But that wasn’t very likely.
He’d have to assume his only weapons would be his bare hands and his head.
And his head, of course, was what allowed him to be placed in this predicament to begin with.
He should have argued with Tony to at least let him bring his AR and sidearm that morning. Not to take into Crazy Town, but to keep with him.
Just in case he had to go in.
Dave would go in, even without arms.
He had to. His partner was in there.
And Dave was Corps through and through.
You didn’t leave a man behind. You just didn’t.
By the time Dave made it the mile to the exit Tony had marked on his map, the sun was getting low in the sky.
He used it to his advantage.
He saw the sentries at the Dalton’s Raiders camp as he walked by them, behind a spray painted Lincoln Town Car. They eyed him suspiciously as he walked past, but didn’t challenge him.
He looked just like dozens of others who walked down the interstate each and every day.
He continued west on the interstate another quarter mile or so, then waited behind an abandoned cement mixer.
Now came the tricky part.
The sun would be setting in just a few minutes. When it did so, he’d be hidden from view to the sentries east of him. If they happened to look to the west, they’d get an eyeful. But it wouldn’t be of Dave. It would be of the blinding sun.
The area west of Dave was a different matter.
If there were any sentries to the west of him, they’d be able to see Dave easily.
Tactics weren’t enough in this case. Dave would require a healthy dose of luck as well, to pull this off.
Luckily the service road just below the interstate was heavily clogged with abandoned cars. With any luck he could dart from car to car, using them as shields, until he cleared the service road and disappeared into the residential neighborhood just on the other side of it.
He kept an eye on the sun, and when it half disappeared below the horizon he held his breath and ran low to the first vehicle on the service road.
It was a Ford 150 pickup truck, and he kept it on his left shoulder as he waited for gunshots or shouting.
Instead he heard silence.
Of course, it was possible there was silence because he was spotted and the sentries were lining up their shots.
They had to know he’d be moving to the next car on the service road momentarily.
They might, at that very moment, be lining up their shots in the gap between that next car and the pickup he was hiding behind.
He hoped not. But he’d soon find out for certain.
He held his breath again and sprinted over the fifteen yard gap to the next car.
A blue Hyundai.
His luck was still holding. There were no gunshots, no yelling, no indications at all he’d been spotted.
The next gap was even longer. It was an all out forty yard sprint across somebody’s front yard to the alley behind their house.
This was where he’d be shot, if it was going to happen. For there was simply nothing substantial to give him cover between the Hyundai and the alley. A few shrubs which might help hide him.
But they’d certainly stop no bullet.
If anyone had eyes on him he was dead meat.
Then he had an epiphany.
It would be dark in just a few minutes.
He felt like an idiot.
Then he lay down, hidden from both sides east and west, trying to ponder his next move.
The only problem was, he didn’t have one.
He had the map to Dalton’s headquarters, sure.
But a fat lot of good it did him.
Once he got there, then what? What if Tony wasn’t there? What if he was waylaid while making his deliveries and robbed of his drugs and his ATV? The confines of Crazy Town, Tony had told him, encompassed almost ten square miles.
If he was being held in one of those houses, Dave would have a hell of a time figuring out which one. If he was beaten and left bleeding in some alley, Dave would have to determine which one of hundreds of such alleys.
And what if he was still at Dalton’s HQ, bound and gagged and being held for… who knew what? To hear Tony tell it, Dalton and his henchmen needed no reason to conduct the chaos they dealt… only a time and a place to do it.
If he found Tony in such a situation, Dave doubted very seriously the Dalton gang would cotton to him just waltzing in and saying “Hi fellas. How ya doin’? I’m just gonna untie my friend and take him home now.”
It was possible, considering how crazy they were.
But highly unlikely.
No. This first mission would be a recon mission.
He’d use it to gather information only, unless he happened upon an unguarded weapons cache.
He’d try his best to determine Tony’s location, present condition and circumstances. Whether he was wounded in some way. Whether he was incapacitated. Whether he was tied up and being held against his will.
If that was the case, Dave would try to ascertain what their motives were. If they even had a motive.
Also, what the enemy’s troop strength was. Where they were posted. What time they changed shifts.
Most of all he’d look for weak spots. Things he could exploit.
Then and only then would he make the day-long journey back to the trash pile to get his weapons.
It seemed dark enough to go now.
He looked in all directions, wishing like hell he still had his night vision goggles.
And he stole away down the nearest alley.
Chapter 37
Dave worked his way slowly through the alleys running adjacent to the street on his map. Since Tony used landmarks instead of street names, he had to peer out each time he came to a cross street to see whether there was a Valero on the street corner.
Once he found the Valero, he headed west. This time there was no alley to take cover in, so the going was much slower. He darted from bush to bush, from abandoned car to abandoned car.
