Blood Lines

by Mel Odom

  He put that out of his mind. This life, poor as it had been, was over. Whatever was left, however meager and sorry it might be, lay ahead of him.

  44

  >> Rafter M Ranch

  >> Outside Fort Davis, Texas

  >> 2148 Hours (Central Time Zone)

  Victor Gant stood in the darkness and tried to spot the fleeing horseman. He heard the horse’s hooves striking the earth, but he couldn’t see a thing.

  He ran forward and took a position against the corral fence. He rested the barrel of the M4 he carried on the topmost railing and took out the high-intensity halogen flashlight clipped to his belt. With a press of his thumb, he brought the flashlight to life and aimed it in the direction Tyrel McHenry had taken.

  It was no use, though. The light illuminated the ground in front of him, but the beam vanished in the dank black of the night.

  Victor cursed when he realized Tyrel had escaped. In the next instant a spark of light flared in the darkness. The corral post shivered under the assault rifle, and wood chips flew into the air. Aware that the bullet had missed him by inches, Victor extinguished the flashlight and threw himself to the ground.

  The harsh crack of the shot rolled over him.

  “Find that muzzle flash!” he roared at his crew. “Find that shooter and light him up!”

  Other bikers fell into position against the railing. Some of them raked the darkness with bullets.

  Victor lay there for a moment, but there weren’t any more shots from Tyrel McHenry. He’d taken his opportunity to make a quick kill and turned his attention to getting out of there.

  Grudgingly Victor knew he would have done the same thing. Taking a chance on killing an enemy when that enemy wasn’t expecting it was good. Bringing enemy fire to his position, especially when he was in full retreat, was just suicidal.

  “Victor,” Fat Mike called out of the darkness.

  “Here.” Victor pushed himself up and stood near the corral. He didn’t move away from the fence post. It was also possible that Tyrel would take up one final position and try for a kill once everyone let their guards down.

  “Thought he got you,” Fat Mike said.

  “He almost did.”

  “He shoots good. Nervy cuss, ain’t he?”

  “You planning on an adoption, Fat Mike?” Victor demanded angrily.

  “Nope. Just observing, is all.”

  Victor stared at the darkness, then looked around at his crew. He appeared to be two men short.

  “I take it Tyrel didn’t just escape, did he?” Victor asked. “I guess a couple of men had to go and get themselves shot.”

  “Dirty Bob and Dead Ear,” someone volunteered. “The old man got ’em as they were comin’ through the window.”

  “How are they?”

  “Dead. One shot, one kill. That old man must have ice water in his veins to stay holed up like that and come out shootin’.”

  Victor walked toward the main house and deliberately ignored the fact that the younger biker was referring to Tyrel McHenry as old. Tyrel was a couple of years younger than Victor.

  “Anybody else at home?” Victor asked.

  “Nope,” another man said. “Done been through it. He was here by himself.”

  And he got away, Victor thought bitterly. His cell phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket. “Yeah.”

  “That cop Loco shot was on the radio when he went down.” Buster, an ex-communications officer from the Army who’d been discharged for dealing drugs in the first Iraq War, was monitoring the law enforcement frequencies. “Word went out. That twenty is about to be flooded by county Mounties.”

  “Affirmative,” Victor snarled. He folded the phone and put it back in his pocket. Then he raised his voice. “Pack it in. We’re outta here. We’re about to be eyebrow-deep in cops.”

  “What about Dirty Bob and Dead Ear?” one of the bikers asked.

  “We got a klick-run ahead of us,” Victor said. “You want to superman it and hump them out of here, feel free.” He turned toward the front of the ranch where they’d left the motorcycles and began trotting.

  Behind him, Fat Mike cursed disconsolately. As big as he was, Fat Mike was already carrying the equivalent of a dead man’s weight strapped to him.

  Victor focused on the run. He’d get another chance at Shel McHenry. Victor felt that in his bones. The big Marine wasn’t the type to clear out of a situation.

