Standoff: A Vin Cooper Novel (26 page)

One more hangar to go and twenty minutes or less until predawn lightened the sky and made sneaking around undiscovered impossible. The keys unlocked the necessary doors and I found myself in a garage full of B-double trucks – Macks with covered load areas. I counted twenty rigs. I found parked among them a couple of prime movers attached to gasoline tankers, a dozen hoses with filler nozzles on each side of the vehicles for refueling multiple machines out in the field. Another rig had a big tank of diesel on the back. All made sense. Mobile infantry requires mobile gas. But what were the ramps for? And then it hit me. The ramps would be driven into place to launch the bikes over the goddamn fence. Maybe that’s also where Whelt fit in – to teach Apostles’ men how to get their Steve McQueen on.

I swept the flashlight across the trucks, then over one of the … twins? “Cooper – how did you escape?” she asked.

“The usual way – tied some sheets together.”

“I’ve just come from the cellblock. You left a mess back there.”

“And what were you doing there?” I asked her, checking my watch. “Dropping off a loaf of bread with a file in it?”

“Y’know, all I have to do is call out and back you’ll go.”

“I’m not ending up on Perez’s table. I’m fond of my shallow exterior.”

“Is that why you’re escaping?”

“Can you think of a better reason?”

“You’re not CIA?”

“So now it’s insults,” I said.

The twin lowered the torch and walked over. She was wearing track pants, Nike runners and a puffy jacket, the identifying push-up bra no longer visible, if indeed she was still wearing it. Her hair was loose. She looked like she was on her way to the gym, or returning from it.

“Who am I talking to, by the way?” I asked, her face close to mine. I moved her hair and looked behind her ear. No freckle. “Morning, Lina.” I was surprised that it was Lina.

She reached up and grabbed me around the neck and pulled me into a kiss, her lips warm and salty.

The lights in the hangar came on, white overhead lights as bright at mini suns. The light revealed Apostles accompanied by half a dozen men armed with assault rifles. I glanced at Lina. She shrugged with the slightest of smiles.

“You want to tell me what you’re doing in here?” Apostles asked in Spanish.

“Looking for a jack,” I replied in English. “You’re sitting on a fortune in wheels here.”

“Your intention was to escape. Why didn’t you take a motorcycle from one of the other buildings?”

“You’re talking to a Harley rider. Those things you got back there aren’t real motorcycles.”

“But you are going somewhere?”

“I told you already – to another cartel who’ll appreciate my skillset.”

“Unlike my associate, Cooper, I don’t believe torture reveals truth. People will do or say anything to make it stop. You had the perfect opportunity to provide your true allegiance to Lina just now, but you didn’t change your story. The only thing that concerns me is how willing Lina was to volunteer for this job. I think she is more interested in you than she’ll admit.”

Lina repeated her smiling shrug.

Did I buy any of this? “Where’s Perez?” I asked.

“Laying out his instruments,” said Apostles. And then, with a flick of his head,
“Mantenlo!”
 Hold him!

Lina turned, a pistol now in her hand, aimed at my face. Odd thing to notice but her smile was gone. I snapped a hand out and deflected the barrel as she pulled the trigger.
BANG!
Powder burns stung the skin on my neck but the round missed. A sudden kick in the back of my leg sent me down on one knee. I looked over my shoulder and saw Daniela. “Morning,” she said all sing-song happy, moving a KA-BAR from one hand to the other.

“I warned you about her,” said Lina.

Apostles was holding back his men, apparently getting ready to enjoy the sight of his women kicking my ass.

“Cowboys Cheerleaders?” I asked, the sciatic nerve in the back of my leg sending shockwaves of hurt into my hip.

“Camouflage,” said Lina with a smirk. “That sent you off into a world of cliché schoolboy fantasies, right?”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“
En efecto
they were Special Operation Command,” said Apostles. “They taught self-defense to Ranger candidates. But then the US Army put the integration of women into special forces on hold so Lina and Daniela searched around for another challenge. And came to me.”

