Levon's Time Read online

  “You broke some kind of record, pogue,” Gunny Leffertz said.

  Levon turned at the voice coming from the dark, or as much as he could turn in the box they’d locked him in. Too short to stand. Too narrow to lie down. Too cold to sit after the sun went down. All he could do was crouch, naked and shivering in the frigid thermals dropping down from the ridgeline of the surrounding hills.

  “Not the first to get out of here, but the farthest. Long damned run. A lot longer than your first run. Remember that?”

  Levon nodded, remembering.

  “Made you a goddamned legend. Got your ass outta here the first night. Came back the next morning with huevos rancheros from Mike’s for all of us.”

  Gunny walked around the cage. Levon turned to keep an eye on him through the chicken wire walls.

  “Most pogues follow the path of least resistance. Follow Seventy-nine north. Head west for the beach, or south for Mexico. Found one fucker living in a dumpster behind Mike’s place. Living there!”

  The man crouched, a hand atop the cage, and leaned close to the wire.

  “You went straight up the side of a mountain, over the Coyotes, and crossed a fire road instead of following it. Went around the RV park at Borrego Springs and out into the desert.”

  Gunny tilted his head as though studying Levon’s face.

  “Made it all the way to the Salton Sea. Gone two weeks. Two goddamn weeks!”

  “My luck ran out, Gunny.” Levon spoke low, struggling not to betray that he was shivering.

  He’d been living on a boat behind a vacant vacation house in Bombay Beach along the Salton Sea. Survived off the food he found in chest freezers plugged in on back porches, and a vending machine he managed to pry open at the Ski Inn. He set some dogs to barking, and a neighbor called the highway patrol. They knew right away from his bleached white BDUs that he had come out of the training site at Warner Springs. Gunny Leffertz was there when they took him out of the prowl car, wrists and ankles flex-cuffed.

  “Welcome back to SERE, hillbilly.”

  Now he was on his second day and third night in the cage. Broil by day and freeze by night with a bottle of water and a HooAH! bar twice a day.

  “You gonna try to leave here again, pogue?” Gunny Leffertz asked. He plucked the wire with a callused finger, making it twang.

  “That’s my job, Gunny.”

  “You hate me, don’t you, pogue?”

  “You’re just doing your job, Gunny.”

  “Out there. Downrange. In the wicked world, there’s men might do worse to you. Worse’n me. You gonna hate them? They just doing their job?”

  Levon remained silent, eyes on his own reflection in the Gunny’s dark lenses.

  “You need to hate them. Have to hate them. Can’t kill a man you don’t hate. Can’t kill a fucker you don’t look down on. Kinda asshole that can kill without hate is worse’n an animal. But you have to hate smart. You know what I’m talking about?”

  “Get angry. Get stupid. Get killed, Gunny.”

  Gunny let out a dry chuckle.

  “You and me are gonna have breakfast together. Gonna talk about your future over biscuits and gravy.”

  In spite of himself, Levon’s mouth watered.

  “See you at sunrise, pogue,” Gunny said and rose to walk away into the greater dark.

  26

  “I need to piss,” Buey said.

  Tesoro nodded. He sat behind the wheel, eyes on the road and the driveway that led to the horse lady’s house.

  Buey stepped from the van to stretch before heading into the woods to pee. A movement in the corner of his eye made him turn. He tried to pull the handgun he kept tucked in the waistband of his jeans, but it snagged on the lining of his coat. The motion plucked the Glock from his fingers to spin away. He dropped to hands and knees to find it in dried leaves that carpeted the ground.

  The pressure on his bladder was urgent, but his need to find that gun was even more pressing. There were sounds of footfalls, something moving with great care through the woods above him. His hand found the pistol. He brought it up in the direction of the movement.

  A deer, a big eight-pointer, stood munching and eyeing Buey over the trembling front sights. His ears twitched forward. Body tensed to run. In the trees behind the buck, Buey could see more deer moving, does and fawns. The honking of the van’s horn scattered them. They vanished into the birches as if they were never there.