  A grin pasted itself on Victor’s face. He’d promised Tran after tonight’s attempt that he’d get out of the United States for a while. If the Marine came after him, he was going to have to do it on dangerous terrain.

  No one knew Vietnam like Victor Gant did.

  >> 2201 Hours (Central Time Zone)

  Shel slotted himself into the breakneck convoy that raced down the farm-to-market road toward the Rafter M. He’d positioned himself the third vehicle back. Not close enough to the front of the pack to appear anxious to take over the operation, but not so far back that he missed out on a good look at the scene when they arrived.

  “They need to turn off the flashing lights.” Don sat in the passenger seat and clung to the seat belt. “Those bikers are going to see us coming for miles.”

  Shel silently agreed. But he knew trying to tell the deputies that would only start an argument. They were driven by the adrenaline of knowing one of their number had gone down in the line of fire. For most of them, this was probably the first time that had happened. They weren’t thinking right now; they were reacting.

  “That’s pretty smart for a preacher.” Shel tried to sound as though he wasn’t worried about their daddy.

  “It’s common sense.” Don shook his head. “I grew up watching the same Western movies you did.” He pointed. “Look. There’s the ranch house.”

  Shel peered through the night and spotted the house in the distance. He was relieved to see it sitting there quietly in the darkness. He’d been expecting to find it lit up with muzzle flashes or engulfed in flames.

  The lead deputy cruiser veered without warning and suddenly raced for the ditch on the right side of the road. Over Shel’s shoulder, Max barked and ran to the driver’s side window in back. Shel’s hand was already on his pistol when he heard the shots.

  A moment later, the second deputy cruiser came under fire. Bullets ripped through the windshield and tore across the flashing light bar.

  In the next moment, powerful motorcycle engines thundered to life. The bikers rose from the ditch on the right as their machines struggled with the grade because of their weight.

  “Get down!” Shel ordered when he noticed Don was sitting frozen in the passenger seat, watching the outbreak of violence around them.

  Shel transferred his pistol to his left hand and cupped his right behind Don’s head to pull him down. He knew that Max had already gone to cover.

  Bullets slammed against the SUV and ripped through the windshield. Safety glass trickled into Shel’s lap as he held the wheel straight with his right knee and took aim at the first biker he saw. The pistol jumped in his fist as soon as he had a lock on the target.

  The biker jerked, and the motorcycle went out of control. It fell over sideways and skidded across the road under the SUV.

  Shel let go of Don and grabbed for the wheel. It didn’t do any real good. The motorcycle had lodged under the SUV and made the vehicle unmanageable. Still, he almost had it under control when the deputy cruiser behind him slammed into him. The air bags blossomed with staccato blasts and trapped Shel and Don.

  The other bikers sped past and were gone in a heartbeat.

  Shel tore the air bag free with his hand and cleared his way out of the SUV. He flung open the bullet-riddled door and turned to face the retreating bikers. In the darkness, he couldn’t tell how many of them there were. He opened fire immediately and hoped he got lucky.

  If he hit any of the Purple Royals, they gave no indication of it.

  A quick check of the vehicles revealed that the first two and
his own were definitely out of commission. He ran to the next cruiser as he fed a new magazine into his pistol. Max paced him.

  The deputy in the car was bleeding from a head wound while he fought the air bag. A quick glance told Shel that the man had received the wound from the wreck, not from a bullet.

  “You okay?” Shel asked.

  “Yeah.” The deputy nodded but looked out of it.

  “Call dispatch. Let them know what happened. Tell them they need to shut the highways down.”

  “Okay.” The deputy grabbed the handset.

  None of the deputy cruisers were in any position to give pursuit. With the ditches on either side of the narrow road and the tangled mess of the wrecks, they were trapped.

  “Shel.”

  When Shel turned, he saw Don standing beside the SUV.

  “What about Daddy?” Don asked.

