Chapter 10: Hostilities

Four Years Ago

Everest, Montana

Travis Scott continued with his normal routine after his former boss headed back to Washington, or Langley, or wherever he was hanging his hat. The new cash was put in a shoebox in the back of his closet, though he pulled a few of the bills out and put them in his wallet. The next time he went back to the Caribbean he’d take some of it with him and stash it in one of the accounts; he had a suitcase with a secret lining that items could be hidden behind. Travis’ normal routine was a quiet one. Most days he worked around the property or ran errands in Everest; nights he stayed home. He rarely dated.

Regardless, it was time to do some research. The first step was to figure out everything he could on Balustre. According to Wikipedia, a balustre was simply the French spelling of baluster, which was a fancy carved spindle for a railing. That didn’t seem overly helpful, unless the people behind the Balustre Group were architecture fans. The company had a website, which was very limited, though the Corporate History section indicated the founder was named Balustre, and he was long deceased.

Much more information was found when he googled ‘balustre group’. The Balustre Group was originally named Protection Specialty Services, Inc. when it was founded back in the early 1990s. For several years it supplied security services to private companies doing business in the Middle East, heavy security services. You didn’t call Protection Specialty Services for mall cops. They hired ex-Special Forces types who went to work in body armor and openly carried fully automatic weaponry. There was an incident in 2005 in Afghanistan, where a security team responded to a riot in Kabul by lighting up the crowd with a pair of machine guns while being filmed by a British news team. The reporters were also targeted, which also made it onto the news that night. The security team ended up being tried and convicted both in Afghanistan and back in America.

Following that debacle, Wilson Balustre bought out the remaining partners in Protection Specialty Services and renamed the company after himself. Promises were made that they would be more careful in the future and that they had learned from their mistakes. Otherwise, it was back to work as usual. As The Who so eloquently sang, ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!’ Balustre didn’t live more than another couple of years before he died when his car ran off the road, supposedly hit by a drunk driver. Since then, the company was run by the managing partners who ran the individual divisions. Travis wondered if the drunk driving accident was an example of executive action.

Though the company was private, business analysts all agreed that growth was fast and profit margins were excellent. Balustre was now one of the largest private military contractors in the world. They were under contract with the CIA, the FBI, State, Treasury, and Defense. They also provided security to private corporations located in iffy neighborhoods. Travis considered that akin to an old-fashioned protection racket - pay me or something bad will happen to your plate glass window. They guarded convoys, protected diplomats and foreign leaders, ran training centers, built modified armored vehicles, and created specialized weapons. If you paid them enough money, they would provide entire army units, staffed with combat veterans and special operators from around the world. Former American Seals, British SAS, Russian Spetsnaz, with or without good records, all were employed by Balustre.

If that was the opposition, thought Travis, he was well and truly fucked. There was no way he could take them on directly. Balustre had more resources than some small countries and loads of political connections in the States and overseas. If Balustre learned where he was and decided to come after him, he would have to counter them with stealth and secrecy. In this, he felt he had an advantage. If the death of the tax lawyer was any indication, Balustre didn’t seem to have any use for subtlety. They used the big hammer theory of problem elimination - if you had a problem, just use a big hammer! If that didn’t work, or if there was a problem with the first hammer, go find yourself an even bigger hammer.

Travis decided to keep an eye open. He hadn’t left any tracks on his return home, and Balustre didn’t seem to know who he really was. That was fine with him.

Present Day

Day 0

Everest, Montana

Travis got a midweek visit from Undersheriff Haskell. Jake was puttering in the barn, getting ready to mow the lawn with his John Deere lawn tractor. Jake noticed a sheriff’s Tahoe pulling into the driveway, so he set down the gas can and wandered out to see what was going on. The Tahoe pulled up to the barn and Marty Haskell stepped out. “Good morning, Undersheriff Haskell,” said Travis.

“Nice to see you, too, Jake.”

“The name’s Travis, Undersheriff. You keep forgetting that.”

Marty Haskell wasn’t smiling. “Jake, we need to talk, and don’t give me any shit about your name. I don’t know what your issue is, but something has come up that involves Jake Kilbourne.”

“Well, that sounds very serious, but you really have the wrong man,” Travis answered, smiling.

