New Shores: The Eden Chronicles - Book Three

by S. M. Anderson

  The lead guard nodded once to himself, reached down, and pulled the blade from the trader’s hand with a jerk meant to retrieve the blade rather than provide any comfort to the Strema. He tossed the knife onto the table and turned to the back of the room, where their server stood wringing his hands on a large towel, looking pissed off.

  “Banisa?” The guard clearly knew the barkeep. “Is this what happened?”

  “I had my back turned, but I heard the insult that started it.” The barkeep pointed at the figure on the floor. “We all did. They were stinking of pata when they walked in.”

  The lead guard nodded once and waved at his men who relaxed their stance. Jake breathed a sigh of relief as the rifles swung upwards.

  “I’ve heard enough.” The guard faced Arsolis, if the Strema don’t have enough in their pockets to pay Banisa for the damage, you’ll make up the difference.”

  “Of course,” Arsolis agreed quickly.

  “Search them.”

  The three guards fell on the Strema, looking for bags of coins. Jake figured it was going to be a good day for the Hatwa fraternal order of police. As far as he was concerned, Hatwa law enforcement deserved a solid thumbs-up. He and Lupe shared a relieved look. He turned to Arsolis and gave the man a nod of thanks; the man could have turned them all in right then.

  The guard rifling through the pockets of Hyrika’s initial victim stood back up.

  “This man is dead.”

  Shit . . .

  The guard captain shook his head in disgust. After a moment, he nodded once to himself in decision and turned to Arsolis.

  “This is a different matter. You will have to stand before the council. All of you.”

  The guards’ rifles came back down again in unison.

  For a split second, he considered drawing his gun. Just then, another pair of guards gained the rooftop from the staircase.

  The guard captain shook his head at the body on the floor. “Strema . . .”

  “On your honor, you may keep your blades.” The guard nodded at all of them. “But you must come with us.”

  Shit . . . Shit . . . Shit . . . Get into the city, have a look around . . . that had been Audy’s plan. They were now going to see parts of it he’d just as soon go without.

  *

  Chapter 12

  Nebraska/Wyoming, Earth

  “You two wait here,” Britt whispered from where they knelt amid the sagebrush on the outskirts of the Muncy Ranch’s landscaped grounds. Beyond the house and its immediate outbuildings, which included a large horse barn and associated riding pens, lay an airplane hangar and an asphalt runway. “I’ll take a peek around.”

  “There’s people living in there,” Pete said. Even in the dark, they could see him pointing at the large compound. Several vehicles were parked in front of what looked like a smaller structure near the large shed or hangar. The main house looked empty. “You don’t need to go and be waking them up. There’s a water truck parked next to the barn.”

  Tom cringed in anticipation. Britt wasn’t used to having to explain herself. He knew Pete was very close to learning why she was in command. Tom heard his wife take a deep breath before slapping him on the arm. “You explain it to him.”

  And then she was up and gone, moving like a wraith in the darkness. Tom smiled to himself; there was nobody who could move like his wife. In general terms, the people who discovered that fact weren’t usually long for this world.

  “Pete, there’s something you need to understand about Brittany.”

  “I know she’s your CO, and wife,” Pete spit out. “But dammit, she’s going to wake that whole bunkhouse up.”

  “You don’t think they’re going to wake up when we start up that truck?”

  “Well . . . I, err . . .”

  “We’ve done this before, Pete.” He was getting tired of having to explain common sense to the hardheaded rancher. “Trust me; it’s better to deal with them on our schedule, in our way, than have them come pouring out of that house with guns blazing when an alarm goes off or the dog starts barking.”

  “Just what the hell is she going to do all by herself?”

  Nothing stupid, I hope. “Pete, you remember three or so years ago, that Caribbean cruise ship that got hijacked by those narco-terrorists out of Venezuela?”

  “Sure, it was all over the news. Some American passengers put paid to the assholes before the SEALS could even get there. Hard story to forget.”

