by John A. Daly
“He’s the pussy who took off in the Cadillac,” the man with the silver hair freely answered after dwelling only a couple of seconds on the question. Though the man tried to hide it, Lumbergh detected bitterness in his voice. Obviously he hadn’t expected his apparent boss to leave him behind.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter!” Lumbergh shouted. His voice trembled from the adrenaline bouncing through his veins. “We’ll get him after we take you down!”
A string of deep, hollow laughter echoed down from the top of the driveway. Lumbergh took the opportunity to scoot forward a little and let the door hang open no more than an inch, hoping the man with the silver hair wouldn’t notice. He didn’t seem to.
“Who’s we, hillbilly? You’re out here all alone, unless you’re hoping for the forest animals to come save you!” He ended the statement with bellowing laughter.
Little more than an arm’s length sat between Lumbergh and what he needed from the Jeep: The radio receiver, whose cord could be stretched outside to where he sat, and the spare clips for his gun. If he could rattle the man who had him pinned down, if only for a second or two, he could lay down some quick fire and snag what he needed from the Jeep. He relaxed his breathing and let his mind piece together the earlier words of his assailant along with what little he knew of Moretti. Though he wasn’t nearly as seasoned of a bullshitter as his brother-in-law, desperation urged him to give it a shot.
“Valentino gave you up, asshole!” he shouted, praying that his words had more meaning to the man than they had to him. “He gave it all up! Everything! You’ve got the FBI coming after you—the Las Vegas office working with the Denver bureau. Bringing your shit across state lines wasn’t the brightest of moves.”
He waited for a response but received none. He hoped he had struck a nerve of some kind. He continued. “A fleet of agents started pouring through these mountains this morning! They’re on to you, man! None of you are getting away!”
Without raising his arm into view, he pointed his gun to the sky and squeezed off two quick rounds, hoping the sudden shots and the echoes they’d create would force the assailant to take cover long enough to make his move. He swung open the Jeep’s door and lunged for his radio receiver. Without hesitation, an onslaught of bullet fire shredded through the windshield and side window. He felt the collision of bullets stream into his underarm. The high-pitched, agonizing cry that he heard didn’t seem to have come from him, but it did. His body crashed down along the running board of the Jeep before he fell to the dirt. He no longer felt his gun in his hand. Only incredible pain.
The deep cackling of the man who’d served him that pain replaced the sound of gunfire, but it was no less terrifying. Both of the moth’s wings had been clipped, and Lumbergh’s twisted face released groans and snarls of frustration and utter helplessness.
“I think you’re full of shit, hillbilly,” spoke the man whose voice now sounded closer.
Lumbergh knew he was being approached. He painfully twisted his neck from side to side as warm blood further dampened his shirt. He couldn’t find his gun.
The edge of the man’s imposing shadow advanced into Lumbergh’s view along the road and he tried his best to dig his heels into the dirt and gravel to slide along his back in the opposite direction. His lack of mobility heightened the sense of hopelessness that already accompanied his panicked state.
His mind darted straight to Diana and he knew that there would be no greater test of her steadfastness among crisis than his death. He saw her long, wavy hair dangling above him and smelled her scent through his own sweat. When the wide, crooked, and sadistic smile of the man with the silver hair rose above the hood of his Jeep, he felt as though he had been hit by another bullet, not of lead but of punishing angst.
The lenses of the man’s thinly framed glasses failed to shield his demonic eyes that seemed to read Lumbergh’s every thought with their glaring imposition. Lumbergh held his breath and waited for the man to raise his automatic. Instead he watched the impulsive widening of the man’s eyes and the eerie transition from his large grin to an awkward grimace. His shoulders slumped and he winced as he gracelessly spun around on the toes of his boots, lending his attention toward the front of the house.
The lodged shaft of a long and dark metallic arrow protruded squarely from between the man’s shoulder blades. Deep red fletchings that matched the color of the small but growing stain of blood from the arrow’s entry flared out its tail like flames.
