The Standoff Read online

  They walked up to the second floor and turned a corner in a short hallway that led to another hallway.

  “This is a big house. It’s kind of grand.”

  “Thanks. We love it. We like to think of it as our own Buckingham Palace.”

  The house was no Buckingham Palace. Widow knew that because he had been to Buckingham Palace. But it was a nice, big family farmhouse.

  At the end of the hall, Abe opened a door that led to a good size corner bedroom.

  “This is the guest room. There’s a private bath with a shower in it over there. Help yourself.”

  “Think I will take a shower. I need one. Thank you, sir.”

  Abe paused at the door. He looked Widow up and down.

  “What size clothes you wear?”

  “Thirty-four tall in pants and extra-large in shirts are in my comfort zone.”

  Abe nodded, turned, shut the door, and left. And finally, Widow was all alone with a shower and a bed. He couldn’t help but smile.

  The guestroom had a king-sized bed against the back wall and two large windows and one armchair against the corner. Greens and blues and grays made up the colors. There were two rattan-framed mirrors and a long, waist-high dresser on the next wall and two doorways on the last one.

  Widow opened one of the doors and found a closet with shoeboxes stacked on the floor and no shoes in sight. The rack for hanging shirts was empty except for wire hangers dangling from the bar. Clean bed linens were folded on a shelf above.

  Widow closed the closet door and tried the next one. He found the shower and toilet and sink. Everything was simple and white except for the shower curtain and towels, which matched the green and blue from the room.

  He stepped back to the room and yanked his socks off his feet. Then he undressed and left his clothes in a pile in one corner. He stepped back into the bathroom, naked, and hopped into the shower. He set the water to warm and showered.

  Widow killed the water when he was done and stepped out of the shower. He toweled off, slicked his damp hair back and wrapped the towel around his waist. He stepped to the mirror and wiped the steam off it. He stared at his face. He could use a fresh shave. He wondered if it would be impolite to ask Abe to borrow a razor and a can of shaving cream.

  Next to a stand-up squeeze bottle of toothpaste, there was a cup with several disposable toothbrushes wrapped in plastic like Widow had seen in some motels.

  He did need to brush his teeth, but he didn’t need to waste one of the Whites’ disposable brushes. He went to his old jeans and fished out the cheap gas station-bought toothbrush out of one pocket and rinsed it good and used it, in conjunction with the Whites’ toothpaste, to brush his teeth.

  He decided to take one and opened a new tube of toothpaste and went to work on his teeth.

  Widow had all his own teeth, amazingly given how many times he’d been punched in the jaw. He was proud to have them. In his life, he had never had a single cavity or major dental-related operation, except when he was seventeen when he had all his wisdom teeth yanked out.

  After he was done in the bathroom, Widow returned to the guest room just in time to hear the last of a series of knocks at the door.

  He heard footsteps walking away as if someone had knocked and then hurried off.

  “Just a second,” he called out.

  He double-checked the towel’s staying power around his waist. When that was safely confirmed, he opened the door.

  No one was there. The hallway was empty, but on a short table across from his door was a stack of neatly folded clothes.

  He went over, careful not to drip water onto the hardwood, and scooped up the clothes. He returned to the room and shut the door behind him.

  The clothes had belonged to Abe’s dead son he figured, like the house shoes and the combat boots from the downstairs mudroom cubby and the dog tags.

  Widow thanked Abe to himself as if the gratitude could be transmitted psychically. Then he realized he was talking to himself. Widow noticed he was doing that more and more, a habit common to drifters, probably. He was spending too much time on his own on the road and not enough around people. That was probably not healthy.

  Widow set the clothes on the bed and took off the towel. He toweled his hair some more till it was part dry, part damp. He hung the towel on a rack in the bathroom.

  The dead son’s clothes consisted of a pair of dark blue jeans and a belt and a thick long-sleeved black shirt. He checked the sizes. The jeans were thirty-six waist, and tall. He guessed that’s why Abe had brought him a belt to go with them. There was also a pair of clean black socks. No underwear, probably because that would be weird for Abe.

