by Bart Paul
I walked down through the sagebrush out onto the bridge. Harvey’s home-made abutments kept the channel narrow, so the creekbed under the bridge was scooped out deep and the water was about to a man’s head. The current pushed the Escalade under the bridge and wedged it there sideways against the I-beams of the railcar undercarriage with water boiling around it. I stood in the middle of the bridge with my rifle across my shoulder, watching the trailhead where the other car was waiting in the dark. Whoever was sitting up there wouldn’t have a plan B right away. I could hear yelling in Spanish. One of those shooters still had his head above water. I thought I heard him yell por favor, but it was hard to make out over the rush of the creek and my Spanish was never very good anyway.
I made a little come-along motion with my hand and the headlights of the second car popped on. It rolled to the edge of the hill then crept down the road. I stood there in the headlights waiting for them, holding the .270 with the muzzle pointed in their direction now. The car was another SUV, a big black Ford Expedition. Reno car rentals must have been flat out of black Escalades. With their first car stuck and their trigger pals drowning under the bridge and no time to set the scene, I didn’t figure they’d shoot me just then. The Expedition stopped and waited for a minute. Then the passenger door opened and lit up the interior long enough for me to see there was two of them. The door closed, and GQ sort of floated into the high beams, sage dust swirling around him. I walked to his end of the bridge and waited for him to come the rest of the way.
He looked cold in his Hawaiian shirt, but he had a big smile on his face. He got up close enough so I could smell the cigarette on his breath.
“Pretty slick, Slick,” he said. He walked past me to the edge of the bridge and looked over. The headlights still glowed in the water. “That water looks cold.”
“Colder than Miami Beach.”
“You think we can get them out of there?”
“You’re welcome to try. You got one still thrashing around like a trapped badger.”
He shivered and lit a smoke and made a face. “There’s more where they came from.”
“I figured.”
He looked around, sucking on his smoke. “So how did you figure we’d come at you like this?”
“’Cause you don’t know any other way. Those boys in the creek didn’t know that once they shot me and Lester, one of them would get shot before you scattered cash and meth crap all around my trailer.”
GQ just laughed. “Very good,” he said. “I told you you should work for me.”
I kind of nodded at the Expedition. “That big fella is all you need.”
“But Teófilo doesn’t work for me,” he said. “More like I work for him, claro? And he works for some people in Mexico you don’t ever want to meet.”
“You’re in some deep shit then either way.”
“We’re born in deep shit, my friend,” he said. “Me more than most, but you too. If you weren’t, you hicks would have reported Dad’s plane the day you found it.”
He looked pretty sure of himself.
“How long have you had those lights rigged?”
“Couple of days.”
“Amazing,” he said. “How long to break ’em down so this just looks like some tourists took a wrong turn into the river?”
“Couple of minutes.”
“Improvise and adapt,” he said, “right?”
I didn’t say anything.
“So where’d you fight, soldier?”
“Fallujah.”
“Ah, Lallafallujah,” he said. “Some bad shit.” He waited like he was wanting me to say something more.
“Some folks said we fired on ambulances. My boys never did.”
He looked at me like he didn’t believe it. “Why the hell not?” He laughed. “Hell man, shoot ’em all. Shoot their babies and their mamas too.” He looked down into the current at the Escalade. “No? I get it. You’re a moral killer.” The headlight glow faded out in the water, then went dark. “They’ll appreciate that.”
“I’m heading back. If you and the big guy want to try to cross this bridge, that’s your business.”
“I think we’ll pass,” he said. He flicked his cigarette out into the creek, and I left him there. He hollered at me when I was about halfway across.
“Hey, soldier. Will I see you again?”
I had to shout for him to hear. “Not if I see you first.”
He laughed at that. He cupped his hands and hollered one last time. “So what did you do in the war, daddy?”
“Sniper.”
I walked back up into the sagebrush and unclipped two of the spotlights and hauled them back to the tin shack. I’d fetch the other two and reel up the wire at first light. I could see the headlights of the Expedition turning around and flying up the hill, then flickering away down into the trees. They just left those other two in the creek.
Chapter Twelve
I snoozed for a few hours in the front room of the trailer, waking up now and then to look out the window toward the bridge. When I finally rousted out, it was still full dark and the moon had slipped behind the crest and it was cold. I went out to start catching and graining the horses. I haltered three that were standing by the gate and easy to catch, then went to fetch my lights while the rest of the stock wandered up from the creek to see what they were missing. When I walked back from the bridge with the last two halogen lights, dragging two hundred feet of wire behind me in the dirt, I saw a kerosene glow from inside the trailer. I stowed the lights in the tin shack and was coiling the wire when Lester hustled outside in his jacket.
“Coffee’ll be ready in no time,” he said.
I tried not to look too surprised and handed him a halter. We caught the rest of the stock and went to brushing and saddling. We had six horses and mules rigged with sawbucks and our saddle horses cinched up by dawn. When Lester went back up to the trailer, I slipped into the corral to see Dave Cathcart’s colt. I stopped about ten feet away and let him walk up to me while I tied back the corral gate so the few head of saddle horses we’d be leaving behind could get back out to pasture while we were gone. I talked to him and rubbed his neck until Lester came outside with coffee cups in both hands.
