Smoked Out (David Wolf Book 6)

by Jeff Carson

  Pope pulled the trigger, silencing him for good with a three round burst.

  Handing back the gun to Luther, he reached down and unclasped the talisman from Fred Fontaine’s dead neck.

  Fingers drenched in blood, he stood up and placed it around his own neck.

  The medallion that hung from a silver chain, known as “The Talisman,” was a symbol of The Chairman’s power within the organization, and now it’s warm metal rested on Pope’s chest. It was heavier than he imagined it would be. Perhaps it was a harbinger of the responsibility to come.

  Raising his hands, he turned full circle once again, giving the men a good look at the historic moment. He made sure there was no mistaking what had just happened.

  Half the men, those who called Pope “The Pope” with genuine reverence, had known this moment was coming. The other half of the men looked down at the three lifeless bodies among them and the dead Chairman in front of them and understood—those who were against the changing tide were dead.

  Every man raised their right hand in a fist and hailed him.

  “Chairman!” they chanted.

  Pope stood for a good minute in the glory of the moment and then whisked himself up the steps and into the Command Building.

  Luther and Trey, the two men with the M4s, followed closely.

  The door shut behind them, and the noise of the men was drowned out and replaced by a tiny radio playing classic rock. He flicked it off and the three men stood in silence.

  Pope paced on the low-pile carpet for a few moments, listening to the squeak of the decaying wood underneath. It smelled like coffee and old food in here. He would need to change that, but there was work to do first.

  “We have trouble,” he said.

  The two men looked at each other.

  “The Sheriff. Wolf. He’s escaped the FBI’s clutches, and he’s with a rogue agent who’s helping him. A woman. I destroyed the information in the storage unit.”

  Luther nodded. “And?”

  “After I burned it, Wolf and this FBI bitch showed up. They took my truck and phone.” He paced some more. “They need to die, fast. We need to move. Get ten men ready. We move in ten minutes. We’ll convene at GH 3. It’s nearest Rocky Points.”

  “Wait a minute,” Trey said.

  Pope felt a flash of rage, but let it dissipate. Trey was much taller and bigger, and he also held an M4 at the moment. “What?”

  “You killed the lawyer and his family, correct?” Trey asked.

  Pope considered not answering for a moment, as Pope answered to no man in this organization as of two minutes ago, but Luther looked interested. It was good leadership to get other men involved. “Yes.”

  “And you got the second agent this morning.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the original FBI threat taken care of, but what is this female FBI agent doing with Wolf? Who is this female FBI agent?”

  Pope stared at Trey. “Agent Tedescu’s new partner.”

  Trey rolled his eyes. “Shit. So she might know everything, right along with this guy Wolf. Tedescu could have easily told her. And now they have your phone and truck?”

  Pope walked to the paper-strewn desk and started opening and closing drawers. In the third drawer there was a Glock sitting on a notebook.

  “So we’ve got to move on this Wolf guy,” Trey said as if it were his own original thought. “And this other agent. Or else we’re really screwed. Where are they now?”

  Pope picked up the gun and checked the chamber for a round, and then with his trophy-winning speed aimed and pulled the trigger, shooting Trey in between the eyes.

  As Trey’s eyes rolled into the back of his head the M4 exploded in fire, three rounds spraying into the wood paneled wall, and then he collapsed to the floor.

  Pope aimed through the smoke at Luther. “You want to tell me some more things I already know?”

  Luther shook his head. “We move in ten minutes.”

  Pope slid the Glock in his pants and nodded. “Get eight men now that Trey’s decided to quit, and then we move. Trey was right about everything. We have to kill these two, the ex-Sheriff and FBI agent, or we’re screwed.” He looked at the wall clock. “Is that right? The time?”

  Luther pulled out his phone and checked it. “Yeah.”

  “We still have five men worth a shit near Rocky Points, so I called and mobilized them. They know what to look for—my pickup truck—and they know where to look for it—on County 17 between Carbondale and Rocky Points. There’s no way they’re going to risk coming in on highways with all the attention they’re getting from law enforcement.”

