by Thomas Scott
“Let’s get the guns set up,” Reif said.
Reed, Fischer, Chase, and Stone moved to the back of the SUV and got the guns and ammunition. The rifles were all the same…Heckler & Koch MSG90’s chambered for standard 7.62 NATO rounds, and scoped with the Hensoldt ZF 6×42. Their accuracy was good up to about eight hundred meters with a competent trigger man. They brought the guns around to the front of the truck and got them loaded and ready.
“Gonna make some noise,” Stone said to no one in particular.
“Take a look around, dude,” Chase said. “We’re all alone.” He slapped a loaded magazine into the rifle, pulled back the charging handle to seat a round, pointed the rifle at nothing down in the bowl, and popped off three rounds in a row. “Welcome to Indiana.”
Reif put his arm around Chase’s shoulders, then took the gun from his hands. “Let’s not make any more noise than we have to.” He put the gun to his shoulder and looked out at the quarry through the scope for a few seconds, then gave the rifle back to Chase. “Not much down there. We’re going to need something to aim at. Wait here for a minute.”
He went back to the SUV and looked for something they could use as a target. A hubcap would have been ideal, but the SUV didn’t have any. He dug around in the back and finding nothing suitable, he moved to the front and pulled the headrest from the passenger seat. He tossed it to Fischer. “Count out three hundred yards and plant this in the dirt.” Then, before Fischer could say anything, Reif took the rifle from Chase, turned to the others and said, “Okay, safety first. Get those mags out and clear the chambers. No one touches anything until Fischer is clear.”
The others unloaded the guns and set them back in their cases. Fischer headed down into the bowl, counting his steps as he went. The others stood silently and watched him and when he was about a hundred yards out, Reif lit a cigarette and locked eyes with Reed and held his stare until the other man looked away.
Fischer stopped about halfway out and looked back over his shoulder. He had a funny feeling, but no one was moving. They weren’t even looking at him. He turned around and kept going.
“What’d he do?” Stone asked.
Reif took a long drag on his cigarette, dropped it in the dirt and snuffed it out with the toe of his boot. “Broke the main rule.” He looked at Reed. “Took a side job, didn’t he, Evan? That smash and grab in Northern Cali last month? How many guns did he pull out? He could have brought us all down.”
“Still might,” Stone said. “Now that the ATF is looking.”
“He got out clean. And even if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have given us up.”
“Bullshit,” Reif said. “He’s got enough on all of us that he’d be out walking and talking like a free man while the rest of us sit in solitary. That what you want?”
Reed tipped his head to the side and tried a brotherly grin. “C’mon, Reif. Fisch is solid. I brought him in.”
Reif picked up the rifle Chase had fired earlier and handed it to him. “I know. That’s why you’re going to take him out.”
“No way, Reif. I served with him. He’s like a brother to me, man.”
Reif pulled a Beretta M9 from the back of his belt and pointed it at Reed. “Get down on the ground and get to it.”
Reed looked at Fischer off in the distance as he kicked at the dirt, trying to push the rods of the headrest into the ground. Reed looked back at his boss, a little sorrow in his voice now. “Reif…”
Reif clicked the safety off and pointed the gun at Reed’s face. “Him or you. No, wait a minute, that’s not quite right. Definitely him. You’re still a maybe.”
Reed looked at the others, but they were no help. He got down in the dirt, rested the barrel on the bi-pod and took aim. Reif walked over and squatted down next to him, the Beretta resting casually across his knee, pointed directly at the side of Reed’s head.
“Hey Reed?”
Reed had his eye to the scope and kept it there. “What?”
“If you miss, you’re a dead man.”
Reed was already a dead man. He simply didn’t know it. He took a deep breath and slipped his finger into the trigger guard. He exhaled slowly until almost all the air was out of his lungs. When his heart was between beats, he pulled the trigger smoothly, the way they’d taught him in the army.
The standard NATO 7.62x51 mm round travels almost three thousand feet per second. Fischer was three hundred yards away. He was dead before the ejected shell casing hit the dirt. Reed was still looking through the scope when Reif fired the Beretta. It took the side of his head off.
Stone jumped when Reif pulled the trigger. He quietly slipped his hand behind his back. Reif knew what he was doing without even looking at him.
“Relax Randy. Two steps up the ladder should do it, don’t you think?” He put the gun back in his belt and remained facing away from Randy Stone. The message was twofold, and clear: I trust you, and we’re done.
Stone left his gun in his belt. “I should hope so, you crazy bastard.”
Reif turned and smiled at him. “We never could have trusted either of them again. You know that.”
Stone nodded. “I do. But now we’re going to be shorthanded.”
“We can handle it,” Reif said. “And now the split is better for all of us.”
“What about Gus?”
Gus was their current boss, and he was no more than a voice on the other end of the phone. None of them had ever met Gus. He was simply a voice that told them where to go and when. He was polite, soft spoken, and a complete mystery to Reif. Gus wasn’t even his real name…it was simply a name they’d given him because they didn’t know his real name and he reminded them of Gustavo Fring from the television show, Breaking Bad. And because the money had never failed to show up when the voice said it would, they did what they were told.
