On the Bourbon Trail – chapter 13
"You are supposed to be in jail." Raylan was angry, glared at Kurt as the Yakuza herded him to their end of the yard. It would be one thing if he got shot today, always an expectation, and he might do a happy dance if Wynn Duffy got shot, but it would quite another thing, and there was nothing he could think of that would make it all right, if Kurt got shot.
Kurt obviously felt the same, and he looked decidedly dejected when he replied, lacking his usual luster. "They let me go."
"Why would they do that?" Raylan's anger shifted now to the clearly incompetent local law enforcement in Kurt's town. "The sheriff seemed determined to press charges."
"Teddy got me out."
"What? You found Teddy?"
"Sorta. He was sleeping off a bender at the jail when they took me in. He said he and his cousin had got a line on a couple of barrels of Wild Turkey and they'd drunk their way through quite a bit of it over the week. They set fire to the barn they were in, said it was an accident. The sheriff caught up with them doubling back into town on Mrs. Howe's old bicycle. He was sober by the time I got there, told the sheriff that he never gave nobody permission to go into his rooms. They had to let me go then."
"Shit."
"Well, I didn't do anything wrong."
"That don't make me feel any better at this juncture. I wish they'd kept you overnight at least, for your own good, then all of this would've been over and done." Raylan pressed his lips together tightly, his eyes, too. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Trying to get the rent owed me. I thought maybe I could garter Teddy's wages. He said he and his cousin have been working this bourbon theft thing with the fellow that lives here, Craig Franklin."
"Bourbon theft?"
Kurt shrugged. "This is where they delivered it."
Duffy leaned into the conversation. "Are we back on the bourbon again, Marshal? And I think you mean 'garnish.' It's garnish wages, not garter. Nice dress, by the way."
Raylan turned his back on Duffy. "I think," he said to Kurt, with a bit of force behind the words for the stupidity, "it might be difficult to formally garnish wages that aren't declared. They were stealing. Did you think they'd get a paycheck for that?"
"I just wanted to talk to the man. See if he might be reasonable to the idea. It was worth a try."
"You expect anyone to be reasonable while you're waving a shotgun around?"
"They usual are. You were."
They all turned at a noise from the house. The front door opened and Craig Franklin stumbled into view, followed by a rifle barrel and the remaining Yakuza gang. It didn't look to Raylan like things were going Franklin's way. He was prodded to the middle of the yard, close to their tight group, knocked to his knees. Raylan felt he had a pretty good idea of what was coming until he became the center of attention again, suddenly, some pointing and a nod. It was a more familiar role for him and he felt, for a moment, that he had control back; center stage was where he belonged, after all. He could always handle just about anything that anybody could throw at him, but what they threw at him threw him. Cutting the tie on his wrists, one of the Yakuza tossed him a shovel. He wasn't expecting that, but maybe he looked the most capable of the group, the ex-coalminer, a more likely candidate for digging in the earth than the older Duffy or the man in the dress.
The Yakuza member closest to Raylan prodded him with his rifle, gestured to the ground at his feet and said something in Japanese. Raylan got the picture.
"I see what you mean about guns and translation," said Raylan.
Duffy nodded. "Better than a babelfish."
"A what?"
"You ever read A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?"
"No."
"Then never mind, it would take too long to explain. I would suggest, Marshal, that you start digging and hope that they stop you at one."
Raylan was prodded again, the Japanese a little louder and a little angrier.
"Shit." The word came out of Raylan with almost as much enthusiasm as Kurt's earlier version. "It's gonna be hard to garnish or garter anything from a dead man," he said to Kurt as he adjusted his grip on the handle of the spade and wondered how good a weapon it might be against a dozen semi-automatic assault rifles.
Tim dropped his forehead onto his scope. The irony building on his side of the hill was threatening to choke him. If he was going to have to stick his neck out to try to save Craig Franklin's life, and with a sniper rifle, goddammit, then he decided there was no way in hell he was sticking to the bargain of giving up bourbon, even if the bargain was met and help did somehow arrive in time to finish sorting out this mess.
It wasn't fair. He should have left it alone and let the cards fall where they may – Yakuza-style karma was almost as good as a criminal record. But Raylan and Kurt would likely still be tangled in it, Tim reminded himself. At least now he was in a position to give them some support. Whether it would be enough remained to be seen.
He watched as they freed Raylan's hands and tossed him a shovel. Raylan caught it and adjusted his grip on the handle, hoisting it like a pro, and then looked around the yard, calculating. Tim knew him well enough by now to guess what was going on in his mind. Don't do it, he thought, the bad guy count fresh in his head. But apparently Raylan had the same thought because he turned his focus to the ground at his feet, putting his energy into burying the spade aggressively into the dirt. Adding his weight to it, he lifted a shovelful and dumped it on the shoes of the nearest Yakuza gang member.
Franklin started talking faster, which was precisely what the Yakuza were hoping for. Stop talking, Tim yelled silently, they'll shoot you anyway once they got what they want. Another shovelful of dirt and another mouthful of Japanese, and Franklin was jibbering and waving frantically. Someone was sent into the house and returned minutes later with keys and headed for the garage.
"Shit." Tim continued to watch, waiting for an opportunity, or a point of no return. He kicked himself mentally for suggesting that dumb luck was a welcome option. It seemed like dumb fucking luck to him that he should be the one in a position to give Mr. Snipers Are Cowards an opportunity to survive the grave he was digging for himself, didn't matter that it was Raylan wielding the shovel.
