A Killing to DIE For

  Chapter Thirty

  The two sheriff’s vehicles -- big white SUVs -- stopped near a junction at the bottom of the valley. Made their way down, had a fine old time getting around the Washington guy’s cruiser. Made it to the flat; the turnoff. Hernandez hopped out and moved to Kroger’s window.

  “Jungle, I’ll get you to park right here. I’ll wait a while then head back up, but slow and steady.” He peered up and down the road. It was empty.

  “Lieutenant, how serious is all this? Believe a single thing she said before?”

  “Thought they’d take her in,” replied Hernandez. Seemed strange to him, then again conditions for travelling were awful. “Not leave her overnight, still she can’t get far.”

  “Immigration asylum or a lunatic asylum?” quipped Kroger. “She’s nuts, boss. Guess it’ll all come out eventually…what about Gunny Hatfield?”

  Hernandez spat on the trail. “Damn shame, the old guy should have somebody lookin’ after him. Don’t believe he’ll see next summer; ‘bout worse every time I see him.” He climbed into his cab and slammed the door. “I’ll head up. Radio call on the hour, any case I’ll be up and down. Swap over midnight…”

  Corporal ‘Jungle’ Kroger was six-one and two-thirty pounds. The deputy kept his head shaved at the ripe old age of twenty-nine; he worked out and fueled himself on a diet of nicotine, strong coffee, fast food and ‘roids; the latter only when off duty. He was an avid follower and past participant of MMA competitions -- helped enormously during difficult arrests -- good for takedown time. Woe betides any violator thought they could outrun or outfight Kroger; they all ended up flat on the ground and locked up in jail.

  He waited till the taillights of the boss’s Explorer were out of eyeshot and lit up a smoke, leaning on the fender and jiggling about. It was a cold one, only eight o’clock and well below freezing. He popped the flaps of his cap over his frozen ears and thought about the overtime, it’d come in handy for all kinds of things.

  Hatfield, Tanaka and Pakdee waited on the landing of the shack. It was perfectly still and the full moon had turned brilliant, it cast shadows over the valley from vast tracts of lifeless skeletal trees.

  “JJ, fix us a coffee, please,” said Tanaka. When Hatfield was gone he turned and eyeballed her, everywhere she showed up -- trouble. She was staring blankly, pouting.

  “You got Asperger’s or something?”

  “Normal where I’m from not to display emotion or anger,” replied Pakdee. “Why, you think I’m strange? Who is Asperger, anyhow? Somebody I should know?”

  “You’re some piece of work,” mumbled Tanaka. “You know at first light I’m gonna take you in. You’ve got a few things to clear up. Just so you know, I can detain you under the-”

  “I’ll be out and home before you can blink an eye, Tanaka-San,” she replied with confidence. She remembered how he hated being called that. “As we speak, the very highest echelons of my government are preparing my repatriation, you know that? Tomorrow night I’ll be headed home first class…with the things you unlawfully possess.” Pakdee sniffed and nodded back to the door. “In truth, I fear for Will’s father. You must place him under protective custody…please.”

  Scary thing, she’s probably right, Tanaka thought. Then again she had no idea where the circuits were…better to hand them over to her, to his bosses, or risk who-knows-what?

  “JJ Hatfield’s okay now, there are three police officers and we’ll get more up here,” said Tanaka. “Maybe you could enlighten me on something, though. Like exactly what happened to Mike Jackson, our legal attaché?” he asked. “Any ideas?”

  She entered the shack and returned with an iPhone, one she’d brought with her. She fiddled with it.

  “Good luck getting reception-”

  “I’m not making a call. Look at these,” snapped Pakdee. She thrust it before him and stood back to see his reaction.

  Tanaka touched the screen, flicking through the images. It was a whole mix, fascination, horror, disgust… “Where the-”

  “Passed on to me,” replied Pakdee. “Group Arcana were thinking of recruiting Jackson. They changed their minds about him, though. This filth was to be used to blackmail him but his use-by date was past. He was collecting home-movies of all his conquests using the very latest in the bureau’s surveillance equipment. He posted his own pay-per-view websites and was cleaning up! He was responsible for the death of William Robert Hatfield! He tipped off the middlemen who were on the payroll of splinter-groups. Better you hand it to your superiors. This may be evidence.”

