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Authors: Jon Land

BOOK: Dead Simple
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Buck pulled himself under the tanker, toward the cab. He could feel his wounded side stiffening, to add to the problem of his hobbled leg. He’d have to stand up when he reached the cab, and the prospect of that scared him as much as anything until he heard the enemy approaching.
 
“
O
thell!” yelled Tyrell. “Othell, get the fuck up here!”
“Holy shit,” Vance muttered when he drew even with Tyrell, finding himself facing the tanker of Devil’s Brew that had been missing for seven months now.
“This is it, isn’t it?”
Vance couldn’t believe his eyes. “I don’t believe …”
“Mary found it. She was right all along, right up until the end.”
Tyrell moved on ahead, Tremble and Othell Vance just behind him. Suddenly Othell stopped, sniffing the air.
“Jesus, Jackie, I think I smell—”
A figure shifted in the darkness on the far side of the tanker, its faint outline just out of range of Tyrell’s flashlight. A glimpse was all he needed to raise his pistol and aim. In that instant he wanted more than anything to kill the man who had shot his Mary, so much so that he failed to hear Othell’s desperate shout of warning.
“Nooooooooooooooooo!”
Jackie Terror’s bullets ignited the gasoline still soaking into the ground, and instantly raging flames surrounded him. Tremble screamed, lurching back from the same kind of fire that had stolen his face. Still wailing, he whirled wildly through the mine, slapping at himself to make sure none of the flames had gotten him this time.
Jack Tyrell could feel their heat licking at his skin, trapped in the middle and not caring in the least, because Mary’s killer was burning up before him. Snared by one of his bullets and now turning into a charred husk on the mine floor as Jackie watched.
It didn’t bother him that he himself was going to die. He was ready, certain Mary would be waiting on the other side.
Then, suddenly, the tanker rumbled, and a white frosty mist sprayed out from nozzles hidden all along its sides. Tyrell stood stark still and the mist enveloped him, chasing the flames away with its cold, smothering them. It felt like ocean spray on his skin, and he watched while the raging fire shrank away to nothing.
“Jackie!” Othell Vance called, advancing toward him tentatively across the scorched ground. “Jackie, you all right?”
Tyrell’s eyes were locked on the tanker. The fire-extinguishing spray coated it in a thin blanket of white. Made it look so pristine, he could almost forget the tanker was carrying the deadliest explosive known to man.
He turned to Vance. “We got work to do, Othell.”
L
iz held the wheeled carriage called a limber steady while Blaine worked the doubled-over bobby pin into place, attaching the crank to the Gatling gun’s shaft. This time, when he turned the handle crank on the gun’s right-hand side, an audible
click
sounded, indicating it was now ready to fire. Prior to being exhibited, the gun had obviously been restored to prime condition. Now, once he began turning the handle again, gravity would feed the bullets into the firing chamber, the gun firing as fast as he could churn. Its weight was balanced in the rear by a long wooden trail attached to the limber. The quickest way to rotate the gun would be to hoist the trail up, and Liz positioned herself behind Blaine in case that became necessary.
They were ready when the first of the gunmen crashed through the double doors. Blaine started turning the handle, and the Gatling’s six barrels spun in a smooth rhythm, belching smoke and fire with each shell, clacking in a loud staccato. The first two gunmen through the door never knew what hit them, while the next pair managed to slide belly-down across the floor, searching futilely for cover as they tried to steady their weapons.
Blaine rotated the limber slightly to trace them with the Gatling’s fire, his hand never leaving the handle. Wax dummies, glass display cases, and their contents fell to his onslaught as he sought a bead on the remaining gunmen by shifting the heavy gun to the right with Liz’s help behind him.
The two who had scampered off that way opened up with submachine guns. Without sufficient cover, though, they were no match for the old rimfire cartridges, which spilled the men over one at a time. And none too soon, as Blaine’s next churn coughed the jerry-rigged bobby pin out of the shaft, the crank going limp in his grasp.
McCracken took his hand off the crank and was turning toward Liz when a man shaped like a fireplug hurtled over the escalator rail and grabbed her in a single motion. He yanked her brutally backward and pressed a pistol against her head.
“Don’t!” Blaine ordered, turning the Gatling on the man and thrusting his hand back onto the crank, hoping the ruse would work. He still had a third of the magazine showing, enough to be intimidating.
The man smiled and drew Liz closer against him. She looked weightless in his bulky arms. “I been waiting for this kind of opportunity for a long time. Something certain to drive my price up.”
“I know you?”
“No, but I know
you.”
The man’s squat, muscular shape was further exaggerated by his bulbous neck and military crew cut. “Name’s Dobbler.”
“You working for Rentz?”
“He pays pretty well.”
Blaine kept his hand steady. “He pay you enough to die?”
“I see that crank start to move again, I’ll kill her, McCracken.”
“Let her go, Dobbler, and you can spend what you’ve earned so far.”
“Step away from the gun, and I let her go, McCracken. Leave this between just you and me.”
