Authors: Patrick LeClerc
THE NEXT MORNING, I got up, started a pot of coffee and looked in the small fridge. Bob had installed solar panels on the cabin, and the only demand was the refrigerator, outlets for a few computers or phone chargers and a few overhead lights. Even in summer there was no need for air conditioning up in the mountains, and there was an old pot-bellied stove for heat in the winter. A propane burner on the counter was what passed for cooking.
The fridge was nice, though. All the difference in the world. Running water would have been nice too, but there was a stream within an easy walk, and Bob had stocked in a bunch of bottled water.
When the coffee was made, I took a mug and went out to sit on the porch. It was still early. The sunrise was still just a promise, mist filling the forest below the cabin. It was chilly up here, even in summer, but it was a pleasant chilly. I zipped up my hoodie and wrapped my hands around the mug.
The view up here was gorgeous. Had to give it that. It was nice to get away from the city, especially in the summer.
Not nice enough to move up here, where you can’t put the trash out or the bears will get into it and a Greek sandwich shop was considered exotic cuisine, but nice.
After I finished my coffee, I went to the fridge and took out some bacon and a carton of eggs. A few slices of bread. There was no butter, but I was going to cook the eggs in the bacon grease anyway, so that wasn’t much of an issue. No toaster, but I could do the bread on the stove, serve the bacon and eggs on it and nobody would know the toast was dry.
As I expected, the smells of cooking brought the others to life. I heard shuffling in the bunk room and Bob and John soon appeared.
“Coffee’s ready,” I said. “Food in about five. Over easy’s good for everybody, right?”
“Make mine over hard,” said Bob.
Heresy.
“What?” I asked, just to be sure.
“I don’t like runny yolks.”
I stared at him for a moment. “The fuck is wrong with you?”
He shrugged. “I like ‘em the way I like ‘em.”
I shook my head, apologized to the spirits of the eggs for what I was about to do. I looked at John. “You don’t mind a properly runny yolk, do you?”
“So long as somebody else is cooking, I’m happy.”
“What did I do to wind up with this crew?” I asked.
I finished cooking, plated the toast, layered strips of bacon and then laid the eggs on top, leaving Bob’s in the pan until the yolk was ruined like he asked.
“You have a plan?” Bob asked when I put the food on the table.
“I have a vague plan,” I said. “We know where they have a cabin. I figure we stake it out, watch the comings and goings for a bit, follow somebody and see what they’re up to, who they talk to. If we can’t figure it out from watching, then we grab one of them and have a chat. Or, if they leave the place unguarded, we break in and toss it for intel.”
“What kind of intel?” asked John.
“Not a clue. I hope I’ll know it when I see it.”
“He was a Marine,” Bob explained.
“I just don’t know what their plan is. And it’s hard to do interviews when anybody we could talk to could be one of them in disguise. The goal is to neutralize them as a threat. If I find something I can blackmail them with, or a weakness I can exploit, or just find out what they’re willing to take to back off, great. If not...” I shrugged.
“So long as we know what we’re doing,” said John. “What are you packing?”
“Just my forty-five.”
“What?” asked John.
“He carries an M1911,” said Bob.
“Why?”
“I hit what I aim at,” I replied.
“That thing is heavy, low capacity and kicks like a mule.”
“I learned to shoot with black powder muzzle loaders,” I said.
“And you’re nostalgic?”
“You aren’t picking on Bob, and he carries a revolver you could hunt buffalo with.”
“That fits him. He’s Six Bears,” John said. “You should have a coyote weapon. A nine millimeter. Something you can conceal. Like a Walther.”
I shrugged. “I like my forty-five. It’s reliable and it makes big holes.”
John just shook his head. “You can’t just ignore your spirit animal and think he’s gonna be there for you.”
“So we’re set for sidearms,” Bob interrupted. “I have a few choices of heavy artillery for you. I have a 12 gauge pump, a 30-.06 semi automatic or one of those MP5s you left at my place last winter.”
“I’ll take an MP5,” I said. Lightweight, reliable, good German engineering. Put a full magazine in the black at 50 yards as fast as you can pull the trigger. Dances a bit on full auto, but what could you expect?
“That’s more like it,” said John.
