A Man Named Mike
Copyright© 2025 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 2: On Vacation
Mike spent the next two weeks after his conversation with the Widow Hammersmith gradually going stir-crazy.
Susan Hammersmith had been a cold, shrill, pinch-faced woman who had, so far as Mike could tell, not the least bit of human compassion in her heart.
She wasn’t interested in what he had to say and mentioned a few minutes into the conversation that she’d heard that Mike hadn’t gotten along with her husband from the outset. He listened to her talk for about five minutes about various things, mostly imagined, about the events in the lobby before Mike turned to his boss and shrugged.
When she started in on his association with the “known Russian mobster, Andrei Badorin,” he’d reached his limit.
“Mrs. Hammersmith, I’m sorry for your loss. There is nothing I could have done to keep your husband alive; it wasn’t within my power. I’m sorry you feel the way you do about events, but I’m going to have to tell you that if you continue saying the things you’re saying about me and anyone else who was there that evening — I’m afraid I too will have to avail myself of the courts.
“I would suggest that you listen to your lawyer, who, if I’m any judge of character, wishes you’d be quiet, because if I take you to court, you will make him look bad as bad as you.”
“For all I know, you shot my husband yourself!”
That was more than Mike could bear. “If you pursue this case, it will be over the objections of the government, and they don’t like it when their people screw up. In the final moments your husband turned tail and ran ... it reflects badly on the leadership of his superiors. If you pursue this, you will get the autopsy reports showing that your husband was shot five times in the back as he attempted to flee. I was in front of him, and there were no wounds in the front. The FBI agent he was with died with his hand on his pistol, without having had time to draw it before he too was killed.
“The FBI agent and your husband were standing facing each other, sideways to the desk and between the front desk and the lobby door. The FBI agent went for his gun and turned towards the terrorists. Your husband turned the other way and managed two steps before they shot him down like the cur dog that he was.”
Mike’s boss wasn’t happy, but that was too bad. The woman was an idiot and he’d had his fill of idiots, so sorry. He was out of there in less than a half hour.
Still, after two weeks, he wouldn’t have minded a second round with her because at least it would have been more exciting than sitting around his apartment. Each afternoon, he would wander off to a local cineplex and watch a movie, eat some popcorn, and suck on a coke. The inactivity was driving him crazy.
He worked out in the morning and he spent an hour or two every day at the range, where he had to endure the questioning looks of his fellow marshals. He ended up joining a private range and putting a lot of holes in targets. The truth was that even after a few days off not shooting, his edge wore thin and he knew edge was everything, so he kept in practice.
He wasn’t a runner, but he did belong to a swim club. A couple of times a week he went there and did laps. You would think he had a busy schedule, but it was pretty much devoid of human contact and about as interesting as watching water boil and about as intellectually stimulating. The movies were generally awful and after ten days of it, he stopped going.
One day, he went down to his car and found that someone had egged it. Of all the means available to the terrorists to have retaliated against him, he was pretty sure that egging his car wouldn’t have made their list of possible modes of retaliation.
Sure enough, he called in to report the minor vandalism and his boss told him that the Widow Hammersmith’s lawsuit hadn’t made it through summary judgment and had been vacated the previous day.
As each day after that went by, he seemed to get more bored and more antsy. He checked for surveillance, but couldn’t detect any. He didn’t bother to call the office to report a probable non-event.
Frustrated, he spent two days watching his car, but no one returned.
One fine morning he picked up the phone and called the first number on Andrei’s business card.
A perky female voice answered, and he told her his name and asked if he could speak to Andrei. The woman had a throaty laugh. “Mr. Dunbar, you live in Virginia. Mr. Badorin is currently in California, and he’s still asleep. I assure you, sir, that your message will greet him the first thing when he wakes up.”
Mike grimaced. Yeah, it was seven a.m. in Virginia ... four a.m. on the west coast. Time zones? Who needed them?
A few minutes later, his phone rang, and he picked it up, not sure if it could be Andrei or not, and if it was, how pissed the Russian would be.
“Michael! It is good to hear from you!” a cheerful, familiar voice told him.
“I forgot about the time zone difference. I didn’t mean to haul you out of bed, Andrei.”
