Fatal Harbor (22 page)

By then darkness had fallen and, one by one, lights were lit inside the home.

I settled in for a long wait.

Through the night, I saw shapes and shadows move beyond the windows. It was impossible to determine how many men were in there. Once, a light went on in an upstairs bathroom, and I saw a muscular young guy with a short blond haircut take a shower. If I’d been someplace else and
was
somebody else, that might have proven interesting, but he wasn’t Curt Chesak, whom I desperately wanted to see.

Eventually from one of the larger windows to the rear, I spotted the light blue glow that mean a television was in play.

I waited.

It grew darker.

Waited some more.

Out in the woods I could hear creatures scurrying through the fallen leaves. Once an owl hooted loud and long just a few yards away from me, almost causing me to jump up like I had been stung by wasps.

Lights went on, lights went off.

I slowly moved my binoculars around, keeping my view on the house.

One by one, slowly and gradually, all the lights went off.

I kept still, watching. My eyes adjusted more to the darkness.

There were little glows of light coming from the house, from those little bits of electronic gear and machines that are always on, all the time, illuminating just a touch to let their human masters know they’re up and awake.

But it looked like everyone in that house was asleep.

I waited another hour, and then spent another half-hour crawling back so enough distance was put between me and the stone wall.

Thus ended the first day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

M
y camp wasn’t really a camp, just a hollow in the woods where I felt comfortable taking some shelter. I used a headlamp with a slight beam to put a ground cloth down, then a thin mattress pad, and then my sleeping bag, still damp from the previous night’s adventure. I put everything within easy reach and then settled down for dinner. I opened up a freeze-dried packet of chicken and rice, but I didn’t dare light a fire or a stove. Maybe the guys in that alleged hunting camp were kicking back and taking it easy, and maybe they were on hyper-alert, with night-vision gear and thermal imaging devices. So I poured in the correct amount of water and ate it cold. If I hadn’t eaten in two weeks, it probably would have tasted pretty good. Dessert was two Hershey’s chocolate bars. I cleaned up and undressed and scooted into the sleeping bag, and I shivered until the down bag eventually warmed me up.

In the darkness I reached out with my right hand, touched a sheet of plastic. Underneath the plastic were a flashlight and my 9mm Beretta. I was all set. I settled in and looked up through the tree branches, saw a couple of stars, and fell asleep.

I awoke with the daylight, at about 7:15
A
.
M
. I got out of my bag, stretched, made a temporary latrine about fifty feet away, and went back to my little campsite. Breakfast was water and a couple of granola bars. I brushed my teeth, then got my gear wrapped up and hidden at the base of a tree trunk that had lots of gaps and holes. Dressed and geared up once again, I went back to the stone wall and settled in again.

Some voices from the house. Television, radio, or real guys?

Couldn’t tell.

The sun was shining right into the upstairs bathroom window, so I couldn’t tell if anyone was showering or not. Not that I was curious in that sort of way, but if I saw a bearded guy showering, at least I would know the firm count of men in the house was at least two.

The morning dragged on. Ants walked over my hand. At some point a fat woodchuck waddled right by me, about ten feet away. I should have felt tired, bored, or weary, but no, I was doing okay. Watching that house and waiting to see if Curt Chesak was really there or not was like having a giant dry-cell battery nearby, feeding me energy. I felt like General U. S. Grant, feeling feisty and like I could wait here all fall and winter if I had to.

On my back I had a Camelbak hydration pack for water, and I sipped during the morning and kept myself hydrated.

Then it got very interesting, very quickly, when two men with shotguns appeared.

They came from my left, moving slowly, about twenty feet apart. I saw them out of the corner of my eye, and if it was possible to freeze even more, that’s what I did. I saw their weapons first, pump-action shotguns, held out, barrels moving left and right as the two men scanned the area in front of them.

I tried not even to blink.

They came closer. They were wearing blaze orange vests, hats, and camouflage pants. Hunting licenses dangled from safety pins on their vests. Both men were heavyset and bearded.

Hunters.

Shotguns.

I don’t hunt, but I have no problem with those who do. My only problem was that they were following the stone wall, and in about sixty seconds or so the closest one was going to get one hell of a surprise when he stepped on my back.

