Young girls with men who tell stories that don’t add up, especially older men with tattoos on their face and neck, are many times the victims of sex trafficking.
Yeah, that’s profiling, and there’s nothing wrong with it.
Sheriff Guzman lowered his voice and spoke to her while I watched the couple’s body language. I didn’t like the way she kept looking at the skinny little rat every time the sheriff asked her a question. Victims continually try to make eye contact with their abuser, watching for signals or orders.
I decided to get her away from him. Things weren’t adding up. “Karen.”
The young girl, who seemed to be weighted down with sadness, or fear, turned her attention to me out in the yard.
“Come talk to me.”
She immediately glanced at Gary, as if for permission.
“Don’t you do it.” Gary’s face darkened and his eyebrows met. “You don’t have to. They ain’t got no warrants. This is our property. Stay right here.”
Heat rose in my face, and I had to clench my jaw for a second. “Shut up, Gary. You don’t know anything about the law, except what you’ve been convicted of.”
She looked up at him again, wanting his permission, but I didn’t want that guy thinking for her or telling her what to do. “No. Don’t look at him. He’s not in control right now. You’re a minor. Come here to me.”
Hesitant, the girl caught the tone of my voice. She picked her barefoot way down the splintered steps and tiptoed past the junkyard litter, looking at everything but me. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and another alarm went off in my head. I watched a dozen expressions flicker across Gary’s face, and he didn’t take his eyes off the girl.
She passed Sheriff Davis, and he stepped between her and the trailer, as if Gary might charge through Sheriff Guzman.
She stopped a couple of feet away, staring at her painted toenails. She was cute as a bug, but the thick mascara and eyeliner combined with too much red lipstick hid her soft features. I leaned in and spoke softly. “I’m a Texas Ranger. You’ve heard of us.”
Nod.
“Name’s Sonny Hawke. I have a daughter not much older’n you. What are you doing here?” She pulled her long blond hair behind one ear with a finger and started to turn and look back toward the trailer, but I gently took her arm. I didn’t want to intimidate her, but I needed her attention. “You don’t have to ask him anything. Look at me. Are you all right? Do you need any help?”
Still refusing to make eye contact, she fixed her gaze on my badge. “I’m fine.”
“What are you doing here?”
She shrugged. “Just hanging out.”
“I smell grass. Is there pot inside?”
Nod.
“Other drugs?”
Another nod.
“Have they been giving them to you?”
Shrug.
“Have you taken anything today?”
She started to turn again, probably to see what Gary wanted her to do, but I took her arm for a second time, noticing a bruise on her bicep that was covered by makeup. She didn’t resist. Other warning signs jangled my nerves.
Rivera started in my direction, but I held up a hand to stop him. “Does anyone in there say that you have to take them or smoke weed?”
She nodded again, but it was almost imperceptible. “I’m fine.”
A rote, repeated answer. “No you’re not. I know these guys are bad dudes. You’re not anybody’s girlfriend. Where you from?”
She shrugged. “Not far away.”
“Name the town, quick.”
“It’s, uh, Wichita Falls.”
“What air force base is there?”
Her eyes dropped. “I don’t know.”
“Honey.” My tone went softer. “Where’re you from?”
For the first time, she tilted her head up to meet my gaze. “Oklahoma City.”
I took that one. It came quick and another piece fell into place. A minor alone in a trailer with someone she wasn’t related to is another warning sign. Now we had state lines involved. “I’m going to ask you a question that might make you uncomfortable, but I need to know. Ready?”
Wrinkling her smooth forehead, she nodded.
“Here it is, and I want the truth. I’m not going to ask you anything personal for the moment, but I need to know the answer to this really odd question. Do they make . . . movies in there? I bet there’s a room full of light stands and lights, and cameras.”
Her eyes widened and filled.
Sheriff Guzman was talking to Gary in a low voice, but the creep’s attention was on us.
“You’ve been in some of them. Men come and go, and you’re expected to entertain them, right?”
