Peril in the Pines Ch. 03

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"I like it. I'll pass that along."

"We'll be leaving a bunch of bricks behind, and the enemy will come back to get them, so it'll give us a good chance to catch them and get those bricks, too."

"I'll get on it as soon as you hang up. Is that all?"

"Yes. I'll call you when we get outta here."

The digging and loading of the bricks continued went along smoothly until Tim called a halt and we put the equipment aboard and got set for the ride out. "The carts are on board," Vince reported, "Do we want the shovels?"

"Yeah. Bring 'em. Let those crooks get their own damn shovels. Oh, Vince, open the left rear door and bring out that box. Yeah, that's the one. Put it in the middle up against the front of the truck bed."

"What's in it, Chief?" asked Vince.

"Some firebricks. They look enough like the mystery bricks to make the enemy look twice. If you run out of ammo or are bogged down, start tossing them at the enemy's windshield. So plan A is we get in the truck and drive home. Plan B is you shoot the bastards. Plan C is you make it hard for them to follow us real close by throwing firebricks at 'em. I want those guys to think they're the real thing, worth thousands, so they'll want to pick 'em up. Maybe cause enough confusion to slow 'em down a bit. Okay?"

"Brilliant!" said Vince with a grin.

"Everybody on board?"

Tim looked around and reported, "We're all here." I climbed into the front passenger seat. Tim and I were in front, three in the back seat, and Vince and Harold up in the truck bed as tail gunners. "Let's go."

As we made the turn to head down the dirt track, a rifle shot from off to our left sent a bullet across the hood, in front of the windshield. The bullet plowed a groove in the sheet metal and ricocheted off to the right with that twanging sound you hear on TV westerns. Before I could say a thing, Harold was standing up and delivering two full auto bursts in the direction the shot had come from. I shouted to Tim, "You know the truck and the road. Get us out to Racebrook as fast as you can without killing us all."

The Sheriff had said that the troopers were in control of our exit to Racebrook Road, and when we came around a bend a hundred yards before the final zigzag, I spotted a campaign hat. "Look at that!" I yelled. The guys all went crazy yelling and cheering. I said to Tim, "Let me off to talk to that trooper. Keep going slow and I'll catch up to you on Racebrook."

The trooper said they had four cars to escort us, two in front and two in back. He looked impressive, tall and straight, with sharp creases in his uniform and that boy scout looking hat sitting perfectly square on his head. But the finishing touch was the bag hanging below his left arm with spare magazines for the AR he had slung in front of him, Army style, on his right side. Everything about him spoke of competence. After all the stress I'd been under since six in the morning, I could have kissed him. My final words to him as I broke away to run for the truck were, "You'll never know how glad we were to see you!"

We picked up the SUV and made it back to the Sheriff's Office without incident. Tim backed the truck up to the back door, and all the guys pitched in to unload the bricks and wheel them to the holding cell where they'd stay for a while. The troopers put their cars in a semicircle around the truck, and stood guard with their AR's slung in front, ready to fire. Vince had the unloading detail in hand, so I went into the office and reported to the Sheriff. He waved me to a chair after introducing me to Sergeant Duffy, the commander of the detail of troopers.

"Sheriff, Sergeant, roughly a third of the bricks are still out there in the woods. There's an enemy presence right there, has been all day, with some authority figure right there in command. He's the one who talked on their walkie talkie and I talked back to him and told him to surrender. Those woods are thick, and I never got even a fleeting glimpse of anybody other than the three that I shot. By now they're probably starting to get the other bricks out of there. If you want that walkie talkie of theirs, it's on the floor in the front of our truck."

"Already taken care of," said the Sheriff. "Now you sit back and tell us what happened. We both have our recorders ready."

"Okay, here's how it went," I said, and I kept talking for about ten minutes, first giving an overview, then going back through it with details, and finally adding some comments about the performance of the deputies.

Sergeant Duffy commented at the end, "That was quite an operation, Chief. Our people will pick up those three bodies. Considering the risks, you did well to bring everybody back in one piece. We'll look around and see if Harold's full auto bursts hit anybody. The bullets in the tree trunks will show us where to look. It's clear to me that all the kills connected to this brickyard adventure from day one have been defensive in the face of hostile actions, and that's what my report will say. Somebody may want to question you back at headquarters, but it's all routine, and you won't have any trouble over it. I'll come back here in a day or two to record a backup interview with Vince. He's a good witness and we all know him. I'm sure that's all the information we'll need to complete our file.

"Now that you've been through all this, do you have any insight into what this whole thing is all about?"

"Only conjecture. These bricks must be worth a fortune. They must have something valuable inside of them. I think that the outside is exactly the same material as the light tan dirt that we took two samples of the other day. It looks to me like mine tailings.

