“Another couple of days,” he muttered.
The worst part of his self-imposed bed rest was that he was going stir-crazy. Cano was a man of action, and he didn’t do well on his back, waiting. He had a strong urge to suit up in his plate carrier and ride out despite the doctor’s warning, but he resisted it, there being no place to go. He closed his eye and willed himself to rest, knowing that every hour of recuperation would pay dividends later.
Outside, his men were playing cards, laughing and swearing as the level of their bottles sank and their luck changed. Inertia was also bad for them, Cano knew – left to their own devices, they would quickly lose their edge, and soon the fights would start.
He needed to get back into the field.
“Soon,” he whispered. “Soon.”
~ ~ ~
Duke spied motion in the darkness and hit the switch for the floodlights, his AR-15 in hand as the compound’s periphery lit up for two hundred yards in all directions. Doug was approaching on the main trail and waved to signal his presence. Duke looked through the telescope and then leaned back to take a swig of water and extinguish the lights, the rider identified.
Doug waited outside as Duke opened the gate. He dismounted and walked his horse through, and after tying him to a hitching post by the water trough, gave Duke an abridged report on his recruiting effort.
“Not many able-bodied men around in a mind to leave what they got to come to work, Duke. Word’s spread about Loving and Pecos, and it’s got people on edge.”
“There’s got to be somebody. Don’t want to keep having to do four-hour stretches. Like death by a thousand cuts, once you get to be my age.”
“I hear you. Maybe we’ll have more luck tomorrow.” Doug hesitated. “I did stop by Slim’s place. They ain’t seen him.”
Duke set his rifle down. “Kind of weird, dontcha think?”
“He was glad to be rid of the ranch. Can’t see him excited to return.”
“Wonder where he went off to?”
“No tellin’. Boy always had a restless streak, long as I known him. A real mustang when he got it in his head.”
“Not many places to get to, though, are there?”
“Sometimes even nowhere’s better than where you are.”
“And he didn’t mention anything to you about wanting to leave before he skedaddled?”
“Not a word.”
“Go on in and grab some chow. Aaron caught some fish. Still on the stove.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Duke watched him make his way to the main building, and his brow creased with mounting worry. Was it possible Slim had gone to the Locos and sold them out? He hadn’t seemed like the type, but what did Duke really know about him? And where else could he have gone? It wasn’t like West Texas was a hotbed of opportunity waiting for a young man with big expectations to come along.
He followed the thought through to its conclusion: if Slim had done as he feared, the trading post was toast. It would just be a matter of time before the cartel rode in and flattened it for lying to them about the woman – and worse yet, not alerting them when there was still time to catch her.
It wouldn’t be about picking up her trail, although he was sure they’d delight in torturing him to learn whatever he knew. It would be revenge, pure and simple, brought to him by the same forgiving folks that had slaughtered an entire town without hesitation.
Duke didn’t back down from a fight, but he wasn’t delusional and understood that if the cartel came loaded for bear, his defenses would fall and they’d prevail. His usefulness as a trading conduit wouldn’t save him from their wrath – especially not that of the tattooed demon who’d searched his place. No, if Slim had sold them down the river, Duke was already on borrowed time.
So the question was, did he feel lucky?
He looked around the compound. Duke had a hideaway up in the mountains where he could lie low for a while. Near a stream flush with fat bass, far from prying eyes. He could get most of his high-value items into the wagon and leave at first light; tell the boys he was headed for greener pastures. Aaron would probably accompany him. Doug, likely not. Which was fine. He didn’t know the man all that well, anyway, and wouldn’t miss him.
“Nothin’ lasts forever,” he murmured, eyeing the building and already running an inventory of what would stay and what would go. That the outpost would be looted was a given, but there was only so much damage that could be done to cinder block and dirt. He’d miss the solar and considered how many of the panels he could fit in the wagon.
He glanced at the time. Another hour, and then it would be Aaron’s watch.
Duke would break the news to him then.
Doug, he’d tell in the morning. He didn’t want to take the chance of a mutiny.
That this stage of his life was over didn’t bother him as much as he would have imagined, but then again, he’d always been resilient.
He’d radio the kook up north and see if he could get hold of him before he left. No way was he going to take the chance of being overheard before that. Of course, the chances that the man was monitoring the airwaves twenty-four seven were slim and none, but he had to at least try. And he’d have to phrase things carefully so an eavesdropper from the cartel wouldn’t understand the warning he was giving, or it could do more harm than good.
Composing it would require some thought.
Duke sighed as he looked out into the darkness. At least he had plenty of time to do so.
Chapter 34
Lubbock at night was a study in contradictions. As Lucas rode into town unchallenged, he passed groups of indigents gathered around fires, their skeletal forms bent by premature aging from the ravages of hunger and disease and dressed in little more than rags. Their gaunt faces watched him in silent misery as he guided Tango along the streets. At one of the fires he spotted the unmistakable carcass of a skinned dog roasting on a spit, and hot bile rose in his throat. The stench of sewage and rot greeted every step further into the city, which appeared to be a nightmare vision of privation – until he neared the town center.
