Conquistadors

by Jeff Kirkham

  As he approached the parking lot, two latecomers pulled up to the traffic jam, figured out the futility of crossing the bridge, made messy turnabouts and zoomed away back up the hill toward Boulder, Nevada. Even more than two weeks after the crash of the stock market, people were still attempting to flee Las Vegas by car.

  A sick feeling cooked in Noah’s stomach, the combination of two years of shoddy fitness and the gut-burning climb up the hill from the bridge. Just then, the sun peaked over the far side of the Colorado River gorge and gave him his first taste of the coming heat. There and then, he decided he best not dick around.

  As he walked up to the turnout to the lodge, a fancy, gleaming-black truck roared out of the parking lot. The bed was crammed with belongings and the cab held a small family. Noah caught the panicked expression of the rotund father behind the wheel, looking for all the world like a fat rabbit trying to escape a fox. Noah jumped into the bed of the pickup truck and held on to an antique desk the family had rescued from the apocalypse.

  Rather than stomp on the gas, the driver froze. The big black Dodge idled, and Noah waited while the man dithered. Finally, Noah leaned out and looked in the driver’s side mirror. He could literally see the whites of the man’s eyes and both of his hands clamped on the steering wheel. Noah gave him a wave and flashed his best shit-eating grin, as though nothing whatsoever was amiss. The man had certainly seen the 30-30 slung over his shoulder and combined with the friendly gesture, it must’ve fried a circuit in his brain. What does one do when an armed man hops in the back of your pickup truck and waves at you?

  Noah smiled even bigger and waved the man forward, hoping to get the situation off high center with bullshit self-confidence. A second later, the truck went into gear and drove on, crossing the interstate back toward Vegas.

  A mile later, the truck took a right onto Lakeshore Road—the most likely route back toward Lake Mead. The family was either looking for water or another way across the Colorado River. Noah still didn’t know where he was going, but he felt good about the direction, even though they were leaving the interstate. Every turn away from a main road meant a greater chance of losing the column, but this turn jibed well with his mental map of the area.

  From what little he knew about Las Vegas, he seemed to recall that there was nothing but desert and solar power plants to the west—on the blighted highway coming in from Los Angeles. He was fairly certain that there were no refineries between Hoover Dam and Sin City given his high school forays down that road. That left only the desert north of Vegas, heading toward Saint George, Utah. Noah would put his money on it—Las Vegas needed fuel storage of its own, given the distances to other population centers. Assuming that, the nastiest land where one might park an ugly refinery would probably be to the north of Vegas; just off Interstate 15 if memory served. He knew it was open, arid land, with an Air Force Base and a motor speedway; the perfect mix of industrial sites for a refinery. If his mental map was to be trusted, taking a clockwise turn around Lake Mead would shortcut the distance between the dam and the north fringes of Las Vegas.

  Plus, it felt right.

  The rush of feel goods was quickly followed by a rush of dread. The last time Noah followed his “inner child,” thousands had died a gruesome death. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath—a breath full of guilt and shame. Once again, sitting atop a family’s belongings in the back of their pickup truck, he’d used his homespun good looks and sparkling smile to bamboozle innocent people. Hopefully, he wouldn’t get this family killed too.

  He opened his eyes and saw a sign whip past with a white grocery sack hung up on the corner, flapping in the wind. He pounded the side of the pickup and the driver hit the brakes, probably as a reflex. When the truck whinnied to a stop, Noah hopped down and gave the family another bullshit wave. The driver stomped on the gas and roared away.

  He backtracked to the sign and saw what his subconscious mind had likely noticed already. The sign read, “Kern River Gas Pipeline.” The grocery bag still burbled in the breeze, alive but unable to take flight. He stepped back from the sign and took in the bigger picture. The sign had been posted in the middle of a fifty-foot wide disturbance in the desert floor. Some time in the not-too-distant past, Kern River Company had dug a gigantic trench around Lake Mead for their pipeline. Given that the pipeline ran north-south, and given that it lay on the west side of the Colorado River, he guessed that it probably carried fuel products from the oilfields in Wyoming to the fuel-users of Southern California. He didn’t know much about oilfields or pipelines, but he guessed they would always carry fuel from the source to the market. In the case of the American West, the large markets hustled and bustled on the California coast--and may God have mercy on their souls.

