Devils and Dust (19 page)

He put the launcher down and picked up his assault rifle. He couldn’t see what had happened to the men in the truck. From out of the darkness, he heard a soft report, duller than the crack of a rifle. It was a sound he could have sworn he’d heard before. He had only a moment to process it before something landed a few feet away, just in front of Shippen. A split-second later, he recognized what it was.

“GRENADE!” he shouted.

“C
OME ON,”
Keller said as he sprang to his feet. The two of them were moving up the hill even as the grenade exploded just below the crest. He heard someone screaming in pain. He stopped, fired off a three-round burst, and ran. The rattle of answering fire came from the top of the hill, but the grenade must have disoriented the shooter, because the rounds whined harmlessly overhead. Keller fired again, then charged the last few feet to the top of the hill. As he came over the crest, he was panting for breath, eyes filled with sweat.

He saw a man, on his back, rolling on the ground and howling in agony, hands over his face. Another man looked up from where he knelt over the wounded one. All Keller could see was a flash of white face in the darkness. As the man started to rise, Keller fired. In the dimness, he couldn’t see where the round hit, but the figure fell backward, landing bonelessly on his back, without a sound. He didn’t move. The man on the ground kept screaming.

“Drop the gun!” Oscar shouted, his voice cracking, the blast of the shotgun following almost immediately.

Keller spun around. A man was falling backward, hitting the ground with a thud, followed by the skittering of rocks and the sound of the body sliding backward down the reverse slope of the hill. Oscar stood panting at the top of the hill, the shotgun in his hands, and fell to his knees.

“Oscar,” Keller called out as he ran over. He dropped to his knees beside Oscar and put an arm around his shoulder.

“I’m fine,” Oscar wheezed. “I’m not hurt.” As his breathing steadied, he racked another round into the chamber. He had a stricken look on his face. “I didn’t give him time to drop the gun,” he whispered.

“He wasn’t going to,” Keller said. “Next time, don’t bother asking.” He gave Oscar a slap on the shoulder, then stood up. “Good job.”

“Good job,” Oscar whispered. He shook his head and staggered to his feet.

The one remaining man was still writhing on the ground, but his screams had trailed off to dull moans. Keller walked over and looked down at him. After a moment, he nudged the wounded man with his foot. “Hey,” he said. The man only whimpered. “HEY!” Keller said louder. He kicked the man in the side, not too hard.

“Jack,” Oscar said.

Keller looked up. “This cocksucker and his buddies here just tried to kill us, Oscar.” He leaned over and picked up the launcher for the RPG. “With this. If he’d had his way, we’d be,” he tossed the launcher aside and pointed to the flaming wreckage of the truck, “burning to death down there.” He kicked the man in the side, harder. There was no response. “And he may be the key to what happened to your boys. So forgive me if I don’t much care about hurting his feelings.”

“I think he’s dead,” Oscar said.

Keller lowered his gaze, then bent down, and felt for a pulse. “Shit,” he said. He moved the man’s hands away from his face. They fell limply to his sides.

“Madre de Dios
,” Oscar said as he saw the ruin of the man’s face. He crossed himself.

Keller stood up and looked around. “They had to have come here in something. Maybe that’ll give us some clue. At least we can drive it out.”

“Jack,” Oscar said. “These men are dead.”

Keller looked at him steadily. “I know,” he said. “We killed them.”

“Shouldn’t we bury them?”

“We don’t have time. They may have friends nearby who’ll come looking if they don’t report in. We need to get whatever information we can and haul ass.” He gestured with the barrel of his rifle to where the man Oscar had shot had fallen. “Go look through that guy’s pockets,” he said. “Look for ID. Anything with an address on it. Restaurant or hotel receipts. Anything.”

Oscar looked down the hill, into the darkness. He didn’t move.

“Come on, buddy,” Keller said. “I know this is hard. But these aren’t just random assholes. They didn’t just wake up this morning and say ‘Hey, let’s go blow up some dude’s truck we never heard of.’ They have to be connected with the people who took your boys. And I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but they did just try to kill us. The only reason I’m sorry they’re dead is we can’t get them to talk. Now come on, we need to get moving.”

Oscar shook his head again and walked down the hill, into the darkness. Keller knelt by the dead man and went through his pockets, turning him over to try and find a wallet. Nothing. He repeated the process with the other man. He noted the web of tattoos on the dead man’s arms and chest. There were a number of Nazi symbols: a swastika, the paired lightning bolts of the SS, a cross in a circle. The arms of the cross were of equal length. Keller recognized it as the Odin Cross. It was another symbol used by white supremacist groups. He rocked back on his heels and thought for a moment.

He’d had to bring back a few bail jumpers who’d been affiliated with white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups. One particularly chatty jumper who he’d had to bring back from Georgia had railed for hours about how the “invasion” of what he called “mud people” was going to destroy the United States if someone didn’t stop it. The man had finally annoyed Keller so much that he’d spent the last two hours riding in the trunk of Keller’s old Crown Victoria with a strip of duct tape over his mouth.

Oscar came trudging out of the darkness, his head down. “Find anything?” Keller asked. Oscar just shook his head. Keller stood up. “Let’s look for a vehicle,” he said. “At least we can find a ride out of here.”

Oscar nodded. “Okay,” he said in a low voice.

“Oscar,” Keller said. “I know this is rough on you. But you’ll get used to it.”

