Blood Price (Dark Places Of The Earth 1)

by Evans, Jon

  “And let’s hope they’re heading for the airstrip,” Lawrence said from the cab. He kicked Rogue into gear and we leapt away, headed for Black Rock Airport.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Lawrence explained. “Both of the planes big enough to reach Mexico now have propane tanks discreetly duct-taped onto them. The idea is we get there before they do, turn on the tanks, hurry them along so they don’t notice what’s going on, and just as they take off we drive along beside them and light them up with a blast from one of these flamethrowers. Steve rigged the tanks so if the propane catches it’ll be like a fuse and the tank will blow a few minutes later.”

  “Oh,” I said. It didn’t sound like a very good plan to me, but it wasn’t like I had a better one handy, and my mind and body were both badly shaken. Still, there was something about it that bothered me, and not just the fact it relied on Rube Goldberg propane bombs. I tried to work out what it was. I was distracted by sensation slowly returning to my hands. An intensely painful, pins-and-needles-on-fire sensation that brought tears to my eyes. But there was something wrong, something very wrong.

  “Shit,” I said. “They can see us.”

  “What?”

  “They’ve got two rifles with fuck-off nightvision scopes. That’s how they caught me. They can see us fine right –”

  There was a loud bang as something metallic slammed hard into Rogue’s side. Steve, Talena and I fell to the bed. I howled as my cracked ribs collided with a propane tank.

  “Fucking hell,” Steve said.

  Another loud bang followed, and Rogue’s engine developed a loud, unhealthy whop-whop-whop noise. Then a popping noise, which I guess was a shot that missed. It didn’t matter. The previous shot had been sufficient. Rogue’s engine faltered, sputtered, slowed and stopped.

  I got to my knees and looked around. Ahead and to our right, about a mile away, two lines of lights indicated Black Rock City’s airstrip. Steve knelt up next to me and looked through the binoculars at the spider-car, maybe half a mile ahead and to our left.

  “The money’s in the boot,” Steve reported. “They’re climbing in now.”

  The spider-car’s headlights winked on and began to move. Away from Black Rock City, away from us, towards the airstrip and plane that would take them to Mexico.

  “It is not too late,” Saskia said fiercely.

  Lawrence said, “Steve. Can you fix her?”

  Steve vaulted to the playa, popped open Rogue’s hood, and illuminated the engine with his flashlight. “Maybe,” he said doubtfully. “She doesn’t look good. Hard to say without giving it a go.”

  Saskia jumped down too. “Lawrence. Talena. Come. We must light the propane before they are gone.”

  “No,” I said weakly. “No. They’ll see you coming.”

  “They won’t be looking for us,” Talena said. “They think they’ve won.”

  “They have won. Accept it. We’re alive. That’s all we get.”

  “No,” Saskia said. “I will not let them go. I will go myself if I must.”

  “No. Talena, don’t let her go,” I said.

  Talena thought about it a moment as I climbed painfully down from Rogue.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not letting them go that easy. Lawrence. You coming?”

  “Well,” Lawrence drawled, getting out of the cab, “I suppose after all this driving, stretching my legs would do me good.”

  “Don’t,” I said to Talena. “Stop it. Don’t be an idiot.”

  She kissed me on the cheek. “See you in a bit,” she said. Her voice was cheerful, mischievous. “I love you. See you in just a little while. Steve, keep an eye on him, don’t let him go anywhere, he’s too badly hurt.”

  I reached out to grab her but she was gone. I watched her and Lawrence and Saskia sprint across the desert towards the airstrip. I was coldly certain that they were being watched. I almost hoped they would be shot at. If that didn’t happen, it probably meant they were being lured in so Zoltan and Zorana could be sure of killing them.

  There had to be something I could do. “Steve,” I said. “I’m going for a walk.”

  He emerged from Rogue’s hood and looked at me. “Paul mate. Don’t know if that’s such a grand idea.”

  “You going to stop me?”

  He thought about it for a second. “I reckon not. Might come with you though.”

  “Don’t,” I said. “If you can fix this beast, that’s our best chance. Good luck.”

  I didn’t stay to hear his response.

