What Happens On The Mountain

By J.J. Probasco

Rifle slugs…rattlesnakes…runaway trucks…this is not the stress relief and recuperation Dillon MacMillan had in mind when he put the Air Force and Albuquerque in his rear-view mirror, hauling Penny and the kids to a new home and a new life in the mountains. Accidents? Maybe. That's what the sheriff thinks.

But the nightmares are back—the ones he tried so hard to leave behind—and now they're in broad daylight and way too real. Dill must face them all at once when his family is trapped at their secluded mountain retreat and plunged into a maelstrom of greed, betrayal, revenge, and terror.

Cut off from the outside world, he has to find a way to stop a new nightmare—one more sinister, more chilling, and with more far-reaching consequences than he could have ever foreseen.

Dill is no Rambo...just an out-of-work computer tech. But he has Penny, a fiery redhead who wields a wicked skillet in more ways than two. And Lacy, a wounded warrior with a furry secret weapon named Auggie and a surprise or two up her pant leg. And his own fierce determination to keep his family—and a hundred thousand other innocent people—alive.

Whatever it takes.

266 Print pages

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.J. Probasco
• Release date: Jun 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386294269

Book preview

Chapter 1

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I should have stayed in bed.

Maybe if I’d just rolled over and closed my eyes...maybe the planets wouldn’t have lined up quite the same again. Maybe fate would have ambled down a different trail and found someplace else to squat.

Yeah, I know...it wouldn’t really have made any difference. It would have happened the next night, or the next, or the next.

Sure could have used a premonition, though. Or something. I hate surprises.

But when the dreams turned dark at two in the morning and my eyes snapped open, I did what I always did when that happened. I got up, threw on a robe, did a perimeter check, and headed for the den.

They weren’t really so bad any more, but they still made it hard to sleep. Sometimes I was in total darkness, fingers dug into the sand, breathing shallowly as my heart raced, wondering if the whoomp of the mortars or RPGs or IEDs was getting closer. Sometimes I was in pale moonlight on the bank of the boiling river, watching bright colors swirling away through the gloom, out of my reach. Sometimes just a sliding, writhing sense of death lurking in the shadows. And when it woke me and my eyelids popped up, it always took a little while to figure out the dream was gone and the bedroom was safe and sane and calm, and my breathing and pulse could settle down a little. But at least it wasn’t every night now.

I looked out the den window. The moon peeked between the clouds as they sailed by, randomly highlighting the drizzle as it came and went. Somehow, it still surprised me to see rain simultaneously with sun or moon, though I’d seen it often enough. Cloud cover was splotchy, but there was enough so that the clouds kept bumping into each other, squeezing out some moisture for the thirsty earth below. The earth was always thirsty in the high desert of New Mexico, even an hour after a deluge. The water didn’t seem to soak in anywhere; it just ran off and left the earth thirsty. Plenty of flash floods, but always dry somehow. This wasn’t a deluge, though—it was the rain we almost always got. Scattered, drizzly, intermittent. But it was just fine having it outside and me inside.

The moonlight wasn’t reliable enough to see what I was doing, so I nudged the mouse a bit and the computer monitor woke up. That was all the light I needed to work, anyway, but it also helped me find the switch on the coffee maker, so I punched that on, too. Progress cannot be made without the elixir of life, so the pot was always armed and ready for action. Penny thinks I’m killing myself with all the coffee I manage to toss down, and maybe she’s right. But it’s cheap and it won’t make you fat or rot your teeth if you keep it black. I’ve also discovered, through many a long midnight shift and grueling sessions of fix-this-computer-or-it-could-mean-the-end-of-the-free-world, that if you drink a couple pots of the stuff a day, it won’t keep you from sleeping at night. So maybe it’ll kill me one of these days. But life without coffee would be, well, pretty bleak. I’ll take my chances.

