Crystal Meth Cowboys (21 page)

Wes saw no sign of life in the area bordered by the pine trees, heard only the disembodied echo of a female voice on the plant PA speaker. Must be lunch hour. He scanned the area for outbuildings, saw none, figured the lab must be on the far side of the pine trees. A rutted dirt truck path ran between the two condensing ponds, offering the quickest route in and precious little cover.

Wes shusshed down the soft white mound, slogged along the bottom, rounded the corner and burst into the open. The truck path was flanked on both sides by ten foot berms of bulldozed earth that diked the condensing ponds, tunneling his vision to the empty road and the pine trees a hundred yards distant. His stride adjusted itself automatically to the soft surface. Except for the assault rifle in his right hand, it was much like running down a muddy field to cover a kickoff. You had to splay out your feet for traction. Blood pumped from his lacerated shin and soaked his sock.

Wes wondered about the gunfire. He knew he had heard a dog bark but he wasn't sure about the gunfire. A tall dredge pump fed fat inflow and outflow hoses into the middle of the condensing pond on his left. An early
afternoon sundowner prodded the pine trees and carried a deep-chested dog growl to his ears.

Wes sprinted the last forty yards at full speed, keeping to the flat area between the tire tracks. He skidded to a stop in front of another truck path that ran east-west, parallel to the pine trees. Wes bent to one knee, ducked low and peered around the corner to his left.

A thick hose dangled from a high metal scaffold, sweeping back and forth in the wind like an elephant's trunk. Some sort of truck bay, thought Wes. He pulled back and looked right. He saw hundreds of wooden pallets stacked against a long low corrugated tin building. A warehouse. A high traffic area unsuited to clandestine activity. Likewise the smaller sand-colored administrative building next to it. And the far side of the buildings faced the intersection of Highway 1 and Playa Road. Wes raised up for a better view of the area directly ahead, behind the row of pine trees. The powdery white earth droppped out of sight. It resurfaced about 50 yards further on, near the towering funnel tanks and smokestack of the processing plant. An excavation pit. No place for a hidden meth lab there.

Wes peered left, blinking away a gust of fine white ash. He thought that the dog growl had come from this direction yet all he saw was a high tension pole and a tiny white shack. Pine branches clutched the shack to the cinderblock wall on the eastern edge of the property. There were no smoke pipes on the roof. The shack was too damn small for a lab anyway. He noticed something else. Branches on a stand of pine trees to the right the shack were bare, as if the needles had been burned off.

Wes checked his weapon. The SKS had nothing that resembled the thumb-sized safety he was accustomed to. He pulled back on a large lever behind the trigger housing. It clicked into place. He jiggled the oversized magazine. It was secure. He figured he had about thirty rounds, assuming the clip was full, which, knowing Bell, it was. Wes grabbed
the SKS with both hands and stepped left around the corner of the berm.

The wind whipped his hair while his legs measured out low quick flatfooted steps on the rutted road, kicking up a trail of white dust. As he passed the truck bay Wes saw the German Shepherd. He was lying on his side, tongue in the dirt, matted blood on his coat, as dead as it was possible to be. Wes hadn't imagined the gunfire.

Moving closer he saw that the small white shack was really a miniature house. Board and batten walls with crown mouldings on the corners and tiny gutters below the eaves. But no doors or windows that he could see. The far side of the house faced the cinderblock wall. The door had to be on the south side, facing the excavation pit.

Wes slanted right across the road and ducked behind a pine tree. There was no door on the south side of the little house, just a tiny window with a tiny sill, the glass painted over from the inside. He heard a deep-chested dog growl. He trotted forward. The row of pine trees ended. Wes felt his back prickle as he exposed it to the excavation pit and the plant buildings beyond and wished devoutly for his kevlar vest.

Wes pried a snowy pine branch from the little house and slipped into a dark Alpen dell bordered by the cinderblock wall. There was a door on this side. A wide open door. Wes started forward, felt something touch his left ankle and looked down. The blonde Lab was sniffing his bloody sock. Wes patted the dog's head with his free hand and crept forward on a carpet of pine needles.

The door stood straight out, blocking his view of the interior. The frame was only five feet high. He would have to duck down to enter. The Lab padded alongside, happy that a human was now in charge. Pine branches drummed the roof of the little house.

