Authors: David Jacobs
4:37
P.M
. MDT
Arroyo Coyote, Los Alamos Canyon
Beyond the knob the arroyo opened into a wide oval space, like the bulge an ostrich egg makes when swallowed whole
by a python. At the south end of the oval the rock walls narrowed once more, becoming a twisty gorge.
The shed was long and narrow, a one-story wooden frame structure. It nestled at the base of a rocky cliff, its long-sided front facing south.
It had been built back in the 1960s by some idealistic squatters trying to found a back-to-nature commune. A single summer in the desert had been enough to send the communards back to the city. It was pieced together from found and stolen pieces of wood; planks, boards, and beams of different sizes and shapes were cobbled together into patchwork, crazy-quilt construction. Its flat roof was made of corrugated tin, now badly rusted.
It was currently under new management. Holes in the roof and sides were patched with squares of blue plastic painter’s drop cloths. The fresh scents of sage, yucca, and aloe plants were replaced by a strong chemical reek. A pile of empty fifty-gallon drums lay heaped on the east side of the oval.
A handful of vehicles were parked in on the sandy flat in front of the shed. There was a dark green panel van, three motorcycles, and a dune buggy. A shiny new Ford F4 pickup truck stood by itself, apart from the others. It was purple with gold trim.
“Blanco’s truck,” Porky whispered, excited. He was motionless but breathing hard. He and Varrin were kneeling behind the pile of fifty-gallon drums, using them for cover. Keeping it between them and the shed.
The drums on the bottom level were full; the next layer or two stacked above them were empty. An industrial-strength miasma of chemical fumes hung over them, causing the eye to tear and irritating the insides of nose and throat. Varrin and Porky had worked their way down the arroyo to this place of concealment twenty-five yards from the shed’s southeast corner.
The shed’s front windows were bare of glass panes. Some were empty, open to the elements; others were covered by translucent plastic sheets. The door was missing; the door frame gaped open. The interior was alive with sound and motion. Shadowy forms crossed back and forth in front of the windows. Raucous bursts of talking, laughter, loud voices came from within.
Varrin gave Porky a hard look. “Hesh up. You’re whoofin’ and snortin’ like a stuck pig.”
“I can’t breathe! What’s in these drums?” Porky asked.
“Chemical waste from cooking up the meth, most likely.”
“Gawd!” Porky rose on one knee, peering through a space in the stacked metal drums. He gave a sudden start, ducking down. “Uh-oh! Up on the cliff—I don’t think he saw me—”
Varrin took a peek. A figure stood on a ledge on the rock wall seventy-five feet above the ground. “That’s Lassiter, you damned fool,” he told Porky.
“He didn’t have no cowboy hat and this one does—”
“Must have took it off the spotter. He’s showing hisself so the gang won’t get suspicious if anybody looks up.”
Porky scratched his head and ass, in that order. “How does Blanco get away with it, running a meth lab out in the open like this?”
Varrin had the easy disdain one in the know reserves for those in the dark. “He don’t run it, Speedy Barnes does. He pays Blanco to stay in business. That’s why Blanco’s out here today. It’s Saturday, time for the weekly rake-off.
“Nobody comes to Arroyo Coyote unless they got business here. Elsewise, they don’t leave.”
A loud shout sounded from inside the shed; a shot followed. More shouts, more shots. Handguns popped; machine guns stuttered.
Porky’s eyes glittered. His mouth hung slackly open; he breathed through it. He shouldered his shotgun and pointed
it at the shed. Varrin clamped a hand on the other’s shoulder. “Not yet—wait.”
“They must have seen Quinto and Cruz. Sounds like they’re having a hot time of it—”
Someone screamed in agony.
“They’re getting paid,” Varrin said.
Two men ran out the front doorway. A burly man with long hair and a beard, holding a Thompson submachine gun. He was followed by a skull-faced bald man in dark glasses with gun in hand; a thin, skeletal figure.
Varrin released Porky’s shoulder to bring his own weapon into play. “Now!”
The hairy man was first out the door but the skeleton put on a burst of speed and passed him, running into the first burst of autofire from Varrin’s M–16. He folded, flopping to the ground. The hairy man tripped over him and fell, dropping the Thompson.
A third man ran out of a door on the east side of the shed. Porky cut loose, felling him with a shotgun blast.
