White Wolf McLeod Page 18

  “How? There’s no way up. I ain’t getting myself all dirtied up just to try, either.”

  McLeod heard three doors slam shut and the car move away before he decided to pick himself up. The cabin was close by, he heard one of the goons say. He wondered if he could reach the cabin first, but then dismissed the notion as unlikely. There had to be another way of either slowing these thugs down or preventing them from reaching the cabin altogether. He started running again, scouting the edge of the land next to the road for just the right weapon that would aid him.

  He was maybe a thousand yards in front of the car when he saw it: a dead tree leaning precariously above the roadway. Now, if only it had rotted away enough for him to be able to push it down into the road, he prayed. He put his weight against it and then stepped back. This baby isn’t going anywhere, he thought. He started digging around the base of the tree and was pleased to find that half of its root structure had ripped itself out of the ground. He drew a knife from its hidden sheath within his boot and began sawing at several roots he determined were holding enough earth to maintain its precarious equilibrium. The knife, honed to a razor-sharp edge, which he himself had whetted, cut deeply into the dead wood and severed the once life-sustaining cords that connected it to the land.

  He heard the car approaching. He flopped down on his back and placed his feet on the exposed underside of the tree. Then he prayed for the Earth to aid him and lend him its strength as he pushed with all his might. He strained with the exertion, but the tree did not budge. His second attempt was rewarded by a cracking sound and some movement. He bolstered his energy, calling out in his mind to the spirit of the dead tree to assist him, and pushed with everything he had. The tree groaned and began to tumble down the slope and into the road.

  McLeod rested only a moment, sitting up to survey his accomplishment. The tree had managed to block almost two-thirds of the road, the remaining third too narrow for the car to drive around. Then he found a rock about twice the size of his fist. He waited until the car had round the bend and exposed its windshield. McLeod was up and pitching a fastball for a strike. The windshield shattered as the rock crashed through it. He did not wait to witness their reaction as the car braked hard and the thugs exited the vehicle in a rage. He raced towards his new objective, feeling secure that he had considerably lessened the odds against him. It was time that he had no control over.

  The cabin sat a mile away from his impromptu roadblock. He smelled the smoke being expelled from the chimney long before he saw it, which guided him to his destination. The hour was growing late, and he was beginning to feel tired from today’s adventures. It had been a long time since he, as a kid, had skipped through the forest for miles on end without feeling fatigued. He was ashamed to admit it, but he thought maybe he was beginning to become flabby, just like a White Man. There would be time enough later to chastise himself, he told himself. Right now he had a job to do and a life to save.

  Reaching a point about five hundred feet from the cabin, he performed a quick reconnoiter. A small stream thick with ice ran beside it with about thirty feet of earth between them. Trees grew up virtually next to the cabin, offering adequate cover. Two parked cars, one a squad car and the other Mary’s rental, were parked side by side about a hundred feet from the cabin in a clearing. Thus, approaching the cabin was a cakewalk, and soon McLeod was peering in through a window and observing the interior.

  The cabin consisted of four rooms: two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living area that took up at least half of the cabin’s size replete with a fireplace, which sported a blazing fire. He saw Mary trussed up with ropes around her legs and hands bound to a wooden chair. A gag had been shoved into her mouth, which incensed McLeod. Even if she screamed all day, who was going to hear her? The dirty cops who had done this to her did not want to hear her trying to reason with them, trying to silence their guilty consciences.

  O’Reilly was seated in another wooden chair guzzling a beer, while his feet were propped up on a cardboard table and pointed towards the fire. His chair was tilted back with the front legs off the floor. Sandinista was nervously walking around and talking. McLeod could not hear him very well, but what words he did catch impressed him that the cop did not like the turn of events. This was just supposed to be a snatch and quick kill with no traces or leads for others to follow. Instead, they were sitting with their derrières exposed with no safety nets except for the hollow promises of the people who paid them for their special services.

