Chapter 10
Brad glanced back at where he knew Susan stood in the darkness. He wanted to reassure her that everything was going to be okay, but he couldn't do that. There were three armed men in front of his house, and in a few minutes there would be four. All of them intent on killing him, and God knows what to Susan. Their orders were to deliver her alive, not necessarily in good condition.
"Recon." Brad said into the darkness, knowing that somewhere in the black, Recon was watching and listening to him. "Stay. Guard." Susan had proven that she was quite capable of taking care of herself, but Brad wanted to add insurance, and Recon was highly trained insurance.
Brad took the crossbow from his shoulder and fitted a bolt into position before running down the slopping field towards the back of the barn. His training kicked in as he ran, scanning every spot where someone could appear, looking for moving shadows. He thought he saw a movement and froze as still as one of the trees behind him, studying the spot. Waiting for another movement in the darkness. He resumed his run to the barn once satisfied he was still alone.
At the back of the barn he waited, crouched at the farthest corner from the house. He listened for movement, hearing muffled voices of men gathered in the drive between the house and the barn. They were waiting for the van. He moved quickly up the side of the barn, his free hand grazing against the rough, weathered wood of the wall as a guide to his movement.
Glancing out at the distant road beyond the pasture he could see headlights piercing the night as the van turned into his driveway. He pressed his back against the wall, even though the glowing eyes of the van could capture nothing more than a piece of the road it followed. Brad shouldered the crossbow and pulled the pistol out of his belt that he had lifted off the dead man. He noticed its heft. Revolver, he thought. He felt a cylinder hole. .44 caliber. Probably a magnum. Sort of like a cannon with a handle grip. Now he was really curious about these people. This was not the first choice of weapons of trained professionals. He shoved the revolver into his belt and pulled the .45 semi-automatic from its holster. If he needed a back up weapon, he would use the magnum. He wished he had the Glock, which held a bigger clip of bullets than the .45, but Susan had it, and he was glad she did. He might need her to give him cover fire before this was over - if things didn't go according to plan, which, experience had taught him happens more often than not.
As Brad inched into position at the corner of the barn, waiting for the van to pull in from the driveway, the ascending headlights were suddenly blocked from view by the silhouette of a man rounding the corner, reaching for the zipper of his pants, obviously pre-occupied with relieving his bladder. A ghost of headlights captured in the damp night air prickled the darkness around Brad. The man, focused on natures call as he was, realized something was in front of him and looked up startled. As he reached for the gun in his belt he opened his mouth to yell, only getting out a short bark as Brad took one step towards him and slammed the pistol butt into the man's temple. As the man fell, Brad stepped forward and quickly glanced around the corner to see if the other men had heard. Their attention seemed to be on the headlights coming towards them. As Brad pulled his head back a sharp pain blasted into his back, almost knocking the breath out of him. His arms flew out as the blow thrust him forward, the gun falling from his grip. He reacted immediately, the pain in his back screaming for attention, but his training and experience almost instinctively took command. Survival or death danced together within this moment. He spun, hitting the man with the back of his wrist in the same bloody temple where he had struck him before, throwing the weight of his body behind the punch. As the man began to drop Brad hit him in the ribs with a spinning kick, immediately regretting using that leg as a sharp pain rose from his old wound.
At that moment the arriving van passed through the motion detector as it drove into the parking area. Lights over the barn flooded the area. The van driver saw Brad and honked, pointing to the edge of the barn where he stood, but there was no need. The scuffle with the man who now lay at his feet had created enough noise to draw their attention. Brad glanced over at them, realizing that in the fight, he had moved into view. A shot rang out as one pulled a pistol and fired. Brad dove behind the barn wall and hit the dirt on his belly. He heard two whacks as bullets tore through the old wood of the bar just above his head.
Where he laid, the direct light in the yard was blocked by the corner of the barn, but enough of its aura escaped into the darkness at the edge of the old building for Brad to see his pistol on the ground. Grabbing it, he spun around and inched back to the corner in a belly crawl. He stopped short of the layer of revealing light, remaining at the edge of hidden darkness, elbows on the ground as he held the pistol pointed skyward in a two handed grip, expecting them to come around the corner any second, hoping to fill his back with hot lead as he tried to run away.
