Undeclared War (10 page)

Reaper watched the Vette start to accelerate. Whatever was under the hood, it was a sure thing that the Vette could outmaneuver the Checker. For the moment, the straight stretch of road they were on took away that advantage. Now they were in a race that the Checker could win—if he could stop the speeding sports car.

Reaper reached down to the seat next to him and put his hand on the Desert Eagle. For a moment he considered opening fire with the big pistol, which he had confirmed was a .44 magnum with a fresh round in the chamber. The Vette was low and fast, but Arzee wasn't moving around the road much at all. He was just trying to outrun the Checker. His mistake.

The fiberglass body of the Corvette Stingray wouldn't offer very much resistance to the 240-grain jacketed hollow points loaded in the Eagle. They would barely be slowed as they smashed through the body of the sports car. Of course, that was also the problem. If Reaper misaimed or one of
the magnum slugs was deflected off a metal component, he could end up hitting Arzee. And that could cost him the only solid source of information that he could be sure knew where his family was.

No, the pistol wasn't going to be the answer, and Reaper lifted his hand away from it. Instead, he reached to the dashboard and flipped the switch that operated the muffler cutout solenoids. The exhaust pipes were now blowing straight out into the open air. The sound of the big V-8 roared out unabated. A flock of ducks in the marsh to the left jumped into the sky, flying away quacking and protesting the violent noise. The drop in back pressure inside the exhaust system gave the Checker more horsepower and increased its speed.

 

The reaction inside of the Vette was close to being the same as that of the ducks. There wasn't any quacking, but Arzee was starting to feel a little panic. He could hear the sound of the Checker's engine even over the roar of his own 350 V-8. That yellow beast was going to catch him. He would have to try to outmaneuver it.

Coming up in the distance, Arzee could see a road sign that showed he was approaching a T-intersection. According to the sign, another road would be going off to the right. If he could make the turn, the Checker couldn't at the speed it was going. It would either have to slow down to make it, or it would miss the turn entirely and have to come back to it. Either way, it would put a lot of space between the two cars and give Arzee a better chance of getting away, or maybe even ambushing the Checker himself. It was
going to be a desperate gamble, but Arzee knew his driving was up to the challenge.

Arzee allowed the Vette to drift over to the left side of the road. The extra space would give him a better chance of making the upcoming turn. The gravel shoulders of the road would be a danger, but that was something he knew so he could watch out for it. Just as he was committing himself to the turn, a horrible blasting roar sounded out from behind him when the Checker cut out its muffler.

Startled by the sound, Arzee made the mistake of making the Corvette fishtail slightly as he jerked at the wheel. That was his undoing as he started to lose control of the car.

The rear of the Vette swung to the right, and Arzee twisted the steering wheel to compensate. The rear of the sports car then swung back to the left, going past the hard road surface and slipping out onto the gravel of the shoulder. The wheel on the gravel lost traction and spun, increasing the sideslip of the Vette. Overcompensating, Arzee pulled the wheel hard over to stop his skid—but it was far too late.

The back end of the Vette came back onto the roadway much harder than it should have. The car was now in a full spin and it was going to keep going until it lost speed or Arzee brought it under control. The side road Arzee wanted so desperately to take went past as the back end of the Vette skidded past it. The car was sideways across the road and still turning. It did a full turn and a half, finally coming to rest on the left side of the road, sideways across both lanes with the nose of the car pointed
out to the marsh. Arzee was stunned, but he had the presence of mind to draw his weapon.

From underneath his jacket, Arzee fumbled trying to pull his SIG Pro automatic from his Galco Miami Classic shoulder holster. The handgun was hanging horizontally underneath his left arm and his hand finally grabbed the grip as his thumb popped free the safety strap. There was a reassuring feeling to the weapon and Arzee's hand started to pull it from the holster. The ten rounds of .40 Smith & Wesson ammo that were in the weapon would take care of Reaper. And there were two more full magazines under his right arm to help if he had to reload. Then Arzee looked out to the left of the car, toward the approaching sound, and his own scream was lost in the noise.

 

The two cars were almost evenly matched as far as top speed went. Reaper knew the area and turns were coming up where the Corvette would have the edge over the powerful but heavy Checker. This race had to end fast so Reaper decided to play his ace in the hole. Reaching over to the dashboard, he flipped up the red safety cover over the NOS switch. Bracing himself, Reaper flipped the switch.

Solenoids popped open and, from the rear of the Checker, nitrous oxide flowed forward into the carburetor and the combustion chambers of the engine. Suddenly, it was like the big V-8 was running on rocket fuel. Originally invented in order to give piston-engined fighters during World War II a source of emergency power, nitrous had been almost forgot
ten during the age of jet aircraft. Racers had rediscovered the advantages of the additive during the 1970s. Now, there were speed records held by cars that had been running with nitrous oxide boosts.

