* * *
STEALTH OR SPEED? Controlling two men was a problem, when you wanted one or both of them alive. Bolan had hoped they would find Waylon Crockett on his own, maybe asleep, but now they’d have to deal with him and Kent Luttrell. Grab one and dust the other, hopefully without rousing the settlement at large.
Step one was getting through the bungalow’s front door.
Still carrying the silencer-equipped XD, he tried the knob and felt it turn. There was no going back from that point, and he pushed through into light that made him squint after the outer darkness, taking in the scene. Beer bottles on a coffee table. Kent Luttrell reclining in a La-Z-Boy. And Crockett on his feet, retreating toward the unit’s kitchen space.
There was a second when the New Texas Republic leaders gaped at Bolan and the lady Ranger coming in behind him, frozen, then it went to hell in hyperspeed. Crockett let out a yelp and bolted past the kitchenette, charged through the nearest bedroom door and disappeared. Bolan ran after him without a word, left Granger with Luttrell, and reached the bedroom just as Crockett dived headfirst through yet another window, taking out the screen and tumbling into darkness on the other side. Before Bolan could reach the window, Crockett was already off and running, shouting, “Red alert! Intruders! Red alert!”
Instead of going after him or trying for a long shot on the run, Bolan retreated to the living room. Luttrell was still kicked back in his recliner, hands raised high over his head, eyes focused on the bore of Granger’s shotgun. His face had lost most of its color, and his mouth was hanging open, highlighting his need for major dental work.
“You want to live?” asked Bolan. He received a silent nod in answer. “Then get up and come with us,” he ordered. “Try to run, you die.”
“Okay.”
Luttrell rose from his chair, an awkward moment aggravated by his trembling. Outside, somewhere in the compound, Crockett’s cries for help were being answered. They were out of time and then some.
“I don’t like our odds on foot,” Granger observed.
“That’s why we’re taking wheels,” Bolan replied. “Outside,” he said to Luttrell.
He killed the lights as they were leaving, turning toward the compound’s motor pool, where vehicles of several kinds were parked in tidy rows. “Where do you keep the keys?” he asked Luttrell.
“They’re in the cars. Nobody’s gonna steal ’em here,” Luttrell replied.
“Better be true,” Bolan advised their prisoner.
“If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.”
“You got that right,” Granger confirmed.
They ran to the vehicles—no point in strolling casually now, and everything to lose if they were overtaken. Bolan picked a Wrangler, used by the sentries on their perimeter patrols, and slid behind the wheel. Granger shoved Kent Luttrell into the back and took the shotgun seat—quite literally in this case, half-turned with her twelve-gauge angled toward their prisoner.
The key was in its place, and Bolan twisted it, hearing the Wrangler’s engine come alive. The fuel gauge registered at half a tank, but that was ample for his purposes. They had to breach the fence and get back to their waiting SUV, this time without a mile’s slow hike through darkness from the highway.
If the compound-dwellers didn’t kill them first.
Someone was shouting at them, coming closer, as Bolan put the Jeep in gear, released the clutch and powered out of there, working the stick shift smoothly. Bolan left the headlights off but couldn’t stop others around the compound from blazing on, as Crockett’s howling roused his soldiers and their families. Bolan and Granger’s best hope now was to escape before women and children joined the pack.
“How are we playing this?” asked Granger, still faced backward, covering Luttrell.
“Straight through the corn,” Bolan replied.
The ground they’d navigated while hiking in was dry enough to keep the Jeep from bogging down, and Bolan thought the Wrangler should be able to plow through the stalks without stalling. He hoped so anyway.
They cleared the open ground and rows of corn loomed up in front of them. “Hang on,” Bolan advised, and hit the green wall doing fifty miles per hour. In an eye blink, they were swallowed by the field.
Gunfire erupted as the Jeep rolled out of sight. Bolan glimpsed muzzle flashes in the rearview, there and gone as cornstalks blocked his view. The Wrangler made a poor target at night, unless he tapped the brakes, and—for the moment anyway—the last thing on his mind was slowing down.