At one point he ducked behind a house so he could use his cigarette lighter to check his map.
The night was disorienting, and he couldn’t afford to get lost.
Finally, he reached the boarded up gas station he was looking for, and headed north again
The storm front finally hit at that point and the skies opened up.
“Gee, thanks,” Dave muttered while looking toward the sky. “I really could have used you when I had to sneak across that damn highway.”
But it was what it was.
It was a while in coming, but since the rain was finally there he’d use it as an ally.
He knew that the rain in conjunction with the dark of night would make it much more difficult for sentries to see Dave coming.
In his estimation, he could probably stroll leisurely down the middle of the street and not be spotted by the houses on either side of it.
Not that he was going to try it.
In any event, the comfort of knowing he couldn’t be seen didn’t last long.
When Dave was in an open area between two abandoned cars a flash of lightning almost directly overhead illuminated the whole area.
“Shit!”
He’d told himself he was going to stop using that word, since he expected to find and liberate Beth very soon, and would have her by his side.
But no other word in his vocabulary seemed to apply.
He dove to the ground until the skies darkened again.
Exactly three blocks north from the boarded up gas station Tony came to an intersection and waited until another lightning flash.
Hiding in the bushes against the corner house, he patiently sat, talking to the gods of the sky once again.
“Okay, now, help me out. I can’t see a damn thing out there.”
As he waited he thought he caught the putrid scent of burned human flesh. But he quickly dismissed it. The burning
of bodies had become a routine thing in every urban setting in America. It was quicker and easier than burials.
The sky flashed brightly again for a couple of seconds.
Just long enough for Dave to make out a deserted elementary school on the opposite corner to his left.
And directly across the street from him, on a brick house, he just barely made out graffiti in fluorescent yellow spray paint.
“Dalton’s Raiders Rule The World.”
Jackpot.
Tony was a hell of a mapmaker.
He was elated. The first and most critical step in tonight’s mission was to find his enemy. Nothing else could be done until he succeeded at that. No intel gathering, no rescue. Nothing.
So he was one big step closer in accomplishing the night’s mission.
He waited in place for the next lightning flash, wishing he had some binoculars.
Until he moved closer, onto the actual property, his movements would be guided solely by the occasional lighting of the sky. For he still had to ascertain for certain the threat he faced.
Suddenly lightning filled the sky, just long enough for Dave to see there was no one on the porch of the house before him.
That struck him as odd. Surely their security people must know they were especially vulnerable at night. And doubly so when it rained at night.
Obviously Tony was right. This wasn’t your typical group of thugs.
On the next lighting flash Dave looked closely at the shrubbery against the front of the house and below the picture window. The shrubs were empty, the drapes were closed.
It was time to go.
But no.
For in the last millisecond of light, before the flash of lightning ran its course, Dave thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye.
Something in the street, between the house in front of him, and the blackened hulk of the abandoned school.
Something which looked very much like… a crumpled human body.
He waited some fifteen seconds, until the next flash confirmed his suspicions.
And for every one of those fifteen seconds he prayed a silent prayer.
Which did not come true.
He fairly ran to the spot, even while knowing he was exposing himself in the process.
He went to one knee beside Tony, who’d been doused with gasoline and burned alive while the lunatics danced around him.
Tony had screamed and rolled as best he could. But his hands and feet, bound with leather belts, had limited his movements.
His tormentors had laughed at him, comparing him to a fish out of water, flopping around in his last moments.
But Tony was stubborn, and much tougher than they gave him credit for.
He hadn’t died.
Oh, he stopped moving after a couple of agonizing minutes.
His heartbeat slowed to next to nothing. His breathing went shallow.
But he wasn’t dead. He mercifully passed out and slipped into unconsciousness. It was his brain’s way of dealing with pain he could not handle.
When his body went limp, the flames lapped off the remaining bits of clothing until he was pretty much naked in the street.
At the same time the raindrops started to fall, cooling his body and making steam rise from it.
The steam, the rain, the horrible stench combined to make a desperately sadistic act seem almost surreal.
Or maybe macabre would be the best word.
Dave was sure he was dead.
As he felt for a pulse, he demanded of the crumpled figure, “Why? Why did they have to do this to you?”
He heard a moan.
It was so faint he wasn’t even sure it was real. The rain had slowed to a trickle, though, and he heard it again.
He felt no pulse. The blood pressure was too low, the heart was barely beating.
But he knew dead men didn’t moan.
He rolled Tony onto his back and placed his face next to his friend’s.
“Tony,” he said. “I’m here. As God is my witness I will avenge you.
Tony struggled to open his eyes. He wanted to look at his friend one last time before he passed.
But his eyelids were fused to his eyeballs. They’d never open again.
“I can’t… I can’t feel anything, Dave. Shouldn’t I be burning or something?”
