The Lost Ones

by Ace Atkins

  He called in his position to Lillie and the Union County folks.

  The ground was beaten and uneven, with a thin layer of gravel spread out around the trailer encampment. The barn stood dark and quiet, only cows softly wailing by the feed troughs and buckets of molasses. Quinn kept watching the barn until a tall Hispanic man, maybe in his early twenties, wearing a black cowboy hat with a Concho band, walked out into the open holding an M4. Quinn was quite intimate with the model and made a call on his cell. Four more men joined him from the trailers, heading to the group of trucks, speaking Spanish, Quinn unable to hear what they were saying even if he had had great command of the language, which he didn’t.

  The sun would be up soon, and the deputies would be bottlenecked on that road.

  Quinn called into the sheriff to see if there was a back road or a fire trail the gunmen might use to try to escape arrest.

  No one seemed to know.

  All of the men carried assault rifles. The hills obscured the sheriff’s cars down the road. The men held the ground as Quinn watched the light of the television flashing inside one of the trailers, thinking back to another nameless village where his platoon dragged two American soldiers out from a Taliban safe house, the soldiers’ faces beaten to shit. The Rangers left no one standing within a hundred meters of the landing zone. Everything was done with quickness and speed, getting in and getting out, taking care of the enemy without discussion. Quinn tried to slow his breathing, clear his mind, not think so much.

  If he moved a little bit out of the pine concealment, Quinn could take out all four men before they could squeeze off a round. He raised his Beretta 9 and aimed at a man in the black cowboy hat. The man wore a big denim coat with a Sherpa collar and continued to speak on a cell phone. A cigarette hung from his mouth.

  Quinn took a breath.

  He heard the cry of a baby from one of the trailers. The men turned, and a young Hispanic woman walked out, a baby against her shoulder, patting its back and yelling to the men. A toddler in pink pajamas waddled to the open door and looked out into the crisp night.

  33

  “I WENT AHEAD AND CUT THE POWER TO THE SONSABITCHES,” SHERIFF Drake said. “I got six deputies in the woods surrounding the trailers, and the only road is blocked. If they try and shoot their way out, we’ll cut ’em down. I guess it’s their move now.”

  The sheriff spread a large topographical map on the hood of a patrol car parked on the side of the county road, a few cars slowing to view the commotion. Quinn and Lillie stood on either side of him, Lillie smoking a Marlboro Light, and Quinn drinking coffee someone had brought in a Styrofoam cup. The sheriff tapped a pen to the location, circled it, and looked to both of them for a reply. The wind brought a razor chill to the back of Quinn’s neck, nearly taking his ball cap with it. Dead leaves tumbled out in the street and spun in a little vortex.

  “If I wasn’t worried about those kids,” Quinn said, “I’d say let’s go ahead and hit them right now. But a five-mil round from one of those M4s will eat up those trailers. We don’t want to risk it.”

  “You get an ID on the fellas in the ditch?” Lillie asked and blew out a long trail of smoke in the cold.

  Drake shook his head. “Working on it,” he said. “But I’m betting they ain’t from Tishomingo.”

  Lillie’s face had grown tight and stern. She was never pleased with herself when she fired her weapon. She’d want to know every detail of the dead men until she could set in her head that she’d done right. It didn’t matter to Quinn. He had learned long ago to leave the dead where they fall. Most of the men he’d killed were nameless and faceless, and he preferred to keep it that way. He did his job and moved on. Keeping score only weighted you down.

  “Can I borrow one of your .308s?” Quinn asked. “And for Deputy Virgil, too. I’d like to scout those boys out one more time before sunrise.”

  Drake nodded. Quinn sipped his coffee.

  “If only this was easy as talking to an archangel,” Lillie said.

  Drake looked to her, confused, and folded up the map.

  “The other day Sheriff Colson talked down this old coot who said he was protecting his land for the Virgin Mary,” Lillie said, smoking down her cigarette and crushing it under her boot. “He’s pretty good at the negotiation. Too bad these fellas don’t speak English or whatever the hell they speak in Afghanistan.”

