The Standoff Page 28

  Abe asked, “Anything helpful?”

  “Yes. This dude isn’t good news. He’s some kind of war god.”

  “War god?”

  “It’s like a war hero, only without the hero part. From the impressions I can get off the info scattered across the internet, I’d say he’s got plenty of battle experience, and it seems he’s highly regarded by his guys.”

  “That makes him sound like a good guy.”

  “Not necessarily. I can tell there’s plenty here that’s redacted.”

  “Redacted?”

  “Omitted by the Army from public knowledge. Plus, there’s one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “He was sent to Polk straight from Baghdad.”

  “So? What’s that mean?”

  “Fort Polk is called Fort Puke.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s an awful assignment for a general who loves combat. And this guy loves combat. I can tell. This is like a punishment. The Army promoted him to general and gave him the worst assignment they could.”

  “I don’t know. Sounds good to me. Promotions are a good thing. Plus, he’s out of the fray. He wouldn’t have to worry about IEDs.”

  Widow stopped and looked over at Abe. He stared into his eyes. He swallowed a lump in his throat and asked a question, softly, compassionately.

  “Is that what happened to Abraham?”

  Abe looked down at his right hand. He stared at a piece of jewelry that Widow hadn’t noticed him wearing before. It was a ring that was far too large for Abe’s fingers. He wore it on his middle finger. He looped it around and around, slowly, staring at it like he was lost in memories.

  Widow looked at the ring. It was a class ring. It wasn’t a normal class ring. It was military.

  Widow asked, “That his West Point ring?”

  Abe nodded.

  “He graduated back in 2003. I was so proud of him when he got in to West Point. He was so excited to go to Iraq. He wanted to help so much. You know? He wasn’t in it for the pay or to hurt people. He wanted to save lives. He believed in what we were doing over there. He truly did.”

  Widow clicked the cell phone off and set it down on the table between the two men. He reached out his hand and placed it on Abe’s shoulder.

  A single tear, nothing dramatic, just a single drop streamed out of the old man’s eye.

  He said, “He was blown up by an IED. Outside of Al Anbar.”

  Widow stayed quiet.

  Abe reached up and wiped the tear away.

  “I lost one son. I can’t lose the other, Widow. I can’t. Abby can’t. We can’t take it. Not again.”

  Widow said, “You won’t. You have my word.”

  Abe looked at him.

  “He might already be dead. If he’s really been taken by this Abel guy.”

  “He’s not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They came over here for him. A living hostage works better than a dead one.”

  “Why didn’t they just come for all of us?”

  “I imagine it’s not you-all that Abel’s interested in. They probably needed Walter’s truck. They might be stuck because of roadblocks or the FBI dragnet.”

  “Or they really did break down. Maybe they told the truth about that part.”

  “Maybe. They might’ve sent one guy here to see how many of us there are. I don’t know exactly. We’re just spitballing here. But all are equally plausible reasons.”

  “What now? We just pray that Adonis brings him back alive?”

  “We could do that. She probably will. They’re the ATF. They’ve got a helicopter. Plus, the federal government is behind them.”

  Abe said, “That doesn’t sound very promising.”

  “The federal government isn’t completely useless.”

  Abe paused and looked at Widow’s face.

  “I’m the proud father of a veteran son. Don’t bullshit me. I can see past the façade on your face. You’re worried.”

  “Okay. I’m a little worried.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of Adonis.”

  “Why? She seemed competent. She seemed eager to catch this whack job.”

  “I agree. She’s a special agent in charge or whatever the ATF calls them. She definitely looks like a leader to me. She’s tough. And pissed off.”

  “But?”

  “Look back at her face. What do you remember seeing?”

  Abe hesitated a moment.

  “She’s a woman?”

  “No.”

  “She was tiny?”

  “No. Forget about her physicality. It’s a mistake to underestimate her as a cop because she’s a small woman. They’re tougher than most men. Trust me on this. I speak from experience. They’ve got to deal with all the shit we give them. Plus, they get shot at like everybody else. No, it’s something else.”

