Tribulation Read online

  Bart had given him a brief synopsis of the gun battle in the Gulf with the two fishing boats, and hearing him tell it, Keith was amazed that Shauna was the only one hit. Eric had pulled off a well-executed counterattack against difficult odds, but knowing what he did of his brother’s background, Keith wasn’t surprised. What did surprise him was that Eric was back in the U.S. at all. Keith had known the odds were stacked against him getting back here from overseas, but if anyone could find a way, it was Eric. The only question was whether or not he would want to. As things began unraveling here at home, Keith had often wondered what Eric would do. He’d left his family behind and in the end lost them in exchange for a life of danger and adventure in the far corners of the world. Was he really back only because of them, or because he could now ply his trade here as well? Keith wanted to believe it was the former, because he hoped his brother had changed for the better, but regardless of that, he was looking forward to seeing him again. The last few weeks since Lynn’s death had been the loneliest he had ever known, and Keith was truly uplifted at the prospect of spending time with family again. He was happy to help them all in any way he could, beginning with taking his former sister-in-law to the hospital.

  “I didn’t expect to see so much hurricane damage way up here,” Shauna said, when they finally reached Vic’s dock and Keith shut down the outboards and tied off the boat. “It must have been almost as bad as it was in south Florida.”

  “That’s not unusual for the big ones. This part of Louisiana is just as low or lower than most of Florida. There’s not much between here and the Gulf to weaken a storm as it comes ashore. The only real difference is the population isn’t nearly as dense as it is in Florida, especially along the coast. It’s been rough around here, but I imagine things are going to get a lot worse down there, at least in terms of human suffering. I’m glad you got out when you did.”

  “We wouldn’t have without your brother and your dad. I’ve been stuck there worried about Megan all this time, Keith, and it’s been awful just waiting, unable to do anything. When Eric showed up, all that changed, and I hoped the hardest part was behind us when we sailed away from Florida. I didn’t want to believe it was as bad everywhere else as it is there, but after hearing you describe all that’s happened here too, I’m terrified for her. The not knowing is killing me, Keith.”

  “I understand, Shauna. Believe me, I’ve been worried about Megan too. The last time I talked to Dad before the hurricane, he said none of you had heard from her. I’ve been worried about all of you ever since. I can’t tell you how hard it was to resist just heading down there to get Dad and all of you guys out. I also told Lynn I would go to Colorado for Megan myself, if I could. It was hard knowing I couldn’t do either one, Shauna, but our department had already been hammered by then and I couldn’t walk out on all the folks around here looking to us for protection. It was even worse after Dad and I lost radio contact. I wondered about all of you every single day.”

  “I think you did the right thing by staying put. You might have made the trip for nothing and missed us after we left with Eric. That’s what’s so frustrating about this situation with the phones out and no way to find out anything. I was almost afraid to even come here because what if Megan had somehow found a way to get home and we were already gone? That was always my worry, and then there’s Daniel and Andrew. Megan is practically an adult, but Andrew, at his age, is so much more dependent on his father and me. I’ve been so torn, Keith. I love Andrew, but Megan is my child, no matter how old she is. Daniel fought with me about coming even here when Eric showed up and said he was going to get Megan, but aside from how bad it was getting down there, I wasn’t going to stay there and simply keep hoping while he was doing something about finding her. And I can’t wait here either, Keith. Eric thinks I’m going to, but I’m not and I made up my mind about that even before we got on the boat.”

  “I understand how you feel, Shauna, but you’d be a lot better off staying here. It’s going to be a dangerous journey and a hard one, aside from the issue of your injured hand and arm.”

  “It’s just a flesh wound in my arm. The bullet barely grazed it. My hand will be fine too. It might take a little longer, but it will heal just as well on the road as it will sitting around here. Even if I don’t have full use of it for a while, I’m not useless.”

  “I suggest you let the doctor decide that.”

  “Decide what? Whether or not I’m useless?” Shauna turned to him and smiled. “Are you taking me to a shrink or an ER doc?”

  Keith laughed. “You know what I meant.”

  “Yeah, I do. I hope you can understand though. Now that I’m this much closer to where Megan is, or at least where we think she is, I want to go all the way. I don’t want to wait on the sidelines doing nothing.”

  “I understand. I’m just saying you need to listen to the doctor too.”

  “Are you sure they’ll even see me at that hospital? From the way you described it, they’re overwhelmed already.”

  “Of course they’re busy, and it’s a wonder they’re operational at any level, but they’ll see you because you’re going there with me. I’m sure they’re turning plenty of people away, but they won’t turn my family away because they know how badly they need law enforcement. That’s why I didn’t want to wait around as long as it’ll take Vic to lead the way up the river. The earlier we get there, the better. We’ll be ready and waiting when the next available doctor has a free minute. Your hand may not be as bad as Eric thinks, but a doctor needs to decide that. You don’t want to risk a permanent disability by leaving it untreated, especially now that you have the option.”

  “Thanks to you, yes. I appreciate it Keith. I really do. I don’t mean to sound selfish, just talking about my problems and worries. You had to bury your wife, and I can’t begin to imagine how you must have felt. I’m really sorry about Lynn. I was looking forward to seeing her again after all these years.”

