21
Rangers have always prided themselves on their skills in the woods. Although Quinn had never been on a single mission that wasn’t in the desert or up a mountain, he’d been trained for years at Fort Benning to move through the deep woods at night, up, down, and around those red clay hills of the Cole Range, being smoked to shit by his instructors until they damn near killed him. He’d marched the range so many times by himself or with his platoon that he could move blindfolded, feeling each twig and branch, moving from tree to tree, always forward, always toward the objective, the SLLS still resonating in his brain. STOP. LOOK. LISTEN. SMELL. You do this a thousand times, a million times, as a Ranger, it becomes so commonplace that you stalk men and encampments as well as you breathe.
Behind him, Boom sounded like an elephant, hitting branches and tangles, but Quinn never thought for a moment they’d be heard. When they got close, he’d search for a decent vantage point, never asking Boom once if his shooting had suffered without the arm.
If there were trouble, Quinn knew Boom—one-armed or not—could drop half those bastards with that big .44.
They followed the fire road, walking a good hundred meters along a deer trail through brush and thickets. Most of the trees were newly planted pines, the blanket of rusted needles as soft and quiet under their feet as carpet. Quinn slowed as they spotted the beaten trailers and motioned Boom forward, Quinn pointing over to a low-hanging branch where Boom would balance his rifle and pick off any targets he saw fit.
Quinn, the .308 slung on his back, .45 in his belt, would make his way down the eroded slope and into the ravine running into old Hell Creek.
Boom winked at him and took position.
He was having a ball.
It was coming up on 0530.
“Just a look?” Boom said, whispering.
“Trust me,” Quinn said with a grin.
A soft dawn shone from the east across the still trailers, no lights or activity. He could hear the gentle hum of generators in a sorry old barn, leaning hard to the hills, the tin roof crudely painted with a Rebel flag. Quinn edged through the woods the way a deer would, keeping just out of reach of the clearing, watching everything.
A trailer door opened, and an old man stumbled out, took a leak, and then moved down toward another trailer, slamming the door. A girl, maybe fourteen, in a yellow oversized sweatshirt and panties, emerged from the crooked barn holding a laptop computer under her arm.
She smoked a cigarette in the cold and finished it off before heading up a long trail to another trailer and a crude parking lot filled with an old black Camaro, a blue GTO, and Daddy Gowrie’s cherry red El Camino. Assorted busted-up trucks and sleek muscle cars.
Quinn checked the time again, not needing it but reacting as he’d been trained.
Size, Activity, Location, Uniforms, Terrain, Equipment.
Four men headed out from another trailer. All of them had shaved heads. Two wore camo jackets, one wore a woolly pully, and the last was in a sleeveless T-shirt. The same boys who’d tried to steal his uncle’s cattle for Johnny Stagg. They weren’t armed, but Quinn knew there would be guns in the trailers or down in the barn.
The men headed down to a smoking trash barrel and added in some stray branches and scrap wood. One of the boys, the skinny shitbag who’d confronted Quinn at the farm, held a joint in his hand, smoking it down before passing it along. His eyes looked black and cheeks hollow.
Quinn stayed there a good hour until the sun came up, turning everything a slate gray and then a bright purple, more men and women coming out of trailers, most headed down to the barn to fetch food on paper plates and then returning to their heated shitholes.
He figured on about eighteen folks. Eleven men. Seven women. Quinn sighted the men down the rifle’s scope, a clear, clean shot of each of their heads, big as dinner plates. He missed his M4 carbine, maybe some flash bangs and grenades, but the hunting rifle would do just fine. The problem was on the reload, but if things got tight, he had four clips for the .45.
He shifted the scope from man to man, watching as Gowrie walked out from the trailer farthest up the hill and joined the men, Quinn taking aim like he’d just found the big prize buck.
