Nightzone (28 page)

Chapter Thirty-four

“Now who the fuck are you two?” His voice cracked, ruining his bravado, but the handgun shifted from one of us to the other and back.

“I'm Bill Gastner,” I said easily. “I used to be a friend of old Dick Finnegan's. That was his property back there. Where you and the lady were camped.”

“What are you after? Nobody just cruises around out here in the middle of the night.” His courage was gaining some ground. With one murder already under his belt, I had no desire to underestimate him.

“We're just checking property.”

“You a cop?”

“Do I
look
like a cop?” I said, feigning astonishment.

“Yeah, you do. Gimme your wallet.”

“Why would I want to do that?” The gun twitched, and his finger was against the trigger. I rethought my game plan and spread both hands wide. “All right, all right. It's in my left hip pocket. You know, there's been some cattle gone missing in these parts lately. That's why we're out.” I jerked a thumb at Waddell. “This is Couey Martin. We've had some trouble with the Forest Service monkeying with his livestock. Thought we'd take a look.”

I handed him the wallet, and he took it with his left hand, still standing out of range of my door. He flipped it open and his eyes narrowed. Sure enough, the first thing he saw was my old sheriff's badge, and my current special commission.

“You have a license and your insurance card we can trade? We need to clean up this mess. Sorry I got in your way, son.”

The affable absurdity of that request didn't seem to register with him. He tossed my wallet past my head into the back of the SUV.

“With these two fingers,” and he pinched index and thumb together, “hand me your weapon.” He said it as if he were reading a script, and if he could have kept the tension out of his voice, it would have sounded pretty good.

He couldn't have known that the Smith and Wesson was empty, its rounds wild into the trees around his speeding truck. He most likely would never have heard the gunshots. Incapable of walking and chewing gum, or driving hell-bent through the night prairie while fiddling with slippery cartridges, I hadn't fumbled with the speed loaders. I leaned forward and to the left, finding the gun in the pancake holster. With my left hand on the steering wheel, I said, “Okay, now. Take it easy. Here it comes. It's not loaded.” I drew out the Smith and Wesson as he had suggested, holding the magnum up like a dead fish.

“Throw it in the back.”

I did so, and relaxed. If he'd wanted us dead, there we'd be. Still, the underarms of his gray army-navy store bargain shirt were soaked. His case of nerves was understandable, I suppose.

“Those,” he said, nodding at the center console. I assumed he meant the handcuffs that nestled in one of the bottle holders.

“Can't do that, sorry,” I said. “Enough's enough. You just…” He struck so damn fast I didn't have the chance to raise a hand. The flat of the automatic connected with my left temple, and stars danced. I cursed and pressed a hand to my head, feeling the leak.

“Get out of the car.” This time there was a higher pitch to his orders, a desperation. I looked at him with one eye closed, and he still had the gun pointed at Waddell. It was too dark to see if his hand was shaking, but this was not the time to play games, no time to announce that he already had a murder one rap on his sheet, and when the real sheriff arrived, there would be no negotiations. Daniel would be in custody or dead.

More important just now was that both Miles Waddell—aka Couey Martin—and I be able to enjoy breakfast in a couple of hours, all in one piece. I didn't know what Daniel's plans were, but he didn't need to know that he had
NightZone
's creator, the man with direct connection to satellites, the FBI, the UN, and who knew who or what else, captive at his feet. I had no desire to light the kid's Roman candle.

I held up both hands again, placating. “All right. Just all right.” I unlatched the door and moved it slowly, even though he was well out of its range. I outweighed him by fifty pounds, and maybe twenty years before that would have mattered. Twenty years ago I would have smacked the gun out of his hand and then broken his arm against the sharp fender of the truck. That was then.

As it was, I damn near fell when my boots touched the ground. He darted behind me and grabbed the cuffs off the console. “You,” I heard him say to Waddell. “Get out. If you want him dead, do something stupid.”

At gunpoint, he escorted us to the back of the electric company's utility truck—which, thanks to the railroad tie bumper, had suffered not a bit. In the back was his motorcycle, lashed down neatly so that it nestled between four 50-gallon drums.

