by James Hilton
“You’re one crazy-assed looney tune, you know that?” Rebecca gave a nervous giggle.
“You’re not the first person to tell me that.”
“How did you know they would swerve out of the way?”
Danny answered while keeping the vehicle as close to top speed as he could. “Because nobody wants to die, certainly not in a head-on collision. Even the most determined fighter will veer away from certain death. Something deep in our souls won’t let us snuff out the light.”
“What about the kamikaze mentality? What if they’d been as mad as you, what would have happened then?”
“We all would have died,” said Danny. “I’ve met a few bona fide psychopaths in my time, but even most of them don’t want to die when it comes down to the wire. As for the kamikazes, the suicide bombers and such, the only option is to drop them before they take out their target. That’s never a good situation to be in, there’s almost always collateral damage.”
“Collateral damage?”
Danny gave a single nod. “But we’re still alive and moving, so all is well.”
Laura lurched close to the window, her hands scrabbling at the door. She wound down the window with a frantic motion. The sound of retching came next. Danny kept his eyes on the road as Rebecca reached over to Laura. When she finally pulled her head back inside the truck, her face was bereft of colour.
“I’m sorry,” said Laura, dragging her hand across her mouth. “My hands won’t stop shaking.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Danny. “It happens to the best of us.”
Rebecca reached out and squeezed Danny’s right arm. She smiled. Danny gave her a nod. Sometimes words were not required.
“I’m so dry,” said Laura. “I wish I had some water.”
Danny looked at the centre console. Two empty cup holders. No water. “Check in the back?”
One of the rescued women leaned forward. Danny could feel her head pressing against the back of his seat as she felt around in the gap below. “Nothing back here.”
“We’ll get some soon,” promised Danny. The passengers lapsed back into a nervous silence. Outside, the darkness seemed to press against the outer shell of the truck.
The road beneath the pickup changed from hard-packed dirt to asphalt. The truck’s vibration changed accordingly too, from a constant bumping jostle to a low, continuous hum.
“We must be getting closer to the main road. Tarmac is good,” said Danny. As Danny glanced in the rear-view, his upper lip curled to one side. Way behind Ghost and Clay, two sets of lights were again in pursuit. “Hang on to your hosiery, we’re not out of this yet.”
69
Ulrich Weiss sprang from the vehicle before it had stopped moving. The Toyota FJ cruiser was his own SUV, bought and paid for with his own money. Some bitch in the back of the pickup had opened fire with a damned shotgun. She’d put one load through the centre of his windshield. Ducking low, Weiss hadn’t seen the rock at the side of the road and had slammed straight into it. The Toyota was a rugged machine, but it had landed nose first in the dirt. The front and side airbags had deployed in response to the impact. The hood was now gaping open and steam hissed from the stalled engine.
Squeezing on the built-in cocking lever located at the front of the grip, Weiss snapped off three shots, aiming his P7 at the rear window of the pickup. The bitch with the shotgun let loose with another shot of her own. He winced as pellets peppered the raised hood of his listing vehicle.
Spreading his legs into a more stable Weaver shooting stance, Weiss registered a new danger. Twin orbs of light that could only be more headlights, rocketing straight at him. A shower of sparks akin to an angle grinder buzzed into the air as it sideswiped one of the fleeing trucks.
“Watch out!” Weiss yelled to the men still inside the damaged Toyota, as he sprinted out of danger. The speeding vehicle turned tight on its axis and slammed into the front of the stationary SUV. Weiss squinted against the glare of the headlights. The vehicle was impressive. This had to be more enforcers from Los Espadas. As if to prove him correct, an angry face peered from the driver’s window.
“I know you. You’re the German. Where’s Velasquez? He wanted us to help run down some targets.” The man’s gold tooth caught the light as he spoke.
“I don’t know where the others are. I thought I was following them until I realised that their truck was full of our runaways,” answered Weiss. He kept his pistol close to his right side, ready if needed.
“You remember me?” asked Golden Tooth.
