An American Outlaw (10 page)

A patrol. Route reconnaissance. The city of Fallujah; insurgent zone. 

Two rifle squads. Twenty six men, all told.

There were no dogs. 

I saw it. I should have known.

I was overall leader; first shirt. Nate Childress was second in command. My squad was on security. Nate leading the reconn element. A car man. Intel on suspicious vehicles. We moved out in fire teams of four. Scouts at the front, rear and flanks.

The middle of the day. A suburb of a city. An hour into that patrol, the streets were deserted. Nate kept the reconn squad moving. Shifting formation every few meters. I brought up the rear, on high alert.

No dogs
.

Dogs are the first to sense danger. There were none; not even scavenging.

At base, platoon leader Lt. Black updated each position
—
working the grid. In remote command, as I called it back.

Every step, he knew about it. I made sure.

We moved between buildings. Mainly rigged.

They filled them with gasoline. Tanks of propane. Wired them to remote triggers, while they watched us. Some of the buildings our guys already cleared. They'd marked 'em, at the doors and windows. But last place to enter any building was the ground floor.

I was looking at one
—
it had chalk marks by the door; the sign we were using.

Nate spotted something. From the edge of my vision, I saw him put up a signal.

Reconn squad stopped. Nate was looking towards a rooftop
—
elevated firing position. Stairwell most likely bricked. 

I saw him hand-signal his three fire teams. They spread defensive.

Then his lead scout got dropped.

I saw the round
—
it caught the edge of the scout's kevlar helmet. It hit him in the face. He was dead before he hit the ground.

The shooter was front, right-flank, less than fifty.

The forward fire team pulled the immediate-action counter-ambush drill—running right
; 
to the enemy. To a concrete wall.

The moment they reached it, a burst of automatic rifle fire ripped from the left. A derelict house. Two more hit.
 

A prepared field of fire.

Cover
.
The marked warehouse.

Something stopped me.

I put my three teams on Nate's retreat, the squad SAW suppressing.

The same split second, the brick warehouse exploded. A ball of flame rolled across the street.

Bricks and debris flying. Everybody down. Firing, front-left, front-right.

Somebody pulled an M203. Put a high explosive round at the house.

We had to break contact—break, not engage
.

I grabbed the radio. Waved for Nate to peel right.

A machine gun opened up behind us. Third floor window of a bombed out office building. 

Behind us.

We couldn't pull back.

Paisano Pass, TX.

Five years later.

I pulled Michael from his vehicle—for the second time in my life. 

I rolled him on his back, saw the blood in the sand. It was leaching through the sweat top, the black cotton soaked around his right arm.

There was more blood on his left leg.

Tennille covered the pair of us with her shotgun.

I knelt by Michael, grabbed the sweat top, dragged it up over his stomach. 

Tennille backed away, to Michael's truck. She stood by the rear tire, eyes searching the pick-up bed.

I worked the sweat top over Michael's head. Saw the bandage on his arm. 

He'd got something over the wound, but blood was still oozing out of it. His head rolled in the dirt, eyes flickering open.

“Hey,” I says.

He gave a bare nod.

Tennille searched inside the truck cab. The barrel of the shotgun resting on the seat.

I called out, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Shut up,” she says.

The blood on Michael's jeans was dark. I put my hand to the leg wound. 

“How bad is this?”

“A nick...” His voice was ragged.

I pulled the sweat top back onto him. Tennille was still searching, ripping through a hold-all inside the cab. She tossed it aside. 

From the ground, Michael turned his head in her direction. 

Then he looks at me. “There's no fuckin' money...”

I watched her reach underneath the seat. She pulled out Michael's P250 Sig. 

She put the pistol in the pocket of her hunter's jacket. Took the shotgun in both hands. 

She stepped from the pick-up cab. “You owe me...”

“You half kill me? You hit me with the butt end of your shotgun.” I shook my head. “I say we're even.”

