Fred had a grip on the wheel and a hand on the key. "
Never
blow off any
feeling
Buzz gets. If she has a feeling something bad is going to happen, watch your butt because it is definitely going to happen. Remember fire ant city? Be careful, you guys."
Armand came around the back of the SUV. "Here," he said as he shoved a 9mm into my hand.
I checked the clip and turned to see him give an AK47 to Evo. I looked at my hand gun and decided it was a good time to whine. "How come Evo gets a cool gun and I get a pea shooter?"
Evo ruffled my hair and my eyes stung thinking about J.J. "Because I'm trained in warfare and you're an ex-cop."
"Oh." I looked at my weapon and sighed.
Damn, I hate it when they're right.
I chucked a shell into the chamber and nodded. Armand led point, then me, and Evo brought up the rear as we approached the foreman's office. By silent agreement, we entered through the back door, hoping to avoid a shoot-out as well as scare the crap out of whoever was in there into running away without trying to kill us.
Armand halted and reached for the door knob. It turned, and Armand signaled that it was open. My feeling of uneasiness increased as the door opened and Armand snuck a peek low and around the corner. He signaled with a nod and I came in high. Evo brought up the rear, crouched and facing backward. When Armand stopped I touched Evo's belt. He stopped, but kept an eye on the back door. We were in a kitchenette which subbed as a sleeping area. It held a small fridge, a stove, a cot, and a sink. Cabinets without doors lined one wall, and a miniscule bathroom next to Evo. I suddenly had the urge to go–bad.
"Must have been all that coffee," I mumbled to myself.
"Why, do you have to pee?" Great timing detective," Evo whispered. "Didn't your mama teach you to go before you went out to play?"
"You picked a fine time to become a comedian."
"Shh,"
Armand said.
Then we heard it. A soft scraping against the wood floors from the other room. A shadow crossed the doorway in front of us and Armand moved like a whisper on the wind. He took one side of the doorway and Evo and I had the other. Armand pointed in the direction he looked and held up his index finger. In the direction Evo and I were facing no one visible, so I held up a fist.
Armand whipped around the corner and yelled, "ATF! Drop to the floor!"
Evo and I came around the corner just in time to watch a white guy in a pith helmet dive through a front window. Armand rushed to the window in time to see the guy jump into a running vehicle. He peeled off a few hundred rounds from his assault rifle in our direction as the car sped away.
Armand turned to us and said, "Well, that was a useless endeavor. Let's see if he left anything worthwhile." We began to look around the ransacked office.
Evo took the kitchen and I took the desk. Opening each drawer and glancing over company paperwork didn't shed any light on who the guys were and what they were doing here. From the looks of the office, they trashed it in search of something. We could only hope they didn't find it. I flopped in Ron Hansen's chair and looked around. I rested my hands on the backs of the arm rests and they suddenly flew forward. I ran my fingers underneath and found an indentation. Sliding it forward, the bottom of the right armrest shot forward to reveal a compartment. In it, a folded paper popped up and in a sing-song voice I chirped, "Look-ee what I found."
The sweet feeling of discovery suffused my body and a little tingle raced up my spine. I pulled plastic gloves from my cargo pants and carefully extracted the papers from the armrest. "Think this might have been what they were after?"
The roar of an engine answered my question as Armand yelled, "Oh crap, they're back. Get out! Go, go,
go
!"
Bullets riddled the desk and I dove to the floor with a thud. "I think they brought their friends." I checked the magazine on my weapon and risked a peek around the desk. Armand returned fire from a window, but Evo lie on the floor by the bathroom. I felt my blood drain down to my feet as I took in the dark puddle pooling next to his body. "Bloody hell, Armand, Evo's down!"
"Throw me his weapon!" Armand's voice barely carried over the noise of the ricocheting bullets. I watched Lassie enough as a kid, and between that and police training, I knew how to crawl under gunfire.