"Here's what I think. Those bricks were made at an abandoned mine. You remember that German guy who was using the tailing material at the old mine west of town tp make lightweight building blocks? His operation was set up in buildings from the old mining company that had quit the site. Now suppose somebody had something very valuable, like diamonds, and they found a way to make lightweight bricks with a package of the precious stuff in the middle of each one. They could have an operation sort of like the German's outfit. To stash the bricks, they would have picked a spot away from the mine, but not too far, so to find the right mine I'd work backward, starting at the brickyard in the woods and doing a spiral search from there.

"The employees who put the valuable stuff into the bricks would have no idea where they went to, and the ones who buried the bricks would have no idea what was in them or where they came from. The transportation crew could haul the bricks out of the mine to the woods at night, and haul the dirt out to cover them during the day, without ever knowing there was anything special about the bricks. I'd guess that it would take only a few weeks to make all those bricks and hide them in the woods.

"Trying to kill us and protect the bricks today probably took more men than any other thing they did, so I'd guess they brought in hired guns from some place away from here, and they wouldn't have known anything about the bricks. Any way you look at it, this is a very well organized operation."

BACK HOME WITH INTERRUPTIONS

After Sergeant Duffy and the troopers had left, the Sheriff said, "So you dusted three guys with the AR on full auto. How'd you like the gun?"

"It was wonderful. Shot to point of aim, action very smooth, fed ammo well. How many of them do you have?"

The Sheriff started to chuckle. "That's a funny story. When we ordered those guns from military surplus they were described as being ten to a crate, and we could order any quantity. So I ordered twenty, expecting two crates. But some supply clerk made a mistake, and what we got was twenty crates, containing two hundred rifles. In a small third world country, we could arm a revolution!"

We shared a laugh, and it felt good after concentrating so fiercely all day. I asked the Sheriff, "Any problem if I go home early? I've been strung tight since six am and I'm beat."

"Sure. Go ahead. And don't come in before noon tomorrow."

Just then, Vince came into the office. "All put away nice and neat in cell number two, and double locked by Tim and me together. What's next, Chief?"

"That's great, Vince. Get everybody into the squad room. I'll be right in. Do you want to say something to them, Sheriff?"

"You do it, and then at the end I'll just say 'Good job.'"

I got up and went into the squad room. "Guys, that was absolutely a wonderful job that you all did there. A few special points. First, you all did exactly what you were told, even when it may not have made much sense at the time. Second, you worked hard and fast and you cooperated well to get the job done so we could get out of there. Special attaboys: to Tim, who did a great job of driving in and out under very difficult conditions; to Harold for his lightning fast work with the AR that persuaded the sniper to pack it in; and to Vince, for his calm, positive leadership. Again, my thanks and congratulations to all of you. Sheriff?"

"Boys, I'm proud of all of you. Thank you for pulling it off so well. Now go on home and see your families. You can say that you were on a special assignment and that it was hard and stressful, but don't go beyond that. We still don't know who or what we're dealing with out there. You're dismissed."

The old yellow Jeep never looked so good to me. I climbed in and fired it up and headed home by the quickest route. Well, for a while, anyway. Four minutes into the seven minute trip I decided that the Pontiac behind me was suspicious, so I turned off to the right. Pontiac did the same. I entered a supermarket parking lot. So did the Pontiac. I drove slowly down an aisle as if I were looking for a parking place. So did the Pontiac. I turned up another aisle that lined up with an exit and loitered along, watching the traffic. The street cleared ten seconds before the light at the corner changed, so I waited till it changed and raced out onto the street in a screeching left turn, barely ahead of the stampede of cars that had been turned loose by a green light. I whipped around corners left and right, and made a roundabout tour of the neighborhood, ending up back at the Sheriff's Office.

I drove in blowing the horn, slid to a stop, leaped out, and got the engine compartment between me and the Pontiac, which was racing in right behind me. I had my pistol in both hands, ready to blast the driver. But he surprised me. He stopped his car and opened his door, but he scooted back around the rear of his car. He was crouched low so I couldn't see him until he sprang out firing at me as he came. Oh, this guy was good, but trying to run and crouch and shoot all at the same time is tough, no matter how good you are, and his shots were spraying around wildly, bullets thudding as they hit the concrete wall of the Sheriff shop behind me. I kept my sights on him until he was coming straight at me, giving me a constant sight picture. Then I got off four shots fast, trying to stop him but spare his head. His momentum carried him forward but his legs stopped cooperating, and he landed on his chest, elbows and face, on a parking lot covered with sharp edged three-quarter inch crushed granite. Ouch! His elbows were slightly bent, and as they hit the ground his arms rotated up at the shoulders, which sent his pistol flying up and ahead, toward me, to land a few inches from my right foot. I picked it up, slid the safety on, and tossed it into the Jeep.

