The Devil’s Share

by Wallace Stroby

  Greggs groaned into his palm, bucked again, bills falling to the floor, his T-shirt darkening with blood. Hicks got in closer. “It’s okay,” he said into his ear. “Don’t fight it, brother. Don’t fight it. Go easy.”

  Greggs shut his eyes tight, then snapped them open again. Hicks drew out the ice pick, drove it home in a different spot.

  Greggs’s struggles weakened. His right leg spasmed, the heel tapping the floor. Hicks imagined what was going on inside him, the lungs filling with blood, the heart slowing, sluggish. He drew out the ice pick, took his hand away, stepped back.

  Greggs was gasping, dragging in air, blood on his lips. Red bubbles rose through the holes in his T-shirt. Hicks put a hand on his right shoulder, gently pushed him back against the wall again. “Easy, brother.”

  Hicks traced the red tip of the ice pick across Greggs’s chest, to his best guess at where the heart was. He held it there, no pressure yet. Their eyes locked. Greggs’s lips were moving.

  “Sha…,” he breathed. “Shar…”

  “I’m sorry, man,” Hicks said. “I really am.” He leaned forward, used his weight to push the ice pick all the way home. Greggs’s eyelids fluttered, and then he was still.

  Hicks stood back, breathing hard. He drew out the ice pick, looked down at the blood on his hand. He’d been careful, so there was none on his pants, and only a few drops on his jacket sleeve. Nothing anyone would notice at night.

  In the kitchenette, he ran water in the small sink, washed the ice pick clean, then his hand. Blood swirled pink in the drain.

  He shut off the water, left the ice pick in the sink, dried his hands with a paper towel. Then he went back to the daybed, picked up all the bills, replaced them in the envelope, snapped the rubber bands around it. The envelope went back into his pocket.

  He had to move Greggs’s body to the side to get the cell phone. It would have his number in it. Even though he’d called from a burner, he didn’t want to leave any connection behind. He put the phone with the money.

  He used a dirty T-shirt from the breakfast nook to wipe down everything he’d touched. Then he went into the kitchenette, opened the cabinet beneath the stove, and found what he was looking for, the two propane lines coming in from the outside tanks.

  Using the T-shirt, he opened drawers, found a pair of pliers in the second one, mixed in with silverware, pens, and small tools. He started to shut the drawer again, saw the edge of the black box stuck in the back. He drew it out, knowing already what it was. He lifted the lid, and inside on a bed of cotton was Greggs’s Silver Star, on a red, white, and blue ribbon.

  He looked at the medal, then back at Greggs, set the box on the counter.

  There was no time to search the camper, see if he’d left notes, a journal. It was time to finish this.

  He left two windows partially open for oxygen, closed the rest, then knelt in front of the stove. With the T-shirt covering the pliers’ teeth to prevent sparks, he unscrewed the propane lines. Gas began to hiss into the kitchenette, the smell of the odorant making his eyes water.

  There was a small toaster oven on the counter. He unplugged it and carried it into the bedroom at the far end of the camper, holding his breath against the gas. Just a mattress on the floor here, tangled sheets, scattered clothes. He set the oven on the floor, then ripped the T-shirt in half and shoved part of it inside, pushing it up against the coils. He plugged the cord into a wall socket, turned the dial to its highest setting, wiped down what he’d touched. The oven began to hum.

  He closed the bedroom door to give himself more time, got the ice pick from the sink, and left the camper. Shutting the door tightly behind him, he wiped the outside latch clean, then went down the steps.

  There was a single light still on in the house. Sharon waiting up to hear from him. He hadn’t wanted it like this, but there was no other way. And he’d have to be quick, before the camper went up.

  He held the ice pick down at his side, shoved the torn T-shirt into his jacket pocket. He would need it. As he started up the driveway, the dog began to bark.

  SEVEN

  Crissa steered the rental car to the side of the road, looked off into the empty desert, heat haze rising, and thought, This is the place.