  Widow put on the new clothes with his own underwear and checked himself out in the bathroom mirror. Everything fit pretty well, even the jeans. They were a little loose, but the belt kept them nice and snug at the waist.

  After he checked the fit, he took all the new clothes off again because he didn’t want to wrinkle them. He opened the closet and folded the jeans over a hanger and hung them up. He repeated the process with the shirt. He left the socks on his feet and kept the underwear on.

  He went back over to the bed and tossed the top layers of covered pillows onto the floor. He turned down the covers and blankets and sheets. He found several layers, more than he’d anticipated.

  Before he knew it, he’d slipped his body under the covers, and his head was on the pillow. He turned to one side and stared out the window for a long minute, letting his mind run until it was empty of thought.

  Clouds overcast the sky outside. Everything was gray or white. He closed his eyes and fell fast asleep.

  Chapter 27

  D OBSON CROUCHED over the motor to the van with a look of confusion on his face, which he was faking to keep Abel thinking that he was also blindsided by the van’s sudden breakdown.

  A single hood lift held the van’s hood open. He tinkered around with a screwdriver, tapping it on different parts of the engine.

  While some of the other guys napped, Dobson went straight to work in the van. He knew that he had better look like he was busy trying to fix the problem, even though he already knew what the issue was, and he knew that he couldn’t fix it.

  He stood inside the barn to the abandoned farm. Overhead in the loft, under the roof’s peak, and the high beams, Brooks and Jargo were chatting, occasionally checking out the road with the sniper rifle’s scope.

  Radio chatter flickered and buzzed throughout the barn.

  Brooks was getting radio communication from Abel. Probably a status report or an update request. Abel wanted both often.

  After a moment, the chatter died away, and Brooks went back to talking to Jargo.

  Dobson could hear the reverberations of their voices, but not what they were saying. He heard them shuffle around, probably trading positions at the rifle.

  Empty stalls surrounded the van. Stacks of old hay lined the walls.

  Morning sunbeams crept out from behind clouds here and there. Most of the sky was overcast with gray and white, which made Dobson think it would start snowing at any moment.

  Flack stood at the rear of the van with the doors swung open. First, he rechecked the pipe bomb packages, then checked the labels and the stamps. Everything was as Abel had instructed it to be. The labels were correct. The names and addresses Abel gave them were listed correctly. The correct name coincided with the correct street address. Each pipe bomb would be delivered correctly to the right person’s home. As long as no mailman got curious and tried to open any of the packages, then they would hit the correct targets addresses.

  They may not all be opened by the intended recipient, but that’s war. Collateral damage was to be expected. Plus, Abel didn’t much care if he missed his targets, but killed a wife or husband or even a kid instead. That was just as good a target.

  The stamps were metered correctly for weight.

  Next, Flack checked all the belts and buckles and locks and bars to make sure they were
closed tight to keep the pipe bombs and their packages locked in place.

  Flack closed the doors and came around to speak.

  “How’s it looking?”

  “Not good.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Like I said earlier. It’s electrical. I can’t do nothing about it without a diagnostic machine and the correct software.”

  Flack reached a gloved hand up to his face and wiped his mouth.

  He whispered, “Like in the cave?”

  Dobson glanced back to make sure no one was listening.

  “Yeah. Like in the cave.”

  Just then, as if on cue, one of the barn’s huge double doors pulled open with an eerie creak, and Abel stepped inside. He stretched his arms out and up like he was just waking up. His white gear and coat blended into the gray and white behind him.

  “How’s it looking, boys?”

  Dobson assumed he was talking to him.

  “Same as before.”

  “Can’t fix it?”

  Dobson shook his head.

  Abel walked into the barn, stopped about five feet from Dobson, reached out a long arm and patted Dobson’s shoulder.

  “Well, then, we’ll need new wheels.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Come out here.”