The report of a machine pistol whizzed like a sewing machine, splattering the front barn wall with the intensity of driving rain. Brad hovered close to the ground, placing the corner post of the barn between him and the shooter. Bullets tore into the front wall, hitting the side wall and exiting through cracks, but the corner post and high foundation below where he hovered absorbed the lethal shots.
From behind the barn, Brad heard three quick reports from the Glock, than another three. Susan. Brad inched an eye around the corner and fired in the direction of the men who were now running for cover.
With Susan keeping them pinned down for the moment, Brad glanced at the van's license plates, but the angle he had parked offered the dimmest of light, and the angle made the number even more difficult to see, but he could see what state it was from by the plate design - Florida. As he was doing this, the driver of the van could discern him in the semi-darkness from his angle, and came out of the van with gun in hand. Keeping the door between him and Brad he fired as Brad pulled back into the darkness, and the semi protection of the barn.
Brad quickly turned, crouching to create a small target and make the most of what protection the barn offered, he exposed only his head enough to see the van and fired off a series of shots. The windshield of the van instantly webbed around a large hole and sparks flew from the top of the door, making the man crouch behind the fender well. Brad had seconds to escape and get to the tree line. As he rose he turned and started to run, hoping that the machine pistol would not spray the barn again.
As Brad rounded the back of the barn, he could see Susan in the ambient light from the front of the house, It was so faint that it barely touched her in the darkness. Her gun was raised and she was taking aim between the house and the barn. The men had taken cover. She couldn't see them and she wanted to keep it that way as she watched Brad running with a limp towards her.
"That could have gone a lot better." Brad said as he came up to her. She fired two more shots before wrapping her free arm around Brad, which he gratefully accepted as she helped him to the tree line.
"How bad are you hurt?" She asked as they passed into the forest, disappearing into the blackness of the trees.
They slowed their pace once they had a thicket of giant tree trunks behind them. "Not bad." Brad finally answered through clenched teeth.
"Did you get hit?' She asked in the darkness.
"Not by a bullet, but I think I might have a rib problem. I took a hard punch." She rubbed his back as they walked deeper into the woods. She heard an intake of breath as she did.
"If you got hit in the ribs, why are you limping?" she asked impatiently.
"Jeez, Susan, you're about as compassionate as a platoon sergeant." he said defensively.
"Oh." she said quietly and then said, "I'm sorry." she said with sincerity. "I was afraid that they were going to kill you when I heard all that gun fire. I couldn't see how you could possibly survive the barrage of bullets that I could hear, and then when I saw you, limping as you ran, I thought for sure you had been shot." She paused. "I was afraid, Brad, and when I"m afraid I have to try to get control of my situation, my emotions. So, I was assessing your condition, trying to figure our odds.My concern was how badly you're hurt. I didn't mean to sound cold, but we need a quick assessment so we can evaluate our next move."
"I'm limping because I used my right leg when I should have used my left one."
"For what?"
"To kick a guy. I got fancy with a karate kick. I should have just kicked him in the balls and then knocked him out."
"What would you call that - wisdom through retrospect?"
He chuckled "I find profound women who are dangerous with a gun very exciting." She giggled.
She grinned at him in the darkness before saying, "Okay, mountain man, where are we going?"
"Believe it or not, I have a plan." he said. "Turn on that flashlight and let's see where we are."
The beam swept across what seemed an endless crowd of redwoods, their fury trunks etching up into the darkness of the canopy overhead, and lost in the depths beyond the cast of fading sight just a short distance around them, a world dissolved to a level of solid and non-solid black.
Brad took the flashlight and wandered around, running the beam across the ground in front of him. "Here it is." he said, stopping.
Susan walked over and looked down. "Here what is?" she asked.
"The trail." he replied simply.
"That's a trail?" It was about 18 inches wide of exposed dirt with a spin of small washed rocks running up the middle like a spine. " It looks like a dried up little creek."
