Pardners

by Roy F. Chandler

  Byrne sighed and the noose loosened a small inch. Lavender frantically sought air. Byrne's voice was again emotionless.

  "We have made a deal, Charlie. You have not lied that I can tell. If we discover otherwise, we will kill you.

  "You deliver the money to your ex. Never ever contact Donna Santos or anyone else about me or anything to do with me. Fail in that, and you will die slowly and painfully."

  Dewey Lavender was nodding agreement and understanding as fast as his condition allowed.

  Byrne said, "Then, we are finished for now, Lavender. Drive down to the entrance and point the car back this way. When Milo and I get out, return to this exact spot. Do not peer around or attempt foolish moves. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, yes. I understand and . . ."

  "Shut up, Charlie. Put the top down and start driving." The syringe left Lavender's side and Byrne replaced it in its fancy case.

  The strangling cord had loosened even more. Lavender flipped the switch and the top began folding away. Sweet and delicious summer air filled his lungs.

  Still, it wasn't over, and Charlie's sweat-soaked and shaking hands gripped the steering wheel hard enough to leave imprints. The car moved slowly to the gate and stopped when Alpha said, "Stop."

  Byrne stepped out and his again fisted pistol smashed the right side mirror. Lavender was slightly distracted because the garrote had again tightened around his throat. Byrne crossed in front of the silver Mercedes and stopped almost beside Lavender to smash out the left rearview.

  The pressure of the garrote around Charlie's neck eased. He felt the car's balance change as Milo dismounted. The strangling cord was gone, and Byrne waved him away. Eyes glued ahead, Lavender drove back to his original parking spot.

  When he shut off his engine and looked, Byrne and Milo were gone. Had the gate camera recorded them? Dewey Lavender did not intend to find out. He sat within the stink of wet urine and ultimate fear and vowed to do exactly as Byrne had demanded. If he didn't, Byrne or that crazy Milo would kill him. Charlie's shoulders began to shake violently, and involuntary sobs racked his body.

  Alpha and Bravo were near. A short walk uphill and a downhill return across the street allowed them to enter the eating establishment they had used before.

  At their window seat, Bravo studied the Mercedes parked in its usual spot.

  "The top is back up, but he's still in the car, I think. You'd suppose he would get out. What a stink."

  Alpha agreed. "I think he's letting his nerves settle. Then he will go home and change clothes. He'll probably call in sick today."

  Bravo was admiring, "Byrne, you really scared the squash out of him. I was afraid he would crap in his pants, and it was already bad enough in there."

  Alpha questioned, "Do you think he will do it?"

  Bravo laughed aloud. "If I was him, I'd do it. Imagine having two bad asses like us out here in the city just waiting for him to be slow in paying his ex-wife or making calls that we might find out about.

  "I figure he beat us on the amount of money he has left, Alpha. He's probably got a lot more stashed where we could never find it. All he 'fessed up to was what he could put his hands on locally."

  "You're probably right, pardner, but I didn't want to raise the bar so high that he would have second thoughts and get brave tomorrow."

  Bravo asked, "If he hadn't cooperated, would you have squirted him with that bug juice in the syringe, Donny? You sounded real willing."

  Alpha said, "Of course, I would have." Then he smiled coldly. "I slid that needle in just under his skin. It burned a little, but it wasn't near anything important, and all the hypo had in it was tap water.

  "I doubt there is anything in the local drinking water that would have put him away, Bravo, but I have to admit I wouldn't have cared if he had scared himself to death."

  Alpha said, "Here he comes. Heading home to change clothes, I guess."

  "Yeah, and you notice that his windows aren't down. Makes him hard to see in there. I hope his air conditioning is powerful. It's got to be really strong in that car."

  They ordered drinks. Neither man was a coffee drinker. Bravo had Coke. If it was available, Alpha drank Diet Mountain Dew. There was no hurry at the moment. If Lavender came back, they would be surprised, but he would not see them behind the glass window.

  Bravo mused, "We did that pretty well for a couple of civilians, Donny. Maybe we should become professional torturers."