  It was getting dark by the time they left Vic’s in Greg’s truck for the drive to the hospital. The road appeared to be deserted, but Keith was still keeping a sharp lookout both ahead and behind, as they headed west, instructing Shauna to help him do the same. He still had no idea who had killed the three men on the road near his house, but it had happened this morning sometime before daylight, so there was a good possibility whoever was responsible could still be in the area. Keith’s M4 was on the seat between him and Shauna as he drove, but nevertheless, he knew they were still vulnerable to an attack. The scene of the killing looked like an ambush to him, and he figured there must have been at least one more vehicle involved that the shooters had left in. It was obvious the driver of the car had been killed at close range with a shotgun, and Keith found a couple of 9mm pistol cartridge cases on the shoulder of the road as well. Beyond that, he had no further clues, as he had no time to investigate. He didn’t recognize any of the dead men, but the Toyota car had plates from nearby St. Landry Parish. There could have been any number of scenarios that played out there, and he knew he’d probably never know what happened, but he still couldn’t help thinking about it as he drove.

  “It just makes us a target,” Keith explained when Shauna suggested that being in the marked sheriff’s patrol truck might make someone think twice before attacking. “You should see the bullet holes in my own patrol truck. I’ve been luckier than most of the men in my department though. The sheriff and several deputies were flat-out lured into a death trap and murdered in cold blood.”

  “But why? Who would do such a thing, and what do they hope to accomplish?”

  “Whoever set that trap did it in retaliation. We don’t know for sure, but we suspected it was one of the anarchist groups that were organizing in Baton Rouge. There were lots of riots there that turned violent early on, with lots of shooting on both sides. The riot police had no choice, and killed a number of the worst offenders, but that only served to recruit more to their cause. After they burned most of the city, the attacks spr
ead. I don’t think they were particularly organized, but as things broke down more over time and the police response got tougher, some of the gangs went on the offensive, and started looking for any targets representing authority.” Keith went on to tell her that not all of the incidents he’d been involved in were related to the rioting though. Some of them, like the murder and robbery at the closed convenience store where his partner, Greg, got shot, were simply spurred by desperation as ill-prepared refugees struggled to survive. The whole point of telling her this was to make sure that she understood danger could be lurking at any point along the road, and that they could never let their guard down, even for a moment. The drive to the hospital proved uneventful in the end though, and when Keith pulled up to the emergency room entrance the armed guards waved him forward as if they were expecting him.

  “You fellows over in St. Martinsville are trying to keep us on overtime, aren’t you?” one of the two men asked when Keith rolled down his window so they could see his face with their flashlights.

  “I’ve got a patient that needs to see a doctor, but she’s not a member of the department, she’s my sister-in-law, actually. So it’s really just her and the deputy I brought by the night before last. I want to check on him too of course, while I’m here.”

  “Another fellow in one of your trucks brought a woman and her little boy in early this morning. It wasn’t long after you left, I don’t know, maybe about 4 am? I know it wasn’t too long before my shift ended. He said he wasn’t a deputy, but his brother was. I think he was talking about the one laid up in there with the gunshot wound.”

  “Greg doesn’t have a brother that I know of. Did this guy give you a name? What did he look like?”

  When the guard told him, Keith couldn’t believe it. As soon as they were inside, he found a nurse and made sure that Shauna would be taken care of when a doctor was available, and then he left her in the waiting room and headed straight to Greg’s room. The nurse hadn’t been able to tell him anything about the snake bitten child that Eric had apparently driven to the hospital, because she wasn’t on duty at the time. Keith figured he’d have to wait to talk to the doctor to find out the details of that mystery, but he wanted to check on Greg while he was waiting. When he stepped into the room, his wounded partner was awake and looking a lot better.

  “I didn’t expect to see you back here again so soon,” Greg said. “I figured you’d be hanging out with your brother, Eric.”

  “You know about Eric? So he came in here and introduced himself?”

  “Yes sir, he sure did. Said he’d been looking for you at your house but you weren’t home. Then he told me he ran into trouble just up the road from your place. A couple of guys that had run down a car with a woman and her kid and boyfriend in it. They’d already killed the boyfriend and were dragging the woman to the back of their truck. Eric had to take them out. Then he found out the kid had been bitten by a cottonmouth. That’s why the three of them were out on the road at that hour, trying to get here to the hospital. Eric drove her and the boy on in. I think he was in your truck, because the guards told him there was a wounded deputy in here. That’s why he came looking for me. I think he thought it might have been you in here at first, since he couldn’t find you at home, or around town.”

  “What happened to the boy? A cottonmouth bite is bad news for a child.”

  “When the doctor came to check on me later, I asked and he said the boy was going to pull through. He said he was lucky they still had the right antivenom on hand, and lucky your brother came along when he did.”

