by W L Ripley
“Finally, the assholes finished with her and they let me go, laughing the whole time. ‘Your turn, Blackjack,’ they said. ‘C’mon, man, your gash, take a cut.’ I said okay, but first I hadda take a leak. I went outside, got my sixteen and a couple grenades, then I went back in, made ’em let the girl go. She ran, still don’t know what became of her. Then it was just me and the six rapists. Six American criminals. Seven, counting me. Americans. Shit.” He squeezed his eyes shut. I knew the ending.
“They had it coming, Chick,” I said. “That’s a long time ago. It’s over. Let it go.”
“I gotta finish,” he said, deadpan. “I’ve never told anybody what happened. So, I held the gun on ’em until she left, and then I pulled the pins on the frags and said, “I’ll be outside, waiting. Either way, the war’s over for you guys.’ I rolled the grenades inside and stepped out. Some of them tried to get out. No fucking way.
“No fucking way,” he said again. “Blackjack. Smoke and fire, man. The Black Death. Shit, I was proud of it, man. Why’d I bring that girl in amongst those animals? Why’d I do that?”
“Wasn’t your fault,” I said. I thought about the girl in my dreams, the girl dressed like a man, the one whose face I’d peeled back like onion skin, the face that would never leave me.
“I killed six Americans.”
“They raped the girl. Tortured the sapper to death.”
“War’s different.”
“That’s crap,” I said. “I’ve heard that excuse until I’m sick of it.” I thought of the arguments I’d had with my father, a World War II vet, the alienation between us when I expressed my disgust with Nam and U.S. policy. “It was inside them. The cruelty. You either are what you are or you’re not. War warps the senses. War reveals what we really are. Sometimes what we are isn’t pretty, but it doesn’t change things. We had to kill the enemy, that was our job. It wasn’t our job to torture, murder, or rape the enemy or the populace. It’s the difference between being a soldier and a barbarian. Leave it there, Chick.”
He looked at me for a long moment, as if deciding something.
“Before this thing is over,” he said, “we may have to do things you won’t like. Things that’ll bring the whole thing back. You know that. There may be no way around it.” I nodded. “What Roberts said, about me losing my nerve. He may be right. In my mind I think I just got sick of it. I said I’d never do it again. But when it comes down to it, I’ll do what has to be done. We’re painted into the corner on this one, partner, and I wanted you to know what kind of man you’d hooked up with. I owe you that.”
“I already know what kind of man you are. It comes into the room with you. Your story changes nothing. If anything, it enhances what you are. I trust you.”
He nodded at me. “The rest of the way it gets hard. From here on out, it’s hunting snakes in the dark.”
“I know.”
THIRTY-THREE
The moon was a fingernail in the muddy autumn sky when we pulled onto the lane leading to my cabin. After we left the Silver Spur we had stopped for coffee before heading home. Chick was a little bleary but was convalescing in the passenger seat, a recovery that consisted mostly of snoring like a rutting bull moose with the whooping cough.
I stopped to check my mail—L. L. Bean catalog, Sports Afield magazine, fan mail from Ed McMahon, who insisted he wanted to make me rich. How did Ed find me? Some recluse I was. I put the mail on the floorboard and drove up the road. Chick stirred in his seat, rubbed his face, and made a low guttural sound, part grumble, part groan, then said:
“Did I eat a Styrofoam chest filled with gravel tonight?”
I refused to play straight man for him.
“Was afraid of that,” he said. “Does this mean the Silver Spur gets a new wing they can name after me?” I nodded, giving in. Then he said, “Explain your plan to me again. I think I may be a little fuzzy on some of the details.”
“Which ones?”
“Starting with calling Morrison.”
I pulled to a stop in front of the cabin, shut off the engine, then said, “Roberts is pinned at his house until at least nine in the morning, waiting for the call. Can’t leave. We call Morrison, give him the info, see where he would like us to set up the exchange, then the feds move in and arrest Roberts.”
“Hopefully, before Roberts has us killed.”
“Pessimist.”
“What if Morrison doesn’t like it?”
