Knockdown

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Barry chuckled. “You don’t know everything about me, kid. I’ve done some things I’m not proud of. I was pretty close to being a drunk for a while. But that was a long time ago.” Barry shook his head. “A whole other life, it seems like sometimes.”

  Silence lay between them for several moments. It was true that quite a bit of Barry’s shadowy existence was still shrouded in mystery to Jake. Up until a few years earlier, Jake had believed that his uncle was long dead, killed in an explosion when Jake was just a child.

  Barry had survived that murder attempt, though. Plastic surgery had turned him into the top-secret operative code-named Dog.

  He had worked for those at the highest levels of government. Sometimes, he had worked against those at the highest level of government when they didn’t have the best interests of the country and its citizens at heart.

  Over time, Dog, or the Rig Warrior, as he was sometimes called, had become part legend, part boogeyman in the intelligence community. Some people didn’t believe he even existed, or at least professed not to believe. There was a good chance they just didn’t want to draw his attention to them.

  Because where Dog went, death often followed.

  Jake might not ever have known any of that if a gang of vicious criminals and terrorists hadn’t taken over the university campus where he was taking postgraduate courses and trying to figure out what to do with his life.

  A decorated veteran, deadly with fists, blades, and guns, Jake hadn’t taken that atrocity lying down. He had fought back with everything he had, and along the way he had gotten some vital help from a mysterious figure who had turned out to be his long-lost uncle.

  Discovering the truth about Barry had led Jake to take up a similar mission of his own to right the wrongs in the world, only these days Jake was doing it through more established channels. With the backing of a special agent named Walt Graham he had met during that crisis at the university, Jake had joined the FBI, graduating at the top of his training class at Quantico.

  So far, it had been the best decision of his life. He enjoyed the work, liked the idea of taking down lowlife scum in all walks of life. The power struggles and manipulation in the upper echelons of the bureau sometimes bothered him, but he ignored that aspect as much as he could and focused on catching the bad guys.

  He was good at catching them, too. He could have risen in the bureau’s hierarchy—if he had wanted to. But that would have meant playing those political games, and Jake was having no part of that.

  He had stayed in touch with Barry, though, and even helped him out now and then, when he could without straying too far from FBI protocols. He was a straight arrow, to use an old-fashioned, out-of-fashion term. He knew it. Couldn’t help it.

  So he hadn’t been surprised when Barry had contacted him through the usual back channels and requested a meet in that cantina on the Mexican side of the border.

  Jake, who was working out of the Dallas field office these days, had been able to take a few personal days to make the trip down here. Barry had told Jake to pretend not to know him, at least until Barry gave him a sign that it was all right, so that was what Jake had done.

  “You could have gotten us killed, you know,” he said now, not liking how irritable he sounded but unable to do anything about that, either. “Those cartel guys aren’t known for their tender mercy. That fat one wanted to cut your head off.”

  “Nah, I don’t think he really did. He was just fooling, showing off for his amigos.”

  “Are you crazy? After that he tried to shoot us.”

  “Believe me, Jake,” Barry said, “if Pancho really wanted to shoot us, we’d be dead now.”

  “You can’t know—” Jake stopped abruptly. He looked over at his uncle. The light from the motel’s neon sign painted Barry’s lean face in green, red, and yellow shades.

  “You do know, don’t you?” Jake went on. “You know what kind of shot that cartel enforcer is.”

  “Pancho gets top marks on the range,” Barry said. “He’s one of the best shots in the DEA.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Jake closed his eyes, shook his head, and muttered something under his breath. Then he asked, “Is Pancho his real name?”

  Barry nodded. “Pancho Gonzalez Gutierrez. Named after an old tennis player you’ve probably never heard of. Pretty clichéd, isn’t it? But I’ve known more than one guy whose real name was John Smith.”

  “And he’s an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration?”

  “Yeah. Known him for years. We worked on a few ops together, a long time ago.”

  “And here I thought you were just being politically incorrect, as usual, when you called him Pancho.”

  “That’s what his friends thought, too. I don’t think anything that happened tonight will give them any cause to suspect him, do you?”

  Jake didn’t answer that. Instead he asked, “How long has he been undercover?”

  “I’m not sure. Two years, at least.”

  “Did he get hold of you and request a meet?”

  “That’s right. He said he had some intel for me. He passed it along while we were rolling around the floor, fighting.”

  “Why you and not his bosses at the DEA?”

  Barry’s voice took on a slightly more serious note as he said, “Now that, I can’t tell you. Unless . . . and I’m just shooting from the hip here . . . he has some reason not to trust them completely.”

  Jake leaned back against the pickup seat again. “That’s a pretty serious accusation.”

  “I’m not accusing anybody. I’m just saying that would explain why Pancho reached out to me. He knows I’d always have his back.”

  Jake thought that over and nodded. “So what did he tell you?”

  “The Zaragosa cartel doesn’t just smuggle drugs into this country. I already knew that. They’ll bring in anything as long as the price is right, including people.”

  “Human trafficking,” Jake said. The revulsion and anger in his voice made it clear what he thought of that. “The bureau is aware of it.”

