by Dave Lund
Chivo smiled at the biker, who looked very confused at the man smiling at his pistol, before jamming on the Land Rover’s brakes and yanking the steering wheel to the left. The biker shot, but the round skipped harmlessly off the hood of the Land Rover. The corner of the bumper hit the back of the motorcycle and knocked it sideways. The biker dropped the pistol and tried to grab the handlebars, but the motorcycle turned sharply and high sided, throwing the biker off. He slid on the asphalt. The hard surface ground the skin off the biker’s left arm and the left side of his face. His right foot pointed at a ninety-degree angle away from his shin, but somehow the biker lived through the ordeal. Chivo stopped the Land Rover by the biker lying in the road. He and Apollo climbed out and walked over to him, finding him lying flat on his back in the middle of the road and yelling in pain.
“Hey guy, you should really be more kind to your arriving guests. I’m going to give your establishment a bad review on Yelp.”
The biker spat bloodily at Apollo; he kicked the biker’s broken ankle, resulting in another howl of pain. Chivo kicked the biker’s hand away from the broken ankle and put his boot on it. While stepping on the biker’s fingers, Chivo leaned over him. “So how many of you assholes are there up there?” he asked, pointing towards the Chisos Basin.
“Fuck you, wetback!”
Apollo raised his eyebrows at the racial slur the biker spat at Chivo, who replied by stomping his foot on the biker’s hand. The crackling sound of breaking bones could be heard over the man’s screams.
“OK marica, let’s try this again. How many of you assholes are up there?”
Gasping for breath through the pain, the biker replied, “Only eleven of us left.”
“Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. What sort of weapons do you have?”
“M-16s and a fifty-cal machine gun.”
Chivo looked at Apollo, and after years of working together, they exchanged their thoughts in a single glance. If the bikers had a machine gun emplacement deployed correctly, there was no way they could drive into the mountain basin without being ambushed.
“So those are what you have guarding the road?”
“No, no one is guarding the road,” the biker replied through gritted teeth.
Apollo smirked, “You’re a gang of idiots then.”
“Fuck you nig—”
The biker’s slur was interrupted by Chivo’s pistol firing a single shot, erupting the biker’s face and head in a geyser of blood.
“No jodas, pendejo. You can call me names, but you don’t call my brother names.”
Apollo grinned at Chivo. “Thanks buddy. Now what?”
“Statue of Liberty play, straight up the middle.”
Apollo nodded, and they climbed back into the Land Rover.
CHAPTER 43
The Basin
February 17, Year 1
Bexar thought he heard a shot echoing off the mountains, but it was very faint and he wasn’t completely sure. His head pounded and he felt nauseous; this was going to be a bad hangover. He snacked on a Snickers bar that he’d taken from the store in Terlingua, moving as slowly as he could to remain hidden. Bexar had never been in the military and never had any training as a sniper or in cover and concealment. All Bexar could rely upon was what he’d read in books like American Sniper to give him tips on what to do.
It was hard to keep count of the number of bikers in the basin; the binoculars just weren’t powerful enough to see the details down by the motels very well. Bexar also didn’t have anything to write on and was relying on his half-drunk encroaching hangover brain to keep track. There were the two he had already killed, but they didn’t matter anymore. Another had left on his motorcycle towards the exit of the basin about twenty minutes ago. There was the one he saw enter his old cabin, and so far he had counted seven others milling about doing various things. Mainly, he saw them drinking beer and smoking dope in small glass pipes. Bexar wasn’t sure what they were smoking, but from a distance it looked like either crack or meth.
Two mostly naked women went into his old cabin about thirty minutes ago, as best Bexar could tell, but they hadn’t come back out yet. Bexar guessed that that was the leader’s cabin since it was one of the nicest, and he hadn’t seen any women entering any of the other cabins.
