Slow Burn: Bleed, Book 6 (16 page)

The ground in most places among the trees was just a layer of dried cedar needle clusters an inch or two thick over sandy bits of limestone or hard rock. So, following our footprints out the way we’d come wasn’t an option. There were no footprints, just trees that all looked pretty much alike.

A few steps back along our path, I grabbed Murphy’s shoulder. He turned to me. I pointed in the direction we were moving and whispered, “What are the chances there are booby traps back that way?”

Murphy shrugged and looked around.

I said, “We could have been walking in a minefield since we entered the trees.”

“I’m not sure I’d call it a minefield.”

I rolled my eyes. “Does it matter
exactly
what it is?”

Still looking around at the tree trunks and across the ground, Murphy said, “This whole place could be full of traps, or that could be the only one. There’s no way to know until we find some more or get blown up by one we don’t see.”

I turned back in the direction we’d originally been moving and looked deep into the trees. “Just luck.”

“What’s that?” Murphy asked.

“We’re only alive because of luck,” I said. “Again.”

“What’s your point?”

“One booby trap doesn’t change anything.” I pointed toward the place where the house lay out among the trees. “We have the same chance of getting killed by a mine no matter which direction we go.”

Nodding slowly, Murphy said, “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” His face stretched in a wicked grin.

“What are
you
thinking?”

“Bad thoughts.” Murphy looked back at the mine strapped to the tree behind me.

I asked, “Can you disconnect it and reuse it?”

“I don’t know, but I think we’re on the same page.”

I put a hand in my pocket and yanked out a couple of pillowcases, kept one for myself and handed one to Murphy.

He shook his head. “If I can disconnect them, you’ll have to carry ‘em. I’ll need both hands to keep from getting blown up.” Murphy pointed to pair of tree trunks that looked to be competing for the same spot in the ground. “Go stand behind those while I do this.”

“But—”

“Besides getting blown up, what are you gonna do to help? Go over there where you won’t get hurt.”

Sulking, I walked over and put the double trunks between me and the booby trap. Murphy knelt down by the mine and leaned in close. With his back to me, I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing.

It took only a few moments of work before Murphy started to laugh and waved me over.

Puzzled, I moved between the trees, keeping an eye out for any wires I might have missed on the way to my hiding place.

Once I was beside him, Murphy said, “Get down here. Look at this.”

I knelt so I could see.

Murphy had the thin branches pushed to the side, exposing the whole mechanism. The wire was still taut. He pointed a finger at the wire and said, “Look around the other side of the trunk and tell me what you see.”

I leaned around the small trunk. The wire that extended across the path was looped around the trunk. On the backside of the tree, held in place by the loop was some kind of clicking mechanism with a wire that ran up to an explosive device, a curved, green, rectangular container very roughly the size of a Pop-Tart box.

“So, you trip on the wire,” I surmised, “the wire pulls tight, the clicker switch closes and the mine goes off.” I looked at Murphy expecting a nod and a smile.

Instead, he was holding in a laugh. “Typical.”

“Typical? What’s that mean?”

“You don’t know what this is, or how to use it?”

I was a little bit offended. “No, but how hard could it be?” As I was saying that, I realized that my guess must have been wrong.

Murphy’s big fingers went to work with surprising dexterity on the thin wire, untying the knot that made the loop. “Untie the mine.”

I fumbled with the wires.

Murphy had his untied in seconds and brushed me out of the way, having little patience for my difficulty. Again, it took only seconds, and the wire loosened and the green mine fell. I gasped and caught it before it hit the ground.

Murphy laughed. “It needs an electrical charge to blow. Dropping it won’t hurt it.”

“The fall won’t set it off?” It was hard to believe.

“You could beat it with a hammer and it wouldn’t go off.” Murphy held his hammer out to me. “You wanna try?”

I shook my head.

He looked down at the mine I was holding gingerly in two hands. “Turn it over and see what it says.”

Looking at him like he was keeping a secret from me, I turned the mine over and read it out loud, “Front toward enemy.”

“It’s an M18 Claymore directional mine.” Murphy said. He held up the clicker. “This is the clacker. You gotta click it three times to make it go off.”

“Three times?” I asked.

“This booby trap wouldn’t work. You’d get one click when you tripped over the wire. The Claymore wouldn’t go off.”

I said, “I’m confused.”

“Whoever set this up, it wasn’t somebody who understood what he was doing.”

“Not soldiers?” I asked.

Murphy shook his head. “Like you said up on the street, probably some knucklehead White with a car fetish.”

