Yeager's Law

by Scott Bell

  At the bottom of the stairs, he met Santos coming from a bedroom on the lower floor. Santos had pulled on pants and boots but wore no shirt. He carried a pistol in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other.

  “What is happening?” DaSilva demanded.

  Santos glanced at him and held up a hand, asking for a moment. He clamped the radio to one ear, listening to a frantic voice spilling out between bursts of static. A boom from behind the house rattled the windows. DaSilva flinched and ducked.

  “Someone is stealing the truck!” Santos shouted. He led the way toward the back of the house, running into the library. Light from outside flooded into the house, giving everything a silver coating. “For some reason, half my men are in the north field. If they live through this, I will kill them all.”

  They burst into the back garden in time to see a flaming diesel rig slam into the barn doors, rupturing the aluminum with a bang. The crashing boom rolled across the courtyard, followed by a shriek of rending metal as the truck ground to a halt, three quarters of its length buried in the barn.

  DaSilva blinked. A single guard danced and capered in the lights of the parking lot, an expended grenade launcher lifted in the air above his head.

  Yeager coughed and fought to keep his watery eyes open in the choking clouds of smoke and steam that swirled around in the cab of the truck. He’d taken a solid bang on the forehead when the rig hit the barn doors. Dizziness added to his misery. Victor kicked the passenger door, popping it open with a curse, and vaulted to the floor.

  The truck had come to rest against a row of pallets filled with stacks of fifty-pound bags. Beyond the pallets, the remaining floor space was taken up with rows of low benches, each containing various sizes of bags, bins, scales, and other equipment. The walls were a brilliant white, adding to the appearance of a giant chemistry lab.

  Yeager grabbed the fire extinguisher mounted on the bulkhead behind him and kicked his own door ajar. He climbed down more slowly than Victor had, wooziness threatening to spill him to the floor if he moved too fast. Using the extinguisher in short bursts, he worked his way around the front of the truck, snuffing the smoldering fire with clouds of chemical fire retardant.

  With the threat of burning to death neutralized, he joined Victor crouched at the rear of the truck, aiming his M4 through the gap between the trailer and the wreck of the sliding metal barn door. The doors had been torn from their hinges, peeled back, and lay supported against the side of the trailer. That left a roughly triangular opening on each side of the trailer’s rear wheels.

  Victor fired a three-round burst as Yeager bellied up beside him. The guard who had fired the rocket launcher dropped like a sack of flour.

  “Take that, fucker,” Victor muttered. He glanced at Yeager, the black camo paint on his face beaded with sweat. “Now what?”

  “How many?”

  “Guards?” Victor frowned. “Hell if I know. More than a squad, less than a regiment.”

  “Good. For a minute, I thought we might be outnumbered.”

  Victor laughed. “Hey, you remember that movie? The one with two guys, the outlaws? They’re trapped by like a thousand Mexican troops, outnumbered with no escape. In the end, they run out into the square, and the movie ends, and you know they got shot to shit. You know that movie?”

  “Butch Cassidy,” Yeager said. “It was Bolivian troops.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure it was Mexicans. Anyway, I wanted to tell you: I never liked that movie.”

  “We’re not gonna end up like that. We have several advantages that those guys didn’t have.”

  “Like what?”

  “Grenades for one. Modern assault rifles, C4.” Yeager grinned. “And the natural fighting spirit of a United States Marine.”

  “Oorah. Looks like they’re starting to get their shit together.”

  The ranch’s guards, a ragged collection of cartel bravos in jeans and T-shirts and armed with a motley array of assault weapons, were reacting at last. One force grouped to their left, behind the hacienda’s garden fence. Another collection of guards assembled at either end of the stables, over a hundred yards distant, at the far side of the flat concrete lot.

  Yeager nodded. “If they try a frontal assault…”

  “No shit,” Victor said. “Even you couldn’t kill ’em all.”

  “The flanking force worries me.” Yeager peered through his weapon’s sights. “A dozen or so behind semi-decent cover. They enfilade us while the other advances, we’ll get chewed to shreds.”

