Blood Appeal

by Lyle O'Connor

  The farther north we drove, the longer the sun hung in the sky. As planned, we’d made our first contact with Kuhl at a campground near Fort Nelson. He’d parked and waited on our arrival. We parked on the opposite side of the campground, and invited Kuhl over for dinner, and a quick meeting. Anna was on deck to cook. Watching her as she carved the chicken into parts with a small kitchen knife, I couldn’t help but notice her smile. It ushered in memories of Anna’s ability to work a blade on a man’s throat. She had minced few words in Thailand when she sliced a “Colombian necktie” on a guy. It was a work of art with a tactical blade. In Toronto, she was forced to perforate her abductors back with a common steak knife. The nature of a kill with an assassin’s knife required up close, and personal engagement that was slow work, and rarely preferred amongst those of us that kill.

  Engaging in small talk after dinner, the three of us chewed the fat recalling sites we’d seen thus far. Always below the casual surface chat were ideas about our mission. They remained unvoiced. Anna had brought up a more generalized question that made food for thought. “Do you ever wish there was another way?”

  “Another way to do what?” Kuhl asked.

  “To make a change,” Anna remarked.

  “Tried already,” I said. “Nothing else works. Maybe someday when the world gets away from the psychobabble kick of thinking everything can be cured, and address the real problem of personal responsibility for the choices made. Maybe then the government will step up and take care of business rather than trying feel-good classroom theories that always fail at the expense of more victims.”

  “Got that right,” Kuhl said, pointing his finger as if it were a handgun.

  The following day, before breakfast, Anna and I stretched our legs in the crisp morning air. We stopped by Kuhl’s van to invite him over for a bite, but he’d broke camp and was gone. We’d delayed our departure longer than intended. Spontaneous passion had interrupted our plans and moved us to explore new boundaries—we were picking up our lives where we’d left off.

  Anna had planned the trip using her MilePost travel guide. When we crossed the Laird River Bridge, she looked for a campground to take a break. We weren’t more than a mile and a half past the bridge when Anna spotted the place she later referred to, as her idea. She swung the motorhome into the RV Park.

  Anna rested her eyes while I explored the camp area. From the motorhome, I saw a plume of vapor that rose skyward above a cluster of trees a short distance from where we’d parked. A boardwalk trail worked its way through a patch of conifer trees toward the vapor column. A quarter mile trek and I came upon a body of water. The posted sign read natural hot springs and the proviso for usage.

  For a few minutes, I watched other people lounge in the hot springs. One or two were by themselves while others clustered into small groups. The outside temperature was warm, but a far cry from hot, and served as encouragement to get in the pool. I sat on one of the benches the park provided, kicked off my tennis shoes and stuck my socks inside. I checked my pockets for anything I didn’t want to get wet then waded in thigh deep. As I walked around the pool, water temperatures varied from scalding hot at the head of the spring to the average temperature of a typical Jacuzzi at the lower end. Unbeknownst to me, I’d been followed. “You look silly in there without swim trunks,” Anna said.

  “Well honey, thirty years ago, hippies bathed in these same pools without a stitch of clothing. Would you rather I take my clothes off entirely?” I couldn’t help myself. With a wink and a lascivious grin on my face, I continued “Come on in if you dare. I can feel things heating up.”

  Lacking a bathing suit didn’t deter Anna. Not at all. She saw my reply as an invitation to play. She spotted my shoes, slipped hers off, and aligned them next to mine. Dressed in body-hugging designer jeans and a silk tank top, she slipped into the pool. She leaned back in the waist deep water dipping her hair beneath the surface. I loved the wet look. When she sat forward, the silky top clung snugly to her ample breasts. I needed no further encouragement. Our bodies drifted together. Anna’s soft skin and delicate jawline begged for my touch. And touch I did. She responded in kind with her fingertips as she lightly traced my emerging goatee.

  We whiled away the time, long enough that I suggested we spend another day at the hot springs. Anna agreed on the condition that it was for therapeutic purposes. Her heart was set on my full recovery.

