Chapter 1

Stephen Everett Randall was a loner. He’d been forced into retirement by the company he’d given thirteen years and nearly his life to, on numerous occasions. After he’d been shot three times and recovered, he came close to being killed in a roadside bomb blast. Now they were afraid he’d not be able to perform at such a high level in the future.

He had a lot of years in with the lesser known, CIA military contractor, Uno Bravo. Now they’d told him he was high risk because of his injuries. He’d recovered fully as far as he was concerned - he could still take on anyone in camp and put them down.

Even at 35 years old, 6’ 6” and 250 lbs, he was lean and he was mean. He had been trained to kill. He wasn’t trained to fight. He had killed many men and a lot of women too during his employment with Uno Bravo.

They paid him one hell of a buy-out, plus a monthly retirement pension, before he’d go away. Which is what they wanted in the first place. To get the walk-off bonus money, he had to sign an agreement that he wouldn’t hire out to another organization or another country for ten years. He was 35 at the time. They knew he’d not be much of a threat in ten years.

He was lost and bitter when he first got out. He didn’t know how to be a normal civilian. He’d never been married, never had any kids and his family was all gone. It was just him.

He was born in Jasper, Arkansas on the Buffalo River, right in the middle of the Ozark National Forest. The National Forest covers 1.2 million acres in the northwest Arkansas wilderness that spreads over parts of, if not all of, sixteen counties. He’d grown up hunting and fishing in the wilderness. He was good at it and took his knowledge of the wilderness serious.

This knowledge made it easy for him to get hired by the lesser known special ops forces, Uno Bravo, upon graduation from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Even though he’d never had any military training, not even ROTC – when he signed up they knew they had a winner when they saw him handle a gun, a knife, a compound bow and a crossbow.

He was sent directly to Uno Bravo for basic training to become one of the best there is at recon and killing.

He always came back with a finger and or a scalp of the one he was sent to kill, for DNA proof. No matter who – no matter where.

Steve was a skilled marksman with any weapon he picked up and could move through the night faster and quieter than a shadow.

As a teenager he’d shot up 6 inches in height. He was tall and skinny until his senior year, then he added over fifty pounds in less than twelve months.

He was gaining weight so fast his basketball coach put him on a high level training regimen in the gym. From the end of his junior year until his graduation from high school the next spring, he trained.

He wasn’t involved in organized sports at U of A, but he was hooked on training and kept at it all through his three and a half years there, and at home during summer breaks.

Now he’s back in his home state of Arkansas. Thirty-five years old and dumped back on the streets. He felt empty, abandoned, useless and alone.

They did ship Dog to him ... They’d been together six years, he and Dog. They had trained together, slept together, and eaten together for over a year. Bonding into one, before being deployed to that Hell Hole on earth called, Baghdad.

They were together for one reason – they were a killing team. A deadly team destined to be sent into the deadliest places on earth. Steve had been shipped out to Iraq right after September 11, 2001 with no record of his whereabouts. He and Dog were sent on missions where the chance of survival, was at best, rated zero. Missions the military brass would never consider sending American Special OPS into. These missions were turned over to the CIA. The CIA contracted Uno Bravo.

Uno Bravo sent Stephen Everett Randall and Dog.

But they always came back! They’d walked through the dusty-hot, barren streets of Hell together a few times, but they survived. He and Dog were sent into the towns and villages ahead of the elite forces, securing their positions and providing re-con information first for the snipers and then the Special Forces.

When they’d kicked him out last year they couldn’t do a thing with Dog. He wouldn’t even eat. They located Steve and notified him that Dog was on the way, with arrival time and terminal at Little Rock National Airport.

He hadn’t seen Dog in nearly a year – he missed him. Dog had been his shadow, his right hand – never making a sound, but always there. Steve thought at times Dog could actually understand him and could think just like him. Knowing what they were going to do as soon as he, himself did.

They’d shipped him in a wire cage shipping crate and when Steve broke the seal and opened the door on the cage, Dog licked his hand and they walked from the dock to his pickup. Neither of them uttering a sound, as they left the wire cage on the dock.