I LAY ON MY BELLY on the forest floor, peering through the leaves at the cabin where they’d held Sarah. It was hot and still, but at least I was in the shade. Sooner or later somebody had to leave, and when they did, we’d follow them.
Two men walked out of the cabin, got into the Cadillac SUV, and pulled out onto the road. I took out my phone and called Bob.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Two men in a black caddy Escalade headed to the main road.”
“OK,” he said. I’ll pick them up and follow for as long as I can. Get out of there and back to your car. You can take over later.”
The best way to follow somebody is to switch cars. One car follows for a while, then calls another who takes up the tail when the first drops off. That way, they won’t notice the same vehicle behind them for two hundred miles. Between Bob, John and myself, we should be able to keep up. I had rented a very boring, nondistinctive sedan just for this purpose. They probably knew about the Impala, so I left it behind. Bob’s beat up pickup truck would blend in up here in Northern NH, as would John’s rust bucket Toyota.
I made my way through the woods back to my rental, and waited for the phone to ring.
“They’re headed for the highway. Stopped at a diner near exit 36. I’ll hole up at the gas station near the exit and let you know whether they go north or south.”
I had a feeling it would be south.
“OK,” I said. “I’ll get on Route 93 South. I’ll wait in Lincoln. John, you go an exit north. Bob, let me know when they’re coming up on the exit and one of us will pick them up.”
“Sound’s good.”
I drove to a Dunkin Donuts right off exit 32 in Lincoln, got a coffee and a not very good croissant and waited.
My phone rang,
“Coming up on your exit,” said Bob.
“Got it.”
I left the shop, got in my rental car and headed to the highway. I pulled on and saw Bob’s pickup just ahead. I passed him and got the Escalade in my sights.
“I got him,” I said. “You should pull off.”
“On it,” Bob replied. “John is ahead of you. I figure he’ll stop in Concord and take over, see which way they go at the 93- 89 split.”
“Sounds good.”
Following somebody is pretty boring, unless something goes wrong, then it’s pretty terrifying. As far as I could tell, nothing went wrong. John picked them up in Concord, I dropped out, he followed them down 93 South to Manchester, where they stopped for lunch. I picked them up again and followed them to Route 97 in Salem, then gave them a few cars lead and followed them to Rowley.
Rowley was a small town about thirty miles northeast of Boston. Mostly woods and rolling hills, it was populated by old Yankee aristocracy in rambling, ancient houses and barns reeking of horses and old money, with a scattering of trailers and hovels to give it some character. It had a population of around five thousand, of whom probably four thousand nine hundred and ninety five were white.
It amazed me that twenty five miles due west, Philips Mills was a concrete and brick grid, where two thirds of the city lived below the poverty line and was seventy five percent Latino.
And I was far more likely to get knifed or shot in Rowley.
I kept pretty far back from the Escalade and eventually saw it turn up a long dirt driveway that curved up a hill through the woods. As I passed the drive, I saw a large stone house behind a field and a barn.
I looked at my GPS and called Bob.
“It looks like I’m on Middle Road. They just pulled into a driveway. Meet me at the Agawam Diner at the intersection of Route 1 and Route 133. We’ll plan our move.”
“OK. I’ll let John know. We’ll be there in about an hour.”
I drove around town for a while, taking a meandering route to the diner. I’d have liked to drive around the block to case the house, but there weren’t really blocks in Rowley, as such. I made my way to the diner about three in the afternoon, which was nice because the lunch rush had died and the dinner rush hadn’t begun.
I had a cup of coffee while I waited for John and Bob. The Agawam had good coffee.
While I waited, I took out my phone and pulled up the satellite view from Google. I fiddled around until I found what I was pretty sure was the right house and zoomed in, looking over the terrain.
Eventually, John and Bob walked in and sat at the table near me. A waitress came over and took our order. I got the fisherman’s platter, because you just shouldn’t eat at a diner in a New England town on the coast and not get the fisherman’s platter.
Bob looked at my phone when the waitress had left. “That the place we’re going?”
I nodded.
“That beats the hell out of the old crappy laminated maps we used to use,” said John.
I’d cut my teeth on plans scratched in the dirt with a stick, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
“So,” I said, “there’s pretty heavy woods all around here, but the front of the house is fairly open.”