  Abe thought back for a moment.

  He said, “She had bandages on her head. Like a wound. She was injured.”

  “She was injured hours ago.”

  “She was there. At the explosion.”

  “She was not only there. She was probably in charge of the whole operation. I think it’s personal for her. They’re searching for the men responsible for blowing up all the agents that she’s known and worked with and probably commanded. This is her Op. And it went very, very bad.”

  “What’re you saying, Widow? You don’t think she can be trusted to follow through with her job? She’s compromised?”

  “I’m saying that if this were the Navy, she’d been taken off post the moment everything went sideways. Not fired or stripped of her command, but she would’ve have been benched. She’s not thinking clearly like an agent is supposed to. I wouldn’t be. Would you?”

  Abe said nothing.

  Widow said, “She probably saw people she knew die today. What? six or seven hours ago? She shouldn’t be out here. She shouldn’t even still have a sidearm.”

  Abe nodded.

  “So, what now? What can we do? Should we call somebody?”

  “She said the local sheriff couldn’t be reached. I guess we can call his office and tell them. We could call the FBI. That’s probably who should be here anyway.”

  Abe said, “Okay. I’ll call the sheriff’s office.”

  Widow nodded.

  Abe left Maggie’s phone on the table and fished his own out of his pocket. It was a smartphone, only old like a first generation. He looked at Widow like he was going to ask the phone number and then decided just to dial nine one one.

  He put the phone to his ear. It rang and rang, and then he heard a busy tone.

  “It’s busy,” he said.

  “Is the sheriff the only law enforcement out here?”

  Abe nodded.

  Widow said, “Must be inundated with calls from people. Probably claiming all kinds of things. Terrorist attacks tend to flood local cops with bullshit calls. Try their landline.”

  Abe nodded and went onto his phone’s internet browser to locate the number. Once he had it, he dialed.

  He stared at Widow while it rang.

  After five, long minutes, he clicked off the phone.

  Widow asked, “Busy too?”

  “No. It just keeps ringing and ringing.”

  Widow nodded and thought for a moment.

  Abe asked, “What’s it mean?”

  Widow said, “Either they're all too busy right now, which is plausible. This is a small county, and their sheriff is missing. They probably are scrambling to keep up with calls from worried locals. The TV is probably playing loops of the whole situation being a terrorist attack. Which would stir everyone up, causing them to flood the sheriff’s office with calls.”

  Abe nodded.

  Widow said, “Or, Adonis told them not to respond. Or she shut them down.”

  “Can she do that?”

  Widow shrugged and said, “She can, I guess. Maybe she told them since their sheriff is missing that the ATF was comm
andeering their post. She might’ve told them to work the roads and leave the phones off.”

  “Which means we should worry. She’s gone rogue. Like you said, it’s personal for her.”

  “And the other guys with her. We can assume the ones in the helicopter are under her command and the patrolman she’s driving around with might have some stake in this as well.”

  Abe said, “So what do we do?”

  Widow tilted the coffee mug and stared into it. He had devoured all the coffee in it. It was bone dry.

  He asked one question, and it wasn’t about coffee.

  “Got any guns here?”

  Chapter 36

  A DONIS TOOK THE LEAD. It was her show. She held her Glock 22 out and ready to go, pointed outward, following her eyes—none of that muzzle pointed at the sky bullshit like in the movies. If someone stepped into her line of sight, chances were that she wanted to shoot him. As far as they knew, there were two potential hostages. If she was honest with herself, she wasn’t there for a rescue. It wasn’t her primary objective. It was secondary. Certainly, she wanted to rescue the sheriff and Walter too, but that’s not what weighed on her mind. She thought about nothing but leveling a bullet between Abel’s eyes.

