Castroville: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 7 (15 page)

     Chief Martinez, on the other hand, still lived at his home on North Hein Road. It was the house he grew up in. Had lived in every day of his life. He always said it was the house he’d die in.

     The chief had been number two on Robbie’s hit list. And if number one was inaccessible, that placed the chief at the very top.

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     In the end, it was ridiculously easy for Robbie to exact his plan for revenge. He simply did everything he’d planned to do to assassinate John Castro and moved it to a different place, in a different part of the city.

     Chief Martinez didn’t even have a clue he’d become Robbie’s new target.

     If he had, he certainly would have changed his habits.

He’d have moved his wife of thirty one years to a different location, then perhaps have joined her there.

     He’d have stopped being so predictable.

     Everyone knew that the chief always arrived in his office at ten past eight every morning, give or take a minute or two for traffic variations before the blackout. And give or take a minute or two for weather variations since.

     The chief had walked out his front door at precisely seven fifteen for years. Always with a cup of coffee in hand, always with an adoring wife walking onto the front porch with him to kiss him goodbye.

     But this would be the last time.

     He never saw the grenade Robbie had rolled onto the porch between them. As Robbie was ducking back behind the brick wall adjacent to the porch to avoid the blast, the chief’s wife looked down to see what bumped against her foot.

     The last thing Chief Martinez ever saw was a very puzzled look on Eva’s face.

     The blast killed both of them. Him instantly, her a little bit longer. She tried to help him, in her own last moments. But there was nothing she could do. The lower half of her husband’s body simply wasn’t there anymore.

     She looked to Robbie for help. But all she saw was the sneer on his face.

     He said something, but she couldn’t hear it. Her ears were still ringing from the blast. Her left leg was completely gone, her right leg lay tattered, her life’s blood pouring out of her.

     Her face still appeared puzzled as things started to darken around her and Robbie began to laugh. Then things went forever black and Robbie watched as she closed her eyes for the last time.

     He bent over to spit in the chief’s face. The chief had always said he’d lived in that house his entire life, and he planned to die there.

     Robbie helped him fulfill his destiny.

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      Jack Payton hated defiance in any form. It didn’t matter that he, a societal outlier, was as guilty as any of defying the laws of civilized society.

     That was different. Because he was committing offenses and affronts to others.

     When someone did it to him? Well, then it was personal.

     He hated nothing more than desertion within his own ranks. When a man agreed to work for him, he expected nothing less than the man’s entire life and circumstance. He was not too far removed from the devil himself, demanding the everlasting soul of his followers.

     When those same men decided they no longer wanted to be in his employ, he was almost like a sensitive child whose feelings were hurt.

     “What do you mean, you don’t want to work here anymore? Haven’t I given you everything you needed, provided for your every want?”

     Payton was all about the show. And he wanted to make this show one that would be discussed for a very long time.

     “I’ve called you here this morning because discipline is breaking down all around us. Our own people are leaving us, deserting their posts and scurrying off into the night. They’re cowards in every sense of the word. Selfish cowards at that, for their departure is leaving our flanks exposed to attacks. By leaving us the way they do, they expose every other one of you to attack. They’re endangering your lives to make their own a little easier.

     “That should make you furious. It makes me furious. And we’re going to put a stop to it here and now.”

     He looked around, pausing a moment at each person’s face. He looked each one of them in the eye.

     “After this meeting, by God, none of you will ever desert again. None of you will have the guts to, for each and every one of you will know what you’ll have coming if you do.

     “Suarez… Cook… Swain… McCoy… Mason… you boys draw horses from the corral and saddle up. I want you to light out after Redding and Hadley and bring them back alive. I don’t care how you do it, but you do it. If you come back without them, you’ll meet their fate instead of them.”

     Suarez started to say something to Payton, but saw something in the boss man’s eyes. Something he would describe later in not-so-glowing terms.

     “I saw what insanity must look like.”

     Payton walked back to Tom and stood beside him. That was worrisome enough to Sara. That he still held the scythe in his left hand made it hard for her to hold her position.

     Randy found that by going to one knee and moving slightly to his left, he could get a good view of both Tom and Payton.

     He quietly drew his handgun and scanned the crowd.

     He was relieved to note that most of the men rushed out of the house without their weapons. He made note of the ones who were armed and where they were in relation to Tom and to the edge of the hayloft where they might be able to see Sara.

     If the shooting started, he wanted to have a good idea where his primary targets would be.

     He also noted that not a single one of the women were armed.