“And how do you know they’re not working undercover?” I asked.

Daniela feinted with a thigh kick and a strike to my windpipe, both of which I saw coming and blocked. But then I felt a slight pressure on the side of my waist. Daniela took a step back and pointed at my leg with the KA-BAR. I glanced down and saw a red stain spreading down the front of my pants. She’d cut me across the ribs and the slice had been deep, aggravating the wound Perez had put there at Juárez airport. I hadn’t seen that coming. A searing pain began to spread up and down my side.

The twins began to circle, looking for a way in. Eventually, they’d find one. This wasn’t a good situation. My back was always going to be exposed so I reached around for the Sig but before I could pull it out, Lina came at me capoeira-style, down low, twirling, changing direction, feinting. Daniela poised, waiting her turn, the knife held two-handed for a downward strike. I crouched and moved, keeping an eye on both of them, but I moved too slow and Lina’s ankle caught the side of my head. The strike left me dazed, poleaxed. Lina kept spinning, this time the opposite way. Another strike. Time – but only just – to protect my head with a raised arm and elbow but the bicep was corked and my left arm went dead. Daniela leaped at me for that two-handed knife strike. I shifted and rolled, and blood from her knife slash spattered across the concrete floor. Daniela had time to pull her strike, but when she came down, she slipped on the blood from the cut she’d put in my ribs and landed on her back, all balance gone. The knife clattered out of her hand toward me. I picked it up and swung at it at Lina as she made a move, a wild, range-finding air swing. But the follow-through took the blade through an arc that ended at Daniela’s neck and the knife stuck fast in her twin’s oesophagus.

“Danny!” Lina cried out, forgetting about me completely and running to her sister’s side.

And then the door behind Apostles burst open. It was Matheson. He stood there attracting a lot of attention, swaying with anger, his eyeballs red and protruding. He was looking right at me, a pistol by his side. “I’m going to fucking kill you, Cooper,” he rasped.

The Sig was suddenly in my hand. Pure reaction as he raised that pistol. Matheson’s dirty blond curls dancing behind the Sig’s front sight. The barrel leaped. An ear-slipping
BLAM!
as, in a burst of red, a hollow-point round sucked Matheson’s face clean through the back of his head. I got off a second shot in the noise and confusion and one of Apostles’ men, who was crouched in front of the boss, sprayed everyone with meat and cartilage as his chest exploded.

I didn’t stick around for the response, diving beneath the nearest truck. I crabbed my way back beneath the coupling and stopped beneath the trailer. Lying down, looking for targets, I shot out the knees of three guards as they ran back and forth, waiting for orders.

I could see Lina tending to Daniela’s injury, pulling her sister onto her side so that she didn’t choke in her own blood, the knife sticking up out of her throat.

I heard doors opening and plenty of shouting. Options were diminishing by the moment. I scuttled to the back of the hangar, beneath a succession of trucks. Two men came running down the narrow passage between the vehicles. I shot out their legs and both went down screaming. An FN clattered to the ground and lodged between a tire and the floor. I made a dash for it, but one of the wounded men with no knees had a pistol and began firing. I retreated all the way to the back of the hangar, putting a wall of truck rubber and metal between Apostles’ men and me. There were floor to ceiling doors here, but they were locked. A quick inspection revealed them to be thin aluminum panels hung on an aluminum frame.

I ran forward and jumped onto the running board of a turbo-diesel-powered battering ram. The driver’s door was unlocked. I swung it open. The damn thing was heavy. I tapped the glass in the door – thick and bulletproof. Figured. These Macks were armored, built for battle. There was no key in the ignition so I ran to the truck beside it, a tanker. Same situation with the ignition key. Third truck along, I saw keys dangling from a sun visor.

