Primal

by D. J. Molles

  “What we need to be doing,” Lee grumbled. “Is focusing on doing damage to Nuevas Fronteras. The more damage we do, the more likely Mateo Ibarra is to show himself.”

  “Or less likely,” Abe said. “You’re operating on this assumption that he’s some sort of hot head. What if he doesn’t give a shit, Lee? What if he’s cold as ice?”

  Irritation caused the bottom of Lee’s throat to tighten and feel hot. “He’ll come out. Somehow. I’ll get a shot at him. We just have to put our heads down. Focus.”

  “You know what would be a great way to do damage to Nuevas Fronteras?”

  Lee propped himself up on his elbows, looking out across the distance with his naked eye. He already knew what was coming, but invited it anyways with a snap of temper. “What’s that, Abe?”

  “We could have the Marines come fuck their shit up,” Abe shot at him. “If only we could get them enough fuel to make it here in force.”

  “You’re like a broken record.”

  “And you can’t see the forest through the trees.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Yeah, fuck you too. Asshole.”

  Lee sighed through his nose. Clenched his teeth until the desire to start swinging ebbed. “Moving on.” He smooshed his cheek back onto the rifle’s buttstock and looked through the scope again. “I’ve got two guards at the west side of the house. What appears to be another two on the east side, though I’ve only caught shirtsleeves at this time. There’s one roving unit. Two men. They’re circling the perimeter.”

  There lasted several long seconds of silence.

  Lee’s heart thudded against his sternum.

  A breeze moved a strand of grass that tickled against his forearm, but felt good as it dried his sweat, if only for a moment.

  “What’s their attitude like?” Abe finally said, with a more relaxed voice.

  Both men let out a quiet breath of release.

  They were back on track.

  Back to business.

  Beating the shit out of each other would have to wait for another day.

  “They look bored,” Lee observed, reading the faces and body language of the cartel foot soldiers milling about La Casa. “Everyone looks bored.”

  “Bored is complacent.”

  Lee nodded. “If we can hit ‘em in the middle of the night, we might be able to skip the firefight part. Might be able to get a decent stock of ammunition if we don’t spook them into wasting it all.”

  “How close are the tankers to the house?”

  “About twenty yards off.”

  “That’s far enough that we could fire the house while they’re sleeping. Take them when they bunch together outside.” Abe spat again, and seemed about to say something else, but then stopped.

  Lee heard it, right at the moment when he watched Abe’s shoulders tense up and his grip tighten on his rifle.

  “That’s an engine,” Lee said, rolling out of his prone position behind the Barret .50 caliber and swiping up his M4.

  Abe came to one knee, his rifle at a low ready. He faced west—away from La Casa—back towards the dirt road that accessed their hideout. “You think they found the truck?”

  They’d hidden the truck a good distance away from their hideout. But if the cartel patrols had been ranging out a little further than normal from La Casa, they might’ve seen fresh tire tracks, or any number of other spoor that could’ve given the truck away.

  And if they found the truck, they’d recognize it as the one belonging to their missing friends.

  Lee stood up. “I don’t know.” He kicked brush over the Barret. He hated to leave it so soon after acquiring it, but he wasn’t going to get into a firefight with that stupidly heavy chunk of metal. Not with only nine rounds to spare. And he had no way to carry it on his back while keeping his M4 in his hands.

  He’d have to call it a loss.

  They listened for a moment, but couldn’t hear the engine any more. It had definitely come from the road behind them. Lee was sure about that. It’d been too clear and loud for it to have come from La Casa.

  Abe stood up as well. “Should we go back to the hideout?”

  It was a risk. Just because a patrol might’ve found the truck, didn’t mean that they’d found the hideout. And the hideout did have all of their food and supplies. Without them Lee and Abe might find their chances for survival suddenly dwindling.

  But recent events had made them extremely wary about traps.

  “We go,” Lee said, finding himself whispering. “We’ll put eyes on from the tree line. If there’s a goddamned speck of dust out of place, I’m calling it and we run.”

  Abe seemed okay with that plan.

