Bleeding Hearts

  I hesitated for all of five seconds.

  ‘Let’s do it.’

  We slept the rest of the daylight away. I emerged to find Spike dressed only in fresh T-shirt and shorts, chopping onions in the kitchen. He’d found a marijuana plant in the main bedroom and pinched off a few leaves. The aromas in the kitchen weren’t just cooking herbs. He held up the chopping-knife for me to see. It was a rubber-handled combat knife with a fat nine-inch blade, the last three inches of which were saw-toothed. ‘Chops vegetables great, Wild West.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ I looked in the fridge and pulled out a carton of orange juice. I was a lot more comfortable about the place. The condemned man tends to worry less about the state of his cell. I shook the carton and drank from it.

  ‘Oh, man, cooties!’ Spike complained. ‘Glasses are in the cupboard over the sink.’

  So I poured the rest of the juice into a glass, filling it to the brim. I’d drunk half the juice when Bel came in, wearing a long trucker’s T-shirt and not much else that I could see. She’d bought the shirt at a service station. It showed a chrome-fronted truck blowing out smoke like steam from a cartoon bull’s nose. There was a Confederate flag in the background and the legend ‘Ain’t No Chicken!’

  Spike was trying not to look at her legs as she stood in front of the fridge, bending from the waist to see what there was.

  ‘Any juice?’

  ‘Here.’ I handed her my glass. ‘We’re on cootie-sharing terms,’ I told Spike.

  ‘Cosy,’ he said, still chopping. He scooped the onion into a pan and added oil. Bel went to watch. ‘Uncle Spike’s Texas-Style Chilli,’ he revealed. ‘So long as I can find all the ingredients.’ He opened a tin of tomatoes and poured the lot in, along with half a tube of puree. Then he added chilli powder and some other herbs, and finished with a drained tin of red kidney beans.

  ‘Can’t find any meat, but what the hell. How hot do you like it?’ He offered Bel a spoonful of the juice. She thought it was hot enough already.

  ‘Chicken,’ he said to her.

  ‘Well, Spike, why don’t you pour some into another pan, that can be my pan? Then you two boys can add as much fire as you like to your share. I’ll just sit and watch you tough it out when it comes time to eat.’ She patted his back. ‘It’s food, remember, not an arm-wrestling contest.’

  Spike waited a few moments, then howled with laughter.

  ‘Bel, you’ve got more balls than half the guys I know. Move down to Texas and marry me.’ He got down on one knee and grabbed her hand. ‘I’m proposing right now, proposing to the woman of my dreams.’

  She pushed him away with her bare toe and he sat back on the floor, arms behind him.

  ‘The Good Lord spare me from rejection!’

  ‘Sorry, Spike. Maybe one day when you’re older.’

  ‘Come on,’ I said, leading her through to the living area. There was a breakfast bar between it and the kitchen. We flopped on to the sofa while Spike sang a few bars of some country song, then decided to whistle it instead.

  ‘Bel,’ I said quietly, ‘I want you to stay here while Spike and I — ’

  She leapt back up. ‘No way, José! I come this far and now you want to dump me?’

  ‘Sit down, please.’

  She sat down. ‘Listen, before you try any other speeches or tactics, Michael, I know why you said what you said, and I appreciate it. It shows you care. But you couldn’t stop me coming with you if you put a gun to my head, not even one of those M16s. If you leave me here, I’ll wave down a car, cosh the driver, and come after you. And I won’t be in a good mood.’

  ‘Bel, I only want to — ’

  ‘I know you do, sweetheart.’ She stood up, then bent over me and planted a kiss on my forehead. Then she went over to the hi-fi and searched for something suitable.

  Well, I thought, that went pretty much as predicted. I’d tried, which didn’t mean I could now progress with a clear conscience. What I’d been about to tell Bel was that if she came along, she’d only be a liability. She might get in the way, or she might cause us to make a critical misjudgement. I knew if I was wounded and there was heavy fire, Spike would leave me ... and he’d be right. But would either of us leave Bel under the same circumstances? Spike had already confided that he didn’t want Bel along.

