“Can you move?” I call to Seth.
“Oh, shit,” he moans, but he manages to stagger up and the three of us run blindly into the underbrush. The ground slopes into a shallow gully, and we fall, tripping over thorny ground cover. It’s thick and it’s dark, but the assailants have heard our progress, and they’re shooting in our direction. They’ve taken up a defensive position behind our car. We return their fire, but they’re relentless. They can’t see us well in the thicket, but eventually a bullet will find its mark.
Kyle is tugging at me again. He says he can find his way back to the barn and we can take cover there. If, that is, the dealers haven’t already overrun it.
We have a choice. We can wait for Peavy’s backup, which will take no less than twenty, thirty minutes, or we can advance to the rear also. Now I’m wishing I’d let Kyle keep his thumb-buster.
“How bad are you hit?” I ask Seth.
He takes my hand and guides it to the wound at his side. My hand comes away wet with blood.
“Are you in a lot of pain?” I whisper.
“Well.” He pants. “It hurts worse than a pulled tooth.”
“How far to the barn?” I grab at Kyle’s sleeve and he looks at me, his eyes huge in his head.
He says, “Ten minutes, if we run like hell.”
“I can make it,” Seth says.
We plunge deeper into the trees, Kyle’s white shirt showing a blur of pale in front of us, and soon we’re running a narrow, cleared footpath. The evening is sweltering, with a groundswell of dampness that smells like burned oatmeal. There’s no breeze and the mosquitoes are swarming. I feel them boring into every bit of exposed flesh.
We keep moving at a steady pace for about five minutes, until Seth’s legs buckle and he collapses, breathing hard, onto the ground.
I crouch down, looking back up the path, and in the distance I see an occasional sweep of a flashlight through the trees.
“Shit,” I whisper.
I hear Benny’s voice in my head telling me to get up. Now.
“Get the fuck up, Seth,” I say, and I haul my partner roughly to his feet. I don’t have to tell him that these guys won’t give a rat’s ass that we’re cops.
“We’re close,” Kyle whispers, and we keep moving, Seth’s arm draped around my neck.
Another few minutes and we come upon a clearing and the hulking form of what must be the barn on a slight rise about thirty yards away. There is no light coming from the barn, no sound. We could stay crouched where we are, but the path leads to us and we’re too exposed.
“Keep moving?” I ask Seth.
He takes both my arms and pulls himself up. “We can’t stay here.”
Hunched over, we stagger for the barn across the exposed clearing and hear gunfire coming from behind us, the dull thunk of bullets throwing dirt clods around our feet. I see the barn door but have no idea if it’s unlocked or what’s on the inside, and I’m thinking we’re better off running for the far side of the building.
A rifle is fired over our heads. It’s coming from high up, like the shooter’s on the roof. We cringe and throw ourselves flat, but from the blackness of the open loft door, a man’s wavering voice calls out to us. “You all better run faster.”
Then whoever’s in the barn begins firing off a large pistol, with earsplitting, echoing rounds. It’s aimed at our attackers behind us, and we scrabble up again, yank at the barn door, and throw ourselves inside. Kyle bolts the doors and we sit, blind and gasping.
For a moment there’s total silence. I can’t hear our defender up in the loft and so with my gun still drawn I call out, “Hey…hello? Dallas Police!”
“Move toward my voice,” the man says. “Toward the ladder. It’s safer up here.”
We feel our way to the ladder, our eyes adjusting to the dark, and I see the silhouette of a figure in a long coat standing in the shadows above me.
“Come on,” the man calls to us. “The boy knows me.”
Telling Kyle to go first up the ladder, I holster my gun and crawl up behind Seth, who has to make his way slowly and one-armed.
The man helps Kyle onto the loft and says, “Hey, boy. Good to see you’re alive.” He hoists Seth off the ladder and reaches down a hand for me. I can see now that he’s an older man, in his eighties at least, gaunt and wearing a gray uniform with a lot of medals pinned to his chest.
He’s also wearing a sword.
