Once More to Die Read online

  María Elena had the windows open to hear gunfire if and when it occurred and the wind whipped through the Yukon, blowing her hair every which way. She wished she had a NASCAR ball cap to hold it in.

  With no idea what she’d do when she reached the cabin, she pressed forward and downshifted for better control when she rounded the final bend.

  A man stood up and stepped toward the road, his face quizzical. He carried some kind of automatic weapon. She let her foot off the gas pedal to decoy him and slowed down as if to talk. When she was close enough for him to see her and begin to react, she floored the accelerator and smashed into him. For a moment he hung on the right side of the grill, then he fell away and the Yukon rolled over him, bouncing off the wheels momentarily. She heard nothing for a few seconds, and then shots began.

  She straightened the wheels and kept accelerating. Another man dived behind a large rock in front of the cabin. María Elena swerved, clipped the rock with a crescendo of screeches and ran over his legs as he tried to crawl aside.

  Two down. To avoid gunfire, she switched back to the hardpan, spewing sand and dirt behind her. She swerved right then left then right again, zigzagging to confuse her as a target. It occurred to her without seeming to count, that she was receiving fire from one handgun and a shotgun. The shotgun had peppered the side of the Yukon and some of the pellets flew through open windows. One gouged her bad shoulder and stung. Oh, well, it figured.

  To further confuse them, she performed a high speed U-turn. “Beat that, Kyle Busch,” she said through clenched teeth.

  Once she passed the cabin, she saw one of the attackers crouched in the shadows behind the cabin. She slewed the Yukon to the right and braked hard. Another shotgun blast scarred the back of the vehicle and shattered glass. She leaned out with the Glock and carefully aimed at the guy behind the cabin. He didn’t wait to aim, and he started firing a revolver. His haste cost him as she put two rounds in his torso and he flew backwards.

  She smelled gun oil and smoke from her Glock. “Tommy!” she yelled and her words sounded more like a panicked shriek, but she went on. “Two out front. One shotgun.”

  Another couple of shots came from in front of the cabin and sounded like a kid beating on a pan. She dropped the brake and accelerated at max, heading straight into the fray. She saw the two remaining hoods stand to take more certain firing positions and aim at her.

  “Oh, shit,” she said aloud.

  Then out of the corner of her eye, she saw the front door to the cabin slam open and Tommy burst out. He wore only jeans and had a pistol in each hand. The two bad guys saw him immediately and swiveled to target him. But he kept running—straight at them firing from his hip. Before María Elena could realign the Yukon, Tommy stopped and took up the classic shooting position, side on to the target and emptied one of his guns into the shotgun wielder. So she aimed at the remaining shooter and floored the Yukon again.

  But he’d learned from experience and ran at a cross-angle she couldn’t compensate for. However, it didn’t matter, because he jerked and stopped and jerked again as Tommy shot him three times. He tried to run again and Tommy shot him again with another pistol he’d pulled from his waist. The last man standing tumbled askew, limbs flying and flopping in ways they shouldn’t.

  She stopped the Yukon and jumped out. She ran to Tommy. She flung her arms around his neck. His breath was foul, thank you mescal bender.

  “Good work, Pocahontas.” His voice was raw and he shook his head to clear it.

  Then she pushed him away strongly. “Outa my way, buster, I gotta pee bad.”

  When she returned from the bathroom, she was coming down from the adrenalin high. And weariness washed over her. She’d never run that fast that long before in her life.

  She heard a gunshot and rushed out. Tommy was coming across the open space from the rocks where she’d used the Yukon as a weapon.

  “Don’t ask,” he said. “Brief me.”

  Quickly she summarized what had happened, including what the getaway driver had told her. “Somebody named Hamilton,” she finished.

  “Looks like you done just fine, college girl.” He grinned. “Your learning curve is going up more steeply every day.” He held up a hand with five fingers straight out. “It did wake me up and it took about five seconds to figure out what the five shots meant.” He surveyed the carnage and eyed her. “Maybe I shouldn’t oughta piss you off.”

