Page 17 of Drowning in the Deep
“Won’t they hear thatwhir whir whirmachine?” Tilda asked, spinning her finger around like a propeller as she spoke.
“Nah, this is whisper quiet and super small,” I assured them. I got the drone out, and within a matter of moments, it was up in the air, heading toward the farmhouse. The three of us huddled around the controller where the screen showed the view from the sky.
“As long as those bastards don’t like bird watching, we should be fine,” I muttered as the path that led off the dirt road to the house came into view.
The farmhouse itself looked like something out of a black-and-white television show from when my grandparents were young. Rundown and dilapidated, it could have also been the scene of a horror movie. Thinking of the girls Tilda had mentioned bringing here, I imagined it actually was just that for them.
The house was two stories but not particularly large. Maybe three or four small bedrooms. Behind the house itself, we saw a couple of outbuildings. One of them looked like a barn that had been built before the dawn of time. Perhaps it just looked ready to collapse from a strong gust of wind because it hadn’t had a fresh coat of paint in sixty years, whereas the house was likely taken care of a bit better, but it looked like the sort of place horses would run from, not seek shelter.
The other building was a shed not quite big enough to park a car in. Rusted and leaning to one side, it also looked like it might fall over at any moment, but it was in better shape than the barn.
Throughout the yard and beneath the trees, several vehicles were pulled in at awkward angles all along the side yards and into the back of the house. It looked like the drivers assumed being away from the road was good enough, and once they were behind the tree line, no one would be the wiser that a small army occupied the space. I counted ten cars, trucks, and other vehicles, but there was no way to know for sure how many occupants had arrived in each of them.
“Where are their guards?” Vin asked, moving his head to get a better view of the screen.
I didn’t see any, so I backed the drone up a bit so that I could more safely lower it down. When I flew it back around to the front of the property, a couple of forms came into view. Two guys sat on the front porch, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. It seemed pretty evident whoever was in charge here didn’t think they were really in danger. While these two were armed, their weapons were slung off to the side, next to them on the porch. We saw no security cameras, excessive exterior lighting, lookout towers, or anything else that would be of help to the Savages when we came a callin’.
“They look like a couple of farmhands taking the day off,” I said. “Except for the assault weapons.”
“Replace those with hunting rifles, and we’re in a scene fromOld Yeller,” Vin noted.
I looked at him for a moment, brow raised, wondering since when he knew anything about classic movies, but I said nothing. He had probably just watched it to laugh when the dog died.
Moving the drone back up to the second-story window level, I took a quick peek around. Inside, I could see several people. Most of them were sitting around talking or walking from room to room. No one seemed to be on the lookout for intruders. It seemed like they were relaxing at home, not working in a crime ring.
Satisfied that we’dgotten all the information we could from the drone, I brought it back toward us. “As soon as the sun goes down, we’re going on,” I told Vin. “We need to do some up-close reconnaissance. It seems like they aren’t paying any attention at all, so it shouldn’t be that hard.”
“Works for me,” Vin said with a shrug. “Maybe we’ll get lucky, and I can slit some throats.”
I shook my head at him. “If we get that close to them, we’ve fucked up.”
“I’d just as soon not go in for this part of the mission,” Tilda said. “I can stay here and call for backup if I hear gunshots. I do want to be there when you take the bastards down, but getting caught would mean I’d end up buried in the back forty, and I don’t enjoy getting that kind of dirty.”
A small grin spread across my face at her joke. “No problem, Tilda. You can stay here,” I told her. “But no one is getting caught. And no shots are going to be fired.” For that last bit, I turned and looked at Vin, who gave me a reluctant nod.
We hung out in the van until the sun went down. The weather was mild, so rather than leaving the engine running, we kept the windows rolled down, though I warned Tilda she might want to roll them up if it got chilly or she thought people might be poking around. In the dark, it might be hard to tell if someone was sneaking up on her until it was too late.
“I’ll roll them up and lock the doors,” she said, and I didn’t blame her.
Vin and I walked backto the lane but we didn’t go straight up the path, veering off to the right of the house instead. We walked through the trees and came across an old barbed-wire fence that hadn’t been visible from the drone. Bending down, I lifted the rusty metal for him, and Vin army crawled through on his belly before standing and holding it for me.
The sounds of the countryside at night filled our ears as we walked across the velvety grass. A thousand insects sang a symphony while owls and other night birds called from tree to tree. Clouds rolled across the sky, obscuring the sliver of moon. It was difficult to see, so we took our time, careful not to step on a fallen branch or something else that might give us away.
Light streamed from the farmhouse, helping light the way once we broke through the trees and could see it in the distance. We gave the house a wide berth, heading toward the back of the property and the barn first.
The closer we got, the louder the sound of Latvian music became. A distinct chemical smell hit my lungs, and it became clear before I even approached the back of the barn that there was something cooking inside, and it wasn’t food. The barn was barely held together by the remaining nails, though it looked like most of them had spilled out over the years. We could easily see through the holes in the slats that at least a half-dozen Savages were inside, cooking up some meth, laughing, drinking, and listening to their obnoxious music.
Vin leaned over to me. “Looks like a discount version ofBreaking Bad.”
I stifled a laugh and waved for him to follow me over to the house. I’d seen everything I needed to at the barn.
The dumbasses hadn’t bothered to pull the shades or anything, so we could clearly see them inside the house whereas they wouldn’t easily be able to see us. We stuck to the shadows, skirting around, taking inventory. At least fifteen, maybe twenty guys, ambled around, smoking and drinking with guns over their shoulders or in their holsters, but they were completely oblivious to the threat right outside. Death was at their doorstep, and they didn’t even know. It might not be coming tonight, but it was coming.
Still circling around, we headed back to the other side of the yard behind the house where the rusty shed sat in the shadows. It was the only building that didn’t have a single light on, which was a good thing because that probably meant no one was home and I needed to get a look at what was in there.
Once we were away from the house and barn, I said, “These bastards think they’re invincible because they’re so far away from the city.”
“Yep. They’ll find out real quick that bullets are just as deadly in the sticks as they are on the south side of the city,” Vin noted with a chuckle.