  McLeod backed away from the window. He needed a plan to divide and conquer without endangering Mary. He decided to check out the rest of the cabin before concluding any action. As luck would have it, the bedroom window at the back of the cabin was open. It was small, and he probably could have squeezed through, but the sound he would make in the attempt might alert both of the men, putting Mary at risk. Instead, he pushed the window as high as the runners would allow. The curtains lifted and blew inward from the gentle breeze flowing into the house. McLeod noticed a figurine sitting on a table just under the window and reached in with his right hand and carelessly knocked it onto the floor. Then he stepped back away from the window and waited.

  Sandinista entered the room and saw the window wide open and the figurine on the floor. He drew his weapon and began to suspiciously look around the room. He opened the closet door quickly and shoved his revolver into the empty space, ready to shoot anyone—or thing—that might be hiding inside. He even looked under the bed. Reluctantly, he replaced his pistol back into the holster and moved towards the window. He picked the figurine from off the floor and set it back onto the table.

  “What was it?” O’Reilly called from the front of the cabin.

  “The wind,” Sandinista shouted back. “Knocked over a figurine. Everything’s secure.” Then he started to lower the pane of glass.

  “Psst!” McLeod made a noise.

  Sandinista bent down and stuck his head out of the window opening to discern the source of the noise. McLeod thrust his fingers into the man’s exposed throat with his right hand, grabbed the man’s hair with his left, and pulled the officer partly through the window frame. Sandinista squirmed and futilely kicked with his legs for the last remaining seconds of his life, managing to knock over the table and the figurine he had so carefully set back up.

  “You okay?” O’Reilly warily called from the front of the house.

  “Yeah!” McLeod shouted back into the house, leaving the body stuck in the window. Then he went around the cabin to the front door and knocked. He heard the chair fall back on all four legs and O’Reilly starting to walk towards the door.

  “Who is it?” the officer shouted.

  McLeod knocked again. “It’s me, you dope!” He stepped to the side of the door and readied his shotgun.

  “Me who?” O’Reilly shouted back.

  McLeod surmised that the man was not foolish enough to come straight to the door but probably had approached it from the side. He calculated that curiosity would soon win over the man’s better judgment and that he would be tempted to look out the peephole that had been bored through the wood. He heard the man move and figured that he had indeed placed himself in front of the door. McLeod quickly turned and emptied the first barrel of the shotgun through the door, chest high. Half of the door shattered into thousands of slivers and shards. McLeod kicked the remainder of the door open and was readied to discharge the second round, but the first had hit the mark. Officer O’Reilly lay in a mess of his own blood and the ruined door, his body almost cut in half by the blast.

  McLeod ran over to Mary who sat wide-eyed at the carnage, her ears probably ringing from the explosion. He cut the cords that bound her and removed the gag.

  “Sam!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “Am I glad to see you!”

  “We’ll talk later,” he told her gruffly. “Think you can drive?”

  “Damn right I can!” she exclaimed excitedly.

  “Good. Use your car. Don’t go back towards the Ser
iglio house. I don’t know if they’ll recognize you, but there are at least four goons heading this way. Besides, the road is blocked.”

  “Gotcha, Sam.”

  McLeod was grateful that she had been well-trained: she did not ask a lot of questions that tended to eat up precious time. “When you get back to Tahoe, stay away from anyone you talked to with the police,” he told her.

  “I just talked to a Detective Renkins. He assigned this guy,” she pointed to O’Reilly, “and his partner to help me.”

  “Then make sure that this Renkins doesn’t see you. I don’t have time to rescue you every time you get into trouble.”

  Mary felt chastised. “What are you going to do?”

  “You don’t really want to know, Mary. I’d hate to have you forced to testify against me if the truth should ever leak out.”

  Mary laid her hand on McLeod’s arm. “If I do run up against this Renkins guy again, can’t I just have a little fun?”

