Sandbagged: A Theo Ramage Thriller (Book 2)

by Edward J. McFadden III

  Karma ran along the western side of the road, but before Ramage could raise the .38 she veered sharply right and disappeared into the parking lot for a building with a sign that read, JHM, Inc..

  Ramage lowered the gun. The drivers of the stopped cars were gawking, and he could only imagine what he must look like. Dirty, blood stained, holding a gun, and running from the sheriff. In Utah that all added up to a citizen pulling a gun and taking him down, so like he was in the Matrix, Ramage had to assume everyone around him was now an enemy.

  He slipped the gun into a pocket and gave chase, head down, legs pumping. Nobody tried to stop him, and when he looked back, he saw Queensbury wasn’t in pursuit. The fire was out, but thick clouds still rolled over the depot, and there was a line of cars trying to get out of the lot. Gasoline and fire didn’t play nice, but with the flames gone there was no realistic fear of the gas supply igniting.

  When he reached JHM, Inc.’s lot, he left the road, his heart racing, lungs burning. Karma was moving fast, and Ramage was forced to trail after like a dog chasing a stick thrown by its dutiful master.

  The junk yard, a few businesses and JHM Inc. lined the western edge of the road, a vast nothingness beyond, and to the east the town of Price sprawled across the flat terrain. Houses with lawns, businesses, civil buildings, a Dinosaur Quarry, were all intermingled in a squared-off organized grid of numbered streets that looked like it had been laid out on a computer.

  Karma backtracked and cut between stopped cars, running along the eastern edge of RT-6. Ramage lost sight of her when she turned into a field next to three white domes. From his wanderings around town, he knew the odd white structures were the offices of the Price City Engineers. Cars parked close to the main dome, but most of the lot was empty. It was Saturday, and many businesses were closed for the day or operating at a reduced capacity.

  Ramage bounded around a box trailer with no wheels, and a bullet pinged off metal. He pressed his back to the trailer, panting as he eased his head around the trailer’s corner, face and hands stinging with cold.

  Karma was gone.

  “Shiiiiiiiitttttttttt,” Ramage screamed. He gripped the snubby so tight his hand hurt. If she managed to get into the heart of Price, he’d lose her for sure, and what that meant he didn’t want to think about. Even if he did manage to stay on her tail, what could he do if she went to a public place? A crowd?

  Ramage jogged across the empty lots surrounding the three white domes, gun at his side. Nobody was around, but Ramage was certain he was getting picked up on security cameras, so he played it cool, eyes tracking back and forth like a machine, ears tuned to the highest reception level. The scent of gas and oil carried on the cold breeze, the late morning sun casting massive shadows across the lot.

  Metal clanged and popped. A bullet smacked the blacktop next to Ramage and he dropped to the ground, laying prone on his stomach with the pistol out before him. Nothing moved to the east, where a brown field of dormant grass with cement buildings around its edges ran to a street lined with residential houses.

  He lay pressed to the ground, his gaze shifting to the white dome to his left. Nothing moved beyond the building’s glass doors, the reception area and hallway beyond dark. He felt his phone vibrate and he chuckled. Had to be Anna. Her timing was beyond anything his mother had ever achieved.

  Two minutes slipped away without another shot, so Ramage pressed to his feet and continued running east toward the open field. When he reached the edge of the parking lot he pulled up. He’d be a sitting duck running over the open terrain, so he made a hard left, following the edge of the field until he hit a fence, where he started working his way east again.

  At the opposite end of the field Ramage saw Karma climbing over the fence he was running along. He skidded to a stop and brought up the snubby, but let it drop to his side a second later as he continued following the fence. Karma was a hundred and fifty yards away, he was an OK shot, but the .38 lost accuracy with each yard its bullet traveled, and there was no way he’d be able to hit her from where he was.

  Karma slipped over the fence, and with her on the opposite side, Ramage had no way of knowing if she was backtracking or otherwise changing direction. He had to get over the fence, and the sooner the better. He pocketed the snubby and mounted the fence at a full run. The barrier bent and twisted under his weight, and when he reached the top, a bullet thwacked into wood and Ramage threw himself over.