“Get up there,” he ordered, and I laughed. There might have been room for a couple of kids.

“I don't think so, sport.” The utility bed had no tailgate, but still it was high off the road, and I was far past the ‘hop into the back of the truck' stage. The massive bumper included a pipe-fitter's vise welded in place.

Ever helpful, he kicked the trailer hitch. “Step on that, then up. Move it.” He was right. It worked. Miles Waddell followed. So far, he hadn't said a word, his face grim. “Put these on your right wrist,” he said to Waddell. The rancher didn't have much experience with handcuffs, and it took him a minute to figure them out. “Give me,” Daniel said. He reached up and clenched the cuffs tight, all the while pointing the gun at me. “Go to that side of the bike,” he commanded, pointing to the left. “You,” and he meant me, “on the right.”

We each had a little alcove in which to squat. The drums filled the front of the truck bed in sort of a “U,” the front wheel of the bike nestled between the rear two. It was an effective barrier between us. “Pass the cuffs under the bike's fork in front of the engine and snap them on your left wrist,” he ordered. This was a new one on me. Right to left, we were handcuffed and secured in position by a 500-pound rice rocket. The key to the cuffs was on my ignition ring, back in the SUV.

“Don't do anything stupid,” Daniel repeated as he turned to climb into the cab.

The utility truck started with a lurch and reversed, accompanied by a tearing of metal as the embedded railroad tie took out part of my Durango's fancy grill guard. I shot my free hand forward and grabbed the rim of the nearest drum. It was heavy and cold, the aroma of gasoline pungent.

We could go down on our hands and knees, or kneel, or stand bent over in an ape posture that I'd be able to hold for about five minutes. As soon as the truck started down the narrow road, I realized how truly close to torture this was going to be.

“How's your head?” Waddell asked.

“Attached.”

“You took a hard lick.”

“That son-of-a-bitch has fast hands,” I said.

“And who's Couey Martin?”

“Just a name,” I said. “He used to work for the highway department years ago. I didn't figure this son-of-a-bitch needed to know who you were.”

“What's he aim to do?”

“I don't know. But right now, he's got the cards. A good truck, what looks like two hundred gallons of gasoline, and two hostages. Go figure.” I tried again to get comfortable, but the jouncing was brutal.

“Put your left hand down flat on the bed right by the front wheel,” Waddell whispered. With the cab's center window blocked by the utility bed's front tool boxes, Daniel couldn't see us. But what served as his ally was the continual battering we took from the truck's impossible suspension. Try to move, and a lurch sent us crashing into the drums or the bike.

On his hands and knees, Waddell planted his right hand on the truck bed opposite my left, the two of us snuggled against opposite sides of the bike's engine. “Just lift the front of the bike. Use your shoulder, or butt, or whatever. Even a knee against the front wheel. It's on its kickstand, so all we have to do is lift it a little bit, then we slide the cuffs forward, out from under the wheel.”

“And then what—leap off a moving truck into the cactus?”

“We'll think of something. Jump on
him,
maybe.”

The problem with his scenario was that we had to lift the front end of the bike and at the same time, slide our hands in unison, hoping to slip the short link that connected the two halves of the cuffs under the three measly inches of rubber resting on the bed. It didn't work, despite our duet of groans, gasps, and curses.

“Why don't we just push the son-of-a-bitch out the back?”

“We don't want to go overboard with it,” the rancher said. He thumped the heel of his hand against the nearest drum. “You think he's got gas in all of these?”

“That's all that I smell,” I said.

I pushed the small of my back hard against the bike's engine, trying to ward off a savage lumbar kink. “Can you reach the bungees?” Two secured the back, with two more at the front. On top of that, the bike rested on its stout two-legged stand, held tightly from side to side.

