The old man took his time, examining the guns, the hard-eyed man who held them leveled toward the citizens of Santa Rosa. Slowly, with a fine contempt, he spit another murky stream into the street and took a long stride back to lounge against the grocery's brick facade. Rebecca Kent felt the tension gradually unwind her, sensing that catastrophe had been averted for the moment. But she knew that it was only a postponement, rather than a true reprieve. Her mind made up, she turned to Bolan in defeat.
"Your guns are in the first examination room," she said. "A cabinet underneath the sink."
* * *
Grant Vickers watched the sideshow through binoculars from his position at the southern end of Main Street. The approaching sirens had alerted him, but Vickers knew Rivera's reputation and had not been overanxious to respond before he checked out the situation. A glimpse of the Grundys' ambulance, the Chevrolet Camacho had been driving, told him everything he had to know about the noisy caravan. The presence of a squad car was distinctly ominous, but Vickers was concerned with number one right now. The border boys could damned well take care of themselves.
Old Snyder was a spitfire, but he backed down quick enough when guns were drawn. Rivera was the first one who had ever shut the old bird up, and Vickers gave him points for that, but he was worried now about the confrontation shaping up in Santa Rosa. If Rivera lost his cool, or if some local boy got itchy, made a careless move, they could be ankle-deep in blood before the sun went down. Grant Vickers didn't want that on his conscience, but he didn't want his own blood on the pavement, either. Somewhere, in between the two extremes of martyrdom and crass desertion, he would have to find a not-so-happy medium and try to make it work. Somehow he had to try to save the town.
There was no question of a face-off. Vickers had lost count of the armed men down there, and there might be others hiding in the ambulance. It was an army, and he was just one reasonably frightened lawman with a job to do. It didn't help that he had never faced a hostile gun before, and his involvement with Rivera through the past few years was icing on the cake. When a person accepted money from a man like that, his soul was pawned without a ticket. Vickers hoped there was a way to pull it out before the whole thing blew up in his face. With any luck at all...
He listened as Rivera stated his demand: delivery of the stranger in an hour's time or there would be unspecified reprisals. Vickers had no doubt that blood would spill. Rivera wasn't on the list of gracious losers, and he would not leave until he had his quarry, or until his anger had been spent upon the town. If no one gave the stranger up...
But what if no one had him? What if no one in the tiny, godforsaken town had seen him. If Rivera was mistaken, or if the elusive hit man had already found himself a place to hide, unknown to any resident of Santa Rosa, they were up the creek. There were abandoned mobile homes and houses on the outskirts of the town, a scattering of shops downtown that had been closed for eighteen months or more. A couple of the houses had been broken into by tramps or bikers, and there would be nothing to prevent a fugitive from holing up in one of them to lick his wounds and watch the hunt go by. If Vickers could persuade Rivera to begin a search of the outlying empties, he was betting they could bag the guy in question and avert a massacre, but touching base with his employer would not be as easy as it seemed. He lived in Santa Rosa, after all, and there were still proprieties to be observed.
Downrange, Rivera wrapped up his ultimatum with the announcement of a lesson for the populace of Santa Rosa. At a gesture, one of his gorillas revved the ambulance and put it through a backward U-turn, parking in the middle of the street with rear doors angled toward the small crowd on the opposite sidewalk. Rivera snapped his fingers, and a couple of his henchmen opened the doors, began unloading something heavy on the pavement.
Vickers took another look through his binoculars, then closed his eyes and groaned. There would be no more time to waste, he realized. It might already be too late to head off the bloodbath; there might already be too many witnesses.
Rivera and his men were pulling out the stops, going for broke, and they had left no doubts concerning their intentions. If he still had any hope at all of heading off disaster, Vickers had to act before somebody in the town panicked and took it on themselves to even up the score. If there was time. If there was any hope at all.
* * *
Rick Stancell had been drawn from the garage by ululating sirens, startled at the sight of the Grundys' ambulance bringing up the rear of a motley parade. There had not been sufficient time for them to get to Tucson, let alone return, and that meant someone must have stopped them on the highway. Rick observed the squad car at the head of the procession, realized its driver and his passengers were not in proper uniform, and knew that something had gone desperately wrong in Santa Rosa. He thought of Dr. Kent's phone, and his own back at the service station. Dead. And suddenly his father's beating seemed a part of something larger and more sinister, a threat not only to the Stancell family, but to the town at large.
Rick listened from the sidelines as the tall Hispanic stranger made his statement, sparred with Enoch Snyder, finally calling up the guns. It was apparent that the town was under siege, perhaps cut off from any contact with the outside world, but Rick's predominant concern was for his father. Dr. Kent had made it clear that he was desperately in need of treatment that the local clinic could not offer, and prolonged delays while strangers played their macho games in Santa Rosa might prove fatal. Rick was tempted to approach the leader of the raiding party, make a personal appeal, but something told him that he might as well be talking to the wall.