Weiss gave a curt nod. “I do. You’re Verdugo.” The executioner.
Verdugo pointed to the receding tail lights. “I take it those are the pendejos we are here to find.”
“They are,” said Weiss as he approached the vehicle. The savage machine, the narco truck, was certainly a thing to behold. He rested the P7 at the side of his hip. He shot a look at his own damaged Toyota. It looked like a toy next to the cartel battlewagon. “You got room for one more?”
Verdugo’s smile was little more than a tightening of skin. “Call a fuckin’ Uber!”
Weiss opened his mouth to reason with him, but Verdugo revved his engine and with a screech of heavy rubber raced off in the wake of the three escaping vehicles. Holstering his pistol, Weiss reached up and grabbed the buckled hood of the Toyota. With one sharp tug, he slammed the metal lid shut. The hood bounced back open. A heat separate from the Mexican humidity flushed over his face. He touched the side of his face with his fingertips. The skin there felt like plastic. He slammed the hood again. A wide bevel marred the centre of the lid. “Piece of crap!”
Weiss climbed back into the Toyota. Thomas looked up from where he’d been repacking the airbags. The men in the vehicle were all badly bruised, but none of them were out of action. “Are we going after them?”
Weiss glowered at him. “Ask one more stupid question and I will shoot you in the face!”
As he turned the ignition key, Weiss feared the Toyota would not restart. It took three attempts. The engine stuttered, then roared to life. He slammed the cruiser into drive and floored the gas. The Toyota lurched forward a few feet then the engine fell silent again. “Scheisse!”
Again, he turned the key. This time the engine fired up and held. Weiss forced himself to take his time. He had no desire to be left with no other option but a humiliating walk back to the compound. There was an unhealthy scraping of metal on metal as he urged the Toyota forward. Pushing down gently at first on the gas pedal, he felt the cruiser begin to pick up speed. The metallic rasping did not lessen as he steered after the Espadas.
“We’ll never catch up with them now. The cartel have us outgunned and have a way better truck. We might as well head back home.” Thomas pursed his lips as he pushed the barrel of his rifle against the dashboard. “Some night this turned out to be.”
The three men in the back of the Toyota yelled out in a single note of surprise as Weiss pulled the trigger of his P7. They hadn’t seen him draw his weapon. The single shot was deafening in the boxy interior. The bullet entered just below Thomas’s jaw. He shuddered violently, then slumped against his door, bright arterial blood spurting over the window.
“Are any of you three handy with a rifle?”
The man in the middle seat answered. “I am.”
“Good,” said Weiss. “It’s Taylor, right? You’ve just been promoted.”
The Toyota continued to gain speed.
“Climb through and get rid of this cretin.”
Taylor did as Weiss requested, opening the door and shoving Thomas’s body out into the night.
70
The scars on Clay’s face crinkled as he smiled at the woman with the shotgun. He shouted so she could hear him. “Kelly Jones from Wyoming, you’ve just made it onto my Christmas card list. Shootin’ like that will win you a coconut.”
“I’m not sure if I got any of them inside, but I’m pretty sure I ventilated their ride for them.”
�
��You hang on to the Remington and do the same if anything else unexpected shows up on our tail,” said Clay. “Here’s a few spare shells to keep you going. That’s the last of them, so pick your shots.”
“A packing crate full of these would make me feel much better,” said Kelly.
As she stretched her arm into the cab for the extra cartridges, Clay could not help but notice the deep rope burns on her wrist. “A-men to that. Be sure to make each one count.” He glanced at Celine. “You hangin’ in there?”
Celine responded with a weak smile then looked over into the back of the vehicle. She reached in between the two seats. When she retracted her hand, it was stained crimson. “Marco?”
Clay could offer no words of false comfort. He knew the chances of Marco Kenner surviving his grievous wound lessened every minute that he was denied professional medical attention. The complications caused by leaking stomach acid and bile mixing with blood and other tissue were horrendous, if he lived.
Celine cupped her face in her hands. Her body took on a slow shudder.
