The Standoff Read online

  He heard a distant buzzing sound break through the rustling wind. It was far off and faint. It was somewhere in that realm of maybe it was there, or maybe his mind was playing tricks on him.

  At first, he wasn't sure.

  Dorsch ceased his forward shuffling and stopped and stared up at the sky, his eyes darting left, darting right, desperately searching. Frantic.

  He needed to find what he was looking for. He needed to see it. He needed it to be the ATF’s spy drone. He needed to know that they had sent it to find him—to save him. He needed to know that Adonis hadn't forsaken him, that his service to his country had meant something.

  He needed these things to happen, to see it above them, but there was nothing. He saw nothing in the sky, no drone, no backup—nothing.

  Abel stopped behind Dorsch and looked to the sky with him. He looked left, looked right, and mockingly followed Dorsch's gaze.

  The six armed men who patrolled behind them also stopped, just like a group of highly trained bodyguards for a Middle Eastern dictator.

  Each of the armed guards slowly scattered around Abel and Dorsch, forming a wide circle.

  Abel asked, "What're you looking for?"

  Dorsch stayed quiet.

  "Are you looking for one of those drones?"

  Dorsch stayed quiet.

  "You think it's out there?"

  Dorsch stared up at the sky.

  "You think it can see you?"

  Abel stepped forward, and with his free hand, he snatched Dorsch by the collar and spun him around so that they were face-to-face. So that he could see into the agent's eyes.

  Abel pulled in close and whispered to him.

  "There's no drone. No one's coming for you. No one."

  Abel breathed in and breathed out, slowly and jeeringly.

  Dorsch could smell his breath.

  "They wouldn't see us anyway. They'd have to send the drone down to see. Too much cloud cover, you see? Too much winter grey."

  Dorsch breathed again.

  Abel said, "Well, not unless they had infrared lenses strapped on it. Like we had in the Army, which they don't. Not for you. They're not going to waste that on you. I'm surprised they even bothered using a drone for you in the first place. Does the ATF even have infrared lenses on their drones?"

  Dorsch stayed quiet.

  "We did."

  Abel breathed once more. Then he shoved Dorsch hard in the chest, forcing him to stumble backward, almost falling over, but he didn't.

  Dorsch stayed standing and stayed quiet and stayed defeated.

  Abel saw in Dorsch's eyes a single shred of hope, of resistance, possibly.

  They hadn't broken him completely, not as Abel had thought, but enough was enough. He had things to do, things to prepare. He had an operation to oversee. He couldn't be out here all day, tormenting this guy, despite how much fun he was having.

  They were surrounded by acres and acres of rolling, snow-covered hills and dark trees. The sounds of stillness echoed across the sky, killing off any notion left in Dorsch's mind that he had heard a drone buzzing overhead.

  In fact, the buzzing hadn't been there at all. It was his mind playing tricks on him, giving him a delusion of hope, like a mirage in the desert.

  Abel breathed again, coldly, calmly like before. He could see his own breath. He could see Dorsch's breath. He could see the thick air around them.

  Without a command from Abel, Dorsch assumed they were moving on; he turned and stumbled forward, again, weak, barely able to walk straight, partially from external bruises, partially from internal bruises and partially from sleep deprivation.

  Blood was near-frozen on his face from being pummeled all night by six sets of hardened fists, fists that had pummeled a lot of people over the course of their existence. They were the kinds of fists that knew how to hold back and how not to. For him, they hadn't held back.

  Dorsch had one black eye, and his nose was broken. Plus, he was pretty sure that he had at least two cracked ribs. Possibly, he had internal injuries other than cracked bones, but he wasn't sure of that. Most of the pain was merged into one overshadowing, continuously throbbing pain by this point.

  The six armed men who surrounded he and Abel had the sets of fists that had pounded him into hopelessness the night before. He stopped stumbling and stood up as straight as he could and looked at them.

  It was the first time that he noticed that they were no longer following behind him. Now, they were staying back, but flanking him and Abel in a wide circle. Then they all stopped and stood guard.