There, where the Crew occupied most of the better buildings, electric lights burned brightly. Groups of gang members cruised the streets, well fed and radiating danger, and many of those he saw were apparently drunk, high, or both. He skirted everyone, sticking to deserted streets as he wended his way toward the medical center campus, which he could see on the far edge of the city, its multistory towers dark against the star-filled sky, its outline familiar to him from a prior visit with his wife.
If stopped by anyone, Lucas would pretend to be a trader looking for a watering hole – a likely enough cover, Lubbock being a reasonable hub for those wishing to travel west. Magnus, like any of the other regional warlords, needed commerce to keep his population of de facto slaves prosperous enough to afford whatever the Crew was selling – chiefly protection, drugs, clean water, and electricity. Trading accomplished that. Unlike small strongholds like Pecos or Artesia, larger towns had porous borders too large to guard, so rather than attempt to impede entry and exit, the gang profited from it indirectly, taking a bite of every transaction via a tax on the outposts, and then downriver from sales of its wares to the residents. The end result left the population with just enough trading wealth to be willing to continue working while the Crew took most of the juice.
Not so much unlike the pre-collapse governments, Lucas reasoned. Most had been originally set up to provide services to the populace – in the case of the United States, to build roads, deliver mail, defend against attack, and the like – but had morphed into tyrannical rulers that sucked the marrow from the citizenry, ruled it with a set of laws the elite members of society didn’t follow, quelled rebellion with a police state that would have been the envy of industrialists at the turn of the century executing union organizers on behalf of the corporations, and generally drained the prosperity of the nation via hundreds of hidden taxes…in addition to one on income.
Magn
us had simply removed the pretense of free will from the equation. He supplied the same services of protection and punishment, taxed the survivors for his efforts, and fleeced them of most of their earnings over time with the threat of force while delivering as little as possible. He’d stepped into the gap left by state and federal entities and imposed his own kind of order that recognized no rights he couldn’t dispense with at will, and the inhabitants of his territory had tolerated it – anything to survive.
Lucas was drawn out of his musings by the sound of hooves pounding down one of the adjacent streets. A cry was answered by two shots and then laughter, followed by the clip-clop of horses moving away. He didn’t need to investigate what had happened to understand: one of the unfortunates had crossed the Crew and had paid the ultimate price. Nobody else would have dared discharge a weapon in Lubbock with so many of the gang there; ergo it had to be them, enforcing their rule with a bullet.
It wasn’t his problem. He had to stay focused on his objective, which was to make it to the staff housing, find a way past any guards, and identify whether Jacob was still alive. Lubbock would take care of itself, for better or for worse. Still, the part of him that had carried a badge rankled at the injustice of the situation.
He cut east of the medical center campus and made his way to the boulevard, which was dark as pitch, only a few lights on at the hospital guard stations. After confirming that there was nobody nearby, he lowered himself from the saddle and freed his M4 to look through the night vision scope. A quick scan of the street revealed two gunmen at the front of the apartments near the hospital, exactly where Sierra had said they’d be, blocking the entryway into the horseshoe-shaped complex.
Lucas had thought for three days how to best get into the apartments undetected, and had come up with creating a diversion as the safest way. To do that, he’d need a bottle of his grandfather’s white lightning and a shirt that had seen better days. He bundled the jar of moonshine inside the shirt and stuck it under his arm and, after tying Tango beneath a tree at the back of a vacant lot two blocks away, set off for the apartments on foot, M4 at the ready.
He eased himself past an overflowing dumpster that hadn’t been emptied for years and crept up an alley that ran between Jacob’s complex and the next in the line, which Sierra had said was abandoned. When he arrived at the midpoint of the span, he stopped at a window and peered into the darkness. The room appeared empty, and he tried the window, which was locked. He studied the aluminum frame and spotted screws connecting the vertical piece to the top and bottom.
Three minutes later he’d removed them with his bowie knife and pried the vertical bar loose until it slid with a soft scrape to the side. Inching the glass free was easy from there, and he placed it carefully on the ground, listening for any indication that the guards were taking a lap around the building. Confident they were still at their post, he pulled himself into the apartment and stood motionless for a few moments in case the sound of his entry had given him away.
Nothing but the smell of mildew and rat droppings.
A sweep of the room with his NV scope revealed a vacant dining room and kitchen, the cabinets and baseboards chewed away, explaining the vermin infestation. According to Sierra’s map, he was six apartments from Jacob’s, which was on the second floor. He’d decided he couldn’t go to Jacob, so he needed a way to force the scientist to him.
The moonshine was the key.
He dowsed the kitchen with alcohol and then stuffed his rolled-up shirt sleeve into the half-full jar until it had absorbed much of the fluid. He removed a disposable lighter from his flak jacket, lit the garment, and threw it against the cabinets, breaking the glass and spraying the area with flaming liquid.
Lucas was back through the window in a flash. He watched as the flames licked at the wood and the sheetrock and then crawled up the partially exposed struts. Within moments the apartment was blazing, smoke and tongues of fire flitting from the window, and he ran to the dumpster and waited behind it, ignoring the nauseating odors wafting from it.
A voice called from the front of the apartment complex. “Fire! Shit. It’s going up. Hey, wake up! Fire! Get out of your rooms!”