  “Who’s in Rocky Points? Fellman and Larson? That crew?”

  Pope nodded with a confident smile.

  Luther smiled back. Besides Pope, Fellman and Larson were the two most ruthless and clever men in the Organization there were.

  “They’re setting up an ambush, and then we’ll be in the clear. It won’t matter what those two know.”

  “Time to engagement?”

  Pope glanced at the clock again. “Thirty minutes.”

  Luther nodded, clearly he had another question but was afraid to ask.

  “What?”

  Luther shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Just ask. I’m not going to shoot you.”

  He stood straight. “And if they get through the ambush?”

  Pope hid the welling anger. “Then we’ll hold a knife to the kid’s throat to smoke them out. Then we’ll cut off his head in front of them. Then we’ll give the bitch to Reichlund, and if she’s not dead after that we’ll give her to the rest of the men until she is. And only then, after that guy Wolf watches the entire thing will we start on him.”

  Averting his eyes, Luther looked down at the lifeless man at his feet and swallowed. He was probably thinking how much the dead man had sacrificed of himself to get Pope into power, only minutes ago shooting the deadliest man he’d ever known in the leg, and how quickly Pope had disposed of him for insubordination.

  That’s the kind of leader Pope was going to be. “Move. And get someone to clean this shit up.”

  Luther nodded and was out the door.

  Pope’s body was electrified. He felt a pang of regret looking down at Trey, but knew he needed to be quick and decisive, using measured doses of violence, in order to rule this dangerous mob of men.

  So help him, if these two weren’t taken out, the violence was going to be biblical.

  Chapter 27

  Wolf’s head bumped against something and he opened his eyes.

  After a couple blinks he realized he’d hit his head on a window on the inside of a truck cab, and then he remembered just where he was and who he was with.

  “He lives!”

  He stretched his arms and straightened up in the ample passenger seat. “How long was I sleeping?”

  “An hour and a half.”

  “Where are we?”

  Luke jabbed a thumb backwards. “About fifteen miles past Aspen.”

  They were rumbling on a two-lane dirt road through God’s country. The hills on either side of them were glowing yellow with changing aspen leaves, with the occasional blood red burst of color near the sparkling river to Wolf’s right. Flanked on either side were steep hills and mountains sculpted from brown and maroon earth.

  “What time is it?”

  “Three p.m.. We’ll get into Rocky Points in an hour, hour and a half.”

  Wolf found an unopened water bottle in their sack of groceries and took a swig. The cool liquid filled his belly and gave him energy.

  “You’re looking decent.”

  Wolf noticed Luke had pulled her hair back again. Her face was cleaned of any soot and when she smiled there was no more discoloration on her teeth.

  “Ditto. Except for the slouch outfit of course.”

  She looked down and rubbed the soot marks on her tee shirt, brushing up against one of her breasts in the process. “Did the job, didn’t it?”
/>   Wolf nodded absently, watching her hand slide across her chest.

  “You men are always looking a foot and a half lower than you should be.”

  Wolf raised his gaze and felt his face redden.

  “See?” She shook her head. “Bunch of simpletons. Every last one of you.”

  Wolf thought about the pile of charred papers and pictures again. “We should have taken all that burned stuff. We could have sifted through it more carefully to get an idea what we were looking at.”

  “We need to give ourselves a break. We narrowly missed getting killed by that guy, and then we had him unconscious and bleeding on the floor with cops driving up on us.”

  Wolf looked at her. “What happened to the doom and gloom woman I was riding with earlier?”

  “She was hungry.”

  Another grove of aspens flicked by the window. “It was a pile of papers that guy was willing to kill for. Willing to kill an entire family for.”

  Luke’s eyes glazed over, as if the images of the dead family were haunting her.

  “You said there was an envelope there? Just an empty envelope?”

  Luke blinked. “Yep.”

  “Was there any writing on the envelope?”