  She got out of the car, taking the binoculars with her. Only forty-five minutes from Las Vegas, the city already out of sight behind the hills. In the distance, snowcapped mountains, but here, only an endless stretch of parched red earth, strewn with boulders.

  She’d driven another twenty miles south, still scouting, but hadn’t found a better place, so she’d turned around, come back. The land here was mostly flat, but on the other side of the road was an arroyo that ran parallel to the highway. No guardrail, and ten feet deep at least.

  On this side was a scattering of rocks, the largest about twelve feet high and twenty feet wide. High-tension lines in the far distance, and about two hundred yards past the rocks a single cell tower, maybe a hundred and fifty feet high, bristling with antennae at different levels. There was a cluster of equipment cabinets in an enclosure at its base, surrounded by a high chain-link fence topped with razor wire.

  She wore a black pullover, jeans, and boots, and the heat was a shock after the air-conditioning in the car. From Texas, she’d flown directly to Vegas, picked up the rental. Standing out here now, in the middle of this emptiness, she felt for the first time that it was all real, that it might work.

  She heard a distant thrum, looked north and saw a dark shape coming down the road, seeming to rise and fall in the blacktop haze. A tractor-trailer, moving fast. She walked back to the wide boulder. It would be a good vantage point. From here, she could see anything coming down the highway in either direction. The truck blew past, raising dust.

  Behind the boulder was a natural depression, already shadowed. She gouged at the ground with a boot heel. Beneath an inch of dusty topsoil, the earth was packed flat and hard. Enough traction for a vehicle, she guessed, especially if it was four-wheel drive.

  She pushed her sunglasses up into her hair, raised the binoculars. Empty land in all directions, mountains beyond. To the west, California and the Mojave. To the south, Arizona and, beyond that, Mexico. Above the southern mountains, a white contrail etched slowly across the blue sky, the plane too high to be seen.

  She got back in the car, set the binoculars on the seat. It was a new Nissan Altima, fewer than two thousand miles on it, and she’d need to be careful taking it off the road. It would be bad news to get stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, break an axle on a rock, or drive into loose sand she couldn’t get out of, have to call for a tow.

  She started the engine, pulled slowly off the shoulder and into the dirt, the car rising and falling on the uneven ground. Once behind the boulder, she backed and filled until the entire car was in shadow. With the motor running, she got out, walked north up the highway for about two hundred feet, looked back. Standing on the center line, she couldn’t see the Nissan at all. She went another hundred feet, where the angle of the road changed, but the car was still hidden.

  She walked in the other direction, stopped, looked back, went fifty feet more and did it again. The car was out of sight from all angles. It would do.

  She got back in the car, put it in gear. The rear tires bit the ground easily, with no fishtailing. She pulled out of the shelter of the rock, back onto the solid ground of the shoulder, and parked.

  The digital camera she’d brought was cheap, but good enough for her purposes. She took it from the glove box, got out of the car, and began snapping pictures in all directions. Wide landscape shots at first, then details: the surface of the road, the loose stones on the shoulder, the hollow behind the boulder. She walked out toward the cell tower, took distance shots before moving in closer. Inside the chain-link fence, squat boxes of machinery hummed. On one of them a bright yellow sign with a black lightning bolt warned DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE!

  Something moved in her peripheral vision, and she turned to see a jackrabbit
run past, then vanish into an unseen hole. The wind whined through the razor wire. A tumbleweed blew against the chain-link.

  She walked back to the road, her shadow stretching out in front of her. In the coolness of the car, she got out her cell phone and dialed Hicks’s number.

  When he answered, she said, “I found it. You need to come take a look.”

  “When? Where?”

  “As soon as you can. And I’ll show you when you get here.”

  “I’ve been traveling,” he said. “I just got back to—”

  “Call me when you get to Vegas,” she said, and hung up.

