Yeager's Law

by Scott Bell

  Smiley brayed laughter. “All right, my man!” He slid over and patted Yeager on the shoulder. “That’s called customer satisfaction, for sure.”

  Yeager gritted his teeth and imagined killing the grinning bastard. Maybe twist the creep’s head around first. After that, Yeager would get creative.

  “Your money’s gone,” Yeager said. “Maybe by this Steven guy, maybe by the drug lords. You don’t have a reason to kill anybody. Pack up and head out.”

  Ponytail resumed pacing, arms crossed, one hand worrying his bottom lip. Scarecrow kept watch on all of them. Yeager expected a snake’s tongue to slither out and test the air for scent. By the forklift, Smiley tucked his gun in his pants and wiped his hands on his shirt. The scuffing of the leader’s ostrich boots moving around behind them was the only sound.

  “So you know where this truck is right now?” Ponytail asked. His voice echoed a little in the high-ceilinged space.

  Yeager nodded. “I can find it, yeah. But maybe only the cab, not the trailer.”

  “But chances are they’re not far apart.”

  Yeager shrugged again. The tape on his wrists crackled. “I’ll be happy to tell you where it is. You’re welcome to go after it.”

  “Well, I do appreciate the thought, my man, but hey, dude, come on. Why should we risk our ass when we’ve got you?”

  The question fell into a flat silence, the same look of confusion on everyone’s faces. Even Scarecrow stared at his partner, eyebrows raised.

  “Think about it.” Ponytail circled around to stand at Yeager’s shoulder. “My man here’s obviously some kind of ninja action hero, the way he took out all those baddies the other night, right?”

  The stick figure with the shotgun said, “Stoney, what the fuck are you thinkin’ now?”

  Stoney? A lawyer named Stoney. What was it about that name…?

  “Just this, Skeeter.” Stoney squeezed Yeager’s shoulder. “Mr. Ninja Dude here can go get us our money from those bad boys down in Mexico, while we relax here with the pretty señoritas. He don’t come back with the money, we kill his favorite red-haired customer and her store manager. No risk to us. It’s a win-win, dude.”

  “You’re fucking crazy,” Yeager said, craning his neck around so he could look at Stoney. “I’m one guy. Going up against a whole cartel?” The irony of using the same argument Charlie had given him last night didn’t escape him.

  “Whaddya think?” Stoney didn’t even bother to look at Yeager, keeping his gaze fixed on Smiley. Apparently, Scarecrow didn’t get a vote.

  The blond gunman shrugged. “Nothin’ to lose. We already took the money from the safe with this ’un.” He jerked a thumb at Nita. “We take the women somewhere else and give him a couple days. He don’t show, we kill ’em and leave with what we got. Cut our losses.”

  “Exactly.” Stoney beamed. “That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout. C’mon, honey,” he said, motioning to Charlie. “Get up. You’re comin’ with us.”

  “Goddamnit, no!” Yeager strained at the tape on his wrists. “Leave her out of this. I’ll get your money for you, but leave her alone!”

  “Oh no, Mr. Ninja. I need a guarantee of good behavior. No cops, no FBI, no DEA, no Boy Scouts of America. The lady comes with us.” He scuffed his way over to Charlie, took her by the upper arm, and pulled her up from the chair. “Get the bags,” he ordered the punk by the forklift.

  “Wait,” Yeager said. “How’m I supposed to believe this? There’s no way I’m trusting you to keep your word. We’ve seen your faces, John Stone. I know exactly who you are.”

  Stone raised an eyebrow. “Well, damn, I hope so. I paid enough for them TV ads; I should have some face recognition from ’em.” He tapped his foot on the floor. “Well, here’s how I’m going to put it to you. If you get our money back, you all go free. After that, you make all the noise you want. I’ll say that you all was in on it. Stevie, the redhead, the gal with the boobs here, all of you. You too, Mr. Truck Driver. I’ll drag all of us down if it comes to that.”

  Yeager swallowed the response on the tip of his tongue. Pushing the guy into a corner suddenly seemed like a bad idea. The plan of mutually assured destruction seemed possibly feasible. He needed time to think. “How do I get in touch with you?”

  “Good point. Read off your cell number. Harlan, load it in your phone.”

