CHAPTER 7
We were two kilometers into the upgrade the next morning when Millen launched our drone. If you weren’t within a meter or two of it, you’d hear only a faint whisper, and at 500 meters you had to look straight at it to know it was there. It had a twenty-minute flight life before needing to return for recharging, but it took only six minutes to spot our welcome party. A narrow section of the pass was two kilometers ahead at the summit and where Johnson said they usually waited. From there, they always sped away downhill toward Justice or, more likely, one of Cherkoff’s ranches.
We sat on the end of the wagon, watching the video feed on our comms. Robbers or not, I didn’t hide my disgust at the lack of professionalism.
“Two are just sitting in the pass, not even bothering to hide. The other two are slightly sneakier and are about forty meters back toward us and just behind some bushes. It’s been so easy, and they’ve been doing this enough, they figure there’s no reason for better concealment.”
“Well,” Millen said, “you have to admit they haven’t had any reason to take more precautions, not with thinking the biologists are easy prey. As far as we know, they don’t expect us along for the ride.”
“Do you recognize them?” I asked Johnson, holding my comm to him so he could see the drone feed of the first two men.
“Yeah. That’s them. I recognize both.” Disgust dripped from Johnson’s words, and it occurred to me that he hadn’t expressed an opinion on the use of violence. We hadn’t learned whether the men and women were formal pairs back at the researcher camp, but maybe he kept quiet to avoid arguing with one or more of the women, especially if he was partnered with Joy.
Millen toggled the drone to land on a rocky ridge a few hundred meters above the ambush site. “I’ll send it back up when we get within a kilometer. I doubt these jokers are going to be moving.”
We continued up the pass, this time with my rifle in both hands and eyes continuously scanning. Millen didn’t comment this time and did the same. We passed through a rocky defile when Millen sent the drone back up. The four men hadn’t changed position.
“Everett, I’ll stay with the wagon. You drop off here and follow on foot just out of sight. Maybe about a hundred meters back. I’ll turn on my comm mike as soon as we see the first bunch, so you can hear what we say.
“And rules of engagement haven’t changed?” We’d gone over this, but it never hurt to confirm.
“No,” Millen said. “I’ll give them a chance to back down, but if they point guns, and I think they’re serious, then it’s open season. I’ll have my rifle out of sight, but they’ll be in pistol range.”
Having seen Millen handle his pistol, I’d be betting on him, even with two armed men in front of him.
“Remember, Everett, if possible, we don’t want to kill if we don’t have to—I want to send a message, and we need messengers.”
I guess it hadn’t fully sunk in before that we might actually be in a gunfight. I know, what the hell did I think might happen? I confess I was half-imagining that no robbery would occur or that if the men existed, just seeing us would deter them. Now, as I watched the drone feed of four armed men setting up the ambush, it finally hit me this was all real and I needed my game face.
I watched the wagon continue without me. A flashback washed over me. The rocks and the pass reminded me of too many times in Yemen, the hell-hole on Earth that for hundreds of years thought it was still in the Middle Ages, fighting tribal and religious wars. The Federation would just as soon send the whole country on a one-way trip to anywhere. Unfortunately, they hadn’t figured a way to scoop an entire country off the face of the Earth. At least here, there wouldn’t be fanatics wanting to die in order to get to paradise. I hoped.
The upgrade was gentle enough and the ground mainly easy footing, so I wasn’t breathing hard when my radio came to life. “Johnson, there’re two men on the trail in front of us.”
About a minute later, I heard a new voice, faint, as if farther from Millen’s comm.
“Whoa!”
I’d just been told the first two robbers had stopped the wagon.
“Hey, Johnson. Who’s your friend? Ain’t seen him on these trips before. Another of you scientists?”
“Name’s Millen, Edgar Millen. And no, I’m not a scientist. Just let us on through, and there’ll be no trouble. I’m here to see that Dr. Johnson’s cargo gets to Justice on schedule.”