Oscar looked up. “I don’t want to get used to it,” he snapped. “I don’t want to become like—” He stopped.

“Like me,” Keller said. “I get it.”

“I’m sorry,” Oscar said. “I shouldn’t have…”

“No,” Keller said, “you’re right. You don’t want to become like me. Hell,
I
didn’t want to become like me. But shit happens. Shit happened to me, and it happened to people I cared about, and here I am. Believe me, Oscar, I know just how fucked-up I am. But how I am is what I need to be to get this job done. To find your sons. And to get you home to your wife.”

Oscar nodded sadly. Keller realized that at least part of the sadness was for him. Oscar felt badly for him. He felt a brief flash of anger at that, then it died. He didn’t have the time for anger. The hunt was on, and there was only one way it led.

Forward. Just keep moving forward
.
Do the next thing. Don’t think too much about what you’ve become. If those boys are in the hands of some white supremacist wackos, then they don’t have much of a life expectancy.

“Come on,” Keller said, “let’s find that vehicle.”

T
HE TINY
room was not what Angela would have called comfortable, even if she hadn’t been locked into it. There was only a single cot with no blankets or sheets, a rickety wooden table, and a chair so old and flimsy she hesitated to sit down on it. At least everything was clean.

They hadn’t bothered to blindfold her. That worried her. If they weren’t concerned about her finding the place again, that might mean they intended for her not to be alive to try. But then she recalled the confusing journey through increasingly narrow streets. Maybe they were confident she’d never find her way back, even with her eyes open. There was one narrow window in the room, set high in the wall. The window was dirty to the point of being opaque and there was a metal grate screwed into the wall over it. She could hear city noises filtering dimly through the window: horns, traffic, the occasional shout. At one point, she thought she heard children playing, but she couldn’t be sure. She wished she had a book to read, a newspaper, a radio, anything to pass the time. With the window obscured, she couldn’t even be sure if it was day or night. The old injuries in her legs ached the way they always did at night, but that could have been the result of stress.

A sound came from overhead, someone walking in the room above her. She heard voices, then there was silence. A few moments later, she heard a rhythmic squeaking of bed springs, followed by a woman’s voice crying out, over and over. It lasted for about a minute, then stopped. Footsteps again, then silence.

She got up for what felt like the hundredth time and prowled the room, considering what she might use as a weapon. She could possibly break the chair into a club, but the thing seemed about as substantial as balsa wood. The table was too unwieldy, the cot too hard to take apart with no tools. “Come on,” she told herself, “think. You’ve got to get out of here
.
”

She heard the jingle of keys outside and the scrape of a key in a lock. She went over and sat on the cot, trying to listen as closely as possible. A lock clicked, then another, then she heard a bolt snap back. The door swung open and Esmeralda, the girl who she’d last seen at Mandujano’s, came in carrying a tray. She glanced sullenly at Angela, then away as she crossed the room, and set the tray down on the table.

“Thank you,” Angela said softly, then, “
Gracias.
”

“
De nada
,” the girl said automatically, then looked away again.

“Esmeralda, isn’t it?” Angela asked in Spanish.

“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” the girl replied in the same language.

Angela nodded. “Okay. I don’t want you to get hit again. I know what that’s like.” Esmeralda looked at her in surprise, then her face went blank again and she walked to the door. “But could you maybe get me a blanket?” Angela said. “Or a pillow? And I’m going to need to use the bathroom.”

The girl hesitated. “I’ll see what I can do,” she murmured. As she exited, Angela caught a glimpse of the hallway outside. There was a man there, carrying a machine gun. As the door closed, he said something to Esmeralda in a low, insinuating voice. The closing door and the rattle of the locks being fastened cut off her reply.

Angela walked over to the table. There was a bologna sandwich on a plate and a plastic tumbler of milk. So they weren’t going to starve her, and they weren’t going to shoot her. Yet. She sat down and started eating, looking at the door. She picked up the plate as she held the sandwich in one hand. It was plastic, like the tumbler. She might be able to break it, but there wouldn’t be any edges sharp enough to use as a weapon.
If I’m going to get out of here, I’m going to have to talk my way out. And I’m not sure I can do that.

On the floor above, she heard the squeak of the bedsprings again, the woman’s voice crying out.

Great.
I’m in the basement of a whorehouse
.
Well, it wasn’t like I was going to get any sleep tonight anyway.

T
HEY FOUND
the vehicle at the bottom of the ridge. It was a large, black Dodge crew cab truck. Keller climbed up into the driver’s seat. The keys were still in the ignition. “Oscar,” he called out, “look in the glove box. See if you can figure out who this is registered to.” Oscar climbed into the passenger seat. Keller heard him rummaging among the papers. He turned the key and the engine roared to life. He looked around. A GPS system was secured to the dashboard by a suction cup, and Keller pulled it off. After a few false starts, he figured out how to scan through the preset destinations in the device’s memory.

Oscar spoke up from the other seat. “I think I have found the registration, but…this makes no sense.”

“Let me see it,” Keller said. He turned on the overhead light and took the crumpled paper from Oscar’s hand. It was a South Carolina registration, in the name of The Church of Elohim, LLC.

“What kind of church needs that kind of weapons and employs that kind of men?” Oscar asked.

“A really scary one,” Keller said. “We may have more trouble here than we thought.”