Payload (26 page)

Gato started to reply, then frowned and stared into the distance. “You after us because we took their money?”

“”Yeah,” Marv nodded. “It’s open season on FASA assets. And don’t think we had to cut off any ears to get the FASA guys to talk. They gave us computers’ worth of stuff.”

The gang-banger shook his head.

“C’mon, you hear anyone reading you your rights? See anything that looks like a badge? You’re a freakin’
terrorist
, Gato, you are at war with the entire US of A, and you’ve got Bin Ladin’s chance of clemency. So talk to me about your home boys in FASA, man. They threw you in the grease, after all. How do you think we found you?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Gato said sullenly. “It was just a straight-up job: set up a roadblock and watch for an RV, gave us a picture, man. See it, stop it, and make a call, simple as that. We ain’t no terrorists.”

Marv felt a cold chill run down his spine, but he kept it off his face. “How many more road blocks?”

“Five. Our whole outfit.”

“Where?”

“I dunno. We barely been set up here.”

“Yeah. How would you let them know if you found the RV? You had to have a number to call so you could collect your bounty.”

“Hermie had it,” Gato jerked his head towards the faceless man in the concert tee shirt, then winced at the pain in his ear. “This was business, man.”

“Yeah. Who gave that girl in the trailer the business?”

Gato made a clicking noise, shaking his head gingerly. “Man, don’t sweat some bitches.”

“Good point.” Marv brought his sap down on Gato’s ankle, blasting the bones into gravel.

Stepping away from the convulsing gang-banger, he waved Dyson over. “You find anything on black tee shirt?”

“Phone, personal junk.”

“Is the phone locked?”

“Nope.” Dyson tried not to look at the maimed Gato.

“Did the two holed up at the sign have a radio or phone, anything to communicate with?”

“No, why?”

‘There’s five more roadblocks, all manned by this same crew, and all of them watching for
us
. Get Gato here strapped in and let’s move things up a notch.”   

“You’re…a lot meaner than I thought, Marv,” Dyson said frankly.

“I’ve gotten a lot meaner,” the Ranger admitted. “Today was a couple firsts for me. But I think I have to get meaner to get through all this. And to be honest I’m getting real sick of people like Gato here; the reason I’m alive and was able to take out those FASA guys on I-75 was because an old Marine and his wife bought the farm trying to stop them. A bunch of people caught it at the RV park because they had the bad luck to be there when we arrived. And these assholes passed the time waiting for us to show up by raping, robbing, and murdering. I’m developing a real complex about FASA and the people who take their pay.”

“I see your point,” Dyson nodded. “I’m not the same guy I was a few days ago.”

The gang-bangers had gotten to the roadhouse in four vehicles, and had used seized vehicles for the roadblock. One of the vehicles in the roadblock was a dually pickup pulling a trailer with a Ditch Witch on it; Bear backed the stubby little front loader off the trailer and used it to dig a trench behind the trailer where they buried the twelve people the gang members had murdered.

“Sixteen hundred,” Marv shook his head. “This is taking forever.”

“We’re almost done,” JD patted the air in a calming manner. “We just need to sort out the women and we’re good.”

“Yeah,” the Ranger turned in a half circle. “Am I forgetting anything?”

“If you have, everyone else has, too.”

“So, now what are you guys going to do?” Sylvia asked as Chip scrubbed the shoe polish off his face in one of the roadhouse kitchen’s sinks.

“Head west. We’ve got business in Texas.”

“Business like this,” she swept a hand which took in the entire situation.

“No, this is sort of…targets of opportunity. What’s in Texas is different. I can’t tell you the specifics because its classified.”

“So you’re like CIA?”

Chip paused, honesty fighting against the way she was looking at him. “Different set of letters,” he tried to keep his voice casual. “You’ve never heard of the agency,” he added truthfully.

“So the Yard Gnome thing is just your code name?”

“For the team, yeah, kind of an inside joke. You did a great job on the logo, by the way.”

