Recon

by David McCaleb

  Lam reached down, patted the dog’s head, and rubbed behind his ears. Bud’s hind leg twitched in a dead man’s scratch. A hinge creaked behind, and the hound’s tail wagged. Lam turned and threw up both arms as if shielding his eyes from the sun. “Holy shit! Get some clothes on.” Damn. He’d never be able to unsee that.

  Scrugs stood behind the screen door, white beard hanging to his chest, yellowed at the tips and a single brown streak of tobacco stain at one corner of his mouth, pale potbelly protruding over stretched-out tighty-whities. “You come on ta my land and gonna tell me how to dress?” The hermit pushed the door open and, with guttural grunts, stepped down the cinder block stack, barefoot. One big toe had a purple nail, as if stomped by a bull. He patted Bud, then pointed to a wooden crate with a large hole cut in one side. “Now, git!” The dog stood and loped off, shaking its head to clear the flies as it went.

  Lam grimaced as he glanced into the recluse’s bloodshot eyes, trying to keep a straight face and ignore the half-pregnant man. “I need to borrow your Remington 700. The one-chambered 7mm mag.”

  Scrugs’s nostrils flared. He rested hands upon hips, though Lam couldn’t really say the man had any. “And...why you ain’t takin’ your own rifle?”

  Lam glanced back at the trail he’d hiked to the house, so the loner couldn’t see him think. Should’ve come up with a story before now. “Saw a small elk herd on my way in today. Didn’t bring mine, and not enough time to fetch it. Thought I’d try and bag one, though.” Scrugs would know this wasn’t the first time Lam had poached while at work.

  The old-timer’s gaze was steady. “Then why your eyes all puffy? Hungover? Don’t look like you’ve slept in a week. How’d you hurt the arm?” The man stepped closer, slipping a finger beneath the edge of the sling near Lam’s neck. He snorted. “Funny. Your shirt’s got a forty-five caliber hole in the front.” Pale love handles jiggled as he turned back toward his shack and swung an arm, two fingers pointing at the screen door. “Come inside. I’ll get ya doctored up. Slug still in there?”

  The man hadn’t even asked why he’d been shot. He’d hunted many a time with Scrugs. They’d roasted an elk tenderloin down in the gully on a spit over maple fire, sipping homemade brew, and he’d woken the next morning with a rod through his head. Lam stood on the narrow trail, feet heavy as rocks. No way he’d follow that old bastard into his cabin till he got more clothes on. “Slug’s out. Passed clear though.”

  The man stopped and spoke over one shoulder. “None ’a my business, but who you wantin’ to kill?”

  Lam shrugged. “Kill? No one. Just trying to bag an elk.”

  Scrugs eased himself down on the cinder block steps, back straight, fingers knotted across his belly. A wave of nausea rose, but Lam pictured him in a red suit like Santa Claus and it finally passed.

  The man’s voice deepened; his beard trembled as he growled. “You come ta my house, no sleep, shot through the shoulder, askin’ me for a rifle, when you got a beautiful Remington thirty aught six of your own settin’ at home. Wife seein’ another man?”

  “No!”

  “Then you got mixed up in that shit on top ’a Pikes Peak, I s’pose.”

  How’d Scrugs hear about that? Maybe he’d been to town yesterday.

  The old-timer scratched his beard. “Scanner’s been full ’a traffic last thirty-six hours. Even seen a few of them black helos flappin’ around the sky like injured ducks.” His eyes narrowed. “I think them feds is coverin’ up an abduction. You goin’ huntin’ for an alien?”

  Lam suppressed a grimace. Here we go with the talk about skinny green men from outer space. “Nope. Not an abduction.”

  The geezer’s overgrown cottony eyebrows lifted. “How you know? Happens all the time! Air Force told the media they moved the command center out of the mountain. It’s a lie! To cover up what they’re really doing. They’re busier inside there than ever. Think they ever needed all that equipment just to track satellites and space debris?” He pointed a pale arm to the sky. “They’s got eyes on them UFOs comin’ and goin’. Can’t do a thing about it, though, ’cause we’re outgunned. Aliens come and take whoever they want and do—”

  “Scrugs!”

