(Wrath-06)-Smoke & Dust (2012) Read online

  “Shut up!” Ammon screamed into his ear.

  “Listen, Sergeant Black,” Luke hissed to his brother from the darkness. “We’ve been back from Afghanistan a real long time. I haven’t killed a man in weeks now.”

  “Shut up!” Ammon shouted. “Shut up, Sergeant Smith. Shut up and let me think!”

  The battered man began to tremble against his arm.

  Ammon shot a glance to the inside of their car, thinking of the gold coins and cash hidden there. They hadn’t found it. Not yet. But they surely would have, if Ammon and Luke hadn’t come when they did.

  Shoving the attacker, Ammon pushed him toward the shattered window of their car, pointing to the rumpled bedding and scattered clothes. Everything had been dumped out: their suitcases, the food and water, everything searched and thrown about. The two men obviously weren’t thinking of survival—it hadn’t even entered their stupefied minds. Beer and money were the only things they had been considering, that was pretty clear.

  Ammon glanced at Luke, barely able to see him in the dark. Luke held the smaller man from behind, his arm around his throat, one hand viciously grabbing his head by a handful of hair. Ammon turned toward his mother. “Are you OK, Mom?” he asked, his voice a growl.

  “I’m OK, Ammon,” she answered quietly, seemingly in shock.

  Unlike her two sons, she wasn’t pretending. The attacker’s angry words and attempted slap had sucked the life out of her, leaving her weak and helpless. Sara had lived a peaceful life, a quiet life, and the possibility of being attacked in anger had never really crossed her mind. She had never been hit, not so much as a single time in her life, and she felt violated and helpless at what almost had happened to her.

  “Let’s just kill them,” Luke sneered again, shaking the stranger he was holding by the hair. “Let’s just kill them and leave them out here. No one’s going to come looking for them. There’ll be no police, no investigation. And we could always claim that we had to kill them in self-defense.”

  Ammon felt the man struggle against him and he tightened his grip, squeezing against his neck. The stranger bent his legs, dropping his weight against Ammon’s arms, fighting to get away, but Ammon dropped with him, both of them landing on their knees. He pulled his arm into a death grip and felt the man grow weak. He seemed to think for a moment, then nodded to his mother.

  “All right. Get the gun, Mom,” he said in a deadly voice.

  Sara hesitated. He sounded so serious, she was starting to believe him. “No, Ammon, you can’t kill them—”

  “GET IT, MOM!” Ammon screamed.

  Sara didn’t move.

  Mary stepped toward Ammon, trying to remember the things he had told her to say. “I know this type,” she said, her voice cold and unfeeling. “I think you ought to kill them. If you don’t do it, they’ll be back. We’ll have to deal with them later. They’ll follow us and give us trouble—or if not us, then someone else. They’ll give the world nothing but trouble now. It’d be better off without them.”

  “You got that right,” Ammon hissed. “Go on, Mom, get the gun.”

  The man cried again, his ribs on fire, every breath, every movement sending jolts of anguish all through his chest. Ammon squeezed against his back and he went limp. His lips were growing blue now, his broken ribs struggling to give his lungs room to breathe. “No, no, no,” he begged, as if believing for the first that he was just a few seconds from death. “Please, you don’t have to do this.” He started crying, his voice drunk and thick. He took a painful breath and sobbed. “We didn’t mean nothing, OK? We’ll go. We’ll get out of here. I promise you, you’ll never see us again.”

  “The only way I’m going to see you again is if I dig you up,” Ammon snarled. He squeezed against the attacker’s neck again and pulled him to his feet. “I could shoot you now or save the bullet and just strangle you.”

  Luke almost laughed. That line was just too much. Like something from a Clint Eastwood movie. Ammon was so into this role.

  These two men were no threat to them any longer, he could see that. Drunk, defeated, and scared, they were two young bulls who’d just been branded with a very hot iron.

  The man stammered in fear, “I swear to you, we’re sorry. I swear it to you, man, you’ll never see us again.

  Ammon pulled again. “I hope I do,” he whispered in his ear. “If I see you, I can kill you. I will kill you. Is there any doubt in your mind?”