While the coffee was dripping, I asked the computer to link up with the satellite.  I was still impatient with it after being spoiled by cheaper and faster cable internet, but satellite was what was available and it still beat dial-up. Sometimes you have to suffer a little in one area to make up for another, and I was feeling pretty good about the lifestyle change, so I knew I’d get over it.

I was delighted to be online in a heartbeat, asked for the e-mail to come in, and took a few moments to watch the clouds dance in the moonlight. That’s why I didn’t like turning on too many lights when I arose in the wee hours...they masked the outside a little too much. I had put my battered old oak desk right in front of the picture window, on the top floor looking out over the porch roof, so I could enjoy all the wide-screen scenery while I worked. I figured it didn’t make any sense to live in the middle of the mountains if you couldn’t enjoy the view every available minute, even at night. So I appreciated even the dim light of the moon and stars, and let the hills and trees and rain ease my mind a little.

This time, a glance was enough before I clicked my browser into action and got settled into the search again. I’d been retired for nine months already and was getting very fidgety. I guess I could have gone a while longer without a job, but we were starting to dip into the insurance money. A military pension, even for a senior NCO after twenty years, wasn’t exactly a living wage. And it looked punier every day when stacked up against the appetites of three growing boys. Still, getting away from where we'd been was the priority, and figuring out what to do when we got somewhere else was something to look forward to.

And this somewhere else was just the kind of place we wanted to be. Away from the rat race, out of town, with gorgeous scenery and nature all around us. A pretty little place with a lot of land around it, up on the side of a mountain where we couldn't hear the neighbors' phones ringing. We laughed about being above all the flat-landers in their towns. We felt like pioneers, living free and wild. Up On The Mountain, definitely capitalized. Well, it was a new experience for us, anyway, and it was a very welcome change.

I wasn’t just goofing off, either. We went through all the contortions moving entails, settled the kids into a comfortable routine, started in on the little projects that make a house a home—like shelves all over the place for Penny’s thousands of dust catchers, but I’m not saying anything—and there were always new things coming up to thoroughly occupy us.

But I was getting antsy. I was used to having a mission, adjusting priorities, meeting deadlines, accomplishing things. I had thought it would be great just kicking back and relaxing after twenty years of butt-busting, but there were a lot of things I still missed. And I wasn’t even forty yet...I had a whole ‘nother career left in me. So I was thinking there must be just my kind of consulting job out there somewhere, with computers or communications systems or maybe even web design, and all I needed to do was find it.

Sneaking a mug of steaming brew out of the coffee maker, I again confirmed my conviction that the pause-and-serve gadget was one of mankind’s greatest successes. I settled into my well-worn leather chair and squirmed myself into the proper level of comfort, and turned my attention back to the screen in front of me.

I saw lots of interesting things over the next hour, and wondered if some of those analysis jobs with the Department of Homeland Security could be done by telecommuting, and especially with some flex time. I really didn’t want to punch a clock. Besides, the thought of helping to save my country from the forces of evil while watching the Air Force – Army game in my old sweats—or even Captain America Underoos if I really wanted to—was pretty appealing after spending half of my life in a uniform.

I poured a little more coffee and glanced out the window one more time. The weather was changing, as it did every half hour in the mountains. The moon was gone, but so were the clouds and the drizzle. The highway down below, at the bottom of the valley, wasn't a major thoroughfare at any time, but at this quiet time of day it was abandoned and there were no random reflections of headlights to interrupt the peacefulness. The stars shed enough light to just barely show me the vague outlines of the ridge across from me, and a hint of the trees dancing to the touch of the wind.

I guess I drifted a little. I usually tried not to let my mind wander in the direction it was going because it always got me agitated, but I found myself thinking about the military days. I was glad I wasn’t still there, because it was going places I wasn’t comfortable with. I’d spent enough time beating my head against brick walls for the sake of my principles, and feeling too much weight on my shoulders and not enough support. But the big point was the boys...I just couldn’t take the risk of being sent away from them any more. Not after all they’d been through.