  “I got a couple deputies who took Spanish in high school,” Drake said. “Damn menu at Taco Bell confuses ’em.”

  Lillie leaned close to Quinn and whispered, “I meant you spoke crazy.”

  Drake walked over to the muscular black deputy Quinn had met first thing that morning and asked him to bring in a couple rifles.

  Quinn looked past the open gate and along the long dirt road. Frost coated the hills in a brittle white, cows huddled next to one another for warmth, taking hay from a round steel feeder. Quinn finished the coffee and stared down the row of cedar posts to the place he’d cut into the barbed wire a few hours ago. Once he had those men in the crosshairs, it’d be hard not to take the shot. With Lillie watching his six, he could take out all four of them and work with the locals on clearing those trailers.

  “Let me talk to them.”

  Quinn turned to see Dinah standing behind him. Strands of red hair crossed her pale and freckled face, making her seem almost kid-like.

  “They won’t shoot a woman,” she said. “Machismo culture and all that.”

  “I don’t like that plan,” Quinn said.

  “OK.” Dinah shrugged. “You got a better one?”

  “Sheriff says to wait ’em out,” Quinn said.

  “What do you say?” Dinah asked.

  “Not my county. Not my call.”

  Lillie stood between them, hands on her hips and fresh cigarette in her lips, maybe enjoying being a spectator.

  “And if the kids are in there with armed men, and that Torres family’s feeling the heat?” Dinah asked, leaving the question hanging out there. She looked up at the long dirt road cresting the hill and disappearing on the other side. She shook her head at the prospect.

  “You just walk right in and say hello?” Quinn asked. “That it?”

  “I think she’d actually say ‘Hola, ’” Lillie said. “¿Cómo estás?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “You said that already,” Dinah said. “You know, I am trained in this type of situation. Say what you will about Mexican drug runners, they won’t shoot a woman.”

  “Got to love machismo,” Lillie said. “Makes you stupid.”

  Dinah smiled at her. Lillie nodded with appreciation.

  Drake walked up and handed a lever-action Browning with a tactical scope to Lillie. “Ladies first,” he said. Lillie studied the rifle, cigarette clamped in her lips, and opened the breech with the lever. Drake passed along a pack of .308 bullets. She nodded and loaded the weapon and snapped it shut with a hard clack.

  Drake handed Quinn the same setup.

  “Guess you’re pretty good with this,” he said.

  “Lillie might be better,” he said. “What were you on the Ole Miss rifle team?”

  “Team MVP,” Lillie said.

  “Hot damn,” Drake said. “Ever think about leaving Jericho?”

  “Yep,” Lillie said. “Pretty much every day.”

  Lillie smiled as she passed Quinn and followed the cedar posts to the opening in the fence and disappeared into the pines. Dinah Brand stood sure-footed at the edge of the patrol car, two 18-wheelers blowing by, and removed the Sig Sauer from her holster and worked her way into a Kevlar vest. She fitted a jacket reading atf over the bulk.

  “What are you thinking?” Sheriff Drake asked.

  “I want to talk to them,” Dinah said. “Let them know their options look like shit.”

  “Can you say that in a nice way?” Drake asked.

  “I’ll smile at them when I lay it out.”

  Dinah looked to Quinn and raised her eyebrows. She started dow
n the dirt road.

  “I sure as shit hope she knows what she’s doing,” Drake said. “It’s on my ass. Yours, too. Those Feds never get their names in the papers.”

  Quinn nodded and followed Lillie’s lead, keeping a fast pace to catch up.

  “WHAT DO YOU HAVE?” Quinn asked on radio.

  “I got the Pancho Villa bastard playing pocket pool, and Antonio Banderas talking on his cell phone,” Lillie said.

  “You targeting the man with the mustache and the curly-headed fella at his flank? Denim coat?”

  “Like I said, Pancho Villa and Antonio Banderas,” Lillie said, answering back. “Holy crap, Quinn. Get a goddamn sense of humor.”