When Steve opened the truck door, Dog got in. He was with Steve now - he was happy. He lay his head on Steve’s thigh all the way back over to the little unincorporated community known as Strawberry, in Johnson County north of Clarkesville, Arkansas on I-40 west of Little Rock.

Steve had planned to buy a place back up nearer Jasper but found a place he liked in northern Johnson County instead. He had a small cabin with 175 acres. There was plenty of big Oak and Hickory trees, and plenty of game on his property bordering the southern edge of the Ozark National Forest.

When he opened the truck door after returning from the airport, Dog jumped to the ground, hiked his leg and pissed on all four tires. Then he pissed on every tree, rock and porch post on the place. He was with Steve once more. This was his territory and he was marking it against anything that walked or crawled.

He came to lick Steve’s hand then took off through the forest in a dead run. Steve didn’t see the big black cur again until nearly dark when he came back with his belly full.

Having Dog was fun and he felt good for a while. He wasn’t near as lonely having the cur at his side wherever he went. But even that wore off and he knew he needed a woman.

He’d always had a woman. No matter where he was there was a woman. Even in the war zone he’d found a woman. It was just something he’d considered a necessity all his life.

His long-time friend, Julio Ramos was working as a bartender at a motel lounge down near Clarkesville on I-40. Steve went there to visit Julio and scout the women.

Julio had just hired a young waitress. Lilly was her name, she was small and sexy, and she smiled a lot. She was eight years younger than Steve, but she flipped over him. She went home with him the first night they met, then moved in the next day. She was fun to have around ... and did she ever love sex!

The only bad thing was, she hated living in the sticks so far from town. She hated Steve’s dog too. Really hated him. She told Steve that Dog stared at her all the time, like he was hungry.

She quit her job as a barmaid and got a job at a grocery store as a cashier and stock girl. She was working day shifts now and Steve bought her a used car to drive back and forth. They made love all night some nights. Sometimes on the porch, sometimes in the yard and even in the bed when it was cold or raining.

Lilly never did like the wilderness though and griped all the time about it.

She was off on Wednesdays. This was house cleaning day. She cleaned the house naked this Wednesday, stopping her mopping and sweeping and dusting and cleaning long enough to bring Steve a cold beer and either sit on his ever hard cock or suck it. Then she went right back to her cleaning. They had bought groceries the day before and filled the pantry, the big chest freezer, and refrigerator with everything she could think of. Steve actually thought she was beginning to accept living here. She sure had changed suddenly.

When she had the house clean and clean sheets on the bed, she grabbed Steve’s hand and pulled him to the bedroom, closing the door so Dog wouldn’t come in. She made love to him all night, stopping only long enough to ask him for the hundredth time about moving closer to town. He put her off and kissed her titties and her body just the way she liked for him to. She hushed about moving.

She made love to him twice before leaving for work on Thursday - then left the house crying. Steve had never figured her out and wasn’t about to try and figure her out this time either.

Jerry Larson hated the days it was raining from the time he drove to work at 5:30 am, and was still raining and blowing just as hard at 1:00 pm.

Fridays were always his busiest days. He still had over thirty-five parcels left to deliver and a lot of those were rural. This was going to be another late day and Becky was going to be madder than hell. But she’d just have to get over it.

He looked at his manifest once again and saw that his longest run out in the country was on County Road 37011. This was the one getting the ten big boxes. That delivery alone, would really speed his slow day, and may even bring him back close to his average time.

The address didn’t ring true to Jerry and he stopped to look at his detailed 911 map.

‘Hell, there’s County Road 3701, I bet that’s the one. Shit, looks like they could at least get the address right. We’re always having to chase down these, out of the way residences.’

It had been fifteen minutes since his last stop and Jerry knew he was losing valuable time. He turned off State Highway 123 onto Johnson County Road 3890 west of Hagarville, looking through the blinding rain for his road.

There it is, County Road 3701. If there was a 37011, it had to be a driveway off County Road 3701. He turned onto the narrow gravel road with the wind whipping the rain against his windshield on the brown delivery van. He gunned his engine and roared north then curved back east.