“Ah, but you don’t have a twelve-year-old daughter whose enthusiasm for her horse doesn’t extend to the five a.m. feeding! As a doting father, I make sure the filly is fed in the morning, while Andromeda has to do the afternoon feeding, rain or shine, no matter what, at five p.m. as well.”
Mike sighed with relief. “Andrei, I know I said I’d never want a favor from you, for fear of what it would cost. Now, I need a favor.”
“There will be no cost, Michael. I swear. Whatever you could have possibly owed me, you paid back in full in the lobby of the hotel. Don’t worry about it.”
“I need some time to decompress, Andrei. I think I’m starting to lose it. Just a place to put my head.”
“I have a very special hotel near Santa Barbara,” he told Mike. “It’s for the very, very, rich; it’s quite exclusive. There’s a beach, and the usual sort of hotel amenities, including a 19-hole golf course. Imagine people’s surprise when they reach the 19th hole for the first time and find that’s the name of the resort bar!”
Michael smiled. “I’m afraid I’m neither a golfer nor a bar rat.”
“Surely you have some sins that you indulge in?”
“Wine, sir, now and then. I suppose it makes me a closet alcoholic, but there’s nothing better after a long trip than sipping some good wine, listening to some good tunes, kicked back and relaxed. I don’t know why, but nothing works this time.”
“It was a rather tense time, Michael.”
“It was indeed, although at the time it felt like I was on autopilot.”
“When I was much younger, the Soviet Union was a very different place than Russia is now. I was nineteen and got my call-up papers. The Soviet Union didn’t do deferments, not in 1980. So they put a rifle in my hands and sent me from Moscow University to Afghanistan.
“There was little training. Most of our officers and NCOs were drunks, praying for their tour of duty to end so they could go home and cut their wrists if they were ever assigned back to Afghanistan. I did my duty as best I could, Michael. I did manage to survive, which, in those days, was some feat.”
“And your point?”
“It was a very tense time in my life, Michael. For years afterwards I had problems. I finally sought professional help — from an idiot it turned out, but it was enough to get me on the right track.” He laughed. “I’m much better now.”
Michael laughed as well. “Andrei, what I would like, if you have anything like it, is a private beach with no one for miles. You don’t have something like that, do you?”
“Alas, no. The laws in your country preclude that unless you go someplace very remote — and usually with very unpleasant weather.”
“How about a mountain top, far away from the beaten path?”
There was a moment’s pause. “I do have a place like that, that you can use, Michael. It is, however, very far from the beaten path.”
“Hard to get to?”
“People usually access it by helicopter. It takes a day on horseback or two or three days on foot.”
“My idea of heaven! Can I rent it for a couple of weeks?”
“I could bore you by telling you that your money is no good with me, Michael, but you and I are too much alike. I have two feet and I enjoy standing on them. I would take some umbrage if someone thought I needed help to stand. It’s three fifty a week, including a helo flight there and back — two weeks minimum.”
“Sign me up! Where do I go?”
“Come here, to Santa Barbara,” he gave Michael the address. “You can stay by the beach for a day or so, then fly up on your own schedule.”
“I won’t change my mind.”
“I never thought you would. But this is a very remote place. Michael, I have very stringent rules for what someone has to have along. There is a written test, and then an inspection before you’ll be taken there.” He sighed. “You Americans are so litigious.”
“Not me,” Michael told him.
“Well, I’m sure you will pass easily, Michael. Like me, you want to make it on your own. The possibility of failure will concentrate your attention.”
“That it will.”
“The number you called reaches my secretary,” he told Michael. “Call her with your itinerary, or you can fax it to her as well. She will get back to you with the list of the supplies and equipment you will need.
“Also, I’ll tell you in advance that Yuri is much better and intends to shake your hand as I did. Someone will be there to meet you at the airport.”
“He’d have done the same for me.”
“He would have if he’d ever paid attention in class,” Andrei said dryly. “I’m afraid classwork isn’t one of Yuri’s strong points.”
“He seems like a good man.”
“He is. I didn’t know it for a few days, but he cracked two of my ribs when he knocked me down. Like your President Reagan’s security guards did to him.”
“Broke his ribs,” Michael replied, agreeing. It was in every marshal’s syllabus about the necessity of doing what had to be done to protect their principal.
