Page 55 of Trapped with the Covert Ops Soldier

“You still believe there are innocent people in the world, doc?” The shadow snorted. “There aren’t.”

“Children, housewives, farmers, average every day people are innocent. They believe they’re safe here at home and you’ve taken that away from them.”

“We know different, don’t we, doc? We know no one is safe anywhere.”

“I don’t know what you know, but my nightmares are mine. I will never foist them on someone else.”

“Shouldn’t they know? Shouldn’t they know a little of the hell we’ve gone through? They treat me like a pariah. No respect, none, but if I have the gold, if I find the mine, they’ll all have to pay me the respect they’ve owed me for years.”

“There’s no mine here.”

“I’ve seen you with the dynamite. Every morning like clockwork, throwing a half dozen sticks into the lake. I kinda liked it. It shook people up and our uppity Sheriff hated it. Until that soldier showed up. You gave him the dynamite. Old dynamite. The only place you could have gotten it was the mine.”

“I don’t know how the dynamite got down there, but there’s no entrance to the mine. It’s a hole in the ground. Period.”

“Get down there.” There was no give in the voice. No compromise. No patience.

“Fine. Let’s get this over with,” Abby said, waving her hands at JD to get down the stairs.

“For the record,” JD said to the shadow. “This blows.”

“That,” Abby told him. “Is a distinct possibility.”

“Someone owes me a mickey after all this,” JD said as he disappeared into the dark.

Abby followed him down the stairs. The air was cool, dry, dusty, and filled with earthy smells. As she reached the floor of the cellar, she bent over to keep from brushing the top of her head against the dirty ceiling.

Feet came down the stairs, then the rifle gesturing at them to back up. Finally, the shadow emerged.

“I didn’t know you fought in Vietnam, Virgil.” Abby said.

Virgil Hackey was a local hunter and trapper who owned and ran a taxidermy business out of his home a couple of miles outside of town. He’d seemed old when she’d been a girl. He looked ancient now with his deeply wrinkled skin, white hair and droopy eyelids. Something had aged him that had nothing to do with the number of years he’d been alive.

“Nobody knew,” Virgil snarled. “I was a sniper in a small group of men who went on long range patrols. We lived off the land and went after Charlie in his own backyard. But, when we got home, we were told to keep our mouths shut. The killing we did, a secret.” He scoffed. “No medals, no parade, no nothin.”

“I’m sorry you were treated that way, but as you can see there’s no mine or gold here.” She swept her hands in a wide arc.

The cellar floor and walls were packed earth, the ceiling made of stone and wood. Two barrels sat along the wall, one marked for potatoes and another for carrots.

“Where is the dynamite?”

“Here.” She walked to the far corner and removed a wooden plank from the floor. “There’s another hundred or so sticks left.” She stood to the side so Virgil could edge closer and see in the hole.

“How deep is it?”

“The size of one of the barrels maybe, or a little smaller. There’s no tunnel, no doorway, no map. I don’t know where the dynamite came from. My job was to dispose of it.”

“Job?” Virgil asked.

“Gran asked me to in her last letter to me. She said she’d found it a few years back, but didn’t know what to do with it. So, she left it where it was and forgot about it until she heard on the news about the improvised bombs used in Syria.”

“There’s nothing else in that hole?”

“No. Take a look for yourself.”

He stayed where he was, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You took all the dynamite out?”

“Yes, when I first opened it up.”

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