  Keith thought back on the shooting scene, trying to piece it together with this new information. He’d known the driver of the car had been shot in the head with a shotgun. The other two had been killed by pistol rounds—9mm based on the shell casings he’d found, and the shot placement had been precise—two in the center of the chest and side of the head for one guy and one between the eyes of the other. Keith had thought when he saw it that it could be partially attributed to luck, but now that he knew it was Eric who’d fired those rounds; he knew the deadly accuracy wasn’t luck at all. What was luck was that a professional like his brother happened upon the scene at just the right time to do something about it.

  “I told him I sure wished he’d consider hanging around here and helping us out. We could use a guy like that, couldn’t we?”

  “You bet we could, but that’s not gonna happen. He’s back in the U.S. to get Megan. I imagine he’ll be on his way to Colorado as soon as possible.”

  “That’s what he told me. That and that he’d sailed here with your father, and his ex-wife and her family. He asked about Lynn, Keith. He knew something happened because when he went to your house looking for you, he saw all the pictures and stuff through the window.”

  Keith told Greg that he’d already seen Bart and the rest of the crew of the schooner, and that they’d freed it from where it was aground near the mouth of the river. He also told him of the battle at sea they had all been involved in, and the gunshot wound that was the reason he was here again now, with his former sister-in-law.

  “It could have been a lot worse for sure, considering they were taking all that incoming fire out there on a sailboat in the wide open Gulf.”

  “Eric and your dad turned the tables on those fellows though, didn’t they? That must have been quite the surprise, when they thought they were looking at easy pickings.”

  “Anyone who’s ever tangled with Eric has been in for a surprise. Most of them don’t live to regret it either.”

  “I’m sure sorry I’m laid up in here like this, partner. I need to be out there working so you can spend a little time with your brother before he leaves again. I know it’s been a long time since you’ve seen him.”

  “That’s the least of your worries, Greg. You need to rest and recover until the doctor says it’s okay to do otherwise. Eric will leave when he gets ready, but I think Dad is going to hang around here. I don’t think he’s up to traveling at the kind of pace Eric is going to set going out West. I don’t know if anybody is, but Shauna says she’s going with him. I can see her point, but Eric’s not going to hear of it with her hand shot up like that, and I doubt her new husband will be too thrilled about it either.”

  “How’s he gonna get out there? Your niece is in Boulder, right? That’s a hell of a long way to go and a lot of wide open, exposed highway the whole way.”

  “I’m not sure what he’s got in mind until I hear it from him, but Shauna said he and Dad had talked about going north a ways up the river, to the Mississippi and up as far as St. Louis or something. It’s certainly not the direct route, but the more roads he can avoid, the better.”

  “However he does it, I reckon the training and experience he’s got will give him a better chance than most folks. It’s still going to be hard and dangerous as hell though. And when he finds Megan, then what? Is he going to bring her back here, or has he got something else in mind?”

  “I think his plan involves the schooner they sailed here from Florida. You’re right though; getting her back safely may be a lot harder than going out there to find her. I wish I could go with him and help.”

  “Why can’t you? There’s nothing here to stop you. With Lynn gone, you don’t have any reason not to.”

  “I’ve still got my duty to the department, Greg. You’re out of commission and we’ve lost everybody else that’s in any shape to do something. I can’t bail out now and go off on an expedition like that, as much I’d like to help Eric out. You know things aren’t going to get any better around here. That latest incident Eric happened up on ought to tell you that. Not to mention our little adventure at that store.”

  “If I hadn’t been so stupid, I wouldn’t be stuck here right now, and then I’d insist you go,” Greg said.

  “It could have happened to either one of us, and you know it. The good thing is that you’ll live and you’ll be back on the job, eventually. But the bottom line is it wouldn’t make a differe
nce whether you were able to work now or not. I’m sworn to protect the citizens of this parish, and leaving my post after what happened to Lynn would dishonor her too. I’ve got to do what I can to keep this crap under some semblance of control, because when people see the law bailing out like they did in so many of the big cities, they’ll go apeshit, and you know it as well as I do.”

  Six

  “I PROBABLY WOULD HAVE shot anything that moved, clearing that house,” Bart said, when Eric finished telling his story. “But since she came out unarmed, I reckon it’s best you didn’t kill her.”

  “Normally I would have too, Dad, but I knew she couldn’t be much older than Megan. None of them were, except that deranged professor. I’ll tell you, it’s really bizarre, operating like this on the home turf, especially when I have no idea who the enemy is.”

  “The best policy is to assume everyone is until they prove different.”

  “I know you’re right, but even so, I’m still trying to figure out the rules of engagement here.”

  “There are no rules of engagement as far as I’m concerned. You know how I handled the looters at my boatyard. Shooting them all was the safest bet, and it seemed to be working just fine.”

  “Well, like I said, she was unarmed, and I also thought Keith might want to question her. He’s still trying to do his job here, according to his partner I met, so getting some answers from people like her might be worth the trouble. What he does with her after that is up to him. I don’t know if they’re still running a jail around here or not, but I’m guessing probably not. I found the sheriff’s department last night when I was looking for him and the building was boarded up and abandoned. Maybe Keith will just let her go when he’s done asking questions; I don’t really care one way or the other. The main thing is that I took care of the three that tried to feed me to the gators.”