Allegiance: A Jackson Quick Adventure Read online

  “Uh,” George is standing behind me, peering over my shoulder, “that should solve our ammo problem.”

  I pick up the passport and flip it open. There’s a color photo of Charlie. Her hair is a little shorter, but equally red. She’s smiling; I know that smile. I look at the name printed on the insert: Judy Bethulia.

  I toss the passport to George, grab a pistol, pocket a couple of clips, and tuck the knife into my waistband.

  “Check out the name on the passport,” I tell George. “Use the web on my phone to Google it. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Wait,” George says. “You can’t go alone. There are two of them.”

  “I’ve got two guns,” I assure him. “You can’t shoot. I’ll be fine.”

  He nods and walks back to the car. I start jogging up the road, ignoring the stabbing pain in my leg, to find whatever it is the pickle people have that might be of use.

  ***

  I can see the tops of the flipped SUV’s tires as I run up a small rise in the road. There are voices.

  “Have you alerted team two?” It’s a man’s voice. He sounds like he’s wheezing.

  “They were in team two’s vehicle,” says a second man, his tone shrill. “Team two isn’t answering any communications. They’re out of play.”

  I stop jogging and cross to the left shoulder, crouching behind the brush at the top of the rise. Not having gone for a good run in at least a week, my lungs burn.

  To stop my chest from heaving, I breathe in deeply through my nose and slowly blow out the air. My heart rate slows and I focus on the two men standing behind the SUV. Both of them look bruised from the wreck, but seem okay. They can’t see me.

  “Who the hell is this kid?” the second asks. “This was not supposed to be difficult.”

  “You should have had him at the gas station,” says the wheezy one. “You hit the wrong guy.”

  “Yeah,” the second steps toward the first, pointing his finger. “Team three didn’t have any luck either. They had him cornered in the tunnels and couldn’t tag him. Team two...who even knows what happened to them.”

  “The file on him didn’t mention anything about firearms training,” the first coughs and wipes bloody spittle from his chin. The wheezing is worse.

  “You okay?” The second puts his hand on his partner’s shoulder. “You puncture a lung?”

  “I don’t know,” he bends over and coughs again, spitting a trail of bloody saliva onto the road. “We’ve gotta get that kid. He’s supposed to be dead three times now. It’s like he’s got a guardian angel or something.”

  From my position behind the brush, it’s hard to tell if either man is armed. When the angry one bends over to help the wheezy one, a handgun peeps from the holster on his left shoulder. He’s right handed.

  “I’ll call team three,” says the angry one. “They’re on standby. We need them in position to intercept.”

  “You haven’t called them?” wheezes the first one. He’s now on one knee, Tebowing. “They won’t activate without your call.”

  “That’s why I’m calling them now,” the angry one says through gritted teeth. He balls his fist before reaching into his jacket breast pocket. Now’s my chance.

  I check the Sig Sauer’s clip and turn off the safety. The .40 caliber holds 12 bullets. This one is equipped with a barrel suppressor. Plenty of bullets and no noise. Dropping to one knee, like the wheezing pickle person, I quickly brace my arms and extend the 9MM. With my left eye closed, I tilt my head to the right and target the angry one.

  He’s thumbing a number on the phone when I pull the pressure sensitive trigger.

  Pop!

  The bullet rips through the back of his right shoulder and he spins around, the phone flying from his hand as his arm goes limp. His guttural scream is unnerving. He’s clutching his shoulder with his left hand, stumbling in disoriented pain when I send another silent shot.

  Pop!

  Right through his left hand at the wrist. He won’t be unholstering the gun.

  I stand and pull the Governor from my waistband. With a gun in both hands, and my arms fully extended, I march quickly toward to the two spooks. The angry one is writhing in his pooling blood, while the other falls back into a sitting position. He raises his arms in surrender, trying to suppress another messy cough.

  “Who are you?” I demand, one weapon aimed at each man. The angry one is shivering, his color evaporating. The wheezy one says nothing.