“My,” the man says, guiding me up, “aren’t you—”
Finding my footing, stepping onto the loft, I finish the sentence for him. “Yeah, I know. I’m tall.”
Kyle says, “General, these two are the police.”
The man gives me the once-over. “Uh-huh, right…” he says doubtfully. Then he extends his hand to shake mine. “I’m General Stuart Lyndon Haskell, Company E, Fourth Texas Infantry, Hood’s Confederate Brigade.”
“Of course you are,” I say. I can just make out Benny’s laughter barreling across the void.
A forceful rattling at the barred door we’ve just entered through causes the general to draw his pistol and fire wildly through the wood. The explosion is deafening but the rattling stops.
From outside the door the word putos is screamed in retreat.
“We’re safe here,” the general says. “Unless they decide to burn us out. You’ve entered through the back door. The front door is over yonder. Through that door, a few hundred feet away, is the fort that’s been under attack all day. It’s about time you showed up.”
“You’ve been here all day?” I ask.
The general has taken off his sash and he balls it up, presses it to Seth’s bloody abdomen. “Yes, that is what I just said. Until now they didn’t know I was here. I figured the best offense was a good defense.” He hands Seth a canteen. “Good thing they didn’t think to check the back door earlier.”
“How many reenactors are in the fort?”
“Close to a dozen,” he says. “A few are wounded, I think. They’ve been pinned down a good while now. Outgunned.”
“How many attackers?” Seth asks.
“Three. It was down to one man watching the house with an automatic rifle.” He turns to me and sniffs. “Until you led the other two back here again.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’m old, ma’am, I’m not deaf. Those Mexicans have been making enough noise all day to wake the dead.”
“You know what they’re looking for?” I ask.
The general gets up and, from under a pile of hay, pulls out a large red duffel bag. “I believe this is what they’re looking for,” he says.
“This is all my fault,” Kyle whispers.
The general and I agree with him at the same time.
“There’ll be more police here soon,” I tell him. “We just have to sit tight.”
“We’re going to burn you out if you don’t come out now!” the voice from outside yells. There is a pause and then: “You have one minute!”
I look at Seth and he shakes his head. He’s in pain and bleeding heavily. It’s been nearly twenty minutes; Peavy’s police should be at the encampment soon. The question is, will it be within the one minute we have left before the Mexican barbecue?
The general hands Kyle his small sidearm, another cap-and-ball job, and says, “I’m thinking we have one Mexican at the front and another one at the back of the barn now. I don’t think we can make a run for it.”
The old man leans in and pats me sympathetically on the arm. “And, my dear,” he says, “I wasn’t going to remark on how tall you are, only how lovely you are. I’ve always been partial to redheads.”
“Fuck it!” the voice outside yells. “We’re just going to burn you out!”
“Well, we can’t sit here and be burned alive. There’s only one thing for it,” the general says, straightening up. He walks to the hayloft door at the front of the barn and pitches his large pistol to the ground. He yells, “I’m unarmed now!”
“What are you
doing?” I shout. “Get down!”
“Yeah, fucker,” the voice outside roars, “but you’ve got cops with you, and they’re armed.”
“I have what you want!” the general shouts. He turns to me and winks. “Ever heard of Stonewall Jackson?” he stage-whispers.
“What?” I say. Stonewall Jackson? We’re trapped with a lunatic.
“Harpers Ferry?” he asks gleefully.
Even though I order the general to move away from the open hayloft, he stands fully exposed to our attackers outside, one hand resting on a tall, bulky object, some long-abandoned farm implement covered with a canvas cloth. He opens the red duffel bag, pulls out a stack of cash. “You burn us,” he tells the men outside, “you burn the money too.”
“How ’bout I just shoot you and come up and get the money. Or burn down the house over there, now we know you’ve got it!”
“Then my officer friends will have to shoot you.” There is silence outside the barn and the general continues. “I’ll make a deal with you. Give me your word you’ll leave and I’ll throw down your money.”