  “I still have to piss!” Buey shouted. He struggled to pull down his zipper, the Glock still in his fist. The horn honked again and he started, sending a yellow stream down one leg of his jeans. It splashed on the hand holding the pistol. Buey hissed and cursed and urged the urine from his body. The horn bleated behind him a third time. Jamming the damp pistol back in place, he hobbled back to the van and a cursing Tesoro.

  “The car! The Kia! It’s here!” Tesoro said and threw the van into gear. Buey was only halfway in when it took off, back wheels spraying dirt.

  Jessie brought the minivan to a slewing stop in front of the barn.

  She was out of it and racing. Somewhere a horn was honking. She threw the barn doors wide and ran to where Scarlett, a roan quarter horse mare stood in the corridor between the stables, cross-reined and ready to ride.

  Jessie undid the snaps keeping the animal in place and swung up on her back with a whispered apology for leaving her saddled so long. A little kick and a snap of the reins, and the mare bolted forward. Jessie ducked to clear the door and pressed with her left knee to turn the horse right.

  She twisted in the saddle to look back. That shitbox van was roaring up her driveway. Rooster-tails of dust rose behind it. Jessie bent low, her face pressed to the neck of the mare, her ears filled with her breathing.

  Scarlett was cantering for the trail that started at the opening in the back fence. She knew the path well since she’d been ridden along it a dozen times in the past month. She was boarding at Riverstone while her owners were away in Europe. Beyond her pasture time, either Jessie or Sandy got her out for exercise three or four times a week. To her, this was fun.

  Jessie gave the horse her head, and they raced from the paddock across the open pasture that skirted the wooded slope. It was only ten acres, and they would cross it in seconds. It still felt like a mile run, the shelter of the trees an impossible distance away.

  The van kept on, coming off the driveway with a bounce. The opening in the paddock fence was not quite wide enough. There was a shriek of metal as it squeezed between the stout upright posts, the ends of the cross rails leaving long gouges the length of the van.

  Slewing and swaying, the van came on across the pasture, rebuilding speed after the hitch at the fence opening. It was closing on the woman and the horse racing for the tree line. The horse was at a full gallop now. Clods of turf flew in the air behind her hooves. The van was close enough that one of the divots exploded across its windshield.

  And then they were into the trees, Scarlett powering up the slope to leave the van behind.

  Tesoro jerked to a stop and leapt from the van at the foot of the wooded hillside. He kicked at the dirt, then tore off his coat and threw it to the ground.

  Buey watched his cousin shake a fist and shout a stream of abuse and dire threats at the surrounding forest. Tesoro turned back to see a ragged furrow along the van’s side. A long strip of chrome trim swayed like a feeler. Buey was drying his Glock with his shirttail when Tesoro returned to the van to bang on the door.

  “We go back to the house!”

  “What for?”

  “To rob it! To burn it down! I do not know!”

  Tesoro circled the van back and paused while Buey walked backward through the fence opening, guiding him through the narrow gap. They parked between the barn and house, leaving the engine running.

  “I will look in the house. You search the car,” Tesoro said. He was on his way to the ranch house at a trot.

  “What do I look for?” Buey called to him.

 
“Clues! Evidence! Something to tell us where we might find the girl!”

  We are detectives now, Buey thought as he neared the Kia. I am Columbo or from CSI looking for fibers or a receipt. He wanted to ask more questions, but his cousin was not in the mood. He pulled the driver-side door open and was startled by a piercing squeal that turned into an insistent warble. It was painful, so he clapped hands over his ears and backed away from the minivan. The annoying sound continued. The car’s lights were flashing.

  He turned back to the house. Tesoro was running from the porch, stabbing a finger at their van and shouting. Buey removed a hand from one ear to hear what he was saying. Over his cousin’s unintelligible ranting, he could hear a new sound—the rising and falling wail of a siren coming from the house. Along with it was a basso Anglo male voice coming from loudspeakers. He could not understand the voice, but recognized the tone as “get the fuck out!”

  The cousins clambered into their ride and took off, leaving the cacophony from the house and car to echo up the holler.