  Sweet girl.

  We walked hand in hand back to the motorhome. Once inside, Anna threw a smile my way that promised everything. Slowly she stripped off her clinging wet jeans, then slipped out of her top which captured my full attention.

  “We need to rinse off Walter. You don’t know what might be in the water.”

  “Good idea, sweetie.” Anna kicked her wet clothes into a pile and helped me get out of mine. She took me by the hand and led me the ten steps to the RV’s shower. “You first, or me?” She asked.

  I smiled and said, “Together of course, as good citizens it’s essential we conserve water!”

  She laughed, but then as I looked at the toilet with the shower head above, I mused, “That’s going to be hard for the both of us.”

  “Hmm, perhaps harder than you think,” and with that Anna turned the water on and adjusted the temperature. I took the seat while Anna straddled my legs facing me. It was quite a while before we noticed that the water finally ran out.

  Our extra day was therapeutic for our mending relationship but didn’t prove to be that conducive to my recovery.

  At Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, a community of nearly twenty-thousand, we restocked our supplies and filled the motorhome’s duel gas tanks. Two days later, just past Beaver Creek, we crossed into Alaska. A hundred miles further west, we took the Tok cutoff toward Glennallen.

  We contacted Kuhl by cell phone, apologized for our day delay, and arranged to meet at the intersection of the Glenn and Richardson Highways. Kuhl was waiting as planned. After we had refueled, we picked up fresh supplies and backtracked five miles to our camp destination on the Gulkana River.

  The image of a campground I had in my mind was one of peace and solitude. What we hadn’t factored into our plan was a camp-ground during the middle of the salmon season. The place was packed. Tents, trailers, and motorhomes filled the camp. Four-wheelers hauled anglers up and down the slopes to the river, while droves of fishermen lined the banks.

  At the camp entrance, I disembarked the RV while Anna went to the makeshift office located in a twenty-foot travel trailer. I watched one young boy’s face, filled with excitement, as he landed a fish and added to his memories of a lifetime. One guy climbed the embankment carrying a large trash bag with a noticeable outline of fish.

  “Hey buddy,” I said, “Looks like you did pretty well.”

  The fisherman set the bag on the ground and displayed the contents. With a brimming smile, he said, “We’re slaying ‘em today.” It was music to my ears. I’d come to slay ‘em too.

  Anna finished the registration process and motioned for me to return to the motorhome. “Problems?” I asked.

  Anna laughed. “No, they didn’t require ID, only money. So I registered us under the name, Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”

  We pulled into our designated site and took care of the RV hookups. The large number of people in the camp area appealed to me. I didn’t care for the social contact, but being lost in the crowd had its advantages. People were coming and going at all hours of the day and the portion of dusk to dawn that passed for night. It wasn’t likely anyone would notice us as we blended into the backdrop of humankind.

  We uncovered and backed my Avenger off the tow dolly and made her ready to use. Discreetly, Kuhl outfitted us with the weaponry that he’d transported. Once we’d finished settling in, he made plans to return to his camp area. He’d selected a campground three miles farther north.

  “Is zero-eight-hundred good for everyone?” I asked.

  “Breakfast will be on the table,” Anna replied.

&
nbsp; Kuhl nodded and took off. He’d arrived in the target area two days before Anna and me and had taken advantage of the downtime to conduct area reconnaissance. He’d mentioned there was a large gravel pit located a short drive north that might come in handy during the project. I wanted to waste gunpowder with the newest addition to my arsenal.

  At seven forty, Kuhl pounded on the RV’s front door. I’d misunderstood Anna from the night before. I’d interpreted her promise for a hardy breakfast to mean she’d intended to cook. I was mistaken. Her idea of breakfast was yogurt and a bagel. I took the initiative and tossed a half-pound of bacon into a skillet on the cooktop, popped some canned biscuits from the fridge into the oven, and fried the eggs in the bacon grease. Anna found the process unhealthy and totality disgusting. Kuhl, however, was appreciative.

