by Wayne Mee
Nate went on to explain how things had changed since Sam and Shirley had joined them. Faith, upon hearing that another woman had joined the Desperadoes, showed an interest in meeting her. Josh noticed however, that her eyes kept straying back to Des.
“Well then, Faith,” Nate beamed. “Why don’t you come back with us and visit for a spell? Hell, the whole lot of you can come!” He turned to Josh. “I doubt those two vans of yours would make the trip, but that monster truck of yours sure as hell will!”
Faith’s smile widened. “Let’s go, Paw. The company would do you good.”
George sighed and smacked his leg. “I guess these old shanks of mine can hobble over to a truck, and I would like to see the high country again. What do you say, Josh? You and your bunch want to come along? This Sam fella might know something about this one-eyed man you’re after --- beside, I know a good place to catch Cut-Throat Trout.”
Josh glanced up at Cobb and Flame. The one shrugged and the other nodded eagerly. Ever since her first experience in New Hampshire, Flame never missed a chance to get above the treeline. “Almost as good as sex,” she’d told Josh one night as they lay sharing a sleeping bag. Overhead the stars had burned like a fistful of diamonds scattered on black velvet. Josh had grunted and turned on his side. Pressing her body close to his she had whispered; “I said ‘almost’!”
Josh, reliving the memory, smiled to himself. “Sounds good,” he said. “If it’s okay with Des?”
Des nodded agreement, his glance going towards Faith.
An hour later they were all headed back up the winding logging trail that led to the Desperadoes camp.
Chapter 41: ‘ONE-EYE’
Los Padres National Forest
Sierra Madre Mts.
California, May 9th
Bodies lay strewn about like scattered leaves. The pine blocking the road was still ablaze. Two vehicles were little more than burning hulks. Like wraiths, forms staggered through the black smoke. The stench of death was everywhere.
Roy Heller pressed a bandage to his right temple and gazed about him. “How many down?”
Nina Escarlo, her face drawn and pale, listed the names. “Lt. Crofter and his crew. Bersher, Connors, Gorman and Spriggs. Eleven in all. Several more wounded and Rat’s seriously burnt.”
Heller swore and looked for Scar. He spotted him talking to a group of his guards. A body lay at his feet. By the time Heller made his way over to Scar, the guards had faded into the trees.
“Bastards hit us hard,” Heller growled.
Scar ignored him, shoving a fresh clip into his Desert Wind.
Heller noticed the hole in Scar’s Kevlar vest. “That came close.”
The one-eyed man grunted, working his left shoulder. “Sniper up on the cliff. Goldberg took care of him.”
“We get them all down here?”
“Three got away, but not for long.” As though to prove his point, shots, distant and muffled by the trees, drifted back to them.
“Shit!”, Heller swore. “Jocco won’t like this! We need some of them alive!” He kicked at Donald Paxton’s body. “This prick say anything?”
“Nothing that’d help.”
Just then one of Heller’s men called down to him from the cliff high above. “Found something up here, Captain!”
“What?”
“One dead male, one .306 and one set of tracks. Leading east. Small, probably female.”
“Wounded?”, Heller yelled back.
The voice floated back. “Don’t think so, Captain. There’s a hell of a lot of blood, but none on her trail.”
Scar grunted. “Who the hell is that? Davy Fucking Crocket?!”
“Corporal Gerald Swan,” Heller grinned. “The boys call him The Nose. He grew up in these parts and he can follow a trail like a bloodhound!”
Scar’s guards reappeared. Sergeant Godwin flashed him three fingers and the thumbs down sign. Scar nodded while Heller frowned.
“I said we needed live prisoners!”
Scar holstered his Desert Wind, a sly look on his disfigured face. “Then you’d better hope your bloodhound is as good as they say.”
Heller brightened. “Christ, Scar, with any luck The Nose’ll follow the little cunt all the way back to their main camp!”
“He’s your man, Roy, not mine. You can haul your ass all over these mountains if you like; me, I’m going to stay right here, have a few brews and cook myself a steak. If your man finds something, good. If not, come morning I’m going on to Bakersfield.”