The hole in front of Raylan grew steadily bigger. While he dug, two men disappeared into the garage and returned with a crate. It was opened, a tiny porcelain bowl held up for viewing. The suit walked to the crate and fished through it, counting, stood and smiled and said something that sounded very satisfied and final.
Tim rechecked his angles.
The routine patrols had stopped and the Yakuza teams had closed their perimeter in, now closer to the back of the house, every eye riveted on the drama playing out in the yard below. The men on the ridge were now far enough ahead of Tim, a good fifty yards, that he felt safe letting out a quietly disgusted huff at the way events were playing out. He wrestled with his morals, but in the end, what choice did he have, really? He set his sights on a new target, the gunman standing behind Craig Franklin. A handgun was pulled from a holster and raised to Franklin's head. There were a few more words spoken between the Japanese boss and the blubbering philanthropist, then a cold nod, and then Tim pulled the trigger, putting a fast and lethal bullet into the head of the would-be executioner.
Time staggered. No one in the group moved, a long minute of confusion – the Yakuza disbelieving, Craig Franklin gaping at the gun in the lifeless hand, Kurt's hands up over his mouth in shock, Duffy's eyebrows hopping between concern and elation. And in that pause, while time picked itself up again after the stumble, Raylan had a revelation in the form of a replay of the conversation during which he'd heard the name Craig Franklin. He stared, trying to piece it all together – the bourbon, Duffy, Teddy Newton, Kurt, the phrase 'snipers are cowards' and an angry Tim and a neat bullet hole centered between the eyes of a dead man.
"Snipers are cowards, huh?" he said aloud as he arrived at an optimistic conclusion about the shooting and reacted accordingly. Dropping the shovel and snatching a weapon from the body, he grabbed Franklin by the collar, Kurt by the arm, and dragged them both backward behind a vehicle.
Duffy stood still a second longer, then followed Raylan.
The Yakuza responded next, moving the opposite way, surrounding their boss and shuffling him quickly behind cover. The line was now drawn – Raylan and his crew on one side with the shooter, the Yakuza on the other.
It took Duffy a bit longer to work out the direction the bullet came from, and when he did, he wasn't happy that Raylan had positioned them in plain view of the sniper. He started crawling, confused desperation, around to the other side of the vehicle. Catching hold of his ankle, Raylan yanked him back.
"Raylan, what are you doing? Let go!" Duffy hissed and swatted at the hand holding him.
"What are you doing, you idiot? They'll shoot you."
"And he won't?" said Duffy, waving frantically to the hills behind the house.
"Who?"
"The sniper! Or are you so deluded about your immortality and importance that you thought that was divine intervention back there?"
"He won't shoot us. He's ours."
"How do you know that? How could he possibly be ours? The marshals couldn't have reacted this fast. Not even you knew where we were headed, and I don't remember bringing a sniper with us."
"I'm sure of it." Raylan made a face. "Well, pretty sure."
"Pretty sure? Fifty-fifty? Seventy-five-twenty-five?"
"I'd say more than fifty-fifty."
"Excuse me if I don't find that comforting."
"He just shot one of them."
"Maybe he missed!"
"He didn't miss." Raylan jabbed his index finger against the center of his forehead. "That was a precise and calculated shot."
The Yakuza were regrouping while Duffy and Raylan argued, moving their hill patrols into position to surround their attacker. The men spread out on either side of Tim's nest, calculating a direction, guessing at a distance, getting the line approximately right, but too short. Their eyes moved restlessly, weapons at the ready, searching the forest for any hint of a shooter, and Tim drew his sidearm again, set it handy in the leaves by his right shoulder, and watched. There was a spattering of Japanese voices, then a burst of movement near the house as one of the Yakuza broke cover and ran behind another vehicle. Tim followed the man's movements through his scope, but he wasn't falling for it. He wasn't about to fire at the target and give them an opportunity to narrow down their search. He waited, patient, willing to give himself away only when it was strategically advantageous to do so, or when things got desperate.
It wasn't a surprise when the man reappeared five minutes later with a sniper rifle of his own, mounted it on the hood of an SUV and aimed up the hill in Tim's direction. He was peering through his scope and doing short sweeps of the forest. He was now Tim's number one target, and Tim lined him up and waited for the Yakuza, or Raylan, to make the next move.
Miljana shook her head. "No, Deputy Dunlop, he said…"
"You can call me Nelson."
"Okay, Nelson, Art said that you should take me where I need to go."
"He didn't mean…"
"He said, 'Take her where she needs to go.' I need to go get Stell...Tim's buddy and get my car back."
"I really don't think he meant…"
"That's exactly what he meant. Who else is going to keep Tim's buddy from getting involved in this? Art wanted me to take him back to my place and keep him out of trouble, so that's what we're going to do. But we have to find him first."
"But…"
Miljana felt a jolt of guilt for manipulating Nelson the way she was, though more like a harmless static shock from a carpet than any painful cosmic karma zap of lightning, certainly not enough to stop her from continuing.
"Nelson, you know where he's headed. I know where he's headed. He's going straight out to that country estate to try and help Tim. He'll bring a gun, or six, or maybe a grenade launcher, and his messed-up CIA morals and a shit storm of trouble for the Marshals Service. Your chief will not be happy if we don't try to stop him."
"All right, I guess, if that's what the chief meant."
"Take the I-64 to Owingsville. I've got the map that Tim used."
Nelson sighed, started the car and headed for the interstate.
"You can drive faster," said Miljana as she buckled her seatbelt. "It'd be nice to catch him before he gets there."
Nelson sunk the accelerator a little closer to the car floor and began chewing on a nail while he navigated the streets.
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