The Unit (9 page)

We pour some fire on them to see what they’re like. They pop back at us with a little .22 and one shotgun round. Let’s just say that our fire is a lot noisier, and so the situation is clear. I send runners behind us and all the way to the trees to make sure there aren’t any more strangers setting a trap for us. I learned how to play chess when I was locked up in juvie, and an ambush is a lot like that mean little game. I know I can’t pay so much attention to setting up an attack that I fall into somebody else’s.

I send runners to get some of our dynamite. I don’t want to blow up the market, but I want to be ready for anything. I hold up my fist and the men stay low and some of them look like they want to get this over with and go back to sleep, but they’re watching me and understanding my signals, and I know they’ll do whatever I say.

For now we’ll wait. We’ve had good luck with waiting. We’ve had people surrender after the first few shots. We’ve had people shoot up all their ammo at us, so we could just walk over and put them out of their misery. One dude even shot his family and then himself while we waited. Ookie said that the dude didn’t know what side he was on, and we laughed about that crazy loser for days.

No, these strangers aren’t going anywhere. I’ll wait for the runners to get back before I make my next move, then I’ll think of something that doesn’t get anyone but the right people killed. I glass them with the binoculars. The girl peeks out from behind an aisle of soda pop, and she’s looking fine, fine, fine, with that wild red hair. She’s wearing a ski coat and some nasty-looking blue jeans, but her clothes can’t hide the fact that she’s one hundred percent female. I hand Luscious the binocs and ask him what he thinks of her.

“So
that’s
what you’re after,” he says.

“That there is a righteous-looking wench,” I say.

The shooting stops. The kids are quiet, and I crawl to them and check them for holes. I check their arms and legs until they push me away. Susan hasn’t been hit, thank God. I remember to check myself. There aren’t any holes in me either, thank You, Lord, again and forevermore. Thank You for not letting us die because of my stupidity and greed.

But how did we miss these guys? I don’t buy the story that they just walked up on us. No. They could’ve been hiding in the motel or the wrecking yard, watching us pass. But if that was the case, they could’ve taken us on the road. Maybe they have hidey-holes. Spider holes, like the terrorists had in Beirut. It doesn’t take long to prepare positions like that. And nestled down in the earth, beneath good camo cover, you’re very hard to spot. Unless someone steps directly on the position, a spider hole is practically invisible.

But I’m only being paranoid again. They probably just didn’t see us right away, and that’s a good sign, because it means they’re fallible, too. I low crawl to Susan and whisper that we’ll wait until dark. We’ll melt away into the night, God willing. She squeezes her eyes shut. Her lips move, but she’s not talking to me.

I brush shards of glass from her hair. I want to kiss her but I don’t. I sweep a place free of glass for us. We roll onto it. I reach up above us and pull a few things from the shelves. I treat the cuts on her forearms with hydrogen peroxide and I cover them with SpongeBob SquarePants Band-Aids. Then she treats my cuts while the children follow our lead and bandage their own cuts.

“Be ready for anything,” I say. “We have a long day ahead of us. If these bastards don’t have other plans, we’ll be leaving when it gets dark.”

I want to crack open the Crown Royal and take a long pull, but I don’t. We settle down to wait, but the killers don’t wait forever.

They’re running across the parking lot. No. It can’t end like this. Please.

Scott moves to cover the door to the storeroom. I move so I can cover Scott. Jerry doesn’t have to say a word. He crawls to the front door. Melanie sticks close to him. For half a minute we crawl like insects to the places where we’ll live or die. I get more cuts from the glass. The reality of our situation is hard to swallow, but I swallow it. We’re together in this. None of us is alone, and if we have to go, this is the way to do it. But no. Hell no.

The shooters are close. A voice comes from outside.

“Give it up, people.”

Jerry saying, “Sure thing—right after you give us your guns and cook us a steak dinner.”

Our attackers talk among themselves, but I can’t hear the words. The voice starts up again.

“We know it’s you, Hammersmith.”

