Coming Home to Roost: Chapter 11

Before pon­der­ing how some­one might have got­ten into the house, I imme­di­ate­ly checked on the Sig and the oth­er items I had brought from the oth­er place. All those items were still where I had put them, and the box con­tain­ing the remain­der of the ammo for the rifle was still safe­ly tucked away. 

Whether the cul­prit had found what he want­ed and left, assumed there was noth­ing else to be had, or was inter­rupt­ed while pil­fer­ing the place were ques­tions I was obvi­ous­ly not going to be able to answer with any cer­tain­ty.  But the prospect that most filled my mind was that Mr. Celik had paid a vis­it and maybe had tak­en exact­ly what he was after.  The more I thought about it, the more the log­ic of it became apparent. 

Celik would prob­a­bly have had a hard time enter­ing the coun­try with any type of weapon.  Of course, he could pret­ty eas­i­ly pro­cure most any type of weapon from some ille­gal source, but, being a total stranger to the work­ings of American soci­ety, that would have proven dif­fi­cult.  Since he also appar­ent­ly knew of my back­ground, he may very well have assumed that I would be in pos­ses­sion of weapons that would be use­ful to him, and past occur­rences had already shown that he was keep­ing me under surveillance.

Well, if Mr. Celik was of a mind to try to take me out with a long-range shot, using my own rifle, I would have to oblige him to some extent.  I was going to reck­on that my assump­tions were cor­rect and that he had pos­ses­sion of my Remington … and act accordingly.

I have always believed that the best defense is a strong offense.  That phi­los­o­phy has kept me alive through many assign­ments.  It was time to put it into prac­tice once again.

There being too few places in Winchester where one can pur­chase a rifle, espe­cial­ly the kind I was after, I head­ed to Lexington and Bud’s Gun Shop on Industry Road.  Bud’s is known local­ly as hav­ing one of the best selec­tions of arms in the area, and I sus­pect­ed they would have what I needed.

The place was busy, as it usu­al­ly is, but with­in about a half hour I left with a new Remington Model 700 and an updat­ed Schmidt and Bender PL II tac­ti­cal scope.  Though I felt that the scope on my stolen rifle was bet­ter (maybe just because I was used to it), this new scope is the same one used by Marine snipers.  If I encoun­tered Celik on a one-to-one basis, it was going to be a con­test between the best equip­ment and the best marks­man. One advan­tage of the new scope was that it was an infrared-rang­ing type that would give me accu­rate dis­tanc­ing information.

However, I could­n’t, by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion, assume that our encounter would be a con­test of long-range rifle fire.  If it devolved into a close-in attack, I was going to have to rely on skills that I had­n’t had to test in a long time.  I nev­er grap­ple with a man in a wrestling match if I can avoid it. If Celik was intent on try­ing his knife skills on me, he was going to be faced with the busi­ness end of the Sig. So my con­ceal hol­ster was going to be a com­pan­ion for the fore­see­able future.

During the next few days, Harden moved equip­ment onto the site and was already under­way with the new house foun­da­tion. I was pleas­ant­ly amazed at the speed of his work and how smooth­ly things seemed to be going. The demo­li­tion con­trac­tor had done an excel­lent job in leav­ing the site ready for new work to begin, the exca­va­tion for the foun­da­tion was com­plete, and con­crete had been poured. 

While the foun­da­tion was cur­ing, addi­tion­al foun­da­tion mate­ri­als were being deliv­ered to the site, and fram­ing mate­ri­als had been ordered and sched­uled for deliv­ery.  Payments for mate­ri­als and labor were being dis­persed by Glenda when request­ed, and Martin was check­ing invoic­es from the con­trac­tor to make sure they jibed with the amount of work that was in place.

As long as the weath­er did­n’t become a fac­tor, progress would continue.

As the days drift­ed by, I could nev­er quite shake thoughts of where Celik might be or what might be on his agen­da.  I was con­stant­ly try­ing to be aware of black BMWs that might be around, and each time I spot­ted one, my defen­sive sens­es became heightened.

A cou­ple of weeks after the inci­dent of the stolen rifle, I arrived back at the rental after hav­ing had a late din­ner with my librar­i­an friend Sean. We had got­ten togeth­er at Merrick Inn in Lexington, and both opt­ed for the famous Merrick Hot Brown, a glo­ri­ous com­bi­na­tion of ham and turkey on toast cov­ered with Patrick’s mor­nay sauce, accom­pa­nied by a bot­tle of Leone D’Oro Vino Nobile di Montepulciano Sangiovese, not an expen­sive wine but well suit­ed for the meal.

After drop­ping Sean off at his place, it was near­ly ten-thir­ty by the time I arrived back at my tem­po­rary home.

Realizing that leav­ing the Lexus on the street might be an entice­ment to Celik to mon­key with it — most like­ly again — I drove up the alley behind the house and put the car away in the garage.  He might still gain access to it, but a locked garage would make that some­what harder.

Like so many old­er homes in this part of town, the garage was com­plete­ly sep­a­rat­ed from the house, and I had to skirt the back­yard sep­a­rat­ing the two build­ings to reach my back door.  There was no yard light or street light, and it had been cloudy all after­noon. It was just now start­ing to driz­zle a bit, so even moon­light was blanked out by the cloud cover.

I can’t hon­est­ly say if I man­aged to see some­thing in my periph­er­al vision or maybe heard the slight­est foot­fall on the damp grass, or maybe just had some ele­vat­ed sixth sense at the moment, but the move­ment of a dark­ened shape and a vocal grunt at the last minute caused me to swiv­el just as a knife blade brushed my cheek. 

Though I could­n’t make out a face in the dark­ness, it was most obvi­ous­ly Celik, rely­ing on his reput­ed knife skills.  He had lunged at me with the knife, slashed me slight­ly on the left cheek, and con­tin­ued his thrust as I raised my left arm, deflect­ing the knife away from me and leav­ing him some­what off bal­ance — and caus­ing him to slip in the wet grass.  As he fought to regain his bal­ance and deliv­er anoth­er thrust, this one aimed toward my stom­ach, I par­ried with my left fore­arm and brought the house key, now clutched tight­ly between my fin­gers curled into a fist, up under his chin and drove it into the soft tis­sue just inside his jaw bone.

I’m sur­prised that his resul­tant yelp did­n’t draw the atten­tion of any of the neigh­bors, but there was no change in the lights of the hous­es on either side as the dark fig­ure raced toward the alley and away from me as I kneeled and with­drew the Sig from the ankle hol­ster, too late to make use of it.

I pulled a hand­ker­chief from my back pock­et and laid it aside my cheek to stanch the flow of blood that I could feel run­ning down the side of my face, and head­ed into the house to see how bad the cut had been.

That’s three, Celik, I thought as I cleaned the wound and applied some anti­sep­tic oint­ment and a cou­ple of but­ter­fly adhe­sive ban­dages. That’s all you get.  Hmm, I won­der if the women are going to be turned off or on by the new scar?