Patience County War (Madeleine Toche Series) (15 page)

“Damn it Nathan, I can run you know!” Sam said, more as a statement than in anger.

“Of course you can,” was all Nathan said by way of explanation.

“What the hell was that Dad?” Sam said, obviously referring to the rocket blast.

“Panzerfauste,” John said as the jeep bounced all over what was once a trail. His eyes were ablaze and mischievous.

“That wouldn’t be a World War Two German anti-tank weapon, would it?” Sam asked.

“Yep, the 60. Effective against all Allied tanks in the war, even the giant Russian bastards, the Stalins.”

“Good to know they’re effective against heavily armored minivans,” Sam replied.

“You were compromised, soldier. Didn’t you hear? Those were Kalishnokovs, AK 47 assault rifles. It would have been a one-sided firefight with innocent people around, so I took them out.”

“You were not here, Dad. The official story is gonna be the old hot round in the gas tank excuse, because I know I’ll get a call from the sheriff over in Jackson County. I know him, and he’s a good man, but he’ll have something to say.”

The next day Sam was sitting in the bunker when the phone rang.

“Goddamn anti-tank Sam,” Sheriff Baker said in an almost pleading voice.

“No, it must have been a hot round in the tank,” Sam offered.

“Sure Sam. Just so you know, about an hour ago nine guys, that’s nine, Sam, in black suits and black Ray Ban sunglasses showed up for a chat. I know a damn spook when I see one. Hopefully these guys were from our government. They were everywhere; I mean we were scared shitless. These bastards were cold killers. If that wasn’t enough, after they were here for about twenty minutes, hands down the scariest dude I have ever seen walked into the station. He must have been their fearless leader. He was like six foot four, black hair, black eyes, no smile. I swear the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. I’m still not completely convinced that the guy wasn’t death himself, masquerading as a government agent to amuse himself and kill time until he grabbed his next million souls. He politely thanked me for turning over all data on the incident and informed me that as a matter of national security nobody would speak about it again. He said if there was a breach of security I could expect him back. I turned around for a second, and he was gone, just gone. Like smoke in a hurricane. Buddy of yours?”

“I have no clue,” Sam lied. Jackson’s sheriff had just met his brother, Tracy.

Tracy Trunce set down the phone in his office at NSA headquarters in Washington and shredded a small file that contained all references to
the incident in Jackson County. Tracy was a senior NSA officer and intervened in modest ways in his family’s doings in Patience, mostly gathering information and coordinating with Bill “Moon” Meyer, one of his former NSA agents, now relocated to Patience in a quasi-witness protection situation. Moon would have been a valuable capture by any foreign government, friendly or not, not so much for what he knew, but for what he could do. There simply weren’t any other cryptographers of his caliber. He was a genius at most disciplines that he applied himself to: math, computer science, chemistry and physics. The list of sciences that he’d conquered was lengthy, but his true passion was weaponry. He and John Trunce had become fast friends after his move to Patience, often sneaking off like two kids to play with fireworks, except that their fireworks were things like Panzerfaustes.

“Sam,” Tracy said into the phone connected to a scrambled line.

“Trace!” Sam said with great enthusiasm.

“A Panzerfauste?”

“I swear I had no idea. All we were trying to do was roust a couple of Mexican meth boys and show them the error of their ways. Their display of firepower means they were heavy hitters.”

“We’ll check the usual sources to see if there’s been any discernible communication pattern increase to any of the known Mexican mob heads. Sometimes they have little idea of what their people are doing on the ground. Meth is a big export from Mexico, and like most really bad drugs out there, the guys who are making it in quantity and moving it don’t use it,” Tracy said.

“That should be the biggest clue to the people attracted to it: the people who have an endless supply would only use it at gunpoint. It must be a great source of amusement to them to sell so much of it to the Anglos,” Sam pointed out.

“Tell dad to try to avoid further use of ordinance, although I suppose it’s a good thing that he wasn’t up in his thunderbolt at the time.”

“I’ll try to discourage any possibility of it,” Sam said.

“I think you guys should formulate a defensive plan. Whoever tried to put holes in you isn’t going to like the loss of personnel, weaponry, product, or money.”

“We’re getting the word out. I think they’ll have to do a little recon. I’m sure they’ll get to Henry the Head; he’s gondi.”

“I might bug out too, after I see a Panzerfauste take out a minivan, must have been a sight, Tracy said.”

“The pieces are still falling.”

After his call with Tracy, Sam called the station and spoke to Lisa.

“Spread the word, meeting at Madeleine’s. I want all the deputies to be told and to round up the usual suspects.” That was Sam’s fun way of saying to round up their friends who represented decades of combat experience.

Sam hung up the phone and dialed Madeleine’s number. More than once, important meetings were held in the basement of her restaurant. When Sam and his friends were ridding Patience of the meth dealers who had sprung up prior to his return, strategy meetings were held there. Sam knew that this time they were dealing with an unknown entity. Before, it had been disorganized thugs who were dealt with. Someone had upped the ante this time.

“Madeleine, Sam here. We have a situation; we need to hold a meeting today.”

“Eight o’clock in the basement. We will not be disturbed.”

Sam was always surprised that she acted in such a business-like fashion when it came to these potentially dangerous situations. Sam’s family and friends took their way of life and safety very seriously; this extended to their community. It was an unspoken, collective effort to create some kind of haven of right in a world of increasing wrong. They fought back.

