Three down, eight to go.
John saw the flare and punched the detonator.
Sheriff J. D. Johnson always rose at the crack of dawn. Twenty years living on military time would do that. Today, he needed to get up early. He was going up into the mountains northeast of town, the mountains he loved to gaze upon as he drank his first cup of coffee of the day, as he was now, to find Colonel Brice and his son. Or to find what Colonel Brice had left behind. Just as he was about to turn away from the window, Red Ridge exploded like a Roman candle.
The mountain shook.
Ben was under the log now, protected from the falling rocks and tree limbs. After allowing a few seconds for the serious debris to fall, he returned to his shooting position and sighted in the camp through the haze of dirt and snow blown into the air by the explosion.
The explosion had the intended effect: chaos had captured the camp. Men in long johns fell out of the cabins; their heads jerked about as they tried to locate their attackers. They fired their weapons wildly and took cover behind the vehicles. Ben put two more down before they had made cover.
Five down, six to go.
He was sighting in another man, a big man ducked down behind the white SUV outside the main building, when the man popped back into sight with a shoulder-mounted missile aimed directly at Ben’s position. Captain Jack O. Smith was a skilled soldier: the suppressor prevented muzzle flash, so he didn’t know Ben’s actual position; he was simply aiming the rocket at the shooting position he would have taken if attacking the camp.
An adrenaline rush catapulted Ben up and running before the captain fired. He ran east for the count of five then dove under the nearest cover just as the ground rocked with an explosion behind him.
“Ben!”
Little Johnny Brice was crouched down and his ears were ringing from the first explosion. The second explosion had been right at Ben’s location. Ben had told him not to move from this position, no matter what happened. And Mom had told him to do exactly what Ben said and maybe they’d get Gracie back alive.
But neither of them had told him what to do if Ben got himself blown up!
John looked down at his right hand, the one holding the .45-caliber pistol Ben had given him and trembling like a leaf in the breeze. He had fired the weapon a dozen times out back of Ben’s cabin; he had hit nothing he had aimed at. He hadn’t even come close. This wasn’t his kind of work.
Scared shitless in Idaho!
John R. Brice, alpha geek, Ph.D. in algorithms, 190 IQ, billionaire three times over, pushed his glasses up on his nose, took a deep breath, and ran toward Ben’s location.
If Ben Brice were defending the camp, he would do what any good soldier would do: he would outflank the enemy. The western route was too steep; an assault would come from the east. So as soon as the sky cleared of falling debris, Ben jumped up and ran toward the east, running the woods just like he had run the woods in Vietnam. The instincts would always be a part of him, the instincts that—
—made him duck behind a thick tree. His ears had picked up a sound, and his mind and body had reacted automatically. He shut out the sound of his own breathing and listened. He heard heavy footsteps crunching in the icy remains of the snow; the enemy was coming closer now. Ben reached down and grabbed a large flat stone, several pounds of rock. The footsteps were almost on him now, closer, closer, closer—
now
!
Ben stepped out and slammed the rock into the unprotected face of a large man carrying an M-16. He was out before he hit the deck. Ben straddled the man. He could not take a chance on the man regaining consciousness and returning to the fight. He thought only of saving Gracie as he broke the man’s neck. He patted the man’s jacket down and found two fragmentation grenades. Ben put them in the pocket of his coat.
Six down, five to go.
John inhaled smoke then coughed it out. The trees were charred and smoldering along a line where the explosives had detonated. At Ben’s location, there was a small crater. Ben had survived the explosion. Or he had been blown to megabytes.
John ran on.
The suspect was crouched behind an old truck and loading a goddamned grenade launcher! On the ground beside him was an MP-5 fully automatic machine gun! And FBI Special
Agent Pete O’Brien was betting that truck didn’t have an up-to-date vehicle registration on file with the Idaho DMV!
