by L. J. Martin
Nothing. Not a peep.
So I yell again. "I have enough Semtex out here to blow you guys back to Laughlin, and will if you don't give it up. Throw your weapons out in the road."
Still no sound. I grab my iPhone and open the app that controls the Parrot mini drone, one of the two I've hidden by the road, and guide it out onto the gravel road. I roll it up to about twenty five feet behind the van and advise Skip. "I'm about to give them a taste of Semtex to see if we can pry some weapons out of them."
"I'm holding my ears," comes back.
I dial in the number of the phone-activated detonator and the explosion almost lifts the back of the van off the road. I wait until their ears might have time to recover, then yell again, "I got more where that came from. Look out the back of the van.” I activate the other Parrot drone and roll it out into the road, about fifty feet behind the van and let it set, ominous with the yellow-orange blob of Semtex stuck to the top of its video camera like a cancerous growth. Then I activate the quad copter, and lift it off and maneuver it over the thicket of brush where I know one of them is hiding, and actually spot him via the GoPro and the real time monitor on the iPhone, then I maneuver it behind the van until it's hovering only six feet from the back at window height.
I can hear the van door open, and flare the quad copter away and quickly gain a hundred feet of altitude so the a-hole doesn't shoot my toy down.
But then a heavily accented voice rings out. "I am throwing my weapon out. Do not shoot."
"Out on the road, then you walk at least twenty paces from it and lay down, face down, arms and legs spread."
And he moves out. It's the fat guy who was sleeping when he was supposed to be guarding Skip and Tammy. I'm surprised Skip doesn't blow him away as soon as we see who it is.
Then, foolish as it is, the other guy bursts from the thicket, spraying gunfire my way, and the ground around me is erupting in plumes of sand.
Then he, too, reverses direction, wind-milling his arms, his AK flying away.
Skip runs up beside me. "You're getting slow, old man," he chides.
"I saw him from the quad copter and he was hunkered down in a shallow cut. I didn't think he could move that fast."
"There you go," Skip said with a grin, "Thinking again. I gotta go give that fat fuck a few kicks as pay back."
“You’re bleeding, you’re hit in the side,” I say, noticing the growing bloom of blood on his side, a little surprised as he’s wearing his vest.
“It’s not my side. He creased me on the inside of my arm.”
Then I see, the blood is flowing pretty freely from a deep graze on the inside of his left bicep. “That needs a compress then stitches.”
“I’ll bind it with something. We gotta roll. But not before I kick the shit out of fat boy. Payback time.”
"Good, I'll check the van for the loot, then let's haul ass out of here. We're not so far from the highway that all this gunfire won't be heard."
Skip heads for where the fat man is spread eagle on the gravel and I palm my Glock and open the side slider on the van. As Sol reported, there are some rifle cases, hard-sided and each built for two weapons, and four of those oversized hard suitcases with wheels, the size a lady might take if she were to be traveling for a month. I hoist each of them and figure them for fifty pounds, then pop the latch on one. Nothing but hundreds, and if I'm any judge there's more than two and a half mil in each. Maybe as much as three mil in each. I consolidate half the contents of one suitcase into the other three, then step out of the van to see that Skip is making fat boy remove his pants and shoes.
I speak to him via the radio. "You into fat guys now."
"I'm into making the fat fuck walk on this hot gravel barefoot if he wants to get back to the road."
"Then send him on his way." And he does, the fat man begins a comical hot foot hobble back toward the highway, at least a half mile away.
"Skip, stay with the money. We're leaving the light suitcase, with over a mil, so the cops will think this was something other than a robbery. Hang tight. I'm going after the van. I'll have to reload the Harley so I'll be a while."
I leave the M4 as it'll weigh me down and I have to retrieve the .308, and chug up the hill. I'm back in twenty minutes, driving the van right down the slope doing a little boney-bouncing. Just to add to the collection and as we'll have to get rid of the weapons we've used, we take their AK47s and one nice Heckler Koch and place our M4’s in strategic locations. Some CSI guys will have a grand old time trying to figure out which of the weapons shot which bad guy and from where.
And we're off to Quartzsite, with what I hope is at least ten mil in the back of the van, to make this little adventure come to a conclusion.
After I get Skip to someone who’ll stitch him up.
26
I get the hell out of Dodge and away from the scene of the multi-crimes as quickly as possible, but then stop in Vidal Junction to pull into the truck stop parking lot and dig out my medical kit. I could stitch Skip up myself and have the sutures to do so, but I’m afraid the bullet nicked a vein or artery the way he’s bleeding and that’s beyond my ken, so I bind the hell out of it, hopefully not cutting off the blood supply. Then I decide I have to take a slight detour through Blythe. To have him patched up properly.
It’s almost fifty miles to Blythe, and he’s still weeping blood even with the tight bandages by the time we get there and find an emergency room.
And I’m running short of time.
I drop Skip off in front of Palo Verde Hospital, a small facility in the small town of Blythe.
