Scott Nicholson - Chronic fear

Roland moved between the trees, not bothering to muffle his footsteps. He didn’t look up, either, which meant Gundersson hadn’t been spotted.

He was in Gundersson’s line of sight now and headed toward a small clearing. Roland raised the pistol in front of him and moved aside a birch sapling. Gundersson calculated how long it would take to draw his Glock from his shoulder holster. Being in such an awkward position might slow him and it would be hard to do so silently.

“Do you see it, honey?” Wendy called from the porch.

“No,” he said. “You sure it was out this way?”

“It ran from behind the pen straight down that little trail.”

It. She’s calling it an “it.” Which means it isn’t me.

Still, Gundersson remained tensed and ready for action. Roland had a furtive aspect about him, as if he was enjoying the hunt.

The shrubs to Roland’s right exploded with motion and Roland raised the pistol, squeezing off three shots in rapid succession. The sudden thunder boomed across the hills. Gundersson had the impression of a sleek, dark animal bounding away, but it was the bushy red tail that helped him identify it.

A fox?

The animal couldn’t have been more than ten feet from Roland, which reassured Gundersson that the guy was too liberal to practice his marksmanship. The fox, instead of bolting deeper into the woods, took a detour and splashed up the creek. Roland fired one more wild shot, sending a ricochet off a rock that zizzed through the woods. The fox slowed and trotted up the creek about twenty more feet, almost taunting its attacker, and then vanished in a thick tangle of laurels.

Roland gave chase for about fifty yards, lost from Gundersson’s view but traceable by the commotion. Roland apparently gave up at that point and returned to the clearing, where he brushed twigs and leaves from his feet.

You have to admire the little critter. Even in danger, it still takes the time to double back and trick out its scent so it can’t be followed.

That was probably a good lesson for federal intel agents as well. Gundersson wondered if he’d been diligent in covering his trek from the tree to his camp, as well as a couple of other reconnaissance points he’d established-a massive tumble of granite slabs on the south side of the cabin and a dense thicket of rhododendron near the chicken shed.

But he was more of a desk jockey than anything, a little out of shape, with curly, unkempt hair that didn’t fit the ramrod stereotype, and a freckled complexion. Nobody would mistake him for a secret agent of any kind, and someone spying him in the tree would have taken him for a redneck poacher. Hell, he’d barely even made it up the tree, skinning his elbow in the process.

He probably had been a little less careful than he would have been on a real assignment, checking up on an alleged KKK militant or scouting transfer students from the Middle East. And mistakes like that could get you killed. Mistakes like that were why the clandestine service was needed in the first place.

“Did you get it?” Wendy asked from the porch.

“No,” Roland called back, irritated.

Roland bent and stirred around in the leaves a little, plucking something from the ground where the fox had been. Still clutching the pistol, but relaxed now, he headed back to the cabin.

When he reached the porch, Gundersson raised the glasses. He could see the feathers in Roland’s hand as Wendy reached for them.

Fox must have been raiding the henhouse.

The couple went back inside the cabin. It was time for breakfast. Gundersson was hungry himself. Eggs sounded real good.

But he’d be eating out of a can instead.

He made his way down the tree and, taking a hint from the fox, he navigated a new route back to his camp so that he wouldn’t create a trail that Roland might follow.

Sly as a fox. I hope I’m quick enough to dodge four bullets when my time comes.

“Morgan!”

Mark snapped alert. His Basic Law Enforcement Training instructor was in his ear, leaning into the sedan.

“Yes?” Mark asked, avoiding the automatic “sir” he was compelled to add. While most of the students were in their early twenties, Mark was close to the same age as Derrick Frady, a former sheriff’s deputy who’d lost his job during a political housecleaning. Frady, who made up for his diminutive stature with a militaristic zeal, was of course nicknamed “Frady Cat” by the students, but none of them dared call him that to his square, flinty face.

“The suspect just ran another car off the road during the chase. It looks like a probable PI. What do you do?”

“PI” was the police code for “personal injury.” Mark was faced with the choice of continuing his pursuit of the suspect or serving the public he was sworn to protect.

Well, I haven’t sworn anything yet. I still have another two hundred hours of training to go.

Mark figured that a real cop faced with such a dilemma would punch the accelerator and indulge in the adrenaline rush of a high-speed chase. Because that was Mark’s first impulse, he figured it was probably the wrong one.

“What’s the Ten-Twenty of my backup?” Mark asked. He was in the back parking lot of Durham Tech, behind the wheel of a dummied-up police cruiser. The car sported a two-way radio, siren, bar lights, and all the accessories of a real cop car. It even had the black-and-white, two-toned paint job, although it bore no emblem or insignia of any kind.

“Half a mile behind, but the neighboring department has a road block a mile ahead,” Frady said.

“I pull off pursuit and check on the collision victims,” Mark said. “Calling it in, of course.”

Frady pulled a twisted crease in one side of his mouth, an expression that passed for a smile. “Serve and protect,” he said. “The first word is serve.” He slapped the top of the sedan. “Good enough.”

A series of orange cones were arranged across the empty parking lot. Mark had negotiated the obstacle course in just under three minutes, burning a little rubber off the tires but managing not to tip any cones. He’d scored an 87, which wouldn’t have him busting Vin Diesel in a Fast and Furious sequel anytime soon, but at least he hadn’t skidded into the chain-link fence that surrounded the lot.

Several students waited their turns on a weedy courtyard between the lot and main campus building. They were all dressed in the loose black athletic pants and gray T-shirts that bore the BLET logo. The outfit was part of the indoctrination, a sort of junior varsity uniform to prepare them for blues and badges. Two women were in the class, and they were both as tough as twisted rawhide.

Mark had not beaten the women at anything yet, although he suspected it would be his turn to shine when they trained for presenting evidence in court. If only he could keep his head straight and concentrate.

“All right, Morgan, we need a braking maneuver and a full turn in pursuit,” Frady said.

“Which way?”

Frady smirked. “Listen to the radio, rookie. Now wheel it to the start.”

While Mark navigated the cruiser to the end of the hundred-yard lot, he eyed the crumbling asphalt. The roads wouldn’t be in any better shape once he pinned on a badge, given the sad state of infrastructure funding. Fortunately, government leaders didn’t dare cut law enforcement budgets, so he should be able to land a job even if he didn’t make top of the class.

Frady had a short-range CB radio system set up in the courtyard. The receiver in the cruiser was set to a channel used infrequently but sometimes prone to interference. Frady’s reasoning was that real-life emergency communications often featured overstepping and crowding, so an officer should be skilled in filtering out the noise.