She nodded and went back to a drawer. Inside sat a yellow box of rat poison with fat black lettering on it.
Frank searched the fourth man and found nothing. He searched Stumpy and found a wallet with fifty bucks cash, a comb, and a package of chewing gum to help the man keep his breath minty fresh. The Glock and the first magazine used in the P90 were lying on the floor. Frank picked them up and quickly moved through the rest of the house.
He didn’t find his phone, which meant Ed must have it. Not a good thing. Ed would have looked through his contacts. He would have found Kim’s number. It was one of the few contacts Frank had. And then Ed would have smiled.
A sick feeling took hold of Frank. If Ed got her on the phone, he could make all sorts of threats. Extort Kim into any number of things by telling her he had Tony and now Frank and was going to kill or torture both of them. He growled with frustration.
He went back into the kitchen. Cereal boxes, plastic plates, plastic bowls, cans of beans, salt, and other crap littered the floor. He said, “Let me use that phone.”
Carmen nodded and pulled the iPhone back out, but when he went to unlock it, it asked him for a password. Of course it had to be locked. “Tony!” he called.
A moment later Tony walked through the entryway from the living room. Frank held the phone out to him. “Hack this thing.”
Tony took it, slid his finger across the display to unlock it. Turned it over. “The older ones were a cinch.”
“We need to call your mother.”
“I’m working on it,” Tony said.
Carmen opened a cupboard with boxes of ammo and gun cleaning equipment inside. There were at least four guns in this house: the semi the fourth man had dropped on the stairs which Tony had picked up, the Glock Frank had taken from Jesus, the shotgun, and the P90. The shotgun was a fine gun, but it only held five rounds. Furthermore, it was a close range weapon, and he didn’t intend to be storming any houses with it. But he didn’t want to leave it for Ed to use when he got back.
Frank cycled the shotgun’s slide a couple of times to be sure the receiver and magazine truly were empty. Then he removed the barrel nut at the end of the magazine tube and slid the barrel from the gun. The magazine spring popped out. He tossed the stock into the yard, the receiver to the front room, and dropped the barrel behind the fridge. It clanged when it hit the floor. He left the spring in the blood and mess Carmen was making.
In the cupboard, he found a box of 5.7 millimeter rounds and another for a nine millimeter. He tossed the box of 9s to Tony and kept the other. He also found two fine orange ear plugs, which had been in who knew how many ears. He took one and stuffed it in his right ear. He put the other in his pocket.
The girls were crying. “Tell them they’re going to be okay,” Frank said to Carmen. “We’re getting out of here right now. Today they’re going to be free.”
He crossed over to the back door and walked out into the sun of midmorning. The air smelled cool and fresh. The area behind the house had been paved with brick cobbles, forming a nice patio. The table with the umbrella sat on those cobbles. Beyond that the yard and driveway were covered with gravel. If this had been a regular farm, the traffic on the graveled area would have crushed any weeds that had tried to grow. And what the traffic didn’t get, the owners would blast with judicious squirts of Roundup. But this wasn’t a normal farm, and the weeds dotted the pale gravel like mold spots on white cheese.
Off to the right stood the red metal barn. It had a big garage door on its narrow side and a regular man door just around the corner. On the opposite side of the yard stood three old sagging chicken coops that were as gray as cheap newspaper. Next to them stood a white propane tank, looking like a shiny nine-foot long capsule of Tylenol.
Beyond the coops, the graveled yard, and barn stood some old farm equipment including a rusted tractor that looked fifty years old. Beyond that were fields of hay, shining nice and green in the sunlight, stretching out for as far as the eye could see. And with this flat land, that was pretty far. In the far distance, a few blocky houses rose up from the fields. They looked odd, like something from Mars.
Frank walked down the back steps. A carton of empty Corona bottles sat on the brick cobblestones by the table with the umbrella. Tony came behind him, followed by the children. But they stopped when they reached the bottom of the porch. Two of them were crying, pleading with Carmen, refusing to move forward.