  ‘I’m not being sexist, man, but this won’t be any party for a lady. Nobody’s going to be eating sausage-on-a-stick and drinking Californian white. There won’t be nice dresses and urbane conversation. It’s going to be expletives and explosives, and that’s pretty much all. What if she freezes? What if she chokes, man? What then?’

  I hadn’t an answer for him. It was a question, really, that had to be put to Bel.

  Bel put Springsteen on the hi-fi, which met with a roar of approval from the chef. It was early Bruce, and even I knew the record. We sang along where we could, and Spike even sang along where he couldn’t. Bel disappeared back into the bedroom and reappeared wearing jeans and boots. Spike had worked up a sweat in the kitchen, and guzzled from a bottle of red wine. He saw me looking at him.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘not a touch after this, okay?’

  ‘That’s okay,’ I said, ‘we’re not going out there tonight.’

  ‘Why not, Wild West?’

  ‘Lots of reasons. They’re almost certainly expecting us, we’re not ready, we’re still all a bit zonked or a bit hyper. Lots of reasons.’

  ‘Not ready? Man, how ready can we be?’

  ‘Readier than this. We want to be fully rested. Tomorrow is better.’

  ‘What? Tomorrow at dawn?’

  ‘Tomorrow night.’

  ‘Why wait, man?’

  ‘Because Jeremiah Provost’s supposed to be visiting HQ tomorrow.’

  Bel sat down beside me. ‘You think he still will?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe.’ Spike had come out of the kitchen. He handed round glasses and poured wine into them from the bottle he’d been swigging from.

  ‘It’s safe, Wild West, no cooties on me.’

  ‘He means germs,’ I told Bel.

  ‘I knew that,’ she said coolly.

  ‘Spike,’ I said, ‘we need this extra time. You’ve still got to show us how to use that arsenal you’ve provided.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he conceded, ‘that’s true. I was just itching to do it tonight.’

  ‘Relax, calm down. Take a slow drink and we’ll eat a lazy meal. Tomorrow we’ll fire off some guns, check their action.’

  Bel shook her head. ‘If we’re going to the peninsula tomorrow night, surely it makes more sense to try out the guns tonight, when conditions are the same?’

  Spike whistled through his teeth. ‘That is a good point.’

  ‘I do have my good points,’ Bel said, accepting more wine.

  Twenty minutes later, we sat down to the meatless chilli. We ate it with rice and nothing else. It was fine, but Spike kept complaining about how tame it was and splashing pepper sauce over his. His forehead was all perspiration as we talked.

  ‘That Commando is pretty good,’ I said. ‘Kicks a bit.’

  ‘You’re using it one-handed, of course it kicks. Wait’ll you try the Ingram, that thing is like somebody’s standing there jostling your arm all the time. We are not talking pinpoint accuracy, but it’s a nine-point-five on the mayhem scale.’ He scooped up another spoonful of beans. ‘Have you tried the Varmint yet?’

  ‘Haven’t needed to.’

  ‘Been one of those weeks, huh? Well, here’s my plan. I’ll fire an Ingram up into the air and flush them out, then spray the fuckers, while you sit up a tree and pick off the clever ones who’re hiding in the cabins. How does that sound?’

  ‘Lousy,’ I said, reading Bel’s mind. Me, I didn’t think it was such a bad plan.

  But Bel threw her spoon into her bowl. ‘You could be shooting innocent people. We don’t know that they’re all involved. So far as the cult goes, we don’t know that any of them are involved.’

&nb
sp; ‘That’s true, Spike,’ I said quickly. I didn’t want to give him a chance to say something that would really get Bel angry. ‘From what I heard and saw of Provost’s conversation with Kline, they’re not exactly buddies. Kline couldn’t have been treated worse if he’d been selling Bibles in hell.’

  ‘Hell’s full of Bible salesmen,’ Spike said, and I smiled a wide smile at his joke. Bel was still stony-faced, but he had one weapon to throw at her.

  ‘Bel,’ he said, lobbing it without looking, ‘now don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want you along tomorrow night.’