  The two of them started moving, immediately dipping into the clusters of trees that surrounded the clearing at the top of the hill. They weren’t far from the hideout. Maybe five hundred yards. But they couldn’t see it through the brush. They would have to get closer.

  They moved at a steady clip, but they kept it slow enough to be quiet.

  Stands of juniper created hedgerows that were like walls. Lee hated them. You couldn’t see through them, and you had to walk around them. They turned the woods into a maze. The only upside was that their needles made a soft blanket on the ground and kept their footfalls nearly inaudible.

  They worked their way down the hill.

  Up ahead, Lee caught a flash of white siding through the trees.

  The hideout.

  He stopped there, and listened.

  His ears strained. Seeking the sounds of vehicles, or men speaking, or doors opening and closing.

  All he heard was the quiet countryside.

  Birds sang, oblivious.

  A slow breeze shuffled some leaves.

  Up ahead, another dense wall of juniper. Beyond that, they would have a view of the hideout. They could use the juniper as concealment. At least it would serve them somehow.

  A deer trail made an obvious path through the center of the juniper. It looked like the deer used it as a bedding area, so that it created a sort of cave amongst the green boughs.

  Lee squatted down on their side of the row of junipers. Through the deer trail, he saw most of their hideout. But not all of it. He would need to slink into the junipers to get the full view of the structure.

  He stooped low into a squat, then shuffled forward, duck walking as quietly as he could, into the tight confines of the hollow space. He heard the slight rustle of the evergreen brush as Abe followed him in.

  Squatting on his haunches, his rifle tucked to his chest, Lee peered out from under the juniper. Their hideout was only about fifty yards away now. His angle currently put them at a diagonal, off the back-left corner of the house—what Lee referred to as the “B-C corner.”

  As Lee already knew from being in the house for the last twenty hours, it didn’t have many windows. It was a very simple ranch house. But Lee saw the larger window that faced east. The one he’d sat at earlier.

  Unfortunately, the reflection of the sky completely obscured the glass.

  He could see nothing inside.

  “No visual through the window,” Lee whispered.

  The second that he breathed the words, everything went to shit.

  Men started yelling, very close.

  “You in the bushes! Don’t fucking move! DO—NOT—FUCKING—MOVE!”

  Lee and Abe’s instinctive reaction was to move.

  Abe started to spin, to get out the way they’d come in.

  Lee shifted his weight to plunge straight forward.

  The next words stopped them.

  “I got five soldiers that are gonna rip those bushes to shreds if you twitch! I can see you, motherfucker! Put down your weapons!”

  Shit, shit, shit.

  They were right on the other side of the junipers. The damn bushes had hid them from Lee’s view.

  Lee and Abe were caught, dead to rights.

  They’d known this day might come, and they’d agreed that they would never l
et the cartel take them alive. They’d agreed on a code word that meant they were going to go out in a hail of gunfire—better to die fighting.

  Abe invoked it with a growl: “Sundance.”

  But Lee grabbed his arm to stop him.

  Something that had been said had given him pause.

  It was the word “soldiers.”

  Lee knew it was possible that the man shouting at them was cartel, and he was simply referring to his men as soldiers. But Lee decided to take a gamble, all of this flashing through his head in a bare instant.

  “The cartel is on the other side of that hill,” Lee said, loud and clear. “If you start shooting, they’re going to come for all of us.”

  A momentary silence fell.

  If this didn’t work, then it would indeed be Sundance, and all Lee had to do was release Abe’s arm. Then they’d tear out of there, shooting at anything that moved, until their fingers could no longer pull their triggers.

  The one that had shouted at them spoke again, but this time with more hesitation. “Come out of the bushes. Do it slow.”

  Lee thought that he knew what that hesitation meant.

  Both parties had thought the other to be cartel. Now that was being reevaluated.

  It was Lee’s only hope. And a slim one at that.

  Maybe he was being an idiot.

  He’d made mistakes before.

  It was possible this would be his last one.

  “I’m coming out,” Lee said, more to Abe, than to the people that had them in their sights.

