by John Knoerle
"You witnessed this?"
"No, sir."
"He 21'ed you?"
"No, sir. But it's true nonetheless and we need to get everybody out there immediately."
Wes heard a nasal rumble shudder down the line. He waited impatiently. PsychoSarge said, "Shit, he's not even on duty till three o'clock."
"Sir, I don't see how…that's not the…here," said Wes to Sherri as he handed her the phone. It was time to go. Bell had to have a weapon stashed in the house somewhere. Well, of course. The SKS.
Wes grabbed the assault rifle from the closet, checked the clip and ran into the back yard. The day was rainwashed to a spanking shine from a brief squall the night before, the sky blue, the sun high and hot. An extremely lousy day for covert action. Wes searched the side of the house for a ladder. He heard Sherri raise her voice in anger.
Wes ducked through a side door to the garage. The Firebird sat waiting for its master's return. He jerked his head around, searching corners and spied a step ladder leaning against the wall. He opened the dryer but found nothing but socks and underwear. He checked the washer and extracted a soggy king size sheet. He scuttled back to the back yard, wet sheet in one hand, ladder in the other.
Sherri stood on the patio with her arms crossed. She watched Wes plant the step ladder in the gravel next to the cinderblock wall. "Are they coming?" he shouted.
Sherri started across the lawn. "I wouldn't hold my breath," she said. Wes thought sarcasm a strange response under the circumstances. "Wes, what the fuck is going on?"
Wes climbed the ladder. He placed his plant foot on the top step, his right foot on the step below. He was wearing his stiff black oxfords, pleated gray flannel slacks and burgundy Polo shirt with banded sleeves to show off his biceps. He had cancelled his mental note to buy a more comfortable pair of work shoes after the slick-soled oxfords saved his life.
"We-ess," said Sherri, rushing to help steady him on his shaky perch. "Tell me."
Wes rose up and looked over the rolls of concertina wire that topped the ten foot wall. He couldn't see much past the thirty foot swept-back fir trees on the other side.
"Wes, godammit I…" said Sherri. Wes silenced her with a gesture. He thought he'd heard a barking dog.
"Gotta go," he said and flung the soggy sheet over two rolls of razor wire. Steel teeth bit right through it. He tossed the dragging tail of the sheet over the same coils, got the same result.
"I'll get you a blanket," said Sherri, releasing him and starting off.
"No! No time," barked Wes. "Just hand me the gun." Sherri picked the SKS off the grass and passed it up."And brace the ladder." Wes flexed his body and bent his legs at the knee. "I'm gonna pole vault this motherfucker." Sherri dug her feet into the gravel and wrapped her hands around the ladder.
The top of the wall was even with Wes Lyedecker's knees, the top of the razor wire just above his waist. When he heard a baying dog and a burst of gunfire from inside the compound Wes planted his plant foot and propelled himself off the top step, slammed the rifle butt down on a coil of concertina wire and sliced the shit out of his left shin as he vaulted over the wall and dropped twelve feet to the grounds of the Department of Evil.
Chapter 21
Wes Lyedecker landed with a poof in a soft pile of white dirt. He climbed eight feet to the top of the mound, crouched down and surveyed his surroundings. This part of the Department of Evil looked like a Christmas card. Everything was white, save for two 200 foot long green-water condensing ponds, one directly below, the other running parallel some 50 feet to his right. A hundred yards ahead a row of pine trees sealed the area from the smokestack and funnel tanks of the processing plant.
Wes saw no sign of life in the area bordered by the pine trees, heard only the disembodied echo of a female voice on the plant PA speaker. Must be lunch hour. He scanned the area for outbuildings, saw none, figured the lab must be on the far side of the pine trees. A rutted dirt truck path ran between the two condensing ponds, offering the quickest route in and precious little cover.
Wes shusshed down the soft white mound, slogged along the bottom, rounded the corner and burst into the open. The truck path was flanked on both sides by ten foot berms of bulldozed earth that diked the condensing ponds, tunneling his vision to the empty road and the pine trees a hundred yards distant. His stride adjusted itself automatically to the soft surface. Except for the assault rifle in his right hand, it was much like running down a muddy field to cover a kickoff. You had to splay out your feet for traction. Blood pumped from his lacerated shin and soaked his sock.