Damn.

I held my breath.

They got closer.

I could smell wood smoke coming from them.

A voice. “Hey, Darryl?”

“Yeah?”

“Take a break?”

“Sure, why the hell not.”

They stopped and lowered their shotguns. Both checked to make sure the safeties were on—thanks, guys!—and leaned the shotguns up against two adjacent oak trees. They both sat down on the stone wall, stretched out their legs in the leaves.

“George, where the hell is this meadow you’ve been saying?”

“Another twenty minutes, thirty tops. We just follow this stone wall, get past this place, and we’ll be there ’fore you know it.”

“That’s what you said a half hour ago. Only a half hour left to go.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think the pheasant will mind, so lighten the hell up, Darryl, okay?”

A few more murmurs of voices, a plastic water bottle passed between them, two cigarettes lit up. They both used lighters and took deep drags from their cigarettes. They talked low for a while—I caught bits and pieces of conversation about mortgage payments, the upcoming presidential election, and wives—and then the one called Darryl raised his voice some and said, “So, how’s it going with you and Marcia?”

No answer.

Darryl said, “C’mon, George, if you can’t tell your brother, who can you tell?”

“Shit,” George said. “It’s like this, I know she’s going through becoming a teenager and all that, but it’s driving me freaking crazy. The other night, I came home from work and she wanted to talk to me about green energy and how I was contributing to the destruction of the planet ’cause I was workin’ at the mill. You know, all I wanted to do was to kick back and have a beer, watch some ESPN, but Margaret tells me I need to pay more attention to her, with all the hormones kickin’ in and shit. So I tried to be polite and say, well, green energy sounds cool and stuff, but that’s down the road, and right now we got bills to pay, and the mill’s the best place around here for a guy like me to get work.”

The other man said, “Sounds reasonable.”

A heavy sigh. “Christ, at her age, I don’t think Marcia knows how to spell ‘reasonable.’ So she said if I was right sure the planet was important, I’d make sacrifices now to help save energy and stuff, prevent climate change and global warming, and I said okay, if you want to start saving energy, let’s get rid of the TV in your room, your hair dryer, and your damn cell phone, you can start tonight if that’s so important to you, and then she started getting teary-eyed and said I was making fun of her, and I was part of something called the patriarchal oligarchy, and it wasn’t fair that her class should be called on to sacrifice first, and then she stormed upstairs and wouldn’t come down for dinner, and Margaret got all pissed at me for getting Marcia all wound up, and crap, all I wanted was a beer and some ESPN.”

Another heavy sigh. “What the hell is an oligarchy anyway?”

Another brief wait, and his brother said, “Christ, I’m sorry I asked.”

When their break was over, they stripped their cigarette butts to make sure there were no leftover embers to start a fire—again, good job, guys!—and then one went to retrieve his shotgun, and the other said, “Hold on, gotta take care of business here.”

He traipsed over a few yards, stopped about two feet away from my shoulder, and in a very few seconds something liquid started splashing against my back. I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth. The little shower seemed to go on for a long time, and there was a grunt of relief. “Man, that second cup of coffee was killing me,” George said. “Thought for sure my damn bladder was going to explode.”

“Good for you,” Darryl said.

Yeah
, I thought.
Good for you. Now get the hell out.

Darryl retrieved his shotgun, and he and his brother started talking and walking.

On George’s first step, a bolt of pain hammered my left ankle.

“Shit!”

George took a tumble into the leaves and I bit my lower lip to keep from crying out. The damn guy had just stepped on my ankle and fallen.

Darryl said, “You okay?”

“Shit, yes, but damn it, what the hell did I trip on?”

I bit my lower lip even harder. Trembled. I didn’t dare move my head. I just bit and held my breath and waited.

“I don’t know,” Darryl said. “Could be a rock or a limb underneath all those leaves.”

“Cripes, I guess so. Hey, give me a hand up, will you?”

“Okay.”

Some more words were exchanged and then their voices drifted off.

I relaxed some, let out a breath of air. My lower lip ached, as did my left ankle.

And I stunk like a urinal.