  “Yeah. Guess so.” Tanaka switched it off and stuck the iPhone in his jacket and frowned. It’d need to be sent to the investigators; the case was still unsolved and he wouldn’t be getting any more help from Anna.

  “Don’t s’pose you’d have any take on who they were would you…the shopping mall jog your memory?” he asked. His mind rustled up every formidable nation with the most devious kill-squads he could think of…

  “Russians, Iranians, Israelis; a Swiss group…who were they, Anna?” asked Tanaka.

  “Arcana,” she replied. “It’s a word in Latin. Look it up.”

  “I will,” said Tanaka. “So who killed Jackson, then? Was it them? Was it you?”

  “I believe you asked why and not who, Special Agent,” whispered Pakdee.

  JJ Hatfield came out with a mug of steaming coffee in each hand but Anna refused. She only drank green tea. Nobody heard of green tea this side of town and she’d finished her supply. They saw the headlights from far away; Hernandez was making his way back from the valley floor. He had to get around Tanaka’s stuck city cruiser; it was plumb in the middle of the trail with a bund on either side. Couldn’t quite make it so he left it directly behind. Need to get a tow-truck first thing. Lt. Hernandez slapped the steering wheel with his hand in frustration; he jumped out and started trudging through the snow, up the rest of the hill.

  Jungle Kroger strolled around, needed to get off the road and take a leak. It was a junction, traffic was sporadic now, and most travelers would be tucked in at home by a warm fire.. The flask of brewed coffee was going through him like salts. Zipped up his fly and pressed the remote lock and sauntered out past the junction, puddles on the roadside had iced up now, the still air smarted on his cheeks. He turned back to his parked SUV then noticed an approaching vehicle moving in from the western side; it indicated and pulled over with the headlights still on. Kroger approached, just to check…maybe lost, maybe an engine or battery problem.

  Louisiana plates…no law against that but check ‘em out, he figured.

  “License and insurance please,” he demanded. Clicked his Maglight on.

  As the driver cranked the window down he shone the beam inside quickly and back at the occupants, foreign guy and his passenger who sat mutely, their hands obediently on the dash. Two Hispanic males in the back. The passenger up front was gigantic, heavier than Kroger.

  “Turn off your engine please,” said Kroger. “Be right back.” They cut the engine as ordered and he moved to the rear, noted the plates and sent a radio-check with his two-way. Something didn’t seem right. He doubled back to the driver. In hindsight he shouldn’t have.

  “Sir, what you doin’ here this evening? You ain’t from round here.”

  “Officer, I’ve lost my way.” An unusual sing-song accent. The one in the passenger’s seat -- some black guy -- he was so big his head nearly touched the roof of the car. There was a map, laid out across the passenger’s lap.

  “I’m ’fraid you ain’t goin’ no further this way. It’s a dead end anyhow,” said the deputy, cocking his head toward the causeway. “Where’s y’all headed?”

  “Pittsburgh,” one of them answered before reaching slowly and hitting a feeble light under the dash. The deputy pointed his flashlight at the map and the passenger lifted it, one hand no longer visible. Something was underneath and Kro
ger instinctively lurched back.

  “Get your hands where I can see ‘em!!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs, reaching for his sidearm.

  The Mac 10 discharged several rounds with a rattling noise like an old Olivetti typewriter, straight through the front windshield and missing the deputy’s face by inches. Kroger stumbled and tripped, cupping his eye where some glass fragments had gone. When he hit the ground he could see the driver’s door open, the passenger was out and the driver was climbing over the driver’s seat.

  Kroger desperately regained his footing, hopping backward; he could see the end of the gun that had just let loose, the shape of a muffler. The huge passenger -- the black one -- was now at the rear, clutching something else. Another burst of shots from a different automatic rifle kicked up gravel as the deputy scrambled along the road, he glanced over his shoulder to see the passenger this time, the outline of an assault rifle at his hips. Kroger made the side of the road and leapt headlong into a deep gully, he landed in a pile of trash and that had been offloaded into the stream by litterbugs. The rounds from the assault rifle snapped over his head, tossing things around. He blundered through the garbage and brambles, tearing at his skin and uniform until he reached the stream. It was mostly iced over and running at a trickle. On its side, an ancient Kelvinator, a solid thing that had been there for ages. It was heavy. Buried in the silt. Kroger leapt over and squeezed under it.