Reaper was pushed back into the seat by the acceleration of the Checker. The engine roared out a solid wall of sound through the muffler cutouts. The speedometer climbed as Reaper hung onto the wheel. He no longer needed the handgun lying on the seat next to him. He was at the wheel of a huge projectile, a guided missile, one he was able to aim very precisely.

As the sound of the nitrous-boosted engine boomed out, Reaper watched as Arzee went onto the gravel shoulder and lost control of his car. As the distance between the two vehicles closed, he saw the Vette spin out and stop sideways across the road. Reaper could now see Arzee sitting at the wheel struggling to draw a weapon. That wasn't something Reaper was going to allow to happen.

Indecision was not something a SEAL could tolerate. Neither could he afford to be reckless. Reaper knew that Arzee was his best lead to finding his family. But if Arzee killed him, he couldn't do his family much good. He would just have to be very careful and precise.

Moving his steering wheel only slightly, Reaper lined up with the rear of the Vette. He saw Arzee's mouth open in a scream just as the juggernaut that the Checker had become smashed into the Vette. Reaper had carefully aimed the cab to impact on the right side of the Vette's back end. The heavy truck frame of the Checker absorbed the energy of the crash with ease. The bodywork crumpled a bit at the
left front fender, but that would be repairable. What happened to the Vette was not something that looked even salvageable.

The whole back end of the sports car had disappeared in a cloud of glass fragments and shattered fiberglass. The chrome back bumper flew off to land somewhere in the marsh, twisted and unrecognizable. From behind the front seat back, the Corvette Stingray ceased to exist. The front part of the car spun around completely before going off the road and partially sinking into the marsh. The huge noise of the impact terrified a large gaggle of Canadian geese who took off deeper into the marsh, the large birds honking in panic as their flapping wings and running feet took them across the top of the water.

The terrified flight of the big birds tore up the reeds and cattails in their way. The plants grew in huge patches all over the marsh. Now there were dozens of open paths ripped through the green plants radiating away from the crash site.

Arzee was spun about in the crash. Dizzy and disoriented, he realized that he had lost his weapon. That was the least of his worries for the moment. The recognizable portion of the Vette had slipped into the shallow water and he now was in real danger of drowning. What was left of the car was lying parallel to the road it had just left, the driver's door facing into the marsh and already half underwater. Clawing at his seat belt release, Arzee freed himself and pushed at the door. It wasn't latched, there wasn't anything left for the door to latch to—the rear door post was gone.

Scrambling out of the wrecked car, Arzee could hear the Checker screeching to a halt. He only had seconds before Reaper would come back for him. Now in a full-blown panic, Arzee half-crawled, half-swam, out into the marsh. Ducking under some plants and mulch, he clawed at the mud to pull himself forward. An almost primitive instinct to hide from the predator was all that directed his motions.
Covered in mud, slime, weeds, and dead brown cattails, Arzee pulled himself to the far side of a muskrat mound and stuck his face down into the stinking mud to hide.

 

Reaper flipped the safety cover down, shutting down the NOS system once the smashed Vette was well behind him. Pushing hard on the brakes, Reaper made the Checker's tires smoke as he brought the cab to a stop. Quickly shifting into reverse, Reaper again tore rubber off his tires as he backed the vehicle up to where the remains of the Vette lay sinking in the marsh.

Bits of the car's body were scattered all around. The rear axle was down the road from the impact site, mangled and barely recognizable as part of a power train. Only the single wheel still in place identified the axle for what it was. The other wheel was nowhere to be seen. It had probably been thrown a good distance and had sunk into the dark waters of the marsh.

On the shoulder and facing into oncoming traffic on the wrong side of the road, the Checker came to a stop. Reaper rolled down the driver's window and looked over the wreckage. The Desert Eagle was in his hand, the hammer back and safety off. Reaper carefully looked for any signs of a possibly armed and uninjured Arzee. There were no signs of the man and nothing but the slowly sinking front half of a smashed and smoking car to show he had even been there.

Opening his door and stepping out of the Checker, Reaper went down to where the wreckage
of the Vette lay. Stepping into the water, the SEAL looked for the missing man. There was no sign of Arzee, or of any blood indicating an injured man had been in the driver's seat. Reaper's best source of information was gone.

In spite of possibly not being injured, Arzee had to have been badly shaken up by the crash. Normally, Reaper would be in his element tracking a man across a plant-filled marsh. But it seemed as if nature itself was going to take that ability away from him.