  “No, man. You’re crazy. You’re some crazy, wigged-out soldier. I got no doubt at all.”

  Ammon laughed, shrill and unhinged, then shook the man’s head in rage. “Do you believe that I will kill you?”

  “Yes, sir, I know you will.”

  “Go then!” Ammon cried, throwing the man across the ground. “Get out of here before I kill you and bury you underneath these bloody skies!”

  Luke also released his grip on the man that he was holding, then kicked him with his knee.

  Both men stumbled, glanced toward the boys, their eyes wild with fear, then turned and ran.

  * * *

  Sara hurried over to Ammon. “Are you OK?” she asked, her voice worried, almost pleading.

  Ammon studied the spot where the strangers had disappeared, not moving. Lukeedged slowly to his side. “That was like, you know, way convincing,” he said.

  Ammon shook his head. “I was so scared,” he answered slowly.

  “You didn’t sound scared, you sounded crazy. Really crazy, man. I didn’t know whether I should laugh or run. You almost had me convinced.”

  “I was scared,” Ammon repeated. He seemed to be talking to himself.

  Luke chuckled just a little. “You sounded like you were going to rip that poor guy’s heart out and cook it up for dinner. A regular Hannibal Lector thing going there.”

  Ammon moved away. “I didn’t think I could sound like that,” he said. He was clearly shaken up.

  Luke reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s OK, dude,” he tried to comfort.

  Ammon didn’t answer. “I’m not like that,” he muttered as if trying to convince himself.

  “It wasn’t real, Ammon. Remember, it was part of the plan. We knew it wasn’t going to be enough to just stop them. We had to scare them.” He stopped and looked at Mary, her bright eyes shining in the moonlight. “Mary was right,” he nodded to her. “It was a smart thing to do. They would have stuck around. They’d have come back. We had to really scare them so we didn’t have to worry about them again.”

  “All I did was scare myself,” Ammon said.

  “Yeah, but that’s OK.” Luke watched him a moment, then turned to his mother, walked toward her, and put his arms around her shoulders, pulling her close and not letting go. “Are you OK?” he asked, his voice choking.

  “I’m fine, son.” She rested her head on Luke’s shoulder.

  He stepped back. “Are you OK?” he repeated.

  “Really. I’m OK.”

  Ammon turned from the darkness and walked toward his mom. Standing in front of her, he looked into her eyes. He put his arms around her, the three of them holding onto each other in the night.

  Mary cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice soft, afraid of intruding. “I’m a little worried about my baby girl.” She nodded toward her car.

  “Right, right,” Luke said breaking away from the others. Bending, he began to gather their scattered belongings. “Let’s get this mess picked up. Don’t worry about organizing it, we’ll take care of all that in the morning.”

  Ammon seemed to think, then ran to the car, yanked open the front door, and knelt beside the seat. Reaching under, he felt it. The gun was still there.

  Sad, Sara thought as she watched him. It wasn’t the money or food that he was worried about, it was the gun.

  Had it come to that already?

  No, she shook her head. It wouldn’t come to that. Not for them. She and her family would never live that way.

  Ammon stood and walked toward
them.

  “OK, listen,” Luke said, “we’ll get this picked up, but that’s really all we can do tonight. We wait until morning, then see what’s going on. Ammon, you and Mom stay here. Sleep in the car. You keep the sleeping bags. Mrs. Dupree and I will sleep in her car. We’ll take some blankets for us and Shelly Beth—”

  “Kelly Beth,” Sara corrected.

  “Sorry, Kelly Beth. I’ll stay with her and Mrs. Dupree tonight.”

  The group was silent for a moment.

  “OK,” Ammon said.

  * * *

  Morning came. Low rain clouds had gathered again, hanging in the western sky, and a cold wind blew down from the north, sweeping across Canada and Lake Michigan, picking up a dank, fishy smell.

