We opened the Dr Peppers and walked out to the barn, went behind it, and leaned against the old log wall and looked at the sky. It was late day, and the sun was beginning its slide to the west, like a fried egg on a tilted Teflon skillet.
“We’ll be all right,” Leonard said.
“Sure,” I said. “We always are.”
“I guess we’ll be all right until we aren’t.”
“There you go.”
“Think we can trust Booger?”
“I don’t like him,” I said. “But yeah. I think we can. Cason says he’s reliable, and I think he wants to kill someone so bad he’ll do the job. I only fear he’ll want to do it too well.”
“You still thinking you’re going to bring some of the bad guys in and that the cops are going to go, ‘Oh, sure, you went out there alone and brought them in without telling us, and we have to trust what you told us is true. We like that. Thanks, boys. You can go home now. Here’s a lollipop.’ ”
“I just don’t like the idea of shooting them down in cold blood.”
“You knew it was leading to this.”
“I know. But I don’t have to like it.”
“I don’t like it, but it is what it is, and I do believe there are just some folks that need killing. You and I, this isn’t our first county fair, now, is it?”
“I know.”
“If I was making a list, brother, these motherfuckers would be right at the top, just under some that are already dead, like Hitler and Jack the Ripper and some that ought to be, like the Pillsbury Doughboy.”
“You know I hate that doughy bastard, don’t you?”
“You always say you want to take a rolling pin to him.”
“I’d make cookies out of that cocksucker,” I said.
“And then eat them.”
“You got that.”
“Vanilla, the extract, not the woman, would be added for me.”
“You know it.”
“We could dip the cookies in coffee.”
“You know we would.”
Puffy clouds were blowing across the sky like marshmallows floating in water. We watched them. I didn’t say it, but I knew Leonard was probably thinking the same. What if this was the last time we ever paused long enough to study those clouds? It was an odd thought, really, because if we died we weren’t going to miss them. I didn’t believe in life after death, only in life, and I wasn’t sure how good I had managed mine, but I liked it enough I wanted to hang on to it.
We sipped our drinks. It was really hot out there, but the heat felt good. I liked it on my face.
“In case anything happens,” Leonard said, “I have a confession.”
“All right.”
“One time I used your toothbrush.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Goddamn, Leonard. Recently?”
“Yep. Last time I stayed overnight at your house. I wanted to clean the toilet, and it was handy.”
“Oh, go fuck yourself,” I said, and we both laughed. Right then anything could be thought funny. We leaned there for a long time and drank our sodas and watched the white clouds rolling over the high blue sky and were pleased to have a breeze come up. The hot sun felt good, but the breeze drying the sweat on our faces felt even better.
50
Vanilla came back when the long blue shadows began to crawl and there was only a strain of daylight left. She was in a black Buick Grand National sedan, circa 1980s. It roared into the drive like a lion. We all went out and looked at it. I don’t really know diddle about cars, but I knew it looked cool.
Vanilla was wearing black leather pants so tight you could see the outline of a quarter in her pocket, a black shirt, black leather jacket, and tall black boots. She got out and walked around and leaned on the Buick like she was about to have her picture taken at a car show.
“Where’d you get this?” Jim Bob asked.
“Don’t ask,” she said.
“Stolen cars will give us an unneeded headache.”
“It’s not stolen,” she said. “But still, don’t ask.”
She opened the back door and took out two large black metal cases. I stepped over and took one from her. It was light. We took the cases in the house and placed them on the couch. Vanilla opened one of them. There was a series of black tubes and truncated rifle stocks inside, along with a scope and boxes of ammunition—.22 longs.
“I brought a very large van with me from Houston. Inside is the motorcycle and this stuff. I had the car arranged for here. Stored the van and bike in town at a storage unit. The car is a 1982 Buick Grand National. Last of the good muscle cars. I hope we won’t need the speed, but if we do, we’re ready. I’d prefer to just kill them, drive back slow, and have a small decaf later here at the house.”
“It looks brand new,” Booger said.
“Freshly repainted to match the original. It has a four-point-one liter turbocharged V-six, two hundred thirty-five horsepower. Go to sixty miles an hour in five seconds in spite of its size. Six seconds is common, but this one has had some serious modifications. It also has nice cup holders. Drinks gas like a fish drinks water. But the thing we really need is the stuff in this case.”
“I don’t recognize these weapons,” Booger said.
“That’s because they are special made. Not from any gun company. Light. Durable. Heaviest stuff on this trip will be the shotguns you carry. I saw them in the closet.”
“You are quite the snoop,” Leonard said.
“I like to know my surroundings. This one”—she pulled out two pieces of black gun barrel and screwed them together—“shoots a twenty-two round. Technically they have a bit more firepower due to the design of the rifle. Screw these barrels into this”—she reached in and pulled out the body of the gun, and then the stock, which was black and shortened at the back—“and you load it and go. It has a light clip, holds twelve shots. There are spare clips under the foam padding. There’s a night-vision scope that fastens on it.”
“I know what a night-vision scope is,” Booger said.