  Without a word, they turned together and raced for the road that led up to the ranch house.

  45

  >> Rafter M Ranch

  >> Outside Fort Davis, Texas

  >> 2204 Hours (Central Time Zone)

  Please, God, don’t let my daddy be dead. As he ran, Don knew he sounded like a child. But that was all right. In God’s eyes they were all children. They were supposed to turn to him in times of need and fear. God was a daddy too.

  Over the years, Don had known he’d enjoyed a closer relationship with God than he had with his earthly father, especially since he’d been called to lead the church. God had pulled him to that, and Don had never doubted that a day in his life. He suspected that even if he were close to his daddy, he’d still have been closer to God.

  Don ran as fast as he could, but he couldn’t match Shel’s speed. Ultimately Don knew he was going to lose, but the thing that worried him most was that some of the bikers might yet remain at the house, or that Daddy might accidentally shoot them while thinking they were the bikers.

  That fear and the adrenaline lent wings to Don’s feet. He was less than a hundred yards behind his brother when Shel reached the ranch house.

  Shel hunkered down behind the big pecan tree in the front yard. Mama had asked Daddy to put that tree in, and she’d made pies from what they’d gathered every year after it started producing. For a long time after Mama’s death, Daddy had gathered the nuts every year and given them away. Then when Don married Joanie, he’d given the pecans to her. They’d given Daddy pies back. Lately Don’s kids had gathered the pecans.

  Out of breath, afraid that he was about to throw up from the exertion and nerves, Don bent over and rested his hands on his knees.

  Shel faced him, his features calm and set like stone. “I want you to stay here, Don.”

  “Why?” Don gasped.

  “Just stay here.” Shel’s voice was hard and clipped. It was his big-brother voice. After all these years, it hadn’t gone away. But it had been a long time since Don had heard it.

  “All right,” Don said. He was used to telling Shel whatever he needed to in order to mollify him.

  Shel approached the house at a measured run. He signaled to Max, and the Labrador took the lead and stayed to the left.

  Don noticed that Shel was going to the rear of the house, obviously circling it. When he knew Shel was too far away to stop him, Don took off like a shot and ran for the front door.

  He flattened up against the door like the television cops he enjoyed watching every now and again. Those shows were his one guilty pleasure. He’d sometimes imagined what it might be like going with Shel in his NCIS work.

  What it turned out to be was scary. Don’s heart beat so hard and so fast he thought it was going to rip right out of his chest.

  “Daddy?” Don called. “Daddy? It’s Don. Are you in there?”

  There was no answer.

  God, please watch over us right now. Keep us close. Marshaling his courage, Don tried the door. It was locked, but that made him feel better. If he had to use his key to get in, maybe everything was all right.

  Inside the house, Don almost turned on a light out of habit. He caught himself just in time and stopped. Turning the light on would have made him an instant target.

  He went through the house quickly, working from the living room to the back of the house, where Daddy’s bedroom was.

  When he saw the broken window, Don almost cried out in fear. He made himself stay quiet. At the window, he looked down and saw two men lying in obvious death on the ground. Shel was squatted beside them.

  “I told you to stay back,” Shel said without looking up.

  “I couldn’t,” Don said. “Is that . . . ?” He couldn’t say it.

  “It’s not Daddy,” Shel said.

  Thank God.

  “But Daddy killed them both.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “They’ve each been shot once,” Shel said. “One through the head and the other through the heart. At a distance, that’s not such a big deal. But killing a man up close like this . . . and two of ’em, one right after the other?” He shook his head. “That takes some real nerve.”

  “They would have killed Daddy if he hadn’t killed them first,” Don objected.

  Shel stood and looked around. “I know. I wasn’t faulting him, Don. I’m just impressed. Taking a life ain’t like it is on television. Especially not if you’ve already done it before.” He paused. “You either learn to accept the need and that dark part of you that can do it, or you eventually get yourself killed. Not every law enforcement person I know could handle something like this. That’s all I was saying.”

