by Jeff Carson
A couple miles out of town the traffic thinned and he took a left on Juniper Hills Road. He made his way into and up the low plateau hills of orange, gray, and brown earth. There were multi-million-dollar houses on either side of the road, and juniper trees, sage brush, and blue-green grasses carpeted the hillsides. Even with the windows closed the scent of the surrounding foliage came strong through the vents of his SUV.
After a few miles of driving, he slowed and turned onto a dirt road. His truck vibrated and kicked up a plume of dust behind him as he drove for another half-mile, up and over a rise. He meandered down to a point where the road passed through a dry gulch, and there he parked and got out.
The low hills on either side of the gulch blocked the wind, which whipped against the junipers higher up the slopes. The sun was warming, but it would drop behind the hills in a matter of minutes. Insects buzzed everywhere and he heard the cry of a hawk flying stationary in the rushing air above.
He walked around the Explorer and opened the rear door; then he put on a set of rubber gloves. He carefully chose six plastic canisters and put them in his pocket. Then he shoved a black marker and the zip-lock bag into his jacket and closed the door. He grabbed the lighter fluid and napkins out of the front seat and went down the gulch for fifty yards, away from the view of the dirt road.
Kneeling down, he opened the zip-lock bag, set the bullet casing on the outside of the plastic, and opened the lighter fluid. He doused the casing with the pungent liquid and scrubbed it hard and thoroughly. Then he set it down to dry on a flat rock.
He opened each of the full canisters and threw the dirt into a pile, dug out a small pit, and set them, now empty, inside it. He took out of his pocket the three empties and scooped the pebbly dirt next to him into each. After screwing the lids on tight, he took out his marker, copied the labeling, and sealed them all.
The casing went back in the bag, and the new containers went in his pocket. Everything else went up in flames, lit by a hot-pink Bic lighter. He stepped back to watch the fireball, and threw the lighter in. It exploded with a dull thud and the flames spattered out of the hole, dissipating harmlessly on the sand.
Chapter 20
“So who’s the guy?” Wolf asked.
Luke looked left and right and pulled back onto the highway.
“I asked you something.”
“I know, I know. Listen, the guy is part of an investigation that we’ve had ongoing, and you just broke it open for us. It’s something that I can’t talk about.” She kept her eyes on the road, and reached down to turn on her headlights.
“This is part of my ongoing investigation now.” He stared at her. “My son was shot at more than ten times by these men, and I was hit. My son is currently in danger because of these men. He shot one of them. He can identify one of them.”
She shook her head. “Listen, so can I. And I know that these men are going to be long gone by now.”
Wolf frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means they’re going to be on the run. There’s a one hundred percent chance of that. And we’ll pick up the chase. And you can go about your business.”
Wolf glared at her, and she squirmed in her seat, flicking sideways glances at him.
They passed an old pickup truck and then she looked back at Wolf with a pleading expression.
“Look, I can’t tell you about it,” she said. “I’m sorry, but if I want to keep my job, I can’t tell you. It’s a national-security matter. Just know that you’ve flushed them out. They were in hiding, and you’ve exposed them, and we’ll take it from here.”
Wolf turned away and shook his head. Rather than explode in a fit of cussing, which he felt like doing, he stared out the window at the passing landscape. The valley was now cast in shadow and the eastern peaks blazed bright in the early-evening sun. They passed a sign that read Rocky Points 13 miles. Pine trees grew denser, swishing by the window as they climbed in altitude up Williams Pass.
“How?” he asked, keeping his eyes out the window. “How are you going to chase them?”
“Don’t worry about it,” she answered quickly.
Wolf let the rush of anger evaporate, and ran through options in his mind as they summited Williams Pass and then dropped down the other side and into the southern end of Rocky Points. He had connections he could check with. None in the FBI, but others he could call on. Maybe he could track down the guy in the picture himself. But it was little to go on with just a neck tattoo and a burn.
A burn. The burn was fresh, and the guy wasn’t burnt in the picture Luke had sitting in her manila folder. That had to be a clue. Maybe he’d been hurt in an explosion or a fire recently. In a recent EOD training exercise on a nearby base? Fort Carson, in Colorado Springs?
As they pulled into Rocky Points and down Main Street, the sky was orange, and only the tips of the eastern peaks were still illuminated by the sinking sun.
The SUV crunched and wobbled as they pulled into the SCSD station lot, and the pain in Wolf’s arm had returned with a vengeance, just as he’d predicted.
Luke parked and looked at Wolf. “I’ll be in touch.”
Wolf ignored her remark and got out, walked to the rear door of the Tahoe and pulled it open. He grabbed his orange pack and slung it over his shoulder, walked a few steps and tossed it toward the base of the wall next to the frosted-glass garage door.
Luke followed silently with the remaining two packs and set them down gingerly.
Wolf inserted his key in the side door, walked in, and shut it behind him.
Chapter 21
Kristen Luke sped out of Rocky Points in contemplative silence. Her pulse raced as she thought about what had happened to Wolf, and to his son. A tear spilled down her cheek and she wiped it with the back of her hand so quickly that it failed to reach her chin.
“Fucking fuck,” she said through clenched teeth.