  If logic held, and if the map in his mind was correct, he thought he could probably track this pipeline easement back toward some kind of refinery in or around Vegas. In other words, he’d landed exactly where he’d need to be in order to get out ahead of the cartel—assuming they were, yet again, trying to score gasoline.

  He watched the grocery sack flutter for a moment, pitting fact and superstition against one another in a mental struggle. So much had changed and so much had gone to shit over the last two weeks. If Bill had been there, he would’ve kicked Noah’s ass. Noah had “jumped track” so many times, he’d lost count. He had ranged ahead, relying on brazen guesses and “gut reads” and, to his credit, he’d managed to stay out ahead of the column of Mexican cartel. But his method had been shoddy—half-steeped in grief, hope, and a fortune teller’s fake science. Thousands had died on his watch, and he was pretty sure he was one hundred percent to blame. Without him bringing in the pissed-off Texans with their huge-ass rifles, the town of Artesia might still exist today. There was just no way around that fact. Noah had pulled the levers that had led to the flaming death of an entire town.

  Yet, he wasn’t ready to off himself. He wouldn’t eat the end of his rifle, as alluring as that did sound. Not yet, at least. If he wasn’t going to drown himself in sorrow, he needed a way forward and there were precious few facts to inform his decisions. Like the way his eye had caught the Kern River sign and marked it, in a split-second, as a critical waypoint—he would need more of those blurry talismans to guide his way. Otherwise, he’d be hunting around aimlessly in the desert like a man trying to find his car key in a pocket full of bolts. He was one man conducting surveillance from in front of a brutal, murderous invader with fucking tanks. If he didn’t deserve a little gosh darn divine intervention, he didn’t know who did. God could exact bloody penance on him for his arrogance later. For now, they had a column of narcos to kill. As much as he felt like a piece of shit, he also felt like God, or whomever, still looked over his shoulder like a stern father—flabbergasted at His son’s foolishness, but not willing to turn His back.

  Maybe it was just this all-fired beautiful sunrise that was making him feel optimistic. Noah sighed and rubbed his nose. He’d done so much second-guessing since Bill died that he wanted to punch himself in the face, if just to get his onboard computer working right.

  But he didn’t punch himself in the face. Instead, he looked around and took in the sunrise. The lake shimmered like the apocalypse never happened. As the sunlight hardened, he spied about a zillion people piled up on the shoreline like tiny mice. Their cars, trucks and campers littered the sand and overwhelmed what used to be an orderly campground. Noah had wondered where all of Las Vegas had gone, and now he knew. They’d gone to the lake.

  It made sense: Vegas would’ve probably run out of water five minutes after the power died. Even stupid people from Las Vegas knew where the water waited when it wasn’t in their pipes. It waited in Lake Mead.

  Noah had no desire to mix it up with the desperate hordes from Las Vegas. He eyed the road warily, praying that it would cut around the shoreline, and avoid the teeming masses. Given the rise and fall of the lakeshore in dry years and wet years, he doubted the engineers had run the road close to th
e waterline. There was a good chance that the road circumnavigating the lake might be free of traffic and free of idiots. In any case, there was no chance he would be able to walk to North Las Vegas and still beat the cartel to the refinery, if there was one. He didn’t know how far it would be, but he knew his water would run out by mid-afternoon if he attempted to beat the sun at its own game.

  That meant stealing a car. By the looks of the mayhem down by the water, he didn’t figure stealing a car to be overly difficult.

  God would just have to add Grand Theft Auto to his growing bar tab of sin.

  Noah didn’t have to use his theoretical knowledge of hot-wiring in order to steal a ride. He picked out the closest thing to a Land Cruiser, an early model Jeep Cherokee, found the keys dangling from the ignition, and drove away. The owner must’ve been camped down by the shore, because there wasn’t anything but trash inside the Cherokee. It even came with a half-tank of gas.

