His rest was uneasy, filled with gruesome imagery, and he woke multiple times with a cry on his lips and bathed in sweat. The final time, an hour before dawn, it had been Sierra’s face he’d awakened to, her eyes accusatory, as though castigating him for letting her down.
He hadn’t been able to sleep from that point on, and instead busied himself preparing for his journey. Duke had offered a capable steed, a three-year-old stallion he’d assured Lucas could make the trip to Pecos in a single long day, though the ride would be a stretch for even the fittest of his species. Lucas carried his tack to the barn, where the horse allowed Lucas to outfit him without protest, and Lucas was finishing up when he spun, Kimber in hand, at a sound behind him.
Duke was watching him from the barn entry, his hair askew. “Got ants in your pants, huh?”
Lucas nodded. “No point in wearing out my welcome.”
Duke held up the night vision monocle. “Figured you could use this.”
Lucas approached him and took it. “I’ll bring it back.”
“I hope so. Got kind of attached to it.”
Duke had filled Lucas in on the cartel’s strength, and Lucas was under no illusions about what he was facing. Duke had suggested posing as a trader when he arrived. Pecos, for all its criminality, served as an important hub for those in the area. Lucas could blend in with the rough crowd as well as any, and his weapons wouldn’t draw a second glance from the cartel enforcers; the traders who chose to brave the city’s perils were normally armed and extremely dangerous, and military weapons were a common sight on the streets.
Duke had told him that the cartel was headquartered in the courthouse, across the street from the US Marshals’ former headquarters, which Lucas was familiar with from trips there with prisoners in his past life. The courthouse was a formidable brick edifice in the original downtown area and would be hell to infiltrate, he knew.
“There’s a bar where many of the traders hang a few blocks away. Think the one from Star Wars, only worse,” Duke said. “That’s where I’d start.” He mentioned the name of the watering hole.
Lucas nodded. “Appreciate the ammo and the rest. Especially the hospitality.”
Duke hesitated. “Sorry about Hal. He’ll be missed.”
“Me too.” Lucas eyed his watch and walked over to where Tango was housed. “Be good, old friend. I’ll be back. Catch up on your beauty rest, eat too much, maybe make friends with some of Duke’s mares.” Lucas turned to Duke. “Take care of him.”
“Like my own child.”
Lucas hesitated. “If I don’t make it back…”
“You will.”
“Yeah, but if not…hold this for me. Seeing what a gold bug you are.” Lucas handed the trader a small suede bag cinched tight with a drawstring. “Twenty ounces. Use it to take care of my friend Ruby if she comes looking for me, which she will if I don’t show up within a week or so.”
Duke’s eyes widened. “Twenty! I’ll kill you myself for that kind of loot.”
Lucas managed a sad smile. “Got to stand in line.” He led his new horse from the stall. “What’s his name?”
“Gunner.”
“Fitting.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over the barn. Duke offered his hand, and Lucas shook it.
“Give ’em hell, Lucas.”
Lucas’s eyes were cold anthracite in the predawn glow as he escorted Gunner from the barn and mounted. “Count on it.”
Damp earth scented the breeze on the trail south as the trading post receded into the distance. Lucas calculated that with rest stops he would be in Pecos after nightfall, assuming that Duke’s assurances about Gunner were accurate. The chestnut stallion covered ground at a reasonable clip, and the day passed without event, no one else on the trail that paralleled the highway. In the distance, the occasional ruins of a ranch house or farm stood in dry fields turned a fallow beige, sacrificed to looters or Raiders.
He could make out Pecos two hours before he arrived, the distant city’s bonfires lighting the horizon with bright tongues of yellow and orange. As he drew near, he was forced to navigate the main highway for the final two miles. At an overpass above the train tracks that marked the boundary of the city, a cartel gunman greeted him from a fortified guard post with the barrel of an AK.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the man growled.
“Got some trading to do, and need a place to bunk for the night.”
“What you got to swap?”