“No shit. And how do you expect to do that? You a guard or something? I don’t see no weapon, and even if you had one, there’s four of us. Look behind you.”
I didn’t need to listen anymore and turned off my comm to prevent it being heard. I moved up to forty meters behind the second pair, who had stepped from behind bushes. I felt cold and hot at the same time. My throat was tight, my eyes burned, but all other muscles were slack with the calmness that came over me when something was about to go down. I could see Millen turn to look behind. As soon as he saw me, he turned back forward, his pistol in his hand as if it had always been there.
“What the fuck—!” exclaimed the lead talker, and he fumbled to bring his rifle off his back.
Millen fired three times. The two with their backs to me started unslinging their rifles.
“Freeze!” I yelled. “You’re covered!”
Both spun, continuing to claw at their rifles. I shot at their legs. Two shots each. Three hit. One round hit the meaty portion of a man’s outside right thigh, and he fell screaming to the ground. The other man just fell straight into shock—one round had broken his left femur, the other nicked his right thigh. I ran up, kicked aside their rifles, and relieved them of pistols and knives. It didn’t take triage to see that the one in shock was more serious, so I gave him whatever first aid I could to stanch the bleeding. After injecting a coagulant enhancer and a painkiller, I applied a tourniquet with an adjustable pressure knot. I set it to release enough blood every ten minutes to keep the tissue viable below the wound.
The screamer wouldn’t stop. Christ, I’m sure it hurts, but it’s not that bad. I’ve run six or seven kilometers with a more serious hit. I stroked him under the chin with my rifle butt to shut him up, and he was out. I tore open his pant leg, but the bleeding had already slowed.
Picking up their weapons and satisfied they’d survive the next few minutes, I jogged forward to check on Millen’s end. Things there were under control, more so than with my two. Both of Millen’s men were down, one with a broken arm and the other a hole in his forehead. Both made no sound—one out of evident fear, and for the other, it was a permanent condition.
“I thought you said we were to take them alive,” I said, unable to resist chiding him.
Millen looked almost embarrassed—for him. “Got the first in his gun arm, but the second was fast and moved to the side. I didn’t have time to dick around and let him get a shot off. Serves him right. I told ’em to let us through.”
Johnson sat glued to the wagon seat, his eyes bulging like something was pushing on them from the inside. “My God, oh my God, oh my God.”
Millen hopped down, and we checked his two men, which was easier than mine because only one of his was still alive.
“Johnson!” Millen called back to the wagon. The researcher kept repeating, “Oh, God.”
Millen went back to the wagon, pried the reins out of Johnson’s hands, and pulled him to the ground. Millen shook the scientist until his eyes focused. “We need to get the wounded to Justice as fast as possible. We can give some first aid here, but they need a doctor. We’re almost at the top of the pass, and it’s early enough—can we push and make Justice before nightfall?”
“Nightfall? Nightfall? Yes, maybe, if we push the horses and don’t mind the rockier ride. But my God, Millen. That all happened so fast. Are they dead?”
“One is, and three ain’t. We need to get them loaded up and push on to Justice.”
“My God,” repeated Johnson. “I wasn’t expecting this when I passed on asking
for help to stop Cherkoff and his men. I only wanted us to be able to do our work and be left alone.”
His statement triggered several questions I’d had. “Who asked you to look for help and how did you do it?”
“The person asked they not be named. As for who I contacted, I know a department head at the University of Oslo. The local leaders have been unable to get help from any level of authority, so when I was in Oslo for a meeting, I told Dr. Singahal what’s happening here and was there anything he could do. He’s highly regarded, and his work is known beyond Astrild. He just asked for more details, then said he’d do what he could but not to get my hopes up that anything would come of it. Then I got a comm from him to expect two men to come to Justice to take care of the little problem we discussed. I was to forget anything we talked about and was to play naïve.”
I motioned to Millen. We walked away and left the shocked researcher staring at the body.
