Ranger Brad Oliver, Company B, took time from his busy schedule to answer dozens of questions about modern Texas Rangers. Thank you, sir, for your service.
Jorge Rodriguez, muchas gracias for the mal de ojo and mano izquierda twist!
Thanks to Jeffery Deaver, C. J. Box, Craig Johnson, Sandra Brannan, Hank Philippi Ryan, T. Jefferson Parker, Jamie Freveletti, Marc Cameron, and especially my East Texas buddy Joe Lansdale for your support and advice. You guys are great!
Thanks to my family, daughter Chelsea Hamilton and her husband Jason, daughter Megan Bidelman for the conversations and suggestions about plot.
My outstanding agent Anne Hawkins believed in me the first time she read one of my earlier novels and never gave up as I struggled to reach this point in my career. Thanks, Miss Anne!
I sincerely appreciate Kensington Executive Editor Michaela Hamilton for bringing me into the Kensington family and taking a chance on this series. Your enthusiasm is infectious and boundless.
None of this would have happened if the love of my life, my wife Shana, didn’t believe in me. She even offered many years ago to support the family so I could quit my full-time job and write. Sure glad we didn’t do that, babe. As she always says, things happen in their own time and when they’re supposed to.
And to you readers who’ve followed my magazine and newspaper columns for years, or those who made the Red River series a success, and everyone new to my work, as we say in East Texas, much obliged!
Don’t miss the next exciting Sonny Hawke thriller
by Reavis Z. Wortham . . .
HAWKE’S WAR
Coming soon from Kensington Publishing Corp.
Keep reading to enjoy a sample excerpt . . .
Chapter 1
Thunderheads boiled over the peaks of the high-desert county in Big Bend National Park as four hikers stretched out along the winding Chisos Spring Trail. The experienced thirty-somethings filled the dry, cool morning air with comments and good-natured ribbing.
Trailing last as usual in the group’s fifteen-year relationship, Harmony Cartwright stopped to tighten the faded Texas state flag bandana she used to keep her blond hair under control. She adjusted the pack straps on her shoulders and seeing that she wasn’t falling too far behind, bent to pick up a 520-million-year-old-stone from the trail.
She scratched away a few grains of sand with a chewed, unpainted thumbnail and angled it toward the sun. After a short examination, Harmony blessed it with a quick smile and tucked the rock into the pocket of her cargo shorts, where it clacked against half a dozen similar stones. The others maintained a steady pace and she hurried to catch up with her husband, Blue. He trailed behind Chloe Hutchins, who followed her husband and the troop’s leader Vince.
The veteran Marine stopped to take a long, deep sip of water from his bright yellow Camelbak pack. Solid as the hardpan under their feet, Vince had been an adventurer all his life. He came home from the Marine Corps after two tours in Afghanistan and settled down to sell real estate, but the months of inactivity were almost too much. He’d been looking forward to leading their foursome into the remote Big Bend backcountry for a little adventure.
He swiveled to see Chloe hoofing along at the same pace that was as quick as her wit. “Hey, Spousal Unit, how about you walk point? That way I can watch your transmission twitch.”
Chloe gave Vince a wink and pinched the blue nylon shirt from her damp skin, pumping it like a bellows. Both wore wide-brimmed straw hats they’d purchased from the general store in Terlingua. “You wouldn’t be able to concentrate then, Sergeant Hutchins. You’d probably trip on something and break a leg, and none of us can carry you out of here, so mind your business.”
Blue caught up with the cheerful couple and tilted his Tilley hat upward. Built like a fireplug, he wore khaki shorts that revealed thick legs built for walking. “Y’all drinking enough water? This dry air’s suckin’ it out as fast as I can pour it in.”
Chloe rolled her eyes in fun. “Not as much as Big Guy here, but he’s working harder than I am.”
“I’m still fresh enough out of the Sandbox to think this is chilly.” Vince frowned in mock anger. “You’re right though, make sure you drink enough, Little Bit.”
“You should be sweating out all that beer y’all poured down last night.” Chloe poked him in his stomach with a finger.