  McLeod shook his head strongly in the negative. “That’s my job. I do all the cleaning up around here. And don’t you forget it. Now, get going. Ah, better yet. When you get back, don’t turn in the car, and don’t check out of the hotel. Buy a bus ticket and go to Sacramento. Take a plane back to Washington from there. I’ll want a full report when I return.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  COLOMBIA

  AFTER BREAKFAST, THE Drill Sergeant (a term loosely used by the initiates for the lack of a more decent title that could be used in mixed company) recalled the recruits to formation for both a head count and the daily issuance of assignments. He strode up and down the lines like a little tin general, carrying a clipboard, attached to which was a list of names and their corresponding assignments, and barked criticisms at each individual as he gave them a quick physical inspection. The tasks handed out were usually menial, such as janitorial duty in the high-rise buildings downtown, which was not a terribly bad draw. After the collection of refuse, any papers, carbon copies, and typewriter ribbons found were sifted. Should any significant find be made—meaning that the item contained possible, useful intelligence for the family—the finder was either monetarily rewarded or granted extra favors, his choice. Another task would be as a driver for one of the family’s lieutenants, providing the off chance of becoming familiar with someone important within the hierarchy; but normally the big shots had little reason to converse with their underlings, especially the new guys on probation. It was not so much a lack of trust that kept them distant, as it was their form of keeping respect and discipline in the ranks. Along with that, few underlings ever retired from this line of work to enjoy their health in their reclining years, so attachments were rarely encouraged.

  However, instead of his usual routine, when the D. S. came to Chino, he merely said, “Pack your bags.”

  Startled, Chino blurted, “Say again?”

  “Pack your bags. You’re taking a trip.” The D.S.’s tone indicated that he was surprised as well.

  “Uh, is that supposed to be good news or bad news?” he asked the retreating back.

  The D. S. turned around and glared at him. “What do I look like? 411? You got your orders. Now just follow them!”

  Twelve hours later, Chino found himself sitting in a small, dilapidated, narrow airline seat that had been condemned for years and hastily bolted to the floor aboard a charter aircraft belonging to a CIA dummy company with the dubious name of PleasureCraft, Inc. Also, he had in his possession a new passport (the process taking only two hours from photo shoot to finish), a new identity, and Colombian currency worth a hundred dollars American in his pocket. At the least, if he knew nothing else about this mission, he had a fair inkling as to his general destination.

  The airplane jounced and bounced as it held a southerly heading. The engines purred loudly, drowning out any attempt to carry on a decent conversation, if he had cared to talk to anyone, which he decidedly did not. The whole plane rattled, groaned, and quaked with each bump, and Chino had the impression that it was literally trying to shake itself apart. That, too, and the fact that the pilot seemed to enjoy hitting every “pothole” in the sky. He looked around to see if he could locate a parachute and saw that none were readily available. He noted that his five companions chosen for the ride also exhibited white or green complexions from fear, airsickness, or a combination of both, while they held on to anything around them for dear life. Actually, Chino was enjoying himself. It reminded him of the old days when he was wore a uniform. The uniform did not mean much; it was interchangeable, just like the loyalties of his government. One day he could be fighting for the good ol’ U.S. of A., the next for the rebel factions or the foreign government they were contesting for political control. It all depended on the poker hands played for high stakes, financial as well as political, by the power brokers at the highest levels of his government. He had not really cared which way the wind blew during those days, as long as he had a weapon and the authorization to kill. Of course, there was one drawback that he had not particularly liked that came with his line of work: parachuting out of a perfectly good airplane. If there ever were a chance that he could become seriously hurt or injured during an operation, he always believed that it would be from floating down to Earth at a high rate of speed into dense vegetation and its hidden dangers, such as rocks, gullies, or the occasional dead tree limb thirstily waiting for a piece of meat to pierce through. He pulled down the brim of his oversized hat, adjusted his seatbelt a little tighter, and began to doze.

  Someone jostled him awake. He almost attacked the man out of reflex and self-preservation. Had it not been for the restraining seat belt, he would have been all over the co-pilot.