“Ammo.”
“Yeah? How much?”
“Plenty. You going to let me through, or do I head elsewhere?”
The gunman considered Lucas carefully and then motioned with his rifle. “Let’s see what you have.”
Lucas sighed and reached behind him for one of his saddlebags.
“Easy,” the Loco cautioned.
“I’ve got ten STANAG thirty-round mags of 5.56mm to trade. Like new. Only used by Grandma on Sundays.”
That drew a laugh. “I’ll bet.”
“Want to see them, or are we done?”
The thug lowered his weapon. “There’s a place down that road that rents out rooms. Cost you five rounds per night. Used to be a motel.”
“Safe?”
Another laugh. “Assuming you know how to use your gun, it should be.”
Lucas nodded. “I do. Where can I get some grub and a drink?”
“Couple joints downtown. You’ll see ’em. Only places that are open.”
Lucas rode on into Pecos. As he approached the courthouse, he heard music blaring from its grounds, which answered any questions about whether the cartel had figured out solar power. Shouts and whoops drifted down the boulevard, and as he drew closer, he could see a pair of gunmen camped in the parking lot. The interior ground floor of the building was illuminated, and he could make out a large foyer that had been converted into a bar, from which rap boomed with bombastic insistence, at least fifty men inside yelling at one another over the music.
He continued past without slowing, the guards’ eyes burning into his back as he guided his horse down the street, and two blocks further along he spied one of the restaurants, a half dozen empty plastic tables outside on the sidewalk indicating business wasn’t good. He stopped at a storefront next door, whose picture window and door had been destroyed, and tied Gunner to a wrecked pickup truck’s door handle before moving to one of the tables.
The meal was tasteless gruel served in tortillas, and he wolfed down four of them, opting for his own water rather than what was offered, and paid with ammunition. After eating, he watered Gunner and then walked the horse down a dark street that ran parallel to the courthouse, where one of the bars Duke had told him about was located. The shabby watering hole, whose façade was pocked with bullet holes, was identified by a sign over the door boasting a cigar-smoking rooster with a ten-gallon hat and six guns. He’d reached the Half-Cocked Saloon, which looked even worse than Duke had described.
Lucas tied Gunner off beside eight other horses and nodded to an old man sitting on a milk carton in the shadows, pistol in hand. “Watch my ride?”
“On the house, Señor,” he said. “Although tips appreciated.”
“What do you drink?”
The old Mexican gave him a toothless grin. “Anything.”
Inside, the scene was as dangerous as any he’d ventured into since the collapse: a smattering of marauders, traders, and murderous-looking locals – but to Lucas’s surprise, no obvious cartel members. He approached the bar and nodded to a rail-thin bald man who was staring at him like he planned to rob the place.
“What are you serving?” Lucas asked.
“Moonshine, tequila, home-brew beer.”
“How cold’s the beer?”
“Room temperature.” The man named a price: three bottles for one round of ammo.
Lucas tossed one of the 9mm rounds he’d brought for barter on the bar. “Perfect.”
He spent the next half hour nursing a beer that tas
ted like sweat socks, commiserating with a trader from San Antonio way who’d gotten a lousy deal on a pair of horses from a cartel buyer, milking him for information on the group’s habits.
“They stick to their joint at the courthouse. Locos only. Keeps the murder rate down to something tolerable, according to the locals.”
“Yeah? What do most of the locals do for a living?”
“Whatever the cartel tells them to.”
“What about the people who don’t go along?”
“They’re all dead. Cartel made a point of exterminating them, going block by block. Of course, weren’t many left after the bug got done with ’em. Hit hard here. But nothing like as bad as in the bigger towns.”
“Yeah?” Lucas said, pretending interest.
“El Paso, Austin, San Antonio…you wouldn’t recognize ’em. Tell you what, buddy, you ain’t a believer in God, you’ll believe in hell once you seen what I have.”
“That bad, huh? I was in El Paso for a couple weeks after the flu hit. Got out when the power died.”