  “You betcha.” She slapped her final magazine into the Glock.

  “Not sure I can do without you,” he mumbled. His eyes admired her beneath the mesh tank top.

  She looked at him, eyes up and quizzical. She regretted not putting on her sports bra.

  He stared down at the ground. “Hard to break in new talent at this late date.”

  “Tommy? We got dead people lying all over the goddamn place. Maybe we can have this conversation later?”

  “All right. First we rob these guys of guns and ammo and their wallets. We’ll use the money and maybe the ID, if they got any. I suspect they do. They’re mob guys, sloppy and cocky. They wouldn’t have taken precautions. Then I’ll take the Yukon and check on the guy back up the trail. You grab the money and documents and our armament, throw it in the jeep and when I get back, we’ll eddios this fucking place.”

  “Revision,” María Elena said. “You do that stuff and I’ll take a shower. I go nowhere without taking a shower.”

  “Déjà vu,” he said.

  She granted him a smile. “And when you come back, you take a long shower and brush your teeth.”

  Tommy cocked an eye at her. “That bad?”

  “Roadkill bad.” Usually she liked his smell a great deal and subconsciously knew that his pheromones were one of the things which had attracted her to him.

  “Okay. We might have time. Their protocol approximated something like they called their contact or boss as they were incoming, starting the operation. And likely they were supposed to call in upon completion. But this is way out and their cell phones might be out of range, I dunno. We could check, but I don’t want to know.” He paused and scratched his chest with a revolver. “When they don’t check in, maybe their boss sends backup. Maybe somebody local heard the shooting, a hiker or another hermit, or a friggin’ game warden, whatever. Maybe the feds are trailing them. We need to pack up and leave real quick.”

  “After our showers.”

  “Maybe we’ll load up the bodies and dump them in the desert, hide ’em. That will confuse matters.”

  “Tommy? How did they find us? Nobody knows we’re here.”

  “One person knows.”

  “Charley.”

  “Yep. He’s an ex-mob guy. Served in Vietnam back in the day. Went to work for them. Finally, he went through that stress thing and they couldn’t trust him to do the job right, so he and they parted ways. Maybe he got drunk up in Vegas and talked to the wrong people. Maybe he turned us in for the reward.”

  “Hold on. Reward?”

  “The mob has a long standing reward out for me.”

  “Oh? So you’ve been holding out on me?”

  “Um, I didn’t want you to think ill of me.”

  She put her hands on her hips and got in his face. “Goddamn, Tommy! I finally start to fall in love for the first real time in my fucking life and find out you’re holding out on me? Son of a bitch. I figured you were hiding something, but this?”

  “I didn’t think it was any of your business, not at the time.”

  She fumed. “First time I saw you, you were standing over me like an NFL linebacker, powerful and mean and going in for the kill. You were smooth, bang bang bang and it was over. What a wonderful sight and sound. Then I think you dumped me and I was dying inside and it was dark and gloomy and you drive up at that mall and I feel like a million dollars. So when it came to Orlando, it was only natural to figure out what you were going to do and very easy to appeal to you. Then it was becoming an ‘us’. I did sort of offer myself to you that night, I w
as willing to sleep with you for what you did and I was okay with that, too, not just feeling obligated, even though I’d never done anything like that in my life. In San Antonio, you didn’t have to come after me—that was too much to ask. But in my heart of hearts, I knew you’d find a way, I knew you’d come in with guns blazing, I knew the next gunshots I heard would herald your arrival and I was so confident over that thing. Everything that happened between you and me pointed us in one direction, and I was so happy over that. When you got sick, I fought the malaria devil with everything I had because I simply had to. As long as I had something to say about it, we were going to fight the disease with all our energy as if it were bad guys trying to kill us. Like all these dead guys here right fucking now, nothing was going to come between us; nobody was going to harm you if I had to kill every Goddamn one of them. All that damn buildup and after what we shared? You could well have confided in me.”