“He’ll like it,” I said. “He hasn’t got any choice. Besides, I’ll take it to Browne and the highway patrol if he doesn’t like it.” I started to get out of the vehicle.
“Wait a minute,” Chick said, putting a hand on my arm. With his other hand he opened the glove box and retrieved his gun.
“What’s up?”
“No sense walking into anything. If they zip you they might figure they don’t have to worry about buying the formula. Wait here while I check it out,” he said, then bailed out of the vehicle.
I rolled down my window, then reached under the seat, grabbed the butt of the Browning, and put it on the dash. I sat in the dark for several minutes, smelled the cold, clean air, and considered the irony of sitting in my own drive in the dark with a loaded gun while a bounty hunter checked my cabin. Not exactly what I’d had in mind all those years ago when I walked away from the NFL.
It came back to me now, settling in my brain like the aftermath of an early morning rain—the day I decided to quit. The day I knew it was enough. The day I woke up with yet another in a series of hangovers that solved nothing except to eclipse the cold-as-metal pain in my left shoulder and right knee. The day I woke up next to the femme du jour, another interchangeable droid, with straight teeth and all the right moves. The day I woke up.
I no longer wanted to be what they were trying to make me. Or what I was allowing myself to become. The concessions I’d made. Lying to myself. Couldn’t believe what I had allowed myself to accept. The all-night parties. The drugs. The booze. The pills I took to kill the pain, to put me to sleep, to blur reality into a fuzzy-edged daydream. Just wanted to be me again. My innocence hadn’t died, it had been waylaid by misplaced priorities. I wasn’t built to be a star. Wasn’t born to follow.
God, I was sick of me.
Had not wanted it to be that way. Too late to regain what had been lost, but maybe not too late to reclaim what was left. I was not who I used to be, but I didn’t have to be what I was becoming. So I walked away. Walked away. Retreated to the woods. To obscurity.
Slowed down in time to see the long bend in the highway.
I had been sitting for several minutes, thinking about these things, when Chick returned.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Somebody was here, though. Broke in, tossed the cabin, probably looking for the formula. Must’ve thought you made the call from here. But be ready. For all we know they could be watching.”
I got out of the Bronco, taking the gun with me, and we walked to the cabin, staying a good distance from each other. At the doorstep I saw where they had broken a windowpane and opened the door from the inside. Inside, things were a mess, as if a high wind had swept through. Cushions lay scattered about, drawers were pulled out, cabinets stood open. It was the same in the other rooms.
“Not much of a housekeeper, are you?” said Chick. “Anything missing?” I looked around. Guns were still there, though the glass was broken and the guns in disarray.
“Nothing important,” I said. “I don’t own anything important. They just went through everything.”
“Pro job. Notice all the drawers are open? Means they started with the bottom drawer and worked their way up; that way they don’t have to shut a drawer to look at the next one. Bet there isn’t a fingerprint in the whole place.”
The phone rang. I looked at the clock. Eleven forty-seven. Who would be calling now? I picked it up. It was Morrison. Saved me a call. I could tell him about the trap we’d set for Roberts.
“Storme, glad I caught you. I’ve
been trying to get hold of you for the past hour.”
“We’ve been out. What’s up?”
“Bad news, I’m afraid.…Agent Taylor is dead. Murdered.”
My knees felt soupy and I rolled my head back, closed my eyes. No. Tempestt was dead. I’d done it again. Somebody else had died because of me. Why? Why? No more. “How?”
“Poisoned. Somebody injected what appears to be Liquid-Plumr and cocaine into her IV bag. She was already dead when they found her. Sorry about this, Storme. I know you had feelings for her. That’s why I called you. Storme…are you there? Storme, what’s—” I hung up the phone.
“They killed her,” I said to Chick. “Tempestt is dead.”
Chick looked at me for a long moment. He ran a hand along his jaw. “Sorry,” he said. I nodded. Then he said, “So what do you want to do?”
“We change tactics,” I said. “No more negotiations. No more games. No cops. We storm the castle and cut the cancer out.”