  “Cell phone reception is poor in the area. Hit and miss at best. Don’t rely on coverage,” Kuhl said. “I have two-way portable transceivers we can carry. Keep in mind range will be limited by terrain.”

  “Kuhl, we need a reconnaissance of the training camp. We need to know if there are people living there. How much time do you need to complete the mapping?” I asked.

  “Three days from today,” Kuhl said.

  “Anna and I will recon our target’s physical residences. That means a road trip for us. Let’s get a bead on where these guys supposedly live.”

  Anna laid her files on the table and opened the covers. “These are the pictures I obtained from my investigative source in Portland.”

  I pointed to the first picture, “This guy here, Jake Boury, is the muscly A-team member I named Flattop.” Next to Boury’s folder was Hayden Leigh’s file. I put my finger on his picture and said, “Ponytail. He’s missing a piece of his right ear.” I moved to the last folder, picked up the photo of Brady Woolf and examined it carefully. “This guy is heavier now, but he still looks like a bug-eyed Pug on two legs.”

  Kuhl’s sardonic grin narrowed as if he’d bit into a crabapple. He fingered through the folders and with a harsh tone said, “Dead men, all.” The room fell silent. I liked the way Kuhl thought.

  I clapped and said, “Three days then.”

  Kuhl headed south toward the Richardson Highway. In less than a half hour, he’d be at his destination. He had a big task ahead, and three days wasn’t much time. We believed from the inception of the plan that the project’s success would hinge on Kuhl’s powers of observation and detailed mapping of the training camp, the best place for the kills. We needed weak points identified on which to capitalize. If possible, put eyes and ears in the place, and wire it with explosives.

  Unlike Kuhl, Anna and I would eat up our time traveling. We were up against a two-hundred-mile road trip to Anchorage—one way. If we traveled on to Moose Pass to recon Woolf ’s place, we’d add one-hundred-fifty-miles to the trip. The importance of our observations depended significantly on how well the project came together at the training camp. If we had to scrap the Glennallen idea, we’d have to engage our targets where they were most secure—their homes. As we travelled south we picked up cellphone service. Anna called ahead and snagged a room at the Golden Lion Hotel in Anchorage.

  I was capable of driving my car, but Anna asked for the responsibility. I conceded. After two hours of hilly curves, doglegs, roadside overlooks, and steep descents into valley floors, the road emptied out into the Palmer flats. I knew our location immediately. Suffering and sorrow hovered over this place like a canopy. The loss had broken many hearts, and I felt their pain.

  A voice deep within whispered, “Revenge me.” I recognized the voice as a reaffirmation of my Calling and not the beckoning from a ghostly being; although I’ve never known for sure. Palmer was home to Dawn Simmonds, the young native girl murdered in Missouri. I was here solely to collect on the debt.

  An hour later we arrived in Anchorage. I’d grown hungry for the taste of retaliation. We checked into the Golden Lion and set up our agenda. Hayden Leigh’s house sat only minutes away from the hotel. We wasted no time and traveled toward the Chugach Mountains on 36th Avenue for a block, then hooked a right. We’d passed four streets before we spotted Ponytail’s driveway.

  Leigh’s house, a 70’s style two-story with the garage directly under a large bay window, sat fifteen yards off the beaten trail. I’d hoped to see Leigh’s motorhome in the driveway—it wasn’t there. Did he still own it? Had they returned to Alaska or had they left again? The fact was, without putting an eyeball on his RV, it remained a missing piece to our puzzle.

  We made a loop around the block, turned around and came back up the street from the opposite direction. With Leigh’s work history, I had to question how he could afford a house in this middle-class neighborhood.

  “Start mapping. There’s no place to set up,” Anna said.

  “Do another loop.” We went around the block and pulled the car to a stop. “No matter where we set up, people can look out their windows and see us. We can’t take the chance of being seen. Let’s map it on the fly.” Fieldwork was my talent, not Anna’s. Her forte was the internet, fact building, and execution. Anna drove a loop twice more while I quickly scribbled details and drew outlines. We pulled into an empty city transit bus stop and made distance estimations and recommendations for target extraction from the home. Then we drove the loop again until I was confident we’d picked up enough critical information to initiate a home invasion if necessary. I closed my notebook and said, “Let’s check out Boury’s lair.”

