Gil Mason/Gunwood USA Box Set

by Gordon Carroll

  The old woman painted a cross on Majoqui's forehead, the blood feeling oily and cold, and then ran her fingers across his cheeks, painting them both the color of her lips. She prayed the old prayers, chanting and singing, as her voice rose in volume and speed, escalating upward until she was screaming, her body convulsing into tight spasms that shook her frame and brought near terror to the heart of the great assassin. Her words became guttural barks that exploded from her throat and her tongue spit out and in like a poisonous snake searching its prey.

  Majoqui's heart hammered in his chest as she flicked drops of blood onto his face and hair, baptizing him in the blood of power. She gripped the sides of his face in her hands and screamed her inarticulable words to the heavens and to Hell, calling on the saints and the demons to grant him his desire, no matter the cost. And when she was done, she sat back, exhausted and spent, her red red lips slack and a line of drool stringing to the table. Her dead eye floated absently as her living eye shook in its socket as though she were dreaming.

  And perhaps she was, thought Majoqui. Perhaps she was searching through the nether world of sleep and dreams, trying to regain the strength she had just passed to him.

  He kissed her hands, slipped the bloody charms from the bowl, kissed each in turn, before pulling them over his head, and then left.

  The three brothers from Hollywood drove him out east, past Byers, to a dirt road that led down and around to a grove far back from the highway.

  Majoqui had them set a series of beer cans at hundred-yard intervals. He drew the rifle from its hard plastic case and seated one of the twenty-round magazines. He bolted in a .308 cartridge and snugged the buttstock into his shoulder. The first can grew large in the scope as he sighted in. The supersonic crack of the missile piercing the sound barrier hurt Majoqui's ears, even through the wadded up bits of paper napkin he'd stuffed deep into his ears. The beer can exploded, frothy liquid spraying in all directions. Carlos, the leader of the brothers, picked up the can and held it out for him to see through the scope. The entry hole had punched dead center, proving the sighting to be right on target.

  Majoqui waved him off and sighted in on the second can a hundred yards down range. The Vortex scope was equipped with mil dots for wind and elevation adjustment, but Majoqui had never used them, preferring instead to use his natural talent for judging lead time and bullet drop.

  Releasing a third of his breath, he pulled steadily back on the trigger until the familiar kick to his shoulder told him the bullet was on its way. He saw the can spray as it went spinning down range. He'd hit it high, near the lip. He made a mental adjustment and sighted on the next can another hundred yards down.

  There was the buck and the crack as the bullet slid through the sound barrier, and this time, the beer can buckled at the center before exploding its contents into the air in a white spray.

  The recoil was very slight, about the same as an AR-15, little brother to the M-16. Majoqui had not been in the armed services, but several of Mara's members had, bringing their experience and knowledge back to the group for dissemination. Majoqui had learned much of his gun knowledge from them, and he had learned even more from the Internet, but of course hands on was the greatest teacher of all. Majoqui was a good shot with a pistol, but he was deadly with a rifle. He'd spent many a day with a .22 up in the hills of San Salvador, shooting rats and birds and virtually anything that ran, creeped or flew past his purview. Since those long ago days, Majoqui had killed nineteen men with the rifle from great distance. He had missed only once and that was a very far shot indeed. Close to a thousand yards. The bullet had struck a wall a few feet away from the man. Majoqui had seen the bricks chip at the bullet's impact. The man had jumped and looked around, but had no idea he had just missed death by a yard. Majoqui adjusted, aiming more than a foot over his head. This round caught him in the chest and it was as if he were a puppet whose strings had just been cut. His body went instantly limp and he fell as loose as water to the street.

  Remembering, Majoqui held the picture of the last can several inches above the upper rim. There was a breeze now, from the east, and he let the barrel drift to the right in compensation and then the almost surprise of the kick to his shoulder and the sharp report that assaulted his stuffed ears and the beer vaporized as it vacated the metal canister that had an instant before safely housed it.

  The Crow had not lost his touch.

