by Chuck Dixon
“What’s wrong?” Jessie said.
“They shot Tasha!” Sandy said. Fresh tears started from her eyes. Her mouth was twisted.
“We need to ride back the way you came,” Levon said. He drew alongside Merry.
“Not until I know what’s going on,” Jessie said. Her eyes were hard on Levon’s.
“I’ll tell you on the way. For now, we all need to keep moving,” Levon said. He leaned from the saddle and took Merry’s reins. He led her pony around to head back up the trail.
“He means it, Jessie,” Merry said.
The left the trail at its northernmost point where it curved back west to rejoin the short trail. The ground sloped up easy and was dotted with tall pines. The ground was clear beneath, the underbrush either shaded out or unable to find purchase in acidic earth composed of decades of rotten needles.
Levon took the lead with Jessie just behind. The young girls were together behind them, Sandy bringing along the pack horse and pony. They rode easy, letting the horses set the pace. A steady pace that made distance was more important than speed. Wear the horses out and they’d be left to go forward on foot.
“We have until sundown to make an easy ten or so miles,” Levon said.
“This heads up into the watershed. State land,” Jessie said.
“I know. We’ll see the posts just ahead. There’s a spring where we can water the horses,” he said.
“They smell it,” she said. Her mount raised his snout, nostrils flared. His lips clamped together with a clopping sound.
They rode through the soundless woods. The bare bones of trees seemed to stretch to infinity in every direction. This was a place to get lost in. And lots of unwary hikers had done so, wandering in ever-widening circles until exhaustion or exposure claimed them.
“Tell me why we’re not calling the police,” Jessie said.
“Because they can’t end this. They can’t protect us,” he said. He kept his voice low so the girls behind them, particularly Sandy, could not hear him.
“And you can end it?” She lowered her voice as well. There was a sharp edge of skepticism in her words.
“I killed three men at your place. Men who were going to hurt your daughter. Do worse than hurt her.”
“You could claim self-defense.”
“That means getting booked, arraigned and going to county to await trial. They can reach me there. And if they couldn’t, they can reach you and Sandy.”
“You’re trying to scare me.”
“I hope I am scaring you, Jessie. Scared is exactly what you need to be right now.”
“Okay. I’m scared, okay? So how do you end this?” she said.
“Two ways. Make them think that they got what they’re looking for. Or convince them that pursuing me any more is going to be too costly for them,” he said.
“Have you decided? Which is it going to be?” Jessie said.
“Both,” Levon said.
Steel signs, rusted around the edges, informed them that they were on restricted state land. It cautioned them against trespassing and promised stiff fines for anyone caught camping or lighting fires.
They watered the horses at a spring that bubbled from rocks on the floor of a shallow depression. Cold, clear water from deep within the heart of the long hill they were climbing. Levon topped off some gallon jugs that he handed back to Jessie. Merry stood away from them talking softly to Sandy. The girl looked numb, her eyes on the younger girl speaking low and even, a hand on her arm.
“Your little one is as tough as you,” Jessie said. She watched the two girls talking.
“She’s a good girl. I don’t want her becoming hard. I try to keep her away from things. Not much luck lately,” Levon said.
“You’re trying. You brought her home.”
"This isn't my home anymore. It's changed. Something ugly happened."
“Something you’re trying to make right? All by yourself?”
“I only wanted to come back to hide. Find some peace maybe. I wasn’t looking for this. Now I’ve dropped you and your girl into this mess with me.”
“If that’s an apology you can shove it up your ass, Levon.”
He glanced up at her, an eyebrow arched. He handed her a full jug to be tied back on the saddle of the pack horse.
“We can walk the horses from here,” he said.
“You know where we’re going?” she said.
“I do.”
They camped cold that night. The horses and pony were hitched to a line strung between trees.
The air turned icy as the moon rose. Jessie held the girls huddled to her under layers of the blankets Levon had packed along.
Levon sat draped in a blanket with his back to a tree. The rifle rested across his knees. He listened to the dark all around. His ears searched through the rising and falling sounds of cicadas for noises that did not belong. A crunch and snap above him turned out to be a line of whitetail deer moving through the pines.
Sandy made a whimpering sound. Jessie pulled her daughter closer, cooing to her in a dozy way until both were silent once more.
The high country of the watershed was far from any road. No highway sounds reached them here. The only sign of civilization was a silver glow against the clouds from the lights in Haley, miles away to the north.
He allowed himself to drop into a state of half-wakefulness. He rested rather than slept. His senses tuned only for sights and sounds alien to this place.
Levon came fully awake, not sure what roused him. The pines were gray under a sky lit by the sun still climbing the hill behind them. A white mist hung above the forest bed. Nothing moved. The cicada rhythm had died away leaving a silence that was deep and wide.
Except for a burring sound, waxing and waning, from somewhere far below them. A machine sound. The sound of men.
47
“Get the horses saddled. Leave everything else behind,” Levon said once he had Jessie and the girls up and awake.