I leaped down, crawled under the vehicle to the tanker and pulled one of the filler nozzles off the rack. There was no lock on the filler trigger to keep gasoline flowing. I looked around for something I could use. Paperclips! I dug into my pockets, pulled ’em out, straightened one and then wound it around the handle and trigger mechanism to keep it locked in the open position. More shouts. Jesus, the whole damn encampment was bearing down on me. I turned the master lever on the main fuel cock in the direction of the arrow and gasoline began to flow, gushing out of the nozzle under pressure, a miniature Niagara, splashing wheels, tires and trailers, and spreading across the floor.

I ran back to the Mack with the key in the ignition, gunshots ringing out in the confined space and rounds crackling past me, sparking and ricocheting off the metal trailers. One round tore through my jacket. I tried not to think about it, climbed into the rig and fired it up. The book of matches. I took them out of the pocket. In the door mirror I could see fuel spraying everywhere and the air was thick with choking gas fumes. Jumping across the wide seat and lowering the passenger window, I fired up the book and tossed it back toward the spreading pool of gas on the floor. I braced for the explosion, but nothing happened. A wave of gasoline had surged over the flames and extinguished them.

Fuck, fuck and triple fuck. Machine-gun fire had joined in with all the pistols and carbines. Time to motor. I jammed the rig into gear and booted the go pedal. In the mirrors I saw Apostles’ men sprinting down the aisles between the vehicles, holding their weapons above their heads, firing wildly. A round smashed one of the mirrors on my door. Slugs sparked off metal like crazed fireflies all around as a fusillade of lead was unleashed at the departing rig.

As I hit the wall at the back of hangar and smashed through it, those fireflies must have touched off the fuel. A pulse of air rushed into the hangar behind the trailer and a massive explosion erupted, the heat reflecting off the remaining door mirror searing my face. A mighty fireball blew the roof and one of the walls clean off the aluminum framework and they sailed high in the dawn sky.

One problem that took the edge off my pleasure at all this mayhem: the back end of the trailer attached to the prime mover I was escaping in was also on fire. Another problem – I was so busy gloating over the destruction raining down on Apostles and his people that I ran right into the main fuel dump positioned behind the now destroyed hangar. I pulled hard on the steering wheel to avoid crashing straight into a large storage tank raised off the ground, but desert sand doesn’t provide the best traction and the rig ploughed more or less straight on through regardless, taking out some pipework. The smashed and buckled plumbing sprayed diesel oil all over the back of the trailer as it barreled on by. I was now pulling a roaring gout of flame across the desert.

I scribed a lazy turn, keeping the rising sun on my right, set a northerly course and planted my foot. As far as I knew, there was nothing but thirty miles of sand and those rattlesnakes between the encampment and Texas.

Looking back, things had livened up considerably over in the encampment. Trucks and tankers were being driven out of the pool of flames and doused with foam. Men were running around everywhere. And then a stream of motorcycles surged out of one of the hangars, along with a couple of those pickups with mounted .50 caliber Brownings in the rear. Shit. I had a good head start and sixty mph showing on the speedometer, but the bikes could go faster. And meanwhile I was pulling what looked like a flaming comet and sooner or later those flames would reach my own fuel tanks.

A fire extinguisher was mounted on the side of the passenger’s floorboards. I let go of the steering wheel and reached across to grab it, but not at a great moment. The rig barreled into a shallow gulley, the prime mover grabbing some air and the towed fireball bucking and weaving dangerously. The truck crashed up the other side, booting a pool of dirt skyward before sliding sideways. My heart crowded into the back of my throat as I wrestled with the wheel. At the speed I was traveling, it wouldn’t take much to roll this rig on its side.

But as Apostles’ daughter Juliana had pointed out, it’s not always about me. In this instance, it was also about the men on those motorcycles who were gaining faster than I expected. I shouldn’t have been surprised. This was their turf and they trained on it. Also, the rig didn’t have the turn of speed I thought it might’ve had with an empty load.

There were at least a hundred dirt bikes cutting the corner, closing on the truck. And then I saw why. The sun was coming through the passenger window, which meant I’d drifted around to the east. Shit.