"Yeah. The exposed rock in the center - - which actually is made from water runs in the winter, but it's also a trail Just ask any wild animal who lives here." he said, jokingly.
"I have a feeling that I just did." she said, joking back.
"Hm." Brad grunted. "Try to walk on the rocks in the center of the trail as much as you can." he said, pointing the light directly down at the trail to lessen any light from traveling into the air. "We won't leave as easy a trail to track if these guys get adventurous and come after us."
The trail seemed anything but, to Susan as they followed the wobbly light that seemed to soak into the ground in front of them. Loose branches dangled from the bottom limbs which they swept aside like swinging gates that closed again right behind them. The forest that seemed so beautiful to her during the day was now ominous, a black abyss of nothingness in which the world only existed within a small island of struggling light. The back of her neck prickled with anticipation of a hand grabbing her around the neck or a bullet exploding the back of her head. She knew she shouldn't worry about it, but she couldn't help it. Brad had sent Recon to guard their rear as they climbed the windy trail up the mountain. He seemed very confident in the dog's abilities.
"Why do you call him Recon?" She had asked when Brad had sent the dog to their rear.
"Because that's what he does, and he's very good at it." He offered no more explanation as they climbed carefully up the trail.
After about forty minutes of walking they came to a clearing near the top of a mountain. Brad swept the light across the clearing, the colorless grass of night responding to the glow in greens. A small structure came into view as they crossed the field.
"What's that?" she asked.
"Dad's hide-a-way. He built it when they first bought this land. Long before I was born."
A jagged silhouette of trees claimed the starry horizon behind the cabin. The cabin had a wooden front porch with an overhang. A river rock foundation rose to the level of the porch. Walls of smooth horizontal logs rose to a pitched roof.
"Charming." Susan said as they climbed the three steps to the porch. Brad turned. looking across the dark forest that slipped down the mountain to the valley that they had just left. Recon trotted up the porch steps and laid down as if bored with the intensity of the night.
"Recon." Brad said to the dog. His ears perked up. "Stay. Guard." Recon laid his chin on his front paws and stared out at the forest cloaked in night.
Brad had turned the flashlight off once they had neared the cabin. In the darkness Susan could hear a bolt on the wooden door being slid. He led the way in, asking Susan to close the door behind her before he lit a lantern. As she did a match flared. In it's light she could see Brad lift a glass chimney from a kerosene lamp and fire the wick. A thin stream of black smoke snaked up from the lantern. He replaced the chimney and the flame settled into a golden glow that softly filled the room. It was a single room, about 20'x20' square. A rough hewn thick table with a polished top graced the center of the room where the lantern sat. Four matching kitchen chairs with short backs tucked under each side. Against one wall was an old wood burning stove. Against the opposite wall a bed encased in a brushed redwood frame. Below a window covered from the outside by wooden shudders stood an old drafting table with art supplies neatly lined on a ledge just above it. Next to the drafting table was an old wooden desk. Like the kitchen table and chairs, it was also roughly hewn, looking as if it had been made from the surrounding forest.
"Your dad built this?" She asked as he lit another lamp and placed it on the ledge of a small sink.
"Yep. It and every thing in it. This was his get-away. Dad liked to come here and paint, write, read or just sit out on the porch and watch the day go by"
"Did he come here often." she asked, curious why such a charming cabin was built in such a remote place when Brad's father had such a nice house just a couple of miles down the hill.
"Once a week, if he had the time to spare. He liked the feel of this spot. He said it was the perfect place to reconnect with himself.
He sat down with a sigh and instantly felt a thousand pains shoot through his body. "How do you feel?" she asked, reading the slight change of expression on his face.
"Like I got ran over by a herd of locomotives." he said, shifting uncomfortably. "But, I'll survive. I didn't take any bullets and my back ribs are bruised, but not broken." He patted his right leg which was extended in front of him. "And the old leg feels a lot better than it did an hour ago."
She took the gun out of her belt and placed it on the table before sitting down across from him, his leg extending passed her as she scooted up close to him.
"Do you think those men will try to follow us?"
