Dead Six

Chapter 27:

Last of the Gunslingers

VALENTINE

Once again I was in the middle of somebody else’s fight. The story of my life, right? Well, not so much this time. I had reason to believe that Gordon’s group was behind the abduction. It wasn’t really through any desire to repay Lorenzo for saving my life, because fuck him. But I liked Jill. And like I told Lorenzo, she didn’t deserve to die because of her association with us.

As for Lorenzo . . . he was a strange one. He was constantly on edge, with a sort of angry nervous energy. I didn’t trust him, though I really didn’t think he’d try anything while Jill’s life was on the line. Frankly I couldn’t see how somebody with a heart of gold like her could fall for such a prick.

Lorenzo was hard to describe. He was short, six inches shorter than me at least. I couldn’t tell what ethnicity he was. His skin was a pretty indistinct shade of brown that could’ve originated from dozens of countries. His black hair was cropped short, and he had some kind of permanent stubble thing happening on his chin. His eyes were like knives, and I swear he was always watching you.

He had gone into the other room to make a phone call, muttering about “gathering intel” or something. I listened to his half of the conversation through the door all the same. Some guy named Bob had been pissed about something but had known right away who Gordon was. The conversation had ended abruptly after that.

A couple hours later, Lorenzo’s so-called associates arrived. His associates consisted of exactly one skinny Goth kid dressed all in black, carrying a laptop. He had a big hockey bag slung over his shoulder.

The kid was a trip. Black fatigue pants, combat boots, black Rob Zombie T-shirt, black trench coat, and his hair hanging in front of his eyes. He had piercings in his nose and ear. He had tattoos on what small amount of his pasty white skin could be seen.

He looked surprised when he noticed me sitting against the far wall.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

“Who the hell are you?” I retorted.

“Wait . . . it’s you! You’re that guy!”

Raising my eyebrows, I looked over at Lorenzo. Seriously? Lorenzo just shrugged.

“What are you doing here?” the kid asked.

“I’m going to help you get Jill back so I can get on with my life,” I said, going back to my cleaning. On a table in front of me was my disassembled DSA FAL carbine. It had a short, sixteen-inch barrel, a folding stock, and rail hand guards. It was equipped with an ACOG scope and a weapon light. It was nearly identical to the carbine I’d carried while on Switchblade 4. Also on the table was my beloved .44, a S&W Performance Center Model 629 Classic. It had a five-inch heavy barrel, a smooth, stainless-steel cylinder, and a black Melonite finish on the rest of the gun. Lorenzo had given me a dirty look when I pulled it out. I just smiled at him in return.

Lorenzo addressed his associate. “Reaper, this is—”

“I know who he is,” the kid interrupted. “Is he for real?”

“He’s for real,” Lorenzo replied.

Reaper, I guess his name was, stared at me. “Dude, what’s wrong with your eyes? They’re like totally different colors. That’s fucked up.”

Lorenzo ignored him. “Let’s get started. How are we gonna do this?”

“I’m still on board with the ‘go in and kill everybody’ plan,” I said. “Or did you get enough information to make a better plan than that?”

“No.” Lorenzo frowned. “We need to find Jill first. We still need more information. Their meet will be a turkey shoot. I called somebody earlier who might know. He’s working on it now.” Reaper raised an eyebrow, but Lorenzo didn’t elaborate about his mysterious phone call.

“I don’t think we have a lot of time,” I said. “We don’t know what we don’t know. We’ll just have to go in and play it by ear.”

“Not really my style,” Lorenzo said.

“Mine, either,” I confessed. “But nobody ever tells me what the hell is going on, so I just roll with it. You guys got weapons?” If they didn’t, Hawk sure had a basement full of them.

“Hells yeah, we got weapons!” Reaper said. He picked up the hockey bag and dumped it out onto a table. Lorenzo rolled his eyes as weapons, magazines, radios, body armor, and night-vision equipment came clattering out of the bag, landing in a heap on the table.

So this was the crack team that had managed to track down Dead Six and infiltrate our compound. I shook my head and went back to my cleaning.

Reaper handed a carbine to Lorenzo, who proceeded to check it. Some kind of short, select-fire AR-15, with a twelve-inch barrel and a suppressor. Reaper pulled from the bag a Glock 17. He inserted a magazine, chambered a round, then stuck the pistol in a shoulder holster under his trench coat. On his belt he had more magazines. He then picked up what I assumed was his primary weapon.

“Benelli M1,” Reaper said proudly as he started stuffing 12-gauge shells into every available pocket. “Semi-auto, short barrel, badass all the way.”