THIRTY-FOUR
We entered the woods two miles behind Roberts’s estate at 4:30 a.m. The fingernail moon was gone, hidden behind the mattered sky of blue-black clouds, and a cool mist hung in the air. My face was smudged with camo paint. I wore black jeans, a black Eddie Bauer fatigue sweater with elbow patches, and a pair of black driving gloves.
Chick was dressed similarly, with the exception of a midnight-blue navy watch cap. Under his coat he carried a .357 Ruger Black-hawk and a Colt .22 Match pistol. In a rear pocket he carried a cylindrical silencer for the .22 that was as long as the gun itself. Strapped across his back with a nylon sling was a short-barreled Remington pump shotgun. I was carrying a shotgun, also, a 12-gauge Savage/Stevens side-by-side I’d bought at an estate auction only the week before. It was a pretty piece, despite a couple of rust specks. Before we left the cabin I had stuck it in a vise, sawed eight inches off the barrels, then sanded the truncated muzzle with emery paper, transforming it from a gentleman’s fowling piece into a short, wicked weapon with two black, demon eyes that could throw a pattern the size of a tractor tire. It was ruined now. It would never again be what it was forged to be. I rigged a holster for it from an old bow quiver, slashing a slit for the trigger guard with a Buck knife, then lashing the whole thing across my back. When I needed it all I would have to do was reach over my shoulder and grab the stock.
I also carried the Browning Hi-Power pistol and my compound bow, four arrows on the quiver.
The night closed around us like a tent flap as we sank into second-growth timber and the dark secret places of nature. The air was chill on my exposed face, and the forest seemed to reach for us with thin, wooden fingers. My feet searched for stability, the ground uncertain and unfamiliar in the darkness.
Chick moved wraithlike ahead of me. This was his territory. If I had not seen his dark shape before me, I wouldn’t have known he was around. He seemed to drift through the forest soundlessly, confident, as if his eyes were infrared. About 150 yards from the road we scared up a wild turkey, which exploded from a tree overhead in a flurry of huge, slapping wings, like a pterodactyl rising from its nest. I heard my breathing, heavy in my chest, more from apprehension than fatigue. A dry knot of anxiety balled in my throat.
As a boy in these Ozark woods, I had accompanied my father and my brother, along with uncles and cousins, on coon hunts with a single-shot .22 rifle in my hands and a flashlight bulb on my hat like an Appalachian coal miner, my heart eager and filled with the delight of shared experience. But this was different.
The black dreams of Vietnam were slithering up my neck into my head. Horrible memories of night patrol, slapping through the elephant grass, your hands clammy and fatigues stiff with the salt of the day’s sweat, hoping you didn’t trip a claymore, eyes straining for shapes in the darkness, straining so hard it gave you a headache, all the while hoping that if something did happen you wouldn’t foul your pants or some freshmeat draftee wouldn’t accidentally roll a half-clip of M16 ammo up your back.
It started to grab at me before I was ready. It had been years since I’d experienced it. Usually, I could feel it creeping up on me, but this time it clubbed me along the medulla with a magnitude I hadn’t endured since I’d first returned from overseas. I slowed up and tried to head it off. Chick, sensing my problem, or smelling my fear, stopped and looked at me. I felt the hair ball of hyperventilation slinking up my throat, along with the sour sensation of nausea. My knees began to shake. I didn’t feel pretty. Or brave. Neither was I ashamed. I was almost glad. It reminded me I was a man with feelings about to do an unpleasant job.
Chick stepped back to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Hang on, Wyatt,” he said, softly. “Ride it out. I’m right here with you.” He knew what it was, probably had experienced a taste himself, a souvenir many of us brought back from our little vacation in Indochina. I held up a hand, tried to inhale slowly through my nose, exhale through my mouth. Finally, I was able to regain control. I looked at him. He looked back, his teeth white against his camo-smudged face. Neither of us said anything for a moment, then he said, “I know.”
I nodded appreciation and we continued into the dark spiderweb of predawn forest.
It was 4:47 when we reached the edge of the forest line around Roberts’s house, a large redwood-and-stone lodge with high-peaked A-frame roofs and a redwood deck running along the second floor. There was a six-car garage and some outbuildings—tack house, machine shed, and a large Kentucky-home horse barn. The whole thing couldn’t have cost any more than a B-2 bomber.
