Hawke's War

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  Only yards away, Chloe gave up on pulling Vince’s body to cover. She sat against the sheltering rise. Blood soaked the front of her shirt from her shoulder wound, 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!” He crawled ten feet to the lowest part of the bank’s taper.

  Another round hit Vince in the chest. Echoes bounced from one hard ridge to the next. His shirt fluttered from the impact, but he was already beyond hurting or responding. Chloe shrieked and covered her face with both hands. “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! He’s trying to draw you out! Harmony, don’t move, baby!”

  “Why is he 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. It was unbelievable that four people on a hike in a U.S. national park were the targets of a madman with a rifle.

  The numbness of the shot was already wearing off. His arm hung limp and useless. He’d never felt such intense pain before and was swimmy-headed. Afraid he’d pass out from either the pain or shock, he gritted 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 different cluster of honey mesquite. Movement from above caught his eye and he saw the upper half of a man’s body shift and twist in her direction.

  “There you are.” Drawing on hours on the shooting range back home in Dallas, he aimed the 9mm and adjusted for the elevation, hoping that the new technology in Parabellum ammo was true to the manufacturer’s hype. He’d never shot uphill before, and the shooter looked to be at least a hundred yards away, but the trigonometry in his head worked out the angle for the trajectory he’d read about. He cranked off six fast shots from the 15-round magazine, thinking it was odd that his mind would register the empty brass tinkle off the rocks in such an intense situation.

  The man on the ridge above threw his hands into the air and a rifle flipped end over end. “Got you, you son-of-a bitch!” Blue started to rise, but his response drew a stunning fusillade from above. The world erupted in mind-numbing noise as more than one fully automatic weapon hosed the area below the ridge.

  The tiny 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 the scant branches and lacy leaves to find flesh. His legs folded and he went down hard.

  * * *

  Harmony screamed over the rolling man-made thunder and reversed her direction, belly-crawling toward her husband.

  Startled by the sudden continuous gunfire, Chloe spun toward Blue’s body and became the next target when she involuntarily straightened into view. The rifle spoke again and 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. Knowing what would happen if she presented any part of her body above the rise, she kept her head low, grabbed Blue’s shoulder, and rolled him out of sight from the rifle above.

  Her husband was already gone. A single tear ran from the corner of his eye. The sight of that clear drop of liquid defined the moment, and Harmony cradled her husband’s body. Trembling with fear and horror, she wept with deep, wracking sobs.

  The high desert grew silent. The buzzard narrowed its spiral and circled overhead, waiting.

  * * *

  The day’s heat rose as the sun reached its peak in the blue-white sky. Dark thunderheads to the west built to 50,000 feet, but refused to bring relief to the only survivor of the ambush. Flies buzzed the corpses and clotted pools of blood. Beyond those insects, there was no movement other than a kettle of 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.

  They call them a kettle when they’re flying, she thought, her shocked mind working to overcome the horror of what had happened. They’re a wake when they’re feeding.

  She covered her mouth and gagged at the thought of what would soon happen if help didn’t come.

  Dusk arrived, bringing relief from the blazing springtime sun that slipped first behind a collapsing thunderstorm, then reappeared momentarily before settling below the bluish mountains in the distance.

  Stiff and dehydrated, she released her husband’s body and risked a quick peek at the ridge above. It was as empty as the rest of the park around her. When there was no more gunfire, she gained even more confidence and knew what she had to do. 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 moment, she picked up his Glock that was familiar from shooting at the local outdoor range not far from their house.

  A house that’ll be lonely and still from now on.

  She gasped at the thought and gagged, but nothing came up but bile.

  With an effort, Harmony gritted her teeth until the feelings passed. She didn’t need distractions right then. She needed to escape, to bring help, and tell the authorities what had happened.

  Still cautious, she belly-crawled along the edge of the low rise. It was slow, painful work as rocks gouged every part of her body that scraped along the trail. Her elbows, thighs, and knees took the brunt of the abuse and were soon as raw as hamburger. After a hundred yards, her shirt and shorts were cut and torn in a dozen places, her waistband full of sand and pebbles. She paused to dig the rock samples from her pockets and drop them on the trail.

  Her crawl resumed, and when her bare legs couldn’t take any more, she decided she’d had enough. Hoping she was finally out of range, Harmony rose and ran in a crouch for another hundred yards without drawing gunfire. There was nothing but a brilliant orange glow over a ragged line of mountains behind her as Harmony straightened, slipped the second pack strap over her other shoulder. Grasping the Glock in a white-knuckled death grip, the only survivor of the attack jogged through the dusk to get help.