I missed the challenges and the job satisfaction that came with doing what I could for my country, though. I missed that, even if I didn’t miss the opportunity to spend half my time deployed to some desolate wasteland, wondering when the next SCUD or RPG or suicide bomber was going to hit, or where. And I didn’t miss spending the other half of my time wondering when I’d have to go back to one of those places again.

So there my mind was, wandering through a tent somewhere out in the desert, feeling the heat and the grit blowing in through the flaps. Remembering the claustrophobic feeling of hunkering down behind a field desk, cocooned in flak vest and helmet and web gear, keeping a chemical mask and suit within reach just in case, trying to see what might be going on in the dark, and listening to the radio chatter as the sweep teams examined each stretch of fence for breaches. Hearing explosions in the distance and wondering how far away they were, and how big. And whether one might be about to blow through the flimsy canvas wall next to me.

The hardest part, always, was not knowing what to expect next. It makes you tense up and be ready to move in any direction at any time, and maybe stay in that condition for hours on end. It wears you out, on top of the heat and the weight of the gear you have to carry, and the pressure to get a comm circuit operational or the fuel delivered or the perimeter patrolled. But you have to do it. That’s where a lot of the stress came from then. And where some of those dreams come from now.

Thousands of miles and a few years away from that time and place, I was tensed up as it ran through my brain. Even though I was leaning back in my chair and had my feet propped up on the desk, and was raising my coffee cup for another slurp, the little extra touch of adrenaline made me edgy.

Maybe that was what helped. Maybe it was just being clumsy and startled out of my wits. Whatever it was, I was glad for it when I had a chance to think about it later. Because when I saw a tiny circle appear in the window in front of me, hairline cracks radiating out from it, particles of glass spattering over my face, and a muffled boom echoing through the valley, the chair toppled backward and I somersaulted across the floor. I fetched up against the bookshelves across the room, undignified, bewildered, upside down and drenched in coffee. I congratulated myself on being in that position about three seconds later, when the next round punched through the computer monitor and pierced the air where my chest had just been.

Chapter 2

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Sheriff Lucas raised up from the soggy ground, brushed pine needles from wet knees, and squinted into the early morning sunlight. I’m sorry, but there’s not a lot for us to go on. The ground’s too spongy with all the pine needles to hold any tracks, at least where it isn’t bare rock. There was probably enough rain after the shots were fired to wipe out whatever might have been left, anyway.

There wasn’t much doubt we were in the right place. It was little challenge to trace the probable bullet trajectory back from my pine paneling, through my computer monitor and window, to the ridge where we were standing. Besides, there weren’t many other places around with such a good view of my den.

The sheriff and two deputies had searched the place pretty thoroughly, and it was pretty inconclusive. We had actually found a few shreds of evidence, but it was hard to tell if any of it might be usable. A gum wrapper, a few cigarette butts, some odds and ends of trash, and even a few cartridge cases showed up in the general area. This was a place with a fair amount of traffic and people have a tendency to throw trash around, but a couple of the cartridge cases had some possibilities. They weren’t really old, still had some gunpowder smell to them, and were .308 caliber, so they weren't out of line with the size of the holes in my house. They might have some fingerprints on them, so the deputies bagged them and noted all the info and took pictures, and would be able to compare them to a rifle if one was found. Not a lot of promise to them, since plinking and hunting do happen in places like this. And this wasn’t a big serious crime scene being handled by a forensics team like on TV, since there wasn’t any murder or serious injury or something like that to pin on a perpetrator. So gathering microscopic DNA traces and calling in FBI profilers probably weren't in the game plan.

I looked across the small valley, across the highway down below, between the pines, and into the upper story window four hundred yards away. Although my unaided eyes couldn't be sure at this distance, I knew Penny was looking back through the window at me, and even at this distance I could feel the worry emanating from her.