Leaves and small limbs were blowing across the one-lane gravel road so hard the wipers couldn’t keep up. Big green Oak leaves were sticking flat to his windshield and the wipers weren’t even raking them off.

He drove by a narrow driveway on his right, then slammed on his brakes to slide sideways in the wet gravel. When he had gotten straightened out, he backed up to look at the road sign. It had been shot more than once over the years but he saw the last two digits, ‘11’ in white numbers on the right side of the crumpled up green sign which was barely hanging from the bent signpost.

He saw the mail box and the name Ste++n Ra+dall on it, with bullet holes riddled all over. It had been shot with buckshot until it looked like a rusted out birdhouse hanging on the post.

The KEEP OUT sign was the only thing legible at the driveway entrance.

This is it...

He turned his wheels hard to the right and gunned the van through the low, heavy wet limbs under the trees in the narrow drive until he came to a clearing with a small cabin. There was a 4x4 pickup in the yard so he knew someone must be home. He hoped so anyway. This big drop required a signature for the ten boxes at sixty-six pounds each.

Whatever it was, he would be glad to get them off and get back down to civilization to finish his deliveries.

Steven E. Randall

2010 County Road 37011

Strawberry, AR. @#@839

Jerry saw where the ten boxes had previously been shipped to Strawberry, Arkansas 72469 over in Lawrence County, then re-routed back through Little Rock to Clarkesville, and on up here to the scattered little unincorporated community of Strawberry in Johnson County. He sure hoped this was right or he’d have to haul them back and fill out a report.

He looked at the registry and the first part of this zip was blurred. The damned electronic delivery register had moisture inside it.

The whole damned address is blurred. I’ll have to scan each damned box now.

The rain was coming down at flash flood levels with gale-force winds as he pulled in.

Just my fucking luck. He grumbled.

Jerry sounded his horn as he turned his van around in the narrow drive in an effort to back as close as he could to the front porch on the house.

He jumped out, jerking the sliding door forward on the off side and ran to the back of the delivery van. He was hoping the truck door had closed as he ran to the back. His van was right up against the low tin roof with water pouring down off the roof against the van’s back doors.

“Fuck it,” Jerry said aloud as he banged on the wooden door, his brown shirt and knee length shorts already soaked.

“Hell its open, come on in,” someone yelled from inside.

“UPS delivery,” Jerry yelled over the roar of the rain hitting the tin roof on the porch. The wind was still howling through the trees like a hurricane.

“Bring it on in! Shit, don’t stand out there in the rain,” the voice yelled.

Jerry had to laugh. ‘Shit this is just about too much.’

He opened the door and saw a man who was maybe in his mid thirties. He was dressed in camo fatigues, sitting in a chair drinking a beer. There was a mean-ass black dog lying at his feet. He was looking at Jerry like he was hungry.

“Got ten boxes for you. Where do you want them?”

“Well hell, I reckon I want them in here out of all this rain. You need some help?”

“Well, there’s ten of them and they weigh sixty-six pounds each, the papers say. At least that was what was on them before my papers got wet. I can hardly read any of the labels now.”

“That fuckin’ Lilly, I’m going to skin her ass. What in the hell has she ordered this time?” Steve asked no one in particular, thinking maybe this was the reason she’d been so domestic the day and night before. She’d spent some more of his money on foolishness.

“I have no idea who Lilly is. You are Steven Randall, right?”

“Hell yeah! Who did you think I was, after you drove all this way out here in the middle of a storm, with ten boxes weighing sixty-six pounds each?”

“Well, I guess you got me there. Here sign this and I’ll start putting them on the porch. If you’ll put them inside, they won’t get near as wet.”

Stephen Randall stood up and stretched, then walked over to the door and took the electronic delivery register, scribbling his name. All Jerry could make out was a big ‘S’ and an ‘R’. The rest of his signature was just a scribble.

When Jerry took the first box off the van and turned to set it down, he looked up at the man.

‘Damn, he sure looks like someone named Steve Randall, who would live at the end of a dead-end road on the edge of the Ozark National Forrest.’

The man was close to 6 foot 6 inches tall and weighed at least 250 pounds. He’s wearing camo fatigues and a camo tee shirt. He’s barefoot and his feet looked to be over a foot long. His hair is all over his head and down on his shoulders. He has a three day beard ... at least. But the cabin was as clean as he and Becky’s own home down in Clarkesville.