We sat at the edge of the timber and looked over the lay of the estate. “Remember what I said,” said Chick. “No second thoughts. No moral dilemmas. No hesitation. These guys are killers. They’d as soon cut your throat and pull your tongue through the hole as say good morning. Roberts ain’t mob, but he’s been around them so much he thinks and smells like them. If he goes out of here upright, you and I will never be safe again. Somewhere, sometime, you catch a bullet or your car gets a C-4 wire job, and there’s no guarantee someone you love will not go with you.”
Someone like Sandy, I thought. Or Tempestt, already. I knew he was right. Now that I had the formula I would always be a threat to him. Even if I gave him the formula he could never be sure I hadn’t kept a copy. After he guaranteed exclusive rights to the wise guys he couldn’t afford a competitor. The uptown guys didn’t negotiate, they liquidated assets—yours, not theirs. So we had to take him off the board. Roberts was a killer. First the sheriff, now Tempestt.
I had killed in Vietnam. Forced to. In order to stay alive for 365 days I had killed other men. And a girl. In order to return home. I was seldom angry when I killed in those times. I was afraid. Fear was demon and daily bread as well as ally then. Now I just wanted Willie Boy Roberts to cease to exist; wanted comfort in the thought that he was no longer around to hurt anyone ever again. To avenge Tempestt. I wanted to kill him slowly. Piece by piece. With his crimes on his mind and my name on his lips as he expired. Knowing that it went against my Christian upbringing to kill, knowing, in fact, that it was wrong, made no difference. It had to be that way. I needed a monster in order to do what I had to do, and he had provided me one. There was no other choice.
But the knowledge hardly made the task easier.
Chick took out the .22 pistol and fitted the long silencer on the end of the muzzle. We had two plans. We didn’t know which we were going to utilize until we got there. Plan A was to arrive early and take them by surprise. Plan B was to wait until 9:00 a.m., when Deputy Simmons would call Roberts to set up the bogus meeting. Since we were sure Roberts had no intention of buying the formula or of allowing us to live, we knew he would send people to meet with us and zap us. He would be somewhere else with an alibi at ten o’clock. If something did happen to us, then Simmons was to notify Sam Browne and let the patrol take it from there. But I knew Roberts would be at the house until nine, waiting for the call. When he sent the muscle out to meet us, we could go in and take him with fewer soldiers aro
und.
A horned owl floated soundlessly overhead, its wingspan monstrous against the blotchy purple-black sky. On the north ridge a coyote yipped a high-pitched cry and was answered by others. Then, from behind the lodge, came the deep-throated complaint of a large hound, then a second one.
“Dogs,” said Chick.
I thought about my encounter with the Doberman, which made me uneasy. Wyatt Storme, dog killer. Now I might have to do it again.
“When the time comes,” Chick said, “I’ll try to take the dogs out with this.” He raised the silenced .22. “But you may have to do it with the bow.”
I nodded. “If I have to.” But I didn’t relish the thought.
The big house sat up on a slight rise. A long white rail fence bordered the road on the south property line; the fence became barbed wire on the east and west lines and ran all around the house. There was a ridge about two hundred yards north of the property. We were positioned on the east ridge, the wind rising up in our faces. The long paved drive leading to the house was decorated by red maples. The lawn was vast. Crossing the fence would present little trouble, but crossing it without the dogs sounding an alarm or severely biting my favorite wide receiver was another matter. Fortunately, most guard dogs depend upon their sight and hearing rather than their sense of smell, and well-trained attack guards didn’t bay at coyotes. But it didn’t matter whether the dog that crushed your femur was trained or not.
We were deciding whether to use plan A or B when a gray Dodge Dynasty stopped at the road gate. A man got out of the car, opened the gate, and drove up to the house. Chick reached into one of his pockets and produced a monocular, one of those small telescopes with a four-power lens like binoculars. A light came on in the house. The car stopped near the garage. Two dogs, a Doberman and a Rottweiler, bounded up happily into the yard light. A man, their handler perhaps, followed the dogs. The driver got out and petted the dogs. Chick put the scope up to an eye.