Standoff: A Vin Cooper Novel (6 page)

I found myself in a paddock of sand, and stopped. The morning was utterly silent, nothing to disturb the high-pitched whine of tinnitus in my head, the legacy of too many explosions and a long period of incessant calling from my ex-wife’s lawyers. Though it was still relatively cool, a single droplet of sweat trickled down my temple and the Sig felt clammy in the small of my back. I flopped my shirt back and forth to get some ventilation going. Still no sign of the coming dawn except that the stars had vanished, frightened off by the coming white-hot furnace just below the horizon.

Coming into view in front of me were the unlit shapes of semi-trailers. Recalling the overhead photo of Horizon and the placement of bodies, there weren’t any victims indicated among them, but I was here now so I pushed on.

Down the back of the facility it looked less like an airport and more like a boneyard for old long-haulers. At least thirty trailers were lined up in rows while others were parked at random angles. In another fenced-off area beyond, an unimpressive sign announced that this was the headquarters of the National Truck & Transport Company.

I went up to a couple of trailers and slipped between two refrigerator units, the air in the confined space smelling of grease and brake dust. Nature was calling so I took a leak on a tire, second for the morning, and allowed my mind to drift. The killers had swept through the area while the cargo was offloaded. They murdered everyone in the area to make sure there were no witnesses. Keeping the assumptions going, I imagined the perps also wouldn’t have been happy for the type of transport vehicles they used to be common knowledge. Or the time the vehicle or vehicles had departed to be known. But were there other cards the killers were keeping close to their chests?

I zipped.

The assumption that sent the DPS off to Abilene on I-20 was the one that the perps were driving their cargo to Dallas. No doubt, DPS had also covered I-10. I kept moving between the trailers. And then it hit me. Maybe there was another reason. Maybe possible witnesses were killed not just to keep them from informing authorities about the transfer of drugs to vehicles that could be identified, but that the transport vehicle or vehicles
had never left the airport at all
. And what triggered this sudden revelation? The fact that I had just come around the end of a trailer to find myself face to face with two young guys dressed in oversized gangsta chic, bandanas on their heads and jeans belted tight halfway down the backs of their legs. They were twenty years old, maybe less, and were the image of Mexican gangbangers. And the other dead giveaway to this epiphany of mine? Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine guns hung off their shoulders.

The three of us looked at each other for what seemed like a full minute, but was probably closer to a second or two. They knew who they were. And they knew I knew who they were. They reached for their MP-5s and I went for the Sig. My fingers found its handgrip and I pulled the weapon clear as my legs got themselves pumping. I moved to the left, putting one shooter in the way of the other while allowing me to fire with my right arm extended.

One of the men panicked and began firing his weapon in my general direction, before it was properly aimed, half a dozen rounds drilling into the dirt maybe ten feet behind and beside me. The other man, the one who was obscured, was trying to untangle his weapon, which seemed to have been caught up somehow in the deep open scallops of his tank top. I got off two shots as I ran. One of these rounds smacked the guy wrestling with his weapon in the cheek. I knew that from the way a hand went to his face, and from the way he fell to his knees and discharged his weapon straight into his buddy. I couldn’t see the specific damage but I knew it was fatal by the way the second guy fell.

And the need for me to run ended, just like that. I went into a crouch. My heart was now competing with my breathing to give the tinnitus a run for its money. The survivor was on his knees beside his dead pal. Keeping low and my Sig aimed, I moved in and kicked their weapons clear. I pushed the man holding his face headfirst down into the dirt, planted my knee firmly in his back, and pulled one of his hands behind him and reached for my cuffs. A loud noise distracted me. Looking up, I scanned the area. It was a trailer twenty yards away. One door had banged open. The second door was following, swinging wide. Two dark shadows jumped down from the trailer. I heard them whispering hoarsely in Spanish to each other. I holstered the Sig. The guy beneath my knee – I snapped Smith & Wessons on his wrists.

One of the shadows had a flashlight, which also meant they probably had lights on inside their trailer. That suggested there was a good chance their night vision was shot. And if that was the case, it meant I would have an advantage for a small period of time. The guy face down in the dirt started groaning, the pain making itself known. Time to move. I crawled over to the MP-5s in the dirt, took one, dropped the magazine out of the other and shoved it in a pocket. I then ran at a low crouch toward a group of three trailers parked on the far side of the area.