“That’s actually a Benelli M2,” I corrected. Reaper frowned. I wondered how well Reaper could use his shotgun, though. He looked like an extra from The Matrix. Reassembling my rifle, I watched the two of them get suited up. I could tell they’d been working together since . . . well, probably since that kid graduated from high school, which couldn’t have been all that long ago. Still, for old friends, they didn’t talk much. It might’ve been because of my presence, but then, professional thieves probably have some weird interpersonal dynamics going on.

Like I’ve got any room to talk, right?

Hawk came home while we were still playing dress up. He scowled first at the strangeness that was Reaper, then at me, then finally gave Lorenzo a silent nod. “Been a long time.”

“Hawk,” Lorenzo responded uncomfortably.

The two stayed, exchanging a look that I couldn’t decipher. There was a lot of history there, and I couldn’t tell if they were friends or enemies or maybe somehow both. Finally, Hawk spoke. “No sign of the girl. No one in town knows anything.”

“I guess we keep waiting,” I said.

Lorenzo reached into his pocket as his phone vibrated. “Yeah?” He listened for at least a minute straight. “Okay, I got it. Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”

Hanging up the phone, he looked at me.

“What’s the word?” I asked, fiddling with my thigh holster like a woman adjusting a stocking.

“Our next stop is a closed rest stop down the highway. Out past it is an abandoned prison work camp. That’s where they’re holding her.”

“You’re sure of this? Can your friend be trusted?”

“Oh, I’m sure. He’s like a brother to me.”

LORENZO

The four of us were still in Hawk’s house, readying equipment. We would be leaving in a few minutes. At one point I caught Hawk studying me. He motioned for me to step aside to speak. I stopped loading magazines long enough to follow. He had aged a lot since I had seen him last. I knew Hawk was at least a decade older than I was, and there had apparently been some hard years in there. His hair was grayer, his face lined and creased by the sun and wind of several continents, and he’d picked up a limp at some point.

When we were out of earshot, Hawk began to speak. “You know, I thought you were dead. Everybody from the old crew thought for sure those Cubans had got you in Sweothi City.”

“It was better that way,” I answered. “Some of us didn’t part on the best of terms. I figured it would be easier for everybody if Decker assumed I was dead.”

Hawk nodded sagely. “That was probably smart. Adrian wasn’t the kind of man that I’d want holding a grudge against me, so I suppose it was for the best. Well, I was glad to hear from you. I always hated losing men. I just wished you would have called sooner, because that’s one less thing I would have had gnawing at me, Ozzie.”

It had been a long time since I had gone by that name, just one of many in a long line of aliases. “I go by Lorenzo now.”

“That’s what Jill told me. That girl wouldn’t shut up about you. She’s got quite the fondness for you. She talked a lot, but I’ll admit, it was nice having a young lady around. You’ve changed more than your name, Lorenzo. You’re a different man than you were back in Africa.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked slowly.

“The man I knew back then was a stone-cold killer who only thought about himself and back-stabbed anybody who got in his way, unless you just happened to somehow become one of his friends, and he didn’t have hardly any of those. A man so twisted up inside and scary driven that it even got to worrying somebody like Decker. Why do I think you changed? Because for a woman that good to take a liking to you, you’re either a better man than I remember, or you’re a whole lot better con.” The old mercenary gave me the smallest bit of a grin. “And Val might not think so yet, but you did the right thing helping him. That boy’s like a son to me. Don’t you tell him I said that.”

“You don’t have to come with us, Hawk.”

He was solemn. “True. I don’t. I’m retired. I’ve got a nice place, just how I like it. Comfortable, I suppose. But you know, I think I took a liking to that girl too. Hell, Val and that little lady damn near killed each other in my kitchen when he first got here. Had to separate ’em like a couple of squawkin’ kids.” Hawk let out a raspy laugh. “He’s sure got a soft spot for the females. And they’re about the same age. They got along after a while. Gave her someone else to blab about you to. I was getting tired of it.”

I laughed along with him. We’d overthrown a country together once. Hawk was the last of the gunslingers, and there was nobody alive I’d rather have at our side.

Valentine appeared in the doorway. “It’s time.” He was dropping rounds into his revolver and snapped the cylinder closed. Well, maybe Hawk wasn’t the last of the gunslingers.

VALENTINE

It was a long drive out of Quagmire to the rest stop, following a lonely two-lane highway with sparse traffic. We were far away from the nearest interstate, and there wasn’t much going on out here. The rest stop itself was closed, but you could still pull off into the parking lot. Sitting in that parking lot was a nondescript black Suburban. I watched Lorenzo get out of his car, and I could tell he was surprised.