  He hit the ground hard, ears ringing, the frozen ground leaking into him, the right side of his body going numb. A fleeting thought ran through his pain addled mind as he covered his head with his arms and waited for the bullet. Too bad his lucky keychain was blown to bits with Rolly. It had been a gift.

  When no bullet came, Ramage looked up and saw Karma run past the end of the fence onto the road beyond.

  Back on his feet, boots slipping and chafing, sweat dripping down his back despite the cold, Ramage ran, his muscles and lungs protesting. He was in decent shape, but the last twenty-four hours had pushed him harder than he’d ever been pushed, even in Prairie Home.

  Home. His cell had stopped vibrating, and Ramage knew Anna was pacing from the Gutierrez kitchen to the living room, and back and forth as Santino watched. It wasn’t fair he was putting her through this. He should have never left.

  When he reached the end of the fence he peered around the corner. An old woman walked a dog along the cross street, which was labeled S 300 W, and in a driveway a teenager was washing a pickup that looked so battered Ramage thought the thing might fall apart once all the dirt and grime was removed. To the north Creekview Elementary School’s brown fields filled the open space between the school building and RT-6, and several boys threw around a football.

  Karma angled away from the school, turning onto S 300 W.

  Ramage reached for his gun, but left it where it was. He was sure houses along the street had doorbell cams, security cameras monitoring every angle of their domain. She was too far away anyway, and he didn’t want to waste ammo and send up a flare. He walked briskly up the street, Karma a hundred yards ahead.

  Karma approached a cross street and Ramage picked up his pace, not wanting to run and draw attention, but his body jerked and spasmed in frustration as Karma receded into the distance.

  A kid’s BMX bicycle lay forlorn in a driveway behind a car, waiting to be flattened. The image of Ramage peddling the little bike up the road after Karma made the idea too insane to contemplate, and yet he found himself lifting the bike and getting on it. Ramage looked around, and there wasn’t a person in sight. At this point did he care about the roaming eyes of doorbell cams?

  He peddled, teetering and swaying on the little bike, legs bent, muscle memories from years prior pushing their way forward. The snubby dug into Ramage’s back as he rode, a playing card wedged in the spokes of the bike’s front wheel thwapping and cracking as the BMX picked up speed and Ramage raced down the center of the road.

  Karma saw him and did exactly what he would’ve done. She broke north, ran across a lawn, hopped a short chain-link fence, and disappeared behind a brick house that looked like Manson family relatives lived there.

  Ramage peddled hard, angling after Karma, the oddest suburbia Ramage had ever seen fleeting past on both sides of the road. He Jumped off the bike when he reached the Manson house, letting the bike crash to the sidewalk. Sorry about the scratches, kid, but at least mom wouldn’t call the cops.

  An old woman peered through her front window as Ramage cut through a hedge of desert pine, and he smiled at her and yelled, “Did you see a dog run through here?” The woman raised a phone.

  Karma was gone, and the chase was on.

  Chapter Thirty

  Ramage broke free of the shrubs onto West Main Street. The school rose above a line of houses to the west, and to the east the sign for the Children’s Dinosaur Quarry marked a cross street. Straight ahead Happy Trails Trailer Park sprawled out in a disorganized maze of campers, mobile homes, and patches of
hardpan, the property’s northern edge wrapping around the western most section of the dinosaur quarry. No trees lined the road, no mailboxes.

  Karma watched him from beneath the carport of the trailer park’s main office. She hid behind a support pole, and he couldn’t see her gun. The street was empty, but there was probably a clerk in the office, and certainly there were people in their metal homes. If she started firing the chaos that would ensue wouldn’t be good for either of them.

  Sirens and air horns blasted as emergency vehicles joined the chaos at the Red Rock Truck Stop. It was only a matter of minutes before the sheriff got the search underway.

  Ramage and Karma stared each other down. He took a breath, calculating options, weighing decisions. Did he mean to kill Karma? What choice did he have? How did he manage to put himself in this position? Anna’s voice screamed through the numbing memories and images, reminding him that he didn’t cause any of this. That realization didn’t change the fact that Big Blue was gone, and he’d have to explain everything to Rex, who would be less than happy to hear yet another example of Ramage’s inability to fly under the radar. Rex wouldn’t want to hear any explanations, and this time there was no dangerous drug to take off the streets.