Using my elbows to inch across the floor, I made it to Evo's side and kicked his weapon toward Armand. He scooped it up in one hand, flipped the strap around his huge forearm, and began firing with both hands. Flipping Evo over I muttered, "Thank God we have Rambo along for the ride."
Between bursts of gunfire, Armand yelled, "Get him out, and get ready to move."
Now, I'm by no means a petite miss, but Evo is a very large man. With bullets spraying over head, and smoke beginning to fill the rooms, my options were becoming more limited by the second. Looking around desperately, I remembered the bathroom. I Lassie-crawled to the door and jumped inside. I ripped the shower curtain from the rod and prayed it would hold. Inching back toward Evo, I saw his eyes, not open, but at least fluttering.
"Hold still, pal." I spread the curtain from his shoulders down to his feet, and rolled him onto his side. He grunted, but didn't move. I stuffed the curtain under his body as far as I could and rolled him back over. It was then I saw the blood seeping from a wound by the AC joint of his left shoulder. Ripping off the bandana I had around my neck, I stuffed it under his T-shirt. I took his right hand and pressed it to the wound. "Hold that." He winced and grunted, but obeyed.
I grabbed the shower curtain and inched backward toward the rear door. Nothing can prepare one for dragging the dead weight of a six-foot-three, solidly muscled man. I might as well have been dragging a Mack Truck. Step, yank, inch. Step, yank. The fire play continued from the other room, and I feared it wouldn't be much longer before they burst through the front, or made their way around to the back.
I was about half-way through the kitchen and puffing like a steam engine when manic footfalls, stumbling, and shouting sounded behind me. In a split second, I recognized Fred's graceful entrance and heard Sam let out a screech. "Evo!"
"Help." I gasped for air and the two of them moved like they were shot out of a cannon. Sam had one side of the curtain and Fred grabbed Evo's good arm. We yanked, and tugged, and finally wrestled him around the corner and out the door.
We got him to the Land Rover and Fred opened the rear door. Standing bent over and sucking in air, I said, "We can't pick him up, so we'll have to get him in the car in increments. Head and shoulders first since they're heaviest."
Running around to the opposite side, Fred got into the SUV. I ran the curtain under Evo's armpits, which made him howl like a wounded bear. Sam and I heaved, lifted, and shoved him through the door. Fred grabbed him by the T-shirt and shower curtain and pulled with all she had. We were still doing the heave-ho thing when Armand burst through the back door.
"What the hell?" He stuffed his weapons in my hand and lifted Evo's butt in the air. It's a good thing Fred had closed the other door or she and Evo would have flown out the other side of the SUV. As it was, Evo's body sprawled across Fred, and Sam kicked his legs off the seat and jumped in beside him.
Armand snatched back the weapons and jumped in the passenger's seat. "You drive," he yelled at me. I slammed the Land Rover in reverse and spun the tires in the dirt. Armand shoved an AK47 in Sam's hands and yelled, "Point and shoot." He grabbed a hand and slammed it on top of the weapon. "Hand stays here–it'll climb up on you. Spray it back and forth if you can!" He looked over at me.
"Drive, Drive!"
I slammed the SUV in gear and tromped on the accelerator. The tires sprayed dirt and rocks all over the building, just as some bad guys burst out the back door. Caught momentarily by surprise, they held up a hand to protect their faces from the flying rocks. That's all the opening Armand needed. He let fly with his automatic weapon, which kick started Sam. I looked in the mirror just in time to see her grit her teeth and take a deep breath. She popped up behind the luggage like a pro and let fly a barrage of gunfire over the heads of the hapless bad guys.
"Lower," Armand yelled as he turned forward. In the side view mirror I saw the three men at the door drop, and I saw Sam spin around and bite on a knuckle. Tears spilled over her cheeks as she brushed a lock of hair off Evo's forehead. Fred had her head down and her hand pressed to the bandana.