“So what’s the plan here?” he said.
“I don’t know. Try to put things back the way they were, I guess.”
He just nodded and drank his coffee. It was light enough I could see he had his Ruger .357 holstered on his belt. I caught him watching me freezer-bag about three times more grain than we’d usually take and set it out on the platforms. I took a piece of blue plastic tarp and folded it and set it out too. We went inside and ate cereal while the stock finished the grain in their feeders. After ten minutes we blew out the lamps, hoisted the packs, and lashed down our loads on the two lead mules, and hung bags and slings on the rest. I stowed the grain in the empty bags. Then we buckled on our chinks, swung our legs over, and rode out leading three apiece. If Harvey had drove in the yard before we disappeared, I don’t know what we would have done. I don’t think I had any lies left in me.
It doesn’t matter what foolishness you’re up to, there’s nothing like heading up that canyon horseback early in the morning in the summer with the sun on your back and the peaks all around and the pack animals strung out behind you in the sagebrush and the rush of the creek close by. We didn’t talk, but I could see Lester resting his rope hand on the butt of that Ruger. I don’t think he cared what we were doing as long as we were doing something. To him it was another adventure, even if his heart was broke. We were heading up that little rise along the edge of the first meadow before anybody said a word.
“If GQ and his crew are gonna take it to us,” he said, “how come we don’t take it to them first?”
“They already tried last night.” I told him about the Escalade in the creek. He interrupted so much it took longer to tell it than it did to do it. We were heading into the aspens before I finished.
“Was it still there t
his morning?”
“Yeap.”
“Did you see any bodies?”
“I didn’t get close enough to look.”
“Shit-fire, Tommy. So how did you know their wheels would spin them right off the bridge once you hit ’em with the lights?”
“There was a little diesel got spilled on the steel plate.”
“You are one diabolical sonofabitch,” he said.
“Keep that in mind next time you take a swing at me.”
“I know you could’ve tried some Special Forces tricks on me if you wanted,” he said. “Ripped out my windpipe or something.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m just glad you know what we’re doing here, old son,” he said. “But next time, you wake me up.”
“If there is a next time.”
* * *
The trail narrowed down through the aspen, and we fell into single file and stopped talking for a while. I dug out Nora’s satellite phone and called the sheriff ’s office saying I was a fisherman that found an SUV wedged under the Aspen Creek bridge above the campgrounds. The phone said it was seven twenty-eight. When we hit a two-track below the second meadow, Lester rode up abreast.
“You think they’re still alive?” he asked.
“Probably not. That bother you?”
“Not a bit,” he said. “It’s exactly what the bastards did to Callie. Lemme see that phone.”
I handed it to him. He turned it around a bit, held it next to the Rolex to compare the time, and handed it back.
“Where’d you get that sucker?” he asked.
“The lady lawyer.”
“She’s a hot one. Were those her undies hanging from the rearview yesterday?”
“I surely hope so.”
I looked straight up to the head of the canyon. I could see the pass and the snowfield below the pass shaped like a V high in the distance waiting for us like it was waiting for the billionaire that day he followed the canyon west, that little saddle in the Sierra crest showing him the way. In about ten minutes the phone rang back with the county sheriff ’s number showing, but I didn’t answer. It was an hour later when we heard a chopper rumbling up-canyon. We were in the boggy timber way above the second meadow so a pilot couldn’t see us if we weren’t moving, but we couldn’t get a great look at the helicopter either.
“Sheriff ’s, you think?” Lester asked. He was squinting up through the tree canopy. That new little mule was dancing at the end of his string.
“Can’t tell. Sort of looks like Tony Aguilar.”
“Then I bet he’s got Sarah riding shotgun, looking for our ass,” he said. “Looking juicy in that tanktop.”
“Could be.” I dug that phone out again and called Nora’s number to give her a heads-up. When she didn’t answer I slipped it back in my saddle pocket, but Lester noticed right off.
“You got that look again,” he said.
“They got all kinds of cell service in Mammoth. Straight to voicemail means Nora’s either left or never got there.”
We leaned into it to cover more ground as soon as the helicopter passed over, the empty pack bags flapping. We didn’t stop till we were in the edge of the young aspen just below The Roughs. There was a nice breeze coming down from the Sierra crest, and we listened for any sound of a chopper before we headed out over that bare shale where there’d be no cover to hide ourselves. It wasn’t long before we crested the notch at the Wilderness Area boundary. Lester was in front, and he nodded to the sign.
“No firearms beyond this point,” he said. He patted that Ruger.
“It’s a tad late for you to get all law-abiding on me, bud.” I swatted the butt of the little mule and we kept on riding.
Another half hour put us at the forks where we let the stock have a good drink before we started climbing out of the tamarack into the cirque. It would be the last deep running water they’d get a chance at until the next day.