  * * *

  At the motel restaurant, she sat at a table near the big window, looked out at dark mountains, lightning pulsing in the clouds. The motel was thirty miles from the spot she’d picked, set back from the highway and close to the hills. She’d finished her dinner, was on her second glass of wine. Her work for the day was done. She could relax until she heard from Hicks.

  The restaurant was dark paneling, wagon-wheel chandeliers. There was a bar beyond, through a short hallway and swinging saloon doors. Noise coming out of there, laughter, and country music from a jukebox.

  Occasionally a tractor-trailer rolled by on the interstate, rattling the chandeliers. Other than that, it was blackness out there, broken only by flashes of dry lightning that, for all she knew, were a hundred miles away.

  “Ma’am, I couldn’t help but notice you’re all by yourself out here.”

  She looked up. The man was in his fifties maybe, thin, wearing cowboy boots, a Western shirt with snap buttons, a belt buckle in the shape of a pair of dice. His hair was combed back and cut with silver, and he held a black felt cowboy hat at his side. Being a gentleman.

  “What I’d like to do,” he said, “is buy you another glass of whatever it is you’re drinking there.”

  “Thank you. But I’m just about to call it a night. Maybe some other time.”

  “Not even one glass? It’s still early, and I’d hate to have to drink alone.”

  “Thanks, but no.”

  “Well, allow me to introduce myself at least,” he said. “My name is—” He started to draw out a chair. She hooked a foot around one of its legs, stopped him.

  “Drift,” she said.

  He met her eyes, saw something there he wasn’t used to. He straightened, looked down at her, his smile gone. He gave a slight bow, turned away, said, “Dyke,” under his breath, and went back down the hallway and through the saloon doors. She watched him go, wondering if he was staying at the motel, if he might be a problem later.

  Her cell buzzed. She pulled it from her jeans pocket. Hicks’s number.

  “Where are you?” she said.

  “Still in L.A. Can’t get a flight until tomorrow.” His voice flat, tired.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine. I just had something to do last night, and a long drive afterward. It’s all straightened out now.”

  “I’ll pick you up at the airport,” she said. “Better to have just one car when we go out to the site; it’ll attract less attention. Call me when you have your flight info. I’ll get you another room where I’m staying. It’ll be easier.”

  “We coming back here afterward? To L.A.?”

  “You are,” she said. “Not me.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s somebody I have to go see first.”

  * * *

  Hicks walked down the center of the road, put his hands on his hips, turned slowly, squinted back to where she stood by the boulder, the Nissan parked out of sight behind it.

  “You’re right,” he said. “It could work.”

  He started back toward her. He looked tired. Hungover, she guessed, the faint scent of alcohol and sweat coming from his skin.

  “Still,” he said. “A straightway like this, vehicles build up some speed. A curve in the road would make it easier to stop them. Especially three vehicles at once.”

  “There’s ways to do that. We don’t need a curve.”

  He looked north. “Closer to Vegas than I’d like.”

  “It’s the best place for what we’re talking about.”

  “Lots of open country. That convoy could go off-road, haul ass across the flat. Be hard to chase it.”

  “They won’t have the chance,” she said. “We’re going to box them in.”

  “How?”

  She pointed at the mountains to the north.

  “That’s the way they’ll be coming. There’s a turnoff way back there, at the base of those hills, that goes up into some rocks. I already checked it out. We can hide a vehicle there. When the tail car goes by, our car swings out after it, keeping enough distance so no one gets nervous. They follow it all the way here. When we stop the convoy, our car comes up close behind the tail car, blocks it in. We do it right, all three vehicles will be bunched together. They won’t be going anywhere.”

  “And how do we stop them? Spike strips? Pull another vehicle out in the middle of the road, block it off?”

  “Neither,” she said. “We can’t take a chance with either of those. If there’s a collision, and one of our own cars gets disabled out here, we’re out of luck. What we need to do…” She walked south down the road, past the boulder. He followed. “… is stop the lead car right about here.”

  “Again, how?”