A tear formed and spilled down her cheek.
She nodded.
“Tell me the truth. Do you need help?”
A whisper. “Yes.”
That one word was all I needed. I took her elbow as a rage built in my chest. I choked it down. “Come with me.” We walked to my truck and I opened the door. “You’re not under arrest, but I need you to empty your pockets. Do you have anything in them?” Her shorts were pretty-well painted on, and I didn’t think she had anything on her, but she nodded. I knew it couldn’t be a weapon or I’d have already seen the outline, but needles or a razor blade were a distinct possibility.
I held out my hand and she plucked something from her back pocket with two fingers. She dropped a strip of condoms in my palm and I had to drop my filters back in place real fast.
Over her shoulder, and past the truck, I saw Gary’s eyes darken.
“That’s what I thought.”
Sheriff Davis shifted closer to the fender of his car. The three officers drew closer, talking amongst themselves.
“Get in the truck and stay here until I come get you out.”
“He has a gun.”
I nodded. “Where is it?”
“Behind his back.”
Shit.
“Okay. Wait here.”
I closed the door and started toward the trailer. Things had been calm up to that point, but with a gun in play, it could all go sideways pretty quick. Flashes of red burst inside my eyes, and it was all I could do not to charge up there and beat that little weasel into a greasy spot on the dried boards, despite the threat of a weapon.
Gary saw me coming and apparently recognized the Look on my face the twins tell me about. His eyes locked on me, even though Sheriff Guzman was still talking. I was halfway there when something changed in the man.
I called his name as if to ask him a question. “Gary!” Sometimes a person’s name will snap them out of whatever they’re thinking of doing.
It didn’t work.
Chapter 15
Trouble happens fast. Gary’d faced us the entire time and the reason was the semiauto pistol stuck in the small of his back. He snatched it out of his waistband, shoved the muzzle into Sheriff Guzman’s stomach before anyone could react, and pulled the trigger.
Guzman oofed at the bullet’s impact, grabbed for the pistol with his left hand, preventing the slide from completing the action from loading another round. His knees buckled, but he held on like a snapping turtle and stumbled backward, pulling Gary with him. The sheriff drew his Glock and stuck it into Gary’s stomach. Off balance, Guzman pulled the trigger over and over at the same time he went through the warped rail, dragging the surprised child molester with him.
They landed with a hard thump on the packed ground at the same time the world exploded. Automatic weapons opened up from two different directions. Other men who I took to be Smith brothers had probably slipped out the back door as soon as we pulled up and waited to see what would happen.
Caught in a crossfire from the cedars at both ends of the trailer house, highway patrol officer Wayne Friedman and the other deputy Juan Acevedo dropped in their tracks. Lead sprayed across the enclosed yard. The sound was deafening. Sheriff Davis twisted and dropped out of sight as he threw himself around the front
of the car.
Halfway across the open space between my truck and Sheriff Guzman’s cruiser, I would have spun and taken cover behind the Dodge’s block, but Karen was in there. Instead of drawing fire against her, I sprinted for the cruiser and flinched when an overturned fifty-five-gallon trash barrel between me and the gunman on my left vibrated with the impact of several rounds. It was enough to divert the bullets that whirred so close they sounded like angry wasps.
The other bad guys’ fire was concentrated at first on the cluster of lawmen standing twenty yards away, giving me just enough time to snatch the big .45 from its holster and drop down against the cruiser’s left front wheel. It wasn’t much, but it had to do.
Sheriff Davis’s pistol cracked twice. “Get down!”
I didn’t see him and figured the poor guy was on the ground trying to crawl under the car. There was no telling if he was offering me advice or talking to someone else.
At his shout, the nearest gunman to my side shifted his aim back in my direction. A line of holes erupted across the hood, seeking me out and punching through the sheet metal with the flat sound of hammers on metal. Davis fired again, and it sounded like he was under the front end of his cruiser. I heard dragging sounds and grunts from his position.