I peeled around the corner of the building on two tires and the men at the front of the building turned to shoot. Armand picked off three of them like ducks at a shooting gallery, and Sam caught another running from the building. I roared out of parking lot and yelled for everyone to hold on. I had to make one more pass across the entrance to the building, and spun the Land Rover in a donut that would have made my old Evasive Driver Training Sergeant smile. I spun the wheel and the Rover barely fishtailed as it bolted forward. One lone man ran madly from the front door, and there was barely recognition in his eyes before Armand popped him. I veered away from the building and headed toward the front gate. A couple more guys ran from the building and jumped into a Jeep. I tore across the parking lot and sped through the compound.
I didn't remember so much equipment being in the way on our way in, and had to weave around the land movers, derricks, piles of sludge pipes, forklifts, and a sundry of other oil drilling stuff which I had no clue of their purpose. The Jeep stayed back, firing half-heartedly at the back of the Rover. Damn, they will probably shoot holes in my underwear. I heard a pop and a hiss. Damn, there goes my spare bug spray. Now if they shoot holes in my underwear, I won't have to worry about the biting mosquitoes, because my underwear will be covered in repellent.
Finally, the gate came into view. I fully expected a full complement of artillery, but unless they had a battalion hiding in the jungle, one lone guy with a big smile on his face was the only person on the gate. Armand hesitated a second, and the man on the gate brought a rocket launcher to his shoulder.
"
Oh, shit
. The guy took aim on the Rover. I cranked the wheel right and shot down a side road. The rocket launcher went off as we made it to the end of the road, and I cranked the wheel to the left again. We all screamed as I took another right. The Rover went up on two wheels again and banged off a stack of long pipes. The strap snapped and the pipes rolled into the road behind us just as the Jeep following us came around the corner.
Consecutive blasts shook the earth as the Jeep ran into the pile of pipes and the rocket ran into the Jeep. The explosion sent a fireball into the sky and bite sized pieces of metal and men raining down on the compound. I skidded around another corner and once again found myself bearing down on the gateman. He seemed surprised to see us, and reached forward to grab something. I calmly lifted my left hand and fired. I smiled as the bullet went through the top of his skull.
You still got it, kid.
We tore past his slumped body, through the gate, and up the jungle path.
I glanced sideways at Armand, to see his mouth hanging open as he stared at me. "Wow.
That
was like the sexiest thing I ever saw. Will you marry me?"
In the aftermath of the near-death adrenalin rush, I found that statement particularly funny, and laughed. Now I don't mean the tee-hee titters. I mean belly-laugh-had-to-stop-the-Land Rover or drive into a palm tree guffaws. Tears ran down my face and I held my side. Fred started laughing and even Sam guffawed. Armand looked at us like we'd come from outer space, and gave it up to have a good chuckle himself.
"Oh, Armand, you are so fickle. You wanted to run off with my sister earlier and now you want to marry me because...why?"
"Man, I haven't seen anyone drive and shoot like that in my life, only in the movies and they weren't women."
I got myself under control and found a place in the shade where we could doctor Evo. I pulled off the path and noticed that Sam had her make-up kit out and rifled through it. Armand jumped out of the rover and brought a first aid kit, the likes I've never seen before. It opened like a tackle box, but also had drawers in the side. He pulled out sterile bundles complete with autoclave tape and set up on a portable stand. We set up a cot and helped Armand move Evo to it. It looked like a mini surgical ward in the middle of the jungle.
In comparison, Sam looked kind of dumb standing by the Land Rover holding her eyebrow tweezers. Briskly, she said, "Uh, I'll take it from here," and shoved the tweezers in her pocket.
Fred careened around the side of the vehicle with a fifth of Jamison's she had stashed for a celebration and a first aid kit we packed before we left the states. If it wasn't so absurd, it would have been funny. We all looked down on Evo's ashen face and each of us wondered if he was going to make it through the next hour.
24
Sam took the Irish whiskey from Fred. Armand split Evo's shirt up the middle. He cut the sleeves and eased the armholes to the side. Sam took a healthy swig of the whiskey. "His breathing is shallow." She felt his pulse. "Heart is strong and steady though." She took another swig and handed the bottle to Fred.
Armand stepped forward. "I can take it from here, ladies."