Call Me Joe (36 page)

"I don't like this, Tru," Jack snapped.

"Another one of those things you can't control," I replied.

There was a stony silence.

"In case anything…happens?" he asked.

"Send in the F.B.I., State Patrol, anybody who shows up, to Joe's cabin," I sighed. "I won't be there. Neither will Joe. But he won't have gone far."

I set the phone to vibrate only and slid it into the small watch pocket of my jeans. It made an uncomfortable lump there but I'd feel it if it rang.

I took out the Desert Eagle and thumbed off the safety. Basic caution. I was reasonably sure Joe didn't know we were coming but there are a lot of reasonably certain men lying in cemeteries. If he did have some sort of perimeter alarms, I wouldn't find them and my having gotten to within 100 yards of the cabin suggested there were none.  That in itself was peculiar. Guys like Joe only become 50-ish guys like Joe by taking extraordinary precautions. If I was right about this, Joe's C.I.A. handlers would already have decided that he was a liability. There's only one possible resolution to that scenario. It's the dirtiest of dirty little secrets for a democracy that lays claim to the moral high ground. It's also unavoidable. The classic example of the good of the many outweighing the needs of a single individual. Our hilarious moral code dictates that a Joe-type can roam the earth shooting dozens of unarmed and possibly innocent people, get paid handsomely for it, and never need to question the rightness of his actions, unless
he
—the one with the ultimate moral culpability—begins to pick his own targets. Then, he's a cold-blooded murderer. As long as it's sanctioned by some faceless committee, he's a patriot.

I didn't begin to understand Joe's reasons behind taking out the Pembroke board. Maybe it was as simple as the e-mails suggested—he just didn't want hoards of vacationing dip-shits roaming his land. I was having a hard time seeing that as a less morally valid reason for shooting someone than some of what he'd done for his bosses in the past.

The only way most Americans could live with a lot of what's routinely done in their name is to know nothing about it. We need the C.I.A., god knows, and I have no desire to see it gutted, but I also have little sympathy for the things that blow up in their faces. If you're going to play God, you'd better expect the occasional earthquake.

With all this bubbling in my subconscious, I was ready to do almost anything—short of getting shot—to avoid having to throw down on Joe. If what I suspected was true, though, using the Eagle was going to become a matter of necessity.

I was just hoping that pointing it would be enough. Pulling the little lever changes things.

I turned out to be more than 200 feet to the cabin's broad shelf. Depth perception skews a bit when looking up a steep hillside and my estimated 3 minutes of tough hiking became 10 minutes of really laborious, hand-over-hand climbing. The entire distance, though, was as well-shielded as I could have hoped. I had no illusions; a good sniper could take me out within a second of stepping out from behind a rock. I thought about it, kept my movements as random as possible, but went on. Fear is normal. Quitting isn't.

The cabin was built on a broad ledge of solid bedrock, flat as Kansas, that was set into a sort of natural bowl rising to a height of about 12 feet on my side but completely open on the other. It looked like the Paul Bunyan version of the way we used to kick our heels into the dirt to tee up footballs when I was a kid.

The sunlight filtering through the trees dappled the whole scene with a greenish half-light, broken, in splashes, by bright shafts of dusty sunbeams. It gave the place a Brigadoon-ish air of unreality; like some enchanted glade where man would be blissful but wholly incongruous.

I could see why Joe would fight to preserve this. I would, albeit without the guns.

I looked around the rim of the bowl. If Simmons was there, I couldn't spot him.

I was drawing a breath to call out when Joe stepped out onto the porch.

"Come on in, Simmons," he said mildly, "and bring the other guy with you."

I laid the Dragunov on the ground and tucked Joe's Eagle into my boot, slipping my jeans down over it. I stood and stretched and started down the steep slope to the cabin.

Joe glanced at me without any visible concern and then looked back to the opposite direction.

I was about halfway to him when I finally became convinced.

"Joe," I said as quietly as I could. "Count to three and hit the deck."

He gave me the tiniest nod, still staring off toward where Simmons should be.

I broke into a run, diving behind a pile of firewood at the end of the porch.

Joe dropped absolutely flat and rolled to his left, behind a couple of sheets of wallboard at the far end of the cabin.

The silence of the glade exploded with the curt crack of a large-bore handgun. The pile of logs above my head blew backwards through the window of the cabin as the shots walked across the pile and down.

"When I get up," I yelled at Joe, "get inside."

I leapt to my feet and saw the ragged end of a muzzle flash over to my left. A log burst in front of me and smashed into my ribs. I gasped, straightened and emptied the Eagle into the rocky cleft where the shots had originated. I heard the slugs whanging off into the trees and then a howl of pain that was almost certainly Simmons taking a rock shard in the face.

I ducked into the cabin. Joe was hunkered down behind a massive gun safe, calmly loading a Beretta 92FS.

"You with him?" Joe asked.

"No," I replied, "I'm a private investigator working for the guy who's building the resort. The guy out there is C.I.A."

"I know," Joe nodded. "I knew first time I met him. Nothing to do about it, though. Hadn't been him, it'd have been somebody else."

"You're the guy from Laos," I said slowly, "the sniper."

"Were you there?" Joe asked.

"Naval Intel," I answered.