Jerry grabbed another box and each time he stepped out of the van with a box, the tall man was there to take it like it was a box of feathers. Taking three steps and setting them down, he stacked one neatly on the other in the house until they had them unloaded.

“Gotta run, have a good day,” Jerry said as he ran to his van. The sliding door had not closed and the rain was blowing in. His seat was wet. Hell everything in front of the damned van was wet. He grabbed the sliding door and jerked on it. It came forward with a bang and he took off.

He looked around for his register and didn’t see it. When he slammed on his brakes, small packages came flying to the front. Jerry backed up, turning his wheels as he did, so he wouldn’t run over his register.

He felt the thump-thump, and then, the bump.

He stepped out into the blinding rain and saw it. He’d backed over his register with the rear duals and the front tire. Picking it up he saw the LCD display was busted. He turned it over and the back was crushed, with sand, water and small gravel running out.

“What a damned fucked up day.”

Inside the cabin, Steve Randall looked the large, wax-coated cardboard boxes over. He started to open one but then decided to wait until Lilly got home from work and let her explain what the this was all about. He walked out on the back porch where the rain wasn’t blowing in as hard and pissed on the ground.

“Dog, if you gotta piss you better get your ass out here. I’m not gettin up to let you out to piss about the time I sit back down,” he growled at his dog. The black cur walked right past him, hiked his leg and pissed on a porch post.

They both went back inside. Steve got a beer and sat down to listen to the weather on the radio. The cur lapped a bowl of water up then lay back by the chair at Steve’s feet.

That’s exactly where they were when the sun came up bright and hot the next morning. Steve looked around and didn’t see Lilly. He looked in the bedroom and she hadn’t even been here. He opened the front door and Dog walked out on the porch, dropped down with his front feet out in front and stretched, then shook his body.

Steve walked barefoot out on the wet gravel and looked all around. The rain had stopped during the night and there were no tire tracks, except where the UPS van had driven in and out. Even those tracks were just about washed out.

He knew she hadn’t been here or there would have been more tire tracks.

He stretched his arms over his head, his back arched, then walked back in to get a cold beer for breakfast. He sat on the front porch for a long time, drinking his beer, wondering if he should go look for Lilly.

Steve went back in and straight to the bathroom to take a shower and shave. He knew he had to go find her.

‘That piece of shit car of hers probably quit on her somewhere and she’s still sitting there madder than a wet hen.’

When he came out on the porch after putting on clean camos, he heard the mailman honk his horn down at the end of the long drive. He and Dog walked down to the mail box.

There was a Kroger ad full of coupons from Clarkesville and some insurance company wanting him to hurry and buy insurance before the special ran out.

A credit card company wanted him to accept the offer of a pre-approved card in his name.

‘Fuck, they even spelled it wrong, I spell my name with ‘ph’ and not a ‘v’

He dropped a small letter and bent to pick it up. It was mailed to him from Clarkesville, with a handwritten address on it. There was no return address.

‘Wonder who in the hell knows me down in Clarkesville, Arkansas besides Julio?’

He ripped it open and saw real quick who wrote it.

“That fucking Lilly” He mumbled. Then he read.

Stephen,

I’ve decided to leave you. I can’t stand living out in the fucking wilderness any more. You told me we’d be living closer to town before spring and we’re not. I’m going to Ohio to live with my brother and his wife. I hope you find a girl who will love you and like living in the sticks, with you and that fucking mean-ass Dog. He never did like me anyway and was always staring at me like he was hungry. I quit my job at the grocery store and took a hundred dollars from the bank to buy gas with.

I love you Stephen, but I guess I just don’t love you enough.

Lilly

“Well, I’ll be damned. You fucking mangy-ass cur. You run Lilly off. I hope you’re happy now. It’s just me and you and you don’t look near as good as Lilly did lying in my bed,” Steve scolded the black cur. Dog just looked up at him, hiked his leg and pissed on the front porch post then walked inside to stretch out beside Steve’s chair.