  The wildness in the old man’s eyes flared out. “You come askin’ me ’cause you know none ’a my guns can be traced.”

  Lam couldn’t deny that. Scrugs had dutifully purchased his entire collection from private parties, in cash, then disassembled every part and filed off anything that looked like a number. All his conspiracy theory militia buddies who gathered the second Tuesday night of each month in the VFW parking lot did the same thing.

  Lam sighed. “I need yours because we shoot the same X. I’m not looking to kill a man, but I need it just in case.” The old-timer was half-cocked, but kept a secret even when drunk. Lam relayed his experience the night before to him, Red and his kid running off toward Cheyenne Mountain, and the callback from Carter asking for any help Lam could provide.

  “You trust this fella, this Red?”

  Lam grimaced as his shoulder cramped. “He took one hell of a beating for his little girl. Patched me up and made sure I was OK. I don’t owe him anything, but the guy needs a friend right about now.”

  Scrugs slapped hands to knees and, with effort, grunted himself upright. He started to hike up the steps. “Fine. I’m comin’ with you.”

  Like hell. “You don’t want to come on this hunt.”

  “You want my rifle, I’m comin’. Plus, what good’s a weapon gonna be if you need it? You’ve got a busted shoulder. You’d be twitchin’ all over. Probably shoot his kid. Big mistake… Maybe you start losin’ blood. Someone’s gotta look after your ass too.”

  Lam caught the door before it slammed and followed him in. As lax as the man kept his body and wardrobe, the inside of the trailer was squared away. A short stack of Field & Stream stood on an oak coffee table next to another neat pile of Guns & Ammo. Planted in the middle of the living room was a suede leather recliner, directly in front of a short black woodstove. On a folding table against the wall lay a gray box, a frequency scanner, that Scrugs had demonstrated to him once before. Several other radios stood behind it, mounted in metal mini racks, wires bundled and tucked in a tidy manner. A black Motorola XPS 5000 two-way radio, the same brick used by the FBI, stood in a charger. Scrugs claimed he could eavesdrop on the feds’ encrypted frequencies, but Lam knew that was a joke. Like media reporters, he could only listen to the police channels, and the FBI in the off chance they needed to transmit unsecured. Tiny red and yellow lights flashed like a Christmas tree, reflecting off glossy green metal cabinets hung in the kitchen over a shiny Formica counter. Not a single soldier was missing from a twelve-inch-square knife block. “Clean as ever,” Lam said.

  Scrugs’s skin glowed a deathly lime in the florescent light as he waddled back to his bedroom. “Nothin’ wrong with being poor, and soap don’t cost much.”

  Lam chuckled to himself. Scrugs liked to poor-mouth, and did a fair job of looking down and out. But he received a regular disability check from the Army, plus Social Security, plus had other income based on how much money he spent on weapons. More than enough for a single man to eke out an existence inside a paid-for trailer.

  A few minutes later Lam was flipping through an article in one of the magazines about bow hunting moose in Alaska when a couple snorts drifted in from the bedroom. “You got your girlfriend back there?”

  “Jus’…tyin’…my boot.”

  Who knew speed laces were such an effort. Another few minutes and the old man stepped into the kitchen with the hems of dark charcoal fatigues tucked into knee-high leather chaps, like a World War I cavalry rider. He laid the Remington 700 on the counter. The twenty-six-inch barrel projected from a dark-grained walnut stock. Scrugs had rubbed the wood with three-hundred-grit sandpaper, leaving behind a matte finish that didn’t reflect light, like he did for most his
weapons.

  “She’s got three in the magazine, one in the chamber. Reloads with 160-grain soft points, IMR 4895 powder. Overcharged a little, like I always do. Them slugs’ll fly just shy of thirty-three hundred feet per second.” He patted the Leupold 3x9 power scope tenderly, as if stroking a kitten. “Zeroed at four hundred yards on flat terrain at nine thousand feet altitude.” He rubbed fat fingers across the stock’s wood grain. “Go a lot farther too. She’ll reach out and touch someone for sure. When the Democrats seize power like they’re plannin’—”

  “Scrugs. What you got strapped to your back?” Lam needed to rein in the man’s attention, so the long barrel topped with a flat muzzle brake rubbing the ceiling was a good opportunity. “I’ve never seen that one.”

