by D. J. Molles
And could Tex really blame him?
He wanted to. But he couldn’t.
Even he, Terrence “Tex” Lehy, probably one of the most pragmatic and militaristic members of Project Hometown…yes, even he had given in.
It’s one thing to be pragmatic about the civilian population.
It’s another thing entirely to have their lives in your hands.
In the end, Tex wasn’t as hard-hearted as he’d thought. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t just let those people all get slaughtered. No matter the cold, horrible logic of the arguments that ran through his head—He might kill them anyways! and You’ll save more lives by not giving in! and Letting Greeley have access to your bunkers will be worse for everyone in the long run!
None of it mattered in the end.
Because all of that was theoretical.
What was real were the people staring down the barrels of Daniels’s hired guns.
And now Lee had been given the same choice. And he’d made the same decision that Tex had.
Which meant that they were fucked.
Daniels held all the cards.
Tex and Lee had nothing.
In the distance, beyond the cattle fences, the figure of Lee Harden was now within about a hundred yards of the edge of Triprock. No crazy plan had become apparent. No contingent of heretofore unseen forces had sprung out of the dust.
It was just one, lonely figure, striding towards them.
A team of soldiers that Tex couldn’t see shouted at Lee over a bullhorn. They must’ve been behind the big barn. The snipers in the hayloft stayed glued to their rifles and their scopes, ready to splatter Lee’s brains into the Texas dust if anything started to go sideways.
And even if it did, at this point, they would still win.
They would still have killed Lee Harden.
The small figure of Lee halted, and complied with their directions.
He raised his hands above his head.
He turned to reveal his back.
There was a roar of two engines, and the technicals that bore the Cornerstone welcome party tore out across the dry plain, leaving clouds of dust behind them that obscured whatever happened next.
It was over.
***
“Target’s secured,” Daniels’s earpiece buzzed. “Positive ID. We’re bringing him back.”
“Roger,” Daniels murmured, keeping his words brief, so as not to betray the shake in his voice. He kept fidgeting, so as not to show the tremor in his limbs.
He marched to the front door and pulled it open.
Griesi turned and looked at him.
Daniels nodded. “Bring in the birds.”
He stepped out of the ranch house. Into the open. He looked over at Tex. “Secure him. Get him ready for transport.” Then he stepped off the porch and stood in the center of the compound.
A figure approached.
One of Mateo Ibarra’s lieutenants.
He was not as casual as many of the others. He had a military bearing, and he wore dark jungle fatigues that had faded with sun and constant use. He had been, Daniels believed, a man of some importance in the Panamanian army. He held an FN-FAL rifle in his grip, and eyed Daniels with a look of perennial suspicion.
Daniels licked his lips. “Where would Mr. Ibarra like us to meet him?”
The lieutenant tilted his head to one side. “You will be transporting with helicopter, no?”
Daniels nodded.
“Then I will come with you.” It was not a question. Almost a command. “When we are in the air, I will give you the location.”
Daniels smiled in what he hoped was a comfortable fashion. “Of course. Not a problem.”
And it wasn’t. Daniels had already prepared for this.
Two of Daniels’s technicals roared through the front gates of the ranch and came to a stop right in front of the main ranch house. It wasn’t until their engines downshifted into an idle that Daniels became aware of the distant background thump of the approaching helicopters.
Two gunships—the same two Apaches, in fact, that had executed the trap at the power plant a month before.
And also the Blackhawk. For transportation.
Out of the lead technical, two Cornerstone operatives emerged, dragging a hogtied and hooded figure. They stopped in front of Daniels, holding the body upright.
Daniels reached forward and grabbed the rough, black fabric of the hood. He pulled it up.
Lee Harden looked up at him, a rag tied into his mouth to gag him. His eyes looked black in the gloom, and Daniels was struck by the expression in them—or, more correctly, the lack of expression.
They looked like spider’s eyes.
Daniels suppressed a shudder that he wasn’t sure whether was born of excitement or something much darker.
It was him. Without a doubt.
Lee Harden. Bound and gagged and on his knees.
Daniels almost grabbed his pistol and ended it right there, just to make goddamned sure. It may have been, he thought, the smartest thing to do. But there was a problem with men like Lee Harden. There was a problem with people who became mythical.
You couldn’t just kill them. You had to kill the myth as well.
There was a reason they used to do public executions.
If Daniels executed Lee Harden right here, then his legend would live on.
And that was not something they could afford.
Daniels pulled the hood back over Lee’s face, not wanting to look at those dark eyes anymore. “Good,” he said.
The sound of the approaching helicopters grew louder.
“Secure them in the Blackhawk,” Daniels said. “Secure them well.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
─▬▬▬─
THE PATH
Plastic zip-cuffs.
The double-looped kind, with a locking mechanism in the center.
These were around Lee’s wrists, fastened tight so that already his fingers began to tingle from lack of blood flow. His hands secured behind his back. And they were around his ankles, too.
He couldn’t run. He couldn’t fight.
