by Gavin Reese
“Naw, don’t worry about Andrew,” John replied over the radio. “I figure he’ll be the first to realize they’re on an impossible mission and call it off. Kinda surprised he even went out. I’ll rake him over the coals in person when he gets back. Maybe he’s just playin’ games with us and wanted to see what kinda surveillance package we'd put together for this.”
“You say so, John. He’s still my lead candidate for being a snitch. I don’t think he’s the kinda cop that’s gonna work out here. Something’s gonna rub him wrong one day, and he’ll turn on us.”
“Speaking of, you’re rubbing me wrong right now.”
The associate grimaced and stepped farther back from the edge to stay concealed from the street below. “Yeah, but you ain’t gonna go run and squeal to nobody about it, though. I might taste my own blood when I piss you off, but I ain’t gotta worry about you sinking our whole battleship over some perceived slight.”
“Get off the radio, windbag, and stay focused on your goddamned job.”
“Copy. Standing by to stand by.” He released the talk button and spent several long minutes intently scanning what he could see of the streets to the north and east. Andrew’s gotta come back by here, only a couple streets he could use to get back south without me seeing him from here. Can’t wait to prove that prick—
“Ahem.”
He turned around at the startling noise, expecting to find a cafe employee demanding an explanation for his presence on their building. To his further surprise, embarrassment, and anger, he saw Andrew.
The despised trainee stood with his arms crossed over his chest and leaned back against the south side of the parapet wall. “You need a hand with something up here, John? I know we’re supposed to call you ‘John,’ but, is there someone else you’d rather go by? I mean, all four of you can’t really be named ‘John,’ right, unless that’s part of the selection process.”
“Fuck off, Andrew, and get the hell off my overwatch!” How did that shithead get by me, and get up here without me noticing? Shouldn’t a-been all Chatty Kathy on the goddamned radio, that’s shit’s always distracted me!
“Alright, John, I can do that, but you oughta quiet down. Don’t you think you’ve already called enough attention to yourself this morning? I figured you’d just wanna know I’d seen you. Thought you’d maybe want some constructive feedback on how you were doing up here. Me, personally, I’d rate it just north of ‘shitty,’ but I’m not the boss.”
“Goddamned right, you’re not the boss of anyone!” Now further embarrassed by his own words, he aggressively pressed forward. Motherfucker’s gonna hafta swing on me or get back down to the street! He can jump from here, for all I fuckin’ care!
THIRTY-SIX
Training Day 105, 0813 hours.
The Blue Bonnet Café rooftop. Lusk, Wyoming.
Michael put his hands up in front of his shoulders in a feigned surrender. “Sorry, Double, err, John, slow your roll, man, I didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers.” He stepped away from the wall to give himself room to work, just in case Double-Time didn’t alter his apparent course of action. This guy’s pissed and embarrassed, but he still oughta know this isn’t really a surrender position.
The despised trainer kept crossing the roof toward him. “Get the fuck outta here, Andrew, or—”
“Or, what, you’ll call Big John and tell him your little one-man surveillance team got spotted?”
Now only a few feet away, the instructor telegraphed his intent by drawing back his right fist as he lunged at Michael. “You fuckin’—”
Because his hands up were already up and just in front of his shoulders, Michael knew he had a tactical advantage over the trainer. He quickly ducked right and sent out a left jab, but struck for speed and didn’t follow-through. As soon as he connected with the front of Double-Time’s throat, Michael pulled it back to minimize its damage; at the same time, he swam his right arm over the man’s oncoming left and stepped right, just outside his opponent’s direction of travel and intentionally maintained his tremendous advantage. Michael’s right arm was already bent with that hand up just over the outside of his opponent’s extended left forearm and protecting his own face; he powerfully stepped right again while rotating his torso and forcibly slid his right forearm along his opponent’s left until he back-fisted the outside of Double-Time’s neck. There!