  Alpha had no doubts. "You could be good at it, Bravo. You have the mean temperament, and you have enough muscle to tug on a piece of rope. Milo sounds like a proper name for a man of your talents. You could go far, Tommy."

  Bravo grinned. "Maybe Dewey Lavender would take me on—as a bodyguard or something."

  Alpha said, "You should leave your name with Jocko."

  Chapter 19

  Crossing the United States was a long drive. It allowed time for thinking and considering. The Alpha and Bravo team had not enjoyed empty time since their Noisy Oyster days, and they made the most of it.

  As it had been in earlier years, they verbally jabbed and poked at each other. Most observations by one were ridiculed by the other. Heavy, often crude, army-style humor was exchanged. World politics was cursed over, and earthly problems were simplified into their obvious nonsense and vigorously eliminated.

  Because they had little information to work with, they only occasionally spoke about what they would do in California. Face Donna Santos was about as far as they managed. They speculated how that could come about and moved on to important things like the cost of diesel fuel.

  Bravo said, "I'm getting cash short. I need to visit a bank."

  Alpha volunteered, "We've got enough until we get into the Rocky Mountains. We do not want to leave credit card or banking records indicating that we have been in the east."

  Bravo was disdainful. "Charlie can't set the CIA or the FBI on us, Alpha. He will want to keep all of this as quiet as possible. No one is looking for us or checking on us. Get real."

  "I agree that no one is looking, pardner, but we can't tell what is ahead, and we may not want anyone to know where we've been or what we did while we were there.

  "We eat in fast food joints, and we pay cash for everything. We sleep in the trailer, mostly in Wal-Mart parking lots, like we have been doing, and we leave almost no tracks. That is the smart way to do it."

  Bravo switched complaints. "Every time we fill the tanks in this beast of a truck I want to cry—four dollars and forty-eight cents a gallon the last time.

  "I'll tell you, Byrne, the happy days of traveling the country are over for most people. This year, 2008, will be the end of it. Nobody will be able to afford driving out of their state. Either we find more oil and be damned quick about it, or this country will change so dramatically that we won't recognize it."

  Byrne nodded agreement. "Bad times are coming, Tommy. No question about that. We will all adjust, and life will stumble on, but damned few will be driving the Alaskan Highway just for the adventure of it."

  Bravo charged, "Huh, damned few will drive anywhere, and I blame it on you Democrats, Byrne." Alpha's glare tickled Bravo's funny bone.

  Byrne said, "Don't you call me a Democrat or any other vile name, Bravo. You left wing, nuthouse Californians are responsible for most of the rotten stuff that goes on in this country. If it's immoral, illegal, or just plain stupid and perverse it can be traced back to California. Super-high fuel prices are probably in there with all of the other liberal, low life, garbage spreading across North America."

  Bravo laughed aloud. "Wow, now tell me how you really feel, Donny. Don't hold back. Let it all out."

  Byrne joined the laughter. "Bravo, we are dinosaurs. Politically, we stand to the right of old Genghis Kahn. Our idea of negotiating a point is to hold the other guy at gunpoint. That's why we were Rangers. It's why we jumped the Santos men down in Mexico. It's why we rammed that pirate boat out in the Gulf and never looked back. Hell, Bravo, we are barbarian
s, or we wouldn't have half strangled Charlie and threatened his life."

  "We think alike and we were trained alike back in our formative years. If someone wrongs us, we don't look to the law. We decide what gun to shoot him with, and where to bury the body."

  Bravo nodded. "I can't disagree."

  Bravo changed subjects and his voice tightened. "I'm not through with Charlie, Alpha. His greed killed an old soldier, and he betrayed us for money."

  Alpha nodded. "We are not through with him, pardner. First the Santos, then Charlie."

  Bravo was quiet for long moments before asking, "Do you ever sweat the shooting we did back in Mexico, Don? Ever have bad dreams or regrets or any bad thoughts about it?"

  Alpha's answer was short. "No. Do you?"

  "Nope, but I have wondered now and then, why not? These days, anyone, say a cop or even a soldier, who shoots in the line of duty requires paid leave and counseling. I wonder what that is all about, and then I wonder why I don't feel zilch about what we did."