“Good for you,” Vanilla said.
“What’s in the other case?” I asked.
“My underthings and changes of clothes.”
“Can we look at those?” Jim Bob said and gave her his charm-them-out-of-their-pants grin.
Vanilla said, “No.”
51
The Grand National roared through the night, Vanilla at the wheel, me in the front seat. Behind me was Leonard and Booger and Jim Bob. It was a wide car, and there was plenty of room in the backseat, even if Booger took up a lot of it.
It was just after midnight, and we were tearing through the dark and out into the hinterlands, as I liked to think of it, where the evil bastards lived in their dark little mobile houses with their sharp little wires and their grim little thoughts. Right then, my thoughts were pretty damn grim. I thought of Brett, and I thought of Chance. I even thought of our rescued dog, Buffy. But I didn’t let myself think too long.
We hummed along, and I showed Vanilla how to go. When we turned off onto the back road, Vanilla went slow. Hot summer road dust swirled in the headlights and settled on the windshield. We came to where I buried the cat, and Vanilla parked behind the tree and brush where me and Leonard had stopped before.
“Walk in from here,” I said.
“Turn off your phones,” Vanilla said. “Anyone gets a phone call while we’re sneaking, I’ll take him out. I’m not getting killed for stupid reasons. But you will.”
We checked our phones. Everyone was dressed in black. Vanilla had changed the black leather pants for black leotards. They fit even tighter than the leather but were far more flexible. I know, it’s sexist, but I notice that kind of thing, and just about every heterosexual male who walks the earth and isn’t neutered or too old to know ducks from chickens, and some that don’t, notice those sort of things. It’s biology, and it’s a bitch. In polite society what you say to an attractive woman who is dresse
d in a way that makes you understand the power of biology is, “You look nice.”
Vanilla had Booger hand her the case from the floorboard of the backseat. She put her rifle together. I knew, too, from watching, she had that little gun of hers in one leather jacket pocket, and strapped on her in clear sight was another pistol, also an automatic and also made of plastic, light as a child’s dreams.
We got out of the car and walked to the back and got some rolled-up thick blankets out of the car. That part had been Jim Bob’s idea. It was a good idea, but I’ll come to that. There was a coiled rope with a grappling hook. Booger took that and draped the coil over his shoulder. Me, Jim Bob, and Leonard grabbed the shotguns. All the shotguns had shoulder straps on them, so we slung them. The shotguns were fully loaded.
We all had extra shells. I had a cold-piece Smith & Wesson revolver with me and it was loaded and the belt it was holstered on had shells in the bullet loops, just like an old cowboy gun belt. Booger had only his bag and whatever it was he had in it.
We walked together, watching for headlights, but there weren’t any. Finally we came to the path through the woods with its tight limbs and brush and went along that. Once a raccoon darted across the road in front of us and was nearly shot by all of us who were carrying shotguns. Vanilla didn’t so much as quiver.
We stopped at the brush gate and looked around carefully with our penlights in case new booby traps had been placed there, but found none. We opened the gate and went through, and when we came to the wire across the path, Booger studied it with the light, went to one end and used his knife to pry the top of one of the wooden boxes. We stood there with our assholes clenched while he did this, but he knew what he was doing. He said, “The wire pulls a trigger, and it causes an explosion that launches whatever is packed in this plastic bag with gunpowder. Looks like glass and nails.”
That was as I had figured.
“We can just step over it,” Jim Bob said.
“Yeah, but we come back this way quick we might not want to worry about it.”
“Fair enough,” Jim Bob said.
Booger used his knife to gently cut the string that pulled the explosive into action. “You got to cut it smooth and without much pressure. This stuff, it goes off, it sprays like skunk stink but hurts more.”
He went over and cut the cord on the other side. He tied off the cord to limbs on either side so it appeared to be rigged.
“Now, we come back through here hauling ass, forget about where this is in the heat of the moment, we don’t have to worry.”
“Good job,” I said.
“I know,” Booger said.
We went on up the narrow trail, came to where it rode up on the hill then coiled down through a small patch of divided trees and on down to the compound. At night there were lights in the compound. They were on the wall and inside on large posts, and there was a small light coming from two of the trailers.
“Either someone’s home,” Leonard said, “or they just left a few lights on for giggles.”
“There’s the deer stand,” I said and pointed. “I can position myself there.”
“You’re a good shot,” Vanilla said, “but I have the rifle for it, and I’m used to how it works. I think that should be my job.”
I nodded. “Take it.”
“All right,” Vanilla said. “Good. Stand has a clear look down on the compound. I’ll use it as my crow’s nest. I feel like I need to come down and join you boys, I will. Otherwise, I’ll be shooting from there.”
“Well, don’t shoot us, baby girl,” Booger said.
“Baby girl shoots you, then you know I did it on purpose. I don’t miss a whole lot, not when the target is standing still and doesn’t know I’m out here, and a lot of time even if they do.”
“Holding you to it,” Booger said.
“First I need to take care of the motion lights,” she said.