  * * *

  Backlit from her angle against the orange horizon and pinkish clouds, the sniper wearing a shemagh head scarf rose and watched the blond woman’s escape. Acquiring her dim image through the scope, he grunted and asked Allah for the strength not to shoot the fleeing target.

  Though the gathering darkness and her bobbing figure would have made it a challenge, he was confident 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.

  My horse snorted and I rubbed his nose. Red liked it enough that when I quit, the big knothead tucked his nose under my arm like a puppy looking for more attention, making me stagger sideways.

  “Careful, ya big moose.”

  Horseback sure wasn’t the way I wanted to travel, but the rugged backcountry in the Big Bend region of Texas sometimes required that we use the tried-and-true methods that worked for generations. It allowed me to move faster and
sure beat walking.

  The hikers’ bodies had been airlifted by helicopters and the responding law-enforcement agencies were long gone. The .308 Win, and 5.56 casings from what they were calling “the sniper’s nest,” and the 9mm hulls from Blue’s Glock were in Washington, along with the plaster casts of footprints and tire tracks from the ridge. There was nothing left but a buzzard hanging on the thermals above.

  Since it was a national park, the FBI was still in charge of the case. But I wanted some time alone to study on what might have happened without the input from those guys, the park rangers, border patrol, or the highway patrol. I was friends with those folks who were murdered not far from where I stood.

  There are sixteen Texas Rangers in Company E, my company. I told the boys to come on out if they wanted, but they knew I had a personal stake in what happened and said they’d be there if I needed ’em.

  My wife Kelly and I were really close to the hikers. In fact, we’d planned to be part of the hike at the outset. I got a call at the last minute and we had to bow out. That thought got hold of me for a minute and I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck, wondering if the outcome would have been different had we been with them.

  Kelly and Chloe had been good friends since they were third graders in our hometown of Ballard, nearly ninety miles to the northwest. Blue and I were hunting buddies. Vince was a good enough guy, but we only saw each other when he was home from the service, and I hadn’t had the opportunity to spend time with the Hutchinses after he started selling real estate.

  The girls spent the last month posting photos and comments about the upcoming trip on their Facebook pages, something I stayed as far away from as possible. I never had any use for social media, and didn’t intend to start.

  Because of our close personal connections to the victims, I stayed 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.

  That’s how I work best. And an even better reason was my new assignment. Major Chase Parker changed my position in the Texas Rangers with a brand-spankin’-new title after what had become known as the Ballard Incident a few months earlier when terrorists took over our courthouse.

  My recent Shadow Response designation was a fresh and as-yet-untried concept in Rangering, one that adapted modern investigative techniques to the tough, in-your-face tactics 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 as they handled those difficult cases that defied common descriptions, 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.

  And lordy were the times changing.

  I knew why the victims wanted to hike that spring day. The air was fresh and clean. The hardpan was bursting 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 bristled with piñon mixed with junipers, depending on the elevation, and spread in all directions. Bare ridges in the distance were devoid of timber, but farther down, enough green vegetation grew in a fringe that reminded me of older men losing their hair. The canyons below were already starting to shadow, worming away dark and mysterious with the promise of pitch-black nights if the clouds continued to build.

  I tilted the straw O’Farrell’s hat up on my forehead and turned away from the crime scene below to scan the area. Black clouds towered above the craggy ridge in the distance, promising another afternoon of pop-up traveling thunderstorms that arced torrents of rain onto the hard ground until they cried themselves out.

  The sudden out-of-place echo of automatic weapons bouncing off the mountains sparked a jolt of dread. The hair on the back of my neck prickled again, and I shivered as if the air had suddenly gone frigid. I angled my head, using my “good” ear to find the source of the sound. Like many hunters and gun enthusiasts, I suffered from “Hunter’s Notch,” a slight hearing loss on the side opposite the shooter’s gun hand.

  The recent firefight I’d been involved in only months earlier hadn’t done my ears any favors, either, and now I had tinnitus to deal with. The steady ringing didn’t block sound, but it remained a constant annoyance and despite what my doctor said, it sometimes made hearing difficult.

  The best I could tell, the shots came from far away toward the west, back where I left the truck and trailer parked on a two-track trail ending in a cul-de-sac. I checked the phone in my back pocket, and as usual, there was no signal so far back in the wild territory. I wondered why I ever toted the damned thing around in the first place.

