John Connolly - The Reapers

“I’m buying it as a gift for someone,” she explained.

“That’s acceptable,” said the older of the two men, although it wasn’t clear if he was referring to the legality of the transfer or the nature of the gift. Angel and Louis looked on in bemusement, then returned to their car to drink the coffee, and continued north. A wind farm occupied the hills to the west, the blades unmoving, like playthings abandoned by the offspring of giants.

“It’s a strange part of the country,” said Angel.

“That it is.”

“Lot of people out there who didn’t vote for Hillary.”

“Lot of people in here who didn’t vote for Hillary either.”

“Yeah, fifty percent of them. I don’t care. I always liked her.”

When they came to Burke, they spotted the first of the brown U.S. Border Patrol vehicles, and although they were only doing five above the limit, Louis slowed down. They almost missed the right onto Route 122 as it grew dark, and only a closed campground, its power outlets covered by upturned plastic trash cans, alerted them to the presence of the turning onto 37. A chimney stack for a house never built appeared on the left, concrete slowly succumbing to the onslaught of green, and then, about twelve miles from Massena, motels appeared, and a Mohawk casino, and Indian smoke shops. A sign advised that they were only a mile from the Canadian border. Another, draped across a warehouse, announced that “This is Mohawk Land, not NYS Land.”

They were close now.

They stopped in Massena, checking in separately at an anonymous motel and booking different rooms. Louis slept. Angel watched TV, the volume at its lowest audible level, alert to the sound of cars entering the parking lot, of voices, to the presence of anonymous figures in the gathering dark. It was too early for him to fall easily into sleep. He was a night owl by nature. It was mornings that were hard for him. At last, he forced himself to turn off the television and lie back on the bed. Maybe he napped for a time, but he was awake when the clock by his bed indicated that it was after 4:00 A.M., and he stilled the alarm before it had barely had a chance to sound.

Louis was already waiting in the car when Angel emerged from the room. No words were exchanged, no greetings. Instead, they drove from Massena in silence, their attention fixed on the road, on the darkness, and on the work that lay ahead.

LOUIS TURNED SOUTH SOME five miles west of Massena. After a further six miles, they passed a series of U-shaped pools filled with still water, and old mining works falling into decay, the only remnants of the Leehagen talc mine. Farther back, now slowly being reclaimed by nature, were the ruins of Winslow. They could not see them in the gloom, but Louis knew that they were there. He had seen them on Hoyle’s photographs, and had memorized their position down to the nearest fraction of a mile, just as he knew the position of the two unmarked roads that curved southwest across the Roubaud Stream and into Leehagen’s land.

They came to the first intersection after sixteen miles had appeared on the clock. It was marked “Private Property,” and led to the first bridge over the Roubaud. Louis slowed. To their right, a flashlight blinked once from the trees: Lynott and Marsh, making their presence known. Louis and Angel followed the road for another three miles until they came to the second bridge. Again, they were signaled from somewhere deep among the trees: Blake and Weis.

The Endalls, meanwhile, had entered Leehagen’s property under cover of darkness shortly after midnight and had traveled, on foot, to the ruins of the old cattle pens, there to keep watch on Leehagen’s house and await the arrival of Angel and Louis. As with the three main pairs, there was no way to communicate with them now that the operation was under way. It did not matter. Everybody knew what had to be done. Phones would have helped, but they were not an option, not here.

The only ones who were not yet in place were Hara and Harada. They were still in Massena, and would leave only at a prearranged time once Angel and Louis had entered Leehagen’s property, in order to avoid the possibility that a miniconvoy of cars might draw attention to what was about to occur.

Once Louis was satisfied that the bridge teams were in place, he crossed the southern bridge onto Leehagen’s land. They saw no lights, passed no other cars, nor detected any signs of life on the road. Mostly, the land around them was forest, so they were hemmed in on both sides by trees, but on two occasions they came to man-made breaks in the tree line, hundreds of feet wide: Leehagen’s grazing acres. After two miles, they took a dirt road north again, the forest beginning to thin here, until they came to an old barn, pinpointed on one of their maps, that stood beside an abandoned farm, and there they left the car. They were less than half a mile from Leehagen’s house, and to drive any farther would be to risk alerting its residents, for it was quiet here.

They armed themselves with Glocks and a pair of Steyr TMP 9mm submachine guns fitted with suppressors and carried on slings, leaving the rest of their mobile armory in the trunk. This was to be a killing raid, fast and brutal, and they did not anticipate the need for longer-range weapons. The Steyrs were simple and effective: easily controllable despite an effective range of up to twenty-five meters; light, with an empty weight of just under three pounds; limited recoil; and a cyclic rate of nine hundred rounds per minute. They each added a spare thirty-round magazine for the Steyrs, and a spare clip for the Glocks.

Ahead of them lay the cattle pens, twin wooden single-story structures painted white. Nearby, a modern blue grain elevator towered over the lower buildings. Angel could smell the lingering odor of excrement and cow urine, and when he looked inside the first of the pens he could see that they had not been cleaned since the animals had been slaughtered. Louis checked the pens to the right, and once they were sure that both were empty, they moved on, using the buildings for cover until they came to the bottom of a small hill that overlooked the Leehagen house about a quarter of a mile to the west.

Louis had never had any intention of taking Leehagen with a long-range shot, even if the old man had been more mobile than he was. It was not one of his particular skills, even less so since the damage suffered to his left hand while they were in Louisiana with Parker some years before. Had such a shot been available to him, there was no way of knowing if Leehagen might actually have been fit enough to take the air that particular morning, and then there was always the weather to consider. After all, a sick man was hardly going to be wheeled around his property in the cold, and the forecast was for heavy rain. But there was also the son to be dealt with. Louis wanted him as well. If he killed the father and left the son alive, then the vendetta would continue. Both had to be taken out at the same time. That meant killing them in the house, with Louis and Angel entering while the Endalls provided cover. It would be done as quietly as possible with silenced weapons to limit the possibility of gunfire drawing unwanted attention to what was being done, but Louis knew that such hopes might well prove optimistic. He didn’t believe that they could get in and out entirely unnoticed, and he recognized that they might well end up fighting their way off Leehagen’s land. At least they would not have to do so alone, and Leehagen’s men would be no match for their ten guns.

“Where are they?” whispered Angel.

Louis stared back at the empty pens. This was where they were supposed to rendezvous, but there was still no sign of the Endalls.