Renewal 9 - Delay Tactics (2 page)

The man kept yelling.

“Quiet, or I’ll kick you square in the nuts,” Kirk said loudly.

The man stopped.

“Better.” Kirk waved to a couple of his men who brought in a canvas army litter to carry the man back to his fate.

Terry hit the wall of post adrenalin and staggered out of the cornfield. He spotted Sally over to the side and walked straight to her. Sally was weeping softly and trying to hide it from the gathering crowd. Terry stood between Sally and the others, helping her to keep her secret.

He brushed her copper hair from her eyes and quietly said, “It sucks, doesn’t it?”

She looked up at him for a long time. He watched tears roll from her reddened eyes. “It does suck. Why do we have to do this?”

“I don’t know Sally, but I think we do.” Terry pulled her close and let her bury her face in his chest. Terry couldn’t tell which one of them was hurting more.

In a few minutes, she pulled herself together, sniffed and said, “Let’s go see what he has to say.”

Chapter 9 -2

It was 3:30 in the morning when Terry and Sally arrived a Teeny Town’s medical clinic. The man Sally had shot was on one bed in the glaring white room, and to Terry’s dismay, his friend Rob was on the other. Rob had been one of the team in Nashville, and Terry knew him better than most. Terry reckoned that he had been on gate guard when the attack occurred. Bill and Aggie Carter, essentially the community’s leading couple were also there. Bill was still on his crutches, but Terry quickly noticed that he only used them when he thought about it. The rest of the time Bill was hobbling around, gathering information from the assembled people. He waved at Terry and Sally, and they both took it to mean that he would debrief them soon enough.

Terry went to Rob’s bed and saw that Rob’s ear was bandaged. No other wounds were apparent. Terry greeted his friend. “Hey, Rob. You ok?”

“Oh, sure. Can you believe I got shot in the ear?” Rob grinned to show that he didn’t see it as a problem.

“Will they be able to save it, or are they going to amputate?” Terry asked with a smile.

Rob reached up and pulled the bloody bandage back. Terry leaned in to look. Rob had a perfect half circle clipped out of the edge of his right ear. “I think they can save it.”

“That’s going to be the finest scar in town,” Terry said.

“You think the ladies will like it?”

“No doubt, Rob. No doubt.” Terry looked over his shoulder briefly. Then he turned back to Rob. “What happened?”

“I guess they snuck in between patrols. I was on duty with the inner patrol on the southwest, which means they got past us. Anyway, they started shooting at the gate guards and we came running. They had our boys pinned down when we showed up behind the bad guys. Once we started shooting, it was pretty much over. The only problem is we were shooting from the ditch and we had to stick our heads up to get shot. That’s where I got my new ear hole.” Rob spun his finger around his ear. “Luckily, I was the one with the first aid kit. I slapped one of those old plastic bandages on it and called it good. By then, the fight was over. We had a live one for a minute, but he did something to spook one of the young guys at the gate and got himself shot. I heard the whole thing was a diversion.”

“Looks that way,” Terry said. “There was a group toting two big cans of diesel looking to burn something. Sally and I were heading for the fight at the gate when we heard them in the cornfield.”

“You took ‘em out?” Rob asked.

“I got a few of them, but Sally did the heavy lifting. She shot that one,” Terry jerked a thumb over his shoulder, “through ten rows of corn.”

“Is she doing ok?” Rob asked, and Terry knew he meant the emotional strain of killing, not her physical wellbeing.

Terry waggled his hand back and forth and said, “Ok, I guess. Man, she can shoot.”

“You don’t have to tell me. She spent the last ten years making the rest of us look bad, except for Jeffry. Nobody shoots better than that guy.” Rob squirmed around on the hospital bed, trying to make himself comfortable.

“Yeah. I guess she earned her reputation.” Terry replied. “Well, I’m sure we need to get in on the questions over here. Tell Sue to make sure you have a good scar.” Terry smiled and gave Rob a pat on the shoulder before he turned to the crowd around his foul-mouthed prisoner.

Bill gave Terry a nod as he stepped to the prisoner’s bed. Sue was cleaning the man’s ragged leg wound. She was doing a thorough job, but she wasn’t one to waste anesthetic on bad guys. The man was gnawing on the edge of his pillow and moaning as she worked. Kirk was playing his hardened killer routine to the hilt. “Don’t be such a sissy, man. It’s just a flesh wound.”