  Yeager recited the number, and the blond guy, Harlan, loaded it into his cell phone. Then, he headed toward the main store, pulling Charlie along with him. She glanced back at Yeager and sent another silent message with her eyes. Either get me out of this, or be careful, he wasn’t sure which.

  Skeeter cut Nita loose and shoved her with the shotgun. “Get going.”

  She looked up, bleary eyed, and stood like an old woman rising from a wheelchair. Skeeter pushed her toward the door then used his lockback knife to cut a notch through the tape on Yeager’s left wrist.

  “You oughta be able to get loose in a few minutes. Don’t foller us, or the bitches die.”

  Yeager locked gazes with the lean, dark-eyed killer. He tried to project enough venom with his stare to drop the man dead, but the guy just chuckled.

  “Yeah, Mr. Ninja, you all that, aintcha?” he drawled. “I reckon you could maybe get our truck back after all.” Still chuckling, he left.

  The swinging doors thumped back and forth for a few seconds then stopped. Yeager was alone, taped to a chair.

  And Charlie was gone.

  CHAPTER 23

  Book Finders

  Austin, Texas

  Yeager took eight minutes to get loose, every second spent cursing and sweating. Expanding the notch the skinny bastard had cut meant ripping the heavy packing tape with brute strength. He made good progress until the tape bunched up at his wrist into a thin band tougher than any rope. Sliding and twisting, tearing arm hair and abrading his hide, he jerked his hand free. From there, it was a matter of picking apart the wrapping on his other wrist.

  He checked the store first, going to the front glass window and looking out. The door was locked, apparently by Stone and his gang. Traffic passed a dozen feet away, people going about their business.

  Prioritize, you dummy. Yeager dithered for a moment, running through options. Get the authorities involved, or try to handle the problem on his own? If he called the cops, he risked being held in a jail cell while Charlie’s time ran out. Fresh out of jail and there he would be, reporting the abduction of the woman who’d bailed him out.

  Stone and his buddies weren’t going to keep their end of the bargain. Pretending otherwise would be foolish. They would kill the women as soon as they put their hands on the money.

  Calling the cops required convincing them John Stone, personal-injury lawyer, kidnapped two women at gunpoint and demanded Yeager recover a truckload of cash from the ex-husband of one of the women. Assuming the cops believed him, they would shove Yeager to the side. From the second the authorities became involved, Charlie’s fate was out of his hands. He would be nothing but a bystander. Unacceptable.

  Yeager jogged upstairs, snagged his duffel, and repacked it. Charlie’s purse lay on the kitchen table. He hesitated then dug through it for her spare cash and credit cards. His over-strained credit wouldn’t get him where he needed to go.

  “Sorry, honey,” he said. Hearing his voice in the empty apartment seemed strange.

  He used his laptop to make a flight reservation, swearing at the slow browser window every time it struggled to load a page. After the final click, he jotted out a quick note to the cops about what happened on some stationery next to the phone in the kitchen, left it there, and took everything else back to the warehouse.

  The broken warehouse door was held shut by a few twists of heavy-gauge wire. Yeager cursed some more at the delay as he unwrapped the wire. He pulled open the door and stepped into the Monday morning sun at thirty minutes after ten.

  He headed for the Marriott, where he could get a cab to the airport. From there, McAllen.

&n
bsp; After that: Mexico.

  McAllen International Airport

  McAllen, Texas

  Yeager took another cab from the arrivals gate to a private hangar on the fringe of the McAllen airport. He paid the driver, who grumped about the short trip and scorched away from the curb. Yeager shifted his duffel from one shoulder to the other, already sweating in the morning heat.

  Victor sat in a folding lawn chair, the metal kind with woven straps that cut your ass to shreds once it started to break down. He tossed back the last of his coffee, set the cup down, and stood, his head barely reaching Yeager’s chin. They shook hands, an old friends’ greeting that included one-handed back-slapping.

  A ringing clatter and a curse erupted from inside the hanger. Yeager squinted into the shaded interior.

  “Cujo,” Victor said. “Working on his plane.”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “No. You do not.”

  “I need some of that coffee. I’m about to lose my mind.”

  “Yeah. Let’s get started.”

