Allegiance: A Jackson Quick Adventure (26 page)

“Yep,” he says. “Yellow and blue plates.” George steers out of a curve and accelerates. The black SUV is within inches of our rear bumper. We’ve got to do something to shake it.

“Keep it steady,” I advise, grabbing the 9 mm from the center console and climbing into the back seat. I slip on the bloody leather and tumble onto the floor, still holding the gun.

“Be careful!” George yells. “You could have shot me.”

I inch my way into the passenger’s back seat and stay low. “Let me know when you’re about to make a sharp right turn.”

Still crouched in the seat, I find the rectangular button on the left side of the gun behind the trigger. A light thumb press drops the clip into my left hand. There are two rounds left.

“Left curve!” George yells.

I slide the clip back into the gun and push it up with my palm. It clicks into place as the car lurches to the left and my weight pulls me to the right against the door.

I grab a seat belt shoulder strap and yank it until it locks, hen wrap it around my right ankle. A tug tells me it should hold.

“Right coming up!”

I turn to the rear of the car and, completely twisted in the seatbelt, reach to my left and pull on the door handle. The door opens wildly and almost slams shut, but I jam my shoulder into it and lean out of the car. My face is maybe six inches from the blacktop. I grip the gun with both hands and extend myself as far as I can, the door beating against my arm and shoulder.

We haven’t hit the turn yet, so I can’t see anything but the back of the Ford and the tire spinning against the road.

My body slides away from the open door, but the seatbelt holds me in place. The front of the black SUV slides into view. I extend my arms and pull the trigger. Nothing.

The
safety’s
on
!

I thumb the safety off and quickly aim again at the car trailing us.

Pow
! I hit the lower edge of the front passenger’s side door. A miss.

The SUV slides back to the right and out of view.

“Another right!” George yells. The SUV moves back into position. I aim again. I’ve got one bullet. My right finger presses the trigger and pulls.

Pow
!

Almost immediately the SUV swerves when its right front tire explodes and disintegrates in a series of loud thumps.

Hit
.

I pull myself back into the Ford and yank the door shut. Still caught in the seatbelt, I pull myself up to look out of the rear windshield. The SUV wobbles and the driver overcorrects to the left. He drives up the edge of an embankment and the engine whines as the SUV flips onto its side and slides, still following us, for a good fifty yards.

“You got ‘em!” George is watching in the rear view mirror. He sounds giddy. “Should we stop?”

“Hell no,” I tell him, untangling myself from the belt and climbing into the front seat. I’m covered in Ripley’s blood. “We need to keep going.”

“Don’t we need to know more about those guys?”

“We are out of ammunition. The gun is empty, and they’re armed. We don’t need to know more about
them
. You already know who they are.”

“Maybe they have documents or information that’ll help.”

I pull the front belt across my lap and snap it. “We’re good. What we need is to connect the dots we haven’t drawn together yet. That’s Charlie, the Governor, Buell. The oil companies themselves. Those guys are working for the oil companies.”

“You said we needed to piece together ‘Pickle guys’. Remember?” George stops the car, pulling onto a narrow shoulder.

“Yeah, I did say that.” He’s right. They may know something.

George looks at me like he’s waiting for me to change my mind.

“Fine. Let me check the back for a weapon.”

“I’ve got Ripley’s gun.” George pulls it out from underneath the driver’s seat. I hadn’t seen him put it there. “It’s got six rounds in it, that shotshell stuff he was talking about.”

“It’s good from close range,” I tell him, taking the revolver from him. “But we need more.” I unlatch the seatbelt and get out of the car. The air is warmer, thicker. There’s more green along the side of the road. We must be close to the highway. The sound of the trunk popping open scares a pair of birds from their perch on a mesquite tree.

The bag from Charlie’s car opens with a loud zip and reveals a treasure of life-ending equipment; a couple of Sig Sauer 9MM pistols, five loaded clips, some boxes of what looks like rifle ammunition, and a large knife. There’s also a pair of binoculars, some MREs, a small laptop, an iPad with a flash drive attachment, a small black iPod, and a United States passport.