Steve went back in and got another beer from the fridge. Walking by the stack of boxes on his way to the porch, he looked down and kicked one with his bare foot, damn near jamming his big toe.

“What in the fuck is in them damned boxes anyway?” he growled and Dog looked over at him.

Steve took his long hunting knife from the scabbard hanging on the wall. He cut the shipping tape from the top of a box and saw it was full of Nabisco Saltine Crackers.

“Ain’t no fucking way a case of damned crackers weighs sixty-six pounds, and what in the fuck did Lilly want with ten cases of fucking crackers anyway?” he cussed and fussed. His big toe was still hurting as he stepped back with it raised, to keep it from touching the floor.

He cut into two more of the cardboard boxes and saw the same thing – saltine crackers.

“Well Dog, I sure as hell hope you like saltine crackers. We’ll be eating them for a while looks like. Hell, I’ll cook up a big pot of deer chili. That’ll last a week or two since you run our cook off, and my pussy too,” he cussed and Dog just looked at him.

Steve took a box of crackers out of the cardboard box. It was heavy, maybe close to five or six pounds, he guessed.

“No way in hell does a box of crackers weigh five pounds,” he mumbled as he slid his knife point under the tape on the end of the cracker box, ripping it outward.

He saw something fly off the blade of his knife and looked under the couch where it had fluttered.

“Damn ... that looked like a dollar bill!”

He bent down and looked under the edge of the couch.

Steve jumped back and looked at Dog. Dog saw him jerk back and looked over at him. They looked at each other and when Steve let out a loud whoop, Dog got up and walked slowly out to the porch.

Steve reached under the couch and picked up the hundred dollar bill. It was cut nearly in half. He looked it over, turning it to look at the other side. His first thought was counterfeit. He grabbed his flashlight and held it under the bill. He saw the watermarks in the paper. This wasn’t a new, freshly printed bill, it had been in circulation, but it wasn’t the older bill that had Ben’s picture aligned in the center either.

“Shit, I wonder if all ten of these boxes are full of one-hundred dollar bills? Where in the hell did they come from?” Steve said aloud.

Dog came over to stand on the porch, looking in the door at Steve as he talked to himself.

He pulled another cracker box out and opened it completely. It was packed full of one-hundred dollar bills. They were in tightly wrapped bundles and he unwrapped one bundle and counted the bills. There were one-hundred bills in the bundle.

“DAMN.”

Steve counted the bundles in the opened box. There was $10,000 in each bundle and twenty-five bundles in each cracker box.

“DAMN, that’s $250,000 per cracker box,” he said, holding the cracker box up to the outside of the big cardboard box, using it to measure down the side. He figured there were twelve cracker boxes in each cardboard box.

Steve got a pencil and went to figuring. He figured it three times.

“Holy Shit – there’s three million in each big box and there’s ten of them.”

“FUUUuu-uuUUUCK—thirty million?”

He walked to the front door, “Get your mangy ass in here Dog,” he fussed, and closed the door as Dog walked slowly over to the chair and lay on the floor.

“Somebody’s going to be looking for this money. This isn’t bank money either. They don’t put their money in cracker boxes and send it out on UPS.”

He looked at the shipping label. Some dumb-ass had shipped this from the same address they sent it to. He looked at the UPS shipping label. It showed it was picked up in Strawberry, AR then traveled four days and arrived back in Strawberry, AR

“Yeah right, bunch of shit too. Strawberry is over in Lawrence County, this is just a community called Strawberry. There’s not even a post office here.”

He tore a half-way legible label off one box and stuffed it in his pocket. He slipped his shoes on, not even lacing them and picked up his cell phone. He got his 9MM Beretta and slipped in the pocket on the right leg of his camo cargo pants.

“Dog, you stay here and guard this money. If we find out this is real money and not Monopoly money, you and I’ll go find us some fresh pussy.

“Hell yeah, we’ll find you some too,” he laughed as Dog jumped up on his leg and licked his hand.

He threw a bedspread over the boxes of money, put the $100 bill he had cut, and one more in his pocket, then walked out to his truck.

