“The last we saw,” Pierce continued, “she was headin’ north up the foothills out there. If I was you I’d hurry up and take off that same way. Maybe you can catch up to them.”
“I can go?” Church whispered.
“I’ve got no use here for a man like you. Go on, now, before I change my mind. A couple of you men”—he pointed them out—“you see Mr. Church safe out the door and get him walking off in the right direction.”
When they’d left, with Ben Church half dragged between his escorts, Pierce walked over to the long canvas bag on the table, unzipped the length of it, and took out the long rifle that had been replaced there.
“Now if you fellows will accompany me to the portico, I want to show you something,” Pierce said, as he opened the bolt, pulled a box of ammunition from the bag, and began pressing cartridges into the well. “That underhanded rat bastard Thom Hollis is about to claim the first of many innocent victims on his nationwide rampage.”
The men filed behind him as he walked through his office and out onto the balcony beyond. His crew had worked around the clock and the damage from the fire was mostly erased already. Some valuables had been lost, but nothing irreplaceable.
On the other hand, as he’d told them, so much had been gained. From this high vantage point he could see the extent of the bounty of arms and supplies that his new alliance had already rendered. It had taken years to accumulate the few advanced weapons they’d expended in an hour at Gannett Peak, and many dealings with characters every bit as unsavory as Warren Landers.
But now, arrayed there before him was an arsenal he wouldn’t have dared to dream of holding only a week before. Stacks of crated Stinger missiles, factory-built RPGs, cases of advanced explosives and high-tech detonators, a truckload of untraceable guns and banned ammo—all that, and a free pass for under-the-radar transport to any target, any city, any time. Tomorrow, at long last, was when it all would begin. The possibilities might boggle the mind of a general less prepared for action.
But George Pierce had spent his life imagining such power at his command, dreaming of the glorious ends and only lacking the means to reach them. And here, from the midst of failure, those means had fallen right into his hands. The old saw was true: when God closes a door, somewhere else he opens up a window.
Down below, about fifty yards distant, the men had set him loose and Ben Church was stumbling and limping his way toward the far-off woods.
“Stop me if you’ve heard this story before, boys,” Pierce said. “When I was a little kid, just knee-high to a duck, my daddy introduced me to the man who killed John Kennedy. Now a couple of people shot him, understand, I’m talking about the man who killed him. He was a Frenchie, his name was Lucien Sarti, they call him the badge-man in that one old picture of the grassy knoll.
“But let’s consider, just for grins, that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. In ’79 even the dopes in the U.S. Congress had to admit that there had to be another shooter, but let’s just say that he acted alone. Now what’s the best reason you know of that would cause you to disbelieve that?”
“Three good shots in seven seconds,” a nearby man offered. “One man couldna’ fired that fast and hit what he aimed for, not unless he was a whole lot better with a gun than Oswald ever was.”
“That’s what they say, isn’t it?” Pierce asked. “All those damned conspiracy theorists. Well, sir, I’m here to tell you those skeptics are right about a lot, but they’re wrong about that.” Ben Church had picked up his pace somewhat, having adjusted his stride to accommodate his injuries. “The range is about right now, though he’s moving a little slower than a top-down limousine. I’ve got me a better rifle here than Oswald had, but then I’m no Marine sharpshooter, either, so I’d say we’re even enough. Let’s give it a whirl.”
Pierce worked the bolt twice to eject two cartridges and leave three, and to check the action—it was smooth as butter. “The first shot was a miss,” he said. “Whoever’s got a second hand on their watch, when you hear that shot that’s when you start the time.” He brought the stock to his shoulder and the scope near his eye. “Number two’s what they call the magic bullet. I’ve gotta put it clean through his neck or it don’t count. And the third, that’s the money shot.”
George Pierce took in a deep breath and held it, sighted down, and squeezed the trigger.