“Should I assume this Dr. Singahal and Mr. White are somehow connected?”
“Actually, I don’t know,” said Millen, “though it would explain why Mr. White insisted that helping the Starsumal Station would make a good testing ground for our partnership and would get us some updated information. Our contacts are strictly through Mr. White, and there’s no ‘need to know’ beyond that.”
I filed away the information. It was only a small part of the puzzle of exactly who we worked for, but I found it reassuring to confirm that the connections were not all confined to a nebulous organization light-years away.
It took only a few minutes to load the four men onto the wagon bed. The dead one we wrapped in a tarp and heaved him into the rear. Millen’s second man docilely accepted help climbing up. My two men required Johnson’s assistance because they were both unconscious—the guy I’d cold-cocked and the severely wounded one who was out of it from the painkiller.
Millen and I retrieved two of their cycles, leaving the other two, including the one with the freezer sidecar. I told Johnson to put them in the wagon on his return trip. He hesitated until I said to consider them partial reparations for previous lost shipments. That perked him up.
“Sounds fair to me, but Joy will raise hell about it, not to mention the shooting.”
Johnson moaned most of the way to Justice. Fortunately, Millen and I rode the two cycles and could put some distance from Johnson when we got tired of listening. The sun was a hand’s span above the horizon when we hit the outskirts of town. We didn’t shout out or anything, but it didn’t take long before people noticed three wounded men and a body in the wagon bed. We accumulated a growing following, as Johnson took us to what passed for a hospital and let the staff cart the three wounded inside. The staff voiced minor disagreement when we tied one hand each of the two less-wounded men to bed frames while they were being treated, but Millen threatened to shoot anyone who untied them. I hoped he wasn’t serious. We also discussed whether to tie the other man, but we agreed that his broken femur probably meant we could catch him again, even if he did escape.
Then we went outside the hospital’s main entrance.
“What’s next?” I asked, already figuring on the answer.
“We wait for the local law enforcement contingent. I expect word has gotten to them, either from someone seeing us on the way in or from the hospital staff spreading the news. Shouldn’t take long.”
“I assume you remember they’re on Cherkoff’s payroll. If the four we brought in are also his men, then you must have some brilliant plan on how we’re going to explain all this.”
“All my plans are brilliant, but no brilliance is needed here. This was just the first step in our mission in Justice.”
I was relieved to hear we actually had a plan. “Think you might continue to enlighten me on what we’re doing in this dumpy town? If I hear it enough times, I might start to believe it.”
“From what Mr. White and Dr. Johnson tell us, Makon Cherkoff and his men have a stranglehold on Justice and the surrounding hundred or more kilometers. He’s well on his way to being a warlord if he isn’t one already. What we’re going to do is remove him and his crew from the backs of the citizens. The little excursion we just had was only an introduction to the area and a final chance for me to see how you handle yourself. It’ll start getting more serious once Cherkoff learns we’re around.”
“Well, that shouldn’t take long,” I said.
“Maybe a day or two, depending on where Cherkoff is at the moment. Long enough for us to settle some things in town and have some conversations with a few of the more important local citizens. What we’ll do right now is inform the local law enforcement staff that their services are no longer needed.”
“And how many staff are there supposed to be?”
“Johnson and I talked before I woke you. He says it’s a department of two.”
“Two? For a town this size? I’d expect eight or more.”
“Think about it. If everything’s run by Cherkoff, and something happens that those two can’t handle, what do you think comes next?”
The answer was obvious. “I expect there’s a deep pool of Cherkoff deputies ready to be sworn in . . . if they bother.”
“There you go.”
I looked around just as a siren became audible. A stereotypical police car with lights flashing turned into the hospital’s small parking lot.
“I think I’ll stand over by my cycle and rifle,” I said, walking away.
“I doubt that’ll be necessary, but no harm in being careful.”