That made me feel a bit better about sneaking up on the house. “So our Humvee might be sitting in the driveway and all we have to do is get in and drive off.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Murphy looked at me seriously. “Just because this guy doesn’t know how to set up a trap with his Claymores doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Where do you think he got the Claymores?”

“Probably the same place we got the grenades from.”

“The munitions bunkers at Camp Mabry?” I asked.

Murphy raised his eyebrows. Where else?

“I hope he had as much difficulty with it.” I put the Claymore, its wires, and clacker in my bag.

“Let me disconnect those clacker wires from the mine first,” said Murphy. “Don’t want you blowing us up when we’re traipsing through the woods.” I held the pillowcase open and Murphy reached in.

We collected two more Claymores while working our way through the trees on the way to a black metal fence that bordered an expansive property. Whether natural or excavated, the front yard was a half-acre of mowed—now dead—grass and flowerbeds, laid out in front of a ranch-style house that might have covered a half-acre all by itself. Across the front lawn, snaking between the flower gardens, a driveway was covered with cars. Some parked neatly, others halfway in the grass. By the front door sat two Humvees. Neither had a machine gun mounted on the roof. Out across the yard, halfway to the fence and visible from every window on the front of the house, sat another Humvee—
our
Humvee. The machine gun mounted on the roof was all the proof I needed.

“I can jump this fence and be inside in like, twenty seconds,” I said. “You run back up through the trees and I’ll pick you up in the cul-de-sac.” I looked over at Murphy for agreement.

He was shaking his head.

I looked over at the house’s dark windows. “Unless there’s some kind of super sniper in there, he’s not going to be able to hit me, as fast as I’ll be running across the lawn. Once I’m inside, I’m home free.”

Murphy’s brow furrowed as he looked at the house and back at the Humvee. “Any decent shot will get you before you get halfway across.”

I huffed and looked back and forth across the lawn. “I’ll be halfway there before anyone even sees me.”

“Maybe.” Murphy scooted further back into the trees. “You wanna take that chance?”

Yes. Some days I felt invincible, though I had to constantly remind myself that my delusions of invincibility were driven primarily by anger and stupidity. Reluctantly, I asked, “What do
you
think?”

“No point in chancing it. If we wait ‘til dark, we just hike across, get in and drive off. No danger. No risk.”

I looked longingly at the Humvees, knowing Murphy was right.

He said, “Let’s fade back in the woods a bit, walk around the perimeter, and see what we can see. We’ll gather up as many Claymores as we can. I’m thinkin’, in our future, shit that blows up will always be useful. At dusk, that’ll be the hardest time to be seen running across the lawn. Depending on what we learn when we’re checking this place out, that’s when we’ll steal our Humvee back.”

We started on a zigzag path through the trees, going up near the fence where we could see the house, then  back downhill and away. With much of the day to burn, we had plenty of time for our Claymore Easter egg hunt, and we found them with ease. The tripwires had been strung with some silvery wire that was pretty easy to see over the brown and green background, at least when you knew to look for it.

After I’d put a fourth Claymore into my pillowcase, we rounded a curve on the hill and found ourselves in a haze of smoke. Murphy stopped and sniffed the air, looking in the direction of the house. “Damn, that smells good.”

I said, “I can’t believe those fuckers are up there having a barbecue.”

“We might have to steal some of that, if we can.” Murphy hiked up the hill, following the smoke back toward the house.

I followed as the smoke drifted through the tree branches overhead.

Murphy looked back at me and whispered, “I’m surprised they’re not drawing in every White in the neighborhood with that smell.”

“What are they cooking?” I asked.

“What?” Murphy sniffed the air.

“They can’t run down to the H-E-B to buy a brisket,” I said. “So what do you think? A deer? A dog? Maybe a wild pig?”

Murphy shrugged. “There are plenty of wild pigs in the woods in east Texas.”

“That’s wishful thinking. If anything, it’s deer, I’ll bet.” I took a look around us in the woods. Always checking for anything that might be sneaking up. “I’ve never seen a wild pig around here.”

Murphy licked his lips. “I don’t care if it’s a deer, or a dog, or a cat.” He started forward again.

The hill grew steeper the closer we got to the fence, and by the time we were at a level to see across the backyard, we were mostly invisible from the house, hidden by the slope. The backyard was only half as big as the front and was mostly covered by an expansive patio. On the near side of the patio, behind several cords of neatly stacked oak wood, I spotted the source of the smoke: a long barbecue smoker, chugging white clouds into the air. The tops of two heads were visible just on the other side of the smoker.