The high whine of four-stroke engines cut through the morning silence. The noise yawed and fell from down the slope as someone moved back and forth in a search pattern. Motorbikes or ATVs.
Spurred by the sounds, Jessie snatched a pair of saddles by the pommels and swung them up on the horses' backs. Merry was placing a blanket on Bravo. Sandy was alert but unmoving. She knelt on the groundsheet they shared, her hands shaking, her loose hair hiding her face.
Levon took Sandy's arm in a firm, even grip and helped her to her feet. Her eyes met his. They were red-rimmed and wet. Her chin quivered, though her arm was warm through the flannel sleeve.
“The men that were going to hurt you? They’re dead. The men coming for us now? They’ll be dead soon. Do you believe me, honey?”
She nodded, sniffing.
“Now do what your mother says and it’s all going to be all right. Can you do that?”
"Yes," she said — a small voice.
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. Louder, more sure, this time.
“You’ll do fine, honey.” Levon laid a gentle hand on her face. He turned to Jessie.
"Walk the horses up to the crest. Over the lee of the hill you'll find a hunting trail running along the ridge. Turn right on it. It'll take you down to Mosby Creek. Follow the creek to where it runs under the county road where the Mason lodge is."
“I know the place,” Jessie said.
“Wait for me in the woods above the lodge. Take my horse along with you.”
“How will you catch up? You’ll be on foot,” Jessie said.
“Not for long,” he said.
The buzzsaw roar of an ATV rose through the trees from below.
Gunny Leffertz says:
“Stick and move. Stick and move. Never be where they think you are. Always be where they think you ain’t.”
48
He followed the man and machine over the front post of the carbine. The guy was leaning on the handlebars, standing crouched, to keep his weight forward
as he climbed the grade. An automatic rifle was bungied across the fork. The shaved head swiveled left and right as he rode.
The first slug took him in the chest. The rider struggled to control the ATV. It wavered and swerved until it was perpendicular to the grade. The driver’s weight pulled it over sideways to capsize hard into the pine needles, tumbling over once. The motor died with a cough. The weight of it rolled over the rider. He let out a yelp like a wounded dog.
Levon was on the move as the machine continued toppling into the trees below. Carbine up and advancing in a sideways gait to maintain his footing. The needle floor of the forest was slick with dew.
The man was still alive and struggling. The .44 mag had punched a wicked keyhole wound into his lung. The lips of the wound moved as wind sucked in through the opening. The weight of the ATV left his hips crushed. A tip of white bone stuck through the leg of his jeans where a thigh had snapped, tearing through flesh and fabric. He was a young man. His face was turning blue as he starved for air. His mouth was open in a perpetual gasp. His eyes fought to stay focused. It was a losing battle.
Levon kept his ears attuned to the forest below. More engine sounds converged, trying to find the source of the single rifle shot. He crouched by the dying man and searched the pockets of his jeans. The man moaned deep in his throat, a palsied hand reaching for Levon’s arm. He had the head of a snarling wolf tattooed on his chest below curved letters spelling out “Lupo.”
Levon found keys, a crushed pack of cigarettes and a cell phone. He pocketed the phone after wiping the blood from it. He tossed the ring of keys far into the woods.
The man was dead by the time Levon stepped over him to move at an angle down the hill to meet the mechanical sounds growing louder. He took up a position behind the thick bole of a mature spruce. Below him a dark shape flashed between the trees. Another ATV. It was on a path to climb the slope at an oblique angle. He waited, watching as the man and machine returned in the opposite direction, closer now. The searchers were using a crisscross pattern to hunt for their comrade and the source of the rifle shot. Another ATV motor could be heard, but not seen, farther to Levon’s left.
No cell footprint out here. They might believe that the rifle shot was their friend signaling them. Levon knelt low and braced the carbine against the bark of the tree. In his peripheral he saw the dark shape returning from off to his right. He took in a breath, let it out slow, and trained the sights on a gap between the trees in the path of the returning ATV. It came into his field of vision fifty yards beneath him, coming on at a steep angle. He gave the rider a half second’s lead and pressed the trigger home.
The slug took the rider through his helmeted head. The rider, limp as though made of rags, slid from the saddle. The machine sputtered to a stop, upright, on the slope. The second machine was closing on a direct path, following the echoes of the carbine's big boom echoing down the hillside.
Levon ran full out on a slant to his left, running and sliding down the incline to meet the third machine. He dropped behind a tree, his back braced to it. The machine drew closer, charging straight up the slope, engine screaming. The ATV passed his position to his left, the rider standing on the frame. His head was turning as he rode, scanning the woods above.
Two shots to the back, a double tap. Levon held the carbine snug to his shoulder to jack the lever again and again. The rider pitched over the handlebars to roll back down the way he came. The ATV choked and barked and came to rest canted sideways on the slope.
Levon ran to the man lying face down in the needles. The two holes in the back of his t-shirt were only inches apart. Either one was lethal. The man lay still as only the dead can. Levon searched his pockets. Another pack of cigarettes. A lighter. A fold of cash secured in gold clip decorated with a human skull. And a cell phone. He took the lighter, cash and phone.