  The old man turned sideways to allow a clear view. The entire weapon looked almost seven feet long, like a thick barrel with a stock affixed. A compact bipod folded against it about halfway up. Single shot, bolt action, whatever the rifle was. Velcro straps ran across its center, snugging it to a black tactical pack. A scope large enough to see Mars was affixed to the top.

  “I just bought her last month at the estate auction of a cardiologist in Montana.” He grinned. “Lotta good he was. Man died of a heart attack at fifty-nine. I snatched up this baby right quick. A Soviet anti-tank rifle from early World War II. She’s a PTRD-41. Fourteen-and-a-half-millimeter bullet. Not much good against German armor, but’ll take down an elk at a thousand yards. Even farther, I suppose. The doc had a smith up there add the scope.”

  A thousand yards? For real? “You can’t take that. It’s not even legal.”

  Scrugs frowned. “Why not?”

  “Over fifty caliber. After that, it’s classified as…artillery…or something.”

  “Not like what we’re doin’ is legal anyway.”

  Lam picked up the Remington with his good arm. “We’re not doing anything illegal. Just going on a ride in my truck with a couple high-powered rifles. If you gotta come, bring a different one. Something smaller. Less obvious. More…legal.”

  The geezer shrugged the pack higher up his shoulders. “I’m comin’, and I’m bringin’ my gal. Not like you could hit diddly shit with a busted shoulder anyway. You plannin’ on shootin’ left handed? Who knows where your X would be.” He squinted. “I ain’t gonna be alive much longer anyhow.”

  Lam rubbed his eyes with a clenched fist. The old man was always sure he was dying from one thing or another. And as hardheaded as his hound with the scent of blood in his nose. Lam’s arm was starting to ache again, so he reached in his pocket, popped the top of an ibuprofen bottle, and swallowed a few. “Whatever. Let’s go.”

  He pushed open the screen door and stepped down. With two, he had to admit, they could cover more ground. If Red and his kid were still alive, he knew exactly where to wait. But chances were, so would any other good hunter, such as friends of the dead Jap and Rasta. Scrugs was lumbering along behind him with that damn rifle barrel waving over his head tall as a pine sapling. Maybe the old man was right, except both of them would be dying.

  The image of Andi’s dry, empty eyes staring at a night sky full of white dots pricked his conscience. She was a mother. Maybe even now her young children were getting the news of her death. He kicked a pebble down the trail. No, he resolved. These predators were part of the same team. The same ones stalking Red and his kid. Lam was a hunter too. If any of those bastards showed up in his scope, he’d be sure to adjust for windage.

  Chapter 25

  Towers

  Penny crept on hands and knees up behind her dad. Sharp pebbles pressed into her palms and shins. He was on his belly next to a tall tuft of blue-green grass stalks, whose heavy heads were bowing in a breeze. His fist gripped his smooth gray walking stick. He’d been lying down for about a minute, next to a dusty clay road. More than a dozen tall steel towers in red and white stood atop a pine-dotted crest ahead of them, like a section from Jackson’s Erector Set.

  She gasped with the excitement of the sight. Wasn’t this finally where they were supposed to be? But there was no Air Force base here. She glanced around, bewildered. Where were the airplanes supposed to land? Dad was staring down a road.

  “You doing your ‘stop-look-listen’?” she asked, out of breath. Moving silently was so much harder than normal walking around.

  He turned, leaning on one arm. “You’re getting quiet, sneaking up like that. Yeah. We need to go through this gully, between those two peaks.” His cheeks glowed with fresh sunburn, a deeper red than his beard. She’d always liked those whiskers. He used to joke how she’d pulled out tufts of them as a child. “Got the grip of a gymnast,” he’d teased. None of her friends’ dads had red hair. Some grew beards, but theirs all looked dorky. Dad’s didn’t. He trimmed it neatly, but the thick red pelt still reminded her of a wild animal. No one else would’ve known how to protect her on top of Pikes Peak, or from those men shooting at them while they biked away. None of her friends’ dads could’ve run all day with a bullet in their butt, and then fight a soldier twice their size, then keep moving all night long and still be awake now.