Pete was standing twenty meters behind the suspect. His adrenaline was pumping double-time; his rifle was aimed at the suspect’s back. Just as he was about the squeeze the trigger, the voices of his Academy instructors came screaming back to him:
“An FBI agent may
not
shoot a citizen in the back!”
“FBI rules of engagement require that the suspect be given the opportunity to surrender!”
“Suspects have constitutional rights!”
“You must shout, ‘FBI! Drop your weapon! Yes, that grenade launcher!’ ”
Of course, ordering this suspect to drop his weapon would give him an opportunity to shoot Pete first. But that’s what the “arresting agent” had done in every training exercise at the Academy; and every “suspect” had surrendered. But this wasn’t some bullshit hypothetical training exercise staged in Hogan’s Alley at the Academy with fake bad guys and fake bullets, where no one actually died when someone screwed up. This was the real fucking thing, a fucking shoot-out on a fucking mountain in fucking Idaho with a bunch of armed-to-the-fucking-teeth terrorists holding a little girl hostage and plotting to assassinate the President of the United States of America! At the Academy, they said 99 percent of all FBI agents would retire without ever having discharged their duty weapon at a suspect, much less ever having killed a suspect. Pete O’Brien sighed; he wasn’t going to be one of those agents.
He shot the suspect in the back. Twice, to make sure he didn’t file a civil rights complaint.
Ben heard two gunshots from west of the camp. Agent O’Brien’s position.
He had to get around behind the camp. He ran north, deeper into the woods, then he turned west. He came upon the first cabin. He worked his way from tree to tree until he was at the east side of the cabin. He put his back to the exterior wall of the cabin then moved around to the backside and to a small window. Ben could see a man huddled inside in the rear corner; he was wearing yellowed long johns and pointing a sawed-off shotgun at the door.
Ben stepped back, pulled the pins on the two frag grenades, and threw them through the window. He heard a shotgun blast as he ran for cover and hit the deck. After the explosion, he looked back.
“
Cripes!
”
John had almost stepped on the man laid out in the snow. His arms and legs were splayed, like he was trying to make a snow angel and stopped in mid-angel; his head was cocked in a grotesque manner, as if he were trying to look behind him.
This is what Ben knows.
Ben was still alive.
John carefully stepped around the body and ran deeper into the woods, toward the cabins.
Ben figured four men remained to be killed, maybe three if O’Brien had killed one on the west side. One was Captain Jack O. Smith. Another was the blond man hiding behind the woodpile out back of the main cabin fifty meters from Ben’s location and holding a large caliber handgun. Ben needed him alive, at least until they found Gracie. Ben dropped the cross hairs from the man’s head to his hand, the one holding the gun, and squeezed the trigger.
Junior had never been in a real firefight before. He naturally figured he’d be a fearless son of a bitch because the major was. He figured wrong. He was shaking all over, and he was worried he might piss his pants.
Charles Woodrow Walker, Jr., was a coward.
As soon as the shooting started, he had run out back and hidden behind the woodpile, hoping Jacko and the others would take out the Feds. He was holding his .357-Magnum a foot from his face when it disappeared, along with his middle finger.
“Get up, you're not hurt,” Ben said, kicking the blond man curled up in a fetal position on the ground; the man was holding his bloody right hand and groaning like a draftee after the first day of boot camp.
“Where is she?”
Before the man’s response—“Fuck you”—was out of his mouth, Ben’s boot was in it. When the man looked back up, his mouth was bleeding.
He spat blood and said, “You ain’t FBI.”
“And you're not your daddy, Junior.”
“Ben Brice. You betrayed the major.”
“He betrayed himself. Where’s Gracie?”
“You ain’t never gonna find her.”
Ben grabbed Junior by the collar and yanked him to his feet, then pushed him to the back door of the cabin.
“Open it,” Ben said, pushing Junior in front of the door.
Junior slowly opened the door. Holding Junior in front of him with his left hand and his rifle in his right, Ben entered the cabin. The main room was vacant. Two doors were at one end.
