CHAPTER 1
Six was kind of an insult. It wasn’t enough. I thought they were going to need a bigger boat. It’s a line from Jaws. The sheriff says it when he sees the great white shark for the first time, when he sees how big it is. It’s now an idiom for being outmatched. Like how “over the moon” means happy. Or “break a leg” means good luck. So when I saw there were only six of them, that’s what I thought. They were going to need a bigger boat.
Then again, it was a small town—maybe six was all they could spare. Maybe six was everyone. And it was an urgent operation. Panicked even. Had to be. If it wasn’t, Wayne County wouldn’t be doing it. They’d be relegated to cordon control. This had been a hasty phone call followed by an even hastier order: “Do it now before he moves. You don’t have the luxury of waiting for reinforcements. In the meantime, we’re scrambling everyone we have.”
I’m not a huge man—five eleven, weigh a buck ninety—but they approached me like I was unattended baggage. They looked scared. Jittery. Probably never had to do a job like this before. Lived in Wayne County to get away from jobs like this. Cold sweat on furrowed brows, faces rigid with tension. One of them had a twitch going on in the corner of his right eye. Probably a nervous thing.
They were doing OK, though. Hadn’t tried to rush me. They weren’t shouting, weren’t giving contradictory instructions. They’d walked through the bar without causing alarm. A ripple of hush followed them. The barman even switched off the music. All eyes turned to me. Not something I was used to these days. They fanned around my booth without getting in each other’s way, and then waited. There was no hostility. Just cops doing their duty. If I hadn’t seen what was on the TV, I might not have known they were there for me.
It’s an oversimplification to say there are good cops and there are bad cops. Cops can be both brave and cowardly, honest and corrupt, and they can be clever and stupid. And they can be all of those things or none of those things. So, to make things easy, I don’t trust cops. I don’t trust anyone. It’s why I’m still alive.
Even before I’d seen them, I’d auditioned several scenarios. None were good. They didn’t work out well for me and they sure didn’t work out well for them. In the end, it came down to math: When all your options are bad, choose the one that allows you to fight another day. You play the odds.
Before I hit somewhere new, I make sure I’m not walking into a town like the one from the first Rambo film, the one with the sheriff who didn’t like drifters.
Wayne County Sheriff’s Office covered a large area, and the sheriff was a woman called Diane Long. They had a good reputation. The men in front of me were deputies from the road patrol department. Solid, no-nonsense cops. Not high-profile like the NYPD, but in a small department like Wayne County, the sheer variety of their daily call sheets made them tough and adaptable.
So far, no one had spoken. Their weapons were drawn but remained at their sides. It wasn’t a standoff—they were waiting for a signal. A man wearing sergeant’s stripes was covering their backs. He said, “Now,” and as one, they raised their weapons.
Two were holding Taser X26s. Black and yellow and nasty. When discharged, they launch two probes that attach themselves to the target’s clothes or skin, completing an electrical circuit. Hurts like hell. Completely debilitating. They have a range of fifteen feet, and the cops were eight feet away. The ideal distance. I didn’t want to be tasered.
The only woman of the group was aiming a shotgun at my chest. I couldn’t tell what shells she was packing, but my gut told me they’d be nonlethal. Probably beanbag rounds. Enough to cause a bad bruise and, if I was standing, put me on my ass. Nut-busters, I called them once. Useless, unless you go rogue and aim for something soft and dangly, because with a six-foot-five muscle-head who’s in the middle of a Hulk-like meltdown after he’s overdone the gym candy, center-mass shots barely tickle. A blast to the balls, however …
They’d been told to bring me in alive.
That was good.
The sergeant was carrying a standard-issue Glock, though. A serious man with a serious gun. Loaded with 9-millimeter Parabellums. If one of those hit me center mass, I wouldn’t be getting up. “Parabellum” is taken from the Latin “para bellum.” It means prepare for war. I’ve always thought it’s a good name for a bullet. The sergeant had a barrel chest, square shoulders, and an even squarer chin. His mouth formed a rigid grimace. His gunmetal-gray eyes fixed on me with no disengagement. The Glock wasn’t drawn, but his hand rested on the butt and the holster was unfastened. Although I got the impression he’d been told he wasn’t to point his weapon at me, I knew that, at a hint of danger, his hand would shoot out like it was remote controlled. I understood his anger: They were doing someone else’s dirty work and, federal order or not, he didn’t want his guys getting hurt by some asshole he hadn’t heard of until half an hour ago.
The sergeant spoke. “Can you come with us please, sir?”
I said, “You’re going to need a bigger boat.”
Copyright © 2023 by M. W. Craven
