April Smith - Judas Horse

I stare hard at McCord. “I don’t like being lied to is all.”

Stone guffaws and the so-called cowboy hides a smile. I am furious with the pretender, and the attraction that I felt for him, but why should it matter? He is just another player in this depressing endgame.

“You’re a hired killer!”

“First of all, I never fight for Communists,” McCord explains pleasantly. “Second, it’s not like being a hired gun in the Old West. Some guys are trigger-happy, but they don’t last. The long-timers know how to protect the client’s interests without the use of force. There’s always the fine art of negotiation. But I wasn’t lying to you, ma’am.” “How is that ?”

“I believe I did say that I am a professional wrangler. I was raised with cutting horses in Kerrville, Texas. And that’s the truth.” “Meaning what?”

He shrugs. “Nothing to hide is all.”

“You can hide in plain sight,” I snap.

“This is the FBI. Please take the phone into the house. It is very important that we contact former agent Dick Stone.” Stone has been sitting calmly, hands on knees.

“I’ve decided to talk to them. I have only one demand. If they give me what I want, this will resolve. If they don’t, this will be the worst day in the history of the FBI.” That’s what David Koresh said before the siege at Waco. And he was right.

“You,” orders Stone. “Miss Secret Agent. Get on the phone.”

McCord: “What do you want me to do?”

“Hang tight. There will be compensation.”

Without a flicker, McCord says, “Good enough,” and snaps the suitcase shut.

Stone stays close as I call 911 on the house phone and ask to be connected to the sheriff’s department.

“This is Special Agent Ana Grey with the FBI. I’m inside the farmhouse.” “How many with you? Is anyone hurt?”

“We demand to talk to the lead negotiator.” I hold Stone’s shrunken red eyes and repeat his message word for word: “No lackey Bureau assholes. I will open the door and pick up the phone. That’s all.” We go to the front of the house. Using my body as a shield, Stone crooks a forearm tightly around my throat while holding the Colt.45 to my head. I try to stay loose, a compliant dance with his. I reach for the knob and open the door. Outside, the wide world shouts. A quick scan reveals no snipers; they are hidden on higher ground. Afternoon heat hits our faces as we bend together, and my hands reach out to pick up the phone.

We retreat and slam the door.

No shots are fired.

Then he brings Megan and Sara up from the basement and orders me to help them prepare for evacuation.

We pull everything out of the front closet, dragging the vacuum cleaner and its attachments, and all the attachments from the previous vacuum cleaners, too, the unstrung tennis rackets and stiff yellow rain suits, and toss them out of the way. Megan insists on sweeping the floor, painstakingly digging a mouse corpse out of the corner.

All that’s left is the naked closet — wire hooks and pegs, a single lightbulb on an old chain fixture — and the painted-over inner door: the one I discovered while searching for the gun that killed Mackee.

Megan runs upstairs and returns with several backpacks already loaded for an emergency getaway.

Sara is trembling. “I don’t want to go.”

The two anguished women stare at each other and embrace.

“We can’t leave the animals,” Megan says, sobbing along with her. “Geronimo is just a baby.” “We don’t have to!” Sara cries. “We don’t have to go! We can make it a condition. They have to take care of the animals, and then we’ll surrender.” Megan and Sara are clinging to each other, keening like widows.

I crawl inside the closet. The painted seal is already breeched. The inner door has recently been chiseled open.

McCord is suddenly crouched behind me. “What is it?”

“It’s a tunnel. Stone’s secret escape route.”

How he avoided the cameras. How he spirited Slammer and the goons away.

I push on the hobbit-size door. Doom. It is doom to look through such an opening into absolute darkness. Nobody should do it. Nobody should have to look. A draft of cold, unworldly air unwinds through the overheated closet, as if the house had been waiting to release its death rattle.

“Listen to me, Ana,” McCord whispers urgently, close to my ear. “We’re both on the same side.” I turn to him, annoyed. “Are you a merc? Or what?”

“I am a contract soldier for a private military company based in London. We don’t just fight wars”—he sneaks a backward look through the door—“we protect private interests. We find people. Like Sara Campbell.” “Sara?”

“The girl has run away a dozen times. I was hired by her parents to find her and bring her home.” “She says she comes from ‘dirt.’”

“Well, it’s pretty rich manure. Her dad is president of an oil company. We provide protection for American executives in Saudi Arabia; that’s how he got to me.” “Does she know?”

He shakes his head. “I’ve been easing in gently. Working from the edges.” “When you showed up at the BLM corrals and at the shooting range — you weren’t following me; you were tracking Sara.” “I thought she’d show up at the protest.” He smiles. “But it was no hardship running into you.” “That’s why you gave her the foal.”

“Workin’ on trust. She’s bolted before. She’s tried suicide. The parents and the shrink all said to go slow.” I glance back through the open closet door. The hallway is empty.

“Sterling,” I whisper. “We can take Dick Stone down. You have his trust. Your weapons are right there in the kitchen.” “Not my job.”

“Then I’ll do it.”

“Can’t let you.” He restrains my arm. “I was hired to protect the girl. If things go south, she’ll be put in harm’s way.” “Are you crazy? This place will blow any minute. If Stone is dead, the game ends and nobody else gets hurt.” “I won’t risk it.”

“You are a royal pain.”

“Just so you know, when it comes down, I will get Sara out.” “All right,” I hiss. “The sewing room is the designated safe room. The rescue team will deploy through the screened-in porch.” We crab-crawl backward out the closet door.

Stone is shouting into the secure phone, “Nothing changes with you people. Listen to what I say. I want it printed in every newspaper. I want it read on TV. My true manifesto! The truth of what the American people need to know about the fascist abuses of the FBI. I have it all right here.” Megan and Sara enter the kitchen, tear-stained, clutching the dusty emergency backpacks. McCord is plucking weapons from the suitcase of horrors.

Megan says, “Are we out of here?” as Sara shouts, “Oh no!”

Through the window we can see the small white horse has wandered from the barn. He is thirty yards from the house, tearing the leaves off tomato plants.

“Screw me. We left the damn stall door open,” says McCord.

“What about Sirocco?”

“She’s still tied.”

Megan is transfixed by the stranded foal. “The baby.” She drops the backpack.

“Leave him be,” warns McCord. “He’s fine where he is.”

Dick Stone slams down the phone. “Lying bastards.”

With a high, piercing whistle, the window implodes, and flash-bangs pop all around. The acrid choke of tear gas sends us crawling from the room.

I push Sara into McCord’s arms. She is stunned, resisting.

I’m screaming, “The safe room!” but they can’t hear me, and I can’t see through swollen eyes.

More shrill canisters. More lightning bangs.