“I’m not waiting—“
“Bullshit,” he snaps.
“You’re going to have to give them some B.S. regarding how you got that wound. I’d suggest you tell him it was a hunting accident and you were pulling your rifle out of the back seat and it went off. Now get in there and let me get out of here.”
“Bullshit, you wait. At least leave me the Harley.”
“I can’t, Skip. I might need the bike and we don’t have time for an interrogation by some hillbilly sheriff. I’ll be back.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll handle this. You be careful.”
“10-4,” I say and as soon as he steps out of the van, I’m out of there. It’s only twenty-five miles, east, to Quartzsite, Arizona, and my hoped-for rendezvous with Edvin Gashi.
A quick check of the time on my iPhone tells me he’s due there in an hour to pick up his dough from his ex-partner. And ex is the right word, as he’s exited this earth.
I should have a half hour to get set up once I find the airport, and that should be easy in a berg like Quartzsite. Most of the snowbirds who frequent the town in the winter should have flown the coup by now, at least I hope so as the fewer folks who might get caught by a stray bullet, the better.
Using Siri to dial, I get Sol, who answers on the first half of the first ring. “How’s it going?” he asks.
“Good, we discouraged a few guys but I may have screwed up by leaving a couple who could make some phone calls and maybe cancel the meeting I have scheduled. Any way you can track phone calls from there.”
“I might, given enough time. I’d have to get in the carrier’s system and I’d have to know what number I’m looking for.”
“No chance. I’ll have to wing it. Odds are a call won’t go through to an aircraft.”
“That depends.”
“Yeah, I know, I’m flying blind. Are you back in Laughlin?”
“Not quite.”
“Hang there in case I need something. I had to leave Skip in Blythe…he…he hurt himself.”
“Bad?”
“No, but it had to be taken care of. Stand by. If you don’t hear from me in an hour, call him and tell him you’re coming to get him.”
“I’ll hear from you. Be careful.”
“10-4, you stand by.”
I stop at the main crossroads in Quartzsite and get directions to the only airport around. Of course as I look around
, the whole of my surroundings may be the world’s largest airstrip as the desert is flat with some vegetation and only a few ravines. It’s a rock collectors heaven, however, but there are a thousand places to land a small STOL, short takeoff and landing, aircraft.
I’m a little surprised to see a fairly short airport with both ends of the strip x’ed out, which means it’s not kosher to land there. Like Gashi gives a big rat’s ass. There is, however, a wind sock and the wind is pushing it around. It should tell me which way these guys are landing.
There’s one small metal building, and one car parked nearby. A web search has said there’s no fixed base operator and no radio control. The wind is out of the northwest, so I head for the north end of the strip as they’ll land into the wind. The paving is short enough that any plane landing there will have to use up most the strip, and then will have to dodge the potholes. They sure as hell are not flying a Citation into this shithole, more likely a 210 or something even smaller.
Now, if only Gashi is aboard.
I position myself three quarters of the way down the strip, hiding the van in a nearby ravine that only hides about the bottom half, take both the M4 and the .308 and move up near the strip and find a comfortable spot at the base of a thin screw-bean mesquite, and decide that’s my makeshift hidey hole. Just in case something happens to me, I haul the suitcases of dough up the ravine a hundred fifty yards until I find a place where the bank is deeply undercut and I can hide the suitcases and jump up and down on the bank and collapse it and hide the goodies. Then I return to my poor excuse for a hidey hole.
And my wait is not long. The aircraft makes a flyby and I recognize it as a Comp Air 7, single engine, but STOL and with a good payload. I know this airplane as a lot of guys who want to land where no one else does, or can, use it. She’s turbine powered with over six hundred horses, balloon tired and can get in and out of places few planes can. And she has a big payload of a ton, plenty for three or four guys and twelve mil in hundreds.
I can’t tell how many guys are aboard, or if the fat man is among them. I guess the pilot is merely checking the wind direction.
They make a wide sweeping turn, I guess checking the area for vehicles, and I know they can see the van as its white will stand out clearly in the desert.
I have absolutely no interest in killing some poor sap who’s been hired to fly these guys, and hope it doesn’t come to me having to abort to avoid doing so. He makes a long approach and touches down, and I lay the .308 on the fat tire on my side of the strip. He slows, and slows, until he’s only a hundred yards from my position.
Squeezing one off, the .308 bucks in my hands, the tire goes flat, and the plane swerves my way and rolls to a stop. The sun is reflecting off the windscreen so I still can’t tell who’s on board. I’m going to feel pretty stupid if I’ve just risked some mining company’s plane ground looping and killing everyone on board.
But my doubts are quickly squashed as guys pile out of both sides and the guy coming out the pilot’s side is carrying an automatic pistol with a thirty shot clip and as soon as he hits the tarmac is firing. But he doesn’t see me and is shooting at what’s showing of the van. But I’m not so lucky with the guy who comes out of the passenger side. He lays the barrel of another weapon across the wing strut and dirt kicks up all around my location. I should have had a flash suppressor on the .308 as he made my location. I keep my belly and my face in the dirt until he has to change the clip. Then pop up and, I think, drop him center-punched with a .308. But before I can correct to the other guy, that one’s on me and spraying my location. Again, I’m eating dirt.