Muzzle blasts through the tender green vegetation to my left gave the gunman’s position away. I still couldn’t see him, but there was no doubt where he was shooting from. I violated the Old Man’s cardinal rule of hunting and the cardinal rule of shooting. The Colt rose in my vision and I lined the sights up on the muzzle blasts and deliberately squeezed the trigger one, two, three . . . four times at an unseen target. The limbs shuddered, and the firing stopped from that weapon.
Now you might be rolling your eyes at that, thinking that just like in Hollywood movies, a guy can shoot fifty times with a machine gun and miss every time while the good guy with a pistol shoots once or twice and kills the man. But the truth is that most people who use fully automatic weapons aren’t familiar with them. It’s hard to hold an automatic rifle still. The barrel tends to wave around, and rise up and to the right.
I’d spent enough time on the range for muscle memory to kick in. I’d leveled the pistol and squeezed off the shots with what the Old Man calls deliberation. It worked.
Now that I was out of the second gunman’s line of sight, I peeked around the front of the cruiser. Deputy Acevedo’s leg was shattered and blood poured from a wound in his neck and side where the rounds missed his vest, but the tough highway patrol officer wasn’t out of the fight. Dragging himself with one elbow and shooting with the other hand, Acevedo used his good leg to push himself toward the closest protection, the trailer.
The deadly machine gun hidden on my right chattered again as the bad guy held the trigger down. One round impacted Acevedo’s good leg. Another caught his shoe on that same destroyed leg and twisted that foot into an impossible angle. The officer shrieked like a panther and collapsed.
Small bursts of sand stitched from Acevedo’s body toward Friedman, who was also down and trying to roll over. Sheriff Davis fired again. The only one of our guys I couldn’t locate was Deputy Rivera, who was nowhere to be seen. With the car between me and the other gunman, I crabbed around the front and looked under the cruiser.
The automatic weapon went silent. Probably changing magazines. In the silence, I heard Sheriff Guzman groan.
He and Gary had been still so long I thought they were both dead. I crept to the front of the sedan, keeping it between me and the other guy. “Guzman! I can’t get to you. Use your feet. Push yourself under the deck.”
Another stitch of bullets threw sand and gravel in small fountains, forcing me back to cover.
I heard Guzman dig in to crawl at the same moment Gary came alive. Even with three holes in his stomach, the dirty little creep rolled onto his side and fired twice into Guzman’s back from less than three feet away. Two quick shots hammered the enclosure and Gary snapped forward and then fell back.
I couldn’t see where those shots came from. Dropping to my stomach, I found Sheriff Davis was almost under his car, using both empty hands to pull himself along the ground, and I couldn’t understand why the gunman hadn’t yet zeroed in on him. I peeked again and realized Davis was partially protected by a rusted-out wheelbarrow and a washing machine half-buried in old ashes and twisted metal.
That was where Rivera had taken cover. He’d figured out the angle to keep the trash between him and the gunman, and was belly-crawling toward me like someone out of that old TV show, Combat.
He got aholt of Davis’s collar, and I raised up and shot the Colt dry to keep the shooter’s head down as Rivera backed around the cruiser, dragging Sheriff Davis. The unseen rifle chattered again, stitching the side of the sedan. They collapsed beside me, and we ducked at the insane volume of noise. Though the gun was a hundred feet away, I swear I could feel the pressure wave of the shots.
The cruiser vibrated from the impacts of round after round. It seemed as if the shooter was trying to shoot us through the car. We were against the front wheel, keeping it and the engine block between us and the deadly rifle.
I saw blood on Rivera’s shirt. Sheriff Davis lay still, though he was breathing. “You hit bad?”
Another line of stitches chopped at the car. One slug punched through to our side, causing us to flinch, though it was obviously too late.
“Yeah.” Rivera slapped a fresh magazine into the handle of his Beretta M-9.
“Stay with me. Throw some more rounds in that direction so he’ll duck his head. I bet he’s ready to reload.”