  “WHO ARE YOU?” I repeat and pull back the hammer on the Governor, aiming it across my body at the angry one’s right leg.

  No response.

  Pow!

  The shot shell sprays into the angry one’s leg, peppering it with shrapnel. He curls up in a ball and wails.

  “We’re contractors,” says Wheezy. “Independent contractors.”

  “You work for F. Pickle?” I level the Governor at Wheezy. I still have Angry in my peripheral vision. He’s hurt, but he still has a weapon.

  “Something like that,” he says and wipes the back of his chin with his sleeve. Blood is smeared across his cheeks.

  “What do you want with me?” Why do you want me dead?”

  “We don’t give a rat’s ass about you,” he says without a hint of expression on his face. “We’re doing our job.”

  “What’s your job?”

  “To protect the interests of our clients,” he coughs out in a nasty spray. “That’s all you’re getting.”

  “I don’t think so.” Without warning I aim the Sig at his right hand and pull the trigger.

  Pop!

  “What the—”

  Pop!

  His right foot.

  Now I have two men crying for their mothers in the middle of Nowhere, West Texas. I’ve lost my mind. I don’t know where I’ve found this penchant for violence. Maybe I’ve been pushed too far. Maybe I’ve always had it in me, hiding underneath the surface.

  “You answer my question or a bullet finds your left foot,” I stand over him, my fingers on the triggers of both weapons. I step on his foot.

  “All right!” He grabs at his knee, as though that’ll ease the pain in his foot. “You know too much!”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know!” Wheezy lays back and covers his face with his hands. “I only know what I’m told. Neutralize you. You know too much.”

  That’s enough. It’s all I’m going to get. Keeping my eyes on both men, I back up and find Angry’s cell phone a few feet from the SUV and take it as a souvenir.

  George and I have more work to do.

  ***

  “That’s it?” asks George. He’s fidgeting in the passenger seat, having given the driver’s seat back to me. “You know too much?”

  A sign to the right of the highway tells me we’re only four miles from the I-10 and highway 118 interchange. We’ll switch to George’s rental, assuming it’s still behind the gas station. “They weren’t much help.”

  “I heard a gunshot,” he says. “I think it was one. The echo made it difficult to tell. Did you kill one of them?”

  “No.” The Governor is tucked between my legs; the Sig is in the center console. Both have their safeties on.

  “Did you shoot either of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “One time?”

  “Five.”

  “You shot at them five times but you didn’t kill them?” George’s knee is bouncing. Apparently his hero tonic has worn off.

  “No, I encouraged them to tell me more than they wanted to divulge.”

  “You tortured them.” George isn’t asking a question.

  “Torture?” I glance at him, my jaw tensing. “I didn’t torture them. What are you? My conscience? Gimme a break, George. One of them was armed. They both admitted that their mission was to kill me. If they got me, they’d have gotten you. Torture?”

  If I’m being honest, I didn’t need to shoot Wheezy in the hand or the foot. The shotshell to Angry’s leg was prob
ably unneeded too. I run my tongue across the top of my mouth. I can still feel the small cut left there by glass-laden baby food.

  Am I no better than The Saint?

  No. It’s not the same thing. I’m trying to save my life. I did what had to be done. Nothing more.

  “That reminds me,” I pull the Governor from between my legs. “This needs another bullet. The 9MM there in the console needs a fresh clip. It’s in the glove box.”

  George doesn’t move to reload either of them. He sits there looking at me with what I guess is concern. His eyebrows are arched and pressed together. His fingers are tapping on a bouncing knee.

  “By the way,” he finally says. “She was an assassin too.

  “Who?”

  He picks up the passport from the floorboard and waves it at me.

  “Judy Bethulia was a killer too?” I check the rear view mirror. There’s nobody there.

  “Judith of Bethulia killed the Assyrian general Holofernes as he was about to attack her home city, Bethulia,” George recites. “He was interested in her because she was beautiful. That got her close to him. She got him drunk and cut off his head.”

  “Another woman assassin who kills a man because of political differences.”

