We parked my Toyota 4Runner in a patch of woods only a few feet from the old abandoned railbed. I made sure to park it behind some thick brush so that D’Amico’s men might miss it altogether should they pass it by. But I also made sure it wasn’t parked all that far from where I felt fairly certain we would find the two fugitives. We would need it for transporting them back up to Albany and to my employer’s doorstep at the Governor’s Mansion on Eagle Street. The less distance required to drag them through the woods, the better.
The railbed was overgrown with weeds and brush. Some of the railroad ties were either missing or rotted out. The rails were rusty in spots and, on occasion, non-existent, as if somebody hack-sawed a five-foot section here, a three-foot section there, for their own use to sell off for scrap. We walked swiftly, but not so fast we’d miss the marker that Joyce Mathews had placed conspicuously for the two cons. Whatever that marker turned out to be. Gene said Sweet and Moss would recognize it when they came to it, that is . . . it was still there in the first place. But if it was, why shouldn’t we recognize it too? But that might be wishful thinking.
We carried the AR-15s, rather than use the shoulder straps, like we were on patrol in Viet Nam or Afghanistan, not saying anything, not needing to speak. Needing, instead, to concentrate on the task at hand, knowing that at any moment a vigilant Moss and Sweet could ambush us. A not too far-fetched situation considering the desperation the two men must have felt by then.
A couple of minutes passed before I spotted the small red kerchief tied to the tree branch. Raising my right hand to signal stop, I faced the old oak tree.
“Whaddaya think, Blood?” I said, voice low, tone soft.
“Look like a marker to me,” he whispered. “But then, what do I know?”
“What does your gut say?”
“Half my gut say D’Amico and his men passed by this very rag a hundred and one times already,” he said. “But the other half of my gut says D’Amico got his head up his ass, and that’s the marker we looking for. That what the gut say.”
“Mine too.”
I pulled out Maude’s smartphone, typed art slut in the area required, and then went to the picture gallery. I found the map that contained the X and tried to get my bearings. Enlarging the photo, I held the phone in the palm of my hand so that Blood could get a good look also.
“That’s the railroad bed,” I said. Tapping the picture with my index finger. “I’d say we’re standing right about here.”
He nodded. “If you right, we only a couple hundred feet away from where X marks the spot.”
“Safety’s off,” I said, thumbing the safety into its vertical firing position.
“Safety’s off,” Blood repeated.
We stepped into the woods, and with the semi-automatic rifle barrels aimed for whatever might come our way, we proceeded to punch our way through the thick brush, step by careful step. It was slow going at first, but eventually, the woods thinned out. A few long beats passed before we broke through the brush entirely and came upon a small clearing that measured maybe ten feet by ten feet.
Blood and I stopped in our tracks.
Positioned on the forest floor before us was a cylindrical solid metal door that led to some sort of underground space. And standing atop the metal door, his rifle barrel staring us in our respective faces, was a hunter and his dog.