Way Down on the High Lonely (28 page)

Cal waved the gang over and set them to work. He asked Hansen, “What about the prisoners?”

Carter stepped in. “I’ll deal with the prisoners.”

“Yes, sir.” That was fine with Cal. He was far more interested in the weapons Mackinnon had brought, and there was plenty of time to have some fun with that one-armed wise guy and that smart-ass Carey. With any luck they might break Harley’s three-week record. So let them wait.

“So far we’re winning,” Graham repeated to Neal. “We kept them talking for a half hour and now we’ve caught a break with this arms shipment arriving. With any luck they’ll be busy playing with their new toys for a while, which means more time for Ed to wake up and come get us out of here.”

“I wish he’d hurry,” Neal answered. He didn’t think Graham could survive much longer, not with the cold, the pain, and the shock. “You were great, Dad.”

“Hell with these guys,” answered Graham. “We’re not dead yet.” But we’re going to be, son, he thought. And the only thing I can do for you now is to try to keep the terror out of your mind. Stop you from imagining what the pain is going to be like. “Have you started working on your story yet?” Graham asked.

“Not really.”

“Get on it,” Graham snapped. “Think up layers on top of layers.”

“You got it.” I know what you’re trying to do, Dad, but I’ll play along. It gives us something to do, and I think we’re in for a long wait.

Then Carter and Randy came back in.

“Where’s Dad?” Shelly asked her mother.

They were standing at the kitchen counter. Karen sat at the table, peeling potatoes.

“On the roof,” Peggy answered.

“Again?” Shelly laughed. “Who does he think he is, Santa Claus?”

“Honey, your father has always thought he was Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Peter Pan all rolled up into one. He’s still working on this big surprise of his.”

Karen asked, “When do we get to see it?”

“Tonight, he says.”

Shelly rolled her eyes dramatically and said, “It’s going to be a long afternoon.”

Up on the roof, Steve held the last of the wires down with one hand and pounded the U-nail down with the other. He wanted to finish up before the storm came in and made him stop.

He looked up to check out the clouds again. Yep, he thought, looks like we’re going to have a white Hanukkah.

Then he heard the far-off crackle of rifle fire coming from the Hansen place. Knock yourselves out, boys, he thought. Because I’m going to knock you out tonight.

Shoshoko heard the gunfire too. He looked up from the rabbit he was skinning and listened closely. The sound was coming from the valley, close to the base of the mountain. But what could they be shooting at, using so many bullets? Or was it just the white man’s silly habit of constantly testing his aim? A wasteful, childish game, Shoshoko thought.

Yet from his dream, he knew that the white men would be coming up the mountain and that the bullets would be for him. He went back to skinning the rabbit. They needed the meat, and it was not his fate to die in the daylight. The white men would not come until the night.

Cal could tell that the constant popping sound of the boys trying out the sample M-16s was annoying Mackinnon. The man didn’t like working with explosives anyway; his fingers looked numb with cold, and he was sweating profusely even though he was lying in the snow. But the arms dealer sure as hell knew what he was doing, Cal could tell that. He watched as Mackinnon finished arming the mine, then brushed some snow over the top of the metal disc that looked like a large dinner plate.

“Mark this down as ‘AV, RC 3,’” he told Cal, who stood above him making sketches in a notepad.

You don’t have to tell me, Cal thought. It was critical to record the location and type of the mines. This one was “antivehicle, radio-controlled number three,” the last of the mines they’d planted on the road. They’d put one right on the turnoff from the main road, another one about halfway down, and this last one right under the compound gate itself; if anything ever managed to ram the gate in, they would blow the hell out of it right there.

They’d laid a dozen ‘AP, CD’—antipersonnel, contact-detonated—mines in an irregular pattern around the outside of the compound. These were the sweet little puppies that exploded as you stepped
off them,
giving you the cheerful choice of standing perfectly still and getting shot or hitting the dirt with whatever was left of you after the mine blew up underneath you. They also planted twenty-four dummy mines. The only way you could tell they were duds was by stepping off them and seeing whether you were alive or a memory.

The idea was to force any attack into narrow unmined lanes that you had covered with presighted rifle fire. This would equalize the firepower of your small force against your enemy’s larger one. With discipline and training, one good man with an Ml 6 could take care of his own lane while a centrally located heavy machine gun could sweep the entire field of fire. Your best marksmen stayed up in the towers with their sniper rifles and picked off the enemy’s leaders. A good fire team could turn an enemy attack into a debacle in moments. It would take trust, of course. Every man was literally betting his life that every other man was doing his own job. And Cal was going to make goddamn sure that was the case.