“Just in time. Turned into a free-for-all. No border patrol to stop the beaners from crossing and killing anything that moved. Local gangs going nuts. No law, no army, nothing. A friend said that for a solid month, all you heard from sundown to sunup was shooting. Looters picked the place clean, raped anyone with a pulse, you name it. Once the food ran out, they turned on each other. Good riddance.”
“What’s it like now?”
“Divided between two Mexican cartels. Gun battles every day. Meth labs all over town. Still a trade for that. Some things never change.”
“No sign of the government getting its act together?”
The trader’s laugh was a dry hack. “What government? Ain’t none. Although I heard rumors about D.C. having power. Probably, knowing how things work. They probably got champagne and hookers and AC while the country’s starving. Ain’t that how it always is?”
“Anywhere else?”
“Parts of Houston and Dallas, but only gang areas.”
“You’d think people would have organized and taken their cities back by now.”
The trader checked furtively around and lowered his voice. “That’s dangerous talk there. The gangs are organized. They kill if you look at ’em wrong. Try to set up resistance, your kids get burned alive in front of you, and then your wife gets gang-raped, and then they skin you alive and drag you down the street until you’re hamburger.” The trader shook his head. “One thing to talk about standing up, another to do it. See that a few times, trust me, bruthah, you’re not steppin’ outta line.”
“Just hard to believe.”
The man smiled sadly. “And it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another.” He took a sip from a shot glass half full of tequila. “That’s the Good Book. Revelation 6:3-4. Tells it all right there in black and white. This here’s the end times. Just got to keep our heads down and wait for it all to play out.”
The trader didn’t know where the cartel kept its prisoners, and as he grew drunker and more morose, he gradually lost interest in any further discussion. Lucas detached and, sickened by the aroma of unwashed bodies and rancid sweat in the bar, carried his remaining two beers out to the old man and handed them to him.
“Where would be a good place to camp in town?” Lucas asked.
The old man studied him and shook his head. “I wouldn’t.”
“Anyplace safe to leave my horse?”
“All dangerous.” The man looked to his left. “There’s a lot down by the courthouse, maybe two blocks away, has some grass growing. Horse might like it. But I’d sleep with your eyes open.”
Lucas nodded and, after checking his saddlebags to verify nothing had been filched, led Gunner toward the courthouse, a plan taking shape with every heavy step.
Chapter 30
After tying Gunner to a tree in the vacant lot, Lucas filled every available compartment of his plate holder with magazines and made for the cartel’s clubhouse. He darted from building to building toward the rear of the courthouse, having verified that the disinterested sentries were only guarding the front on his ride by. He paused on the corner and noted through his binoculars that they were bored, playing cards and not paying attention to their surroundings, secure in the knowledge that they owned the town and that nobody posed any danger to them.
He hoped to leverage that complacency and make it work against them. His only advantage was surprise, and once he lost it, he would be a dead man unless he could force the cartel to play the game he had in mind. His chances weren’t stellar, but he didn’t care – he wanted blood for blood, and by his reckoning, a hundred of the cartel needed killing if it was to be an even score. Although preferably he could exterminate them all.
The only way he could see of inflicting maximum casualties was to blow up the building, but that wouldn’t be easy. He had no explosives, there was no gas to ignite, and it was just him and a few guns.
But he would find a way.
He edged along an abandoned hulk on the final block, and when he was across the street from his target, he stood motionless in the shadows and studied the building through the NV monocle. Nothing moved, and from what he could tell, there was nobody minding the back side.
Lucas glanced at his watch. Closing in on midnight, and no lights were on in the building except in the front area. The music from the festivities carried, reverberating off the brick buildings that surrounded him, which would further mask the sound of his entry – at least, that was his hope.
He lowered the NV scope, darted across the street, and moments later was at one of the ground-floor windows. Most had been broken out and were now boarded up, but several still held their glass, and it was one of these that he selected for his entry. He tried the frame, but it was locked. After scanning the area a final time, he withdrew his hunting knife from its sheath and slammed the metal handle base against the glass.