Wes sidestepped five paces to the right, turned and raised the assault rifle at the open door. The little house
was empty. He crept closer. He saw the shiny steel steps of a spiral staircase, the kind you might see in a submarine. Ah ha. The little house had a basement.

Wes inched forward, hoping the dog would enter first. Wes stopped three steps from the door. The dog stopped two steps behind and sat on his haunches. He wasn't as dumb as he looked. Wes flirted with dozens of reasons why he shouldn't cross the threshold, reasons why he should simply announce his presence, take up a defensive position and wait for backup. But yelling 'Police!' wouldn't help his partner. If he was being held. If he was still alive.

Wes unfastened a latch and unfolded the bayonet. He clapped it into place below the barrel and refastened the latch. He crept toward the house, squinting his eyes to hear. Faint hollow voices, brief command and response exchanges drowned in echo. The subterranean chamber was large.

Wes ducked his head and crossed the threshold. A steady-burning light rose from the bottom of the staircase. The voices became clearer. Two men, speaking Spanish. Wes placed a white-dusted oxford on the top shiny metal step, said his goodbyes to his loved ones, grabbed the railing and descended the spiral staircase on the balls of his feet.

The light came from the right, from a tunnel or anteroom. The small room he lowered himself into was braced with timbers. The walls had been sprayed with texturecoat, mud showing through in patches. The voices tailed off, moving further down the tunnel that crossed under the cinderblock wall above. Wes stepped down onto the mud, grasped the assault rifle with both hands and waited for his irises to expand.

The nylon whisper of a warm up jacket was what alerted him. That and a suppressed grunt of exertion. Wes lurched to the right of the sound, heard an angry
CLACK
of wood on metal.

Wes blinked. He had moved into the fringe of light from a naked bulb that hung from a vertical shoring timber in the three by six foot tunnel. He scrambled back to darkness. His shadowy opponent muttered a quiet curse from the back of the room. Wes couldn't see him, heard only the blood pressure hammering in his ears. But he could see the head of a baseball bat gleaming dully on the steel staircase. His opponent must have switched to a more lethal weapon. Wes Lyedecker swung the SKS toward the back of the room. He didn't know where this guy was exactly but he had thirty rounds to find out. He pulled the trigger. The safety was still on.

Wes dug his toes in the mud and shot forward. His black oxfords cooperating nicely, flexing in all the proper spots, finally broken in. His opponent took shape in outline form, a ghostly silhouette, raising its right arm.

Wes shot his triceps as he lunged, concentrating all his body's kinetic energy into the tip of the Russian-made assault rifle's bayonet. Two quick machine pistol rounds singed his right ear and flashblinded his eyes. The blonde Lab howled plaintively from up above.

FUCK YOU, thought Wes as he adjusted his point of attack several inches to the left and drove the bayonet through the breastbone, lungs and muscles of his opponent, driving him back and pinning him to the texturecoated wall. The machine pistol fell to the mud.

Wes wanted to curse the man who had tried to kill him, wanted to woof, talk trash and get in his face but the bayonet must have pierced his heart because his opponent was no longer breathing. Wes pulled his bayonet from the wall and almost pitched over. The dead man was still skewered on the blade.

Wes pushed against the man's chest with his foot and yanked back on the stock of the SKS. The blade, buried in bone, didn't budge. Wes dumped the dead man on his back. The assault rifle twanged back and forth like a whip
antenna. Wes got on his hands and knees and groped around frantically. Paid killers with automatic weapons would soon evince an interest in his whereabouts.

"Miguel? Miguel?" shouted a young male voice from down the tunnel. Wes patted the mud with his palms, working right along the wall. He heard approaching footsteps. He swept his arms out wide but he couldn't seem to…Ah. A gun barrel warmed his fingers. He grabbed it up with both hands and squatted against the wall. The machine pistol was surprisingly heavy. He could see the far wall behind the fading orange starbursts in his eyes. Come on down asshole, he thought. Step on into that bell of light.

No one showed. Miguel hadn't answered. The man with the young voice must be waiting in the tunnel. Shit. Wes heard a distant percussive
shuck
. Sounded like sliding door. They were loading something into a van. He had to get himself down that tunnel.

