their cigarette—plenty of time to smoke it and go back to the sleeping bag, if not to sleep.

  I slowly let out my breath and watched as the vapor trailed to my right, dissipating and fading into the half-moonlit meadow as I took the last few steps.

  The handle on the vehicle was a large lever-action one, like those you saw on walk-in freezers in grocery stores. There was a small trip mechanism at the end of it with matching holes where a padlock could be used to secure the two doors. If I’d had enough padlocks and the other doors were so equipped, I could just lock them in and let them drive around until they ran out of gas.

  I carefully played the small trip mechanism out of the way of the bar, placed a hand on the foot-long lever, and remembered to breathe, hoping that the moonlight would illuminate the interior enough so that I could see who it was I might have to shoot.

  I yanked the handle up and swung the door wide, jamming the .45 into the opening. There was no one inside near the doors, but something glowed to my right, so I aimed the Colt at the small amount of light and movement.

  The other Ameri-Trans guard sat covered in a blanket against the bulkhead. He was puffing on a cigar, his right hand cuffed to the grating that divided the cab from the cargo space. He pumped the stogie like a bellows and rocked back and forth; I could barely make out his eyes, he’d pulled his knit company logo cap so low on his forehead. “Thank God, I thought I was going to have to be here like all night.”

  I kept the .45 on him but allowed my eyes to scan the interior—empty—and then looked back at him. “You’re alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where are the others?”

  He nudged the cap back with the butt of his free hand. “Gone, man. They’ve been like gone for hours.”

  “Where?”

  He shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. I don’t know where I am.” He shoved himself a little farther into the corner but continued rocking. “You mind coming in and closing that door? I’m like freezing my ass off.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Brian Heathman. We’ve met.”

  “We have?”

  “Yeah, back at that lodge where the Bureau guys set up camp; it was like just a handshake.”

  I readjusted the Sharps and lowered the Colt. “Sorry, Brian, that seems like a million years ago. I’m going to get my pack. Stay here.”

  He nodded his head and squinted his eyes through the irony and cigar smoke as he rattled the handcuffs. “Very funny.”

  I holstered the Colt, made the round-trip to the tree line, and returned with the pack. I removed my gun-hand glove, tucked it in my inside pocket, and then pulled the Colt out again and stuffed the semiautomatic into the side of my coat.

  I opened the door and tossed the pack onto the floor of the Thiokol. Heathman had pulled the blanket up around his neck. I climbed in and shut the door behind me, careful to leave it unlatched, as he reached overhead and turned on the dome light.

  “You’re going to run down the battery on this thing.”

  Still rocking, he removed the cigar from his mouth and shook his head. “The transmission is like shot; it’s a lawn ornament. Hey, you don’t have anything to eat, do you?”

  I pulled the pack up, unzipping and rooting through the detachable top. I found the aged bag of Funyuns and held it up.

  He tucked the cigar into the corner of his mouth and took the bag. “Oh man, these have the cutout. Frito-Lay hasn’t used those since like ’05.”

  “Cutout?”

  He held it up for my inspection. “The little window where you can see the product; they’ve all got solid bags with a photograph now.” He turned the bag to look at it. “Who knows how old these things are.”

  I glanced into the pack, aware that I had a few sandwiches further down, but I wasn’t giving those up just yet. “I’ve got some very old Mallo Cups, and some beef jerky that appears to have hardened into iron ore.”

  He transferred the cigar into his attached hand and ripped open the vintage chips with his teeth. “Anything to drink?”

  Pulling one of the water bottles from the side of the pack, I placed it on the bench at his covered feet and took another for myself. I unscrewed the top, resting it on the seat beside me, and took a swig. No need for ice. “Didn’t they leave you anything?”

  I took a little time to study him—he looked rather incongruous with the cigar in his cuffed hand. He was a little heavy, which might’ve explained why Raynaud Shade had left him behind. Maybe.

  “No.”

  “What did they expect you to do?”

  Reaching in and pulling a few of the ringlets from the bag and examining them for bugs, he seemed satisfied and popped two in his mouth. “He said you’d be along.”

  I took another swig from my water bottle. “He did, did he? ”

  “Yeah.”

  “He didn’t think that Fingers Moser would finish me off?”

  “Hell no. That guy was a nutcase, and Shade like wanted to be rid of him in the worst way.”

  I leaned back against the interior side of the Thiokol and could feel the cold emanating from outside. “How’s the other hostage?”

  “The FBI agent? She’s fine; a little roughed up, but she was okay when they left.”

  “And you have no idea where they went?”

  “Nope.” He rested the bag in his lap, plucked the cigar from his opposite hand, and stuffed it back in his mouth. Then he wiped his fingers on the blanket, bunching it so that his hand was underneath the fabric.

  “Hey, Junk-food Junkie.”

  The tone of my voice and the use of his nickname gave him pause.