Gowrie snatched the joint out of one boy’s fingers and headed off to a drainage ditch, where he unhitched his pants and started to piss, standing ankle-deep in rubber muck boots. He had thick black hair on his shoulders and a map of jailhouse tattoos on his bare back.
Gowrie was a massive target in Quinn’s scope. His shaved head, balding at the crown, was dead center for the .308, which could blow a hole the size of a baseball through his skull. Quinn could drop him before his boys even knew what happened, pick up the girl and Luke, and boogie on down the road, no one the wiser.
How many people would even miss the son of a bitch?
Quinn listened, looking for any sign of the girl or Luke, noting all the action and folks in the camp, the comings and goings, who carried a weapon, what kind. He kept the sight in on the same place, Gowrie moving back and forth in the crosshairs, the bridge of his nose dead center.
Quinn took a deep breath, feeling the trigger under his finger, thinking about Uncle Hamp cutting down bamboo to make cane poles, teaching him how to drive a truck when he was twelve. He saw his uncle walking down a fire road at sunset into the heart of that never-ending forest after ten-year-old Quinn had started to believe he was the only man left on the planet. Uncle Hamp welcomed him with a smile and took him down to the Fillin’ Station for four cheeseburgers and a scoop of ice cream.
He’d never stopped looking for Quinn.
Gowrie looked feral, with those broad tattoos across his back and shoulders, lording over these shitbags. He was animated and wild, sucking the smoke deep into his lungs, not feeling the cold on his bare chest.
Quinn felt that trigger so perfect on his fingertip. He breathed soft and easy.
Quinn lowered the gun. And waited. The only guilt Quinn felt was for the damn ease of the shot.
About that time, Quinn heard a girl scream.
Pain was a son of a bitch, and every time Lena wanted to get up the doctor kept on pushing her down and telling her it was better for the baby, and she couldn’t get up and move on out of this filthy room in this damn dim light and walk out into the cold darkness. The pain kept on coming along and then it would stop, and then start again, Lena wishing it would just hit her hard and constant and not make her feel like things were going to get any better. One of Gowrie’s women, a girl not much older than her with big tits and streaked hair, held one of her arms, and the doctor motioned for another young girl to hold the other, both of them loopy and giggling but strong, when she’d buck up and tell ’em, baby or no, she was getting the hell out of there.
“Come on,” the girl with big tits and silly hair said. “Just take it easy.”
“You done this before?” she asked.
“Hell no.”
“Then why don’t you shut the hell up,” Lena said.
She wanted to be cold. Lie on a cold stone somewhere.
The doctor had her legs spread open, her underwear cut off and tossed away, a big tent of sheet over her legs. She couldn’t see what was going on there and didn’t really care, just fought with those girls and gave one big huge massive push that felt like she was trying to take the biggest damn dump ever. She forced herself to her elbows, legs spread apart, vision dimming, the words and sounds and screams going dull in her ears, as she yelled and pushed and felt her whole body just arch and ache with pain, the pain no longer coming in waves but just a steady kind of hurt, a tensing of everything in her, as she pushed and pushed, the doctor telling her that she wasn’t pushing and her calling him a goddamn dirty liar and him saying if she didn’t start pushing the baby wasn’t coming out. And Lena said, “I don’t care if it ever comes out.”
“Yes, you do,” the doc said.
“You lousy bastard.”
“Grab my hand and squeeze till you think you’re gonna break me,” the doctor said. “Call me Luke.”
“I’ll crack your bones like a pecan, Luke.”
The pain hit her again, and her elbows gave way, those pimply-faced girls holding her down, acting like they knew something, like they had some kind of strength or knowledge that made them right for this. But them girls would be on their backs right now, legs spread so wide they was going to split, if Gowrie didn’t have sense. That man had more sense than Charley Booth, Jody Charley Booth. In jail. In prison. A big smile on his face. Yeah, I didn’t finish.
Hell he didn’t.