The man opened his eyes long enough to give Kirk a nasty look, and he saw Terry. He almost came off the bed in his attempt to strangle the younger man. “You son of a bitch! You shot me!”

Terry took a single step back and said, “No. If I was doing the shooting, you’d probably still be running... See that pretty girl over there? She shot you. You never had a chance.”

The assembled group laughed knowingly at Terry’s remark.

The man’s face turned red with fury, but he didn’t reply. He grabbed the pillow with his teeth and went back to chewing.

Sue flushed the debrided wound and started stitching. The man switching from moaning to merely hissing and wincing each time the needle passed through flesh. Kirk continued to taunt the man until Bill gave him a pointed look. Bill preferred to get some cooperation when the questions started, the taunting would not help. The other option for interrogation was something Bill would avoid at great cost. One of the prisoners that Terry and John Hall had taken at the Jenkins farm was not cooperative, and Bill had chosen to leave him imprisoned on a platform in the woods rather than resort to physical torture, although one could argue that the platforms amounted to the same thing after prisoners were exposed to the elements for a few days. The other, a mid-level officer in the Dragon’s organization, had broken under a steak dinner and spilled the beans on what he knew, which was better than nothing, but not incredibly detailed.

As far as Bill could tell from those earlier interrogations, the actual family members would resist any questions strongly, since it was their own flesh and blood at stake. The employees, however, were not always treated well and lived with the jealousy of being considered lesser men than the family members themselves. They would generally spill the beans if treated decently. Bill seriously hoped they were looking at a lackey on the emergency room bed. They could really use some information.

Sue finished her work and left the man with a fully bandaged leg. He looked around the room, probably trying to guess what would happen next. He rattled the cuffs against the bed rails in reflex. He couldn’t reach his head to wipe away the sweat trickling into his eyes.

Bill turned to the room. “Everyone, come take a close look at this man on your way out. If you see this man limping around within a mile of here without an escort, you will shoot him.”

The milling crowd formed into a line and filed past the bed. He was  forced to endure a long series of hateful expressions and a smattering of hostile comments as the room slowly emptied. Terry, Kirk, and Aggie remained with Bill at the bedside. Sally sat quietly in one of the row of plastic chairs by the wall. Terry wanted to go to her, but there was still work to be done.

“Well... I guess you know where we stand on people who try to burn our town,” Bill said. “Let’s start with your name.”

“Fuck you.”

“Ok, Mr. You. Let me introduce you to my brother, Kirk. Personally, I’d prefer to have a polite conversation to learn what I want to know. Kirk here is not so interested in polite. He’s keenly interested in knowing what he wants to know, and I can tell you from past experience, he really has no limits to what he will do to get that information. You’re looking a simple choice, really. You can answer the questions, or you can suffer more pain than you ever knew existed.” Bill said it very calmly, as if he were simply explaining how to plant a seed. “Do we understand each other?”

The man nodded in a rapid, jerking motion.

“Good, now what’s your name?”

“Cooper. Jared Cooper.”

“That’s better, Mr. Cooper. Maybe your day won’t be so bad after all,” Bill said. “Who are you working for?”

“Wyatt Jenkins.”

“And?”

“That’s it. I swear. He came by the feed docks and offered good money for an easy job. All I had to do was follow those men and carry the gas can.”

“Well, since Mr. Jenkins is short on men these days, I need to know who the other men were.”

“I don’t know. A couple of guys I knew, but they were like me. Hired off the docks,” Jared Cooper said.

Terry nudged Bill’s arm to get his attention, then whispered the name of the man he had recognized in Bill’s ear.

Bill leaned forward and said, “I’m not sure I believe you, Mr. Cooper. Why would you come out into the country in the middle of the night with people you don’t know? Dig deeper.”

“Ok... There were some Talley boys... And some Coxes in the bunch.”

“What was the plan?”

“Wyatt Jenkins said you burned down his place, that you deserved the same. We were supposed to set fire to as many places as we could. When we got tangled up at the gate, somebody sent me and the other boys down the hill while they kept your people busy.”

“Did Mr. Jenkins tell you that the reason we burned his place down was because he kidnapped Dusty Baer, tortured him nearly to death, and then dumped him out of the back of a moving truck. You know Dusty?”

