Nightzone (29 page)

“It's back in my truck, son.”

He thought about that for a few seconds, then nodded. “You won't go anywhere.” Without the least hesitation, he raised the gun and fired a single shot, the explosion loud and sharp. Miles Waddell gasped and lost his balance, dragging me down with him.

“You don't play games with me,” Daniel said. “You and your buddy just…” and he let the rest of the sentence go, running out of words.

He returned to the cab, but returned almost immediately with one of those yellow fabric tow straps. He tossed it into the truck bed. “Wrap that around behind your cuffs,” he ordered.

“Now wait a minute,” I started to argue, with visions of him dragging us down the road. He lifted the damn gun again. I held up a conciliatory hand. “Don't do it.” I looped the strap through the cuffs.

“Just give me the ends.”

I thought on that. The strap was weighty, but not a good weapon. I could swing it at him, but what would that earn? Miles had regained his balance, but stood hunched, his free hand pressed against his thigh. I did as I was told, and the tow strap sawed against my wrist as Daniel pulled out the slack. With both ends in hand, he yanked the tow strap over my side of the truck and slipped both end hooks around something well out of reach, up forward toward the cab's rear door. Such an arrangement wouldn't have stopped a couple of agile teenagers, but it was effective for us. I might have been able to slide over the side, breaking only a few things, but I was cuffed to old peg-leg.

Daniel returned to the cab, I guess confident that I wouldn't drag my wounded partner out the back or down the side, or anywhere else. He evidently knew the handy utility of darkness. Even if we successfully bailed without shattering any more legs or necks, just where would we go? Stand in the dark and wait for the cops?

Daniel was digging his personal hole deeper and deeper. I wanted to be there when he hit bedrock. The truck started with an unnecessary jolt. Waddell cursed again.

“That son-of-a-bitch shot me,” he said between gritted teeth. His free hand clutched his thigh.

“Bad?” The instant I said it, I realized how stupid it sounded. Even if it doesn't break bones, a hole is a hole, and all kinds of blood leaks out. Miles was just a dark shadow, though. He tugged my hand over and put it on his, halfway between knee and hip, right in the heavy thigh muscle.

“I don't think it hit the bone,” the rancher said hopefully.

“Just try to hold still,” I said. “Let's get a belt or something around it.”

“It's not bleeding that much,” he said. “Just leave it.” He drew himself up a little, trying to relieve the weight on his leg, and then sucked in a sharp breath as the truck lurched and dumped us hard against the steel truck bed and the drums. “This is going to hurt.” He looked across at me, his features indistinct. “It's a good thing I hired you to keep me out of trouble.”

“You bet,” I said. “Think where you'd be if I had left you behind at that damn reception.”

He laughed, but without much humor. “What's the sheriff going to do?”

“I have no idea. The only thing I can guess is that he's got the girl.
Someone
has her. And he'll be able to guess where we're headed.”

“My place.”

“Yep. I mean, where else?” I rose a bit, trying to see out beyond the cab. “Get a good hold,” I said, ducking back down. “The canyon breaks north of the interstate and Seventeen are coming up.” He knew what I meant. We wedged ourselves as tightly as we could, at least thankful that the drums were dead weights, reluctant to slide around against their retainers. For four miles, we charged through narrow cuts in the rocky mesas, across two arroyos, and finally down a jagged slope that angled along a mesa flank. The mesa had dumped all its loose rocks on the road, and we swerved this way and that, at one point scraping the undercarriage.

The road delivered its last savage jolt, and then we were skimming across a dry sandy lake bed—the water gone about the time the mastodons left. Headlights cut the night sky, and we flashed under the interstate, the late-night tourists blissfully ignorant of what was going on below them.

Posadas County is sliced by three east-west state highways, and Waddell's holdings lay between NM 17 and 56. Once we crossed NM 17, we were headed for his home turf…and, I wagered, Elliot Daniel's grand plan.

Charging up a rise in the prairie, we reached the stop signs for NM 17. Determined to give us no opportunity, Daniel slowed the truck only a fraction, and with no headlights cutting the night to argue with him, dove through the stop sign, across the old state highway.

His view wasn't as good as ours. As we shot across the macadam, I saw the moonlight touching the white roof of a car three reflector tenth-posts to the east. As the pavement faded behind us, I saw the car pull out, running without headlights.

I knew that Deputy Thomas Pasquale often drove 303, one of the older hot rod Crown Vics. I had been in the office one day when Pasquale had gazed out the window with lust at the undersheriff's new Dodge Charger. He'd turned to Sheriff Torrez and asked plaintively, “When am I going to get one of those?”

“When you learn not to turn 'em into junk inside of a week,” Torrez had said, and that ended that conversation. The young deputy's nickname, “Parnelli Pasquale,” was well-deserved.