  Quinn set down the radio, finding a good spot to lie prone, elbows and body against the earth, finger on the trigger, and two targets in his crosshairs. He focused on a gaunt man with an unnaturally long face, a neatly etched mustache, and hair under his lip. The other gunman stood a few inches shorter and broader, mustached and scruffy-faced. Both wore crisp dark jeans and large gold belt buckles, trucker jackets with Sherpa collars. They both looked as if they’d stepped out of a hundred-year-old photograph. A few minutes later—maybe ten—he heard Dinah calling out a warning in Spanish from the other side of the hill.

  The long-faced man turned to the others to discuss, shouldering the M4, taking aim on where she’d walk, saying, “Venga solo. Vamos. Vamos.”

  Quinn let out his breath, breathing slow and easy, falling into a comfortable place. He felt his whole body grow loose, still not seeing Dinah but knowing from the reaction of the men that she’d crested the hill. The long-faced man was speaking in a conversational tone with her now, gun still in the crook of his elbow, but he seemed to relax. After a few moments, he lowered his weapon, his attention on Dinah. Quinn pulled away from the scope and reached for a pair of binoculars. Three other men stepped away from Dinah and the long-faced man to watch the hills and long road past the barn. One looked up directly where Quinn waited but kept scanning right along the length of the pine woods.

  The long-faced man reached for Dinah’s arm and pulled her toward him. Quinn reached for his rifle but then put it back down as the man’s hand roughly searched her, running hands under her coat and down her legs, coming up hard to her crotch and smiling as he searched. He pushed her away, speaking louder now, harsh words in Spanish that Quinn could barely hear and didn’t understand.

  Dinah kept her cool. Quinn appreciated the loose way she stood and talked with the gunman, shrugging and nodding.

  She waited a beat and then yelled back to the man. The man approached her with dead eyes, and Quinn wanted very badly to end the entire discussion. He reached for the rifle. The other three men had wandered, their backs to him. Quinn stared through the scope and let out a breath.

  It started to rain a little.

  Dinah turned and walked back on the dirt road toward the barn and over the hill. Just as she reached the top, a limb cracked and broke behind the trailers.

  The gunmen turned and opened up with their assault rifles. A stream of bullets erupted, bringing Quinn back into a familiar place and zone, the .308 back in his hands, firing two shots at two figures, dropping both as the others fell to the ground, the others falling from someone else’s gun.

  The battle took less than ten seconds.

  The bodies lay in the dirt road, rain dimpling the puddles and blood coloring the water, as deputies came out from the woods. A sheepish skinny deputy with a red face covered in dirt followed. It wasn’t hard to tell, he’d been the one who’d broken the branch. The deputy looked up at the dark clouds and thanked Jesus he hadn’t been shot.

  Lillie was up to the first trailer as patrol cars raced down the road with a lot of lights and useless sirens. She tried the door handle as Quinn reached her at the steps, dropping his .308 and carrying his sidearm. He motioned for her to step back and kicked in the door, moving fast and hard into the space, finding the long shot of the trailer open and empty. A television played from a far corner, Lillie checking the rooms, Quinn covering her, both moving out and away, rain pinging across the dirt road puddles and the trailers. The Union County deputies stormed the second trailer, and Quinn and Lillie found their way into the third, hearing the children even before the door was open. A teenage Mexican girl in a pink bathrobe fell to the ground and covered her head with her hands, praying to the Holy Mother and various saints that she wouldn’t be shot, Dinah pulling her to her feet and pushing her into the trailer, where there were more cries and children all around. Quinn stood in the center of the trailer, the inside now crowded with law enforcement, harder and harder to hear what was going on with the crying children, the crying teenager, the shouting deputies, and the rain against the trailer roof.

  Lillie held up a wailing baby, naked and cold, and clutched it to her chest. There were two more children in portable cribs, and another in a back room that reeked of soiled diapers and spoiled milk. Sheriff Drake entered the trailer, removed his hat with sorrow and remorse as he listened to all the children, reaching down for a baby not more than four months old who had fallen into the cushions of a ratty and torn sofa. He placed the child inside his satin sheriff’s jacket to give it some warmth and met Quinn’s eyes with tears running down his weathered face.

