by Lisa Rivers
That said, he took his foot off the brake and we moved forward. He had made his point.
Not long after that, I noticed I could no longer see my car in the rearview mirror. Apparently, the two buzzards in it had dropped back to stay out of sight while the transaction took place. If something went wrong, as things like this often do, they would likely act as backup.
The Mexicans were waiting for us. They were four of them in two SUVs.
From about two hundred feet away, Russ put on the brakes.
“I don’t know these people, do you Buster?” He unsnapped the strap holding his pistol.
“I can’t say that I do. It damn sure ain’t Paco and his bunch.”
“What do you think I should do?” the deputy asked Buster.
“I’m not real sure, but it’s too late to turn back now. I would image they work for Paco. Drive about half the distance and then let them come to us.”
Russ pulled forward about a hundred feet and placed the vehicle in park. He and Buster lowered their windows.
For what seemed like several minutes, but was probably only a couple, the Mexicans simply stared. Finally, one, as if relenting, walk over and picked up a briefcase off the hood of an SUVs. He carried a large pistol in a shoulder holster. He walked toward us and went to the driver’s window when he reached the vehicle.
“You got the money?” Russ asked.
As if to verify there were women in the vehicle, the Mexican first ran his eyes over me and then cut them to the middle seat. Apparently satisfied, he extended the briefcase to Russ.
“Tell the mujers to step out,” he directed to Russ.
Russ ignore him and popped open the case. He quickly counted the money.
“What are you trying to pull? There’s only forty thousand here. The agreement was for twenty a piece. Where’s Paco?” Russ demanded to know. His right hand eased toward his pistol.
“Paco doesn’t run things anymore. I do. The price has just gone down yesterday.”
“That not going to work,” Russ said. His hand now rested on the butt of his service weapon.
“You can leave here with forty grand or maybe not leave here at all, amigo.” The Mexican slowly moved his hand to the weapon situated on the right side of his chest.
Russ was an idiot like his cohorts. He drew his weapon. Just as it was coming up, the Mexican shot him in the head. Blood and brain matter spatter my face. I quickly ducked to the floor and tried to flatten myself into the foot-well.
I didn’t see what happened in the next few seconds, but the other girls later told me that as soon as the Mexican shot Russ, Buster projected the assault weapon out the window and shot the Mexican.
After hunkering in the tire-well for several seconds, I opened my eyes. Not knowing what would happen next, I stared up at the window. It took a moment to realize that Russ’s dead hand lay a couple of feet from my face. In that dead hand was his pistol.
Taking the weapon in my own hands, I quietly slid the mechanism halfway back to ensure a round was in the chamber. My boyfriend had taught me how to do that. At the time, I never dreamed I would need that knowledge.
I heard a door open behind me. I projected my head just enough to see Buster had rolled over the back of his seat and opened the rear-hatch. Once he was out, he hunkered down and moved along the driver’s side of the vehicle. He moved about halfway down when I saw his head go out of sight as if he had hunkered even further or dropped to one knee for a shooter’s stance. I didn’t see any sign of Clete. It appeared he was also hiding on the floorboard. My friends were doing the same.
I was a dead woman either way I went. I could stay hunkered here and sooner or later die in the fusillade that was sure to come from the remaining Mexicans. If they didn’t kill me in the fire fight, they’d kill me once they approached the vehicle. I had but one option. Die trying to survive. That appealed to me more.
Silently as possible, I opened my door and slid out. I slowly projected my head around the opened door to see what the Mexicans were doing. For some reason, there was no gunfire from either side. Peeking around the door, I saw the three surviving human traffickers in their SUVs and backing away to make a retreat. They might have thought more gunmen were in the sheriff’s vehicle. They could have even thought it was a setup.
Now that he no longer had targets, Buster would likely pull Russ’s body from the driver’s seat so he could move the vehicle. Luckily, I had the frame of mine to drop to my knees and look to the far side and determine his location. Just as I figured, he had stood and was beside the door.
My heart pounding and my body shaking so badly I could hardly move, I begun crawling to the rear of the vehicle. Once there, I continued to the left rear. I stood on wobbly legs and stepped around the left rear corner. Buster saw me and turned. He was bringing up the rifle when I shot him in the chest. For a moment, he looked at me stupidly, but made no further attempt to level his weapon. I shot him in the same area twice more. Collapsing, he fell back against the open door and sit down. Just to balance out my rounds, I shot him in the forehead.
Buster wouldn’t be kidnapping or whipping any more women. Not in this world.