Wes wondered about the gunfire. He knew he had heard a dog bark but he wasn't sure about the gunfire. A tall dredge pump fed fat inflow and outflow hoses into the middle of the condensing pond on his left. An early afternoon sundowner prodded the pine trees and carried a deep-chested dog growl to his ears.
Wes sprinted the last forty yards at full speed, keeping to the flat area between the tire tracks. He skidded to a stop in front of another truck path that ran east-west, parallel to the pine trees. Wes bent to one knee, ducked low and peered around the corner to his left.
A thick hose dangled from a high metal scaffold, sweeping back and forth in the wind like an elephant’s trunk. Some sort of truck bay, thought Wes. He pulled back and looked right. He saw hundreds of wooden pallets stacked against a long low corrugated tin building. A warehouse. A high traffic area unsuited to clandestine activity. Likewise the smaller sand-colored administrative building next to it. And the far side of the buildings faced the intersection of Highway 1 and Playa Road. Wes raised up for a better view of the area directly ahead, behind the row of pine trees. The powdery white earth droppped out of sight. It resurfaced about 50 yards further on, near the towering funnel tanks and smokestack of the processing plant. An excavation pit. No place for a hidden meth lab there.
Wes peered left, blinking away a gust of fine white ash. He thought that the dog growl had come from this direction yet all he saw was a high tension pole and a tiny white shack. Pine branches clutched the shack to the cinderblock wall on the eastern edge of the property. There were no smoke pipes on the roof. The shack was too damn small for a lab anyway. He noticed something else. Branches on a stand of pine trees to the right the shack were bare, as if the needles had been burned off.
Wes checked his weapon. The SKS had nothing that resembled the thumb-sized safety he was accustomed to. He pulled back on a large lever behind the trigger housing. It clicked into place. He jiggled the oversized magazine. It was secure. He figured he had about thirty rounds, assuming the clip was full, which, knowing Bell, it was. Wes grabbed the SKS with both hands and stepped left around the corner of the berm.
The wind whipped his hair while his legs measured out low quick flatfooted steps on the rutted road, kicking up a trail of white dust. As he passed the truck bay Wes saw the German Shepherd. He was lying on his side, tongue in the dirt, matted blood on his coat, as dead as it was possible to be. Wes hadn't imagined the gunfire.
Moving closer he saw that the small white shack was really a miniature house. Board and batten walls with crown mouldings on the corners and tiny gutters below the eaves. But no doors or windows that he could see. The far side of the house faced the cinderblock wall. The door had to be on the south side, facing the excavation pit.
Wes slanted right across the road and ducked behind a pine tree. There was no door on the south side of the little house, just a tiny window with a tiny sill, the glass painted over from the inside. He heard a deep-chested dog growl. He trotted forward. The row of pine trees ended. Wes felt his back prickle as he exposed it to the excavation pit and the plant buildings beyond and wished devoutly for his kevlar vest.
Wes pried a snowy pine branch from the little house and slipped into a dark Alpen dell bordered by the cinderblock wall. There was a door on this side. A wide open door. Wes started forward, felt something touch his left ankle and looked down. The blonde Lab was sniffing his bloody sock. Wes patted the do
g's head with his free hand and crept forward on a carpet of pine needles.
The door stood straight out, blocking his view of the interior. The frame was only five feet high. He would have to duck down to enter. The Lab padded alongside, happy that a human was now in charge. Pine branches drummed the roof of the little house.
Wes sidestepped five paces to the right, turned and raised the assault rifle at the open door. The little house was empty. He crept closer. He saw the shiny steel steps of a spiral staircase, the kind you might see in a submarine. Ah ha. The little house had a basement.
Wes inched forward, hoping the dog would enter first. Wes stopped three steps from the door. The dog stopped two steps behind and sat on his haunches. He wasn't as dumb as he looked. Wes flirted with dozens of reasons why he shouldn't cross the threshold, reasons why he should simply announce his presence, take up a defensive position and wait for backup. But yelling 'Police!' wouldn't help his partner. If he was being held. If he was still alive.
