En El Medio Page 2

  And yes, one of the drug-running crowd made it up to one of the 50-caliber guns. A few moments later, a massive barrage of shots was fired up at Meadows' position on the hillside 300 yards away.

  "I'm hoping you spotted that and moved." Preacher whispered in the radio.

  "Yep. About 30 yards down and east. Do you have eyes on the kid?" Meadows replied hurriedly.

  "Uh, no. I have eyes on a couple dozen muzzle flashpoints, but no, I don't see the poor little helpless boy you brought me down here to find and rescue."

  "Just a second." A moment later Meadows released four successive shots. The third and fourth found their target and sent the guy manning the 50-cal to the great drug-running track in the sky.

  Preacher smiled. "Nice shooting. But I expect them to go mobile within the minute. They are likely to lay down cover before rolling out." And right on cue the first of two rocket-propelled grenades were fired at Meadows' location on the hill. The explosions were impressive, but a good distance from Meadows as he moved further east along the hill. The likelihood of hitting a target from this distance was minuscule, which meant the RPGs were a covering tactic for the next maneuver. Engines firing up gave the next move away.

  Preacher stayed in position and rolled over onto his back. "You got those two other boom booms in your site?" He asked Meadows.

  "Got em."

  The many, many armed residents of the complex began firing up at the hill as two four-by-four trucks burst from the center of the compound, throwing up sand as they tore toward the front gate opening in front of them. Two more RPG rounds were fired up at the position Meadows had been a minute earlier.

  The first truck was 60 yards out the front gate when a fiery explosion erupted on the right side of the vehicle and blew it airborne and over on its left side in a burning mess. The second vehicle slammed on brakes, which in the grand scheme of things was a mistake. Because just to the left of it was a thicket of bushes with yet another gasoline wrapped propane tank. The wreckage of the first truck blocking the path on the dirt road meant fiery death for the driver and passengers of this second truck.

  Meadows finally missed on one of his explosive shots, but his second trigger squeeze sent the blast up into the second truck. It was rocketed over on to its right side in an ugly blaze. The screaming of men in the truck could be heard over the fading concussion of the blast.

  Preacher decided this was his cue. He shouted loudly in Spanish while lying on his back behind his little sand berm. "No one else has to die tonight. You only have to do one thing."

  "And what's that?" A voice replied from behind the third building about 40 yards away.

  "Send out the boy. The young gringo." Preacher thought his Spanish accent sounded like it was from the area, maybe Chihuahua.

  "What boy. There is no gringo here."

  "He is in there. We saw him playing cards with you. Looked like he was winning. Send him out with his hands over his head and we leave."

  No reply this time. They were whispering among themselves. Preacher could hear conversations over radios. He heard some laughter.

  "You only have a few people in your numbers. We don't need to do anything you ask. The few of you will be coyote food by morning."

  It was Preacher's turn to laugh. The consummate liar, accomplished killer and human chameleon decided to play this thing out on another level. "You are correct. We are a small group. There are only five of us. We came with a very specific purpose and very precise orders. Either we bring the boy back with us, or we kill everyone inside. Simple."

  "That is a serious threat amigo." The voice speaking the words had switched to English.

  "This is a serious matter. Send out the kid. Have him walk right out the front gate and keep walking. When we have him, we will take the crosshairs off your foreheads." Preacher chuckled to himself after that one.

  No reply. Too bad.

  The bad people inside the complex didn't know that the three men comprising the Canadian band Rush had just finished their live performance of a song to a rousing audience in Preacher's head. They didn't know that this meant that 15 minutes and 45 seconds had passed since Preacher ducked into the compound, moved up the left fence line and followed a natural row of scrub bushes to a collection of tanks gathered together. There were two large propane tanks and a gas tanker uncoupled from a semi. They were all about 30 feet apart which put them all within 80 feet of each other. A dangerous collection of gas and other extremely flammable liquids.

