by Steven John
“Like I said, you’re in the Sandy Dunes Inn.”
Haskell and Kretch were both so surprised by the flying dirt and echoing report that for a moment they merely blinked at one another. A second shot crackled through the air between them and C. J. dove to the ground. Kretch, petrified, remained standing and even took a drag off his cigarette.
“Hit the fuckin’ dirt, Wilton!” C. J. bellowed, grabbing at Kretch’s jacket and hauling him to the ground. Wilton collapsed into a pile and Haskell rolled away, pulling off his hat and rising onto one elbow. With his other arm he held the white, wide-brimmed Stetson away from his head and a couple feet off the ground, surveying the desert below. The bullets had come from the north. There wasn’t another dune half the height of this one anywhere near firing range in that direction and Haskell strained to spot the source of the shots.
The three men out on the sands below had abandoned their load and were sprinting away to the west. Three more shots rang out, though C. J. heard neither rippling in the air nor impacts as lead met earth. He pressed one cheek to the damp soil as he looked behind him to find Wilton still curled in a ball, fumbling to draw his pistol.
“Here,” Haskell whispered loudly, kicking the rifle Kretch had dropped closer to him. Then he tossed aside his hat and turned to look over the other shoulder. “Duncan! Down, boy! Down! Down! Get down, Duncan!” He held his palm parallel to the ground and made a rapid pushing motion. The horse immediately obliged, lowering itself onto its knees and then rolling onto one side, black withers twitching with excitement.
Haskell spun around and then clawed and kicked at the dirt, crawling to his horse as fast as he could while keeping himself flat. A sustained hail of gunfire rang out, this time aimed close enough that dirt clods and pebbles flew into the air then rained down on the outriders. C. J. scrambled faster down the dune toward Duncan.
“Hasky! Where are you goin;?” Kretch veritably shrieked. The younger man paid him no attention, his mind racing. Where the fuck are they shooting from? Ain’t a goddamn place to hide out there!
Again Kretch called out. “Haskell, come back here!”
C. J. reached his horse and threw one arm around the colt’s neck. “Just stay down, honey! Stay down, Dunc!” He sat up enough to reach over the horse’s flanks, pulling his rifle from a saddlebag. Then he grabbed the satchel slung from the saddle horn and began to work his way back up the dune, wriggling his shoulders and using his heels to propel him, staying belly-up and digging through the satchel.
Wilton craned his neck to see out into the field. He tossed another look back at his comrade, and upon seeing Haskell returning, Kretch managed to get back a bit of nerve. Wilton grabbed his rifle and swung round again to face out over the desert. He checked the muzzle for sand or other debris and then jammed down the brass load lever, chambering a round. No shots had been fired for what felt like a minute or two; it may have been seconds. Kretch tucked the walnut stock against his shoulder and slowly raised his torso off the ground into a shooting position.
“You got any bead on ’em?” he called back to Haskell, his voice taught.
“Nothing.” C. J. crawled up beside Wilton, then rolled twice to put about six feet between them. Ratcheting back on his rifle’s bolt, Haskell said: “You got them sharp eyes, right? You keep sweeping and I’ll use my glasses.”
“OK,” Kretch nodded. Keeping his cheek down by the gun barrel, he panned back and forth across the land below. C. J. raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes and began a careful albeit swift inspection of each little dune, outcropping, or stand of brush within what he gauged was the range the shots had come from.
Four or five bullets slammed into the dune not ten feet from the outriders and Haskell dropped the field glasses, impulsively grabbing his rifle. Wilton squeezed off three shots, deafening so close to Haskell’s ears. The young man could barely hear Kretch’s voice over the ringing in his skull.
“Got movement on that low dune! Due northwest two-hundred yards!” Kretch pointed and fired another volley, then rolled onto his back to reload.
C. J. set his jaw and wrapped his left hand around the smooth wood of the rifle’s stock, his right index finger finding the trigger. He lowered his chin against the weapon and closed one eye, sighting between its three iron pegs and cursing himself for not using a scope. The fuck did he see? Haskell’s breaths were short, his heart pounding. There was scarcely a shrub on the dune Wilton had indicated. He stayed perfectly still, watching the hill. All was silent save for the methodical click of Kretch jamming rounds into his repeater. The sun was breaking through the clouds of the eastern sky, painting little pockets of the desert gold while leaving the rest a soft purple-gray. A bead of sweat trickled down Haskell’s brow and crept into the corner of his left eye. As he wiped it away with the thumb of his shooting hand suddenly Wilton began firing again.