  “No, I’m not talking about coyotes running truckloads of illegals across the border.”

  “You mean undocumented immigrants.”

  “No, I mean illegals, blast it,” Barry said. “They’re criminals. Don’t think the fact that I recognize that means I don’t have any compassion for them. I do . . . most of them. Not for the drug addicts and thieves and rapists and murderers, though.”

  He slashed the air with his hand. “We’re getting off the subject here. What I’m talking about is how the Zaragosa cartel will also bring in high-profile clients who are willing to pay a lot of money to ensure that they get into this country without anybody knowing. Pancho’s heard rumors that a job like that is in the works.”

  “Who’s the client?”

  “He hasn’t been able to find out yet. Whoever it is, though, must be somebody with plenty of financial backing who doesn’t mean well. Otherwise, he wouldn’t hire the Zaragosas to get him across the border.”

  Jake cocked his head to the side and said, “Your friend was able to tell you all this while you were rolling around on the floor, pretending to be trying to kill each other?”

  “He’s pretty good at boiling things down to their essentials.”

  “Wait a minute. If the whole thing was a ruse so he could pass on that intel to you, why’d you beat him up so bad? He had blood all over his face.”

  “Had to make it look good,” Barry said. “Pancho understood that. Shoot, if I hadn’t roughed him up, that would have looked suspicious. As deep cover as he is, he couldn’t afford that.”

  He laughed and went on, “Of course, now his amigos are going to give him trouble about getting his butt kicked by an old gringo. Speaking of which . . . Don’t think I didn’t hear you call me an old geezer back there. You should be showing more respect to your elders, boy.”

  “Maybe I would have if I’d known what was going on. As far as I could tell, you’d gone lo
co.” Jake shrugged. “But I guess I understand now. What’s the next step?”

  “Pancho’s going to keep trying to turn up more intel on his side. We’ll work the case from this side.”

  “We?” Jake repeated. “I’m on my own time here, not the bureau’s.”

  “Well, you’ve got more personal time coming, don’t you?”

  “And cases of my own to work!”

  Barry waved that away. “Nothing as big as this is going to turn out to be.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “That’s what my gut tells me, and I’ve learned to trust my gut. I wouldn’t still be alive without it.”

  For a moment, Jake didn’t say anything, then, “You’re going to get me kicked out of the bureau, that’s what you’re going to do. You know that, don’t you?”

  Barry grinned in the neon glare. “What’s more important, being a bureaucrat . . . or saving the world?”

  “Your gut says this case is that big?”

  Barry sniffed. “Says it could be.”

  Jake drew in a deep breath, blew it out. “I guess you’ve got yourself a partner . . . for now. I’ll work it out. On one condition. I don’t go into any more situations blind. You tell me what’s going on ahead of time . . . you old geezer.”

  “I’ve killed men for less than that.”

  The bad part was, Jake wasn’t sure if his uncle was joking or not.

  CHAPTER 5

  Western Nevada

  The train was a short one, only six tank cars behind a huge GE AC6000CW locomotive with six thousand horses—very overpowered for the current job. It was available, though, and the bosses wanted to get that goop to the containment site as soon as possible, so Rudy Hendrickson wasn’t going to complain.

  He wasn’t going to ask too many questions about what was in the tank cars back there behind the short-hood puller, either. He knew it was hazardous. The train’s destination was a hazardous waste containment facility in middle-of-nowhere Nevada, and places didn’t get any more middle of nowhere than that. He and his fireman, Daryl Marshall, would get there and stay out of the way while guys in protective suits hooked up thick hoses and drained the tankers into underground containment trenches. Then they’d decontaminate the tankers, inside and out, and once that was done, Rudy and Daryl would be on their way back to Reno. They had made this run before, so it was nothing new to them.

  The train was making good speed south toward the containment facility. Rudy sat on the right-hand side of the cab and checked all the display screens and gauges and dials on the control stand spread out in front of him in an abbreviated U-shape. He performed those checks diligently, because he was a professional engineer and that was his job.

  At the same time, he’d been at this long enough that he could tell by the sound and feel of the train that it was moving along just as it was supposed to. The big engine was in good shape and didn’t miss a beat.

  From the fireman’s seat on the left side of the cab, Daryl pointed through the windshield and said, “Look up yonder. Is that a roadrunner goin’ across the tracks?”

  “No, and we’re not gonna find any tunnel mouths painted on the sides of cliffs, either,” Rudy replied. “You’re such a kid. Grow up, Daryl.”

  “Hey, there’s nothin’ wrong with likin’ them cartoons. I read some article online that said they was masterpieces of animated cinema.”

  “Yeah, they are pretty funny, I suppose,” Rudy admitted. “But they’re still kid stuff.”

  The tracks ran straight and mostly level through this area. A few slight rises, but nothing you could even remotely call a hill. To the left, about five miles east of the rail line, a range of small mountains jutted up abruptly without any foothills. To the west were sandy flats dotted with scrub brush stretching as far as the eye could see.