  Preacher had removed from his backpack a nice little package of 12 sticks of dynamite taped together and rigged with a simple ignition device he had attached to a cheap radio transmitter. More deadly skills learned at Harvey Point.

  Lying there on his back in the desert night looking up at the glorious canopy of stars above a cloudless night, he thought about light and distance and travel across time and space and the truly amazing function of the eye reflecting and capturing this light and transmitting electrical impulses to our brains through the optic nerve. That is a long strange trip indeed.

  "Ultima oportunidad!" He shouted out 'last chance' in Spanish.

  "Go to hell, dead man," was the terse reply he received.

  "Asi sea," he whispered in Spanish. So be it.

  He had pulled the second cheap walkie-talkie out of his backpack. He pressed his head against the backpack and covered his other ear with the palm of his hand. "Close your eyes lieutenant." The he pressed the transmitter of the other radio.

  The explosion was horrendous, stupendous, deadly. Buildings were shattered, debris was scattered over a quarter mile as the flames roared and rolled into a luminous ball lighting up the black desert night for miles. Humans in the blast radius were no match for the concussive blow of the force followed by a brief but raging inferno. The killer was really the blast wave. This shock wave of pressure expanding out from a high explosive core blows buildings apart, shatters windows and levels any living thing within the radius. The blast wave of this explosion was ferocious. It was truly as if several bombs had been dropped on this outpost on the fringe of the Mexican desert.

  Preacher lifted his head and shook off the sand and dirt and debris that had landed on him.

  He had placed this little surprise just in case things didn't go well grabbing the kid. Which they didn't. He figured that he would have the boy by now and be able to cover him up before the blast. But that plan too had been blown away when he looked into the window minutes ago.

  Fractured buildings were in flames. Looking around, he saw no one. The explosion was even larger than his estimation. Had to be the quality of the dynamite. That he could buy it easily from a Juarez supply story without any ID or authority was amazing. He had purchased a little extra, just in case. It worked. The place was leveled. He rose to a knee with the AK-47 pointed into the complex. No one fired at him. He stayed low and moved forward.

  Thirty seconds later, an engine fired up across the compound. It revved and started in the other direction, not toward the main gate. "Meadows, can you see where that vehicle is headed?" Preacher angled to the right, keeping low.

  "Headed to the north. Can't make it out very well. Looks like a jeep." Meadows was monotone. Obviously still shaken from the size of the blast, even 300 yards away.

  "Damn. There is a small gate over there. But I didn't make it around that side yesterday." Preacher responded. He put the radio in his jacket pocket and hurried forward to the shattered hull of the outbuilding in which he had seen the kid with others sitting around a table drinking and gambling. He fought off the urge to shoot up hundreds of feet to look down and worked his way around to the front of the building. He dropped to the ground and peeked around the corner from his belly. No one. No one on their feet at least.

  He ran over and stepped into the smoking building through a doorway with the door blown off. A bloody man moaned on the floor under a fragmented pile of building material. Preacher paced the rest of the structure and found no one else. No one else alive tha
t is. He stepped back to the lone survivor and kicked the plywood and sheetrock off of him. He pulled the man to sitting position and kneeled down beside him.

  "Como te llama?" Preacher asked. "Quickly, your name?"

  "Juan." The guy mumbled through bloody lips.

  "Juan, I only have a few moments. I need information, very specific information. If you are unable or unwilling to give it to me, I will speed your descent to hell with a bullet through your forehead." He put the silenced Berretta 9MM between Juan's eyes. "How old are you Juan?"

  "Forty-three."

  "Good, you are more than half-way there, to your end. Children?"

  "Yes. Three."

  "Grandchildren?"

  "Si, two and one on the way." Juan smiled in the face of death. Children do that to you.

  "Good. You want to get back to them, correct?"

  "Sí."

  "Bueno. Tell me, when did the kid arrive? The gringo?" Preacher smiled.

  "Two days ago."

  "Have you seen him before?"

  "Yes. Two, maybe three times. In Juarez."

  "Who did he meet with?"