Dave had seen similar injuries in Iraq. Tony was beyond hope. Dave couldn’t save him. He was very close to death.
The least he could do was to be straight with him. To not mislead him.
“Your nervous system has shut down. It’s taken away your pain.”
He coughed.
“Dave, listen to me. They never made it inside. The sentries laughed at them and sent them away. They told the old man his pickup truck looked ridiculous pulled by two broken down old horses. The last time they were seen they were headed west on the interstate away from the city.”
Dave was stunned. In his final act on earth, Tony had been doing Dave’s work. He not only accomplished his mission, he’d accomplished Dave’s as well. And now he was dying and Dave couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Tony was too far gone and they both knew it.
Even in the old days, when ambulances still worked and trauma centers were fully staffed and operational, he wouldn’t have made it.
“Dave,” he wheezed. “Don’t avenge me. My luck finally ran out. I knew it would eventually. Go get your daughter. She needs you more than I do.”
He never exhaled. He expended all of his final breath with his last words. His body merely went limp.
And it occurred to Dave he never even said thank you.
Dave was stunned. So much so that he sat in the middle of that street, unarmed and totally vulnerable, for several more minutes.
Cradling his friend’s head in his lap.
Wishing he could speak to him just a bit more.
Every time the lightning flashed he could have been spotted. Could have been shot.
But he wasn’t.
And by not shooting him when they had several chances to do so, the animals in the Dalton house sealed their own fate.
Chapter 38
Dave felt bad that he hadn’t thanked his friend. Hadn’t prayed for him before he died. Tony might have objected anyway, given his claims of being a non-believer.
Dave really did believe the old adage that there were no atheists in foxholes. Men who neared death almost always hedged their bets by praying, even to a God they professed not to believe in.
He thought Tony might have found some comfort in hearing Dave’s words, asking God to take him under His wings and to watch over him.
But Dave didn’t do that either. He was caught up in the moment, trying to wrap his arms around it all. The realization he’d lost a friend. The knowledge Beth wasn’t even in Albuquerque. And that meant the odds of her being alive were so much greater. The fact he’d soon be leaving the city confines to begin his search anew.
He was a jumble of emotions. Sadness, elation, regret.
Tony was gone now. He was in no more pain. He was at peace. And surely God would recognize his last act was one of kindness, and would forgive him for all that non-believer stuff.
Just in case, Dave bent his head. The rain picked up again and rolled in a tiny torrent off the point of his chin as he prayed aloud on Tony’s behalf.
He couldn’t bury his friend under the circumstances. He couldn’t burn him either. So he did the next best thing.
He carried Tony to a tree in the front yard of the Dalton house and placed him under it.
“Rest in Peace, my friend. They will pay for what they’ve done to you.”
He looked to the house, still incredulous that no one was standing guard. No one was peering through the windows.
No one seemed to care.
He walked up the steps and onto the porch. A particularly bold move in light of the fact he had no way to defend himself.
It was a reckless and stupid act. Had he been in a better frame of min
d, he’d have stolen away in the dead of the night and regrouped. Come back at a later time when he was more level headed and more prepared.
But on this particular night he wasn’t himself.
He was in a rage and bent on sending these men to hell.
There was a party atmosphere within the house. He smelled the pungent aroma of marijuana smoke. It surely was Tony’s, for he’d claimed he was the only supplier who had the guts to come into such a sewer.
He wondered if that was why they’d killed him. Had they merely wanted his drugs and didn’t want to pay for them? Then why not take them and just let him ride away?
Tony had said they were unstable. That their actions defied reason. He’d said they just did what they did without regard to reasoning.
Had they killed him just because they needed something to do?
The heavy drapes had been drawn, but there were gaps Dave could peek through. The interior of the house was lighted with electric lamps, which meant there was a generator running in the backyard.
And although he needed no more reason to hate these men, his hatred grew as he looked into the window.
Three men were huddled around a water pipe, smoking marijuana. Two others were smoking crystal meth from a glass oil burner, passing it back and forth between them.
Yet another was forming lines of coke atop a coffee table.
And all of them… every damn one of them, was laughing and carrying on as though it were a frat party.
It was all Dave could do to keep from crashing through the window and strangling as many as he could with his bare hands, until someone found the presence of mind to shoot him.
But that wouldn’t help him get to Beth or get her back. All it would do is condemn her to a lifetime of slavery.
He’d seen Tony’s Polaris parked haphazardly against the porch. Its black and woodland camouflage paint scheme helped it blend in well into the shadows, but the occasional lightning flash lit it up like a Christmas tree.
He walked over to it to see whether the key was still in the ignition.
It shouldn’t have surprised him that it was. But then again, who in their right mind would steal from a group of insane blood-lusted men who killed without reason even those they needed?
On Desert Sands: Alone: Book 6 Page 11