Mp, p.3
MatchUp, page 3
“That’s when you gave them your phone?”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said, annoyed. “I told them I wanted to join up. I told them everything I thought they’d want to hear about the country going to shit and the way to finally fix it. They liked what I was saying, but they didn’t greet me with open arms. I could tell they were thinking about it, though. If nothing else, they needed help with the building before winter rolled in. These guys aren’t exactly geniuses when it comes to construction, as you can tell.”
“Most criminals I’ve dealt with are just idiots,” Pickett said.
“I’ve known many who were fuckin’ smart. But these guys are idiots, with a cause. And even though they were friendly at first, they started getting suspicious. To prove I wasn’t a threat, I gave them my phone when they asked for it. I wasn’t worried because I’d deleted everything on it.”
Pickett nodded. “Go on.”
“It all went pear shaped when a fat guy with a WHITE PRIDE sweatshirt and a skinny guy who looked like he’d just walked off the set of Deliverance decided they’d pat me down to see if I was packing. I was, of course. I started backing off, but that didn’t sit well with Duck Dynasty over there, and the next thing I knew he was locking and loading his rifle and aiming it at me. I ran for the trees as the three others went for their weapons. I was able to throw myself into the shelter of a big root-pan, when they all opened up. It sounded like D-Day.”
“I heard it,” Pickett said.
“Finally, when they paused to reload, I was able to take out Duck Dynasty. That caused the others to strike out on foot. I chased them for a while and then decided it made more sense to see if I could find my phone and call it in. Unfortunately, that’s when you showed up.”
Pickett raised his hands in a what-are-you-gonna-do? gesture.
“But now that I’ve had time to think about it, I think I have a plan to take these guys on,” Coburn said.
“Oh, really? This should be interesting.”
He pretended not to notice Pickett’s skeptical tone. “I keep them engaged until dusk, like I’ve been doing. That way, they’re on the defensive and they won’t have the wherewithal to overrun us. Then, you’ll replace me. I’ll give you my .45 so they’ll think I’m still the one firing.”
“Then what?”
“You’ll do what I’ve been doing. Playing the . . . what was it?”
“Whac-A-Mole.”
“Right. Popping up every fifteen to twenty minutes to take a shot at them. Keep them guessing when you’ll appear and where you’ll shoot.”
“Meanwhile?” Pickett asked.
“I’ll use your cover fire to run out of this building. I’ll take your shotgun and get up into the trees and outflank them. Then I’ll take them out one by one. They’ll be dead before they know what hit them.”
Pickett seemed to remain doubtful.
“The best thing you can do to the enemy is keep him off balance,” he said. “Given the odds, they won’t expect me to take it to them.”
Pickett grinned. “I’ve got a buddy named Nate Romanowski. We butt heads from time to time. I think he’d approve of your plan. But I’m not sure I do.”
“You have a better one?” Coburn asked with some heat.
“I’m thinking.”
“That gives me absolutely no confidence.”
Pickett continued to ruminate. Why did it take this guy so long to form a thought? A glacier could have thawed by the time the game warden said, “So you’ve been hiking around these mountains all by yourself for weeks until you found these guys?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Must be running from something yourself.”
His hackles rose. Pickett might be slow, but he sure as hell wasn’t thick. “That’s none of your goddamn business.”
“What are you recuperating from?”
He didn’t respond.
“You said you were recuperating. What from?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Just wondering. Concussion? Chickenpox? Ingrown toenail?”
He gnawed the inside of his cheek and finally said, “Gunshot.”
Then he sprang to his feet and ran along the wall toward the corner of the building, his .45 at the ready. The burly white supremacist in the filthy WHITE PRIDE hoodie had just cleared the trees to the south and was working his way toward the unfinished lodge. The man carried a Ruger Mini-14 rifle with a thirty-round magazine.
“Drop it,” Coburn shouted.
WHITE PRIDE raised the rifle.
He fired and hit him center mass. WHITE PRIDE flopped straight back and landed on his butt, still.
“Two down,” he coldly said.
He heard a bang, then something hit him with the force of a mule kick and threw him flat on his back.
He couldn’t move his upper body.
But his grip on his .45 never wavered.
Pickett rushed over and dragged him along the ground to the log wall.
PICKETT WAS SURPRISED BY HOW heavy Coburn was. He was dead weight, but still alive. Proof of that was the litany of profanity that poured out as he propped the agent against the wall.
“Son of a bitch, that hurts,” Coburn hissed through gritted teeth.
“Where are you hit?”
“Chest.”
Not good. A high-velocity round through the chest could be fatal. He reached up and peeled back Coburn’s jacket. The bullet had struck just below the clavicle, closer to the shoulder than heart. It looked like a through shot because there was blood coming out from both sides. He’d seen the damage gunshots could do to big-game animals and had become inured to the sight of them. But when a human being was hit, that was different, even if it was a man he had no reason to like.
“I don’t think anything vital was hit,” he said. “I’m not sure it even broke any bones.”
“It hurts like hell.”
“You bleeding out is a worry, though.”
Coburn grunted.