  Ramage strode across the road, angling directly toward Karma.

  The assassin moved like smoke, fell in behind the support pole and used it for cover as she slipped into the heart of the trailer park.

  He crossed a thin stretch of hardpan that looked to have once been grass, picking up his pace, gripping the snubby hidden in his pocket. Karma could be hiding around any bend, waiting to put a bullet in him. Ramage was panting hard now, his legs aching, his breakfast of eggs and bacon attempting to make a curtain call.

  “Now you just hold it right there,” said a squeaky male voice.

  Ramage came around the corner of a trailer that looked to have once been blue, but was now so rusted and stained it was puke brown. He skidded to a halt, Karma standing with her back to him, hands in the air.

  A man sat in a folding chair within the remains of a screen house that had once been part of the trailer. Curled pieces of tattered screen hung from aluminum supports, blowing in the breeze, and cases of empty beer bottles were stacked against the trailer. The guy held a sawed-off shotgun, his blue eyes gleaming with alcohol or drugs. He wore an old Army jacket, and a knit cap with skull and crossbones on it. Something hung from the man’s mouth like a cigarette, but Ramage wasn’t sure what it was.

  “Step over here, nice ‘n slow if you don’t want a belly of buckshot,” the guy said.

  Ramage considered using his go to move, the drop and roll. If the guy fired and Karma caught some of the blast, so be it, but something in the man’s eyes made him pause. It was then Ramage noticed the swastika tattooed on the man’s left cheek.

  He sighed to himself. Of all the assholes, in all the world.

  “Let’s put those guns on the ground, nice and slow,” the guy said. “Move funny and I’ll blow you away. Well, maybe not you, sweetie.”

  Karma looked over her shoulder at Ramage, her eyes asking a question. “Are we together on this, or not?”

  When Karma didn’t put her Berretta on the ground the guy launched to his feet faster than Ramage thought the man capable of. He swiped the Berretta from Karma’s hand, swept her legs out from under her, and put his foot on her chest as she landed on her back. He stuffed the Berretta in his waistband and brought up the shotgun, aiming it at Ramage’s chest. “Where be your weapon?”

  Ramage pursed his lips, but said nothing.

  The guy pressed the tip of the gun barrel into Ramage’s chest.

  Ramage did a fast mental inventory: he was hidden between two metal trailers, he was being hunted by the police, had an illegal handgun, and no good reason to be carrying. His truck was blown to smithereens, and he was wanted for questioning by the police. He slowly took the .38 out of his pocket and laid it on the ground.

  As soon as the weapon left Ramage’s hand the guy lashed out with his shotgun and smacked Ramage in the head. He staggered back, stars blinking, his vision going dull, head throbbing.

  Nazi boy snatched up the .38 and said, “Let’s go.” He pushed Ramage toward the rear of his trailer, the shotgun pressed into his back. “You too little lady, and don’t try noth ‘in.”

  The trailer door was open, and their captor inched open the screen door with the tip of his cowboy boot and pushed Ramage inside. The place reeked of cat urine, dirt, shit, and fried food. To say it looked like a bomb had gone off would be an insult to bombs. Papers, magazines, piles of dirty laundry, and to complete the filth, a sink full of dirty dishes with flies circling the wreckage. Ramage wondered how dirty does a joint have to be for flies to flourish in the middle of winter?

  “Take a seat on the couch powderpuff,” the guy pushed Ramage, and he slipped on the grime caked orange linoleum floor. “You can sit here.” He pulled out a chair for Karma and guided her into it. When the guy realized Ramage hadn’t sat down, he thrust the .38 forward, the man’s eyebrows rising.

  Ramage sighed and sat, a gold necklace with the name Duke in big gold letters glinting under the harsh fluorescent lights. “Sure thing, Duke.”

  The guy’s eyes narrowed, then he laughed and pointed at his jewelry. “Good. Good,” he said. Duke peered out the trailer door, looked both ways, then pulled it shut, cutting off the distant sound of sirens. He rummaged through a pile of garbage by the door until he found a dirty blue t-shirt. He tossed it to Karma. “Rip that in half and use it to tie up your boyfriend there.”