  My idea was so simple it barely qualified as a plan. Talena and Saskia and Lawrence were following the spider-car towards the airstrip from the Black Rock City side. I would simply cross the airstrip and approach from the other side. There was plenty of time. Zoltan and Zorana and company still had to transfer the money into the airplane, prepare it for flight, taxi out to the airstrip, and so forth. With any luck Talena and Saskia and Lawrence would find some way to harass them without getting shot. No one would expect me to show up from the other side. I might be able to do something useful.

  Then again, one of the reasons no one expected me to show up was that no one thought I was capable of doing anything at all. I was battered, bruised, and nauseous, with two cracked ribs and a concussion. I felt barely able to stand upright, much less fight bad guys. But the woman I loved was out there, with a woman I thought of as my little sister, and a man who was one of my closest friends, battling a woman and two men I hated.

  I reached deep down and found a glowing coal of rage, somehow undimmed by pain and fear and nausea. I tried to fan the coal, to breathe on it, make it catch flame, make it burn. Fuck my throbbing dizzy head. Fuck my weak and wobbly muscles. Fuck the two knives that stabbed me every time I took a breath. Fuck pain. Pain is only a warning. Pain doesn’t matter. The only things that matter are love and revenge.

  I walked. Then I walked faster. I grunted under my breath, but it was as much with anger as with pain, and then the anger began to predominate, to burn, and then, somehow, somewhere, I found the strength to run.

  * * *

  I leaned against the cool metal of a tiny airplane and tried to catch my breath. I was covered in sweat. My forehead was bleeding again. I was torn between the need to breathe deeply to recover my strength, and the need to breathe shallowly to avoid the explosive agony of my cracked ribs. I was cold and naked and thirsty and dizzy. But I had made it to the airstrip and I hadn’t yet heard any shots. That meant Lawrence and Talena and Saskia weren’t far away, probably hiding on the other side of this airplane parking lot.

  Two lines of little electric lights extended into the playa, outlining the Black Rock City airstrip. They provided the only illumination except for the flickering light of a single flashlight, its location also the source of the only sounds, the muffled grunts of Zoltan and Sinisa and the Mexican as they struggled to transfer the three-hundred-pound crate to their getaway plane. I could barely see Zorana’s outline atop the spider-car, rifle to her shoulder, sighting towards the Man, away from me. They obviously knew they had been followed. The other airplanes, barely silhouetted against the night by the airstrip lights, looked like ghostly alien mausoleums, like this was some kind of surrealist cemetery.

  I took stock of my surroundings. The thirty or so aircraft here were parked in a grid seven planes wide and four deep, facing along the airstrip, with about ten feet between wingtips and enough space between propellers and tailfins for planes to taxi in and out of the grid. Sinisa’s airplane was the third airplane from the left, in the second row. The one I leaned against was on the far right of the front row.

  I tried to think of something cunning I could do to cause a distraction. Blow up one of these other airplanes? Start one up and drive it into their getaway plane? Or at least find some kind of weapon? I reached for the door handle of the one I leaned against and gingerly tried it. It was locked. And even if it hadn’t been, I knew nothing about airplanes and I doubted anyone had left a loaded .44 Magnum out fo
r emergency use.

  At least I had the element of surprise. I started moving towards the getaway plane. My bare feet were silent against the hard playa surface. I scuttled from plane to plane, staying underneath wings and behind cockpits, trying to stay unseen. Nobody shouted a warning, and soon I was lurking behind the getaway plane’s neighbour, watching the situation. The spider-car was parked on the other side of the big Cessna 182. Zoltan and Sinisa and the Mexican were trying to wedge the money through the Cessna’s cockpit door, but it was a poor fit, and very heavy, and they only had a single flashlight, resting somewhere in the cockpit, to guide them.

  “Push,” Zoltan grated. “Fucking push.”

  “It won’t fit. We have to turn it around,” the blond Mexican said.

  “It will fit,” Sinisa sait. “Push. Harder. Harder!”