  Byrne said, "We are living Neanderthals, Shepard. We lack sensitivity."

  Bravo snickered. "Fair enough, Doctor Byrne. I am glad I am traveling with a licensed physician who understands these philosophical points.'

  Then he added, "How about those mercenaries buried in front of your old mine? Any thoughts about them?"

  Byrne drove before answering. "Yeah, I do have thoughts about them. I figure they were all pretty hard boys, and I know the sniper was tough and seasoned. All were killers who had within the week murdered your friend, and they were trying for me."

  Alpha digressed for an instant. "Geez, did you see the bullet holes in the planks from my outhouse? They must have each emptied a full magazine into that one-holer. I heard the explosion, and I figured I'd gotten at least one of the bastards, but I never dared hope to get them all.

  "When his whole team disappeared in a cloud of dynamite smoke that sniper must have about wet his pants."

  Alpha's voice was flat. "What I think about is how in hell did I come out on top in that battle? There they were, five trained and prepared guys against a very ex-soldier, meaning me, and I wiped them out. Man, Bravo, there was a lot of luck there.

  "Do I have regrets or second thoughts? Of course not. Given the situation, I would do it all again, just as I did the last time."

  Alpha nodded to himself. "It's like that guerilla on the bridge that you dumped with the shotgun. The one who was beating up the peasant. Do you have any regrets? Hell no, you don't. You did what was right for the moment, and that is about the best we can ever do."

  Bravo considered Alpha's reasonings. Then he said, "This Donna Santos is something different, Alpha. Can we shoot or blow up a woman—an old woman at that?"

  Ever since Charlie had identified his money source, Don Byrne had been weighing the same thought. He had his answer ready.

  "It's a problem all right. "The easy answer is no, we can't, but that is not an honest response.

  "If the woman came at us with a gun blazing? I would shoot her without hesitation. So would you. A gun changes everything, and it makes us all equal. If she were sipping tea? That is tougher."

  A passing motorist blasted his horn and gave them the finger. Byrne asked, "What was that all about?"

  "Hell, Byrne, you've slowed down to fifty miles an hour. If you can't drive and talk, shut up, or I'll take over."

  Alpha exclaimed, "Damned if I didn't ease off a bit! If I do that again, tell me."

  Shepard groused, "If I watched your driving, I'd be complaining all of the time. You drive like an old man, Byrne."

  "I'm staying within the speed limit because we do not want a ticket to make a trail, Bravo. I've been doing most of the driving because you speed like a maniac, and we could get pulled over."

  Byrne grinned. "Actually, I am saving us big money by holding down the speed. With the cost of fuel these days . . ."

  Bravo shifted in his seat. "Forget the fuel. At this speed we will never get to the mountains. Hell, we will die out on the Great Plains somewhere. Pick it up a little, Byrne." Alpha raised his speed to sixty-five.

  Bravo said, "So what is your plan on handling Donna Santos? If she finds out that we are on her trail, and Charlie might already have told her, she'll unloose another army. Then what?"

  Byrne's answer was not satisfying. "I've got part of a scheme, pardner. Let me think about it for a while. Jumping at the first idea is not always the best way. Just restrain yourself for a day or two. On the other hand, if you think of some nifty maneuver let me in on it.

  "I don't know why I have to do all of the planning, anyway. It's always like this, Shepard. I have to do every damned . . . "

  Traffic was reasonable on I-95 south, and they breezed along. The trailer towed nicely behind the big Ford. And the weather was almost spring-like. They switched over to Interstate-81, and near quitting time mileage to Route-40 and Knoxville, Tennessee became short.

  Bravo said, "I'm tired of sitting. Let's find a mall, park the trailer, and eat a big meal. We can walk around and see what the rest of the world is doing."

  Alpha nodded, "Sounds good, but I'll tell you right now what the rest of the world is doing. Everybody is sitting at home watching TV and wondering how they're going to pay for anything other than gasoline. Damned Democrats, all they've got to do is start drilling, and we will have oil for a hundred years."

  Bravo agreed. "We should have every state building two nuclear power plants as fast as they can get them in, and we should build the natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the states. They can run it right beside the Alaskan oil pipeline."