I nudged Murphy and pointed. He’d been looking across the pool to the other side of the yard and was frowning when he looked up. He said, “I see ‘em. C’mon.” Murphy took off, moving quickly across the slope, staying far enough down so that he couldn’t be seen from the backyard.

I hurried after, curious what had spurred him to hustle.

We dodged prickly pears that were scattered between the cedars and stayed away from loose, gravelly spots in which we might noisily slip, bringing unwanted attention from the people who stole our Humvee.

Eventually, Murphy came to a stop and crouched down as he started back up the slope on his hands and knees. I did the same and we worked our way up until we were able to once again see the backyard. I looked across the width of a swimming pool, across the patio, and saw the smoker, still spewing pungently delicious white smoke that drifted lazily with the wind in the other direction. The two people who’d been tending the smoker were now absent. Back in the house, or so I guessed.

Murphy nudged me and pointed to our left.

Along the fence at the back corner of the yard stood a rectangular construct of chain link fence, sealed across the top with fencing material and partitioned into four equal parts, each with a closed gate. It was a kennel, but it didn’t hold dogs, it held Whites. Some were standing, a few were lying in the dirt, but most were squatting and looking despondently out at the yard or into the trees.

Murphy scooted back down the slope a few feet. I stayed where I was, sneaking peeks at what I could see. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Why imprison Whites?” I asked.

Murphy shrugged and pulled a face. “Doesn’t matter why, I guess. Every time we come across some of these Slow Burn knuckleheads, we see something new.”

“Oh, shit.”

“What?” Murphy raised his hammer and looked around.

“No,” I said, “not that.”

“What?”

“I’ll bet they’re livestock,” I said, feeling disgust at voicing the thought.

“Livestock?” Murphy asked.

“I’ll bet I know what’s on that smoker.”

Shaking his head, Murphy said, “No, that’s disgusting.”

I looked back in the direction of the smoker. “They’ve got some kind of meat in that smoker.”

Murphy turned away and slowly scanned through the woods. “I find myself liking the world less and less every day.”

“I hear you.”

Murphy took a moment to think about the Whites in the kennels. “Barbecued Whites, I don’t give a shit. That doesn’t change anything for us.”

“Okay.”

Murphy pointed back up toward the house. “There’re at least two of them up there.”

“I wonder how they get them into the kennels,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Murphy said. “We probably need to steer clear of that kennel unless we want them making some noise when they see us. You never know what those fuckers will do.”

“Okay.”

“When you saw those two behind the barbecue pit, did you see any gun barrels sticking up or anything?”

“Nope,” I answered. “Just the tops of their heads.”

“Yeah, me too. So we don’t know anything about them yet, except maybe what they like to have for dinner.”

I asked, “So what are you thinking? Plan A? Go out front and wait ‘til dusk, then steal our Humvee back?”

“Or we get out of here.” Murphy rubbed a hand over his bald head. “We don’t know anything about how many are in there, what they’re up to, or what they’re capable of.”

“Is that what you want to do?” I was looking at the kennels when I asked the question, and I realized there was something odd about the occupants of one section. “Oh, shit.”

Murphy was immediately ready to fight again. “What do you see?”

I waved Murphy back up. “Come take a look at this.”

Murphy was beside me. “What?”

“Those Whites in the far section of the kennel.” I pointed.

Murphy squinted. “It’s hard to make ‘em out with the Whites in the other cages in the way.”

“Yeah.” I turned and sat down on a flat piece of limestone. “Keep looking and tell me what you see.”

“What am I supposed to see?” Murphy asked. After a moment, he said, “Wait.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought. I don’t think those ones are Whites.”

I got up off my comfortable flat piece of stone, and together Murphy and I worked our way around the curve of the fence to a place that would give us an unobstructed view of the end of the kennel in question. It was only twenty or thirty feet away from us when we peeked up over the sloping edge of the backyard.

Shaking his head, Murphy lowered himself back out of sight. He took a deep, frustrated breath.

I knelt down beside him. “Looks like half a dozen naked girls with normal skin color.”

“Of course,” Murphy said, disgusted. “If you’re gonna have a rape kennel, you gotta have ‘em naked.” He pounded his hammer into the dirt a few times.

“A rape kennel?” I asked. “You think that’s what it is?”

Shaking his head again, Murphy said, “I don’t know. Does it matter? They’re people—normal people, girls—in that cage. This place is just as fucked as that tattoo parlor. Maybe more fucked.”

I was as disgusted as Murphy. “You know what I’m thinking.”

“Null Spot?”

I nodded. There was no point in pretending that I wasn’t.

“Me, too,” Murphy offered. “I want to smash somebody’s head with my hammer right now.”

I hefted my machete and agreed.