  “None. I remember thinking it wasn’t mail. No stamps or postmarks. It was torn on the top and empty.”

  “So it was sealed.”

  “Yeah. What are you getting at?”

  Wolf shook his head. “I don’t know. Did you know the lawyer?”

  “No. Never seen him before. But my SAC said he worked with some of the agents in the bureau.”

  “Worked with Tedescu?”

  She nodded. “Sure seemed like it. I’m not sure why else we would have been there. I guess he could have been a family friend of his.”

  They came around a bend and started down a long straightaway. The road cut through a grove of trees with gold leaves shimmering in the afternoon light.

  “What do you think that guy’s going to do when he gets out of that storage unit?” Wolf asked.

  “Gets out? Like I said, we have his phone, his gun, there were no tools in there to help him out.”

  “Yeah, but someone could drive up, maybe go into another storage unit down the row, and he could yell for help.”

  “What are the odds of that? Nil. That guy is screwed. He’s gonna starve in there. I hope it’s a cold one tonight.”

  Wolf shook his head. “No. He’ll get out today. There’s security at those places. People who work there. If it were me, I’d just bang on the door until someone let me out. Someone would hear the racket. He’ll get out.”

  They rode in silence for a beat. “So what? What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I wish I would have killed that guy. I’m really regretting that I didn’t.”

  She turned down the radio and they both rode in silence.

  Wolf opened the glove compartment and took out the Beretta pistol he’d taken from the tattooed man. Racking the slide back, he made sure it was loaded and then put it back in and shut the compartment.

  “You thinking we’re in danger from him?”

  Wolf ignored her. He was sitting forward in his seat, his pulse was pounding, his palms gripping his knees. It was like an equation had finally been solved in his subconscious and it was being uploaded to his waking mind, ever so slowly.

  “What?”

  “Slow down.”

  “What? Why?”

  The road ahead was a long straightaway with a steep embankment to the left and deciduous trees interspersed with pines lining the right.

  She let off the gas and pressed the brake, slowing to twenty miles per hour.

  Twice Wolf and his squad had been caught in ambushes in his six tour service as an Army Ranger. Both times he’d had the same feeling after the carnage had been over—that he’d sensed it before it happened. Many of the other men swore the same thing. Before both ambushes their Staff Sergeant had been vocal about anyone speaking up if they felt anything was off, and both times they had happened anyway.

  After that, they had been one of the most skittish and reactive squads the Army had ever known. It was a trait that was ingrained in Wolf’s DNA now.

  A discoloration in the trees caught Wolf’s eye. It was silver and shiny, the chrome bumper of a vehicle.

  Quickly he dropped the glove compartment door and pulled out the Beretta, spilling papers out onto his feet.

  “Shit, what?”

  Pressing his face against the window as they passed the vehicle, he saw it was a big Dodge truck backed into the trees.

  Two men sat inside with their elbows out the windows, and both locked eyes with Wolf.

  The last fleeting image Wolf saw before they disappeared behind passing trees was the passenger bringing a radio to his mouth.

  “Stop!”

  Luke mashed the brakes and the rear end swung to the side as they skidded to a halt.

  A cloud of dust enveloped them, but not before Wolf caught a glimpse of a patch of red in the trees up ahead on the right.

  “We’re being ambushed.”

  Luke squinted and peered over her shoulder. “What? That truck back there?”

  “Yes. Get in the back, I’m driving.” Wolf took off his seatbelt and started climbing toward her.

  She froze for an instant and then sprung into action, flying out of the seat and diving into the back of the cab.

  Wolf crammed himself into the seat, which was way too close to the wheel for him, shifted into reverse, and pushed the accelerator.

  The diesel engine roared and rocks spit forward as they reversed. Looking over his shoulder, it was almost impossible to see any direction through the dark tints and multiple panes of glass, but he kept his foot pushed to the floor anyway.

  “Open that back window. When we hit them climb into the back and take out the passenger. Shoot through the window.”