  Majoqui nodded as the three brothers whooped and cheered his marksmanship. He had what he needed and now the example must be set.

  Putting the rifle back in its protective case, he motioned for the others to return. The sun was slipping behind the mountains to the west and he had to pick up Tamera's VW for his next job. It was wise to know the prey's habits and since observation was the best teacher… he had a car to follow.

  17

  I was tired. It had been a long day of training and I'd suited up and caught all the dogs. Sweat had dried on my skin, making me feel clammy and itchy, and my shirt was still soaked. I needed a shower and bed.

  No word at all on Stitch or his buddies from California. Jim Black had put a BOLO out on the SUV, along with the plate and descriptions on everyone we had, but nothing had turned up yet. I knew Denver would be out in droves. Nobody killed one of theirs and got away with it.

  Pilgrim slept in the back of my patrol car. There's no backseat. Instead there's a platform with a rubber mat and a sort of metal cage that covers the back and windows. I have a slider that I keep open so he can stick his head through and I can pet him. I also have an automatic door popper that hydraulically opens the passenger side rear door at the push of a button so I can call him to me if I'm on a traffic stop and things go bust; like they did the night before with Stitch. Pilgrim snored loudly and I could hear his paws scrabbling against the rubber mat as he chased a rabbit or a bad guy in the world of dreams. Good. He'd earned the rest. First with Stitch last night, and again tonight in training. Three different decoys had put on the bite-suit to catch him. Cassandra took the first hit. She stood out about thirty yards away and screamed and yelled at him as he came at her, her arms waving with a bamboo snap stick in one hand. Pilgrim never even slowed. He hit her on the inside left shoulder near her chest, and even though she turned expertly with the blow, his shear weight, 120 pounds, combined with his momentum, maybe 30 miles an hour, bowled her over. She hit the grass hard and I heard her breath whoosh out. But she recovered like the pro she is and started ground fighting immediately, wrapping his body as best she could with her legs, keeping him on the bite until I called him off.

  Matt Shunt and Brian Floss were the next two victims. Matt caught him on a runaway, Pilgrim hitting him in the center of the back and knocking him face first to the ground. Brian's catch was easier. He was hiding under a bush and Pilgrim sniffed him out after a seven-hundred-yard track across parking lots and through a golf course, and bit him on the right bicep. Even through the suit, there's a good deal of pain with the pressure of Pilgrim's jaw strength.

  Pilgrim had had a full night and I envied him his ability and opportunity to be able to sleep while I had to make the trek home. It was like I was his chauffeur or something. Sheesh.

  I pulled into my driveway a few minutes later, yawning as I activated the garage door opener. We live in a small, two bedroom house in Littleton, off of Bowles and Lowell. It's an older house with a few problems, but the yard's pretty big by today's Colorado standards, which gives Pilgrim plenty of room to romp. Not that he's that big a romper. He's never been a high energy dog, being as big as he is, but what he lacks in speed and energy, he more than makes up for in scenting ability and brute strength. Less of a sports car… more of a tank.

  It was nearly three in the morning as I shut off the car and pushed the button to close the garage door. A yellow Volkswagen drove past as the door closed. It was too dark to see the driver, but I didn't recognize the car as belonging to the neighborhood. It wasn't the paper boy either and it sure wasn't the milkman. I craned m
y neck to try and catch a glimpse of the license plate, but it didn't have a bracket light and the door closed too fast anyway.

  I let Pilgrim into his kennel. I have two. The one in the garage has a doggy door to the house and another to his outside run where he can do his business and get sunshine whenever he wants. There was no sunshine at this time of the morning, but he went out anyway… to take care of business.

  When I got inside, I looked out the living room window to make sure the VW wasn't cruising through again. It was a pretty safe neighborhood, but no neighborhood is so safe as to be immune to burglaries or theft from motor vehicles.

  Nothing.