There was a short pause. “I am going to have to go, Michael. Have you ever raised horses?”
“No, sir.”
“They demand to be fed at the same time every day. If you fail to do so, they make a lot of noise until you do. The horse is making a lot of noise. I must go, Michael, or the filly will wake up my wife and daughter.”
“Don’t let me keep you, then. I’ll see you in a few days.”
Mike booked a flight and then forwarded his itinerary by email to the secretary. He got back the list of what he needed and he nodded in agreement when he looked it over. It was thorough, clearly designed for the totally ignorant of life far from services.
He wasn’t surprised to be met, and the limo was nice too. Mike was pretty sure Andrei was making a point, because they waited at LAX for an hour, gathering up two more passengers, both with entourages and both with monstrous baggage trains. The chauffeur was polite, good-humored, and had a trunk that seemed to be limitless in its capacity.
One of the other men, a politician that Mike vaguely recognized, wanted Mike to move from where he was sitting. Mike didn’t care and started to get up, but the driver waved him back to his seat. “You stay there, Mr. Dunbar.” He flashed his teeth. “I’m Vassily, Yuri’s little brother.”
The man was six and a half feet of raw-boned Slavic giant, while Yuri probably hadn’t made it to six feet, and was much more slightly built, relatively speaking.
The politician complained, saying he’d speak to Andrei. Mike grimaced. He’d been told that Yuri was Andrei’s brother-in-law; ipso facto, the man-mountain here was Andrei’s brother-in-law as well.
“I’m sure I’ve been in the US Senate longer than this man has,” the politician said smugly.
“Mr. Dunbar saved Mr. Badorin’s life; he saved my brother’s life. He sits where he pleases. And if you open your mouth again, you will be standing at the curb, with your thumb out, looking for a ride.”
The politician sputtered, but one of the men with him leaned close and whispered. Most of it Mike couldn’t hear, but the words, “and he’s an Air Marshal,” were clear enough. The politician looked Mike over, seeing the long-sleeve sport shirt, the Dockers, and a briefcase, and audibly sniffed.
The ones with the best suits exchanged various whispers, ignoring Mike after that. It took almost two hours to wend their way through the LA traffic, reach Highway 1, and finally arrive in Santa Barbara.
Again, it was funny. Andrei was there to greet them, but the first hand shaken was Mike’s. Andrei was polite enough to the politicians, and they appeared to take second-class status with some grace, but Mike didn’t think they were happy campers.
At the hotel, he was dealt with first, ahead of the senator and his friends, and again, earning him black scowls. He had no idea where their rooms were, but his looked out over the ocean and beach, a spectacular view.
A little before he thought about going to dinner, Vassily knocked on his door. He was stiltedly formal. “Mr. Dunbar, Mr. Badorin requests the pleasure of your company for dinner with his family in one hour.” The big man grinned. “Mr. Badorin is fond of many things. It would please him if you appeared in a white dinner jacket and tuxedo slacks.”
Mike laughed. “Oh, I pack a tux like that every time I plan to spend a couple of weeks alone on a mountain top.”
Vassily snapped his fingers, and a moment later, Mike was being fitted for a dinner jacket and slacks. An hour later, he followed Vassily upstairs and shook Andrei’s hand. He was quite unprepared to meet Yuri, who hugged Mike first and then took Mike’s hand in his and simply grinned.
“I am in your debt, sir,” Yuri told him.
“You don’t owe me anything,” Mike assured him.
Yuri laughed. “You say, so I must agree. But, sir, you showed me how poorly I’d learned my chores. I was an indifferent student — until I learned how important those studies truly were.” He hugged Mike once more, nearly crushing his ribs.
Then Andrei introduced Mike to his wife, a tall, elegant woman, who, Mike thought, was Polish, which didn’t make much sense vis-à-vis Vassily and Yuri. She was pleasant, but clearly had no idea who Mike was or why he was special.
Andrei’s daughter was the true surprise. She was, Mike thought, older than he’d gathered from Andrei’s comments, perhaps fourteen or fifteen. She took his hand and looked at him seriously. “Thank you, sir, for bringing my father back home safe to us.”
Andrei laughed. “Andromeda hates getting up before the sun, friend Michael. She would be happy about anyone who spared her from that.”