The dark man finished threatening his audience and smiled. In stilted, formal tones, he offered them "a lesson," something to consider if they were tempted to defy him. At a gesture, one of his companions backed the ambulance around until it stood directly in the middle of the street, its double rear doors pointed toward the combination grocery store and post office. At a finger snap, two gunners trotted to the van, swung back the doors and reached inside. Rick froze in shock as work boots wriggled into view, pursued by khaki legs, the swollen paunch of Amos Grundy. The gunmen dumped his body on the pavement as though it were a sack of grain, reaching back inside to haul his brother out and place them side by side. The flaccid postures, ragged wounds and crusty, drying blood left no doubt that both men were dead.
Rick held his breath, already sick with horror as a third limp body was wrestled from the inside of the ambulance. He did not have to see the battered face, now vented with a bullet wound above one eye, to recognize his father. The remains of breakfast came up and Rick was doubled over, retching, by the time Bud Stancell's body hit the pavement in the middle of the street.
He could hear a woman sobbing somewhere behind him, two men cursing softly beneath their breath. The world was spinning, tilting crazily beneath his feet, and for a moment Rick was frightened that he might collapse, lose consciousness, before he had a chance to break away. The blinding rush of panic-rage was fading, and while he longed to lock his hands around the stranger's neck, move on when he was finished there to throttle each of his companions in their turn, Rick knew that he could never hope to reach his target in his present state. A rush from where he stood, barehanded, would be tantamount to suicide, and he was suddenly committed to survival. Long enough, at least, to pay back something of the debt he owed to nameless men whom he had never seen before this afternoon.
He straightened slowly and with difficulty, and turned his back upon the hollow shell that once had been his father. There was nothing he could do to spare his father from the pain and the indignity he had suffered in his final hours, but there might be something Rick could do to even up the score. His father kept a .38 at the garage, in case of robberies, and while there had been no occasion for its use, he had kept the weapon oiled and loaded. Rick had failed to check to see if it was still in place this morning, but if it had not been taken by the men who had attacked his father...
There was still a chanc
e that he could have some measure of revenge, and while he knew that it would never be the same again, it might just be enough to keep his mind within the borderlines of sanity. But first... he thought of Amy Schultz with sudden longing, totally divorced from sex, and knew that he should see her, just once more, before he took a last, irrevocable step against his enemies. Avoiding glances from the other citizens of Santa Rosa, stepping wide around the hands that sought to stroke him in condolence, Rick struck off in the direction of the hardware store.
13
He had promised them an hour, and Luis Rivera was a man who kept his word from time to time. No more than forty minutes left, but he would wait and see if any of the gringos had a shred of common sense. If one of them had seen the soldier, even sheltered him at home, it would be so easy to step forward, save himself, his family, by offering the information Rivera sought. Of course, it would save no one in the long run; all of them would have to die, now that Rivera had been bold and brash enough to show his face, but no one in the tiny town of Santa Rosa knew that. Yet.
Rivera honored promises as long as they were useful to him. In a business deal, if he agreed to pay a large supplier on delivery of merchandise, he kept his word, thereby ensuring future shipments. If he made the promise to an independent runner, trying to retire in sunny Florida on income from a one-off deal, he simply took the merchandise by force, retired the would-be dealer to a sandy grave, and went about his business. Compared to some of his competitors, Rivera was a paragon of virtue. You could trust him just as far as you could see him, on a foggy day.
With Hector, Esteban, and half a dozen of his gunners, he had moved inside the air-conditioned diner, seeking refuge from the sun. His other troops were left on guard around the vehicles and out back, preventing any two-bit local from attempting to become a hero overnight. The bodies from the ambulance still lay on Main Street, lined up on the center stripe, and they would soon begin to smell. Rivera didn't mind, especially — he was accustomed to the stench of death from long experience — and the aroma just might serve as an incentive to the people of the town.
Or one of them, at any rate.
The stranger's presence was not general knowledge. He had searched the faces of his sidewalk audience for hints of recognition as he spun his fabricated story, seeking a response and finding none. No hint of shock or guilt, no trace of lingering anxiety. Rivera now considered two alternatives: the people he had spoken with, thus far, knew nothing of the gringo's presence in their town; or else one of them was a great deal stronger than he looked.
Or she. A woman might be tempted by a wounded warrior, taking him to heart and standing firm against a threat to his well-being. Despite Rivera's heritage, his personal commitment to machismo, he did not regard the female as a weaker sex. They suffered much in life, not least in childbirth, and their lust for vengeance could be awesome. If a woman had the stranger in her clutches, and especially if she was unmarried, then Rivera's task would be that much more difficult. She would not give the gringo up as readily as, say, a man with a wife and children to protect.
But he would let them have their hour, keep his fingers crossed and hope that someone, anyone, would point at his neighbor, whisper in Rivera's ear. A fearful man will sell his neighbor, and his neighbor's children, to survive. With three dead men — their friends — already lying in the street, the townspeople knew that he was serious, that it was not a game. They would think twice before they tried to call his bluff.
