by Bradley West
“Let’s have more light!” Muller shouted. “Give me four beams in the same place. Pick it up,” he said to Melvin as he tossed the Sharpfinger at his adversary’s feet.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Showdowns
Sunday, July 19, 2020: Spice Land, Idaho, early morning
Arkar and Travis stopped when the lit-up hospital RV came into view as they crested a small rise. “You go left and I’ll go right,” Travis said. “We need a hard count on the Echoes.”
“At main gate, five biker,” Arkar said. “How many in truck?”
“Two up front, Muller and another, and up to three more in the back. That gives us seven or eight total. We can’t take down that many men without risking hostage lives.”
“I start diversion,” Arkar said. “Steal RV and draw fire. You save people.”
“If we had one more man, proper weapons and nogs we could do it. But it would still be a suicide mission for the driver. Don’t kill anyone unless you’re discovered. Find out all you can and meet back here in ninety minutes.”
In the still night air, they heard crowd noises reminiscent of a sporting event. Additional lights came on behind the hospital RV.
* * * * *
Muller drew first blood, dancing on two good legs and using his nine-inch blade advantage to slice Melvin’s left delt. The hostages let out a groan. Muller hotdogged it, switching the blade to his left hand. His wounded left side hurt every time he made a thrust, but he kept his facial expression impassive. He circled and feinted like Ali while the former regimental light heavyweight boxer Melvin played Frazier and bored in, willing to absorb punishment in return for one shot at the knockout. Muller slashed Melvin’s right forearm and blood flowed.
Melvin gritted his teeth but kept coming, tiny blade swallowed in the maw of his off-hand. He exaggerated his left calf injury to disguise what speed he had left.
Muller had a short attention span. He also realized that darting in and out of a light circle made him a prime sniper’s target. He spread his arms wide and curtsied with a sardonic smile on his face, then stepped aside and slashed Melvin’s upper back as the former paratrooper charged past. “Olé!” he called as Melvin turned around.
A brave captive behind a flashlight saw her opportunity and raised the beam from the ground to Muller’s eyes just as Melvin charged. Blinded, Muller stepped back and slashed where Melvin should have been, but the big man had already launched himself into the air. Melvin’s extended left arm targeted Muller’s solar plexus but missed low and to the side. The Sharpfinger’s short blade jammed into Muller’s appendix. Muller’s forehand slash had missed high, but as he crumpled from the knife to the guts, he used a backhand right to chop down on Melvin’s left trapezoid. Melvin collapsed on his face, bleeding from four wounds.
Muller was on his knees, absorbing the pain that radiated from his guts. Crawling on his hands and knees to close the few feet between them, he raised the bayonet with both hands on the hilt and plunged it into Melvin’s back.
The hostages let out heartrending cries. Muller was too weak to pull the bayonet out. He panted for a moment and regrouped. Finally, he raised his head and grinned in triumph, blood pulsing from his wounded belly.
“Shoot whoever put that light in my face,” he decreed. “And fetch the doctor.”
From the crowd came Tina’s voice: “You can’t do both because I’m the one with the flashlight and I’m also the surgeon. I’ll sew you up, but first I examine the men you injured.”
“No deal,” Muller said and collapsed on his back.
* * * * *
Dirty Pete figured he was next in command and took stock. Norris clung to life in the backseat of the Ford where Burns cradled his head and dribbled water into the man’s mouth. Katerina played disc jockey in the RV, spinning and mixing fluids to horrible electronic music. Muller was as good as gut shot. Left where he was, he’d either bleed out in hours or die of peritonitis in days. Either was an ugly way to go, but Muller deserved it richly. In the meantime, there wasn’t any good reason to kill the only medical professional. “Bring me the fucking doctor!” Pete shouted.
“Get your hands off me!” Tina said. “I’m coming.” The grin on Stenner’s face when he followed her out of the crowd suggested he’d grabbed more than just Tina’s arm. Tina knelt by Melvin and felt in vain for a pulse. “He’s dead.”
