Harden

by D. J. Molles

  He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting.

  Maybe just some group of hell raisers like Milo’s crew had been. Or, at worst, some religious fanatics, like The Followers of the Rapture. Both of those groups had been hard enough to deal with.

  But this…?

  “They’re huachicoleros,” Paolo said, the Spanish word pronounced effortlessly in the midst of his southern drawl. “Fuel thieves. They’re not in it for drugs and money. They’re in it for oil. And these days, oil means power. And control.”

  Power. Control.

  He who has the gold, makes the rules.

  But gold didn’t matter anymore.

  Oil did.

  “Well,” Julia cleared her throat. “At least we answered one question.”

  Lee nodded. His voice sounded hollow. “Yeah. We know who controls the pipelines.”

  FIFTEEN

  ─▬▬▬─

  CO-ORDIN-ATIN’

  They’d driven for a long time.

  Carl listened to the sound of the engine, and he kept track of time.

  Time and speed.

  That might give him a distance.

  And distance might give him a radius.

  An approximate location of wherever they stopped.

  So far, he’d been able to mark the hours by the fingers on his hands that he could barely feel anymore. They were at about three and a half hours. Probably averaging about sixty miles an hour.

  Still, keeping count of the seconds turning into minutes turning into hours, along with keeping track of the speed he thought they were going, required his complete focus. Focus he might’ve spent on trying to learn a bit more about his captors.

  What he had been able to note, pretty much right off the bat, was that two of their captors were native English speakers, and two of them were native Spanish speakers. Carl didn’t speak Spanish fluently. He knew what he called “survival Spanish” from a few counter-cartel operations he’d taken part in as a member of Delta. So he was able to identify the language at least, if not everything they said.

  But there wasn’t much to learn. His captors kept quiet.

  After being taken from the airfield, Carl and Tomlin had been driven to a place that was less than twenty minutes away. They had spent several hours there, crammed into the Suburban, not allowed out. Not allowed to speak to each other.

  Outside of the Suburban, while Carl and Tomlin waited for whatever was next, they heard muffled arguments.

  Then their captors—or maybe a new set of them—had gotten back in the vehicle, and had been driving them non-stop ever since.

  Back to counting seconds.

  Minutes.

  An upcoming hour.

  Three hours and forty minutes.

  At three hours and fifty minutes, they slowed, took a gentle turn, and began to coast.

  Is this it? Are we at the final destination?

  He waited, thinking three hours and fifty minutes, three hours and fifty minutes, to make sure this wasn’t just a simple stopover. But then the vehicle came to a complete stop, and the engine was killed.

  Doors were opened and closed.

  A few shouts in Spanish.

  Hands grabbed him.

  “Out,” was the accented command. “Out.”

  They hauled him out of the seat. Stiff legs and numb feet hit the ground. What felt like gravel under his boots. The air was thick and humid.

  Two men on either side of him. They snaked their arms up behind his and forced his upper body down, propelling him forward while they did it so he stumbled to keep up, bent over double.

  Three hours and fifty minutes at sixty miles an hour.

  Where are you?

  They jerked him to a halt. Kicked the back of his knees, sending him to the ground with a grunt. His knees hit the gravel, sharp pain sticking through them.

  Focus.

  He felt metal on the back of his neck. Knew what it was.

  “You feel that?” an American said. “You move, you die.”

  It came down to a mile a minute, Carl figured. That was a good rough average, and it made for easy math.

  230 miles.

  That’s clear across the state of Alabama, Carl thought. Either southern Alabama, or we’ve gone into Louisiana.

  For a moment, he was bewildered by this.

  They’d punched through “The Wilds” in three and a half hours. A trip through the backcountry of Alabama that Lee had figured would take them a week.

  But Lee and the team would’ve gone through slow and methodical. Not knowing what lay around the next corner. Reconning towns, and circumventing cities.

  These people had no such reservations. Which either meant they were reckless…or it was their turf.

  Either way, Carl didn’t like it.

  You’re a long-ass way from home now, Toto. Now, focus on killing these motherfuckers and getting out.

  He heard footsteps in front of him. The grind of hard souls through gravel.

  The footsteps stopped.

  Carl smelled…

  Soap.

  And cigarette smoke.

  “You American?” a voice asked him. The accent was obvious.

  “Yes,” Carl said, because he didn’t think it would do him any good to deny it.

  “Take off his blindfold,” the voice said. “I want him to look at me.”

  The muzzle of the rifle that was against his neck pressed harder.

  Someone tugged at the blindfold. Pulled it up off his face.

  The air felt cold against his eyes after being forced shut so long.

  Carl blinked rapidly and found himself in daylight. It was morning.

  He was kneeling in the middle of a collection of pipes, conduits, and tanks. Cisterns. Power cables. He realized for the first time there was the thump and rumble of working machinery in the background, though it was faint.

  The fuck is this?

  He let his eyes take one circuit around his environs before he affixed them to the man standing in front of him.

  The man had dark, shaggy hair that hung nearly to his shoulders. He had a soft, kind face, with a bit of stubble on his chin. He smiled down at Carl like they knew each other from way back when, though Carl didn’t know the man from Adam.

