Authors: Bob Ferguson
1997
I
LAY IN THE
tub, too sore to move. The only light is from the heat lamp keeping the small bathroom warm. I realize my water in the tub is cold, probably bringing my mind back to the present. Painfully, I reach down and pull the plug, draining the cold water from the tub.
Christ, I’ve got a hard-on! My body’s black and blue. I’m mentally and physically exhausted and I’ve got a hard-on. Damn I miss my July. Just thinking about her makes me hard.
I turn on the hot water warming up the tub. There’s no way I can move. I just lie there wondering what’s happened to the guys chasing me. Well, there’s nothing I can do if they do find me. I can’t fight back anyway. I just want to rest. I wonder what time it is.
For the first time, I hear the howl from the wind and through the small bathroom window, I see snow swirling around. A storm, well, I’m as snug as a bug in a rug. I wonder about the guys chasing me, hoping the storm was throwing a fuck into their plans.
Ten miles from town, sitting in Mrs. Green’s old farm house, a man named Henekie reflected over what had gone wrong. Up until last night, it had all gone so well. Now Ginter, his mentor, his boss, and his best friend was dead, leaving him to figure how to get out of this mess. This wasn’t the first mistake made on this trip, and Henekie had already put in question the men Ginter had selected. They’d had two jobs to do.
One was to blow up a house in Bowling Green, Kentucky, getting rid of a suspected CIA informant. While they were rigging the natural gas furnace in the basement to make it look like an accident, his helper had whispered, “Henekie?” The house was probably bugged; this was not good.
The second job was this one in Canada. Ginter was a meticulous planner. He was also a born hunter and right from the start seemed to treat this job more as fun than work. As they traveled north, Ginter explained what was to be done. Their client wanted five potential problems eliminated in a remote part of Canada.
They had all been mercenaries at one time. That’s how they all got to know one another. Ginter was the contact man; if they got a job, he would phone who he needed. Henekie and Ginter had done lots of these contracts, but this one was a big one. They recruited three comrades living in the United States. They weren’t the best of men but made for less false IDs and less traveling time than if they’d brought in their usual team. Both Henekie and Ginter traveled under German passports, but both could speak fluent English and had no problem getting the documents they needed to become American citizens, just part of the job.
They crossed the Canadian border passing themselves off as hunters, thus bringing their own firepower with no questions asked. They planned to go out the same way. They rented a van at the airport and drove four hours north to the hotel the outfitter had rented for them. It was on the edge of town, so every morning the outfitter came to the hotel to pick them up, and every day there were never more than three hunters that went with him. The explanation was that the other men had contacted a severe illness.
The outfitter didn’t complain; it was less hunters for him to look after, and the money was the same. Ginter and Henekie spent the first week acquainting themselves with the area and spying on their targets. Bill Shonavon and his wife lived just on the outside of town. They learned that he did welding in the winter to supplement his income. They deliberately broke the trailer hitch on their van, taking it to Bill to fix. They found out that he lived there with his wife, no kids left at home. They discovered that he did not have a dog and just about anything else they wanted to know.
He charged them an exorbitant price to repair the hitch, but they didn’t complain; the information was well worth every penny. They found out that Dale and Pearl Drinkwater lived twenty miles to the east. He did custom work, mainly crop spraying. Learning he had bought his equipment in the States, they went to visit Dale, Ginter pretending to represent the company. The rest were clients wanting to see Dale’s equipment. Dale was so happy they picked him; he never even thought to check with the company. He treated them royally, bringing them in for supper. Dale loved to talk, so they let him, making it all the easier to carry off the charade and learn what they wanted to know.
But this Green guy proved more difficult. The information on each client they had originally been supplied with gave no indication he was any less naive than the others. This dossier also told them that his wife was in the Bahamas with their son. The daughter was away at college. They learned he was staying alone in his mother’s farm house. Ginter and Henekie went looking for the place and found it to be remote and situated on the edge of a deep valley. Green wasn’t home so they stopped at a neighbor’s house about a mile down the road. He was a rough-looking sort who told them he didn’t see much of this young Green.