I heard movement behind me. Turning, Clete was already out the rear hatch and dragging his foot into the desert.
“Stop right there, Clete, or I’ll put a bullet in the back of your head.”
Clete stopped.
Clete knew what had happened to Buster before he tried to run, but forcing him to come back and actually see the corpse had a profound effect on him. He dropped to his knees and began the most bloodcurdling wailing I had ever heard. I let him wail while I collected the assault weapon Buster had been holding. Once in my hand, I walked back and put the maw against Clete’s temple.
“I want you to get up and put Buster’s and Russ’s body in the back of the SUV,” I told him, giving a little shove of the barrel for emphasize.
It took a while to convince Clete to drag his dead brother’s and the deputy’s body to the rear of the vehicle and place them inside. In the meanwhile, I told the other girls to get back in the vehicle. I also asked who could use the pistol. Sarah volunteered that she could. I gave her the 9mm while I held on to the assault rifle.
After Clete loaded the bodies, I made him crawl over the corpses and over the back of the rear seat and sit where he had originally been sitting. I crawled into the driver’s seat and twisted about to see out the rear glass. I left the driver’s door open for a quick exit.
Rudy and Joe should be showing up anytime now.
In fact, I had thought they would have already been here. Maybe they weren’t as good a backup as Buster might have thought. It would seem they were waiting until the battle was over to make their appearance. Once they did show, I had a surprise for them.
Finally, after what seemed a hundred years, to our rear in the distance I saw a roiling of dust. A few minutes later, I recognized my car just slightly ahead of that dust. I instructed Sarah to stay right where she was and only use the pistol in a last-minute act of self-defense. I would handle the two rednecks. Pushing the safety off the rifle, I sat prepared to exit the vehicle as quickly as possible. I glanced to where the dead Mexican lay. Little creepy things were starting to crawl about his body.
The redneck bastards stopped my car about forty feet to the rear of the SUV. Had I planned it, I couldn’t have positioned them any better. They then sat there for a long time before they decided to get out. I’m sure it was a puzzling scene for them. With the tinted glass, they couldn’t see who might be in the vehicle. The fact there was no live Mexicans around likely relieved some of their sense of danger.
Fortunately, for my car as well as myself, they both stepped out at about the same time. I waited until they were about twenty feet away before I stepped out, surprising both. I’m sure it was a surprise of a lifetime. In fact, it was the last surprise of a lifetime. I shot the driver first. The passenger tried to run. The only thing that got him was several bullets in the back.
Just to make sure they would not be doing the things they’d been doing any more, I put a couple of rounds into each of their heads.
Prologue
It took a while to find an elongated rock of sufficient weight and size to hold down the accelerator. I didn’t want it to press the gas all the way to the floorboard and possibly stall out the vehicle. I just wanted it to gather enough speed to go where I intended it to. For that to happen, I found another rock about an inch and a half thick and placed it beneath the accelerator.
About an hour and a half ago, the girls helped Clete load the two bodies with each carrying a limb. We put one more body in the cargo area in the rear and one on the last seat. We then had a little pow-wow where I suggest an idea that had been simmering in the back of my head, but not yet brought to a boil.
To a woman, we all agreed that what we had been through was degrading enough without all the press that would surely follow. I could visualize my own picture in the paper and a story beneath it telling how I had been anally raped. They might even write about the butt plugs. I could never hold my head up again.
So, that being agreed upon, we also agreed that for that not to happen, this entire gang of rapists needed to disappear from the face of the earth. That recalled the chasm Russ had shown us earlier.
We had one tiny problem. What was we going to do with Clete who we had placed in a second-row seat while we had I conference? I gave it a lot of thought as I’m sure the other women did. No one could come up with any notion.
Then, Sarah, still holding the 9mm, turned from the group and walked to the SUV. We could hear Clete still wailing when she opened the door. She must have looked at Clete for several seconds before she lifted the Glock and put two slugs into what little brain he had. It wasn’t exactly what I would have preferred, but it did solve the problem.
With my rocks in place, I cranked the SUV. I already had it pointed directly toward the crevice we had been shown earlier. I put my right foot on the brake while my left remained on the ground. Leaning my body as far out the door as I could and still touch the shift, I put the vehicle in drive. I then jumped back.
It worked as well as we had hoped. The vehicle was still gathering speed when it cleared the lip of the chasm. We listen, but never heard it hit bottom. Now, that’s deep.
A hundred years from now if someone dares to venture to the bottom of that hole, they are going to be puzzled. I’m sure people will speculate as to what had happened. If I’m still around, I might even explain it to them.
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