Coming Home to Roost: Chapter 12

The buzz of the cell phone on the van­i­ty beside me sum­moned atten­tion as I was in the mid­dle of shav­ing, work­ing gin­ger­ly around the cut from the pre­vi­ous night.

“Hello,” I said as I picked up the phone and held it away from my face to avoid the shav­ing cream still there.

“Michael, it’s me, L.T.  Didn’t wake you did I?”

“Nah.  Just going through the morn­ing rit­u­al.  Caught me shaving.”

“Well, I’ve got some more dope on Celik.  It might be helpful.”

“I’ll take any­thing at this point.  He tried again last night and near­ly took me with his knife, although I think his reput­ed skills are a lit­tle overrated.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, noth­ing that time won’t heal.  Got me on the side of my face, but it’s not seri­ous.  He may be hurt­ing more than me since I plant­ed my house key under his jawbone.”

“Really?  Didn’t know you were into close combat.”

“I’m not.  If I’d have had the chance, I’da shot the bas­tard from a dis­tance.  Anyway, whad­dya got?”

“Celik made a call from his cell phone that last­ed long enough for us to get a loca­tion on him.  At the time, he was call­ing from a house locat­ed on the riv­er south of you.  I guess it’s the Kentucky River?”

“Right.”

“Well, the house is on the riv­er side of the road, high­way 1924, and just before you get to an old pow­er plant there. The place is called Ford. You famil­iar with it?”

“A lit­tle.  At least I know where it is.  How did you get a trace on his cell phone?”

“Michael, I can’t give away all our secrets, but we had him tagged and put on the watch list as soon as he entered the coun­try.  And while he was being checked through cus­toms, we got and logged his phone, and we’ve been lis­ten­ing to him off and on since he got here.  When I found out he was after you, I asked for an increase of his phone traf­fic sur­veil­lance.  I just got a report last night on him, along with a satel­lite map of his loca­tion.  Hope this helps.”

“Can’t hurt.  Anything else?”

“Nope.  Not right now.  You doin’ okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good.  The new house is com­ing along pret­ty well.  But since Celik has com­plet­ed three attempts on my life, and caught me off guard each time, I’m begin­ning to won­der if retire­ment isn’t tak­ing the edge off.  And I sure don’t like hav­ing the rem­nants of my pre­vi­ous life endan­ger­ing those around me here at home.  I pre­fer tak­ing the work elsewhere.”

“I under­stand.  Guess we can’t always con­trol things the way we’d like.  Just have to rise to the occa­sion and do what you’re good at.”

“I guess.”

“Well, you have my num­ber.  Let me know if you need any­thing else.”

“Will do.”  By the time I had uttered the final phrase, I heard the click on the oth­er end, sig­ni­fy­ing the end of the con­ver­sa­tion.  One of these days, I’m going to hang up before he does!

With that one bit of infor­ma­tion, it was now pos­si­ble for me to go on the offensive!

I fin­ished shav­ing, put on two clean but­ter­fly ban­dages along with a gauze pad to cov­er the whole thing, got dressed, and had a bit of break­fast while read­ing the morn­ing paper.

As I downed my third cup of cof­fee, I opened Google Earth on the com­put­er and searched for the area that L.T. had described, zero­ing in on the only house on the riv­er side of the road near the old pow­er plant.  I entered pedes­tri­an view and was able to see the front of the house but attempts to see the back area were unsuc­cess­ful.  It was obvi­ous from the hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal views that there was a rather steep hill on the oppo­site side of the road as well as quite a few hous­es some­what far­ther back.  Any area pro­vid­ing cov­er on the hill would have been so far up that it would have been impos­si­ble to get a clear shot into a win­dow as the front of the house was faced with a porch along its entire front.

Besides, those defilade shots are much hard­er than a flat shot.

Scanning around from an aer­i­al view­point, it looked like tak­ing a shot from across the riv­er might be a bet­ter bet.  Not only was the ground there devoid of any near­by dwellings, there was good clear­ing to the house, and the dis­tance was only about two hun­dred meters, an easy dis­tance even with­out a pow­er­ful scope.

I deter­mined that I would recon­noi­ter the area on foot.  And soon.  I did­n’t want to pro­vide time for Celik to con­coct anoth­er attempt at me.  It was my turn now.

That after­noon I drove down to the riv­er, tak­ing along a pair of binoc­u­lars and my cam­era.  I drove into the park­ing lot of Fort Boonesboro State Park and began walk­ing along high­way 388, par­al­lel to the riv­er, look­ing for the open­ing to a large field that had shown up on Google. 

Boonesboro is a state park that runs along­side the Kentucky River and is reput­ed to be the area where Daniel Boone cre­at­ed a set­tle­ment in the 1700s.  The park is exten­sive, with a recon­struct­ed fort, a pic­nic and prim­i­tive camp­ing area, a pool, and a camp­ground for vehic­u­lar camp­ing.  There is also a beach of sev­er­al hun­dred meters length which, in days gone by, was a pop­u­lar swim­ming spot but is lit­tle used now.

Several hun­dred meters past the park, I came upon the gap and head­ed into the field.  Anyone dri­ving along the road and see­ing me would have just seen some tourist with opti­cal equip­ment look­ing for some­thing to shoot.  Of course, they could not know that the real shoot­ing would occur lat­er, with more dead­ly intent.

The land rose gen­tly from the road lev­el, reach­ing a crest after about sev­en­ty meters, and then began to drop again to the river’s edge.  Though I had been trudg­ing through a mown field, it tran­si­tioned into a wood­ed patch for about anoth­er eighty meters to the edge of the water.  Perfect!  The trees would pro­vide cov­er from the oppo­site side of the riv­er, and the crest behind me would keep me shield­ed from the road.  The only near­by res­i­dence was the house where Celik was stay­ing, so any sound of rifle fire was unlike­ly to cause much clamor.

Using the binoc­u­lars and being care­ful to keep con­cealed from the house as much as pos­si­ble, I observed that the back side of the house was almost entire­ly glass.  I guess who­ev­er built the place want­ed an unob­struct­ed view of the riv­er, and it was obvi­ous that the leisure rooms of the house were also locat­ed on the riv­er side, mean­ing that there was a high like­li­hood that Celik would be vis­i­ble when­ev­er he was there.

Satisfying myself that I had picked the cor­rect spot, and locat­ing the opti­mum place with­in the woods from which I could make an effec­tive shot, I head­ed back to the car, stop­ping occa­sion­al­ly on the road as I spot­ted a car approach­ing and mak­ing like I was tak­ing pho­tographs of some­thing along the way.

Time to final­ize the plan.