“What’s going on?” Frank asked.
“They say the Gorozas have promised to kill their families if they try to run away without paying their debts. They have connections in Mexico. The Gorozas told them one telephone call is all it takes.”
The oldest girl was adamant. “No,” she said. “We will pay our debts.”
The little boy’s face was even more bruised out here in the sunlight. The littlest girl was still in her pajamas. Frank couldn’t promise them the Gorozas wouldn’t kill their families. He couldn’t promise them that the U.S. authorities wouldn’t deport them right back into the arms of those who had sold them into slavery here. But who had to tell the authorities?
There were plenty of folks living here illegally. It wasn’t the best life. As an illegal you always ran the risk of being preyed upon. Anyone could threaten to rat you out to ICE. if you didn’t do what they told you to. Likewise, there was little recourse if someone committed a crime against you. You had no protection. That’s why MS-13 originally started. In the 1980s Salvadoran immigrants were being bullied and preyed upon by more established Mexican and Black L.A. gangs. So those immigrants took matters into their own hands to protect themselves in their little district in L.A. But MS-13, like all gangs and criminal organizations, carried the seeds of its own host of cancers and mutated into the very thing it fought.
The law of the criminal order was not exactly designed to promote life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But these girls didn’t have to join a gang. There were other ways. The life of an illegal wasn’t the best. But it wasn’t the worst, especially if they found a place in a decent community.
Frank said, “Tell them I’ll take responsibility. Tell them the Gorozas will think I stole them, and so they’ll come after me, not them. Tell them they can’t stay here anyway because the Federales are going to come to this place.”
Carmen relayed the message, and it seemed to stress them out even more. She gave Frank a look like she was contemplating something, and then she turned to the children and said in Spanish, “It’s me the Gorozas want. I’m the one they were hunting.”
“You’re the Matanarcos?” the little boy said.
“I will take you to safety,” Carmen said.
“They will kill our families,” the older girl said.
“They will not,” Carmen said. “Come with me.”
The children hesitated, clearly held back by the older girl’s worries. But then the little boy stepped forward and took her hand. The littlest girl was next. And then the rest followed, tears and worry and all, trusting Carmen.
“Matanarcos?” Frank asked her. The narco killer. What was that all about?
Carmen looked at his gun, looked back at him warily. She had a gun in her hand, the spare Jesus had pulled on him in the basement. “We’d better split up.”
“You’re not going to get far without a vehicle,” Frank said. Then he turned to Tony. “Keep an eye on the road out front. Holler if you see anything.”
Tony’s face was a bit ashen. “What are we going to do?”
Frank set the extra ammo and P90 at Tony’s feet. “I’m going to see if the fine owners of this establishment have provided us a ride.”
There had been hooks with two sets of keys hanging on them inside the back door of the house. Frank ran up the back steps and fetched the two sets of keys and came back out. Then he walked over to the barn. None of the keys worked on the big rolling barn door. He walked to the man door on the side that was made of metal and had a dead bolt.
He tried every key on
both chains again, but none of them worked. He looked around on the ground. No mat, rock, or bucket. Nothing but weeds growing up the sides of the barn. Then he reached up and felt along the lip of the top of the door frame and brushed something. Bingo. He grabbed the key and brought it down. It was a dull bronze with a round head. He fit it into the dead bolt, and gave it a turn. The deadbolt slid open. He fit the same key into the lock in the door knob and opened that as well.
He stepped into the barn, found the light switch just to the side of the door and flipped it. Nothing. Then he found the box that controlled the door. He pressed one of the square buttons. The hum of a motor up above started, and then the big barn door began to rattle up. The morning light streamed into the barn. The front half of the barn floor was covered with cement; the back half was covered with gravel.