  “That’s a sanitized way of putting it,” George says. “More like a pretty woman using her good looks to get close to an unwitting victim.”

  “Really?” I say to him sarcastically, the implication not lost on me. “What else does it say?”

  “It’s biblical stuff,” he says. “There are more than a hundred famous works of art depicting her killing the dude. Many of them have her holding his head after she cut it off. Brutal.”

  I let Charlie, or Judy – or whatever her name was – get close to me. Her beauty was certainly what had caught my attention. What was it that kept me interested? What was it that kept her from killing me? Was there something darker we both sensed in each other that subconsciously drew us to one another?

  “You really had no idea who she was?” George puts the phone in the center console next to the 9MM.

  “Apparently not,” I admit. “She played me from the beginning. I was a mark, a target, whatever snipers call their prey. The only thing she didn’t do was put a bullet in my head.”

  ***

  It was a Saturday morning. My dad woke me up from a dead sleep.

  “Jackson,” he whispered. “Get up. I’ve got a surprise.”

  I was groggy when I stumbled downstairs in a T-shirt, jeans, and a pair of brand new Saucony running shoes. They were ugly but comfortable. At the kitchen table was a glass of orange juice and a plate of French toast. My dad was at the coffee pot. My mom was frying some eggs.

  “What’s the surprise?” I asked, plopping myself into a chair.

  “Your dad has a special outing planned for the two of you.” My mom was smiling. “A guy thing. I’m not invited.”

  “You can come,” I managed with a mouth full of French toast shoved into one cheek. “Whatever it is.”

  “No, she can’t.” My dad eased up behind her at the cooktop and kissed her neck. “Besides, I am sure she has her day all planned out already.”

  “Maybe,” she said coyly. The two of them were good parents. They loved each other a lot.

  “What is it?” I took a swig of juice.

  “You’ll see when we get there,” my dad winked, and finished sweetening the coffee he’d poured into a stainless thermos. “Your mom made lunch. Everything is loaded into the truck. Whenever you’re finished eating, we can take off.”

  It took me less than a second to shove the rest of the plateful into my mouth, drown it with juice, and bolt for the door. I ran back to kiss my mom and shuttled back to the truck.

  We were on the road for what seemed like forever, but it was probably only an hour or so. My dad swung the wheel to the right and we turned off of the highway onto a narrow gravel road darkened by the thick canopy of tall pines overhead. The rocks and pine needles crunched under the thick, oversized tires on my dad’s Toyota Tundra.

  “Where are we going?”

  “That would only be the fiftieth time you’ve asked in the last thirty miles,” he laughed and patted my knee. “You’ll see when we get there.”

  The gravel road wound to the left and into a clearing. There was some wire fencing extending across the field, from one end to the other and a small iron gate blocked the road. My dad slowed the truck to a stop.

  “We’re here!” He adjusted the faded Los Angeles Raiders ball cap on his head. “Hop out.”

  I sat there for a moment, seatbelt still strapping me to the seat. I panned the horizon. It was grass, trees, rocks, and more trees.

  “C’mon Jackson,” my dad called from behind the truck. He’d dropped the tailgate and was fumbling with a thick canvas tarp. “I need your help back here buddy!”

  I hopped out, my new shoes plopping onto the gravel, and met my dad at the tailgate. He’d peeled back the tarp to reveal a gold mine of artillery. There were three rifle bags, a crossbow, a few boxes of ammunition, a quiver of composite arrows, a backpack, and a large red Igloo cooler.

  I looked up at my dad who was already looking at me. We both knew, without saying a word, what an awesome day we were about to have.

  “I need you to roll the cooler and carry the backpack,” he said as we lowered the cooler onto the ground. “I’ll carry the weapons and the ammunition.”

  He led me past the gate and across the field. Neither of us said much as we trekked past the buzz of dragonflies and waist high goldenrod. The backpack clanged against my back and every few hundred yards I’d switch the arm pulling the heavy cooler.