“Who’s that?”

“That would be
you
.”

“That would be bull
shit
.”

They talk to each other again. I can’t hear what they’re saying outside, but they’re saying a lot. Three minutes pass. And then finally:

“I’m coming in. I want to talk, but my buddies say I shouldn’t bother. We have a shitload of dynamite out here. If you shoot me, you’ll die ugly. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then.”

“Okay.”

I hear the door opening. It grinds on its hinges and pushes through the debris in its path. I hear careful footsteps on broken glass. I move to a place where I can see both the storeroom door and the storefront. I get a look at the guy. He’s holding a big cowboy revolver, but he’s keeping it pointed at the floor. I get a look at his face. He’s a boy, maybe one year younger than Scotty. He’s either afraid or he’s a very good actor. I can’t bring myself to point my shotgun at him. He sees me. He stops, but he doesn’t raise his pistol. I move the shotgun so it’s beside me on the floor, almost out of his sight. For a second, he looks grateful.

Jerry stands. He walks to the boy. He walks quickly in a way that could be seen as threatening, but he doesn’t have a choice. He’s closing the distance between them, so he can keep Melanie out of any potential line of fire. He stops when he’s right up against the checkout counter. He keeps the boy at his two o’clock position, so I still have a clear shot. I slide the shotgun up and manage to aim it in the boy’s general direction.

Jerry keeps his rifle pointed at the floor. They size each other up, as males of different generations do. Jerry is bigger than the kid, but the kid doesn’t seem to be intimidated.

“We’re up from Weed. We’re looking for a man who kidnapped a girl. You’re not him.”

“Nope.”

Jerry doesn’t say anything more. He coughs once without opening his mouth. Seconds pass. The kid loses the edges of his tight posture. He lets out his breath and betrays the fact that he’d been holding it in.

“What’s your story?” he says.

“We’re coming down from Yreka, headed south. Headed home.”

“I heard it was bad in Yreka.”

“It was.”

“Who’s this with you?”

“My family.”

Jerry’s trigger finger is white against the trigger guard of his rifle.

“Okay,” the kid says.

“Okay?”

“You don’t have to be afraid of us.”

“I don’t?”

“No.”

Jerry flicks a glance at the riddled store.

“Convince me.”

“Well, let’s start by taking ourselves off high alert.”

The kid uncocks his cowboy revolver and slides it into its cowboy holster. He shrugs his thin shoulders and raises his eyebrows. Jerry nods and slings his rifle so it’s pointed muzzle down. It looks less threatening that way, but I’ve seen him bring it up and fire a shot in less time than it takes me to blink. He doesn’t ask us to stand up, so we don’t. I have a say in everything else we do, but I’ll let Jerry make the decisions about whether we should talk with strangers or kill them.

His story about looking for a kidnapper is bullshit. He’s younger than I am. He smiles at me, but maybe he’s a monster, so I don’t give him anything. He has long brown hair and he’s wearing a natural grunge look. He looks bright enough. He could be a poet, for all I know, but all I can see is that stupid, so-called Peacemaker on his hip. I hope he’s a decent person, but I think he’s probably a killer. I want him to leave, but I don’t have the nerve to say anything.

He shouts to the other guys.

“It’s okay, men. The shooting’s over. And for God’s sakes, put away the dynamite.”

He calls one of them inside. The door opens again and a huge brown kid comes in. He’s really big, but he looks like he’s about sixteen. Dad treats both the young guys like men. They probably think they are. Dad introduces himself and shakes their hands. They shake, but they keep their serious boy-man faces on. The big one says his name is Luscious. He looks straight at Dad when he says it, like he’s daring him to say something. The leader calls himself Bill Creedmore Junior. His eyes are bright and he has the same wild look on his face that my brother has. It’s like they think this is some kind of extreme sport. If I thought it would do any good, I’d remind the testosterone-poisoned males of the world that the process of evolution has a habit of weeding idiots from the herd.