“Thanks, I take art classes.” She stuck her hands in her back pockets. “So, listen, my car is screwed up, and I really don’t have anywhere special to get to, the place I worked at burned down in the fighting in Little Rock, so maybe I could tag along with you guys until you get somewhere safe?”

“Let me ask-a team like this, there’s protocol,” Chip said carefully, hiding the way his hands shook in the towel he had used to dry off. “I’ll have to get clearance. But I’ll certainly try.” He realized he was babbling and shut up.

“Look I’ve been real helpful,” Chip announced as he marched up where Marv was talking to Bear and Dyson. “I thought of the gravel truck and I came on this mission. I got
hurt
, dude,” he jerked a thumb towards his bandaged ear.

“Yeah, that’s true,” the Ranger said carefully, absently rubbing at the boot polish on his face. “Your point being?”

“Sylvia wants to come with us, and I think she should.”

“Yeah, about that,” Bear ran a hand through his pony tail. “I got a request along those lines, too.”

“Are we suddenly taking apps for camp followers?”

“Look, you may be buoyed by your endless devotion to God and Country, but I would like to get laid,” the biker explained. “I’ve walked, ran, ridden, and fought my way from ratbag central Florida to the middle of Arkansas against zombies, terrorists, and gang members, and we ain’t done yet. I lost my hog in the process and so far I haven’t seen squat in the way of pay or compensation. As I’ve mentioned before,
I’m
not in the Army.”

“Well, first point, none of them get read into our operation,” Marv held up a finger. “Tell them we’re going to Texas and leave it at that. What they don’t know, they can’t leak. Second, how the hell are we going to handle the logistics? That RV is big, but there’s seven already, and the last thing I wanna hear is you guys getting it on.”

“No problem. That quad-cab dually that was pulling the front loader is a diesel, and there’s a nearly new Eddie Bauer Airstream trailer behind the old gas station-why they stashed it there, I have no idea. It’s a twenty-five footer, plenty of room for any female companionship we happen to encounter.”

“The pick-up would certainly give us more carrying capacity,” Chip jumped in. “The RV is overflowing.”

“OK, but I want this clear: they follow orders, they don’t start trouble, and you guys are responsible for their behavior. I’m not refereeing domestic squabbles, and I’m not accepting drama. You guys still stand night watch same as anyone else. No special privileges because you’re in love.”

Bear snickered. “It ain’t love I’m feeling, chief. Another couple days and Dyson is gonna start looking good.”

“I’ll show you something you’ve never seen before,” the Georgian advised him. “The other end.”

“Yeah, OK, so long as you guys understand,” Marv shrugged.

“No sweat, road boss,” the biker grinned. “I’ll still tote my load.”

“How are we on the other women?”

“We’re setting up a van,” Dyson waved towards the vehicle, where Brick was checking under the hood. “They would like an escort, but frankly I think they’ll be safer on their own.”

“All right, get the pick-up and trailer on line.” Marv checked his watch. “We roll in fifteen minutes whether the pleasure palace is a ‘go’ or not. FASA will be getting a read on our location by then, and we can’t afford to screw around.”

Chip and Bear promptly set off.

“We’ll have to sort things out on the move,” Dyson warned.

“So long as we’re moving, that’s OK. How’s Addison doing?” Marv addressed that last to JD, who was coming up.

“Almost done,” the promoter said. “What’s with Chip and Bear?”

“We’re bringing along a couple of the girls, a pickup, and a trailer-we’ll sort it all out down the road.” Marv handed JD a road map he had found in one of the vehicles. “Are we clear on all the particulars?”

JD unfolded the map. “Yeah. Things are a lot simpler with zombies. Kind of cleaner, too.”

“I agree. But we have to work with the hand we’re dealt.”

The promoter nodded bleakly.