An enraged, animalistic snarl filtered out through the man’s clenched teeth and he raised his automatic rifle and took quick aim before firing into the forest north of the house.
From that forest, Ron Oldhorse let the thick trunk of the tall pine he’d taken cover behind bear the brunt of the rapid bullet fire. Though his face remained characteristically stoic and emotionless, his mind couldn’t fathom how the man with the silver hair was still standing. He’d hit him dead center.
From the scene Oldhorse had come upon after running in the direction of the noisy barrage of gunfire that had erupted through the forest, he feared he’d arrived too late. The chief ’s Jeep had been turned into Swiss cheese, and a trail of bloodstained earth leading around to its hidden side was all he could see of the lawman. But if there was any chance Lumbergh was still breathing, he wasn’t about to leave him. Abandonment was not an option.
It shouldn’t have been an option years ago, the day a younger Ronald Wilson accidentally struck a young Bosnian Serb with a US military Jeep during an overseas peacekeeping operation. An angry mob in the town of Brčko in northern Bosnia kept him from attending to the woman’s severe wounds. Wilson was forced to speed away to protect himself and the men he was responsible for. He learned later that the woman had died without receiving treatment quickly enough. A mother of two. The fear of dying and the hopelessness he read in her eyes was a dark, persistent memory that Oldhorse hadn’t been able to move on from. It transformed him into the spiritual yet misunderstood man that he now was.
As he told Toby’s mother, Joan Parker, last night as she sat under a blanket that provided her no comfort, he would die before he left a lost and battered soul behind.
Keeping his shoulders tight to his sides, Oldhorse lifted an arm up and snagged a fresh arrow from his pack. He lowered its nock to the center of his bow’s taut string and breathed in through his nose. He waited for the intermittent discharges of the rifle to stop before he stole a glance around the splintered edge of the tree to see the man. He had moved in closer than Oldhorse had guessed, limping noticeably from a shot he had taken to his thigh. Only about twenty yards away. A used magazine dropped from the man’s hand to the ground and he quickly pulled a new one from his jacket pocket. Before he could shove it into the base of his rifle, Oldhorse was on the move.
Like a whisper in the wind, he wove through dense trees and scrub with the weaving locks of his long hair chasing him. He hoped to draw the man’s attention further away from the chief.
The man with the silver hair howled and shouted unintelligibly as he unloaded his rifle. The sweeping movement of his arm from side to side sent lead through the surrounding terrain like an enraged swarm of bees chasing a predator from its nest. From his lips poured incessant rage that sounded of a mixture of foreign tongue and unleashed fury. His face, contorted in anguish, glistened from sweat. Wheezing gusts of air escaped his flared nostrils.
His compressed gaze had lost track of the spry man who’d gotten the jump on him, but he knew he was close. He mouthed a silent promise to finish that quarrel. When he swung his body back toward the Jeep—off-balance and fatigued from the metal tip of the arrow wedged between his lungs—his eyes bulged in a display of perhaps the first grain of fear Alvar Montoya had ever experienced in his life.
“Hillbilly?” he muttered.
A half second later, his forehead imploded just above the bridge of his nose. Smoke drifted out from the hollow trail of the bullet nested in his cranium and he stumbled forward on rando
m footing before collapsing to his knees and then his chest. Yards in front of him lay Chief Gary Lumbergh sprawled out along the bloodstained dirt road, his Glock held tightly at the end of his shaking, outstretched arm. Smoke rose from the barrel before his grip loosened and the gun fell from his hand.
“I’m from Chicago, asshole!” he groaned before his eyes squinted shut and he collapsed.
Thursday
(Two Days Later)
Chapter 51
“Just getting off the plane now, D,” he spoke into the receiver as he stepped in front of an obese, curly haired woman who was being pushed up the gateway carpet in a wheelchair.
“Hey! How ’bout a little patience,” the woman barked in protest at the large man who had crippled the momentum of the struggling flight attendant who was doing her best to guide the chariot forward.
