by Jeff Shelby
“Type that up and send it to the governor,” I said, pulling off the highway and heading north. “Never know what might happen.”
He nodded, as if the thought had never occurred to him. “I think I’ll do that.”
The two-lane asphalt road took us higher into the dense forest, the tall green pines hovering over the road and smothering the air with their aroma. We crested the highest point and started to descend through a series of S-curves. Famazio’s directions indicated a turnoff at the middle of the curves and I found it on our right, easing the Jeep into it, the tires crunching on the gravel.
“We gotta walk a little from here,” I said, opening my door.
“I better get to shoot someone,” Carter grumbled.
I walked around to the back of the Jeep. “No promises.”
He came around to meet me. “I wasn’t asking for permission.”
“You shoot anybody without my permission and it is a long walk back to Mission Beach.”
He stuck his tongue out at me.
We pulled his gear out of the back of the Jeep. The rifles were Ruger Mini-30s. Each had a scope attached to it. I noticed a selector switch on each receiver.
“I thought these were semiautomatics,” I said.
“They were,” he said, laying his on his shoulder. “Originally.”
“You had them converted to fully automatic? That legal?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. Sorta. I don’t know.”
I shook my head.
We divvied up the magazines and walked down a dirt path that led from the turnout. It was steep and narrow and uncomfortable, our feet sliding forward on the loose rocks and uneven terrain every few steps. After ten minutes of walking and sliding, the path leveled off and then disappeared amid a cluster of pines.
“Now where?” Carter asked.
I looked at the map. “Should be right here.”
I moved forward to the trees and saw that about four trees in, the earth dropped away. I heard muffled voices down below.
“This is it,” I said, lowering my voice. I motioned to our right. “Let’s move up here, off the end of the trail.”
We went about ten yards off the trail and found a wider spot between two of the pines at the edge and lay down on our stomachs, putting the guns between us. We inched carefully toward the edge of the landing and looked down.
The area was a hundred feet below us, maybe twenty square yards of dirt and trodden grass. A concrete fire ring was the center of the circular patch. A boom box sat next to the ring, speed metal blaring from the speakers. At the farthest edge of the circle, the front ends of a couple of pickup trucks poked out from just behind the trees. A cache of assault rifles was spread out on the ground near the trucks. A thin trail disappeared into the trees next to the trucks, indicating another entry point.
About a dozen guys lounged in various acts of slackerdom-several in low-slung lawn chairs, a couple shaking their heads to the music, a few more standing, holding cans of beer. They all wore some variation of camouflage pants, white T-shirts, army jackets, and black leather boots.
All of them had one thing in common.
A shaved head.
“Cool,” Carter whispered. “A party.”
“And we didn’t get invites.”
“Probably ’cause we go to the wrong barber.”
We were too high up to make out any of the words in the muffled conversations below us. An occasional laugh drifted up to us, but that was it.
“Can I just pick ’em off?” Carter asked. “One by one?”
“That would probably be Plan Z.”
“What’s Plan A?”
“We lie here and see what happens.”
He glanced at me. “You are so boring.”
“One of my best qualities.”
“Said the really boring guy.”
“Shut up.”
Carter scanned the area. “See your guys anywhere?”
“Nope.”
“How much am I getting paid for this?”
“Same as always.”
He paused. “You’ve never paid me before.”
“Exactly.”
He dropped his head to the tarp and closed his eyes. “Wake me when I can turn this place into a shooting gallery.”
Ten minutes later, he was snoring softly, earning every cent of what I wasn’t paying him.
I watched what went on down below. They stuck together in groups of two or three, talking, laughing, occasionally goofing off with a shove or a fake punch. Most of them appeared to be in their early twenties and it easily could’ve been mistaken for a frat party.
Except for their cue-ball heads and the pile of guns.
After an hour of squinting to make out their tattoos, counting the empty beer cans, and stacking close to a hundred pine needles on Carter’s cheek, I was ready to give up.
I pushed back from the ledge and sat up, stretching the numb muscles in my back and arms. I started to stand up to unkink my legs when I heard a couple of shouts down below and what sounded like the hum of a car engine.
I dropped down to my stomach and slid back to the ledge.
The group was moving slowly over to the area of trees where the trucks were parked. The front end of another vehicle nosed up next to the ones I’d seen before.
My shoulders stiffened as Lonnie emerged from the truck and walked into the circle.
He high-fived several of the guys as a greeting, smiling and nodding confidently.
I pulled one of the Ruger rifles closer to me.
I reached over and punched Carter in the arm. “Hey.”
He lifted his head up with a start, then frowned as the pile of pine needles fell off his face and down around his shirt collar.
He started brushing them off. “What?”
I nodded down at the campground. “Guy in the black T-shirt. That’s one of them.”
The anger that had visited me twice before when I’d encountered Lonnie was knocking in my stomach.
Carter stared down below for a moment. “Where’s the other guy?”
My fingers tingled. “Haven’t seen Mo yet.”
The way Lonnie interacted with his buddies, the way he moved among them, the way they all wanted to say hello to him, it was clear that he was a leader.