  Bravo was on a roll. "My God, Donny, we've got enough natural gas to keep us going for a couple of centuries, yet we won't drill for it. We've got more coal than anybody, but we are so tied up in environmental crapola that we can't dig it or burn it."

  Byrne grimaced, "Global warming, Tommy."

  Bravo was disdainful. "Our climate change is a normal fluctuation, Byrne, and you know it. You're just trying to make me mad. Hell, warming is over for now, anyway. Temperatures have been stable or dropping for the last ten years. Humans are idiots who like to make things tough for themselves."

  Byrne said, "It isn't just people being dumb, Tommy. There is really big money in global warming, and people do want to preserve the earth. What stuns me is how men in power, who know better, keep pushing that global warming is a crisis that needs horrific emergency changes to save the planet. Preaching that stuff is evil."

  Bravo's chuckle sounded equally evil. "Like drilling in ANWR—you know that pristine strip of ground along the arctic ocean." Both men snickered.

  They had served together in the Army's Arctic Test Board, and they had walked that mosquito-ridden wasteland. They had tested all sorts of munitions within the measly two thousand acres proposed for drilling. They had enlarged four toxic waste dumps that the anti-drilling crowd conveniently ignored. They had exploded hundreds of napalm burster rounds and floated other hundreds of aerial flares that still pocked the tundra. They had tested flamethrowers, all sorts of grenades, mines, and various mortar rounds in profusion. When each year's military testers finished, they burned or buried most of what they had used and flew out.

  Where oilmen hoped to drill in ANWR there were no handsome Dall sheep or awe-inspiring mountains. Those wonders of nature were at least fifty miles away. For less than two months in most springs, a herd of caribou out of Canada crossed the mountains to birth their calves, and wolves and a few grizzlies came with them. Otherwise, the land lay nearly empty.

  Some years, the snow was too deep in the mountain passes, and the caribou calved elsewhere. Those details were never mentioned in environmental extremist's litany of oil drilling horrors.

  The military had left ditch latrines and kitchen grease pits, and dozens of burned refuse piles. The ex-soldiers recalled the sandpit they had established to fill thousands of bags to create safety bunkers. They had visited the Eskimo villages, and after seeing that style of
living, no one could believe native Alaskans were inherently environmentalists. The airport-sized bit of land where oil lay was about as pristine as an inner city park.

  The mindless, knee-jerk prattle of Save-the-Earthers could turn the knowledgeable cynical.

  Bravo had been studying their road atlas. He said, "You know what we ought to do?" His question was rhetorical, and he went on.

  "We ought to rent a pair of sport motorcycles and ride . . ."

  Byrne finished his friend's thought. ". . . and ride the Tail of The Dragon."

  They silently remembered a time of youthful strength and excitement. The Dragon was the famed Deale's Gap Road that wound its way along the face of the mountains before crossing to have one end in Tennessee and the other in North Carolina. The ride boated 318 serious turns in only eleven miles, and bikers came from around the world to test their skills on the winding road.

  On special days, the states cooperated, and stationed a police car at the top and one at each end of the ride. As long as a bike did not cross the centerline, the law said nothing. Speed was rarely noted, but cross the line, and you got a ticket.

  Bravo questioned, "I wonder if they still let you ride full out?"

  Byrne was cynical. "I doubt it, pal. This is the age of correctness with big law suits hanging on the slightest misjudgment, but, boy-oh-boy, those were the days, weren't they?"

  "Yeah, they were good times, Donny. We spent three days up here riding that strip, didn't we?' Bravo sounded nostalgic. "I couldn't ride like that anymore, anyway."

  "Neither could I, but it is important that we did that when we could. We've got the memories, Tom, and no one can ever take them away.

  "Remember skiing at Black Rapids, and eating snakes in our jungle training in Panama? I heard that base is closed now. Would you want to have missed jumping at Benning and Bragg? Remember all of the days training with foreign small arms we had, and . . ."

  Bravo interrupted. "Yeah, yeah, Byrne. I remember, but I'll tell you something that I never expected back in those great times. I never, not even once, expected that you and I would still be hanging together in our mid-forties.