At the first loud report the fleeing man nearly fell as he reacted, though the bullet missed intentionally wide. He’d no sooner straightened up when the second shot struck him just below the base of his skull, and his hands clutched at his throat as though giving a sign that he was choking. He took a faltering step, and then another. Almost simultaneous with the crack of the final shot, the top of his skull exploded in a pink spray of blood and tissue, what remained of his head jerked back and to the left, and he folded like a rag doll to the ground.
The timekeeper called it at 6.5 seconds and with that the hoots and loud applause of the men nearly raised the rafters. Pierce let them go on for a while before quieting them with a raised hand, and then he motioned Olin Simmons to step forward, close to him, and passed him the empty rifle.
“Y’all leave me and Mr. Simmons alone now.”
When they’d gone George Pierce let it stay quiet between the two of them, waiting until the other man spoke.
“That was a damn good shot.”
“That was three damn good shots,” Pierce replied.
“Yeah.”
“Take a team out this afternoon and you dump that body by the highway, thirty miles or so down the road. We’ll call it in next week if the dumb-ass cops take too long to find it. And then you’re going to leave here tomorrow with that rifle, and go raise some hell, isn’t that right? You’re going to go out and terrorize the sheep, get ’em all so scared they’ll be begging for the police state to come in and save them?”
“That’s the plan.”
Pierce nodded thoughtfully. “I noticed you were spending a lot of quality time with that snake-in-the-grass Warren Landers while he was here.”
“Just keeping an eye on him for you.”
“Uh huh.” Pierce took a cigar from his breast pocket, bit a sliver from the cap, and then leaned slightly forward and spit over the rail. “It wouldn’t be like you to forget where you came from, would it? And what you’ve sworn to me?”
“No, sir. I wouldn’t forget.”
“You know,” Pierce said, “they spent a whole lotta energy over the years asking who killed JFK, with not near enough of them asking why. If they’d ever had the guts to get an answer to that one question—why?—then they would have known who it was a long time ago.”
“So why’d they do it?” Simmons asked.
Pierce didn’t answer right away. He lit up his stogie and let the pause stretch out until the other man turned his head and looked him in the eyes.
“Oldest reason in the world,” Pierce said. “Those men in high places, the ones who made him what he was? They killed John Kennedy because he was disloyal.”
Chapter 16
With a last ceremonial stroke of the sanding block, Thom Hollis pulled his work light nearer to examine the dovetail joint he’d just completed. The two maple boards mated flush at a perfect right angle.
He gathered and then dry-fit the sides, front, and floor with their fresh cedar liners and brass hardware. The drawer knit together so well it would almost seem an insult to smear it with glue and stain. There sat a work of art, if he did say so himself, sculpted as it was with only a fret saw and hand chisels.
As the old saying goes, you can judge a rich man by his shoes, a salesman by his necktie, and a tailor by his inside seams—but to size up a carpenter, you really need to look inside his drawers.
Some would see it as a waste of time, such obsessive attention paid to a humble household repair. Old and treasured things, though, deserve to be restored with all the care and patience shown by their creators, or so he’d been told by his teachers.
A st
renuous yawn came from the direction of the doorway and he turned to see that the young man Tyler had arrived on time to retrieve his phone. They exchanged a polite good-morning and Hollis pointed out the reassembled gadget waiting on the far end of the bench. The boy came over and picked it up, but he only slipped it into his pocket without turning it on.
“Now you need to use that thing just like normal,” Hollis said, “like we talked about.”
“I know. Nobody would ever believe I actually got up this early, so I’ll wait till later to sign on.”
“That’s good thinking,” Hollis said. “Say, do you like spiders?”
The boy’s sleepy eyes grew wide. “Don’t say it. There’s one on me, isn’t there?”
“I’m just asking.”
He shuddered a bit. “I hate spiders.”