And just like that, the riders were on the left and right of the truck. Several of them pulled assault rifles from their scabbards and began shooting. The rounds pounded into the window and bodywork and made a lot of noise, but not much else. I thanked Apostles for the armor. When the riders saw what little effect their bullets had, they went for plan B and began shooting out the tires. I heard them blow and the rig’s speed dropped back around ten miles per hour and the control became mushy, but the tires were probably anti-terror units and filling them with holes didn’t have the usual effect.

The riders dropped back. I wondered why until .50 caliber rounds began pounding the cabin. The heavy slugs made a hell of a racket and cracked the armor in the door window, but it held. I swerved into the pickup, which pulled away, and the machine gunner in the back shifted his aim and had a crack at the tires. The truck sank on its axles a little more, but still the rig thundered on.

The machine-gun RV came in still closer, going for point-blank range. I swerved toward it and then pulled away. The RV likewise veered, but not until some burning fuel splashed off the back of the trailer and spattered the guy behind the gun. I watched him try to shake it off, but the stuff must have soaked through his clothes. He let go of the gun and frantically patted himself down as flames consumed his arms and torso. He jumped off the back of the vehicle, perhaps to roll in the dirt and put himself out. But as I watched, two guys on dirt bikes hit him. Their front wheels collapsed with the impact and the riders went over the bars into a puddle of burning fuel discharged by the trailer and the bikes caught fire and exploded.

Maybe hanging onto this trailer wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

The gun truck fell back as, in the passenger side door mirror, I saw one of those mobile ramps. And then two dirt bikes sailed off the end of the ramp and disappeared somewhere on top of the trailer close to the prime mover, out of the burning fuel. The slightest jarring through the steering wheel told me they’d impacted with the trailer roof. The ramp increased its speed and came closer as two more riders jumped. One of the bikes slammed into the rear of the cabin where the engine was housed, the resulting jar through the back of my seat feeling like a strike with a sledgehammer.

A boarding party? I swerved the truck left and right to dislodge the men, but nothing fell off. A noise on the roof above me. Holes suddenly appeared in the roof lining, daylight showing. Shit, no armor in the roof! I kept maneuvering the Mack from side to side, but too violently and it lost speed. More holes appeared. Rounds shattered the speedometer and fuel gauges, and shards of plastic, glass and metal filled the cabin, nicking my face and arms. I pulled the Sig, waited for a shadow to flit across those holes, fired upwards twice and heard a thump. An arm slumped in front of the windscreen, and then a smear of blood. I swerved and saw a body fall off the roof and get consumed by the sliding inferno behind me.

The passenger side door suddenly flew open and someone was suddenly in the cabin, covered in dust and black greasy soot, waving a pistol. I jerked the wheel to unbalance him as he fired. The round missed and buried itself in my door. I fired the Sig at him. The top of his helmet blew off and he seemed to go to sleep, slumping forward. The pistol in his gloved hand came to rest on the seat beside me.

And then I noticed something that had been trying to get my attention. It was a different engine sound. The truck was losing speed, the revs dropping. The turbo-diesel was running on fewer cylinders. Someone was back there fucking with the powerplant. I dragged the deceased guy beside me, fed his inert arms through the spokes in the steering wheel, and then pushed the rest of him into the floorboards. The steering now locked in the straight ahead, an improvised dead man’s switch provided by a dead man, I engaged the cruise control, grabbed my gun off the seat and kicked the door open.

No sooner was I outside when the truck rammed through a collection of cacti that tore my pants to shreds and lacerated a leg. The flora would’ve swept me off the running board had I not been holding onto a grab rail with white-knuckled fear. A fall at this speed would be fatal. I took a moment to catch my breath and observed that the same cacti had also forced the bike riders on a wide detour, so there were benefits. I edged down the running board, fingers hunting for another hand hold, stepped over the fuel tanks and came around the vertical exhaust stacks. A wrecked motorcycle was entangled in various hydraulic lines. One of Apostles’ soldiers was standing over the engine, trying to rip out any lead he could get his hands on.