The Lost Ones

by Ace Atkins

  Porter moved fast ahead and yanked rough on Quinn’s wrist, pulling him forward like he was a dog, taking him under the sloping roof, rain pinging hard above them. Quinn and Caddy were soaked to the bone, both shivering. Porter shook the rain off his slicker and hat. He put his hat back on and looked around the barn, finding an old metal bucket to sit on and stare outside.

  There was thunder and stillness.

  “No, sir,” Porter said. “I hadn’t quite figured out what to do.”

  Quinn gave him a hard glance. Porter kept staring at his sister. Quinn readjusted himself between his legs.

  “You need to peepee, little boy?” he asked. “Come on. I ain’t holding it for you.”

  He loosened the ropes with one hand, Quinn’s wrists red and chafed. His fingers had turned a purplish blue. Porter pointed the end of the shotgun all loose and wild at Quinn, waiting for him to take a leak in the rain, water coming down cold off the cedar and down his neck and back.

  When he finished, Porter spit again and bound a single wrist and yanked him toward the cedar, tossing the end of the rope around the trunk and binding Quinn there in the rain. Quinn muttered to himself, calling Porter a fat piece of shit.

  Porter didn’t even smack him. He sauntered on up the hill and back into the ramshackle, forgotten barn. The rain tap-tap-tapped on the metal roof and stopped for a long, slow moment, thunder growling far out to the west. A deep electric silence far up into the waiting barn.

  Caddy screamed.

  Porter yelled. “Just lay down. Lay down, damn you.”

  Quinn had lost feeling in his wrists and fingers and tugged hard as he tried to loosen himself. The minutes stretched out. He dropped to the ground and placed his feet against the trunk and pushed and wriggled and felt the rope burning and tearing into his skin until he bled. The rope was wet and slick, and with a final kick and tug, one hand broke free, and the other, both dead and asleep and clumsy as he made his way to the yawning mouth of the barn and stepped into the darkness. There was more thunder out in the gentle gray light, and the metal humming with it all.

  Porter had hung his rain slicker all neat and civilized on a nail by the door. His hat and 12-gauge rested on a ledge with an old Coleman lantern.

  “Lay down, damn you,” Porter said from high up in the loft. A homemade ladder built of two-by-fours lifted on up into the crooked ceiling. Quinn rubbed the blood back into his clumsy hands as he reached for the shotgun. Caddy screamed at a higher pitch like bubbles popping at the surface of a pond.

  “YOU AWAKE?” Dinah Brand asked from beside Quinn in the old iron bed. It was late night, a soft storm passing outside, only an old quilt his Aunt Halley had made across their naked bodies. As Dinah turned in shadow, hand propping her head, the curve of her hips and smallish breasts were clear in a sliver of light from the hall.

  “It’s raining,” he said, on his back, staring at the ceiling.

  “You need to let your dog in?” she asked, whispering.

  “He’s got a door in the back.”

  “Were you dreaming?”

  “I haven’t slept.”

  “Sounded like you were dreaming.”

  “No,” Quinn said. “I’m fine.”

  “You worried about what we’re doing?” Dinah asked, staring down at him. Her voice had a husky edge to it. “Because I’m not. This is my personal business on my personal time.”

  “I’m not worried. Couldn’t sleep is all.”

  Dinah backed in closer to Quinn’s body. Quinn’s arm wrapped around her. The rain and storm pinged off the edge of the roof as it had in his memory. Her skin was warm to the touch, and her hair smelled of sweet shampoo. His feet stuck out the bottom of the quilt. “You want some water?”

  “Please.”

  Quinn scooted out as Dinah righted herself, reaching for one of Quinn’s old flannel work shirts, slipping inside and buttoning. In bare feet, she followed him to the kitchen, a single light on over the stove as he filled a canning jar from the tap.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  Quinn handed her some water. Lightning flashed from far off, the thunder low and grumbling out across the pastures. He shook his head.

  “Just some family drama,” Quinn said. “You really want to meet my family?”

  “I really do.”