“Moved in here a few years ago and blew all his mother’s money then moved on. Just like a lot of them young fellas, he come in here setting the world on fire and then pulled out with his tail between his legs. Now he’s back sucking on his mother’s tit. Heard he lost his wife.” The old man’s eyes lit up, “Damn fine-looking woman.”
“When’s the best time to catch him home?” Ginter asked.
“He don’t go out much at night. Some people say he just sits there and drinks himself to sleep.” Ginter thanked the old man, and they drove away.
Ginter didn’t seem to pay much attention to Green after that; he even went hunting a few days. “I think we should do it tonight,” Ginter told the men his plan, “we’ll end up at Greens’ and burn the house with all the bodies in it. That gives us all day tomorrow to say goodbye to our outfitter friend, check out of the hotel, and head for the city just as we normally would.”
“There’s a storm coming in here,” Henekie warned them. “That doesn’t give us much time if Green’s not home.”
“You worry too much, Henekie,” Ginter waved his hand. “It’s too goddamn cold to go anywhere. He’ll be home.”
The Drinkwaters were first; they came to the door smiling, letting them in. It had been quick and merciful; they were not cruel, they just had a job to do. There was no blood, no mess, the bodies were placed in body bags they had brought with them and thrown in the back of the van. It was about midnight when they got to Bill and Hania Shonavon’s place. They shut out the van’s lights and idled around to the back of his yard. The only light on in the house was from one of the bedroom windows. Henekie got the spare key out of Bill’s shop, and they let themselves into the house.
It was quite a surprise when they got to the bedroom. Bill was on top of Hania, their passion left no room for what was going on around them. Bill didn’t know what hit him. Hania saw them and let out a short scream, but then she was kind of doing that anyway.
“Get them in the body bags and let’s get to hell out of here,” Ginter told them.
“Nice tits,” one of the men named Alf said running his hands over Hania’s dead body.
Henekie had watched Alf around dead people before and knew it didn’t have to be a woman to get him excited. “Don’t you touch her, Alf, or I’ll personally cut out your balls.”
Alf laughed, “Trouble with you, Henekie, is you don’t know how to have fun.”
Henekie just shook his head and left the room. Alf helped the other guys put the bodies in the bags. He was zipping up the woman when he saw the gold necklace. He looked around to make sure no one was watching, took it off her, and then put it in his vest pocket.
It was colder than hell; none of them were used to this, and they all wanted it done so they could get out of this damn country. They hadn’t been worried about a thing, all five of them just walked up to Green’s house.
“He’s probably upstairs,” Ginter said. “Either that or he’s on the couch.” Ginter pointed to the two men on his left. “You go around front when you’re ready to go in, just tell me on the radio. We’ll go through the windows, hit the lights, check the downstairs, and then we’ll go up.” It was about thirty seconds later that they heard the bark. They all froze. Ginter quickly whispering into the radio, “What was that?”
“Albert got him,” was the reply. “We saw the doghouse and went to check it out, but the dog wasn’t in it. He was on the doorstep. We didn’t see him in time.”
“Okay,” Ginter replied. “If a light comes on, we’ll know where he is.” They had never seen the moon so bright; it was like working under stadium lights. Nothing appeared to move, and no lights came on in the house. “Let’s go,” Ginter gave the order, and they went in. It took only seconds to gain the upstairs landing. There were four rooms heading off the landing. Two had their doors closed. Ginter turned on the landing light; there was no noise coming from any of the rooms. He moved to one of the closed doors, opened it, and went in. Henekie went to the other, opened it, and went in. It was empty.
“Anything?” he heard Ginter say.
“No,” he shouted back. They quickly checked the other two rooms then began to turn on lights thinking Green was hiding somewhere. They could hear the others searching the downstairs as they searched upstairs.
Ginter turned on the light in the room Bob had been in and saw the open window. He quickly saw the tracks on the edge on the kitchen roof.
“He’s outside,” he yelled.
“Probably on the kitchen roof! He climbed out onto the roof.”
Henekie followed him. They followed the tracks across the roof and in the moonlight could easily see where Green had jumped off. Albert came scrambling around the corner below. Everybody was pretty tense, and they almost shot him.
