by L. J. Martin
For a couple of hundred bucks I have a device that the Corps would likely pay a couple of hundred thousand for, if it were created for the defense industry. The second Insect Mini Drone I hide under a sagebrush, with equal easy access, forty feet down the road from the first, just in case the Albanians come in two vehicles, and even if not it'll be a backup bomb.
The third is merely an observation device.
You can't have too many eyes on the enemy.
It's a quadcopter with a GoPro video camera mounted thereon, and unlike the last one I owned, this one has a Bluetooth program that allows the operator to see on his iPhone in real time. It, too, is radio-controlled, via an iPhone app, as is the camera. She's fast, can fly high, can hover, and can record all she sees as well as transmit in real time. A hell of a device for chump change.
We're only two guys, but two guys armed like two dozen, and with mechanical eyes that don't care if they get in harm's way.
My phone jingles with and unknown caller and I answer.
"Reardon."
"They're driving out, Mike. They loaded a van with four large suitcases and other cases large enough to hold rifles. Ahmeti and another guy, a blonde guy who might be that Fitor guy, got in a black Cadillac and led out. Four guys are in the van."
It's just after noon, so they're leaving early. "Okay, are you following?"
"Yep, I'm staying back a block or so until we clear town, then I plan to give them at least a half mile...like you said."
"Pay close attention. When you're fifteen miles out of needles...watch your odometer...call me. Keep an eye on the other traffic and tell me how many cars or trucks are nearby. When you've gone another ten miles, turn around and haul ass back to Vegas. You don't want to be close when this comes down. You got it?"
"I got it, I don't like it—"
"Sol, I may need lots more help from you and you can't help Pax, or me, or all those kids without parents if you're coyote food out here in this God-forsaken desert. Got it?"
"I got it."
"Swear on your mother's life?"
"My mom died in a bombing in Israel three years ago."
"The hell you say. I'm sorry. Okay, swear on her memory."
"Okay, okay, I get it."
"Swear."
"I swear, I swear. Ten more miles then I turn around."
"Call me fifteen miles out of Needles."
"10-4."
"That-a-boy."
The van is parked over the hill with the cottonwoods on top—the desert around the mine is lined with two track roads—and I've unloaded the Harley Iron in case Skip and I need to go in different directions. We have belt clipped radios with the latest in wireless ear buds, and hands-free microphones. And we've both put on Kevlar vests and battle rattle belts, each with a pair of fragmentation grenades, and four extra thirty round clips for the M4's we carry. We flip for who's to man the .308 as we're both about equal in its use. I win, so I set up at the base of the cottonwoods.
And now it's the hard part. Wait.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It's just after one thirty PM when my phone jingles.
I answer. "Reardon."
"Mike, I'm coming up on the fifteen mile mark. There's a brown UPS truck, a semi, about a mile or maybe a mile and a half in front of the Cadillac, the white van is a hundred yards back of the Cad. There's a couple of SUVs in front of the UPS truck if nothing's changed. Red one and a tan one, I think. These guys don't seem to be in a hurry as they've been driving the speed limit."
"Okay, if anything changes, call me again. Remember, ten more miles then you haul ass."
As soon as he's off I call Dallas. "You've got couple of SUVs, a red one and a tan one my guy thinks, then a brown UPS truck that's your go sign. As soon as you see him coming get ready to light up the detour sign and one of you roll out the barrels while the other dumps the truckload in the road the instant the UPS guy passes. You gotta move quick as you've only got a minute or so."
"Good luck, Reardon," Dallas says, and hangs up.
Skip was set up on on the far side of the road, up a slope where he was concealed behind a pile of boulders. In less than ten minutes, my phone chimes
"Yeah."
"I can see the brown truck. We're a minute out. Good luck."
"Don't let any other vehicle follow them. Block the detour with the skip loader as soon as they make the turn, right?"
"You got it."
Minutes seem like hours when you're going into a battle. I don't expect to get another phone call and am surprised when the phone rattles.