C. J. immediately opened up as well, firing six or seven fast shots from his semi-auto. Multiple puffs of dust rose from the little dune.
Ten or fifteen reports rang out from several distinctly different weapons. Only one shot landed close to home, caroming off a rock between the two outriders with a wicked clang.
“Fuck! I didn’t see shit! You got anything?”
“Nothing.” Wilton’s voice was reassuringly calm for once; he had stayed up and ready, watching for muzzle flashes or smoke. “Gonna let these sons of bitches know we ain’t playing with quits.”
As Haskell looked over at Kretch, not understanding what he meant, Wilton closed one eye, steadied his hand, and squeezed off a single shot. Far away across the desert below, one member of the retreating trio stumbled, then fell to the ground. C. J. could scarcely believe Kretch had made the shot; they had to be three hundred yards off by now. Sneering, Wilton ratcheted down the lever of his rifle.
“It ain’t them, Wil!” Haskell barked. “Just keep your—” His words were drowned out by the savage howl of machine gun fire. It was close. Maybe a hundred yards. Just below them. The earth came to life, sand and soil and rock dancing in the air as lead ripped through the sky; tore the dune apart. Haskell flattened himself against the ground, screaming. Unthinking, Kretch rose to his feet and then dove backward away from the murderous assault.
For a torturous minute the firing kept up, unceasing at first and then in sustained bursts. The silence that followed the hail of gunfire was absolute. Slowly, half-numb, Haskell thought through the various parts of his body, amazed to find himself unscathed save for a few scratches.
“Kretch . . . you OK?”
There was a long pause, during which C. J. didn’t dare move a muscle.
Then Wilton whispered back: “Yeah. I’m good.”
“I saw them. Did you see them?”
“No.”
“They’re dug in everywhere. I saw at least five different muzzle flashes. They’re spaced out in the sand just below us. Some farther out too. They’re dug way in. Bunkers, I think.”
“Jesus,” Kretch stammered. “What do we do?”
“They were all west of us. We crawl off this dune and then get the fuck out of here heading east full gallop.”
16
“What do you mean gone! He has to be there, the man’s got no fucking life outside my office!”
“Mr. Mayor, he’s not home. His phone is. The door was locked. I don’t know what you—”
Dreg interrupted, shouting at the speaker phone on his desk. “Don’t take that fucking calm-him-down tone with me, Strayer! Don’t you condescend to me you mental midget of a man! Why don’t you have men checking the cameras? You can’t walk two steps in this city without being watched!”
“I already have men doing that, sir.”
“Well then reactivate his chevron pin and track it!”
“The pin is here, Mayor. I already thought of that.”
“Well think of something else goddammit!” Franklin pounded a fist on the desk so hard the shade slipped halfway off his gold-plated desk lamp. Dreg leaped forward out
of his chair to catch it. He loved this lamp: its pale alabaster, ochre, and beige lampshade had been a gift from the Saudi ambassador. Its various inlays and facets came from no fewer than ten nations; the shade alone worth a small fortune.
Dreg sighed as he righted the lampshade, not speaking for a moment to let his blood cool. When he continued, his voice was quiet and measured. “Listen, stay right where you are. Call a few men you trust to Hale’s apartment. I’m coming over there myself right now.”
Colonel Strayer clicked shut his mobile. He took two slow, deliberate steps and set the phone down on Timothy Hale’s large dining room table. Then the security officer closed his eyes and, channeling his special forces training, counted out a few long breaths and forced the rage from his head. His thoughts were calm and lucid within seconds. Opening his eyes, Strayer ran his fingers through his short blond hair, then began to walk through the apartment for the third time. There were shards of glass on one section of the floor. An amber stain on the wall above was tacky to the touch and smelled sweet and vaguely pungent. Surely alcohol and a few hours old.