Anxious, I got out myself, my hand hovering over my pistol. All four of us had on body armor and other assorted battle rattle. I hoped like hell it wasn’t a cop. At best, he’d think we were a bunch of militia nuts or mall ninjas. Or maybe we could pass ourselves off as airsofters. Anyway, I doubted most militia nuts were nearly as armed and dangerous as we were.

From out of the Suburban stepped a big guy, tall, barrel-chested, and muscular. He and Lorenzo were exchanging words as I approached, and the bald man seemed none too concerned that Lorenzo was dressed in full tac gear. I could tell they knew each other. Was this the “Bob” guy Lorenzo had been talking to on the phone? Why would he be here?

That’s when I noticed the government plates on the Suburban. “Well, fuck me,” I said to myself. There were Feds here. Lorenzo had called a Federal Agent. Was this a setup? Had this entire thing been some overcomplicated scheme to turn me over to the government? It didn’t make any sense. My mind raced. Adrenaline surged.

“Lorenzo, you need to tell me what the hell is going on here,” I said calmly. My right hand had reflexively found its way to my chest, resting on my plate carrier. My left hand was on the butt of my .44. “Why is there a Fed here?”

“No! It’s cool! It’s cool!” he said excitedly. “This is my brother, Bob. He’s—”

I unsnapped the retention device on my thigh holster.

“Listen to me!” Lorenzo insisted. “It’s not like that. He’s my brother. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be getting his family to safety!” Lorenzo glared at the other man.

“So,” I said, Calm wavering as I grew angry, “you called a Fed. Your brother the Fed. You idiot! Why in the hell didn’t you just have me call the cops if you wanted the Feds involved? Jesus, why don’t we just the ATF and the Secret fucking Service while you’re we’re it! Hell, we can get the DEA and the Coast Guard in on it, too, and have a giant fucking federal law-enforcement jamboree!”

“Look, kid,” the big man said, “I don’t know who you are and I don’t care. I’m here to help my brother get his girlfriend back.”

“She’s not my girlfriend!” Lorenzo sputtered. The big man grinned. I relaxed slightly. Though they didn’t look anything alike, they sure acted like brothers.

“This is Bob,” Lorenzo sighed “Bob, this is—”

“Don’t you dare tell him my name!” I yelled, wheeling around.

Lorenzo laughed. “I’m just kidding, relax.”

It was going to be a long night.

LORENZO

Valentine stomped away, muttering and swearing. I turned back to Bob and whispered, “What’re you doing here?”

“I’ve got a contact in Vegas I was going to see. Let’s just say he’s outside my chain of command, but he’s really good at hiding people. Don’t worry. I’ve got things moving to protect everyone from your boss.” My giant of a brother nodded after Valentine. “Your friend seems a little tense.”

“He’s wound kind of tight. But back to the question, what are you doing here? What about the family?”

“The family will be fine. I’ve put some things into motion. You should have come to me sooner.” Bob shaded his eyes and scanned the horizon. “Look, Hector, this Gordon Willis you asked me about, he’s not just a low-level chump. He’s more important than that. I don’t think you realize just who he works for, but it’s bigger than you can imagine. If he has your friend, she’s in big trouble.”

“You can’t do this, you’re the law. You’re a cop!”

“I won’t be for long if anybody ever finds out about this,” he answered. “Maybe we can share a cell.”

“But these are your people.”

He raised his voice. “These are not my people. My people take an oath to defend the Constitution, and I’m sick of watching men like Willis shred it. People like him work in a different kind of government than the one I signed on to. Black, secret, unaccountable. We’re not even supposed to ask questions about his operation. He’s had suspects taken in, no evidence, no investigation, no trial, and they just disappear into thin air, forever. These aren’t even bad guys they’re rolling up. They’re regular folks who’ve asked too many questions about the wrong powerful people.”

This was kind of a scary paradigm shift. Bob had always been the good one and I had been the bad one. Simple. “But you’ve always been so . . . law-abiding.”

“There’s a higher law, and it’s time that these men had to answer to it.” Bob was truly angry, red-faced and nostrils flaring, like the very idea of Gordon’s outfit offended him to his core. “I’ll take the risk.”

“You’re familiar with them?”

“You have no idea,” Bob stated coldly. “Let’s just say that you don’t know as much about me as you think you do and leave it at that. I can’t let you go in there with just these guys.” He gestured at the other three. “Who are they, anyway?”

“You can call the big kid Nightcrawler since he’s so worried about me telling you his name. The old guy is Hawk. The other kid goes by Reaper.”