A confusion of emotions rolled over him. The cold thrill of the fight was now tempered with a sense of grim responsibility for each of these young lives. Celine remained his prime focus, but the unfolding situation had grown into something else, something more complicated. “We have to keep going. I can’t do much more for him. I’m sorry.”
Two bright spots of light appeared again in the rear-view mirror. With a little more clearance space on either side of the vehicle, Clay continued to test the capability of the pickup. The rumbling vibration changed to a more even tone as the wheels found asphalt. The pursuing lights seemed to enlarge. He knew they were drawing closer. “Kelly!”
“I see them, cowboy.”
Clay gave a tight-lipped smile as Kelly wedged herself low against the tailgate. “I’d rather be back there shootin’ with you.”
“I’m sorry, Clay. We should never have come down here.”
“None of this is your fault, Celine.” The glow of the lights seemed to fill the mirror. “It’s just that when I’m on my own or with Danny, I don’t worry so much when the bullets start flying, but this is a different ball game altogether.”
“Did you never worry when you were in the army?”
“Hey, nobody wants to get shot, but you go in knowing that’s the hazard of the job.”
“But out here you’ve got me and a school-bus-worth of extra bodies to worry about.”
“Different time, different hazards,” said Clay, again glancing in the mirror. The pursuing vehicle was almost upon them, maybe only five or six car lengths behind. Kelly was still hunkered low. These kids continued to surprise him. She knew enough to pick her shots. Only they weren’t kids. He had to stop thinking of them in that way. Most seemed to be between eighteen and twenty-five. At their age, Clay had been a serving soldier in the Rangers. That had been his choice. It had been a hard life but a good choice. These were not Rangers, however, these were college kids, caught in a nightmare, traumatised by the horrors they had endured in the compound. Years of therapy probably lay ahead for many of them, yet that wasn’t Clay’s worry. Ranger training had taught crisis priority, to deal with clear and present danger first. The approaching vehicle full of cartel shooters was as dangerous as could be imagined.
Kelly, still using the tailgate for cover, unloaded on the vehicle. Boom-boom-boom! Three shots in rapid succession. Clay watched as the vehicle dropped back momentarily then swung to one side, so it followed at his offside tail. Ahead, Danny and Ghost slowed as they took a full left turn. They were back on the main road.
71
You never could drive worth a damn, chile.
“We’re still putting miles on the clock,” said Ghost.
A face streaked with dirt turned from the passenger seat. “Huh?”
Ghost offered no explanation. The woman looked stricken already, all furrowed brow and bunched fists. She doubted that explaining that she was talking to the disembodied voice of her dead mother would offer any comfort.
The knife wound in her stomach burned with a strange numbness. The front of her black jumpsuit was wet and sticky, but the patch felt no larger than the palm of her hand. Other pains spread through her body as if seeking solidarity. The muscle in the back of her shoulder, the arch of her spine and her aching jaw all vied for attention.
Beginning to look like a dime-store raggy doll there, chile.
Ghost gave a sideways look at the woman in the passenger seat. She seemed transfixed by the tail lights of Danny’s truck. Two of the three in the back seats exchanged furtive whispers. The young man, his eyes dark with bruises, stared out into the darkness of the night. Ghost recognised the vacant expression. The Devil’s breath had been well named. She could only guess at the deeper and longer-lasting damage that the drug might have wreaked in their minds, her own included. Would any of the rescued passengers ever be fully normal again? Would they ever be able to sleep sound, safe and secure without worry again? Each had endured unspeakable horrors in the compound, no one had been exempt.
Her hands clenched the steering wheel as her thoughts turned to Ezeret. That sly, manipulative bastard had escaped her vengeance again.
Mayhap those Gunn brothers will do your job for you and put him in a hole in the ground, chile.
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Ghost. “I didn’t have time to compare scorecards.”
“What?”
Ghost paid her passenger no heed. The time for talking would come later. She shifted in her seat, the shard of titanium in her cargo pocket digging into her thigh. Lauren, sweet Lauren.