Movement caught the corner of his vision, and he panned his binoculars towards the road entering the basin to see an old Land Rover driving up the road. The vehicle drove slowly and turned off the road behind the basin store. Bexar assumed it was more bikers and they were too far away for him to engage. So he continued to watch the store until two people moving slowly around the far side of the building caught his eye. He glimpsed a man in BDUs moving west, using the buildings for cover, carrying the largest rifle Bexar had ever seen. That kept Bexar’s attention until the man hit the low scrub of the desert floor and vanished like a ghost. Bexar held his breath and scanned with the binoculars, nearly convincing himself that the mix of alcohol, Vicodin, and the gunshot wound had him hallucinating. But he scanned back towards the store and saw the other two in BDUs moving up the road in a half jog before melting into the woods on the east side of the basin. He could have sworn that behind the black guy was someone with a blond ponytail, but it was hard to see with all the gear that guy had on.
Bexar was still trying to figure out who those new guys were and if they were a threat when he heard a woman scream. He panned his binoculars back towards his old cabin where the scream originated. One of the bikers he had killed with a knife had reanimated and was lumbering towards three women. Two of them were the ones that had gone into the cabin a while ago; the third one was completely nude and had her hands bound.
Bexar’s heart nearly stopped when he realized that the nude woman was Jessie. She was badly beaten, but she was there and she was alive! Bexar dropped his binoculars and pulled his AR up from his side, took aim, and fired a single shot through the skull of the zombie biker. The woman nearest the re-killed biker was splattered with fragments of skull and diseased brain matter, which she responded to by freezing in her tracks and screaming again. The rifle’s report echoed across the mountains. The biker with the ponytail erupted from the cabin and walked to the body of the biker, looked at the splatter of brain matter, and followed the path backwards and up the hill, seeing Bexar lying on top of the low cabin roof. The biker gang’s president locked eyes with Bexar’s before growing wide in surprise and then narrowing in anger.
The biker grabbed the first woman in reach and pulled her in front of his body, using her as a shield. He started backing up towards the cabin. Bexar looked at Jessie and at the retreating biker, and decided that if that woman led his nude wife into the parking lot bound by a rope, then she was a party to the gang’s violation of his family and friends and deserved what she got. Bexar lined up the reticle of his ACOG and squeezed the trigger. The woman’s head exploded in blood and brain matter. The biker fired his pistol wildly towards Bexar before Bexar could line up his follow-up shot. Four trigger pulls of the AR later, the biker with the pistol lay motionless on the asphalt. Jessie also lay on the ground, unable to move her hands. She rolled in pain on the ground, one of the biker’s pistol rounds having nicked her in the calf. Blood began flowing from her wound onto the pavement.
The bikers smoking dope ran towards the two dead bodies. One drew his pistol and started towards Jessie; Bexar shot him a half-dozen times before he fell to the ground. Bexar threw the poncho aside, did a tactical reload of his rifle, and slid down the front of the roof to the patio to run down the walkway as quickly as he could, limping along the way. The adrenaline was so high that the hangover seemed to vanish instantly.
Breaking into view from between the next row of cabins, Bexar saw that the white van on the other side of the parking lot was smoking. The other biker must have shot it as well as Jessie by mistake. Bexar slowed and knelt, shouldering his AR now that he had more shots on the other bikers, when the head of the biker lined up in his reticle exploded in a re
d mist. Then another and another before Bexar realized that the guy with the big rifle was taking out the bikers. Bexar lowered his AR and scanned the pavement for other threats. The remaining two bikers ran down the hill to his right; Bexar began to turn to line up shots on the escaping bikers when he heard the staccato fire of an AR being fired rapidly.
“Well shit yeah,” Bexar said out loud. He began to stand and noticed the white van had flames pouring out of the open holes where windows used to be. Suddenly, it felt like a giant punched him in the chest and knocked him off his feet onto the walkway behind the first row of cabins. Bexar’s mind had just started to process the roaring sound of the explosion that rolled over him when he felt a blank curtain fall over his eyes and mind. Then, blackness.
CHAPTER 44
The Basin
February 17, Year 1
“What in the hell was that?” Lindsey yelled.
Both Lindsey and Apollo lay flat on the asphalt; Lindsey had no idea what had happened, just that Apollo had pushed her to the ground before he joined her.
“Fucking IED is what that sounded like.”
“Like in Iraq?”
“Yes.”
“What now?”
“You get the Land Rover and drive all the way up this road towards the cabins until you find me. If I think it’s a trap, I’ll come back down and meet you.”