The instructor’s legs buckled as soon as Michael struck his brachial plexus nerve motor point. Immediately unconscious and unable to protect himself, Michael wrapped the man in his arms and grabbed onto his clothing as best he could to prevent him from face-planting onto the rooftop. He clutched the man tightly, and quickly sat down, taking his felled opponent with him. Michael fluidly rolled backward onto his buttocks and back to absorb the energy of their collective weight. “Easy, John, no reason to lose any chicklets up here!” Michael briefly laid on his back with the bested instructor on top of him. Damned glad that part’s over with!
As expected, the man’s legs, arms, fingers, and toes had straightened and now slightly seized while his body rebelled against the internal trauma. Michael urgently worked himself out from under the man and stood, knowing damned well he didn’t want to be there when Double-Time came to. May as well go all the way now, not like this guy’s gonna rat on me and admit all his mistakes. Reaching into his opponent’s back pocket, Michael retrieved his wallet, opened it, and scrolled through its contents. Maryland D-L, Damian Haggamore, what the hell kinda name’s that? His parents should-a read a Bible or watched a few horror flicks before making that decision. Gym membership, supermarket card, couple credit cards, little bit of cash, two condoms. That’s optimistic, that he’d need two in the same night. I thought everyone knew not to keep condoms in their wallet anymore? This asshole’s gonna impregnate some poor farmgirl that doesn’t know any better.
“Hhhmmmfff…”
Michael expected Haggamore would soon regain consciousness, although he’d remain pretty useless for another five or ten minutes. His eggs’ll need time to unscramble. The seizures grew lighter and less frequent, so Michael felt confident he’d sustained no serious or long-term injury. Now that I know he doesn’t need a paramedic, I can really drive this point home to make sure he doesn’t try to even the score. He opened the man’s mouth to confirm Haggamore hadn’t bitten his tongue and still breathed on his own. With his welfare now reasonably assured, Michael shoved the man’s wallet between his teeth. He carefully turned Haggamore’s head to the side to ensure his airway stayed clear while he recovered. He oughta understand he’s lucky I didn’t want to harm him. Can’t say it’d be mutual if he were standing over me right now. Michael stood up and stepped back toward the access ladder.
“Hhuugghhhh…wh…wha…”
Just before he reached the ladder, he saw Haggamore’s radio on the roof, likely from being dropped during the brief scuffle. Michael collected the radio and descended to the alley behind The Blue Bonnet Café. He considered taking the radio back to John. I’d rather that this stayed between me and Haggamore, but, at the same time, if he’s gonna go running to daddy later, I want John to hear about this from me first. Michael weighed his options for only a few moments, and decided to leave their supervisor uninvolved for now. Naw, Haggamore’s too arrogant to say anything. I’ll just have to watch for his retaliation, his ego’s too big to let this go.
Part of Michael already regretted what he’d done, for he’d run across a lot of Damian Haggamores in his life. He knew the bully would take the first cheap shot he could, whether he really hurt Michael or not. What’s done is done. Stepping across the alley to a large Dumpster, he set Haggamore’s pac-set radio on top of the closed plastic lid and turned the volume all the way up. Gotta give him a fair chance to find it. What else can I uncover on the way back out to the compound?
THIRTY-SEVEN
Training Day 105, 0904 hours.
Rural Compound. Niobrara County, Wyoming.
Michael drove back to the isolated com
pound, parked the borrowed sedan near the main house, and strode up to the porch where John sat in a rocking chair. The lead instructor rose to his feet and leaned against the front handrail as Michael approached.
“You see your comrades on the way back,” he called out.
“Yeah, John, they were still making their way into town.”
“Figured you woulda picked a few of ‘em up and given ‘em a goddamned ride back home.”
“You said this isn’t a team sport, John, so I flipped ‘em off and kept driving,” Michael explained as he reached the front side of the porch and stood in front of John. “They’re big boys, they’ll figure it out.”
“I think you got some explaining to do.”
“How’s that,” Michael responded. Dammit, Haggamore ran his mouth.
