“Let’s spell it out,” the voice said. “Big Joe Rivers dies?”
“Yes.”
Jack hung up.
27
Barry and Slim took a state highway north out of Fort Stockton. About twenty miles out of town, they pulled over and parked by the side of an old barn. The ruins of a ranch house stood starkly vacant, mute in a deserted silence.
“Reckon why they left here?” Slim asked.
“A dream died,” Barry said, opening the doors to the trailer.
“That’s spooky, man. You sure you’re not a poet, or something like that?”
“I’m sure.” Barry dragged the flesh-peddler out and dumped him on the ground.
The man glared up at Slim. “They’ll get you, Slim. You nothin’ but a walkin’-around dead man.”
“Maybe,” Slim said. “But my hands are clean for the first time in a long time. It feels good, Sam. Believe me.”
Sam spat on Slim’s boots.
Barry knelt down beside the hogtied man. “We can do this easy, or we can do it hard, Sam. It’s all up to you.”
“I ain’t tellin’ you nothin’, prick!” Sam blustered.
Barry’s smile was savage, a brutal curving of the lips that held no semblance of mirth. “Yeah, you’ll tell me, Sam.”
“I don’t think I wanna see this,” Slim said.
“You probably don’t.” Barry’s reply was softly spoken.
He reached for Sam.
Sam was dead. His cooling body lay on the hot Texas sands. His face was contorted from that last moment of pain before his heart quit on him.
Slim had walked to the scene only once, leaving much faster than he arrived. He had puked on the ground and not looked back.
But Sam had talked. Slowly, with pain-filled words, he had told it all. The entire slimy, depraved, perverted tale.
Then he had cursed Barry with his last breaths and died.
“I don’t ever want you for an enemy, Barry Rivers,” Slim said, looking at the bloody sands.
Barry rose from his squat and stretched. “The VC had fifty thousand dollars on my head in ’Nam, Slim. A lot of them tried to collect it.”
“Too bad we didn’t have four, five more guys like you over there,” Slim said dryly. “We’d have won the damn war.”
Barry folded his lock-back knife and put it in the case on his belt. “You ready to go to war, Slim?”
“Might as well. What are we gonna do with Sam?”
“Leave him for the coyotes and the buzzards. And hope they don’t get sick.”
Standing by the truck, Barry opened his atlas and pointed at a spot just north of the Apache Mountains. “One of the CSS experiment stations is located there. We’re going to destroy it.”
“All by ourselves?”
“You got a better idea?”
“Put this on my tombstone, Barry: He teamed up with a mighty mean man.”
Laughing, Barry waved Slim into the truck.
“You got ’em in sight, Montana?” Horsefly asked over the CB.
“Four on that. Looks like they’re gonna make it to Monahans and then take the interstate. But I don’t know which way.”
“Five’ll get you ten it’s west. Big Foot sent word the SSTs would be haulin’ to just south of the Delawares. It’s a goddamn setup, boys. We can keep trackin’ ’em on the radio. You get in touch with Woodchuck, Dolittle?”
“Four on that. Him and Big Foot and Hawkeye are rollin’ south right now. They’re runnin’ with the SSTs.”
“Let’s go, boys. BigJoe asked us to look out for his son, and that’s what we’re gonna do.”
“I don’t think that ol’ boy needs no one to look after him. Four?”
“Be fun keepin’ up with him and Slim, though,” Shiny Hiney said.
“Some people think it’s fun to play with rattlesnakes, too,” Horsefly offered.
“We’re workin’ for the man.” Montana settled it. “Big Joe is wirin’ the money to our banks. Our rigs is OK, our families secure. My grandaddy rode for the King Ranch. His daddy with Goodnight. You take the man’s money, you ride for the brand.”
“Before you bring us all to the point of tears with this sad tale of yours,” Horsefly said, “why don’t you just grab hold of that gearshift and put the pedal to the metal and roll?”
“I’m tryin’ to educate you ignorant bastards,” Montana radioed.
“Only person in the history of education to ever flunk recess, and he’s gonna teach us,” Dolittle said.