They’d hogtied him at first—lashing the zip-cuffs of his wrists to the zip-cuffs of his ankles. But they’d released him from that to put him in the Blackhawk. Then they’d secured him to one of the jumpseats. Lee wasn’t sure what they’d used to strap him there, but they’d done it tight.
Strapped to a chair. Wrists locked behind his back. Ankles immobilized. Black bag over his head so that he couldn’t see anything. Rag in his mouth so that he couldn’t speak.
With him in this position, the helicopter rumbled towards a destination that Lee didn’t know. It could have been north. It could have been south. Part of him believed he was heading north to Greeley, but there had been a man who was clearly not Cornerstone standing right beside Daniels when the hood had come off for that brief moment on the ground.
That man had been cartel.
And the fact that a Nuevas Fronteras man was in the helicopter with them, made Lee believe that maybe they were heading south.
Lee considered his options, and saw that there were none.
All he could do was continue to sit and wait.
In a way, his world had become very simple. There were no more decisions to make—he’d made them already. Now he was on a track, like being strapped into a rollercoaster. Either death was going to reach him first, or an opportunity was.
And he thought he knew which one it would be.
Maybe this is best.
Had he saved the people of Triprock?
Well, that was difficult to say. It would be nice to believe that he had. He decided that he would not think any more about it. It was a waste of mental effort. He would choose to believe that he had saved them.
He had, at least, tried.
He pictured Sally and Eric and Catalina. Pictured them safe.
He would hold onto that picture, when he was staring at his own death.
Or at en
dless torture.
He had no delusions that he would be spared that, if Daniels turned him over to Mateo Ibarra.
But that was also wasted mental effort.
If the knives came out, or the vats of acid, or the branding irons, or whatever else Mateo Ibarra might come up with…well, then, Lee would deal with it when it came. It did him no favors to think about it now. And he felt that if he let his fear of it grow, then it would unman him in the end.
If he was going to die, he would do it clear-eyed.
He would not let them see pain. He would not let them see fear. He would not let them see grief.
All they would see would be hate.
He’d burn with it until he was ashes.
And so he closed his eyes, though it made little difference inside the hood. And he let the helicopter bear him towards wherever his final destination was. And he breathed slow and deep, and he focused on that, and nothing else. He existed only in that moment, in a space between thoughts, between emotions, between memories.
It didn’t take long.
Lee felt the sudden deceleration. And then a drop in altitude.
Were they there already?
His stomach gave a lurch that had nothing to do with the dropping altitude.
He tried not to think about how close he was to the end.
Eyes open. Head clear.
He opened his eyes to the black fabric. And he waited.
He breathed in through the nose. Held it. Breathed out.
To his right, someone opened the main doors of the Blackhawk. Sound and wind came roaring in. The smell of exhaust managed to make it in past the hood. Lee felt the fabric flapping against his face. Spit had pooled where the gag didn’t allow him to close his mouth, and now spilled over onto his chin. The flapping fabric smeared it around.
Their descent slowed. Then the bump of the landing gear hitting the dirt.
Immediately the roar of the Blackhawk’s engines deflated, powering down.
Beneath it all, Lee heard the very faint sounds of people yelling to each other, but again, he couldn’t make sense of anything they said.
Eyes open. Head clear.
Someone grabbed him. He felt metal nudge him in the temple, and he knew that it was the muzzle of a rifle.
“Do what I say,” a voice shouted over the exterior noise. “Or I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
Lee didn’t respond. It struck him as an idiotic thing to say. He was going to his death anyways. This was not a matter of obedience. If they wanted him to comply, they’d have to remove any other option.
Which, to their credit, it seemed like they were doing.
Whatever they’d used to strap him to the jump seat came loose, and then was pulled away.
They hauled him off the jumpseat. Two operatives, one on either side of him. With the zip-cuffs on his ankles, he couldn’t walk, so they jammed their hands under his armpits and carried him out.
The noise and the buffeting wind grew louder.
There was a step down.
He was on the ground now.
He heard the rotors whooshing overhead, slowing down. They didn’t push him out from under them, though. They put him on his knees, a pace or two away from the body of the helicopter.
Whatever it was that they intended, they planned to do it close to the Blackhawk.
His two escorts didn’t leave him, but there was some additional movement from behind him.
Something jostled into him, on his left.
It felt like someone else kneeling beside him.
Experimentally, Lee gave the shape a little nudge with his shoulder.
It nudged him back.
Then a hard rap struck the back of Lee’s head.
“Cut that shit out,” the voice commanded.
But Lee thought, That’s Tex. He’s here, right beside me.
Did Daniels really intend to turn them over to the cartel?
It seemed to be shaping up that way.
Lee could think of a lot of reasons why Daniels would do that.
He could also think of a lot of reasons why Daniels wouldn’t.
The Blackhawk’s rotors had slowed to the point that Lee could hear the individual blades as they passed overhead. The engine whine was not as oppressive, and Lee could hear some other details now.
The sound of vehicle doors, opening and closing, somewhere ahead of Lee.
Then there was nothing for a while.
Lee stared at black fabric. Off to his right, he perceived a muted glow that he suspected was the sunset. He wasn’t sure if that information was useable or not, but that meant he was facing south.