“I could set up on this rise,” said Bob. “I brought the ought- six, with the scope. It can’t be more than three hundred yards to the front door. I can keep it covered and let you know if anybody comes out.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “John, how do you feel about sneaking through the woods?”
“I have to answer that question from a paleface?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Must be my forked tongue. So you and I approach the house through the woods.”
“As a true son of my ancestors, I will glide trackless through the forest.”
“Well, just don’t sell me out if they try to bribe you with some glass beads.”
“Don’t worry. Fool me once...”
“And don’t quote George W Bush if you want to inspire confidence.”
“Moving on,” prompted Bob.
“Ok, Bob is overwatch, John and I infiltrate and see if we can either get in the house and gather some intel, or grab a prisoner. Everybody set your phones on vibrate, and keep them inside your clothes to muffle any sound. Use text only, since John or I may be too close to the enemy to talk. We’ll move in from different sides, scope out the whole area faster and if one of us is seen or captured, the other one is still free to help. And one man can move quicker and sneakier than two.”
“Especially if I don’t have to match my pace to a fork- tongued, paleface jarhead,” John agreed. “I can do this Indian style.”
“What’s that?” I asked. “Build a casino and lure them out?”
“Go ahead and laugh,” he said. “You know who else laughed? Custer. And Fetterman. And St Clair.”
“Don’t forget Braddock,” I said.
“Thanks. I did forget Braddock. Man, you white men just can’t fight in the wilderness.”
“Probably why we’re always trying to pave it,” I said.
“Let’s get on with this,” said Bob. “If it doesn’t work and we don’t get killed, you two can go into comedy.”
“In that case, let me just point out that today is a good day to die,” said John.
I WAS STALKING THROUGH THE WOODS from the west side of the house when my phone vibrated. I crouched down, took it out and read Bob’s text.
Two men with rifles just left the front door and moved into the woods. Keep an eye out.
Well, that sucked. I wondered if they suspected something or had seen something or this was just a patrol. Whatever the reason, it meant we had an armed, wary foe to deal with, which is my least favorite kind.
I texted
OK
back and continued my slow steady progress toward the house, straining my eyes and ears for signs of the enemy.
I heard footsteps in the underbrush behind me. I sank down to one knee behind the broad trunk of a pine and waited.
Soon, I heard the steps coming closer. Slow, wary strides. Somebody walking carefully, but not carefully enough. The late summer undergrowth was thick in places, and hid the floor of the forest. It was hard to avoid the fallen twigs, dried leaves and other noisy debris beneath the low, broad green leaves.
A man with years of practice could do it, but only if he moved slowly. It had become second nature to me.
Peering through the branches, I saw John picking his way through the woods, his shotgun at the ready, eyes scanning left and right. He was moving a little stiffly, like he was in pain. I noticed a dark stain on his field jacket.
I sank back behind cover. Pitched my voice low before speaking.
“John.”
The footsteps paused.
“Sean?”
“You OK?”
“Got jumped a few hundred yards back,” he said. “Guy cut me but I took him out.”
“You good to go if I take point?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said.
We moved forward in silence, angling toward the big house. He stayed behind me, quiet, but not quiet enough.
Something just didn’t feel right.
“Guy should have known better than to start a knife fight with an Apache,” I said.
“That he should,” he said.
I threw myself to my left an instant before the shotgun boomed behind me. Whatever John was, he wasn’t Apache. He’d never have let that slide. Or he’d have made a joke about palefaces being slow learners or something.
I ran serpentine through the woods. I turned and snapped off a few rounds from my MP 5 as I went. Not much chance of hitting, but maybe I could make him flinch and ruin his shot. A second load of buckshot tore through the brush as I slid to cover behind a fallen tree. I quickly crawled on knees and elbows a few yards along so I wouldn’t reappear where he’d seen me last, then popped up and took aim.
He was moving forward, gun in his shoulder, trained on the end of the log where I’d taken my dive for cover. I took a second to line up my sights on the middle of his torso and fired.
He jerked and staggered but didn’t fall, so I shot again. He flinched but stayed up, swinging his gun to point at me. I switched my aim to his head, held my breath and squeezed the trigger.
Almost- certainly- not- John’s head snapped back and he dropped to the ground. I saw one foot kick for a moment, then go still.
