Ted Bell - Spy

He didn’t see any sense in trying to pry the door open now. It would be way too noisy for his purposes, but he picked up the tire iron anyway, just in case he got desperate enough later on.

Hell with it. He’d try the ladder. He pulled down slowly on the bottom rung, trying to be quiet about it.

Screeeek.

Damn!

He let it go like a hot poker. The grinding noise had been brief and not all that loud. Still, he waited, his heart thudding pretty good inside his chest, expecting to hear somebody shout from the window over his head. Or shine a light on him and shoot him. His gloved hand moved down to grip the butt of his sidearm. His heart slowed down to near normal after a couple of minutes of nothing happening.

Maybe nobody inside had heard the screeching ladder.

Hell, maybe there was nobody inside to hear anything.

He looked up at the rotted-out fire escape again. Those iron stairs would wake the dead if he yanked that extension ladder down. Hadn’t been used in a few decades probably, maybe more. He looked around the empty side lot, overgrown with weeds. He was looking for a barrel or something he could stand on, maybe reach up and grab the permanent staircase without using the extension ladder. He’d need something pretty high. A couple of big wooden crates would do it.

But he didn’t see anything like that.

There was a bunch of crap laying around in the overgrown field out back. A kind of junkyard back there, surrounded by a barbed wire fence that had seen better days thirty years ago. A couple of old Mack truck cabs and trailers from the fifties were parked right where somebody’d left them sixty years ago.

Maybe he could find something useful back there in the yard. Hell, it sure beat standing here freezing to death. He inched along the wall toward the rear of the building. In the pale moonlight, everything looked silver. Especially the rusted trailer rigs on the other side of the barbed wire fence surrounding the junkyard.

At the rear of the nearest rig, a couple of fifty-gallon steel drums were lying on their sides. Two of those babies stacked up would just be about perfect. Plus, if he ripped some of the old wire fence out, he could roll those drums back around to the fire escape without making any noise at all.

He kept low and made for the fence. He got there quick and knelt in the bushes, looking back at the looming brick building. No sound, no lights in any upstairs windows. No nothing. He grabbed a fistful of wire stands and yanked. The stuff came away nice and easy in his hand and two or three of the rotted posts just broke off at ground level. He stood up and moved at low crouch into the abandoned junkyard.

It was about twenty feet over to the oil drums by the trailer and he got there without any alarms going off.

He snapped on his mini-light and stuck it in the one upright drum. There was about a foot of black gooey stuff at the bottom, maybe just old oil, maybe worse ’cause it stunk. The two other drums were empty although the bottom of one of them was completely rusted out. But, hell, they’d do in a pinch. He’d stack ’em, and then haul himself up on the fire escape.

What the hell was that?

HE’D HEARD something. He whipped his head around, automatically looking back at the factory. No, it had been closer. Not a human sound. A kind of a snickering noise. Rats, he thought. Rats inside this trailer? That must be it.

He found himself staring up at the doors of the funky old trailer. You could still make out (barely) the faded words Tequila Mockingbird over a bottle of cheap Mexican hootch. The rear doors were locked. Not only locked, but there was a heavy chain wrapped through the handles and locked with a large, rusty padlock. Do you padlock an empty truck and leave it in a field for twenty years? No.

So, what the hell was in there was so all-fired important?

He stuck the tire iron through the twin door handles and pulled back hard as he could without making a huge racket. Didn’t budge an inch. He looked at the padlock again, yanked on it. Rusty, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Now, he was curious. He stuck the sharp end of the tire iron up under the corner of the steel door and tried to pry it upward. The rusted metal peeled up about six inches. He shoved the tire iron in deeper and pulled upwards really hard. It gave another inch or so. He dropped the iron and snapped on his mini-light again.

He bent down to peer inside the trailer.

Couldn’t see diddly-squat in there. But there was one thing. He could see blue starlight coming down from above. So, part of the top of the trailer was missing. Rusted out. And there was one of those narrow ladders going up to the roof that looked like it just might hold his weight. He clicked off his light and stuck it back in his Sam Browne belt.

Hell, climb up, see what was in the old truck and then go find what was going on in the building where the Yankee Slugger cab had disappeared.

He was half way up the ladder when he heard somebody shout, “Who’s out there? This is private property! I got a gun and I’ll use it, pod-nuh. I’m comin’ out there.” The voice was raw, raspy, and vaguely familiar. The smoker upstairs? The red-eye? Most likely.

He was coming through the open field along the side of the building. He had a light too, a powerful beam that was sweeping the ground in front of him in great looping arcs. In about two seconds he was going to figure out somebody must be in the junkyard.

Homer was about to shout, “Police! Drop your weapon!” but he was in an awkward position hanging on the ladder and besides he had the feeling this guy was the type to shoot first and ask questions later. Or, not ask any questions, ever. Just bury the evidence out here in the yard.

He could jump down and confront the guy but something told him that was a really bad idea. No. Homer had nowhere to go but up. He stuck his boot in the bottom rung, reached for the highest rung he could, and quickly pulled himself up. He got to the top of the ladder just before the light caught him.

“Stop! Hold it right there! You move and you’re dead.”

Homer swiveled his head around but all he could see was the blinding white light.

“I ain’t moving. I’m the law. Put your weapon down.”

There was a loud pop and a round whistled past Homer’s ear.

“The next one doesn’t miss,” the man’s scratchy voice said. “Throw down that gun and we’ll have us a little talk about what happens to trespassers here in Gunbarrel.”

Homer put his right hand to his sidearm. He wished he could see the man’s face. Judge his intent.

The next round caught him in the upper left arm and almost spun him right off the ladder. It felt like somebody had slugged him hard as they could with a two-by-four, but he managed to keep his footing and hold the ladder tight with his right hand as he climbed the last rung. He could remain on the ladder and wait for the next bullet. He could leap to the ground but he couldn’t outrun that beam of light.

He knew he had to go up, up and over. Inside the truck. Now, while he still could.

In that split second, up on the top rung, he saw why there had been so much moonlight streaming down inside the trailer. The top had rusted almost completely away. And shoot, the truck bed was halfway full up to the top with something. Kind of whitish blue in the starlight, the stuff looked like a load of dried out timber and rocks. Sticks and stones, maybe.

Another bullet whistled a hot tune over his head.

He pitched forward and fell inside.

He landed on top of the pile of rattling baseball bats and tried to scramble to his feet. Except the truck wasn’t full of dried timber at all, Homer saw when he picked one up in his hand.

Hell no, it wasn’t sticks and stones.