I was holding my pistol in my left hand, so I transferred it back to a two hand grip and slowly walked around the guy on the ground, but not too close. If he made a hostile move I was ready to empty the magazine into him if necessary. But he didn't move. I hoped I hadn't killed him. Right about then the Sheriff and Vince came running out, and the guy on the ground moaned and moved a little. I called back over my shoulder, "Got your cuffs, Vince?"

"Yeah, I'll take care of him." And he did, with handcuffs behind the back and plastic zip ties binding the ankles together.

The Sheriff said, "Put him in holding cell number one, Vince, and I'll call for an ambulance and an escort." Vince carried him like a rag doll, making it look easy even though I figured the guy at about one-seventy. The Sheriff turned to me with a smile and asked, "Where do you keep finding these guys, Jack?"

I carried the hit man's pistol on a pen thrust through the trigger guard, just like the old Perry Mason shows on TV. I set it on the table in the interview room and sat down. I told the Sheriff, "I'd clear it if I had gloves, but I forgot to take any out to the woods with me."

The Sheriff was filling out the evidence tag. "That's all right. I'll get Henry to do it. Was that guy tailing you?"

"Yeah. I made him after a mile or so. He must have been waiting right around here somewhere. I used a parking lot to get separated from him, but he was almost up to me coming in here. He's very good at his job. Or was. I probably put him into retirement. I tried to spare his head, because I'd like to question him. But maybe you ought to do it. You're good at it. You'll have to coach me on interrogation.

"The whole idea of a hit man coming after me just made me mad. I was having a pretty good day till he showed up. I was starting to relax after being tense all day, and having him show up to try to kill me just seemed like one thing too much. I'm sorry, Sheriff. I'll try to control my anger better."

"Don't be too hard on yourself. He was what, the fourth guy who tried to kill you today? Fifth if you count the sniper. That's a lot for one day. It'd make me testy, too."

We talked some more, and then I called Jan and asked her to come and pick me up. I left the Jeep in the lot and relaxed on the way home. But that night, I didn't take the gun off my hip until I went to bed.

Jan was very concerned about me. She was so sweet to me, so considerate, that it almost brought me to tears. I tried to tell her what had been going on, without telling her what had been going on. When we got into bed she massaged my neck and back, and all the way down to the muscles in the back of my thighs and calves. She was very good at it, and while she was massaging, we talked.

"In Afghanistan, did your missions make you feel like this?"

"Well, of course they were different, but yes, they gave me a lot of the same feeling. A day's work there might include two or three hours of intense danger, maybe the same amount of moderate danger, and the rest of a twelve hour day was relatively peaceful patrolling. The variety gave us a chance to relax a bit before getting scared again. And we had our Humvee to crawl into, like an armor plated cocoon, safe unless we got blown up. You can just imagine how careful we were to avoid getting blown up. In a way, we got accustomed to having danger all around us. Here I didn't expect it. This is supposed to be a peaceful place. I'm still not over the way you and I were surprised at our picnic in the peaceful pines. So some of this has to do with my expectations, and I'll have to make an adjustment to deal with that."

"How did the other deputies react to the precautions that were new to them? Did they think you were just some kid fresh out of the Army trying to show off, or did they treat you with respect?"

"I guess they respected me, at least to the extent that they did what I said. The idea of anticipation is still new to them. I think that the way they've been operating is to go about their business until somebody takes a shot at them, and then react in a semi panic. The same thing happens in the Army. But that's just not my way to go about it. I believe in thinking beforehand about all the things that can happen to us and taking precautions to prevent us from being hurt by them. And that's what I'm going to teach the deputies. But I expect it to be a long, slow, maybe painful process. The biggest ray of sunshine is Vince. He's a natural for Senior Deputy and he believes in the way I plan a mission. You ought to see the way the guys just automatically do what he says without thinking twice. The Sheriff will support me because he agrees that the deputies need to anticipate and plan better. If he didn't see it my way he'd never have made me Chief Deputy."

"What happened to your plan to come home early? You called earlier to tell me you were leaving right then, but it was nearly an hour later when you called me to come pick you up. Did something happen?"

"Yes, just as I was leaving something came up that I needed to take care of. It was an unintended consequence of the things we were doing today out in the woods, that's all. I took care of it, but I had to do it right away so I didn't have a chance to call you until afterward. I'm sorry if it was confusing for you. It was an unusual situation and I doubt that it'll happen again."

"How will you get to work tomorrow if you're going in late, after I've left?

"I'll call and get one of the guys to pick me up. No prob."

We went off to sleep that night in each other's arms. The cares of the day out in the woods slipped away as if they had never happened. My last thought was that every way I looked at it, I was the luckiest man in the world. I was lying in a soft bed, warm and dry, living in the world of my choosing, holding the woman I loved. It just doesn't get any better than that!

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