  I yawned again and made my way to the kitchen. Jolene left a note on the fridge telling me there was a burrito in the microwave and all I had to do was hit the minute heat button and then remember to take it out before I fell asleep. What a gal. I hit the button, grabbed a soda from the fridge, and then sank into my favorite chair, the recliner. I popped on the TV, with the volume really low, and flipped through the channels until the microwave dinged. I grabbed the burrito, a fork and a paper towel and went back to my chair. Nobody made green chili like Jolene and she'd loaded it with pork, just the way I like it. I hadn't even realized I was hungry, but I was. I plowed through it in record time while still flipping through the channels.

  I had to wonder why I was paying such high cable bills for the privilege of having some two hundred paid advertisements hogging up all the channels. I finally settled on an old John Wayne flick. It was one of my favorites, McLintock.

  Somebody ought to belt you in the mouth. But I won't. The H… e… double toothpicks I won't!

  Nobody ever punched anybody in the face as good as the Duke. Not even Chuck Norris. Chuck kicked people in the face better, yes, but Mr. Wayne was the best movie puncher of all time.

  The doggy door clickety-clacked and in came Pilgrim. He went to the front window where I’d stood before getting my burrito and came over so I could rub his big head. I’d been a bad handler with Pilgrim and allowed him to get into the habit of begging for table scraps. So sue me. I cut a chunk off my burrito and let him eat it out of the palm of my hand. Once the food was gone, he laid down next to my chair and fell asleep.

  After a few minutes I set the empty plate on the coffee table and started to get up for bed, but the mud fight was still going on in the movie and who could leave that? So I stayed where I was… and then there was the scene where John shoots his daughter's boyfriend in the chest with a blank, making her think he'd killed him at her request and then… well… the next thing I knew, Jolene was smiling down at me as she pulled me from the chair and helped me into the bedroom. I shucked off my gun belt and clothes and crawled under the covers in just my skivvies and a t-shirt. I should have hopped in the shower first, but I was way beyond that now. I kissed Jolene on the lips and then kissed Marla on the forehead, she was snuggled between us, her thumb corkscrewed between her pink lips, and then I was out.

  I dreamed of my teenage days. My parents were good people who loved me, my brother and my sister, but I was a bad kid. It wasn't that I meant to be bad, it was just that I was curious… curious about the world… that and the fact that I hated school. I ran away for the first time when I was thirteen. Oh, I know a lot of kids run away at that age, but I didn't run away like most kids. I ran away to Alaska where I lied about my age and signed up on a crabber boat. I made it for about two months before a State Trooper spotted me and shipped me back home. But by then, of course, I'd been bitten by the bug and I would take off every chance I got. I never went to the same place twice and I got farther away almost every time. My poor parents.

  I dreamed of that first time, on the crabber boat. There was a fight, a big red haired boy from Okie in his early twenties went off on a skinny Basque guy in his late fifties. The boy had huge arms and hands and he picked the older man up off the deck with one hand, by the throat. The Basque moved so fast I hardly caught the movement at all. He swiped his hand in and down and suddenly the red haired boy dropped him. The red haired boy clutched his forearm, blood squirting from between his fingers. He started screaming… not like he was mad… like he was dying. I'd never heard anything like it. The sound of it made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. It was like that in the dream too. I could feel my hairs standing up and a chill ran through my body. In real life, the Basque and I became good friends and I learned a lot from him, but in the dream, he just turned and looked at me and there was something very scary in his eyes. I looked down and saw I was carrying my daughter in my hands and when I looked back up, it wasn't the Basque anymore. It was Stitch and he was staring at Marla with his one open eye and in his hand was a machete.

  I jerked awake, breathing hard and barely holding in the scream that tried to make it past my lips. Marla was still lying between Jolene and I. Still sucking her thumb, still safe.

  It took a long time before I could fall back to sleep. And when I did, I had another bad dream, only I couldn't remember it when I woke up.