  He didn’t release his rifle. That, he would not do. But he left it pointing at the ground, his gun hand on the grip, and his support hand raised in front of him.

  He shuffled forward.

  Emerged from the hollow in the junipers.

  He immediately became aware of several figures that he’d missed before, expertly hidden by the thick juniper stands. One immediately to his left, about ten yards away. Two more behind that man, about twenty yards, and a final two, about ten yards to Lee’s right.

  Lee noted that they all wore a conglomeration of US military fatigues. A patchwork of worse-for-wear UCP, MARPAT, and even some old ACU.

  Lee stood up very slowly. His support hand still raised. His eyes sought out the man that had given them commands, and thought that he spotted him, in the group off to his right.

  As Lee scanned the faces, he noted a wave of recognition go over them. They blinked at him, suddenly uncertain, but they didn’t lower their own weapons.

  Lee locked eyes with the one that seemed like he’d been the speaker.

  The man frowned, and spoke again: “Take your hand off your rifle.”

  Lee wasn’t going to do that. Instead, he rolled the dice yet again. “You recognize me,” he said, hoping this was true, and that he hadn’t misjudged their expressions. “Do you still work for Tex? Or Menendez?”

  A subtle stir went through them.

  They were disciplined enough not to make it obvious, but Lee saw it all the same.

  The speaker—a man with corporal’s stripes on his battered OCP uniform—took a half step forward, his rifle still pointed at Lee. “Your man in the bushes. Have him come out.”

  Lee made sure not to move too much or too suddenly. He didn’t want to invite a barrage of gunfire from some itchy trigger fingers. His heart thudding hard in his throat, he looked over his shoulder and saw Abe’s bearded face glaring up at him from inside the juniper.

  Lee gave him a small nod.

  Abe’s face twisted. Lee saw his teeth flash behind his beard. But then he slowly slid out. Also raising his support hand—and also not taking his gun hand off his rifle.

  He stood up, about a pace away from Lee, instinctively facing the opposite direction. Covering his back. If the shooting started, they’d be able to fire in two directions at once. The better to punish their attackers before they themselves were snuffed out.

  The corporal craned his neck to look over his sights, focusing on Abe. “You with the big beard. I want you to very slowly turn and look at me.”

  Abe glowered, but then did as he was told, glaring at the other man from under his eyebrows.

  Lee watched the corporal. Watched the muzzle of his rifle dip.

  “Shit,” was all the corporal said.

  He recognized them. Lee was sure of that.

  And that meant one of two things: Either Lee was horribly mistaken, and they were soldiers from Greeley who had seen Lee and Abe’s face in photographs…

  Or they had been a part of Tex’s crew.

  “Corporal,” Lee said, speaking carefully, like a man balancing on a high wire. “I need to speak to whoever is in command.”

  The corporal stared at Lee for a long moment of silence, and then, keeping his rifle up with his gun hand, he used his support hand to key a PTT on his chest. He mumbled something into the mic that Lee couldn’t make out. He had an earpiece in, so Lee couldn’t hear whatever the response was, but after a moment, the corporal gave a faint nod and transmitted back, “Roger.”

  The corporal shifted his feet, both hands back on his rifle. “Captain Harden. Major Darabie. You’re going to have to work with us. You can keep your rifles slung, but put your hands on your heads and interlace your fingers.” Without waiting for them to respond, he raised his voice. “Gents, if they don’t comply, hose them down.”

  Lee and Abe exchanged a glance.

  Abe’s gaze was fierce and suspicious.

  Lee gave him the tiniest of shrugs.

  Then they both raised their hands over their heads, and interlaced their fingers.

  TWELVE

  ─▬▬▬─

  THE MEET

  Lee and Abe stepped through the front door of their hideout.

  The corporal that had captured them led the way, and four of his soldiers followed behind Lee and Abe, who still had their hands clasped on top of their heads. The soldiers looked wary. But also…awestruck.

  Lee had encountered these expressions before. He remembered when he’d stepped into Tex’s bunker, after the firefight in Caddo, and had seen the wide eyes and heard the whispers as he walked past.

  It used to make him feel uncomfortable.