  Dorsch took note of their weapons, again.

  The six men were armed with serious weapons: assault rifles, a couple of shotguns, and one sniper rifle slung behind a guy's back by a shoulder strap, as if it was the most important thing to him in the entire world.

  They were all big guys, probably spent enough time in the gym between them to compete in all the Olympic Strong Man competitions and come away with the gold.

  Two of them were above average height while three circled around six feet, and one was short and stocky.

  The tallest one was a black guy armed with an M4 assault rifle. He stood a hair over six-foot-four.

  The sniper was the next one down in height. He was over six feet tall. If he hadn't been that tall, the stock of the sniper rifle on his back would've been dragging behind him in the snow. It was a massive rifle.

  Dorsch recognized it as a fifty-caliber, a very deadly rifle that fired a bullet that could punch a fist-sized hole through an engine block.

  They were all former soldiers who used to swear their allegiance to their country, but now they swore it to Abel.

  Dorsch looked at Abel. He saw the rock. He looked past it and saw a Glock was burrowed down in a holster on Abel's left hip, under the white winter coat. The holster stuck out like a sore thumb because it was the only thing he wore that wasn't all white.

  Abel didn't brandish his weapon, not the Glock; instead, he squeezed his hand around the heavy stone, plucked from a rock quarry in the trees at the back end of the compound where a river zigzagged through the corner of the property.

  He held the rock, gripping it tightly, keeping it down at his side, but visible. Every time Dorsch looked at Abel, he saw the rock, as if an unseen spotlight was trained on it.

  Abel stood still. He watched Dorsch for a moment, studying him.

  Abel had a look in his eyes unlike any that Dorsch had ever seen before. In the academy, in his last five years working for the ATF, he took a lot of courses and read a lot of books and attended a lot of seminars about criminal psychosis and criminal behavior. A theme that always struck him in those courses was that criminals are often good people gone bad, as if there was some kind of redeeming quality about them, always lingering under the surface, as if they could be saved.

  He saw none of that in Abel's eyes. There was no good left in him. No hope of redemption. There was pure evil.

  Even though Dorsch had stopped moving; Abel barked an order at him.

  "Stop right there."

  Dorsch froze and stared at Abel. He looked down at the heavy rock again.

  Abel said, "Face away."

  Dorsch paused at first. Then he turned back to face away from Abel. He locked eyes with the tall black guy, who stared back and smiled, just a slow, demented grin, but its presence there was big and obvious.

  "On your knees."

  Dorsch didn't argue. He had no arguing left. He dropped to his knees. They slammed and sank down deep in the snow like two heavy cement blocks.

  Abel saw Dorsch’s breath again, only this time it was heavy and frantic.

  Abel stayed back for a moment, watching, enjoying, almost salivating. Then he spoke, asking a question that seemed way off in left field.

  "Do you know your Bible?"

  Dorsch stayed quiet at first, and then he nodded.

  "That's not a very reassuring answer, but okay. It's not a sin to not know it. It's not one of the Ten Commandments to memo
rize the Bible."

  Dorsch didn't answer.

  "Do you know the story of Cain and Abel?"

  "Of course."

  His speech was a little battered, a little irregular, which happens when a trained, retired Special Forces operator slams the butt of an M4 into your jaw a couple of times, followed by his crew using their fists to pummel your face and torso.

  Dorsch felt shame that he hadn't lasted longer through their beating him, but he was no soldier. He hadn't been trained by the military or ever seen any combat, not like these guys. What was he supposed to do? He was terrified for his life.

  Abel saw the guy thinking. He didn't wait for him to finish his thought. Abel spoke anyway.

  "Cain said unto Abel, 'Abel, let's go out into the fields.'"

  Abel paused at the end and looked down at Dorsch.

  "And Abel followed."

  Dorsch stayed quiet. Fear overtook his face.