  Luke reached up, one hand holding her pistol and the other unlatching the slide window and then pulling it open.

  Wolf was completely blind. “Get down!”

  She ducked out of the way and Wolf saw he was nearly too late.

  Wrenching the wheel to the right, the rear wheels careened off the road and bounced through a dip. Wolf sagged and then shot up in his seat, and his head connected with the roof and his teeth clamped together.

  Tasting blood from where his molars pierced his tongue, he slammed back into the seat as the truck stopped with a metallic thud.

  Feeling the pistol still firm in his hand, he opened the door and got out as fast as he could. Immediately he stumbled, as the ground was lower than he’d expected.

  Landing on one knee, Wolf felt plastic and metal shards needle into his back as a barrage of bullets smacked into the open door.

  Elbow already on the ground and the gunman’s fire raking above him, Wolf dropped all the way to the ground and started pulling the trigger. Only after the second shot did he have a bead on the blaze of fire coming out of the muzzle of an automatic rifle ahead near the trunk of a tree. The third shot was properly aimed, and so was the fourth and fifth, and the incoming fire stopped.

  Wolf sprang to his feet. Ears ringing and eyes stinging from the gunpowder smoke, he aimed at the windshield of the truck behind them. It was empty.

  Ducking just in time, Wolf stumbled forward as the cab of their truck exploded in glass and mayhem, and then just as quickly it stopped, and then there were two muffled shots coming from inside the truck bed.

  With raised pistol, Wolf stepped to the tree trunk and fired two rounds into the man he’d previously shot, sealing the deal.

  Wolf bent over and wrenched the M4 out of the man’s hands, searing his fingers on the muzzle. The strap caught under the man’s arm and Wolf stepped on his bearded face to get it free.

  “I got him!” Luke yelled from the back of the truck.

  Wolf’s hearing was still muted from the gunfire, but he could hear the gurgle of the diesel engine as it still ran. He sprinted ba
ck to the truck, got into the seat, shifted to drive and stepped on the gas again.

  He took a right, toward the second waiting ambush vehicle, which was now pulling out onto the road.

  Wolf glanced in the rearview and saw Luke tumbling back in the bed of the truck, light streaming in on one side where she’d shot out the glass.

  “Get down and hang on!”

  As the truck ahead pulled out onto the road, Wolf saw it was another big diesel engine pickup with four doors. It jammed to a stop halfway out, the driver clearly shocked at the sight of them speeding toward them at fifty miles per hour.

  Wolf kept his foot on the gas and the speedometer needle climbed higher.

  When they were a mere fifty yards away, Wolf swung the truck to the left side of the road to pass and saw three men tumbling out of the doors with guns in hand.

  A smattering of bullets connected on the passenger side of the truck as Wolf sped by, leaving them in a cloud of dust.

  Now traveling seventy miles per hour, a bend to the right approached fast and he jammed the brakes. Sliding on all four wheels, he was lucky the turn was gentle, but there was a sharp curve to the left ahead.

  Foot still pressing hard on the brake, he fishtailed back and forth, getting his speed to twenty miles per hour, then took the left turn. He then hugged the left side of the road and came to a complete stop.

  “Careful.” Luke poked her head out the broken window of the truck bed topper.

  With the M4 in his clutches he sprinted back to the sharp curve in the road.

  Over his straining breath, the pulse pounding in his ears, and growing tone blaring in his left eardrum, he heard the approach of a diesel engine coming around the bend.

  He slid to a stop and raised the M4 to his shoulder, and fired the instant the red hood of the truck came into view.

  For the first three bullets his aim climbed too high. He compensated for the muzzle kick and red spray and flailing limbs told him he’d hit the mark. The truck revved and rolled over the edge of the road and out sight, and then there was crunching metal, and then nothing.

  Turning back to the truck, he raised the M4 again, briefly aiming at Luke who stood in the road, and then beyond her.

  He walked forward and kept the rifle aimed up the road, toward danger that never showed itself.