Pat spoke for all of them when she said, “You murdered a wounded man in an unfair fight. You have no honor, and I pray to God you’ll find no mercy in this life or the next.” She broke free of friendly restraints and fell to her knees next to Melvin, hands clenched around her rosary and tears flowing down her cheeks.
Pete was starting to wonder if they’d stumbled upon a bunch of religious nuts with a miracle drug.
“Let me look at my friend that your boss shot, then I’ll deal with Muller,” Tina said.
“He’s not my boss, and take your time.”
Tina ran to Jaime and bent over him. “He’s still alive! Erinn! Bring my med bag from the table outside the RV.”
Erinn and one of the bikers had a disagreement that escalated when her knee to his balls landed off-center. Kurt partially doubled over but retained enough strength to punch Erinn in the chest and knock her to the ground. She tried to get up, and he hit her again. “You stay down, bitch!”
Bailey and Stenner found this exchange hilarious. Bails eventually found the right bag and brought it to Tina.
Tina had used the turmoil to confirm two things: Jaime was conscious, and the wounds weren’t as bad as she’d feared. One bullet had grazed his neck, and the other was above the left lung and well north of the heart. Tina helped him roll over onto his back as Erinn dug through the med bag.
Two bikers had a smoke ten feet away, ignoring the man they figured for a goner.
Tina sprinkled sulfa powder into Jaime’s entry and exit wounds, and applied air-tight seals to both sides. Covertly, she spread the blood around his neck wound, making it look worse than it was. “That should slow the bleeding. Do you want a pain pill?”
Jaime spoke in a low voice, knowing it would carry less far and raise fewer suspicions than a whisper. “Play up how badly I’m injured and get me a weapon. Then leave me.”
Tina stood up. “He needs surgery after I’m done with your friend,” she called out to Pete. “He’s bleeding internally from a chest wound and from the neck as well. If I don’t operate, he’ll die within hours.”
“I’m in no particular hurry about Rolfie, but there’s no fucking way that a spic who shot my friend gets operated on. He’s a dead man.”
To emphasize the point, Kurt walked over to Jaime and pissed on him. Jaime kept his eyes closed and focused on happier thoughts involving images of dead bikers butchered in imaginative ways.
Fraser walked over to Dirty Pete and had a quiet word: “We don’t have all their people. There are at least two soldiers who weren’t on Maggio’s Vegas trip list and aren’t here. We need Muller alive at least until they’re dead.”
“Fine. You supervise Florence Nightingale and I’ll check on Propeller Girl in the lab.”
As Tina ministered to Muller, Erinn sought out Sal and updated him on Jaime’s true condition. Sal thanked her and thought about that .357 Magnum behind a rock.
* * * * *
Arkar belly-crawled the last fifty meters at a slow pace. He passed the Telluride and wondered if any advanced weapons were inside. The white truck held an arsenal, but the latched doors meant he couldn’t enter undetected. The moans, excited shouts and then cries of lamentation told him there had been another death in their party. The indiscriminate flashlights made it hard to pick people out. More than twenty minutes passed before he confirmed four dismounted bikers, Burns and no one else other than the person or people in the RV. That would be the tiny white woman and Muller?
Wait, there he was! Mullers’ prone body rested atop a table. A fresh bandage adorned his waist and his hands clutched his right abdomen. That made f
ive gunmen—one wounded—and Burns. He could kill the leader with his first shot and one guard an instant later. The third guard had a handgun on his right hip and an unidentified long gun across his back. . . and then he saw a biker come into the light with an M-4. The man next to him also had an M-4—they’d found Johnny’s hidden stores. Only a coordinated attack would stand a chance of stopping them all simultaneously and preventing a hostage massacre.
Before turning around and crawling back, Arkar spotted Maung’s children and his son seated next to Zarni. Yonten’s appearance startled him—his son displayed intense hatred as he sized up the bikers. Yonten was planning something, and Arkar needed to be nearby to protect him. He redoubled his crawling speed until it was safe to stand up and run back to the rally point.