  “Whoa! Whoa! Take it easy! I just wanted to tell you that we’ll be landing in about twenty minutes!” the man bent down and screamed into his right ear.

  “Thanks,” Chino yelled back, mixing in an apology with his tone. His mouth felt dry and cottony. He must have been sleeping with his mouth open again, he thought.

  He had been dreaming, but he did not know when he fell asleep or for how long he had been out. Worse, he could only remember snatches or fragments of the tangled images his relaxing brain had tried to weave together into some kind of cogent sequence or story. He felt that he had once again been involved in a firefight back in the jungles of Central America, but he could not determine the exact location. There were so many experiences and situations that his brain could have chosen from, some that came close to being his last, and others that were over in less than five minutes. The attack had been sudden, a surprise the attackers hoped would catch most of the defenders asleep or, at least, with their senses dulled by fatigue. He remembered flying off his cot with a weapon in hand already spitting bullets in every direction. The other peculiarity about the sequence was that he was fully dressed and ready for combat the moment his feet had hit the dirt. Then he did not fully know which side of the fight he was on, and it seemed to him that he was aiming at and killing indiscriminately anything that moved within his sight. If anything disturbed him about the dream it was the fact that he was enjoying himself immensely amidst the carnage and the explosions chaotically erupting all around him, particularly as bodies were ripped apart by shards of metal screaming like enraged banshees across the compound. Then it was suddenly over, and he was the last man covered with gore, standing on a pile of bodies that had been stacked up like cordwood ten feet high, howling at the sky in exultation.

  Am I really such a blood thirsty killer? he asked himself with some concern.

  The plane “landed” a couple of times by bouncing up and down on a level, dirt runway with jarring reality. Chino was tempted to pass along a little advice to the pilot after the man finally brought the craft to a halt so he could deplane: not to quit his day job until he had a couple hundred more flying hours in flight school under the expert guidance of an experienced instructor under his belt. He never had the chance to meet the pilot in the long run, for when the hatch was opened, three Latinos wi
th gorilla-like physiques dressed in tan shorts, flower print short-sleeved shirts, and knee socks, boarded the aircraft with AK-47’s strung over their back and started barking orders for everyone to leave the plane. As Chino passed by them, he noted that they were not only profusely sweating but also smelled like they had not seen a bath in at least a week. Then the hot, sultry tropical air hit him and took his breath away. The overly bright sunlight unblocked by haze or clouds partially blinded him, and he almost stumbled down the aircraft stairs.

  “Into the truck,” one of the men ordered gruffly. The truck turned out to be an old beat-up pickup with upright wooden slats added to the bed to stabilize large loads. Chino descended the steep ladder attached to the plane and started for the vehicle, his legs a little unsteady from the jolting flight.

  “Hey!” one of the apes yelled down at him. He had just the presence of mind to catch his backpack as it was flung down to him.

  He gingerly climbed aboard the bed of the truck. The metal deck was already baking, and he pulled back his palms after gaining the bed, rubbing them against his pants. He decided to sit on his backpack as a cushion between the blistering metal and his buttocks. Then he leaned back against one of the wooden slats and watched the other five passengers climb aboard. He could have warned them about the danger, but then he decided, Why bother? He neither knew any of them nor owed them anything. They meant nothing to him. Just more meat for the jungle to eat, he thought pessimistically as he turned his eyes towards the scenery.

  The truck started up with a roar and a loud burping emission of a large cloud of blue gas from the tailpipe. Then jerkily, the driver pulled away from the airplane and headed for the only dirt access road to the makeshift runway. The jungle soon swallowed them up, and as the road swerved to the right, the aircraft as well as the runway were lost to sight. Chino breathed in the familiar scents of the foliage: one jungle smelled pretty much like any other jungle. He and his unhappy companions rode in silence for about thirty minutes until they entered a small village where the driver parked in front of the largest of the wood huts with thatched roofs and shut off the engine.