  We’d walked maybe a half mile when the clearing widened to a small lake. The brush melted into clay and dirt along the edge of the water. There was a small wooden picnic table, the remains of a campfire, and some outcroppings of rocks.

  “What is this place?” I asked, dropping the cooler and thunking the backpack onto the picnic table.

  “A friend of the family owns it,” he told me, looking across the lake, which stretched for maybe an acre in either direction. “My dad brought me here when I was about your age.”

  “Why didn’t we bring the truck all the way here?” I wiped my forehead with the bottom of my shirt. It was getting warm.

  “Aw,” he laughed. “We could’ve. I thought the hike would add to the suspense.”

  “I did kinda think we were trespassing,” I told him.

  “Trespassing?” Where’d you come up with that?”

  “The Lord’s prayer,” I told him as though it were obvious. “You know, ‘As we forgive those who trespass against us’?”

  “I know it,” he said, unzipping one of the rifle bags. “It’s always good advice. To forgive and we’d like to be forgiven. Right?”

  “I guess.”

  I watched him pull my Henry rifle from the bag. He tousled my hair with his right hand while pulling out a box of ammunition with his left.

  "Here's what I love about your rifle, Jackson," he said as he started loading the gun. "I can get 22 of these small .22 short bullets into the tube-fed magazine. That's a lot of ammo."

  Dad finished loading it and handed it to me before he grabbed the backpack and walked toward the rocks. I followed him to the rocks and the edge of the lake.

  He pulled out five tin cans from the bag. "These are your targets. Try to pop each of them off the rocks." He set them side by side: crushed tomato, sweet corn, green beans, another crushed tomato, and a frijoles negros.

  "Where do you want me to shoot from?" I asked, the Henry slung over my shoulder like a continental soldier.

  "Go back about twenty yards. Next to the campfire." He checked the cans and joined me by the ashen circle. It smelled like burnt marshmallows.

  "Whenever you're ready," he said, stepping behind me.

  I turned to my side, left shoulder forward, and spread my feet. With my left hand I cranked the lever.

  Click!


  I pulled the Henry to my right shoulder and tilted my head to the right to sight the crushed tomatoes. I slowly pressed into the trigger.

  Pow!

  By the time the rifle kick into my shoulder the can clanged off of the rock.

  "Nice," said my dad. "Now I want you to hit the other four in rapid succession."

  "What does that mean?" I asked, cranking the lever again. "Like fast?"

  He nodded. I nodded.

  Aim. Pull. Pow! Clang! Corn

  Crank. Aim. Pull. Pow! Clang! Green Beans.

  Crank. Aim. Pull. Pow! Clang! Tomatoes.

  Crank. Aim. Pull. Pow! Clang! Frijoles Negros.

  I turned to look at my dad. He was looking at his Timex.

  "Twelve seconds," he said. "Incredible!"

  "Why were you timing it?" I asked. I had the Henry pointed at the ground now.

  "Just checking," he said and winked.

  An hour and two reloads later, the cans were peppered with holes. I hadn't missed a single shot.

  My dad pulled the red cooler over to the picnic table and flipped the lid open. The plastic hinges creaked and he dug to the bottom, pulling out two cans of Dr. Pepper with his right hand. He plopped them onto the edge of the table with a pair of sandwiches and a big bag of Lay’s potato chips.

  “Lunch,” he said. “Then something really cool.”

  We talked about music and classic television in between mouths full of peanut butter, raspberry jam, and white bread. My sandwich was cut into two triangles, my dad’s in rectangles. I don’t know why my mom cut them differently, but she did. She paid attention to the details.

  I finished my Dr. Pepper and asked for another. My dad suggested too much caffeine wasn’t good for a sharpshooter, so I swigged a bottle of water instead.

  “You ready?” he asked, straddling the table’s attached bench.

  “Sure. What’s next?”

  “A crossbow.”

  “Cool! I hopped up, eager to try out the new weapon.

  My dad opened up one of the rifle bags and pulled out what looked like a rifle. There was no barrel. Instead, at the front of the rifle, is a bow with cables extending from either side.