  No reply this time.

  "Juan, either you can tell me, or I end the life of your grandchildren's favorite abuelo and go find someone else who will be willing to talk. Simple, mi amigo. Quickly now."

  Juan lowered his head. "He will kill me, just like you."

  "The boy?" That was strange. The kid put fear of death in a guy facing certain death in the face. That's interesting.

  "Sí."

  "Huh, but he does not have a gun to your head now. You may be able to escape death at his hands if you tell me where I can find him. I am guessing that was him and some others running away in that Jeep. Now, Juan. Tell me where he is going in the ciudad. Ahora!" Preacher used the silencer to tilt the man's face back up by lifting his chin. "Now."

  "You are like him." Juan brought his eyes from the floor to meet Preacher's. "Like Felix. You are frío, cold like him. A murderer."

  Preacher's smile grew larger. "Is it really that easy to see?"

  "Sí. Muerto." Death.

  "That's the funny thing, I don't feel like death anymore. Not like I did, like I used to." Preacher drifted for a moment. He floated back to that time not so long ago in Russia and Europe when he was caught in the middle, en el medio, between life and death, between this life and the next. The Black Angel. The smile returned and he opened his eyes to look into Juan's. "We all die Juan. But some of us come back. Where is the gringo killer headed?"

  Juan didn't want to go to the next life, not yet. He unburdened himself of the information he retained between his ears. Preacher delivered a concussive blow to Juan's temple and let him return to his family when he wakes. But he snatched up Juan's wallet from his back pocket for safekeeping. Always build a network. Always gather assets for future use and exploitation.

  He moved from Juan into the night with only flames from burning husks of buildings and vehicles lighting the dark. He stayed low and made his way out of the complex and around the bottom of the hill on the other side where he met up with Stan Meadows and proceeded deliver a painful blow to the tall pilot's midsection with a bent elbow. The Navy lieutenant collapsed. Preacher had avoided striking the guy's face to keep from drawing any extra attention in the days ahead. It could have been much worse for the Lieutenant.

  Chapter 2

  "I don't think that is la policia back there," Preacher looked over his shoulder. Meadows kept his eye on the rearview mirror while he drove. The two vehicles behind them were gaining rapidly.

  "Nope. Don't think so." Meadows added. He still cringed a little bit from the blow to his midsection he'd taken a half an hour ago.

  "They wouldn't be able to recognize us. Not me. And they didn't see you. They must have passed us going the other way and flipped around. Not much traffic on this road." Preacher turned back around and grabbed up two of the three guns he had at his feet on the floor of the small Toyota truck. Meadows put the pedal down.

  "I don't think they care. They'll shoot first, see what we look like later." The Texas twang in Meadows' accent was always a trip for Preacher.

  "Thought maybe we had enough of a head start on them that they couldn't catch us before town." Preacher made sure the silencer was tight on his Berretta. He had reloaded it a few minutes ago. The AK-47 had a full magazine. The M4 rifle he had snatched from a dead man on the way out of the complex was also fully loaded. He preferred the M4 to the M16 he had carried during basic training and during his brief stint in Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. It was lighter, better aim.

  He looked out the window at the smattering of buildings on the barren southern outskirts of Juarez. They were coming into town from the southwest. A glance to the east showed the first glimpse of the coming sunrise. It was going to be a nice day after rains the day before. Preacher didn't need to look at a watch to know it was just after 5:15 in the a.m. He thought of another sunrise over Iraq and that first big mission. The fake mission Seibel had brilliantly concocted.

  And thinking of that mission, as he had thousands of times over the ensuing nearly four years, always brings him that first image, that brilliant flash of seeing her for the first time. Marta once told him it wasn't love at first sight. It was death. He knew exactly, precisely how she felt. With his eyes closed, speeding well above 100 mph and drug-running thugs coming up behind, Preacher smiled and tilted his head back to the headrest. The next few minutes and hours would bring violence and death and he would cause much of it. He figured that's why he was here. There was undoubtedly more to this episode than the story Meadows showed up in Colorado with a few days earlier.