His chief lieutenants sat in silence, sipping coffee, killing time, and waiting for their orders. Esteban had done a decent job of rounding up assorted weapons from the hardware shop, reducing chances for a vigilante ambush on the street, and he had briefed Rivera on the incident involving Jorge and Ismael with the merchant's daughter. The gunners would be dealt with later, when Rivera had the time to teach them discipline, but at the moment he was thinking of the girl. Allowing her to live had been a judgment call, with which Rivera did not totally agree, but he could understand Esteban's reasoning. The girl would certainly be found. Her injuries, the liquidation of her parents, would spread further terror among the locals, prompting them to take whatever steps might be required to save themselves. Potential problems lay within their choice of methods for survival. While the rational recourse would be delivery of the wounded stranger to Rivera, some among them might decide to fight. It was a risky game, this playing with men's minds, and he would have to wait to see the outcome first, assessing methods with the benefit of hindsight prior to making any judgment on Rodriguez.
As for Hector, he had been chastised, in private, for his failure to maintain communications with the column while he made his own reconnaissance of Santa Rosa. There had been no need for public confrontation, with Camacho losing face in front of his subordinates, but if he failed a second time, Rivera would be forced to reinvestigate his options. And, if Hector failed him once again in Santa Rosa, he would not be going home alive.
Rivera called for coffee, studying the slender waitress as she served him, noting how she trembled in his presence. She was young, no more than twenty, probably eighteen, and she excited him, but he resisted the temptation to reach out and slip a hand beneath her skirt. She would not resist him — he could see that fear had sapped her will to fight — but he did not have time for games. Rivera's mind was focused on the task at hand, and a distraction was the last thing he needed. Maybe, when his work was done in Santa Rosa, he would take the waitress with him, keep her for a day or two to celebrate and pass the time. When he was finished with her, she could join the others in oblivion.
The dealer lit another of his cheroots and checked his watch against a large clock on the wall above the door. The townspeople had already wasted half of their allotted time, but he could wait. No one would interrupt them here. His men were on the highway, north and south, and the telephone lines had been cut down on either end of town. There was no local operator, no telegrapher, and as for CB radios, he would have to take his chances. If anyone got on the air, if anyone was listening...
He pushed the thought aside. Less than thirty minutes remained, and he would be long finished with his business in the little town before assistance could arrive. The sheriff's office was in Tucson — more than sixty miles away — and any solitary deputies who might respond, meanwhile, would be destroyed by his rear guard before they reached the town limits. Santa Rosa, for the moment, was entirely his, and he would use its people as he chose, in order to get answers, revenge.
The answers were important — who and why — but after so much wasted time, Rivera knew that he would settle for the gringo's head, a trophy that would prove once more that he was no one to be trifled with. There might be other ways to learn which of his many competitors had tried to put him out of business in a single stroke, and if he never learned the name at all, it might be enough to let the jackals know that they had failed, that their efforts were in vain.
Rivera could survive without the answers, but he could not go home without the stranger's head. Defeat would inevitably lead to other challenges, eventual defeat by someone stronger, quicker, and more cunning than himself. There was no point in leaving Santa Rosa if the stranger was alive, and so Rivera made his mind up that he would not leave, his gunners would not leave, until their job was done. No matter if the county sheriff came, the state police or the National Guard. Better for them all to die in combat than to tuck their tails and run like yellow dogs. Far better for them to find the gringo soon, mop up the witnesses and head for home.
His coffee had gone cold, and he called for more, eyes fastened on the waitress as she moved to serve him. The border crossing might yet have its rewards, he thought, and smiled.
* * *
Keeping to the alleys, crossing two blocks down from where his father and the Grundys stretched out side-by-side on Main Street, Rick spent thirteen minutes on his trek to reach the hardware store. Granted he had stopped to vomit twice along the way, but now the rolling of his empty stomach
had subsided into steady, throbbing pain, and he was confident that he would not be forced to stop again. The image of his father hung before him like a grim mirage.
From the hardware store, he would be forced to cross the street again, but it would be all right, if he did not delay too long. The bastard with the microphone had promised them an hour, of which twenty-seven minutes remained. The gunners, standing watch beside the caravan, had not molested anyone so far, but Rick had felt compelled to reach the hardware store by a circuitous, deceptive route. He would not draw attention to the Schultzes, would not let himself be seen with them, not with the actions that he had in mind for later. If he failed — an almost certain bet, considering the odds and arms against him — Rick would not bring further wrath upon their heads. If he was not seen entering the store, or leaving it, the bastards might not take it out on Amy, on her parents.
Even as the thought took shape, Rick knew that he was being childishly naive. His father and the Grundys had been murdered in cold blood by men who did not take the time to hide their faces. Clearly they were not expecting any witnesses to walk away and spread the word of what had happened here today. The stage was being set for wholesale slaughter, but the leader of the wolf pack had delayed his final stroke while waiting for some stranger to be found in Santa Rosa. Once he was discovered and in the bag, there would be nothing to restrain the gunners, nothing to protect his neighbors, Amy, any of them.
But he still had time. While the invaders waited for their break, he had an opportunity to move against them, strike a blow for those they had already murdered. It was foolish to believe that he could kill them all before they cut him down, but if he took out a couple, if he did any good at all, it might encourage others to defend themselves. By his example, he might move the others to respond in kind, and if they pulled together, there was still a chance that they might win. A chance, at least, that some of them would walk away.
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