“Listen,” I whisper fiercely, “you throw that money down and we’ve lost our bargaining chip. They’ll set fire to the barn quicker than you can say Gettysburg.”
The general looks at me, the bag hugged to his chest, his face set, and I know I’ve lost all control or even influence on the outcome.
“We are so fucked,” I tell Seth.
I crawl frantically to the open loft, dare a quick glance outward, and yell down to our assailants, “Take the deal! Weatherford Police are on their way!”
That brings laughter, but it’s a tense laughter because they know it’s only a matter of time before reinforcements come.
“Fucking country-ass Weatherford Police. Shut up, bitch! Okay, throw down the money and we’ll leave.”
Without hesitation, the general heaves the bag with all the cash down into the clearing in front of the barn.
There are a few seconds of quiet and then I yell for the general to get down out of the line of fire because I know they’re going to start shooting at him. I crawl as quickly as I can away from the open loft, imagining we’re going to have to run for it, hoping the dealers won’t pick us off as we escape from a burning barn.
But the general yanks the canvas off the bulky object, and I see that it’s not a farm implement as I had first thought. It’s a cannon, the barrel pointing downward. And he’s holding in one hand a long string lanyard attached to the barrel. He alerts me that one of the Mexicans is approaching the duffel bag, gun drawn.
With his other hand, the general quietly unsheathes his sword, and I distinctly hear him say, “When it’s war, draw the sword and throw away the scabbard!” He bounces on the balls of his feet a few times, satisfied. “I’ve always wanted to say that,” he muses.
He turns to us and, in an aside, says, “Cover your ears.”
He gives the lanyard a good yank and a shattering, echoing boom erupts, the explosive recoil sending the cannon careening backward. It plummets over the edge of the loft and crashes to the floor of the barn.
The general ducks, and the shooter with the assault rifle begins spraying the loft with bullets, sending wood planks, metal fragments, and smoking strands of hay in all directions around our heads. Then the assailant’s fire is drawn away from the barn and I realize there are now other shooters in the woods. A lot of them. It’s the Weatherford reinforcements. Less than five minutes later, the firing comes to an abrupt end, and from the cover of darkness, Peavy calls our names.
12
As it turns out, the Weatherford Police have come to our aid with most of their on-duty force—eight squad cars, four highway patrolmen, a few unmarked detectives’ cars, and two ambulances—as well as half a dozen off-duty police wearing dove-hunting camos and carrying 12-gauge shotguns who had picked up Peavy’s radio calls and decided to come and join the battle.
To say there is overkill from department-issued weaponry would be an understatement.
What’s left of the south-of-the-border incursion are two bullet-riddled drug dealers at the barn; one dead at the stream, shot earlier by the reenactors; and a fourth casualty, hit by the general’s cannon, who has to be bagged in pieces. Evidently, a six-pound cannonball will do that. This last assailant turns out to be Ruiz’s bodyguard El Guiso, aka the Stew. Seth and two wounded reenactors are taken immediately by ambulance to the Weatherford hospital. As Kyle had feared, two more from his group are found dead in the water. Additionally, one costumed reveler, an overweight smoker, suffers chest pains and is taken by a patrolman for treatment.
To the best of my ability, I confirm that none of the four attackers is Ruiz, but a brief search of the barn uncovers a large quantity of cocaine. As soon as I get a cell signal, I call Taylor and let him know that we have recovered the drugs and a significant amount of cash. Ruiz is still missing, but he’s been stripped of everything: money, drugs, and men.
After seeing Kyle safely reunited with his father and uncle, I catch a ride to the hospital with a local policeman.
The general agrees to be checked out by medical staff only if he can ride with me in the back of the squad car, and, during the half-hour drive, lights flashing and siren blaring, he explains to me about Harpers Ferry.
“It was one of Stonewall Jackson’s most brilliant Civil War engagements,” the general hollers over the siren. “A tactical victory ensured by cannons hauled over mountain ranges, some of them during the dead of night, so that they could be fired at Union troops from high ground. It was an impossible maneuver, but the stars aligned, and disaster for his troops was averted.”
