Light of the World (73 page)

I wondered if my fatigue and adrenaline and revulsion had impaired both my senses and my ability to think. I was convinced that was not the case. I’m also convinced that all the events I was about to see and participate in happened just as I will describe them. I have never set much store in psychological stability or what we refer to as normalcy. I don’t believe the world is a rational place; nor do I believe that either science or the study of metaphysics can explain any of the great mysteries. I have always fled the presence of those who claim they know the truth about anything. I agree with George Bernard Shaw’s statement that we learn little or nothing from rational people, because rational people adapt themselves to the world and, consequently, are seldom visionary.

I went downstairs holding the M-1 at port arms and walked through the French doors into the yard. The lights were off at the marina, but the hulls of the sailboats in their slips were white and sleek in the chop, rocking softly against the rubber tires hung from the mooring posts. Had not at least one person inside a cabin on one of those boats been alarmed by the gunfire and used a landline to call in a 911? Perhaps they had. Or perhaps no one was in the boats. Or perhaps they couldn’t have cared less.

I saw Clete walking toward me, Gretchen’s jungle-clipped AR-15 slung over his right shoulder. “Where are Molly and Albert?” he asked.

“With the girls on the back steps. Molly was opening up some canned food,” I replied.

He nodded and looked around, his eyes sweeping the lakeshore and the shadows by the work sheds and the cherry trees puffing in the wind. “It’s cold,” he said. “None of them have wraps.”

“You want to pack it in?”

“Surrette is still out here. If we leave, he skates. Let Molly and Albert take Felicity and the girls to the hospital in Polson.”

“I don’t like them being on the highway by themselves,” I said.

“You’ve got a point.”

“Let’s search the sheds and the orchards and the cottage where the wrecker is parked,” I said.

He nodded again, then I saw his expression change as he gazed up the slope toward the two-lane. “Fuck,” he said.

Three sets of headlights were coming down the grade from the southern end of the lake. The first vehicle slowed and turned into the driveway that led down to the two-story stone house. The other two turned with it. None of the vehicles had emergency flashers. The drivers cut their headlights before they reached the stone house. In seconds, the three vehicles had disappeared among the work sheds and orchards.

“You were right,” Clete said. “It’s Caspian Younger. He’s about to inherit billions, and we’re the only thing standing in his way. How did we let these motherfuckers get behind us?”

Because I didn’t listen to my old friend the line sergeant,
I thought.

“What do you want to do, Streak?”

“Like you said.”

“What did I say?”

“Blow up their shit,” I replied.

C
LETE AND I
began walking toward the work sheds that were located on the far side of two cherry orchards that sloped from the two-lane down to the water’s edge. The bandolier of .30-06 clips clinked softly against my back. He was carrying the AR-15 with his right hand wrapped in the pistol grip, the butt against his hip. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this place, Streak.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know how to put it. It’s ancient country. It’s like it’s full of ghosts, like we stumbled into something a lot bigger than us.”

“Don’t think that way. A perp is a perp. Like you always said, bust them or dust them. We’re the good guys; they’re not.”

“Sounds good. Except you know better,” he said. “Surrette is the real deal, Dave.”

“What do you mean?”

“A guy you can’t put a label on. A guy who was allowed to go on killing people for over twenty years. How’d we get into this shit?
Why us? It’s like we didn’t have a choice, like we were supposed to meet up with this guy.”

I did not want to dwell on the implications. Clete was not one given to extravagant rhetoric. The fact that he had said what he said made my breath come short in my chest.

We continued through the orchard, fifteen feet apart. The first shed was a long weathered building shaped like a boxcar, with a peaked, shingled roof. Through the trees, I could see two SUVs and a Chrysler parked on a gravel roadway. Eight or nine men had gathered by the car. Both Clete and I sank to one knee and remained motionless inside the orchard, the branches waving above us, shadows shifting back and forth on our bodies.

