Arturo ducked his head, obviously embarrassed. “My mom lost her job, and we had to move.” He jerked his head toward a barren trailer. Dented and broken washing machines, barrels, and the rusting skeleton of an Audi took the place of landscaping. “We live there now.”
Ethan took stock of the trash-strewn yard and the screenless windows gaping open. The door was warped and splintered. “You stayin’ out of trouble?”
“Yessir. Mr. Sonny said I had to keep my nose clean if I wanted to be a lawman.”
“He’s right about that. Keep your grades up, too. Why aren’t you in school this mornin’?”
He shrugged. “Missed the bus. I’m walking to my friend’s house. His mama has a car and she’ll take me. You here about them dogs that chewed up that old lady this morning?”
“How’d you know that?”
“Because I’m the one that run ’em off from her. They’ve come at me before.” He held up the rebar. “I took to carrying this when I’m out.”
“We’ll take care of it.” Ethan accelerated as Herman waved good-bye.
Chapter 24
Mary and Jerry Hawke were arguing in the cloudy parking lot of Ballard High School. The twins looked alike all right, but they were as different as night and day. Slender as a willow, Mary was the planner, doing everything by the book and trying her best not to stray too far off the path their parents had set for them.
Jerry was like his dad, impetuous, solidly built, and quick to anger. It was his habit of jumping without looking that kept them from going inside. “Look, we both know Dad may be in trouble. They’re putting together a search team down in the Bend, and I’m not going to sit here in class while other people look for him.”
Raindrops beaded on windshields and fresh wax jobs, but spread into a dark gray paste on older cars with bad shines. The West Texas dust was quickly turning to mud. Beads of moisture caught in Mary’s long, strawberry blond hair. “So, what, you’re just gonna drive down there and join in the search? The first thing the school’s gonna do is call Mom at home and tell her you didn’t come in today. You’re already busted and you don’t even know it.”
“I don’t care. What are they gonna do? Nothing. Cutting class isn’t much of a crime.”
“It is right now. She’s already worried about Dad, and you running off down there will just make it worse.”
“I can’t sit behind a desk, listening to old Miss Latimer drone on and on about American History. She’s probably showing a stupid movie right now anyway since school is almost out.”
“That doesn’t matter . . .” Mary stopped when their friend Arturo stepped out of a beat-up Ford Contour sedan driven by a frazzled-looking Hispanic woman.
Arturo waved and joined them. The little junior had become close to the twins after last winter’s Ballard Incident in the courthouse, and often ate at their house on weekends when school was out and he couldn’t get a decent meal. His deadbeat step-dad had been deported for the umpteenth time, and his mother’s below-minimum-wage job barely kept a roof over their heads.
He joined the twins, seeing the anger in their faces. “What’s up?”
Mary pointed a finger at her brother. “This dummy is ditching school.”
“Cool. What for?”
Exasperated, she mimicked her mother’s habit of tilting her head back and venting toward the sky. “Guaaah. You two are just alike.”
Jerry threw a glance at the lowering clouds and pulled a green gimme cap low, the edges of the rolled bill resting low on his temples. “Dad’s missing in the Bend. I’m going down to join the search party, and she doesn’t want me to go.”
“Why?”
Mary shook her head. “Because it’ll worry Mom even more when the school calls to tell her he ditched class.”
“I’ll go with you.” Arturo pitched his books in the backseat of Jerry’s 1976 Bronco.
Mary spun on her heel. “You two do what you want. I don’t care if you get in trouble or not, just don’t drag me into it when you get caught.”
“They won’t say anything when we find Dad.” Jerry slipped behind the steering wheel and waved his cell phone in the air. “I’ll call you from the park!”
Chapter 25
Bare, dead trees seemed to keep the heavy clouds from falling on the sagging trailer and dirt yard. It appeared to Sheriff Ethan Hawke that the residents simply threw their trash through the open doors and windows. The only vehicle was a pickup on blocks.