The general then pats me on the knee and tells me again how taken he is with redheads. “And,” he adds, waggling his brows, “I don’t mind dating a woman who’s taller than me.”
When we get to the hospital, the surgeon assures me that my partner should make a full recovery.
I find the general a blanket and a chair in the hallway and call Jackie on my cell, which, to my great relief, has a strong signal.
She picks up on the first ring, her voice breathless with worry. “Your sergeant just called,” she says. “How are you doing? Truthfully, Betty.”
I wander down the hallway looking for a quiet place and duck into an open supply closet. “Truthfully, I’m exhausted. Shaken up. Scared as shit for about an hour. I need a shower and a few Jamesons. But I’m not injured.”
“And Seth?” she asks.
“He’s having surgery. He’ll be okay. I’m going to stay the night here, though.”
“Do you need me to be there?”
I smile because I imagine that she is already getting dressed, ready to drive down and take over the entire hospital wing.
“No,” I tell her. “You sleep. As soon as it’s light, if Seth’s doing well, I’m coming home.”
“Did you get Ruiz?” she asks.
“No. But we got everything else. There’s nothing left he can do.” I press my forehead against the cool tiles in the alcove, closing my eyes. I open them again, though, when my brain tries replaying the image of the general’s cannonball wrapped in intestines.
“I love you, Jackie,” I say. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”
13
From the shadows I watch Jackie’s form slipping through the water like a selkie. She does five laps in an easy breaststroke, arms sweeping out evenly at every attack, neatly tucking and rolling her body below the surface so that her feet can push off the tiles at each end.
She pulls herself out of the pool in one effortless movement, her supporting triceps lean and sharp, walks to my chair parked under an umbrella, and purposely stands close, dripping cold water down onto my T-shirt. I make a playful grab at her, but she jerks away, laughing. She picks up a towel, wraps it around her waist, and sits in the chair next to me.
“You shouldn’t sit so close,” I tell her. “I look like a mushroom next to you.”
I’m not the only pale-skinned pers
on at the pool, but I seem to be the only sensible one. It’s midday, the sun sparking off the water in blinding flashes. There are several women rafting their babies on floaties at the shallow end, and the women’s shoulders and arms are all burned to a bright flamingo pink.
Jackie has the kind of skin that turns golden at the mere hint of sun. Now, at the early part of September, she is like some Mediterranean goddess who took a wrong turn at Greenland and ended up in a Viking settlement.
“Why don’t you come in?” she asks, toweling her hair.
“I have a better idea.” I trace a finger briefly over her thigh. “Why don’t you come back to the apartment with me for a nap.” I air-quote “for a nap” and she laughs again and shakes her wet hair at me like a young water spaniel.
“It’s too nice to go inside right now,” she says.
The heat has diminished over the past few days, the evenings less humid. North Texas manages to produce a dozen perfect days a year, and today seems to be one of them.
I hear laughter from across the pool. Not joyous, carefree hilarity, but derisive, nasty, high-school-boy giggling. One of our Russian neighbors, an acne-faced teenager named Sergei who has the high cheekbones and cruel mouth of a Chechen rebel in training, is sitting with two of his creepy friends. They’ve been watching Jackie, making comments to one another in furtive exchanges. I’ve seen Sergei and company around the apartment complex late at night, hovering between parked cars (no doubt trying to figure out how to steal them), smoking acrid-smelling weed, flicking the lit ends away with practiced carelessness.
Jackie catches my scowl and follows my gaze across the pool to where the three are sitting. The two friends duck their chins, grinning, but Sergei looks at me defiantly, holding my stare.
“Little pricks,” I mutter.
“Poor things,” Jackie says, unfazed. “Just think how miserable it must be to have to whack off all the time just to be able to finish an entire sentence.” She reclines the lounge chair and lies down on her back. “I talked to Seth’s surgeon earlier,” she says. “He’s sending me all the charts. Your partner’s making good progress.”