Wanted (37 page)

Dark Earth

Devil’s Icebox (Dark Earth, book 2 - pending)

The Lost Girls
(The Lost Girls, book 1, a Dark Earth novel)

Traitor
(The Lost Girls, book 2, a Dark Earth novel)

Wolfgirl
(The Lost Girls, book 3, a Dark Earth novel)

Voices
(a Dark Earth Book)

New Beginnings
(Vitalis, book 1)

The Colony
(Vitalis, book 2)

Parasites
(Vitalis, book 3)

Screamer
(Vitalis, book 4)

Human Nature

Sex Sells

Ice Princess

By Jason Halstead

Sarah fought the urge to take her helmet off. The sun had hidden behind the red cliffs to the west and the wind whistled fiercely through the open bed of the old army truck. Even with that relief she was still miserable and hot. Too many layers of clothes that were too tight on her combined with brutal desert sun and not nearly enough water.

Occasionally somebody would try to say something. A joke or a complaint, but it seldom sparked a response. Open mouths meant another hole the dust could blow in, even though most of them wore rags over their mouths. Sarah shifted her grip on the worn rifle in her hand and glanced around. She shared the back of the truck not only with the two large crates of questionable medical supplies, but also five other men. They were all dressed the same, shapeless in their collections of desert camouflage, but they knew she was a woman. They also knew her well enough to know it didn’t matter. She was off limits and one on one she could prove it.

The shade only made it worse. In the sunlight any sweat that dared to drip below her helmet was evaporated. Now it left streaks down her neck and forehead, itching as it moved the tiny particles of dust. She bit back a groan of annoyance and only barely noticed the glint from the top of the eastern ridge.

Sarah froze, her eyes widening. She studied carefully, catching another brief flash of reflected sunlight. Something was up there, something metallic or otherwise shiny. Something that could have easily been the scope of a sniper’s rifle.

She feared that moving would draw attention to her. The cliff was on the short side of two hundred feet and probably half that to the east of the road. That and the fact that the truck was moving did little to calm her racing heart. A good sniper could have made the shot with his eyes closed.

“
Hey!” Sarah called out loudly enough to overpower the combined sounds of the wind, tires, and the trucks diesel engine. The others glanced at her, moving as little as possible out of efficiency or laziness. It didn’t matter, she figured movement would be what triggered an attack, not her telling the others. Unless the sniper could read her lips. “Sniper on the eastern ridge!”

She saw wide eyes that echoed what she imagined her own expression had been. The two men sitting on her right glanced up. Only one of the men on the opposite side turned to look. She cursed. It was obvious now. “Fucking amateur!”

He looked back at her, surprised, then his eyes narrowed behind the rag he used to filter out the dust. He met her glare for glare until Vince, the man on her right, rumbled loud enough for them all to hear. “I don’t see nothing, you sure?”

“
No, couple times in the same spot I saw a flash. There’s no metal or buildings up there, what else could it be?”

To make matters worse, the trucks engine quieted. It slowed, taking a curve in the road that had once been wide enough for at least four lanes. Now fallen rocks and the occasional strategically placed derelict vehicle narrowed it to something the truck could barely fit through. Sarah risked a glance and saw that, past a hill made of dirt and sand, a river cut across the canyon. Leaning back to give her line of sight ahead of the vehicle, she saw a road block with two armed men waiting. Behind them was a large bridge that spanned the Colorado river.

“
We’re here, be cool,” The man across from her said. Sarah glanced back up to the canyon wall and breathed a sigh of relief. The sniper, if it had been one, was behind some rocks that the turning road had put between them. The range had to be at least half a mile now too. The relief also brought a return of her earlier feelings of irritation. The sweat had gotten worse, thanks to her anxiety, and now her entire neck and upper back was itching.

“
Don’t get out,” John, the man across from her, said as the truck slowed to a stop. She had worked with him before and knew his name wasn’t really John. It didn’t matter to her, but she did wonder what he’d been born with. John had vouched for her and got her the job, so she owed him that much.

The man in the passenger seat waited until one of the guards approached. He got out slowly, hands evident to show he had no trouble in mind. He did have a pistol at his side, but it was confined by a buttoned strap over the grip. Sarah looked away quickly, forcing herself to ignore the obvious and keep an eye out for anything that seemed amiss — strange clouds of dust being kicked up, smoke, or even noises that were out of place. She’d seen them all at meets that went bad in the past.

The passenger door shut, bringing her attention back from their surroundings. She glanced at John and he gave her a brief nod. She returned a tight lipped smile. It made her feel good to have someone notice her, but she knew better than to show it. Among men like these it would be taken as a sign of being girly. Next would come the leers and the jokes, and before she knew it somebody would start grabbing or pinching and expecting a good time. Then she’d have to shoot off somebody’s dick or ram her antique grenade somewhere that the sun never shined. She could save the girly stuff for between fights with her sister.

The truck jerked forward, threatening Sarah for a moment with the possibility of falling out of the open tailgate. She recovered her balance quickly, clutching her gun nervously. The tension in her neck and shoulders drained when she realized the truck was moving slowly and heading across the bridge. Only two lanes remained, the other span on the east, formerly the south-bound span, was piled high with rocks and trashed vehicles at both ends and along the sides. It made the remaining span a perfect killing zone. The tension returned in spades.

Twenty minutes later Sarah’s nerves were no less calm. The road to Moab had been turned into a high desert slalom course with boulders and broken down hulks of vehicles or machinery. Beyond that, down a slight hill, the once welcoming town of Moab lay nearly pristine and untarnished by the ruin of civilization. The only thing missing, as the sun dipped lower into the western sky, was electricity.