Ethan tapped the horn. Dogs barked from the back, but no one came to the door. The sheriff and Herman stepped out and surveyed the area. Tire tracks from numerous cars crisscrossed the yard. The drive off the dirt road was thick with varying treads.
While Herman stayed beside the Dodge, keeping the vehicle between himself and the ragged trailer, Ethan knocked on the front door. When he was sure no one was home, the Sheriff returned to the Durango and reached inside, withdrawing the Remington pump shotgun that rode in the front-seat bracket. He jacked a shell into the chamber and rounded the end of the trailer.
Herman raised an eyebrow and followed him past a dusty dump ground anchored by a washing machine full of beer cans. He stopped at the corner to keep an eye on the front yard and the back. From his vantage point, he could cover Ethan on three sides, if necessary.
Two pit bulls were barking, snarling and jumping up on the sides of an often-repaired dog pen. Cinder blocks filled holes dug under the fence as a stop-gap. In one place, a chewed wooden pallet plugged a hole.
The dogs growled and backed up as Ethan approached the pen. “Herman, I see a brindle pit and a light-colored pit. Both have collars with brass plates.”
“Yessir.”
Ethan raised the shotgun to his shoulder, but before he could pull the trigger, Herman spoke up. “Hang on a minute.” The old Ranger crossed behind the sheriff, picked up two broken cinderblocks, and dropped them into the hole under the fence where the dogs dug out.
The sheriff lowered his shotgun. “Why’d you do that?”
“I know the law says you can shoot ’em, but did you see all them tracks in the yard?”
“I noticed ’em. Why?”
“They circle around back here, too. That’s a lot of cars for this shack, don’t you think?”
“Now that you mention it.” Ethan studied the tracks. “You thinking this might be a drop?”
“That’s my thinking.” Herman pointed toward the dirt road curving past the front of the house and disappearing toward the west. “Where does this road come out?”
“Well, this one don’t. It runs into a couple of two-lane tracks that meet up with some ranch roads.”
Huge ranches spread across the Trans-Pecos, or far West Texas. The area was so vast that many ranches were isolated and only accessed by crossing other ranches, using dirt roads and two-lane tracks. Both men knew drug smugglers used the roads to avoid the highways and border patrol.
“Looks like they’re using the back roads. I’d have to check, but I think they all finally funnel everything out toward Fort Davis.”
“Something’s up.” Ethan pointed to tire tracks that were much wider than the others.
“Yep.”
“I’d say there’s a lot of ’em here that match that cattle trailer settin’ over there. You think somebody might be hauling more than just cows in that thing?”
“Could be.”
“I’m asking, because we both know for a fact that them terrorists we tangled with showed up at the courthouse in one. Somebody might have gotten the bright idea to move meth or cocaine in there. This don’t smell like no meth house, they’re not cooking it here, but I’ve heard of ’em puttin’ it in bags of roasted coffee to mask the smell. Cow shit and piss’ll do the trick, too, I ’magine.”
“So you think we watch and see, instead of me shooting these two dogs?”
“I would.”
“Gary and his mama’ll want more.”
Ethan raised an eyebrow as Herman fell in beside him and returned
to the Dodge. “They’ll be happy if we clean this rats’ nest out.”
The sheriff hit the horn as they pulled in Gary Collins’ drive. He met them in the yard. “I didn’t hear anything. I figured you’d shoot those dogs.”
“Started to, but I want to ask you, has there been a lot of traffic on this road in the last few weeks?”
“Sure enough. Trucks pulling cattle trailers. Sometimes they’re full of stock, other times just empty rigs. A pump truck comes out pretty regular. They must be having trouble with their septic tank.”
“Since they moved in?”
“Yep. Don’t remember the folks who lived there before having any trouble. It’s aggravating. We didn’t have any traffic before these guys. The people who moved the trailer in there a few years ago pretty much stayed to themselves, and I didn’t mind that one bit. I moved out here to get away from traffic.”
Ethan rubbed his chin. “This new traffic going out and coming in the same way?”
