Tuck's Revenge (6 page)

Tuck looked at Bill, smiled, and said, "You
speak Spanish huh?”

Bill smiled and walked toward the house
saying, "Time to rest for a while. We'll meet everybody after we
catch a few hours of sleep.”

They went inside to a table set with enough
food to feed at least four or five people. They sat down and began
eating, when Bill said, "Is anybody else here yet?”

The young man said, "Si, Seńor Bill, three of
them got here a couple of hours ago, but no more yet.”

Bill smiled and said, "Fine, they'll get here
eventually.” After they ate, Bill told Tuck to grab a room and get
some shuteye, and he'd wake him up in a few hours.

It was a strange place, so Tuck didn't go
right off to sleep. He was listening and watching. He was still
wondering what it was Bill had to tell him and show him.

The next morning, about an hour before
daylight, Tuck smelled coffee brewing, so he got up out of bed and
went into the front room searching where the smell was coming from.
It didn't take long to find Bill in a room off to the back of the
house.

When he walked through the door, Bill said,
"Morning, did you get any sleep?”

"Yeah, I slept pretty good actually, all
considering.”

Bill looked at Tuck and said, "Quit worrying,
man, you're among friends here.” Then he said, "Want some
coffee?”

Tuck accepted, so Bill reached up in the
cabinet, pulled him out a cup, handed it to him, and said, "Help
yourself.” Bill poured another cup for himself and they walked
through a door out to a back porch. Sitting at the table, they
drank their coffee and watched the sun come up.

"This is a great place here. I relax better
here than in most places.”

"You spend a lot of time here, don't
you?”

Bill said, "What makes you think that?”

Tuck said, "Well I noticed when we were in
the kitchen, you seemed at home. You knew right where the coffee
cups were, and didn't have to search for them.”

Bill laughed and said, "You are
observant.”

"Like I said, that's how I stay alive.”

"Yeah, I used to live out here. I call this
my ranchette, and I hope to live out here again someday if I can. I
have one hundred and eighty acres here with goats, sheep, and
horses, even a few cows out here on the place. It's quiet nearly
all the time, so it's where I go when I need to relax. Right out
there under that tree is where I hope to be buried when I die.
Although I hope I can put that particular plan off for a while
longer."

As Bill and Tuck was sitting there, Bills
radio keyed up, and a voice on the other end said, "We're at the
gate.”

Bill answered back and said, "Coffee is
ready, come on in.”

Then in a minute or so, they heard several
trucks coming up the drive, and that's when Bill and Tuck walked
around the house to meet them. Several men and a couple of women
crawled out of the trucks, walked toward Bill all smiles and happy,
like it was a big reunion. A couple of minutes later three men with
scoped rifles walked out of the brush on the hillside. Tuck was
eyeing them and on alert, they shouldered their rifles then walked
up to Bill, shook his hand, and let him know that no one followed
them in.

Bill introduced him to everybody. They were
all friendly enough, but Tuck could tell he wasn't yet in the
clique or accepted as part of the fold. But with Tuck, he didn't
make friends and cozy up to people anyway, so he didn't care if
they liked him or not, and he wasn't going to change for
anybody.

While everybody was talking and slowly
migrating back to the rear of the house, Tuck was his usual
standoffish way and some among the group questioned Bill about him.
One man, sort of a big mouth and showoff, yelled over and said,
"You too good to hang out with us?”

Tuck looked up at him and said, "Only time
will tell.”

The Bigmouth started walking toward Tuck when
Bill said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you." But the big mouth
kept walking. When he got up to Tuck, he stood to his face and
said, "You want to repeat that again?”

"Do those big balls make you deaf and
stupid?”

The big mouth got a serious look on his face
for a second, then smiled and walked back toward the porch saying,
"I think I'm going to like him.”

Everyone started laughing except for Bill.
"I'm glad you didn't try anything.”

Bigmouth smiled and said, "Why, you don't
think I can handle myself?”

Bill said, "When you take on Tuck, you better
keep a close eye on his hands.”