I waited a moment, straining my ears, listening for more enemies and letting my heart rate slow to something like normal. I changed magazines, sliding a full one into my weapon. I didn’t think I’d fired many shots, but it’s easy to lose track, and if you do run into the enemy, a nice full magazine is good to have. After a while, I crept over the fallen tree, stealing up on the body.
Please, let it not be John,
I repeated to myself. It couldn’t be. There was too much that was wrong.
But still, please don’t let it be.
I reached the body and looked down.
It wasn’t John.
It looked like I’d shot up an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue and this guy fell out.
He was dead. It didn’t take a medic to tell that. Two holes in his chest and one above his left eye. He was young. It’s tough to tell on a corpse, but he couldn’t have been out of his twenties. That always bothered me. It always seemed like such a waste to see young men die, and so much of war is fought by young men. I wondered what motivated this one. Family loyalty? Money? He didn’t look like somebody who’d ever been short of money.
He was lean and muscled, with sunbleached blond hair worn just a bit too long, chiseled features, blue eyes. A good looking kid. Seemed a pity to waste a shapeshifter’s talent on a guy most people would be happy to look like.
That also answered a question. When they died, they reverted to form. Something to think about. I wondered if they reverted to form if you knocked them out. I knew they didn’t when they were sleeping because–well, because.
He was wearing John’s jacket over a tee shirt and jeans. On closer examination, a very expensive tee shirt and jeans. His boots were pricey L.L. Bean hikers, but that didn’t mean anything. I have to work a sixty hour week to pay rent and I wear pricey L.L. Bean hikers. It doesn’t pay to buy cheap shoes. They wear out so fast you’ll have to buy four pair before you’d need to replace one pair of good boots. You’ll spend more money over time and your feet will hurt and get wet.
He did have John’s shotgun, and it was John’s jacket. There may have been a bloodstain on it before I’d shot him, but it was impossible to tell now.
The question was: was John still alive, and where was he?
They had his stuff, and they’d gotten a good enough look at him to imitate him. Even the voice, so they’d talked to him. Not long enough to pick up his sense of humor, so chances are they didn’t have a man inside our little band, they’d just gotten to John and hoped to surprise me with a look alike.
So was he dead or a prisoner or was he lying in the woods, bleeding to death? He’d stuck his neck out for me, so whatever it was, I couldn’t leave him. You don’t leave a man behind.
You do get to swear about it for a minute.
After I got that out of the way, I headed back the way my enemy had come. It wasn’t too tough to track his path. He’d broken and trampled enough stuff to give me the basic idea.
I took it slow. Forced myself to. Maybe time was a factor in John’s survival, but stealth was a factor in mine, and I couldn’t help anybody if I blundered into an ambush. The guy I’d shot wasn’t exactly Daniel Boone, but he wasn’t the worst man in the field I’d ever faced, and if somebody captured John, they must know something.
Probably pulled the fake identity trick on him. Maybe pretended to be me. They’d had somebody around me long enough to get my mannerisms down.
After a while, I heard voices. John saying something then somebody hissing him to silence.
OK, so he was alive.
Unless they had another decoy.
This was getting too complicated. I’d have to ask him something after I rescued him, before I gave him a gun. Something nobody would guess. Like how did Bob like his yolks? No right- thinking person would guess that.
I crept toward the voices. Slow as the sunset, and quieter.
The ground was uneven, rocky, and densely forested. I heard them long before I saw them. When I did catch sight of them, I squatted in the shadow of a black oak and studied the situation.
John was on his knees, hands zip-tied behind him. He didn’t look too bad. They must have faked him out and got the drop on him. Next to him was...
Me.
Again.
It’s an odd thing to look at yourself doing something repugnant, like smacking your friend. It’s also fairly disconcerting to look at yourself through the aperture of a gunsight.
I’d have liked to grab this guy. See what he had to say. Get some information from him. But that didn’t seem too feasible. I’d have to try to circle wide around to get behind him, and he was actually surprisingly alert, scanning the forest waiting for his friend to return. This guy was a professional, not some bored conscript walking a safe post.
I spent a few minutes watching to see if he had any more friends showing up, then I made my decision.
He wasn’t far away. Maybe thirty yards. But he had an AR-15 held at the ready, and he was far too locked on for my liking. I was going to have to take him out quickly, and with the 9 mm MP 5, that meant a head shot.