  Abel turned and walked out into the open air.

  Dobson followed him out.

  Abel walked him to the snowy driveway and stopped over the van’s tracks left in the snow.

  Abel stopped, turned and faced Dobson. He held out an open hand.

  “Are you armed?”

  Dobson looked around. The others were gathering around him, except Jargo and Brooks who were still up in the barn’s loft behind him.

  Dobson said, “Yes.”

  “Hand it over.”

  Dobson tried to look confused, but it wasn’t confusion on his face. It was fear.

  “Go on,” Abel said.

  Dobson reached a shaky hand into his coat, and reached down to his side. He unsnapped a safety catch on a hip holster, brandished a Glock. He took it out and paused a beat, and then reversed it and handed it to Abel.

  Abel turned to one of the others and tossed the pistol to him.

  “How long you been with us?”

  Dobson still held the screwdriver in his hand. He stood there and said nothing.

  “I’m talking to you,” Abel said, pointing a slight shaky, pruned finger at Dobson.

  An icy breeze blew across the farm and slapped Dobson in the face. He shivered. Some of it came from the breeze, and some of it came out of fear.

  “I guess ten years.”

  “Ten years?”

  “Maybe longer.”

  Abel nodded and said, “In all that time, how many times have you failed me?”

  Dobson stopped, looked down at the ground for the answer, and thought for a moment. He looked up and saw the look on Abel’s face. Fear overwhelmed him. He stopped looking for the answer.

  Abel grinned back at him, ominously.

  Dobson prayed that Abel couldn’t see his fear.

  He said, “Never.”

  “Never.”

  Silence.

  Dobson stayed put. He fought to keep still. He fought to stop his muscles from moving, but it didn’t last. He started to shiver visibly.

  “Are you going to kill me?” he asked.

  Abel grinned wider and craned his head slowly and looked up behind Dobson. His eyes moved up the barn to the opening under the peak.

  Dobson turned and stared up.

  He traced the barn’s exterior until his eyes came to rest on the loft window at the top of the barn at Jargo’s sniper nest. The loft shutters were wide open, but neither Jargo nor his sniper rifle, were there.

  Instead, Brooks knelt in the open window armed with his M4. He knelt in a firing position. The rifle butt was lodged against his right shoulder, his eyes lined over the sights, and his finger was on the trigger. A sound suppressor stuck out of the business end of the weapon. And it was pointed straight down at Dobson.

  Dobson locked eyes with Brooks and froze. His jaw dropped and his hands shot up instinctively to block the bullet from tearing through his face.

  He screamed.

  “NO! NO! NO! PLEA….”

  Suddenly, Dobson felt a sharp, tight pain around his neck and in his throat and deep down where the voice formulates letters. But it wasn’t pain from a bullet to the head. No bullet was fired. It was something else. He couldn’t breathe. Something was strangling him.

  Dobson’s hands moved down to his throat in violent desperation. His fingers brushed across his skin and neck until he found the cause of strangulation. His fingers clawed and clung at a sharp wire around his neck. He scraped and pried and wriggled, trying to slip a finger under it, trying to get some slack, trying to get a fraction of a centimeter, anything. But it wouldn’t give.

  Suddenly, Dobson felt his feet come up off the ground. His leverage was wiped away in an instant. He still couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t pull the wire off his neck. There was no slack to give. He couldn’t do anything but choke. He was completely helpless, completely powerless.

  Moments earlier, and seconds before he walked into the barn, Abel had radioed up to Brooks and told him what was about to happen and what he should do.

  Brooks distracted Dobson with the M4 while Abel crept behind him, slowly. Then Abel exploded to action and yanked a long, homemade garrote and slipped it around Dobson’s neck. The garrote was crafted from items he’d found in the abandoned farmhouse. The string was a high-grade fishing line. He used a pair of wooden muddlers from the kitchen as the handles, stringing the line between them in grooves already left there around the bulbous bottoms of the muddlers. Finding the fishing wire and the muddlers left behind wasn’t a surprise to Abel. Why would anyone bother to pack them? They were replaceable and not worth packing up. When the bank’s coming to foreclose on your farm, the last thing you might think to pack would be trivial items like fishing wire and muddlers.