  It occurred to me that if Zorana was looking the other way, I could walk right up to their airplane without being seen. The others were focused on the illuminated cockpit, not the dark exterior, too busy with the money to pay any attention to me. But Zorana might have seen me approach, might have the gun trained on me, waiting for me to step out into the open. I made myself take two quick steps towards the getaway plane before allowing myself to worry too much about that possibility, paused for a second, observed that I had not been shot, and walked up to the getaway plane, behind the wing where the fuselage tapered down to the tail. I was maybe fifteen feet away from the three men fighting with the crate full of money on the other side of the aircraft.

  I squinted at the Cessna, trying to work out where the hell that propane tank had been affixed. At first I had thought that that was the weakest part of their plan, the tank was bound to be seen. But here I was actively looking and still unable to find it.

  A shot blasted out and my whole body twanged and shuddered like a bowstring, I gasped and dropped to my knees. But it hadn’t come anywhere near me.

  “Get this fucking money in now,” Zoltan said.

  From my new vantage point on my knees, I saw a standard-issue propane tank between the Cessna’s rear wheels, attached to the fuselage by several miles of duct tape. The tank’s nozzle faced towards the nose of the airplane and I had to crouch and reach as far as I could to turn it open. There was a loud thunk as the crate full of money finally got through the door and fell into the airplane. My fingers found the little wheel. I twisted it and was rewarded by a gaseous hiss. Now all I had to do was light it. Trying to clear my dizzy head and work out how I could acquire fire, I sat back on my haunches, cracked the back of my head against the Cessna’s fuselage, and yowled.

  Zoltan, Sinisa, and the Mexican froze with surprise. I leapt to my feet and started to run. Two shots boomed through the night as I ducked behind the neighbouring airplane, and in the dim light I saw a jagged hole the size of my hand materalize in its fuselage. I didn’t know what kind of ammunition Zorana had in that rifle but I guessed it would kill Kevlar-vested elephants with a single shot. Something, gasoline from the smell, began to leak out of the airplane. I decided this was not a safe place and kept running. Then I heard footsteps behind me. I glanced back. One of them was pursuing me. The Mexican, carrying one of the rifles.

  I sprinted to the next airplane over and hid. He followed, walking leisurely. I could just barely make out the outline of his body. He walked with his rifle up against his shoulder so he could see through its nightvision scope. He knew which airplane I had hidden behind. He was coming straight for me.

  I took two quick steps to my left, then abruptly reversed direction and sprinted to my right. The feint worked, he fired but missed, and I took cover behind the next plane. He kept walking, unhurried, unconcerned. It didn’t matter how many times I could pull a trick like that. This game of cat-and-mouse would inevitably fall out in his favour. I was naked and unarmed and there was only one more airplane between me and the open playa.

  Desperate, I decided to wait beneath the wing strut of this airplane, make him come so close I might possibly be able to leap out and wrestle with him. He would probably get a shot before I reached him. Even if I didn’t, he was stronger than me, in my current condition I would lose a wrestling match with Tori Amos, never mind a Mexican gangbanger with a gun. But I had no other chance at all.

  The Mexican approached. I crouched and tensed and told myself to be ready for one final, desperate burst of strength. I wasn’t sure I would even be able to stand up, much less launch myself at him like a tiger. He came closer still. I saw him silhouetted against the arstrip lights, right at the nose of the airplane I hid behind. I saw him turning to face me. He was still a good ten feet away.

  “G’day mate,” a loud Australian voice said. “Need a light?”

  The Mexican jerked with surprise and spun around. Too late. The jet of flame hit him dead center and he screamed. Steve kept the flamethrower trained on the Mexican as he dropped his gun and flailed around madly, his clothes and hair on fire, and finally fell writhing and screaming to the ground. I smelled roast meat and for an instant I flashed back to the pig that Dragan and the Mostar Tigers had barbecued on a spit, centuries ago and parsecs away. I saw Steve by the firelight. He had not repaired Rogue; instead he had strapped a flamethrower onto his back and come here on foot, just in time.