“Aemellio! Crisanto! Aemellio … !”

It was the shadows calling. The gunshots had made them nervous and they ran back and forth, sweeping the area with their flashlight, searching for their pals, both of whom were immobilized, one permanently. The deputies on the front gate would have heard the gunshots along with anyone else in the vicinity. And pretty quickly this truck stop would be crawling with law enforcement.

The flashlight beam eventually found what they were looking for. The shadows raced up to their buddies, shouting and swearing in Spanish and English. Meanwhile, I came around the other side of the lot behind them and headed for the trailer they’d been occupying, the doors of which were wide open. I reached the trailer without being spotted, the shadows preoccupied. Inside, I could dimly make out chairs, bedrolls, food packaging and water containers. There were also boxes stacked to the roof. I didn’t have to wonder too hard about what might be in them.

The Sig was suddenly ripped from the holster in the small of my back. Shit, so much for the preoccupation.

“Hey, you gringo fuck. You gonna die for this. Shoot you with your own stupid gun.”

The guy’s breath smelled of Cheerios, beer and cigarettes.

“Drop it,” he said, referring to the MP-5. I set it on the ground with one hand, the other raised a little above my head. In the space between the two trailers, I saw a couple of patrol cars come power sliding from out behind the airport buildings two hundred yards down range, their rooftop LED lights firing rapid staccato flashes of red and blue into the night. The lead vehicle hit its high beams, washing the truck stop with a blaze of blue-white light. Whoever was driving knew where to come. The cavalry was on its way. All I had to do was survive another dozen seconds or so, which maybe wasn’t gonna to be so easy.

“
¡Chingao!
” snapped the guy who wasn’t pushing the Sig into my kidneys.
“¡Dispara al cerdo!”

I had enough Spanish to translate his suggestion that the pig – me – needed to be shot. Any subtext, I missed it.

But then, perhaps glimpsing the reality of their predicament, his pal hissed in English: “No! We go’ need his pig ass!”

The guy with the gun was considering a hostage situation, using my life as a bargaining chip, negotiate for their freedom. I could almost hear the gears turning. How else were they going to get away? But after the violence done here at Horizon, I didn’t like their chances – or mine – of coming out of that negotiation alive. Pretty soon there’d be a lot of angry lead flying around and not all of it would be carefully aimed. So I pushed back against the Sig, which only made the guy reciprocate with a push of his own, digging it hard into my flesh.

“They’re gonna kill you after what you did here,” I said.

“We’re American just like you,
chocha
. We have rights,” snarled the jerk, the one who smelled like he poured Budweiser over his breakfast cereal.

“You’re gonna die here, fool,” I whispered. “And maybe sooner than you think.”

“Kill him,” hissed the asshole who wasn’t holding my Sig.

“Yeah, you know what? Fuck you,
cerdo!
” sneered the guy who was.

He forced the weapon into my back harder, just the way I wanted it. And then the trigger was pulled. I heard the hammer smack the stops as the shockwave of metal hitting metal snapped through the barrel, leaped the thin polo-shirt barrier and bit into my skin. But there was no blast, no bullet ripping through my kidneys.

There was nothing at all. And I knew why.

The guy holding the Sig was momentarily confused, which maybe gave me a couple of seconds before he pulled the trigger again. I turned and grabbed the gun with my right hand. As I spun, lifting the weapon and twisting it hard in a clockwise direction, his index finger became trapped inside the trigger guard. Bones snapped like fresh carrots as I kept the turn going. The man had to bend forward to take the pressure off his rotating hand and arm. But his pal had no such inconvenience. He raised the MP-5, brought its ugly short barrel up. So I whipped the Sig around, squeezed the shattered finger against the trigger and this time the weapon fired, as I knew it would, the round hitting the man just below the sternum. It seemed to happen in slo-mo. As he died his muscles contracted, squeezing the trigger of the MP-5 in his hand. The submachine gun discharged, and a short subsonic burst of lead ripped into his buddy’s thigh and groin. I felt the impact of the absorbed rounds jumping through the man’s hand and into my own as he screamed.

The Sheriff’s cruisers skidded to a halt in the gravel behind me and the doors flew open.

