“I’m gonna mess you up, viejo.”
The old man said, “Oh, crap.”
The fat man’s three buddies turned toward the big hombre who had challenged them. He didn’t give them a chance to set themselves. Throwing his arms out wide, he charged them, grabbing the two on the flanks and bulling his shoulder right into the one in the middle. That bull rush swept them all backward into the fat man, who was trying to wrench the machete loose from the table.
It was like a tidal wave of flesh washing over the fat man and knocking him forward into the table. The old man hopped out of the way with a nimbleness that belied his age.
The weight of all four men came down on the table. Its spindly legs snapped, and the whole thing crashed to the floor. The fat man and his amigos sprawled on the wreckage. One of the men howled in pain as he got pushed against the edge of the machete and the blade sliced into his leg.
With an athletic grace uncommon in a man of his size, the big hombre had caught his balance before he could fall on top of the others. He took a step back and looked at the old man. “We’d better get out of here.”
“Not yet,” the old man said with a gleam in his eyes. “Pancho and me still got to settle up.”
CHAPTER 2
The big man rolled his eyes and then swung around to face the rest of the customers in the dim, smoke-hazed cantina. They were watching with a mixture of keen interest and trepidation, but none of them seemed eager to mix in.
According to the bartender, the fat man and his friends worked for the Zaragosa drug cartel, and nobody wanted to mess in cartel business.
The old man leaned over, caught hold of the fat man’s dirty shirtfront with his left hand, pulled him up a little, and used his right hand to slap him hard, back and forth. Before that, the fat man had appeared a little stunned from being knocked down, but the sharp blows knocked his wits back into him.
He roared in anger and used a foot to hook one of the old man’s legs out from under him. The two of them grappled together and rolled across the filthy floor.
Two of the other three tried to get up and rejoin the fight. The third man was still yelling as he clamped both hands around his leg, which was bleeding heavily from the machete wound. It looked like he might have nicked an artery.
As the two cartel members scrambled to their feet, the big hombre caught them by the neck from behind. The muscles in his arms and shoulders bunched as he slammed the two men together. Their heads clunked loudly. Both men came unhinged at the knees and crumpled to the floor again.
The big man gestured toward the bleeder and addressed the room at large in decent Spanish: “Somebody better help him before he bleeds to death.”
When he turned his head, he saw that the old man somehow was getting the best of his overweight opponent. The wiry old codger knelt on the fat man’s chest and punched him in the face again and again. Blood blurred the fat man’s features. The big hombre stepped up behind the old man and hooked his hands under his arms.
“Come on,” he said. “He’s out of it. And we need to be out of here.”
The old man was breathing hard. He glared down at the fat man. But after a few seconds, he said, “Yeah, you’re right.” He shook free of the big man’s grip. “Let’s go.”
With the four cartel members out of action, no one else in the cantina made a move to stop the two gringos as they headed for the door. They stepped out into the hot night air. Gravel crunched under their feet as they crossed the parking lot.
The door of the squalid cinder-block building slammed open behind them. The big hombre looked back and muttered, “Oh, crap.”
The fat man stumbled out of the cantina and waved his hand, which was holding a pistol. It spurted flame and thundered in the night. The big man sprinted toward the pickup he had driven across the international bridge from Texas earlier in the evening. The old man followed him.
“Where’s your car?” the big hombre flung over his shoulder.
“Don’t have one! I walked across the bridge!”
That could actually be smarter than driving in Mexico, but wandering around a border town at night wasn’t a very bright thing to do these days. Such places had always been hotbeds of crime, but now, with the so-called authorities virtually powerless when compared to the cartels, norteamericanos risked their lives being anywhere near the border, let alone across it.
At the moment, however, the big hombre was glad he had transportation out of here. The fat man was shooting wild, but there was no telling when he might get the range.
“Come with me!” the big man yelled to his newfound companion. He hoped nobody had stolen or slashed his tires while he was in the cantina, or damaged the engine in some way.
The big man unlocked both doors of the pickup with the remote key as they ran toward it. The old man yanked the passenger door open and piled in while the big hombre threw himself behind the wheel.
Gravel kicked up not far from the pickup as the bullets came closer. The engine cranked, caught. The big man slammed the truck into gear and peeled out, spraying gravel behind him. A wild turn onto the potholed highway, and he was speeding toward the cluster of high-intensity lights that marked the international bridge a quarter of a mile away.
The big man watched the rearview mirror. No headlights popped into view. That was good. Even if the bridge wasn’t busy, crossing would take long enough that the fat man and his friends could catch up if they wanted to. Maybe they were back there attending to the guy who’d sliced his leg open.
“Well, that was a mite exciting,” the old man said. He didn’t sound drunk anymore.
The big man just glanced over at him and didn’t say anything. At the bridge, he guided the pickup into the Ready Lane line behind two other vehicles. The American border guards passed those through fairly quickly. Still no headlights coming up behind the pickup. The old man handed the big hombre his driver’s license. He put it with his own and handed them to the guard as he pulled up to the now-lowered barrier.
The guard scanned the RFID chips on the licenses and then nodded at the results that came up on his scanner. He asked the usual customs questions about regulated goods they might have with them.
The big man said, “Nope, not a thing.”
The guard handed the licenses back, then nodded at his cohort in the control booth, who pushed buttons and started the barrier lifting. The big man waited for it to clear and drove through at an unhurried pace, back onto Texas soil.
He drove through the border city, a garish oasis of lights in the vast darkness of the border country, and pulled into the parking lot of a nondescript motel on the north side of town, away from the border.
He brought the pickup to a stop beside an eighteen-wheeler parked at the edge of the lot, a Kenworth long-hood conventional with an extra-large sleeper behind the cab.
The big hombre killed the lights and engine, then sat there in the darkness for a long moment before he turned to the old man and said, “All right, Barry, what the hell was all that about?”
Though known largely for their westerns, New York Times bestsellers, WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE and J. A. JOHNSTONE are the authors of some of the most explosive and timely thrillers of the last decade, including the nationally bestselling Tyranny, a ripped-from-the-headlines story of citizens’ rights and government wrongs, and Stand Your Ground, a chilling depiction of terrorism on American soil.
The Johnstones know that freedom is never free. They fully support our military and regularly donate books to our troops. You can learn more about this as well as upcoming releases and special promotions by visiting williamjohnstone.net, or kensingtonbooks.com.
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The Scorching Page 28