"It's possible." he said, contemplating. "It depends on how determined they are, and they seemed determined, or they could go away and try to grab you again later."
They sat in heavy silence for a moment, both turning over the evening events, trying to make sense of it.
"It would be very helpful if we knew what your brother did." Brad finally said. "We've already got an idea what kind of people he worked with."
"Yes." she said frowning. "I saw him just a few days before he disappeared at sea." She let the memory unfold in her mind. "It was almost as if he knew he was going to die. He told me how much he loved mom, dad and myself and how proud he was of my achievements in life."
"Your achievements." Brad said, realizing he knew nothing about this woman for whom he was risking his life, other than he had an immediate feeling for her when they met. "What is it exactly that you do?"
"I work for a company that is contracted to the government. We work in sophisticated coding and decoding. Classified stuff."
Brad's eyes opened in surprise. "Did your brother, Jeff, know what you do?"
"Well, yes, of course. He knew the general nature of what I do, but, as I said, I didn't see him much after he moved away from home. Three years ago I had an apartment, and he would drop by unexpectedly at times, as if he was just passing through town and stopped to say 'hello'." Her eyes drifted and a slight smile came to her face with a memory. "The last time I saw him he gave me a beautifully carved jewelry case. He said it was very special and that I must keep it until I see him again." Tears came to her eyes. "He said that no matter what happens that he will come back and show me a surprise that the box holds."
She put her hands to her face and started crying.
"I'm sorry for your loss." Brad said tenderly.
"Oh, it's just everything." she said in frustration, choking back the tears. "This day has been wonderful and a nightmare all in the same package." She paused and looked at Brad. "I killed a man tonight and tried to kill others. I've never done anything like that before and didn't even know that I was capable of such an act."
"I know." he said, bending towards her and hugging her softly. "But, I'm glad that you were capable or I would probably be dead now."
"You seem to take it in such stride." she said. "Have you ever killed a man before tonight?"
He studied her for a moment wondering how much he could tell her. "Yes." he said finally. "I was a soldier."
"All that stuff you told me earlier about you being Special Forces was true. Those photos were of you getting some kind of commendation from the top brass of spook land." She looked at him with a look of realization. "You worked for the CIA. You were a spook."
"No, I didn't work for the CIA. We, at times, did operations that were CIA induced. We all worked for the same government. I was just a soldier - a well trained one, but still a soldier."
Changing the subject, he said. "What I noticed when I was listening to those guys talking on their radios is that the team leader had a New York accent. So did the driver in the van. The other guys had Spanish accents. The plates were from Florida. The other could have been Cubans."
"Okay." Susan said. "What does that tell us?"
"At the moment, nothing that connects anything. But, it's a piece to a puzzle." He rubbed his chin as he thought. "Cubans and New Yorkers -" Their eyes locked - she waiting for him to finish while he tried to formulate something in his mind. "Right now, I'm speculating some kind of mob involvement - Mafia's. Cuban and New York Mafia's working together."
He leaned gently back against the chair. "We've been thinking that they want to use you as bait to draw Jeff out of hiding. They want something that he had, that is obviously very dangerous to them in the wrong hands." He paused again. "But, what if they think that you have it. Their orders were not to kill you. I heard it on their radio. What if they think that you have information, or even the item that they're - - " his word trailed off.
"What?" she asked.
"Have you ever inspected that jewelry box he gave you?"
"Of course I did. It's beautiful." she responded.
"No. I mean have you ever manipulated it - searched for a secret compartment?"
"No. The thought never entered my mind." she looked at him with surprise. "Oh, my God. Do you think I might have what they're looking for?"
"Of even more concern, do THEY think you have what they're looking for."
A scratching at the door drew their attention. "What's that?" she asked.
"Recon." he said as he rose from the chair. "He's telling me I should come outside and see something." Brad turned the lamps low before slipping out the door, Susan behind him, both with pistols in hand. Recon stood at the top of the steps staring out at the dark canopy of forest that ran down the hill in front of the cabin. The beams of flashlights could be seen sporadically piercing through the trees, escaping into the night above them.