Michael pushed himself up on his elbows. He stared down the pass—down the line of the dirt track. 

“The hell is that?”

In the distance, a vehicle was approaching, a bank of dust trailing behind it. No way to make it out. 

He pushed himself straighter, the weight off his bad arm. Whispering under his breath, “Get the fuck out of here...”

I looked at him. His eyes never wavered.

Tennille raised the shotgun to her shoulder. “Get up,” she said, “both of you.”

I steadied myself, grabbed at Michael. Put his good arm over my shoulder, pulled him up.

Michael breathed, “I can rush her...”

Tennille raised the barrel straight. “Shut up. Whatever you're saying.”

I stared down the pass. 

Whatever it was, it was headed straight for us; less than a half a mile off. Some kind of big four by four.

Tennille swung the shotgun. “Get him in the truck...”

I shifted my weight. Took a half-step to Michael's pick-up.

“Not his,” she snaps, “mine...”

I checked step. 

“
Move
,” she shouts. “Get him in the back seat.” She jabbed the shotgun at me.

“
Your
truck?”

“Get the hell moving.”

I gripped Michael, we turned, ran, stumbling—Tennille tracking us, with her gun.

“Get him in,” she shouts.

I pushed him forward. “What about me?”

“Get in the front,” she says. “You're driving.”

The Nine Hill.

A trail in the mountains, headed north. 

Michael's slumped against the window, behind me on the back seat.

Tennille beside him. The 250 SIG in her hand. 

I checked the rear-view. The shotgun's propped in the door frame in back.

“Can you see anybody?” she says.

I didn't answer.

The four by four had followed us out as far as the edge of the pass. Then it'd turned back, towards Michael's pick-up.

“It must have been somebody off the ranch,” she says.

“Yeah. And they would've seen you pointing a gun at us. They must've called the police.”

In the wing mirror of the truck I saw Michael push himself off the window. He tried to straighten up. 

“Gil?” His voice a rasp. “Why didn't you come...”

I thought of Terlingua, the power outage. The miner's house. 

I turned in my seat to stare at Tennille.

“Just keep driving.”

“You know these tracks?”

“I grew up here. Why wouldn't I?”

“Where the hell are we going?”

She didn't answer.

Alpine.

A lowering sky stretches out across the empty horizon. Whicher steers the Silverado along the two-lane into Alpine.

Spiny grass, the color of sand, shifts in the wake of his truck. 

He stares at a ridge of dark hills rising in the south. 

His cell phone rings. He picks up the call. 

“This is Benjamin Zemetti.” 

An educated voice. Late middle-aged.

“Alpine police department gave me this number.”

“Mr. Zemetti?”

“Doctor, actually. I'm calling from Brooke Army Medical Center.”

Whicher thinks of the USMC file.

“You wanted to make an inquiry. About a patient in my care?”

“Yes, sir. Heywood Black. US Marine Corps. It's in connection with a serious crime.”

The doctor clears his throat. “Yes,” he says. “I'm afraid I don't quite follow.”

Whicher looks out through the windshield, at the unyielding land.

“Captain Black was invalided out more than six months ago,” says the doctor.

“He was in charge of a rifle platoon,” Whicher says, “in Iraq. A lieutenant, five years ago.”

“Five years?”

“I'd like to discuss an incident that occurred while he was in command of that platoon.”

The doctor's silent on the end of the line.

“I'd just like to ask him some questions,” says Whicher.

“I can't guarantee he'll be able to help you. Captain Black was invalided out suffering a severe intra-cranial injury...”

“
Intra-cranial
, that's a head injury?”

“Correct.”

“Is he still, uh...”

“He can function,” the doctor cuts in. “But he's pretty severely impaired.”

“Can I speak with him? Under your supervision?”

“You'd have to come in...”

“To Brooke—to San Antonio?”

“There's no question of him going anywhere else.”

Whicher stares at the snaking line in the center of the highway. “No, no. Of course.” He pauses. “Doc, I don't mean to be blunt about this. Thing of it is, if I come on out there. What I mean is...”