The Jeep was not exactly a piece of farm machinery, but Bolan was impressed by its ability to clear the row of stalks he’d straddled when he drove into the field, tires churning up the irrigation troughs to either side. Corn rattled past the Wrangler’s undercarriage with a sound like paper crumpling, and the Jeep was losing some of its momentum from resistance. Bolan stood on the accelerator, got its speed back up and held the steering wheel rock steady as he plowed ahead.
“They’re coming after us,” said Granger. “I see headlights.”
Bolan caught a quick flash in his rearview mirror and ignored it. A pursuit had been inevitable from the moment Crockett had broken away from him. The question now was how they’d go about it. Would they follow Bolan’s stolen Wrangler through the corn, or try to drive around and head him off? Was Crockett on a two-way radio already, summoning his guards from the perimeter to intercept them?
Probably.
“Be ready if they’re waiting for us when we clear the field,” he cautioned Granger.
“Got it,” she replied. To Luttrell, she added, “One twitch, and you’re a memory.”
“No twitchin’ here,” he answered back. “Just watch that twelve-gauge, huh?”
“I’ll watch it take your head off if you make a move,” Granger replied.
“We’re almost clear,” Bolan said.
Then they were, the Wrangler leaping forward onto open ground once more, leaving the flattened corn behind. The rearview mirror showed him headlights bobbing in the field, but Bolan focused on the pairs converging from his left and right, Jeeps drawn from their patrol around the fence by Crockett’s radio alert. Two men per vehicle, which left one free for shooting on each side.
How would the sentries handle it, with Kent Luttrell on board? Was he expendable, or would they try to take Bolan and Granger back alive?
“Do what you can to slow them down,” he said to Granger, aiming their Wrangler toward the chain-link fence, still something like a quarter-mile ahead. Another thirty seconds at their present speed.
“On it,” said Granger, and he felt rather than saw her turning, to aim behind the driver’s seat, toward the Jeep highballing from their left. He braced himself, leaned forward slightly, as Luttrell said, “Hey, now—”
Granger fired, the shotgun cannon-loud inside the small Jeep, taking out the left-rear window. Its ejected cartridge flew past Bolan, glancing off the steering wheel, and rolled across the Wrangler’s dashboard.
“Missed ’em, damn it!” Granger said and fired again. More thunder, and the spent shell struck the inside of the windshield this time, bouncing back toward Bolan’s lap.
Off to his left, the charging headlights veered away, then went into a crazy roll. Around the third flip, one light burst and left the other glaring like the lone eye of a Cyclops. Granger turned again, cranking her window down in preparation for a clean shot at the other Jeep.
That Wrangler’s rifleman was firing at them now, short bursts from his side window, aiming awkwardly around the Jeep’s wing mirror. Precision shooting wasn’t feasible under the circumstances, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t catch a lucky break.
“Bastard!” said Granger, as she shifted the Benelli to her left hand, angling for a shot.
Bolan kept one eye on Luttrell in the backseat. No doors for him back there
, and he was hanging on for dear life as they raced over rough ground, toward a collision with the compound’s fence. He made some kind of muffled moaning sound, but Bolan couldn’t pick out any words.
Granger squeezed off three shotgun blasts in rapid-fire, fighting the weapon’s recoil, spent brass flying back to ping their ducking passenger. At least one of the shots hit home, and Bolan saw the second Wrangler swerve off course, not rolling like the first one, simply slowing as its driver slumped behind the wheel.
“Brace for it!” Bolan warned, and hit the chain-link doing sixty-five.
Chapter 11
“What do you mean, you lost ’em?” Waylon Crockett raged.
“Jus’ what I said,” Sam Vandeveer replied, remembering to add a “sir” just in the nick of time. He was in charge of the community’s security, and clearly knew his scrawny butt was on the line after the grim night’s huge snafu.