The hairy man slithered across the ground, groping for the Thompson. Varrin squeezed off a burst, stitching him in the back.
A small explosion detonated in the shed. There was a crumpling sound. The walls swelled outward; the tin roof rippled.
This was only the precursor to a much larger blast. Yellow light flared inside the shed. Hissing white smoke clouds poured through the windows and door. There was a sharp cracking sound like the snap of a whip. Yellow glare turned red, filling the shed.
A man dove headfirst out a front window, rolling when he hit the ground. He got his feet under him, jumped up, and started running away from the building.
Torreon Blanco
.
Varrin drew a bead on him; it was an easy shot. His finger curled to squeeze the trigger—
The shed blew. Rather, the volatile chemicals used for cooking up the meth blew.
The building’s outer shell disintegrated. In its place: fire, noise, heat, and smoke. Black smoke and white smoke.
The ground shook. The shockwave knocked Varrin and Porky off their feet, sending a pile of fifty-gallon drums crashing down on them. The metal containers were mostly empty but still gave the two a tremendous walloping.
Varrin, stunned, was dimly aware of what sounded like a hailstorm, an ungodly racket. It was the debris of what had once been the shed, blown sky-high by the blast and now falling back to earth. He squirmed and wriggled, crawling out from under a pile of drums.
Fresh bursts of gunfire focused his attention. An engine thrummed, roaring into life. Varrin broke free of the drums. His hands were empty and he couldn’t find his M–16. A gash across his forehead leaked blood into his eyes; he pawed at them to clear them.
A purple and gold F4 pickup truck zoomed past him heading south. Hunched over the wheel, scrunched up to present a minimal target, was Torreon Blanco. On the passenger side the door was open and Stan Rull hung half in, half out of the cab. Facing backward, he fired his gun in the direction where the shed had been and a hissing, sputtering, spewing ruin remained.
A figure emerged from the smoke, staggering after the truck, guns blazing in both hands, throwing lead at the pickup truck and not even coming close: Diablo Cruz.
Stan Rull returned fire; he missed, too.
Varrin remembered the pistol in his pocket. He hauled it out and started shooting at the fleeing pickup. It was already out of effective pistol range.
Its wheels churning up plumes of sand, the F4 slithered, slipped, and slid toward escape. The machine fishtailed, hit a bump that caused the wheels to lose contact with the ground for an instant, nearly shaking Stan Rull loose from his grip on the door frame. He held on.
Torreon Blanco got the pickup under control. It exited the oval, plunging south down a twisty gorge and away.
Cruz saw Varrin and pointed his guns at him. Varrin’s gun was leveled on Cruz. “Shoot me and you won’t get the rest of your money,” he said.
Cruz wiped the back of his hand against his forehead. Some of the craziness went out of his eyes. He holstered his pistols butt-out under his arms. “I didn’t know it was you at first, Varrin.”
“You were looking a little kill-happy. Feel better now?”
“Yeah.”
Varrin lowered his gun. Empty metal drums rattled, booming hollowly as they banged into one another. Porky crawled out from under them, one hand clutching the shotgun.
He was coughing, choking. He had taken a beating. His face was black and blue; one eye was almost swollen shut. His bare arms were covered with cuts and bruises. “You okay?” Varrin asked.
“No,” Porky said through cracked split lips.
“Quit dogging it; you ain’t hit and nothing’s broken.”
Porky loosed a string of obscenities. He hauled himself to his feet. He was wobbly, reeling.
“What happened?” Varrin asked Cruz.
“Quinto and me were sneaking around the back of the shed. When we rounded the corner, a guy stepped outside for a smoke. I burned him down. Barnes and his crew opened up. They had me pinned down behind some rocks.”
“Quinto?”
“He ran into machine-gun fire.”
“Dead?”
“Completely.”
“Then what?”
“A hot round must have tagged the chemicals. There was a small explosion but they didn’t all go up at once. The shed caught fire. Stan Rull laid down covering fire and he and Blanco got out of the building. The heat touched off the main store of chemicals and then there was a big blow.”
“And Lassiter? What about him?”
“Over here,” a voice called. They turned toward it. Lassiter stood between them and the smoking ruin where the shed had been. His forager’s cap was turned right-side around on his head. The rifle was slung over a shoulder and his gun was held at his side. He looked clean, untouched. He crossed to them.