  18

  Ziggy thumbed the striker on the lighter. Three jets of green colored flame heated the small black ball of tar heroin resting in the bowl of the spoon to liquid. Ziggy set a small piece of cotton over the goo and carefully drew the now filtered drug into a syringe through the cotton, his usually palsy nowhere in sight. He tapped the plastic syringe several times to raise air bubbles to the top, then gently squeezed it out the needle. The shoestring already circled his bicep, swelling his veins to thick snakes waiting to be fed. He didn’t even feel the point as it slid past his flesh and into his bloodstream. The world changed. His perception changed. Time and reality changed. He could think again. Reason and knowledge flooded back in vibrant strobes that invigorated his senses. He closed his eyes and the horrible hunger… the need that possessed his every thought and action, subsided to the back of his consciousness where it lingered like a shallow threat.

  The alley was deserted except for him and the rats. But he kept enough presence of mind to peek up at the street every so often to make sure no cops were coming his way. And it was because of this that he saw the tattooed man walk past. He knew him instantly. The way the rabbit knows the cougar. And knew also what it could mean to him.

  He slipped the string from his arm, and with practiced ease, quickly arraigned his paraphernalia into a purple, cloth Crown Royal bag with a draw string and shoved the bag into his pocket. Ziggy hurried up to the mouth of the alley. He was just in time to see the son of Mara meet another gang member and watched as the two of the them stepped into the nightclub.

  His head bobbed back and forth as he angled down the street. It was early, only nine o'clock, and the heavy hitters wouldn't be out for another hour or so, although some of the whores were already pushing their wares. They knew better than to waste their time on a burned out junkie like him, but there had been a time, not so long ago, that he used to spend his money on them occasionally. That was before heroin had replaced his need for women or sex or booze, or even food, most of the time. She was a jealous lover, heroin, and she didn't like sharing her conquests with anyone or anything.

  Ziggy didn't go into the club. It was called El Azul Muerta, (The Blue Dead), this month. They charged a five dollar cover, which he didn't have and wouldn't have paid even if he did. Last month, the same place had been called Head Bangers and had catered to the white, punk crowd. Now it was inhabited by Chicanos and other South and Central American peoples.

  Half the street belonged to Denver, the other half, the south side, belonged to Aurora. Police cars of both persuasions cruised up and down Hampden looking for trouble makers.

  Ziggy was half black, half Asian. His father, an Air force pilot who married a Japanese woman, brought her with him back to the states. His father was a big David Bowie fan, hence the name Ziggy, which he had hated all his life. Ziggy had been a decent soccer player back in high school in Chicago, with a nice build that women liked, but that was nearly three decades ago and his once lea
n muscles had long since been eaten away by age and the heroin so that he was now barely skin and bone. And the skin his body was able to hold onto was thin and easily breached. Ziggy knew what he looked like, but he also knew that his muscles would grow back quickly once he dumped the drugs and started eating proper. And he was going to do that, sure enough, just as soon as he was ready. Just a few more hits with the lady and he was going to be all done with her, oh yes. He knew he could do it anytime he wanted to — anytime he really wanted to. That was the key, of course, to really want to. And he would, eventually. He just wasn't ready yet. Not quite yet. Not when he knew Gil would be good for at least a Grant, and maybe even a C-note, if he wanted these guys as bad as he seemed to.

  Ziggy didn't have a cell phone. If he did, he would have sold it anyway, and the closest pay phone was at the gas station a half mile down the street. He bobbed his head back and forth trying to think. If he left to call Gil, the tattooed man might leave without him seeing him. If he didn't leave to make the call, the tattooed man was sure to leave eventually and Ziggy had no way of following him except on foot. And following an MS 13 gang banger on foot was a good way to get your throat slit.

  What to do?

  He ran back to the hookers, singling out a short, fat, white girl with pimples and hot pants. Her fat thighs bulged out of her shorts, the cellulite looking like dimpled curds of cottage cheese.

  She chomped a wad of gum noisily.

  "Could I use your phone?" he asked, as politely as he could.

  She shook her head, more street wise than her age would make him believe. "So you can run off with it and make enough for a hit? Beat it doper."