She took a deep breath, then a few more, and after a few minutes she had composed herself. Only then did she pick up her phone and dial.
“What d’ya got?” Michael Vance, her special agent in charge, never had liked greetings.
“Not much,” Luke said. She could hear men talking in the background, and since the dashboard clock said it was after five o’clock, that meant he was probably at the bar.
“Really? It’s not our guy? EOD tattoo? Colorado? Are you kidding me?”
She huffed into the phone. “Yeah. Believe me, you know I want it to be, but I don’t think it’s our guy. I don’t think it was an EOD tattoo he saw. After I grilled him on it, he didn’t seem too sure, then I showed him the picture—”
Luke squinted and looked into the rearview mirror. There were headlights approaching so fast it was like she was standing still. She looked down at her speedometer. She was going sixty-five miles per hour.
“Jesus,” she said.
“What?”
“Nothing, just a second …” She shook her head as the headlights got brighter and brighter, closer and closer. But they never passed. They just sucked up against her back bumper, now so close they were out of sight behind her tailgate.
“What the fuck? I’ll call you back.” She hung up and dropped the phone on the passenger seat, and then gripped the wheel with two hands. Her body hummed with electricity. She breathed deeply to control her movements, and relaxed her face to calm her thoughts, just like she’d learned from her sensei in college.
Was that what was going on? For a split instant, she was back at the University of Colorado—with hands groping her and slapping her face—and she strangled the life out of the steering wheel. Was this another psycho? Was this it? She’d spent the past ten years of her life preparing for another moment like this. Preparing to never, ever, be caught off guard again. Since then she’d trained in self-defense for thousands of hours. She was a second-degree black belt, an expert in Krav Maga. Quantico had elevated her shooting to the next level.
She tapped the brakes, and then pressed them continu
ously, slowing down a good twenty miles per hour.
The lights stayed glued behind her.
She eyed the road ahead and saw a shoulder pullout on the next turn. If this asshole wanted some, he could have some. She and her SIG Sauer P220 would be able to settle this just fine.
She reached into her coat and thumbed back the hammer, then put both hands on the wheel and slammed the brakes as hard as she could without locking the wheels. At the final instant, she pulled over and stopped on the shoulder turnoff.
The lights followed her every move, staying just behind her, as if the driver shared her every thought.
She jammed the car in park, whipped off her seatbelt, and opened the door. As she twisted out of the Tahoe, she reached back into her jacket and pulled the SIG. When her feet hit the pavement, she was aimed.
There was a figure already out of the door of the vehicle behind her, and the cab light illuminated a man with one hand up, and the other looking like it was tucked inside his waist.
“Freeze! Freeze!” she yelled, tensing her finger on the trigger. When the figure didn’t move, she almost shot, almost put a bullet in the tall man’s chest. But her peripheral vision took in the shape of the vehicle behind her and she comprehended who it was at the last instant. There were dark turret lights on top of the vehicle, and the man wasn’t reaching into his waist—his arm was in a sling.
She dropped her aim. “What the hell are you doing? Are you kidding me?”
Wolf lowered his hand and slammed the door of his vehicle shut. She squinted against the bright headlamps, unable to see his face as his silhouetted figure crunched toward her with fast strides.
She raised the gun again. “Just stop! What are you doing?”
He continued, and now she noticed he was holding up a small square of paper in his free hand.
She stepped once to meet him halfway. Before she knew it she felt her pistol wrenched from her hand. There was a loud clank on the top of the Tahoe, and she realized Wolf had lobbed it up there.
Without an instant’s hesitation, she launched into a flurry of punches. She glanced one jab off his cheek, but he easily blocked the next three quick shots. Suddenly the square piece of paper was shoved in her face, and that was all she could see.
“Look at this!” he yelled.
She was too shocked not to. It was a picture of a child, maybe ten years old. A boy kneeling next to a soccer ball, smiling with a hole where a front tooth used to be, with a long mess of black hair.
“Take a good look,” he said, making sure his headlights shone on the picture. He continued in a softer voice. “Those men shot at my son. Were inches from killing him. Over and over, they shot at him. And I had to watch it, and hope to God they missed every time. I couldn’t help him.”
She shook her head and clenched her eyes. “I’m so—”
“Tell me!” he screamed so loud it hurt her ears. “Tell me about that man with the tattoo.”
A pair of headlights illuminated them, and a car drove by slowly.
They stood staring at each other until the car disappeared into the distance.
Luke lifted her chin. “The man you saw on the trail has been assumed dead for seven months.”
Wolf waited for her to continue.
“He went MIA in the mountains of Afghanistan. Seven months ago. And now you just saw him yesterday.”
Wolf narrowed his eyes. “And he’s back here in the US?”
Luke nodded. “Apparently.”
“But there were four of them last night. Him, two shooting at us, and the guy I shot at the fire.”
“His whole team went MIA. There was an explosion inside a cave, and they were believed to be inside.”
“How many team members?” Wolf asked.
“Four. Him and three others.”
Wolf stepped away and looked into the darkness.