“Where the hell were you?” Cruz demanded.
“Climbing down from the ledge. You could break your neck on the goat path if you don’t watch your step,” Lassiter said. He was cold, unemotional, and phlegmatic.
Cruz spat. “Fat lot of good you did!”
“The biker-looking dude with the long red beard that was shooting a machine gun at you—his head didn’t come apart because he sneezed.”
Varrin was excited. “Biker with a long red beard—that’s Speedy Barnes.”
“I don’t know him from Adam. But he wasn’t Santa Claus.”
“He was honcho of the meth lab. A sweet score!”
“If you believe it,” Cruz said.
“He leaned too far out of the window trying to get a bead on you in the rocks so I potted him,” Lassiter said.
“Prove it.”
“I’ve got nothing to prove to you, sonny. But to keep the record straight, you can check if you’ve a mind to. He got blown out of the shack when it blew up. The body’s pretty
badly burned but most of the head is intact except where my round blew the top of his skull off. You won’t find any bullet because the hollow points shatter on impact, but I guess you could find a few fragments in his cranium if you want to dig them out.”
Cruz sniffed. “I got better things to do than go picking over corpses.”
“We believe you, Lassiter,” Varrin said.
“Speak for yourself.”
“Shut up, Cruz. This is no time for bickering. We got to haul ass out of here.”
“Now you’re talking,” Porky said, his voice quavering. “That smoke can be seen from a long way off. It’s the dry season and the firewatchers will be looking for something like that.”
The blast had spewed flaming debris far and wide. Some had fallen into the dry brush that choked the rocks bordering the shed. Dry brush and weeds, kindling ready to go up at the first touch of flame.
Varrin eyed the blaze. “The brush is burning like a bastard! We better vamoose before it spreads and cuts off our escape.”
Lassiter turned, went to the vehicles parked in front of the shed. The blast had tumbled the motorcycles and overturned the dune buggy but the green panel van was upright and intact. The others followed to see what Lassiter was doing. They grouped around the van, facing the corpses littering the landscape and the smoldering crater that had been the meth lab.
Varrin nodded approvingly, grinning at the carnage. “Nice work, boys. We got everybody but Blanco and Stan Rull.”
“What happened, hotshot? How come you missed Blanco?” Cruz demanded.
“I can’t hit what I can’t see. When that meth lab blew up
it laid down a smokescreen for him,” Lassiter said. His attention was on the van. The cab was unlocked, its windows rolled down. He opened the driver’s side door and peered inside.
“No keys. I haven’t hot-wired since I was a kid,” Cruz said.
Lassiter unslung his rifle, leaning it butt-down against the side of the van. He raised his gun, reached into the cab, and shot the ignition lock on the steering column. The unexpected move made the others jump. “Hot damn!” Porky cried out.
Lassiter holstered the gun and took a folding knife from his pocket, opening the blade. He slid in behind the wheel. The ignition lock was bent, twisted, hanging mostly off the column. He used the knife blade to pry it out of the way.
Removing the lock exposed the cavity in the column; inside was a bundle of wires with different colored insulation. Lassiter selected two different colored wires and stripped the insulation off their tips, exposing several inches of copper wire on each tip. He touched the exposed wires together, generating sparks. He worked the gas pedal at the same time.
The contact triggered the starter and the engine coughed, shuddered, turned over.
Lassiter tromped the pedal, giving it the gas. The engine roared into life. “All right!” Porky said.
Lassiter played the pedal to keep the engine idling high. “Why walk when you can ride? This beats humping it back on foot north up the arroyo.”
“I don’t know if I could make it again.”
“You would if you had to, Porky.”
“Yeah, Varrin, but now I don’t have to.”
“Varrin, get my rifle.”
“Okay, Lassiter.” Varrin picked up the .22. He held it in one hand and the M–16 in the other. He went around the
front of the van and got in the passenger seat. He stood the rifles butt-down on the floor and held them by the barrels, out of the way.
“Where am I gonna ride?” Cruz said.
Lassiter laughed. “In the back, out of sight—where you belong.”
Cruz colored, green eyes narrowing. “You and me are gonna tangle before too long, big man.”
With one smooth, fluid motion Lassiter drew his gun and leveled it at Cruz’s middle. “Why wait?” he asked. He said it easily, without rancor, as if he was just making conversation.