Mike Lawson - Dead on Arrival

Yes, it was a pretty simple plan: one killer after another falling over like a row of dominoes. However, neither Emma nor DeMarco thought it was going to be easy. And something that neither of them said out loud was that keeping Pugh alive wasn’t as impor tant as catching the person who tried to kill him — or succeeded in killing him.

DeMarco had never been involved in anything resembling a military operation, but he was involved in one now. And Emma was the general.

The same day Patsy Hall mailed the photo to Oliver Lincoln, DeMarco, Emma, and four men arrived in Victor, Montana. The four men were ex-military, men that Emma knew, and they were professional bodyguards. Usually their clients were celebrities worried about lovesick stalkers or wealthy people visiting countries where kidnapping was a cottage industry.

Emma introduced the men to DeMarco as Bob, Stan, Harry, and Stew. They didn’t look alike, yet at the same time they did. Stan and Stew were both short and stocky and had weight lifter’s muscles. Bob was tall and rangy and bald. And Harry was just sort of average — average height, average build. The thing that made the men look alike was their eyes, eyes that said they’d been to hell and back when they’d worked for Uncle — and they weren’t afraid to make the trip again.

And Emma’s guys came well equipped. They had binoculars and night-vision goggles and.22-caliber pistols machined for silencers. They had sniper’s rifles and radios and bulletproof vests. They were a mini-militia; they were ready for anything.

Patsy Hall had told Pugh to tell Lincoln to send the four million to a post office box in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in two weeks. Jubal had asked why she wanted to give Lincoln so much time and she explained that Lincoln would need that long to round up the money. She didn’t tell him the real reason was so Lincoln would have time to plan Pugh’s murder. Hall would then pick up the cash, telling Jubal it would be best if she made the pickup because (a) she was a trained government agent and (b) Lincoln had never seen her. Jubal, being the trusting guy that he was, wanted to know what was to keep Hall from absconding with his half of the money and leaving him to rot in Montana. Hall explained that if she did, all Jubal had to do was place an anonymous phone call to the DEA and tell them that a certain unpopular agent had suddenly become very rich.

Hall introduced Pugh to his security detail over the phone. She told him Stan was the man in charge as Emma figured that Jubal — being the redneck that he was — wouldn’t like it if a woman was responsible for his safety. So Pugh thought that four people were protecting him, not six; DeMarco and Emma stayed out of sight.

After four days of watching Pugh, DeMarco was about to go out of his mind from boredom and he had grooves in his hands, arms, and neck from scratching at bug bites. He didn’t know what kind of bugs they were, but they were vicious little bastards. But if sitting around doing nothing and getting eaten alive by insects bothered Stan and his crew, DeMarco couldn’t see it. These guys, you could drop them into a swamp at night and they’d stand there in the water, never moving, while leeches vacuumed out their blood.

DeMarco was teamed up with Stan and Harry; they had the day-shift watch, from six in the morning to six at night. Emma was on the back-shift watch with Bob and Stew, because she figured Lincoln’s assassin was more likely to come at night. When Jubal went to work at the scrap yard, they followed him then hung around all day while Jubal ripped parts off cars. DeMarco figured working in a scrap yard had to be a pretty boring job; it was definitely a boring job to watch.

After Jubal finished work, usually about four every day, he went to his favorite bar and drank beer for three hours, then went back to his trailer and drank more beer. Stan had instructed Jubal not to change his routine in any way. Emma had told Stan to tell Jubal this. She wanted to give Lincoln’s killer every opportunity.

Emma figured that the killer would watch Pugh for a couple of days, then break into his trailer at two or three in the morning and start ripping out his fingernails. He might try to snatch Pugh and take him someplace to talk, but it seemed more likely that the killer would take him at his home. Emma and her guys spent a lot of time looking for anybody who might be watching Pugh, but didn’t see anyone, and this Emma found disconcerting. Stan and his guys were too good to miss somebody following Pugh, and she started to wonder if Oliver Lincoln had decided he didn’t need to kill him.

Emma said later if they hadn’t all been sexists, including her, they never would have blown it the way they did.

On their eighth day in Montana, DeMarco sat with Stan in a clump of weeds on a small hill watching Jubal work in the junkyard. Stan, pro that he was, kept searching the surrounding area with his binocu lars, and every hour or so he’d talk to Harry on the radio to make sure nothing was happening on the side of the junkyard that Harry was watching. DeMarco mentioned to Stan that sitting in the weeds was maybe a good way to get bitten by a snake, which earned him a what-a-wuss look from Stan.

Jubal was currently taking the mirrors off three cars that had just been towed into the junkyard. DeMarco figured side-view mirrors were probably a pretty hot commodity in the junk business, as people were always ripping off their mirrors when they didn’t pay attention going in and out of their garages. At least that’s the way DeMarco had ripped the mirror off his car three months ago.

About 11:30 A.M., they saw Jubal wipe his hands off on a rag he kept in his back pocket and walk toward the main office to eat his lunch. Ten minutes later, a Ravalli County sheriff’s car drove into the junkyard. DeMarco figured the cops probably came to places like this fairly often to check on stolen cars being stripped for parts. He picked up his binoculars and looked at the cop. She was wearing a peaked hat, sunglasses, and a brown uniform. Around her waist was a wide black belt with all the usual cop stuff on it — handcuffs, radio, nightstick, Mace, and gun. DeMarco figured a skinny man, a man with no hips, would have a hell of a time keeping the belt from falling down around his ankles with all the crap there was on the belt. But this cop, she had nice hips. A nice ass too. She didn’t seem to be having any trouble keeping the belt up.

Fifteen minutes later the cop left.

DeMarco pulled a can of Coke out of his knapsack — he was getting pretty tired of drinking warm Coke — and checked his watch. ‘Looks like Jubal’s taking a long lunch break today,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ Stan said.

Yeah . DeMarco had tried talking to Stan but gave up after a couple of days. It was as if the guy was saving his voice for something; maybe he and his pals were some sort of lethal barbershop quartet.

Half an hour later, Stan said, ‘Something’s wrong here.’

‘What?’ DeMarco said. He’d just seen something that looked like a centipede, and he’d been checking the weeds to make sure there wasn’t another one around close enough to crawl up his pant leg.

‘I said, something’s wrong here,’ Stan said. ‘This guy’s never taken this long a lunch break before, and his boss, he’s always outside walkin’ around, doin’ something.’ Stan was silent a minute, then picked up his radio. ‘Harry,’ he said, ‘is everything okay on your side?’

‘Yeah, haven’t seen a thing. But why the hell is this guy still inside the office?’

‘I don’t know, but I don’t like it,’ Stan said. ‘I’m going down there.’

Emma, DeMarco, and Stan were standing in the parking lot of the motel where they were all staying. Harry was making a phone call.