Chapter 28. A Bed and Breakfast

Miyamoto Musashi
Book of Five Rings

The fire-pit’s charcoal, wet from the rains, provided a good paste to apply on my face before scouting out a suitable place to lay down and post. I positioned myself in the thick brush under the canopy of Box Elders where both sides from the berm the road could be watched. I took comfort in wet and cold. Like Yuri, I’d been trained for extremes and prepped to stay put anywhere and under any conditions whether in wet and cold or the humid heat of Southeast Asia’s delta. Cold was easier than the razor grass, insects, and snakes. I was in my element.

The light from inside the trailer glowed through the drawn

curtains. Larry was acting as though we were on vacation at a Bed and Breakfast.

That’s fine with me. It’s like catfishing. Cat fishing’s a waiting game. Using a bob, you can hardly tell how big it is or whether you have one on the hook. The bob dips a little… a finicky cat just tasting… sucking on the worm. They go by smell and taste in their murky habitat… She swims away and comes back maybe several times. You feel it…. you sense it…. and, when it bobs just right, you yank the pole and sink the hook.

It’s an eerie thing, even if you know the Shipping Channel is on the other side of the slough, to see the bridge of a container ship soaring above a fifty-foot-high stack of containers on their way to Sacramento. Lit up, it served as a backdrop for two silhouettes of men, slumped down, running atop the levee toward us. My eyes adjusted well enough to the little light there was to see them. I didn’t expect company this soon. They could’ve been wearing body armor too. If so, I wouldn’t take chances. I would need them close enough for head shots.

Don’t move. Be still. Breathe. A hunter’s meditation… watching. thoughts come and go. While meditating, some of the damnedest things come up. I’m a Pole. Well, a Slav of some sort… An American Slav, Crash Kraszhinski. I thought of the Pollock woman at DuPont, back in the sixties, who insisted the techies use the spinneret to make fibers of some goop that was going to be tossed out… great things have come from discarded crap … stainless steel, WD-40, and Kevlar. Kevlar’s useful for damned near everything; fibers for belted tires, violin strings, and body armor.  I wished Bird Dog had me some body armor at the shed. Maybe I’m to be disposed of, like these amateurs Yuri sends our way; useful for something greater than my cold dead body. Yuri, nor I, would have run along the top… he’s smarter than that… these two were disposable to him too.

The brain is wired to never stop… I don’t even try to stop them when meditating… but I couldn’t stop the internal chatter… that maybe Yuri’s already on my side of the slough, doing some catfishing himself, and using his boys for bait. If so, we won’t get through the night… time to slow it down, between the bardos of now, I whisper to the thought… the thinking… “Thank you for sharing. Now shut the fuck up. I have work to do.”

The Coleman inside dimmed, turning the curtains to an orange glow. Larry wouldn’t know how to pump-up pressure in the old lamp’s tank. Let it burn out. The rains stopped. The night was dead still. I have ears. Had I been blind I would’ve heard the two scuffling the gravel as they came halfway down the steep slope of the levee facing us from the other side of the slough. They lit up flashlights. Idiots. Why not send me a Western Union to let me know exactly where they were?

I would have to get them both before one or the other could zero-in on my position. Silencers make enough sound to be heard at this range in the still of the night. Even though suppressed, the muzzle flash can also be seen in the dark. I heard them cursing the rain. Complaining about the cold. Breathe, yes, breathe through the scope. The shades rose in unison, flashlights on the trailer, ready to fire. I squeezed two bursts into where I sensed their faces were behind their torches. Then, a tumbling sound… the shadows fell and loud plop-plops from the water confirmed the kill. Rolling to cover in the grass, I changed position. It was more waiting. Thinking… there had to be, at the very least, a third. I couldn’t take chances.

The hour before dawn, a tanker’s bridge glided above in the shipping channel. I saw a silhouette of the third man at the top… running away. I held fire… it was too far away. The shadow slipped out of range. I scanned the area before going to the camper. Yuri could have been watching from somewhere but it wasn’t likely he’d make a move any time soon.

It had been a long watch before the first morning light. The sky was clearing. I had a good view of the flats spread out two or three miles from where we were to any decent road that a bike could cross with ease. There was nothing moving on the two tracks towards us yet. The access mud-track we crossed the night before was hardly wide enough for a vehicle and it would have to cross the soggy terrain cautiously without ending up in a ditch. That gave us plenty of time to take the back door that was just as sluggish but a bit wider. Bitter experience told me that the hour before and after dawn are the most dangerous to move. The deer, the cougar, and the bear, know this… the hunter and the hunted. But I wanted daylight to traverse those mud flats this time.