She was, Mike had been told, Andromeda Badorin. Now she simply grinned at him and bobbed her head in his direction. It was clear enough to him. She meant every word, and none of the obfuscation of her father meant anything.
During dinner, Andrei’s wife barely said anything beyond “Pass the potatoes.” Andromeda, on the other hand, was a fountain of words about everything under the sun. At the conclusion of the evening the women excused themselves and Mike found himself alone with Andrei, Yuri and Vassily.
“You are well, Michael?” Andrei asked.
“Bored, Andrei. I never knew how much I missed the job until I couldn’t do it.”
Andrei nodded. “If my name was involved it would not help you, so I’ve kept my distance. The Italians...” he shrugged. “What can I say, friend Michael? They are proactive only when it comes to protecting themselves and their turf. The rest of the time, they are quite content to wait until they find out what tomorrow brings.”
“It doesn’t matter. I was thinking about it the other day. Maybe the Islamic State will believe them and decide I wasn’t the problem I actually was.”
Andrei shook his head. “They will never think that, friend Michael. They know there were two of us in that lobby at the end. They know my name and they know yours. While I will continue to take precautions, the word is that I’m a filthy Western capitalist who got lucky and survived the attack, protected by my bodyguards, but you are an anti-Muslim bigot, who slew their brothers without compunction.”
“In that, they are right,” Mike told him.
Andrei nodded. “I know. Still, there is too much chance of disinformation for me to ignore. My wife is — unhappy — with the security required.”
“They will target everyone,” Mike reminded him. Alexei nodded and then changed the subject to the topic at hand.
“Vassily went through your equipment, friend Michael. If you wish, you can leave the first thing in the morning.”
Mike smiled slightly. “It was a very complete list I was sent. It took almost ten minutes to pull everything out of my garage and another hour to check that everything was in good shape.”
Andrei grinned. “So, you will be ready?”
“Yes, I will.”
Andrei grinned. “I say this because I must. All you have to do is pick up the radio and call, and your chariot will arrive to whisk you away within two hours.”
“I’ll remember that,” Mike said.
The next morning Mike had breakfast, and then went fluttering off into the blue sky.
It was a longish helicopter flight, nearly two hours, before they landed. Vassily showed Mike to the cabin, pointing out the various amenities, then grinned, lofted his thumb into the air, and vanished. A few moments later, Mike heard the helicopter fade into the distance.
He spent a day settling in, familiarizing himself with things. After that, he spent a couple of hours each day splitting wood; there was a lot of that to do.
It was more than a little frustrating. It was no different than it had been at home. After a few days he was bored, no matter how active he kept. Trying to redouble on the activity sounded all sorts of alarms in his psyche — it wasn’t good to deliberately pursue the extra work, beyond what his body needed.
Frustrated, he stood on the steps of the cabin on the evening of his fourth day there, once again bored out of his skull. As dark descended, some miles away, a cluster of lights appeared.
Curious, Mike went and reviewed the maps. There was a town there, named “Mountain Pass.” It had a population of five hundred, according to the map, and was some eleven miles away. Mike was thinking Andrei had short-changed him on the remoteness of the cabin, but then he laughed when he saw a dozen places between the cabin and the town where the map contour lines nearly touched. There were only a few dirt roads that led to Mountain Pass, and none of them ran in the direction of the cabin. What with one thing or another, he’d better assume it would take two days to walk into town.
He smiled then. Why not? He was bored ... there were still days and days before he could expect to be picked up. He had no great desire to call for help before then. He sat down and wrote a note explaining where he was going and the route he expected to take.
It did take two days, two full days. He approached the town in the early evening, the light already failing. He stood on the edge of the town, looking it over. There were maybe fifty or sixty people visible, a lot more than he would have expected. They seemed quite agitated, so he stayed back in the shadows.
He wasn’t entirely sure when he realized that he had a shadow.
He looked into the fading light. She was twelve or thirteen, he thought. Quite thin, wearing jeans and a blouse, standing no more than four feet away, and had been for some minutes.
“Hello,” Mike said as mildly as he could.
The girl sniffed. “Yeah, right.”
Mike waved towards the small town. “I’m Mike Dunbar. There sure are a lot of people out and about.”