  Victor picked up his empty cup and led Yeager inside the building. Past the half-open sliding door, the interior smelled of oil and machinery. In the middle of the floor, a single-engine plane with the wings over the canopy took up two-thirds of the interior. Arrayed around the walls were tool boxes, workbenches, and odd bits of aircraft parts that Yeager couldn’t identify.

  Victor opened a small office on the right. Cujo stood on a stepladder, mounting some kind of gear under the left wing. Cables and wire dangled like the guts of a science fiction robot.

  As Yeager approached, Cujo dropped a socket wrench, making another clatter on the floor. “Fuck!”

  Yeager retrieved the tool. “Here.”

  “Hey, Abel,” Cujo said as if they’d seen each other yesterday. “When’d you get here? Thanks, man.”

  “Just now. The fuck are you doing?”

  Cujo grinned, showing crooked teeth through a shaggy beard. His hairy eyebrows danced up and down in glee. “You’ll never guess.”

  Victor came over and handed Yeager a cup of coffee. “Cujo, uh, found a real live .50-cal, full auto. He’s trying to figure out how to mount it under the wing. Arm his airplane for the coming apock-a-lips, you know?”

  Yeager inspected the plane’s wing. “Cujo, you fire a fifty mounted on an aircraft this size, you’re gonna spin her in a circle. Assuming you don’t rip the wing off.”

  Cujo stared at the wrench in his hand for a beat then said, “Oh.”

  Yeager looked from Cujo to Victor and back. Cujo, a red cotton bandana tied around his head, ducked his head and stared at his shoes.

  “Is true.” Victor shrugged. “But hey, the boy needs something to do. Like a hobby, you know?”

  Yeager grunted and slurped coffee. Victor brewed some of the strongest, blackest coffee on the planet. He said the beans were roasted in a cave in Africa by the Zulus. It was even better than Charlie’s.

  “Talk to me, man,” Victor said. “You look like shit.”

  Yeager jerked his head toward the office, and Victor followed him. Yeager dropped his duffel on the floor and slumped on the ratty visitor chair with white stuffing poking through where the leather had cracked open. Victor took the creaky swivel chair. Papers and engine parts threatened to spill over the sides of the desk. Everything from old calendars to faded and curled pictures had been tacked to the walls.

  Another ringing clatter sounded from the hanger. “Fuck!”

  Yeager shut the office door. “This is some crazy shit, my friend,” Yeager said, trying to organize his thoughts. “First, the daddy of that woman from the wreck shows up in Arkansas, of all the damn places. The only thing stopping him from killing me was Charlie, who drops in like an avenging angel with a six-shooter. Then two of his crew pull that stunt in Chicago, at the motel—”

  “Which is where I saved your ass like an avenging angel with a nine-mil.”

  “Yeah. Exactly like that. So I go to St. Louis, pick up a load for the woman who saved my butt, and take it to Austin. There, Humberto and his crew do a full-on invasion, armed out the ass. Charlie and I drop six of seven. One ran away; I think it was the same guy that you scared off in Chicago.”

  Yeager sipped more coffee. “I’m not out of jail long enough to take a leak, and somebody stole my truck and took it to Mexico. At this point, I’m thinking fuck it, I don’t want the damn truck anymore. Soon as I reach that conclusion, these three hombres show up. One looks like a game show host, the other like a stick of jerky, and the third is none other than John Stone, famous ambulance chaser.”

  “Wait a second. The guy on TV? The Crock of Texas?”

  “The Rock. Yeah, that’s the guy.”

  “Dang, man, a lawyer and a crook. Who’d believe it?”

  “He tells me the truck’s full of money they stole from the Sinaloas and they want it back—the crooks, not the Sinaloas, though I imagine they’re pretty pissed, too. They say Charlie’s ex-husband was in on the deal and he must have stole it and run to Mexico. I’m not buying that. From what Charlie said, the guy was a doctor, a research doctor, at that. What’s he know about drivin’ a truck?”

  “It’s not rocket science, bro. Otherwise, you couldn’t do it.”

  Yeager drained his coffee cup and set it on the desk. “But why Mexico? All he had to do was drive it across town, unload the money, and then run away. Going to Mexico with a truckload of cash? Nah. I don’t see it.”

  “You think maybe this guy did it, the one from Humberto’s crew?”