  Ammon awoke. The night before, he had unzipped one of the sleeping bags and pulled it around him, then slept in the front seat. Sara had slept in the backseat but was already up. When Ammon didn’t see her, he climbed out of the car. Even the gray, misty morning was welcome after such a dark night. He glanced behind him, up toward the freeway, then down the off-ramp toward Mary Dupree’s car, which was closer than it had seemed the night before. Funny, he thought, how distances seemed so much greater in the dark. Sara and Mary were standing close together outside the black woman’s car. To his left was a thick cluster of trees; to his right, the four-lane freeway was crammed with stalled cars. He could see dozens of people huddled around several cars and, half a mile east of the off-ramp, he could make out the parking lot and buildings of the service stations they had been aiming for last night. Beyond the trees were fields, brown and ready for fall digging. He was surprised at how rural the scenery around him was, being so close to Chicago.

  He considered, then stretched. Walking around the Honda, he checked the two broken windows, grabbed a bottled water from the backseat and walked toward his mom.

  “Good morning, all,” he said.

  Sara turned toward him.

  “You sleep OK, Mom?” he asked.

  “Pretty well, Ammon. It was colder than I thought it would be.”

  Ammon nodded at the sky. “The temperature has dropped quite a lot.” He turned to Mary. “How are you, Mrs. Dupree?”

  “I’m fine, honey, fine.”

  He glanced to her car. His brother wasn’t there. “Where’s Lukester?”

  Sara nodded toward a cluster of trees to her right, a hundred feet or so beyond the road. “There was a man back there, in the trees. He was on an old four-wheeler. Luke thought he was a local. He went to talk to him.”

  Ammon moved his eyes to where she was pointing. Luke was just emerging from behind the trees. They waited, watching him walk toward them.

  “Anything?” Ammon asked.

  Luke shook his head. “There was a guy back there on a four-wheeler. He rode away before I could talk to him.”

  “A four-wheeler. It was running? Are you sure?” Ammon asked skeptically.

  “Yeah. It was old and pretty beat-up, but it was working. Now, why is that?”

  Ammon thought. “Anything built before electronic ignition and all the gee-whiz computers that control everything now, I think will work. You might have to replace some spark plugs or ignition wiring, but that’s pretty easy to do.”

  Sara moved back and leaned against the vehicle. “We tried Mary’s car again,” she said, as if offering something important. “It’s still not working.”

  Ammon nodded, not surprised.

  Mary walked over and looked through the back window at her little girl, then turned toward them. “Sir,” she said to Ammon. “Please, I’ve got to get my little girl home. She needs her medicines—if nothing else, her pain medications.”

  Ammon walked toward her and leaned down, looking through the back window of the car. The little girl was still asleep. Small and thin, she looked to be eight or nine years old, but it was hard to tell, she was so slender. Her face was thin and dainty . . . no, that wasn’t right . . . her face was thin and fragile. He watched her sleep and thought what a beautiful little girl she was.

  “Did she wake up last night?” he asked Mary.

  “A couple times. She sleeps all the time now, but never for more than three or four hours at a time.”

  “Did you—you know—tell her anything?”

  Mary shook her head. “I told her we were having car trouble.”

  Luke came forward and stood next to them, stealing a glance toward Kelly Beth.

  “It worried her,” Mary concluded. “She worries way too much for a little girl. She’s got a new sister back in Chicago that she’s worried about now. She is terribly concerned about leaving her alone.”

  A gust of wind blew and the trees off in the distance began to sway, creating a muted whisper, a smooth and lonely sound.

  “This other daughter, why is it that she is a newcomer to Chicago?” Sara wondered.

  Mary hesitated. How much should she explain? How would these people feel about it? She just didn’t know. “She’s not really my daughter,” she started.

  They waited patiently.

  “She’s an orphan from a refugee camp in southern Iraq. She’s Iranian, not Iraqi, though. She had no family, no one, really. She’d been bought—” Mary hesitated. “There are people who buy and sell young women, I’m sure you know what I mean. There’s an organization in London that works to intercept and save them. My daughter, her name is Azadeh, had been bought, paid for and taken out of the refugee camp. I don’t know if she knows or understands this, but she was on her way to a very bad situation, a very bad place. I don’t know the entire story, but someone, apparently a couple of U.S. soldiers, stepped in and saved her.”

  “No kidding,” Luke answered. “Some U.S. soldiers found her and saved her?”