“But …”
“No buts, go!”
Lindsey frowned at Apollo before hopping to her feet and running down the hill to where they’d left the Land Rover parked. Apollo climbed to his feet and jogged up the hill with his rifle ready. Before passing the two bodies of the bikers, Apollo fired a single shot into each one’s skull to make sure they wouldn’t get up again.
At the top of the hill, the destruction was incredible. The three stand-alone stone buildings to Apollo’s right and in front of him were mostly destroyed and burning. The long row of cabins to his left were also catching fire. Chivo came from behind further west, jogging down the hill with the big Barrett fifty-caliber rifle over his shoulder.
“Our guy is on the other side of those cabins. You check here and I’ll go after our guy.”
Apollo flashed a quick thumbs-up and checked each of the bodies on the pavement. The bikers without any heads were obvious; Chivo did incredible work. There were two women on the pavement; both had burn marks on their bodies and one of them was nude. One of the women was very obviously dead; a large piece of shrapnel was lodged into her forehead and her eyes were open, focused on infinity in death. The other woman looked OK except for being nude and having what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the right calf. Apollo took out a pair of latex gloves, put them on and checked for a pulse, then took the stethoscope out of the MOLLE webbing on his chest carrier and checked for any signs of life. He couldn’t find anything. Her eyes were closed, but Apollo was sure she was dead. Apollo stuffed the stethoscope back into his gear and moved on to the other bodies. Each body he checked, he found completely lifeless. If the biker they’d interrogated was correct, they were one body short. Apollo didn’t know about the other two bikers Bexar had killed up the mountain by the water tanks.
Chivo returned with a limp body over his shoulders.
Apollo looked at Chivo and shrugged. Chivo nodded. “He’s alive.”
Apollo raised his eyebrows and before he could say anything, the Land Rover pulled up beside them. Chivo lay the unconscious man in the back of the Land Rover. “I’m going back for my rifle and this guy’s bag. Prep for depart in five mikes,” he said as he held up an open hand.
Apollo flashed another thumbs-up. This was like their year in Afghanistan and the terrain kind of looked like it too. Apollo pulled his stethoscope out again, along with a pair of EMS shears. He cut off the man’s boots and all of his clothing before doing a blood check, rubbing the body to check for any blood that would signify an open wound. He found none except a gunshot wound to the right thigh that didn’t look fresh and looked like it might be infected. Lindsey climbed into the front passenger’s seat and Apollo handed her an IV bag. “Hold this up until I can rig something to hold it.” Apollo started an IV as quickly and cleanly as any emergency room nurse. He’d trained and practiced as a combat medic in the Army Special Forces; that training was continued after he left to work for the CIA. Once the IV was taped down, Apollo unfolded a silver foil-like emergency blanket and wrapped the man in it followed by one of their poncho liners. Chivo returned just as Apollo ran a length of 550 cord from the roof rack through the door and across the ceiling to tie off on the other side of the vehicle. With a carabiner, he hung the IV on the line and gave a thumbs-up to Chivo, who handed Lindsey the man’s bag and his big sniper rifle before climbing behind the wheel of the Land Rover.
Not waiting to see if the missing biker turned up with the fifty-caliber machine gun, Chivo drove quickly down the road and away from the basin. They needed to check in on the SATCOM with Cliff, but they also needed to get to a secure place.
CHAPTER 45
The Basin
February 17, Year 1
Jessie’s mind slowly came into focus, and it took some time for her to figure out where she was and what had happened. Her eyelids opened to find a pale blue sky and trees, but she couldn’t hear anything. Wait—she could hear a high-pitched ringing in her ears, but she knew that it wasn’t a real sound; it was her ears protesting against an assault to her ear drums. But what happened to cause it? Jessie sat up and realized she was completely nude. She felt dizzy. Her hands were tied together with some rope. Turning her head, she saw that there were dead bodies on the asphalt and that the cabins were on fire. The cabins. She was in the park in the basin. The events before the explosion came back in a flood. She’d been kidnapped by the biker gang and had been savagely beaten. Jessie looked at her crotch and wasn’t sure if she had been raped, but she could remember the beatings, the darkness, and being pissed on. Jessie was sure if she didn’t flee, she would be violated sooner or later.