“So I ask you, what do you think they’re going to do? Come after you and your son? Why? Because you know they’re alive, and you can identify them? If they do that they’re going to run into a shitload of FBI agents. Because we’re on their asses now. They’re going to run. They were coming after you last night because you saw them. But it’s too late now and they know it.”
Wolf turned back toward her, but kept his eyes on the ground.
“And we’re going to catch them,” she said. “So you can go about your business as usual, and not worry about it. You have plenty of things on your plate. What, a music festival in two days?” She softened her voice. “I understand where you’re coming from. You’re worried about your son. But please don’t worry. We’re on it.”
Wolf looked her in the eye.
Her chest tightened under his intense glare, feeling like she’d just been hit with twin spotlights. His eyes were like knotted dark wood, glowing in the headlights of his SUV. His body was tall and strong. His hair was a thick chestnut-colored mess. He had a handsome face covered with a two-day beard that was thick and perfectly symmetrical. Dangerous as hell.
Then there was the way he’d taken her gun. One-handed. Or, if he’d used his other hand, she didn’t know how he’d done it. Suddenly, this small county sheriff from small-town, nowhere, Colorado, was a much larger presence to her.
She looked away, realizing her thoughts had to have been showing on her face. “All right,” she said, standing on her toes to look at the roof. “Now, get me my gun.”
Wolf walked to the rear and stepped on the back bumper, sagging the Tahoe down, and pulled it off.
He handed it to her without saying a word, got back in his SUV, backed up, turned around, and drove away.
She watched his taillights recede and then disappear behind the pines, and listened to his revving engine fade into nothing.
“Goddamn it,” she said, and got back in the Tahoe.
Chapter 22
Wolf looked at the ticking football-clock on the wall, and at the phone sitting on his office desk. He contemplated making the call, and wondered whether or not the man on the other end would be at his desk. It was just after eight o’clock p.m. Colorado time, seven o’clock Pacific. And General Haines was the type of man to get to work early and stay late.
Wolf dialed the phone, and a few seconds later a woman’s voice answered. “General Haines’s office.”
“General Haines, please.”
“He’s currently not available, sir. Can I take a message?”
“Tell him David Wolf is calling.”
“I’ll tell him you called.”
“I’d prefer if you told him I’m calling. You know, put me on hold and tell him.”
She chuckled softly. “I’ll tell him you called. Can I take your number?”
Wolf gave it to her and hung up. He’d run out of ideas already. There were a couple of other people he could call, but they’d probably be off killing people in a foreign country at the moment.
He sat staring at the puddle of light on his desk, and the phone rang, splitting the silence.
“Sheriff Wolf,” he answered.
“Are you the one crank-calling my secretary?”
Wolf smiled. “Hello, General. How are you?”
“I’m doing well. You caught me just in time. I was about out the door for a drink.”
Wolf looked at the ceiling. “Let’s see. Wednesday night. That’s Popeye’s, isn’t it?”
“You remembered.”
Haines broke into a loud laugh that made Wolf smile as wide as he could. It was a laugh that had probably helped hoist the man up the ranks over the years, from a lowly first lieutenant when Wolf had met him to the lieutenant general he was now.
“What the hell are you up to, son? I hear you’re still working law enforcement. Still in your home town? Rocky Flats? Or what was it?”
Wolf smiled. “Rocky Points.” Haines had a mind like a steel trap, and wouldn’t have mistaken the name of Wolf’s town for the now defunct nuclear-weapons production facility in between Boulder and Denver without a tongue in his cheek. “I’m
actually sheriff now.”
Haines whistled. “Wow. You’re not even forty years old yet, by my calculations. That’s gotta be a pretty big deal.”
Wolf didn’t answer.
“Then again, you were always a pretty big deal.”
“Thank you, General.”
There was a long pregnant silence. He hadn’t spoken to the LTG in years, and the last time they’d spoken was in person—in a bar near Ft. Lewis, south of Tacoma, Washington, where Haines had spilled his guts to Wolf about how he’d always thought Wolf was one of the good ones. One of the best ones he’d wished he could have held on to.
“So what do you want?”
Haines had never been one for rehashing old memories.
“I need to know the identity of a few missing soldiers. Army EOD. Four total. They went missing in Afghanistan, supposedly seven months ago.”
Haines sighed. “Oh. My drink is going to have to wait, huh?”
“It would only take you a few minutes to log into the database and check, right?”
There was another pause. Wolf knew the man was computer inept.
“Just a second,” he said, and there was the rustle of a hand being pressed over the phone, and muffled conversation. “I’ve got Angie checking it out. It should take less than a few minutes. She’s incredible with these computers.”
Wolf smiled again and leaned back in his chair. The blood moved in his shoulder and his wound throbbed.
“Brian Richter. EOD team leader. Chad Hartley …”
Wolf scrambled for his pen and paper and started writing.
“… Wade Jeffries. Marcus Quinn. There’s your four. Went MIA October 30th, last year in an explosion in Tora Bora.”
“You’re kidding,” Wolf said.
Tora Bora was a cave system in the White Mountains of Afghanistan that Wolf knew well. Though the rangers had not been present at the battle, Wolf and his company had kept up with the news, waiting on orders to assist that ultimately never came from the brass.