  Jessie Hamer sat astride Scarlett and smiled as she tapped her cell phone. From the floor of the valley came the woop-woop, squee-squee of her house and car alarms, as well as the Sam Elliott voice informing any intruders that the police had been called, although they hadn’t. She’d stopped paying for the monthly service years before. She relied instead on the alarm to provide a wake-up and ten-second head start to retrieve the .38 she kept in a gun safe by her bed—the Smith & Wesson that now rested comfortably in the clamshell holster, snug in the small of her back.

  She pulled the reins and turned her mount to face the source of a huff and a grunt from the trail above. The soft thump of hooves reached her through the birches long before she could see the girls walking the horses in a row toward her. They were beaming as they joined her, their little adventure ending in victory.

  But that wasn’t the end of the adventure. They’d skunked the two hombres looking for Merry and Sandy’s little amiga. That didn’t mean they’d lost them forever.

  So now what?

  27

  The chokehold was strong but inexpert.

  Levon tucked his chin into the crook of a meaty arm furred with ginger hair, which kept the grip off his throat. It was the heavyset Euro with the red beard he’d seen earlier. The pressure on Levon’s jaw grew as the bigger man put his back into it.

  Levon pushed hard off a shower upright with both feet. This caused the man gripping him from behind to lose his footing on the soap-slick floor and they both crashed to the tiles, with Redbeard taking the brunt of it. Levon twisted to slam an elbow into the bigger man’s ribs. Three lightning jabs, and Redbeard released him with a grunt. Levon rolled off, only to spring back, driving the heel of one hand up under the man’s jaw. Redbeard’s shaven skull struck the tiles with a crack.

  Avoiding his grasping hands, Levon got a double grip on the man’s right wrist. He drove his slippered foot into the man’s throat, pressing down as he hyper-extended the captured arm. The bigger man flopped and twisted but couldn’t shake Levon off. A pinching grip on the ball of the man’s hand dislocated his thumb. Redbeard howled through clenched teeth, spittle spraying from his lips to fleck his beard with foam. His face turned crimson, then purple as Levon’s weight cut off his air supply. His tongue was blue and lashing out between gnashing teeth filmed with blood.

  The guy fought like a gaffed marlin until, starved for oxygen, his eyes turned red, the blood vessels bursting.

  Levon kept the pressure in place, sweeping his eyes around the half-circle of men standing in the warm mist and watching the action.

  One, an evil-looking man with stripes of raised scar tissue across his torso and arms, began to step forward from the group. A knife fighter. Levon caught the gleam of a needle-shaped blade in his fist, a homemade weapon of hammered spring steel with a duct-tape grip.

  Levon released Redbeard, unconscious, comatose, or worse, to lie lifeless in a spreading puddle of his own piss. He crouched to receive the first attack from the knife man. An older man, with a snow white mustache, took hold of the man’s knife arm.

  “Chay-chon,” the older guy said.

  The Chechen.

  The knife man stopped, eyeing Levon. Nodding once, he flicked his hand in a practiced move, and the blade vanished. The group broke up, returning to their showers.

  Levon walked to the partition door and shoved through the plastic strips. He was soaked to the skin, and his shirt was stuck to him under his coat. He exited into the morning light through the latrine exit. It was colder outside, and he held the coat closed tight around him. The guard outside turned to him with a question.

  “Diyare. Boklar,” Levon said with a grunt. The shits.

  The guard snorted and returned his attention to his cigarette.

  Levon went back to his cell and stripped off his wet clothing to rub himself down with his blanket. Wrapped in the blanket, he squatted over a drain in the floor to wring out his shirt and pants.

  “Murder looks like hard work,” Klaus said from where he leaned, arms folded, in the cell doorway.

  “They find the bodies?” Levon twisted the clothing in his hands. Water bled into the drain.

  “You went on a spree?”

  “It got complicated.”

  “There has been no alarm raised.”

  “There will be.”

  “All this for a coat and blanket?” Klaus asked.

  “Woher hast du deinen mantel und deine decke?” Levon asked.

  “Meine mutter.”

  “My mommy’s not here. I’m on my own.”