The distance and the mud was comfort enough to familiarize Larry with a rudimentary firearms lesson. I went inside. He was curled up fetal. I kicked him, laid the rifle on the table, and hollered drill sergeant style, “Time to get up, soldier.”

He moaned, “Damn, when do we get to sleep.”

I barked, “The dead have lots of time to sleep.”

The radio squelched a call.

I answered and said, “They came for us last night.”

Gabe’s voice took over, “Get your ass to our spot at ole’ Stoney’s!”

Good, I knew the place. I answered, “Roger.”

All the while Larry sat at the table staring at the rifle like it was a rattlesnake.

“Come on, get up.” I shoved him out the door, and handed it to him, “It won’t bite if you hold it right.” I demonstrated where the safety was, how to cock it, and how to load the clips. I had him repeat each step several times until he was ready.

I patted my right shoulder, “Brace it here, once we’re riding”

“Okay.”

“When I hit the horn, bust some caps.”

“Caps?”

“Shoot. Fire. Empty a goddamned clip, Larry!”

“While we’re riding? I… I’ve never shot one of these.”

“You don’t have to be Annie Oakley. If we run into anyone on the way out, I want you to lay out some covering fire. Try to hit the driver best you can. Okay?”

“Uh, okay.”

“Come on. Take a few shots.” After unscrewing the silencer, I picked up an old coffee can and threw it about twenty feet. I took the rifle from him, flicked it’s toggle off full automatic and handed it back to him.

Larry fired two rounds completely missing the can. I switched it to full automatic. “Try again but don’t empty the clip.”

BRRRRRAAAAP-uP! … the can was unmoved.

I handed him two full clips. “That’s close enough to scare ‘em, Larry. Put these in your pocket.”

Once on the bike, I patted my shoulder, “Put it here and try again. Squeeze off a couple more rounds at it.”

Larry braced it there let out a short burst. BRRRAP! The can jumped. Larry was ecstatic, “Hey! I got it! I got it!”

My right ear rang. I regretted removing the silencer, “There, you’re a killin’ machine now. Reload and let’s get the fuck out of here.”

We were going slow, rear wheel spinning, front wheel slipping and sliding, steering the best I could without spilling over, legs out… very dangerous… easy to dislocate a knee or worse.  I saw them, the same SUV from the night before, coming across the flats, and headed for us. I stopped. Thinking of going back to the alternative route.

“Fuck. Look there!” Larry shouted, grabbing my arm, “behind us!”

A pick-up truck with several goons in the bed was parked a half-mile away. There was no going the other way out. My choice was made for me. The best tactical move was to play chicken with the SUV. I chose the route with the SUV and I knew I would have It would take a delicate touch on the throttle to pick up speed quickly enough to work but slow enough to keep from spinning out. We were sure to dump at the slightest variation in the slick muck. I had to go straight at them and odds were 10 to 1 in favor of us becoming bugs splattered on their grill. The seconds it took to close the distance between us seemed framed time suspended in slow-motion. The Harley’s rumble was muffled. I was a kamikaze motherfucker in their face. I couldn’t’ve been going faster than thirty but we might as well have been going a-hundred-thirty on this track. I beeped… Larry opened fire, a muted b-brrrrrrrr-uttt! … emptied the clip. A few hit the windshield on the driver side. I held steady… ready to die. In that moment, there was no sound at all… like we’d been launched in space… The SUV swerved off into the ditch onto its side the last nano-second. The pick-up was closing from the rear. There was no slowing down to assess the damage.

I shouted, “Good shootin’, Doc!” Several bees buzzed past my good ear. I saw Yuri, from the passenger side of the SUV, draw a bead on us with a pistol as we passed.

Larry yelped, “I closed my eyes long before we... Yaauuch!”

I thought he’d gone cowboy with a Rebel Yell until he screamed, “I’m fuckin’ hit!”

Unable to look back at risk of spilling in the muck I hollered, “Shit! Where?”

“My shoulder.”

“Can you hold on?”

“I’m good.”

“Try not to move. Tuck that piece in the saddle bag and hold on.”

“I dropped it!” he yelled, shifting weight with one arm around my waist. The bike tipped, wheels spun and slipped as Larry’s arm pulled on my side almost dumping us.

“Well, hold on steady… the best you can!”

“I’ll try!”

The pickup stopped at the SUV in the ditch. That bought us a slight lead and I hoped it would be enough to get where I could patch-up Larry. I owed him that much for taking a bullet for me.