He raised an eyebrow at the petite brown-haired woman who weighed less than a hundred pounds. “Twelve little ol’ cans ain’t that much, besides, I run a bigger machine, so I can handle it.”
Blue watched the clouds in the distance. “I wish I had one of those yellow-bellies right now.”
The quartet had formed in college, and Blue was used to the same good-natured sparring matches he’d been hearing in the years since. He stopped a few feet away. “Couldn’t you guys find somewhere in the shade to stop?”
Vince spread both hands at the yucca, prickly pear, honey mesquite, and creosote bushes scattered around them. “We’re a little short on trees around here.”
Blue scanned the sun-blasted high-desert landscape. The only sign of active life was a buzzard floating on the thermals high overhead. “Yeah, which is why we should be hiking in Colorado, where there’s trees, instead of this godforsaken desert.” He kicked a rock the size of a softball. “I get to pick next year, and it’s gonna be a hike in Hawaii . . . from the condo to the beach.”
Harmony caught up with them and tugged a bottle of water from her pack. “This is beautiful! I love all this space! Look.” She knelt to pick up a twisted piece of mesquite. “This will look good in a flower arrangement.” She brightened. “You know, I’m gonna use it to make one for Kelly Hawke. I tried to get them to come with us, but she said Sonny couldn’t get loose this week.”
“Honey, that’ll just add weight to your pack.” Blue watched the love of his life tuck the wood into a side pocket. “I’ve already seen you put three pounds of rocks in your pocket, and besides, it’s illegal to take anything from a national park.”
Harmony winked at Chloe. “They have plenty of rocks around here. I doubt they’ll miss a handful.”
Chloe tore open a packet of powdered electrolytes and was pouring the contents into her high-tech water bottle when Vince grunted, staggered, and folded in half. The sharp whip-crack report of a rifle shot reached them half a second later. Shocked, her hand moved and the remainder of the powder drifted on the slight breeze in an orange cloud.
Unable to grasp what was happening, Chloe sat the bottle on the ground and knelt beside her husband as he dropped to one knee. “Vince. Vince?”
The look in his eyes from under his hat brim was one of pain and confusion. “Oh hell. I’ve been shot.”
Blue’s head whipped toward the ridge high above. “Some idiot isn’t paying attention to where he’s shooting! Y’all, get . . .”
A second shot hit Vince above his left ear. The soft-nosed round expanded, blowing out the side of his head. His gore-splattered hat flipped off to land in a clump of skeletonweed. The man who’d survived two tours of duty in Afghanistan dropped without a sound onto the American soil he’d sworn to protect.
Recovering faster than he would have ever imagined, Blue slammed Harmony onto the dry trail in a full-body tackle. They hit the hard ground at the same instant a third round punched through Blue’s pack. Digging in with his hiking boots, he yanked his wife against the rising terrace of the rocky canyon wall. “Chloe! Get down!! Get over here with us.”
She grabbed the straps on Vince’s pack to drag him out of the line of fire coming from above. His dead weight and the heavy pack proved too much for her slight frame. She grunted, and jerked back on her heels. Vince’s body moved an inch.
The shooter’s next round plucked at the top of her shoulder. The material fluttered and blood wet the nylon. Chloe lost her grip and fell, catching herself with one hand.
Blue and Harmony squeezed against the shoulder-high rise between them and the shooter on the ridge. Keeping one
eye on Chloe’s struggle with her husband’s body, Blue slipped out of his backpack and dug into its contents. “Get under cover!”
Harmony crouched low, her shoulder against the bank of rocks, dirt, and scrub. “What are you doing?”
“That’s no accident. Somebody’s shooting at us on purpose!” Elbow deep in the pack’s contents, Blue fished around and pulled out a Glock 19. He would have left the heavy weapon home had they not planned on camping overnight in the backcountry.
Vince had a pistol tucked under his shirt, but neither expected a sniper attack in the middle of a national park. The conversation the night before centered on their concern over illegal aliens who often crossed into the U.S. from Mexico. Though most came looking for a better life, there were always a few with bad intentions.
