Spitting Image (8 page)

AFTER THEY LEFT, I poured a generous tumbler of whisky and dropped into my favorite chair. I let the smoky bite linger in my mouth before I swallowed, feeling the burn in my throat, the warmth in my belly. It was good to feel anything.

Drinking has always helped me think. It loosens me up, lets the tension out so I can stop worrying and start working on a problem. The cat jumped onto my lap, purring loudly. When I took too long to scratch behind his ears, he butted his head under my chin.

“Sorry, Oh Mighty One,” I said, doing my duty. He beamed at me. “I’m a little distracted.”

I took another sip of the whisky. “You wouldn’t understand,” I told the cat. “You’re a hunter. You stalk your prey and take it. Well, now you stand by the dish and demand it, but I’m not like that. I’m a wily scavenger. A survivor. An opportunist.”

I drank more. The cat looked at me. Maybe it was the whisky, or the fatigue, or the fact that my brain was mush and my emotions raw and numb over the loss of Sarah, but I felt as though he was trying to tell me something. The look on his face reminded me of the way a very good teacher will look at you when he knows you have the answer, willing you with Zen patience to put the pieces together. I’d done it often enough with new medic students. His look said “Think about what you just said.”

I nodded. Maybe this wasn’t a problem that could be solved by hiding, by running, by surviving and moving on. Maybe I had to become a hunter, a predator. Seek out those who were threatening my life and neutralize them.

To a soldier, “neutralize” usually means kill, or wound them badly enough that it doesn’t make a difference. I’m sure my feline sensei would interpret it to mean “eat.” But I actually meant it literally. I had to do something to draw their fangs. I didn’t really want to wipe the whole family out.

Right?

For a moment I wasn’t quite sure. I felt angry enough to lash out. But I didn’t think I had enough rage to sustain me through a thorough purge of a family.

But I had to find a way to hurt them, or at least get enough of a handle on them that they’d be worried I could.

How could I investigate people who could be anyone? Who could I ask for help? They knew me, knew my friends; anybody I spoke to could be one of them in disguise. The one lead I had was the location of the cabin where they’d held Sarah. It might be rented under a false name, and they could have picked up the keys looking like anyone, but it was a start.

I had a few days off before I was due back at work. Unless I was fired, in which case I’d have a lot of days off. I took out a bag and started packing.

After packing some clothes, I went to the top shelf of my closet and got my pistol, two spare magazines and a box of .45 caliber ammunition. I took the weapon from its box, worked the slide, looked it over. I like the old M1911. I’d used one like it a long time ago, and it was simple, reliable, and if you hit somebody, it got their attention. For all people complained, it was accurate enough if you were at handgun fighting range, and you took care of the weapon and didn’t have an old, shot-out relic that still had black sand from Iwo Jima in the chamber.

I put the gun in my bag. As I did, I saw an old paramedic shoulder patch in the box. I took it out and looked at it. It was one of the first ones I got when I graduated from medic school. The old shiny disco patch. The thing was gaudy. A gold ring around a circle of blue with a gold star of life on it, and the gold Paramedic rocker underneath. That doesn’t convey just how tacky it was. The gold wasn’t just gold colored thread, it was shiny, glittering. The blue wasn’t a serious navy but a bright royal blue. The lettering was red, because why the hell not?

I like the fact that it was loud and tacky and big. One of my partners had said that after the hell that was medic school, he wanted astronauts on the International Space Station to look down and know he was a medic. I’d been through Valley Forge and Chosin and the Bulge, so medic school wasn’t quite the ordeal in my memory, but it was a lot of work.

No, I loved the big gaudy patch because it told the world that I was the man who practiced his trade in dark alleys, heroin syringes and spent brass and broken glass crunching beneath my boots as I labored to save the people nobody else would, as they gasped and gurgled and coughed up hepatitis blood and e-coli vomit and tuberculosis sputum. It was big and cocky because it fit the man who wore it.

It meant a lot to me. I’d won medals, but it meant more than a medal. A medal was an award for something you did, something that an officer noticed that you did. I’d seen plenty of heroic deeds go unrecognized, and plenty of awards undeserved. To be sure, there were plenty of people who were justifiably proud of medals, and they earned them. But a medal was a pat on the head for a job well done.