“A few, but now that you mention it, I’d say most don’t come back out. You think they’re going on through to Fort Davis?”
“Could be.”
“Why do you think that?”
“To get around the border patrol stops. Tell your mama I’ll deal with those dogs, but to give me a few days. This might be something none of us expected.”
“You bet. But I’m not going anywhere around here from now on unless I’m heeled, and you need to know, I’ll shoot those dogs next time I see ’em out.”
“Wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
The sheriff waved as they headed down to Big Bend National Park.
Chapter 26
The Ranger’s tracks were distinct in the sand, and Abdullah Kahn’s spirit soared when he saw blood droplets near at least two of them. “Javier!”
The gangster joined him. “What is it?”
Abdullah pointed at the track. “He’s wounded. We shouldn’t be too far behind. Tell your men to be careful.”
“They always are.” He called to them and they spread out, moving through the brush as smoothly as the deer who left their tracks throughout the region. A rabbit burst from a clump of cactus and crisscrossed the arroyo before disappearing from sight.
He lost sight of the gangsters and followed, thrilled that they were so close to their quarry. No stranger to hunting men, Abdullah pressed forward with the Cobra ready. Hawke’s wounds and physical condition were sure to take their toll, forcing him to seek cover somewhere. Abdullah expected Hawke to turn and fight at any minute.
Despite his frustration with not yet having the Ranger’s head, the terrorist realized he was enjoying the chase. His eyes took on a new light, and his lips spread in a wide smile behind the beard. The game had changed and his heart rose.
Not far from a rock formation was a confusion of jumbled boulders both large and small, all undercut from eons of swift water. The desert was ever changing from the causes of erosion.
Wind sandblasted the land with tiny particles it blew against the rocks and ground. Periodic flash floods picked up everything in their paths, grinding down the arroyos in a devil’s brew of rocks, branches, whole trees, and sun-washed trunks.
The mesquites that had weathered the last floods, or had grown in the meantime, thickened at a bend in the arroyo. Abdullah walked alone, keeping a close eye on a particularly thick bush. The Ranger wasn’t there, but a ragged skeleton was.
Despite the need to maintain caution, Abdullah slowed to get a good look at the skull with a gaping hole in one side. Bodies were nothing to him, but the sight of a human skeleton partially shrouded by rotting clothing was something else entirely.
Intent on the fatal wound in the skull, he didn’t see the diamondback rattlesnake coiled nearby and blending into the sand and rocks. At least five feet long, it had the ability to strike half the length of its body. It lunged and missed by less than an inch. Human instinct took over and Abdullah screamed, jumping to the side.
The snake coiled for another strike, but Abdullah stumbled into the open and was met with a hail of bullets. In shock, he registered strikes and explosions around him before the Ranger’s aim steadied. A round punched through his shoulder, feeling as if it had been struck by a sledgehammer. The terrorist dropped to his knees.
Moments later the gangsters whooped in delight. Through his shock, Abdullah saw his prey rise to his feet from behind a window of rocks and raise his hands. Despite his wounds, he felt light as a feather. “Allahu akbar!”
Chapter 27
I was getting pure-dee pissed.
Nobody likes to run from a fight, and no one wants to be hunted. It was time to fight back. A formation of red rocks a mile away was my best shot. They’d be cautious coming down the arroyo, expecting just the kind of attack I had planned farther on.
I was one big mass of hurt and blood, and about played out, but anger took over and drove me forward through the wide-open expanse of reddish soil and rocks carpeted with mesquite and prickly pear. All those cactus blooms and flowers weren’t near as pretty as before, in my opinion. The canyons, arroyos, arches, and cliffs were a magnet for those who loved the desert away from the safety of their air-conditioned cars and well-established trails.
Those who found themselves in the wilderness had a different view in a world filled with barbs, stickers, and daggers. The desert had always been a dangerous place, and a horrible nightmare come to life for those lost or severely injured in the backcountry, but it was about to become even more dangerous for those guys following me when I reached the shelter of the high ground.