  Yeager nodded. “He seems good. Or maybe the cartel people caught up with what’s going on and grabbed their money back. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Stone and his buddies are holding Charlie and her female manager hostage and will trade ’em for the cash. No matter who has it, I gotta get it back.”

  “Damn, bro. You are having a seriously fucked-up week.”

  “Except for Charlie, I’d agree.”

  “That good, huh?”

  Yeager shook his head, feeling a grapefruit-sized lump in his throat. “The best, man. The very best.”

  “Is okay, hoss. We’ll get her back.”

  Yeager’s phone buzzed, and he pulled it out of his pocket. A blocked number showed on the caller ID. “Yeager here.”

  “Hey, dude, wassup?” Harlan, the blond guy, asked.

  “Listen, dickhead,” Yeager said. “Those ladies get so much as a hangnail—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Heard it, got the T-shirt. You’ll hunt us till the ends of the earth, blah blah blah. Close?”

  “Tattoo it on your forehead, cocksucker.”

  “Here’s the deal. You have until Wednesday, ten a.m. We either make the exchange on or before that time or these sweet little thangs gets dropped on the side of the road with a bullet to the head. We clear on that, amigo?”

  Yeager ground his teeth. “Where and when do we make the exchange?”

  “You’ll find that out later. Keep this phone on, dude, cause y’know, we want to keep in touch. And don’t bother trying to trace this call. We’re dropping this phone in the trash and movin’ on.”

  Yeager tried to control his breathing, shifting the phone from one sweating palm to the other.

  “Oh, and by the way, you’d better hurry,” Harlan went on. “I think Skeeter’s taken quite a shine to your honey, if you know what I mean. I don’t know how long he’s willing to wait.”

  Yeager started to reply, but the line died in his ear.

  Rural road

  East of Austin, Texas

  Behind the driver, Charlie retreated as far as possible into the corner of the orange Challenger. In the driver’s seat, the blond guy in the Hawaiian shirt turned off the cell phone and held it in his lap for a moment, out of her sight. He tossed a bit out of the window—the SIM card, she assumed—then started the engine.

  “Well,” he said, “I think that went well, don’t you?”

  Charlie, working on her invisibility spell, didn’t reply. She wrapped b
oth arms across her chest, fists clenched. David. What will David think? He’ll be so worried. She kept trying to swallow with a dry throat.

  Nita sat in the front seat, mascara painting her face into a tragic clown mask. The scarecrow sat behind her, holding a gun low so he could cover both of them with equal ease. A Ruger Blackhawk, probably in .44 caliber, a part of Charlie’s mind noted. Exactly like one Dad used to have. The reek of cigarettes and skin oil from the snakelike man in the back with her nearly made her eyes water. She thought his name was either Skitter or Skeeter. Her heart wanted to pound out of her chest. She’d never been so scared.

  The third guy, the one called Stone, had gone off on his own after giving the two guards instructions to keep Charlie and Nita locked up and unharmed.

  They pulled out of the Feed Store parking lot where the blond had stopped to make the call to Yeager. The car accelerated smoothly down the rural two-lane blacktop, appearing as just another vehicle in the early morning farm-to-market traffic.

  The blond man kept speaking as if they were on a sightseeing trip. “I don’t know what kind of relationship you and this truck driver have—it was hard to tell from the newscasts—but he seemed a mite upset.” When Charlie didn’t say anything, he added, “Which is a good thing for you. Means he’ll be motivated to get us our money.”

  “How we gonna make the exchange?” the lean man next to her said. “The woman for the money?”

  “That’s Mr. Stone’s worry, Skeeter, my man.”

  “So what now, Harlan?” Skeeter spoke in a raspy, dry voice that scared her worse than if he’d yelled.

  “Now?” Harlan asked. He paused at a flashing red light, turned on his blinker, and headed south. “Now we need to find us a place to hole up for a couple of days.”

  “That we do,” the scarecrow rasped out, looking straight at her. “We need someplace real quiet, too.”

  He grinned, showing a lot of yellow teeth. His glittering reptilian eyes seemed to have the ability to see right through her clothes as he appraised her from head to foot, the weight of his gaze tracing her skin. She had to clamp her teeth together to keep them from chattering and bury white-knuckled fists in her armpits to stop the shakes.