by Steve Brewer
By the time Oscar arrived, Swank figured, all the lights would be out, all the hunters snoring in their bunks. The Colombians would take their goods and Swank could quietly put all this nasty business behind him.
He entered the ranch house, locked the door, ambled down the main hall, and heard the wide-screen television playing in the billiards room. He poked his head in and saw Billy Don on the leather sofa and Red in Swank’s favorite recliner. Swank shook his head. The imbeciles were watching an infomercial about a male potency drug. Swank had always been amazed at the power of television…you could sell a ten-pound bag of dog shit if you put it in the right package. Maybe that was something he should look into.
Swank started to tell the rednecks to turn the TV off and go to bed…but he decided it would be worthwhile to have them awake at midnight. He didn’t expect to see Oscar, but the crazy Colombian was unpredictable. So he left them where they were and groggily continued down the hall to his bedroom.
“D’you hear that?”
“What?” Red replied.
“A door closin’ or sumpin’.”
“Probably just Swank hitting the hay. Don’t be so jumpy. The Meskins are all gone. You saw ‘em leave, same as me.”
“Sorry we couldn’t find nothin’, Red. Maybe they was just here to buy a horse or sumpin’. Maybe that’s all it was.”
Red stifled a yawn. He’d had too many beers and was fading fast. The whole evening had been a letdown. They hadn’t even been able to find any cash. “You seen any horses out here?”
Billy Don shook his head.
“Well, then…how the hell they gonna buy one?”
“Maybe they done bought ‘em all.”
Red started to reply but realized it was futile. His heart just wasn’t in it. So he swigged his beer and sat in silence.
“Hey, Red?” Billy Don called to him.
Red didn’t reply.
“Red?”
“What?” Red said, like he was talking to a pesky younger brother.
“Know what I wanna do?”
“Does it involve Wesson oil?” Red asked, “‘cause I’ve always told you I’m not into that.”
“Very funny,” Billy Don said, sitting up straight on the leather sofa. “I wanna watch one of them skin flicks.”
Red started to make a smart-ass remark but, frankly, it sounded pretty good to him, too. “You’re too late. Swank’s back and they’re all in his bedroom closet.”
Billy Don grinned and held up the black videocassette. “All exceptin’ this one.”
“You awake?” Marlin asked.
“Yes,” Becky murmured. “And a little scared.”
Marlin was reclining with his back against a wall and Becky had her head in his lap. Looking down, he could see her gorgeous features in the glow of the Coleman camping lantern. Luis, their captor, had been kind enough to give them a few provisions…the lantern, a couple more blankets, more water…he had even given Marlin his wristwatch and wallet back. But regardless of Luis’ friendly demeanor, Marlin knew that a criminal was a criminal. You could never be sure of what he might do next. So Marlin had decided it was time to do something about their situation. A few hours ago, they had agreed to wait until Luis had gone to sleep—judging by when the campfire had burned down—and then put their plan into action. Catch him when he was groggy.
Marlin stroked Becky’s hair and his heart fluttered with mixed emotions…the thrill of having discovered this wonderful creature versus the fear of losing her. “I want to tell you again how sorry I am about all this. If I had had any idea…”
“Hush,” she said, rolling onto her back, placing a finger on his lips. “It’s not your fault.”
He leaned down and they kissed. It was heaven—and he wondered if it would be the last time.
Marlin slipped out from underneath Becky and peered through the slender crack around the door. “Looks like the fire is fading.” He tried to sound confident. He glanced at his watch. “Let’s give it another half hour…till midnight. Then we’ll get the hell outta here.”
***
It was eleven-forty. Oscar and his men had driven aimlessly around the Central Texas countryside for more than five hours, making one stop for dinner at a barbecue joint outside of Fredericksburg. Now Oscar had heartburn to go along with his increasingly foul mood.
Oscar was becoming more and more anxious as they approached the main entrance to the Circle S Ranch. He knew he had already wasted far too much time. The time to act had come. He would take what was his…and show no mercy to anyone who tried to stand in his way.