“That’s bad news for you, Tyler, because they’re everywhere. Throughout your whole life, city or country, every minute you’re almost never more than six feet away from a spider. You don’t see ’em most of the time, but they’re seeing you, with all those shiny black eyes. They’re thinking about you, too, if you can call what they do thinking. Mainly they’re just wondering what sort of a web they’d need to spin to catch you.”
Hollis turned back to the bench and set about cleaning the work surface with a hand brush and dustpan. “I’m not saying they’re all bad. There’s some deadly ones out there to be sure, but some can be very helpful little creatures. You shouldn’t ever forget, though, they don’t care what’s good for you, not for a minute. They’ve always got their own best interests in mind.”
“Okay, okay, jeez, I get it.”
“I’m sorry, you get what?”
“You’re saying Big Brother’s watching, and even when he’s not, the phone, the computer, and Facebook, and Google, and Skype, and Twitter, and Pinterest, and Instagram, and all the games and the apps, whatever, even if they say they’re free, they’re not really, and I need to be careful, yadda yadda yadda—”
Hollis frowned and pointed to the boy’s shoulder. “No, I’m saying there’s a gigantic spider on your shoulder.”
The frantic clog-dance of swats, stomps, and curses that ensued got Hollis to laughing like he hadn’t laughed in months. When he realized he’d been fooled the boy laughed, too, despite himself, though in the course of it he did refer to his elder by a few choice names that wouldn’t bear repeating in polite company.
“Really, thanks a lot for freaking me out,” Tyler said. “Very mature.”
“Any time.”
Hollis went on with his cleanup, replacing tools and storing unused stock. After a few minutes of this he noticed that the boy hadn’t yet gone.
“This ain’t a punishment detail,” he said. “Go on, now. You’re a free man.”
“Yeah, I know.” Still, he didn’t move to leave. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“My cousin said you fainted the other day, when they found you guys out in the woods. Is that true?”
“Am I the only subject of loose conversation around here? Why do you want to know?”
“I don’t know,” Tyler said. “It’s just that you’re this big strong guy, and I guess I never heard of a grown man fainting before.”
“If you must know, I’ve had a bit of a condition, and since I got back from the service it’s been known to flare up on me from time to time. I hadn’t slept or eaten much for a week or so, and I suppose it all must have built up and got the better of me.”
“What, like post-traumatic stress whatever?”
“Yeah. Something like that, I guess. Maybe we should put it up on the bulletin board to save the others the trouble of asking.”
“And why’s your voice sound that way? It’s kind of, I don’t know, kind of wheezy.”
Hollis took an extended look at the worn edge of one of the chisels, then put it aside for later sharpening. “Bring me a Coke from the fridge over there, and I’ll tell you.”
The young man went to the corner and brought back the bottle as requested. “So?”
“So, I took a piece of shrapnel in the throat one time. I was out to cover an allied patrol, nothing special about the mission, just an afternoon milk run in year five of a sixty-day war. We got hit outside of Sangin, total surprise, by some local warlord who’d switched hats and took a better bribe than what we’d offered. I was lucky with what I got, compared to some.” He touched the scars; they were easier to trace without his beard. “Like the other thing, it comes and goes. Believe me, I’ve sounded worse.”
“Sangin. Where’s that, like Vietnam?”
“It’s in Afghanistan.” Hollis hooked the bottle cap on the metal lip of the workbench, popped it smartly with the heel of his hand, and took a drink. “And you know something? I understand it’s not top-of-mind for a lot of folks these days, but for all the people who’re still dying in service to this country, whether or not you believe in the wisdom of these perpetual wars, I think it would be a pretty damn good thing if we all at least knew the names of the places where they’re giving their lives.”
The boy didn’t speak for a while, and then he said, “I’m sorry.”
Even as he’d said them Hollis knew his last words were too harsh, and he hadn’t meant them to come out as they had. All in all, it seemed best to change the subject.
“Well, if you’re going to hang around, would you give me a hand with something?”
“Why not? I guess there’s nothing better to do at the crack of dawn,” Tyler said.