"Damn. These guys are persistent." Brad said watching the distant glows flickering. "They're about a mile and a half away, and they aren't following the trail. They're just climbing the hill, looking for tracks, knowing that we came this way."
"I hate to keep repeating myself, but, what are we going to do?" Susan said.
"Well - " Brad said, walking back into the cabin. "We gave them a chance to leave."
"Shouldn't we try to get away?" Susan asked as she followed him back into the cabin.
"We just tried that, and it doesn't seem to be working." He walked over to a wall to what looked like a door to a recessed ironing board cubbyhole. He continued as he opened the door. "They aren't going to give up until they have done what they came here to do."
Upon opening the door, Brad revealed not an ironing board, but a hidden gun rack.
"You seem to have guns everywhere. Are you always expecting trouble?" she asked coming up next to him.
"No, not at all, though there are probably some people in the world that wouldn't mind knowing who and where I am." He studied the contents of the cabinet as he spoke. "These were my dad's. I just never took them out of the cabin, but I do keep them up." He pulled out the M-1 and a pump action 12 gauge shotgun, the total weapon contents of the rack. "Old guns." he said, handing her the shotgun.
From the bottom of the gun rack he lifted a lid of matching wood, revealing boxes of ordinance and an olive drab ammo belt. He picked out four boxes of ammo and the belt, walked over to the table where he turned the lamp up and sat down. Susan sat down next to him and silently watched as he removed ammo clips from the belt and opened the boxes. From one box he started removing 30-06 bullets, brass jackets topped with copper colored missiles, and loading them into the clips.
"Each clip takes eight bullets." he said as he worked. "The M-1 is a rugged weapon and has tremendous power. If you don't have a Remington 700, and we don't, the M-1 is a good secondary distance weapon."
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Susan said.
He glanced up at her then back to his task. He continued, "The Remington 700 is a sniper rifle. It's used for long distance shots. The M-1 isn't as good, but good enough."
"Are you expecting me to fire that monster?" she asked nodding at the M-1."
"No. The down side of this rifle is you need training just to load it, and practice as well." He took a loaded clip, slid the action back and inserted the magazine, quickly removing his hand as the action slide shut with a loud snap. "If you aren't fast when you load these things, you get a case of M-1 thumb, which usually means a lost thumbnail."
He leaned the rifle against the table, muzzle pointed up, and picked up the shotgun from the table and started loading shells into the side chamber. "Dad loved this shotgun." he said as he finished. He held it up so she could see the side of it in the lamp light. "See that scroll work on the side?" She studied the ornately etched details of ducks in flight and scrolling that extended to the barrel. "The old man did that. Pretty good, huh?"
He stood up and handed her the shotgun as she also stood. "Have you ever fired one of these?" he asked.
"Yes, I have, and it hurt like hell. Bruised my shoulder."
"You have to hold it firmly against your shoulder when you fire. It will still kick on you, but just a slight space between you and the butt will make it slam into your shoulder. Remember - hold it tight when you fire."
He stood back and looked at her holding the shotgun like she was modeling an accessory. "Chamber a round. Let's see how smooth the action is for you." She easily pulled the slide back, a shell flew out and hit the floor. "Good." he said in satisfaction.
He walked over to the bed and pulled out a drawer that was embedded in the wooden frame. He started rummaging around and stood up holding a fanny pack. Fill this with shells and then put as many as you can in your pockets.
"How many bullets do you have left in the Glock?" he asked. She popped out the clip and counted.
"Nine." she said, shoving the clip back into the grip.
He pulled out his own weapon and did the same thing. "I have four. We won't use these unless it gets close and personal." He glanced over at the crossbow. "That could come in handy too. I still have five bolts in it" He picked it up and strapped it to his back.
"And now - ?" Susan asked, dangling the obvious question.
"And now - " Brad said as he blew out the lamps and walked outside. "the hunter becomes the hunted."
All content - poems, posts & images - are ©2011 by John Evans. No permission is given to post, share, copy, print, e-mail, reproduce, distribute or link to. All Rights Reserved. Please contact John Evans at JohnEvansPoet.Com for licensing inquiries.
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