Grinding his teeth, suppressing an impulse to strangle Vandeveer, Crockett said, “Now explain that to me, will you, Sam? How did you let ’em get away?”
“We didn’t let ’em go. They took out both patrols, kilt two men doin’ it and messed the others up real bad. They crashed the fence, then ditched the Wrangler by the highway, where they musta had another car waitin’. We chased ’em through the corn, you know, but they was gone before we made it to the road.”
“And took Kent with ’em.”
“Well...I guess.”
“You guess? Where else you think he went, up to the freakin’ mother ship?”
“I only meant—”
“Don’t say another goddamn word! Your people missed ’em out on the perimeter and let ’em walk right through the compound to my goddamn door!”
“Lucky you wasn’t there,” Vandeveer said.
“Lucky? Did you say lucky? It was only by the grace of God they didn’t snatch me up, along with Kent!”
“They didn’t, though.”
“You think that makes it better? That it gets you off the hook?”
“Um...”
“Stop gruntin’ at me, damn it! Do you know how they got in here in the first place?”
“Yessir. They cut the fence,” said Vandeveer, “then wired it back together.”
“And your people didn’t notice that?”
“They did a good job. Wasn’t obvious, unless you knew what you was lookin’ for.”
“Which no one did, until their dirty work was done.”
“Them two are slick. I’ll give ’em that.”
Sometimes it took the patience of a saint to deal with idiots. “So you admire ’em now,” said Crockett.
“Well, I wouldn’t say—”
“You understand they have Luttrell? Has that sunk in?”
“Yessir, I understand.”
“They could be squeezin’ him for information right this very minute. This could ruin everything.”
“I’d say he’s purty tough,” Vandeveer said.
“You would, huh? Maybe I should kick you in the balls and see how tough you are. How’d that be?”
“Don’t suppose I’d like it,” Vandeveer allowed.
“Tell you what I don’t like,” said Crockett. “Since I called this in to Simon, now I gotta go and see him personally, to explain how we screwed up. You’re goin’ with me, Sammy.”
“I ain’t sure if—”
“Don’t mistake it for an invitation,” Crockett told him. “It’s a goddamn order!”
“Yessir. Right. Okay.”
“We’re leavin’ in five minutes. Anything you gotta do, see to it in a hurry.”
“Yessir.”
Vandeveer was none too happy when he left, which suited Crockett to a tee. He didn’t plan to take the rap for this alone, if he could serve somebody else up as a sacrifice to Simon Coetzee’s wrath. The most important thing, to Crockett, was survival—and the place he’d been promised in the new order that would arise when Ridgway played his hole card. Once they’d passed that crisis, Crockett would be golden. He could write his own damn ticket in the New Texas Republic.
And if that meant he had to pull the plug on Vandeveer, so be it. He’d already lost Luttrell, no realistic hope of ever seeing him alive again, so why not cut some deadwood? Vandeveer had let him down, made him look foolish, nearly cost Crockett his life.
Some things, as Sammy was about to learn, were unforgivable.
Coleman County, Texas
ROLLING EAST ON I-67, Bolan spotted a deserted-looking barn and pulled off the highway and drove along an access road that was more weeds and dirt than blacktop until he found a place to park behind the sagging structure, out of sight of traffic on the interstate. He killed the RAV4’s lights and engine, spent a moment listening to night sounds from the desert, then stepped out.
Granger hauled Kent Luttrell out of the backseat, and Bolan helped her direct their captive toward the barn, sweeping the ground before them with a flashlight beam. Field mice were plentiful, which made him think of snakes, but they encountered none before they reached the barn and entered through a gaping doorway. What had happened to the door was anybody’s guess.
It had been close, escaping from the compound, but he’d managed to outrun their various pursuers after Granger had discouraged the perimeter patrols. Once they were back in the Toyota, it came down to speed and running without lights the first couple miles, then slowing down and driving normally across the northwest part of Concho County into Coleman. Bolan didn’t know if Crockett would resort to notifying law enforcement, but he doubted it, and sixty-odd miles seemed far enough to run, as long as they could find a decent hiding place.