“What I need is one of those pens that marks yellow on these bills. I’ve seen Lilly use them at the checkout in the grocery store. Hell, I’ll just go get one.”

In his mind, he sorted it all out, and came to a conclusion. ‘If this was real money and someone made a mistake in shipping some stolen money he may just as well lay claim to it as the next man, or even the damn government. They’ll just confiscate it and it’ll never be seen again’

Steve drove down to Strawberry Loop and on down to Minnow Creek Cemetery where he took highway 123 to Clarkesville. He stopped at a convenience store and bought a Coke and got an I Wanna shopper. When he went to pay, he looked down and saw a marker pen like he wanted, by the cash register.

“Give me a small box of them Roi-Tan Cheroots you got over there too,” Steve said and as soon as the girl turned, he raked the marker over to the edge under his shopper paper. The he stuffed it into the big pocket on his camos, making sure he wasn’t on video. He paid for his purchases and went back to his old Chevy truck smiling.

As soon as he got in, he lit a cheroot and pulled his marker out along with the $100 bill that wasn’t cut. He marked it then took the other one out and marked it too. They both passed, leaving a faded yellow line across the bill.

Steve drove on over to his favorite place to buy beer and cigars and went inside. He took two Coors Light Cooler Packs with thirty-six cans each over to the register and set them on the counter.

“Roy, let me borrow your Scotch tape. I got a bill here that’s been cut almost in half,” he said as he reached for the roll of tape and taped both sides, wrinkling the tape, then smoothing it the best he could. He handed the bill to Roy and the first thing he did was grab his yellow marker and rake the point across the bill. He looked at the wrinkled up tape and shook his head at Steve, before giving him his change.

“Roy I forgot! Give me a big box of those Roi-Tan Cheroots you got over there,” Steve said.

“A box of 50?”

“Yeah, I’m trying to quit, but they taste too good.”

“That’ll be $111.16”

“Damn, all I got on me is another big bill,” Steve said and laid the other $100 bill on the counter.

“Just take it out of that. I’ll need some change anyway.”

Roy struck a mark across that bill with the pen, then handed him his change of $88.84 and put the box of fifty cigars in a plastic bag for him.

“See ya in a few days Steve. Looks like you got enough beer and smokes for at least a week,” Roy laughed as Steve turned, ready to walk out.

“Yeah, the way it’s been raining lately I need to stock up when I drive all the way to town,” Steve answered, stacking the two cases of beer and picking them up under one arm.

“Damn, we sure got a good one this last time. Rained for two days and nights here. I saw on TV where some roads back up north in the county close to you are flooded and the bridges are out,” Roy told him.

“Hell, I never heard that. But I don’t have TV up where I live, only the radio and I keep it turned off most of the time.”

“See ya next time,” Roy told him.

“Well, now I know it’s not Monopoly money. What in the hell will I do with all that shittin’ money I got stacked up out there at the house?”

Johnson County is a semi-dry county in Arkansas and there were only a few private clubs where you had to be a member to get in and buy liquor-by-the-drink. Steve was a member of the two closest to Clarkesville. He met Lilly at one of them and she had moved in with him the next day.

Steve felt like company and a stiff drink before heading back up to the northern part of the county. He was going to miss that skinny little girl with her hot ass. She may have bitched a lot, but she sure loved sex.

He pulled into the parking lot of the BestWay Motel and Lounge at the edge of the city limits. He’d always parked around on the side away from busy eyes on the front lot.

He knew Julio would be working this week’s shift, from 3:00 in the afternoon until 1:00 am when they closed. He and Julio go way back and spend a lot of time reminiscing when they get together either here at the bar or up at Steve’s cabin, while hunting. Julio hadn’t been up in a while because Lilly never liked him – Even when she worked for him. She said he was always ogling her ass.

Damn, when you look like Lilly, all the men ogle your ass. She’d be pissed if they didn’t!

“Hey Julio, I need a tall one, Amigo,” Steve said as he walked in the door. He always walked right past the register ... one of the few who come here that Julio doesn’t require to sign his guest book. It’s a rule set up by the Arkansas Alcohol and Beverage Control Board, where private clubs are required to have a paid membership. Members are supposed sign the register when they enter.