Lunch was two more Granola bars, two more Hershey bars, and some lukewarm water from my Camelbak. My lip eventually improved, but my ankle ached like the proverbial son-of-a-bitch. Later in the day, I heard the hollow
boom-boom
of shotguns being fired, and I hoped the two brothers were having a better day than I was.

Meanwhile, all was quiet at the house, which still hadn’t told me whether or not it was Curt Chesak’s rural fortress of solitude.

So I waited. And smelled. And ached.

In the afternoon it got warm and despite my adventures of the morning, I started feeling sleepy as the fall sun beat down on me and my little hiding place, and the heavy weight of my ghillie suit on me. I yawned a couple of times, and then I dozed off for a few seconds, and then jerked up when I realized I was drifting off. I tried spraying my face with my Camelbak water, but it was too warm to jolt me awake. I stretched and bent and bit my lip again, and I felt like I was losing the battle, that nothing was going to prevent me from falling asleep.

Until I heard the sound of an approaching engine.

It grew louder and louder, and the way the engine was thrumming, I knew exactly what was coming my way.

A helicopter.

I slightly turned my head and I saw a shadow flash overhead. It went over the house and then came back, a standard four-passenger dark blue Bell helicopter. Old memories came to me of helicopters, none of them particularly pleasant. The helicopter slowly came down, and I had to admire the pilot’s skill as he placed his machine square in the middle of the H painted onto the concrete.

Then the rear door to the house opened up, and a smiling Curt Chesak strolled out.

My hands quivered some as I watched him come out. I had no trouble recognizing him, since I’d had a personal interview with him just a couple of weeks before. He was carrying a black overnight bag and was with another guy who seemed older, and who was speaking loudly to Curt as the two of them approached the helicopter.

My Beretta was in my right hand, the binoculars in my left.

Damn, not a good shot, not a good shot at all.

I should have brought a rifle. Even one without a telescopic sight and with only open iron sights, it would have been an easy shot to nail him in the chest with no difficulty at all.

But all I had was the Beretta and a couple of other things that wouldn’t do.

Damn, damn, I thought. Why didn’t you bring a rifle? Why not?

And it sickened me to acknowledge, but a dark and angry part of me knew why I only had a pistol: because I wanted Curt to get a good look at me and know exactly why he was about to be killed. A rifle shot from fifty yards away wouldn’t do that. Oh, the ultimate goal would be achieved, but I wouldn’t be as satisfied.

The two men got closer to the helicopter, ducked low to avoid the spinning blades.

Damn, damn, damn.

Because of my pride and vanity, my one chance to get the son-of-a-bitch was fading away, for within seconds he’d be at the now-open door to the helicopter’s cabin, and he’d be gone.

Damn.

And how would I feel, and what could I say to Lawrence Thomas when that happened? That Curt had gotten clean away because of my arrogance?

For the first time in a while, I felt I had lost it all.

The two men got to the helicopter. Chesak tossed in the overnight bag, shook the hand of the older man, who then climbed into the cabin.

Chesak stepped back. Closed the door. Waved.

Moved back, head still low.

The engine noise increased, the helicopter lifted up and back, and then it was gone.

By then, Curt was back inside the house.

I let my breath out. Didn’t even realize I’d been holding my breath.

I lowered my Beretta, took a swig of water. That had been too damn close.

So, what now? Chase after Chesak right now, surprise him as he’s settling back in?

Yeah, right.

There was Curt, and the guy I had spotted the night before taking a shower.

Didn’t mean there were only two of them in there.

Oh, I was sure there weren’t thirty or anything, but that didn’t mean I was about to embark on a suicide mission.

Not yet, anyway.

So I settled in, waited some more.

The afternoon dragged on. At one point I slowly moved away and used a convenient tree to urinate against, almost laughing at the thought that at least I wasn’t pissing against some guy pretending to be a tree trunk. I ate another granola bar, took a couple of Ibuprofen for my aching ankle, and slowly crawled back to my hiding place and let the afternoon drag away. A couple of times I heard something rustling in the leaves about me, but I never did see anything, which wasn’t surprising. A squirrel at play in the woods can sound like a coyote trotting up to you if you let your mind get away from you, and I was desperately trying not to let that happen.