Blaine met Liz’s gaze and for an instant saw Buck Torrey’s eyes look back, telling him she was ready.
“You said you knew me.”
“That’s right.”
“Not very well, apparently.” And Blaine made sure Dobbler could see his hand tighten on the Gatling’s handle.
Something changed in Dobbler’s expression, his focus redirected in the moment before Liz slammed her heel down on the instep of his nearest foot. He howled in pain and lashed her across the head with his pistol. Liz crumpled, as Blaine lifted the trail and shoved the wheeled carriage forward fast across the freshly waxed floor.
The Gatling gun was upon Dobbler before he could resteady his pistol on McCracken. His eyes bulged when Blaine rammed the barrel into his midsection and drove him backwards. Dobbler’s back crashed through a glass display case, sending a host of Civil War saber swords tumbling to the floor. His gun dropped and skittered across the tile, as he fought for his footing and his breath.
The sudden burst of motion, though, had weakened one of the carriage’s wheels enough for impact to strip it off. The entire carriage toppled and
the clamoring Gatling staggered McCracken, freeing Dobbler to burst through the jagged remnants of the display case’s glass.
Sneering, Dobbler grabbed a shiny saber off the floor. Blaine snatched a similar sword, which had fallen between the trail and the spilled Gatling, in time to block Dobbler’s furious downward stroke and throw him off balance.
Blaine pushed Dobbler away and shoved him backwards. They faced off against each other blade-to-blade, tips crossed as Dobbler sidestepped. He kept his legs close together, feigning lunge after lunge to gauge McCracken’s reaction.
Blaine missed with a swipe, slicing the head off a mannequin outfitted as a Union sergeant. He darted behind it as Dobbler lurched out with a thrust, the mannequin’s midsection taking the impact instead of Blaine’s own. Dobbler yanked the blade out before Blaine could move on him again, sweeping it around instantly in a long cutting motion. The blow at first appeared lumbering and awkward, but it picked up deadly speed after it crossed the midpoint of its diagonal slice. Blaine just managed to dodge sideways and deflected it with his own blade, trying a counter which Dobbler blocked effortlessly.
The two men pirouetted across the room, twisting and turning. Blaine assumed Dobbler’s men must have disabled the museum’s nighttime security force and disconnected the security system while they’d been waiting upstairs, meaning no help would be coming from either quarter.
Blaine ducked under Dobbler’s next strike, and a painting brilliantly recreating a Northern field hospital was lost to his slice. Dobbler twisted inside Blaine’s retaliatory thrust, toppling a glass display case full of letters home from Southern soldiers. Blaine surged over the shattered glass, feeling it crunch underfoot, but Dobbler parried a quick pair of McCracken’s blows, which left the two men locked up at the hilt. Eye-to-eye now, both searched for the slightest opening that would end one of their lives.
Dobbler whirled away and Blaine darted sideways to follow him, nearly blinded by one of several spotlights aimed at a collection of interconnected paintings making up a wall mural on the foyer’s western side. He pretended to slip, drawing Dobbler toward him to launch an expected diagonal slice for his throat.
Blaine waited until the last possible instant before knocking it aside, darting in at Dobbler to force him to turn into the spotlight’s spill. Blinded for an instant, the smaller man’s eyes narrowed, and Blaine thrust his saber out low and hard, the blade digging deep into the fleshy part of Dobbler’s thigh.
Dobbler screeched in agony and tried to lash an overhead slice downward, slipping as the blood gushed out from his leg wound. Blaine twisted to avoid the strike and thrust his blade through Dobbler’s shoulder. The
razor-sharp tip shredded flesh and muscle. Blaine felt it nick some bone as he pushed harder on the sword and shoved Dobbler backward.
The blade emerged through the back of his shoulder and embedded itself into the wall. Dobbler tried once to pull free and wailed horribly, pinned to the paneling.
His screams were still echoing through the third floor of the museum when Blaine reached Liz.
“Are you all right?” Blaine asked.
She sat up woozily with his help. “I … think so,” she managed. She had a nasty gash across the side of her head, near the temple. Blood dripped from it down her cheek.
Blaine eased her upright, supporting her weight. “Lean against me. We’re getting out of here.”
He retrieved Dobbler’s pistol from the floor and held it in his free hand as they retreated out the shattered white doors and retraced their steps through the “We the People” exhibit. Liz recovered quickly and was walking almost on her own by the time they reached an emergency exit. She needed only minimal support to manage the flights of stairs down to the ground floor. Blaine quickly found a door leading back outside and tensed briefly before bursting out into the night on the Fourteenth Street side of the building.
“The van,” Liz remembered.
McCracken jammed the pistol into his belt. “Never mind. We’ll find another vehicle and—”
“Don’t move!” a voice blared from behind them, emerging from a nest of bushes. “Don’t turn around!”
Blaine and Liz froze.
“Drop the gun!”
Blaine lifted Dobbler’s pistol lightly from his belt and let it plop to the soft ground.
“Now turn around. Slowly. Both of you.”