“Let’s go up the tower and label the switches,” Mackinnon said. “Then let’s call it a day. I’m beat.”

They’d put in a full one. They’d unpacked the crates of rifles and test-fired half a dozen of them. Then Cal had set the men to assembling and cleaning the rest and they hiked down near the base of the mountain, set up some targets, and started sighting them in. Then Mackinnon took Cal and Randy and talked them through the intricacies of the Schmidt Rubin 31/55 sniper rifle, a Swiss beauty with a bipod stand, capable of delivering a 190-grain bullet with great accuracy at long range. Then he and Cal started the long, sweaty work of laying the mines.

Now they walked back into the compound. The late afternoon sky had turned a sullen, threatening gray.

“Why don’t we put the switch box in the southeast tower?” Cal asked. “That gives us the best view of the terrain.”

“We can put a box in each tower and one in the bunker, if you want. It’s a simple matter of override switches. That way you don’t have to worry about being in one particular place to detonate the mines.”

“Sounds good to me,” Cal said. He was impressed. Mackinnon had put some thought into this deal.

So Mackinnon charged four battery-run toggle-switch boxes and set the frequencies. They taped one into each guard tower and another one into the main bunker room. He showed Cal which switch detonated which mine. By the time he was finished it was dark out.

“Now you can blow the hell out of any ZOG bastard who tries to come in here,” Mackinnon said.

“That’s good,” Cal answered. “We might be needing to any time now.”

Mackinnon’s eyes went flat and cold. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well, we have a couple of prisoners who …”

Cal saw Mackinnon’s jaw drop in disbelief and his face flush with anger.

“Prisoners?” Mackinnon hissed.

“Yeah. Couple of prisoners, I—”

“You assholes let me bring these arms into an insecure area?”

“It’s not insecure, it’s—”

“ZOG would put me away for life if they caught me with this shipment! Are these guys cops? FBI? Secret Service? Customs?”

Jesus, the guy is flipping out, Cal thought. He said, “I don’t know who they are. We haven’t really started questioning them yet.”

“Well, we’re goddamn well going to start now!”

Cal saw Bob Hansen walking over with that sour look he got on his face when he didn’t think things were going the way he wanted.

“What’s happening here? What’s the yelling about?”

“Where’s Carter?” Mackinnon yelled.

Cal almost smiled, because he’d never heard anyone yell at Hansen before.

“He’s back at my house, having a rest,” Hansen answered.

“His ass is in the sack and he’s got mine in a sling?”

Cal had to put his hand to his mouth and fake a cough.

“What’s the trouble?” Hansen asked. Cal could tell the boss was starting to get pissed off.

“The trouble is,” Mackinnon said with exaggerated patience, like he was talking to the slowest kid in the fifth grade, “that you guys have let me drive a truckload full of illegal arms into a place the law seems to have targeted. That’s what the trouble is.”

“We’re taking care of the—” Hansen started to say.

“You’re not taking care of shit!” Mackinnon yelled.

Cal saw Bob Hansen go positively pale.

“Where are they?” Mackinnon asked. He looked away, put his hands on his waist, and shook his head.

“They’re locked up,” Cal said. He pointed at the small bunker. “Right over there.”

Mackinnon said to Cal, “Let’s go.”

Hansen butted in. “Now wait just a minute. This is none of your concern. Reverend Carter—”

“You did search them for transmitters, didn’t you?” Mackinnon asked.

“We were about to do that when you came in,” Cal lied. He was some kind of embarrassed, especially because about half of the boys were standing a few feet away watching the whole scene.

He was grateful when Mackinnon turned his rage toward Hansen. “I want my money right now. Then I’m out of here.”

Hansen’s face looked like stone. “Come to the house with me. You’ll get every damn penny.”

“You’re damn right I’ll get every damn penny. But bring it here, to the truck. I’m not walking into any house with you. Half the National Guard might be hiding in there,” Mackinnon answered. He turned back to Cal. “You’re about the only half-competent guy around this place. Will you go with him to get my money?”

Cal looked to Hansen and the boss nodded curtly.