  The Nigerian emptied another magazine into the culvert before taking two M26 grenades, drawing the pins and letting them tumble over the side where he figured the terrified deputy was hiding.

  Kroger heard the noise, a hollow ‘ping’ sound, like many young cops he was ex-ROTC and knew what was coming; knew what he was in for -- one second, two, three, four -- he bundled into fetal position and grimaced. A twin burst, soil showering all over his hunched form and a split-second flash…it was the ancient ice box that saved him. More rounds from the huge black guy with the assault rifle thudded into the stream and dead thorns around him.

  The four of them had been on the landing and they were headed in when they heard the noise from way down below -- the gunfire and the blast. It carried through the still night from way down blow on the valley floor.

  “I’d know that sound anywhere -- damn Kalashnikov,” snarled Hatfield.

  Facial expressions last a split-second, they tell a lot…

  JJ Hatfield, anger and outrage, violated. He’d always been the expeditionary, always gone out on a mission, seek and destroy. His valley, his sanctuary was at stake. At risk of losing everything, now they were under attack. PK Tanaka tensed up straight. Pulled out his Glock and held it close like a child with a teddy-bear. Lt. Hernandez did the same with his nine. Step by step they moved back with the old guy and Anna into the shack.

  Pakdee did nothing at all, she had no expression, if there was any inkling it was one of relief…“I have not been telling lies, you know that?” she said. “We don’t do things like that.”

  “Sammy-boy, you ready?” The Tamil accelerated up the ridge. The Forester was perfect for this, compact and maneuverable. The Latino hoods in the back snapped on their belts and hung on.

  “Shit, amigo…everybody’ll be looking for us!” yelled one of the men in the back.

  The Nigerian turned around and glared at them. “Not if we’re quick. We get in and grab him. Back to the river. That’s what the boats for. We tie a rope to this very car, drag it in and it goes straight to the bottom of the river. The old man’s body inside…no trace!”

  The Tamil dropped down a gear in the manual shifter and the little SUV came careening over a rise then slammed to a dead halt…two vehicles blocking the way. The larger one was a sheriff’s car.

  With a shotgun in his left hand and his wife behind him holding a rolling pin the farmer peered out the window. Sounded like a drunkard’s footsteps. They’d been interrupted from late night supper by the noise. Out here it was unusual to hear that many shots so late at night and the other ‘bangs’ were much louder, not like cherry-bombs used to vandalize post boxes.

  Under the light on the porch the sight that greeted the couple left them stunned. A cop, looking like he’d been through a cement mixer…one filled with mud and nails.

  Kroger barged into the room once the occupants had realized he was in what was left of a sheriff’s uniform and they finally unlatched the oak door. He was covered in mud and scratches, soaking wet and dripping blood from a nasty gash on his forearm but lucky, considering. After a twenty foot plunge through brambles into an icy stream Kroger had landed next to a discarded ice box and it had saved him; both grenades had dropped to the other side of it, sparing his life -- plopped into the stream instead of bouncing. The deputy’s lucky day. He bolted downstream before sighting a homestead nearby a parked up trailer several hundred yards away.

  He tore at the land line, he fell on the floor and blubbered into the hand set of the wall phone as the farmer’s wife surrounded him with blankets and towels.

  “Officer down, shots fired!!” he bawled. “Send everything you got…unknown suspects; hot-damn they threw a bomb at me! They got machine guns, they got firepower, and they got AK47s…arghhh!!” Kroger continued to rave and ramble into the phone and as he did the farmer turned off all lights and nervously paced around with his trusty long-barreled pump and the lady of the house tried to calm him down. Hopefully backup was on its way. Up at the junction Kroger’s vehicle burned like a Roman candle, throwing out sparks and belching flames.

  Deputy Sheriff, Corporal Cornell ‘Jungle-Jim’ Kroger…one time MMA fighter, a top-gun cop who always regarded himself as a hard case…now he was doubled over, he was shaking and frozen. Traumatized and looking like he’d been run over by a freight train, but he’d live, he’d survive. He’d always been the kind of guy to brag about his legendary exploits and great bravado. Once this terrible night was over he’d have a real war-story for his buddies at the gym and the newspapers, the pretty TV interviewer and anybody else who’d listen. The guy who faced off with foreign terrorists. Maybe he’d get that long awaited promotion to sergeant and a medal, too. As it turned out Kroger would never speak of this night again once the enquiries were done. Shook him up too much, near-death experiences tend to do that.