“I give up,” Montana said disgustedly.
“Good!” the others all radioed.
“I got a bad feelin’ in my guts,” Beer Butt told Kate.
“Such as?” the little blonde asked, behind the wheel of the Kenworth as they approached the New Mexico border.
“It’s comin’ down to the wire, Kate. I wish to God you’d reconsider and hunt a safe spot and stay put.”
“We been over that, Beer Butt. No dice. I’m staying.”
The big man signed. “I knew that’s what you’d say. Turn off right up here. Get on that state road.”
“Beer Butt … if something bad is going to happen, I want to be with my man.”
“I understand.” He spoke gently. He reached for their logbook and looked at it. “Christ, what a mess. If we wasn’t pullin’ SSTs the ICC would ground us.”
“How far are we from the cutoff?”
“ ’Bout three hours, Kate. He’s all right, girl. If something had happened to him, we’d have heard on the CB.”
“You know damn well he was involved in that shootout we heard about. He might be hurt.”
“I doubt it. Barry Rivers is one randy bastard. We’d have heard.”
“Beer Butt?”
“Yes, Kate.”
“How come people think truck drivers are stupid? We’re not hauling electronic gear for fighter planes. Listen to that damn stuff rattle, would you?”
“I know.”
“They’re using us to get to Barry, aren’t they?”
“That’s the way I see it, Kate. And with us dead, whoever takes over the company will put their own drivers in. The government contract will remain in force. From then on, it’ll be smooth sailin’. They can haul dope or human beings, or whatever they choose to haul. And nobody will question it. It’s big, Kate. A whole lot bigger than Barry first thought.”
“But first they’ve got to get rid of us, right?”
“Yep.”
“They’d better send some damn rough ol’ boys to do that,” she said grimly.
Beer Butt looked at her and grinned. TNT was right, he thought.
Barry drove right up to the gates of the CSS station and honked his horns. And honked.
A guard finally stepped out of the air-conditioned block-house and looked through the wire at the Peterbilt. “What the hell do you want?” he yelled.
“How do you like living?” Barry asked, sticking his head out the window.
“Beg pardon?”
“You heard me.”
Slim jacked back the hammer on his pistol.
“You better carry your ass on away from here, boy,” the guard said. “Just back that big bastard up and haul it!”
Barry dropped the Peterbilt into gear and rammed the gates. The guard squalled and cussed as he jumped out of the way. Barry stopped and Slim stuck his pistol out the window.
“Drop your gun belt and start runnin’. Don’t look back. Just keep on goin’. Things are about to get hot around here.”
“You guys are crazy!” the guard yelled.
Slim put one round between the guard’s feet. The guard jumped and dropped his gun belt. “Now run, boy!” Slim yelled.
The guard ran, running as if demons were pursuing him. He did not look back.
“What’s the plan, Barry?” Slim asked.
“What plan?” Barry said with a grin. “Just bear this in mind, Slim: there are no innocent people working in this hellhole.”
“We go i
n shootin’?”
“Just like John Wayne.”
“Hammer down, Barry Rivers.”
The compound was rapidly filling with people, some of them with guns in their hands, all of them pointed at Barry and Slim.
Barry gunned the engine and spun the wheel hard left, the empty trailer sliding on the pea gravel of the compound. The rig was in no danger of overturning, but to the inexperienced eyes of the civilians, it appeared the long trailer was about to fall over and crush them.
They panicked, running in all directions, many of them screaming and yelling in fright.
“Shoot those sons of bitches!” a white-coated man yelled, pointing at the Peterbilt.
“That’s my cue,” Slim said. He put a .38 round at the man’s feet and the man jumped about a foot off the ground, hollering. He came back to earth and fell down on the pea gravel, scooting and crawling behind a bush. His head was protected but his ass was sticking out.
“Wish I had me a shotgun with bird shot in it,” Slim said with a grin.
A slug whined wickedly through the windshield, causing both men to cringe and duck. Barry lifted the Uzi and put a few 9mm rounds over the head of the gunman. The guard dropped his service revolver and took off running.