"Come on, Sheriff, there’s got to be something you can do. We can’t have some psycho running around these mountains shooting at people." I was doing my best to stay calm. It was tough. It wouldn’t have been so hard except for Penny and the kids, knowing that she was so upset and all of them could have been hurt—or worse. I was doing some pacing, not really worried about messing up evidence since there wasn’t much to mess up.

Now, Mr. MacMillan, you know it’s hunting season. There’s a bunch of hunters all through the mountains around here, and maybe one just got to mixing his alcohol and gunpowder last night. He let fly with a couple of rounds for giggles, and your house just sorta got in the way. I know that doesn’t help things, but it was most likely an accident and nobody’s running around the mountains shooting at people.

"Okay, okay, maybe it was just some kind of accident. But this isn’t deer or elk season. It’s turkey season, and rifles aren’t legal for turkeys. I’m not buying the hunter angle. And it's not like a juvenile delinquent doing a little random vandalism—someone was shooting at me!" The calm was fading. I really didn't want to lose my cool, so I quit pacing and stuck my hands in my pockets and took a deep breath or two. That was a little better. But not much.

What’s legal and what happens aren’t always the same thing. Game wardens can’t be on top of everybody all the time, and a lot of people push for whatever they can get away with. Probably one in five of all the hunters out here have a high-powered rifle with ‘em, and one of ‘em got stupid last night and took a couple of potshots. It’s just that this time he went for a window instead of the usual highway sign. You gotta understand that it was three in the morning and there wasn't much light in that room, and you were behind the computer monitor. He probably didn't even see you in there and expected everybody to be in bed. It was stupid and dangerous but probably not much more than that.

I stared at the sheriff for a couple of seconds. Calm, brown eyes looked back with an air of confidence and professional competence. One eyebrow raised a little, head cocked to the side a notch, a look of come on, you know I just might be right.

I let out the last deep breath and smiled, stuck out my hand, and said, I probably started out a little on the wrong foot. The wife and kids are upset, and I’ve never actually been shot at before, so maybe I’m just a wee bit more tense than I oughta be. So I’ll start over. I really appreciate you looking into my little problem, and I’m happy to meet you, and I’d be pleased if you just call me Dill.

The sheriff managed a slight grin, grabbed my hand in a firm grip, and said, Dill? Different kinda name. Short for Dylan, as in Bob?

I had gotten used to that a long time ago, so I just grinned and gave the standard spiel. Well, it's short for Dillon, as in Marshal, actually. My dad is a die-hard Western fan and Mom went along with it because she liked the way it sorta rolled off her tongue.

Dillon MacMillan. Yup, I guess it does have a bit of roll to it. Dill it is, then. We're not much on formality around here, ourselves, and most everybody calls me Lacy.

I'll admit I had been a little startled to find out that the sheriff was a woman. Not that I had any doubts about women having the ability to handle the stress and responsibility, because I’d seen plenty of prime examples in the military. It’s just that not that high a percentage of women seem to aspire to that kind of job. She seemed pretty young, too, for someone who might have the experience and expertise that could get them elected to a post like that. But she did seem to know what she was doing and was very comfortable with her role.

She was tall with an athletic build and an easy but powerful grace, with deep, dark eyes and warmly bronzed skin that spoke of long friendship with wind and sun. Glossy black hair halfway down her back was tied out of the way in a businesslike ponytail, and what looked for all the world like a Government Model Colt 1911 rested on her hip with the familiarity of a long-time companion. It was not one of those designer guns made of plastic that so many law enforcement agencies issued to show how modern they were; it was a .45 auto, walnut and blued steel, a badge of tradition, reliability, and effectiveness. She earned my approval with it.