An electronic quack and hiss came from the ATV, its engine ticking as it cooled. Levon found a walkie talkie secured in a sleeve on the handlebars. He keyed the send button twice. A voice asked questions in Spanish. It called out names. Lupo. Munez. Jorgito. The speaker sounded breathless. There were traces of voices in the background. Men were complaining. Levon held the radio away from his face and pressed the send button.
“Where are you? We have him now,” Levon said in Spanish.
“Is he alive?” the voice on the walkie demanded.
“Sí.”
“Keep him alive. It will take us time to reach you.”
“Sí. We will.”
“Who is this? Lupo?”
Levon snapped the radio off and clipped it to his belt.
There were more of them. On foot. They were coming.
Levon would wait.
49
El Chistoso sat with the windows of the Audi rolled down to smell the morning air.
A cold wind dropped down through the trees above to wash over the grounds of the horse ranch. It carried with it the heady scent of pine sap. It reminded him of winters spent on his grandfather’s farm, a plot of dirt two acres square, high in the hills above Galeana. There were horses there, too. They belonged to a neighboring estancia, a place with hundreds of acres owned by a wealthy oil man. He would visit that man’s villa sometimes with his grandfather.
The two men would talk on the shaded veranda, one a powerful Pemex executive, the other a humble campesino. But while they shared mescal from a clay jug they were equals. Mexicanos.
He would spend his time there in the stables, overcome with a child's wonder at all the horses in their many breeds. To him, the stable was like a palace. It was much finer than the shack he lived in with his parents and siblings. Stalls of oak with gleaming steel bars. A floor of fitted slate. High ceilings with fans hanging beneath, stirring the air with huge wicker blades. And the scent of straw and manure. To him, it did not smell of shit. To him, it was a sweet odor, earthy. It was an odor that told him that all things were possible in this life, even for a horse to live better than a man.
El Chistoso filled his nose with the sweet tang of the stalls coming from the open stable doors. The others told him that a horse lay dead inside. That touched him with sadness. A sadness not visible on the frozen features of his ravaged face. A sadness he did not feel for the men lying dead here. They were stupid, vain, gabachos. He would not mourn for them.
Nor would he mourn the man being hunted through the trees above. But that man he could respect. He looked forward to meeting the man. He looked forward to punishing the man. He looked forward to, once he had wrung all the pain he could from the man’s body, putting a bullet in the man’s brain.
Carlos stood outside the car, listening for the sounds of the machines. Those sounds were lost to him by distance now. He listened for the machines’ return. He heard the brittle crack of rifle fire far away. But that was nothing unusual in these woods. It could be anything.
The phone in his pocket vibrated. It was Lupo.
“Where are you?” he said.
“Are you in charge?” Fluent Spanish spoken in a flat tone. Without accent.
“Who is this?”
“If you were in charge you would know who this is,” the voice said. No inflection.
“I will let you talk to him,” Carlos said. He trotted to the Audi.
“Yes? You have something for me?” Chistoso said.
“La Yegua.” It was the gringo. He spoke Spanish well but still with a yanqui accent.
What did he mean by la yegua? The mare. Like the horse shot dead in the stable stall.
“What are you saying?”
“You have been there?”
“Ai. I have been there," Chistoso said. Not a horse but a place. A long spit of sand off the Gulf coast of Mexico. Broad sandy beaches and salt marshes.
“You weren’t there seven years ago.”
Chistoso said nothing. His features darkened.
“Good Friday.”
Chistoso’s eyes folded into black slits.
“Monte Lugo,” the gringo said.
“Roberto Salazar. Nino Raza.”
“They are all dead,” Chistoso said.
Carlos looked into the Audi to see the old man’s hands clench. The road map of ancient scars across his knuckles turned white.
“You are only alive because you were not there that night.”
“You know me, yanqui?”
“I know of you. One of your men told me you were here before he died.”
“And La Yegua. How do you know of that?”
“I was there that night.”
“How can I believe you, yanqui?”
“I told you the names. Do you need more? Humberto Sosa. Antonio Ruiz. Tiki Ramos.”
Chistoso shouted, “How do you know these names?”
Carlos stepped away from the Audi, eyes on the old man foaming at the voice on the other end of the line.
“I was there.”
Chistoso said nothing. He sat back in the plush seat. His shoulders dropped under the full weight of his years. He recalled La Yegua and the day seven years before. He was to be there but for the weather grounding his plane in Vera Cruz. He remembered the funerals, the widows crying. The coffins empty because the bodies of the men were never found — their deaths a mystery, a deep secret known only to the patróns of the Zetas crew.
“They are all dead, Martin Aguilar.”
The old man nodded.
“Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
The connection broke. Chistoso tossed the dead phone atop the dash.
“Get in and drive,” he said to Carlos.
“Where? The others have not returned,” Carlos said. He stared, witness to the man aging twenty years before his eyes.