  “You might think less of me.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “My mother is a good woman,” Quinn said. “And my sister. Well, she walks a pretty rough road. It’s not her fault.”

  Dinah Brand looked natural in Quinn’s old shirt, red hair loose and a bit wild, bare feet twitching on the floor by the kitchen table. Her eyes almost translucent in the light, long white shapely legs with really nice knees.

  “You got great legs,” Quinn said.

  Dinah stretched on her right leg and turned it this way and that. She smiled. “I do. Don’t I?”

  Quinn nodded. Hondo padded on in from outside and shook his wet coat. He’d been asleep in the mudroom, and he stretched out long and yawned. Quinn tossed him a biscuit from a tin on the counter.

  “Hungry?”

  Dinah shook her head.

  “Thirsty?”

  She shook her head.

  “Want to go back to bed?”

  Dinah nodded.

  She clutched the edge of his shirt in her hands and tiptoed across the room to him, hands across his neck and a warm, welcoming slow kiss. He reached around her waist and pulled her up into him, letting his hand drop down below her narrow waist.

  He had begun to back her down the hall, working on the old shirt’s buttons, when the phone rang.

  Quinn said, “Son of a bitch.”

  It had to be way past midnight. But late-night calls were common. Lillie and the other deputies checked in at all hours. Quinn told them he’d be mad if they didn’t let him know about something important.

  “Sheriff?”

  Quinn did not recognize the man’s voice.

  “Who’s this?”

  Dinah tucked her head on Quinn’s shoulder. He felt the soft curve of her back under the flannel shirt with his free hand. She stared up at him.

  “I know where those kids are at,” the man said.

  Quinn waited. His hand stopped.

  “Don’t worry about tracing this call,” the man said. “I’m at a pay phone, and don’t have nothing to do with this mess. But that fat woman and the Mex are about to boogie on down the road. If you’re quick, you can still catch them up in New Albany.”

  “Where?” Quinn asked.

  “You need a pen or can you listen to me straight?”

  32

  “I AM IMPRESSED, AGENT BRAND,” LILLIE SAID, WINDOW CRACKED, CIGARETTE in hand, as the night highway flew past. “You sure made good time from Oxford. I mean, it was what? Maybe thirty minutes from the time the sheriff got the call? Damn, you federal people are sharp. The best. I’m telling you what.”

  Dinah didn’t answer, only glanced back at Quinn as they headed up 45 North in Lillie’s Jeep and then cut west on 78 into Union County. Lillie drove with Dinah in the passenger seat; Quinn sat in back, exchanging phone calls with the sheriff in Union County, making plans to get on the farm where he’d been told the children were stashed. He said he’d meet Quinn with a couple deputies but couldn’t guarantee a warrant. They could try for a welfare check only and then see how to proceed. By the time they hit the county road where they were supposed to find Janet and Ramón, it was 0500 and dark as hell.

  Quinn liked it that way, always preferring night.

  “What else did the man say?” Lillie asked.

  “Told me about this property, said to hurry, and then hung up.”

  “You recognize the voice?” she asked.

  “If I did, wouldn’t I have told you?”

  “A little testy this morning, Sheriff,” Lillie said. “You hit the wrong side of the bed?”

  Lillie had been quiet most of the ride up, trying a few remarks out in the quiet car, k
nowing full well that Dinah had just rolled out of bed with Quinn. She hadn’t wiped the smirk off her face since they’d arrived at the sheriff’s office about three a.m., Lillie smiling at both of them, lighting up a smoke, taking them both in, studying them with much interest.

  “What’s your move, Sheriff?” Dinah asked between making phone calls to Memphis and Oxford, touching base with the folks she worked with in the ATF.

  “The way I’d plan this is different than the way we have to do it,” Quinn said.

  “Quinn would like to call in an air strike,” Lillie said. “Flatten the shit out of everything and comb through the wreckage.”

  “Nope,” Quinn said. “I found some high ground on the map I downloaded. I’d find a nice spot to set up my rifle and start picking off anyone over three feet tall.”

  “See what I mean?” Lillie said.