She had a subtle way of continuously shifting her focus and scanning her surroundings, vacuuming information in to keep updating her awareness of everything going on around her. She’d done that even in my den while checking out the paths and damage of the bullets, and found out a lot about me from just glancing over mementos on the desk and pictures on the walls. She somehow managed to not leak much about herself and her background, although some of her comments gave me the impression she had a little familiarity of her own with the Air Force. I was curious about that but she turned out to be very deft in the questioning realm and managed to keep turning things back to me. Besides, we sorta got distracted by trying to figure out what to do about me getting shot at.

She tilted her brown Stetson back on her head and gestured at the surrounding countryside. There’s probably a thousand acres of Forest Service land out there with deer and elk trails, or jeep trails, just like what we’re standing on, scattered all over the place. Hunters come in here and set tents up, hikers go through looking at the scenery, and some of them do stupid things. But there’s a possibility a fine upstanding citizen might be out there who’s been paying attention and might have seen or heard something. She looked back at me and grinned. For now, why don’t you figure the adventure’s all over, board up that window, and see if you can’t settle down the wife and kids a bit. I’ll have Larry and Ruben scout the area a little and see if they can’t come up with some camper or hunter or hiker up here who might know something. Fair enough?

I grudgingly admitted there wasn’t much chance she could come up with a culprit right away. Yeah, okay. So, in the meantime, are you gonna run some ballistics or forensics or whatever kind of tests you run on the slugs in my wall?

Be cool, Dill. We’ll get ‘em dug out if we can, and bag ‘em and tag ‘em and all that cop stuff. If they held together fairly well, which I certainly won’t guarantee, we might be able to figure out what kind of rifle they came out of so we’ll know what to look for. If they match up with the empties we found, we'll be on a roll. Still, it won’t do us much good until we have a rifle to match them up to. You understand?

Yeah, I guess I do, but Penny won’t and I’m gonna have to calm her down, too. Just do what you can do and thanks for putting up with us nervous civilians. Oh, and one other thing, Lacy.

She had started to head up the trail to where her deputies were still snooping for tracks, but swiveled back around to face me.

Take a look at that window. See how small it is from here? How many drunks do you know who can touch off two quick rounds and have them land within a foot of each other, four hundred yards away, on a windy, moonless night?

She gazed at the window and chewed her lip for a few seconds, and said, Actually, I know several people who could do that, including me, and maybe even drunk. The average goofball dumb enough to shoot at a house, maybe not.

I raised an eyebrow at her but she just grinned and said, For now, I’ll have the boys check for drunks and turkey hunters, Dill. And while they’re at it, I’ll have ‘em check for sharpshooting assassins, too. And they’ll be down after a while to try digging those slugs out of your wall.

Not much more to say or do here. I said, Thanks, Lacy, and she waved as I headed back down toward the house.

Penny was there as I opened the door, latched onto me tightly and let a deep breath go whooshing out.

So it was just a hunter, right? Somebody just got a little drunk and stupid, and the sheriff has him, and he’s very sorry and he’ll pay for the window and computer, right? Right, honey? She nestled her head into the hollow of my throat and squeezed against me. I squeezed her back, getting at least as much comfort out of it as she was.

Well, babe, I’m sure he was drunk and stupid and he’s very sorry. You’re absolutely right.

Penny had been swaying with me, the way women do when they want the most out of a hug. I’m not sure where that started or how, but they do it with babies and their menfolk both, like they’re keeping the love sloshing around a little so it doesn’t settle to the bottom. But now she stopped and lifted her head up to look at me closely, checking my eyes for the truth.

You didn’t say that other part, she chided. You know, the part where the sheriff has him and he’s going to pay for the damage. Remember?

I’m sure he’ll be paying for the damage, sweetheart. It just might not be right away.

She pulled back and looked at me squarely, still clinging to my hands. She glanced over at the door, assessing the strength of the locks, then surveyed the window layout to make sure we weren’t visible from outside. It wasn’t conscious, not a pointed effort to let me know she was worried about security. It was more a wariness of the environment, like a deer sniffing the breeze and listening for a random snapping twig. She had subtly shifted into a different level of awareness in the blink of an eye.