Vanilla went to the deer stand and climbed up the little wooden ladder quiet and quick as a squirrel. A moment later I saw her rifle barrel poke out of a slot in the stand.
“Do you think me and her might hook up later?” Jim Bob said.
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “Keep your mind on the business at hand.”
“I can be easily of two minds and know what I’m doing. Don’t you worry about that. Have I ever given you cause to worry?”
“No,” I said.
“Still,” Leonard said. “I worry a little.”
“Shit, Leonard. You can fold those worries into a little square and set fire to it when I’m on the job,” Jim Bob said. “You can rub my head for luck.”
“Still a little worried,” Leonard said.
Booger opened his bag, took out a sawed-off shotgun. There was a holster of sorts that he draped over his back and slipped the weapon into. He already had a Colt .45 automatic in his hip holster; it looked like a collector’s item, had pearl handles. He had a knife on his other hip, and I knew in his boot he had another. He had a pair of small wire cutters stuck in a little bag on his belt. He had a light that fastened to the top of his sawed-off. We all had that, though Booger’s rig was special made; mine and Jim Bob’s and Leonard’s were rigged with duct tape.
Booger stood up and said, “No one leaves anyone behind. That’s the military way.”
“I’m not, nor have I ever been in the military,” I said. “But I’m with you on that one.”
I looked down at the compound and the lights around it. It wasn’t that well lit, really. In fact, the center of it was dark and shadow-crowded. I thought of the compound Vanilla Ride and I had broken into once, but she had known the place, and it was more organized and easier to navigate. Down below was a pile of mobile homes and carnival junk and old cars and a lot of unidentifiable metal. It made me a lot more nervous than the other compound had.
There was a hissing sound, like an arrow in flight, and one of the lights went out, and the sound was followed by others just like it in rapid succession. The lights on the wall, and the motion lights that would come on if we came within range, were out of commission. Vanilla took them out quickly and efficiently, and she didn’t miss once. It was dark on that side now, and it would stay that way.
I glanced toward the deer stand, raised a hand in acknowledgment, and then we slipped down the slope of the hill, using the road. We were about a hundred feet outside the wall when Booger said, “Hold it.”
We stopped and waited. “Look out there,” he said.
We looked. I didn’t see anything.
“You see how the moonlight hits along that line of grass there?”
I looked and saw that there were spots of yellowed grass about ten feet apart, and the spots went on for a long ways.
“Grass is green between, but in those spots it’s yellow,” Booger said.
“Traps,” Jim Bob said.
“Mines is going to be my guess,” Booger said, “cause if you look carefully, real carefully, between each spot is a strand of wire. Can you see it?”
I saw it.
“Hit one of those and it’ll pull two of the pins off, and when they explode, my guess is they’re the sort that will go up and out.”
“Sure they’re mines?” Leonard asked.
“No,” Booger said. “But sure enough.”
“The wire is designed so you hit it and it tugs, it’ll go. I’ve seen mines like it before, or similar, in war. All you got to do is not step on the cord. You cut it gently, don’t tug it or push it, it’ll release tension on the mines. You step on one it’ll still knock your nuts up under your chin, but I’m going to slip up there and cut the cord and then we’ll go through. If they’re real clever, they’ll have another line not far from it. That way you see one, the other one will be behind some grass, and you think you’re home free, trip the second one up, and—”
“Balls under your chin,” I said.
“You get the teddy bear,” Booger said.
“Here’s an idea,” Leonard said. “Let’s just go down the
road.”
“We could do that,” Booger said. “It even seems smart, but I got a feeling that road isn’t all it looks to be, either. I think you’ll note there are holes in the gate, and if you look carefully, there are gun barrels poking out of the holes, and I’ll assure you, they are not manned, they are gimmicked. One of them comes in, they most likely got it rigged so they hit a switch, a button, whatever in their automobile, and those guns are disarmed. Way they’re set now—and again, this is me guessing, and you’re welcome to walk up the road and check out my theory—but way I see it, that’s how they’re set. Got to be disarmed by some device that we don’t have. So we take our chances with the mines. I’ll do that part.”
He moved then, and I started to come up behind him, but Jim Bob caught my shoulder, said, “Let him run it through. That way, we lose him, it’s only one man down.”
“And it’s Booger,” Leonard said.
“Yeah, he’ll be missed all of five seconds, though we might be wearing parts of him.”
“He blows up, the noise will give them a small clue we’re out here,” Leonard said.
“Yes, but Booger will be gone, and we’ll live to fight another day.”
“Good point,” Leonard said.
Booger eased forward, took out his knife, and clipped a cord between two spots in the grass, then he eased forward, found another cord, and cut it.
“Damn,” Jim Bob said. “He made it.”
Booger stood up and waved us forward, showing us where to go between the mines he had disarmed.
We ran along then, and when we got down to the wall, Booger uncoiled the rope and tossed the grappling hook over. It caught in the wire at the top easily enough. Booger pulled on it, and the wire sagged but held. Booger took one of the rolls of blankets we had brought, tossed it over his shoulder, and started climbing up the rope. He went up it quick and silent as a hummingbird.