  “With something in the road that distracts them. Causes a big enough scare that they hit the brakes, but with enough lead time so the other vehicles don’t pile into them. We get the people out and contained, then my guy drives the truck away. We disable the other two cars, get them off the road. Then we take off in different directions.”

  He nodded, looked around, turned back to her. “Any ideas on what that distraction might be?”

  “That would be your department.”

  He looked at her for a moment, then smiled. “IED. That’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And you’re assuming I know how to make one.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Maybe. But that kind of thing can be unpredictable. There’s always the risk of collateral damage.”

  “That’s why it needs to be small scale,” she said. “Something that gets their attention, but gives them time to stop. We don’t want to flip a vehicle or send it skidding off the road. Last thing we need is to have to pull that truck out of a ravine. It has to be something that can be set off safely, by someone who’s got a good eye, who can measure the distance and pick the right moment. Not too soon, not too late. And whatever it is, it can’t cause any significant damage to the road. We’ll need it ourselves.”

  “You’re good at this,” he said. “The planning.”

  “That’s why he hired me.”

  They saw a tractor-trailer coming from the south, stepped back off the highway. Hicks stuck his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, toed loose stones with his boot, watched the truck go by, trailing dust behind it.

  When it was gone, he cocked his head at the cell tower. “What about that?”

  “One of the reasons I picked this spot. It’s the only tower around for almost ten miles.”

  “How’s that help us?”

  “If it were out of commission,” she said, “chances are, you wouldn’t be able to get a signal here. A half mile down the road, in either direction, it might be a different story. But right here, in this spot”—she nodded at the road—“it’s the only game in town.”

  He looked at the tower, the equipment surrounding it.

  “Maybe we can find a way to jam signals in and out of it,” she said. “Just long enough to do what we need to.”

  “Too subtle for me. I wouldn’t know the first thing about that. But I’ve dealt with this situation before.”

  “And?”

  “See all those units at the base?” he said. “That’s the equipment compound. Out here in the middle of nowhere, that tower has to be self-sufficient. It’ll use a lot of power,
not just to relay signals, but to keep the whole thing cool. And since Katrina, a lot of cell towers have eight-hour power backups—batteries, additional generators, whatever.”

  “Security cameras?”

  “Not that I know of. And I don’t see any there.”

  “So how do we cut the power?”

  “Couple of grenades over that fence might do it. Maybe some C-4, take the whole thing down, let someone else clean up the mess.”

  “No good. Too much noise, too much smoke. They’ll see it for miles.”

  “A lighter touch, then. We cut through the fence, lay a couple small charges, blow out the utility supply and the gens. Either way, they’ll know when that thing goes off-line. It’ll set off alarms back at their network operations center, wherever that is. They’ll send someone out to check.”

  “We’ll be out of here by then,” she said. “You see enough?”

  “I think so, for now.” They started back to the car.

  “We’ll head back toward Vegas,” she said. “I’ll show you where that turnoff is, where we’ll pick up the convoy. I’ve got photos of everything. When we get back to the motel, we can go over the final route on a map.”

  “I could do with a drink, too.”

  “You look like you had enough last night.”

  “I had my reasons.”

  They got in the car, and she started the engine. He looked off across the desert to the cell tower, outlined against the hard blue sky. “It’s really happening, isn’t it?”

  “Not unless we make it happen,” she said. “And we do that one step at a time.”

  EIGHT

  When they got back to the motel, she showered and changed, then called Walt Rathka, the lawyer she used in New York. Monique, his secretary, put her through.

  “I was going to call you,” he said. “But I wasn’t sure if I had a working number.”

  “This one’s good for a couple days. I’ll call when I have a new one.”

  “This one safe?”

  “Safe enough.”

  She pictured him in his office, twelve stories above Fifth Avenue, sitting behind the big oak desk. For the last ten years, he’d handled her take-home cash, investing it in legitimate businesses, mostly strip malls and car washes in the South. He also moved her money through various accounts, including one she kept at a bank in St. Lucia.