  “Didn’t say I would do it,” Quinn said. “I’m just saying that’s the most efficient. You pick off a couple, and more will come out to see what’s going on. That’s how you clear an area.”

  Lillie turned off the exit. “I’ve been working on Quinn about certain laws we have in Mississippi. We’ve just gotten beyond shoot-to-kill being frowned upon.”

  Quinn ignored her, getting better and better at that, and asked Dinah what she thought.

  “If these are the folks I’m looking for, I wouldn’t knock on the door and say hello. Maybe get as close as we can and try and force a reaction. How far from the road are the barn and trailers?”

  “About a mile,” Quinn said.

  “Too far for an air strike?” Lillie asked.

  “Hell, I wouldn’t call in an air strike,” Quinn said. “Those kids might be there.”

  “What if you knew it was only Janet and Ramón and some of their compadres?”

  Quinn was silent.

  “See what I mean?” Lillie asked.

  THEY GOT A HALF MILE down the farm road before the first bullet spiderwebbed the passenger window, maybe three inches from Dinah Brand’s head. All three of them ducked, Quinn yelling for Lillie to cut off the lights. The Union County sheriff and deputy, braking behind them, did the same. Quinn was out of the Jeep and taking cover behind the vehicle almost at the same time. He fired five times with his Beretta auto and slipped the Remington pump over his shoulder with a homemade sling. There were no lights on the road, only the faintest of illumination well beyond a bend in the open, rolling field. A single white light shone near the mouth of a red barn.

  Two more shots sounded, and Quinn spotted the quick flashes from a ravine at forty meters. He returned fire six times before he met Lillie and Dinah on the driver’s side of the Jeep. He kept a fresh magazine in his pocket and reloaded.

  “Two guns,” Quinn said. “There’s a ditch to the north.”

  He looked to the south of the road, gentle hills without trees, only cows, a bright white frost coating the brown grass, terrible cover for all. The Union County Sheriff’s car, a maroon Dodge Charger, pulled up within a couple meters of where they stood. The sheriff, a portly man in his seventies named Drake, and a young deputy, a muscle-bound black man in his thirties, joined them behind the cars. Drake removed his ball cap and looked to Quinn. “That warrant shit was a waste of time. Wadn’t it? Holy Christ. These crazy sonsabitches mean business. I got eight units headed this way.”

  Four more shots came from the ravine, shattering glass in the Jeep and thudding against the doors of the Charger. “God damn,” Drake said. “Just had this car painted.”

  All five of them squatted down behind the cars. Quinn introduced the sheriff to Dinah, the agent he’d told him about who was tracking guns out of Memphis. Dinah had her red hair tied up in a bun and wore a thick black ski coat.

  “You really think they’d keep those kids in there?” Drake said. “I mean, shit. We gonna have to wait it out now.”

  “I got tipped there are three trailers down that road,” Quinn said. “Up and over that hill.”

  “That makes it a bitch to see,” Drake said. “We got shooters out on this road saying hello, and God knows what’s waiting for us.”

  “All part of the fun,” Lillie said with a grin.

  “Sheriff, this is my chief deputy, Lillie Virgil,” Quinn said.

  Lillie nodded.

  “I used to ride horses out here when I was a kid,” the sheriff said. “I don’t even know who owns it anymore. Tax record says it’s in bankruptcy. Don’t recall the trailers.”

  “When we get some more folks out here,” Quinn said, “I’d like to head back to the main road and backtrack. I’d prefer to introduce myself from a different direction.”

  “What do you think we got in there?” Drake asked Dinah.

  “Maybe a shitload of automatic weapons headed back to Mexico,” she said. “They could be armed to the teeth with assault rifles. Grenade launchers.”

  “Real cute,” Sheriff Drake said. “I was supposed to speak to the Ruritans this morning at eight. I was gonna give the opening prayer, and brag on our low crime rate.”

  “You want us to pray now?” Lillie asked.

  “Might help,” Drake said, turning to Quinn. “You really want to double back on them?”

  Quinn nodded. Drake smiled at him as if recognizing an old pal.