“Don’t cut me. I ain’t no fish. Goddamn, don’t you cut me.” And she pushed hard and long, and breathed and breathed and breathed, ’cause that was something that people all around her were saying: Breathe, breathe, breathe. “Hell yeah, I’m breathin’, and hurtin’, too.”
And then the hurt stopped, Lena thinking that her heart and insides had done exploded. No breathing, no pushing, no pain. Maybe she was dead?
“One more time,” Luke said. “About there.”
“I’m done.”
“Push.”
Goddamn, she hurt, but then she started to notice the soft light around the doc’s face, such a soap-opera hero, with nice clothes and smelling clean, not like those rats who hung out at the barn down the hill. Not like Jody. Two of them dumb girls were cooing and carrying on about something in one of them’s arms, and she couldn’t see it but it seemed to be bringing them a mess of pleasure. Goddamn, she hurt.
Lena tried to right herself in the bed, her legs feeling slick, body just filled with nothing but air. “I’m dying. I got things blowing up in me.”
She was alone and standing on a hill and looking down into a valley covered in nothing but corn and sunflowers in the wind. The hills had snow, and a man with no eyes held her hand. Blood rushed through her ears, sounding like a heartbeat. Her body felt hollow as she opened her eyes, the world coming back into focus.
“You want to hold her?” the doctor asked.
“What? Hold what?”
“Your daughter,” he said, his profile coming into view as he turned to her and handed her that little baby wrapped in a towel decorated with beer bottles and Mex hats. “That’s your baby.”
“I hate you, Charley Booth,” she said, her eyes closing again and then opening. “I hate you.”
“We need to get you out of here,” the doctor said, whispering into her ear where those tramps couldn’t hear.
Quinn saw Luke come outside a trailer, wiping blood off his hands with a dish towel and having some words with Gowrie in the cold. Gowrie smoked down a cigarette as he listened and then tossed it, growing wild-eyed and ranting. He snatched up Luke by the arm and screamed at him.
Luke pulled his arm away and reached for a cell phone in his pant pocket, yelling back at Gowrie before Gowrie took the phone and threw it as far as he could out into the woods.
Luke started to yell some more.
Gowrie pushed him flat on his ass and pulled a Glock from his branded belt, tapping the barrel into Luke’s forehead.
Luke calmed down.
He sat there, white dress shirt covered in blood, propped up on his elbows, and nodded. Gowrie grabbed him by the front of his shirt, yanked him to his feet, and opened the door, throwing Luke back inside the trailer.
Quinn readied himself, lowering the rifle and throwing it back over his shoulder with the sling, taking the .45 from his belt. He could hear the blood flush with excitement in his ears, feel a smile on his face. He’d seen all he needed.
He’d be an easy target running from the concealment of the woods to the trailer, about twenty meters, to get the girl and Luke and bring them all the way back to the county road where he’d parked the truck.
He looked across the way to Boom and nodded. Boom had his six.
The generators hummed up the ravine from the leaning mouth of that old barn, where two pit bulls were staked to chains. If they let the dogs loose on him, he’d have to kill them, but he hated to do that. He could take out an enemy with little remorse, but he figured a dog was a pawn in the situation.
Quinn reached into his pocket for an old nickel-plated Zippo and took the long way around to the barn, finding an easy trail, the dirt of it smooth and silent under his old Merrells. He moved up and over a grouping of trailers, hearing a television going, some men playing cards—spotting them through an open window that was letting out the stink of dope. All the men soft and lazy. Trash had been dumped down into a gulley, and it smelled like this is where they’d been dumping their shit, too.
The sky through the leafless trees turned a soft gray and blue. Quinn moved to the back of the barn in that first light, finding a soft, easy way, so quiet that the pit bulls didn’t even lift their heads. Two large Honda generators sat, thumping and shaking, among piles of gas canisters. In a mess of junk he spotted a cord of hemp rope and he cut off a solid two feet of it with his buck knife, opened the tank, dipped one end in like a wick, and slid the other end into the tank.