That's when everybody looked down at his
hands, and that's when they saw the knife he was holding that no
one noticed before. The smile the big mouth had on his face
instantly faded away.

After the tension of the big mouth nearly
getting gutted by Tuck, Bill asked everybody to gather around so
they could have a little meet up. Bill began speaking and was
giving everyone a little background information about Tuck, like
where he was from, where Bill got him, and how they inadvertently
met while they were serving in Vietnam. Bill went on to tell them
about how Tuck went AWOL, and then about his time in the jungles by
himself for several years. When Bill started to prompt Tuck into
telling everybody what they called him, he looked up and he wasn't
standing there anymore.

Bill was looking around for him, but he was
nowhere to be seen. He started to call his name when all of a
sudden he came walking out of the brush to the side of the house
with two men held at gunpoint.

Tuck walked them over to Bill, and said,
"These guys said they knew you.”

Bill looked at them and said, "No, I don't
know these men.”

Then Tuck told Bill that they had a pickup
parked about a mile up the main road, and they walked in.

"Did you see anybody else out there?”

"There's nobody else within eye shot.”

Bill told a couple of his guys to go get the
truck off the road and bring it inside. They sat the intruders in
chairs and tied them up out in the sun while they questioned them.
After a few minutes, Tuck told Bill that he didn't feel good about
the situation, and told him he was going up the ridge to keep a
lookout.

Bill said, “Okay, but take a radio and a
rifle.”

After about an hour, Bill had failed to get
any info out of the guys, and Tuck was still on the ridge when he
called Bill on the radio, and told him he saw movement to the
south. Bill told him to keep an eye on it and if they started
taking fire to take them out. Then he casually walked around to the
back of the men’s chairs and dragged them in a position where
they'd be in direct line if they started taking any fire from
whoever was out there. Then, Bill maneuvered himself where he would
be out of the line of fire, and told the men, "You have a man out
there." Both of them instantly denied it.

"Well, somebody is out there and they're
either going to try to stop me from breathing, or they're going to
try to shoot you to keep you from talking. My bet is they're here
for you.” Suddenly, one of the men was hit in the chest by a round
and collapsed, which visibly alarmed the other man.

"Tell me what I want to hear and I'll move
you out of the line of fire.” Then, from the hillside where Tuck
was, a shot rang out. Bill waited for a few seconds for radio
confirmation Tuck got the shooter, but confirmation never came.
Bill decided to preserve the other man until a later date, so he
pulled him out of the line of fire.

About that time, Bill and other members of
the group saw Tuck walking up the driveway. When he made it to the
house, he told Bill that the guys that went after the truck on the
road were dead and lying off the side of the road. Tuck then told
Bill he was going back up the hill to watch, but before he left, he
told Bill the truck he’d wanted retrieved was rigged to explode and
not to bring it to the house.

After an hour or so, Tuck came back and told
Bill everything looked alright now and wanted to know what Bill
needed done to straighten the mess up. After seeing all of this,
one of the group asked Bill who Tuck was, and exactly where his
loyalties lie.

"I will vouch for Tuck!”

The dissenter said, "Well that may not be
good enough this time because two of our friends are dead, and this
guy is out there creeping around. How do we know he didn't kill
them?”

Tuck stepped in and said, "I didn't ask to be
brought here. I was brought here at Bill’s invitation. Until I got
here, I didn't even know where we were going, so how could I have
anybody here with me? Besides, I don't know anybody at all, my
whole family is dead and up until a few months ago, I had been in
Vietnam for nearly eight years. These guys more likely came in with
one or more of you than me. You got here after we did, so if anyone
was out there before, wouldn't you have seen them when you came
in?”

Bill stepped in and said, "And if any of you
want to know who Tuck is, I'll tell you. Tuck is the kind of guy
that would pack an icicle in dry ice and haul it a thousand miles
across the country, just to put it in the base of your skull, so it
would melt down and not leave any evidence. Tuck is the kind of guy
that if he wanted to kill anybody, he wouldn't need help to do it.
So, you people are barking up the wrong tree.”

