Once he was only a hundred yards away, he peered through the night vision scope and saw the woman, arms akimbo, speaking to two Raiders, one of whom matched the description of his man.
As Lucas had suspected, the scumbags were lying in wait on the highway to rob and murder anyone stupid or desperate enough to be traveling at night by the main roads. He debated whether to take the woman and second man out right then and there, but the decision was made for him when the shorter Raider struck the woman with a slap he could hear. The men were in motion and the woman was running for her horse, and then she was riding back the way she’d come as the men mounted up, presumably to waylay him at the springs she’d misled Lucas about.
He could have shot the horses, but the smaller targets in motion were too difficult given the angle. His opportunity squandered, he returned to Tango and gave cautious chase. The Raiders rode hard on the highway, and Lucas followed silently through the scrub. He knew the springs she’d described, no more than a quarter mile off the road, and would wait for them to search the area and find nothing before moving on them.
When they arrived at the well, nothing more than a cinderblock utility building and a walled hole in the ground, they leapt down from their horses, guns in hand, and rushed the structure in as amateur a manner as Lucas could have imagined. He dropped from the saddle and crept toward the springs while they roamed the grounds, and closed in on them while they were busy inside.
When they emerged and were both clear of the doorway, Lucas called out from behind the cement rim of the well.
“Drop the guns or you’re dead.”
The small man’s accomplice opened fire on full auto, and Lucas cut him down with a three-round burst. His target dove for the door, but Lucas’s second burst caught his left leg, and he went down hard. Lucas fired another burst near the man’s head and then yelled at him, “Throw the AK away and put your hands where I can see them, or the next round’s between your eyes.”
Lucas could practically smell the desperation as the Raider made his choice. His rifle rattled against the hard clay and he raised his right hand, his left clutching his wounded leg. Lucas rose and moved toward him, and when he reached the first Raider, toed his weapon away and knelt beside him to check his neck for a pulse.
Nothing.
The little Raider groaned in pain. Lucas straightened and approached him. He could make out the man’s features, twisted with agony, but his eyes still possessed of cruelty and animal cunning.
“Hurts, huh?” Lucas observed, and spit to the side.
The man glared at him wordlessly.
Lucas eyed the man’s injured leg, blood seeping between the Raider’s fingers, and nodded. “Looks like it got you pretty good. Man could die from a wound like that.”
“What do you want?”
Lucas’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “That’s not the one.”
The Raider’s expression changed to confusion. “What?”
“Your vest. Wrong one.” Lucas paused. “Although the tin star’s a nice touch. Where did you get it?”
“Found it,” the thug said through clenched teeth.
“Huh.”
“What do you want?” the man repeated, his voice strained.
“World peace. Understanding. The love of a good woman. But I’ll settle for a straight answer. I’m looking for a vest.”
“You shot us for a lousy plate carrier?”
“This is a special one. Sentimental value. A friend of mine’s. He died west of here, in a gulch by the foothills. Bushwhacked by a bunch of you. Has an eagle on the breast.”
The man’s eyes widened in recognition, and then he quickly recovered, resuming his unreadable expression. But Lucas had caught the brief tell and nodded. “Seems like we have ourselves a winner.”
“I didn’t kill those dudes, man. I swear. I just found the stuff. They was already dead.”
“Oh, I believe you. Based on your moves here, you’d have been dead if you had taken them on. That’s not important. Where’s the vest?”
“Why you so interested in it?”
“I collect them. Where is it?”
The Raider coughed. “I don’t have it.”
“Who does?”
The man shrugged with a wince. “I’m bleeding out here.”
“Yup. Looks like you are. Where is it?”
“I lost it in a card game. Back in Mentone. Along with a bunch of other crap.”
“To who?”
“Old guy. Dealer. But I heard he’s dead.”
“Tell me about him,” Lucas said, his voice low.
“Partner or something with the guy who runs the bar. Call him the mayor.”
“I know the place.”
“Mayor’s probably got it.”
Lucas offered a humorless smile. “What does the badge say?”
“How would I know? Police. Something like that.”
Lucas shook his head. “Nope. Says sheriff.” He paused. “You the one dragged him over the rocks? Or your buddy there?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”
Lucas could see the lie in his smirk. “Friend of mine had a star just like that. Decent sort,” he said, and looked down at his M4.
The Raider’s hand reached for his boot and a small pistol appeared from an ankle holster.
Lucas’s final two three-round bursts chewed the man’s torso to hamburger, and the light went out of his eyes. Lucas knelt down and retrieved the Raider’s gun – a piece of Chinese junk, .32 caliber, compact but deadly at close range. He pocketed it and quickly searched the thug, holding his breath at the man’s odor, one of his rounds having punctured his abdomen and small intestine. He retrieved two curved magazines for the AK and slipped them into his flak vest, and then moved to the other Raider and repeated the process with much the same results – a few magazines, a lighter, and a battered Sig Sauer pistol that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a lifetime.
Lucas hurried back to Tango and loaded the weapons into his saddlebags. He knew his shots would have carried to the woman, who might circle around and try to ambush him. He doubted it, but he’d learned you could never assume anything but the worst.