I ran as best I could, grinding my teeth at the pain from the bullet wound. I’d already knocked a lot of bark off my carcass, but I wasn’t going to let those sonsabitches catch me standing still. That scoped rifle of his gave him an advantage that scared me worse than a rattler, but the odds would get better in a jumble of boulders.
The sudden dry buzz of a rattler didn’t faze me. It wasn’t close, and I was too mad. I spotted him about six feet away, and it was one of the biggest rattlesnakes I’d ever seen. It wasn’t the rattler that had my attention, though, it was the human skeleton lying nearby.
With no way to tell if it was a man or woman without a closer examination, I thought of the bones as those of a male. His clothes were nothing but rags. Both feet still in a rotting pair of sneakers were separated and lying five feet away. A skeleton stretched out under a mesquite was one thing, but the large hole in the side of his bleached skull was another. The lawman in me wanted to stop and examine the scene, but I was hunted and had to keep moving.
The rattler buzzed again, warning me away. I wished him luck, because the other guy’s had run out, and kept going.
Despite the cloud cover, the dry air was turning me into jerky. My tongue felt like a strip of leather, and I wasn’t sweating. The formation of rocks didn’t look any closer and I was sucking wind.
One second I was dodging around the mesquites and cactus, for the most part hidden, and the next I popped out in a flat wash scraped by water and scattered with debris and boulders. A ridge rose to my right, and halfway up was a tangled logjam of splintered mesquite trunks, limbs, and dead vegetation sun-blasted to a light gray.
I broke out into a staggering, painful run, feeling like I was out there with a big red target painted on my back. A bone-colored mesquite limb caught my foot, sending me head over heels. That one almost did me in. It was as far as I could go. I regained my feet and hobbled across the wide-open space, half-expecting to feel the sniper’s bullets put an end to my misery.
What would the Old Man say?
Think, dummy! You’re a Texas Ranger for God’s sake.
Yeah, but I wasn’t trained in desert survival or warfare.
Fine. But use your noodle. Gain the high ground and evaluate your situation. Maybe this is where you make your stand. Search teams’ll be looking for you by now, on the ground and with planes and helicopters. You can hold them off from there if it gives you a good field of fi
re. See that rim? It overhangs those rocks so they can’t get above you.
They’re gonna come busting out of all those mesquites just like you did, and maybe you can get a shot. If not, hang on and wait for the cavalry. You know we’re already on the way.
The hair rose on the back of my neck, and I heard myself grunting and whining, straining hard to reach the tangle of debris. A covey of quail exploded almost under my feet and whirred away like shrapnel, scaring me worse than the rattler.
Go figure.
Keep moving.
Keep dodging.
Almost out of gas, I finally reached the bottom of the ridge. The drift was higher’n I thought, and I lost even more valuable time climbing with one hand to reach a small window created by two boulders that had leaned on each other for a thousand years.
The Old Man in my mind was right. That’s what I needed, the high ground. I worked my way behind them and settled into the window. When I got there, I saw the top of the rim was another twenty feet higher than my position.
I checked my back trail, but they still weren’t in sight. Despite the cloud cover, I was dry as a gourd. The desert air was sucking more moisture than I was able to replace. I pushed my thumb into the skin on my forearm and the dent stayed there much longer than I wanted. Serious dehydration. I was down to less than a half gallon of tepid, rusty-colored water and drank half of that, hoping it would stop the buzzing in my ears that sounded like a swarm of bees.
It was the first time I’d been able to check the machine pistol hanging around my neck. I read the name on the side. I’d heard of Cobras, Mexican-made machine pistols, but had never shot one. I unfolded the shoulder stock and gave it the once-over. The safety was easy to find. I located the fire selector and flicked it off of automatic, putting it on semi-auto. I didn’t want to get overly excited and squeeze off a whole magazine.
I laid out two of the extra mags and promised myself I’d wait until they got close enough for the 9x19 caliber ammo to be most effective.
Hawke's War Page 10