The barn door continued to rattle and hum, letting more light in. Frank had thought maybe there might be another car here or a motorcycle or a four-wheeler. This was a farm, after all. Heck, they could make an escape on a tractor if it came to it. But there were no wheeled vehicles. There were some shelves with tools lying on them and a big white enclosed trailer with a dual axle just a little back of center. The trailer was about twenty-five feet long with a V-shaped front. A round plate on the front of the V said “Wells Cargo.” Down below, a hitch extended from the front to hook to a pickup or other truck.
Frank had seen plenty of these back in Rock Springs. He smiled. He just might get lucky. Or he might find it full of contraband.
The trailer had three doors. The back end swung down like a draw bridge to make a ramp, as did one half of the front’s V wedge. Between the two, just above the wheels, was a man-sized door.
Frank walked over. The back and front doors were held tight with two bars about a foot long on either side. To let down the front or back doors, you had to swing back the bars. Each door had a bar on either side. And each bar was secured with a padlock. But the man door on the side was not secured in the same way. It had a simple handle that could be locked, one that was flush with the side of the trailer like what you might find on an RV or camper. Frank tried the keys. None of them fit.
There was a pry bar hanging on a pegboard on the wall. Frank fetched it. The RV lock and handle was a rectangle of metal set in the door. Frank jammed the teeth of the pry bar into an edge between metal and the door. It took some muscle, but he worked the sharp end of the pry bar through to the other side of the door. Then he slammed the pry bar forward. The metal block popped out about a quarter of an inch. He slide the pry bar up a bit more, slammed it again. This time the whole side of the block moved. He pushed and pulled and finally popped the whole unit out of the door. He tossed it to the garage floor.
Frank reached in through the hole and pulled the door open. He must have been living right because snuggled inside the trailer were three Polaris snowmobiles. A lot of folks thought snowmobiles were just for the snow, but they would be mistaken. They worked just fine on hard earth. In fact, people raced them on grass. And that’s exactly what stretched out for miles all around Frank’s troupe of escapees.
A snowmobile had a track like a tank that was made of rubber with stiff, paddle-like studs to give it traction, except instead of being built for war, the snowmobile’s track was built for high-performance and speed. Depending on the surface, a snowmobile could quickly reach speeds of sixty to seventy miles per hour. But even if he and the others had to go half that speed so the children didn’t fall off, that was still a heck of a lot faster than his crew could go on foot.
Two of the snow machines were red; one was blue. The red ones looked like aggressive insects. Their seats were short, just enough for one person; however, the flat aluminum chassis the seat rested on stretched out behind another couple of feet. It was long to make it easier to climb steep inclines. But it was also good for loading gear when going on a mountain tour. Perfect for loading a bundle of kids. The blue snowmobile was a two-seater, complete with heated passenger grips that rose up on either side of the back seat. Three helmets with face shields hung on the wall.
The Gorozas obviously liked their snow. Or maybe they’d stolen the machines and were storing them here until they could find a fence. Frank hopped onto one of the red insectile machines and unscrewed the gas cap. He rocked the snowmobile a bit. The dark contents sloshed and blinked in the wan light.
On the wall just inside the side-entry door hung a key ring with four small keys of the type used for padlocks. Someone had slipped colored rubber covers over the round key heads. Two were black and two were green. Frank took the keys outside to the front of the trailer and tried them on the padlocks holding the front door. The green ones opened the locks. He tossed the padlocks to the ground, unlatched the bars, and swung them out of the way. The door was fairly heavy, but it would have to be somewhat sturdy to bear the weight of a snowmobile and its passenger. He guided the door partway down, then let the top edge drop with a thump and crunch onto the gravel floor. It made a nice ramp, built out of wood with five long, black traction blocks running across the length at spaced intervals to keep the snow machine from just sliding down.
Tony called in from outside. “I see a dust trail! It’s coming our way. Can’t tell if it’s a car or truck.”
“How far?”
“I don’t know,” Tony said. “It’s a ways out there. The dust trail is two or three miles out. Could be going anywhere.”
“Keep an eye on it,” Frank called back.