“What in the name of Christ Almighty were you doin’ at the Sheriff’s Office? You got a couple of my guys pretty worked up right now.”
“Why? Wasn’t the assignment to get a badge? Seemed like the best place to start.”
“Eat shit, Andrew, you know this’s an impossible assignment. The whole thing is set up to make sure any reasonable man sees that and calls ‘abort.’ The rules of engagement on this are too restrictive to succeed. Hell, I figured you’d be the first one to realize that, I’s pretty damned surprised when you drove off outta here. Kinda disappointed, really.”
“Why? Because I got you your badge?”
“Fuck off, you ain’t got sh—”
Michael produced a badge decal from his front pants pocket.
“That ain’t a badge!”
“Sure is. It’s the same design and artwork the Sheriff’s office uses for their chest badges, patrol car insignias, and cloth shoulder patches. If a badge can be cloth, why can’t it be a sticker? Hell, the ones on their Broncos are just damned magnets, and that’s enough to make people pull their cars over!”
“I said you had to steal a badge to win, Andrew, not borrow like I usually specify. Pretty sure there’s a distinct ‘Thou Shalt Not’ about thievin,’ so I know you didn’t steal that.”
kssshhck
“John, you there?” Michael recognized Haggamore’s voice and hoped he didn’t choose this moment to disclose what had happened to him.
Annoyed, John glared at Michael before he roughly grabbed a pac-set radio from a small table near his rocking chair. “About goddamned time! Where the hell’ve you been?! I been calling you for almost a half-hour! We’s about to hafta send two assholes to go find you!”
“Yeah, uh, well, I had to move.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I, uh, I think I got spotted up there, and had to move to another spot before anyone showed up to investigate.”
Michael suddenly felt very confident that things were gonna go his way. Haggamore didn’t rat me out and he lied about why he didn’t answer his radio. At least he was honest that he had, in fact, been spotted up there. Kudos for that, I guess.
“Where you at now?” John looked back at Michael. “Be with you in a second, soon as I sort out my employee problems.” He shook his head but made no effort to improve the privacy of his conversation.
Michael focused on keeping a straight face while his adversary tried to minimize the damage to his credibility.
“I’m, uh, well, you might not like this part, John. The only other tall building in the, uh, area, was the bank.”
“Haggamore,” John seethed through clenched teeth and showed no concern about using the man’s real name, “you’d better not be on top of the fuckin’ bank right now! Every rancher and cattlemen in this county uses that farm bank, and they’ll happily shoot your dumbass off the roof and call the sheriff for clean-up!”
“Well, I, uh—”
John pushed a red button on the top of the radio and interrupted the man’s transmission. “Get down, right now, right, THE FUCK, now, and immediately come STRAIGHT back here!”
“Copy.”
Michael might have felt bad for Haggamore and the part he played in altering the course of the man’s day, but he’d been such a despicable ass for the last three months that Michael didn’t care what happened to the man.
John breathed in a deep, calming breath and spit a string of tobacco juice onto the ground in front of the porch. “Good help is so goddamned hard to find, Andrew. I mean, how fuckin’ stupid can one man be?”
Michael sensed an opportunity to both come clean and potentially deny Haggamore a chance to retaliate. “In that case, John, there’s something you should know.” I’m either gonna get a gold star or a pink slip in the next thirty seconds.
“What now? You boinked the sheriff’s secretary? You weren’t in there long enough to make love, so I know it wasn’t consensual.”
“No, but I’m the one that spotted Haggamore.”
“I shouldn’t have used his name, and you’d damned well forget you heard it.”
“I already knew it.”
John again glared at Michael and his eyes narrowed just before he spoke. “You’re gonna tell me everything that led you to that particular piece of information.”