* * * * *
With Bob and now Ryan dead, the commune’s loving vibe had evaporated. By the time Carla returned in the ATV, Marsh and Andrew had finished an impromptu address to their constituents. Most of the crowd headed to the dorms to attempt to sleep. Maintenance workers in hazmat suits disinfected everywhere that the intruders had driven over or stepped on. Three body bags lay side by side. Carla hustled toward the command trailer where Shorty was standing guard outside. “Those same bikers attacked our camp and captured my group. Travis and Arkar are scouting them. I have ninety minutes to bring whatever you can spare.”
Andrew came out of the trailer and smiled as he saw Carla. “I thought I recognized your voice. Everything okay?”
“No! The bikers captured my people. Travis was too far away to see, but thinks we suffered two or three killed, and maybe shot one before the fighting ended. He knows you don’t have men to spare, but we need night-vision goggles and—”
“Slow down, slow down,” Andrew said. A stern Marsh stepped outside and joined the last Spicer. “Maybe you didn’t hear what that man said after Glenn shot Ryan, but he warned us to stay out of this unless we wanted repercussions. Marsh and I promised our people a commitment to peaceful isolation, and a stronger self-defense.”
“After Glenn shot Ryan,” Carla scornfully aped Marsh’s words, “I heard him say this place was full of women,” Carla said. “They’ll be back tomorrow to rape and kill unless we stop them tonight. You need to go on the offensive, not stick your head in the sand.”
“We’ve put out armed sentries and relocked the front gate,” Marsh said. “They won’t get back inside tonight.”
“Tonight? You’re not listening! Tonight, they’re shooting my people. And they’re already inside your perimeter. When they kill everyone or get bored, they’ll be back here, if not for the women, then for your food, fuel and weapons. We’re not asking you to fight for us, but you have to give us a chance—two night-vision devices and two machineguns, AR-15s or whatever, and lots of ammo. That’s it.”
Andrew put his palms up. “We don’t own any night-vision gadgets, so we can’t help you there. We have AR-15s, but only a few. I know the supplier didn’t ship all the ammunition we’d ordered. Shorty, what’s our count?”
“We have six ArmaLites and only two hundred rounds total,” Shorty said.
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Marsh said.
“My injured mother, sister and father are hostages,” Carla lied. “These people kill without a second thought. All we have are 9-millimeter pistols and a little ammo. What can you spare?”
Andrew looked at Marsh who looked back and floated a trial balloon. “We can give you a box of nine-millimeter ammo but if something happens, don’t tell them it came from us. Please.”
Carla was about to go ballistic when she caught a meaningful look from Shorty. “Fine. We’ll take it. I have to get back. Shorty?”
“I have a personal box of 9mm I’ll throw in. Do you need a weapon?”
“Only if you have a spare. I mostly shoot an M-4,” Carla said, alluding to her only firefight the prior week when she’d squeezed off a magazine from the backseat of a car hurtling across the Golden Gate Bridge.
Shorty chuckled. “Of course, you do. Maybe I can rustle up something. Come with me.”
Carla turned and followed him without another glance at spineless Andrew and Marsh.
* * * * *
Separating out the plasma with the Covid-20 antibodies from the whole blood wasn’t a challenge. The secret sauce was in the further distillation of the antibodies from the plasma. Katerina hadn’t slept well in the pickup truck, not on that corrugated bed with Muller pawing at her, and the drug cocktail in her system had fried her synapses. Muller’s curses aimed at everything and everyone as the 3M quack sewed him up didn’t help either. Within earshot now that she’d stopped the music, the bikers threatened the sheep huddled together begging for water or bathroom breaks.
Katerina also knew that there was no fucking way that their superstar scientist had driven down to Vegas. She needed a break, and she needed help. Fuck it. Off came the hood and down the steps she went. If nothing else, it was cooler out here. She walked over to where the doctor had just finished with Muller. They’d propped him partway up and the shirtless man was waving his arms and ordering people around like a despot.
“What are you doing out here?” he snapped.
“Rethinking my approach. I’m fairly certain I have everything I need to make the Dark Cure, but I’m not one hundred percent confident. We need that scientist.”
“She went to Vegas, or weren’t you listening?”
“The church picnic group arrived earlier today,” Katerina said. “Carla set up the lab equipment I’m using and left for Las Vegas? If so, why didn’t we see any southbound car on Route 95 when we drove up? She’s out there watching us along with anyone else who got away.”