Wes climbed to his feet and stepped lightly across the floor. For a macabre instant he considered advancing down the tunnel using his opponent's skewered body as a shield. He decided instead to crank out three quick steps and bounce himself off the far wall, shooting an astonishing number of bullets down the lighted tunnel before caroming back into the darkened chamber. No return fire commenced. Just fevered voices and the first deep breath of a V-8.

Nothin' to it but to do it. Wes took a quick breath and plunged headlong down the tunnel. To his inestimable relief no hidden gunman stepped up and spat molten death in his direction. The tunnel opened into a spacious room. Wes saw a stained work bench with an overhead hood fan, splotches of red on the concrete floor too bright to be blood, broken glass, a stainless steel sink, tall art deco hallogen lamps more suited to an executive suite, a four outlet junction box and plastered walls hung with asbestos tile.

Wes entered the room, machine pistol poised. Looking left he saw his bound and gagged partner being carried up a concrete loading ramp. Two men had his shoulders, a third man had his feet. A cargo van, side door open, sat parked above.

"Police! Drop your weapons!"

The third man dropped Bell's boots on the ramp while the other two stuck pistols in Bell's ears. Bell bugged out his eyeballs comically.

The heavyset, heavily pommaded Mexican to Bell's right didn't insult Lyedecker's intelligence by demanding he drop his weapon. Tactical Jack had told a rapt classroom of Academy cadets the story of the onion field. Surrendering your weapon when your partner had been taken hostage was not advised.

"Be coo', be coo'," warbled the Mexican through his several chins. Wes liked it that he sounded nervous. He recognized him as the passenger in the El Camino.

"Be coo' and we don't waste him, your
companero
," said the Mexican as he and his twin tugged Bell backward, dragging his bootheels on the concrete. The third man scrambled up the ramp. Lyedecker followed him with his machine pistol but didn't fire. The man reached ground level, ducked left around the van and disappeared. The van was idling, indicating a driver in place. Four against one. The fat twins wore cowboy boots, stitched seam pants and ostrich-skin belts. They were grinning at him now. He needed to assert control.

"I just killed your
companero
." Wes ticked his head toward the other room and returned the grins. "With a bayonet. And now I'm going to kill you." Wes braced his right wrist with his left hand and aimed the machine pistol at the head man's face. "Unless you and your fat friend lower your pistols right fucking now."

Bell was impressed. One, that the kid had found him and, two, that he hadn't resorted to that annoying
psychobabble in an attempt to negotiate a non-negotiable situation. These boys were pros. No one was leaving until shots were fired. Just his luck that he had found the lab at the exact moment the troops rolled up to break it down. Bell released a long-held breath when the gun barrels were withdrawn from his ears and repositioned at his neck and temple.

"Don' be stoopid now," said the head man. "No one he has to get hurt." He reached around with his free hand and yanked the gag from Bell's mouth. "Listen to your partner," said the man, pulling Bell to a standing position.

"Well," said Bell, spitting bits of rag from his mouth, "I guess this here's whut you call a Mexican standoff." Bell's dopey grin went unnoticed by his partner who concentrated on keeping the machine pistol gunsight centered on the head man's bobbing nose.

"Stay
still
!" screamed Wes.

Even Bell froze.

"
Tell
heem," pleaded the head man.

Bell cleared his throat and addressed himself to his baby boy. "Shoot the motherfuckers," he said.

The twins looked aghast. "
Vamanos
," called a voice from inside the van.

Wes wondered what the fourth man was doing. He could be creeping down the spiral staircase, ready to attack from the tunnel. Had Bell been held by one man, Wes would have fired. Tactical Jack said a top-of-the-skull shot would penetrate the parietal lobe and cut the motors, negating a spasm shot. But there were two. The driver revved the engine and yelled, "
Vaya
!"

"What part of 'shoot the motherfuckers'
don't
you understand?" said Bell just before Wes Lyedecker squeezed off two rounds that hit the kevlar vest right above Bell's solar plexus, emptying Bell's lungs and knocking him back into the open van.

The twins fired their weapons at the vacant space. The one on the left shot the head man on the right, tearing out his voice box, interrupting his shout of protest, sending him to his knees.