Chapter Eleven

Sophia marked the positions listed in the readout onto her map and picked up her sat phone. “Team twelve-six? This is Prime, prepare to copy.” She read off the coordinates. “They were heading straight for Checkpoint Five. No, five is not responding, but I have a group from their parent organization en route to assist you. What is your ETA? They should be there a few minutes ahead of you. Let the street people do any heavy lifting-we just want that box, intact.” She listened. “Good. Prime out.”

Setting the phone in its charger, she leaned back in her chair, thinking hard. The payload had passed through the checkpoint-of that she was fairly certain. Why the hired guns hadn’t stopped it she wasn’t certain, but undoubtedly they would have extracted a measure of harm whatever the final outcome.

Now all it boiled down to was waiting-these Gnomes were wounded prey, and her wolves would follow the trail of blood to its conclusion.

She looked at the poster on the wall above her computer, a black and while aerial shot, a grainy image of Hamburg burning in July 1943, the aftermath of Operation Gomorrah. Over thirty thousand people dead, slightly more than that maimed, and one million rendered homeless in a matter of hours. Let her get her hands on that payload and she would personally burn up a dozen cities; just the thought of it made her feel giddy.

Bob Hoskins stowed the sat phone in his tactical vest and set the destination on the GPS. Andre, his driver, checked the path and sped up a little. Bob disliked his new controller-Prime sounded like a seriously sick woman. Not in what she said, but the way she said it, sort of breathless and wet-mouthed.

Bob didn’t have any problem with violence-when you’ve done a solid dime in Louisiana’s penal system you get used to it fast, nor even with killing if the money was right, but he distrusted freaks who get hot over the idea, and loathed those who did the deed by proxy. Prime, in his opinion, was both.

He had four more besides Andre in the Lincoln SUV, all Nigerian muslims that FASA had recruited from the Georgia prison system, none of them too bright or too educated, but they were fine with violence without getting too into it, and none were too upset over taking orders from a creole brother from the Big Easy. They were all true believers, rapping away about jihad and all that; Bob, on the other hand, was in it for the money, same as always. FASA had helped him get out of prison two years ago, and kept him on the payroll since and that was cause enough for him.

He considered calling the team working their way towards them, but decided against it. The outfit coming from District 13 was Aryan Brotherhood and the less he had to deal with those assholes, the better. The only color Bob concerned himself with was green and his only religion was wealth and the good times it could buy, and while that made him very useful to FASA, it meant he had to spend a lot of time with a lot of uptight SoBs who couldn’t see any further than their own version of the world.

Andre blurted something in Igbo that sounded like profanity as they pulled up to Checkpoint Five, and Bob certainly understood why. Over a dozen corpses were lashed to fence posts on the east side of the roadhouse parking lot, and a door had been wired to the fence roughly in the middle of the display with ‘RAPISTS AND MURDERERS” spray painted into it. A stylized symbol had been spray-painted into the front of the roadhouse: a red peak with a white looping half-circle under it, red and green lines ending in black lines doubling back. YGAT was in red, white, and blue letters next to the symbol. Bob realized that the symbol was a yard gnome: red hat, white beard, red shirt, green pants, dark boots.

“Red, white, and blue,” he muttered as he climbed out of the SUV. “Great. We’re up against a bunch of patriotic rednecks.”

The roadblock had been cleared, the vehicles used in it having been parked any-which-way in front of the roadhouse at the road’s edge, forcing Andre to park in front of an old gas station across the road. Four had YGAT spray-painted across the sides-the security team’s vehicles, he guessed.

The
Los Lobos
reaction team had already arrived and were cutting down their friends’ bodies, while three more were digging on the far side of the fence.

Bob picked out the leader and walked over, Andre tagging along. “I’m Bob, Recon team Twelve-Six,” he offered his hand to the grim-faced gang-banger, a rough-looking guy in his thirties with his crew’s insignia tattooed across his bare scalp.

“Maddé,” the banger was so pissed he was shaking. “Who the fuck are these guys, man? I had fourteen people here. You assholes told us they were a bunch of
pinche
bastards, and now I got thirteen corpses and a cripple, man. They disrespected them
hard
, dog.”