Maybe he’s a killer, but Bill Creedmore Junior has an interesting smile. It’s sad, but there’s something complicated in it, too. His eyes do that sparking thing that shows he wants to tell me something interesting. Something that has nothing to do with this shit.

But no. I’m with Dad on this one. Being peaceful doesn’t mean you have to be a sucker. Like that old maggot Ronald Reagan said: Trust but verify.

No way do I trust them. They might have Dad and Mom and Mel thinking they’re okay, but not me. Something’s wrong with them. They’re saying all the right words, but it’s like they’re reading from a half-assed script. Look. There. The smaller one just apologized for shooting at us, but he’s a shifty-eyed bitch. And he’s standing all stiff and uptight. If he was really sorry, he’d relax a little bit. Maybe he’d look down at the floor. But not this dude. I know he’s lying, the little dickhead. Maybe I can’t read minds, but I know when someone is lying. I’ve spent enough time in front of a television to know bad acting when I see it.

They’re still talking, but I keep watch on the storeroom door. I lean the .22 against a shelf of cleaning stuff and take out Dad’s Beretta. The pistol packs more punch at close range. I back up so I can see Dad better. There’s another dude, a big kid who looks like he’s made up of every race and creed on earth. His acting is just as bad as the first kid’s. The smaller one lights a cigarette with a pack of Circle-K matches. He doesn’t shake out the match. He lets it fall to the floor and then he stomps it with his weird gray shoes. They’re walking shoes. They don’t have any brand labels that I can see. The other kid is wearing the same kind of shoes. Two more kids come into the store. They’re all wearing the same crappy shoes. It’s like they’re in a cult or something. Like the cult that thought there was a spaceship hiding in the tail of Halley’s Comet.

More of them move up and stand at the door, and all of them are kids, and all of them are carrying black rifles. My ears start to buzz and I can see almost too clearly and my face is hot. I try to get Dad’s attention, get him to check out the bad footwear and the military rifles, but he’s keeping a tight focus on their eyes and hands. I don’t think he’s bought their story yet, but I’m afraid he will. Unless he’s putting on an act, too, it looks like he’s already starting to relax. I take the Beretta off safe and wait for the little shits to show us what they’re really all about.

You have to be patient, but also you have to know when to make your move. What’s the difference between a player and a bitch? The player knows when to do what needs to be done.

The man’s getting old. He was probably a tough motherfucker when he was young, but he’s got that old-man hesitation thing now. Unless it’s an act, his ass is mine. But it’s his daughter’s ass I’m after. The mother doesn’t look too shabby, either. She’s a project the men could get behind. But the daughter is a natural eight, even dirty as she is. A real stunner.

I give her a smile. It’s my mysterious smile, the one I used to practice when I was locked down in juvie and dreaming about girls, the smile that says, Baby I could show you things you couldn’t
imagine
learning anywhere else. She tries to look through me, but I think the smile got to her, because she’s working hard to pretend I don’t exist.

Her old man sees the smile, too, but he doesn’t get mad. It makes my alarm bells start to ring because it shows that he’s a good salesman, too. He’s not afraid of me, that I can see, and he probably wants to blow my guts out for what he must know I’m thinking about his girl, but he looks right into my eyes and asks me if any of my men are wounded. He says he has some training in first aid, and maybe he can help.

“No,” I say. “Nobody’s hurt, thank God.”

I add the “thank God” thing without thinking about it, and I like how it makes me sound like a man with values. The truth is, I don’t know if any of my guys were hit. I kick myself inside a little bit for not asking right away. The sales job I’ve got here extends to my men, too. It takes both carrots and sticks, and I should’ve at least put on an act and checked on my men, first thing.

I don’t think they’re okay, but I want them to be. Maybe they are. Two more of them come inside. They smell like sweat and tobacco smoke and a night of drinking. Their leader, Bill Junior, is looking at Melanie. He has a good poker face but it doesn’t take much imagination to see the lust in his eyes, and it says something that he doesn’t hide it from me.