Authors: John D. Brown
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Crime, #Kidnapping, #Organized Crime, #Vigilante Justice, #Military, #Spies & Politics, #Conspiracies, #Thrillers
“Okay,” Tony shouted, sounding far away.
Frank walked over to where Jesus’s knife lay, picked it up, then went back and cut Tony loose. Tony’s hands were red, almost blue from the lack of circulation. Frank handed Tony the knife. “Free yourself and the woman.” Then Frank shoved the semi-automatic into his pocket and crossed the floor with the shotgun in both hands to the base of the stairs.
He slid the shotgun’s pump back, sending a spent and smoking red shotgun shell flying, and racked another shell into the chamber. This was a Remington 870. Eighteen-inch barrel. Used for more than half a century by the police, the military, hunters, and home-owners who were unwilling to take breaking and entering lying down. Frank had carried the military version in a number of close combat situations. Like the military’s M870, this one was all black, made from synthetic materials. However, this model didn’t have the extended magazine tube, so instead of being able to hold seven rounds, this gun could hold five—four in the magazine tube and one in the chamber. He assumed he had one more round after this. But if Frank’s assumption was wrong, it could get him killed. He didn’t have time to check.
He arrived at the base of the stairs, knowing Stumpy was sure to come running, and began to climb. He raised the shotgun firmly to his shoulder, aimed at the open doorway at the top of the linoleum stairs. There was no use listening for Stumpy because the only thing Frank could really hear was a steady ringing in his ears.
A moment later someone came round the corner with a semi-automatic pistol in his hand. But it wasn’t Stumpy. It was a fourth man.
Frank pulled the trigger, blasted into the man’s torso. Two pellets over-penetrated and slammed into the half open door behind him, splintering the cheap wood.
The man dropped his pistol and fell back. The pistol thudded once, tumbled, and lay heavily on one of the upper stairs. The man stumbled out of sight, but he didn’t go far because Frank could hear him shouting in pain around the corner.
Frank pumped the shotgun, expelling the red shell, and slammed one more into the chamber and continued to climb. He figured he had one more shell. He kept the muzzle of the gun and his eyes on the open stairway door above and climbed to the last step before the top.
The back door beyond the landing at the top of the stairs had a small window in it. There was a wall on his left. On his right, the house opened into the kitchen, which is where the fourth man lay now, shouting something in Spanish.
Stumpy wasn’t running to the fourth man’s aid. Stumpy would be waiting for Frank to pop his head out of the stairwell so it could be blown off.
Frank moved to the left side of the stairs, as far from the corner leading into the kitchen as possible, which wasn’t much. He began an angular search, shotgun up, ready to fire. It was like sliding along the perimeter of a circle, revealing the room beyond a slice at a time.
There were cupboards, counter, a sink. He saw the edge of a kitchen table at the far end, saw blood all over the floor, and the fourth man on his knees with his back to the stairway, groaning.
Frank reached the top of the stairway. The area right past the corner was the fatal funnel where most people would be aiming to shoot an approaching threat. Frank stepped into it, then out, still swinging round the perimeter of his circle, his shotgun up, aiming directly in front of him.
Stumpy was standing in the wide entry leading from the far end of the kitchen into a living room. He held an FN P90 in one hand like a pistol, pointing it in Frank’s direction.
The P90 was a compact submachine gun that looked more like a kitchen gadget with a can opener than a gun. It utilized a fifty-round box magazine that slid in flat on top instead of sticking out the bottom. It shot the 5.7 millimeter round, the one designed to pierce body armor, the one the narcos called the Mata Policía, the cop killer.
Frank dropped to one knee.
Stumpy let loose with the P90. On full-auto, the P90 can shoot 900 rounds per minute. Fifteen per second. The muzzle lit up. The bullets flew. The rounds came out so quickly it sounded like a monster hailstorm on a tin roof.
The bullets whistled past like angry insects, blowing into the wall behind Frank, into the stairway door, into the cupboards a foot away. They marched up the wall and into the ceiling. Then the gun clicked.
Drywall dust and splinters fell into Frank’s hair. He brought the shotgun round. Stumpy’s eyes went wide and he dashed for the entryway. Frank fired, but Stumpy was a fast little man, and the shotgun blast blew past him and into the wall of the far room in a pattern the size of a large musk melon.
Frank rose and pumped the shotgun. A spent red shell flew out, but there wasn’t another to take its place. Frank tossed the shotgun onto the counter and pulled out the Glock he’d taken from Jesus.