Entering the kitchen, the officer slipped on a pair of thin black leather gloves and began to open cabinets. He found a bottle of cognac front and center in the third cabinet he checked. It was missing only a finger or two of liquor. That had to be the one. Strayer shut the cabinet and moved into the bedroom.
The bed was made, folded down tightly enough to bounce a coin off it. Retentive prick, Strayer thought with a rueful smile. Every drawer contained neatly folded clothing. The drapes were drawn and there was not a single random object upon any of the furniture in the austere room. Above the headboard of the king-size bed hung a large canvas entirely covered by circles of white paint. They were layered over one another thickly, with hints of color tinting an arc here and there. Strayer found himself studying the painting for a long time before he snapped back into the moment.
He returned to the dining room and retrieved his phone to summon a small security detail to the apartment. As he dialed he shook his head, looking down at the large table. There were chairs for eight. Strayer would have bet his last dime the table had never once been set for that many guests.
Scofield lit a match and held it to the tip of his cigarette, taking a long drag. He shook the flame out once the tobacco had caught. He held the extinguished match for a minute, watching a thin trail of smoke dissipate from its smoldering head. Then he snorted out a little laugh, dropping the matchstick on the sand.
“We had a lotta good times, didn’t we?”
Reese neighed softly at hearing her master’s voice. “You remember back in, uh . . . shit what was it . . . late seventies I guess . . . maybe eighty . . . remember that bar fight with those Comanche sons of bitches where I grabbed your shoulders and you wheeled round and clocked me upside the face? Man . . . I got a lot of drinks off you after that.”
Scofield laughed out loud for a moment, then took a drag of his smoke as a tear formed in the corner of his left eye. “I’m gonna pay you back for that the way you deserve, bud. That hit wasn’t meant for me . . . or this for you. I always owed you one, even though you clocked the wrong sonofabitch. You were lookin’ out, anyway. Just not looking straight.”
Scofield found himself laughing again at happy memories as he ratcheted back the bolt of his rifle. He took careful aim at the rope right above Tripp’s neck. “Shot coming, Reese!” He bellowed. Then he fired a single round. It cut through the nylon cord a few feet above the dead outrider. For a second the body swayed, and then the remaining fibers conceded to the large man’s weight and he fell down . . . down for what felt like ages but was barely seconds . . .
The corpse of Tripp Hernandez landed with a dull thud.
Reese lowered her head as if in deference to the fallen man as Scofield tapped her flanks. He rode over to his dead brother-in-arms at a slow trot, reining the mare to a halt a few paces away. Scofield slid from the saddle and pulled off his hat. He walked over to Tripp, who had landed in an inglorious pile, his torso twisted half over legs splayed out in opposite directions, and took a final drag off his smoke.
Grinding his teeth, the outrider began to inspect his friend’s body. The flesh was sallow and bloated, already beginning to rot near his eyes, mouth, and ears. Hours spent hanging in the rain must have sped the decomposition. It still looked like Tripp, but Scofield found himself keeping his eyes off the dead man’s face. The faint odor of decay drifted off the corpse when the breeze stirred.
Scofield forced himself to think not of this as a man he had once cared for but rather as an object to be inspected. There were no bloodstains anywhere on Tripp’s clothing save for a few splotches near his collar where the rope had flayed the flesh of his neck. Scofield peeled back his jacket and shirt. No trauma on the chest. No bones seemed to be broken. Fuckin’ Christ . . . he died by the hanging, then, Scofield bit his lip, both angry and overcome with grief. What an awful, terrifying way for a man to go. What a lonely way to go, out here surrounded by hateful men in the middle of a thunder storm.
There was nothing more to do for now. Scofield hooked his hands under Tripp’s shoulders, reprimanding himself silently for the queasiness in his stomach, and dragged the body toward the nearest QV pillar. He drew a little notebook from his pocket and scratched down the serial number stamped on the column’s base with a pencil. Then he straightened out Hernandez’s limbs so the outrider would at least lie in repose beneath the morning sky.
