High Desert Barbecue (21 page)

J
ason glanced around, looking for somebody or something else to focus on other than the person trying to kill him and his colleagues.

“
What about the rest of you?”

T
erry sat well to the rear, leaning against a bank of earth carved by the high water brought by Monsoon rains and spring snowmelt. He covered his head with his hands and rocked back and forth.

“
Shit,” Jason muttered. He looked to Samantha and his eyes softened. She smiled back.

“
Is there anything—?”

S
he held up a magazine from her rifle and pointed it toward him so he could see that it was empty.

“
Oh shit.”

S
he pointed to where Rena carefully tended Bob’s wound out of sight of the shooter ahead.

“
Them, too, I think.” She shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry.”

J
ason began sucking wind in convulsive sips and the world seemed to spin. He let go of his rifle and cupped his head in his hands. This expedition was supposed to be an idealistic lark. He and his comrades had set out to drive human habitation from the high desert pine forest in the name of all that was good and green.

T
hat was his dream, after all. He wanted to wander through a world devoid of people—except for Samantha, of course. He was pretty sure she was on the same wavelength, which made this whole project even more worthwhile. To find somebody who cared about the same things that he did, and who wanted to depopulate the world so they could share it alone—well, together, but otherwise alone—was exhilarating.

Y
eah, things got a little dark when they were spotted and started chasing the strangers. But it was fun to be the one doing the chasing. And those strangers wanted to stop him from completing his mission—or at least they had the potential to do so.

B
ut now he was the one in the crosshairs, and he didn’t like it one bit. His whole fantasy about the Carthage Option was beginning to take on a new meaning. Instead of imagining himself as a Roman conqueror, sowing the defeated lands of Carthage with salt to keep them from being inhabited again, he saw his role transforming before his eyes. Maybe he wasn’t on the side of the Romans in his Carthage Option; maybe he was that guy who rode the elephants … Hannibal! That’s right. Hannibal was the Carthaginian general.

D
id he really ride elephants?

N
ever mind.

A
nyway, Hannibal had started out as the invader, chasing and defeating the Roman troops, but he ended up losing everything. That would suck. He didn’t want to end up as Hannibal, watching everything he believed in get destroyed.

“
What?”

J
ason was jerked back to reality. He looked around and spotted Samantha looking at him. She leaned forward, almost beyond the limits of her cover.

“
Huh?”

S
amantha brushed her face with the empty magazine from her rifle and spoke again.

“
Did you just say you don’t want to ride an elephant?”

Chapter 47

R
ollo’s eyes teared a little, and his mouth felt like he was sucking on a ball of cotton. Blinking away what felt like bits of gravel from his eyeballs, he descended carefully down the cliff face on his way to the ledge where Scott, to judge by the gunshots, had introduced himself, once again, to the firebugs.

“
Damn this shit,” he cursed, blinking again. “Tastes like I’m smoking a mummy’s cock.”

T
he mountain man paused, braced himself with one hand on a crumbly chunk of sandstone and used his free hand to pull the ancient joint from between his lips. He grimaced and shook his head. He tried spitting, but nothing left his mouth other than a short burst of bad breath.

H
e sighed, returned the joint to its perch at the left corner of his mouth, and continued his journey.

C
limbing down was more difficult than climbing up for several reasons. One reason was that the descent required him to actually look where his body would fall if he lost his grip on the rocks and shrubs that provided his natural ladder. Then there was the battering his rear was getting from the rifle slung over his shoulder. As promised, he’d retrieved the cached battle rifle and hung the heavy piece of wood and steel on his back by its canvas sling. He already had awkward bruises on his back and thighs to show for his efforts. Accompanying the rifle was its ammunition, which bulged from his pockets and from a bandolier slung across his chest. As he climbed, the cartridge boxes wore through the well-aged fabric of his clothes, dug into tender spots and left bruises to match those left by the rifle.

A
nd then there was the joint. He hadn’t even remembered caching dope with the rest of his supplies, but there it was: a full freezer bag begging to be rescued from its subterranean repository. He’d stuffed it down his shirt, except for enough to fill a rolling paper.

T
he stuff really hadn’t aged very well at all. It was also throwing off his balance and his depth perception.

“
Fuck.”

H
e rubbed at a nasty scrape on his calf.

A
final drop brought him to … well, that wasn’t very final at all. There was still a last scramble to be made across an area that would expose him to fire from below.

R
ollo thought about the situation, and then almost immediately decided that reflection was a bad idea. Allowing himself as little time as possible to consider the danger, he clenched his teeth around the joint and lunged.

“
Oh shit!”

“
Rollo! I’m— Oh my God. Did you set fire to your underwear?”