A sudden lunge of the truck cracked the right side of my head against the rim of one of the barrels. Just when I thought I had my balance, we swerved left and I fell again. “I'm going to shoot this son-of-a-bitch when I get the chance,” I swore. Looking toward the back, I recognized the wider, smoother surface of County Road 14. We'd turned off the primitive Forest Road, and the truck's speed picked up.

“I got it,” Waddell said, and the rear bungee buckle on his side flopped loose. I don't know how he found it in the dark, but his hands were more nimble than mine. Contorted like a gymnast, he strained to reach the other. It was on my side, impossible no matter how he twisted. With my left hand held firm, I turned my back to the bike, pressing against the massive engine. This was the time when it would have been nice to have working rotator cuffs. With a review of every curse that I knew, I could reach the bungee buckle with my right hand, but could not managed to do anything with it.

“Find a purchase and skid the bike toward me a little. Get some slack in it,” I said. He braced his back and pushed, and the bike gave a little. Another push, and the bungee drooped. This time I could reach the hook where it latched onto the frame of one of the utility boxes.

“Now the front,” Waddell said in triumph. With our hands laced together under the frame ahead of the engine, the logistics of the front bungees were easier. We had the technique down pat. In another mile, and with a dozen more bruises collected, the first bungee parted company, and we had it made. The second followed.

“Okay,” I said. “Now what? If we don't do this just right, we're taking a dive off this truck with the bike.”

“Then let's do it right,” Waddell said. But as he spoke, the truck slowed hard, and I rose on one knee, trying to see over the cab. Sure enough, we had reached the intersection with State 78, the highway from Posadas out through the northwest corner of the county toward Newton. That meant twelve miles to go down County 14 until we crossed State 17, and then on down the county road still farther to Waddell's holdings—if that's where we were headed.

We enjoyed the smooth transition for two blissful seconds as we crossed the pavement. Daniel hit the gravel on the far side and accelerated.

“Turn your back to it, reach down and grab something, and lift and heave forward,” Waddell said.

“Remind me again why we want to do this?” I muttered. The exhaust pipe was handy. “Now!”

We heaved and accomplished nothing other than digging the handcuff link deeper into our flesh. “One more,” Waddell gasped. And this time it worked. The bike rolled forward a bit, the kickstand snapped back, and the bike was balanced on its tires. And that meant that we were the ones defeating gravity.

“Don't let it lean on you,” Waddell said. “We'll never get it up.”

I silently blessed the county road department for keeping County 14 in some semblance of repair. A click, and Waddell said, “It's in neutral. Easy now. When it goes off the back, slap your hand down hard on the bed. Let it roll over the cuffs.”

“This is going to hurt,” I grunted.

“Of course. Anything worthwhile does.”

“I'm going to remember you said that.”

Looking like a pair of spastic crabs, we edged the bike backward. Linked as we were his right to my left, we had to crawl backward ourselves, shoulders and hips pushing against the bike to keep it upright. What seemed like a week took only seconds. We felt the back tire hit the rim of the bed, and then gravity did the rest.

“Hand down!” Waddell yanked me flat, the bike leaned sideways to rest its bulk on my hip. Then I felt it start to go. The front tire hit our shackled hands, took skin and flesh with it as it twisted away. Then it was gone, pitching back to land on the road with a satisfying crash and scatter of expensive parts that winked in the moonlight.

Waddell's face bloomed into a grin of wild glee. “He ain't going to be happy about that!”

Sure enough, the truck braked violently, sliding to the shoulder. Both of us careened forward and I dropped to my knees, banging my elbow against one of the drums, eliciting only a dull thunk.

Elliot Daniel charged around the back of the truck, his pistol waving like a conductor's baton. He ran back a few yards and surveyed the scattered bike, cursing. The machine might have been able to wobble down the road were it not for the crushed left handlebar. He kicked the front wheel savagely, then bent down and pulled several items out of one of the rear panniers. He didn't bother moving the bike from the center of the dirt road.

He stalked back to the truck, and I picked myself up. He kept the side utility box between himself and us, and the gun, as always, at the ready.

“I don't know what happened,” I said. “It just went out the back.”

“Give me your cuff key,” he demanded.