The guy above seemed to be something completely different. Blue jerked the slide back to chamber a round.
* * *
Feeling a little better now that he could shoot back, Blue took several deep breaths to settle his nerves. Another chunk of lead slapped into a rock near Chloe and whirred away with a low, vibrating buzz.
Assuming the shooter was using a bolt-action rifle for accuracy, Blue figured it would take a few seconds for the sniper to rack the bolt and reacquire a new target. He peeked through a scrubby honey mesquite and squinted upward to locate the shooter. The ground exploded inches away, spraying the side of his face with sand and pebbles.
“Shit!” Skin hot and stinging, Blue fell hard onto the trail and gasped when he realized he was fully exposed. A round punched through his left shoulder and his arm went numb.
Grunting, he flipped onto his good shoulder and squirmed back to the sheltering rise, far enough away from Harmony to draw the fire and keep her safe. She screamed at the sight of blood welling from his wound. “Stay there!” He held out the hand with the Glock, muzzle toward the sky. “No! I said stay down!”
Mere yards away, Chloe gave up on pulling Vince out of the line of fire. She sat against the rocks. Blood soaked the front of her shirt, but the shocked woman’s soft voice floated over the bare ground with the inflection of a worried child. “Blue, Vince’s been shot!”
“So have I!” He groaned and used his feet to push away and gain more distance from the women. “Stay down!”
Another round hit Vince in the chest. His shirt fluttered from the impact, but he was already beyond hurting or responding. Chloe shrieked, palms against the sides of her head. “They shot him again!”
Blue reached the rise’s downward slope that tapered to a dangerously low level, ending his cover. He wondered why the sniper was shooting at the motionless body. Then the realization struck him. “Stay down, Chloe! They’re trying to draw you out! Harmony, don’t move, baby!”
“Why are they shooting at us?”
Blue ignored Chloe’s question that didn’t need an answer. It didn’t matter why they were under fire. Someone was trying to kill them, and that was the hard, simple truth.
The numbness of the shot was already wearing off. His arm hung limp and useless. He’d never felt such pain before and was swimmy-headed. Afraid he’d pass out, he ground his teeth to keep from puking and focused on a piece of quartz to get hold of himself.
Harmony stripped the pack from her shoulders and crawled toward Chloe at the same time Blue rose just enough to peek through a cluster of honey mesquite. Movement from above caught his eye and he saw the upper half of a man’s body.
“There you are.” Drawing on hours on the shooting range back home in Dallas, he aimed and adjusted for the elevation. He cranked off six fast shots from the fifteen-round magazine, thinking the sounds of the empty brass tinkling off the rocks was odd in such an intense situation.
The rounds fell short, most of them impacting rocky soil with ineffective explosions. Still, the man’s hands flew into the air and a rifle flipped end over end.
“Got you, you son-of-a-bitch!” Blue started to rise, but the shots drew a stunning fusillade from above. The world erupted in noise as fully automatic weapons hosed the area below the ridge.
The geysers of dirt and rock exploding around Blue looked like hailstones falling onto still water. Rounds shredded the leaves off his covering brush and punched through to find flesh. He went down hard.
* * *
Harmony screamed over the rolling man-made thunder. Reversing her direction, she belly-crawled as fast as possible toward her husband.
Startled by the sudden continuous gunfire, Chloe became the next target as she straightened into view. The rifle spoke again. Chloe’s hair flew from the round’s impact. Dead before she landed, she fell across Vince’s legs and stilled.
Harmony’s tan shirt and shorts blended well with the landscape. She kept her head low, grabbed a handful of Blue’s shirt, and rolled him out of sight from the rifle above.
He was already gone. A single tear ran from the corner of his eye. The sight of that clear drop of liquid defined the moment. Harmony cradled her husband’s body and wept.
The high desert grew silent. The buzzard tightened its spiral, waiting.
* * *
The day’s heat rose as the sun reached its peak. Thunderheads built in the west. Flies buzzed the corpses and clotted pools of blood. Beyond those insects, nothing moved but the half dozen buzzards circling in an airborne funeral procession.