When we got to our old camp by the avalanche site, I swung off in the shadows of a twisted old juniper where we’d be hard to spot. I handed my horse to Lester and slipped the .270 out of the scabbard. I rested the rifle across the seat of my saddle and scanned the wreck through the scope.
“It look the same?” Lester asked.
“So far.”
“See anybody?”
“Nope.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re not up there,” he said.
I kept the reticle on that bench for another couple of minutes, just watching. The big snowfield hadn’t melted much in the three days since we’d been there. When I’d seen enough, I stowed the rifle and took my horse from Lester.
“That two-seventy doesn’t give us much firepower,” he said.
“Dad always said it depends on who’s doing the firing.”
“Well, deer hunting I seen you shovel shells into that thing quicker than Lee Harvey Oswald on the History Channel,” he said. “You’d best be on your game.”
“I’ll try to be.”
He patted the butt of the Ruger. “If they take it to us, I’m ready.”
I swung back up on my horse. “You shoot that thing off the back of that mare, she’ll spook sideways eighteen feet then bog her head and pile you in the rocks.”
We rode up through the boulders and mahogany heading for the snowfield. With the three animals apiece it was slow going, but we just took our time. We were closing in on the two whitebark pines where we’d tied up before when we heard a chopper again. We were out in the open, and there was nothing to do but just stop and wait.
“Tony again?” Lester asked.
It got louder toward the north for a minute, then faded off.
“Most likely just the Marines.”
We moved on up the trail, the rocks more wet with snowmelt than ever. Lester reined in at the whitebarks and looked up toward the wreck.
“No place to tie all these guys here,” he said.
“I figured we’d camp on that grassy spot just past the plane.”
He didn’t look too sure about all that, but he put on his Ray-Bans and goosed that mare out onto the snow, game as hell just like always. She picked her way with a big black packhorse and the two mules staying in her tracks when he made a switchback and started to climb. I held my string back so as not to crowd them, and headed out when he was about a third of the way up. I followed in his tracks when they were solid and made new ones when they weren’t. Lester stopped a couple of times to let his animals rest and get their bearings. When I finally got up to the wreck, he was already dismounted and tying his string in a hemlock thicket.
We picked out a campsite for ourselves down-trail from the horses, then unsaddled and hobbled them out on the new grass. I saw Lester pull Harvey’s chainsaw out of one of the empty pack bags.
“Just in case,” he said.
When we had the animals squared away, we looked over the wreck. It was just like we left it, with the bogus note still inside the cockpit. I took it and folded it up and stuck it in my pocket. I walked around the plane, poked it with my boot, and rocked the tail to see how easy it moved. The tail stuck out about chest-high now. Lester walked up behind me as I was running my hand over the wires and bolts. There was a little breeze, and the view down the canyon was as clear as it could be, way past the valley and out into Nevada where this plane had taken off the winter before. It must have been real pretty to fly over this country on a day like today. If there was another soul down in that canyon, we sure couldn’t see them.
“So what are we doing here exactly?” he said.
“I was sort of thinking we might just take this sucker apart and pack it off the mountain like it was never here.”
Lester thought about that for a minute then sort of laughed.
“Yeah,” he said. “I get where you’re going. They take the body, so we take the plane. We see ’em and raise ’em. I don’t know if we got enough stock, though.”
“Six is all we got, so we’ll see how much plane is left after
six loads. How much you figure the motor weighs?”
“Too much to put in one pack bag, that’s for damn sure. We’d need an elephant.” He walked back up to the nose where it was balancing on the rock and the bent-over pine and opened the cowling, just studying things for a bit and not saying a word.
“If I stripped the block clean, that would make about a hundred-pound load, give or take,” he said. “Then we could balance that out with the heads, the crank, and the pistons, all the other heavy stuff in the other bag. Old Reverend Al could pack that out easy.”
We studied the black gelding cropping grass. He was sixteen hands and thirteen hundred pounds, and earned his keep every summer hauling big loads or truly fat people that had no business horseback.
“I wouldn’t want to sore him up.”
“A tight little squaw hitch will keep it riding high,” Lester said. “I’ve hauled two hundred pounds of salt blocks on him for Becky Tyree.”
“But that’s over flat ground.”
“He’ll be okay. That sucker’s game.”
“How long will it take you to break down the engine?”
“Till dark. Probably way longer.”
“Then let’s get to it.”
In the beginning I helped Lester. He had a good socket set and the fresh can of Liquid Wrench to unbolt that motor from the mounts, but mostly we just tore into things, ripping off the cowling, cutting belts and hoses with knives and hacksaws, and generally making a mess.
“It ain’t like we got to put the sonofabitch back together,” he said. He tossed one of the heads in the dirt.
I fetched a couple of buckets of sandy granite from under the trees. When we were finally about to roll the block out, I dragged a piece of blue tarp and spread it next to the cowling. When crankcase oil started dripping down on the plastic I was ready with the sand, pouring it on the tarp to soak it up.
“You musta been plotting this out for days in that sick brain of yours,” Lester said. “This is sooo Tommy Smith.” He took a pinch of Copenhagen.