  ‘Tough,’ she said. Spike looked to me for support, but I was busy trying to get the last few beans on to my spoon.

  ‘See,’ he went on, ‘Wild West and me, we’ve been there before in our different ways. Never as a team exactly, but we know the situation and we know the ground.’

  ‘No,’ she said to him, ‘you don’t, I do. I’ve been out there, I’ve been in the fucking compound! And you expect me to sit here knitting you scarves for winter while you go scurrying off to play your little game? No way.’

  ‘Bel,’ he said, 'I know you know about guns, but can you actually use one?’

  There was a silent stare between them. Bel was first to speak. ‘You son of a bitch.’ She turned it back into four words, where for most Americans it was one. Not sumbitch but son of a bitch. Then she stood up, left the table, and went outside.

  I followed, curious to see what she’d do. What she did was find a switch on the wall outside. I suppose she’d noticed it before. Bright white light filled the clearing. I thought I caught a glimpse of a young deer melting back into the woods. There were lamps at ground level and up in the trees. It was like watching a stage-set. Spike joined me on the porch, handing me my wine glass. Bel got into the pick-up and started its engine.

  ‘What’s she up to?’ he said.

  ‘I think I’ve got an idea.’

  She drove the pick-up to the far edge of the clearing and parked it. Then she started looking around her. I took the empty wine bottle from Spike and headed down the stairs. By the time I reached her, she’d found a couple of large stones and an empty Coke can. I handed her the wine bottle. She smiled and placed it on the bonnet of the pick-up. Then she reached into the cab and emerged with some weapons.

  Spike had come down the stairs too. Even he knew what was going on. Bel walked back towards the house and turned to face the pick-up. It was standing side-on to her, the targets all in a row along its bonnet. She chose a handgun first. Expertly she checked and reloaded the clip, then held it out one-handed, closed her left eye, and let off three shots. She hit the can and two of the stones, sending them sliding across the bonnet. I replaced the stones and the can, by which time she’d got to know the small service-style revolver. Three more shots from that, all finding their target.

  Spike started clapping, spilling wine from his glass. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘another good point. Message received.’

  But she wasn’t about to take that. She got the Varmint from the camper and loaded it, then fired off six elegant shots, each one on target. She hadn’t nicked the pick-up’s paintwork. For her final shot, she smashed the wine bottle to pieces.

  Spike was clapping and whistling again. She turned to face him.

  ‘I can shoot,’ she said. ‘I just don’t like it. And I especially don’t like it when innocent people get hurt.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Spike, arms open in conciliation. ‘Give us another plan.’

  ‘I’ve got a plan for you,’ I said. ‘It’s in the form of a question. How do you sort out the good guys from the bad?’

  They both shook their heads, so I supplied the answer. ‘You see who runs away. Now come on, the next drink is on the house.’

  But we had coffee instead of wine, and we sat on the ground outside while Spike spread out his wares. He laid everything out on a couple of old blankets.

  ‘You ever see that film,’ he said, ‘where all the guns are laid out on the bed, and De Niro’s buying? Man, I can’t wait to see their faces when we turn up toting this little package.’ Spike’s grin was halogen-white.

  I thought I saw Bel shiver, but then it was getting late. I felt a little shivery myself.

  27

  And still there were decisions. For instance, should we check Provost’s house, see if he really had gone to Lake Crescent?

  Should we visit the house on Hood Canal first? That way, we might take out possible reinforcements. We didn’t want to lay siege to the cabins only to have a vanload of newly-summoned heat creep up on us from behind.

  Should we take the pick-up, the V-Dub, or both? They’d be looking out for the camper, but then they’d also be on the lookout for a crazy pick-up driver with dents in his cattle-bar.

  One thing we knew: it was too dangerous to cross on to the peninsula by ferry. They’d almost certainly be watching Bremerton. In fact, there weren’t nearly enough roads into the Olympic Peninsula for my liking. For an area measuring roughly ninety miles by sixty, it boasted only two routes into it. There was just the one main road, the 101, circling the perimeter of the National Park and National Forest. Using as few as maybe half a dozen men, they’d have advance warning of any approach we might make.

