A Triple Thriller Fest (2 page)

“It’s a war, Private. This loser chose the wrong side,” Krueger said. He stepped to the slowly swaying body, took hold of a dangling boot and turned the body enough for the available light to reflect off McFarland’s distorted face.

The sound of retching caused Krueger to turn around again. The smaller of the two young recruits who had been assigned to accompany Krueger on this mission was still on his knees, several yards from the truck, relieving himself of the sandwich he had eaten on the drive south.

Krueger sneered. “Stand up, maggot. There’ll be no mama’s boys in my outfit. You volunteered for this mission. Now get in the truck and shut up. If you puke again, you walk home—or you could join our friend here,” he said, jerking the boot and swinging the body around in circles.

The kid didn’t reply, but wiped his mouth on his sleeve and stumbled toward the pickup.

“Ted, close it up and let’s get out of here,” Krueger ordered the other, even younger, teenage recruit.

Ted vaulted into the back of the truck and closed the lid on the side-to-side aluminum toolbox bolted to the back of the cab. The lieutenant had been confined in this coffin-like enclosure during the drive from their base camp in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Ted then jumped down and slammed the tailgate on which, moments before, the trembling accountant, who doubled as a weekend soldier, had been made to stand, his desperate eyes silently begging for mercy.

The First Sergeant climbed behind the wheel and started the engine on the Ford F-150 pickup. With a final glance at the slowly twisting body, Otto spat a wad of chewing tobacco out the window and floored the accelerator, spinning dirt and debris beneath the lifeless remains.

The truck bucked and lurched as Krueger steered out of the dry river bed and up the embankment toward the end of the bridge. As they neared the highway, headlights suddenly blinded them as another vehicle rounded the bridge abutment, facing Krueger’s truck and blocking their return to the highway. Otto jammed on the brakes and reached to the seat beside him for his pistol. He sat motionless for several seconds until the occupant of the other vehicle got out, trained a flashlight on the driver’s side of the Ford, and approached from the front.

“Got a problem here?” a voice called out.

In the dusty glare of the headlights, Krueger recognized the uniform of a Yolo County sheriff’s deputy.

“Quiet!” he mouthed softly. “Not a word from either of you,” he added, climbing out of the vehicle, his pistol shielded behind his back.

“No problem, Officer,” Krueger called out. “Just looking for a good spot to fish.”

“Step into the light, please,” the deputy called toward Krueger.

Dust hung in the air, reflected by the headlights, as Krueger came forward into the space between the two vehicles while the deputy continued to stand to one side of his Chevy Tahoe.

“Not looking for any trouble, Officer,” Otto said, his voice friendly. “Like I said, just looking for a good fishing spot.”

The deputy stepped forward a couple of paces, shining his flashlight toward the interior of Otto’s truck and catching the reflection of two additional faces. He hesitated and moved his hand slowly toward his holster. Otto quickly moved, closing the gap between the two men, his smile visible beneath the twin headlamps of both vehicles.

“Just my two nephews, Officer. Nothing to worry about.”

“Can I see some identification, please?” the officer asked.

“Certainly. Will this do?” Krueger extended the pistol toward the deputy and continued to smile as he closed the remaining distance between them.

The deputy’s face changed immediately, and he quickly reached to unsnap his holster and withdraw his revolver. Krueger remained calm, even smiling, as the seconds extended to what seemed like minutes. Before the deputy’s weapon cleared the holster, Krueger reached out and seized the man’s wrist in a vice-like grip, preventing him from raising his arm. His eyes only inches from the deputy’s face, Krueger slowly shook his head while holding the officer’s arm rigid, rendering the revolver immobile in his hand.