Jessie stood. Her right leg failed her and she fell to the road, painfully unable to catch herself with her hands tied. Tears welled up in her eyes and she wanted nothing more than to sit and cry, but Jessie knew that she had no time to feel sorry for herself. She had to get free; she had to get her mind right and she had to survive.
Bexar.
She remembered seeing a glimpse of Bexar with his AR, but the memory wasn’t clear and Jessie wasn’t completely sure she hadn’t imagined her husband being there. Gingerly, Jessie stood again and very carefully hobbled to where the biker’s leader lay dead on the pavement. His large KaBar knife was still on his belt. Jessie pulled the knife out, sat on the ground, and put the handle of the knife between her feet so she could rub the rope against the blade. A few moments of work and the rope fell away from her wrists, dark red abrasions burned into her skin. Jessie took the knife in her hand and stood. Carefully she checked the biker’s vest and found a pistol. A press check told her that a round was in the chamber. Jessie pressed the magazine release and found that the Glock 21 had six rounds left in the magazine. With the round in the chamber, Jessie had seven rounds to her name.
Blood still poured from the wound in her calf, a chunk of meat missing where the bullet tore through her flesh as it passed by. Jessie limped to the next biker and found he was missing his head. She used the knife and cut off large strips of the dead biker’s t-shirt, which she folded over her bleeding calf and then tied tightly into a makeshift bandage.
She limped to the last cabin, the cabin she and Bexar had lived in a few weeks earlier. The front wall was missing and the roof that had collapsed was smoldering in front of her eyes, but some of the structure and the back wall still stood. Jessie walked slowly towards what remained of the cabin and walked into the rubble. The dresser was broken beneath the fallen roof, but Jessie still found a pair of her pants and one of Bexar’s t-shirts. Even without shoes or underwear, a pair of jeans and a t-shirt was better than nothing.
Limping out
of the ruined cabin, Jessie looked at the bodies lying on the ground around her. The smallest biker was her choice; she walked to his body and pulled the leather boots off his feet. Square-toed with a strap across the front and a metal ring on the side, the boots were far from functional for anyone doing anything other than riding a motorcycle. They were two sizes too large, but boots too large are better than no boots at all, and Jessie put them on. Jessie looked at each of the bodies on the ground and didn’t see Bexar. She walked to the walkway between the cabins and didn’t see him or his body there either.
Maybe he was able to get away. Maybe he thought I was dead and left. Maybe he’s chasing a biker that got away. Maybe he was never here at all. Maybe he’s in Terlingua. Maybe he never came back from Lajitas. I need to get out of here.
Jessie limped back to the parking area, the boots clomping on the stone walkway. Motorcycle boots, I never thought I would be wearing motorcycle boots. Motorcycle. The bikers had bikes nearby. A handful of bikes lay in ruins from the blast, so Jessie gingerly limped down the hill towards the motels and the basin’s store.
In the parking lot, she saw two more motorcycles, but even better yet she saw Malachi’s International Scout. It was intact and looked to be just fine. She found the keys hanging from the ignition. The motor started effortlessly. She put the truck in gear and drove out of the parking lot, out of the basin and towards Terlingua with half a tank of gas and more questions than answers.
Big Bend National Park
The Land Rover turned north on Main Park Road and sped through the desert at seventy miles per hour in contempt of the marked forty-five miles per hour speed limit signs. Chivo drove as fast as he thought safe; Apollo continued to tend to the man they were sent to find; although Cliff had sent them in search of a group thought to be overrun by a biker gang, they only had one survivor. Apparently, they’d been overrun, but at least they were able to save one even if they left a dozen bodies on the pavement after the blast. Apollo still wasn’t sure why the explosion happened. From the exploded remains of a vehicle, it appeared that it was a car bomb, but he couldn’t figure out how or why there would be a car bomb. It didn’t matter how or why. They’d gotten their high-value target and were rushing back to the underground cache site, hoping that the unconscious man would survive the effects from the blast … and the infected leg. It was still too early to tell.