"Reardon."
"Mike," Sol says, his voice stressed, "some guy in a red Corvette just roared past me going at least a hundred."
"Don't sweat it. We'll handle it if it becomes a problem. You spin it around and beat a trail."
"Got it. Hate it, but got it."
In minutes my phone vibrates again, and before I can say hello, Dallas yells into it. "The Cad and a van are on the gravel...and some asshole in a Corvette. We couldn't get in his way."
"Get the hell out of Dodge," I yell back, and take up a position awaiting the oncoming vehicles. The guy in the Vette shouldn't be a speeder. He's on his own.
The Caddi's in the lead. I put the first one through the radiator at a hundred fifty yards, then one into the driver's side tire. The big black Cad jerks left, then straightens by the time I bolt the third .308 into the chamber, and that one goes into the passenger side front tire.
By this time it seems they get wise to the fact that someone is firing at them and slide to a stop.
The van has to stop behind them, and I put one into the passenger side front tire but can't see the driver's side as the Cad's in the way, so I flatten the passenger side rear.
By this time the blonde guy, Fitor, the driver of the pickup loaded with explosives that wiped out Pax's place, has made my location and is firing a semi-auto handgun out the passenger side window, reaching across Ahmeti to do so.
I have no problem putting the crosshairs on Fitor, but before I can squeeze one off, a burst sprays the windshield coming from Skip's position. The front of the Cad goes still as Ahmeti must be hiding as low as he can get.
The rear of the van slides open and out pile two guys, one of them runs for the brush at the roadside but the other drops to a knee and begins spraying Skip's side of the hill with an automatic pistol...looks like an Uzi from my distant position.
I swing the .308 crosshairs on him and center punch him. His arms windmill as he rocks back against the van then slumps. The two guys in the front of the van are hunkered down and have the van in reverse, trying to get the hell back the way they came, when the red Corvette, its top down, roars up behind and brakes hard, almost sliding into the rear.
I can see the Vette guy stand up in the front seat to look out over the windshield, I'm sure wondering what the hell the noise is. Then I swear, even from over a hundred yards, I see his eyes widen and he drops down as the driver of the van runs back and tries to catch up with him. I guess the van driver is wanting a ride out of trouble, but the Vette guy is too fast and dirt flies from the rear tires as he spins the wheels, getting the hell out of there. The driver is running after him, waving his arms, but to no avail.
The driver realizes he’s not gonna get a ride and runs off the road into the weeds.
I don't recognize him, so I let him go.
The last guy in the van is out of sight, probably retreated to the rear.
Ahmeti, who's promised to whack Pax and me, and whom I'm sure is a man of his word, has climbed behind the wheel of the Cad and is trying to drive forward on two flat tires. Just for the hell of it I put another one into the radiator, then another in the rear passenger side tire. He's making a little headway, none the less, but damn little.
If my count is right we've got a guy in the weeds, another guy still in the back of the van, and Ahmeti behind the wheel of the Cad trying to make a getaway vehicle out of what's now little more than a boulder in the midd
le of the road. It's moving, but about two miles an hour. The original driver of the Cad, Fitor, is face down in the road, I hope hurting real bad and dying real slow. One of the van guys is running for Needles. One of the van guys is still in the back of the van. One of the van guys is face down in the road thanks to my .308.
So there are only three threats left.
Ahmeti has decided the Cad won't get him out of danger and is climbing out. Unlike his partner, Gashi, this guy has no fat on him. He's at least my height, maybe an inch taller at six-foot-three, and moves gracefully, like he might have been a real athlete in his youth. He feints like he's going to run on up the road, which would put him even closer to us, but then breaks back. Only then do I realize the trunk lid is rising. He's popped the latch from the inside, and he disappears behind the lid at the rear of the car.
Then he comes up with what looks like an AK47...he doesn't get the bolt thrown before I nail him high in the chest the same time I hear a three shot blast from Skip’s M4. Ahmeti reels back at least ten feet and bounces off the front of the van and goes to his face in the gravel.