The girl sniffed. “I’m Emily Post. You missed the shoot-out at the OK Corral an hour ago. We’ll be talking about it for years.”
Mike’s brain was dulled by fatigue and boredom. “Ah! Little Miss Manners!”
She hauled off and kicked him in the shin. “I am not,” she said, and kicked him a second time, “little.” She kicked his leg again. “I am not Miss Manners; my mother says I’m Miss Behaving. Take it back!” She kicked him a fourth time.
Mike laughed, “I surrender! My mouth ran away from me! I’m sorry, really. I’ll never do it again!”
The girl regarded him for a moment and then turned away, occupying her attention with the bustle of the people in front of them.
“For someone new in town,” Mike asked carefully, “could you explain what you meant about the shoot-out at the OK Corral?”
“The OK Corral is the name of the local tavern. The Graysons have been coming in there since forever. On most Saturday nights, they get into some sort of trouble, usually just fist fights. This time, they got to screaming and shouting at each other, and Mel Grayson pushed his wife, Alice, so Alice whipped out a pistol and took a shot at him, but hit Joe French, the bartender, in the chest.
“Mel pulled out his gun and shot at Alice, nearly hitting Sam Grayson instead. So Sam got his gun and took a shot at Mel, but missed and hit Susan Miller. Joe, the bartender, is a big man, and it was just a .22 caliber bullet, so he got out his shotgun from behind the bar and hit two or three other people, none of them Graysons. After that, I pretty much kept my head down and hid behind the bar.”
Mike had been going to say that she sounded like she’d been there. Evidently so.
She smiled at him. “The Graysons all left together because there were a passel of pissed people at the OK Corral. When they left, none of the Graysons had been hit. Six or so people had either bullets or birdshot in them at the Corral.”
Mike grimaced. “And your sheriff is no doubt calling in the State Police, and then they’ll go get them.”
Emily snorted. “Mom says the Texas Rangers had a motto — ‘One man, one Ranger.’ She is, she says, ten times better than any man who ever lived, so she’s gone up there after them herself. She can usually talk some sense into the Graysons.”
“Usually ... but usually there aren’t so many gunshot victims left behind,” Mike observed. “Could the mayor intervene, and maybe get your mother to ask for some backup?”
Emily Post snickered. “You have to understand,” she waved to the east. “Over there, that’s the Tule Indian Reservation. They have a casino in Porterville, and a lot of their people who live here don’t want to live on the Res. They get a nice big fat check from the casino and they live off of that. They could care less about who’s the mayor, the sheriff or the justice of the peace — they voted themselves a square mile of land to be considered part of the reservation so they don’t have to pay any local taxes.”
Mike shook his head. “And your mom is mayor and the JP as well?”
“Sure, it’s not like anyone else cares. She’s a control freak.”
“Do you know where’s she gone?” Mike asked the girl.
She eyed him warily. “It would be a bad idea to try to help her. She’s liable to shoot you.”
Mike took out his ID and clipped it to his pocket. “Mike Dunbar, US Marshal service.”
“You are going to be even less welcome than a stranger butting in,” Emily told him emphatically.
Mike smiled. “Why don’t you let me talk to her? If she wants, I promise I’ll butt out.”
“She went up the mountain, but she’ll be back,” Emily told Mike. “Those Graysons aren’t going to stick to the road. She’ll need her horse.”
“I can ride,” Mike told her.
“Like I said, you aren’t going to be welcome.”
The young woman’s attention switched, and she waved at the scene in the village. “She’s back. Her name is Carolyn Post; if I were you, I’d forget this.”
Mike saw a dual-rear-wheel pickup pull up to one of the buildings and saw someone exit. He was too far away to see clearly, but his sense of duty propelled him forward anyway.
The young woman simply said, “You are going to get so stepped on.”
Mike strode forward and followed the figure he’d seen heading for a barn. He went inside and found a woman taking a horse from a stall.
She glanced at him, saw his badge, and frowned. Then she looked at his face, and Mike saw her brows furrow.
“I’m Mike Dunbar,” he told her, holding up his ID. “I was passing through and heard about the ruckus. I’d be happy to lend a hand if you think you need one.”
Her face, in the meantime, had turned pale.
“Mike Dunbar?” her voice quavered, quite at odds with the impression her daughter had given him, as well as the one he’d gotten from her on his own.
