April Smith - Judas Horse

When the service of the warrant and the assault begin, Sara and McCord are still in the barn.

“This is an ice boot.” He secures the neoprene wrap around Geronimo’s leg. “You keep it in the freezer, then it goes on the swelling.” Sara kneels beside him in the straw. “How come you know everything?”

“Because I care. I make it my business. Just like I care about you and your welfare.” “You do?”

“You’re a good kid. Just in with the wrong folks.”

She glances furtively toward the house. “Something’s going on.”

“All right.”

“I don’t understand it. This morning, Slammer disappeared without telling me where he was going.” Sirocco is pawing and pulling violently on the cross ties. The baby’s ears are up. Alerted, McCord glances through the open barn doors.

“Get out, now, ” he says and hauls Sara to her feet.

They reach the yard as the surveillance helicopter breaks over the trees. McCord has only time to grab an aluminum suitcase from the Silverado before pushing Sara through the back door and into the kitchen, where all of us are craning to look through the windows.

“Who is it?”

“FBI,” McCord tells Stone.

“Bitch!” he shouts, and backhands me across the face. I reel against the sink as red drops from a split lip find the drain.

McCord: “What’s that about?”

“She’s a fed,” Sara announces breathlessly.

Pressing my hand to my mouth, I see Sterling McCord make an adjustment. He straightens his back and regards me in a different way, as if an entire sequence has locked into place for him.

“In that case, we use her as a bargaining chip. They’ll attempt to negotiate.” “I know exactly what they’ll do,” growls Stone.

Sara goes spacey and begins to wander off, but Megan pulls her back. “Stay away from the windows.” McCord: “You two go down to the basement.”

“What about you?” Sara cries.

“We’re going to talk to the feds,” replies McCord.

“Like fuck we are,” says Stone. “And who the fuck are you?”

McCord shows his palms in deference. “Your house, your call. But can we agree to get the women out of the line of fire?” “Except Ana Grey.”

McCord, bemused: “Is that your real name?”

I nod yes.

The helicopter swoops low and deafeningly loud, most likely checking our positions with infrared devices. They’ve already got a pretty good picture from listening in on Stone’s surveillance system. When the chopper fades, an amplified voice from somewhere out there begins calling us out.

“This is Deputy Director Peter Abbott with the FBI. We have a warrant to search the premises. Please come out with your hands up.” None of us in the kitchen moves. Stone is leaning against the counter, head down, staring at his bare crossed ankles.

“They sent the brass,” he says sarcastically.

“Megan Tewksbury? Laurel Williams?”

Megan startles, as if hit with a cattle prod. “What the hell?”

“I believe you’re innocent. I know you’ve been coerced. This is a dead end. Don’t put your life in danger.” Her eyes go wild. “Why me?”

“They’re trying to drive a wedge,” I say.

“If I go out there, they’ll shoot me.”

“No, they won’t,” says McCord. “They want you out of here. One less potential casualty.” “Megan, Laurel, step outside the door.”

Megan is red-faced, confused as a girl. “What should I do?”

Stone says, “Go on.”

“Without you?”

“All I’ve ever done is bring you down. They’ll cut you a deal. Sara, too.” Sara has begun to quiver.

McCord says, “Go ahead. You’ll be safe, little girl.”

Megan extends her hand and Sara takes it.

“You stay here,” Stone tells me, unholstering his gun.

Megan and Sara, holding hands, walk awkwardly to the front door. Megan glances back at us, then opens it a slice. Somewhere out there is the supreme warrior-bureaucrat, the man who took away her freedom, offering it back.

“What do you want?” Megan shouts.

“I promise you safe passage. We don’t want you to get hurt. Tell Dick Stone to let you go.” “I am my own person!” Megan declares melodramatically. “I am free to go or stay. I have someone else with me. A girl. Sara.” “Good. Where is Agent Grey? Is she hurt?”

“She’s in the kitchen. She’s fine.”

“You and Sara come out now. Everything will be okay.” We cannot see what Megan sees through the crack of the door, but I doubt it is the guns that frighten her. Or the aftermath of surrender, too unimaginable to grasp. She hesitates on the threshold between two men, two lives, and maybe it’s the distance that decides it — not more than fifty yards from the porch to the road, but a still, wavering sunlit space of almost four decades too charged with passion to be dismissed in a banal gesture. Megan slams the door and locks it. Dragging Sara, she hurtles back through the dining room to the kitchen and stands before Dick Stone, who opens his arms and takes her in.

With a sigh, the refrigerator shuts down.

Stone tries the stove. No electric click. The faucets spew air.

“They cut the water and power.” He picks up the receiver. “But not the phone.” When night falls we will be trapped in darkness, while they will follow every move with night-vision. They have the jump, and he knows it. All that firepower, but all they have to do is wait — days, months — who cares? Why provoke a siege? When dehydration and the stink of our own filth have fully driven us insane, they can simply pluck us out of here.

Megan and Sara are down in the basement with the cats, while Stone, McCord, and I sit around a table littered with cereal bowls and used cups as the kitchen warms to medium rare in the midday sun. Already we look like renegades, haggard and rank. Sometime after noon, an armored robotic vehicle crawls across the yard and delivers a throw phone to the front steps.

“All we’re asking is to talk,” says a new voice on the bullhorn. “Please open the door and take the phone. We guarantee your safety.” Through a swollen lip, I offer to open the door and retrieve the phone.

“You know what this will become,” says Stone. “A slow, protracted crisis-negotiator scenario.” “What’s the alternative?”

In answer, McCord slaps the battered aluminum suitcase down on the table.

“They send in counterterrorist assault teams trained for close combat,” he says. “They move fast and use extreme violence. They know it’s just you and me. For them, it’s a walk in the park.” McCord unsnaps the suitcase and opens the lid. Stone and I both gasp. The case is custom-fitted with a collection of handmade weapons I have never seen before except in kung-fu movies: double-bladed knives, with one curved blade and one straight; throwing stars like giant jacks with lethal barbs, meant to blind an enemy in pursuit; miniature razor-sharp scythes.

Stone has his arms crossed and is chuckling again.

“Special Ops?”

“Delta Force. Now I do it for money.”

It is my turn to reel, unable to make sense of it. “You’re a mercenary?” “We don’t particularly like that word. I am a soldier for hire by a private military company. Outsourcing, ma’am. We run every war that’s taking place in the world right now.” “Were you in Pakistan? I’ve seen those there,” muses Stone, pointing to a machete with a rawhide-laced grip.

“Peshawar.”

“I was, too. Many years ago.”

“We must have people in common.”

“Are you two going to start exchanging recipes now?” I say sardonically.

“What’s your problem, Ana Grey?” Stone loves to taunt me with the name.