  "We're out in the fields now. You can't tell because it's winter. Because of the polar vortex we've got all this white snow. But we are. During the warm seasons, these fields grow things for us. We live off what God provides. You see?"

  Abel looked around, waved his stoneless hand out in front of him and brushed it over the vastness of hills and trees and snow and silence as if he were giving a sermon to a crowd of followers who weren't there.

  "You hear that?"

  Dorsch looked over the same vastness and listened.

  "No. I hear nothing."

  "Exactly. Nothing. No flapping helicopter blades. No pitter-patter of SWAT boots on the ground. No ATF reinforcements. No FBI. No police. Not even a single drone. Where're your people now?"

  Dorsch didn't answer.

  "You've been forsaken, my son."

  Dorsch stayed quiet.

  "I'll tell you where they are. They're regrouping. They're huddled up someplace, planning, talking, scheming. You see, that's what people who work for your government do. They sit in their offices and make their career off your backs. They scheme. They're all about schemes and plans and asking permission. They don't live. They're not free. Not like us. Here."

  Dorsch thought about his wife. He thought about the woman he loved. It wasn't her. He thought about his lover. He thought about how he wanted to leave his wife for her. Then he thought about guilt.

  He looked over the horizon, past the trees and overcast sky. A dark object darted out in front of the clouds igniting his hope once again, like gasoline on a single flame. He thought, for one second, that it might be the drone after all, but it wasn't. It was a bird, just a blackbird, probably separated from its flock.

  Abel saw Dorsch looking, once again. He glanced back fast and saw the same blackbird. He knew the thoughts that Dorsch was having. It was written across his face. There was another sudden burst of hope, which, like before, took a sudden nosedive into despair.

  "Ah, a lost bird. A bird lost from its flock. Like you."

  A fresh, single tear formed Dorsch’s face. He said nothing.

  Abel asked, "You know what that is?"

  "A crow?"

  "Know what they call a group of crows, don’t ya?"

  Dorsch didn't answer, but he knew. Everyone knew.

  "They don't call it a flock. They call it a murder of crows. But that's a lone bird. He's not in a group."

  Abel paused a beat and said, "That's a bird looking for a murder."

  Suddenly, Dorsch burst into a pleading tantrum—uncontrollable and compulsory, which put a smile on Abel's face. They had broken him.

  "Don't kill me! Please! They'll trade for me!"

  "What'll they trade?"

  "Your freedom! All of you! They'll negotiate! You can go free! Your people can go free!"

  Silence.

  Dorsch took a long breath. He spoke again in that battered voice.

  "They'll come for me. They'll come to take you-all out if you kill me. People will die. Is that what you want? Your people are at risk. Don't you want them to live? They follow you. They trust in you. You can save them."

  Abel held the heavy stone out in front of Dorsch. He raised it to his waist. Then he bent down and showed it to him. He clutched it in his boney hands like a pro ball pitcher clutches a baseball.

  Dorsch said, "They'll come for me! Soon! They'll come with a hundred agents! They'll come with more firepower than you’ve got! Everyone will die!"

  In a cold whisper, Abel said, "I'm counting on it."

  With a sudden explosion of violence and force and power and rage and berserker, Abel leaped up on the balls of his feet, raised the heavy stone, one-handed, and thumped it down on top of Dorsch's head in the dead center of the agent's fair-haired swirls.

  The stone cracked his skull.

  Abel heard it. The men circling him heard it. Animals not hibernating in the trees around them heard it.

  The murderless crow heard it.

  The guy's skull CRACKED like cheap pottery versus a sledgehammer.

  Blood splattered out and sprayed all over the white snow and covered the front of Abel's pristine, all-white garb that his wife had worked so hard to clean. And he thought nothing of it. He had other outfits in his wardrobe.

  One fatal blow was all it took.

  Dorsch slumped forward. Abel stepped back and watched the guy's body fall and hit the snow.

  The guy's eyes stayed open—lifeless. His fingers twitched behind him.

  Blood continued to percolate out of the huge crack in Dorsch’s head and skull.