The ranch gates were open and Julio pulled Oscar’s rented Cadillac onto the dirt road. Even the suspension system of the big luxury car was not immune to the rugged terrain, and it bounced and rocked in the ruts of the road. Oscar cursed at Julio in Spanish, telling him to slow down. Julio simply stared at his dark form in the rearview mirror as he eased off the gas pedal.
At a fork in the road, Julio turned toward the ranch house. “You fool!” Oscar barked. “We mus’ get Luis first. He is the bes’ marksman. Go to the cabin.” Julio swung off the road into some weeds and found his way onto the alternate path.
Oscar knew this whole thing with tranquilizer darts would be frustrating and time-consuming. He had contemplated not even bothering with tranquilizers—just open fire with the deer rifles and a spotlight. But he simply couldn’t risk that much noise, even with Swank’s connections to the sheriff. They would need to use the tranquilizer gun and Luis was the best man for the job.
“What about the game warden and the woman?” Tyler Jackson asked with interest. “Who’s gonna watch ‘em?” He had been hoping to draw a little guard duty himself. The woman was a knockout…all he had to do was tie the game warden up for a few minutes and…
“We will do what must be done,” Oscar said sharply, as if he knew what Tyler was thinking.
Oscar berated Julio again as the Cadillac bottomed out on limestone. The lesser-used road would be no problem for a truck or SUV, but it was slow progress in a car.
“Que hora es?” Oscar asked to nobody in particular.
Julio glanced at his watch. “Eleven-fifty.”
31
PHIL COLBY, BREATHING heavily, watched the Cadillac’s receding taillights from his hiding spot. He hadn’t expected any traffic on the ranch at this hour, but he figured it could be a hunter arriving late. Not likely, though, the more he thought about it. Especially in a Cadillac. And now they weren’t even going to the ranch house, they were changing course and taking the road that led down to the lower pasture by the river. He wished he could have seen inside the car, but it was too dark.
If Marlin was actually being held captive somewhere on the ranch, Colby knew he still had the element of surprise on his side. The occupants of the Cadillac apparently had not spotted him hiding in the tall grass, and his truck was parked safely two hundred yards past the ranch entrance in Thomas Stovall’s driveway.
Under the cloak of darkness, Colby slowly approached the ranch house. As the guest house came into view, Colby saw twenty or thirty vehicles parked neatly along the driveway. So the hunters were all here, after all, ready for opening day. That made Colby somewhat anxious. Would Swank really invite the state’s top power brokers to his ranch while he was holding a man hostage? That would be outrageous, even for Swank. The hunters would be swarming over every square inch of the ranch in the morning, and Swank was too smart to think that Marlin wouldn’t be found. Colby’s doubts started to get the best of him and he began to turn around. But, in his mind, he replayed Bobby Garza’s message on Marlin’s answering machine. He remembered Marlin’s letter to the attorney general. And he pressed forward.
Colby stopped a hundred yards away from the main house and listened. All was quiet. He could see the front wraparound porch of the guest house. It was unoccupied except for the moths flittering around the porch light. Colby felt safe moving among the trees around the house toward the barn. He knew that Swank ow
ned no dogs. He also knew which floodlights, mounted on posts at random around the house, were triggered by motion, so he was able to carefully avoid them.
The metal barn loomed in the darkness several hundred yards behind the house. Colby decided it was as good a place as any to look for Marlin. He followed the curving road to the barn, walking quietly in the limestone dust.
The barn was well built, but not completely weatherproof, and Colby could tell from the dark seams that no lights were on inside. He put his ear against the cool sheet metal of the barn door and listened. Nothing. Colby took a deep breath and began to roll the large, heavy door open. To Colby, the noise equaled that of a freight train chugging along the tracks. So much for stealth. He opened the door wide enough to slip through and switched the lights on. The interior was just as he remembered…large, gated stalls, hay stacked against one wall, various ranching implements hanging from roof joists. And nobody to be seen. Staring into the wide expanse of the barn made Colby suddenly self-conscious, and he switched the light off. He pulled a small flashlight from his back pocket and quickly checked each stall. Empty, just as he expected.
