Apache Country (17 page)

“He shouted,” Ironheel said abruptly.

“What?”

“Ncha’ahi. The big one. When the boy got
away, he shouted. Like he was hurt. Or mad, maybe.”

“You didn’t mention this before.”

“Only just remembered.”

“Go back,” Easton urged. “Start at the
beginning and tell me the whole thing.”

They swept past the junction for Franklin,
cruising at about sixty. To their left below the road was the
steeple of the church at San Patricio, named for his patron saint
by an Irish priest who had supervised its building over a century
ago. Above on their right, the hills out of which the roadbed had
been cut rose sharp and stony.

Ironheel had closed his eyes and leaned back
in the seat, thinking.

“After Apodaca shot the hastiin, the big man
dragged the boy out of the car,” he said, his eyes still closed.
“Then the boy broke loose and ran.”

“And that was when the big man shouted?”
Easton felt a pulse of tension in his temple. “What? Can you
remember what he shouted?”

“Yati’ yeyokaali. A curse, Something angry,”
Ironheel said, concentrating, eyes shut tight. “‘Ice,’ ‘Spice,’
something like that.”

‘Ice’, ‘Spice’? Hardly words a man would
shout in anger. But what other words sounded like that? He ran
through the alphabet, dice, nice, rice, slice … Aye, sir? Why, sir?
No, none of those. ‘Shyster’, maybe? Then realization hit him like
a rock.

“Scheisse!” he said.

Ironheel opened his eyes and sat up.
“What?”

“It’s German. Like when we say, Shit.”

“Scheisse,” Ironheel said, testing the word
on his tongue. “Y’know, that—”

With a huge bang the windshield suddenly
exploded and in the same instant Easton felt the hot burn of a
bullet on the left side of his body and heard the whisper of flying
glass stroking his cheek. His reflex reaction slewed the Jeep into
the oncoming lane, tires screaming and smoking as he fought to keep
it on the road. A gap appeared in the iron crash barrier bordering
the road to the left and he went for it, sideswiping the scree on
the right as the vehicle crashed and bounced down the unmade stony
track. Metal crunched as the wheels hit a rocky outcrop, almost
jarring the steering wheel out of his grip. He heard one of the
tires blow and he lost control, the Jeep skidding unchecked
sideways into a stony bank at the bottom of the steep slope, coming
to a rocking halt in a cloud of dust.

Easton snapped up the door locks and Ironheel
rolled out of the vehicle. Gun in hand, Easton scrambled out and
thrashed after him deep into the middle of a cornfield bordering
the creek below the track, stopping beside Ironheel in the humid
shade, heart pounding. It was completely silent except for the
harsh sound of their breathing.

“Madre de Dios!” Ironheel panted. “What was
that?”

“Hit man,” Easton said. His mouth was bone
dry, his throat so tight he had to push the words out. “Up there on
the hill, waiting.”

“To kill us.” Easton nodded, yes.

“I thought nobody knew—”

“Yeah,” Easton said grimly. Both men fell
silent for a moment, as the implication sank in.

McKittrick, Easton thought. McKittrick,
McKittrick, McKittrick.

“You’re bleeding,” Ironheel said. “Your face,
your shirt, everywhere.”

“I know,” Easton said. “It’s this.”

He lifted his left arm. Ironheel’s eyes
widened as he saw the dark spread of blood from a wound low down
left below his ribs.

“You need a doctor?” he said.

“Not yet,” Easton told him. “They’re still up
there somewhere.”

He pointed back toward the track with his
chin. The assassins would be pros, probably two men, maybe more.
They wouldn’t leave without making sure their quarry was dead – or
finishing the job. Easton could feel the pain from his wound
gathering, like a big wave a long way out getting ready to roll in
and break. He willed it back, forcing himself to think. He had to
take a chance, now. He got out the key for Ironheel’s handcuffs and
unlocked them, tossing them aside.

“I’m going to try and get the shotgun in the
Jeep,” he said, handing the Apache his Glock automatic. “Cover
me.”

Ironheel looked at the gun and Easton thought
he saw something change in his eyes, although it might have just
been his imagination.

“Big decision,” Ironheel said, hefting the
gun. His face was impassive.