I settled into the best position I could find, on my belly behind a fallen tree, bracing my left arm against the trunk, leaning forward into the gun. I aimed my whole body, putting myself in line with the weapon so the recoil would push straight back against my mass, not at an angle where it might turn me and nudge the barrel out of line. I lined the front sight post in the center of the rear sight, then put his head in the middle, so it sat on the front sight like a pumpkin on a fencepost, and with a slow, steady pressure, squeezed the trigger.
The man with my face jerked and dropped. Just collapsed in on himself, landing in a heap from which limbs spilled out. Like a puppet with its strings cut.
Sometimes they do that when you shoot them in the head. Not often, but sometimes.
John dropped to his side and rolled away when he heard the shot.
I waited. Watching and listening for any more of them.
When nothing happened after what was probably long enough, I emerged from my hide and stalked down to John. I paused, sweeping the area with my weapon, looking for any more enemies to present themselves.
I reached into my pocket, took out my folding knife. “Let me see those zip ties.”
He rolled over on his stomach and presented his bound wrists. “Before I cut you loose, just so I know you’re you, what job did I get in the Great North Woods?”
“You probably worked as a cook for a spell,” he replied.
“Gotta respect a man who knows the classics.” I cut him free. “What happened?”
He rubbed his wrists, shrugged. “I thought it was you. Walked right up to him and he gestured to look over there then put the gun on me. It’s embarrassing, man. Like the ‘your shoe’s untied’ trick. Guy had you down pat.” He looked at the body. “Not anymore, though.”
I followed his glance. The dead man looked a bit older than the other man I’d shot. Maybe mid thirties, still lean, fair and athletic. Could have been an older cousin or brother to the first man.
“Death reveals the Skin-Walker’s true form,” said John.
“I guess it does.” More legends. I wondered how many of those came from people like my enemies.
And like me, I guess.
“What now?” he asked. “Pretty sure we lost the element of surprise.”
I thought for a minute.
“Maybe not.” I stripped the jacket from the dead man. Picked up his rifle and checked it, worked the charging handle just to be sure it hadn’t jammed when he dropped it.
“Turn around,” I told John, picking up the cut zip tie.
“What’s the plan?”
“Put your hands behind you,” I said. “I’ll put these on for show. Take your pistol and put it in your waistband in the small of your back. If this guy didn’t change back to his form when he captured you, we’ll just pretend I’m still him, still being me, and I’ll bring you in. We’ll pull a Trojan Horse on ‘em.”
He smiled. “I knew you had the spirit of the coyote.”
I sent a quick text to Bob, letting him know the broad strokes of the plan, in case he got a look at us through the scope of his ought-six and wasn’t sure just whom to shoot.
“What’s the plan when we get close?” asked John.
“Let’s blow that bridge when we come to it.”
“Ah.”
“We’re here to get as much info as possible. Play the prisoner as long as they buy it. If things get dangerous, pull your gun. I’d like to grab one of them alive if we can. If not, let’s just get inside the house and see if we can find any info. Computers, ledgers, anything. If we get close and there are too many of them, we back off.”
We made our way through the woods toward the big house. As we approached, we saw the stables, then some outbuildings, a carriage house and the gabled roof of the main house rising through the trees, the whole scene carried the smell of horses and privilege.
The main house was fieldstone with a slate roof, arched overhang in front of the door so that a driver could pull up out of the rain and let his passengers off. Blood on their hands was one thing, but rain might ruin their hair, I guess.
I expected the place to be guarded, but I was hoping my un-disguise would get me close, if not inside, before anyone got too rough. I was surprised when I made it unchallenged to the front porch.
The door was unlocked. I pushed it open and motioned John inside. The foyer was decorated opulently with old but expensive taste. Dark wood paneling, hunting and shooting prints, a fireplace with a wide carved wooden mantle.
I heard footsteps and paused. A woman came through a doorway, stopped, and looked at us with relief.
She was beautiful by any objective standard. Tall and leanly muscular, with long blonde hair pulled back into a braid, high Nordic cheekbones and clear, ice blue eyes. A Valkyrie brought to life.
I didn’t know how much of it was natural and how much was artifice, but she did bear a resemblance to the men I’d shot. She could be a sister or cousin. She wore a spotless white blouse, tight riding breeches and high leather boots.