“John?” he whispered into the darkness. He waited a moment and then retreated from the barn, leaving the door open.
Colby circled the barn and walked over to a nearby fence-line. A ten-foot fence. Colby knew this was the five-acre pasture where Swank kept his newest prize bucks. He scanned the sparsely treed pasture and saw nothing. The deer were probably huddled on the back side of the pasture, as far away from human activity as they could get.
Colby squatted on his heels for a few minutes, dejected. He cursed himself for not having a better plan.…Hell, he didn’t have any plan at all. What was he supposed to do, just walk right up to Swank’s front door and knock? Demand to see Marlin? Right about now, that seemed to be his only option, and it was a lousy one.
Then Phil Colby had one of those glorious moments—one of his college professors used to refer to it as “an epiphany”—when the truth suddenly presents itself of its own accord. But this wasn’t just one epiphany, it was two.
First, if Swank was keeping drug-packing deer on his property, they were likely contained in a small area…a pasture just like the one in front of him. The deer couldn’t be allowed to roam the ranch freely because they might never be seen again. Big bucks are the most elusive animals in the woods. Colby recalled one wildlife study where a hunter was turned loose on a high-fenced hundred-acre pasture with one lone buck. Over an entire hunting season, the hunter managed to get one fleeting glimpse of the buck. He never got a shot. If there were deer in this pasture, their bellies probably contained a lot more than corn.
Second, there were at least a dozen feed shacks and other assorted outbuildings within two hundred yards of the barn. But keeping a man hostage in any of those would be just plain stupid. As Colby knew intimately, there was only one building on the ranch remote enough to serve as a makeshift prison. The old rock cabin down by the river. Where the Cadillac was headed.
Marlin peered through the crack of the door frame again and saw that the fire was almost out. Surely Luis was dozing by now, otherwise he would have stoked the fire. After all, it was getting cooler, now down in the low fifties.
He turned to Becky. “You up for this? We don’t have to try it if you don’t want to.”
She shook her head. “Let’s bust out of this dump.”
He smiled and walked over to her, put his arms around her. “Remember…when he opens the door, just stand there and look gorgeous.”
She gave him a coy look, an expression that would have been arousing under any other circumstances. “I think I can handle that.”
Marlin tilted his head, thinking, for a second, that he heard an engine…far away, on the bluffs above the river. But the rushing water made too much noise and he couldn’t be sure.
He looked back at Becky. “Well, then…”
Julio was almost as mad at himself as he was at Oscar. He’d had about enough of his boss, who was really nothing more than a foul-mouthed young punk. Over the years, Oscar had never shown Julio the proper respect. All he ever did was criticize, like now. Was it Julio’s fault that the Cadillac was a pedaso de mierda and couldn’t make it out of the mud?
Julio gunned the engine again to drown out Oscar’s latest string of obscenities…but the Cadillac remained firmly entrenched.
“Perro malparido! Wha’ the fock were you theenking?” Oscar asked. “I tole you to go around the focking mod!”
Julio gritted his teeth. “There are large rocks on either side. This was our only path.” He revved the engine again to no avail.
“Coño de tu madre!” Oscar turned and looked at the hulking figure in the backseat. “Tyler! Geet us out of this focking mod.”
Tyler nodded and climbed out of the car. Julio watched in the mirror as Tyler walked to the rear, leaned down, and placed both hands firmly on the vertical slope of the trunk. Julio floored it and a rooster tail of thick brown sludge machine-gunned up Tyler’s body. Oscar and Julio could hear him cussing as he stepped away from the vehicle. “Keep pushing!” Oscar yelled. “You are already feelthy, so what does it matter?”
Tyler got back into position, Julio floored the pedal, and they could feel the bulky car slowly creep back onto solid ground.
Tyler hopped back into the car, still wiping mud from his torso, and they proceeded toward the winding hillside road that led down to the cabin.
Becky rapped firmly on the door. “Luis! Hey, Luis! I gotta go again.” Thirty seconds passed, then a full minute.