  “Yeah, those guys.” Tom nodded in the dark. “When we got the call, Britt and I were vacationing in Aruba for our anniversary. Just a four-day weekend. We were down there with no gear, no weapons, but we were half a day closer than anything else that could be scrambled.

  “Britt stole us a boat, and the two us got on board during the night. The first guy she took out . . . she did it with her hands. In shorts, sneakers, and a bikini top. We got a machete and a Saturday night special out of that deal. She made sure to give me the gun. The next guy she terminated, she got a better knife, and I got the machete.”

  “That was you guys?”

  “I’m not done.” He smiled to himself, remembering the night spent sneaking around a cruise ship, taking out terrorists with his beautiful wife.

  “We’d taken out half a dozen of the lowlifes with blades, and hadn’t fired a shot. We learned how many of them there were. Britt speaks real good Spanish, and even better field expedient interrogation. By then, she started talking smack to me, bragging on how she’d taken four, and I only had two to my credit.

  “By the time we were done, she had eight to my six. I could have evened up the score at the end, but I left the leader and one of his goons unconscious and—”

  “Tied naked to the ship’s railing! I remember the story. Hah!”

  Tom shook his head, smiling at the memory. “Britt didn’t appreciate the gesture, Pete. I damned near had to drag her off that boat; she wanted to go back for their scalps. She was that pissed off that they’d interrupted her vacation.”

  “Shit . . .”

  “I’m just saying, Pete, but you might want to rethink whatever assumptions you might have about my wife. She knows what she’s doing, and she’s damn good at it. The fact she enjoys it so much? Well . . . she tries to keep that a secret.”

  “I didn’t mean nothing by it,” Pete spoke a little more softly. “I just don’t see what she’s going to be able to do. Those people are just hired hands; they ain’t done nothing wrong. I mean, besides working for an asshole.”

  “She knows that.”

  “I’m just saying, they’re not likely to be choir boys, either.”

  Tom smiled to himself; the only thing he worried about was Britt having to take someone out who didn’t deserve it. That would bother her.

  Brittany knelt down next to the rottweiler-Lab mix she’d just shot and made sure it was still breathing. She squeezed the rubber bulb at the end of the tranquilizer dart to make certain the whole dose was delivered before she removed it.

  She stood back up slowly and took in the main house from behind the corner of the bunkhouse. It was a massive, modern log cabin sitting on a stone foundation. In this desolate setting, the whole compound just screamed money. But she was fairly certain it was empty. There were landscaping lights around the perimeter, but nothing was on in the interior. It was almost two a.m., and if there’d been someone in the house, they’d have left a hallway light on, or something over the sink.

  The bunkhouse was a different matter. She could hear someone snoring from where she stood against the backside of the building. A deep, rumbling rhythm that she half imagined she could feel through the clapboard wall.

  “Please don’t let there be another dog,” she whispered to herself, as she withdrew her suppressed 9mm. They’d sent the only other dart gun they had with Derrick and Denise. The fact that she was going to be walking into a room with men didn’t bother her half as much as the fact there might be a dog inside that she wouldn’t be able to reason with.
>
  She stayed within the shadows as she moved to the front of the building, noting the four pickup trucks and single jeep parked facing the front door. The door itself wasn’t locked, which didn’t surprise her. The massive ranch was almost an hour’s drive from the nearest road on any map. She was glad to see the doggy flap in the bottom of the door, thinking that if there had been another dog, it would have come out when the first one had caught her scent.

  The sound of snores, more than one, hit her as she stepped into the dark room. Small vampire lights from appliances stood out, helping her to form a mental image of the common area as part kitchen, part TV room. An open door beckoned across the open space of the large room. She dropped her night vision monocle over one eye and imagined herself as nothing more than a shadow as she crept forward.