“Knock it off, Jake! I have a message for you from a lawyer in Washington, D.C.!” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “I had a phone call from some guy named Jefferson Hollings who said he had been retained by a guy named Edward Bonaventure, and that if this Bonaventure contacted him, to call me and to have me warn you, and that I was to tell you that ‘This is real, Jake.’ So, Jake, you want to tell me what the fuck is going on? And since when did the Everest County Sheriff’s Department become your personal message service?”

Travis stared briefly, and then ran into the house, followed by Marty. Haskell found him pulling open a drawer in a desk in his den, where he pulled out a pistol. “When did you get the message?” demanded Travis.

“This morning. Now, what’s going on?”

“Shit, they have almost a day on us. They could be here any time now.”

“Who could be here?”

“Who knows you were coming here?” asked Travis. Marty didn’t respond right away, so Travis continued, “Who knows, Marty? Did you tell somebody?” He didn’t wait for an answer but went to the closet at the front door and reached into the back, pulling out a ballistic vest and a MOLLE harness.

“What the fuck?” asked the incredulous undersheriff.

Travis looked outside and then cursed. A pair of sedans had pulled into the driveway. “Crap, they’re here!” He pulled a long gun out of the closet and grabbed Marty by the arm. “We have to go! Come on!” He dragged Marty out of the living room and into the kitchen, just as automatic fire began, and a fusillade of bullets ripped into the living room and den. Travis pulled Marty out the back door and said, “Run! Get out of here! Stay low and get into the woods! I’ll cover you!”

“What’s going on, Jake?”

“Just, go, Marty! I’ll tell you later. Now RUN!”

Marty stared and then ran straight towards the back fence, which he crawled through and then dropped to the ground and headed for the woods a quarter mile away. What the fuck was going on?

Jake smiled to himself, even as he considered the circumstances. He had a Sig Sauer P226 in .40 S&W, with a fifteen-round magazine, and a Springfield Armory M1A, the civilian semi-automatic version of the military M14 rifle, chambered for 7.62 NATO, with a twenty-round magazine and a scope. There were reloads in the MOLLE harness, along with a suppressor for the pistol. Jake headed to the right, towards the barn and closer to the driveway where the two cars were parked. He could already hear boots stomping through the house, with gunfire erupting as every room was searched. It was a brute force method, shoot up a room from the doorway and then go in and look for a body.

When he got to the barn, he heard similar activity inside. At least two men were searching for anybody in the barn. Time to go to work. Travis smiled as he thought that this was much more akin to the killing he had done in the army than what he had done afterwards. He got to the rear door to the barn and dropped to the ground; he screwed the suppressor onto the pistol. Carefully pulling the back door open, he found himself looking at the back of a man standing in armor and carrying what looked like an M-4 carbine. He was turning to see what made the sound behind him when the .40 S&W took the top of his head off. He dropped silently and Travis crawled inside and looked around.

A second man was on the second level of the barn, rooting around and yelling down to the guy on the ground level. When nobody responded, he came to the stairs and yelled down, “Find him?” The response was two rounds in the throat.

That ended the threat in the barn. Now for the others. Two mid-sized sedans made for a max of four or five shooters each. A standard deployment would be one or two at the cars, as tactical reserve and emergency retreat if necessary. If Travis began by clearing out the house, the ones at the car would get away. Better to deal with them first. Travis holstered the pistol and took the M1A from where he had laid it. He moved to the front of the barn. Three men were in sight, two at the cars and one on the porch. All three were looking around, since it was obvious by that point nobody had been found in the house, neither Jake Kilbourne nor Marty Haskell.

Travis smiled and hid himself behind the barn door as best he could. He raised his rifle to his shoulder and sighted in quickly. First to die was the man on the porch, with a round between his eyes. Since the rifle wasn’t suppressed, everyone turned towards the barn as Travis shot one of the men at the cars through the throat, the third man dove to the ground, but that didn’t help him. A third and fourth round took him through the legs; the spurt of blood indicated one or both of his femoral arteries were hit. Then, as bullets began hitting the barn door from the second floor of the house, Travis worked over the two cars, blowing their tires and shooting up their engines. Then he backed away from the door.