“It’s a dangerous profession you’ve chosen, young fella,” Krueger said, raising his .45-caliber military-issue pistol toward the man’s face. Without a further word, Krueger fired one round directly into the deputy’s forehead, released his grip on the man’s wrist, and watched the wide-eyed law enforcement officer sprawl backward. Krueger stared at the fallen deputy for several seconds, then turned and fired one round into each of the Tahoe’s headlamps, extinguishing the glaring lights. Then he leaned down, grasped the dead man’s hand, which still held the revolver, and using the man’s own finger, fired two rounds into the air before dropping the hand and the gun back to the ground. He retraced his steps to his truck, entered the driver’s seat, and threw the vehicle into gear, once again spinning tires as he maneuvered around the sheriff’s vehicle, pulling onto the highway.

“Dude, that was a
sheriff’s
deputy,” the young man in the rear seat whined to his young companion, “and he
shot
him. He killed a cop!”

Krueger growled. “You’re right, Private, he
was
a deputy. Now he’s meat for worms.”

Chapter 2

Davis, California

Daniel Rawlings stood under the shower nozzle, his head tilted back and his eyes closed. Rivulets of steaming hot water ran down his face as he tried to wash away the night sweat and anxiety that always accompanied the dream. For over two years, he had been haunted by a recurring nightmare. It always woke him and left him sitting up in bed, his heart racing. Over and over, he had been forced by an involuntary, self-inflicted penance to watch Susan die, each time as realistically as the first, though in the dream his wife’s face was absent—replaced by a blurred image beneath her fur-lined hood.

He’d knelt in the snow and held her in his arms while she died, but she’d not been able to speak. Ever since, he’d been unable to convince himself that there wasn’t something,
anything
, he could have done to prevent her death.

The dream always brought Dan awake, sweating and trembling, wishing for the thousandth time that it might only be a dream. Then, unable to erase the gruesome image from his mind or fall back to sleep, he would get out of bed and climb into the shower, hoping the hot water and steam might somehow purge the painful memories.

Stepping out of the shower, Dan toweled off, wiped the fog from the bathroom mirror, and lathered his face. Staring back at him were the same blue eyes, the same thick, dark brown hair and heavy overnight beard. There was even the same body, exercised regularly in an almost ritualistic pattern. At slightly over six feet, Dan had maintained every aspect of his physical attributes that Susan had so loved. It seemed peculiar to him that all physical signs were void of the devastation that had occurred within his heart, his soul. Those he had been unable to maintain, to exercise, even to control.

He and Susan had been married for less than a year when she died, and his morning ritual—a return to reality more than an awakening from sleep—was born of frustration at a reluctant but forced acceptance of the ever-present nightmare, of Susan’s absence, and the brevity of the marriage they had been promised. A widower at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, eternity seemed a
long
time away.

The one redeeming benefit of waking so early was that after clearing his head of the memories, he was able to shift mentally into another frame of mind and make good use of the pre-dawn hours to work on the novel he was writing. He had spent hundreds of hours at his computer, his imaginary characters filling the lonely void in his life. In many respects,
Voices in My Blood
had been his salvation.

Despite the bitter cold of the winter morning, sweat saturated the young soldier’s ragged uniform, and salty droplets ran from his forehead, stinging his eyes. Four of them lay abreast in their shallow log bunker, awaiting the next assault by the British regulars.

“There’s no hope, Ned,” the young man said, his voice tight with fear.

“Don’t give in, Tommy, we ain’t dead yet. An’ you’ll see, sure as shootin’, Ethan’s boys’ll come swoopin’ down outta them Green Mountains, and the redcoats’ll scatter like scared rabbits.”

Nearly four hundred and fifty pages of his heart and soul, not to mention personal satisfaction derived from the effort, lay on his desk, ready to be sealed in a U.S. Priority Mail envelope and sent off to a New York literary agent. Born of a year’s worth of sleeplessness, early morning hours, and long, nighttime sessions that had replaced, in large part, any semblance of a social life, the book he hoped would be the next great American novel was finally finished.

Rawlings had needed an outlet for the persistent pain, and he had turned to what he had come to think of as “the voices in his blood” for diversion. Fired by the stories told him by his grandfather, Jack Rumsey, Dan’s feelings for his ancestors had always been strong, but in researching and writing their histories, he had developed a sense of being literally connected to them. Unable to objectively judge its worth, Dan came to view his novel—tentatively titled
Voices in My Blood
—as a catharsis for his grief following the death of his bride. The task of writing a novel had proven far more daunting than he had imagined, but it had also consumed him.