There was a lot of dissention among the ranks
of Bill’s people, and there was no sure way to quell their
suspicions. They knew he was dangerous, and it made them more antsy
and distrusting. Besides that, two of their own were dead, and that
set off warning bells. Bill knew one way to end this dilemma was to
bring in the dead and inspect the wounds on each, and see who
killed who.

Bill asked Tuck what he thought they should
do with the truck out on the road with all the explosives in it,
and he said he'd g take care of it then pick up the others and
bring them back to the house. A couple of the guys didn’t like that
idea, so Tuck told two of the guys to come along with him and they
could hold the explosives on the ride back. When he said that, they
both declined the offer to go along.

"C'mon, Tuck, I'll go with you, we'll leave
the girls here to cook or knit while we're gone.” They walked to
the truck, and Bill stood back some distance until Tuck called
him.

"Bill, something about this doesn't look or
feel right.”

"Why, what's wrong?”

"These explosives aren't hooked to the truck.
Did you find a detonator on one of those guys?”

"No, I searched them.”

Tuck told Bill that they needed to walk over
and see if either of the two he left in the bushes had one on them,
because if not somebody had it.

"You got two? I only heard one shot.”

"I only shot one, but there were two.”

They made their way over to where the sniper
was setup, and found him with a .308 caliber rifle, scoped and IR
(infrared) capable. They searched him and his pack out gear, but no
detonator. They walked about thirty yards to where the other guy
was lying with his throat cut.

Bill asked, "Did you do this?”

"Yeah, but I wanted to bring him in with me,
but he wouldn't have any of that. So I just left him here.”

They searched him, but again nothing as far
as a detonator, but they found a radio in his backpack, so Tuck
took it with him. They were walking back toward the road, when Tuck
headed back to the house.

"Hey, what are we going to do about the
truck?”

"It'll set right there until we find what
they were using for a detonator.”

"What, do you think it's there around the
house somewhere?”

"It's either around the house, or this radio
that guy had is it. But I don't know which it is yet.”

As Bill and Tuck got back to the house, one
of the guys asked, "Where's the truck and the men?”

Bill said, "We need a key to the truck.”

Tuck pulled out the radio as he was close to
the group gathered under the porch, and then he turned it on and
keyed it up. From within the pack, they heard a loud squeal from a
radio someone had on them.

Bill walked over to the guy, and the guy knew
he was caught and all he could do was hang his head.

Bill said, "You have a detonator on you?”

The guy reached in the back of his pants, and
came out with a small remote. Bill handed the remote to Tuck, and
then asked, “Why? Why would you betray us like this?”

"For money of course.”

"How much money, who was going to pay you,
and who is in it with you?”

"Just the five of us. We were going to split
one hundred thousand dollars at twenty thousand each, but we had to
take you out for it to get paid.”

"Who was paying you?”

"I never seen him before, and I don't know
who he was.”

"You know you're fixing to die, right?”

"We all have to die sometime, Bill.”

Bill turned to face the group. "What do we do
with him?”

In near perfect harmony, they all said,
"Death.”

Tuck pulled Bill over to the side so he could
talk without anyone else hearing, then Tuck walked over to the guy.
"This is what's going to happen. You're either going to watch this
other guy die, then you'll tell me who is trying to take Bill out,
or after he watches you suffer and die, he's going to tell me.”

"I'm dead anyway, so what does it
matter?”

Tuck walked over to the other man who was
still tied in the chair and stuck his knife about an inch inside
the man’s eye socket, then started prying it out. The man was in
agony, and screaming. "I can make this last for hours, so you'll
know how long you have to deal with it.”

In just a couple of minutes, the man passed
out from the pain, and Tuck went around behind him, cut his ties
loose and pushed him out of the chair, rolled him over on his
stomach, then he reached down and severed his Achilles tendons,
which instantly woke him back up, and in even more agony. Tuck
reached down, grabbed the man by his hair, "You'll either tell me
what I want to know, or I'll hurt you until these red ants around
here eat you, while you're still breathing. Now tell me what I want
to know, and I'll put an end to your pain.”