T
he would-be hermit spit the last of his joint into space and pressed his gut into the dirt. The belly flop drove his stuffed pockets into his flesh and he felt sharp lumps digging into places that ought to, as a matter of policy, remain unmolested by hard metal projectiles.

T
he impact drove the wind out of him, so he couldn’t respond immediately.

“
I’m serious. What’s that stink?”

“
An excellent vintage of northern Arizona loco weed.”

S
cott tilted his head to stare at the source of the bad odor.

“
You had that in your cache? Why?”

R
ollo wriggled the rifle sling from his shoulder and pushed the rifle forward. The wood and dark steel slid through the dirt until the muzzle projected beyond the ledge and the trigger was by his hand. He lifted the bolt handle and drew the bolt back.

“
I don’t really know why. I’m sure it made sense at the time. It still does the job, anyway.”

“
Still does the job? Then leave that stuff alone right now.”

R
ollo bristled.

“
Hey, I spit it out. OK?”

A
light tattoo of gunfire from below chewed the rocks and dirt around them—far around them. Somebody wasn’t taking the time or effort to aim.

R
ollo finished transferring ten tarnished brass cylinders, tapered at the front, from his right breast pocket to the rifle’s magazine. He pushed the bolt forward and then locked the handle down.

S
cott fired a few rounds from the .22 to keep the firebugs’ heads down, then turned his attention to the older man.

“
A hunting rifle? I thought you said you had some kind of assault rifle up there.”

“
A battle rifle,” Rollo answered. “This is an Enfield. The Brits used it during World War II.”

S
cott eyed the weapon dubiously.

“
I don’t doubt it. Does the museum curator know his exhibit is missing?”

R
ollo sniffed and flipped the rifle’s rear sight so it stood straight up. He ostentatiously fiddled with the adjustments, dialing the peephole up and down to find the proper range. Then he realized that the adjustments were all for ranges far beyond the actual distance of their enemies, and dropped the sight back down in favor of the larger, non-adjustable sight.

“
I suppose I should be thankful you didn’t fetch back a crossbow,” Scott said.

“
Shut up. You’ll see.”

R
ollo ostentatiously took aim through the rear peepsight. A bush behind which he’d seen some movement blurrily filled the ring of the rear sight, overlayed by the blade of the front sight. He carefully put pressure on the trigger. More … more …

B
oth men jumped. Then they peered over the edge of the ledge. Aside from the ringing in their ears, the canyon was silent. There were no shots from below, no animal noises, and no birdsongs to challenge the memory of the rifle’s bark.

“
Well,” Scott said. “That makes a wonderfully loud noise, but I don’t think you actually hit anything.”

Chapter 48

P
articles of exploded juniper tree floated in the air, catching stray rays of sunlight and lightly sparkling. They were beautiful, but Ranger Jason Hewitt found the aesthetics of the moment clouded by the fact that the beauty had been produced by a small chunk of metal traveling at supersonic speed.

“
What the fuck was that?” Jason shouted.

“
A gun,” Bob answered in a low groan.

“
A big gun,” Terry mumbled, barely audibly. He’d abandoned his seated rocking for a position face down in the dirt, and his words were muffled by a mouthful of soil.

“
I know that. What happened to that little popgun and the pistol they were using before?”

“
Well fuck,” Ray said. “I don’t know. Maybe they traded up.” Despite his bravado, he crab-walked to better cover at Jason’s immediate left. The move challenged the little modesty permitted him by his foil loincloth, and he rested his rifle against a rock to tug the thin plastic back into position.

“
Why does it matter?”

J
ason turned and stared.

“
Don’t you think it’s a problem if the people we’re chasing can go shopping for new weapons when they’re perched on a cliff in the middle of the desert?”

R
ay grumbled.

A
nother explosive “crack!” split the air. There was no visible impact, but a whine like a giant hornet passing overhead indicated a ricochet up the canyon.

A
movement to the side caught Jason’s eye. He happily turned from Ray and fears about armories in the wilderness to stare into Samantha’s wide eyes. Her face was pale—where it wasn’t caked with dust.

“
Well, at least whoever is shooting isn’t getting near us,” she chirped, considerably louder than necessary.

R
ay lunged to close the distance with the woman. He barked from all fours.

“
Shut up! They don’t need any help!”

Chapter 49

“
Somebody down there agrees with me,” Scott said. Peering through a low bush, he surveyed the canyon below. “You’re a lousy shot. Either that, or that museum piece of yours is no good.”

R
ollo spat.

“
I don’t see you knocking those bastards over like bowling pins.”

“
I nailed their point man before you even got back here.”

R
ollo lifted his head from the stock. He looked thoughtful.

“
You did?”

“
Yep.”

“
Shit. I’m sorry I missed that.”

H
e slid the heavy rifle across the dirt to Scott and reached for the .22.