“You better hurry. I’m bleedin’ out and losing my strength.”
“Moving.”
“Go!” Rivera stuck his hand up and fired three times to get the guy’s head down, then still shooting, he raised on one knee and shot across the hood. The big 9mm pistol blasts came so fast they were a continuous roll of thunder until the seventeen-round magazine ran dry. I sprinted away from the car in the opposite direction from the shooter. It seemed to take forever to cross the open yard, but the deputy’s fire kept the bad guy from shooting for the moment.
Thank you, Lord, for double-stack magazines.
I reached the safe cover of the cedars and plowed through without slowing. Soft, green limbs slapped my face as I bulled through the limber branches, losing my hat in the process. Holding my left arm in front of my face, I kept pumping my legs until I stumbled out the other side. It felt surreal when the wind slapped my clothes as I broke through in a seemingly different world.
I nearly stumbled over a body lying half in and out of the windbreak.
Two large exit wounds in his back proved I’d used enough gun. I figured him to be one of the brothers, and the guy was as gone as you can get, with a fist-sized hole in his head. The lower half of his body was still in the cedars and it looked as if despite his wound, he’d tried to walk out. An M-16 lay near to hand, shattered by one of my bullets.
I rushed past, around the outside corner and peeked down the line of cedars growing behind the trailer. To my left, there was nothing but open fields and irrigation equipment spraying water onto a crop I couldn’t identify. Other than the house place beside me and half a dozen more rocking pumpjacks, I couldn’t see anything but plowed ground.
A pistol barked again. The shooter answered with a long burst and then everything went quiet except for the wind bending the tops of the cedars. I stepped around a big piñon, which served to define the corner, and crept down the windbreak, listening. The back of the trailer was on my right. The shooter was somewhere around the next corner, and I hoped he didn’t know I was coming.
Man, I wished I had Perry Hale and Yolanda with me. Those guys knew what to do in a firefight, and the only idea I had was to keep moving.
The pistol fired twice more, answered by a short burst from the automatic weapon.
Good. Rivera was keeping the guy busy. Maybe our orchestration had worked after all, and he didn’t know I was coming
.
Three-quarters down the line of cedars, I heard the distinctive rattle of a magazine change as the shooter reloaded. I didn’t like that one damned bit. I’d been hoping he would be at the end of a mag by the time I located him. Then I’d be up against a few shots instead of what had sounded like full thirty-round magazines.
“Hey!” It was Rivera’s voice quavering voice. “I’m hurt bad and out of ammo. I’m the only one left. You go your way, and let me drive out of here.”
Good boy.
“No way, asshole.”
The shooter’s answer was low, as if he were talking to himself, but it gave me what I needed. I was at that last corner by then, about to round the east side. The stiff south wind blew the tops of the cedars overhead, and thrashed the limbs on the outside of the trees around the corner. There was another piñon pine there, and I knelt beside it to listen.
The guy couldn’t be more than twenty yards away, judging by where the bullets had been coming from, and the soft answer. I’ve shot enough deer to know good and well he’d have to be in the windbreak, almost inside the enclosure so he could make clean shots, but not be seen.
Evergreens and pines don’t drop leaves, so there were no worries about my footsteps giving me away. I crept around a few pine cones lying on the outside edge of the windbreak and knelt to listen. Wind soughed though the greenery. An eighteen-wheeler passed on the highway, followed by the hiss of cars and a truck pulling a camper.
The sound rose and fell as they passed, and once again my mind went to that place where it separates itself from what’s happening, good or bad, and allows words to pop up that do me no good. The Doppler effect. That’s the rising and falling sound of a car passing.
Great. Unless I wrote that in the action report to the Major . . . if I lived that long, it might be one of the last things I remembered. I caught the disappearing camper from the corner of my eye and wished I was going camping somewhere instead of sneaking up on a guy with an automatic weapon. The moving limbs were distracting, making it almost impossible to see inside the windbreak.
Hawke's Target Page 9