Joe didn’t have access to the first aid kit. That was with Rojo and his saddlebag. “I’m going to use your shirt to bind it up. Lean forward so I can get your jacket off.”
Coburn took a deep breath and bent forward. Joe could only imagine how much it hurt to do that. He eased the arms free, pulled Coburn’s jacket over his head, then removed the bloodstained shoulder holster. Not taking the time to unbutton Coburn’s shirt, he ripped it open and the buttons popped off.
He couldn’t help but notice the scar on Coburn’s belly. Pink, puckered, recent. “Is that where you were shot?”
“No, I cut myself shaving.”
At least that wonderful personality seemed unaffected. Coburn’s arms were muscled and rippling with veins. A barbed-wire tattoo banded the left biceps, while the right displayed the words HONOR &.
The second word was missing.
“Honor and what?” he asked, as he fashioned a sling out of Coburn’s shirt that went over the left shoulder, under the right armpit, and across the chest. He hoped it would stanch the bleeding on both the entry and exit wounds. “Honor and duty? Honor and sacrifice? Or couldn’t you make up your mind?”
Coburn mumbled something incomprehensible.
“Hang on,” he said, “I’m going to cinch this tight and tie it off. It’s gonna hurt.”
Coburn gave a quick nod, the go-ahead, and Joe took that as his cue to pull the shirt as tight as he could and knot it. Coburn didn’t cry out, his jawbone locked tight.
He checked his handiwork.
The shirt was taut, but blood was still seeping through. Best he could hope for was that it would slow down the bleeding.
“I don’t suppose you can raise your right arm,” he asked.
Coburn winced as he tried, but his right hand and the .45 it held stayed in his lap.
“Didn’t think so.”
“I can shoot with my left.”
Empty boast? Hard to say. But he transferred the pistol to Coburn’s left hand.
“Just sit here. No more Whac-A-Mole for you.”
“We need to keep an eye out.”
“I’m not sticking my head up like you did.”
“This completely screws up my plan.”
“With all due respect, it was a crappy plan anyway.”
“Still haven’t heard one from you.”
He sat back. “Honor and what?”
Coburn sighed.
“Honor and why don’t you shut the hell up.”
NOTHING HAPPENED FOR THREE HOURS.
Coburn was getting antsy, and becoming more annoyed with Joe Pickett by the minute. The evening sun was dropping below the tops of the trees, casting deep shadows through the golden light. The smell of the cool pines seemed to intensify. The temperature had dropped ten degrees. It would be dark in two hours.
His shoulder had gone from screaming pain to what was now a low throbbing. If he sat still, he could stand it. But when he moved, even when he took a deep breath, he had to clench his teeth to keep from moaning, groaning, or cussing a blue streak. Despite the chilly air, he was sweating. Only an act of will, and his training for covert missions, prevented him from shivering. He had no doubt he could do what he needed to do with the .45 in his left hand. Especially at close range.
But he wasn’t sure he’d even get the chance.
The game warden sat still.
He worried that Pickett had fallen asleep. He stared across at the man who seemed to be looking at nothing. Face stoic. Or was it empty? He wasn’t sure which, but either way it was getting on his nerves.
“Blink if you can hear me, Pickett.”
“I hear you.”
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Please don’t strain yourself, but could you speed it along so I don’t bleed out?”
“I’ve been waiting for Rojo to come back.”
“Rojo?”
“My steed,” Pickett said, with an embarrassed smile. “It doesn’t look like he’s coming.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Pickett was quiet for a long time. Then said, “Do you hear anything?”
He perked up, but when he tried to straighten his shoulders, pain pulsed through them.
“No,” he said. “It’s perfectly quiet, except for a little bit of wind.”
“Right,” Joe said. “We’ve been waiting three hours and the natural sounds haven’t come back. No birds, squirrels, anything. Meaning, those guys are still up there.”
He was more than a little impressed that the game warden had determined that. Coburn had engaged in guerrilla warfare in Central America. When the birds quit calling and the monkeys stopped chattering, you unsheathed your machete because somebody was close.
“It also probably means they aren’t exactly sure what they’re going to do,” Pickett said. “Otherwise we would have heard something. Low talking. A branch snapping underfoot. Something. I think they’re still up there, but confused.”
“By what?”
“Think about it,” Pickett said. “It was around noon when they were peppering us with gunfire and watched us take cover here. But because they’ve only seen you, they might assume I was hit and died in here. They haven’t even caught a glimpse of me. They’re pretty sure you’re hit. And since that happened we haven’t shown ourselves. For all they know there are two dead men down here.”
He gave a curt nod of agreement.
Pickett asked, “Have you ever hunted?”
“You mean game?”
“What else?”
He turned his head aside, looked into the darkness, and said quietly, “Men.”
“Only bad men, though.”
“Sort of depends on who you ask, doesn’t it?”
Pickett said nothing for a moment, then cleared his throat. “I was thinking elk or deer.”
“Long ago in Idaho, with my dad,” he said.
He’d been twelve years old. His father shot a mule deer from the window of their truck before the sun came up, which was illegal. In the headlights, his dad had put the wounded animal out of its misery by hitting it on the head with a shovel.