  “This baby’s older ‘n’ yours truly,” said Hatfield. He lifted down from a wall rack an M1A1 Garand, opened the slider, and then unlocked a trunk. Clawed at bundles of rounds clipped into black eight-shot holders. He stared straight into PK Tanaka’s eyes, nodding with satisfaction. “Saw service on Guadalcanal, got the papers when I bought her. Finest damn field rifle ever saw the light of day; drop a rhinoceros with one of these.” He held up a spring clip, eight huge, brightly polished ‘thirty-odd-six’ rounds gleamed. He fumbled through the trunk and pulled out a Colt ACP and on cue Pakdee thrust her hand out. Hatfield held it back but the cops nodded.

  “Okay,” said Tanaka. “Got any others? Firearms, I mean?”

  “Nah,” Hatfield growled. “Two of ‘em; that’s more ‘n’ enough for me.” The old guy passed over the auto and a couple of spare magazines to her, she stuffed the ACP in behind her waist and he shook his head grimly at the cops. “You’ll have to make do with your peashooters. Follow me.” He snatched the Coleman lamp and they followed him down under the shack to a cellar, with the Timber wolf close behind, it knew something was up…seriously wrong.

  The snuck up the side and couched down and could see now, there was a third vehicle stopped behind the cops’ cars. They could see the figures get out, two headed into the forest on top of the cutaway and the other two moved swiftly towards the shack. They stood out in the moonlight. JJ Hatfield raised his rifle but just as quickly the first two figures and disappeared, probably on the low side of the trail.

  Pakdee nudged Hatfield. “Oh my Lord, the African is here.” She knew this from the Nigerian’s sheer size.

  Hatfield made some gestures with
his hand. “I’ll get down the side and head ‘em off,” he whispered. “You lot go down the side of the garage, you’ll see the woodpile. Cover the shack from there. Behind’s a sharp drop -- careful, it’s slippery.” He moved closer. “Another fifty feet down there’s and old access shaft…you’ll see the trolley tracks. Do not; repeat, do not be tempted to hide yer asses inside the mine. Just keep goin’ downwards. Stick to the stream cutting.”

  Hatfield made to move forward but couldn’t; Anna had grabbed his coat and wasn’t letting go. “Crazy woman…go, dammit!” he snarled under his breath. She shook her head emphatically.

  “I shall protect you,” she said. “I failed once and for every hour of every day since then I have suffered.” Pakdee pointed to where the borrowed Volkswagen was parked. “We go for the car in succession then I’ll cover you into the brush on the other side.” She turned to Tanaka and Hernandez. “Do as he says and head down the gully. It is us the syndicate is seeking, not you. Time is running out.”

  They kept going to the landing, one last check they could see the two cops heading down the back of the place. They stopped and took a deep breath. Pakdee counted to three on her hand and they bolted, she out front with one arm behind leading JJ Hatfield. They made it to the car and stopped. Hatfield dropped down, ready for the next run, to the woods twenty feet away. Pakdee seized his collar.

  “Ready?” she asked. He nodded. “I head back across. You go fast…run like the wind.”

  She pulled out the forty-five ACP and the second magazine. Then the firing started from near the three stranded cars. Rapid-fire, from one of the Mini-14s, then the second one opened up. Rounds started hitting the Golf. Hatfield took one last look at her, she nodded back at him, and she turned and sprung -- just like a scalded cat.

  He watched a second or two she was bounding across the open space and vaulted clear over the gate, then she dropped and let loose, the entire seven rounds from the trusty automatic. Hatfield clenched his teeth and bolted to the other side and landed in the thickets. He collapsed sideways behind a tree, ducked and kept moving like a snake. He could see now, there were two shooters firing blind in the direction of his farmhouse. Anna was gone now, disappeared. The firing was down from where he was positioned -- two automatic rifles, repeated volleys of deafening high-pitched rounds.

  JJ Hatfield kept moving forward. He got close enough now; he could see the outline of the two shooters with the flashes from their own rifles. Gone was the anger, it was something else he felt…he raised the Garand to his shoulder, his cheek in hard to the stock. The bad guys, bunched together, firing wildly at his place, towards the others. They had no idea he was casing them, he’d circled in like a solitary reef shark. He slid his index finger in the guard, he exhaled and squeezed.