A steady wind blew at him now. Not the downdraft of rotors. A real wind. And it smelled of the ocean. And something else…
Not exhaust, though it had a ghost of that same petrochemical scent.
This scent was more sulfurous.
That’s crude oil.
A new voice reached Lee’s ears. One he hadn’t heard before. Very faintly accented.
“You bring the most wonderful gifts, Mr. Daniels. I hope you won’t think it too forward of me that I’d like to look at their faces. We must all be sure of where we stand, no?”
Daniels’s voice came next, tension masked by a casual façade: “Of course. Business is business.”
And then the hood was gone.
Air.
You couldn’t call it fresh, with the scent of crude oil and tide pools. But it was unadulterated by Lee’s own exhales, and so it seemed fresh. The scents of the outside world hit him stronger now.
He blinked. Took in his surroundings.
The sky was a dusky gray. In the west, a hellish orange smear.
Rotor blades passed lazily overhead.
They were on a paved road, cracked and potholed. Lee stared straight down it, to where it led to a large structure that appeared to be constructed of concrete blocks and pipes that ranged in diameter from small to truly massive.
Oil refinery.
A cloud of steam poured from the top of the structure in a steady geyser.
A working oil refinery.
Between him and the refinery, two technicals, and a very nice Mercedes SUV. Many armed men that wore no uniform. One in faded jungle fatigues—the cartel man that had been at Triprock and then in the helicopter with Lee.
And one other man, standing front and center, wearing loose, white clothing.
He had shoulder-length black hair, and smiling, friendly eyes.
Near to Lee, Mr. Daniels stood, straight-backed, facing the man in white.
To Lee’s left, Tex knelt. Also bound. Also gagged.
Lee managed a brief glimpse over his shoulder, which garnered him another rap on the side of the head with a rifle butt, but not before he saw four Cornerstone operatives—two guarding Lee, and two guarding Tex—and a gunner, manning an M240 in the door of the Blackhawk.
Lee faced forward again, his left temple stinging from the blow.
The man in white walked forward. The wind billowed his clothing about his chest and legs. His hair curled around his smiling face. He wore black cowboy boots with silver tips. They seemed very well-maintained.
He stopped, about ten yards from Lee, and he stared at him.
Lee stared back.
“So,” the man said, easier to hear now that the helicopter had quieted. “Nadie y Ninguno. The infamous Lee Harden and Terrence Lehy.” The man smiled ruefully and shook his finger at them. “You’ve caused me a lot of heartache.”
Lee didn’t bother to correct him. He kept looking into his eyes. The man’s words flowed around him, and seemed inconsequential.
This was Mateo Ibarra. The one who had drowned Tomlin in oil. The one who had sent men to kill Lee—and almost succeeded. The one who had helped lay the trap that had claimed the life of the one person in the world that Lee loved.
Lee showed none of the fear. None of the grief.
His eyes only showed hate.
A frown crossed over Mateo�
��s smiling face, like a wisp of a cloud on a sunny day.
He looked up at Mr. Daniels. Raised his eyebrows, as though waiting for something. His hands rose a few inches from his side and then fell back. A gesture that said, So, what are we waiting for?
Mr. Daniels shifted his feet. The dusty concrete crunched beneath the soles of his boots. “Señor Ibarra, these aren’t exactly gifts.”
Mateo’s expression didn’t really change. It just grew stiffer. Like a skein of ice hardening over water. “Oh? Your communications with me made it sound as though you wished to solve the problems between us. As though you were in dire need of the fuel that I could provide you.”
“You know,” Mr. Daniels said. “You once told me that I needed to clean up my house. You said yours was already clean. But…then you started having problems.”
“Problems that you created,” Mateo said, a little too quickly.
Mr. Daniels smiled. “I’ve cleaned up my house. And now I’ve cleaned up yours. Consider that the gift. As for Tex and Harden, I’m going to need something in exchange for them.”
Mateo’s hands left his side, clasped each other in front of him. “I see. How much fuel do you want?”
Mr. Daniels nodded towards the refinery in the background. “How much fuel does that refinery produce?”
One corner of Mateo’s mouth twitched up. “A lot.”
Mr. Daniels shrugged. “That’s what I want, Señor Ibarra. I want whatever that refinery produces.”
Mateo chuckled. “You want all the fuel that this refinery produces?”
“No. I want the refinery.”
“The entire refinery? Please.” Mateo’s eyes scoffed. “My desire to have these two men is strong, but not that strong. I am, first and foremost, a businessman. The pleasure of revenge comes a bit further down on my list of priorities. I’m afraid that if you seek a deal, then we don’t have one. But if you’d like to give me a gift, you’ll find me a very generous ally.”
“They also come with Captain Lehy’s GPS unit,” Mr. Daniels said, like a man laying down his winning hand, card by card. “And access to all the bunkers across Texas.”
This caused Mateo to hesitate, but only for a second. He shook his head. “Bunkers that are half-depleted. Even if they were full, it would still not be worth it. You forget, I have the entirety of Central and South America behind my back. It is not hard for me to find weapons and ordnance.”