Michael took a deep breath before the plunge into whatever fate awaited him. “So, I made him when I drove past The Blue Bonnet to go to the Sheriff’s Office. He was standing too close to the front wall along the street, and—”
“No way. I don’t believe you. Nobody looks up when they search or scan an area, it’s not human nature anymore. Don’t fuckin’ lie to me, Andrew, or—”
“John, I’m sure you know more about my background than you’ve let on. It’s one of the things we specifically trained on in my last job. We deliberately taught our guys to look up, even when there was nothing above them to look at.”
His superior pondered that for a moment. “Alright, I’ll accept that until I can prove otherwise. Go on.” The man’s intense gaze didn’t lessen.
“When I came out of the office, I saw he was still up there, so I circled around the neighborhood, doubled back south about a half-mile west of him, and climbed up to the roof to have a, uh, word, with him.”
“You’re just making shit up now, no way he’d let that happen.”
“I think the radio had distracted him, but, it actually gets worse, John, at least for Haggamore.” Now that he had some momentum and John hadn’t immediately bounced him off the property, Michael started to enjoy telling his abbreviated version of their interaction. “He got real upset when I surprised him up there, so he rushed me and put my back to the south edge of the roof, so I knocked him out.”
“You swung on one of my instructors?”
“Not really. He swung on me and lunged, and I didn’t wanna go off the roof, so I jabbed his throat, stepped outside, and bitch-slapped his brachial plexus.”
“Bitch…slapped?”
“Well, sir, I guess ‘backhand’ is more accurate, but, he’s such an asshole that I’d prefer to stick with bitch-slap.”
“That’s when he went down?”
“Yeah, I helped him to the ground, searched his wallet, found his Maryland D-L.”
“That a fact?”
“Yessir, it’s a fact. He’s also got two condoms in his wallet, which makes me think he’s either optimistic or he’s on the little blue pill.”
“What happened next, now that you had him in such a vulnerable position, considering the way he’s been tryin’ to get you kicked outta here? I assume that’s really what this’s about, right? Revenge?”
“Not revenge, really, I just wanted him to realize I deserved to be here and that, maybe, he could give me a little credit and lay off me a little bit. So, all I did was leave his wallet jammed between his teeth. It was as much for his own safety as anything else.”
“You know the problem you just created for me, and for yourself?”
“I didn’t want it to go this way,” Michael offered with a less jovial tone, “but, it seems Haggamore couldn’t be reasoned with.”
John stood up, sighed, and shifted his gaze to the expa
nsive fields behind Michael. “I gotta give you that, I suppose that wasn’t a strong point on his resume. Anything else?”
“Well, I took his radio and set it on top of the Dumpster behind the café. Probably why you couldn’t get a hold of him for a while.”
“Alright. Anything else?”
“Just one more. The car’s his, right? The one I drove to town?”
“Are you shittin’ me?”
“No, it’s registered in his name. You might wanna check to make sure this address isn’t the same one that’s on there.”
John slapped both hands down on top of the wood rail and stared at the porch decking. “I’d like to be real goddamned angry with you, Andrew, but, at the same time, I’m glad to know what kinda man I’m workin’ with.”
“I’m sorry he had to make it go this way, John.”
“Wasn’t talkin’ about him, dipshit! I know who and what he is, but he’s an expert in his field. I just didn’t realize he was also careless. I’s talkin’ about you, about what kinda man you are. You just might make it outta here, if the other goddamned instructors don’t string you up at high noon tomorrow.” He looked back up from the porch and met Michael’s gaze. “I hope it was all worthwhile for a failed, impossible assignment you shoulda fuckin’ aborted.”
“I didn’t fail, John.”
“I’ll give you that you technically got a badge, but I already reminded you that my orders were to steal one.”
Michael produced the second decal from the same pocket. “Right. That’s how I got the second one when she turned away. Didn’t wanna lose on a technicality.”
John’s eyes further narrowed, and Michael recognized his increased displeasure. “Glad you made it back in time for mass, Andrew. Make damned sure you get your ass to confession for this. You’d best start recognizing your goddamned operational limitations if you’re gonna succeed here. Get the fuck outta my face for a while.”