“He must be sleeping,” Marlin said. He pounded on the door with the ball of his fist. “Wake up, Luis! The lady needs a little privacy again.”
They heard Marlin’s truck door open and shut, less than five yards from the cabin door. Marlin looked over at Becky again, reaffirming that she was well lit by the lantern she was holding. Glowing like the Statue of Liberty at night.
Marlin pressed against the wall to the left of the door frame. Moments earlier, Marlin had felt the weight of the tube-sock filled with rocks. Plenty heavy to do the Job. Amazing how many stones Becky had managed to gather on each bathroom trip. They heard the familiar sound of the board lifting out of the brackets on either side of the door…then the door swung open.
At first, Red and Billy Don sat in stunned silence, sure that the videotape they were watching was some kind of joke or illusion. Finally Red said, “Good God Almighty.”
“I ain’t never seen such,” Billy Don said, eyes glued to the set.
Then, a mere nanosecond later, Red realized he was staring directly at the goose that laid the golden egg! Roy Swank would pay a small fortune to get this tape back. It was the one delicious, wonderful, oh-so-fantastic opportunity Red had been waiting for all his life. Damn, here it was, right under his nose…and when he wasn’t even expecting it! Yes, life was fixing to change bigtime for Red O’Brien. There would be no more Milwaukee’s Best when he could afford Budweiser. No more Hamburger Helper when he could afford prime rib. Hell, he’d burn his old mobile home to the ground and replace it with a shiny new double-wide! Get all new furniture, including a dinette set. Drop a new engine into the Trans Am sitting on his front lawn.
Red was overwhelmed by it all. “Turn it off, Billy Don! Turn it off!”
“Wha…?”
Red jumped to his feet and pushed the EJECT button on the VCR. He slid the videotape out and clutched it to his chest. This was his winning lottery ticket, and it wasn’t leaving his grasp. “Go grab our things and meet me at the truck!”
“But, Red, we’re supposed to stay here and…”
“Goddamn it, just do it! Hurry!”
32
THE DOOR OPENED all the way…and Marlin knew that Luis’ next few moves would determine whether the plan was a resounding success or a dismal failure. There was Becky, standing in the warm halo of the Coleman lantern…in her red panties, hair hanging seductively over her shoulders, breasts pushing against
the confines of her recently tightened Wonderbra.
As most men would, Luis automatically took a step forward, eyes focused hungrily on the woman in front of him, the pistol all but forgotten in his hand. Then, just as Marlin had anticipated, Luis decided it was a trap and Becky was simply a decoy. So he turned quickly to face Marlin.
The game warden simply smiled at him.
That’s when Becky stepped forward and swung the weighted sock from ankle height, bringing it down squarely on the crown of the Colombian’s head. Luis’ knees buckled momentarily, but he didn’t fall.
He did fall, however, when Marlin drove him to the ground like a tackling dummy.
Both men lay prone on the dirt floor. Marlin tried to pull himself on top of the wiry man, but Luis writhed and kicked and flailed. Marlin threw a hard right and felt the man’s nose collapse under his fist. Luis squealed in anguish and seemed to find renewed strength from his pain. He managed to pull his upper body free from Marlin’s grasp and started clawing at the earth. Marlin was on his knees now, arms wrapped around Luis’ thighs, as the Colombian, lying on the ground, grabbed the door frame and tried to pull himself away. He was amazingly strong. Luis freed one leg and kicked Marlin on the side of the head. Marlin slammed a big fist into the smaller man’s abdomen and heard the air rush out of his lungs. Luis kicked again, catching Marlin hard on the bridge of his nose. Marlin tried to shake the dizziness he felt in his head, and Luis took advantage of this brief moment to wriggle free, jump up, and lunge for the exit.
Then, the whole room danced crazily as Becky swung the Coleman lantern and hit Luis on the shoulder. Glass shattered and the small man’s shoulder was suddenly aflame. He swatted at the flames and screamed in agony, as Marlin and Becky were too astonished to do anything but watch. The fire began to crawl down the man’s torso and Becky turned away in revulsion.