  “What’s the count?” Quinn asked.

  “Five in the other trailer,” Sheriff Drake said.

  “Six here,” Quinn said.

  “Janet and Ramón?” Lillie asked.

  The old sheriff shook his head.

  “They’re gone.”

  Dinah Brand walked in out of the rain. “But we got a shit ton of cocaine, meth, and a hundred or so assault rifles in the barn,” she said. “This is gonna hurt them real bad.”

  Quinn gave her a solid nod. She nodded back and smiled.

  He looked over to Lillie. She softly sang to the small naked child, holding the baby tight, the rain and the wind kicking up harder outside.

  34

  LUZ FOUND DONNIE WORKING THE COUNTER AT VARNER’S QUICK MART just as the five o’clock rush was coming on. The rush meant more than two people in the store at one time, and right now there was maybe eight, Luz motioning for him to come outside to talk. He looked back at her, trying to let her know “You got to be kidding.” But she didn’t pay him any mind and wandered up and down the short aisles, grabbing a couple packs of bubble gum and waiting in line like a good customer until it was her turn. “We need to talk.”

  “That’ll be ninety-five cent.”

  Luz put down a dollar. “Now.”

  “My daddy won’t be back till seven,” Donnie said. “Come on out to the gun range. We can talk there.”

  He looked to the front doors of the mart, a steady cold rain coming down, night falling early. He nodded to a couple fellas he knew from Ackerman who’d come out to do some tree planting up around Providence. They were covered head to toe in mud, looking like they’d slid back down those hills and into their truck.

  Luz took the gum without a word.

  “’Preciate it,” Donnie said to her back.

  SHE WAS THERE when he drove up in his truck and killed the engine. She sat on the stoop of his Airstream underneath the green canopy that spread out over a table and some chairs. The girl was chewing the damn gum, contemplative. Donnie made a run for it up past the gun shop and along the path to where she stood. His damn jacket and hair were drenched.

  Luz didn’t say a word or look happy to see him. She just studied his face and blew a bubble, shaking her head like she was pissed off at something.

  “What’d I do now?” he asked.

  “You talked to your friend, the sheriff, about those children.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “He’s your friend,” Luz said. “You wanted him to know where they were hidden.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I see it,” she said. “I see in your face. You are lying.”

  “So what if I am?” he said. “Those kids
were being treated like animals. And that woman Janet ain’t even Mexican. Why should you give two shits?”

  “The police raided the farm,” she said. “It was owned by some of my people.”

  “Hey,” Donnie said, smiling. “Come on in, and we’ll have some whiskey. Let’s get out of these wet things.”

  He put a hand to her shoulder, but she shook him off hard, staring into his eyes, full of all that crazy-ass Latin rage. “You know what this means to us? You shouldn’t have done this. There is so much loss. It’s all such a mess.”

  “I didn’t do jack shit,” Donnie said. “You want to come in or not? ’Cause if you don’t want to come in, it don’t matter to me. Freeze your ass off out here. See if I care.”

  Donnie opened the door and stepped up into the trailer, his flannel shirts and Guns & Ammo magazines tossed on the floor where he’d left them. He reached into the cupboards for a half bottle of Jack Daniel’s and stripped out of his jacket and T-shirt. He sat down on the bed and wiped his face with a towel. Luz walked into the doorway, hanging right there in the open space, her arms on each side of the threshold. Through the little round windows, Donnie saw mud and water sluicing off the logged-out hills, cutting little rivulets down into the ravines and creek beds that would run into the Big Black River and out to better places.

  “They took the guns,” she said.

  “Shit. How many?”

  “All of them.”

  “Oh, hell. I’m real sorry.”

  She shook her head, walked inside the trailer, and removed her jeans jacket. Donnie hadn’t turned on the lights, and they stayed there in the darkness of the tin room for a long while, rain drumming above them as they studied the floor. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  “Did you tell the sheriff?” she asked.

  “Shit, woman. I said I didn’t.”

  “Alejandro had been there,” she said. “He left only a few minutes before they came in with guns.”

  “Well, that’s some luck right there. Right?”