“He’s gone over the hill.” Ginter called to Albert as the other two joined him.
“He won’t last long in this cold. He’ll run until he sweats up, and then he’ll freeze.” Ginter ordered Albert to go get their parkas from the van.
“No use us freezing too,” he said. By the time Albert came back with the coats, he had decided what to do.
“Henekie and Albert are coming with me,” Ginter said. “Alf, you take Metro and sit in the van. If he tries to cross the road, you’ll be able to see him from there.”
There was no trouble following Green’s trail in the moonlight. They were almost across a large open flat when they heard a familiar noise. When a bullet hits something solid, it had a distinct sound, and the noise from the rifle was right behind it. They turned to look at the sound of the plop and saw Albert go flying into the snow, and then they heard his screams. They had no idea where the shot had come from; they had been concentrating on following the tracks. Ginter began backing up firing in all directions, so did Henekie. They were caught in the open having no idea that Green had a rifle. They left Albert to fend for himself and began running back to the trees.
Alf and Metro were sitting in the van with the motor running, trying to warm up. They didn’t hear or see Green’s first shot that hit Albert. Alf did see the muzzle fire from Ginter and Henekie.
“They got him!” he shouted. “Turn the lights on so they can see where we are. Pull down the hill a bit. It’s probably easier to drag the body here than all the way back up the hill.”
Metro pulled on the lights and started to move down the hill when Alf saw the wink of Green’s shot.
“What the fuck…” was all he got out before the windshield exploded.
Metro’s face was cut, he let go of the wheel. The van turned then went over the edge of the road, sliding headfirst down the steep embankment, burying its front wheels into the six-foot deep pile of snow at the bottom. With no windshield, the snow came in almost smothering the both of them. When they abruptly stopped at the bottom, something hit Alf hard in the back. He dug desperately to clear the snow away. He poked his head out, only to come face-to-face with one of their victims.
When they had landed, everything had come forward, including the body bags; one had broken open on impact. Alf screamed and dug faster. Metro was right behind him. They both left the van and began scrambling up the steep embankment. A bullet whined over their heads forcing them to slide back down and try to hide where they could around the van. Alf had seen where the rifle fire was coming from.
“He’s up on the hill,” he told Metro.
Ginter and Henekie also saw the wink of gunfire and now knew they had screwed up badly. Albert had managed to crawl quite a ways toward them. They hadn’t seen any gunfire for a while. They decided to go out and get him. It didn’t take long; they’d done it before on the battlefield, grabbing an arm and on the run pulling Albert into cover. It took them close to an hour to get him up the hill to the old farmhouse.
By then Alf and Metro had joined them. Metro’s face wasn’t as badly cut as he had first thought; the windshield had been shatterproof. However, it looked bad enough for Ginter to send him inside with Alf to clean it up. Ginter knew when he saw the wound there was little use bringing Albert up, but he hadn’t decided what to do with him yet, so they brought him up to the house.
The house was cold with no windows left in it, so they set to work covering them with newspapers or whatever they could find. Alf had gone outside to look around. They didn’t think Green would be crazy enough to come back, but then they hadn’t expected him to do what he had done either.
Albert was in bad shape; he would probably live if they got him medical attention immediately, but that was out of the question. The bullet had hit Albert square in the hip bone, making one hell of a mess. Ginter told Henekie and Metro to give him a hand. They carried the unconscious body outside; there, Ginter put his pistol to Albert’s head and put him out of his misery. They all knew it was for the best.
Alf came up to see what was going on. “There’s a tractor in the shop,” he reported. The shop is heated, so it would start. Ginter told Alf and Metro to take the tractor down to the van and pull it out.
“If it’s too badly damaged to run, pull it up to the shop,” he told them. “Make sure you get all the bodies and all our equipment.”
Ginter sat down to plan his next move. He didn’t think for one moment they wouldn’t get Green; in fact, it was the hunt that Ginter enjoyed. It had been a long time since he had been on a good hunt. He sent Henekie outside to look around, then stripped Albert’s body. He didn’t want any way for them to figure out who he was or where he came from.