He lit the end and moved back out to the woods, taking the same path he’d walked before, listening to the men laughing, playing spades, the television blaring loud from another trailer, a man and a woman passed out in a bed that looked like a rat’s nest.
Smoke curled and snaked from the barn.
And a few minutes later the barn exploded, emptying the trailers as men ran down to the fire. A couple of them shooting into the flames, as if bullets would stop it.
Quinn watched as Gowrie, shirtless and sweating, worked to fill buckets from the creek.
“I think you got a celebration goin’ on,” the doctor said, not looking at all excited about the prospect. All that shooting and yelling.
“They always shoot guns and blow shit up,” Lena said, the baby suckling at her breast, the doctor telling her how all that worked. “It’s not on account of me.”
The doctor leaned forward on the bloody bed, head in hands.
“What’s the matter?” Lena asked.
“Your boyfriend won’t let us leave,” Luke said. He had soft green eyes and nice teeth.
“He ain’t my boyfriend.”
“Where’s the child’s father?”
“County jail.”
“Of course.” The doctor nodded and stood, peering outside a dirty window, shaking his head more and pacing. “We got to get you to a hospital.”
“I feel fine. Let me sleep. Jesus.”
“You’re losing a ton of blood, and that son of a bitch out there said I was to attend to you here,” the doctor said, sitting down on the mattress and bloodied sheets, feeling for her free wrist and pulse and then holding her hand. “He said he doesn’t want the police. I didn’t say anything about the police.”
“Gowrie hates government.”
“No kidding,” the doctor said. “He said he’d like nothing more than to blow my fucking brains out.”
“You married?” Lena asked, feeling light-headed, stroking that little pink baby, wanting like hell to leave with this doctor. “You have a nice face. Such a nice face.”
“How do you feel?”
“Fine, fine, fine.”
“You look white as a sheet.”
“I just dropped a child,” Lena said, speaking so low she wasn’t sure she had spoken at all. “Takes some out of you.”
“You have a phone?” the doctor asked. “Gowrie pitched mine in the woods.”
She shook her head, smiling at the doc some more and then smiling down at the baby’s face, touching its nose and little ears, feeling such a strange damn connection. Lena closed her eyes. “Ain’t she pretty?”
“Do you have a phone? Listen to me. Wake up.”
“Won’t do you no good,” Lena said, eyes closed and feeling at peace, smiling big. “Phones don’t work in the hills. You can’t get no signal. It’s like being on the moon. I said that you have a nice face. You heard that?”
Quinn sprinted from the concealment of the woods to the trailer, holding the rifle in his right hand. He made it to the steps, not a shot fired, no one even spotting him. He looked up into the woods to where Boom waited.
He nodded, not seeing his friend but knowing he was there.
Quinn tossed the rifle over his shoulder and grabbed the .45 before he kicked in the front door and checked all corners for movement. A ragged couch and chairs, trash bags and stuffed animals.
No one.
He made his way down the narrow hallway, kicking in another door to find Luke Stevens in a dress shirt spotted in blood. Luke looked up and smiled.
“You hurt?”
Luke shook his head.
“Anna Lee called.”
Luke nodded. Quinn didn’t expect a thank-you as he opened the door wide to see the girl lying in the bed, more blood around the sheets. She looked to be about twelve, with her hair matted around her white face, holding a child that could be her sister.
Her face and throat had been drained of all color. Her eyes were glass.
Luke cleaned his hands on a towel. “Can you get us out? I got a gun in my face. A goddamn gun.”
“Can she be moved?”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“Come on. Boom’s watching our back.”
“Quinn?” Luke asked, touching his arm.
Quinn looked at him.
“They won’t let us go.”
“They got more troubles.”
“Where’s y’all’s truck?”
“A mile down the road,” Quinn said. “You hold the baby. I’ll carry the girl.”