  He opened his eyes and rolled his head. He didn't think of Fuchs while he did it. He'd watched his one-time CIA mentor perform this little ritual every time they were about to take decisive and deadly action. He glanced over at Meadows. The guy had brought him here to kill the kid, not rescue him. It was understandable. People do strange and sometimes wonderful and often horrible things for revenge. Anger turns to hatred and retribution is all they can see, all they know.

  But that still didn't feel right. Something else was going on here.

  Meadows had told him several times over the previous four days how this kid had been a good boy growing up and then gone bad as a teenager. The tall Texan spoke of bouncing the little fella on his knee when he spent time with a close friend and his beautiful bride. But that boy had grown and turned to drugs and gotten in trouble too many times to count.

  The kid's illegal actions lead to his father, a longtime friend of Meadows', being killed by Mexican drug dealers just the week before. The story during the previous four days was that they were rescuing the boy to bring him back to his distraught and mourning mother in Texas. It appeared that finding the kid was still the truth, but rescuing him was not. Meadows wanted to kill the punk for what he had done. Something like that.

  Preacher had been there before, vengeful. Many people paid with their lives. Marta had exacted similar vengeance that made his actions appear tame. It happens. People take revenge. People die. We all will.

  But, right there, it happened again. As he turned away from Meadows, with his lanky ass frame filling up the cabin of the small truck, Preacher saw something that made him stop. It was just a flash, a silhouette. It was Marta, of course. But it was not Marta from that first glimpse in Baghdad or at that high mountain retreat in the Alps or on the beach on the tiny Pacific island of Yap or across the open courtyard at that hospital prison in West Virginia. No, this Marta was from the future. And she was not alone. She held something in her arms. Something tiny. Someone.

  "Pull over. Stop."

  "What? Why?"

  "Do it. Right over there." He pointed to an open lot between two low-slung buildings up ahead. "Now."

  Meadows ripped the wheel to the right and veered off the roadway into an open field of sand and sagebrush and headed for the lot. He spun the wheel and brought the vehicle to a swirlin
g dusty sliding stop. Preacher was out and running before the truck stopped moving. He was at the corner of the first building and taking aim at the approaching lead vehicle. He fired a barrage of rounds and moved his aim from the lead vehicle to the trailing SUV. He targeted the windshield in front of the driver and loosed a dozen more bullets. Unconcerned about the others in that vehicle for a few moments, he turned back to the lead vehicle and burst forward, moving the AK-47 to his left hand and pulling the Beretta from his belt. He aimed and put a bullet through each of the tires on the left side of the Chevy Suburban and then dove and rolled directly in front of the vehicle. Lying on his belly between the two front tires, he watched as the first of two sets of boots stepped onto the ground. Mistake.

  With cruel precision he put bullets into ankles, shattering bone and bringing heads and torsos down to the ground and into his view. He ended these two lives and stood up. The driver and front seat passenger looked at him for a half second too long. Before they could raise their weapons and take aim through the glass, Preacher painted the windshield canvas with a straight line of holes that in turn released a smattering of red into the vehicle's interior. As usual, hostile attackers are seldom ready when one turns the attack on them. He bolted toward the second vehicle.

  As he approached, the driver-side door of the second Chevy SUV opened and the dead driver's body was pushed out. Too late.

  Preacher jogged over and raised both the AK and the Berretta to blast the guy now behind the wheel. Death was immediate. He circled around to the side and ducked, waiting. Meadows had gotten out and worked his way up beside the lead SUV where he took up position aiming his deadly sniper rifle at the trail vehicle. Preacher glanced over at the pilot holding that rifle against his shoulder and saw the cold killer that lived underneath a Texas good ol' boy exterior.

  It was in the comfort of the man's position. The way he casually leaned against the rear of the vehicle. Meadows was no stranger to aiming and firing a weapon. No stranger to killing. It took one to know one.