Sean didn’t even hear her.
With his face cleanly shaven, his hair combed, and his large body clad in fresh clothes that let him resemble a vacationing tourist, he continued, “Yeah, I’m on a cellphone. A friend let me borrow it.”
Sean’s thick neck swiveled and he glanced back at Lisa who offered him a smile from down the jet bridge where she was stuck along with other passengers behind the slow-moving woman in the wheelchair. She was dressed in dark blue jeans that fit her well and a white shirt that was partially covered by an unbuttoned, ecru jacket. The strap of a small, red purse hung over her shoulder. From where Sean stood, the welt given to her from her attacker at the cottage was far less noticeable.
He stepped off into the terminal and continued his conversation with his sister.
“You know, when I told Mom that you saved a woman’s life, she said she was proud of you.”
“Bullshit,” he answered at a volume that compelled a mother waiting for a departing flight to cup her young son’s ears with her hands and reprimand Sean with a disapproving scowl. He didn’t notice it.
Diana chuckled and insisted that she was telling the truth. A half-grin developed across his coarse lips.
“I’ve got someone here who wants to talk to you,” she said. “Hold on.”
From a small Lakeland hospital room decorated with vases of flowers and a couple of gift baskets, Diana kept a hand firmly wrapped around her husband’s while she held the corded phone receiver to his ear. Gary sat up in a reclined position as best he could with an arrangement of shoulder cast, thick bandages, and IV tubes constraining him.
“Hello, Sean,” he said with some dryness in his voice. “Welcome back.”
“Hollywood!” Sean shouted over the phone in near jubilation.
Diana watched a lighthearted sneer form across her husband’s face.
“How are the nurses treating you? I bet they love having a real-life celebrity under their care!”
Diana could hear her brother’s remark through the phone. She grinned at her husband as she watched him shake his head.
Gary said, “Yeah. Diana told me it’s been all over the news.”
“National news, Hollywood,” Sean interjected. “Your ugly mug was on CNN this morning. I saw it at the airport in Michigan.”
“It looks like you weren’t kidding about Vincenzo Moretti being a big shot,” said Gary. “Not just in the casino world, but also in drug trafficking. I guess the DEA’s been onto him for some time, building a case. With Tony Fabrizio singing like a bird, they’re getting more than they ever could have hoped for.”
“Yeah, Fabrizio’s soft. I’ve never seen a grown man cry like that. Have they found Moretti?”
“No. Not yet. A guy from the bureau thinks he may be on his way to Mexico. Maybe Canada.”
“Why do they think that?”
“They found his passport in Alvar Montoya’s car. They think he might have had someone FedEx it to them from Vegas,” Gary said. “Whatever’s in that ledger had him scared enough to want to leave the country. Without his passport, only the landlocked ones are going to let him in. Speaking of Alvar Montoya, it turns out that he’s got a rap sheet four pages long.”
“Big surprise,” Sean grumbled.
Gary let his wife hold a large cup of water with a straw in front of him. He took a sip before continuing. “Most notably, he was wanted in connection with the murder of two US border agents down in Texas. Seems he’d been under the radar for the past couple of years, going by the name of Alvar Sanchez. The Feds didn’t know he was the same guy. He dyed his hair silver, wore glasses he probably didn’t need, and carried a plethora of phony identification.”
“Well, he won’t hurt anybody else from the grave,” asserted Sean. “And you finally got to fire your gun.”
Gary’s tongue formed a ball and pressed it against the inside of his cheek. “In the line of duty, Sean,” he said with some annoyance. “I’ve fired all kinds of guns.”
He knew Sean would feel compelled to get in at least one dig.