  Thank you Sweet Baby Jesus for this stolen ride. Amen.

  Noah wasn’t much for praying, but he tended to talk to the sky when he felt cheery.

  Ten miles later, he’d made his way around Lake Mead and was heading into the desert—every inch of shore had been packed with refugees. Lakeshore Drive gave way to Northshore Road and cut west away from the lake.

  Kern River had unlimited desert options for its pipeline, so they’d laid it as close to paved road as they could. He tracked the yellow poles marking the pipeline every hundred yards. So far, so good. When Northshore Road split off from the lake, so did the pipeline. It headed north, exactly as Noah’s “inner child” had predicted.

  The road dipped down, crossed an emerald wash with a rivulet of water and continued north into the badlands. Again, the road split and so did the Kern River pipeline. Ten miles of uninterrupted, sun-scorched road later, Noah rolled to a stop. The road had been bending west for five miles and he didn’t want to go west. He wanted to go north. The Kern pipeline had abandoned the blacktop and had disappeared into the desert, heading toward where he imagined North Las Vegas to be; on the other side of a looming, brownstone mountain.

  The split in the road didn’t look like a public road. A large sign marked it as the “PABCO Gypsum Mine, which Noah didn’t have any trouble believing since the desert sparkled a desolate white color off in that direction. If he wasn’t mistaken, gypsum was the white, chalky crap they used to make drywall. He had no desire to drive down a private road that’d end in a mine, but the fork in the road headed north and the pipeline had gone north.

  Huffing in frustration, he made the turn and rolled toward the mine. Miles later, a gigantic facility rose in the distance, tucked into a depression in the desert. He pulled over and scanned the mine with his binos. He immediately found a Humvee with a turret-mounted machine gun blocking the access road. Two men in camouflage sat on the ground on the shady side of the Hummer. Another truck, also military, was parked with its ass-end up against a warehouse loading dock on one of the big, white buildings. A guy in camo waited by the driver’s side door of the truck with an AR-15 dangling from a sling.

  Noah suppressed the urge to barrel down to the soldiers and start whooping about the invading Mexicans. Instead, he did another, careful, scan of the mine facility. The paved road led both into the mine and back out on the far side. A half-mile on the other side of the mine, the pipeline easement reconnected with the road. There, another Humvee stood guard. To the north of the mine, a massive solar field sparkled in the sun. Other than the Hummers and the truck, he saw no human activity.

  His current mission already had a “Hail Mary” aspect to it, so he didn’t hesitate to drive down the road and talk to the men behind the Humvee. He certainly wasn’t going to drive back and head west into Vegas. If he had to go the long way around, he’d never beat the cartel. It was this or nothing. If they blasted him, so be it.

  The soldiers jumped up and manned the belt-fed machine gun long before Noah’s Jeep approached their roadblock. One man stood behind an open door while the other aimed the mounted machine gun at Noah.

  Leaving his 30-30 and his go bag in the Jeep, Noah parked, stepped out and approached with hands held high.

  “Turn around and go back the way you came,” the soldier behind the door shouted.

  “No can do, soldier,” Noah yelled as he kept walking. “You’ve got bigger problems than me coming down this road. Not far behind me are a hundred M1 Abrams tanks and a couple thousand Mexican cartel.”

  The words didn’t seem to penetrate. “Turn around, go back to your vehicle and leave.”

  Noah stopped within talking distance of the Hummer. “Son. Stop doing your job and just listen. I shit-you-not: there is an army of Mexican cartel coming across Hoover Dam right now and they have Abrams main battle tanks. I don’t know how they got them, but I know they are just fine killing Americans. I watched them wipe an entire town off the map three days ago. Whatever you’re doing here, you need to shift fire and focus on the bigger picture—or you will all be dead by sundown. Do you copy, soldier?”

  It seemed to get their attention. The gunner and the negotiator conferred in hushed tones. The negotiator leaned his head toward his chest-mounted radio, probably getting orders.

  “Follow us. Don’t do anything stupid or we’ll waste you.” The negotiator boarded the Hummer and turned it around. The turret pivoted and the machine gun pointed directly at Noah as he climbed aboard his stolen vehicle. The Hummer and the Cherokee rolled down the road toward the mine.

