Tag Archives: mystery

“Nice up here,” Fiddler said, looking around. “Lots of trees.”

Duke felt no need to reply to his riding companion’s inane comment about the dense pines and spruce trees of the Superior National Forest. The forest, covering 3.9 million acres of land in Minnesota, also had about 2,000 lakes around the Superior National Forest and Boundary Waters region between the United States and Canada.

He looked in the rearview mirror at the vehicle following them. Five minutes to arrival.

“Run down the Monday-morning setup for me again,” Duke said.

“Assembly takes place in a green, industrial-type shed to the right past another shed-like main office with an awning and signage. They’ll be having their bullshit, Monday-morning meeting. Every fucking Monday the heads and general labor have a bull session. Donuts. Coffee. That kind of thing.”

Focusing on the task, Duke said, “We’re sure everyone will be there? No one in the quarry yet?”
 
Fiddler shook his head, his longish hair pulled back today. “Nah. Just the two places. Main office with the awning and the big green shed next to it.”

Not really worried about how things would go down, Duke told him to cut the noise once Fiddler started chattering about his planned trip to Turks and Caicos.

They’d arrived. Granger’s Quarry, a trillion-dollar shithole.

As they drove down a small gravel hill, Duke’s eyes roamed the parking lot. Relieved to spot the particular vehicle they needed, he pointed to it before slowly pulling up to the front door of the Granger’s Quarry office. He pressed the hatch button and got out, followed by Fiddler, and watched two more men on his team unload their own vehicle right behind them. They each grabbed a cheap AR15, all loaded with 30 round mags of 5.56 mm ammunition. One hundred twenty bullets should do the trick.

They closed the back ends of the vehicles, and Duke pointed to Thing 5 and then to the black F150 Ford truck they’d passed in the parking lot. Thing 5—or Alpha, as he was really known—was the number-five guy on Duke’s team and not yet deserving a personal pronoun. On Duke’s crew, a name had to be earned, but he was confident that Thing 5 knew what to do. Next, Duke’s focus turned to Thing 6, or Bravo. He pointed Bravo toward the front steps of the office and said, “Not until you hear me first.”

Thing 6 nodded as Duke and Fiddler headed to the green shed for the weekly BS meeting. Today, at least one of them will have something real to gripe about. The large industrial, metal shed next to the office had an eighteen-foot garage door open to the September elements. Duke could hear someone talking inside, so he raised his fist to stop Fiddler and quickly peeked inside. Sure enough, maybe fifteen guys sat in there, listening to some asshole at the front, yakking away—probably Chris Granger.