Chase looked at the two dead men. “What about them?”
Reif tipped his head toward the SUV. “You’ll find shovels and a pick in the back, under the gear. Drag Fischer up here. The ground’s softer. They don’t have to go in too deep, but we’ve got to cover them up. We’re going to be around for a while.”
The burial process took a little longer than any of them thought it would, the ground only slightly softer at the top of the bowl. Reif, being the good leader he was, did his share of the digging. When they were finished they loaded the shovels and the guns back into the SUV, turned around and headed back to the motel. Reif was in the passenger seat, sweating and breathing hard. No one said a word on the way back, but Chase and Stone touched eyes a few times in the rear-view mirror.
6
Patty Doyle’s abductors took her to an abandoned house out in the country, the long gravel drive pitted and overgrown with weeds, the yard unkempt with grass that was so clumped and tall it looked like sagebrush blown in from the northwestern part of the country. A portion of the roof was missing, its rafters laid bare to the elements. Most of the windows had either been removed or had been broken out by vandals. A large Maple tree stood so close to one corner of the structure its giant limbs not only touched the roof, they crawled across its surface before elbowing upward across the peak. Nail holes on the siding wept rust colored stains that looked like blood vessels under the pellucid skin of a neglected comatose patient in a long-term care facility.
The men parked their vehicles close to the house then pulled back the tarpaulin that covered Doyle. Her eyes were unblinking, wide with fear and thoughts of what the men had planned for her. When she tried to speak the sounds that came from her throat were muffled and unintelligible. A gag was tight around her mouth, her cheeks pulled back, her teeth exposed in panic and fear, a sharp contrast to her pitiful cries that were no louder than the breeze that whistled through the broken hull of the house. When they dragged her from the bed of the truck she fell flat on her back, the restraints preventing her from protecting herself. A sharp pain screwed itself through her side and made her eyes water. Neither of the men seemed to take notice, their thoughts e
lsewhere, their task at hand defined by something she couldn’t imagine.
The driver of the truck pulled the keys from the ignition and jangled them merrily in his hand as he walked toward the house, the way someone might if they’d recently returned home from a day at the ballpark or an afternoon movie. The other man picked up Patty and hefted her across a shoulder as though she were a roll of carpet, then followed his partner.
He carried her feet first, her abdomen pressed tight across the top of his shoulder. He had one arm over the backs of her thighs, the other resting on the thin fabric that covered her ass.
Patty’s head hung down close to his back and she smelled an odor she’d normally associate with an unsanitary highway rest stop. She’d been to Egypt two summers in a row, participating in school-sponsored archaeology digs. For months she’d labor in the hot sun uncovering tiny pieces of the past. She’d once found a tibia, and then, after days of careful digging, a human skull. She wondered about the skull for months. Who had that person been? What had their life been like? Did they know they were about to die? Had it been sickness that killed them, or violence?
She thought of her childhood and her mother, almost as if she were safe and warm, held in the light of her own past, her mother’s indiscretions and cavalier attitude toward the sanctity of marriage suddenly forgiven. Then another thought, a strange one out of nowhere. Her mother’s favorite song had always been Don McLean’s American Pie, and when that thought hit her the lyrics of the song began to run through her head:
‘This’ll be the day that I die, this’ll be the day that I die…’
Even through her fear—or perhaps because of it—Patty knew she was in real trouble because the men hadn’t bothered to disguise themselves in any way. That meant only one thing. They wouldn’t have to worry about Patty providing the authorities with information of the vehicle that stopped or the physical descriptions of the men who’d presented themselves as kind and decent strangers, helpful in her time of need, men who had suddenly and viciously turned to monsters. They’d do what they were going to do, then kill her and bury her. She wouldn’t be the first I.U. student to disappear without a trace. She probably wouldn’t be the last.
She tilted her head away from the man who carried her and tried to get a look at her surroundings. The man felt her move and let his thumb slide underneath the fabric of her shorts, right at the bottom of her ass. When Patty tried to wiggle away from his touch he slid his hand deeper under the fabric. Patty choked back the bile at the base of her throat and stopped wiggling. The man took his hand away. Mostly.
The inside of the house smelled of mold and animal droppings. The floorboards creaked when the men walked across the bare planks. They moved through the house and into the kitchen. The smell was so bad Patty thought she might die right then and there. If she vomited from the smell, she’d choke to death because of the gag. She had to force herself to breathe through her mouth, her breath whistling through her teeth.
She heard the keys again and for a brief moment, as if he wanted her to see, the man who held her turned around and Patty watched as the other man unlocked a large padlock and swung the hasp away from the frame of the door. When he opened the door and turned on the light she saw a set of stairs that descended into a basement. The back side of the door and the walls on either side of the steps were covered with a dark colored foam that looked like it had been constructed by placing small pyramids next to each other. Though she’d never actually seen it before, Patty immediately knew what it was.