I reached out and placed my hand on the rifle.
“Hang on,” Carter said, now fully awake, reacting to my movement. “Let’s see what goes down.”
Lonnie threw his head back, his laugh working into the air and up to us. I could see black stitching across his nose, courtesy of my having slammed it into the floor at my house.
My hand closed around the rifle’s stock.
Lonnie turned back toward the trucks and the trees.
“Dude,” he yelled. “Come on.” There was more laughter in the group.
Carter glanced at me. I looked at him and shrugged. Then I focused back to the trees as a movement caught my attention.
Mo emerged from the pines, a sort of neo-Nazi Bigfoot. He wore a sleeveless black T-shirt, his arms bulging with muscle. A bandage poked out of the shirt near his shoulder where I’d shot him. The canvas pants on his lower half hugged his tree-trunk-like legs.
“Fuck,” Carter said. “He is big.”
Mo was pulling a rope. It was taut and angled down toward the ground as if it were tied to something.
Lonnie motioned for him to hurry up, excitedly, to keep pulling the rope.
“He go deer hunting or something?” Carter asked. “What the hell’s he got on the end of that?”
I watched.
Mo tugged on the rope and glanced behind him. Then he looked back toward the group, leaned forward a little, and started pulling the rope like a trained mule.
I could make out something at the end, sliding heavily through the tree trunks and pine needles.
The group started whooping and hollering, celebrating like a team that had just won a championship.
The end of the rope came into vi
ew and I felt myself rising up on my elbows, my mind not believing what it was seeing, my hand clamping down on the rifle.
“Motherfucker,” Carter whispered.
They had gone hunting, alright.
Hands bound, gagged at the mouth, Mo’s rope tied tightly around her ankles, Malia Moreno was their trophy.
Thirty-three
“Is that Moreno’s sister?” Carter asked, his voice edged with surprise.
“Yeah,” I said, the muscles at my neck coiling into knots as I slid my eye to the scope for a closer look.
Malia’s eyes were wide, fear radiating from them. Dirt caked the sides of her face, held there by streams of tears. Blood leaked out of her nose and the corners of her mouth. She was wearing a tank top and one of the straps had been torn. She wasn’t fighting Mo or the rope, her body sliding along the ground like a bag of sand.
“We gotta get closer,” I said, sliding back and rising to my knees.
Carter pushed away from the ledge and popped to his feet like he was riding his surfboard. “Work from opposite sides?”
I nodded, reaching for one of the rifles. “Try to stay just above them. I’ll get to the ground and take the ones closest to her. You take the others. Try to herd them to their trucks and get them to run.”
He grabbed the remaining rifle, stuffed several of the extra magazines into his pockets, pivoted, and disappeared into the trees.
I took the rest of the magazines and moved quickly through the trees in the opposite direction and down the slope, staying close enough to the edge to monitor the campground.
Malia was near the fire ring now, the skinheads in a semicircle around her. She was attempting to move, rolling around like a wounded insect. Several of the skinheads moved toward her like they were going to kick her, then held up at the last second, laughing as she tried to roll out of reach. Mo dropped the rope and headed to the back of the crowd.
When I reached level ground, I was about twenty-five yards away from Malia and the assholes.
“Boys, check it out,” Lonnie said, standing near Malia’s head. “Got ourselves a pretty little porch monkey here.”
Their cheers and jeers melded together, exploding into the air.
Lonnie squatted down. “And there’s nothing I like better than putting a motherfucking little porch monkey out of her misery.”
I lay down behind a thick pine, my left shoulder pressed into the trunk, the pine needles sticking me in the elbows, and got the Ruger Mini-30 in position. I felt my chest heaving and took a couple of deep breaths to steady myself. We were outnumbered and I knew that even with both Carter and myself armed, we were going to have a hard time gaining control of the situation.
“Hey, Lonnie. We get a shot at her before we off her?” somebody asked from the group.
I checked the magazine.
“You know? Do her before we do her?” The guy stepped over Malia. He was tall and thin, black suspenders holding up his camouflage pants over his dirty white T-shirt. “Show the bitch what she’s gonna miss?”
Lonnie stood up and laughed as the group screamed its approval.
I felt my breathing level out, my hands relaxing on the rifle.
Malia’s body bucked in the dirt, the group roaring again at her movement, epithets ringing into the air.
The thin guy pulled his suspenders off his shoulders, straddled Malia, and dropped to his knees.
I adjusted my eye to the scope and brought the guy’s torso into focus, and took a deep breath.
“What do you think, nigger?” he asked, his lips curled into an arrogant sneer. “Want a little of me?”
I exhaled and squeezed the trigger.
The thin guy jerked back, a small red puff popping out of his chest, and fell off Malia.
I took another deep breath, trying to get the action to slow down in front of me.
Two more fell to the ground near him, shots coming from the far side of the campground.
Panic set in. Some dove for the ground and some ran for their guns, screaming and yelling, their heads swiveling in both directions. Lonnie dropped to the ground, obscured by the fire ring. My shots skimmed over him.
