“Which way you think he went?” one of them said. He was short, older, thick beard, stocky build.
“There’s his footsteps,” another said, pointing at my tracks in the snow. “Come on.”
I eased back into the alley and waited.
SIXTY
They were good at their work, I’ll give them that much.
One of them did the tracking while the second scanned ahead, the third watching their six. They moved up the street quickly, following my footprints in the dim silver light. Finally, they reached the alley. I stood back in the shadows near a big green dumpster, hidden from sight.
The first of the three men, the short one, drew a pistol from under his coat and started slowly into the alley. By the way he held it, moving the barrel with his line of sight, I knew he had some measure of tactical training.
“You want a light?” the third man asked, taking an LED flashlight from his belt. I tensed, making ready to leap out and cross the distance.
“No. I can see just fine. Don’t want to make a target.” He took a few more tentative steps forward.
“I don’t like this,” the second man said. “Too dark, too many places to hide. Use the flashlight.”
Your friend is smart.
Three more steps. He was less than six feet away now. I held my breath.
“Okay, fine. Give me the-”
He diverted his attention for just a second to reach for the flashlight. It was all the time I needed.
Two steps brought me to his side. My hands flashed out and stripped the pistol from his grip. He stepped back in surprise, one hand reaching for another weapon. Rather than shoot him, I bashed him in the face with his own gun. When he stumbled back, I kicked him squarely in the balls.
As he collapsed, I trained the gun on the other two. “Hands in the air. Do it now.”
Slowly, they did as I said. The man I put down took a hand away from his groin long enough to try for his weapon again. I raised a boot and stomped on his throat—not hard enough to kill him, but enough to stop him from breathing for a while.
“Don’t try that again, asshole. I’ve been nice to you so far, but I’m just about out of patience.”
The man gurgled and sputtered, one hand on his groin, the other on his neck. A cut on his cheek spilled dark black liquid onto the snow.
“You two,” I said to the others, “take off your jackets. Do it slow. Your life depends on it.”
They removed their jackets and let them drop. I kicked them to the side of the alley and ordered the men to put their hands on the wall. When they did, I made them step back and separate their feet so they could not turn on me too quickly. Leaving them there for the moment, I grabbed one of the first man’s hands, put him in a wristlock, and forced him over onto his face. A search revealed a knife and a small .380 revolver, but no other weapons. I tossed them into a pile a few feet away and told him to join his friends against the wall. He whimpered and coughed while I searched the other two and tossed their weapons in the pile as well.
Like most citizens in Colorado Springs, the men had IDs on them. One was an old Texas driver’s license, and the other two were simple government issue IDs distributed at the refugee intake center. When out in public, civilians were required to carry their IDs on their person at all times. Tonight, that rule played to my advantage.
“I’m going to keep these IDs,” I said. “I know your names, and I know where you live. I could report you to the police, but it would be your word against mine, so here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to let you go. Your weapons belong to me now. If I ever see you again, I’ll shoot first and worry about the consequences later. Are we clear?”
They uttered a frightened chorus of assent.
“Good. Now get the fuck out of here.”
They got.
*****
After caching my newfound loot in a nearby abandoned building, I found a rooftop from which to watch the tavern’s front door. I did not have to wait long. The man wearing the medallion stepped out into the frigid night, turned his collar up around his face, pulled his knit cap down tight over his ears, and started walking northward. I slipped down from the rooftop and followed.
The first half-mile or so was difficult work. It is not easy to trail a person on empty streets without being spotted. My father and I used to make a game out of it in our neighborhood, him trying to spot me, and me trying to sneak up close enough to touch him without being detected. It took until I was about fifteen before I could beat him more times than I lost. Considering Dad was ex-Delta Force, it was an accomplishment.
Finally, the man turned onto one of the main thoroughfares connecting the refugee districts. Even this late at night there were a large number of people moving back and forth on the street, most of them third shift people. They made it easier to follow my target.
He reached a row of shipping containers perhaps two miles from where I lived and turned down a side street. I slowed my pace and watched him from the corner of my eye. The street was not long, only ten or eleven containers arranged around a cul-de-sac. I walked past, waited a five count, then turned and walked the other way. This time, I saw him climb a ladder, open a roof hatch, and disappear inside.
Looking around, I committed as much information about the area to memory as possible. The first smooth, uncoiling tendrils of a plan begin to stir.
It was long past time to pay a visit to Tyrel.
*****
After nearly two weeks of diligent surveillance and very little sleep, the time had come to make contact.
The target’s name was Tom Dills. I sincerely doubted that was his real name, but the Army was still prosecuting deserters, so it made sense for Dills to assume a new identity. Another three months would pass before the president would realize the stupidity of what the Army was doing and issue an amnesty decree.
Dills worked as a laborer on a construction crew on the south side of town; brick masonry, for the most part. He was a creature of habit, always walking the same route to and from work, occasionally stopping in for food and drinks at the tavern where I first saw him. He had very few friends, mostly just people he worked with, and occasionally visited a widow with a ten-year-old son who lived a few streets over. He was not the only man who visited her, and she did not appear to have a day job. It did not take much imagination to figure out what she did for a living.
He seemed to live a mostly solitary life, almost enough to make me feel sorry for him. Almost. I’m sure he thought keeping his head down and minding his own business would make it tough for anyone to figure out who he really was. I did not know all of his story, but I knew one small, extremely important detail of it.
I knew where he got that medallion.
It had belonged to Blake, once. His mother sent it to him for his nineteenth birthday, a plain gold disk inlaid with a silver cross surrounded by delicate ivy and roses in white gold. Blake was rarely without it.
Now that is was in Dills’ possession, he wore it everywhere. Made no attempt to hide it. I even heard a few people comment on how nice it was. An Air Force officer tried to buy it from him, saying he wanted to give it to his nephew for his birthday. Dills politely refused. Why it meant so much to him, I could only guess.
The setup was simple. Tyrel rented a horse and wagon from a man who knew better than to ask questions. We loaded it with a few relatively non-valuable salvage items: bundles of cloth, scrap wood, lawn furniture, empty buckets, and, most importantly, several large tarps. Ty parked the wagon not far from Dills’ container on an empty side street and pretended to brush down the horse while he waited.
For my part, I walked slowly from one end of the main road to the other, eyes roving, waiting for the now familiar shape of Tom Dills to appear.
True to his pattern, he showed up just after ten at night, head down, hands in his pockets, trudging wearily toward his favorite watering hole: the same tavern where I first saw him. I tailed him from a safe distance and waited at the end of the street until he went through the door.