  “I’m sorry.” He hung his head.

  “I hear you.”

  “I need you bad.” He studied the gun in his hand.

  “Are you married, too?” she demanded.

  “No.” He was obviously flummoxed.

  “Have you ever been married?”

  “No. Listen, María Elena. We need to get moving real soon.”

  “I want you to squirm, damn it all.”

  “I am. I’m truly sorry.”

  “I thought we were kind of a couple, a loving couple, but now after a mere twenty-four hours, it’s shot in the ass.” Maybe she should have mercy on him. What had her mom told her once long ago? “You have to train them early, or it might not ever get done.”

  “Look here, Florence Nightingale, I know what you’re trying to do now. But really, really, if we want to live through this day, we need to hit the road fast.”

  She shook her whole body. “You’re right, Tommy. We can talk later.” She’d mimicked his declaration of love and angst and anger—was it just twenty-four hours ago? It felt like an eternity.

  He hopped in the Yukon and brushed some glass out of the way. Soon he was heading up the dirt road. María Elena packed quickly and efficiently. It occurred to her that they had extra stuff now, a result of putting down roots, albeit temporary roots. As a conciliatory gesture, she stacked all his stuff on the bed and put his duffle next to it. She gathered guns and ammo. Then she went outside and, against her will, searched bodies. The one she’d hit directly with the SUV was pretty messed up and she managed to fish out a wallet. The machine gun was smashed past use. She surveyed the dead men. She was growing tougher. Well, screw them; they shouldn’t have tried to kill Tommy and her. She knew she should feel some remorse, but was too hyper to feel it. She suspected she would never feel remorse for soldiers like this. Had Tommy been one of them at one time? She shook her head not wanting to know. She stripped her running clothes and stepped under the shower. It seemed so long ago she had started out on her run. Finally the adrenalin high was leveling off.

  She heard the Yukon return and in a minute Tommy came out the back door with a mouthful of toothpaste and a toothbrush scrubbing away. He stripped off his jeans and stepped into the shower with her. She saw the question in his eyes and pushed him aside.

  “Bad timing,” she told him. It could mean anything.

  “Hold still,” he told her and held her shoulder wound under the water.

  “Just a scratch.”

  “It’s more than that, María Elena. But a little alcohol and a Band-Aid and you’ll live.”

  “Sure.” They were standing under the running water face to face.

  His hands began to roam.

  “No, Tommy.” She noticed he was beginning to respond to her.

  “There was a guy with no pants and a Swiss army knife jammed through his nuts. I guess when you say something, you mean it.” He grinned at her and cupped her butt cheek once quickly and then let go and stepped back. “I brought your knife back.”

  She grabbed a towel and went inside to change.

  When he came in, he was all business. “We have no time left to play games with the bodies. Our problem is that our fingerprints are all over this place. We could blow it up and they’d still find prints.”

  “Burn it like your cabin,” she said. “I want to get even with your good buddy Charley.” She held up her hand. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Rock and adobe don’t burn well.”

  Tommy grinned for the first time in a long time. “Here’s what we’ll do. Write a note to him. I’ll write ‘Thanks for the cabin, Charley. Will look you up here again real soon.’” He nodded to himself. “He won’t return and stay here as long as he knows we’re still alive.”

  “If authorities find this place, they’ll take the note for evidence,” she said. “Let me send him an email. Surely he’s checking his account from his hotel in Vegas?”

  “There’s hope for you yet, sweetie.”

  She eyed him. “We’ve yet to determine that thing.” She went to Charley’s desktop and powered it up. While she was waiting on the mail program, Tommy packed his duffle. Then she wrote the email, plain and simple just as Tommy had said with no signature block, and hit send.

  Soon they were outside and finished loading the Jeep.

  “I’m going to take the Toyota and dump it in the middle of the wilderness, another decoy,” Tommy said. “Maybe it’ll lead them to believe we walked away and perished out there.”