The guns near the trucks came to life and fired toward Carter’s side. I shifted to my left and fired in that direction and saw several of the shooters scatter farther into the cover of the pines.
We’d caught them unorganized and unprepared and it showed.
More yelling, then bullets whistling over my head and off to my right. My muscles tightened, involuntarily trying to make my body smaller. I wanted to move, but I would be too exposed.
The two that Carter shot were being dragged away, two guys firing pistols from near the trucks to cover themselves. The one I’d hit was still down next to Malia, not moving.
I couldn’t see Lonnie.
Heavy gunfire erupted from near the trucks. Mo was kneeling just inside the tree line, firing what looked like an AK-47 in Carter’s direction.
I fired twice at Mo. The first one missed, the second one caught him in the thigh.
It didn’t faze him. He shifted to his left, got his body behind one of the trees, and kept firing.
More shots came from our original position up on the ledge, aimed at Mo. I jerked my head in that direction, surprised and confused. I couldn’t make out anyone up on the plateau and wondered who in the hell might be helping us.
Mo moved to a crouch and returned the fire up on the ledge.
A shot boomed from near the fire ring, a large-caliber handgun burst, and Lonnie was up and running low toward the tree line. Mo rotated and fired at me, covering him. I tucked in tight behind the trunk of the pine, my forehead scraping against the bark. Bullets thudded into the trees around me, wood chips showering my neck and face.
The truck engines revved to life, drowning out the screams for the rest to hurry.
Mo waited for the last of his buddies to get into the tree line, then limped back quickly, still sweeping the entire outer edge of the campground with the AK-47. He disappeared into the trees.
Doors slammed, tires spewed rocks and dirt through the trees, and the trucks U-turned and headed out to wherever they’d come from.
The entire skirmish had taken maybe two minutes.
The quiet was overwhelming.
“You good?” Carter yelled from the other side of the circle.
I couldn’t see him. “Yeah. You?”
“Yeah.”
I moved from my stomach to my knees, my throat aching and burning from the gun smoke and dirt.
Malia was still next to the fire ring, her would-be rapist beside her.
Carter emerged from the trees across from me. His rifle was aimed up at our original spot.
I rose to my feet and walked slowly toward the fire ring, holding the rifle at a ready position and watching the entire tree line.
“Who was our helper?” I asked, squinting up at the trees.
“Not sure. I saw somebody when the first shots came out of there.” He lowered his gun. “But they’re gone now.”
We turned to the fire ring.
The skinhead was dead. The entire right side of his body was soaked in blood, an expression on his face that assured me my bullet had caught him by complete surprise.
I wanted to feel good about that, but I couldn’t.
The first thing that had struck me about Malia Moreno when we’d met her at her home was the color of her eyes. They were the same unique amber shade as her brother’s, the kind of eyes that stopped you in midstep.
Now, lying in the dirt, the right one still looked like that, still held on to that mesmerizing quality as she stared up at me.
But the left one was gone, taken by the bullet that had taken her life, replaced by a socket full of red, thick blood.
Thirty-four
I’d called 911 and reported what happened. The local sheriff’s department arrived quickly, took our guns, cuffed us, and questioned us about the four dead bodies on the ground.
C
arter refused to say a word, staring aimlessly into the forest.
I told them who we were, that we’d followed Lonnie and Mo out here so that we could talk to them and had seen what was happening to Malia. We’d had no choice but to shoot. I told them to call Wellton. They probed further, but I gave them nothing else, preferring to wait on Wellton. They were annoyed by that and kept the handcuffs on us while we sat in the dirt.
Wellton emerged from the pines and walked toward us from the other side of the clearing.
“Oh, look,” Carter said. “A forest dwarf.”
Wellton was halfway across the circle when he whistled at one of the deputies and motioned for him to head toward us.
They reached us at the same time.
Wellton pointed at us. “Unhook ’em.”
The deputy looked uncertain. “Uh, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to do that.”
Wellton glared at him. “I didn’t ask what you were supposed to do. Do it or you’ll be wearing your own set.”
The deputy’s cheeks reddened, but he produced a key and promptly unlocked both of us. He hurried away, taking the cuffs with him.
Wellton glared at me. “I said you could poke around. I didn’t say you could go around killing people.”
“Hey, we-” I started, but Wellton kept going.
“You drive out here and just start taking target practice?” he asked, his eyes flaring with anger. “I asked you to help me out. I didn’t ask you to drag me into multiple murders. Which part didn’t you understand?”
“I understood all of it, Wellton,” I said, irritated. “But we had no choice.”
“Yeah, you did,” Wellton fired back. “You could’ve put the guns away and called the cops before you started blowing people away.”
“They were going to rape her,” Carter said quietly as he stood up.
We let that hang in the air for a moment and it seemed to temporarily diffuse Wellton’s fury.
“Who is she?” he asked.
“Malia Moreno. They brought her here,” I said, standing up, dusting off my shorts.
Wellton blinked quickly, chewing his bottom lip.
