The Box by Jeremy Brown (ebook reader play store txt) 📕

dropped quickly to fifteen to twenty feet deep.

The truck slid into the water and kicked up a tan cloud of mud, like a trailer launching a boat, and for a moment it looked like it might hang up there, or even float, then it dipped down and water poured into the open front windows and the truck did a nose dive.

The last they saw of it was the open cap and tailgate, like two tail fins waving goodbye.

A few big bubbles roiled the surface, then some smaller ones rose and burst, then nothing.

“Goddam shame,” Rison said.

Connelly patted his shoulder.

“It’ll be here. Depending on how things go, we give it a couple days, a few weeks, then pull her back out and see what we can do.”

“A whole lotta nothing,” Rison said, like he was burying a friend.

Bruder interrupted them.

“This is a problem.”

He showed them the tire tracks cutting across the grass from the driveway to the pond. The light dusting of snow had mostly melted in the afternoon sun, but the tires still left a set of railroad tracks pointing right where the truck went in.

Nora looked at the tracks.

“I’ll be right back.”

She went behind the house and a few minutes later they heard an engine grow louder, then Nora came around the corner driving the Kubota tractor with a bucket on the front and some sort of mower deck on the back.

Kershaw stuck his head out of the wooden barn to see what was going on.

Connelly gave him a thumbs-up and Kershaw went back to watching the road.

Nora moved some levers and the engine climbed and the mower deck dropped. She ran over the spot where the tire tracks started, then cut left and pulled around to come across the tracks at a ninety-degree angle, bouncing a little in the seat.

After the mower passed, that section of truck tracks was gone.

Bruder, Connelly, and Rison stood by the edge of the pond, watching her.

“Is it me,” Connelly said, “or is this super sexy?”

Rison said, “It’s not you.”

Connelly looked over at him.

“Alright, stop staring.”

Nora aimed for a pile of dead leaves blown up against the base of the porch and sent them across the grass like a confetti cannon. Then she swiped across them, again and again, erasing tire tracks and boot prints and working the tractor through an area that looked like a natural section of the yard, not just a narrow runway.

One of her passes sent a shower of grass and leaves onto the three men, peppering their coats and pants.

“We should probably move,” Connelly said.

They walked back onto the crushed stone driveway while Nora finished up and followed their path, just to be safe.

She raised the mower deck and sped away toward the first steel shed, which had its door almost all the way open.

Connelly said to the others, but mostly for Bruder, “That was good. She really helped us out.”

“We’ll see,” Bruder said, and went to set up the ambush.

Chapter Sixteen

It was close to 2:30 in the afternoon when Kershaw saw the trucks.

“Incoming,” he said over the radio. “F-250 and another pickup, maybe a Tacoma.”

He was out in the field under the camouflage poncho with dirt and corn leaves piled on top, watching the truck through the rifle’s optics. They only offered 5X magnification, but it was enough to see two men in the lead truck and one in the second.

They disappeared behind the old wooden barn, and when Kershaw saw them again, they were slowing near the end of the driveway.

“They’re here,” he said.

Razvan drove his truck up the driveway, ducking down so he could scan the windows and doors and the old wooden barn on the right.

“Watch the loft,” he told Benj, who had his AK pointed out the window, tracking everywhere his eyes went.

Razvan glanced at the rear-view mirror to make sure Mihail was in place.

He was, parked across the end of the driveway and standing behind the truck’s engine with the bipod of his M249 machine gun resting on a sandbag on the hood.

From there, he could sweep the property left to right with bullets.

When Razvan stopped in the driveway next to the steps to the porch he looked at the long garage and two big barns behind the house.

Those would be blind spots for Mihail.

He called his cell and told him what to do, then waited while Mihail backed up on the road until he could see every structure.

Razvan said, “You can see the front of the barns? The steel ones?”

“Yes. The wooden one is in the way, a little, but I’m good.”

“Any movement?”

“Just the woman.”

“Mm,” Razvan said, and hung up.

He looked out his window at the woman, Nora, standing on her porch in a sweater, looking like someone had just killed her dog.

Razvan smiled at her.

“Good afternoon, Nora.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to hold still.”

He lifted the gun, a Pistolul model 1998, also called a Dracula, and pointed it at her face.

It was a fully automatic machine pistol about the size of a Colt 1911, but had a spare magazine fitted to the rail beneath the barrel to use as a fore grip.

It was a nasty looking thing, and it had the effect Razvan wanted.

Nora took a step back and put her hands out in front of her.

“No, wait!”

“I said hold still.”

Razvan kept the machine pistol on her while he opened the door and unfolded himself from the truck.

Benj got out the other side and walked toward the wooden barn to check it.

Razvan could hear him talking to Mihail over the phone, keeping each other updated in case Mihail saw movement, and so he wouldn’t shoot Benj if he happened to poke his head out a window.

Razvan asked Nora, “Is anyone else here?”

“No. Put the gun down, please.”

“You first. It’s in your pocket, yes? I can see the bulge.”

She brought her right hand toward the pocket.

“Slow,” Razvan said. “I know you’re not going to shoot me, but my men are a little upset right now. They might