Sound insulating foam. She knew if she ended up in that basement, she’d never see the light of day again. She started to moan and wiggle. That got her the hand again.
The fingers inside her shorts caused something inside her to shift. Panic and fear were replaced with rage. The new and improved Patty, the Patty who could turn your head wasn’t the type of girl to mess with. Not when she was pissed. So Patty did the only thing she could do in the moment. It wasn’t much, but it was all she had.
She pissed.
The man who held her across his shoulder like a roll of carpet felt the wetness flow across his hand and for an instant—no more than a fraction of a second, really—had the thought that the presence of his hand inside her shorts was a source of sexual arousal for the woman. Then the reality of the event took over and he realized not only was he being urinated on, he’d deluded himself into thinking his touch had been a wellspring of desire no matter the circumstances, in effect making him a willing participant of his own humiliation.
He rolled Patty off his shoulder and she fell to the floor with a thud, the pain in her side flaring once again, but when she saw the look on the man’s face she knew she’d scored a victory, no matter how minor.
The other man turned around at the sound of the thud. “What the hell are you doing?”
“The bitch took a piss on me. I’m covered in it.” He wiped his hand against his pants and tried to brush the moisture away from the side of his shirt.
“That don’t matter now. Let’s get her downstairs. Grab her feet. I’ll take her arms. We don’t want any of the sound barrier ripped away.” He bent down and grabbed Patty’s arms. “Let’s go.”
The pee-soaked man grabbed Patty’s feet and together they hoisted her into the air. “You got no idea what’s happening here, sweet cheeks. But pull a stunt like that again and see what happens.”
Patty pulled her lips back and exposed as much of her teeth as possible. Then she opened her eyes as wide as she could and stared at the man until he looked away.
Patty Doyle…still turning heads, anyway she could.
When they had her in the air, she let her body go as limp as possible, her ass low to the ground, effectively making the men work much harder to pick her up. They had to raise their arms higher than normal because they had her taped at the wrists, thighs and ankles, which meant their hands were close together as well. When they got her up both men ended up with their hands almost all the way up to their own faces. Patty, who’d taken two years to get herself in the best shape of her life, gave it everything she had.
When the men began moving toward the basement stairs she started pushing against the man who held her arms, which caused him to be out of sync with his partner. That gave her just enough leverage to straighten her body and like a shot, she kicked as hard as she could, her feet connecting with the piss-covered man’s face.
But he’d managed to turn his head at the last second, the blow catching him mostly on the brow and the side of his head. He dropped her feet and brought his hands up to his face. When he did, Patty used her core strength again. With her ass on the ground she used both legs and kicked him in the groin as hard as she could. This time it wasn’t a glancing blow. The man fell to his knees, the blood draining away from his face like someone had turned his faucet wide open. She yanked her hands free from the other man, rolled and during the commotion managed to struggle to her feet. Her back was only inches from the basement door, but what was she going to do? Hop away?
That’s when she heard the man who’d held her by her wrists say ‘fuck it.’ He took two steps forward and pushed Patty down the stairs. She knew she was in for a ride, so she let her body go limp. In all likelihood the sound-proof foam saved her life. But when she peed again, this time it wasn’t on purpose.
With the woman tucked safely away in the basement, the men moved her car behind the house and covered it with brush from the overgrown yard. Then they got in their truck and headed down the long drive to the road. Neither of them had done anything like this before. They were skittish…and a little surprised by the amount of fight the young woman had put up.
The passenger held his stomach. “It feels like my balls are floating around next to my liver.”
The driver of the truck glanced at his partner and laughed as he turned out on the road, almost clipping a mail delivery truck in the process. The road was gravel and the mail truck swerved hard and for a moment they thought it might roll. But t
he driver managed to get it straightened out. It was a good effort on the driver’s part, except the stress of the over correction was too much for one of the front tires. When it blew, the mail truck veered to the side and nosed into the ditch, steam pouring out of the radiator from the impact with the embankment. The two men turned in the opposite direction and when they glanced in the rear view mirrors they saw the mail delivery driver stick his arm out the window and shoot them the bone.
“What a punk,” the passenger said. “Remember when mailmen wore uniforms and were considerate and kind? Now they’ve got ponytails like a girl, barbed wire tats, and hoops coming out of their noses.”
The driver hit the gas and accelerated away. “Don’t know nothing about tats. Nose hoops either. I’ll tell you what I do know. You almost got your ass kicked by a girl. A girl who was practically hog-tied. And you smell like piss. Maybe you ought to ride in back until you air out a little.”
7
When it was time to go meet the old man they drove north out of Louisville on 65 and had a moment of slight panic as they approached the Ohio river. They’d been back and forth across the river twice since they’d arrived, but only on 64, traveling East and West, crossing over the Sherman Minton bridge each time, which was un-tolled. No one had bothered to check the map to cross north into Indiana on 65. The meeting was set right across the state river boundary in Jeffersonville. When they got to the bridge, traffic was backed up and while waiting in line they discovered it was a toll bridge and immediately knew they couldn’t cross. Didn’t want their faces on the cameras.