Around the corner in the other room, Stumpy dropped something to the carpet then snicked in a new magazine. Stumpy obviously realized his mistake in trying to Rambo the P90 with one hand.
The morning light was coming in the big front room window, casting shadows. A somewhat short man-shaped shadow moved on the floor by the entryway where Stumpy had disappeared, then stopped. The shadow showed the distinct, if distorted, shape of someone holding something like a gun out in front of him. Frank figured Stumpy was standing a few feet away from the wall and a few feet back from the corner of the wide entryway between the kitchen and living room. He was waiting for Frank to make another circle and expose himself. If Frank was a betting man, he’d lay odds on the fact that Stumpy had taken the P90 off full-auto so he didn’t spray his ammo all over creation again.
So now it was a nine millimeter Glock against a waiting submachine gun, but Frank wasn’t willing to enter that fight. He gauged where he thought Stumpy was standing, and then he brought up the semi-automatic and fired five times into the wall on the other side of the kitchen that stood between him and Stumpy. It was a quick bang, bang, bang, bang, bang in a line about two feet long. Neat little holes appeared in the wall. Little puffs of drywall dust followed. More importantly, Stumpy cried out on the other side.
Frank rushed around the perimeter of another circle, giving the corner of the entryway as wide a berth as possible. He had a two-handed grip, the gun up and ready. He’d only gone halfway around when Stumpy came into view. His face was screwed up in pain and rage. Bright red blood was spreading out and staining his white shirt just below his ribs. Stumpy looked down at it, then raised his gun to fire right back through the wall at where Frank had been, but he must have caught Frank’s movement because he whipped his head around. His eyes went wide. He snarled and swung the submachine gun toward Frank.
Frank sent two more bullets Stumpy’s way, right into the center mass. He hadn’t even had to think. His hands worked of their own accord.
Stumpy fell back, pulling the trigger of the deadly can opener as he fell. There was one bang, and a bullet blasted into the wall, but Stumpy had indeed taken it off full-auto, and so there were no more strays. Just the thump of the gun as Stumpy hit the floor.
Frank proceeded forward, gun up, expecting another shooter to pop out of one of the doors.
Stumpy writhed, looked up at Frank with extreme pain and dismay in his eyes. Knowing the girls and Tony were below, and that a nine millimeter bullet at this range had a chance of sailing right out the back of someone’s skull, Frank bent over and put the killing shot sideways through Stumpy’s head.
It was never pretty to see someone die. Back in the day, when he’d taken men from a distance, he had gloried in it. He’d talked about his targets like some might talk about targets in a video game. But then he’d been involved in some close work. He’d seen how some people mutilate their kills, and the glory and game had quickly faded.
Frank stood. A Glock 19 had a standard fifteen round capacity. Frank had shot nine rounds, but it didn’t feel like he had six rounds left. It felt like he had maybe two. So he picked up Stumpy’s P90 loaded with a brand new magazine minus one and moved to clear the rest of this floor. There were two bedrooms, a bathroom, and three closets. He cleared them all and found little Rosa hiding behind a dresser in one of the rooms. She was still in her pajamas. More importantly, she hadn’t been hit by any of the loose bullets flying through the house.
He smiled as gently as he could. “Es bueno,” he said. It’s good. “You’re going to be okay.”
She looked up at him with eyes that belonged on a woman that was seventy years old.
He motioned for her to stay where she was, then went to the big pane front window, looked outside, and saw nothing but flat farm fields that stretched all the way to the horizon. He opened the front door of the house, walked out and cleared the front yard. Then he walked back inside past Stumpy to the kitchen and stepped past the fourth man who lay on the floor. The pool of blood was large; he hadn’t died quickly, and his heart had continued to pump his life out onto the floor.
Frank walked to the back door, opened it, and stood out on the porch. There was a patio table with a faded umbrella to keep the sun off those who sat in its shade. Beyond it, ringing the gravel yard was a metal barn painted red, some old chicken coops, and a few other small buildings that looked like they hadn’t been used in about a hundred years. There was nobody out there. No vehicle. Nothing but an empty yard sitting in the slant light of the morning sun.
“Tony!” Frank yelled. “It’s clear. Bring them up.”