“So much for experienced guards,” Barry muttered, opening his door. “Most of these people are unarmed, Slim. Let’s round ’em up.”
“When in doubt, charge!”
“That’s it.”
Both men jumped from the truck, Barry to the left, Slim to the right. They zigzagged their way through the running, milling-about, and frightened people, shoving and pushing them toward what Barry guessed was an office building. All the fight seemed to have gone out of the guards. Like so many untrained, gun-toting civilian guards, when it came down to the nut-cuttin’, their in experience overrode bluster and they quit.
The director of this particular hellhole finally realized his ass was sticking out past the bush and got to his feet, his face red and his hands trembling. He faced Barry and Slim.
“I’ll have the law on you!” he yelled.
Barry slapped him, rocking the man’s head back and bloodying his mouth. “Shut up until you’re told to speak.”
“Now see here!” the man yelped.
Barry hit him with a hard, chopping right fist. The man dropped to the hot ground and covered his bloody and bruised mouth with his hands. He sobbed into his palms.
“Please don’t hit him again,” a woman spoke. “Haven’t you hurt him enough?”
Barry turned to face her. “Lady—and I use the term loosely—unless you want to spend the next five years visiting plastic surgeons, I want the keys to the cells, or wards, or whatever you people call your lock-downs.”
The woman could have been pretty, if she would soften her mouth and eyes. “You have to be Barry Rivers. You’re a foolish man, Mr. Rivers. Like so many well-intentioned people—foolish.”
“Spare me the rhetoric, lady. Just take me to the prisoners.”
She arched one eyebrow. “We call them patients, Mr. Rivers.”
“I doubt that many of them would agree with you,” Barry replied. “Move your ass.”
“Don’t be crude,” she said primly.
For a reply, Barry poked her in the belly with the barrel of the Uzi. “Move!”
She paled and nodded her head.
“Everybody on the ground!” Barry said, raising his voice. “On your bellies and keep your faces in the dirt.” He glanced at Slim. “The first one to raise their head gets it blown off.” The woman could not see his wink.
Slim nodded and stuck his .38 behind his belt. He pumped a round into the slug gun. “You got it, Barry.”
“Move, lady,” Barry told the woman.
The facility was worse than a hellhole. It looked like a Nazi concentration camp. The cells were filthy; the prisoners in even worse shape. Many of the men and women were naked, or very nearly so. Barry could seen that most of them had been beaten, some of them many times, the marks of old beatings visible under fresh bruises.
“They have to be disciplined,” the woman said. “For their own sake and safety.”
Before Barry even realized he had done it, his hand flew out and slapped the woman, staggering her, knocking her back against the wall.
“Hit her again,” a man said, his voice weak, his words slurred.
Barry watched the woman slide to the floor, her lips leaking blood. She was stunned, her eyes glassy.
He turned to look at the man. Not a young man; perhaps in his early fifties. His eyes were deep-sunk, reminding Barry of photos he’d seen of Jews in Nazi prison camps. But the eyes, haunted as they were, possessed a high level of intelligence.
“How many can I safely turn loose?” Barry asked him.
“Not too many of them. Sadly, most here are suffering from varying degrees of mental illness. Most of them service-related.”
“And you?”
He smiled. “I am one of the two hundred thousand or so people who vanish each year, for whatever reason. Did you know the number was that large, Mr. Rivers?”
“No, I didn’t. And how in the hell do you know my name?”
“Perhaps you should ask our dear Miss Bradshaw, the darling of this facility. The one you just smacked in the mouth.”
Barry looked down at the woman. Her eyes were clearing as the effects of the hard blow left her.
She met his eyes. “We were expecting you, Mr. Rivers. Unfortunately, our guards were not up to the situation. You may succeed in … well, interrupting operations at this facility, Mr. Rivers, but not for long. I think any good odds-maker would put your chances of living very low.”
Barry stared at her until she was forced to shift her eyes away from his menacing gaze. She cursed as she lost the visual battle. “Son of a bitch,” she ended it.