“Okay, then I’m Colossus and you can be Wolverine. Doesn’t anybody have a normal name in your business?”

“Actually, I go by Lorenzo,” I responded, slightly embarrassed.

Bob just stared at me. “Seriously? Wow, man, that’s devious. And what part came as a surprise when Big Eddie found his way past your masterful secret identity? You were only raised by Lorenzos.”

Reaper walked up. “If we’ve all got superhero names, then Jill should be Aquaman since she’s been kidnapped twice.” I just looked at him like he was stupid. “What? Didn’t you ever watch Super Friends? Aquaman . . . you know, always got captured? Never mind.” Reaper wandered off.

“Super Friends was off the air before that kid was born,” Bob said.

“I know, but he spends a lot of time on the Internet.”

“You guys done screwing around?” Valentine growled as he approached. “Let’s get going. We’re kind of conspicuous hanging around in all of this crap,” he said, indicating the pouch-laden plate carrier and battle belt he wore.

He was right. We needed to get going. “We’re not here to arrest them,” I warned Bob.

My brother shook his head sadly. “Willis’s men aren’t the type you can arrest. They’re a bunch of professional killers. Castoffs who’ve gotten kicked out of every reputable organization there is because they’re too violent, too crazy, or too corrupt. Operations like his attract them like flies.”

“How do you know all this?” Hawk asked suspiciously. Switchblade hadn’t always been a respectable mercenary company, so Hawk had developed an appropriate paranoia about the law.

Bob shrugged. “A man has to have a hobby. Mine is collecting trivia about scumbags.” My brother was being evasive. Somehow he knew exactly who Gordon Willis was, knew something about his organization, and apparently hated them with a passion. “The old work-camp is over that rise. We used to use it to hole up Mafioso witnesses out of Vegas. Word is that Willis’s men are using it for something now.”

“Let’s get these cars hidden, then sneak up on the camp and see if we can spot Jill,” I suggested, hefting my AR-15. “If we’re lucky, maybe we can get her out with minimal shooting.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that.” Bob turned, opened the back of his Suburban, and pulled out a long black Remington 700 sniper rifle, with a suppressor, bipod, and US Optics scope. He worked the bolt and chambered a round. He put the heavy barreled rifle over one shoulder. Bob almost seemed to be looking forward to this. Maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did. “When the shooting starts, take them hard and fast.”

“That’s what she said!” Reaper quipped.

“You. Stop talking,” Valentine ordered.

Reaper grinned, gesturing with his stubby shotgun. “Then let’s go.” The bravado was forced. The kid was tough, but he wasn’t a warrior like the rest of us, but God bless his techno-geek soul, he was ready. “Let’s smoke these fags.”

Hawk adjusted his old South African army vest. “Yep.” Then he spat on the ground.

Valentine raised an eyebrow. “Smoke these fags?” he asked, looking at me incredulously. “What have you been teaching this kid?” I held up my hands in surrender. A general has to fight with the army he’s got.

The five of us climbed the sagebrush-and-scrub-tree hill. The sun was rapidly setting. I suggested we track farther to one side so that we could attack out of the sun. Valentine didn’t seem to care one way or the other, Bob and Hawk thought it was a good idea, and Reaper was used to following my orders.

We picked our frequencies and checked the radios on the walk in, and they worked fine. We had no plan and no intel. Our group had never worked together before, and there wasn’t a lot of trust.

“So why do you guys use those old Belgian rifles?” Reaper asked Hawk and Valentine at one point, displaying his ignorance. “Those are the same kind as those rusty poacher guns from all over Africa, right? Why don’t you get something new?”

Hawk grunted. “They’re all over Africa because they still work, kid. Besides, you can dress ’em up if you want. Look at his,” he said, indicating Valentine’s railed-up FAL. “You can bolt ten pounds of crap on it if you want.” Valentine’s rifle was fitted with a Tijicon scope and had a flashlight bolted to the hand guards. It looked heavy, but he didn’t seem to mind. “And it’s at least a manly thirty caliber, unlike Lorenzo’s pussy twenty-two.”

I paid Hawk’s opinions on terminal ballistics no mind. I’d lost track of how many people I’d killed with a short-barreled 5.56 over the years. I preferred lots of little bullets to a few big ones, but then again, anybody worth shooting once was worth shooting five to seven times.

“M-16s are poodle shooters,” Hawk said. “That’s all they’re good for.”

“I’m pretty good with a FAL,” Valentine answered Reaper, not looking up from the trail through the sagebrush.

“How good is pretty good?” Reaper asked. The kid just didn’t know when to quit.

