Smoke and Mirrors

61

The first light from the sun illuminated the vast Delta with a warm orange glow as they rolled across the barren landscape at sixty miles per hour. Brad was behind the wheel of an old station wagon that had been his mother’s, and Winter drove the Yukon. Six miles from Brad’s door, surrounded by cotton fields bisected here and there by long straight lines of leafless trees, twin hills made of soil stood just off the road. The dirt in the county-owned dumpsite was used for construction projects. Driving down a narrow dirt road, the vehicles entered a sixty-foot-wide valley crisscrossed with deep impressions left from dump-truck tires. The dirt would block the Yukon from the prying eyes of all living things except the birds, and perhaps some poor fool walking across the fields to collect scraps of cotton that were now being blown horizontal by a stiff northeastern wind. It was unlikely that anybody would stumble across the vehicle and, if they did, there was little chance they’d break in and steal the weapons with a corpse sitting inside keeping watch.

Winter left the SUV without looking again at the body that sat belted in the passenger seat. He climbed into the Buick wagon to join Brad, who drove out fast. They were a mile from town when Winter saw an oncoming SUV and slumped down in the seat so he wouldn’t be seen.

“Keep driving,” he told Brad.

“What are you doing?” Brad asked.

“An SUV at our twelve o’clock.”

“I see it.” Brad pulled at the brim of his ball cap before the SUV passed, heading in the opposite direction at a high rate of speed.

“Talk about close shaves,” Brad said, exhaling loudly. “Five minutes off and they’d have found us dumping their pal.”

“Too close for my taste,” Winter said, meaning it.

They entered a long curve and the SUV was out of sight.

“There were at least three men in that truck,” Brad said. “How many more you think there are?”

“Fewer than there will be pretty soon. They take losses very badly. They’ll swarm in now.”

Brad opened the glove box, found a sealed pack of Kool cigarettes, and opened it. After he put one between his lips, he lit it with the car’s lighter and dropped his window a good six inches.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Winter said.

“I don’t,” Brad said, inhaling deeply. “Want one?”