"What's your name?" he asked, eyeing me steadily.

"Truman North," I murmured, reloading the Eagle. "Colonel, back then."

Joe grinned broadly once, and then finished loading the clips.

"Tru North," he smiled. "A pleasure, Colonel. I heard a lot 'bout you. You're not going to make me kill you, are you?"

"Probably won't come to that," I shrugged, "unless you're planning to shoot some more paper salesmen."

Joe looked at me closely.

"Always heard you were sharp," Joe murmured. "But I've been right here, last two weeks."

"Okay," I chuckled, "one problem at a time."

A hail of bullets struck the massive logs of the cabin, a sound like a wooden oar smacking a side of beef. They were too strong to come from the .38 Simmons had been firing. Somewhere nearby, he had a weapons cache.

"Your bosses seem to be convinced you were the shooter," I observed. "Just out of curiosity, how'd you get onto Simmons?"

"He kept coming up here like he was an old friend," Joe sighed. "It's vintage C.I.A. They think the letters make them bulletproof. Walked around like he owned the place. I shoulda shot him, but…just too much trouble."

He stood and looked at me closely.

"I'd hate to shoot you, Colonel," Joe said seriously. "You were a great soldier. But I got a lot to do the next couple hours and I can't let you get in the way."

"Joe," I said, shaking my head, "the girl's not going to make it here. They're onto her, already—picked up on her passport coming through Orly. And you can bet they're sitting on Salt Lake."

A bit of the glow went out of his eyes. I couldn't have explained why but I could actually feel his sense of loss in that instant. A grief real and acute as the death of a parent or sibling.

"Well," he said softly, "probably wasn't going to work anyway. I've been alone…too long."

"What do you want to do about Simmons?" I asked, mostly so I wouldn't go on feeling sorry for a guy who shot six people.

"He's after you because you know about me," Joe said simply. "Sneak out the back. I have a tunnel just past the tool shed. Get out; it's not your problem."

"Nah," I smiled. "Pisses me off when somebody shoots at me. I'm gonna need a little closure."

"We need a plan, then," Joe nodded. I could tell he hadn't really expected me to leave. "He'll eventually get some help."

"You got any ideas?" I asked.

"Nope," he said, shaking his head sadly. "I never have liked admitting this much but I'm…I'm not real smart about some things. I mean, I'm not stupid but…I make plans and they sorta…backfire."

Jesus, I thought, who is this guy? His vulnerability, especially in a professional sniper, was astounding. I've met killers before. To a man, they've been cocky little psychopaths who would cheerfully mow down 20 innocent bystanders, rather than spend 10 seconds examining their own character.

This was the kind of baffled, hapless guy you find hunched over a tearful Budweiser in some sad little urban beer joint; the sort of buttoned-up karma victim who's so much in need of release he'll spill his guts into any semi-willing ear. It wasn't any less pitiful here than it is in the bar…except that this guy had probably shot 200 people.

"Okay," I sighed. "Planning is sorta my thing. Here's what we do…"

He listened intently, nodding in agreement. I yanked the thing out of my ear and had serious doubts about whether it would work at all. If Joe did, he didn't show it. He picked up the Ruger, jammed it into his hip pocket and laced up his boots.

"Okay," he said quietly. "I gotta tell ya, that's a crazy-ass plan."

“We need it over quick," I shrugged. "Can you do it?"

"I could do it left-handed," he shrugged. "Question is, can you do it?"

"I'm betting the C.I.A.'s close-order doctrine is still the same—center of mass," I sighed. "Been that for 40 years."

"Unless he misses low," Joe smiled distantly.

"Well, then I'm fucked," I shrugged.

"Don't like it, Colonel," he said, shaking his head. "Gonna sound funny, coming from me, but I don't like people getting shot for nothing. Too many good soldiers caught it because of a bad decision in a bad situation. Ultimately, this isn't your fight."

"Joe," I said softly, "just out of curiosity, say it was you shooting the board of Pembroke Property Ventures, Ltd. Why might a guy—a pro, because he'd have to be to do those shots—why would he do something so…out of character?"

He looked at me for a long moment. Shots burst through both windows, spraying glass to our left and right. If Joe noticed it, I couldn't tell.

"Okay," he sighed, "let's say this guy…I mean, he's a misfit, right? Guy who does…that for a living he'd have to be. Say he gets older, starts asking himself what's at the end of the road. Say he finds out what he wants most is something he can actually have—maybe even something he's already got. All he wants to do is hang onto it, enjoy something…real, for once. Then say something happens that means the thing he's got is gonna be taken away. Now, this guy, isn't real good at figuring out solutions. He'll ask people he trusts, right? So he asks two and the one says to do this, basically, nothing; let it happen, live with the loss of exactly what it was that made the thing special.  Now, the other person knows the guy in a whole different way, has history with him, has…ties. That person says 'hey, do what you know.' Which one's he gonna do? The go-with-the-flow thing, the surrender, or the thing he does better than anybody else? This guy, hell, that's an easy choice."

"But…maybe he does it and then realizes what he should have done…was nothing. Nothing. Just ignore the threat because he had a way out that was no more risky than either one and required nothing more than sorta…slipping on a mask and maybe building a couple of fences."