When he runs his clip out I rise up and to my surprise, the first guy, who must have been wearing a vest, is shouldering an RPG. These guys came ready to play for keeps. I’m six feet from the edge of the ravine, and spring backwards until I fall over the edge and am three feet lower than the surface.
The explosion, at my former location, does not spray me with shrapnel, but does rock my world and my ears are getting nothing but a shrill ringtone. I move twenty feet down the ravine, unsling the Heckler Koch I’ve taken from the other bad guys, and come up over the edge with a sweep of fire that should get their attention, only to see the guy with the RPG being loaded. We fire at the same time, only this time he’s not firing at me and I drop again and turn to see my van go up in a cloud of smoke and fire.
Damn it, my ride, and not only my ride, but my second ride. My Harley Iron is now scrap metal. I wish I had left it for Skip.
Damn, damn, damn if that doesn’t piss me off. I switch the clip around and come back up to see both guys outside the aircraft are down. And not moving.
I hope, hope, hope that fat man Gashi is in the back of the aircraft, and move to where I can’t be seen by anyone inside and approach from directly in front as the Comp Air 7 is a tail dragger and the long nose hides me.
When I’m close enough, and as no one has appeared, I side step with the Heckler Koch on my shoulder and see no one else in the plane. I move on up and do a quick check to make sure no one is hiding in the rear, and no one is.
Two guys down on the tarmac and that’s it. Gashi has sent a trusted aide to pick up his dough.
I wipe down my weapons then put my Glock in the hands of one of the dead guys and my .308 in the other guy’s grip, and take their weapons. The long gun is an AK47 and the auto pistol an Uzi. The cops will have a hell of a time figuring out who shot who and why.
Gashi, who wants to kill us, is still out there somewhere.
And if he wanted to kill us before, he must be a madman now that we have his dough. And I’ll bet he figures out who picked his pocket.
So, my next job is lined up for me. Find and finish Edvin Gashi, if I have to chase him all the way to Albania. I don’t like having to watch my six at all times.
I go back and make sure the dough is well hidden, ditch all my weapons and accouterments including my Kevlar vest, in the desert at the first badger hole a quarter mile from the airport, then start hoofing it out of there in earnest before the badges show up…if anyone even heard the gunfire. I can hear the ammunition going off in the burning van I’m leaving behind, then the crack of my stash of flash and fragmentation grenades. If the cops don’t hear that, I’ll be very surprised.
I’ll have to call it in stolen as soon as I hit Vegas, and, of course, deny knowledge of any of the tricks of my trade that the van contains…damn it.
On my way, I call Sol and ask him to head for the hospital in Blythe, where, with luck I’ll find a way to get to before the cops start looking for a perp. It’s a two-mile walk to the Grubstake Social Club so I make it at a hustle, and, by the time I arrive a half hour later, have still not heard sirens. There’s a service station with a store attached and I stop and buy myself a tee shirt, “Geologists know Schist” which I presume is some kind of mineral. Now I look like a local, or at least a snowbird who comes to hunt rocks. I find the men’s room and change, leaving my camo shirt in the trash.
I make the saloon and decide to take the time to clear the gun smoke out of my throat with a Jack Daniels on the rocks, and as luck would have it, there’s a freckle faced redhead who looks much better in her tee shirt than I do in mine, not to speak of the skin tight leggings. And she’s only two stools from me, so I sidle up.
“How you doing?”
She stares straight ahead. “Great, not that it’s any of your business,” she says.
“Jesus, girl, what’s in your pretty little craw?”
“Men.”
“Okay, I’ll turn on my feminine side.”
That almost gets a smile out of her, and at least she turns to face me.
I give her my most harmless smile, and raise my voice an octave. “And, as one girl to another, I’ll buy us a drink.”
That earns a smile.
So I charge forward. “Now, girlfriend, tell me about this son of a bitch who did you wrong.”
And that gets a laugh, and I’m encouraged as she looks me up
and down, as I’ve already done to her and liked what I saw. “I left the prick in Phoenix.”
“Crying his eyes out, suicidal I’m sure.”
She laughs again.
“Okay,” she says, “I give, you can go back to being what you so obviously are.”
“Which is?” A smart guy, like a good trial attorney, never asks a question when he’s not sure of the answer, but I like her answer none-the-less.
Her voice gets a little husky. “All man, I’d guess.”
“You, girl, are a good guesser. Is there someplace around here I can buy us some supper.”
“Can’t do it.”
“Don’t break my heart this early in our budding relationship.”
“I’m heading for Blythe and just stopped for a beer. My mom is waiting to console me.”
There is a God.
VI
Judge, Jury, Desert Fury
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21