Which they had.
The barn was filled with dust and spiderwebs, more rodents rustling in abandoned stalls and overhead, in what had been the hayloft. Shafts of dim moonlight were visible through large holes in the roof, and Bolan guessed that bats might roost up there during the daylight hours. Maybe doves and other birds, as well. Devoid of neighbors, isolated in the night, it was as good a place as any to interrogate Kent Luttrell.
As if in tune with Bolan’s thoughts, their prisoner chimed in. “So this is it? You gonna tell me what it is you want?”
“Give us your best guess,” Bolan answered.
“Beats the hell out of me.”
“That’s funny,” Granger said, “since you’ve had peckerwoods trying to kill us over half the state.”
“Says who?”
“The only thing you’ll get from playing dumb,” Bolan advised him, “is a bullet.”
“Way I see it, if you meant to snuff me, I’d be dead already. Drivin’ me out here, wherever this is, tells me you want somethin’ else.”
“Not as dumb as he looks,” Granger said.
“Screw you, bi—”
She clubbed him down with the Benelli’s stock, dropping the captive to his knees. Luttrell spat blood and something Bolan thought might be a molar.
“Shit!”
“The tongue still works,” said Granger.
“You’re mighty tough,” Luttrell said, “when it’s two on one and you got all the guns.”
“The way it was with Jerod,” Granger said.
“Who’s that?”
“My brother. You remember sending goons to kill him?”
“I ain’t killed nobody,” said Luttrell.
“I guess you never heard of double negatives.”
“Say what?”
“He’s all yours,” Granger said to Bolan. “I can’t stand the sight of him.”
“Just tell me what you want,” Luttrell whined, spitting out more blood. “Then get me to a doctor, will ya?”
“George Roth, for starters,” Bolan said.
“Don’t know the man.”
Lut
trell was struggling to his feet when Bolan squeezed the XD’s trigger and a nearly silent slug drilled through the captive’s left kneecap. Luttrell screamed as his leg gave way and dumped him back into the dirt. Bolan stood watching him until the sobbing trailed away to whimpers.
“George Roth,” he repeated.
“Christ! Okay! Aw, shit,” he growled, clutching his shattered kneecap. “I’ll talk. What...do you...wanna know?”
Desdemona, Texas
SIMON COETZEE HAD agreed to meet Crockett halfway, in sparsely populated Eastland County. The county’s population had dropped, from close to sixty thousand in the 1920s, down to roughly eighteen thousand at the last census, and almost no one lived in Desdemona, a certified ghost town on State Highway 16, twenty miles west of Stephenville.
It was the perfect place for tying up loose ends.
Coetzee had come alone but well prepared. Beside him on the passenger’s seat of his BMW X5, a Heckler & Koch MP5K-PDW machine pistol lay covered with a copy of the Dallas Morning News. This version of the weapon included a side-folding stock, selective fire permitting three-round bursts and a muzzle threaded to accommodate suppressors. Beneath his left arm, he’d hung a SIG Sauer P250 semiauto pistol with a recessed hammer and a double-action-only trigger, chambered for the same 9×19 mm Parabellum rounds as his machine pistol. Between the two guns, he had fifty rounds ready to go without reloading.
More than enough for one man or two.
Waiting, he lit the last of seven cigarettes he allowed himself per day, when time permitted. Self-denial had nothing to do with character development in Coetzee’s case, much less spirituality. He simply made a point of keeping his desires under control and doing nothing to excess, a constant test of his personal resolve. While others often disappointed him, it had been years since Coetzee had been disappointed in himself.
The ghost town did not trouble him. He knew its dreary story: once a thriving oil camp, back around the First World War, its field played out during the early 1920s, and the mastermind behind it went to prison for defrauding his investors. The town wasn’t exactly dead today, of course. But there’d be no one to disturb him when he met with Waylon Crockett on the town’s outskirts.
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