Four down, two to go. I have no interest in blowing the van all to hell as it's full of the dough, presuming that's what's in the suitcases Sol saw them load, but a demonstration might just get the guy out of the weeds and the other one out of the back of the van.
I drop the .308 and unsling my M4, better for close work, and advise Skip I'm moving in. I zig and zag down the hill until I'm only fifty yards from the vehicles and the bush where one guy is hiding, and yell out. "I got no bone to pick with you guys. Only two of you left, one in the brush, one in the back of the van. Throw down your weapons and come on out."
Nothing. Not a peep.
So I yell again. "I have enough Semtex out here to blow you guys back to Laughlin, and will if you don't give it up. Throw your weapons out in the road."
Still no sound. I grab my iPhone and open the app that controls the Parrot mini drone, one of the two I've hidden by the road, and guide it out onto the gravel road. I roll it up to about twenty five feet behind the van and advise Skip. "I'm about to give them a taste of Semtex to see if we can pry some weapons out of them."
"I'm holding my ears," comes back.
I dial in the number of the phone-activated detonator and the explosion almost lifts the back of the van off the road. I wait until their ears might have time to recover, then yell again, "I got more where that came from. Look out the back of the van.” I activate the other Parrot drone and roll it out into the road, about fifty feet behind the van and let it set, ominous with the yellow-orange blob of Semtex stuck to the top of its video camera like a cancerous growth. Then I activate the quad copter, and lift it off and maneuver it over the thicket of brush where I know one of them is hiding, and actually spot him via the GoPro and the real time monitor on the iPhone, then I maneuver it behind the van until it's hovering only six feet from the back at window height.
I can hear the van door open, and flare the quad copter away and quickly gain a hundred feet of altitude so the a-hole doesn't shoot my toy down.
But then a heavily accented voice rings out. "I am throwing my weapon out. Do not shoot."
"Out on the road, then you walk at least twenty paces from it and lay down, face down, arms and legs spread."
And he moves out. It's the fat guy who was sleeping when he was supposed to be guarding Skip and Tammy. I'm surprised Skip doesn't blow him away as soon as we see who it is.
Then, foolish as it is, the other guy bursts from the thicket, spraying gunfire my way, and the ground around me is erupting in plumes of sand.
Then he, too, reverses direction, wind-milling his arms, his AK flying away.
Skip runs up beside me. "You're getting slow, old man," he chides.
"I saw him from the quad copter and he was hunkered down in a shallow cut. I didn't think he could move that fast."
"There you go," Skip said with a grin, "Thinking again. I gotta go give that fat fuck a few kicks as pay back."
“You’re bleeding, you’re hit in the side,” I say, noticing the growing bloom of blood on his side, a little surprised as he’s wearing his vest.
“It’s not my side. He creased me on the inside of my arm.”
Then I see, the blood is flowing pretty freely from a deep graze on the inside of his left bicep. “That needs a compress then stitches.”
“I’ll bind it with something. We gotta roll. But not before I kick the shit out of fat boy. Payback time.”
"Good, I'll check the van for the loot, then let's haul ass out of here. We're not so far from the highway that all this gunfire won't be heard."
Skip heads for where the fat man is spread eagle on the gravel and I palm my Glock and open the side slider on the van. As Sol reported, there are some rifle cases, hard-sided and each built for two weapons, and four of those oversized hard suitcases with wheels, the size a lady might take if she were to be traveling for a month. I hoist each of them and figure them for fifty pounds, then pop the latch on one. Nothing but hundreds, and if I'm any judge there's more than two and a half mil in each. Maybe as much as three mil in each. I consolidate half the contents of one suitcase into the other three, then step out of the van to see that Skip is making fat boy remove his pants and shoes.
I speak to him via the radio. "You into fat guys now."