The old patrol car, still plenty peppy, reached County Road 14 before we'd gone another mile, still running without headlights. It turned onto our dirt road with a smooth power slide in the gravel that sent up billows of moonlit dust.

I sat back down. “Well, this will be interesting.”

“Who do we have behind us?” Wadell asked. He could see the dust cloud now as the deputy closed the gap. If Daniel was paying attention, he might be able to see it as well.

“My guess is Pasquale,” I replied, fervently wishing that my cell phone wasn't back on the center console of the Durango. “The sheriff said he was headed out on Seventeen. Let's hope he doesn't get too eager.” And sure enough—the young deputy had either thought this through all by himself, or was listening to Sheriff Torrez's calm instructions. His patrol car slowed and remained a good quarter-mile behind us. Maybe we were lucky, and Daniel
hadn't
spotted him. Hopefully, Torrez hadn't just said, “Get close enough and shoot the son-of-a-bitch,” although had I the wherewithall, that would have been my first choice. I was getting goddamned tired of being jounced, bruised, nicked, and otherwise assaulted by the rough, cold ride in the back of the Posadas Electric utility truck, chained to a fellow who didn't deserve a minute of the beating.

Chapter Thirty-five

I knew County Road 14 well enough that I could predict the worst of the bad spots, and now that we were drawing closer to
NightZone
,
Elliot Daniel was getting antsy, pushing the truck hard. I still had no idea what he had in mind. Unfortunately for us, he hadn't been the sort of bad guy who liked to spout soliloquies about his motives. As the guy in the Italian western once advised, “If you're going to shoot, shoot—don't talk.” Apparently Daniel had memorized that script. This wasn't a guy who was suddenly going to negotiate.

Far in the distance to the north, I saw the faint prick of headlights. More company.

“Whatever he's planned, he's going to have a good audience.” I pointed, and Waddell nodded.

“I saw it. And he probably did, too.”

“The only thing I know for sure is that Daniel thinks he can barter his way out with us if there's a problem. There's no reason to keep us alive otherwise.”

“That's a cheerful thought.” We jolted and Waddell let out a little yelp. “Now it hurts,” he muttered.

Over the last little rise in the prairie, the new electric substation project appeared, the small forest of steel poles and transformer platforms ghost gray. With power restored on the service line, the crews had taken a Saturday night off. One of the big bucket trucks remained parked inside the enclosure with a low-boy utility trailer attached, loaded with four new transformers. As we drew closer, I could see various piles of construction junk around the site, but anything valuable—like the huge roles of copper cable—should have been locked inside the barbed wire and chain-link enclosure with the truck.

We didn't slow down until the last minute, and at the same time that Daniel spiked the brakes, I was crouched with one hand locked around the headache rack, the other with the damn tow strap around my forearm and handcuffs grounding me to Miles Waddell. Able to just see over the cab, my eyes ran from the cold. Just enough February to make us doubly uncomfortable, but not enough to throw a blizzard into Daniel's plans. The prairie was full of humps and bumps and things that showed no definition for the eye, even with the undiluted moonlight. I sat down and for the first time, I could hear Miles Waddell's teeth chattering. “You know, I never asked you this, but is there any chance you happen to be carrying a gun, Couey?”

That prompted a shaky laugh. “Don't I wish,” he said.

“Hang in there. We have lots of company now.” Off in the prairie somewhere, a cow bawled for its late fall calf. All the activity was making her nervous.

With exaggerated care, Daniel swung the rig into the sub-station's rough driveway.

“Sure enough,” I said. He stopped, engine idling, with the railroad tie a pace from the locked gate. “Slide back, right against the bulkhead,” I whispered. “Protect your head.” I scrunched down tight beside him. Under the truck I heard a faint clunk as it was shifted into four-wheel-drive low range. The Ford jerked backward a dozen paces, and then Daniel shifted into drive and hit the throttle.

Free arm over my head, curled up with Miles like a couple of old best friends, we huddled down. The truck took the gate dead center, tearing it out from under the barbed wire strands that passed over the top bar. One wire scraped along the headache rack above us, the stout chain-link gate panels collapsed inward, ripping fence support posts on either side out of their fresh concrete beds. The whole thing snarled on the truck's grill and front bumper, pushed inside the compound, dragging chain-link and posts. He stopped when we were just about dead center in the enclosure, parked beside the electric company's bucket truck, the railroad tie butted against one of the transformer platforms.

I heard Daniel curse, then he dove out the driver's door, a small satchel in hand. I made one last frantic look around for a weapon of some sort. What I had were handcuffs, attached, and a loop of tow strap hooked under the truck.

