Butcher

“Good. Nobody gets hurt here. I need resupply: grenades, claymores, satchel charges, haversacks. What have you got and don't fuck with me, I'm paying.” Money scattered over Meara's shoulder, symbolically.

Meara did not give up his ordnance because of any particular threat, but because of who was behind him. When fucking Chaingang materialized suddenly, thundering up behind you in huge splayed bare feet, big as a sewer culvert, demanding claymores and grenades, you did not screw around, you gave up the claymores and grenades even if you had to go home and make the freaking things. Meara didn't need the pain. He knew the monster personally. He'd seen some of his work. Up close.

“In my barn. Buried under the floor of the barn. I'll dig them up.'

“Good. Let's go.” The voice carried on the water's edge. A quarter ton stepped daintily down into the small boat and it damn near capsized before he could center his weight. Meara got a glimpse of something in Chaingang's right paw, but he did not let himself look directly at the man or his weapon. Pistol. Bowie the size of a large machete. Chain. What was the difference? If he decided to hurt you with something that was it.

The motor caught and they were moving into darkened trees. Meara would have at least considered taking a shot when they moved through the darkest overhang of willows and big oak, had it been anyone else, from Jesus San Diego to Jesus himself. But there was never even a glimmer. You didn't think such things in Mr. Bunkowski's presence. The Dai Uy had drilled him good on the essentials long before they'd met. “Never fuck with him; never speak to him by name; never eyeball him; but above all, never fuck with him.'

Ray'd been a spear carrier, a half-assed merc, but he knew how good this fucking brainiac was. The problem was, even after he'd given up the goods, there was no way Meara would walk away from this. His brain worked at triple time and a half during the silent boat ride.

They reached the other side, Meara cut the motor, tilted up the propeller, and they coasted into a flooded road ditch until the keel scraped muddy bottom. Chaingang hopped out, agile as a mountain goat but for his bad ankle, grabbed the coiled rope in the bow and pulled the boat, gear, Meara, and the outboard up onto land as if the whole shebang weighed fifty pounds instead of five hundred and fifty. Meara got out and they headed up the road toward his barn, the barefooted beast waddling along behind him.

Chaingang could technically get resupplied simply by communicating his needs to Dr. Norman, his hated nemesis. He was never without weapons. There was a haversack of military high explosive in his duffel, and some shaped charges and det gear. The weapons case in his back-breakingly heavy mobile house included such goodies as a submachine gun; a customized mail-order hybrid, which he carried broken down, barrel and shroud, firing assembly, crudely stamped receiver, overlarge trigger housing, and grips shaped to accommodate one of his massive mitts; as well as a small supply of partially-loaded magazines of 9mm military ball ammo. Why aggravate himself to steal a used Winchester, then Remington, shotgun? And why this business with Meara?

Because Chaingang was a planner. He believed in the soldierly axiom that if one planned hard, one fought easy. He had hard plans for Dr. Norman and whomever else might be in the line of fire, and when he was finished in this floating turd of a hickburg, he wanted his munitions and weaponry cocked and locked. He was always going to pick up disposable shooters, such as the bait shop shotguns, and when he saw Meara, a notorious ordnance freak, he smelled instant resupply. These punks, who'd had the temerity to assault him when he was befuddled by the drug, and the elderly Nazi needed killing. He would stock up with field expedient necessities.

Meara was convinced he had one chance: boogie. They reached the barn, went inside its dark confines, and he made his move, McClanahan's unforgettable warning echoing in his head.

“Some stuff on this side, some stuff under those corner boards,” he told the man, and bent to start unearthing the first silenced AK-47. The second he saw the huge shadow move toward the other side of the barn he took off running for his life. The shot never came, which was almost as scary as if he'd felt lead whacking into him, but Chaingang was smart. He knew it would take x amount of time to unearth the munitions and if he fired, one: he might not hit Meara, who was a fast runner; two: the shot might compromise the time he had to resupply. He analyzed Raymond Meara as a low-priority threat and decided, since the fool could hardly go to the cops about illegal guns he'd hidden, to let him go. Also, the drug's aftereffects still exerted some gentling influence on the killer. He wasn't really paying for the stuff, so perhaps this was quid pro quo.