  Red pricked his ears toward the west. I trusted his hearing more than mine. “That’s what I thought, too.”

  He snorted what sounded like an agreement. I jammed the useless phone back into my pocket, stuck a boot in the stirrup, and swung into the saddle. Red knew where we needed to go and took off toward the pops like I’d reined him that way. I kicked him into a lope and settled back in the saddle as his rhythmic clatter of shod hooves ate up the rocky ground.

  It was a long way back to the truck, and periodic shots sounded like a firefight. The echoes bounced off the broken land. I resisted the urge to kick Red into a full-out run. After a while, I realized it probably wasn’t a firefight, unless the guys were in a running gun battle.

  The truck and trailer were just as I left them, and I had Red loaded up in a matter of minutes. The shots came again, as I slapped the locking lever closed on the trailer door, sounding clearer than before. They weren’t any closer than when I first heard them though, despite the distance I’d traveled, but the horseshoe shape of the canyon gathered the sound like a parabolic mike.

  A single report sounded heavier, sharper. It was followed by lighter rounds that were drowned out by thunder from a curved curtain of gray rain in the distance. I slid behind the Dodge’s wheel and snatched the microphone off the dash.

  “Ethan, you there?”

  We were supposed to use the codes I learned as a highway patrol officer, but he and I had slipped out of that habit long ago. He came back, but the storms and box canyon caused so much havoc I couldn’t make out what he said.

  “Ethan, I’m at the Dripping Springs trailhead. I’m hearing automatic gunfire. This may be the same bunch we’re looking for here in the park.”

  His response was even worse. I pitched the mike on the seat in disgust and rolled the window down. I don’t know why I bothered to check, but there still weren’t any bars on my cell phone even after I held it up and angled it in every direction. I got to feeling like the Statue of Liberty and pitched the infernal device onto the seat beside the useless mike.

  It took a second to maneuver the trailer around so I could follow the dirt track full of dips, humps, and washouts. I had to go slow on that rough old road because it wouldn’t take much to bend an axle or blow a tire. Even when I intersected with the gravel road, there wasn’t any driving fast on the washboard ruts, where a couple of terrapins outran me at one point. Rocks rattled the undercarriage and I ground my teeth hoping that I wouldn’t punch a hole in the oil pan, or bruise a tire that’d go flat once I reached the highway.

  I wanted a blessed smooth highway to make some time, but where I was headed was even rougher. It probably wouldn’t do anything but raise my blood pressure, because on the way in that morning I’d gotten behind two tourists in a Jetta who were poking along at thirty miles an hour, the driver fiddling with his phone while his wife took pictures out the window. I didn’t need a repeat of that. They used those same phones to take a picture of my truck as I passed them and cut back into their lane close enough for Red’s trailer to scrape the bugs off their front bumper.


  I figured I’d be talking to the park police about that later. Big Bend has exclusive jurisdiction within the park. As a ranger once told me, “Big Bend law is the only law inside its borders.”

  I could understand that.

  I hoped Red was digging in to stay on his feet as the trailer bounced like a rubber ball behind my dually. The road straightened and another staccato burst of gunfire came stronger, even making me forget the rattling gravel for a second. I got to thinking it was a battle between drug dealers. There was no doubt that smugglers called “mules” hoofed their crap through the desert in primitive packs. Maybe two groups from different cartels found themselves on the same trail.

  Nah, I doubted mules would come through a national park, especially the northeast quadrant. It didn’t make any sense for them to hike for days only to intersect either Farm Road 2627, or worse, the well-traveled north and southbound U.S. Highway 385 that had a permanent border patrol check station up near Marathon.

  I really didn’t care if the cartels shot one another across the river, but this was my country, and I didn’t want their troubles to deal with in the park, or anywhere else for that matter.

  I shouldn’t have run toward the fight. Those guys were usually armed to the teeth, but there was one thing a Ranger didn’t do, and that was run away from anything. I remembered having that thought a few hours later and regretted it.

  I slowed to stick my ear out the window. Thunder rumbled and I sat there long enough to think it was all over until the shots came again and rose to a crescendo before trailing off. It sounded like two automatic weapons this time, followed by reports from the heavier rifle.

  I came upon a two-lane dirt track splitting off the road and paused. My imagination said some poor sucker was holed up and shooting it out with several someones. The recent murders and distinctive sounds of two rifle calibers made me think it might be a second ambush of innocent hikers. Maybe another armed civilian like Blue was fighting back. But run-of-the-mill visitors didn’t hike Big Bend with automatic weapons.