“Gracie!”
“She ain’t here.”
Dragging Junior in tow, Ben checked the two small bedrooms at one end of the cabin. No sign of Gracie. Ben looked around the main room. Army ordnance containers were stacked high against one long wall: machine guns, mortars, grenade launchers, LAWS rockets, C-4 explosive, detonators, and napalm. Maps and charts and an aerial photograph of Camp David were on one wall.
“What’s Gracie got to do with the president?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why’d you take her?”
“Because she’s my sister.”
Ben jerked around at Junior’s words. If he had not moved his head those few inches, the high-caliber bullet would have split his skull like a machete through a watermelon. As it was, the bullet creased the side of his head and felt as if someone had hit him with a two by four. He went to the ground. He felt warm blood streaming down his face. A big boot kicked Ben’s rifle away; a big hand yanked the Bowie knife from the sheath strapped to his thigh and snatched the knit cap off his head.
“I should’ve killed you thirty-eight years ago.”
Captain Jack O. Smith stood over Ben. He struggled to his feet.
“How?” Ben said to Junior.
Junior nodded to the captain. “Show him.”
Captain Smith pushed Ben toward a closed door by the kitchen. “Open it.”
Ben turned the knob and pushed on the door. It swung open, into a dark room. Junior moved by him and lit a kerosene lamp. He was standing next to a bed; he held the lamp up over the bed. And Ben saw him.
Major Charles Woodrow Walker.
His form under the blanket was frail, his face gaunt, and his blond hair thin. His eyes were closed. His body made no movement, as if he were—
“Paralyzed,” Junior said. “What McCoy did to him.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“After we took the woman and got the major released,” the captain said, “we went down to Mexico. The major sent us back up here, said he’d be here in a month. Two months later, he ain’t back, so me and Junior drive down to Mexico. Locals was still talking about the black helicopters and finding the big blond man on the beach. Said he was taken to the hospital. That’s where we found him, like this. They put three bullets in him, one in the neck, cut his spinal cord. Been in that bed for ten years.”
The major’s eyes flickered opened, found their focus, and looked at each of his visitors, finally coming to rest on Ben. After the recognition came into his eyes, Ben thought the major’s mouth moved. Junior leaned over the bed.
“He wants to say something to you.”
Ben stepped to the bed. The skin on the major’s face sagged now and the fullness was gone. But his blue eyes could still look into a man’s soul. He tried to say something. Ben leaned over and put his ear by the major’s mouth. The major’s words came out in a whisper and with great effort.
“Junior showed me … picture … magazine … Elizabeth … the girl … blonde … mine … she belongs … to me … I will own … her life … as I’ve … owned yours … and her … mother’s.”
“You raped Elizabeth.”
A thin smile. “Same as … those Viet gals … Difference is … I didn’t put a bullet … in her brain after …”
And now Ben understood. The major was his connection to Gracie and hers to him. He couldn’t save the china doll. Thirty-eight years later, God was giving him a second chance.
Ben stood tall.
“You’ve owned my life, Major, that’s a fact, and maybe Elizabeth’s, too. But you won’t own Gracie’s. I guarangoddamntee it.”
The major’s blue eyes flashed dark. They moved off Ben and onto the captain. Ben turned to face him. The captain advanced on Ben with the Bowie knife.
John moved around behind the cabin, hugging the exterior wall, looking both ways, his heart pounding hard enough to hear. He came to a window. He peeked in.
He pulled back quickly.
Inside, Ben was standing next to a bed; an old pale man was lying in it. Next to Ben was a young blond man holding a gun; across the room from Ben was a big man with a tattoo. The two men from the soccer game. The men who took Gracie. The big man was holding a big knife.
Little Johnny Brice’s hands were shaking. The urge to turn tail and run was building when he heard the big man say: “I’m gonna gut you just like the VC gutted your buddy Dalton.”