Madeleine hung up the phone and sighed. She had been struggling her whole life against oppression. She stood and looked out the window overlooking the brook, thinking back to the years of her youth when she glowed with the physical beauty that her granddaughter shared. Aside from that, their lives had been very different. She had been a young, carefree girl living a modest but comfortable life with her parents when the German army suddenly took France and the life of her brother, for whom she still cried. When she was sad she still remembered swimming with him and playing on the beach in La Ciotat on their summer holidays. When he died, summer was over and she found her way into the Resistance. She was trained by the British Special Operations Executive, boys whose country was being turned to rubble by the Germans. She learned to kill without hesitation or remorse. Learning to fight and to use a knife and other weapons came quickly. She never had to learn not to hesitate. Every face of every German
was an insult to her brother and to France. She participated in countless raids, blew up supply trains, and killed German officers. She was the most proud of her work hiding Jewish children from the Nazis. After the war many of these children tracked her down, all the way to Patience. During the war she had been hunted by the enemy relentlessly and was constantly on the move. She had earned the nickname ‘The Angel of Death.’

She was hard on collaborators, some of whom she killed for treason, women and men she knew or had grown up with. Once the Allies came and France was liberated, she resurfaced and tried to return to her life, but the collaborators and many of the people in her community were either afraid of her or didn’t know how to relate to the person the war had turned her into.

She could not remain in France and left with her new husband initially for England and then the United States. Her husband, Jack Teach had been a British Special Operations Officer, and the head of the training division. Both he and then others prepared her for the three years she operated as an assassin. Jack never treated her as anything other than a soldier. The training had been painful and hard, and they formed a bond. On her first assignment they were together and encountered a patrol that would have discovered the bombs they had just carefully lain on the train tracks to take out a train moving munitions. Teach pointed to the two German soldiers and to himself and her. He gave her a look she remembered even after his death: pure confidence. The two moved from the shadows as the Germans passed, each killing their target silently and dragging them off the track. Teach hadn’t congratulated her, patted her on the back or in any way demonstrated to her that she had passed some test or baptism of fire. It was the greatest compliment he could have given her, his respect. It was she that came to him the night before he was to leave to train others. Their love was passionate and abrupt. Afterwards, they spoke and talked of everything but the war. He told her he would see her again if he wasn’t killed, and she believed him.

It was the week the Allies crossed into Germany, and she was no longer at risk. She was working with her mother in the kitchen when she saw him through the window, tall, handsome, and all shoulders, walking towards her gate wearing his full uniform. She quietly set down the knife that she was peeling potatoes with, ran through the front door and into his arms. Before he said hello, he asked her to marry him. She kissed him yes. She
led him by the hand back into the house and collected her parents. They walked to the church, found the priest, and were married, remaining that way until his death a couple of years ago.

She’d taken his ashes back to France. Alone she walked off into the countryside to place them along the side of an old railroad track, long since unused, a memory, like the war, all but forgotten except by the people who had lived it and put their family and friends in the ground because of it.

Over the years she’d visited her hometown more and more. The pain had dulled and the faces changed. It was funny how she and her husband had decided to move to America to a place called Patience, all on the say so of one crazy American paratrooper, no more than a boy.

The group in the basement of the restaurant sat around one of the heavy oak tables that was used upstairs and brought out when larger gatherings required it. Sam loved the basement. It was full of bottles of wine, sausages and peppers hanging from the ceiling. On the shelves were big cans of imported olive oil, onions, garlic, and truffles all blending into a fragrance that whispered a promise of exceptional cuisine.

Madeleine, John Trunce and his wife, Nathan, his father and mother, TJ, Sam, Moon, and a heavyset man named Martin, ‘Davy’ Crockett, a local used car salesman and Vietnam veteran, were all gathered. Just as everybody sat down, Christine and Yves came down carrying a ceramic jug of wine and glasses.

Yves sat next to his grandmother. Christine set the jug down in the middle of the table, along with some bread and cheese, and took a seat on the bench right next to Sam. A few people smiled a little, mostly at the flash of surprise that crossed Sam’s face.

“Samson, let’s hear what you’ve got,” John Trunce began.

Sam gave a detailed explanation of what they knew so far. It wasn’t much.

“How do you think we should handle it?” TJ asked.

“We all need to be on the lookout for strangers and to spread the word around. It shouldn’t be too hard to spot Mexican gang members. We don’t exactly have a huge Hispanic population,” Nathan said.

“It’s a mistake to assume that this gang is all Hispanic or that they aren’t sophisticated enough to not attract attention,” John said.

“If they spend any amount of time here, they will end up either getting gas or buying food. We’ll watch for them where they are most likely to go. If cars come into town and just drive around without stopping anywhere, that’s out of the ordinary and will need watching,” Sam added.

“When will the dogs come?” Nathan’s mother asked. She was dressed in a brilliant red Kanga signifying the power of her tribe. Her posture and bearing were unmistakably royal, completely at ease in a council of war, ready to embrace bloodshed without fear.

“It depends how pissed off they are that their van got Panzerfausted,” Sam said.

“A Panzerfauste? My compliments, John,” Madeleine said with a slight smile.

“If something works, stick with it,” John agreed.

There was some more discussion and the wine and cheese were attacked. Soon, Sam called an end to the meeting and followed the group upstairs. Only John and Madeleine stayed behind.

“Up in a second,” John said as his wife glanced back.

“We should try to do this with a minimum of casualties, Madeleine”

“John, I think you may have already moved this thing beyond that,” she said without reproach.

“They fired automatic weapons on Sam and Nathan. I will kill all of them if they come for any of the people I love.”

“As will I,” Madeleine said as she raised a glass to the other pure warrior in the room.