  Swan and James spread out to the left and Ramirez and Shep to her right. Adonis walked front and center. They stepped slowly, keeping their limbs loose, staying on course. Adonis walked up through the brush and over the snow. Shep was the closest man to her. The distance between them and the barn was about the same as from where they were to the farmhouse porch.

  Shep kept his finger out of the trigger housing to the Mossberg shotgun. He noticed that Adonis did not. He said nothing about it.

  Shep whispered, “It’s quiet.”

  They heard natural South Carolina sounds and nothing else. The wind gusted and whistled. Tree branches rustled and swooshed. Light snow fell, mushing on top of the roofs. A dog barked distantly.

  They heard nothing else. The farm looked like a ghost town. Shep thought of one of the many bombed-out, abandoned villages he had seen in Iraq, back when he was a know-it-all jarhead. Now, he was older and a little wiser. His wisdom was telling him this didn’t feel right.

  Adonis kept walking; so did the others.

  Shep said, “It’s too quiet.”

  Adonis said, “Just keep your eyes peeled.”

  Suddenly a memory flashed through Shep’s mind.

  “Keep your head on a swivel ,” a commanding officer from his past had said. He couldn’t remember which, but one of them. Ninety-nine percent of time, patrolling the deserts of the Middle East was like any other desert—boring and filled with long stretches of nothingness combined with distant echoes of wind and more nothingness. Only one time it had not been nothingness. One time his patrol unit stepped into an abandoned town that appeared to have nothing more than empty-looking rock buildings and abandoned huts and a single sand-covered road, but it turned out the village wasn’t abandoned. His unit was vastly aware of insurgents setting up ambushes for patrols. So, they hadn’t walked into a trap blindly. They surveyed the area first with field glasses and sniper scopes. They actually had set up camp the night before outside the village. They took shifts staying awake, keeping eyes on the abandoned structures through the night. The next morning was when they decided to walk through it.

  It turned out it wasn’t a trap, but it also wasn’t abandoned.

  They found twenty-one dead bodies left inside the huts and the rock buildings and the shanty structures. The villagers hadn’t abandoned the town. Neither had the insurgents left an ambush for the Marine patrol. It turned out that the beginning fighters for ISIS had butchered the villagers and left them behind. It wasn’t a message. It wasn’t a sign. It didn’t have some morbid meaning. It was just sheer brutality, a bit of reality of an unstable Iraq. Some infighting was already there.

  Even though that did not turn out to be an ambush, the memory still clung to Shep’s memories like a stowaway he couldn’t shake.

  Adonis said, “Don’t worry. We know they know we’re here.”

  “Then it’s probably an ambush.”

  “You’re free to go back to the car and call it in. Wait for backup if you want. We’re going in.”

  He looked in her eyes. There was something different there. Before she’d had the look of a pissed off ATF agent, but now, she had the look of a woman with a little more revenge in her heart than sense of duty.

  Shep said, “I want them dead too, but I don’t want to walk into a trap blindly.”

  “We’re already in a trap.”

  “We should get back to the car. Let me call for backup. Seriously.”

  Adonis said nothing. James and Swan stopped walking. Ramirez stopped just after that. They stayed in their positions, scanning the buildings for movement.

  “Toni,” Shep said.

  She twisted at the waist and looked up at him.

  He said, “I want them dead too. They killed one of my guys. But I don’t want to die. They got the best of you already once today. Let’s not make the same mistake twice.”

  “We’re already here.”

  Just then, James leaned over and whispered something to Swan. Adonis saw it and put a hand up to Shep to wait.

  James turned and looked at them. He stepped back and walked over to them.

  “Adonis.”

  “What is it?”

  “Over my shoulder. Top of the barn. Don’t stare.”

  Both she and Shep glanced up at the barn quickly, acting as blasé and uncoordinated as they could. Both of them saw what James was pointing out.

  Adonis asked, “Is that what it looks like?”

  James said, “It’s a sniper. A rifle is looking out toward us.”

  “Is he aiming at us?”

  “Can’t tell.”

  Shep asked, “Why aren’t they shooting?”