The wind is the enemy of every infiltrator in a wooded area; when it blows, everything moves except the infiltrator. The other enemy is the reflection of light on your face. Clete and I lowered our heads and stared at the ground. We could hear one man addressing the others. There was no mistaking the imperious tone and its implicit sense of entitlement and authority. I’m sure that in Caspian Younger’s mind he was not only a leader of men with the bodies of gladiators whose lives had been characterized by hardship and the violent ethos of mercenaries; he was also their brother-in-arms and knew their needs and commanded their respect. I am sure that Caspian Younger believed he was a man among men.

As I looked at his Australian flop hat, and the cargo pants tucked into his fur-lined suede boots, and the long-sleeved flannel shirt and quilted vest, and his arms that were like pipe cleaners, I wondered if he had any idea at all of the ridiculous figure he cut. His subordinates probably laughed at him behind his back. His hands were on his hips as if he were a senior officer addressing his troops. We could hear every word he said.

“Listen up, you guys. You are now in my employ as licensed private investigators and security personnel,” he said. “We are stopping a crime in progress. We are rescuing two innocent teenage girls. I believe my wife is already dead. Before the sun rises, everyone on this property except the two girls may be dead also. That is not our intention, but that is probably what will happen.”

Up on the highway, a pair of headlights came over the rise and descended the grade, the high beams tunneling through the darkness between the orchards and the slope of the mountain. Caspian was disconcerted for only a moment. “No matter what else happens, there is one man who will not leave this property. That man is Asa Surrette,” he said. “The men who take him out will divide a twenty-thousand-dollar credit line in Las Vegas. I want him blown apart. Does everyone understand?”

The wind dropped and the night was still. A pickup truck on the highway was slowing as it came down the grade, as though the driver were looking for a turnoff. The pickup passed under a light pole that had been left on over a cherry stand. The truck was painted metallic orange; a camper shell was snugged into the bed.

“One other thing,” Caspian said. “There’s a fat guy out here named Purcel. He’s a disgraced cop from New Orleans who abused my wife. I want him alive. You can put some holes in him, but he doesn’t do the big exit before I have a chat with him. Are there any questions?”

“What if some IPs go down?” one man asked.

“Innocent persons?” Caspian said. “There are no innocent persons. That’s why people get baptized. You didn’t know that? You break eggs to make an omelet. One baby dies, another lives. A whole society is destroyed when one of us steps on an anthill. A hundred thousand die to control the benchmark price on a barrel of oil. That’s how the world operates. We didn’t make the rules. Any other questions?”

He was smiling. I wondered what Clete was thinking. I also wondered how an execrable creature like Caspian Younger, whose sneer and arrogance were like none I had ever seen, could be given the power to make decisions about the life and death of other people.

“All right, start your sweep,” he said. “If in doubt, take it out.”

“That truck up on the highway?” one man said.

“What about it?” Caspian asked.

“It just stopped and turned around.”

C
LETE PURCEL’S NIGHT
vision was not of an ordinary kind. He did not see the external world more clearly than anyone else during the
nocturnal hours, nor did he see it with any less clarity; he simply saw it in a different fashion. After his return from Southeast Asia, he realized that a fundamental change had taken place inside his neurological makeup. The change was not one he understood, at least not until he read an article in a town-and-country magazine about the way horses see the world. According to the article, horses have two visual screens in their heads and watch both simultaneously.

Unlike the horse, Clete did not have two screens in his head; he had two transmitters, and they contended for space on a single screen. Any number of triggers could send him back in time and click on a live feed from the years 1966 to 1968 and force him to watch scenes from a horror show that never had a good ending.

He had not moved or even raised his eyelids while Caspian addressed his men. Inside his head, he saw a valley swirling with elephant grass that was never green but always gray or yellow or brown, as though the land had been systemically poisoned and could not follow the dictates of the season. At the far end of the valley were hills that had the softly contoured shape of a woman’s breasts, and in order to reach them, he had to follow the banks of a muddy stream coated with mosquitoes and strung with the feces of water buffalo. The only sounds in the valley were the sucking noises of his boots in the mud and the thropping of helicopters in a sky the color of brass. Even though Clete was now crouched inside a fruit orchard on an alpine lake, he could smell the jungle rot in his feet and the body stink in his utilities and feel sweat running down his sides like lines of black ants.