  “Or they find another door and shoot our asses off.”

  “Cheery fucker, ain’t you? Gimme that Winchester.”

  In his pack, Victor carried a disassembled bolt-action rifle equipped with scope. It took his practiced hands about thirty seconds to retrieve and assemble the rifle. “Here you go,” he said. “Loaded, on safe. Five .308 Winchester, one in the chamber.”

  Yeager took the hunting rifle and sighted in on the group to the left. Mercifully, somebody cut off the siren, leaving ear-ringing silence. The distance was under a hundred fifty yards, a piece of cake for the .308. The 3x9 scope brought the assembled guard force into focus. A gang of thugs is more like it.

  One man stood out, a chubby one with no shirt. Once Yeager focused on him, he could actually hear the man’s voice as he yelled orders. He was speaking into a radio, shouting and gesturing at the force assembled by the stables. He looked pissed.

  Yeager flipped off the safety with his thumb. He took a steadying breath, then another, achieving bone-to-ground lock from his knees through his elbows and into the rifle. On his third breath, he held halfway through the exhale and squeezed…

  The rifle boomed and recoiled. When he regained the sight picture, the shirtless man was going down, blood spray still hanging in the air. Yeager couldn’t see where the shot struck, but the look in the man’s eyes registered as dead in his shoes.

  The surrounding guards scattered and went to ground. Yeager glimpsed a white-haired man, older with a patrician face, his eyes wide with surprise. The man ducked back behind an archway on the hacienda’s porch.

  “One down,” Yeager said.

  “Oh, good,” Victor muttered. “And here I thought we’d be hanging out all night, you know?”

  Abandoned Convenience Store

  East of Austin

  Charlie took her mind to a blank place and blocked out the gamey smell of Skeeter’s privates, the meaty feel of his penis, and the horrible voice he used to tell her how much he enjoyed her attention. His rambling, disconnected utterances in that Southern cracker voice encouraging her to get on with it had begun to make her ill. She stuck all that away in a corner of her mind and locked it down, refusing to think about it. For if she thought about it, she’d surely gag and vomit, losing her element of surprise.

  Glancing up through her eyelashes, Charlie saw the thug’s head thrown back. He was so totally focused on the pleasure that he had lost all concept of the need for defense.

  Exactly how she needed him to be.

  She held his penis with her left hand, working it gently up and down. Quietly, silently, she slipped the fingers of her right hand under the edge of the cardboard and felt for the box cutter.

  Charlie gathered the small slip of metal into her right hand. Sliding her fingers along it, she made sure that the blade was fully extended, sharp edge up. Moving with such stealth took an effort of will greater than anything she’d ever done before. Forcing herself to remain calm and go slowly, she brought her right hand up near her left.

  She forced calm into her hands and mind and thought through each move in advance.

  “You little rich girls,” Skeeter crowed, eyes closed, hips moving in time with her hand, “really know how to take care of a man, you kn—”

  Charlie jerked the box cutter across the underside of Skeeter’s penis, nearly severing it at the base. He let out a banshee howl of pure agony. His penis flopped like a snake chopped nearly in half.

  He shrieked ag
ain and whipped a backhand across her face that sent her reeling across the flattened cardboard. The box knife skittered out of her hand. Through tears of pain, she kept sight of her tiny weapon, and using the momentum of the blow, she rolled in the same direction. She closed her hand on the thin tool and picked it up in one motion. She twisted to her feet.

  Skeeter had gone from howling to grizzling in pain. A line of drool trailed from his mouth, and his eyes were closed. He held both hands over his groin, while blood slicked his flanks and drizzled over his knees.

  She sucked air, panting as if she’d run a marathon, sweaty hair tangled across her forehead. The beast was wounded but not dead. If she stopped, he’d find the strength and resources to overcome his wound and kill her on the spot. Charlie reached deep into a well of animal ruthlessness.

  He opened his eyes and focused such a look of pure rage on her that she nearly froze to the spot. He turned and stumbled toward his pile of clothing.

  Where he’d left his knife.