  In a sick way, Abel chalked the stroke of luck up to God’s will. Abel had been twisting and exploiting religion for so long that he actually believed some of the lies he spewed.

  Abel walked up behind Dobson, slipped the wire over his head and jerked and wrenched backward. Once he knew that he had Dobson by the throat, he jerked and twisted and spun around in a one-eighty degree turn. He heaved and hauled Dobson up over his back and yanked forward using Dobson’s own weight, and gravity, to strangle the man.

  Dobson kicked outward and wriggled in the air. His face turned blue. He tried to scream in pain, in desperation, but all that came out were gasps of the last slivers of air his lungs could exhale.

  Dobson tried to call out for help. He stared up at Brooks, who watched him die with no emotion on his face, no signs of friendship or unit loyalty. Brooks showed no signs of anything until the last seconds when a smile grew across his face until it was big and wide.

  Dobson kicked harder and harder into the air until his legs started to slow and he felt his energy levels dropping, dropping until nothing was left.

  Abel pulled the garrote harder and harder until Dobson stopped kicking, stopped clawing, stopped moving altogether.

  Abel strangled Dobson until the man died, until his corpse turned pale.

  Finally, when Dobson felt like nothing more than a ragdoll over his back, Abel released the garrote. Dobson’s corpse collapsed onto the snow like a sack of potatoes. It didn’t bounce or move on impact. It just plopped down and stayed, literally a dead weight.

  The wire was still tight around the corpse’s neck. Blood seeped out slowly from around the wire. Abel had strangled him so hard the wire had cut through his skin. Blood seeped out of the cut.

  Dobson’s emotionless face stared up at the sky. His eyes were dead. His skin was almost translucent as if the color had gone out like a light. His eyes bulged nearly out of their sockets. He was as dead as anything that had ever died.

  A
bel breathed in heavy wheezes, trying to catch his breath. Strangling someone like that was physically exhausting, especially for an older man who was past his prime.

  Abel panted and breathed until he caught his breath. His guys stood around, waiting. After Abel’s breath returned and his panting slowed, Flack stepped out from inside the barn. Brooks stayed where he was, but Jargo appeared from the loft and stuck his head out to look at the dead body.

  A silent moment passed between them all until Tanis asked the first question that he and Cucci were both wondering. Not that they didn’t suspect the answer. They just wanted confirmation from Abel.

  “What’d he do wrong?”

  Abel stood up tall. He twisted and turned to check his pants and his winter coat for blood droplets from Dobson’s neck. He found nothing.

  Abel looked up at Brooks and then over to Tanis and Cucci.

  He raised his arms in the air and addressed them like he was standing on a platform in the ancient Roman Colosseum, addressing a bloodthirsty crowd of spectators.

  He spoke loud and articulated every word and every syllable.

  “I only ask for the best. If you boys can’t deliver, then you will suffer. Dobson lied to us. He failed. He knew something was wrong with the van. And he lied about it. Now, he’s paid the price. Now, we’re even.”

  Tanis nodded along, and the others listened.

  Abel asked, “What do we call a man like that?”

  Tanis said nothing. Cucci stepped back to the house and leaned on the railing for the steps. Abel’s eyes looked from face to face. He turned and looked straight at Flack, who said nothing. Abel looked up at Jargo and then over to Brooks.

  Brooks rested the sniper rifle down out of sight and spoke.

  “Dobson was a saboteur.”

  Abel pointed up to him. He became very animated as his blood returned to a normal circulation in his veins.

  “That’s it. That’s right. That’s what we call them. Dobson was a saboteur, a traitor to our cause. He was a problem. Now, he is not.”

  He looked back down at Flack and then over to Cucci and Tanis.

  “What’s the punishment for treason?”