  She’d expected a common bunk room, but through the doorway, she was confronted with five doors, two closed doors on either side and an open one at the end of the short hallway. The last was clearly a shower room from the tile floor she could make out. She opened the hallway door further, giving her night vision a little more ambient light to work with, and cringed when the door squeaked on hinges that probably hadn’t been oiled since the place had been built.

  “Dammit, Pedro!!” A wide-awake voice boomed out from behind the bedroom door on her left, followed by the creaking of bedsprings before what sounded like a water buffalo hitting the floor.

  “If you’re in my shit again, I’m going to feed you my arm,” the voice snarled as the doorknob jiggled.

  She had time to flip the monocle off her eye and bring the gun up before the door was wrenched open. The figure filled the doorway completely; more to the point, in the darkness he looked a lot like a door, minus the boxer shorts, T-shirt, and the giant “Oh shit” look on his face and open mouth that were both much higher off the floor than she’d been expecting. She adjusted her plan, perhaps too quickly—the man’s open mouth was a target that she couldn’t ignore. She was pretty sure she took a tooth out as she jammed the suppressor into his mouth and pushed him backwards.

  She reached for the leather sap on her belt with her left hand.

  “It’s not going to feel like it,” she whispered. “But I’m saving your life.”

  “Whaaa . . .?”

  Her left arm flashed up and out, catching the behemoth on the side of the head with the lead-filled sap. His head jerked on impact, pulling the gun from his mouth. As his head rebounded forward, the rest of him did too. Britt sidestepped the paws that reached out for her in an attempt to arrest his fall. He crashed to his knees and shook his head as he tried to focus on the shadow that had just been in front of him but was suddenly not there.

  She was getting worried; her first strike had been hard and well-aimed, and the guy was still conscious. Off to his side, Britt stepped forward and delivered an overhand strike to the massive forehead. It landed with a wet-sounding slap.

  “Did’na do . . . nothing . . .” the man slurred.

  She heard the man’s jaws slap shut and a groan that sounded like a bear waking from a deep sleep. But the massive form sagged to the side and fell unconscious up against his bed with enough force to drive it into the neighboring wall with a bang that had to have woken the whole house.

  “Little Mike? That you?” a voice shouted from down the hall; she couldn’t tell what room it was coming from.

  Britt glanced down at the unconscious form and shook her head . . . Little Mike!? Could there be a bigger Mike out there? Anywhere? She crammed herself up behind the bedroom door and waited on the footfalls she could hear coming closer.

  “Mikey?”

  A normal-sized man appeared in the doorway, just before he flipped the light on.

  “Mike!” The man surged into the room, and Britt let him come until she had the angle she needed. She didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. She stepped forward and slammed the gun into the back of the man’s head to stun him before she delivered the sap to the side of his head.

  Whoever he was, his unconscious form had the good sense to go down on top of Little Mike.

  “You guys?” A voice came through the walls of the adjoining room. “I no take your cerveza!”

  And that had to be Pedro . . .

  So much for a room-to-room sneak; these cowboys were coming to her.

  “Guys?”

  The door opening next door and the steps coming down the hall were a lot more tentative. In the end, she had to step out from behind the door and greet Pedro, who remained in the hallway, staring in at the pile of man flesh in Little Mike’s room.

  She pressed the suppressor against his forehead and pulled him into the room, shutting the door behind him.

  “How many of you are there?’”

  “Sorry . . .”

  She pushed a little harder on the gun to refocus the little guy’s attention.

  “How many men are here, in this bunkhouse?”

  Pedro’s eyes darted to the floor behind her and then crossed as they tried to see the barrel of the gun just above his eyes.

  “Just us, lady,” Pedro huffed. “Little Mike, Geno, and me.”

  “Who’s the boss?” she asked.

  “Big Mike.”

  She did a double take; Oh shit. She’d really like to get through this without having to shoot someone. She gave her head an annoyed shake, not having to pretend. This was already taking a lot longer than it should have.

  “You said three! Where’s Big Mike?”

  “He no stay here; he lives in Cody. He left yesterday.”

  Thank God.