“Didn’t like it much,” he said.
“Maybe you can still relate to my point.”
“Which is?”
“You can spend weeks in a wilderness like this, going after elk or moose. Stalking. Camping. Moving on foot. The first few years you hunt you’re filled with bloodlust. It’s how men are wired. We want to blast away and kill something and get our hands bloody. But it gets frustrating after a while because these animals we hunt are prey. That’s how they’re wired. They aren’t particularly smart, but they know not to charge into a confrontation. Instead, they avoid ’em.”
“What does that have to do with us?”
“Maybe nothing. But from what you tell me, these One Nation guys are just dumb rednecks. If they were smart, they’d hightail it out of these mountains while they’ve had the chance. Either that, or they’d wait until morning and sneak down here to make sure we’re dead. But these guys are dumb. And violent. They have bloodlust. So they’re itching to confirm their kills, bury our bodies, and get to working on this building again so they can go back to inciting a race war. In other words, they don’t have much patience and they’re probably hungry, like I am.” Pickett chinned toward the coolers and canned goods in the shadow of the trees. “They want their Dinty Moore stew.”
Coburn saw the logic in what Pickett said. Besides, in the shape he was in, he couldn’t launch an attack on a butterfly, much less two idiots with firepower and a cause.
“So we wait them out?”
“Till they make a move,” Pickett said.
“Or I drain dry of blood.”
“Whichever comes first.”
“EMILY.”
Pickett opened his eyes.
It had been an hour and a half since either of them had spoken. They had thirty minutes of light left, although it had been a while since they’d seen the sun. The dark walls of trees seemed to be closing in, and because the breeze had stopped it seemed incredibly still and totally silent except for Coburn’s whisper of a name.
“What?” he whispered back.
“Honor and Emily.”
He was puzzled. “That’s a new one.”
Coburn shook his head. “Honor is the name of my . . . woman. Emily’s her daughter. Five years old.”
He tried to keep his surprise from showing. “So you have a family?”
“Barely.”
Joe waited for more that didn’t come. Finally, he said, “I’ve got a great wife and three daughters. I don’t mind admitting that, if it weren’t for them, I don’t know what good I’d be.”
Coburn looked over hard at him. “You mean like me.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You wouldn’t be far off the mark. She and I have only been together three months.”
“Marybeth and I met in college.”
Coburn shifted uncomfortably. “Honor and I met under more unusual circumstances.”
He waited for more.
“I crawled out of a swamp into her yard, held her at gunpoint, threatened her life, and tied her up.”
“Never would’ve taken you for such a romantic.”
Coburn puffed a laugh. “She was involved in this case I was working.”
He motioned toward Coburn’s belly. “Is that when that happened?”
“Yep. Didn’t know if I’d ever see her again. I started going out to the airport every day.” Coburn paused. “Anyhow, that asshole I told you about? My boss. Hamilton? Honor threatened him with bodily harm if he didn’t tell her where I was. She would’ve been better off staying in Louisiana. But one day there she was. With Emily and Elmo.”
“That sounds like a happy ending.”
Coburn shrugged. “Maybe for a guy who wants to settle down. Maybe for a guy like you. A guy who knows who Elmo is.”
He chuckled. “A little girl, huh? So you’re awash in estrogen.”
“You could say that.”
“Sometimes I think of my place as the ‘House of Feelings,’ ” he said. “It can be quite a shocker to spend the day alone out in the field and return home to that.”
“Four of ’em,” Coburn said, shaking his head. “I have trouble handling two. I’ve spent my whole life on my own. Keeping my own company. Not sharing anything with anybody, especially space. Now I’m having discussions about things like curtains. I don’t care what color they are. I just want to know if they shut.”
He nodded. “I hear you. And what’s the thing with throw pillows?”
“Hell if I know.”
They pondered the imponderable for a few seconds.
“Can Honor cook?” he asked.
Coburn smiled. “Oh, yeah. And don’t get me wrong. She’s wonderful. I can’t keep my hands off her. It’s the other stuff I gotta work through. I keep asking myself, Can I do this?”
“That’s not the question you should be asking.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Do you want to do it?”
He gave him time to answer, but nothing came, so he said, “You can do it, Coburn. If I can put up with a mother-in-law who never fails to remind me that her daughter married down, you can put up with curtains and throw pillows. Builds character. Maybe Honor will take the edge off you.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“With all due respect, you could be less of a hard-ass. And one other thing. When we get out of this thing, go have Emily’s name added to your arm. Don’t chicken out this time.”
Coburn glanced at his still seeping wound. “If we get out of this thing.”
“We’ll find out soon enough, I think.”
By eight thirty a sliver of moon had wedged between the spindled tops of two pine trees, the sky overhead almost cloudy from the countless stars. A sight Pickett never tired of seeing.
Two men stepped out of the trees on the south side of the clearing. One was stocky and short with a barrel chest. The other cadaverous, and he pulled his left leg behind him as he walked. Silver light reflected off the barrels of their rifles.
The stocky man whispered, “You gonna make it?”
“I better,” the skinny man said in a southern twang. “Ain’t never tried to walk on a shot-up leg before.”