Diana squeezed her husband’s hand while he spoke, grateful to God that he was alive and that surgeons told him he’d recover from his injuries over time with the right rehabilitation. Maybe never one hundred percent, but enough to return to work as Winston’s police chief. The irony of it all, though, was tough to digest. They had left Chicago, in part, because she worried for her husband’s safety there. She would have never thought in a hundred years that Winston would prove to be more dangerous. Still, the look in her face admitted she enjoyed watching the pride in his eyes when he spoke of his involvement in his first serious case since leaving the big city. She also saw some rare vulnerability from him since she arrived in the hospital. A sincere appreciation for her companionship and love. She was looking forward to having him home for a few months to rest and heal, and had already tossed every pack of chewing gum in the house into the trash. She mused at the comical image of him sharing the television with her mother.
At that airport, Lisa had seen Sean’s grimace of pain when he leaned his knife shoulder to the post beside him while on the phone with his brother-in-law. She was at his side in seconds.
“Ask him if the FBI has the ledger,” she whispered to him.
He almost grinned at the hint of perfume that met his nostrils as she leaned in to him. “Do the Feds have the ledger?” he asked into the phone.
“They do,” Lumbergh said. “It turned up in a mail room at the Las Vegas branch. Unopened until we let them know they should have it. They haven’t told me what’s in it. I doubt they will.”
“They were probably just happy to have someone do their jobs for them,” said Sean.
No one spoke for a few seconds as each waited for the other to say something.
“I should have believed you, Sean,” Lumbergh eventually said.
Sean could imagine Diana’s surprise in reaction to her husband’s words.
Lumbergh added, “You were right.”
There was only silence on Sean’s end until he finally responded with, “I bet that hurt to say.”
“Yes,” Lumbergh replied. “But you did good detective work. You didn’t give up. That’s commendable.”
Sean grinned. “You know, I think I was right about Tariq being a terrorist too.”
“No, you weren’t.”
Both men could hear each other smile through the phone. It was the first time the two of them had held a civil conversation. Respect had been earned.
“How long are you going to be out of commission?” Sean asked.
Lumbergh sighed. “Oh, I’ll be back before anyone misses me.”
“Who’s in charge until then?” Sean asked eagerly.
“Of the office? Jefferson, of course.”
“Jesus,” Sean bemoaned. “You’d be better off just handing your badge over to Toby.”
Lumbergh belched out an abrupt laugh that Sean figured had awakened his injuries because Diana took over the conversation.
“Joan says that Toby put together a really nice photo collage for Uncle Zed’s funeral service, Sean,” came her voice.
Sean’s shoulders lowered,
and Lisa noticed his smile deflate a little.
“He’s really looking forward to seeing you back,” she continued. “He feels terrible about Rocco though. He feels like he let you down, because you put him in charge and all.”
Sean sighed and said, “He didn’t let me down. I owe him.”
He wished his sister well with the promise that he would be back home to Winston in a few hours. He then handed Lisa her phone back. She ended the call, snapped it shut, and dropped it into her purse.
The two strolled down the wide airport terminal as others walked faster around them, reflecting back on some of the conversations they’d had on the plane and over the past forty-eight hours. Sean was cognizant to the looks he received, having such an attractive woman by his side. Lisa needed to catch a connecting flight back to Nevada where her late husband’s body was to be shipped, so the two stopped when they reached the center of the terminal.
“Have you figured out when you’re going to make it back to Michigan to get your car?” she asked him with a grin.
“I’m not sure. Once the funeral’s over, I’ll figure it out. I’m not planning on leaving it behind. We’ve been through too much together.”
She nodded and reached into her purse. She pulled out a small white, rectangular box with a shiny red ribbon wrapped tightly around it. She held it up to him in the palm of her delicate hand.
“What’s this?” he asked, suspicion lacing his voice.
She smiled brightly. “A gift.”
Some reluctance to accept it was apparent in his gaze, but she insisted, watching his large fingers toy with the ribbon.
“You just have to slide it off,” she said.
He smirked and tugged off the ribbon before peeling up the lid. His lips pursed at the sight of a black, sleek-looking cellphone that was nestled inside in red tissue paper, matching the color of the ribbon. His eyes lifted to meet hers. She grinned again. The radiance of her face produced a fluttering sensation deep in his gut.