The pane shattered and collapsed into the building, and Lucas cringed at the sound. Not waiting to see whether he had attracted unwanted attention, he knocked out the fragments along the bottom that thrust upward like broken teeth and pulled himself through.
His boots crunched the glass on the floor as he made for the door. The room he found himself in was an administrative office that had obviously been sacked. At the door, he listened with his ear against the wood panel – hearing nothing, he pulled it open.
The hall was pitch black, and Lucas took cautious steps toward the stairs that led to the second floor, using the monocle to guide him. At the stairway, he paused at a noise from the far end of the corridor and ducked into the stairwell at the sound of a door opening. Pounding music from the foyer momentarily flooded the hall, accompanied by men’s raucous laughter and yells, and then faded as the door closed.
A flashlight beam played along the floor and footsteps approached. Lucas gripped his knife and set the NV monocle on a step behind him as he waited for whoever was nearing to reach him. The hallway brightened as the flashlight drew even with the stairwell, and a wiry man with tattoos ringing his neck stepped into view, a pistol in hand, unaware of Lucas only a few feet away.
Lucas kicked the man’s pistol hand hard enough to send the weapon clattering down the hall, and then clocked him in the temple with the heavy knife handle. The flashlight tumbled from the man’s hand as his eyes rolled into his head, and Lucas dropped him with a left hook that nearly broke his jaw.
The gunman slumped to the floor, stunned, and Lucas sheathed the knife and scooped up the flashlight and pistol. He turned to where the thug lay on the floor and trained the man’s Glock on his head.
“Get up. Nice and slow. Now,” Lucas said menacingly.
The man struggled to rise, and Lucas motioned to the stairwell.
“Up the stairs. Come on,” Lucas instructed.
The thug looked confused, but not alarmed, and Lucas wanted to keep him off balance until he could have a di
scussion in a more private area. He shined the light into the man’s eyes, causing him to wince and twist away.
“Start walking or I pop a cap in your skull,” Lucas warned.
“You a dead man,” the man managed.
“We all go sometime,” Lucas agreed. “Move.”
The thug staggered up the steps, and Lucas snagged the monocle on the way up with his flashlight hand, his right steady as a rock holding the pistol. At the second floor, Lucas glanced down the hall and directed the man to one of the doors. “Inside,” he said.
The man twisted the handle and sneered at Lucas. “Locked, homeboy.”
“Try the next one.”
He did, and the door opened. Lucas motioned with the flashlight. “Inside.”
The man stepped into the dark room, and Lucas followed six feet behind him. As the man was turning around, Lucas clobbered him again, this time with the base of the aluminum flashlight, and then closed the door behind him.
Four minutes later Lucas exited the room. The man had told him what he needed to know before Lucas dispatched him, the sharp crack of the Walther PPK muffled by a seat cushion. Lucas made his way down the hall to the last door, which he kicked open.
Inside he used the monocle, the flashlight now a liability, and surveyed the room’s contents. After a scan of the items on the floor he moved to a crate of grenades and inspected one, and then slipped three into an empty pocket of his plate carrier. Smiling, he opened a green ammo box of 7.62mm M13 link belt rounds, and then reclosed and latched it. He shouldered an FN Mag M240B medium machine gun before hefting the ammo box, the glow from the bonfires providing just enough light through the window for him to make his way back to the stairwell.
Lucas felt his way down the steps and retraced his route along the hall to the back room through which he’d entered. Once inside, he moved to the window, set down the ammunition case, and freed the NV monocle to survey the street. Satisfied it was empty, he slipped the monocle back into his plate carrier and lowered the machine gun to the ground outside, leaning its barrel against the brick exterior. He set the ammo box on the windowsill for easy recovery and then dropped from the window, landing in a crouch.
The Day After Never (Book 1): Blood Honor Page 17