No one came down to inspect the carnage. Throughout the day, Harmony had expected the shooters to come check on their victims. She worried that other hikers would stumble onto the massacre and become victims themselves, but she remained the only living human on the sun-blasted trail. The buzzards dropped lower, but wouldn’t approach with one of the figures still moving. Dusk arrived, bringing relief from the blazing springtime sun.
Stiff and dehydrated, she released her husband’s body and risked a quick peek at the empty ridge above. She kissed Blue’s cold forehead and ran a finger along the thin white line of the dried tear.
With a deep, shuddering sigh, she hooked two fingers through her backpack, and swung it over one shoulder. Hesitating for a second, she picked up the Glock. Still cautious, she belly-crawled along the edge of the low rise. Rocks gouged every part of her body that scraped along the trail.
Her elbows, thighs, and knees took the brunt of the abuse. After a hundred yards, her clothes were cut and torn in a half a dozen places. She stopped to dig the rock samples from her pockets. Her crawl resumed, and when her bare legs couldn’t take any more cuts and scrapes, she decided she’d had enough.
Hoping she was out of range, Harmony rose and ran in a crouch for another hundred yards without drawing gunfire. The sun winked out over a ragged line of mountains, and she straightened, slipped into the second pack strap, and with the pistol in hand, the only survivor of the attack jogged through the dusk to get help.
* * *
From above, the sniper wearing a shemagh head scarf watched through the scope. It would have been an easy shot to bring her down, but then there wouldn’t be anyone left alive to tell the story.
Chapter 2
The Devil was beatin’ his wife several days after the triple homicide in Big Bend National Park. Chilly raindrops fell despite the bright sun casting my shadow on the rocky ground.
The hikers’ bodies had been airlifted by helicopters and the responding law-enforcement agencies were long gone. The .308 Win, 5.56, and 9mm brass followed in route to Washington, along with the plaster casts of footprints and the tire tracks from three four-wheelers.
Since the murders occurred in a national park, the FBI was still in charge of the case. I wanted some time alone to study on what might have happened without the input from them, the park rangers, Border Patrol, or the highway patrol. There are sixteen Texas Rangers in Company E. I told the boys to come on out if they wanted, but they knew what that meant and said they’d be there if I needed ’em.
My wife Kelly and I had a personal stake in the murders. She and Chloe had been good friends since they were in the third grade. Blue
and I had gotten to know one another after my bride and I married and we became hunting buddies. Vince was a good enough guy, but we only saw each other when he was home from the service.
Because I knew the victims so well, I stayed back out of the way to let the other agencies complete their jobs. My boyhood friend Sheriff Ethan Armstrong and I visited with Harmony in the hospital to take her statement after the FBI guys finished, but what I wanted was to be on my own.
Major Chase Parker changed my position in the Texas Rangers with a new title after what had become known as the Ballard Incident a few months earlier. My recent Shadow Response Designation was a new concept in Rangering, one that adapted modern techniques with those used by the rough old men who’d protected the Lone Star State a hundred and fifty years ago.
I was no longer attached to one particular district, but now moved about the state, supporting the district Rangers, but operating at my own discretion along the shadowy edge of right and wrong. I knew it’d be a dangerous balancing act, but changing times dictated a new approach.
My horse snorted and I rubbed his nose. Red tolerated it like he always did. Horseback sure wasn’t the way I wanted to travel, but the rugged country in the Big Bend region of Texas sometimes required that we use the tried-and-true methods that worked for generations.
I knew why the victims wanted to hike that spring day, even though I’m color-blind. The landscape that disappeared into the distance was the same as what I’d ridden through to the ridge. The hardpan was alive with color in the unusually wet spring. Cactus flamed with yellow blooms. Other flowers that I’d grown up with but couldn’t identify to save my life carpeted the rocky country.
Jagged ridges at the higher elevations bristled with piñon and junipers, depending on the elevation, and spread in all directions. Bare ridges in the distance were devoid of timber and reminded me of older men losing their hair. The canyons below were already starting to shadow, worming dark and mysterious with the promise of pitch-black nights if the clouds continued to build.
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