  Like a lion’s claws, Dad had kept this part of himself sheathed. But instead of scaring her, the thought had allowed her to finally fall asleep last night.

  He pointed across the trail. “Roads are always where you have to be most careful. Nothing there to hide you. Once we get through that gully, it’s a quick downhill hike to the entrance of Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station. Where’d you leave your mother?”

  Penny glanced behind her. “Behind that rock. She had to pee.”

  Dad pointed at a blackened boulder across the road. Someone must’ve put a bonfire next to the rock while camping. “Once Mom gets here, I’m going to cross first, to that spot over there. Then I’ll wave you over. Wait for my signal. Watch how I do it. Be fast, but light on your feet, like when you just snuck up on me. When you go across a road keep your steps pointed parallel to it. That way, if someone sees your footprints, they don’t know which direction you were headed.”

  Gravel scuffed behind, and Penny turned her head. Mom crept up with a tall clump of grass clenched in one fist. “The road looks hard packed,” she said. “But I’ll sweep away any traces just in case.”

  * * * *

  Scrugs gripped the rung of a tall galvanized steel ladder, locking on with both fists. He pulled his body flat against the cold metal and sucked in a deep breath, resting his legs. The wheeze of asthma rattled in his chest, but clinging halfway up a three-legged radio tower on the top of Cheyenne Mountain, he didn’t dare let go to grab the inhaler from his pocket.

  Lam had said the structure was only three hundred feet tall, but Scrugs’s lungs told him different. Like his predawn climbs up tree trunks to hunt deer, he’d tried to ascend in silence. But somewhere around sixty feet his lungs began to sound like a chain smoker sucking wind through a megaphone. Stomach acid crept up and soured his throat.

  He didn’t mind heights. They’d never given him trouble in his high-rise work before he’d retired. After a few years as a door gunner in the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division, he’d floundered between construction jobs all over the country, swinging a twenty-two-ounce framing hammer, moving wherever the economy called. But he’d finally planted himself with Houston Steel Erection after meeting Mary in Dallas. She’d gotten pregnant, he finally gave up weed, and after a decade was a site super for several fifty-story projects. Steady on his feet, he used to scramble across girders three times as high as he was now, before OSHA cluttered everything up with fall arresters and climbing harnesses. Since then, a drunken troll with vertigo could work steel construction.

  The radio tower swayed not because he was dizzy with height, but asthma was depriving his lungs of oxygen. A breeze blew, and the tower’s taut guy-wires hummed a bass note, almost a G-flat. A turnbuckle clattered overhead, as if threatening to break loose. Scrugs craned his neck backw
ard and gazed up. The tensioned lines above all pointed like an arrow to a small steel platform the size of a deer stand another twelve stories above him. The long barrel of the PTRD-41 strapped to his back reached over his head and seemed to aim at the same target. The rifle’s muzzle brake swayed back and forth with each labored breath.

  Closing his eyes, he considered his options. Go back down and set up atop one of the low shacks that housed the radio equipment. But trees could block his vantage point. Lam and his friend Red, and his little girl, they needed help.

  Scrugs started up again, hand over hand, and finally found himself beneath the steel plate. Damn, it looked bigger from the ground. The perch was triangular, the size of a small coffee table. An antenna was bolted to its middle, shooting up another twenty feet. Scrugs reached over, grasped it, and pulled himself atop the platform into a sitting position. He dropped his legs over the edge and locked his feet into the tower struts.

  Lam had tried to ascend a neighboring tower, but Scrugs had insisted he’d be more useful across the gully as a spotter. That would give the two the widest field of view to find this Red fella, if he was still alive, if the government hadn’t killed him yet. Aliens usually only gave the feds twenty-four hours to silence anyone who gained knowledge they deemed inappropriate. Some friends said the ETs could read minds, but those guys were crazy. They could only erase memory. Scrugs had survived an abduction and escaped, though he couldn’t recall most of it.

  In the middle of the stand among a half-inch pile of crusted bird droppings laid two steel nuts, extras left after construction. He pinched them between fingers and dropped one, then the other over the edge of the platform. They fell in the breeze and thumped onto gravel. Three seconds on their downward journey resulted in six feet horizontal movement. That was a lot of windage to adjust for.