As he was digging and pulling up goodies, he heard Meara splashing around out in the water nearby. The sound was oddly touching to him for reasons he'd not have been able to verbalize, even if he'd cared to, but as he loaded up for grizzly he dug around in his pockets and found a little trinket, which he tossed into the empty cache hole. He was paying for the goods after all. Next time old Raymond was down in the barn he'd discover a token from his good buddy Daniel—the smaller of the rocks belonging to Porky Pig's late and lamented Skunkie. Maybe $25,000, give or take, but meaningless to Chaingang.

Would he have whacked Ray had the asshole not been smart enough to run? Is bird shit white?

Fifty minutes later the big man was back at the water's edge. Somebody else who lived on or near Bayou Ridge had a big metal V-boat with a monster muscle motor on the back. Not rinky-dink like Meara's tippy piece of shit. Chaingang stepped carelessly into the larger boat, nearly sinking it, and deposited his heavy load of goodies, then his own heavy load, choked the motor, yanked the starter with a vengeance, and the thing wisely started on the first pull.

Down in the woods, where a freezing Raymond Meara was hiding, the sound of his neighbor's Evinrude was the loveliest thing he'd heard in years. It meant, a, that enormous bastard was leaving, and b, he wasn't taking Ray's boat.

Then again, he thought, he'd stay down in the woods a while longer, just in case that had been the sound of Chaingang laughing.

60

Bayou Ridge

Meara was fucking freezing. Chaingang be damned, he had to get out of the water. Silently as he could, he worked his way around to where he could see the boat. It would be just like that fat shit to start an outboard and send another boat out into the backwater with a wired throttle and ... Paranoia was getting the better of him. If Bunkowski had wanted his ass in the grass he'd be planted. Meara looked into the boat and didn't see any new holes but—who knew? He pulled it up a bit further and staked it.

On the way back he saw his .22 in the mud. That settled it. Unless the big boy had tampered with his piece he wouldn't leave a weapon around somebody he was going to plant. Meara wiped it off, racked the thing back, and a .22 slid into the pipe. He removed the mag, ejected the live round, cleared it, peered up the spout at moonlight. Put the magazine back in and reloaded the weapon. He noticed he was shaking a little.

The house looked and felt empty. Spooky but empty. He made himself go down to the barn while he was gutted up for it. Nobody home. In the open weapons cache he spotted something shiny and picked up his paycheck. It appeared to be real enough but, again, who knew?

He went back to the house, built a roaring fire, changed into dry clothes, and sat huddled up in bed with a pile of blankets on, the .22 still in his right fist. Shit. You could probably put a round into the big boy's brain and he'd still rip your pump out. He put the piece away and went to bed, but the shakes kept him from sleeping. He couldn't get warm.

He got up and brought his blankets in and sat huddled close to the blazing wood stove. Burning up and freezing simultaneously, dead tired and too stoked to sleep. Chaingang in his fucking life from out of the black. How had he found him? Why had he come to look for him? What did it mean? Suddenly he remembered a couple of news stories about recent Bayou City killings and shuddered as he perspired profusely under the blankets. There'd be no reason for him to bother Meara again. He'd taken what he wanted.

Ray thought about being with Sharon again. He wanted to show her how much she meant to him. He wondered if she'd like the ring. On the other hand ... Jesus! Think where it might have come from. Who wanted to know? Perhaps he could sell it or trade it to a jeweler and...

He woke up drenched in sweat, still in front of the stove, inside a wet cocoon of blankets, sick inside as if he were coming down with a bad virus, gripped by a terrible headache and the notion that it was later than he thought. He cursed aloud when he looked at the clock.

Eleven o'clock. Eleven in the fucking morning? He hadn't slept past nine in years. He had a distorted memory of having dropped off to sleep around five-thirty. His neck and head felt as if Fritz von