Daniel pointed the automatic at us. “This is only the beginning!” he shouted.

“You think you're going to walk out of here?” I said, trying to stand up.

“It doesn't matter,” he said matter-of-factly. He started to walk away, picking his way through the tangle of wires.

“What is it you want from us?” It wasn't so much the question, or even the answer, that interested me at the moment. I wanted him to stop and talk, to look at me, to ignore County Road 14, down which Deputy Pasquale's patrol car was approaching. A quarter-mile behind him, another vehicle was running on parking lights. The crunch of tires and burble of exhaust couldn't be disguised, though. It would be only a matter of seconds before Daniel looked up at the approaching danger.

The young man ignored me. Instead, now a dozen paces from the crushed gate, he bent down and zipped open the little gym bag. He came up with what looked like two highway flares, and my gut did a flip-flop.

He still held the handgun, and again without warning or hesitation, he fired, this time from a crouch. Daniel let four rounds off, paced as if he had a metronome in his pocket. I flinched away from the clang of bullets off to my left. He hadn't missed. The four holes punched in a vertical string down the drum, and instantly four fragrant jets of gasoline spurted out. A tiny fragment of something hit me just under the nose, stinging like hell, but the bullets—without doubt copper-jacketed—didn't spray sparks.

As if I hadn't had enough reason to think it before, the idea exploded in my mind—psychotics think up any excuse for their handiwork. Although it might have begun otherwise, Elliot Daniel didn't care if the government was taking over Miles Waddell's mesa for a clandestine fortress. He wasn't the single, selfless hero saving his homeland from some faceless threat. He didn't care who was trapped in a truck that was now a ticking bomb. He was a fruitcake, pure and simple. I'm sure his eyes gleamed when the first power pole started to topple, just as they gleamed now.

Just close enough that I recognized 303, Pasquale stopped his patrol car in the middle of the road. Certainly, he had been driving with his windows open, and had heard the shots. Coming up quickly behind him was another dark sedan. Finally, Daniel recognized Pasquale's presence. He may simply have not cared until this point. The deputy popped on the headlights, snapped them to bright, and then turned on the spotlight. Daniel was pinned in the burst of light, and for a moment he stood confused, some little circuit in his brain short-circuited.

The deputy stepped out of the car, keeping behind the lights. “Drop the gun, right now!” he bellowed. Daniel remained frozen, gun in one hand, the pair of highway flares in the other. The second vehicle slid to a stop in the gravel just behind the deputy's, and two figures got out, leaving the doors open.

“We have to go over the side,” I whispered harshly, and hauled at Waddell's handcuffs. He had struggled to his feet—it was either that or lie in the growing lake of gasoline. The tow strap was stretched tightly enough that it would not reach to the back of the truck. Our choice was to clamber over the utility boxes.

Daniel raised his hand that held the flares, trying to shield his eyes. Gasoline gurgled out of the barrel, the top hole already slowing to a trickle as the level sank.

“Drop it right now!” Pasquale shouted.

I would think that it's hard to stare into spotlights and remain brave. But bravery wasn't Daniel's problem. He bent down slowly and placed the handgun on the ground.

“Oh, shit,” I breathed. “Pasquale!” I bellowed as loudly as I could. “We have spilled gasoline over here!” The riddled drum was one thing—lighting off three more unvented drums put the bomb in another class.

“Come on,” I urged, and pushed myself on top of the utility boxes on the passenger side of the truck, keeping my left arm on the inside, waiting for Miles. He staggered, drawing close enough that I could swing a leg over the side, searching for a toehold. Nothing at all. The truck was slab-sided, a straight drop to the ground. The tow strap was tangled around the rear brace of the cab's courtesy step.

Elliot Daniel had no where to go, but his mind was no longer sifting the choices. In fact, he had only two—and chose the wrong one.

“Don't! Put it down!” Estelle barked, now moving fully into the light. Flanking her was another figure, handgun forward. I looked over my shoulder and saw Daniel fussing with the striker, and sure enough, the flare bloomed with a brilliant halo. His earlier shooting said that he was right-handed, and it took a second or two to transfer the lighted flare to that hand. He had a toss of fifty or sixty feet to reach us, no challenge at all.

His right arm went up, he shifted his stance with left leg forward like a ballplayer readying for the pitch.

“Now!” I shouted, and hauled at Waddell's arm. I slid and he rolled, and the drop off the side of the truck was like a giant stamping on me with both feet. It didn't help that Waddell landed fully on top of me, his bellow of pain punctuated by a sharp explosion that rocked through the night.

Everything hurt, and I couldn't see what had happened. But gasoline still trickled in delicate little streams, now leaking down through the bed of the truck to spatter lightly on the ground beside my head.