Heller looked thoughtful, glanced up at Swan on the cliff, then turned and spoke to Sergeant Peter Cozens. Minutes later Cozens and three other men were climbing the cliff. Swan waited till they reached him, then led the group into the trees. Heller grinned at Scar.
“A few brews and a steak sounds good. Maybe a little tits ‘n ass on the side. Don’t worry about the one that got away. Swan will track her and Cozens knows what he’s doing.”
Scar, his left shoulder still hurting where Dink’s bullet had hit his vest, grunted and worked his arm. “Ya. That’s what you said about Rat.”
As Jenny Simpson stumbled along in a waking nightmare, two scenes kept playing themselves over and over in her brain: Dink’s head exploding beside her and the one-eyed man shooting Don. She tried to force the thoughts away, to concentrate on where she was going, but the blood and the pain always returned. Dead. All dead. First her husband and baby in Fresno and now this. The world had truly gone mad. Better to just curl up and die.
Her foot caught on a root and she stumbled. Pain lanced through her knee. As she lay there sobbing, the sound of running water reached her. Looking up she saw a sparkling stream cascading down the mountainside. Sunlight dappled the moss, turning it a brilliant green. Off to the right a doe and her fawn watched her with liquid eyes. Christ, she thought. How can nature be so beautiful and cruel at the same time?
Limping forward, she thrust her head into the rushing water. Cold. Freezing cold. Gasping, she sat back and washed Dink’s blood from her face and hands.
“Steady now, Jenny,” she said aloud, the sound of her own voice calming her. “You’re alive. If you want to stay that way you have to get moving. Have to reach Des and Nate. Have to tell them about Don and that one-eyed bastard!”
After drinking she stood up and checked her bearings. “This must be Walker Brook,” she reasoned out loud. “If I follow it up, I should reach Des’ cabin in a few hours. They’ll fix that one-eyed son of a bitch!”
Hatred fueling her slim, aching body, she headed up the stream.
“Shit!”, Corporal Gerald Swan exclaimed. “Looks like she’s following the stream!”
Sergeant Cozens sat on a rounded boulder and lit a smoke. “So?”
The man known as The Nose frowned. “So, I can’t follow what I can’t see! The bitch could have gone up or down, could come out on either side. With all these rocks, tracks will be hard to find!”
Private Joe Lions grinned. The gesture made his thin face look like a ferret. “Why don’t you just sniff the cunt out, Nose? Christ, even I can smell pussy!”
The two men behind him grinned. Only Swan and Sergeant Cozens failed to see the humor. “Shut the fuck up, Lions,” Cozens growled. “The only time you ever smelled pussy was when you sniffed your sister’s bicycle seat.”
That brought real laughter from all but the ferret-faced private. Cozens turned back to Swan. “So what now? Split up, wait here, what?”
Swan removed his pack. “All of you wait here. I’ll check out downstream first. Down one side, up the other. If I don’t find anything in a quarter mile, all of us will go on up together.”
Cozens shrugged. “Fine by me. Just don’t take too fucking long, Nose, we only got a few hours of light left.”
As Swan moved down the stream, Cozens called after him. “Sure you don’t want to take Lions the Great Pussy Sniffer with you?”
Behind the burly sergeant’s back, Lions gave him the finger.
It was an hour before sundown by the time Jenny reached the cabin. Soaked and chilled to the bone from following the stream, she’d been about to give up when two of the Desperadoes found her. Kitty Pranks and Sally Chisolm had gone to the stream to bath. While splashing in an icy pool, Jenny suddenly appeared. Trembling and babbling something about a one-eyed killer, they had taken her to the cabin. Shirley Bates gave her two Valium while Kitty took her blood-stained clothes out to be washed. Wrapped in a blanket and placed before the roaring fireplace, Jenny’s story slowly became more coherent.
All there listened as she described the bloodbath. When she came to the part about the one-eyed man shooting Donald Paxton, a low rumble of hatred filled the room. Phil Chalker and Mark Sandorf instinctively reached for their weapons. Lt. Sam Waterton’s quiet voice broke the ancient spell.
“Hold on. We can’t just rush off with guns blazing.”
Mark met the ex-soldier’s gaze. “We can’t just sit here and do nothing!”