  Charlie jumped on his back and locked both ankles together around his waist, clinging to the skinny hoodlum with the strength of her legs. The wiry man reared back, slamming her against the wall of the cooler with a solid boom.

  She grunted from the stunning force and lost her grip. Skeeter pivoted, slinging a fist around in a blurring arc. His fist smacked against the side of her head. Lights flashed, and a bolt of pain jolted through her skull.

  Charlie may have blacked out for a moment. The next thing she knew, Skeeter was tottering toward her, one hand holding the bloody ruin of his groin, the other gripping his knife, blade up. She scrambled to her feet then dove left when he slashed at her.

  “Goddamn bitch!” His words were so slurred, she could barely understand him. “Look what you did to me!”

  He came at her again, and she kicked out, hitting a kneecap. He staggered back, giving her enough space for her to spring to her feet. She snagged his shirt off the floor and tossed it into his face. When he batted at it, she stepped in and kicked him in the groin, hard and fast, like punting a football.

  He dropped to his knees. She ran around behind him, grabbed his head, and pulled his chin back. She dug the broken point of the box cutter into his windpipe with a gristly, cracking sound. Air whistled through the hole she’d made. With another savage jerk, she ripped the blade across his throat, feeling it tear as much as cut a jagged hole through his Adam’s apple, releasing a hiss of air. Blood sprayed over her fingers.

  Skeeter’s clawed fingers scrabbled at her hands, pulling without effect. She continued sawing at his neck. Blood fountained across the wall of the cooler when she hit his carotid, spray-painting it with a hideous Rorschach pattern. Skeeter fell to his knees, his mouth open in a scream that failed to make it past the gaping hole in his throat. The effort added an aerosol mist to the pulsing stream from the severed artery.

  He dropped to all fours then collapsed. The blood flow fell from a jet spray to a trickle, and the last breath shuddered out of his body.

  CHAPTER 33

  Austin, Texas

  Stone zipped up his pants and said, “Refill my drink, would you?”

  “Sure, honey.” Nita stood in front of him, apparently unfazed at being stark naked. She gave him a saucy grin and flounced over to the liquor cabinet, big round ass cheeks swaying.

  “So let’s talk about this here partnership,” he said. “What’s stopping me from taking your money and leaving you in a ditch somewhere?”

  “Now, is that any way to talk to a woman who just gave you a blowjob?”

  “Well, now, I admit, that there was enjoyable, but I can get that for a lot less money down by the courthouse. I even have some clients I can do some pro-boner work for, if you know what I mean.”

  Nita leaned over and trickled bourbon into his glass from the crystal decanter. She straightened and came around the table to plant one knee on the sofa beside him. It brought her tits directly to eye level, filling his vision in wide screen 3-D. Or is that Double-D?

  Stone cleared his throat. “So what really happened to your buddy, Stevie Buchanan?”

  “I killed him.”

  The meaning behind her words failed to register at first, and by the time they did, the bottle flashed in his peripheral vision. The heavy decanter smacked his skull with a thunk and sent rockets of pain exploding behind his eyes. The room tilted, and his vision filled with sparkles in the instant between the slam of the glass bottle and the start of the first wave of pain.

  “Ahhh!” Stone sprawled, paralyzed, his system shocked. Through bleary eyes, he glimpsed the bitch rearing back for another shot.

  “This partnership,” she gritted out, “is now over!”

  She swung again, and another flash of light blew up behind his eyes.

  Hacienda Del Norte

  Northern Mexico

  The hacienda guards had pulled their act together. Incoming fire sparked and zipped off the concrete floor of the barn. The metal walls popped as bullets slapped the thin aluminum, leaving round holes with jagged edges. Victor huddled behind the trailer’s rear tires and fired in short, controlled bursts.

  Yeager slid back into the shadows of the warehouse and worked the bolt on the Winchester, methodically aiming and firing until the magazine ran dry. “Out,” he called.

  Victor paused to shrug out of his pack and scoot it across the floor. “More in there. All the C4, too.”

  “How much you bring?”

  “About twenty kilos.”

