The Massacre Mechanism (The Downwinders Book 5) (2 page)

“God, I hate
following him on this road!” David whined. “There’s so few cars out here, it’s
obvious we’re tailing him.”

“I’ll hang
back as far as I dare,” Winn replied. “We don’t want to lose him.”

“We should take
my car next time,” David said.

“What, you
don’t like my Jeep?” Winn asked, glancing in the rear-view mirror to see if
anyone was behind them.

“I love the
Jeep,” David replied. “But this is the second time we’ve used it to follow him.
It might be wise to alternate.”

“I guess
you’re right,” Winn said. “If you think you could tolerate me in your car.”

“Tolerate?”
David asked, looking surprised. “Why do you say that?”

“You keep it
cleaner than a Safeway chicken,” Winn replied. “I might dirty it up.”

Winn saw
David looking around the Jeep. “You’re giving me shit because I keep my car
clean? Cleaner than yours?”

“You’re a
little obsessed with it,” Winn replied. “I’ve not known many college football
players, but I have to guess most of them have a wrapper or two in their cars.
Maybe an empty can.”

“I like to
keep it clean. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing
wrong with it, I just don’t know many people who are so fastidious about it.”

“There’s
plenty you don’t know about me,” David replied. Winn was about to answer him
when a car appeared in the lane to their left, speeding around them.

“Shit!” Winn
said, watching as the car moved back into their lane after passing, narrowly
missing an oncoming car. “Where’d he come from?” Winn glanced nervously into
the rear view mirror. It was empty.

“He must be
going ninety,” David replied.

“I’m doing
sixty-five,” Winn said. “He might be going a hundred. Maybe faster.”

As they
crested a small hill outside Hurricane, Winn could see Warren’s truck pulling
over to the side of the road, with the car that had sped around them right
behind it.

“He’s
stopping,” David observed. “That car got him to pull over.”

Winn lowered
his speed as they approached the scene. “Shit, I can’t stop. It’ll look worse
if I turn around. Get down so they don’t see you.”

David slid
down in the seat until his head was below the level of the window. As Winn
drove by the stopped cars, he saw the man from the car that had passed them
hand something to Warren. Warren’s head began to turn to look at him, and Winn whipped
his head to the left, hoping Warren hadn’t seen his face.

“Shit,” Winn
said again. “He looked at me.”

“Did he recognize
you?” David said, slowly rising back up in the seat.

“Don’t know.
I turned away. He might have missed me, but I don’t know.”

“What do we
do now?”

“There’s a
parking lot by the storage bays about ten blocks ahead. We’ll wait there for
him to pass us.”

“What if he
turns before that?”

“I can’t
follow him if I’m ahead of him!” Winn said. “And I can’t wait out in the open.
We’ll hide by the storage bays, and if he doesn’t come by within a couple of
minutes, we’ll backtrack.”

Winn slowed
his Jeep and pulled into the parking lot, backing it next to the front office
of the storage facility, where it was perfectly concealed from vehicles approaching
from the south. They waited.

“It’s been a
minute,” David said, checking his watch. “How long do we wait?”

“We don’t
know how long it took him to get going after he stopped for that guy,” Winn
replied. “Let’s give it a couple more.”

“What was
that, anyway? Why’d he stop him?”

“It looked
like the guy handed him something. It was shiny; maybe made of glass. Perhaps
he forgot it.”

“Must have
been pretty important for him to race after Warren like that.”

“How long
now?”

“Two minutes.”

“OK, now I’m
getting nervous,” Winn replied, and he pulled his truck onto the street,
heading in the direction they’d come. They had not gone more than a block when
Warren’s truck appeared in the distance, coming their way.

“He’s gonna
see us!” David said. “What do we do?”

“I gotta
keep going,” Winn said. “It’ll look weird if we stop.”

They saw the
left signal flash on Warren’s truck, and several blocks ahead of them it slowed
and turned.

“Thank god!”
David said. Winn could see the kid’s body was completely tensed up; one of his
hands was wrapped around the edge of the bucket seat, the knuckles white.

“Chill,”
Winn replied. “I’m not going to lose him. We’re fine.”

David’s hand
released, allowing some color back into his fingers. Winn couldn’t help but
notice how big they were.
Football hands
, Winn thought.

Traffic had
increased now that they were closer to Hurricane. A couple of cars had turned
onto the road in front of them, creating some distance from Warren’s truck.

“Don’t lose
sight of him!” Winn said. “I gotta watch traffic now, so it’s your job to see
if he turns.”

“I got the
truck,” David replied. “I’m on it.”

They twisted
through the subdivisions and strip malls, keeping a healthy distance from
Warren. David occasionally noted a turn, and Winn followed carefully, trying to
keep as much distance as they could without losing him.

“He’s going
to Brainerd’s,” Winn said.

“I thought
that was a hardware store,” David replied.

“They sell
feed too.”

Winn slowed
the Jeep as they watched Warren’s brake lights come on, three cars ahead of
them. His right signal came on, and he turned into a large parking lot that
served several different businesses.

Winn turned
a block before the parking lot, and drove his Jeep to the next intersection,
where he made a left.

“Hurry,”
David said. “We don’t want to miss the drop.”

Winn pulled
into the back lot of the hardware store. He stopped the Jeep and turned off the
engine. They were about to exit the vehicle when David stopped them.

“Look!”
David said, ducking a little. Along the side of the building was Warren,
walking in their direction.

Both Winn
and David instantly slid down in their seats until they could barely see over
the dashboard.

“He’s coming
this way!” David said.

“No, he’s
stopping,” Winn replied, watching. “He’s fishing for something in his pocket.”