“He can talk.”

Whicher nods.

“That's all I can tell you. Do you still want to see him?”

CHAPTER 13

Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits. I-10. TX.

A parking lot. The back of a fast food restaurant, close to the interstate.

I stood by the red and black 350. The lot deserted. Tennille pointing Michael's SIG at me through the pocket of her hunter's jacket. 

“I need to get him inside. Get him something to eat.”

“You go,” Tennille says. “He stays here. Bring him something out.”

Michael leaned against the door post. His black sweat top oozing at the arm.

I says, “You trust me not to pull something?”

She gave me her dark-eyed stare. “I don't think you'd do anything to put your friend at risk.”

“Of what?”

“You don't come out of that restaurant, I'll drive him to the nearest police station. They can take care of his bullet wounds for him.”

I looked at her.

“But you're not about to do that,” she says. “I'll give you that.”

From the truck, Michael held his bad arm.

“I'm going in and get you something,” I says. “You got to eat.”

“I'm alright.” He tries a smile. It dies before it's half formed on his face.

“Get back in the truck,” she says to Michael.

His eyes move from her to me. “Go ahead,” I says. “Sit tight.” 

He gave the slightest nod. Got in the rear of the crew cab. Let his head fall back against the rest.

Tennille stood in the parking lot, hand still in her jacket pocket, holding the pistol.

I went inside. Bought chicken. A bunch of sodas. 

I watched her through the window, pacing up and down in the lot. She stared at Michael, in the truck. Then broke off, to check the entrance to the restaurant lot for any cars, anything coming. Turning the silver bracelets at her wrist. Thrusting her hand back in her pocket, to the bulge of the gun.

I paid the guy at the counter. Carried everything in a cardboard tray. Back out in the glare of sun, hot wind raking the tarmac, straight off the desert.

Michael was passed out, sitting in the back of her truck. 

Tennille had climbed in the truck bed. She was closing up the tool-chest, wind pushing hair into her face.

I knelt by Michael, took his shoulder. Shook it, not too hard. 

His eyes opened, a familiar blue. 

My man Michael—with the life draining out of him. In a chicken joint car park.

“Hey,” I says.

“Hey.”

“You okay?”

He gave me a grin. “Fuck, no.”

I took a cup of soda out from the tray. Opened it for him. He took it in his good left hand. Chugged down the ice cold, sweet liquid. 

Sweat was running off him, slick on his skin. Dark and matted in his blond hair. Like a shipwrecked Swede. In an ocean of desert. Waves of heat blowing off the battered lot.

“We in a spot, huh?”

He lowered the cup from his mouth.

I says, “I got your back.”

His eyes seemed to brighten.

“Eat something,” I put the cardboard tray of chicken on his lap. Put his hand on a piece, raised it up, towards his mouth.

Tennille jumped down from the back of the F350. 

“I put the shotgun in the toolchest,” she says. “Locked in. So don't be getting any ideas.” 

She had a cigarette in one hand. She kept the other hand on Michael's pistol, in her pocket. 

“Half a mile from here,” she says, “there's another interstate. It connects with I-10.”

“So?”

“I-20,” she says. A strange cast of light at her face. “Runs all the way to Dallas.”

I stood up. Left Michael eating chicken. Walked to the middle of the lot, to stop him hearing. 

Tennille followed.

“You need money,” she says. She slipped the brushed steel Zippo from her pocket. Flicked it open. Sparked a flame.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“There's a gas station at the intersection. Where the interstates meet. You need money. So do I...”

I just stared at her.

“There's something else.” She lit the cigarette. Flicked the long dark hair from her face. “The two of you need a car.”

I crossed my arms over my chest.

“I'll drive,” she says. “You go on inside. Rob the place. Steal somebody's car.” She took a hit on the cigarette. “Then get out. Meet me. Give me half the money. That's it.”