People lined the streets, watching the truck. They were armed, though only a few of them held weapons in hand. Sarah stared back at them, not letting her eyes linger on any one for long. Some men, some women, and very few children. All in all she fought to keep her disdain off her face. The last thing she needed while trapped in a virtual mountain stronghold was to piss off the natives.

The truck pulled off onto a side street, rumbling along through the otherwise silent city. It stopped before the Allen Memorial hospital. Among buildings that looked old and run down the small hospital reminded her of abandoned Native American ruins she had seen once on a job that took her into Southern Arizona.

“
Let’s get this stuff inside!”

Sarah pulled her attention away from the building and hopped down from the back of the truck. She winced from the impact on her cramped legs, but moved aside without complaint so the others could climb out with her. A final survey of the surrounding area, complete with houses in various states of disrepair, and she slung the rifle she carried over her shoulder.

Sarah helped carry the first box in, taking through the lobby but stopping when some locals at the registration desk told them too. It was placed beside a wall, then for lack of any encouragement to do anything else, Sarah and Vince walked back out to the truck, pausing only to let Reggie and the inexperienced Matt take their box into the building. They rejoined John and a tall Mexican man named Tony by the truck.

Reggie and Matt joined them a few minutes later, preceding another man wearing a white coat. He was older, in his sixties, with a shiny strip of nothing on top of his head and some gray fuzz along the sides. He walked up to them, smiling widely and pulling a cooler on wheels behind him. “We really needed this, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it!”

“
You can show us,” The man running the job said as he came around the side of the truck. His name was Shawn Miller, but Sarah knew little about him. John had done all the subcontracting for the hired help, other than the driver.

“
Right! Yes, of course, sorry about that.” He reached into his coat, causing all of them to tense and a few guns to shift. The doctor didn’t seem to notice. He pulled out a couple stacks of bills, fresh looking money at that, and handed them to Shawn. “Here you go. And water, as much water as you can drink! It’s all clean and good. We’ve got people running constant purification off the Colorado. Gets all the mud and anything from upstream out of it.”

Shawn flipped through the money, appraising it quickly. He nodded, satisfied, and turned to the others. “You heard the man, grab yourselves a drink if you want one, we earned it after that drive!”

Sarah’s wasn’t the first hand in the cooler. Plastic jugs of different sizes, no doubt used and reused many times, were filled with cool water. It was far from cold, but a dark room in a desert basement could feel like refrigeration after all the sun they’d had. She forced herself to take it slowly after the first few refreshing gulps.

“
Food too, it’s the least we can do. There are some camp sites still set up you passed on your way in to town, you can stay there tonight. Our hunters should be back in soon, if they’re not already. They’ll bring in some food.”

Sarah paused long enough to offer the doctor a smile. She wasn’t too sure what passed for edible animals near Moab, but she also knew she wouldn’t turn it down unless it happened to be another person. She couldn’t imagine being that hungry.

She slipped over and grabbed a couple more bottles of water, shoving two in her pockets and holding a third in her hand. She shrugged when John stared at her, then had to take a drink to hide her smile as he and the others did likewise. She figured the doc wouldn’t have told them to drink all they could if he didn’t mean it.

The ride back to the campsite was a little more relaxed. With the expensive cargo delivered, there was no reason to worry. That and the extra leg room made it almost a pleasant experience. Or at least as pleasant as was possible for Sarah under stifling body armor and too many layers of clothing.

The camp required no real set up either. They occupied four cabins, Sarah and John splitting one while the others split up amongst the other three. Each held framework for bunk beds and a full size mattress. The mattresses were long since gone, but that left a plank of wood in the full size and enough flat metal bands in the bunks to offer a makeshift hammock.

After staking their claims they made their way back out to the first cabin where Shawn and his driver were bunking. They already had a fire pit going and an old steel grate ready for whatever critter was unlucky enough to serve as dinner.

The sun was nearly finished with the day, having long since slipped past the eastern ridge of the valley. They gathered around the fire for warmth. John pulled out an old canteen and took a sip from it, something Sarah noticed and raised an eyebrow at. He smiled and offered it to her, which drew the interest of a couple of the other mercenaries.

Sarah stared at it then shrugged and picked it up. Without thinking about it, she took a drink and nearly coughed it back out. It burned her throat and assaulted her sinuses. She finally managed to finish swallowing it down then took a ragged coughing breath. “Paint thinner?” She finally gagged out.

He chuckled and took a heavier swig of it. He grimaced slightly, then offered it to Vince, who turned it down. Tony looked interested, as did Matt, but Reggie waved it off. Sarah took a heavy pull off her water bottle to rinse out her mouth then shook her head and sighed.

“
I bet you’re pretty under all that gear,” John ventured a few drinks later.

“
Don’t go there,” Sarah warned.

He laughed and held up a hand. “Don’t worry, I’m just pointing out the obvious is all. I know better, I remember what you done to that Mexican that tried to get a piece.”

“
Hey!” Tony leveled a glare at John, but John only flipped him off.

“
Relax amigo, the guy was Mexican. I didn’t say he was a wetback or nothing. Didn’t say he tried to mow her lawn or anything like that. Just that he was Mexican. Same as I’m white and Reggie over there is so damn black he’s almost purple.”

Tony stared at him then shook his head and laughed it off. John might have been feeling warm and fuzzy but anyone who knew him knew he was crazy fast with the pistol on his hip and only a wink of an eye slower with the knife on his other hip. Sarah laughed as well, drawing attention away from the two and trying to diffuse the situation. “Wonder if that guy ever did walk straight again?”