You mean he’s still out there running around loose? There’s somebody out there with a gun who might be trying to hurt you? Or me? Or the kids? She was already a bubbling vat of anger and worry, and now the fear was heating it up even more, and it was showing in her eyes and her voice.

No, honey. It can’t be somebody wanting to hurt us. It was probably just somebody taking potshots at windows because he wasn’t having any luck at hunting. That’s all. We just happen to have an inviting target with that big ol' window, and he just wanted to let off a little steam. Not a very good way to do it, but I’m sure it didn’t mean anything.

I thought I was making a pretty good sales pitch, but she wasn’t buying it.

Vandals shoot at windows all the time, Dill. I know that. But they don’t do it at three o’clock in the morning. And they don’t do it when there’s somebody sitting behind the window.

It might have been a myopic somnambulist, sweetie. They're probably all over the place. I grinned and tried to encourage her to cheer up, but it wasn't going really well. I tried again.

Okay, somebody was out to do a bad thing. But that still doesn’t mean it’s somebody who’s after you or me or the kids. It could be that somebody took shots at windows in houses all over the county. It might be no more significant than a lightning strike in a thunderstorm. We were just in the way when it passed through, and it’s over now. But just to make sure, two deputies are out checking, and I’m sure they’re very good at what they do. They know these hills, and they know the kinds of things to look for. They’ll find the guy, or they’ll find out he’s gone. And I’ll be extra careful, too. We’ll close the shutters and find things to do inside, and we’ll wait for Lacy to call us and tell us that everything’s okay. Okay?

She wasn’t happy about it, but there was little either of us could do besides close up the house and wait this particular storm out. But as she realized that, the hint of another storm started to edge over the horizon.

"Lacy? The sheriff’s name is Lacy? And you’re on a first-name basis with her? A pretty woman who carries a gun, pushing all of your perk-up buttons at once?"

I had started to get a bit nervous about Penny’s reaction until I saw the corner of her mouth start twitching up a little. She had found something to give me a hard time about, diverting her worried mind into more mundane matters, and that seemed like a pretty good thing at the moment.

Gee, honey, I was just...

"Don’t you ‘Gee, honey’ me, Mister Roaming Eye! You just remember there’s a hot-tempered but gorgeous Irish babe watching your every move, and keep your attention where it belongs!" She grinned widely at that, wrapped her arms around me, gave me a big smooch, and laid her head on my chest.

I said, Yes, dear, like a good hubby. And we stood there a while, calming down and hoping all was really well with the world.

Chapter 3

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We’d spent the whole day and night inside, with nothing more from Sheriff Lucas than a we-haven’t-caught-the-bastard-but-I’m-sure-he-won’t-bother-you-again call as the sun was slowly sinking behind the mountains. We had stayed away from the windows and even talked in low voices until we finally realized how silly we were acting. We were just pretty spooked.

Wayne thought the whole thing was a hoot. An adventure that would grow in excitement with every retelling, giving him the schoolyard spotlight until somebody else saw a bear or had an appendectomy or went to a theme park.

Scotty had trouble figuring out whether we had been attacked by cowboys, Indians, cops, robbers, Nazis, or terrorists. He wanted to help me go after whichever it was, though, just like in whatever movie came to his youthfully random mind at any particular moment. We made mental notes to be careful about what kinds of movies we let him watch until he was a little less impressionable, and wondered how many years that might be.

Jace was more into technical curiosity. How big did I think that rifle was? How do they make the window glass so that it cracks and crackles and sags but doesn’t just splatter all over the place? Can we get protective custody or maybe some bodyguards posted around the perimeter? Oooh—what about the witness protection program? How soon can we get a replacement computer monitor so he can do some surfing or instant messaging or e-mailing or twittering?

And Penny and I just kept going through the whole thing in our minds, which didn’t particularly help but couldn’t be helped. That had to spill over into conversation, which kept