  “Holy…” Yeager shook his head. “Detonators?”

  “In your bag.” Victor ripped off another burst without bothering to look around.

  “Gee, thanks,” Yeager muttered, then louder, he said, “I’m going to check the perimeter and set up some surprises in case they try and flank us.”

  “Roger that.” Another three-shot burst. “Better hurry ’cause I think they’re working up to do something here.”

  Yeager scooted back and moved to his left until he was out of sight of the main door. Then he threaded his way around the line of pallets and deeper into the warehouse. Or is it a lab? He laid the hunting rifle on top of the closest pallet-load of sacks.

  Six benches ran at right angles to the main entrance and crossed all the way to the back of the cavernous, remodeled barn. Yeager moved to the south wall first. A simple metal door had been cut in the middle of it. The door was locked from the other side, and Yeager didn’t want to take the time to bust it open and investigate.

  Going to one knee, he unzipped Victor’s backpack and found ten square chunks of C4 plastic explosive, individually wrapped in cellophane. Beside those he found a full roll of silver duct tape and a roll of thin, flexible wire.

  “Oh, bless you, my son,” Yeager said. In his own bag, he found two different types of detonators: electrical remote controlled and mechanical ring pull. The mechanical type functioned like a hand grenade; when the ring was pulled, it went bang. And if it was stuck in a block of C4, that went bang, too.

  Yeager taped one of the pliable bricks to the wall. The tape screeched off the roll in two long strips. He tied one end of a piece of wire to the ring on a mechanical detonator and inserted the pencil-thin device into the block of explosive. Taping the detonator down so that only the tip was exposed, he left the ring with its wire attachment dangling free.

  Looping the roll of wire over the doorknob, he measured off a foot and cut the excess wire with his K-bar knife. Then, he secured it with a knot around the doorknob. A half inch of slack remained. If things worked according to plan, when somebody opened the door, the ring would jerk from the detonator, and the intruder’s day would be ruined.

  “How we doing up there?” he shouted toward the front.

  Victor’s voice came back over the smattering of gunfire from the outside, punctuated by his own short bursts of return fire. “Another day… in paradise… you know.”

  “I see two more doors need rigging!”

  “Take… your time. I got nowhere e
lse… I gotta be.”

  “How many?” DaSilva demanded.

  “Two, at least, Don DaSilva,” Gomez, the guard force leader, reported. “Two crashed into the barn, but there may be more.”

  DaSilva remained behind the solid adobe porch arch, while the guards hunkered behind the garden fence. Gomez had established discipline with cuffs and shouts, and the dozen or so men were holding their fire and awaiting orders. The other cadre of guards, situated around the stables, continued to trade sporadic fire with whoever was in the barn.

  “Why are half our men out by the stables?” DaSilva asked, scowling at Gomez.

  A lean, lanky man in his forties, Gomez had a dark Frankenstein face striped with a scar from his left eyebrow to his chin. Gomez looked away. “That… is unclear.”

  “Unclear? Clarify it!” DaSilva’s anger burned in his stomach, and he clenched his pistol. He was very close to shooting someone, no matter who it was.

  Gomez licked his lips. “Marco… um… Marco said they were tricked by a herd of… sheep in the field.”

  “Sheep! We are being attacked by sheep? What the fuck is going on?”

  “I believe that the sheep were a diversion. To confuse our video cameras.”

  DaSilva thought about that. How had the attacking force known about the hacienda’s security? Did they have inside information? Did they believe the money was still in the truck? Was there a mole inside the organization? If so, they had made a mistake. The truck held nothing but books. The idiots were trapped in the barn with no way out and for nothing!

  “Gomez,” he ordered, “send four men to the back of the barn. Make sure no one gets out.”

  “Sí, Don DaSilva.”

  “Take four more men and enter the barn through the barracks. Tell the idiot Marco to send four men around the north side and hold there. Make sure no one leaves through the dormitory. Have him maintain pressure and keep the cocksuckers pinned down with the men he keeps by the stables. You and your men take them in the flanks. The remaining four men will stay here with me.”