The patch wasn’t a reward. The patch was a promise. I wore it because I promised I would be there, despite the germs and the dark and the danger, and I would be that hope for those without any.

That meant a lot, even to a cynical old bastard like me.

I didn’t want to leave this life. I’d been moving on for a long time, but this is where I felt I belonged. Even if they wouldn’t let me stab Adam Armstrong.

I didn’t want to run. I didn’t want to be fired. I didn’t want a break from Sarah, and I certainly didn’t want to lose her.

My nice comfortable little world was careening toward the abyss. And Caruthers’ clan was responsible for most of that.

How to fight them, though? I knew very little about them, and only what Caruthers had told me, so I didn’t even know how much of that I could trust. And they knew a lot about me.

But did they know Bob? Bob was a predator born. And he might have friends who would be a degree less likely to be known to the enemy.

I called Bob’s number.

FOUR HOURS LATER, I parked Vlad the Impala at the head of a logging road, threw my bag over my shoulder and started hiking. Bob had a hunting camp somewhere up here. For when he wanted to get away from the rat race at his solar powered, off grid home on the lake, I guess.

I checked my phone. No cell signal. The road was steep, overgrown, rutted, potholed and had boulders and roots jutting up that would have made the commander of a Sherman tank worry about his suspension.

I settled into my old marching stride, singing in my head. Not cadence, like in training, or a traditional marching song, with off color lyrics that soldiers and elementary school kids find hilarious, but Bob Dylan.
Shelter From the Storm
was on my mind, since I was thinking of Sarah.

Lots of songs came to mind when I thought of her, but right now, I was missing the safe, happy warmth of our time together, returning to, as the man sang, that other lifetime of toil and blood.

I didn’t exactly like it, but part of me felt relief to be back in action. Away from time clocks and pressed uniforms and protocols and bills and all that. I wasn’t due back to work for three more days, and I was probably fired unless Juan and Pete bribed or threatened a lot of witnesses, so I stopped thinking about it. Out here, all I had to worry about was destroying the threat that Caruthers’ clan posed. And the worst they could do was kill us all.

Getting shot is bad, but at least they don’t sit you down in HR and give you a speech about conflict resolution and regret to inform you and all that when they do it. It’s more honest.

I saw a break in the undergrowth to my left. Bob had said take the first trail that split off the logging road. I wondered if that counted as a trail, since a goat would pack a rope and pitons before he tried it, but then I remembered who I was going to see and started up it.

It wasn’t the worst hike I’d done, but by the time I saw the cabin, I was panting my way through
Tangled Up in Blue
.

Bob met me on the porch of the log cabin.

“Come on in, drop your pack and grab a drink,” he said. “This is John,” he indicated a tall, lean man sitting in the corner. The man nodded.

“Good to see you, Bob. John,” I nodded back.

John had weathered Native American features, big, strong looking hands and even at rest he emanated a sense of movement, action held in check, like a coiled spring.

“John and I go way back,” said Bob. “He’s good at this kind of thing. I asked him to come lend a hand.”

“Thanks for your help,” I said. “I’m not sure what Bob has told you. This might be dangerous, and I can’t offer you much.”

“Bob asked me to come, so I have. Don’t worry about what you can do for me.”

“John and I have been through a lot,” said Bob. “He gave me my Indian name. Six Bears.”

I grinned. “Because you’re big and strong?”

“Because he snores like six bears,” answered John.

Bob reached into a cooler, handed me a beer. “First up, we drink away the filters. Then we talk honestly. Then we decide what we’re going to do.”

“Sounds fair,” I replied. “How’s Sarah?”

“Doing as well as you’d expect. She’s someplace safe.”

He didn’t tell me where. I’m sure he trusted me, but she was staying away on her terms, and she knew how to get hold of me if–no. When. When, I insisted– she decided she was ready, so there was no reason to tempt me with the knowledge of her whereabouts.

So I did understand why he didn’t tell me more than that. It hurt, but I understood.

“Before we get into the how, or even the what,” he said. “I need to know why we’re doing it.”

“Whatever it is,” added John.