“What do you suggest? Ask her to surrender and then beg her not to fuck up the process? That’s a couple of big favors from someone who doesn’t owe us any.”
“Owes has nothing to do with it. We have the whole fucking Maggio family over there. Pull one out, put a gun to their head and give Carla ten minutes to move her ass down here. Repeat until we run out of Maggios, or have a working batch of Dark Cure. For a tough guy, you’re all talk.”
“We’ll do it your way.” Muller watched as the bikers smiled and turned away, recognizing a pussy-whipping when they saw one.
Muller looked around. They were still two-plus hours from first light. He didn’t much care for the Maggios anyway. “Bring me Grandma Maggio!” he bellowed.
Pat had been tending to Melvin’s body, having rolled it over and cleaned him up as best she could. She was at peace with the good man’s death, calm in the certainty that he walked among angels. As soon as the sun rose, they’d dig a grave in this unforgiving soil and commit his remains to the earth. Playing in her head was that verse from Ezekiel that Melvin so favored, about opposing the tyranny of evil men. She welcomed the challenge as she heard her name called by Melvin’s killer.
Sal headed Pat off. “Don’t antagonize him,” he murmured. “We just need to survive until daylight and Travis will figure something out.”
* * * * *
At the rendezvous point one hundred meters away and up the rise, Arkar waited for his slower friend. Travis puffed up, left ankle still stiff and side aching from the IED that had taken Maung’s life. “What’s your count?” he asked the Burmese.
“Four bikers, wounded Muller, wounded Burns and a woman.”
“And there’s a sick person inside the pickup,” Travis said. “I saw Burns help him drink. That means they have Covid-20 infections and will be weakening. What about our people? I saw a body that looked like Melvin.”
“Melvin is dead. I didn’t see Jaime, but Tina helped one man on ground. I think that him. He kill one biker.”
“Shit.”
In the distance, they heard the ATV returning. Travis waited for the engine to cut out three hundred meters away, but it kept coming. “Arkar! Run back there and stop her. If they hear her, we’re in trouble.” Arkar took off like a shot, and Travis jogged-stumbled behind.
Carla had forgotten where the meeting point was and expected Arkar’s command to stop. She obliged and the little man ran up and caught his breath. “Where’s Travis?” she asked.
“Behind. Coming.”
The dark hid her immense relief. “I brought two rifles, one hundred rifle cartridges and fifty 9mm rounds, plus three flashlights.”
Arkar used a flashlight to inspect the weapons—two Winchester Model 70 deer rifles with twenty-six-inch barrels and Leupold 3x9 variable scopes. One was brand new and the other one must have been thirty years old.
“The foreman Shorty lent me his personal weapons,” Carla said. “He said the rifle shoots flat at three thousand feet per second, whatever that means.”
From the darkness came a reassuring voice: “That means we can hit them from a half-mile away.” Travis panted into view and inspected the ammunition boxes. “Nosler 270 Winchester Short Mags: the Cadillacs of hunting loads. Excellent.” Next up were the Hornady XTP 9mm cartridges. Ryder and Arkar grunted their approvals—Shorty hadn’t stinted on quality. They stuffed their pockets with each type, loaded the bolt action rifles’ magazines with three rounds and chambered a fourth. They were ready to move out.
Carla held out a Remington Model 870 twelve-gauge shotgun. “He gave me this and told me it held seven shots. He showed me how to load, hold and fire it.”
“Shoot it with both eyes open,” Travis said. “Jam the butt hard into your shoulder because it kicks like a mule. Fire at anything fifty yards away or closer, and you’ll put it down. Do you have shells?”
“Yes. Here.” She handed over four boxes of Federal LE Tactical 00 Buck shells, twenty rounds in all.
“Put one box in your pocket and hide the others under the front seat,” Travis said. “Leave the key in the ATV’s ignition. Come stay with us until it’s light in case they heard you pull up and sent a man around to flank us. When we can see, we can figure out a plan. If worse comes to worst, the ATV is your getaway car.”