  The man wore gray slacks and a white linen shirt that looked rumpled, like he’d been sitting down for a long time.

  Oddest of all, he wore black cowboy boots.

  It was not the style of the boots that made them appear odd, but rather the spit-shined polish of the perfectly-maintained black leather, and the chrome nubs on the pointed toes.

  “You like my boots?” the man asked.

  Carl nodded. “I was just thinking…”

  “Yes?”

  “Those are the cleanest, most impractical shoes I’ve seen in a long damn time.”

  The man laughed. Set one of the boots up on its heel and played the toes back and forth. The sun glinted brightly off the chrome nub. “Perhaps. But they’ve not always been this clean, you know? Sometimes I get dirt on them. Sometimes blood.”

  Carl raised his eyes to the man. Grunted.

  The man shrugged. “I just clean them. If you take care of nice things, they last a lot longer. You know?”

  Carl waited because he felt like there was more to what the man was saying. But he was apparently done talking about his boots. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked off. Carl took the opportunity to let his gaze roam over the man. Saw the bulge in the front of his waistband. The ghost of a gun visible through the light, linen fabric of his button-down.

  “You know what this place is?”

  Carl took another good look around him, and the man with the boots didn’t seem to care that he did. Carl noted that there were six men with guns around them. Two more than had been in the Suburban with them. He also noted that Tomlin was still inside the vehicle.

  “If I had to hazard a guess,” Carl said. “I’d say this is a pumping station.”

  “Very go
od. You are a man who knows his oil.” He flashed a smile and inclined his ear. “Listen! You can hear it. You can hear it moving through the pipes. Like blood in your veins.” He pointed in the direction of some pipes. “That’s pure power, flowing through those pipes.” He looked under his eyebrows at Carl. “And you cannot have it.”

  Carl gave the surroundings another glance, then went back to the man with the boots. “What is it that you want from me? I’m thinking you probably didn’t bother to capture and transport me all the way across the state of Alabama to show me a bunch of shit I can’t have. So what’s the point?”

  The man with the boots gave a look of sheer innocence. “But…that is the point.” He walked over to stand closer to Carl, his gait displaying lazy insolence. “I want you to answer me something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Are you Captain Lee Harden?”

  “I have no idea who that is,” Carl replied.

  The man with the boots stared down at him for a long time. Then he said, “Interesting,” and raised his head to someone else that was behind Carl. “Bring me the other one.”

  Carl registered the sound of the Suburban’s doors opening.

  He felt his stomach twist. For the first time, he started to consider how this was going to end.

  The sound of shuffling feet.

  They kneed Tomlin down on the gravel, about five paces to Carl’s left.

  The man with the boots walked over to him, hands still in his pockets. He bent at the waist. Tomlin still had the blindfold on. Couldn’t see. “Are you Lee Harden?”

  “Who the fuck’s that?” Tomlin spat, managing to sound genuinely confused.

  The man in the boots straightened. “Well. How strange.” Then he turned and looked at Carl over his shoulder and the good humor crumbled off his face. That softly-stubbled young-man’s chin was now hard and severe. “Bañar el crudo.”

  Two men jerked Tomlin off the ground and dragged him forward. They stopped at a red pipe that ran off the others and pointed to the ground. They slammed Tomlin down on his belly.

  Carl watched. Not sure what was next. Feeling the uncertainty grow inside of him.

  He felt off-kilter. Which was a rare feeling for him.

  The man with the boots walked back to Carl. “Keep watching.”

  One of the men dragged up what looked like the body board from an ambulance and they laid it on top of Tomlin, then rolled him over and started to strap him into it.

  Carl began to see what was going to happen. “Stop,” he said.

  The man in the boots shook his head. “No. First, you tell me who you are.”

  Carl didn’t answer. Kept watching.

  Tomlin was now fully strapped to the board. Lying face up now. Underneath the pipe.

  Someone walked to a wheel valve and cranked it hard three times.

  The pipe rattled. Gurgled.

  Black-brown liquid gushed out, engulfing Tomlin’s face.

  He thrashed violently but had no room to move in the straps. His head and chest were instantly and completely smothered in viscous black. He tried to turn his head, tried to get air, but couldn’t escape.

  He’s gonna drown. He’s gonna drown in that shit…

  “Alright!” Carl shouted.

  “Are you Lee Harden?”

  “No!”

  “And is he Lee Harden?”

  “No!”

  The man with the boots held up a hand and the flow was cut off.

  The pipe silenced its gurgling, a thin stream of it still trickling out.

  Tomlin coughed. Gagged. Spluttered. Little eruptions of black droplets spewed from his mouth.

  Carl searched for Tomlin’s face, but couldn’t find anything recognizable under the oil slick that covered him. Like he’d been dipped in tar.

  Carl heard someone shift, just before something hit him hard in the side of the head.

  Bells rang in his ears. Stars in his eyes.

  Carl only just kept himself from hitting the ground. He struggled upright again, blinking to try to clear his vision.

  The man with the boots stood there, a large, chrome 1911 pistol in his hand. A chunk of bloody scalp and hair still caught under the butt of the magazine.