“A couple of you guys check out that truck and tell the guy to mind his own business,” Clete heard Caspian say.

“I’ve seen that truck,” one man said. “You know who that is?”

“No, I don’t,” Caspian said. “That’s why I told you to check him out.”

“He’s a shitkicker,” the same man said. “You know, what’s-his-name.”

“Have I hired a bunch of morons?” Caspian said.

“We’re on it, Mr. Younger,” another man said.

“The guy has a squirrel cage for a brain,” the first man said. “I can’t remember his name.”

“Then be quiet and go find out who he is.”

Three rockets zipped from an island in the lake and popped overhead in a shower of blue and pink and white foam, lighting the orchard like a pistol flare.

“Behind you, Mr. Younger,” one of Caspian’s men said, pointing at the cherry trees.

That was when they all cut loose.

T
HEY HAD SEEN
Clete but not me. At least six or seven were firing in his direction, the bullets ripping through the trees, cutting branches and raining black cherries on the ground. I was still on one knee. I raised the M-1 to my shoulder and aimed through the peep sight and began shooting. I had never fired an M-1 at a human target. The first man I hit was running for the edge of the shed, trying to position himself so he could choose his shots as his compatriots took the brunt of our fire. I saw red flowers bloom on the back of his shirt while his body jacked forward and struck the shed wall.

Another man had set up behind the fender of the Chrysler and was firing a semi-auto that had a suppressor and an extended magazine, not aiming and probably not counting rounds. Each shot sounded like compressed air released from a bottle of carbonated water. Because the suppressor lowered the bullet’s velocity, the rounds that went past my ear made a whirring sound, like a boomerang whipping through the air. My first shot hit the headlight and blew glass into his face. The second whanged off the top of the fender and hit the shed wall. The third went home and knocked him loose from the car and onto the ground, where he remained with his feet pulled up in a fetal position.

The bolt locked open on an empty chamber, and I heard the tinny sound of the clip ejecting. I pushed another into the breech and released the bolt and began firing again, the stock recoiling solidly into my shoulder with each shot. I saw Clete Purcel coming toward me, bent low, holding his hip, as though he had walked into the sharp corner of a tabletop. His face was pale, his eyes bigger than they should have been. He sank down next to me. I gathered up the sling
of his rifle and slung it on my shoulder. “How bad are you hurt?” I said.

“I think it went on through. Maybe it clipped a bone,” he said. A bloodstain was spreading through his shirt. “More of them are headed our way.”

“No, there were only eight or nine besides Younger. I got at least two of them.”

“I saw them coming down the slope. I didn’t imagine it.”

I shook my head. “That’s not possible,” I replied. “There’s nobody else up that slope. Keep it simple, Cletus. Younger is an amateur, and so are the guys who work for him. He’s down to a few men.”

“I know what I saw.” He took his .38 from his holster. “Get going. I’ll slow them up.”

“That’s not going to happen, Clete. Get up.”

“I’m too dizzy. That son of a bitch really whacked me.”

I got to my feet and pulled him up with me, working his big arm over my shoulder. “You’re going with me, or we’re going out together. If we can make it to the driveway, we’ll spray the orchard and have Gretchen and Alf on their flanks. We’ll cut them to pieces.”

His eyes closed and opened again, as though he were unsure where he was. “Let’s rock,” he said.

We moved through the trees, the cherries hitting our faces, the tree branches like whips against our skin. Then I heard the report of a rifle from the yard of the stone house and heard a bullet zip through the trees and smack against the shed, followed by a second and a third shot, and I realized Gretchen was putting down covering fire for us with the bolt-action Mauser she carried in her pickup. “See?” I said. “We’re going to make it. Just put one foot after another. It’s easy. Like Rudyard Kipling said about going up Khyber Pass, you do it one bloody foot at a time.”

I could feel Clete’s knees starting to sag. “I need to rest,” he whispered. “Let me go, Dave. I’ll be all right. I’ve just got to sit down and rest for a while. I’ve never felt this tired.”