  “Let’s say for conversation’s sake that you’ve got a Sig 9mm under that blanket, and that I’ve got a Colt .45 in my right pocket aimed at your guts, and my finger on the trigger; we would continue to have this nice conversation without any rude interruptions, now wouldn’t we?”

  Freddie “Junk-food Junkie” Borland blinked, but that was all he did.

  “Now, I don’t know if your hand is already on that Sig, or that it’s aimed, or the safety is off—but I am ready to pull the trigger on you right now.” In the dim light, I could see his eyes widen just a bit and the glow at the end of the cigar flare a little brighter with his intake of breath. “Something else for you to think about is what’s going to happen afterward. You might shoot me and kill me, but I most certainly will get you—center shot, right in the guts.”

  I tapped my boot against the door, and his eyes shifted to the noise. “The other thing I’ll make sure I do is kick this door open so that just in case the cold doesn’t get you, whatever carnivores might be out there roaming ar
ound looking for a little Bighorn buffet will smell the blood. I’ve had a cougar following me for the last few miles, and I’m pretty sure there’s a good-sized grizzly out there, too—and brother, when those professionals come in here they are not going to concern themselves with which meat is alive and which meat is dead.”

  The last part was mostly horseshit, but I didn’t figure his Phoenix-born ass would know the difference any more than Hector’s Texas one did—besides, the abstraction of a bullet was one thing, but being eaten alive was something else.

  “I figure that putting you in the Ameri-Trans driver’s uniform was Shade’s idea, but after seeing how the other flanking efforts had fared, especially with your buddy Calvin back there, you took exception. That’s when he cuffed you to the grating and left you here with a pistol that’s only got one bullet.” I shifted my weight forward. “What were you going to do after you shot me, hope that you could fish the cuff keys out of my belt?”

  He still didn’t move, but the end of the cigar flared again.

  “Well, I’ll make sure I fall out the back. Then you can sit here eating Funyuns and fattening up for what happens next.”

  He finally swallowed and shifted; the semiautomatic pistol clattered onto the metal floor between us.

  10

  “Only a professional criminal would neglect to ask an officer to uncuff him, but the dead giveaway was the Funyuns. Who but the Junk-food Junkie would know that the cutout window in a bag of chips was replaced in 2005?”

  He nodded and rubbed his wrist, trying to work the blood back into the white and stiffened hand now cuffed to the other in his lap with those cuffs attached with my own to the bench seat.

  “Fuck.”

  “Yep, it never pays to have a nom du criminal.”

  Along with the 9mm, he’d had one of the next-generation satellite phones, which I activated. The battery was fully charged and should be plenty good enough for my purposes; within thirty-six hours I intended to be sipping an Irish coffee somewhere warm. “Were you supposed to call him when you were done with me?”

  “Yeah.”

  I stared at the phone and then tossed it onto his lap. “Call him.”

  His eyes widened. “What?”

  “Call him; tell him I’m dead and that you’ve uncuffed yourself and need to know what to do next.”

  He looked at the phone but made no move to try to dial. “We’re supposed to like meet somebody.”

  I plucked a Funyun from the bag beside him and ate it; it wasn’t the usual and tasted like onion-flavored insulation, but it would have to do. “I’m aware of that, but I want to know who and where.”

  He sat there. “I can’t lie to him.”

  “What, you’ve suddenly developed scruples?”

  He picked up the phone and held it out. “He’ll like kill me; after he kills you he’ll come back here and kill me.”

  “So, they are coming back this way?”

  “No, but he’ll make an extra effort after I lie to him and he kills you. Hey look, I don’t know who we’re meeting or where. Shit, man . . . I don’t know where the hell I am right now.”

  Still holding the 9mm, I sat on the opposite bench and looked at him. “Call him, or when I go I’ll leave the door back here open and let nature take its course.” He still didn’t move. “Survival of the fittest.”

  He looked like he might cry but thumbed the CALL button and bent down so that he could hold it to his ear. After a moment, he spoke into the receiver. “He’s dead.”

  There was a pause.

  “No, like really. I shot him and got the keys off of him. He’s like lying here and I think there are animals outside . . .” He stopped talking for a moment and swallowed, the fear wafting off of him like a bad smell. “What? No, like he’s dead and . . .” He paused again, froze like that, and held the phone out to me, the tears openly flowing. “He says he wants to talk to you.”

  I sighed and took the phone. “Yes.”

  The singsong rhythm of his voice sounded close. “You should be getting kind of tired about now, Sheriff.”

  “Actually, no. I’m used to the altitude, and I’ve been cooped up most of the winter and been looking forward to getting out of doors.”

  “It’s beautiful up here isn’t it—sacred land.”

  “Yep, it is.” I waited, but he didn’t say anything. “I’m sure we’ve got more to discuss than the scenery. Look, Shade, I don’t know where you think you’re going, or who you think you’re going to meet . . .”