“Uh,” George is standing behind me, peering over my shoulder, “that should solve our ammo problem.”

I pick up the passport and flip it open. There’s a color photo of Charlie. Her hair is a little shorter, but equally red. She’s smiling; I know that smile. I look at the name printed on the insert: Judy Bethulia.

I toss the passport to George, grab a pistol, pocket a couple of clips, and tuck the knife into my waistband.

“Check out the name on the passport,” I tell George. “Use the web on my phone to Google it. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Wait,” George says. “You can’t go alone. There are two of them.”

“I’ve got two guns,” I assure him. “You can’t shoot. I’ll be fine.”

He nods and walks back to the car. I start jogging up the road, ignoring the stabbing pain in my leg, to find whatever it is the pickle people have that might be of use.

***

I can see the tops of the flipped SUV’s tires as I run up a small rise in the road. There are voices.

“Have you alerted team two?” It’s a man’s voice. He sounds like he’s wheezing.

“They were in team two’s vehicle,” says a second man, his tone shrill. “Team two isn’t answering any communications. They’re out of play.”

I stop jogging and cross to the left shoulder, crouching behind the brush at the top of the rise. Not having gone for a good run in at least a week, my lungs burn.

To stop my chest from heaving, I breathe in deeply through my nose and slowly blow out the air. My heart rate slows and I focus on the two men standing behind the SUV. Both of them look bruised from the wreck, but seem okay. They can’t see me.

“Who the hell is this kid?” the second asks. “This was not supposed to be difficult.”

“You should have had him at the gas station,” says the wheezy one. “You hit the wrong guy.”

“Yeah,” the second steps toward the first, pointing his finger. “Team three didn’t have any luck either. They had him cornered in the tunnels and couldn’t tag him. Team two...who even knows what happened to them.”

“The file on him didn’t mention anything about firearms training,” the first coughs and wipes bloody spittle from his chin. The wheezing is worse.

“You okay?” The second puts his hand on his partner’s shoulder. “You puncture a lung?”

“I don’t know,” he bends over and coughs again, spitting a trail of bloody saliva onto the road. “We’ve gotta get that kid. He’s supposed to be dead three times now. It’s like he’s got a guardian angel or something.”

From my position behind the brush, it’s hard to tell if either man is armed. When the angry one bends over to help the wheezy one, a handgun peeps from the holster on his left shoulder. He’s right handed.

“I’ll call team three,” says the angry one. “They’re on standby. We need them in position to intercept.”

“You haven’t called them?” wheezes the first one. He’s now on one knee, Tebowing. “They won’t activate without your call.”

“That’s why I’m calling them now,” the angry one says through gritted teeth. He balls his fist before reaching into his jacket breast pocket. Now’s my chance.

I check the Sig Sauer’s clip and turn off the safety. The .40 caliber holds 12 bullets. This one is equipped with a barrel suppressor. Plenty of bullets and no noise. Dropping to one knee, like the wheezing pickle person, I quickly brace my arms and extend the 9MM. With my left eye closed, I tilt my head to the right and target the angry one.

He’s thumbing a number on the phone when I pull the pressure sensitive trigger.

Pop
!

The bullet rips through the back of his right shoulder and he spins around, the phone flying from his hand as his arm goes limp. His guttural scream is unnerving. He’s clutching his shoulder with his left hand, stumbling in disoriented pain when I send another silent shot.

Pop
!

Right through his left hand at the wrist. He won’t be unholstering the gun.

I stand and pull the Governor from my waistband. With a gun in both hands, and my arms fully extended, I march quickly toward to the two spooks. The angry one is writhing in his pooling blood, while the other falls back into a sitting position. He raises his arms in surrender, trying to suppress another messy cough.

“Who are you?” I demand, one weapon aimed at each man. The angry one is shivering, his color evaporating. The wheezy one says nothing.

“WHO ARE YOU?” I repeat and pull back the hammer on the Governor, aiming it across my body at the angry one’s right leg.

No response.

Pow
!

The shot shell sprays into the angry one’s leg, peppering it with shrapnel. He curls up in a ball and wails.