  But Don knew his brother well enough to know that Shel was saying more. Evidently Daddy didn’t hesitate when it came to killing someone else.

  That wasn’t any different than Shel, though, was it? Don didn’t know the answer. Another question was on his mind.

  “Where’s Daddy?”

  “I don’t know.” Shel took off walking. “His truck’s still out front. There’s only one other way he could have gotten away.”

  Don took a final look at the two dead men, then climbed through the window and followed Shel to the barn.

  >> 2209 Hours (Central Time Zone)

  Although Don followed him and he didn’t want to place his brother in peril, Shel ignored the potential danger. He felt that whatever threat had existed was gone.

  Daddy’s gone.

  That realization haunted Shel, but he felt it was true. He couldn’t have said how he knew, but he was aware of an emptiness that had never been at the ranch before. Even when Mama had died, the emptiness had never felt that big.

  “He’s not here, is he?” Don asked.

  Shel didn’t answer. He kept his pistol trained on the prone figure lying in front of the barn door. The man didn’t move. Moonlight silvered the man’s staring eyes.

  When Shel reached the man, he kicked the M4 away, then knelt and placed his free hand against the man’s carotid artery. Only cooling flesh met Shel’s touch.

  “Is he dead?” Don asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “They just left him behind like that?”

  “In case you’re counting, they left the other two behind too. I don’t think the Purple Royals are big on friendship once somebody’s dead.” Shel stood. “Three men. In the dark.” He shook his head. “That’s something.”

  “What?” Don looked at him in disbelief.

  “I’m just saying, is all,” Shel replied. “A lot of men came after Daddy.” Pride swelled inside his chest. “If he hadn’t gotten away, he might have killed more of them. Then again, since this place is his and he knows every inch of it, he might have killed them all.”

  “How do you know Daddy got away?”

  Shel took his penflash out and played it over the ground. The light showed the heavy horseshoes that scored the ground. The earth was still dark and hadn’t dried out yet.

  “I’ll bet that mare of his is missing.” Shel put the penflash away and walked into the barn.

  A brief check revealed t
hat the horse was gone, but Tyrel McHenry’s saddle still hung on the tack wall.

  “He went out light,” Shel said. “Rode bareback.” He walked back outside. Farther down the road leading up to the house, a few of the deputies were headed toward them.

  “Do you think Daddy headed out to get the police?” Don asked.

  “No.” Sadness filled Shel’s heart as he realized what he truly thought. “I think Daddy’s lit a shuck for the quickest way out of here. I’m guessing he’ll be in El Paso come morning. He’ll be in Mexico City shortly after that.”

  “That’s insane,” Don whispered, but Shel knew his brother was starting to realize that what he was saying was true. “Daddy wouldn’t just run off in the middle of the night.”

  “Yeah,” Shel said, “he would. He had all this worked out, Don. That’s why he didn’t hang around but decided to take his chances on riding that mare out of here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Daddy’s got military murder charges hanging over him if Victor Gant tells anyone what happened in Qui Nhon. And the military executes soldiers who murder other soldiers. Even if it was forty years ago.”

  Don was silent for a moment, and Shel dreaded the question he was certain his brother was going to ask next. It was inevitable, though. A similar question had come from the mouths of dozens of family members Shel had gotten to know during his service with NCIS.

  “Do you really . . . do you . . . think Daddy murdered somebody?”

  Shel blew his breath out and looked at Don. It hurt him to hurt Don by taking away his hope. But Shel believed that if people faced facts sooner, it got easier in the long run.

  “Daddy ran, Don.”

  “Maybe he just went for help.”

  “It was safer to stay here than to try to get away on that horse. Daddy lit out because he didn’t want to be here when the police arrived. If he didn’t kill Victor Gant—and there was no way he could be sure of doing that with all those men hunting him—then he knew Gant could get taken into custody. Then the story about the murder would come out. Daddy couldn’t afford to stay.”