  “They ought to know better by now. All of them.”

  “Could be, Florence. But we have to try everything.”

  She followed him and they headed out. They climbed onto the desert plateau and eventually he turned off, flagged her to wait, and drove up a canyon. She turned off her engine and waited. Eventually, the sound of the Toyota receded and half an hour later Tommy came walking out. She reversed direction and headed back. They didn’t stop when they passed the cabin, but she sensed the growing presence of swarms of flies on the bodies. Carrion buzzards floated above in a cliché formation. When they reached the area where she attacked the Yukon guard, she saw that flies had settled in here, too, and a couple of vultures were circling overhead. It was chilling.

  Five minutes later, Tommy grabbed her arm and pointed. “Over there, quickly.”

  “Over there” was a draw under a couple of scraggly mesquite trees on the incline above it. María Elena knew not to ask, but to act quickly, and she did so.

  “Kill it,” he said and rummaged around in the back. He came up with an old GI blanket, and got out and spread it over the hood and windshield, roughed it up, and got back inside. “Best I can do.”

  Then she heard it, the overhead buzzing of a helicopter. “Too much coincidence,” she said.

  He dug into the weapons cache in the back and came up with a twenty-two rifle, bolt action. “Not much help.”

  The heat built in the vehicle. The sounds of the helicopter circling the area came and went, and then suddenly disappeared. Two of the vultures fled overhead. María Elena smelled heat. She continued to sweat wondering why she’d bothered to shower earlier.

  Tommy saw her discomfort. “You smell good either way, Pocahontas.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him.

  “He landed. If they’re the law, they’re going to be on the radio to every cop in Arizona.” Tommy retrieved the blanket and she backed out of the draw avoiding a few prickly cacti, turned and headed out toward Algeria Road.

  “Somebody’s dead serious,” Tommy said.

  “The question is,” said María Elena, “are they after me or you?”

  He grinned at her. “Don’t fucking matter.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THEM

  When Linda came into the office, Suzie Q reflected that Linda always lighted up any room. Suzie could tell Linda had her requisite smoke on the way here from Hoover.

  Linda’s wide smile said that she’d learned something important. She came into Suzie’s office and shut the door.

  “Where’s the coffee?” asked Suzie Q.

  “No time. So
mething’s come up and we need to address it.”

  “Speak now, my dear, or forever hold your peace.” Suzie settled back in her chair and thought about sending out for coffee. Maybe she’d fold and get some from their office coffeepot in the break room. That might suffice in an emergency.

  Linda sat on the edge of a visitor’s chair and crossed her long and shapely legs. “ORG CRIME over at the home office in Hoover has an undercover op in the mob. Get this: Vegas.”

  “Surprise surprise surprise. And this affects us how?”

  Linda held up her hand for patience. “Okay, one of ’em. Anyway, this guy reported they got a tip about somebody named Tommy Atkins—”

  “Now I begin to understand.”

  “The way I understand it, Suze, is that this sub-boss, name of Ralph Hamilton, got the tip. He did some research, or his informant did, and found a longstanding reward from some mob guy in Florida, Tampa to be specific. Different name, of course, but they added two and two and figured out this was their guy. Apparently they had a description and the circumstances fit and this Atkins was their guy. Reward has been out for years.”

  “So where is Atkins?”

  “Southern Arizona, outside of Nogales.” Linda paused dramatically. “There’s a beautiful woman, unnamed, with him, too.”

  “Did they have a specific location?”

  “GPS coordinates.”

  “So this guy Hamilton knows them, too. What’d he do?”

  “Dispatched a hit team.”

  “When?”

  “Two days ago.”

  Suzie Q twirled her chair around and thought. “Organized Crime passed this on to us because?”

  “They thought it worthy of note and we had a red, immediate flag in the system for Atkins and the woman.”

  “Perhaps Hamilton and his hit team will do the job for us?”