Wes unfastened a latch and unfolded the bayonet. He clapped it into place below the barrel and refastened the latch. He crept toward the house, squinting his eyes to hear. Faint hollow voices, brief command and response exchanges drowned in echo. The subterranean chamber was large.
Wes ducked his head and crossed the threshold. A steady-burning light rose from the bottom of the staircase. The voices became clearer. Two men, speaking Spanish. Wes placed a white-dusted oxford on the top shiny metal step, said his goodbyes to his loved ones, grabbed the railing and descended the spiral staircase on the balls of his feet.
The light came from the right, from a tunnel or anteroom. The small room he lowered himself into was braced with timbers. The walls had been sprayed with texturecoat, mud showing through in patches. The voices tailed off, moving further down the tunnel that crossed under the cinderblock wall above. Wes stepped down onto the mud, grasped the assault rifle with both hands and waited for his irises to expand.
The nylon whisper of a warm up jacket was what alerted him. That and a suppressed grunt of exertion. Wes lurched to the right of the sound, heard an angry CLACK of wood on metal.
Wes blinked. He had moved into the fringe of light from a naked bulb that hung from a vertical shoring timber in the three by six foot tunnel. He scrambled back to darkness. His shadowy opponent muttered a quiet curse from the back of the room. Wes couldn't see him, heard only the blood pressure hammering in his ears. But he could see the head of a baseball bat gleaming dully on the steel staircase. His opponent must have switched to a more lethal weapon. Wes Lyedecker swung the SKS toward the back of the room. He didn’t know where this guy was exactly but he had thirty rounds to find out. He pulled the trigger. The safety was still on.
Wes dug his toes in the mud and shot forward. His black oxfords cooperating nicely, flexing in all the proper spots, finally broken in. His opponent took shape in outline form, a ghostly silhouette, raising its right arm.
Wes shot his triceps as he lunged, concentrating all his body's kinetic energy into the tip of the Russian-made assault rifle's bayonet. Two quick machine pistol rounds singed his right ear and flashblinded his eyes. The blonde Lab howled plaintively from up above.
FUCK YOU, thought Wes as he adjusted his point of attack several inches to the left and drove the bayonet through the breastbone, lungs and muscles of his opponent, driving him back and pinning him to the texturecoated wall. The machine pistol fell to the mud.
Wes wanted to curse the man who had tried to kill him, wanted to woof, talk trash and get in his face but the bayonet must have pierced his heart because his opponent was no longer breathing. Wes pulled his bayonet from the wall and almost pitched over. The dead man was still skewered on the blade.
Wes pushed against the man's chest with his foot and yanked back on the stock of the SKS. The blade, buried in bone, didn't budge. Wes dumped the dead man on his back. The assault rifle twanged back and forth like a whip antenna. Wes got on his hands and knees and groped around frantically. Paid killers with automatic weapons would soon evince an interest in his whereabouts.
"Miguel? Miguel?" shouted a young male voice from down the tunnel. Wes patted the mud with his palms, working right along the wall. He heard approaching footsteps. He swept his arms out wide but he couldn't seem to…Ah. A gun barrel warmed his fingers. He grabbed it up with both hands and squatted against the wall. The machine pistol was surprisingly heavy. He could see the far wall behind the fading orange starbursts in his eyes. Come on down asshole, he thought. Step on into that bell of light.
No one showed. Miguel hadn't answered. The man with the young voice must be waiting in the tunnel. Shit. Wes heard a distant percussive shuck. Sounded like sliding door. They were loading something into a van. He had to get himself down that tunnel.
Wes climbed to his feet and stepped lightly across the floor. For a macabre instant he considered advancing down the tunnel using his opponent's skewered body as a shield. He decided instead to crank out three quick steps and bounce himself off the far wall, shooting an astonishing number of bullets down the lighted tunnel before caroming back into the darkened chamber. No return fire commenced. Just fevered voices and the first deep breath of a V-8.
Nothin' to it but to do it. Wes took a quick breath and plunged headlong down the tunnel. To his inestimable relief no hidden gunman stepped up and spat molten death in his direction. The tunnel opened into a spacious room. Wes saw a stained work bench with an overhead hood fan, splotches of red on the concrete floor too bright to be blood, broken glass, a stainless steel sink, tall art deco hallogen lamps more suited to an executive suite, a four outlet junction box and plastered walls hung with asbestos tile.