The guards reacted predictably and were rousing the residents as the flames spread along the wood-framed structure. Lucas heard doors being thrown open and confused cries of alarm as the guards raced the fire. There was a fifty-fifty chance that they’d come down the alley to investigate, but once the residents of the apartments emptied onto the street, it wouldn’t matter.
Smoke billowed from the ground floor as another unit caught, and then the first footfalls sounded on the pavement – probably one of the guards by the sound of it, given that the residents had been sleeping and wouldn’t have had time to don heavy boots. A burly gunman jogged past him toward the area he’d lit, and Lucas sprang from his hiding place and drove his Bowie knife into the back of his neck before the man had a chance to register his presence.
The razor-sharp blade severed the gunman’s spinal cord at the C3 vertebra, and the man dropped like a sack of wet manure, limbs limp and torso twitching. His AK-47 struck the ground, but the sound was lost in the growing cries from the complex. Lucas wiped the knife on the man’s leather vest and sheathed it, and then dragged his body to the inferno and hoisted it through the window, wincing from the effort and the withering heat.
When the guard’s body was found, the fire would have obliterated the evidence of the cause of death. But he was running out of time. It was just a matter of minutes before reinforcements arrived from the nearby medical center, and they’d easily spot a stranger, even in the dark.
Lucas ran to the mouth of the service alley and looked around the corner. There were maybe a dozen people, men and women alike, standing in the street and watching their home burn. Lucas removed his hat and propped it on the barrel of his M4, and then shrugged out of his plate carrier and stashed it along with his weapon behind the dumpster. His hope was that in the confusion he wouldn’t look alarming enough to be registered – and in a pinch, he still had his Kimber.
He took a deep breath and rounded the corner. The other guard was in the courtyard, screaming a warning at the remaining staff, leaving Lucas the opening he’d been hoping for. He looked over the spectators and spoke in an urgent voice. “Oh, my God. It’s going to burn to the ground. Jacob! Has anyone seen Jacob?”
One of the women, who looked half asleep, motioned to a man a few yards away on her left. “Don’t worry, he made it out.”
“Thank goodness,” Lucas said, and moved away as she turned back toward the blaze. He sidled toward the man, who matched Sierra’s description, albeit in sweat shorts and a collegiate T-shirt that looked decades old. When Lucas was beside him, he leaned in. “Jacob?”
The man tore his eyes from the burning spectacle before him and gave Lucas a blank look. “Yes?”
Lucas tapped a finger against the medallion hanging from his neck. “A friend sent me to make sure you’re okay.”
His eyes widened and his mouth formed an O, and Lucas shook his head. Jacob quickly regained his composure and nodded understanding. He looked around, his attention fixed on several Crew members jogging from the medical center campus. He nudged Lucas and whispered to him, “How is she?”
Lucas followed his stare and frowned. “Not here. We need to talk.”
Jacob matched his expression and nodded. “There’s a brick house a block north. Empty. White chimney. Wait for me there.”
“When?”
“Later. Get out of here.”
Lucas didn’t need to be told twice. He moved back toward the alley and ducked out of sight as the guards arrived. He leaned down to retrieve his weapon and hat and then took off at a dead run for the opposite end of the walkway, the roar of the fire now covering any sound from the clomping of his boots on the pavement, his shadow long and wavering along the far building’s wall, backlit by the flames.
Chapter 35
Lucas waited across the street
from the brick house, Tango tied a safe distance away. He had his M4 trained on the structure, watching it through the NV scope. A part of him was troubled by how easily he’d knifed the Crew guard; it worried him that he could kill so easily now. Then he remembered the stories he’d heard about the Crew – the pedophilia, the rapes, the atrocities – and his doubts melted away.
His rumination was cut short by Jacob cutting from shadow to shadow as he made his way toward the house. When he was at the entry, Lucas shifted his focus from the building to the street to see if he was being followed. After verifying they were alone, Lucas rose from his position and darted to the house, little more than a wraith in the dim moonlight.
Jacob was obviously startled when Lucas materialized in the doorway. Lucas stepped inside and immediately sized up the fields of fire he would have if they were attacked and positioned himself accordingly. Jacob watched him in silence, and when Lucas was crouched in the shadows with the M4 clutched in both hands, he finally spoke.
“You have Sierra’s medallion.”
“That’s right. She sent me. There’s been a problem.”
“I heard. Nobody showed up at the rendezvous. You have no idea how worried I was. And Eve?”
“She’s fine. They both are.”
Jacob gave a slow sigh. “That’s a relief. But why did you come?”
“They told me about Shangri-La. They don’t know how to get there.”
“Of course they don’t. Almost nobody does.”
Lucas nodded. “You mentioned a rendezvous?”
“That’s right.”
“We need to set up another one.”
Jacob studied Lucas in the gloom. “Who are you? What’s your connection to them?”
“Their entourage was cut down. I saved their lives.”
“How do I know this isn’t a trick?”
“I have the medallion. She wouldn’t have given it to me if she didn’t trust me.”
“You could have taken it against her will.”
The Day After Never Bundle (First 4 novels) Page 40