“Look,” Valentine said levelly, pointing the knife-edge of his hand at Reaper. “This isn’t a game, okay? You need to focus, or you’re going to get yourself killed. Now either lock it up or go wait in the car!”

Reaper seemed taken aback by Valentine’s harsh words. “Okay, okay! Sorry. I miss a lot. That’s why Lorenzo makes me use the shotgun.”

“Super,” Valentine muttered. “You know, we really ought to be quiet.”

“Kid’s right. Quiet down. They might have sentries posted at the top of the hill,” Hawk suggested.

“They won’t,” Bob replied. “They’ve been operating above the law so long, they think they’re untouchable. The idea of us coming to them will never even enter their minds.”

“I hope you’re right,” Hawk muttered.

After half an hour of walking, we hunkered down in the rocks overlooking the old prison work camp. It looked like a ghost town out of an old western movie. There were several wooden buildings, in two horizontal rows heading away from us, paint long since peeled, signs long since faded. One larger building was directly below us, newer, built out of cinder blocks; it looked like it had been a truck stop or some sort of garage back in the days before the freeway bypassed this little settlement. Fence posts stuck out of the ground like random teeth in a broken jaw, the barbed wire mostly rusted away.

There were several vehicles parked on the broken asphalt around the garage, new vehicles, black sedans, a Chevy passenger van, and another G-ride Suburban. There were a couple of men standing around the cars, smoking, talking, long guns visible slung from their backs.

“Damn, there’s a lot of them,” I said.

Bob extended the bipod legs on his sniper rifle and hunkered down, scanning through his scope. “I’ve got three in the parking lot. At least one moving inside the garage.” After a moment he stopped, then cranked up the magnification. “Hector, take a look at the window on the left.”

“Hector?” Reaper laughed. “Your real name is Hector?”

“Shut it . . . Skyler,” I answered. Reaper was immediately silent. Valentine snorted as he tried to suppress a laugh.

“Yeah? Well, what the fuck kind of name is Nightcrawler?” Reaper asked defensively.

“It’s French,” he replied, looking through the scope on his rifle. He then turned to my teammate. “You know that’s not actually my name, right? Just like you. Reaper isn’t your real name. Skyler is your real name, and I think it’s pretty.” Valentine cracked a smile again.

I shushed Reaper before he could retort. Bob moved aside and I got behind the Remington. It took a moment to find the right window on 14X magnification. The glass was gray with filth and hard to see through. “That’s her.” Jill was slumped in a chair, long black hair obscuring her face. Seeing her there filled me with fresh anger.

The terrain leading up to that window was rough enough that it gave me an idea. I didn’t want to endanger the lives of these men any more than I had to. I moved into a crouch and examined each of them in the fading light. “Okay. Here’s the plan. I’ll sneak up on that building, break in, and secure Jill. If everything works out, I can get her out of there before they ever even know we were here.”

“That’s just stupid,” Bob said. “There’s no way you could sneak in there under their noses.”

Reaper just looked at him and grinned. “Dude, you have no idea. Your brother could steal cookies from the Keebler elves.”

Hawk reached over and tapped Valentine on the arm, gesturing down the hillside. “Check out that ravine,” he said. He’d always had a good eye for terrain.

Valentine nodded. “While you’re crawling through the weeds, we’ll take Marilyn Manson here and head down that way. It’ll put us closer so we can back you up if this all goes to shit.” He looked to Bob. “You good enough with that rifle to give us some cover?”

My brother nodded. Before I had dropped off the grid, Bob had already been a champion rifle competitor. When we were teenagers, I had spent my free time boosting cars, while he had shot coyotes for the local farmers. Bob was better than me at most things, and shooting was probably toward the top of that list, and that was before he had joined the Army and become some sort of Green Beret or something.

“He’ll do fine. We all will.” This was it. This wasn’t a heist, it wasn’t a job. These men were here to help me. This was a rescue mission. I’d led many crews, but usually for money. I didn’t know how to motivate people with pure intentions. Awkwardly, I put my hand out, palm down. “Thanks, guys.”

Reaper enthusiastically put his on top of mine. “Anytime, chief!”

It took a moment before Bob followed suit. “No problem, bro.”

Valentine looked at us incredulously. “Are you guys for real?”

“I’m not really good at saying thank you, okay?”

Valentine glanced over at Hawk, who just shrugged, then back at us. “You guys are so gay.”

Reaper yanked his hand back, embarrassed. Okay, so maybe it was corny. I took one last look at my friends—and Valentine—nodded, and disappeared into the weeds.