aimed at Aaron’s. “Don’t you pee on my floor, bub,” Aaron said. Haw’s that for feeble?
The shorter man froze, slowly brought his hands up, palms out, but Aaron didn’t want him to think he could go for it. “You move and I’ll turn his head to jelly,” Aaron said.
“Take it easy,” the smaller man pleaded.
“I was going in for my identification,” the larger man said, speaking without moving his jaw. “Federal officer.”
“Real slow I want you to pinch out whatever you were reaching for,” Aaron said. “It’s a gun, I want it held by the tip of the handle and dropped on this counter.”
The man reached into his jacket slowly, pulled out a small black wallet, and flipped it open on the counter. There was an ID with the man’s picture on it that identified him as a special agent of the Justice Department. Aaron relaxed the gun so the man could come down onto the flats of his feet. “Well, Joe McLean, why didn’t you say? Paul’s told me about a Joe McLean.”
“We were in the DEA together,” Joe McLean said.
“Justice,” Aaron said as he inspected the ID. “DEA get too hot?”
“Left for Justice three years ago. That’s Thorne Greer,” Joe added, jerking his head at the shorter man behind him.
“Thorne Greer? Thorne Greer retired,” Aaron said. “Minding Hollywood pussy, Paul said.”
“We were with Paul in Miami,” Thorne said. “He was our regional director.”
“Then you’ll know what happened to him? Exactly, I mean.”
“We were both there.”
“Tell me the story.” Aaron maintained the grip on the shotgun.
“Man might want us to keep that to himself. If Paul Masterson wants to share the details…”
“I know Masterson’s story. You tell me what happened and I’ll get you to him. Warned me fellows might come after him carrying phony badges. How would I know it for real and true? I never met either of you, and I never saw a Justice Department ID before either.”
Joe McLean looked over his shoulder at Thorne Greer, who nodded.
“Ambush on a Miami pier. There was a shipping container we were told was loaded with four tons of cocaine. It wasn’t. It was loaded with three hundred pounds of plastic explosives, and three machine pistols held by three Colombian gentlemen who had pledged their own lives. In return their families would be looked after, so to speak, by their drug cartel.”
“An ambush,” Aaron added. “Go on.”
“Two of our agents cracked the doors and were killed outright. Booby-trap detonator failed when the doors were forced. The killers were behind three tons of sandbagging. Paul was standing just behind the two agents who opened the doors. The Colombians fired armor-piercing KTW that passed through those boys like they weren’t even there. Thorne here, a fellow by the name of Rainey Lee, seven locals, and I filled the container with holes and took the shooters out, but we were too late. Paul was hit… five times, I think it was. One bullet entered his right eye at the bridge of his nose and exited his temple. Took two in the leg that shattered the big bone-hence the limp. Two through his guts and one passed through his hip. Thorne drove him to the hospital while I held the brains in his head.” Joe held a large palm up to Aaron’s face. “This hand.”
“Steel plate in his head?” Aaron asked.
“Yeah.”
Aaron tensed, tightened his grip. “Stainless or carbon?”
“Plastic,” Thorne corrected. “Some sort of space-age NASA junk. They were only planning to do the final cosmetics if he lived.”
“Why don’t he wear his glass eye?” Aaron asked, knowing the reason wasn’t common knowledge.
“I heard it kept falling out. Socket was all wrong, but he left the hospital soon as he could stand up to get his pants on.”
Aaron remembered well enough. His trip to Miami to see Paul had been the only time he had closed the store in decades. He could ask them how Laura and the kids took it, but he didn’t need to. Reb, at three, had been horrified by the altered face. Erin as well. Laura… Well, they’d had problems they couldn’t deal with. Or wouldn’t. Aaron hadn’t involved himself in the details of the split because Paul had never opened a discussion of it. Aaron believed in leaving people with their own private thoughts.
“That’s pretty nigh on perfect. If you ain’t who you say, I reckon I’m a goner.” Aaron smiled and put the gun away under the counter. “He lives simple up here.” Aaron reached down and placed a wire basket on the counter. “Don’t be offended if he ain’t dancing glad to see you. He don’t always remember people, but I imagine he’ll know you two. Leave your guns here. You’ll find he’s not the same Paul Masterson you used to know.”
“I’m not carrying,” Thorne said, opening his jacket to prove it. Joe McLean handed Aaron his shoulder rig, and Aaron put it in the basket and the basket under the counter.
“Can we drive to him?” Joe asked.
“You can walk. Go out this back door and follow the trail through the pines right on along. You’ll run smack into the back door of the cabin. A half mile. Stay to the right forks or you’ll be cougar food.”
Thorne smiled. “You know him real well?”
“Raised him from a pup.”
The two men went behind the store, where they found the trail. They took it through the woods. There were three forks in the trail and they followed Aaron’s directions. A porcupine lumbered across the trail ahead of them, and the two men joked about being watched. They wound around the side of the mountain, and just about the time their ears picked up the sound of water moving, they came upon the rear of a cabin. It was a log affair set in a clearing. A sheer wall of dark rock curved out fifty feet above the roof and sheltered it from the sky. Smoke rolled up the wall from the chimney.
The view was staggering, a panorama of steep blue mountain walls under a cobalt sky and a stream of clear water turned to rapids where rocks broke the surface.
“My God,” Thorne said. “Takes your breath.”
“Do make a man feel small,” Joe said.
They turned the corner, and as well as they knew Paul Masterson, they would not have recognized the man who stood on the porch in faded jeans, his right eye covered by a patch of black glove leather. The military buzz cut Masterson had always worn had grown into a flowing mane that cascaded helter-skelter over his shoulders. The unkempt beard was long and shot through with white hairs. The only thing that was familiar to the agents was the left, undamaged side of his face. The horseshoe-shaped scar that touched the edge of the eye patch looked like a piece of twine that had been stitched under the skin. Despite the surgeons’ best efforts, the skull was indented on the side where the round had shattered the bone. His left arm hung at a strange angle, the hand trembling like a grounded fish.
“Hi, boys,” Paul said. “You want to come in?”
“Paul. You’ve changed a little,” Thorne said.
“You look like a mountain man,” Joe said. Grizzly Adams scrambling out from under a derailed train.
“Don’t get many visitors up here,” Paul said.
The men shook hands.
Thorne said, “Wondering why?”
“First time I had a twelve-gauge tucked under my chin in years. Then we had to walk through the haunted forest unarmed. That old coot’s some guard dog,” Joe said.
“My uncle Aaron. I got some coffee on. Might as well warm up for the trip back out. And hope Aaron hasn’t got an offer on your pistol. Said you were carrying a forty-five. That impressed him.”
The cabin was larger than it looked from the outside, but the door was barely tall enough to allow Joe to pass without having his scalp nicked. It was built of square logs and hand-hewn beams with large windows in the kitchen and the den that framed the breathtaking view. The furniture was covered with Indian-style wool blankets. The walls presented dozens of Indian artifacts and antique weapons from the 1800s: bowie knives, skinning knives, a few Henry and Winchester rifles, twin Colt Peacemakers. There was a bow and a quiver of arrows with feathers that looked ready to disintegrate. The bedrooms were in a loft over the kitchen and the bathroom. The den’s ceiling was vaulted, and one wall was covered by a bookcase, filled to bursting.
There were three coffee cups on the kitchen table, which Paul began to fill with black coffee from a fire-