The Rumsey family, his progenitors on his mother’s side, had come from England to the American colonies with the first wave of settlers early in the seventeenth century. Over several generations, they had pioneered the frontiers and been involved in pushing the borders of the fledgling United States ever westward, some crossing the plains in the traditional route, untended grave sites marking the extent of their passage.

The Rumseys, a current-day amalgamation of Macabees, Standishs, Morrins, and a host of other Anglo-Saxon and northern European names, had become a hardy bunch. Together with a smattering of native American Indian blood, they had lived, labored, fought, and propagated during a volatile and romantic period in American history. Like many families of that turbulent era, some were more adventurous, exhibiting a restless bent that brought them at last to the fertile valleys of central and northern California.

Dan Rawlings loved the beautiful Rumsey Valley, nestled in the eastern foothills of the California coastal range, northwest of Sacramento. Another branch of his ancestors had eventually settled there in 1867, the final stop for the formerly South Carolina Rumseys who moved west after the Civil War. It was where he had chosen to continue living, surrounded by the echoes of the past.

Rawlings had found it easy to identify with these robust, often reckless people. Indeed, after he had researched their names, histories, and genealogy, the characters had taken on lives of their own, something Dan found immensely intriguing. The daily task of writing had become an adventure, and as he turned on his computer each morning, he did so with a feeling of curiosity, wondering what his characters might end up doing as he explored their lives and feelings. The “voices in his blood” sang to him, and he found it emotionally satisfying to speculate about their lives and to embellish their stories.

After earning a degree in political science from the University of California at Davis, Dan had then graduated with honors from Stanford Law School. Out of a sense of patriotism, or perhaps his family’s sense of performing their civic duty, he joined the California National Guard in Sacramento, spending six months on active duty at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, becoming a JAG officer.

His marriage to Susan completed what he felt was the foundation of a wonderful life, personally and professionally. Landing a job as the city attorney in Susanville, California, high in the Sierra Nevada mountains, was the finishing touch. With work he loved to do and living near the skiing that Susan loved so much, the two of them seemed destined to enjoy the good life. But Susan’s tragic death just one year later had instantly changed all that. She was twenty-four, he was twenty-six, and their marriage was barely one.

Five months after the accident, still numb from the loss and unable to deal with the memories he and Susan had built in Susanville, Dan resigned his position as city attorney and accepted a job as county administrator in Yolo County, near Sacramento, returning to the geographic roots of his ancestors. Rather than live in Woodland, the county seat, and the town where the county offices were located, he had chosen to live in Davis, near the University of California, where he would have easy access to the library and its resources. Dan had disciplined himself to work at least a few hours each day on his manuscript, and the daily routine had proven to be his salvation in the two years that had passed since Susan’s death. He had settled into a lonely, but comfortable, routine, and it was only a fifteen-minute drive to work—just enough time to clear his head and make the transition from aspiring novelist to county administrator.

The periodic nightmares in which he relived the horror of Susan’s death were a continuing curse and a cruel mocking of what might have been—
should
have been. He hated seeing her broken body lying amidst the blood. When he allowed his mind to drift, he missed her terribly, his breath came in short, ragged gasps, and the pain in his chest, more emotional than physical, was, to his way of thinking, indiscernible from an actual physiological trauma.

But there were also satisfying memories. Even now, while driving or sitting quietly in his office, he often found himself lost in thought, trying desperately to recall her scent, the texture of her hair and the feel of her skin. He would think about how she spoke to him with her eyes, her smile, and the bold and intimate things she would say and do as she draped herself on him, entwining her fingers in his hair, breathing her sweet breath into his ear, growling outrageous threats, slowly building his emotion and desire, and purring in response when he held her tightly in his arms, his face buried in the fragrant hollow of her neck and shoulder.