"I'm into making the fat fuck walk on this hot gravel barefoot if he wants to get back to the road."
"Then send him on his way." And he does, the fat man begins a comical hot foot hobble back toward the highway, at least a half mile away.
"Skip, stay with the money. We're leaving the light suitcase, with over a mil, so the cops will think this was something other than a robbery. Hang tight. I'm going after the van. I'll have to reload the Harley so I'll be a while."
I leave the M4 as it'll weigh me down and I have to retrieve the .308, and chug up the hill. I'm back in twenty minutes, driving the van right down the slope doing a little boney-bouncing. Just to add to the collection and as we'll have to get rid of the weapons we've used, we take their AK47s and one nice Heckler Koch and place our M4’s in strategic locations. Some CSI guys will have a grand old time trying to figure out which of the weapons shot which bad guy and from where.
And we're off to Quartzsite, with what I hope is at least ten mil in the back of the van, to make this little adventure come to a conclusion.
After I get Skip to someone who’ll stitch him up.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I get the hell out of Dodge and away from the scene of the multi-crimes as quickly as possible, but then stop in Vidal Junction to pull into the truck stop parking lot and dig out my medical kit. I could stitch Skip up myself and have the sutures to do so, but I’m afraid the bullet nicked a vein or artery the way he’s bleeding and that’s beyond my ken, so I bind the hell out of it, hopefully not cutting off the blood supply. Then I decide I have to take a slight detour through Blythe. To have him patched up properly.
It’s almost fifty miles to Blythe, and he’s still weeping blood even with the tight bandages by the time we get there and find an emergency room.
And I’m running short of time.
I drop Skip off in front of Palo Verde Hospital, a small facility in the small town of Blythe.
“I’m not waiting—“
“Bullshit,” he snaps.
“You’re going to have to give them some B.S. regarding how you got that wound. I’d suggest you tell him it was a hunting accident and you were pulling your rifle out of the back seat and it went off. Now get in there and let me get out of here.”
“Bullshit, you wait. At least leave me the Harley.”
“I can’t, Skip. I might need the bike and we don’t have time for an interrogation by some hillbilly sheriff. I’ll be back.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll handle this. You be careful.”
“10-4,” I say and as soon as he steps out of the van, I’m out of there. It’s only twenty-five miles, east
, to Quartzsite, Arizona, and my hoped-for rendezvous with Edvin Gashi.
A quick check of the time on my iPhone tells me he’s due there in an hour to pick up his dough from his ex-partner. And ex is the right word, as he’s exited this earth.
I should have a half hour to get set up once I find the airport, and that should be easy in a berg like Quartzsite. Most of the snowbirds who frequent the town in the winter should have flown the coup by now, at least I hope so as the fewer folks who might get caught by a stray bullet, the better.
Using Siri to dial, I get Sol, who answers on the first half of the first ring. “How’s it going?” he asks.
“Good, we discouraged a few guys but I may have screwed up by leaving a couple who could make some phone calls and maybe cancel the meeting I have scheduled. Any way you can track phone calls from there.”
“I might, given enough time. I’d have to get in the carrier’s system and I’d have to know what number I’m looking for.”
“No chance. I’ll have to wing it. Odds are a call won’t go through to an aircraft.”
“That depends.”
“Yeah, I know, I’m flying blind. Are you back in Laughlin?”
“Not quite.”
“Hang there in case I need something. I had to leave Skip in Blythe…he…he hurt himself.”
“Bad?”
“No, but it had to be taken care of. Stand by. If you don’t hear from me in an hour, call him and tell him you’re coming to get him.”
“I’ll hear from you. Be careful.”
“10-4, you stand by.”
I stop at the main crossroads in Quartzsite and get directions to the only airport around. Of course as I look around, the whole of my surroundings may be the world’s largest airstrip as the desert is flat with some vegetation and only a few ravines. It’s a rock collectors heaven, however, but there are a thousand places to land a small STOL, short takeoff and landing, aircraft.