“Sure. Everybody knows Dusty. Good man.” Jared replied with a wince.

“Well, Dusty didn’t make it. He died right in the bed you’re occupying, covered in Jenkins branding iron burns.”

“I didn’t know. I’m... Sorry, sir.” Jared had turned a ghastly shade of white.

“All right, Mr. Cooper. I’m about to make a decision about your fate. Do you have anything to say that will make me think you deserve to live after you attacked my people and my town.”

“No, sir. Now that I know the whole story, I made a big mistake. I reckon I don’t deserve any special consideration. No money is worth what I did.” Jared’s chin dropped to his chest. Bill watched silently as tears began to mingle with the sweat on Jared’s face.

Bill looked at his wife, then his brother. Some kind of silent accord was reached. “Ok, Mr. Cooper. I’ve made my decision.”

Jared looked up and tried to wipe his tears on the shoulder of his shirt.

“I think you’ve learned your lesson. I’m letting you go. There’s two conditions...” Bill said.

Jared nodded and watched expectantly.

“One. You are not welcome here. If you come within a mile, my order still stands. Maybe someday we’ll invite you back, but until then, stay away.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Two. If you tell this story, you tell the whole story. I don’t need people thinking that we go around burning places for no good reason. I’ll need your word on it,” Bill said.

“You have my word, sir,” Jared replied.

“Fine. Somebody will give you a ride back at sunup. Until then, you may as well relax. I don’t want you out where someone might take a shot at you.”

Jared was still nodding gratefully as Bill hobbled away.

The small group followed Bill out the double doors of the clinic. Terry stopped along the way to lend his arm to Sally. She got to her feet, picked up her rifle, and leaned heavily on his shoulder as they walked out. Only the faintest hint of light broke the eastern horizon as they gathered in the gravel lane.

“You two all right?” Bill asked Terry and his daughter.

“I’m fine, Bill. Not so sure about Sally,” Terry said.

“Sally?” Bill asked the implicit question once again.

“I’m ok, Daddy. It’s just... Well, it’s different than I thought it would be,” Sally said with a sigh.

“It always is, sweetheart. It’s always hard and it never gets easier. If you think about it, that’s a good thing,” Bill said with a sad expression. He was thinking how nice it would be if his precious little girl never had to kill another human being, and how unlikely that had always been.

Aggie leaned over and hugged her daughter hard enough to squeeze air from Sally’s lungs. “I love you, Miss Sally.”

“I love you too, Mama.”

“Sally, why don’t you head home and get some sleep. It’ll help,” Bill said.

She brightened a bit and said, “Can I take Terry with me?”

Bill looked shocked for a second and replied, “Uh, no...”

Even Kirk laughed at his uncomfortable reply. Terry gave Sally a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek under the watchful eyes of her parents. Then Sally and Aggie walked slowly towards their home.

Bill returned to business. “Kirk, set John up for another raid. The Talleys and the Coxes need a visit. It occurs to me that I went off half-cocked on the Jenkins. We’ll do it differently this time...” Bill filled him in on the details, and Kirk went off to find John.

“Terry, if you’re up to it, I’d like you and Seth to take Mr. Cooper home. Be friendly. I’m hoping that letting him go is a good idea. Anyone who knows what he was doing will see us bringing him home, and maybe with a little luck, Dusty can still help us out from the great beyond.”

Chapter 9 - 3

Twenty minutes later, Terry was caught in the state between post-adrenalin exhaustion and brain-humming wakefulness. Most of the townspeople had wandered back to their beds as the guard organized a cleanup detail for the sad remains of the late night defense action. Terry considered trying to grab an hour of sleep for about the fifteenth time when he wandered into the town square and saw Bill sitting on the front steps of the church. Bill’s wooden crutches were leaning against the wall behind him. Terry angled in that direction.

Bill appeared to be deep in thought, but he looked up as Terry approached and patted the step beside him. Terry stepped up, spun around and sat in one smooth motion. It seemed to be a quiet time for Bill and Terry refrained from speaking to respect the moment.

After a couple of minutes, Bill finally said, “You know, I’ve been expecting something like this for a long time, but now that it’s here, I think I’d almost rather pack up my family and leave someone else to make all the hard decisions.”