“Now,” Bob forged ahead as though he hadn’t heard. “I like you. I know you did your best for Sarah, and I think you two were a good match. But if you’re doing this to win her back, I’m not sure that’s a good enough reason.”

I shook my head. “I’d love to get her back, but that’s not what this is about. And it’s not for me. I could vanish and leave these people wondering. I could be working a thousand miles away under a new name in a week. Go back into the service, or join one of these international ‘consulting’ organizations. I know enough about soldiering and emergency medicine, and I’ve done enough odd jobs and blended in enough places that I can go find somewhere safe without much effort. But what I don’t know is if they’d leave her alone, whether or not I stayed or vanished. I need to break them to make sure they can never endanger her again. Even if I never see her after it’s done, I need to know I did everything I could to make her safe.”

“Told you this guy’s OK,” Bob said to John.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I’d lie or cheat or steal if I thought it would make Sarah take me back. But it wouldn’t. She knows me too well for me to fool her, and if she doesn’t trust me, it won’t work. But I won’t run off and leave them to target her if they want to start chasing me.”

“Or use her to lure you back.”

I took a deep drink, nodded. “Or that. Because we all know it would work.”

“So if we do this thing, and make sure she never has to look over her shoulder again, and she still says things got too crazy and it’s not gonna work out, you really will just walk off into the sunset? Let her get over it and not make her life miserable?”

I thought about that. I hadn’t gotten that far. Occupational hazard. I tend to focus on surviving the crisis, not how to work the Happily Ever After. It’s never been on the table before.

“If it was the only way to let her find happiness, I’d move on tomorrow. There’s work for a medic anywhere.”

“You’d forget about her?”

“Never. But I’d do the only thing I know how to do.”

“Which is?”

“Keep on keepin’ on.”

“Gotta trust a man who can answer with a Dylan quote,” said John.

“All you need is three chords and the truth.”

“I thought Howard was talking about country music when he said that,” said Bob.

“Don’t go getting your facts all over my witty retorts,” I replied.

“So long as we’re not doing this just to impress a girl.”

“Wouldn’t be the dumbest thing we’ve done to impress a girl,” said John.

“We’re older and wiser,” Bob replied. “And slower.”

“Age and guile beats youth and skill, brother.”

“I get the feeling you two have known each other a while,” I said with a grin.

“Too long,” answered Bob. “Be careful. You hang around long enough and you’ll get your own Indian name.”

“I’ve started work on that already,” said John. “I’m feeling a ‘coyote’ vibe from this guy.”

I felt myself relaxing into campaign mode. Out in the field, away from routine and pressed uniforms and junk-on-the-bunk inspections. No brass, no rear echelon types. Just other grunts. That’s where you build the camaraderie, the closeness of a combat unit. People who depend on you, who trust you with their lives, and make you feel you can trust them. That’s what people miss when they come back from war. Nobody misses the cold and the fear and the blood and death. At least I didn’t. I don’t think most soldiers do, except a few head cases, but the easy, free, and unfathomably deep bond with your mates, that’s something that leaves a void once you go back to the world.

The task at hand, the mission, both accomplishing it and surviving it came into focus, while everything else faded into the background.

Pushing things aside to worry about later was a survival skill. I’d had plenty of practice. I’d seen men who couldn’t do it. Men who got bad news from home while they were at the front, who fell apart. As bad as a job loss might be, it was something that could wait. Not getting shot or getting any of my friends shot was taking all my concentration right now.

I remember Gunny Robichaux talking to the platoon one afternoon after mail call had finally gotten through to us on Guadalcanal. There had been a long delay on the island with no supplies, and we got about a month’s worth of letters. Men starved for news from home devoured the letters, good news and bad, and emotions ran high. The gunnery sergeant growled the platoon to silence, stood up and said “Read those letters, then put ‘em away. Put ‘em out of your head. Sure, it’s just great that the baby is born, your kid brother graduated, your sister got married. And yeah, it’s too bad your wife is a whore and the bank took the house and the cow died. But the news you need to process is that outside the wire are a few thousand Japs who are going to try to kill every one of us. And if you shitbirds start daydreamin’ about home instead of worrying about what you’re here to do, I’ll save ‘em the trouble and kill you myself.”