Cold Quarry by Andy Straka

more of a paramilitary club composed of enthusiasts.”
    “A club of enthusiasts.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Okay, this club of yours then. You’re its founder?”
    “Not founder. But as I said, I do have the privilege of being the commanding officer at present.”
    “Sure. You have a military background, Mr. Higgins?”
    “No, sir. I was four-F during Vietnam—heart murmur. But some of our members do have direct military experience.”
    “And what kind of activities exactly does your group engage in?”
    “Training exercises, mainly. Weapons instruction and tactical drills and lectures.”
    “How many members do you have?”
    He paused for a moment. “It varies. People come and go. We’ve had as many as eighty-five at some of our gatherings and as little as twenty or thirty.”
    “Do you maintain some kind of membership roster?”
    “I have a mailing list and we do a roll call, but if you’re going where I think you’re going, sir, that’s private, privileged information.”
    “Protected under some amendment of the Constitution, no doubt,” I said. I had to be a little careful here. Didn’t want to antagonize the man too early.
    My little dig seemed to wash over him, however. He made no comment.
    “Jake tells me that Chester Carew brought him to a couple of your club’s gatherings.”
    “That’s right, he did.” Something in his eyes told me he’d just as soon that hadn’t happened, but since it had, he was trying to make the best of it.
    “Had Chester been to many of your meetings before?”
    “No, sir. He had some, ah, questions about our organization.”
    “Questions?”
    “Yes. He wasn’t familiar with our activities and some of our training, of course, and wanted to know more.”
    Knowing Chester, I was certain he’d asked a lot more questions than that, but I let it pass.
    “How did Chester come to find out about your group?”
    “We approached him about permission to use a part of his land. He was the only one who hunted up there and we thought it might be a good place to hold exercises.”
    “And what was his response?”
    “He said no, at first. Didn’t want us bringing weapons in there. Afraid for his birds, I guess.”
    “So why wasn’t that the end of it?” I asked.
    “Well, we asked him a few more times. Kept after him because his land was really so ideal and convenient for a lot of us. Invited him to a couple of meetings. I guess he must’ve thought about it and had a change of heart, because he eventually said okay as long as he knew when we were coming so he wouldn’t be in the woods hunting with those falcons of his.”
    “So you’ve had a few of these exercises, as you call them, on his land?”
    He hesitated. “Three so far. And we’ve got another one planned for next week. Don’t know how the widow’s going to take to having us back there again though, so we may have to move it to another location.”
    “How about yesterday morning? Were you having some kind of exercise up there then?”
    “No, why?”
    “Because I was up there and somebody dressed in camos and a ski mask pointed a shotgun in my face and gave me this.” I indicated the bruise and cut on the side of my mouth.
    He said nothing.
    “Not one of your soldiers, huh?”
    “Not to my knowledge.”
    I looked through the glass down a long hallway and a screen door opening to a room in back. I could see gray feathers flapping and a dark shape darted through the air in front of the screen.
    “What’ve you got in there?” I asked.
    “Where?”
    I pointed down the hallway. “Down there. In that room.”
    He shrugged. “Pigeons,” he said. “I race them.”
    “Homing pigeons, huh?”
    “Not exactly. Similar.”
    “Did you know Hitler was a pigeon fancier? Used them to pass messages back and forth to his spies in England.”
    “So? The president of the United States is a jogger and a Republican. Does that mean Democrats shouldn’t jog? For your information our own country used pigeons to pass