  There was a long pause, and then his voice bounced off the satellite in the cold dead of space and landed in what was left of my ear. “You should stop now, Sheriff. I gave you those four in hopes that that would be enough. Remember, there are only the two hostages and me. I’ve given you all I’m willing to give; if you continue to pursue me any further—I will begin taking.”

  I measured my next words carefully, knowing we were playing a balancing act, attempting to get into each other’s head. “I want you to listen to me very carefully, Shade. Those two people are the only reason you’re still alive. I know you’ve got that .223, but if you keep going up on this trail you’re going to hit some long meadows and then open areas above the tree line, and when you do you’re going to feel an itch between your shoulder blades, a .45-70 itch. That’ll be me—and it’ll be the last thing you ever feel.”

  I listened to him breathing on the other end of the line; then he spoke in a voice that was monotonous and unemotional. “Tell Freddie that I’ll be back for him.”

  The line went dead.

  “What’d he say?”

  I thumbed off the phone. “He says he’s having a wonderful time and wishes you were there.” I drew the pack onto my shoulder along with the Sharps and grabbed the snowshoes beside the door.

  “Hey look, you’re not going to like just leave me here, right?”

  “I am but don’t worry, I’m going to use the phone to bring the cavalry to you.”

  “What about the bears and the mountain lions?”

  “When I leave I’ll close and latch the door. Both of them are amazingly adaptable hunters, but one thing they don’t have is opposable thumbs, which means the next thing that opens the cargo hold will be human. It’ll probably be Henry Standing Bear, a big Indian fellow, or a mean little brunette deputy of mine by the name of Victoria Moretti—if I were you, I’d hope for the Cheyenne.”

  I stood there for a moment, thinking about what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. I had limited resources and a limited amount of time. I pulled Saizarbitoria’s cell phone from the inside pocket of my jacket, rescued it from the waterproof Ziploc, and flipped it open; it was still out of service. I closed it and put it back—insurance, just in case I was to get to an altitude where it might get a signal.

  I looked at the satellite phone in my other hand and thought about which of two calls I wanted to make. I punched in the office number.

  “Absaroka County Sheriff’s Department.”

  “It’s me.”

  “Where are you!”

  I held the receiver a little away from my ear. “Ruby, I need you to listen. I’ve got one of the Fed satellite phones now, so this is the number where you can reach me, and I was right, the numbers are sequential. I’m at the waterfall meadows on Tensleep Creek where I’ve got a vehicle broken down. Is there any backup nearby?”

  “Wait . . . meadows at the base of the falls at Tensleep Creek, right? Yes, they broke through on the east and west slopes. Saizarbitoria is arranging transport for that agent.”

  “McGroder. He’s alive?”

  “Yes, and Henry’s with search and rescue. They’re getting ready to head out from there. Did you really leave a man handcuffed to a water pipe at Deer Haven Lodge?”

  “I did, and I’m about to leave another one handcuffed at this location.”

  “Another one?”

  “Yep, and there’s a body at Omar Rhoades’s cabin at Bear Lake.”

  “Oh, Walt
er.” There was a rustling of some papers. “Tommy Wayman, Joe Iron Cloud, and a detachment of Highway Patrol are at the last turn at Tensleep Canyon and should be joining Henry before too long. Do you know about the weather?”

  “It’s cold but dry up here for now.”

  “It’s going to get much worse. The NOAA says that was only the front of the storm and that this blizzard is carrying fifty-mile-an-hour winds with severe mountain temperatures that will likely reach forty below zero. It’s going to be a complete whiteout by midmorning.” There was only a short pause. “Walter, you have to stop.”

  I placed my thumb over the OFF button.

  “Walter, please? They are on their way; at least wait until Henry and the others get there.”

  “Don’t worry, they’ll find me.” My thumb hovered over the button. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Walter . . .”

  I punched it and looked at the indicator, which still read fully charged. I turned the satellite phone off and hoped for the best.

  The Junk-food Junkie was looking at me when I raised my face. “Popp’s dead?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good, he was a prick. How about the Mexican kid?”

  “Hector. Alive and well.”

  “What about Fingers?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He seemed to take a certain amount of satisfaction in that at least one of his companions was alive, but the troubled expression returned to his face as he began rocking again. “You cannot like leave me here.”

  “I don’t see as how I have much of a choice, Freddie. Unless you want to leave the comfortable environs of the Thiokol and accompany me farther up the range, but the weather report isn’t good.” I studied the Fed phone and wondered if any of the other ones had been left. I held the device out. “I don’t suppose they left any more of these, dead or otherwise?”

  “No.” He wiped his hands, rattling the restraints that held them close to the bench, and looked at the water bottle beside him. “How am I supposed to drink that, cuffed like I am?”

  “Pour it into the lid a bunch of times, but I’d not wait too long or it’ll freeze. The other option is keeping it close to your body.” I pushed my own water bottle inside the pack to help it stay insulated and then placed the satellite phone in one of the outside pockets of my jacket in hopes that the cold would do the battery some good.