  “I knew your uncle real well,” Drake said. “Me and him had been sheriff about long as anyone in this state. He sure was a good ole fella. You favor him.”

  Sirens sounded off down in the distance, and the flashers came up hard and fast from the main road, bounding over the gravel. The shooters were silent down in the ravine. Quinn watched for their shadows to return, heading back to the barn or out into the woods, where he planned to follow into the cleared land.

  “Don’t matter to me if you go on,” Drake said. “You want a couple deputies go with you?”

  Quinn nodded, Drake saying they’d meet him on the main road. Dinah and Lillie followed. Dinah carried a Sig Sauer P226 with a laser sight. A gun was usually the second thing he noticed about a woman. Lillie walked confident with a Mossberg pump and standard-issue Glock. Lillie was tall and lithe, good body, but with a tough walk. Dinah walked more girlish in her tall boots, and with more caution on the loose rocks and dirt.

  Back at the county road, Quinn used his Leatherman tool to cut into the barbed wire and track alongside the ravine in some low-growing pines that had been planted in the last ten years or so. The pine needles were soft and quiet, muffling their steps as the group followed him. Quinn saw the sheriff’s cruisers and Lillie’s shot-up Jeep from the edge of the clearing. The ravine sat about twenty meters from the edge of the pine. Quinn spotted two shadows, holding hunting rifles at their sides. The men were speaking Spanish and watching as two more patrol cars joined the mess in the center of the dirt road.

  Quinn could take both men out from where he stood and clear the path to the barn and the next objective.

  “Don’t think about it,” Lillie said behind him.

  “These boys are fucked and they know it,” Quinn said. “Folks are scariest when they got nothing to lose.”

  Quinn quietly radioed to Sheriff Drake to spotlight the ravine. Two patrol cars hit the lights on the wide-open space, and the two men fired again at the deputies in the clearing. Quinn and Lillie fired at the same time into the ravine, dropping both men where they stood. A stillness fell over the early morning. Lillie let out a lot of air and dropped her weapon, refusing to look at Quinn. She walked across the open ground to the ravine, staring down at the dead men.

  Quinn grabbed her arm and pulled her from the light, taking her back into the pines with him. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he asked.

  “You know what else is up that road?” Lillie asked.

  “Don’t ever walk out into the open like that,” Quinn said.

  His voice had some edge about it, and although he knew Lillie didn’t like it, she said, “OK.” Dinah caught his eye, Sig Sauer loose in her hand, and followed Lillie without a word back
toward the main road and the gathering of deputies. Union County had more than half of their department out on the farm road, spinning red-and-blue lights, radios squawking. The early morning had a bright chill to it, a frost spreading up on the rolling hills where the cows stood and made grumbling sounds.

  Quinn didn’t ask but followed the path along the pines to the east and the lone barn, where he expected to find more trailers and more guns and maybe the kids. You always wanted to get a feel for the enemy before they saw you, know their size, their weaponry, their immediate location. You also never wanted to take a chance you didn’t have to. If the local sheriff agreed to march on in and start kicking in doors, fine by Quinn, but he wanted to know every damn detail.

  Quinn was joking when he said it, but he wouldn’t mind having his old M24 sniper rifle in hand with a nice night vision scope. For most of his life, he worked on a simple premise: eradicate the enemy with as much speed as possible. He could pick off any opposition, man-for-man, within inches of those children, making sure no harm came to him or the kids. But there were laws and courts for even the most evil bastards in this nation, and he knew not to fire unless fired upon.

  Those two men in the ditch back toward the road had made their choice. Quinn tried not to dwell on that stuff.

  The thick pine plantings ended abruptly a half mile down, running next to the large barn. As promised by the tipster, three trailers sat up on blocks with four 4×4 trucks parked outside. A light shone down from a utility pole, and strobed light from a television flashed from inside the middle trailer. Two of the trucks were older-model Chevys with a lot of aftermarket supplies, KC lights, and glasspack mufflers. The third was a brown-and-tan GMC with a heavy chrome roll bar on top.