“We’re contractors,” says Wheezy. “Independent contractors.”

“You work for F. Pickle?” I level the Governor at Wheezy. I still have Angry in my peripheral vision. He’s hurt, but he still has a weapon.

“Something like that,” he says and wipes the back of his chin with his sleeve. Blood is smeared across his cheeks.

“What do you want with me?” Why do you want me dead?”

“We don’t give a rat’s ass about you,” he says without a hint of expression on his face. “We’re doing our job.”

“What’s your job?”

“To protect the interests of our clients,” he coughs out in a nasty spray. “That’s all you’re getting.”

“I don’t think so.” Without warning I aim the Sig at his right hand and pull the trigger.

Pop
!

“What the—”

Pop
!

His right foot.

Now I have two men crying for their mothers in the middle of Nowhere, West Texas. I’ve lost my mind. I don’t know where I’ve found this penchant for violence. Maybe I’ve been pushed too far. Maybe I’ve always had it in me, hiding underneath the surface.

“You answer my question or a bullet finds your left foot,” I stand over him, my fingers on the triggers of both weapons. I step on his foot.

“All right!” He grabs at his knee, as though that’ll ease the pain in his foot. “You know too much!”

“About what?”

“I don’t know!” Wheezy lays back and covers his face with his hands. “I only know what I’m told. Neutralize you. You know too much.”

That’s enough. It’s all I’m going to get. Keeping my eyes on both men, I back up and find Angry’s cell phone a few feet from the SUV and take it as a souvenir.

George and I have more work to do.

***

“That’s it?” asks George. He’s fidgeting in the passenger seat, having given the driver’s seat back to me. “You know too much?”

A sign to the right of the highway tells me we’re only four miles from the I-10 and highway 118 interchange. We’ll switch to George’s rental, assuming it’s still behind the gas station. “They weren’t much help.”

“I heard a gunshot,” he says. “I think it was one. The echo made it difficult to tell. Did you kill one of them?”

“No.” The Governor is tucked between my legs; the Sig is in the center console. Both have their safeties on.

“Did you shoot either of them?”

“Yes.”

“One time?”

“Five.”

“You shot at them five times but you didn’t kill them?” George’s knee is bouncing. Apparently his hero tonic has worn off.

“No, I encouraged them to tell me more than they wanted to divulge.”

“You tortured them.” George isn’t asking a question.

“Torture?” I glance at him, my jaw tensing. “I didn’t torture them. What are you? My conscience? Gimme a break, George. One of them was armed. They both admitted that their mission was to kill me. If they got me, they’d have gotten you. Torture?”

If I’m being honest, I didn’t need to shoot Wheezy in the hand or the foot. The shotshell to Angry’s leg was probably unneeded too. I run my tongue across the top of my mouth. I can still feel the small cut left there by glass-laden baby food.

Am I no better than The Saint?

No
.
It’s
not
the
same
thing
.
I’m
trying
to
save
my
life
.
I
did
what
had
to
be
done
.
Nothing
more
.

“That reminds me,” I pull the Governor from between my legs. “This needs another bullet. The 9MM there in the console needs a fresh clip. It’s in the glove box.”

George doesn’t move to reload either of them. He sits there looking at me with what I guess is concern. His eyebrows are arched and pressed together. His fingers are tapping on a bouncing knee.

“By the way,” he finally says. “She was an assassin too.

“Who?”

He picks up the passport from the floorboard and waves it at me.

“Judy Bethulia was a killer too?” I check the rear view mirror. There’s nobody there.

“Judith of Bethulia killed the Assyrian general Holofernes as he was about to attack her home city, Bethulia,” George recites. “He was interested in her because she was beautiful. That got her close to him. She got him drunk and cut off his head.”

“Another woman assassin who kills a man because of political differences.”

“That’s a sanitized way of putting it,” George says. “More like a pretty woman using her good looks to get close to an unwitting victim.”

“Really?” I say to him sarcastically, the implication not lost on me. “What else does it say?”

“It’s biblical stuff,” he says. “There are more than a hundred famous works of art depicting her killing the dude. Many of them have her holding his head after she cut it off. Brutal.”