Most of the other men who had crowded into the room rumbled agreement.
“We can think this through”, Sam replied. “It’ll be dark soon. They’ll either be long gone or waiting for you. Either way Don and the others will still be dead. It won’t help any if you join them.”
Mark sighed in frustration. “Well, I wish to Hell that Des and Nate were back. We gotta do something, for Christ’s sake!”
Sam placed a friendly hand on the man’s shoulder. “We will do something, but first we have to know what we face. Find out their strengths and weaknesses.”
“More ‘planning’!”, Mark hissed, clearly unwilling to wait.
“It’s Sam’s planning that’s kept us alive so far,” Shirley Bates said, her thin face flushed with anger. Marla Stevens moved up beside Shirley and nodded agreement.
“She’s right, Mark,” Sanjo Delacarla said. “Sam’s ideas have helped us plenty. Besides, we should at least wait for Des and Nate to come back. Hell, there’s less than a dozen of us here now.”
As the debate continued, outside Private Gerald ‘The Nose’ Swan quietly slipped back through the trees to where Sergeant Cozens and the others waited. Behind him a body lay slumped beside the barn.
“Well?”, Cozens grunted.
Swan gave him the thumbs up sign. “She led us right to them. Big cabin and several outbuildings. Chickens, goats. Christ, I even saw a pig.”
“Fuck the pigs! How many men?”
Swan shrugged. “Ten, twelve. Hard to tell. Lights fading and there was a guy down by the barn.”
“’Was’?”
Swan shrugged again. “He surprised me. Actually we surprised each other. I had to knife him.”
“Shit!”, Cozens growled. “I was hoping we could take them here and now!”
Lions’ high voice butted in. “Five of us, a dozen of them. Poor odds, Sarge. I think...”
Cozens silenced him with a cold glare. In the lengthening shadows the burly sergeant made his decision. “Swan, get us back down to the others double quick. We’ll let Heller and that one-eyed bastard work this out.”
Swan, Cozens and his men were halfway back down when Des, Nate and the rest of the Desperadoes, coming up the opposite side of the mountain, arrived at the cabin. Just moments ago the dead guard had been found. Josh and his crew, all crowded into the LAV, were momentarily ignored as the news of the killings was retold.
“This one-eyed man,” Josh asked a few minutes later. “Was he tall, black haired and scarred?”
“So Jenny says,” Des replied. “You think he’s the same fella you’re after?”
Josh didn’t bother to reply. Instead he stood at the window gazing out at the fading sunset. Flame moved to his side. Jessie sat on the cabin’s front steps scratching the hound’s ears. Nate, Cobb and Sam Waterford were talking quietly off to one side. Cobb walked over to Josh, Nate and Sam following.
“Doesn’t look good, Josh,” Cobb said. “The dead guard means this place is compromised. Come first light, they’ll be swarming all over us.”
“It’s him, Cobb. I can feel it.” There was an intensity in Josh’s voice that Cobb hadn’t heard since he left the Special Forces. Lot’s of boys back then had a real narrow version of the world --- mainly ‘revenge at all costs’.
“It probably is him”, Cobb replied. “That still doesn’t change the fact that this place is a death-trap.”
“I agree” Josh said coldly. “But for us or for him?”
Cobb shrugged. “That depends on how many hit us and how good this here group is.”
“Damned good,” Nate grinned, slapping Cobb good-naturedly on the back. “We were good before Sam came. We’re twice as good now.”
Chapter 42: ‘OVERKILL’
Los Padres National Forest
Sierra Madre Mts.
California, May 9th
Later that evening, Greta, monitoring the radio in the LAV, had overheard Scar and Heller calling up the rest of their troops. This news had been passed on to Josh and the other leaders who had quickly decided it best to cancel the ambush they were planning for the morning and beat a hasty withdrawal instead. Cobb and Jessie were chosen to act as rear guards. Taking only water and extra amo, those two headed down the stream to setup a delaying action. Back at the cabin some of the Desperadoes were less than pleased with the withdrawal.
“So that’s it?”, Phil Chalker demanded. “We just turn tail and run?”
Phil’s friend, Mark Sandorf, glared at Sam. “What about your big words about making them pay for what they did to Don Paxton and his group?!”