“For all her education, she does have quite a filthy mouth,” the prisoner said.
“And you?” Barry looked at him.
“I have a Ph.D. In psychology,” he added, his tone dry enough to effect a martini.
Barry jerked the keys from a belt around the woman’s waist and unlocked the door. The man stepped out. “Free at last,” he said. Then, smiling, he said, “Although my situation and Dr. King’s are somewhat different.”
Barry handed the man the keys. “Turn loose the ones you feel are capable of fending for themselves.”
Taking the keys, the man said, “How do you know I’m not a vicious maniac?”
“I don’t. But if you show any tendencies in that direction, I can always shoot you.” He lifted the muzzle of the Uzi.
“I do get the point. Oh, my name is Charles Matthews. I’ve been here for only four months. But I’m afraid I do have a drug addition.” He looked at Miss Bradshaw through eyes that held a mixture of hate and contempt. “Thanks to her and others of her ilk.”
“When was your last fix?”
“Not long ago. I’ll be all right for several hours. Mr. Rivers,” he said, pointing, “beyond that door is a veritable chamber of horrors. Please do something for those poor animals.”
“You’ll watch her?” He pointed to the woman, still sitting on the floor.
‘I would cheerfully kill her.”
Barry walked to the door, opened it, and puked on the hall floor.
28
Wiping his mouth and taking several deep breaths, Barry glanced at Matthews. “Tell my partner I’m going to be doing some shooting in here, and not to be alarmed.”
“But of course,” Matthews said.
Barry slung his Uzi and pulled out his 9mm. He walked to a table where a Husky was strapped down, wires implanted in the animal’s head. She had been cut open, and the incisions were badly infected. Her pain was mirrored in her horrible pain.
He turned and asked Miss Bradshaw.
“We operated on the bitch’s throat, preventing her from making any sound. Hell, Rivers. It’s just a dog.”
“How long has she been like this?” B
arry was doing his best to fight back a terrible, wild rage building deep within him.
Miss Bradshaw shrugged. “Several weeks. I’d have to consult the charts.”
Barry stepped out into the hall and kicked the woman in the mouth with his boot. Her jaw splintered with a pop and her teeth bounced off the floor and walls. The woman’s head banged off the wall behind her and she slumped to the floor, unconscious, her blood staining the tile.
Matthews said, “You cannot realize how much personal satisfaction that gives me.”
Barry turned and reentered the torture chamber. He petted the Husky’s head and said, “Easy, girl. It’ll soon be over for you.” He lifted the 9mm and ended the animal’s suffering.
If dogs and cats have a heaven? … Barry thought.
He went to every cage and table, ending each particular animal’s suffering—all for the sake of science, of course.
Barry was on the verge of tears when he left the so-called laboratory. What confronted him brought the tears flowing, unchecked even if he had wanted to stop the flow.
He leaned against the door and stared in utter disbelief.
Some of the men and women were half-starved, that in addition to the marks and scars of beatings. Others were clearly suffering the effects of prolonged drug addiction. The ones Matthews had released appeared normal enough—mentally speaking—but Barry knew nothing of what might be lying behind those eyes.
Miss Bradshaw moaned in her unconsciousness. Barry hoped she was experiencing a nightmare. But he doubted it.
He looked up at the sounds of boots in the hall. He was not surprised to see Montana, Shiny Hiney, Horsefly, and Dolittle.
“What is this goddamned place?” Montana asked, his voice hushed.
“A horror story,” Barry told him. “If you want to know what kind of people we’re dealing with, look at these men and women, and then look in there.” He pointed to the laboratory.
The truckers looked in, pulled their heads out, and walked stiffly back outside. The sounds of their sickness drifted to Barry.
“Matthews,” Barry said. “Some of you drag Miss Bradshaw out of here and dump her outside. Tell my partner to bring my camera and start shooting film of this place. Shiny?”
“Ho,” Shiny called.
“Watch the folks on the ground.”
Rig Warrior Page 17