“DROP THE WEAPON!” a man shouted.

This time I wasn’t going to argue. I twisted the Sig and felt the weight come off it as the man fell away to the ground and kept up with his screaming.

“On your knees!” the shouting continued. “Hands where I can see ’em!”

He meant mine, so I put my hands behind my head, interlocked my fingers and got down on my knees, like I’ve made folks do a hundred times. He didn’t know that I was one of the good guys, and opening my mouth now in this highly charged situation might get me shot.

The deputies felt confident enough to approach, and rushed at me with their weapons raised, one either side of me.

“I know this guy,” said a woman.

I recognized the voice. It was Deputy Basketball.

“He’s OSI,” she said.

“What the fuck’s that?” replied the guy who seemed in some kind of command.

“OSI – United States Air Force,” I answered.

“Shut the fuck up,” he said. “Who asked you?”

“I’m gonna get my ID,” I replied. “It’s in my back pocket.”

“You ain’t gonna do shit. Don’t fuckin’ move. Not a fuckin’ muscle.”

I heard more voices through the radio in one of the Sheriff’s vehicles.

“What are you doing?” the boss behind me wanted to know.

“Calling this in, sir,” came the reply.

BRRRAAT!

Automatic fire.

I turned in time to see the deputy in the car lose the side of his head and slump sideways out of the car, toppling onto the dirt. The shooter was the guy giving the orders, a Sheriff’s deputy. He had one of the MP-5s, and he was bringing it round, looking for more targets. He found one.

BRRRAT!

Deputy Wilson’s mouth was open. I watched her fall down dead, one of her eyes a black hole.

BRRAT! BRRAT!

The weapon discharged a couple more times, but I didn’t see who wore the rounds as, at that moment, I was diving between the wheels of the trailer. I crawled forward as fast as I could, my hands, knees and feet kicking up the dust. What the fuck was going on? I asked myself. I didn’t need to think too hard about that to come up with an answer. In the trailer above me was over a hundred million dollars’ worth of reasons.

I scrambled out from under the chassis and crossed beneath another one beside it, went forward and crossed again, putting as much distance and metal as possible between me, the killer and his Heckler & Koch.

A flashlight beam swept beneath the trailers. “You can’t hide forever, asshole,” the rogue deputy called out. “Gonna be just you and me out here for another ten minutes at least.”

A burst of automatic fire exploded and a spray of jacketed rounds rattled and pinged off heavy metalwork somewhere nearby. The deputy was firing randomly, spraying the shadows beneath the trailers, hoping for a low percentage shot to take care of business.

“You a cop killer, Mr OSI!” he shouted into the night. “Ought’a be ashamed of yourself. They gonna hunt you down, gonna kill you right back for what you done here.”

I crawled out from under the trailer and rolled beneath its neighbor as another burst of machinegun fire shredded the quiet. The flashlight beam played beneath the trailers was reaching out for me, its thrust blunted in a brown halo of dust. I sat with my back to a tire and caught my breath, each exhalation a hoarse wheeze, my throat constricted and raw, coated by the same fine dust diffusing the flashlight beam. I coughed to clear my throat, spat on the ground and sat there for a minute, listening, the noise of my thumping heart obscuring almost everything. I looked down at my hands and saw the Sig cradled in my left. I couldn’t think when I’d had the opportunity to grab it. I’d been lucky, the weapon’s weird design foible saving my life. I pushed my palm against the end of the barrel, which shifted the slide back. Doing that had the effect of putting some distance between the hammer and the round’s primer cap, preventing detonation. By jamming the weapon hard into my ribs, the shithead had handed me a chance. I love the Sig.

A burst of fire. This one was close. Lead slammed into the tire close to my feet. The flashlight beam snapped on, bathing me in light. I’d been found. Dust kicked up all around me, the rounds sparked against steel chassis members and buzzed like angry insects as they ricocheted, leaving trails in the suspended dust lit up by the flashlight. Down on my back, I fired wildly at the ball of light between my boots – three, four, five shots. My eyes closed on those last couple, blinded by the dust. The beam went out suddenly, a man screamed and the shooting stopped. The threats also came to an abrupt halt. Had I killed the guy? I worked my way backward on my elbows until I felt the security of a wheel and tire behind me, the pumping of my own blood roaring in my ears.