  Adonis said, “Are they waiting for us to get in closer?”

  Shep turned and looked back toward the road. He couldn’t see it through the trees, but he knew the distance. He looked at the treetops.

  “No way. They could’ve shot at us back on the road. He’s got a clear enough view through the trees.”

  “So why aren’t they shooting?”

  Shep said, “Maybe it’s a diversion?”

  “What do we do?”

  Adonis said, “It’s gotta be a trick. We’d be dead already.”

  Shep said, “I agree.”

  Adonis said, “Just in case, James, you and Swan take the barn. Ramirez, come with us. We’ll get the house. Yell out when it’s cleared. Tell the others we bum-rush on my mark.”

  James nodded and walked back to Swan. He passed Ramirez on the way and relayed the orders. Ramirez glanced at Shep and Adonis and nodded. He crossed over to them.

  They all walked a step forward. Then Adonis yelled out like the commander of a unit from the Union Army, charging a hill in the Civil War.

  “Now!” she shouted.

  All five of them took off running. James and Swan made it to the barn and hugged both sides of the barn doors. Shep was the first to the farmhouse. He leaped over the broken porch railing and slammed his back to the wall next to the front door.

  Adonis followed Ramirez, who came up the steps and went down in a crouch. He covered the front door with his weapon, keeping his eye over the sights.

  Adonis climbed the porch steps and stopped in front of a door. She paused a beat and listened. She heard no sound coming from the house other than the same gusts of wind tunneling through the old wood and brick.

  She stayed where she was and reached out a cold hand and checked the doorknob. It was locked. She gazed around the doorframe. It was old and cracked and loose in a bunch of places. Luckily, she could see that the deadbolt wasn’t engaged through a long half-inch slit in the jamb. It was just the lock on the knob.

  She brought her hand back to her gun and waited.

  Shep and Ramirez held their positions. Then she heard what she w
as waiting for. Diagonally behind her, and across the driveway, she heard James and Swan rip the barn doors open hard. The two men stormed into the structure.

  Adonis stood strong on her left foot and stepped back fast with the right. She came back up with momentum that surprised Shep. She slammed her right boot into the door just under the knob and the lock. The door crashed open, and the wood splintered around the knob and the lock. The door swung back until it stopped on the opposite side of the wall.

  Adonis breached first and Shep followed. Ramirez took up the rear. They stormed into the house like a SWAT unit that had trained together for years.

  Shep took the right, through an open doorway that led into a downstairs family room, followed by a dining room and a kitchen. The family room was mostly empty, with some old furniture remaining. Settled dust was everywhere. He saw no personal items left behind. There were no photographs or paintings on the wall or books on a shelf.

  He saw empty flowerpots near a window. Cobwebs stretched from wall to floor in some places. Dust kicked up as he walked. A fireplace mantle was covered in both webs and dust.

  He skirted to the right and scanned an open doorway to a kitchen beyond. He stepped through the doorway. Floorboards creaked underneath him. The kitchen was the last of this side of the house. Like the other parts, it was empty and derelict, except for a remaining farm sink. But everything else was pulled out and gone already. All the normal appliances were gone. Even the faucets were missing.

  Ramirez followed behind Adonis for a beat until they came to a closed door to the left of the hall. She waved him to check it out.

  He opened it slowly and peered in. It was a second hallway. He followed it, finding nothing but an empty study, bathroom, and a guest bedroom that still had a mattress on the floor. It looked recently slept on.

  Adonis followed the hallway to the end, stepping on creaking floorboards and over a rug that was left behind. She found a single door next to a staircase leading up. She looked up the stairs and listened. She heard nothing. She decided to go for the door first. She opened it and shoved the Glock forward, ready to shoot. She found she was staring into utter darkness.

  She strode to the right and used her left hand to feel along the wall for a light switch. She found it with the tips of her fingers. She flicked it and nothing happened. Then she realized how stupid that was. There was no power for the lights.