Sam ran his hand through his curly hair. “When there was just a few of them, Mark, we stood a chance. As long as they stayed on the trail, we could contain them. But now, with over a hundred troops and heavy weapons...”
Just then Eddy burst in, a walkie-talkie in his hand. “Jess and Cobb both say they have to pull back. There’s way too many moving up at once.” As though to drive home the point, the sound of distant shots reached them.
“Where’s Des?” Jenny Simpson demanded. “You can’t let that one-eyed bastard kill him too!” Her eyes were wide, her voice near panic. Faith Cummings left her father’s side and took Jenny’s hand.
“Des will be alright, Jen. He’s out back with the others getting the trucks loaded. We’re all going to leave together.”
An explosion suddenly rattled the windows in the cabin. Dirt spattered off the glass. Flame moved towards the door and met Cobb taking the steps two at a time.
“Some heavy shit coming down,” she said.
“Real heavy,” Cobb replied. “Mortars.” He turned to Josh. “They’ll be trying to outflank us.”
“Time to go, folks,” Josh said.
Faith went to help her father rise from his chair. The old man, his arthritic hands clutching a double-barreled shotgun, shook his head. “You go along now, Faith. I’ll be staying here a spell.”
Faith looked down at her father with uncomprehending eyes. “But Dad, we have to go now! They’ll be here any minute!”
George Cumming’s looked up at his daughter, his lined face set in a determined grimace. “I’m tired of the pain, Faith. I came up here for one last look at the mountains. I’ve seen them. Now I just want it to end.”
Tears coursing down her cheeks, Faith knelt by her father’s side, her hand seeking his. “I know about your legs, Dad. I’ve know for a year.”
George stiffened, then squeezed her hand. “Then you also know that I can’t last much longer. You go now, Faith. I’ll be just fine here.”
“Nooooo!”, she cried. Jenny and Flame pulled her to her feet.
“Let it go, girl,” Flame said. “It’s the way he wants it.”
Suddenly standing straight, Faith took a deep breath, bent forward and kissed her father’s brow, then let the two women to lead her out the back door. Nate, his flippant manner uncharacteristically absent, strode over to his old friend. “Give ‘em hell, George.” His voice broke as a single tear tricked down his w
eathered cheek. George nodded, tears of his own now watering his pain-wracked eyes. Biting his lip, Nate offered the chairbound man his hand. They shook in silence, then Nate followed the others out to the waiting trucks.
It had been a classic flanking move. Heller’s group kept the defenders busy while Scar and his men moved in from both sides. Across the clearing Sergeant Salzin’s boys were even now raking the trucks.
“They’re making a break for it, Captain!”
Scar glanced at Lieutenant MacBean, then nodded to Goldberg. Bracing the heavy caliber machinegun on his hip, the sergeant cut loose at the cluster of people running for the trucks. Several went down right away. Others dove for cover. Then Scar’s mortar team opened up. First one truck exploded, then another. Screams filled the air. One body, engulfed in flames, staggered about like a wind-up toy run amuck. As it shuffled towards him, Scar raised his automatic and shot three times.
“Fucking perfect,” Scar muttered to himself.
Suddenly Goldberg was flung backwards, his 50. smoking yet silent. Scar saw a small hole in Goldberg’s forehead. The back of the head was missing. As he watched, a red dot appeared on the back of his radioman’s neck. A second later the man toppled over. Scar swore and flung himself to the ground. Hot led sizzled by just inches from his ear. Behind him the second member of his mortar team was struck in the chest.
Cobb slung his rifle and sprinted for the LAV, cursing the luck that had caused him to miss Scar. Bobby Stewart already had the large diesel motor revving. Enrico was spraying tracer bullets all around the corpse-laden clearing. Two of the six trucks owned by the Desperadoes were already racing down the trail. The four others were in flames. Eddy grabbed Cob’s outstretched arm and helped him scramble in the hatch. Flame and Jessie fired through the smoke.
“Cutting it close, Sport!”, Eddy yelled, slamming the heavy door. The hound, Og, gave Cobb a lick. Flame planted a wet one of her own on his smoke-smeared face.