  Now, he didn’t really care.

  Nowadays, his reputation served a purpose.

  Around them sat the musty detritus of an abandoned house. The corporal led them through the kitchen, where dirty dishes sat clustered on the counters, too old to even have a smell anymore. Then into the living room, which had the east-facing window, and Lee and Abe’s supplies.

  A dark-skinned soldier knelt, hunched over the old feed sack that contained a portion of the foodstuffs from Triprock. As he poked through the items, it didn’t escape Lee that the soldier looked gaunt and hungry himself.

  Still, he hadn’t taken anything.

  When Lee and Abe entered the room, the man stood up and faced them.

  “Sergeant Menendez,” Lee said, doing a decent job of keeping the shock out of his voice.

  Menendez looked Lee right in the face, his eyes scouring over Lee’s features, as though seeking to confirm his identity. Then he looked at Abe.

  It seemed that maybe he hadn’t believed who his corporal had claimed to find. But then realization crashed over his face, and he faltered.

  “Holy shit,” Menendez muttered, not bothering to hide his own surprise. His eyes coursed back and forth between them.

  Lee noted that his tone was not entirely friendly.

  Menendez raised a finger and gestured at the two of them. “You two. You have some explaining to do.”

  Lee raised his eyebrows. “Oh? That’s funny.”

  Menendez’s expression flared. “Most of our men are dead. And you call it funny?”

  Lee’s eyes narrowed. “Their deaths? No. Not funny at all. What’s funny is you thinking that I have shit to explain to you.”

  Menendez took a step forward. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “Me?” Lee shook his
head. “I’m Nobody.” He nodded towards Abe. “He’s No One.”

  The blow struck, exactly as Lee had intended.

  Menendez’s head pulled back, like he wanted to retreat a step. “Nadie y Ninguno,” he muttered.

  Lee didn’t give him the benefit of a confirmation. “Here’s what I know, sergeant. Me and my friend have spent the last month hitting Nuevas Fronteras in every place we can make them hurt. We’ve been drawing blood. We’ve been making them pay. And while we’ve done it we’ve starved and nearly died a hundred times.” Lee leaned forward, his words becoming sharp. “So no, I don’t think I have shit to explain to you. But what I’d love to hear from you, is what you’ve been doing?”

  “I should kill you right now,” Menendez breathed, but it lacked heat. It lacked conviction.

  Lee wasn’t ignorant of the fact that he was pushing his luck. He felt Abe’s tension beside him, though Abe knew better than to intervene. They might not agree on everything, but Abe trusted Lee’s instincts. And Lee’s instincts told him not to give an inch.

  So he shrugged. “Should you, then? I wonder why?”

  “The assault on the power plant was your operation!”

  “Bullshit,” Lee spat. “It was Tex’s operation and you know it.”

  “How did you make it out alive?” Menendez demanded.

  “I stood over Julia’s corpse and I decided that I didn’t care if I lived or died anymore. The first Cornerstone operative that approached, I took from behind. I used his weapon to shoot his partner. Then I shot him under his chin. Then I drew the rest of them in, and I took out their comms, and I killed them, one by one, until it was just me and their commanding officer in a truck. Him I stabbed to death.”

  Out of the corner of Lee’s eye, he saw Abe looking at him.

  He’d never even told that story to Abe.

  Abe had never asked.

  “You want me to believe that you took out an entire squad of trained operatives by yourself?” Menendez said, trying to rally himself. But he sounded like he did believe it, despite himself.

  “I don’t want you to believe anything,” Lee murmured, calm now. “You asked a question. I gave you an answer. How did you make it out alive?”

  Menendez seemed on the verge of rebelling. But then the tension went out of his shoulders. He slouched. “We hid. In one of the guard shacks in the power plant.” His voice was quieter. Exhausted. “We heard them killing everyone in the forest. We heard the gunships raking the woods with fire. We waited until they pulled back. Then we ran back for the beach head. We found one canoe that didn’t have bullet holes in it. Four of us in the canoe. The rest hanging onto the sides when they couldn’t swim for themselves anymore. And we went back across the lake.”