Eli wasn’t sure why he was congratulating these two idiots. It took them a day and a half to track down Hatfield’s fiancée’s home address and follow the trail to her sister’s house in Buxton, where Tyler and his disgustingly plain bitch were hiding. God help them if he couldn’t find better recruits. When the hatch next to the barn door slammed shut, exposing tendrils of dusty sunlight, he wiped his knife on Hatfield’s pants.
“Start talking.”
Several minutes later, Eli stood up from a scratched, unfinished wooden stool.
“You’re a hundred and ten percent sure they weren’t some kind of Special Forces unit? Just regular guys you say?”
“More than that. A hundred and twenty percent.”
“You can’t have more than a hundred and ten percent, Tyler. Everybody knows that.”
Hatfield continued pleading for his life, oblivious to Eli’s facetious comment.
“I don’t know how they got the jump on Jimmy, but by the time we got there, the whole west side of the bridge was throwing lead at us. Bikers, women, everyone had a gun. You stuck your head up; you got shot.”
“Is that so?” said Eli.
“I swear it.”
“I believe you, Tyler. Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”
Eli checked Hatfield’s bindings, ensuring that his wrists, ankles and neck were secured to the post. Confident that his captive couldn’t execute an embarrassing escape, he scurried to the left rear corner of the barn and pulled on a thick metal ring attached to the floor. A trapdoor inched open, revealing a rectangle in the hard-packed floor. Holding onto the ring, he leaned back, and the door swung on its hinges, stopping perpendicular to the ground.
He pulled a flashlight out of a pouch on his belt and descended the stairs. At the bottom, he activated the light and shined it in Hatfield’s fiancée’s face. Her head twisted away from the powerful beam. A muffled scream barely penetrated the thick layers of silver duct tape.
“Damn, it’s nice and cool down here,” he said, grabbing her thick brown hair and yanking her upright.
“You’ve been a good girl so far; don’t fuck it up now,” he said, breathing against her face.
He meant what he said. The underground chamber had been designed as a hide site and couldn’t be locked from the outside, which presented a risk. Then again, the trapdoor weighed at least fifty pounds, which made it nearly impossible to open with hands zip-tied behind your back. Eli had kind of hoped to hear some faint knocking at some point in the afternoon. The thought of her ramming that ugly face pointlessly against the impenetrable slab made him smile. Some people have the good sense to know when they’re beat. Maybe she wasn’t as dumb as she looked.
“Up the stairs. You try to run and I’ll kill your sister, her family, your brother, parents—everyone. You got me?”
She nodded repeatedly, and he pushed her up into the musty barn.
“Now, I’m gonna take this tape off your mouth, but you don’t say a word, or your husband-to-be is going to lose something important for your wedding night.”
She nodded again, and he went to work on the tape, which proved to be difficult to remove without taking a little skin along with it. She cried and whimpered, but kept quiet.
“Very good girl.”
“Mary, is that you?” said Hatfield, straining his head to see around the square beam.
“Shhhh,” said Eli, walking her right behind him, keeping her out of view.
He slipped a combat knife out of a leather sheath attached to his belt and spun her around, jamming the seven-inch marine KA-BAR blade to the hilt inside her stomach. His stabbing hand mechanically forced the razor-sharp knife in and out of her abdomen several more times while his left hand pulled her tightly against him. She dropped to the ground without making a sound. He nudged her onto her side with his foot, surprised to see her eyes wide open, staring lifelessly at his legs.
“You were supposed to scream like a stuck pig!”
“Mary? Mary!”
“Mary’s gone,” he said, stepping in front of the post.
Hatfield’s bloated, black and blue eyes fixated on Eli’s gore-covered knife and hand.
“You promised not to kill her!” he managed to choke out.
“No, I promised not to gut her in front of you,” Eli said, reversing the grip on the sticky knife handle. “I politely did it out of sight.”
“Why?”
“Because you told her the wrong version of what happened at the bridge,” he said.
“No. No. I told her the same thing I told you!”
Eli buried the knife in the right side of Hatfield’s throat, stepping left to avoid the bulk of his pulsing arterial spray. “Exactly.”
The side door sprang open, revealing a wiry, red-haired man holding a short-barreled AR. Eli’s second in command stepped through the opening.
“Clean up in aisle one,” said Eli.
“Shit. Both of them?” he said, closing the door and latching it behind him.
“Unfortunately, it came to that,” said Eli, wiping his blade clean on Hatfield’s pants. “We’ve got a problem.”
“We can get these two buried where nobody’ll find ’em,” said McCulver.
“I’m not worried about that. Hatfield confirmed what I more or less already knew. He said a black Jeep Wrangler with Maine plates approached the eastern bridge at Milton Mills right before all hell broke loose. Possibly fired point blank into the three men. It’s the only way they could have killed them that quickly. Jimmy reported the Jeep over the handheld and heightened their security posture, but the fight on the eastern bridge was over before it started. The guys on the western bridge loaded up and raced over, but were caught in the ambush. This turd never got out of his vehicle. Turned tail and left his buddies behind.”
“Is it possible that he was captured and released? Maybe to lead the hit team here? Finding them seemed a little too easy,” said McCulver.
“No. Those two have the combined brainpower of a trash bag, plus I worked them over hard enough to get the truth out. That’s why she had to go,” he said, pointing his knife at the bloody heap behind Hatfield. “I had to be sure.”
“Should I get some guys to clean this up?”
“I want to leave Hatfield up for everyone to see. This is what happens to traitors.”
“The girl?” said McCulver.
“String her up behind Hatfield. I want the message to be clear. You die with your brothers, or you die with your loved ones. The men we have now will form the essential core of the Maine Liberty Militia. They have to serve as an example for the new recruits. We need committed, disciplined patriots for the fight ahead.”
“There’s a balance, Eli. I trust your judgment with my life, but remember that there’s a line. If you go too far over, you run the risk of losing people.”
Spoken by anyone but McCulver, the words would have resulted in an immediate, excruciating death.
“That’s why I keep you close by. To reel me in when my temper gets the best of me,” he said, patting him on the shoulder. “You and I go way back.”
“I think we might want to bury the woman and limit Hatfield’s viewing to current members.”
Eli fought the urge to pummel McCulver with the base of his knife. “All right. Let’s get her out of here. When we’re done, we need to start looking for that Jeep. Maine plates? Either the Special Forces team is using local government sympathizers, or they’ve been here all along.”
“Like a sleeper cell?” said McCulver.
“I caught something about it on the internet. Part of that Wikileaks thing. Domestic Indigenous Response Team. It was stripped off the web almost as soon as it went up, which tells you something,” lied Eli.