  When they reached the loading dock, an older gentleman in camouflage stepped out of the shadows of the warehouse where he’d been enjoying the shade. Noah parked and walked up to the dock while the soldier behind the big machine gun laboriously tracked him.

  “Mister Cowboy. Would you mind repeating what you told my men?”

  Noah had forgotten that he was wearing his Stetson. The military officer on the loading dock had ordered him to talk with only the slightest pretense of courtesy. Apparently, things were just as tense here as everywhere else. Noah could tell the man was a captain, but he wasn’t clear if he was army or another branch of the military. Either way, there wasn’t much to be said.

  “Sir, there are at least two thousand drug cartel soldiers coming north over Hoover Dam and they have about a hundred M1 Abrams tanks. They’re murdering sons of bitches and I can guarantee that they plan to ruin your weekend.”

  The officer wiped sweat from his mustache. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, Cowboy, but I happen to know for a fact that Mexico doesn’t have Abrams tanks.”

  Noah stepped up to the edge of the loading dock to get out of the direct sunlight. The machine gun adjusted its point of aim.

  “I don’t know where they got them, but I’ve been running ahead of them all night from Flagstaff to the Colorado River. Unless I’m going blind, they’ve got a hundred tanks, half a hundred Humvees and a shitload of trucks with machine guns.”

  The officer waved away the barrel of the belt-fed and sat down on the edge of the loading dock. “Well, if what you’re saying is true that’s bad news. How do I know you’re not full of shit?”

  Noah tipped his hat back and read the man’s name tag. “That’s easy, Captain Sparks. Wait around with your dick in your hands for another few hours and those narcos will come by and blow the shit out of you and your boys. Then you’ll know.”

  The officer smiled, but his eyes looked like they were working the problem. “I guess it doesn’t much matter either way. We don’t have anything at the base that’d stop an Abrams tank.”

  “Which base?” Noah asked.

  “The only base around here: Nellis AFB. The powers that be scrambled all our aircraft and consolidated them in bases away from population centers. It’s a good thing too, because the good people of North Las Vegas overran Nellis four days ago. They picked it clean.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  Captain Sparks hardened his eyes and ignored the question. “We fell back to La
ke Mead Base and tightened the security team around a smaller perimeter that we could defend.”

  Noah could tell he was withholding information, but there wasn’t time to figure it out.

  “Whatever you’re defending, Captain, I think you’re going to lose it. Once they refuel, the narcos will get back to what looks to be their primary mission: finding more bad ass weapons. So far, they’re batting a thousand and we are out of time.” Noah knew he was bullshitting to some degree. He didn’t really know what the cartel’s intention was, other than fueling their gun platforms. He just knew they’d targeted a refinery and a weapons depot in the last week. It was a fair bet they’d stick with the program. The best way to determine what a tracking target would do next was to look at what the target had done before.

  The Air Force captain chewed hard on the information and kept his eyes locked with Noah’s. He peppered Noah with questions about the cartel’s activities, Noah’s eyewitness observations and then drilled down relentlessly on Noah’s background. Fifteen minutes later, Noah felt like he’d been interrogated.

  “So you think they’re going for the refinery?” Captain Sparks summed it up.

  “That’d make sense. They didn’t get much out of the refinery in Artesia. Not after we shot it up. I assume there’s a refinery north of Vegas?” It was the one piece of the puzzle Noah didn’t know for sure.

  “Yup. Dry Lake.” The captain hopped down from the loading dock. “I’m going to level with you, Mister Cowboy. We could line up all twenty of our base security Humvees against even one M1 Abrams and we wouldn’t even slow it down. That tank would go through us faster than shit through a tin goose.”

  “You’ve got no aircraft. No tanks. No TOW missiles…Sounds like you’ve got nothing but dress up clothes,” Noah pressed.

  Captain Sparks laid back the green canvas tarp covering the Deuce and a Half truck that’d been sitting next to them. “I wouldn’t exactly say we’ve got nothing.”