The dozens of paths torn through the marsh's weeds and plants from the panicked dashing of the geese extended far from the shore. The birds were gone but the damage they had done prevented Reaper from being able to identify any specific trail that Arzee may have made as he crawled through the marsh. There was nothing to be seen of the man anywhere in the water. His body could be sinking into the mud, or the man could be hundreds of feet away hidden in the luxuriant growth of the marsh.

 

Gritting his teeth in frustration, Reaper turned to the remains of the Vette. Reaching into the smashed car, Reaper pulled out a briefcase he spotted sticking out from under the passenger seat. The wet case had probably been thrown under the seat during the violent maneuvers of the crash. Arzee was too smart to have left anything incriminating in the case, but it might hold a clue of some kind about where he might go next. Pulling open the glove compartment with more than a little difficulty, Reaper grabbed up all of the papers inside and stuffed them into his
shirt. That was all Reaper could get from the wreck that looked at all valuable from an intelligence standpoint.

Time was slipping away. Reaper realized that his only remaining sources of information about his kidnapped family were the two thugs back at the shop. He had to wring out anything they knew about the location of his wife and son before they might be taken farther away or worse. Whoever was working with Arzee was going to be expecting him. How long it would take for the man to be missed couldn't be known.

Anyone else involved might just decide to cut their losses and kill Mary and Ricky, an option Reaper refused to accept. He had to tell Deckert not to call the police or do anything until he had come back and talked to the two thugs.

He would have to move fast to get back to the shop before Deckert did anything. With a reluctant final look around the crash site, Reaper stepped back into the cab. Starting the car up, he spun it through a tire-smoking U-turn. As the roar of the engine blasted out, he flipped the cutoff switch and put the muffler back into the exhaust system. He needed some speed, but he did not want to attract any more attention than he would just by driving down a country road in a yellow Checker cab with a damaged left front end.

As he was driving, Reaper remembered the cell phone Arzee had slipped into his shirt pocket. Pulling it out, he flipped back the cover and held the phone up so that he could see the road as well as the face of the phone. It was just a cheap phone, one of those prepaid models that couldn't be traced to a specific owner.

Working the phone was easy enough. Punching up the shop's number one-handed, Reaper hit the send button and waited. The first three rings at the other end of the line seemed to take forever. Never before had Reaper noticed just how long it took a phone to ring. Finally, on the fourth ring, Deckert picked up.

Chances were, Deckert was using the phone on the wall behind the cash register. “Keith,” Reaper said. “It's me, Reaper.”

“Yeah, Ted,” Deckert said. “I'm still here playing babysitter.”

Deckert's voice sounded strained, probably an effect of getting slapped upside the head with a .45 automatic. He would have to be taken to an emergency room and get checked out for a possible concussion.

“I caught up to the Vette but lost Arzee,” Reaper said, “I tried to track him through the marsh but couldn't find him. He could be dead or just hiding for all I know. So those two you have are the best…”

Reaper heard a rapid pair of loud shots roar out from the phone. Then there was a grunt and a thump and clatter as if the phone had been dropped to the floor.

“Keith,” Reaper shouted into the phone. “Keith!”

There were a few more sounds over the phone that Reaper couldn't make sense of. Then the line went dead as the other phone was hung up. Reaper snapped the cell phone closed and slipped it back into his pocket. His full concentration was now on just getting back to the shop.

The trip took longer than Reaper thought he
could stand. First his family had been hurt, now his friend and partner was in trouble, probably shot, maybe dead. The nitrous wouldn't do him any good in this race, he would never have been able to negotiate the turns in the road if he were going too fast. Every driving trick he had learned as a SEAL stuck with him as he barreled back to the shop. He cut through turns as if he were a professional race car driver.

Pulling up to the house, the first thing Reaper noticed was that the black Grand Am was missing from the driveway. Somehow, Gun Weasel or Musclehead had managed to get hold of a loaded weapon and had overcome Deckert. Reaper jumped from the Checker and ran into the house, not certain of just what he would find.

Coming into the showroom with the Desert Eagle at the ready, Reaper could see no one standing or attempting to conceal themselves behind the glass cases of the counters. What Reaper could see was Deckert's body lying on the other side of the counter, next to where the phone hung on the wall. Gun Weasel and Musclehead were gone. There was also a big chunk of the carpet missing that had been covering the counter. A drying pool of blood where the carpet had been showed where Musclehead had been pinned.

But all of those details were unimportant compared to Deckert lying on the floor. Reaper could see two bullet holes in the back seat of the wheelchair. Somebody, Gun Weasel most likely, had punched two rounds into Deckert while he was
speaking on the phone. Reaper had been right, his friend must have been a little dingie from the blow he had taken. If he hadn't been injured, the ex-Army Ranger would never have turned his back on the two thugs.

Kneeling down next to Deckert, Reaper immediately noticed that there wasn't any blood on the ground. As he touched his friend, he could feel him stir and then a low groan came from the prostrate figure.