  She reached behind her and brought her left hand up, holding a bundle of extra-large zip ties.

  “You know what these are?”

  “Si, lady. Yes.”

  “Good, let’s put you to work. Just to be safe, let’s start with Little Mike there.”

  A half hour later, little Mike was groaning, and Pedro moved further away from the behemoth, or at least as far as he could, which wasn’t very far at all. Britt smiled down at the surreal game of Twister gone wrong, very wrong. She’d had Pedro do most of the heavy lifting, but the artistry, that had been all her.

  She walked out of the bunkhouse and holstered her sidearm as Tom and Pete stepped out from behind one of the parked trucks.

  “You good, babe?” Tom asked. “We saw one of the lights come on.”

  “All good, just a little performance art. I needed the light.”

  Pete just looked at her for a moment before walking into the bunkhouse.

  Tom was looking at her. “Performance art?”

  “Zip ties.” She shrugged. “Once they wake up, they’ll be able to get to a kitchen knife in a day or so, as long as they move slow and don’t freak out.”

  It took Pete a moment to realize what he was looking at. The tangle of limbs, and the placement . . . made it seem like there were four bodies. Then he counted heads, and came up with three. No, that wasn’t right; more like two and a half. He sure hoped these fellas were friends.

  Pete emerged from the bunkhouse, shaking his head and grinning.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Britt.”

  “For what?”

  Pete glanced over at the hulking figure of Tom and then turned back to the more dangerous of the two. “For anything that I’ve ever said, or may say in the future.”

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s check those fuel tanks.”

  *

  They’d fueled the bird up as much as they were able to with the stolen fuel and managed to add another hundred gallons or so with a mixture of AV gas and a limited supply of kerosene they’d been able to scrounge. Jennifer thought it should be enough to get them and their aircraft to the Muncy Ranch a close forty-six miles away. It would have to be.

  The bird was preflighted and loaded. Jennifer was in the pilot’s seat. Sir Geoff sat quietly in the back of the plane, smiling occasionally out the window at the three young rambunctious boys; the Soares twins, Matt and Craig, and Caleb Ballard, who
were having a good time walking out on the wings of the aircraft and jumping off into the massive pile of loose hay from a broken bale. Grant Ballard and his wife, Beth, had stopped yelling at them to be careful and had resigned themselves to just worrying.

  Rich Bowden sat on the concrete pad of the hay shed next to Grant’s mother, Sharon, who sat staring at her cell phone.

  “We’ll know soon,” he said. “Don’t worry. Pete’s in good hands.”

  “I think so, too,” the woman agreed, before she gave a long sigh. “I was just thinking about Mr. Carlisle. How long has he been sick?”

  The question took Rich by complete surprise. “I didn’t realize . . . What did he say?”

  “Him? Nothing. I was the head nurse at the county hospital in Chadron for twenty years. He’s not a well man. Cancer, unless I miss my guess.”

  He wanted to say, Nah, he’s always that difficult, but the pieces started falling in place. Sir Geoff had been quieter of late, and there wasn’t any of that angry pacing that they’d all gotten used to when he’d first arrived.

  “I think this living on the run just has him down.”

  “You’re probably right,” Sharon replied with a smile. Rich could hear the well-practiced white lie of the former nurse.

  He glanced through the back ramp of the Osprey and looked closely at their ward. He did look a little gray. Maybe there was something . . .

  Sharon’s cell phone rang once, and she gave a yelp and almost tossed the thing in the air before she corralled it and activated the phone’s speaker.

  “Hi, honey.” Pete’s voice came in loud and clear. The government had shut down texting in what they were still calling a temporary emergency. They still allowed voice calls. Denise had told them it was because voice calls were far less numerous, and the recordings had characteristics that lent themselves to identifying the other person on the line through voiceprint recognition, not to mention the conversations had context. From the perspective of a police state, it made things a lot more manageable.

  “Hi, babe,” Sharon answered naturally enough. “You heading back already?”