“Amen,” Easton said, and ran.

The Jeep was only about fifty yards away but
it felt like a mile as he ran, crouched over, expecting any second
to hear the whiplash crack of a rifle, or perhaps even encounter
the blank blackness of sudden death. They said you never hear the
one that kills you. When he got to the driver’s door of the Jeep he
was breathing like he had a hacksaw stuck in his gullet. As he
reached in and released the tailgate lock, the wave of pain he had
been holding back rolled unstoppably through his body and he
dropped helplessly to his knees, a red mist swimming before his
eyes.

He knelt there swinging his head from side to
side, cursing it, and after a moment the red mist cleared a little
and the pain receded. Sweating like he was in a sauna, he scrambled
to the rear of the vehicle, grabbed hold of the fender and hauled
himself up, swung the tailgate open and unclipped the stainless
steel Winchester Marine 12-gauge shotgun that gleamed darkly
within. By now his ragged breathing sounded like an old freight
train coming through a tunnel. Red spots floated in front of his
eyes as he ripped open a cartridge box and stuffed his pockets full
of shells. The brief burst of action so exhausted him it was all he
could do to lift the weapon.

He looked warily around. Nothing moved.

He tried to remember exactly where they had
been on the road – near Glenavon, he figured. There was a post
office somewhere up on the other side of the highway. If they could
get to it, maybe they could call for help.

A car whished past on the road above his
position and he froze, his skin crawling. False alarm.

He pumped a round into the shotgun and
crouched down, drawing in long slow breaths, readying himself for
the run back. There was no sign of Ironheel but he knew he must
still be in the cornfield someplace. At least he hoped so. Ready
…

Now.

As he scrambled to his feet he heard a hoarse
shout somewhere above his position. Concentrating completely on
this one thing only, he ran. A rifle cracked and a slug took a
chunk out of a boulder beyond him and screamed off into infinity.
Half-turning, he saw a man in dark clothing run bent over between
two stands of bush maybe ten yards uphill on the curve of the
cutoff. Still running, he fired the shotgun blindly, pumped, fired
and pumped again, and saw the dark-clad figure drop out of sight.
Crashing through the bony uprights of standing corn, moving on
sheer adrenaline, he collapsed sweating and breathless onto the
moist red earth.

With shaking hands he slid replacement rounds
into the shotgun. He tried to get up but could not. He groaned,
unable to keep the sound from escaping. His wound was burning like
all the fires of hell. The world started to tilt as he fought the
blackness boiling up like tar inside his skull.

He heard a male voice shout something. Here
they come. He jammed the butt of the shotgun on the ground as a
crutch to at least get to his knees. Damned if he’d let them kill
him like a dog on the ground.

“Gódah! Keep down!”

The sibilant hiss of Ironheel’s voice froze
him. Where the hell was he? He could see nothing except the tangled
rows of close-standing cornstalks and the blue uncaring sky. He was
helpless and safe at the same time. Any movement among these
sun-dried stalks would make a rattling racket announcing the
presence of danger.

As he sank back down flat he heard a metallic
bump and liquid sounds over where they had left the Jeep. There was
a soft whoooooomphhh! then a pillar of flame and smoke leapt up
into the sky above the cornfield and the bitter tang of burning
rubber assailed his senses. They had torched the car.

Where the hell are you, Ironheel? he
wondered.

He blacked out again for a moment. As he came
around he thought he heard the stutter of pistol shots and someone
shouting, but the wound in his side was throbbing mercilessly and
there was a solid roaring in his ears. Fighting to stay conscious,
he heard someone crashing through the corn stalks toward him. Then
suddenly they parted and a man he had never seen before stood
looming above him. He was big and broad and wore a hunting vest,
dark pants, and he had a Browning automatic in his hand.

Easton tried to lift the shotgun but
couldn’t. The big man smiled a death’s head smile and pointed the
gun at Easton’s head. The muzzle yawned like the mouth of a cannon.
Easton flinched as the shot rang out but there was no impact, no
pain. The man started to turn around but fell to his knees, his
mouth working, and then collapsed dead in front of Easton, his eyes
wide open and his forehead oozing blood like a crushed egg.