  Another shot echoed through the night, and I heard the earsplitting krang! of metal on metal. For a moment Steve looked like he had grown a halo of flame. Then he was shrugging off the flamethrower and running. His back was on fire. He had gotten about ten steps away when the propane tank burst into a cloud of flame and Steve tumbled heavily to the ground. Shrapnel rattled loudly off of airplanes. I rushed to help Steve, who had managed to roll onto his back and extinguish it, hoping that all this sudden heat had clouded Zorana’s nightvision scope.

  “You okay?” I asked, stupidly.

  “Tell you the truth, mate,” he croaked, “I’ve had better days.”

  He managed to say it with a smile. I figured even Steve would stop smiling if something vital had been hit, and I sighed with relief. Behind me, an engine started, and a propeller began to rotate.

  “I’ll be right as rain,” Steve said. “Go get the bastards.”

  A fine idea. If only I knew how. The gun, the gun the Mexican had dropped. I turned to recover it, but somehow, amazingly, the Mexican was not only still alive, he had grabbed the gun and managed to stagger back towards the airplane noises. Patches of his clothing were still on fire, and he moved like a badly wounded animal, navigating as if he was blind, guiding himself only by sound. I tried to chase him but I had no strength with which to sprint and by the time he got to the getaway plane I had made it only as far as its neighbour, the airplane that had leaked a large puddle of gasoline from the gunshot hole the size of my hand.

  There had been no gunfire since the shot that destroyed Steve’s flamethrower because Zorana had been busy climbing down from the spider-car and coming around to this side of the airplane. It was still dark but I could see her long hair blowing in the propeller wash. I half-expected her to shoot the burned Mexican rather than burden themselves with him, but she stood still, holding the rifle to her shoulder, as Zoltan half-guided, half-pulled the burned man into the Cessna. Sinisa had donned a headset and was flicking switches and pulling levers, obviously making ready to depart. I remembered he had told me, long ago, that he was a licensed pilot.

  I saw a light on the other side of the airplane. Fire. Saskia, standing alone, holding something aflame. She held some kind of torch in her hand, a stick soaked with oil by the way it had erupted in bright flame. I could see she was about to run for the airplane, try to turn on the propane tank – they didn’t know I had already done that – and light the fuse that could destroy the getaway Cessna.

  Zorana saw or heard something, and she turned around and knelt. She was going to shoot Saskia from underneath the fuselage, and Saskia couldn’t see her.

  “No!” I howled, ignoring the pain from my cracked ribs, bellowing as loudly as I could to be heard over
the propeller. “Don’t!”

  My shout might have distracted Zorana. The strong propeller wash might have had something to do with it. But it helped, too, that in the distance, in the heart of Black Rock City, a blinding fusillade of fireworks, the overture to the Burn, rocketed into the air and momentarily painted the night sky white. Zorana fired and missed. Lawrence leapt out of the darkness, grabbed Saskia, and pulled her behind the neighbouring airplane on the other side. She still held the lit torch in her hand.

  “Throw it!” I bellowed. “The tank is on!”

  Zoltan shouted something Serbian at Zorana. She shouted back and started firing almost at random towards Lawrence and Saskia. Then she turned and fired four shots in my general direction. I dropped and huddled behind the airplane, my eyes tightly shut, as bullets tore past me and plunged into the playa. One of them struck some kind of spark and the pool of gasoline not ten feet away from me caught fire and began to burn.

  The shooting stopped. The burning gasoline was so hot I felt my skin beginning to scald. I rolled away from it, half-certain that Zorana would get a clear view and shoot me, and forced my eyes to open. Zorana was not looming over me with the gun. She was inside the cockpit and the door was closing. The Cessna taxied forward, turned to the right, and began to advance down the lane between the first two rows of airplanes.

  Saskia rushed forward out of nowhere, the burning torch in her hand, and threw it at the Cessna. I held my breath, hoping – but it was just a stick of plywood half-soaked with oil, the propeller wash caught it and flung it back before it could reach the propane tank duct-taped between the plane’s rear wheels. We needed to throw something dense – like a flaming baseball, my mind gibbered – and we needed to throw it with impossible accuracy, into the propeller’s gale-force artificial wind, to have any chance of igniting the propane. Even if I had a flaming baseball, it would be an impossible throw. They were going to get away. My whole body sagged with defeat for a moment.