  Abel stopped moving away. He crouched on his haunches to avoid getting more blood on his clothes or on his boots and stared closely at the Dorsch, watching him die.

  Abel didn't hit him a second time, although the temptation was there. He just stared on at the gouge in the top of the man's head. He watched the cherry red blood surge out like a slow-erupting volcano.

  After a long minute, Abel stood up and dropped the rock. One side of it was soaked in blood; the other was clean. The rock thudded on the snowy ground.

  He turned to his men and shot each of them a glance and a smile, one by one.

  "They'll be coming."

  "When?" one of them asked.

  "By morning. We can count on it. He missed at least one radio check. Get to the tunnel. Make sure it's not compromised and double-check the van. The engine. The weapons. The bombs. All of it. No mistakes."

  One of his other guys nodded because that meant him.

  Another asked, "What about the body?"

  "Leave it. They'll probably see him with one of those drones they've been flying around us. A visual confirmation that their inside agent is dead will speed things up. Or not. Won't make no difference."

  Abel looked at his watch and noted the time.

  "They'll be setting up around us by morning. Don't you boys worry. The federal government is punctual if nothing else."

  All seven men walked away, back to the compound.

  They left the dead ATF agent sprawled out on the snow in his own blood.

  Chapter 2

  E IGHT HUNDRED FOURTEEN miles north and west, hours before Abel murdered an ATF agent in cold blood with a rock, Jack Widow turned the wheel of a stolen Lexus LS 500 to the left and merged onto a busy Chicago street early in the morning. He quickly merged again onto Interstate Sixty-Five South, where he headed southwest to the Atlantic Coast of the United States, to warmer climates, like the birds of winter. He hoped he could avoid the brunt of a historic polar vortex that the newspapers had been saying would carry with it the snowstorms of the century.

  Widow's life went like this: He came to a crossroads, he decided on the spot, and he followed through with that decision, for good or bad, better or worse.

  However, Widow wasn't stuck up. He wasn't set in his ways. He didn't have a problem with pride. He had no pride. He had no disgrace either. He just was. Simple. Decisions could be altered. Travel plans could be mended. Courses could be corrected. Minds can change, including his and it probably should have right there. But how
was he supposed to know what he would get himself into? Widow wasn't a fortune-teller. He was both lucky and unlucky. Some people always seemed to win at sports. Some people always seemed to win at opportunities. Some win with money. Others win with love. Widow seemed to win at getting himself both into and out of trouble.

  Seconds before he made that turn, on a whim, he decided that would head south to spend the rest of winter in warmer climates, maybe the southern part of South Carolina or maybe Georgia or maybe Florida. Maybe he would drive down to the Florida Keys.

  Widow liked the random, the spontaneous. Like a wild animal, he lived one second at a time. He lived in the no man's land of life plans.

  Widow was a violent nomad.

  Normally, it didn't matter where he was going all that much as long as he was moving and not standing still. Being still was for the dead.

  This year things were a bit different because far to the north, an unprecedented polar vortex swept over the earth, veering farther south than ever before, shattering world records.

  Polar vortices circle over the planet every year, but ninety-nine years out of a hundred, they stay pretty close to the arctic poles, leaving the rest of the world unaffected—not this year. This year, North America was going to experience record freezing temperatures all over the map. The polar vortex would see to that. This year, the northeast would reap the whirlwind.

  Widow was only at the beginning of it. He was on the outer edge. He suspected the worst was yet to come. He noticed a mention of it in a newspaper, somewhere, on some park bench or bus depot, more than a week earlier and tonight he heard about it on the radio.

  From what he heard, he figured that South Carolina would have snow, and maybe Georgia, but he thought it was a safe bet that Florida would not. Therefore, Florida was most likely where he would end up.

  It was the end of November. It shouldn't have felt like the Christmas holiday season, not yet, but what else was there on a calendar to look forward to before the New Year?

  Thanksgiving had passed. His birthday had passed.