They swung together, eyes widening at the sight of the figure holding an ancient Colt .44-caliber, single-action percussion revolver in his hand.
It couldn’t be!
Blaine recognized the figure’s thick handlebar mustache and deep-set brooding eyes from Liz’s description of the ghostlike specter who had watched them from the hillside, the same face he had seen later on a picture in the Central Reading Room of the National Archives.
It was Colonel William Henry Stratton!
B
y late afternoon the lure of the bottle had beckoned Will Thatch from inside the cheap motel room. He sat wearing his t-shirt, the one suit he still owned laid neatly across the room’s single bed, the darkness broken only by the splotchy flashing of a neon sign missing half its bulbs.
God, he needed a drink.
He had returned to Huggins’ office and taken up residence behind his desk at his keyboard, Will’s files on Jack Tyrell’s former soldiers pulled from his mind instead of his memory wall. It was time to find out where the former soldiers of Midnight Run were and who among them Tyrell might already have contacted. Will had committed twenty-six names to memory long before, for which he was able to track down eighteen firm addresses. Of these an even dozen could not be found. They had quit their jobs suddenly according to their bosses; or abandoned their apartments according to their landlords; had their phones disconnected or simply weren’t around to answer.
They were disappearing, and it had started
four weeks ago
, right after the funeral that had cost four men their lives in a New Jersey cemetery.
Jack Tyrell was putting his Midnight Run crew back together, the most lunatic of the lunatic fringe, by Will’s reckoning. Those who had stewed in the underground or rotted away in prison for a while, along with a few others, who had managed to slide into normal lives they were ready to
abandon in an instant. And that didn’t even account for the fugitives society—and Will—had long lost track of.
The list lay before Will on the motel room table, aglow every time the sign flashed. He buried his face in his hands, traced each wrinkle and furrow as if he were following a map. Sooner or later some authentic FBI agent would realize who they were dealing with here, but Jack Tyrell wasn’t a name that leaped to mind anymore. For now, the truth lay solely with Will Thatch, and he had no plans to disclose it just yet, not until he took a crack at picking up Tyrell’s trail by himself.
But how? He had nothing to go on, besides the cold certainty that Tyrell had a lot of catching up to do and had a plan to manage just that.
It had come to Will in the early hours of the evening. Huggins thought he was crazy when he laid it out.
“You want
what
?”
Will repeated himself authoritatively.
“Why don’t you just get it from your own people?”
“Because the information I want only goes back two days, to the massacre. Local authorities—highway patrols and state police especially—will have much more complete reports that won’t have reached Washington databases yet.”
“That’s gonna take some time,” Huggins sighed.
“I can wait,” Will had said.
The waiting would have been easier with a bottle. Will sat at the table long past sunset, imagining those first sips going hot down his throat, warming his insides. To still the trembling and the fear. Take hold of the memories and blur them a bit so the edges wouldn’t be sharp enough to cut.
One bottle would take care of things. Oh yeah, just fine.
Will gazed at the phone instead, thinking of all the times over the years he’d dialed up the family the booze had stolen from him. Never said a word. Just listened to the voice and then the click. Eventually the numbers got changed.
Occasionally, when Bob Snelling tracked them down again for him, Will would dial up the new numbers. Or take a rental car out to one of his grown-up kids’ homes, hoping to steal a look at his grandchildren. He never stayed long enough, though, seldom even stopped the car. Just cruised up and down the street a dozen or so times before driving off, hoping no one had seen him.
Maybe he should give Bob Snelling another call. Get the latest names and addresses, so he could tell his wife and kids what he was doing.
He had actually started to reach for the receiver, when the phone rang.
 
D
etective Huggins hadn’t been happy about meeting Will Thatch in his office at such a late hour. To his credit, the detective had assembled on a
single disk all the crime reports from a dozen states that had occurred over the past forty-eight hours since the massacre at the Akron, Ohio, police station.
Thatch sorted all the domestic-type and petty crimes first and deleted them. He was looking for the kind of crimes Jack Tyrell and his soldiers had been known for the last time they’d made their presence known: unexplained disappearances, missing persons reports, kidnappings.
In the end, Will was left with three reported incidents that fit Tyrell and his people to a T:
The family of four whose Winnebago had been used to smash through the Akron, Ohio, jail were found dumped off the road just outside Cleveland.
Two trucks carrying circus animals had been commandeered, the animals released and the drivers forced to walk through the outskirts of Pittsburgh in bare feet, chained to each other.
A pair of girls driving back to college from spring break had been reported missing in central Pennsylvania. Girls meeting that description had last been seen yesterday struggling to change a tire on their GMC Jimmy. The Jimmy was missing too.
Three incidents that were right chronologically as well as geographically, occurring over a twenty-four-hour period. Will imagined Jack Tyrell heading southeast from Ohio. Continuing the same line in his mind, he found no other police reports that fit Tyrell’s style at all. So with any luck at all, he hadn’t left central Pennsylvania yet.
And with a little more, Tyrell would still be there when Will Thatch arrived.

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