“I’m not here to step on your toes, Sheriff. I’m available if you need a hand,” he said, trying to keep the whole thing low-key. Her expression was disturbing.
“Oh, my God! Mike!” she said, her voice sounding despondent. Each word punctuated in speech as if it had a period after it.
Mike had no idea what was going on. “Sheriff Post?” he asked, unsure.
The woman drew herself up. “Emily, stop listening. Get Midnight and his gear in the trailer. Now!” She clapped her hands after the last word.
Mike watched with interest as the sheriff quickly and proficiently loaded a horse into the trailer, and Emily quietly did the same thing to another horse. “Mike, if you would,” the sheriff gestured to the pickup. She turned to her daughter.
“This will wait until another time. Contain yourself.”
“Yeah,” the young woman responded, her voice bitter. “I just ignore the fact you’ve just flipped your lid over a man you’ve seen for what? Thirty seconds?”
“Emily! Go to bed!”
The girl flipped her mother a bird and stalked off.
Mike climbed into the pickup’s front seat. A few moments later they were on the road.
“Emily had to have told you what went on.”
“Yes,” Mike responded laconically.
“The Graysons are hill people, you understand? Tomorrow they’ll sober up, apologize profusely, and pay for anyone’s medical bills. For God’s sake — don’t shoot anyone.”
“I only shoot people shooting at me,” Mike said levelly.
“Good. Mike...”
“Sheriff, from the tone in your voice, we’ve met. For the life of me, I can’t remember it.”
She sighed. “I don’t know if it was because I was so forgettable or if I gave you enough reasons never to remember me, or the fact that back then I was fifty pounds heavier — a fat, pasty blob without a clue about the world.”
“If we’ve met, I don’t remember you,” Mike repeated patiently.
She laughed, pounding her palm on the steering wheel repeatedly. Mike wasn’t sure what emotions were running through her mind.
“I deserve it. God, I do. I can’t, though, believe that you don’t remember me. We were at a science fiction convention in Ann Arbor. I told you my name was Karen; I was a very confused young woman in those days. I’d left my boyfriend back at Yale for the weekend. I was, I told myself, going to get laid by a real man, just to know what it was like.”
“Karen?” Mike said, remembering. “Ann Arbor?”
“Yeah, Karen at the con in Ann Arbor. I told you I was from Cleveland. We spent Friday evening and all day Saturday together. We talked each other’s ears off. I’ve never met anyone as easy to talk to as you.”
Abruptly, Mike remembered. “You’ve changed,” he said as politely as he could.
“So have you, Mike. We spent Saturday together, talking like I’ve never talked to anyone before ... or since. We went skinny-dipping together Saturday evening and you kept it as non-sexual as anyone possibly could. I’d never met anyone like you before ... so it wasn’t a stretch to invite you up to my room for a nightcap.”
“A nightcap that was postponed because of an excess of hormones,” Mike said bitterly, unable to forget.
“And right in the middle, I felt so guilty, so dirty ... I had lied to you, left, right, and center. Back at Yale I had a boyfriend waiting for me. Even though you and I were ... getting close ... I asked you to stop.”
“Never forget, that I did,” Mike said with heat.
“I can never forget that you did, Mike. I pushed you away, and you stopped and sat up. You moved next to me and when you put your arm around my waist, I couldn’t trust myself. I asked you to leave. You did that too.”
“And I’ve held you up in my mind since then as someone I’ll never forget and for the reason I remember. No one has ever stopped me since then, but I tell myself that I know that I can,” Mike told her.
“You left and I was crushed by what I’d done. I’d met someone so much like I wanted, a man who I’d dreamed of. And I’d lied to you. I more or less slapped you in the face, and then I sent you away. I got up, dressed, got my things and a few minutes later I was checked out and was in a cab back to the bus terminal.
“Mike, God treats people like me harshly, no matter what you might think. I got home a day early ... and found my boyfriend in bed with someone else. I’d had it, really. I’d had it. I’d met the perfect man, to my way of thinking, and I’d left him for a man I knew was a jerk. There was no denying he was a jerk and I was out of there five minutes later.
“I make no excuses, Mike. It was me and my stupid hang-ups.”
“I didn’t think they were that stupid.”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.