  Carl’s skull ached. His face tingled.

  The man with the boots didn’t point the pistol at him. Let it hang in his hands. “Who are you then?”

  Carl took a moment to breathe through the cloudiness. Grunted. “I’m Carl.”

  “You’re Carl. Hm. And who is he?”

  “That’s Brian.”

  “So. Neither of you is Lee Harden?”

  Carl was trying to think a step ahead here. The blow to the face wasn’t insurmountable. Carl was a man who spent his life using his head to figure things out. And at the moment, he couldn’t see a good endpoint if he continued lying. And he couldn’t see the harm in telling some small truths at this point.

  “Your men shot Lee during the ambush in Hurtsboro,” Carl husked. “He’s dead for all we know.”

  The man in the boots stood up. He gestured flippantly with the chrome 1911. “Here’s what I know, Carl. I know that you and your team are from the so-called United Eastern States. And I know that you came down here, sniffing around for my oil.” He shook his head. “I’m going to let you live, Carl, because you are going to take a message back to your people.” He placed the muzzle of the pistol under Carl’s chin and lifted his face to force eye contact. “I am El Cactus. We are Nuevas Fronteras. And everything you see belongs to us. You will tell your people not to send anybody else. There is nothing down here for you but death. Do you understand the message you are going to deliver?”

  Carl’s teeth were clenched down, grinding each other. “Yes,” he hissed through his teeth. “I understand.”

  The man in the boots suddenly reached behind Carl’s head, grabbed him hard by the scruff of his neck, and twisted him to face Tomlin’s body. The muzzle of the 1911 jammed into the side of his face, like the man was trying to spear it through Carl’s cheek and into his mouth.

  His breath was hot and forceful in Carl’s ear. “The only oil you’ll ever get from me is whatever you can pump out of your friend’s dead body.”

  The creak of the wheel valve cranking again.

  Tomlin’s oil-coated face searched blindly through darkness. He managed to get out a single, sad word: “Carl?”

  The deluge of crude oil guttered out over him again.

  Carl jerked against the grip on his head, but the man didn’t relent, only seized down harder.

  Tomlin’s head and shoulders disappeared under the black waterfall.

  His feet kicking, stirring up dust.

  “You sonofabitch!” Carl screamed.

  The man in the boots took Carl’s head in both hands and brought it down hard on his own knee. Carl’s mind left him briefly, but he came back to himself a moment later, sprawled back and on his side, still facing Tomlin.

  People were kicking Carl. Boots slamming into his chest, his back, his sides, crunching, cracking, breaking, but all he could think about was the man that was ten yards away from him, but for whom he could do nothing.

  Carl remained conscious long enough to see Tomlin’s body go still.

  Then someone kicked him in the face.

  ***

  Carl Gilliard wasn’t the only one that watched Brian Tomlin die.

  And he wasn’t the only one who knew exactly who Brian Tomlin was.

  From the backseat of an SUV, Major John Bellamy watched his old friend drown under a spew of oil. He watched with one hand braced against his mouth, as though he didn’t want anyone to see the disgusted set of his lips, though there was no one else in the vehicle.

  His eyes flicked to the man called El Cactus—Mateo Ibarra Espinoza—and wondered for the tenth time that day why he wasn’t there to put a bullet in the man’s head.

  Then he spared another look at the man who they were currently beating the snot out of, but he was curled on his sid
e, facing away.

  That was okay. John had already seen his face.

  He looked down at the tablet in his lap and scrolled through a list of names and faces. Likely candidates, based on the intel that they had about who Lee Harden was with, and the fact that they had come from Fort Bragg.

  When President Briggs had called upon the military to abandon the coastal regions, and consolidate in the center states, most of Fort Bragg heeded the call. Through reports from the soldiers that had evacuated to Colorado, along with simple process of elimination, they’d been able to compile a list of players that they thought were still alive and active in Fort Bragg.

  About halfway down this list he found a face and stared at it.

  Master Sergeant Carl Gilliard stared back at him.

  A classic, hard-assed military personnel photo. Flag in the background. Master Sergeant Gilliard unsmiling, as though he were, in the moment of the camera’s click, considering how best to kill the photographer.

  Delta, John noted. Bad Mama Jama.

  The door to John’s left opened up. He glanced over, saw Espinoza climbing in behind the driver’s seat. The man inspected his ridiculous boots. Found something offending. Reached down and scrubbed it with his thumb. Then leaned back in his seat and looked at John.

  “Satisfied?” he asked.

  John peered past Espinoza without answering. They were hauling Carl Gilliard’s limp body up off the ground. Unstrapping Brian Tomlin’s from the backboard that had held him in place. “Yeah,” was all he decided to say.

  Espinoza smiled. “You don’t seem satisfied.”

  John went back to his tablet, simply because he didn’t want to look at Espinoza.

  “Were they friends of yours?”

  John gave a brittle smile to the tablet. “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”

  Espinoza shrugged. “The supplies then.”

  John reached down between his legs to the small pack that sat there. He pulled out a Project Hometown GPS device. Plugged a wire into it. Then plugged the other end into his tablet. Ran through a few security protocols in order to open the necessary program on his tablet.