  Karma’s eyes went wide.

  “Umm,” the guy said. “Not your boyfriend, is he? Though in these parts a guy chasing a woman with a gun is a sure sign of marital bliss.”

  When Karma didn’t move, Duke rolled his shoulders in an exaggerated display of tension, then lifted the .38 and the sawed-off and pointed them at Karma.

  Karma tied Ramage’s wrists and ankles, the scent of her perfume tickling his nose. She wouldn’t look at him, and when she was done, Duke tied her up the same way.

  With his prisoners secured, Duke leaned the shotgun by the door, dropped the Berretta and the snubby on an end table, and took off his jacket, hanging it on the end of a curtain rod. Then he sat on the couch next to Ramage, and said, “So, what shall we talk about?”

  Ramage and Karma said nothing.

  Duke waved a hand. “Sure, I get it. I’m the asshole.” He nodded jovially. “I’m kind of the unofficial law around these parts, me and my boys, so why don’t you tell me what you were running from? Now, you,” Duke pointed at Ramage. “I can see why’d you’d be chasing this little piece of ass, but the question is, why was the little lady running? And the guns? The police scanner said there was an explosion over at the rock, gunshots out on the highway. Now here you two are.”

  A loud siren picked that moment to echo through the Happy Trails Trailer Park, penetrating the rusted cocoon of Duke’s metal-covered abode. Duke smiled as he stared, a question forming on his lips, but he said nothing. He got up and looked out the trailer’s windows, peeking through the curtains. When he was satisfied no authorities were near, he disappeared into the bedroom behind the kitchen.

  Karma wouldn’t meet Ramage’s eye, and as he scanned the trailer the threads of tension and fear thrumming through him doubled. There was a small flatscreen TV standing on an ancient wood TV stand, and behind it on the wall was a shrine to Nazi culture. Pictures of Hitler, news clippings of skinhead related terrorist acts, old guns, a green stormtrooper helmet with a white Nazi logo on its front, badges, ribbons, and no doubt the prize of the collection, a framed picture of a pile of bodies with the open door to a gas chamber in the background.

  Bile rose in Ramage’s throat, anger building in him like a clogged pressure valve. He turned to Karma and whispered, “Truce?”

  “Screw you Skeeter. Too late.”

  “Screw you? You blew up my truck, and tried to kill me.” Ramage’s frustration boiled o
ver. “You want to die in this dump?”

  Karma looked at the floor.

  “Yeah, no words, huh? How is this supposed to end?”

  “With you dead, of course.”

  “So you’re saying you won’t stop? That I have to kill you?”

  Karma chuckled, but said nothing.

  “You’re a real top-level assassin. Look around. This how your plan was supposed to work out? From my angle, you’re a bumbling idiot. I bet if I contacted the Valez clan I could convince them to put a contract out on your incompetent ass.”

  “We’ll see, Skeeter. When we get out of this shithole—”

  “Shithole,” Duke was back. “Didn’t I tell you not to talk?”

  “No, you didn’t,” Ramage said without thought, and he was sorry he’d spoken the moment the words left his mouth.

  Duke backhanded Ramage across the face. “Well, I have now.”

  Ramage’s face stung, but not as bad as his pride when he saw the smirk on Karma’s face.

  Duke harrumphed and searched out his cell phone. When he found it, he stabbed the screen as he leered at Karma. “Sarg, yeah. It’s Duke. I’ve got a couple of models to add to our collection.” He said, his gaze shifting from Ramage to Karma. “One of them looks mighty useful, if you know what I mean.” A pause. “The guy, he looks like trouble.” Wind pushed sand against the trailer. “The game. Yeah, he’d be great for that. Yup, tied up and waiting on you. 10-4.” Duke hung up and sat back on the couch.

  “Now, Sarg isn’t as understanding as I am, me being more culturally astute, but things aren’t going to go well for you two unless you tell me what the hell you were running from. She a bail jumper or something?”

  Ramage said, “Or something.”

  Duke sighed and shook his head. “Best get that out of your system before the Sarg arrives. In the meantime, I’m thinking you and I get to know each other better, little lady.” Duke got up and started rubbing Karma’s shoulders.