The cornstalks clashed noisily again, then
parted. Ironheel stepped into view with the Glock in his hand and
knelt down by Easton’s side.

“There were two of them,” he said.

The drums were pounding.

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.

Something evil.

It was getting closer and closer, no matter
how fast he ran. He could smell the foul stink of its breath.
Something awful. A ghastly emptiness coming to suck him into its
blackness. And all the time the drums, pounding inside his head
….

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.

He couldn’t find Susan. People turned away
angrily when he asked if they’d seen her. He couldn’t make them
understand. Then he saw her running ahead of him through fields of
sweet clover bordered by aspens, Somewhere high in the mountains.
Then he could hear the black thing behind him again, drawing
nearer, nearer, ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum, and he shouted a warning.
Susan waved and ran as fleet and swift as a deer across the
mountain meadow.

He knew there was danger and he tried to
catch her but it was like he was underwater, moving in slow motion.
He saw the abyss ahead of her and watched helplessly as she ran
straight over the edge. She turned as she fell and called out his
name, and he saw her lovely face that one last time, and everything
inside him died.

Then somehow Ellen Casey was there, her hands
extended, her frank eyes meeting his. Her voice echoed. You have to
learn to live again. Without Susan. Without Susan. Without Susan.
But still the evil thing drew closer.

It’s coming, he said. I can hear it.

What does it want?

Revenge. It wants revenge.

And the pounding drum was getting louder.
Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.

And he was in an autopsy suite and Robert
Casey’s body was lying on the tilted steel table with the top of
his head lifted back like the lid of a coffee jar, his brain sliced
and laid neatly on a glass plate like smoked salmon. The water in
the sinks ran red with blood. Then he sat up and opened his eyes
…

And awoke.

It was pitch dark. His heart was still
pounding from the dream and he was soaked with perspiration. Memory
flooded back: the windshield exploding, the quick sear of pain in
his side, the whoomph! of the burning car, the astonishment in the
dead eyes of the big man crumpling to the ground, the thin thread
of smoke coming from the gun in Ironheel’s hand.

There were two of them.

Two pros, sent expressly to kill. No warning,
no mercy. If it hadn’t been for Ironheel, I’d be dead.

His chest felt constricted. He touched it and
discovered the wound in his side was bandaged. His face felt stiff.
When he ran his fingers over it, he could feel puckered skin. Cuts
from flying glass, he remembered. He also needed a shave.

He lay quite still in the silence until his
eyes became accustomed to the darkness and he could make out
detail. A window with shutters closed and blinds drawn. Chinked log
walls. Pitched roof. Plank floor, some rugs.

The room was sparsely furnished. Just the
truck bed he was lying on, with its heavy Navajo blanket, a bureau
with a wood-framed mirror above it, a ladderback chair. A
dreamcatcher by the window, a water color of a barn on one wall, an
old Winchester in a beautifully beaded saddle holster hanging from
two pegs on the other. There was a doorway to his right, the door
closed.

Where is this? How long have I been here? How
did I get here? Where is Ironheel? What happened to the bodies of
the men who had tried to kill us? The questions clamored in his
mind like barking dogs.

He made a try to get out of bed, but sudden
huge waves of lassitude swept over him and he slid back deep down
into blackness. This time, however, there was no dream.

When he awoke again the blinds were drawn and
the room was bright with sunshine. He turned his head to see
Ironheel sitting watching him. Unthinkingly, he tried to sit up and
pain ran down his left side like boiling water. In two strides
Ironheel was at the bedside.

“Hanányo’l,” he said, gently pushing Easton
back flat. “Easy, now. You got shot, remember?”

“It’s not the sort of thing you forget,”
Easton said.

Ironheel had gotten rid of the prison
jumpsuit and was wearing a dark blue work shirt, Levi’s, and
scuffed-out cowboy boots. His long black hair was tied back with a
headband and there was a knife in a sheath on his belt. He looked
even more Apache than before.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“If I was a bell, I’d be ringing,” Easton
said.

Ironheel shook his head impatiently. Probably
hasn’t seen many musicals, Easton thought.

“Where is this?” he asked.

“My sister’s cabin.”

So they were on the Mescalero Apache
Reservation.