She allowed no more than three car lengths between Danny’s pickup and her sedan. Stay close, stay sharp. Lights had buzzed close by, Danny seemingly playing chicken with an oncoming vehicle. It had passed in a blur. But something was happening behind them. Clay’s truck swerved over to one side then zigzagged back again. A frantic drumroll and a tongue of flame filled her with dread.
The sedan rattled despite the relative smoothness of the road. Sparks of light flashed through the interior, the smell of burnt flesh strong in her nose. Ghost hunched low in her seat as more bullets cut through the sedan’s outer skin. The steering wheel vibrated in her grip.
Her lips curled back over her teeth as the feeling of dread flowed into a burning rage. Ghost’s voice was raw as the words exploded from her. “No! You can’t have them. These are my sisters, my family. You—can’t—have—them!”
Above the starkness of the headlights of the newcomers’ car, Ghost could see a dark, man-shaped shadow. A ribbon of flame was ejected from the shadow and she knew what she was looking at: the upper body of the shooter perched on the roof of the vehicle. Clay’s pickup was closer to the gunmen but had moved out of the direct line of fire, weaving out to one side. The sedan bucked again. Whatever the shooter was armed with was a lot more powerful than her pistol.
The road was now standard two-lane blacktop, with a flattened dirt verge on either side. No side roads. Nowhere to run. A series of neat holes stitched their way through the roof inches above her head.
Do it, chile, do it!
Ghost gave her screaming passengers only a moment of warning before stamping down as hard as she could on the brakes. The damaged car shrieked in protest as the wheels locked. Ghost clenched her teeth tight as Clay’s pickup passed by in a flash of light, but there was no impact. The pursuit vehicle slammed on its brakes, grey smoke billowing as rubber burned on the asphalt. A body catapulted from the roof of the vehicle, passing clean over the sedan. The shooter hit the road head first, arms outstretched. He cartwheeled again, high into the air, and on his second landing stayed down.
The pursuing vehicle, rubber burning as it braked, crashed into the rear corner of Ghost’s sedan with bone-rattling force. The smaller car whipped in a tight arc, the bodies inside cast against the doors without mercy. Ghost heard a new sound and was startled to realise it was her own scream. The positions had now been reversed. The batter
ed sedan now sat at an angle behind the shooter’s vehicle. Shit and Shinola, it was big!
Ghost had heard of the homemade “narco tanks” but had until now never seen one. The tank was a large truck, much bigger than a standard pickup. Large steel plates with protruding bolts had been welded to the outside, lending the vehicle a savage look: a prehistoric beast fashioned from steel. It looked heavy enough to flatten the sedan into sheet metal. The engine of the narco tank belched dark fumes as it revved several times. The sedan remained silent as she turned the key in the ignition.
A desperate rhythm hammered in her chest as another silhouette appeared on the roof of the tank. The weapon that he held was as fearsome as the vehicle he was perched in. Some kind of machine gun, wide and black. Ghost didn’t need to be a military expert to know that box was filled with death. Close your eyes, chile. You’re done.
The man opened fire and Ghost’s world turned to a blood-filled nightmare.
72
To stop the pickup was to die. The only chance Clay had was to lose the pursuing vehicles. That was much easier said than done; this was cartel land, the Devil’s backyard. To make matters worse, it looked like Los Espadas’ backup team was driving an armoured car. Kelly had unloaded the shotgun into it with little effect. Clay manoeuvred the pickup side to side, knowing a moving target was harder to hit. The gunman had appeared from the roof of the armoured truck brandishing something the size of a SAW, a light machine gun. The heavy and distinctive metallic chatter of the gun filled the air.
Clay swung the pickup as far to the right as the road would allow, then, with a curse, far over to the left. The gunman fired upon the sedan. Tiny sparks flew from the car as the bullets ripped through the roof. The sedan juddered as Ghost braked. Clay shot past the sedan like a rocket. Something dark flew through the night air, landing in a heap in the road. Seconds later, another shooter appeared at the top of the armoured truck. The gun rattled again.