“I want to see these prisoners of yours,” Mackinnon said. “I’ve been dodging these ass wipes my whole life. I can probably look at them and tell you what agency, which office, and how they like their coffee.”

Cal yelled to the gaggle of men who were standing around pretending not to listen. “Jory! Dave! Take him to see the prisoners! Keep your eyes open!”

“I don’t believe this,” Mackinnon muttered as they walked over to the bunker. He reached under his coat, pulled his pistol, and laid it down in front of the bunker.

Dave and Jory stared at him.

“You don’t go into a cell with your weapon,” Mackinnon explained. “What if they grab you and take it from you?”

“They’re chained to the wall,” Dave said. “And Randy’s in there.”

“Then what do you need a gun for?” Mackinnon answered.

They laid their guns down and went inside. Randy closed the door behind them. He turned the light on and Mackinnon looked down at the one man shivering on the floor and the other one a bleeding lump stretched out over two sawhorses.

Then he lost his temper.

Ed’s spinning back kick slammed into Dave’s solar plexus and knocked all the air and most of the will to live right out of him. Dave crumpled to the floor gasping for air, his legs kicking spasmodically like a cockroach set on its back.

Randy pulled a combat knife from his belt and stabbed down at Ed’s neck. Ed shifted to the left, brought both arms up, and crossed them to form an X. He blocked the knife, held Randy’s wrist, turned around and under Randy’s trapped armed, then slammed Randy’s wrist down on his own collarbone. The knife dropped from Carlisle’s hand as his elbow snapped with a dry crack. Carlisle screamed as Ed spun the broken arm around behind his back, held his neck down, and pulled the shoulder out of its socket. Ed kicked Randy in the face, breaking his nose and one cheekbone, and then let him fall to the floor.

All of this took maybe five seconds, and Jory stood watching in shock before he organized his legs to head for the door. Ed lunged and grabbed him by the back of the belt, heaved backward, and threw him over the top of his shoulder. The boy landed hard on the floor, his head snapping back and smacking on the concrete. He was out.

Ed quickly untied Graham and cradled him in his arms.

“You’ve been working out,” Graham murmured to Ed.

Ed gently set Graham down. Then he took off his big coat and laid it out on the floor. A Velcro strap under the left arm held a large automatic pistol. Another strap fastened what looked like a small, flat black box. Ed set these things down, then wrapped Graham up in the coat. He looked at Graham’s swollen eyes, which were now more like slits. “Who did this to you?”

Graham pointed his chin at Randy. “He’s one of them, but I think you already broke every bone in his arm.”

Ed nodded, saw that Dave was struggling to make it to his hands and knees, pivoted on his right foot, and drove a side kick into the man’s jaw. Dave’s head banged into the wall and he slumped to the floor again.

“Neither of you smoke, huh?” Ed asked. “I need a cig.”

He bent over Dave’s unconscious body and found a pack of Marlboros and some matches in his top shirt pocket. He took a cigarette and lit it, then took a drag and exhaled with a contented sigh. “It’s been a long day,” he said.

“Uh, Ed?” Neal asked. “Maybe you could let me loose?”

“Sorry, I got carried away.”

He took the key ring off Randy, found the right keys, and unlocked the handcuffs.

Neal rubbed his wrists to work the circulation back into them. “It’s nice to see you, Ed,” he said.

“It’s nice to be seen,” Ed answered. His back to Graham, he mouthed the words
can he walk?

Neal shook his head.

“You asshole,” Graham muttered. “Why didn’t you tell us what you were planning?”

Ed handcuffed Dave to the wall as he said, “What if you got captured, which you did … and tortured, which you did … and you broke? Which you didn’t, but it’s early. This way you had nothing to tell them.”

“Thanks a lot. So, you have an army out there?” Graham asked.

“I came alone,” Ed answered. He pointed at the bodies slumped on the floor. “I
am
an army.”

Which is a pisser, Ed thought. He had a hit squad standing by in Reno. This was supposed to have been a recon trip. Find out what the hell was going on with Carey and Graham and also set SOS up on a federal arms charge as well as the robbery rap. Not to mention get the Bank’s money back. He hadn’t planned to find Neal and Joe chained in a bunker. And when he’d seen Graham trussed up, bleeding and in pain, he knew there wasn’t going to be time to get to Reno and back. Not unless he just wanted to recover their bodies.