  There were other possibilities, but they were time-consuming. One had us take a boat to Victoria, British Columbia, and then another boat back from there to Port Angeles. The two crossings would take a total of several hours, and as Spike pointed out, Kline would already have considered this. If he was agency or government, he’d have an order put out for all sailings to be watched.

  ‘What you’re saying,’ said Bel, ‘is that there’s no way in there without them knowing about it?’

  Spike nodded, but I had an idea. It was just about my craziest notion yet, but my partners went for it. After that, things started slotting into place.

  Since the authorities weren’t on the lookout for Spike, we rented a car in his name in North Bend. It was a bland family model, and Spike decried the loss of his beloved stick-shift. But it gave us the confidence to head back into Seattle. We stopped at Ed’s Guns and Sporting Goods. I asked Archie if anyone had been asking questions. He shook his head. ‘What’re you looking for this time, son?’

  ‘Balaclavas and warpaint,’ I informed him.

  It was when I said this that it all hit home, the sheer madness of it all. I was way out of my league; I was playing a different game altogether. I should have been scared shitless, and I was. I could hardly stop my hands shaking — not exactly a good sign in a professional sniper. My heart was thumping and I kept thinking I was going to be sick. But at the same time it was like being a little drunk, and Bel and Spike felt the same. We kept grinning at each other and collapsing into fits of nervous giggling. I burst out laughing in Archie’s shop. He gave me a look, and smiled like he got the joke.

  ‘There’s no joke,’ I told him. And there wasn’t. There was just the euphoria of fear. I was pushing myself towards the confrontation as though each step had to be taken in thicker and deeper mud. It was the slowest day of my life. For all the activity and movement, it was slower than all the days I’d spent in hotel rooms, waiting for my hit to arrive in town, all the days I’d sat by windows, working out firing angles and distances. Archie seemed disappointed at the size of the sale.

  ‘I see your friend’s going to be all right.’

  ‘What?’

  He smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody. They had a photo of him on TV. I recognised him straight off.’

  ‘What’s the latest?’

  ‘He’s awake. The police are talking to him. So far it’s as one-sided as staging The Price is Right in a convent.’

  I nodded, relieved. ‘Archie,’ I said, ‘could you go to the hospital, say you’re a friend of his?’

  ‘You want me to go see him?’

  ‘If you give your name and address, I think he’ll agree to see you.’

  ‘Well, hell, what am I supposed to say?’

/>   ‘Tell him we’re fine. Tell him today’s the day. It might help cheer him up.’

  He screwed shut one eye. ‘Does this make me an accessory?’

  ‘What’s the crime?’

  ‘Well...’ He scratched his head. ‘I can’t close up the shop till six.’

  ‘This evening would be fine. It’d be perfect.’

  I tried handing him a twenty for his trouble, but he wouldn’t take it.

  ‘Be careful out there,’ he told me.

  ‘I will, Archie, I will.’

  ‘I hate this car,’ said Spike. ‘This is the most boring car I’ve ever sat in in my life. Period.’ We were parked at the top of the hill, a hundred yards from Provost’s house. We’d been sitting watching for a while, Spike drumming his fingers on the steering-wheel.

  ‘I say we switch to my plan.’ Spike’s plan was simple. He’d walk up to Provost’s front door and ring the bell.

  ‘Just like the Avon lady,’ he said.

  The plan depended on two things: the fact that Provost, Kline and the others didn’t know Spike, and that Spike could manufacture some bullshit excuse as to why he was ringing the bell in the first place.

  We took a vote: it was two to one in favour. I was the lone dissenter. So Spike got out of the car and jogged his way down the hill.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Bel asked.

  ‘I can’t help feeling we’re playing our joker a bit early.’ She didn’t get it, so I explained. ‘Spike’s our secret weapon. If they rumble him, we’re back to square one.’

  She smiled. ‘Aren’t you mixing your card games and your board games?’

  I gave her a sour look, like I’d just bitten on something hard and was checking my molars for damage. Then I watched through the windscreen for Spike’s return.