Frank went back to get the little girl. In the corner of the living room was a shrine to Santa Muerte. There was a little table. Upon it stood a two-foot-tall statuette of the skeleton saint. She wore an ornate dress made out of purple fabric. Black hair flowed out from underneath the cowl of her robe. It looked like the kind of hair you might see on a doll, although he didn’t think Mattel was going to be producing a Saint Death Barbie any time soon. Not with those red ruby eyes. And he doubted Ken would find her getup anything but village kitsch. She held a doll-sized scythe in one hand and a doll-sized set of scales in the other. Arrayed in front of her were half-a-dozen black and gold candles. Another was blue. They were burning, flickering away, carrying the prayers of those that had set them there into her ears. Standing beside the candles was an open glass next to a bottle of mescal, an apple, and an ash tray holding a smoking cigarette.
The girl was crouching behind the dresser where he’d left her. “We’re going to get you out of here,” he said. “Come on. Es bueno,” he repeated.
Maybe she spoke some English. Or maybe she read his body language; either way, she rose and followed him out.
Tony came up with the fourth’s man’s semi-automatic in his hand. Carmen and the children followed behind looking like they’d seen ghosts. They spilled into the kitchen, their tired, haggard eyes wide at the sight of another dead body and the dark pool of blood on the floor.
“I don’t know when Ed’s coming back,” Frank said. “But we need to be gone before he does.”
They needed to be
long
gone because the land was flat without a tree or bush to hide behind, and the visibility, with the sun high in the bright blue sky, stretched all the way to the horizon. If there wasn’t anything in that barn, they’d have to go on foot, and Ed would spot them a mile away.
14
Stolen Assets
FRANK’S EARS WERE ringing. He pointed to Tony and shouted because the boy’s ears were probably ringing as well. “Watch the front of the house.”
Carmen was telling the girls something, but he could barely hear what she was saying. Smoke and the smell of burnt gunpowder filled the kitchen and living room. The iron tang of blood filled his nostrils. A memory of a house in the woods in Honduras flashed in his mind. It too had been an operation with a lot of gun smoke, a lot of burnt powder, and a lot of blood. An operation with a small old stove just like this one.
Frank pointed at Carmen. “Watch the back.”
Ed had taken Frank’s phone, which wasn’t an issue except it had Kim’s number. Frank went back down into the basement, P90 in hand, and searched the pockets of the two dead bodies, going slowly and carefully because you never knew when someone using hard drugs might be carrying a dirty needle.
He didn’t find any needles, but he did find a Leatherman multi-tool on Shotgun. It was the modern day rural version of the Swiss Army knife and had everything from pliers to a small saw. But there was no phone. Nothing but lint and a gum wrapper in the rest of Shotgun’s pockets. Jesus was cleaned out as well. You’d think that between the two of them they would have been carrying something more than a Leatherman.
He climbed back up the stairs, and found Carmen ransacking the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen. She was hunting methodically, dumping food and plates and knives and forks on the ground, tossing the place like a pro.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Records, phones, anything,” she said.
“Are you a cop?”
“Do I look like a cop?” she said and moved to a new drawer dumping its contents on the floor and kicking through it. The fourth man and his pool of blood lay less than two feet away.
Frank hadn’t seen a landline in the house. “I’m looking for a red phone,” he said. He knew he was speaking too loudly, but his ears were still ringing.
She dug into her pocket and pulled out a black iPhone. A number of bills folded in half and held by a gold clip tumbled out of her pocket and fell to the floor. Ben Franklin’s face stared up at them. The fold was thick. He wondered how many more hundreds were in there. She held the phone up.
“You get that off Jesus?”
“He didn’t seem to need to it,” she said.
Frank motioned at the fourth man. “You search him?”
“Not yet,” she said and retrieved the fallen clip of cash.
“Keep an eye out for a red phone,” he said loudly.
She nodded and went back to a drawer. Inside sat a yellow box of rat poison with fat black lettering on it.
Frank searched the fourth man and found nothing. He searched Stumpy and found a wallet with fifty bucks cash, a comb, and a package of chewing gum to help the man keep his breath minty fresh. The Glock and the first magazine used in the P90 were lying on the floor. Frank picked them up and quickly moved through the rest of the house.
He didn’t find his phone, which meant Ed must have it. Not a good thing. Ed would have looked through his contacts. He would have found Kim’s number. It was one of the few contacts Frank had. And then Ed would have smiled.
A sick feeling took hold of Frank. If Ed got her on the phone, he could make all sorts of threats. Extort Kim into any number of things by telling her he had Tony and now Frank and was going to kill or torture both of them. He growled with frustration.
He went back into the kitchen. Cereal boxes, plastic plates, plastic bowls, cans of beans, salt, and other crap littered the floor. He said, “Let me use that phone.”
Carmen nodded and pulled the iPhone back out, but when he went to unlock it, it asked him for a password. Of course it had to be locked. “Tony!” he called.