“Take it easy, Keith,” Reaper said. “You took two good ones in the back.”

There wasn't much question of where Deckert had been shot. As close as he was, Reaper could now see the two dark holes in the back of his friend's shirt, holes that matched up pretty well with the two in the seat back of the wheelchair.

“Oh, Christ!” Deckert groaned out. “Lord save old men from their own stupidity. I am way too old for this shit.”

Reaper helped his friend turn over and sit up a bit. Now, with his hands on him, Reaper could feel the body armor that Deckert was wearing under his work shirt. Under the two holes in the back of the shirt, Reaper could feel the lumps of the bullets that had been fired into, and stopped by, the vest Deckert had been wearing.

“Oh, damn,” Deckert said. “I will never bitch about going to the bank again.”

“Huh?” Reaper said, puzzled at the odd remark.

“I had been planning on going to the bank this afternoon,” Deckert explained. “So I had my vest on since getting dressed this morning. A fat old man in a wheelchair makes a tempting target and body ar
mor helps give you an edge. It sure proved its worth today. Now help me up into my chair.”

Reaper knew his friend's self-depreciating humor was just how he dealt with life in general. As he lifted the big man up, he could feel little in the way of fat under the hard layers of muscle that made up Deckert's back, shoulders, and arms. His legs might not have been of much use to him, but there was nothing the matter with his strength.

“You all right?” Reaper asked as Deckert settled into his chair.

“Not particularly,” Deckert said sarcastically, “I've been pistol whipped, shot, and dumped on the ground twice so far today. Right now, I feel like Nolan Ryan hit me in the back with two fastballs. I've had better days.”

“You want me to get you to a hospital?” Reaper asked.

“No, I'll be fine,” Deckert said. “Besides we have to get on to the trail of whoever those clowns were.”

As he settled into his chair, Deckert gasped as his back hit the seat back.

“Oh, that wasn't fun,” Deckert said as he leaned forward.

“Your back is probably a bruised mess and I'll bet the slugs are still in your vest,” Reaper said as he stood over Deckert. “Get your shirt off and let's at least get those slugs out of there.”

Deckert winced as his arms were pulled back to clear the shirtsleeves.

“Any idea what the hell happened?” Reaper asked as he helped his friend get out of his vest.

“Not much I can say,” Deckert said. “I gave the
big one a rag to help him stop the bleeding after you had left. Tried to pull the knife out but he screamed as soon as I touched it. The little bastard was still laying curled up on the floor so I figured he wasn't worth bothering with—besides, my head hurt like a bitch.

“Then you called and I answered the phone. Not a lot to say after that, the room went boom and the next thing I knew, you were kneeling there.”

While Deckert was talking, Reaper had been examining the back panel of the vest. He pulled a Swiss Tool from underneath the counter and unfolded it into its pliers configuration. With a little digging, Reaper pulled out a flattened lead slug.

“Motherfucker,” Reaper said. “I'll bet that little bastard still had my Taurus on him when I left. This is a .44 Special semiwadcutter bullet, or at least what used to be one. The same thing I keep in my weapon. I forgot to search that sucker before I left. He must have pulled it out and nailed you when you answered the phone. God damn, Keith, I'm sorry. I screwed the pooch this time.”

“How the hell do you figure that?” Deckert said. “I'm the stupid one who turned his back on the little fucker. It's not like you didn't have something else on your mind at the time. What the hell is my excuse? There's a whole rack of handcuffs over there and I didn't think to put a pair on him.”

“Shit, mistakes all around, I guess,” Reaper said. “I lost the Vette at Saint Joe's Marsh. The car was chopped in half so I know that overdressed asshole couldn't drive away, but I couldn't find him before I called you.”

“Nothing to be done about it,” Deckert said as he winced and held his head. “How's the cab?”

“Good enough to get you to a hospital,” Reaper said.

“I'm fine,” Deckert protested.

“You won't be any help to me if you pass out from a concussion or start spitting blood from a broken rib,” Reaper said. “I'll report the accident to the sheriff's officer when we take you in.”

“But your family,” Deckert said. “Those ass-wipes were pretty sure of themselves. We have no proof that they were even here. Before you came in, the snappy dresser had sent the gun handler into the office. They pulled the tape from the surveillance cameras.”

“Shit,” said Reaper. “I'll think of something.”

 

The two men put together a fast story of how Deckert had been hit by some falling steel stock in the shop. Falling out of his chair, he had struck his head on a workbench. The story was enough to satisfy the people at the hospital. The emergency room doctor said that there were no broken bones or a concussion, but that they wanted to hold Deckert overnight for observation. Deckert's protests overrode the doctor's suggestion and the two men headed back to the shop.