The two carried the assembled drawer over to the bachelor’s chest it had been made to repair. With some delicate maneuvering they worked it onto the slides and eased it home until it came to rest at the cushioned stops in back. Hollis ran his thumb over each junction to test the fit, and then stood and took a step back to receive the full effect. Once the finish was matched and perfectly weathered it would take a big-city appraiser to ever tell the new parts from the old.
“Looks like somebody’s been slacking off,” Tyler said.
“Hmm?”
“There’s a ton of stuff to do here.”
“Do you want to see what your folks have been dealing with, instead of doing this work and looking after their business?” Hollis leaned to the side, picked up a fat file from the nearby desk, and slid it over in front of the boy. “What’s been taking up their time is right in there. I don’t think they’d mind if you knew about it.”
Tyler opened the folder and began to leaf through the many regulatory letters, writs, notices, citations, affidavits, audits, and notarized decrees inside. As Hollis worked the boy stopped occasionally to read various items more carefully.
“Dude, this is messed up,” Tyler said.
“It sure is.”
About a year before, an odd couple had visited the ranch for a week’s stay. They seemed to be allergic to almost everything and kept to themselves most of the time, but they’d asked a lot of questions.
Shortly thereafter the first of many official registered letters had arrived.
Hundreds of supposed violations had been reported to an army of bureaucrats, boards, and commissions. Fresh raw milk was being served to guests who requested it, along with ungraded butter and eggs. Wild horses and “feral” animals were alleged to be present, perhaps to be bred and raised on the property. Child labor laws were being flagrantly sidestepped. Dinner menus lacked the required nutritional data. The trumped-up charges and obscure technicalities went on and on.
As a result, multiple licenses and permits were under review or in the process of revocation. Retroactive taxes, fees, and fines were being assessed, and several cease-and-desist orders had been served. All these charges were baseless and most were trivial, but some were dead serious. One of the Merrick brothers traveled the gun-show circuit with hand-tuned and legally augmented high-end firearms; his inventory was actually being named in a preliminary injunction as an illegal cache of assault weapons.
“What does this one mea
n?” Tyler asked.
“They’re accusing your aunt Mary of diverting storm water.”
“Wait, what? You mean the stuff that falls from the sky?”
“Yeah. She’s got a sixty-gallon rain barrel out by the vegetable garden.”
“How can that be against the law?”
“Those paper-pushers made a mistake because it’s not against the law yet here in Wyoming, but it is in more states than you’d think. Doesn’t matter, though. It still takes time and lawyers to answer it all.”
Tyler put the paper back with the others and closed the folder. “This is just, I don’t know . . .”
“Harassment?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s un-American, is what it is,” Hollis said. “Intimidation by regulation, and selective enforcement against a hit list of political enemies. Now don’t get me wrong, government’s not all bad. Once you let these corrupt control freaks get their hooks into office, though, they never stop. It just grows and grows. This is the kind of nonsense they thrive on.”
The next few hours passed quickly as honest work gradually replaced the conversation. At the start what this boy knew about carpentry wouldn’t pack a thimble, but he picked things up with ease and he seemed to like to learn. It was almost eleven when Tyler’s mother dropped by to bring her son a ham-and-egg sandwich and to let Hollis know that Molly’s meeting was about to begin.
“My mom’s been talking about you,” Tyler said, when she’d left.
“Is that a fact?”
“Yup. I think she’s smitten, as grossed-out as I am to say it.”
“There’s a compliment in there somewhere,” Hollis said, “and by George I’ll take it.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“I guess there’s no stopping you.”
“It’s not because anyone’s including me in all the secret talk around here, but I’ve picked up a little in the past couple of days on what you and your friends are all about.”
“Okay. What do you want to ask?”
“Now don’t take this the wrong way,” Tyler said, “but you’re sitting in here fixing old drawers and bitching and moaning about regulations and bureaucrats and stuff.”