  Anna cut a U-turn and cruised back toward 36th Avenue. “Besides the motorhome, Leigh is the registered owner of a silver, 1990 Ford F250.”

  “Wow, I’m impressed. How about Boury?”

  “A red, Jeep Cherokee.”

  Back in front of the Golden Lion Hotel, we turned south onto the Seward Highway making our way to the Dimond Boulevard exit. We hooked a right on Dimond and followed the map to Jewel Lake Road, where we turned right on West 84th Street and into a housing maze. Boury’s shanty, a 50’s style box house, was located one space from a corner lot. Again, no vehicles were present at the address. Kitty corner from the target location, we set up observation in a parking lot of an apartment complex.

  Seedy neighborhoods rarely took notice of two people parked in a car. Drug deals happened all the time. Unless we’d landed in an ethnic area, as Caucasians we’d be overlooked by locals.

  I mapped the street accesses, observation points, and house details of Boury’s residence while Anna kept an eye out on the place. The weak point was immediately apparent. We’d be able to drive directly to the rear of the house via the driveway. With no outside light fixtures, and partially hidden from view by a six-foot tall wood fence, it was inviting. However, Alaska in the summer has an additional issue to consider. It is the land of the midnight sun. That meant we were unable to rely on the cover of darkness. In this neighborhood, people might be up and about throughout the night. A home invasion would be an absolute last ditch effort.

  Activity at Boury’s place was easy to watch. Without a garage on the property, everything was in open view. We’d be able to photograph visitors and have an accurate body count before we fired a shot. We didn’t see any movement in or around the house, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone home. We hadn’t been on location long enough to determine that.

  As it approached five o’clock, traffic flow increased to an uncomfortable level. Ordinarily, Palatini developed project plans over a span of time to ensure a positive outcome. We’d placed ourselves in a time crunch, and the current phase had to be shortened if we were to get a visual on the three target locations. “Let’s go back to the hotel,” I said. “We can use the time to make preparations for the trip to Woolf ’s place in Moose Pass tomorrow morning.”

  Anna fired up the Avenger, backed out of the parking spot where we’d concealed ourselves in plain view and pulled out onto the roadway. At the first stop sign, Anna cranked the wheel to the left to retrace our steps out of the housing maze. We cruised the block betwe
en cross streets and slowed for the stop sign.

  An older model red SUV caught my eye as it made the corner, passing directly in front of our vehicle’s path. Three people were in the car, two in the front seat, and the other person in the back.

  “There! Right, there!” Anna probably thought I’d gone nuts as I dramatically pointed at the passing car. Anna had already taken notice.

  Admittedly the unexpected surge of adrenaline had taken control of my reins. I was fit to be tied. It had been too long since I’d been dowsed with exhilaration. I recaptured my cool and readied for action.

  “Got it,” Anna said in a pacifying manner. She’d taken note of my reaction to the rush. I’d gotten a good look at the driver, and was sure it was Flattop. But it was the guy in the front passenger seat who stole my attention. As the SUV completed the corner, I spun to take a second look, and that’s when it hit me. The passenger riding shotgun was Duke—and he’d turned to look back at me, too.

  Even with our increasing distance, our eyes met. I was sure the element of surprise was lost. If any doubt lingered whether Duke recognized me or the Avenger, it immediately vanished.

  The adrenaline that had kicked in by our surprise encounter continued to course through my veins. My Walther P99 delivered to my hand like clockwork from its holster. Anna looked at me and started the car forward. I slipped the silencer in place and jacked a round in the pipe.

  “Their brake lights are on. Are you ready to do this now?” Anna asked.

  The temptation to end this here and now played on my mind, but there was no sense interrupting the quietness of the neighborhood. If an unplanned shootout was avoidable, it was the right choice. “Roll-on out and we’ll play it by ear.” Anna continued forward and made a turn to the south.