The police car braked, and two men jumped out. The driver was early forties, with a slight paunch and mean eyes. The other man was younger, looked confused, and resembled the first man, who I figured was the police chief, sheriff, or whatever.
“What the hell’s going on!” barked the older man, eying our pistols and touching the butt of his own weapon. “We got all kinds of calls about—” He broke off, as he got to the wagon and saw the tarp-covered body.
“Is that a body under there?”
Millen jerked the tarp enough to expose the face. “Yep,” Millen said, “unless he came back to life when we wasn’t lookin’.”
“Oh, shit, that’s Markie Darkarian. How’d it happen?”
“Mr. Darkarian and three companions have been robbing people bringing things into Justice. The other three are inside having their wounds tended.”
“What! Markie was a Cherkoff man. The others, too.”
What a dork, I thought. Doesn’t even think about what he’s saying.
“Odd that you know the other three are Cherkoff men without even seeing them. Makes one wonder.”
“That it do,” Millen said.
“And who the hell are you two?”
“My name is Edgar Millen, and my colleague here is Everett Cole. We were hired to put a stop to these men robbing people, and we did.”
“You did this?” said the astounded man.
“That we did,” Millen said.
He looked at us like we were purple aliens that had just fallen from the sky. “You gotta be shittin’ me. Don’t you know what you just did? And anyway, why the hell do you think you got any business around here? We’re gonna have to take you two in to face charges.”
I was amused and wondered whether Millen would shoot him, scare him shitless, or just dismiss him. I was hoping for the second, but it turned out to be the third.
“No, Sheriff . . . or is it Chief?”
“It’s Marshal. Marshal Dayton Wilton, and you two hand over your guns.”
“Well, Marshal Wilton, I’m afraid I have to inform you that there’s a new marshal in town. That’s me, and Deputy Marshal Cole over here. We’ll be coming to the marshal’s office in about half an hour. That should give you enough time to clear out any personal belongings.”
I’d been watching the younger man—I assumed a son or a nephew—to be alert if he had a mind to take some ill-advised action. What surprised me was that his eyes were neither angry nor worried—instead, al
most pleased. Well, well, maybe Marshal Junior and Senior don’t see eye to eye.
“What?” sputtered the ex-marshal. Those purple aliens had said something unbelievable. “What the hell are you talkin’ about? I’m the marshal here.”
“Not anymore. And before you do something terminally stupid, consider that Mr. Cole and I just shot four armed men. It might be unfortunate to increase that number, but, come right down to it, don’t make much difference to us.”
Wilton looked at Millen. Looked at me. Looked at Millen. Looked at Darkarian’s body, then turned and went back to the car. I’d swear Junior almost smiled. The car sped off, lights still on, and missed taking out what looked like a small dogwood tree by centimeters. Then it avoided hitting two women only because they were sufficiently agile.
“I’ve been waiting years to say those words,” Millen said.
“Huh? Say what?”
“There’s a new marshal in town.”
CHAPTER 8
Scattered raindrops weren’t enough to discourage the crowd of curious onlookers that had grown during our meeting of minds with ex-marshal Wilton. A hundred or more people stood watching—individuals and small groups, whispering or talking among themselves anywhere from twenty to a hundred meters away. Most looked skittish, as if wanting to retreat, but curiosity got the best of them.
“If there’s no honest legal system here, what’s the plan for the three men inside?” I asked. “Lock them in the marshal’s office once the hospital says they can leave? I’m guessing there are cells of some kind around here.”
“No,” said Millen, “we don’t want to have to deal with watching them. Two of them are pretty much sidelined for weeks, if not months. By then, whatever is going to happen here will have happened. The screamer will be up and around soon, but I’ve a sense he’s no threat. Just to be sure, we’ll give the doctors some time to deal with them, and then we’ll get their opinion on the injuries. As soon as possible, we’ll put them on a dirigible, after warning that we’ll shoot on sight if they return.”
A Tangled Road to Justice Page 9