     He’d consider the women and children all friendlies until they started to show any aggression toward the good guys. He hoped the women and children had the good sense to go to the ground at the first shot, but he expected the children would do the worst possible thing and run.

     Running would be a bad thing once the bullets started flying. Many people have died in shootouts because they ran into the line of fire, or because they were seen in the corner of someone’s eye and wrongly perceived as a threat.

     Randy hoped this thing would end fairly peacefully and not turn into a bloodbath.

     But that, of course, would depend on Mr. Payton and his actions in the coming minutes.

     Payton continued with his rambling speech.

     “I want to show you what I plan to do with Redding and Hadley when they are brought to me. I was going to just describe it to you. But it so happens we have a volunteer in our midst who will help me to show you instead. And a demonstration is so much more effective in a case like this.

     “In the Arab world, public executions have gone on for thousands of years. And they’re never done behind closed doors. Behind closed doors they offer no deterrent value. Out of sight, out of mind and all that.

     “No, they’re done in public, for all the rest of the citizens to see. It’s a very effective way for others to see the light, and to decide that they won’t repeat the same transgressions as the condemned. There’s just something about seeing a beheading first thing in the morning to keep everyone on the right path.”

     Sara, Randy and everyone else knew where Payton was going.

     Payton become Randy’s number one target, and he stepped out of the shadows and leveled his pistol at the madman’s chest.

      From her vantage point in the darkened hayloft, Sara commanded an unobstructed view of much of the lower part of the barn. The light from the torches danced across the faces of those assembled below and left a medieval feel to the scene playing out before her.

     She still didn’t know Randy’s whereabouts, or even if he’d been able to enter the barn, but she prayed he was there among the others, to provide her whatever aid he could in her getaway.

     As for saving Tom Haskins’ life, it was now or never, for she knew she was running out of time.

     A lesser woman would have felt the gravity of the situation, and would have panicked. Or might have frozen at just the wrong moment. But Tom was lucky in that his life lay in the hands of a very strong and capable woman.

     It mattered not that the weight of the world, or at least the very lives of two good people and maybe a third, lay directly upon Sara’s shoulders. She was up to the task.

     She hadn’t fired a weapon since she’d removed Glen’s ugly face from his “Father of the Year” plaque some months before, but it didn’t matter. Her aim was true. She assumed a shooter’s stance in the shadows of the hayloft, took a deep breath, and squeezed the trigger.

     Her first shot struck Payton in the center of his chest.

     As his limp body crumpled to the ground, her second shot hit a stunned Wimberly on the left side of his head, just behind the temple.

     The others were slow to respond, having just seen their brutal leaders fall lifelessly before them.

     And, as she had hoped, none of them had the resolve to offer any further resistance.

    
Cut off the head of the snake,
Tom had told her,
and you remove the threat.

     As if on cue, Randy Maloney burst free from the back of the crowd and held the armed men at gunpoint. He reached down and got Wimberly’s revolver and handed it to Tom, all the time glaring at the crowd as though daring them to make a move.

     None did. The crowd had suddenly turned docile. Almost timid.

     The crisis was over.

      Sara walked to the edge of the hayloft, in full view of the crowd now, and stood ready to shoot anyone who made a move for a weapon. The murmurs racing through the group below made it clear that many were amazed this tiny girl, just barely a woman, had stood up to and conquered two of the most vile men Texas had ever seen.

     But there was still a problem.

     The five men who Payton had dispatched to search for his deserters a few minutes before were still out there.

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      Sara held her position at the edge of the hayloft looking down at the others. Her rifle was pointed in the direction of the men in the group, who’d huddled more or less separately from the women. 

     Randy went through the crowd, his gun still drawn, and took the weapons of the men who were armed. He tossed them over to Tom, who was still chained and disoriented but able to provide Randy with additional cover.

     Randy addressed the women first.

     “I am Randy Maloney of the Texas Rangers. My partners and I are here to liberate the ranch, and to weed out the evildoers among you. I assume that all of you are being held hostage against your will. Please select one among you to speak for the group.”

     The women whispered among themselves, and one woman stepped forward.

     “I am Annie. I was the best friend of the people who owned the ranch before that animal came in and had them murdered.”

     “And you have the permission of the other women and children to speak on their behalf?”

     Several of the others nodded in affirmation.

     “Very well, Annie. Are there any good men in this bunch? Men you can trust to provide protection for you and the others? Men you can trust to treat you as equals and not as slaves?”

     Annie turned and conferred with the others. Randy kept his gun leveled at the men should any of them bolt.