A moment later Tony walked through the entryway from the living room. Frank held the phone out to him. “Hack this thing.”
Tony took it, slid his finger across the display to unlock it. Turned it over. “The older ones were a cinch.”
“We need to call your mother.”
“I’m working on it,” Tony said.
Carmen opened a cupboard with boxes of ammo and gun cleaning equipment inside. There were at least four guns in this house: the semi the fourth man had dropped on the stairs which Tony had picked up, the Glock Frank had taken from Jesus, the shotgun, and the P90. The shotgun was a fine gun, but it only held five rounds. Furthermore, it was a close range weapon, and he didn’t intend to be storming any houses with it. But he didn’t want to leave it for Ed to use when he got back.
Frank cycled the shotgun’s slide a couple of times to be sure the receiver and magazine truly were empty. Then he removed the barrel nut at the end of the magazine tube and slid the barrel from the gun. The magazine spring popped out. He tossed the stock into the yard, the receiver to the front room, and dropped the barrel behind the fridge. It clanged when it hit the floor. He left the spring in the blood and mess Carmen was making.
In the cupboard, he found a box of 5.7 millimeter rounds and another for a nine millimeter. He tossed the box of 9s to Tony and kept the other. He also found two fine orange ear plugs, which had been in who knew how many ears. He took one and stuffed it in his right ear. He put the other in his pocket.
The girls were crying. “Tell them they’re going to be okay,” Frank said to Carmen. “We’re getting out of here right now. Today they’re going to be free.”
He crossed over to the back door and walked out into the sun of midmorning. The air smelled cool and fresh. The area behind the house had been paved with brick cobbles, forming a nice patio. The table with the umbrella sat on those cobbles. Beyond that the yard and driveway were covered with gravel. If this had been a regular farm, the traffic on the graveled area would have crushed any weeds that had tried to grow. And what the traffic didn’t get, the owners would blast with judicious squirts of Roundup. But this wasn’t a normal farm, and the weeds dotted the pale gravel like mold spots on white cheese.
Off to the right stood the red metal barn. It had a big garage door on its narrow side and a regular man door just around the corner. On the opposite side of the yard stood three old sagging chicken coops that were as gray as cheap newspaper. Next to them stood a white propane tank, looking like a shiny nine-foot long capsule of Tylenol.
Beyond the coops, the graveled yard, and barn stood some old farm equipment including a rusted tractor that looked fifty years old. Beyond that were fields of hay, shining nice and green in the sunlight, stretching out for as far as the eye could see. And with this flat land, that was pretty far. In the far distance, a few blocky houses rose up from the fields. They looked odd, like something from Mars.
Frank walked down the back steps. A carton of empty Corona bottles sat on the brick cobblestones by the table with the umbrella. Tony came behind him, followed by the children. But they stopped when they reached the bottom of the porch. Two of them were crying, pleading with Carmen, refusing to move forward.
“What’s going on?” Frank asked.
“They say the Gorozas have promised to kill their families if they try to run away without paying their debts. They have connections in Mexico. The Gorozas told them one telephone call is all it takes.”
The oldest girl was adamant. “No,” she said. “We will pay our debts.”
The little boy’s face was even more bruised out here in the sunlight. The littlest girl was still in her pajamas. Frank couldn’t promise them the Gorozas wouldn’t kill their families. He couldn’t promise them that the U.S. authorities wouldn’t deport them right back into the arms of those who had sold them into slavery here. But who had to tell the authorities?
There were plenty of folks living here illegally. It wasn’t the best life. As an illegal you always ran the risk of being preyed upon. Anyone could threaten to rat you out to ICE. if you didn’t do what they told you to. Likewise, there was little recourse if someone committed a crime against you. You had no protection. That’s why MS-13 originally started. In the 1980s Salvadoran immigrants were being bullied and preyed upon by more established Mexican and Black L.A. gangs. So those immigrants took matters into their own hands to protect themselves in their little district in L.A. But MS-13, like all gangs and criminal organizations, carried the seeds of its own host of cancers and mutated into the very thing it fought.
The law of the criminal order was not exactly designed to promote life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But these girls didn’t have to join a gang. There were other ways. The life of an illegal wasn’t the best. But it wasn’t the worst, especially if they found a place in a decent community.
Frank said, “Tell them I’ll take responsibility. Tell them the Gorozas will think I stole them, and so they’ll come after me, not them. Tell them they can’t stay here anyway because the Federales are going to come to this place.”