These were higher-end models that didn’t have a pull cord start like a lawn mower. These had keys, which were in the keyholes. Frank pulled up the red kill switch knob on the right grip and turned the key. The snowmobile coughed a few times, then started right up, spitting out exhaust. He softly pressed the accelerator lever on the right grip with his thumb, and the snowmobile moved forward. He drove it down the ramp, across the garage floor, then out into the yard. He left it idling and went back for the second. It too started up after a few coughs, and he drove it down the ramp and out onto the sunlit gravel.
The dust trail in the distance was closer now. It was made by two vehicles. The one in the lead was a pickup he didn’t recognize. The other, eating the pickup’s dust, was a white panel van, just like the one that had brought him here. Frank figured they were two, maybe three minutes out. He yelled for Tony and Carmen to come over, then ran back for the third machine.
The blue two-passenger took a little longer to start than the others. When he finally got it going, he gave it a bit too much gas and almost careened off the ramp, but he righted it, made his way down the ramp, through the barn, and out into the yard.
The three machines idled, rumbling with the pitch of dirt bikes. Frank spoke to the oldest girl. “Three of you behind Tony; the other two behind Carmen.” He didn’t want anyone behind him because he might have to run some interference.
Carmen looked down at the snowmobile with a bit of apprehension.
Frank pointed at the speedometer. “Keep it under forty miles per hour.”
“I’ve never driven one,” Carmen said.
Frank feathered the accelerator and the snowmobile moved forward a couple of feet. “Just push this lever to make it go.” He gripped the brake on the left handle bar. “This is your brake.” He shoved the kill switch down, and the engine cut out. “Pull the knob up, then turn the key to start it. You’re going out into the field. Right through that gate at the back of the property. You keep going until you get to that house way out there. The one with the trees all around it. We’ll go from there.” The house looked small in the distance. At least five miles away.
He glanced back toward the vehicles. The truck and van were coming fast. “Get going,” he said. “And tell the girls to keep their feet on the running board well away from the track.”
Tony moved to his machine and helped two of the kids up onto the chassis behind the seat.
Frank picked up the P90. He had the Glock in his pants. They weren’t nearly enough for a shoot
out. So he walked back to the house. By the time he reached the back door, Tony and Carmen were loaded.
The oldest girl sat behind Tony. The two youngest sat behind her on the flat aluminum chassis. The little one in the pink pajamas was the caboose. She was clutching the girl in front of her, arms wrapped around her torso, feet in her lap. Tears still stained their faces; one looked back at the oncoming vehicles, probably thinking this very act would kill her parents.
Tony gave his machine some gas, the pitch in the motor changed, and he rolled out, the two steering skis slipping over the gravel. Carmen gave hers a bit too much gas. The snowmobile shot forward. She and the children behind her all jerked back. She braked and they jerked forward. She tried again. It still wasn’t smooth, but it was better this time, and she followed Tony to the fence and gate at the far side of the yard.
Beyond the house, the trucks were coming fast. Frank turned around and opened the back door.
15
Rusty Shooter
THE OLD STOVE in the kitchen was a gas stove, preferred by chefs everywhere. Much better control for cooking. Much better for other things as well. The candles to Santa Muerte burned in the next room and would have provided an ironic ignition, but propane was denser than air, which meant the gas would spread out like water until it found the stairway leading into the basement. Then it would flow down and pool there.
Frank wanted a big pool of gas. He figured the propane would have to rise about six inches before it reached the level of the furnace pilot light. He figured a six inch pool that was about 900 square feet would do. He turned the knobs on all four burners to full. The gas hissed loudly, a nice heavy flow. The stinking odorant filled his nostrils.
He remembered the extra magazine for the P90 that Stumpy had dropped in the living room. He retrieved it, then walked back through the kitchen and the stinking propane to the back door. He secured it and walked down the steps, the screen door banging behind him.
The trucks were still coming, sending up huge trails of dust.
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