He pointed Tango north and put three miles between himself and the well, and then made camp with no fire. He’d wait until morning to return to Mentone and continue following the thread to see where it led. Of course, the dealer could have traded the vest to someone before he was killed, or the mayor could have sold it, but Lucas had no better place to start and resigned himself to another trip to the hellhole once day had broken.
Would the woman say anything, warn them? Lucas didn’t think so. She would assume the worst when her pals failed to show, but he didn’t see her as being adventurous enough to ride to the well until it was light out, and he had put enough of a scare into her that she wouldn’t go back to the farmhouse any time soon. No, she would find someplace to sleep, maybe go looking for her companions in the morning, and when she found them…it didn’t matter. Lucas would have finished his business with the mayor by the time she could make it to town, if she dared – a lone woman without a vicious ferret like the little killer to defend her might decide that there were greener pastures than the open sewer that was Mentone.
He watered Tango and settled onto his bedroll, troubled by how easily snuffing out life had come to him since rescuing Sierra. After the collapse, he’d had to shoot three different men, all of them in self-defense, but he’d avoided most altercations – which was why he was still alive, he reasoned. None had been easy for him, and he’d struggled with his conscience many a night; the knowledge that he’d had no choice afforded slim comfort when their ghosts came to visit.
But now he’d butchered, what, over a hundred in a week or less? Had he become one of the monsters he so despised? Had the collapse finally taken its toll on his soul and robbed him of his humanity?
He closed his eyes and tried to dismiss the notion. That he had the thought at all w
as proof of a kind that he wasn’t lost. Not yet. Animals like the Raiders didn’t miss a beat and killed innocents so they could steal their possessions – or worse, to entertain themselves. Lucas wasn’t that. Whatever he had become, he wasn’t one of them.
A vision of Alan’s and Carl’s faces, riding into the night in search of Eve, putting themselves in harm’s way to save a little girl they’d never met, filled his imagination, followed almost instantly by a memory of their abused remains. The men he’d gunned down tonight had done that. They had earned their reward, and Lucas had been nothing more than the messenger. Truth be told, he’d probably saved the lives of countless travelers who would have fallen prey to them, and he was quite sure that the Raiders hadn’t suffered any crisis of conscience at their misdeeds.
Tango was munching on some scrub, the only sound his steady mastication and an occasional snort. Lucas sighed and willed the troubling doubts away. He was doing what he had to in order to prevail, nothing more. The world was a brutal place populated by more than its share of sadists and miscreants, and if his role in it all was to wipe the earth of a few of them, so much the better. He was under no illusions about human nature. His years in law enforcement had more than disabused him of any notion that evil wasn’t an active and real force, and that every man didn’t eventually have to either confront it and welcome it into his heart or banish it. Taking life was certainly evil, but when there was no choice, kill or be killed, it was…less so.
His breathing slowed, but with his churning thoughts, rest came hard, and he spent the remainder of the night in uneasy slumber. His dreams were violently vivid and jarring, a parade of departed companions. Tango looked over at him in alarm when he cried out softly several times in the night, rifle clutched to him like a lover, dead to the world but still reliving his battles in the unforgiving embrace of troubled sleep.
Chapter 8
Cano watched as his men moved a pickup truck from the center of the two-lane blacktop, where it had been abandoned at just enough of an angle to block the road. It sat on rusting rims, the tires having degraded to little more than dust from the desert sun, and it groaned like an angry walrus as one of the Humvees pushed it out of the way.
They’d made better time than he’d expected; the highway had been largely uncluttered by cars once they’d gotten fifty miles from Houston, and this was only the eighth such delay in their thirty-six-hour marathon. By his reckoning, they were no more than ten miles from Pecos, and he expected to be able to make out the city’s lights at any moment.
Cano was part of Magnus’s executive team, a troubleshooter who’d proved himself in prison as an enforcer and hit man, whose career had blossomed once he’d escaped with the rest of Magnus’s group. His willingness to use excessive violence at the slightest provocation had made him a powerful force around Houston, and although Magnus had a higher opinion of Garret’s resourcefulness, he clearly prized Cano’s ability to get tough jobs done – including executing those who had failed him.
Being chartered with finding the woman was both an honor and a curse. He had no idea what situation he would find in Pecos, but he was confident that he could manhandle the Locos into providing enough support that he could pick up the woman’s trail. He had no alternative, or there would be a replacement sent to take over his responsibility, and he could expect the same reward for disappointing his master that awaited the one-eyed freak at his hands. He didn’t bemoan that – it was the law of the jungle, and so far, the harsh rules had been good for him.