Carmen relayed the message, and it seemed to stress them out even more. She gave Frank a look like she was contemplating something, and then she turned to the children and said in Spanish, “It’s me the Gorozas want. I’m the one they were hunting.”
“You’re the Matanarcos?” the little boy said.
“I will take you to safety,” Carmen said.
“They will kill our families,” the older girl said.
“They will not,” Carmen said. “Come with me.”
The children hesitated, clearly held back by the older girl’s worries. But then the little boy stepped forward and took her hand. The littlest girl was next. And then the rest followed, tears and worry and all, trusting Carmen.
“Matanarcos?” Frank asked her. The narco killer. What was that all about?
Carmen looked at his gun, looked back at him warily. She had a gun in her hand, the spare Jesus had pulled on him in the basement. “We’d better split up.”
“You’re not going to get far without a vehicle,” Frank said. Then he turned to Tony. “Keep an eye on the road out front. Holler if you see anything.”
Tony’s face was a bit ashen. “What are we going to do?”
Frank set the extra ammo and P90 at Tony’s feet. “I’m going to see if the fine owners of this establishment have provided us a ride.”
There had been hooks with two sets of keys hanging on them inside the back door of the house. Frank ran up the back steps and fetched the two sets of keys and came back out. Then he walked over to the barn. None of the keys worked on the big rolling barn door. He walked to the man door on the side that was made of metal and had a dead bolt.
He tried every key on both chains again, but none of them worked. He looked around on the ground. No mat, rock, or bucket. Nothing but weeds growing up the sides of the barn. Then he reached up and felt along the lip of the top of the door frame and brushed something. Bingo. He grabbed the key and brought it down. It was a dull bronze with a round head. He fit it into the dead bolt, and gave it a turn. The deadbolt slid open. He fit the same key into the lock in the door knob and opened that as well.
He stepped into the barn, found the light switch just to the side of the door and flipped it. Nothing. Then he found the box that controlled the door. He pressed one of the square buttons. The hum of a motor up above started, and then the big barn door began to rattle up. The morning light streamed into the barn. The front half of the barn floor was covered with cement; the back half was covered with gravel.
The barn door continued to rattle and hum, letting more light in. Frank had thought maybe there might be another car here or a motorcycle or a four-wheeler. This was a farm, after all. Heck, they could make an escape on a tractor if it came to it. But there were no wheeled vehicles. There were some shelves with tools lying on them and a big white enclosed trailer with a dual axle just a little back of center. The trailer was about twenty-five feet long with a V-shaped front. A round plate on the front of the V said “Wells Cargo.” Down below, a hitch extended from the front to hook to a pickup or other truck.
Frank had seen plenty of these back in Rock Springs. He smiled. He just might get lucky. Or he might find it full of contraband.
The trailer had three doors. The back end swung down like a draw bridge to make a ramp, as did one half of the front’s V wedge. Between the two, just above the wheels, was a man-sized door.
Frank walked over. The back and front doors were held tight with two bars about a foot long on either side. To let down the front or back doors, you had to swing back the bars. Each door had a bar on either side. And each bar was secured with a padlock. But the man door on the side was not secured in the same way. It had a simple handle that could be locked, one that was flush with the side of the trailer like what you might find on an RV or camper. Frank tried the keys. None of them fit.
There was a pry bar hanging on a pegboard on the wall. Frank fetched it. The RV lock and handle was a rectangle of metal set in the door. Frank jammed the teeth of the pry bar into an edge between metal and the door. It took some muscle, but he worked the sharp end of the pry bar through to the other side of the door. Then he slammed the pry bar forward. The metal block popped out about a quarter of an inch. He slide the pry bar up a bit more, slammed it again. This time the whole side of the block moved. He pushed and pulled and finally popped the whole unit out of the door. He tossed it to the garage floor.
Frank reached in through the hole and pulled the door open. He must have been living right because snuggled inside the trailer were three Polaris snowmobiles. A lot of folks thought snowmobiles were just for the snow, but they would be mistaken. They worked just fine on hard earth. In fact, people raced them on grass. And that’s exactly what stretched out for miles all around Frank’s troupe of escapees.
A snowmobile had a track like a tank that was made of rubber with stiff, paddle-like studs to give it traction, except instead of being built for war, the snowmobile’s track was built for high-performance and speed. Depending on the surface, a snowmobile could quickly reach speeds of sixty to seventy miles per hour. But even if he and the others had to go half that speed so the children didn’t fall off, that was still a heck of a lot faster than his crew could go on foot.