Scofield knelt, slowly putting his hat back on. He stayed crouched for a long while, his eyes drifting across the field. It was a remarkably clear day, the sky a brilliant blue above, still punctuated here and there by milk-white clouds. Visibility seemed endless. Scofield could count no fewer than fifteen of the massive, sinister arrays he had first encountered just a few nights before with Kretch. The strange constructions were wrapped around the base of every interior QV pillar in view. It was hardly believable—picturing the manpower needed to haul that much poundage was blood chilling.
As Scofield walked slowly into the sunfield, he tried in vain to sort through the myriad facts and assumptions cluttering his head. A few words muttered by Boss Hutton got mixed up with something Sebastian had hissed. Fresh images of Tripp Hernandez’s bloated corpse were superseded by a memory of the old leech bleeding out as the boy knelt beside his stricken father. Mayor Dreg’s wormy lips drooled out aphorisms and condescension. The outrider’s mind slowly grew numb, aware only of his immediate surroundings. There was a mustiness to the air as the brilliant sunshine spilled down upon the still damp sands. The sun was warm on Scofield’s back, but not in the way a of a cruel desert sun—it was comfortable; comforting, even. The heat soothed the tense muscles of the outrider’s shoulders. It caressed his neck, sneaking under his wide-brimmed hat as it made its way higher in the sky and he made his way a few more strides southwest to the nearest pillar and its Byzantine parasite.
The array looked by daylight much as it had at night, save for gradations of color where brass tubing intersected copper wires and steel support bars. The back plate and its thick couplings were cast in rough iron. Hairline cracks and imperfections marred the slate-gray surface. As Scofield drew to within three paces of the structure, the hairs on his arms and neck began to rise. He froze, then took a step back: the outrider knew all too well what this tingling could mean. He took stock of the items he was carrying; there was nothing likely to hold a static charge but his six-shooter. Scofield rested his palm over the hammer of the pistol, then walked over to the array and touched a steel strut with the index finger of his left hand.
Nothing happened. So the circuitry of the device was closed. Scofield shook his head in grudging admiration: a mechanism that could stably generate that powerful of an electric field was damn well made, hate the maker or not. He made his way around the pillar, studying the apparatus with something near reverence. Scofield stopped walking after a complete pass of the device and leaned in to more closely inspect the band of strange
bulbs set waist-high atop aluminum posts. He squinted, shading his eyes with cupped palms. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but it seemed they were glowing.
Scofield pulled off his hat and lowered it over one of the glass spheres. Sure enough, the bulb shone with a pale greenish light. A filament inside the smoky, yellowed sphere, visible with the sun’s glare softened, glowed as if with a charge. How the fuck is that even possible? There was clearly a current flowing through the bulbs, here in the very middle of the sunfield. The filament seemed to pulse and undulate, shifting from blood red to ember orange. The lifeblood . . . right there . . . the fuckin’ blood . . . Scofield began to whisper out loud “sucked out . . . before my goddamn eyes just draining away . . .”
For this Tripp Hernandez had died. . . . For this his boys had been called to war. . . . For this the world turned, love it or hate it. Or, for Scofield, tolerate it with ambivalence. At least things had always been stable before. His blood ran hot. The outrider straightened up again and jammed his hat down on his head. He dug in a pocket of his jacket and drew out the sack of tobacco and papers; he needed a stout smoke. As he rolled a clutch of tobacco into a cigarette, Scofield whistled twice, summoning Reese to him. He placed the smoke in his lips and then patted the mare’s flanks as she came to a stop beside him.
“Good girl,” he whispered through clenched teeth. Scofield struck a match and lit his cigarette—practically a cigar he had rolled it so thick—then walked around the horse. The outrider tried not to look at Tripp’s corpse but there it lay in his peripheral vision. Scofield drew his carbine from its saddle holster and walked back over to the apparatus: the embodiment of his blackening rage.
Two thick tendrils of smoke drifted from Scofield’s nostrils as he gripped the rifle barrel and raised the stock above one shoulder. He checked himself just before smashing one of the glowing bulbs. His anger was getting the best of him. Fuck you thinkin’, Scof? This damn thing may blow sky high for all you know. Leave this to cooler heads. He lowered the rifle and stood still, taking in heavy breaths. He began to dig at the thick tapline connected to the array with the toe of one boot.