Thirty-two years old and six foot six, Cano was shaped like a door, with bare arms protruding from his flak vest like tree trunks and covered with full-sleeve prison ink. Originally incarcerated at nineteen for the brutal murder of two youths with a hatchet, he’d shown no remorse for his misdeeds and had been diagnosed a psychopath by the system, about which he cared little, just as he didn’t mind the prospect of life behind bars. One place was as good as any other to him, and he’d quickly climbed the prison pecking order with a series of vicious attacks that had added three more to his list of kills – not that the pair of youths had been his first. Part of his contempt for the legal apparatus was its inability to do its job, and there were four others that had preceded the ones he’d been busted for, all but one murdered with his bare hands. His first taste of blood had been when he’d beat another boy’s head into the sidewalk one evening when he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. After smashing the kid’s brains into jelly, Cano had gone home and eaten a sandwich in front of the television, alone. His meth-addicted mother was doubtless off somewhere earning her next fix, and his nameless father had departed ten seconds after the ejaculation that had created him.
Over the next days, the news coverage of the sensational slaying had amused him no end, but he’d never told a soul, only thinking about it occasionally, and when he did, without emotion.
“Come on. We don’t have all night,” he growled at the men when enough space had been made for the fuel truck to make it through. Cano signaled to his driver to push on, his customary impatience even more pronounced than usual due to lack of sleep and anxiousness to confront Garret.
Pecos rose from the plain like a glowing mirage, its lights bright in the night. The eastern approach had been blocked with a wall fashioned of debris and the carcasses of vehicles; a faded red arrow on a crudely painted sign pointed them to the southern gate.
The guard there looked up at the arriving motorized column like it was a formation of UFOs, and his mouth hung open at the apparition as he stood, his AK a laughable defense against the heavy equipment bristling with Crew members and guns. Cano signaled him over as the Humvee came to a stop, its diesel engine clattering from small impurities in the fuel.
“We’re your reinforcements,” Cano barked when the guard was within earshot.
“Reinforcements?” the man asked, his tone puzzled and not a little afraid.
“Get on the radio with whoever runs this operation. Tell him the Crew’s arrived.”
The Loco nodded and made the transmission, and several long moments later, Luis’s voice crackled over the speaker, authorizing the guard to let the procession through. The man exhaled in relief at the instruction – it wasn’t like he could have done anything to stop them from running him down.
He slid aside an iron gate, whose wheels squeaked a protest as it opened, and motioned the vehicles through, still shocked at the sight of a motorized transport – something he hadn’t seen in years. The Humvee exhausts belched black smoke into the air and they rolled forward. Cano stood with his head in the wind on the passenger side like a conquering general, the bandana over his nose and mouth mottled with road dust.
They roared through the darkened streets as startled residents peered from windows and doorways at the unfamiliar sound of motors, and rolled up to the courthouse square, where Luis and two of his lieutenants waited. The vehicles eased to a stop, and Cano descended from the lead truck and approached Luis, pulling down the bandana as he strode.
“I’m Cano. Magnus sent us. We’re here to help in the search for the woman and child.”
“Welcome, Cano. I’m Luis. Head of the Locos,” Luis said, offering his hand.
Cano shook it with a grip like a hydraulic press and looked back at his convoy. “My men and I have been on the road for too long. Where can we make camp?”
“There’s a motel not far from here that we use.”
“Good. Have one of your people show them to it.”
Luis bit back the response that sprang to his lips at being ordered around in front of his men, and nodded. “Will do.”
“Where’s Garret?”
Luis’s expression clouded. “He’s dead. Killed with his men in the field.”
Cano absorbed the information, his face unreadable. “When?”
“Couple days back.”
Cano nodded. “What progress are you making on the search?”
“None. There’s no trace of them.” Luis didn’t men
tion that it was because they’d given up looking.
The big Crew boss studied Luis for a long moment and then stepped closer. “I want your best men ready to ride tomorrow at first light. Mine need some sleep, but the top priority is finding the woman and child, and we’re going to go over every square inch of territory until we do.”
Luis’s eyes darted to the vehicles and then back to Cano. “We’re down to only thirty or so men. I need most of those to defend the town and keep everything in line.”
“I’m in charge of that now,” Cano said, with a wave of a tattooed hand the size of a ham.
“The deal we made with Garret was–”
Cano cut Luis off, his eyes black as coal. “Meaningless. The new deal, or rather, the only deal is that your men assimilate into the Crew and follow my orders. You decide not to, you better ride hard before I wake up, because you’re either with us or against us.” Cano let the words sink in. “There’s no choice B.”
Luis swallowed a dry knot in his throat. “We had discussed becoming Crew members. I don’t think that will be a problem.”
Cano sized Luis up, and one corner of his mouth curled slightly. “You’re a smart man. No wonder you’re running things, Luis.”
“As long as I keep doing so once you’re gone, we’ll get along well.”
“I want to stay in this shithole about five seconds longer than I absolutely have to. Then you can have it back.”
Luis maintained his unreadable expression. Cano considered Luis’s men for a moment and then continued. “We’ll need horses. Figure enough for fifteen men. The rest will hold down the fort. Be ready to mount up at dawn.” Cano turned to his driver and cupped his hands near his mouth. “Get ready to turn the convoy around and head back to Houston tomorrow.” Cano pivoted back to Luis. “Now let’s see this hotel.”
The Day After Never Bundle (First 4 novels) Page 27