  There were shouts outside, but the growing clamor was cut short by orders shouted over the camp’s loudspeakers. Clubs hammered on the walls of the hut.

  “Hücrelerinize dönün!” Return to your cells.

  The rest of the men of Hut 14 shuffled inside, hurried along by curses and threats. The door was bolted and locked behind them. The men of Levon’s cell stepped into the cramped quarters, ignoring him as he hung his damp clothes from a wire stretched between the bunks.

  There was no afternoon meal that day. Klaus eyed Levon sullenly but said nothing.

  28

  “Why do you think you’re here, pogue?” Gunny Leffertz asked.

  “At SERE, Gunny?” Levon was wolfing down scrambled eggs, bacon, and biscuits and gravy. Gunny topped off Levon’s tumbler of fresh-squeezed orange juice before pouring himself a mug of coffee.

  “At SERE, sure. And Colombia. And sniper school at Pendleton. All your advanced weapons training. Why you?”

  “Uncle Sam always needs us big, dumb country boys, Gunny.”

  “That is right. You are right. The services always call on you rednecks, hicks, and hoopies. Between you and the Indians, that’s the backbone of this country’s fighting force. You know, if the general population signed on the dotted line at the rate the tribes do, we’d have never needed a draft? You serve with a few redskins, pogue?”

  “A few. A Pima helped me through jump school at Benning. You a country boy yourself, Gunny?”

  “Mississippi born and bred, pogue. The Marines get plenty of your kind. But not your quality.”

  “I think maybe this is where God wants me to be, Gunny.”

  “He sure built you for the mission. You sailed through boot like a trip to the state fair. Your intelligence tests, physical acuity, memory, and language abilities are among the highest on record. Tests prove you have an eidetic memory. You’d have crushed West Point and Annapolis if you’d been born anywhere else but Bumfuck, Alabama.”

  “I hated school, Gunny.”

  “Well, your ass is in the classroom now. You ever wonder what the end of the road looks like for you? What’s the end result here?”

  “God and the Marines have a plan for me, I guess, Gunny.”

  “You know what a hunter/killer is, pogue?”

  “I know a little. Special unit that hunts and kills terrorists. Delta. Phoenix. That kind of deal, Gunny?”

&n
bsp; “Right. But the program I’m part of has no name. We go by a prefix to a number assigned to each op.”

  “What’s the mission, Gunny?”

  “We kill…you kill…this country’s enemies.”

  “That’s what I signed up for. When do I start, Gunny?”

  “You’ve still got a ways to go, and things to learn. Finish your breakfast, and get a shower and some rack time. We’ll talk more later.” Gunny stood to leave.

  “Thank you, Gunny.”

  “You’re welcome, son. You’re welcome.”

  29

  Tesoro and Buey wound up in trouble with the cops anyway.

  Deputy Brandon “Brando” Sawtell sat in his county car and read off the license plate of the piece-of-shit Econoline he had pulled over onto the grassy verge of Hood Road.

  “Maryland. Tee-one-one. Bee-five-seven. Commercial van.”

  As he called in to dispatch, he was keeping an eye on the van. It was all banged up down either side, and the right rear light housing had been torn free. That was the proximate cause for his call-over. He was also entering the same info into the laptop mounted on the dash next to his shotgun. He was searching the JMD database for state or federal warrants.

  “Unit Bravo two-two?”

  Sounded like Bernice Tolliver on the horn this afternoon. She was a no-bullshit multiple grandma on her third husband. The ’bama drawl and two packs of Merits a day gave her voice a comforting authority.

  “Go ahead for two-two.”

  “That vehicle is registered to an Armand Peter Engstrom of Annapolis. There are no current warrants. Do you need further assistance?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt. This ride looks like it’s been through the wars.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Going to talk to the driver.”

  “Be careful, honey.”

  Brando watched the driver-side mirror as he approached the van. Light traffic on the two-lane for this time of day on a Saturday. Passing cars and pickups gave the county car and its quarry a wide berth. He could see the guy behind the wheel in the mirror, smiling as their eyes met. Smilers were trouble. Nodders were worse.