They watched
as Warren removed a shiny glass bottle and lifted the black plastic lid of a
large metal dumpster on the side of the building. He let the bottle fall
inside. As he lowered the lid, he looked around to see if he’d been observed. Winn
and David responded by sliding even lower.

“That’s what
I saw the man hand him,” Winn said, “back on the road. It’s not trash. It’s the
drop.”

Winn slid up
a little more so he could see over the dash. Warren was walking away from them,
back the way he came. Within seconds he was out of sight.

“I’ll get
it,” David volunteered, opening the Jeep door on the passenger side.

“Watch out
if he comes back!” Winn said as David slipped out.

“Of course,”
David replied, closing the door. Winn watched over the dashboard as David
walked the fifty feet to the edge of the building and then down its side.

The sun was
beating down on the dumpster, and David quickly pulled his hand away from the
lid when he touched it. He reached for it again, flipping it up. It came to rest
against the side of the building, leaving the dumpster open.

David tried
reaching into it, but it was deeper than his arm would go. Winn watched as
David looked up at him and pointed into the opening, a signal that he intended
to climb into the dumpster.

Shit,
Winn thought.
This is taking
longer than it should.

David pushed
up onto the edge of the dumpster and vaulted his legs inside, his athleticism
evident. David’s head disappeared below the edge of the dumpster, and Winn
began to fidget.

After a few moments,
David reappeared. He raised a hand holding the item Warren had dropped into the
dumpster. He smiled and waved to Winn, showing him that he had it.

Now get
out of there!
Winn
thought.

David jumped
out of the dumpster and began running back to the Jeep. When he reached the
passenger door, he opened it and got inside. “Here it is!” he said.

“Down!” Winn
replied, sliding lower in his seat once again.

David
instantly joined Winn by sliding below the level of the dash. “What?” he asked.

Winn slid up
enough that he could see through the windshield. Three people were walking
toward the dumpster. One was a tall, thin man dressed in a black shirt and
pants, with a dirty white tie and a grey Stetson. By his side were two women, clothed
in ankle-length dresses of drab color. The sleeves of the dresses went to their
wrists, and the tops rose up their necks. Winn had seen the classic polygamist
outfit many times before, when fundamentalists came up from Colorado City to
shop.

The tall man
in black ordered one of the women into the dumpster, and the other woman knelt
to give her a boost. Her long dress made it hard to slide over the edge of the
hot metal, but she was inside within seconds.

“I don’t
know who I was expecting to pick up the drop,” David muttered, “but it wasn’t
this.”

“Some old
polygamist and his wives?” Winn said. “Me either.”

They watched
as the head of the woman inside the dumpster popped back up, showing tight
braids that ran down her neck, stopping at the shoulders. She exchanged words
with the other two, and the man in black ordered her back down. Her head
disappeared, and the man assisted the second woman into it the dumpster. He waited
while the women rummaged through the trash, occasionally looking left and right
to see if they were being watched.

Winn saw the
glass in David’s hand, and asked him to pass it. Inside was a clear liquid. He
unscrewed the cap and took a sniff; it smelled strongly of juniper, and for a
moment he thought it was gin. Then it changed to a scent more like oranges, and
within a few seconds it changed again, smelling burnt.

“Strange
message,” David said. “Maybe it was just Warren throwing away some booze, so he
didn’t get caught with it? Maybe this isn’t the drop at all.”

“It’s the
drop,” Winn said. “That’s why they’re over there, searching for it.”

The tall man
in black turned as the heads of the two women appeared out of the dumpster.
They argued for a few minutes, and the women disappeared inside the oversize
garbage can once again.

“Grab that
iced tea bottle on the floorboard,” Winn said, pointing to a spot near David’s
feet. David reached down and retrieved the glass bottle, passing it to Winn.

“What’s that
for?” David asked.

Winn
carefully removed the cap on the iced tea bottle and sniffed at it. He didn’t
like the smell. “Is there a water bottle down there somewhere?”

David
rummaged through the trash at his feet, finally locating a plastic water bottle
that had a couple of inches of water inside. He handed it to Winn, who opened
it and poured the water into the iced tea bottle.

“What are
you doing?” David asked.

“I’m going
to keep a sample of this message,” he replied, swishing the water around inside
the bottle and then pouring it out onto the floor of the Jeep. “But I can’t
keep it in plastic. Has to be glass.”

“A sample?”
David asked.

“I’ve seen
this before,” Winn replied. “The message is in every drop of this liquid. We
don’t need it all, just some of it.” He carefully poured a quarter of the
liquid from Warren’s bottle into the iced tea bottle, and capped them both.

“As soon as
they go, run this back to the dumpster,” Winn said, handing the bottle back to
David.

“Run it
back? Why?”

“Because
these fuckers seem very intent on finding it,” Winn replied, “and there’s no
reason they shouldn’t. Carma just wants to know what the message says. If they
come back again and find it, they’ll think they were too early for the drop, or
that they missed it the first time. It’ll keep suspicions down and they won’t
confront Warren.”

“I wish they
would confront him,” David said. “Now that he’s working for the enemy, I’d just
as soon they turn on him.”

“That’d be
fine with me too, but I think Carma would rather keep the information coming.
Warren and Dayton have no clue we’re onto them, and it’s best to keep it that
way.”

They watched
as the two women inside the dumpster gave up. Each of them crawled out with no
assistance from the man in black. Once they were out of it, he looked inside,
but didn’t enter it. He quickly glanced right and left. Winn slid down in his
seat, but even from this distance he could see the man’s eyes shifting back and
forth, searching the landscape. Finally the man and his wives turned and left,
walking away from them to return to the front parking lot of the hardware
store.