  Rudy knew every foot of the route. Three miles ahead, the tracks descended into a broad, shallow valley known as Rattlesnake Wash. In that valley was the Rattlesnake Wash Industrial Containment Facility, owned by Sherman Global Enterprises. Rudy knew that because he’d seen the name on the sign attached to the outer fence. He didn’t know anything else about the place and didn’t care. One destination was pretty much like any other, as far as he was concerned.

  Daryl leaned forward in the fireman’s chair and squinted against the sun glare coming through the windshield.

  “What’s that?” he asked, pointing down the tracks.

  “Don’t go tellin’ me you’ve spotted a coyote now.”

  “No, it’s something flying above the tracks.”

  “A bird?” Rudy leaned forward to peer through the glass, too. “Maybe a big buzzard?”

  “Naw, not flyin’ like that. I know! It’s a drone.”

  Rudy had spotted the thing by now, swooping and flitting back and forth through the air not far above the tracks a couple hundred yards in front of the train.

  “That doesn’t make any sense! Those things are radio controlled and have a fairly short range, and there’s nobody around here to be guiding it.”

  Or maybe there was, he realized as he spotted a reflection off something to the right of the tracks. He looked closer and saw the front end of a van parked behind a sandy swell. Somebody in the van could be controlling the drone.

  Rudy started to curse under his breath as he reached quickly for the brake.

  “It’s landing on the tracks!” Daryl said excitedly. “Dang, somebody’s about to lose their drone! Little thing’s no match for a big ol’ locomo—”

  The drone disintegrated in a ball of flame. The explosion filled the air with smoke and dust, making it impossible to see how much damage it had done to the rails. The engine lurched as the brakes caught hold and the sand nozzles sprayed sand in front of the drivers to increase traction.

  But it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, and Rudy knew it. At the speed they’d been making, he would have needed close to a mile to come to a complete stop.

  He flung himself out of his seat and yanked up the latch on the cab door. “Come on!” he shouted to Daryl. The two of them were the only crew. They still had a slim chance of getting off the train before it derailed. That window was only a couple of seconds, though.

  The two men rushed onto the platform at the front of the locomotive. Rudy was closer to the steps. He went down them and dived, throwing himself as far away from the rails as he could. He hit the ground hard and rolled. Out here, the rumble of the train only a few yards away was deafening. He didn’t know if Daryl had made it or not, but as he came to a stop on his belly, he raised his head and looked around for his friend and coworker.

  Daryl lay about twenty yards ahead of him. The fireman pushed himself to hands and knees but stayed there like that, shaking his head groggily. Rudy struggled against the sand as he clambered to his feet.

  “Daryl!” he screamed, trying to be heard. “Daryl, come—”

  The front end of the locomotive disappeared into the cloud of dust and smoke. Rudy had just been thinking the racket was loud before. Now, as the massive engine derailed, the roar seemed loud enough to shake a man’s teeth right out of his head, pulp his bones, and turn his brain to jelly. As the tank cars began to tip, Rudy turned and ran.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Daryl finally leap to his feet, but it was too late. Daryl ran a couple of steps, tripped, fell, and rolled over to stare up in horror at the tank car toppling right toward him. His mouth was wide open, but nobody ever heard his scream. He probably couldn’t even hear it himself.

  Then the overturning car obliterated him.

  CHAPTER 6

  Rudy had nothing in front of him except open ground, so he squeezed his eyes shut, put his head down, pumped his arms at his sides, and ran like the devil himself was after him.

  Which was a pretty apt comparison, because a couple of the tank cars ruptured, and whatever the noxious stuff inside them was flooded out and encountered sparks flying from the wheels as they skidded along the tracks, causing another e
xplosion. The shock wave from the blast slapped Rudy off his feet like a giant hand.

  He yelled instinctively as he flew through the air before his face plowing into the sandy ground shut him up. Dirt went down his throat and choked him. He came up coughing and shuddering.

  It felt like the hair was singed off the back of his neck and the skin was blistered, but he was alive, and it didn’t seem like anything was broken. He forced himself to his feet and stumbled onward.

  If the stuff in the tankers was bad enough that it had to be sealed away in underground trenches, he sure didn’t want to be breathing any of the smoke from it as it burned.

  He looked back, though. All the cars were off the rails now, lying on their sides. Huge clouds of black smoke from the burning diesel fuel shrouded the locomotive, and two other fires from the spilled chemicals were sending gray smoke into the air. It was a horrible catastrophe.

  Rudy’s brain was stunned. He tried to force himself to think.

  He hadn’t had time to grab the radio and let the control center at the yard back in Reno know what was happening. When the shipment didn’t show up on time at the Rattlesnake Wash facility, they would probably get in touch with Reno to find out what was going on, but that might be the first anybody would know that something was wrong. No telling how long it would take to get somebody out here to check on things.

  No, wait, he told himself. The smoke. They would see the smoke. With that much of it billowing up into the sky, they would know something really bad had happened. At a place like that, they were bound to have some firefighting equipment. They might even have an emergency vehicle on the way out here already.

  All he had to do was wait right where he was, and when they arrived, he could get some help.

  But help for what, he asked himself. Nobody could do anything for poor Daryl now. He was gone. Rudy didn’t think he was hurt other than some bumps and bruises, but it was probably a good idea to have himself checked out medically.