Wes entered the room, machine pistol poised. Looking left he saw his bound and gagged partner being carried up a concrete loading ramp. Two men had his shoulders, a third man had his feet. A cargo van, side door open, sat parked above.
"Police! Drop your weapons!"
The third man dropped Bell's boots on the ramp while the other two stuck pistols in Bell's ears. Bell bugged out his eyeballs comically.
The heavyset, heavily pommaded Mexican to Bell's right didn't insult Lyedecker's intelligence by demanding he drop his weapon. Tactical Jack had told a rapt classroom of Academy cadets the story of the onion field. Surrendering your weapon when your partner had been taken hostage was not advised.
"Be coo', be coo'," warbled the Mexican through his several chins. Wes liked it that he sounded nervous. He recognized him as the passenger in the El Camino.
"Be coo' and we don't waste him, your companero," said the Mexican as he and his twin tugged Bell backward, dragging his bootheels on the concrete. The third man scrambled up the ramp. Lyedecker followed him with his machine pistol but didn't fire. The man reached ground level, ducked left around the van and disappeared. The van was idling, indicating a driver in place. Four against one. The fat twins wore cowboy boots, stitched seam pants and ostrich-skin belts. They were grinning at him now. He needed to assert control.
"I just killed your companero." Wes ticked his head toward the other room and returned the grins. "With a bayonet. And now I'm going to kill you." Wes braced his right wrist with his left hand and aimed the machine pistol at the head man's face. "Unless you and your fat friend lower your pistols right fucking now."
Bell was impressed. One, that the kid had found him and, two, that he hadn't resorted to that annoying psychobabble in an attempt to negotiate a non-negotiable situation. These boys were pros. No one was leaving until shots were fired. Just his luck that he had found the lab at the exact moment the troops rolled up to break it down. Bell released a long-held breath when the gun barrels were withdrawn from his ears and repositioned at his neck and temple.
"Don' be stoopid now," said the head man. "No one he has to get hurt." He reached around with his free hand and yanked the gag from Bell's mouth. "Listen to your partner," said the man, pulling Bell to a standing position.
"Well," said Bell, spitting bits of ra
g from his mouth, "I guess this here's whut you call a Mexican standoff." Bell's dopey grin went unnoticed by his partner who concentrated on keeping the machine pistol gunsight centered on the head man's bobbing nose.
"Stay still!" screamed Wes.
Even Bell froze.
"Tell heem," pleaded the head man.
Bell cleared his throat and addressed himself to his baby boy. "Shoot the motherfuckers," he said.
The twins looked aghast. "Vamanos," called a voice from inside the van.
Wes wondered what the fourth man was doing. He could be creeping down the spiral staircase, ready to attack from the tunnel. Had Bell been held by one man, Wes would have fired. Tactical Jack said a top-of-the-skull shot would penetrate the parietal lobe and cut the motors, negating a spasm shot. But there were two. The driver revved the engine and yelled, "Vaya!"
"What part of 'shoot the motherfuckers' don't you understand?" said Bell just before Wes Lyedecker squeezed off two rounds that hit the kevlar vest right above Bell's solar plexus, emptying Bell’s lungs and knocking him back into the open van.
The twins fired their weapons at the vacant space. The one on the left shot the head man on the right, tearing out his voice box, interrupting his shout of protest, sending him to his knees.
Wes aimed low and left and calmly center stitched the other twin with half a dozen rounds from crotch to chin. He died standing up. The van roared off with Bell's duct taped ankles dangling from the open door.
The head man, hand clasped across his fleshy throat, blood pumping through his fingers, hoisted his gun hand. Wes Lyedecker's first burst cut him in half. The second burst turned him into a crowd.
Wes dropped the empty gun, pried the black steel .45 semi-automatic from the man’s death grip and scrambled up the blood-slicked ramp. The cargo van had a ten second head start. The most Wes could hope for was a clear shot at a distant tire. He stuck his head above ground. He was outside the grounds of the plant, the cinderblock wall behind him. A dirt road sheltered by shrubs of cliffrose headed east toward the river. A dark green van sat parked two hundred yards down the road.