  Mary shrugged. “I don’t know the whole story, but yes, apparently.”

  “What studs,” Luke smiled. “Good ol’ U.S. soldiers. Gotta love ’em, man.”

  Sara watched, then interjected. “We have a son in the Army,” she explained. “My husband is in . . . used to be in the Air Force.”

  Mary listened, pulling her shirt collar up around her neck. “I like the Army,” she said. “Lots of my people, most of my neighbors, think it’s a terrible thing to do. I never felt that way. I know what it’s about. Good people. Unselfish people. If you’ve got a son in the Army, you should be proud.”

  “Thank you,” Sara said.

  “Anyway,” Mary continued, “the London organization worked to place Azadeh somewhere in the West. I agreed to take her. It took months and lots of money to get her here to the States. She got here just a few days ago.

  “But that’s not the main reason I need to get home. The biggest reason is Kelly Beth. All of her medicines, her painkillers, her vitamins, everything is back there.”

  The other three were quiet. “How far is it to your house?” Luke asked.

  Mary nodded to the north. “It’s surprisingly close. Straight up Interstate 65. That takes you almost to the lake. A couple miles before that, you come to Gary and take 90 west. It’s only about four miles from there.”

  “So, how far, do you think?” Ammon asked.

  “I don’t know—when you’re driving you don’t pay that much attention, you know what I mean. I could drive it in half an hour, twenty minutes if I don’t hit traffic.”

  Luke reached down, picked a piece of grass from beside the road, and stuck it in his mouth. “Maybe twenty miles?” he asked.

  “That sounds about right,” Mary answered.

  “How far is that?” Sara asked. “I mean, could we walk it? How long would it take us? A few hours? A week? A couple of days?”

  Ammon smiled at his mom. When it came to such things, she was totally clueless. “I don’t know, Mom, maybe a couple of days,” he said.

  “It’s really not that far,” Mary interjected hopefully.

  “So what do we do, then?” Luke asked.

  Ammon stared at his mother, then turned to the others. “We walk,” he said to Luke.


  “That’s a long way, don’t you think?”

  “I guess we could stay here and spend the winter.”

  Luke looked away, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean that, not the way it sounded.”

  Mary put a hand on Luke’s arm. “What about my baby?” she asked, a terrified strain on her face. “We can’t leave her—”

  “We’ll carry her,” Luke answered.

  “You’ll carry her?”

  “Yeah, we’ll carry her, of course.”

  “You will do that? You would do that?”

  “Of course,” Luke answered, smiling at Mary. “What did you think we’d do?”

  Mary hesitated. “Truthfully?” she said. “I thought you’d leave me.”

  Sara shook her head. “Did you hear what I said last night?”

  Mary kept her head down.

  “We meant it, Mary. You’ve got to start trusting us. We’re simply not going to leave you out here by yourself.”

  “Isn’t there a wheelchair in the back of the car?” Ammon said.

  “Yes,” Mary nodded.

  “No problem, then,” he said.

  Luke glanced toward their car. “I don’t know how we’re going to carry everything,” he wondered. “All the food and water, our clothes, the sleeping bags and camping gear?” He shot a secretive look toward Sara, thinking of the gold and other valuables hidden throughout the car.

  Ammon turned and rubbed his hands through his hair. “I was wondering the same thing,” he said with worry.

  “I’m strong,” Mary shot back. “Much stronger than I look. I can carry a lot. You can pack me down like a mule. I’ll carry anything you tell me to. I’ll make three or four trips if I have to. I’ll steal a wagon and drag it, if you’ll please just take my little girl.”

  Ammon smiled sadly, realizing the mother’s desperation over her child. “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “We’re going to figure something out.”

  Luke hunched his shoulders. “Can I talk to you?” he said, pulling Ammon aside. “We’re going to figure this out,” he assured Mary as he guided his brother away.

  Twenty feet from the car, he lowered his voice. “There’s no way we can carry all our gear. One of us to push the wheelchair. Three of us to carry. The water alone would take fully one of us. And think about the money and all that other stuff we’ve got hidden in the car. Are we really going to try to take that with us? That can’t be too smart, walking around with a bunch of cash and gold right now.”