Castroville: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 7 (23 page)

     At that moment Robbie made a very bad mistake.

     Robbie had been watching the street, waiting for the cops that would eventually swarm the block, going house to house and clearing each house as they proceeded.

     His plan was to get them in sight, from whichever direction they were coming from first, and to take out the first one who presented himself as a good target.

     Then he’d be on the move. Over the fence which divided the houses, up the oak tree which was planted way too close to the house next door, and onto the roof.

     From the roof of the house next door he’d have a different vantage point. A bit higher and from a better angle. And depending where the cops took cover after his previous shot, he might have a sitting duck waiting for him from his new position.

     If not, he’d wait again, until someone stood up or low-crawled into the open.

     Then he’d take them out and change position again.

     He’d keep them guessing, and he’d try his best to convince them he wasn’t alone, by having his kill shots come from several different places.

     A smarter man, or rather a man using his full mental faculties, would have seen the error in his own plan. He’d have seen that with all eyes aimed in his general direction that he was much more likely to be spotted when on the move than his opponents.

     He’d have understood that when he took the higher ground, on the rooftop, his cover would be limited at best, and he could present a huge and unprotected target.

     But that wasn’t where Robbie made his biggest mistake.

     He made his biggest mistake by not keeping an accurate count of his rounds. And by not planning ahead before the battle unfolded before him.

     He’d never changed his magazine after shooting Oglesby and the other two cops. That should have left him seven rounds. Then he took out Woods with one round to the neck. That meant six.

     But he couldn’t remember. Had he changed the magazine before he shot Oglesby? It seemed like such a basic thing. Of course he placed a full magazine in his weapon.

     Or maybe he didn’t.

     Now, in addition to the ants eating him alive, he had another distraction.

     In the midst of a firefight, he needed to know exactly how many rounds he had left.

     And at this point in time, he didn’t.

     So he made a rookie mistake to correct another rookie mistake.

     He changed magazines.

     Parrish knew what an AR-15 magazine sounded like when it was released from the weapon. He’d used an M-16 in Vietnam so many years before. The M-16 was the military version of the AR-15. And he’d changed magazines a thousand times in the jungles of Cambodia and Laos. He owned an AR himself now, and before the blackout he took it to the firing range a couple of Saturdays each month. Even now he fired it every chance he got.

     He knew the soft sound a spring-loaded magazine made when its release button was pushed and it popped downward.

     When Parrish heard that sound he immediately went to ground. He was close to at least one of the shooters.

     He wasn’t sure exactly where, but it sounded like the noise came from the other side of a cedar privacy fence and forty to fifty feet away.

     That would make sense, if the shooter was between the two houses and waiting to ambush his officers.

     Then Parrish heard another sound. It was the sound of metal scraping on metal, then a loud click. The shooter had inserted a new magazine and locked it into place.

     Both men felt a rush of confidence, almost elation, but for different reasons.

     Robbie felt the rush knowing he now had ten rounds at his immediate disposal.

     Parrish knew exactly where his shooter was. And he had a pretty good idea he was looking in the opposite direction.

     Parrish needed to make sure, before he rushed headlong into an impossible situation, that the shooter was alone. And that he was indeed watching the street instead of the alley.

     Parrish was on the opposite side of the alley when he went to ground. That was the side where the dumpsters were located every other house and he’d been using them for cover.

     Now he low-crawled across the alley and to the fence where he’d heard the sounds.

     Still on the ground in the prone position, he eased up to a knothole in the fence just a few inches off the ground.

     He could barely make out a few inches of a man’s shoulder, on the east side of the house, as the man stood vigil at the front corner of the house and peered over the fence adjacent to it.

     But he didn’t have a shot. Not really. All he had was his service weapon. He’d have to be a damn good shot to hit the shooter’s shoulder. And of course, being wounded in the shoulder wouldn’t take the man down. In all likelihood it would just piss him off.

     Parrish looked around. Twenty feet in front of him, lying next to a dumpster, was a small night table perhaps eighteen inches high.

     It was worn and weather-beaten, obviously having been there for several years. Several years, as in before the blackout.

     It had been customary in this suburb, as in many others, for neighbors to take care of one another. Residents who threw out something they no longer wanted, but which might still be useable, would leave the item adjacent to the dumpster.

     Instead of inside of it.

     Such a practice drove garbage truck operators crazy. For it meant that they often had to get out of their trucks to toss unclaimed items into the dumpster before emptying it.

     But it was a boon to many neighbors, who might see the discarded items and take them for their own use.

     This table had been sitting next to the dumpster since before the blackout. It had been rained on, iced over, and beaten upon by the brutal San Antonio late summer sun.

     Still, its box design and two drawers would mean it was once sturdy.

     It might still hold Parrish’s weight.

     In any event, it seemed the only option he had to be able to reach over the fence and fire his weapon.

    Robbie, lost in his fantasy world where he was only moments away from killing a sizeable portion of the SAPD, didn’t know Parrish was closing in on him. If he had, he’d have pivoted and riddled the back fence with gunfire. He might have gotten lucky and hit his unseen target on the other side of the fence. Whether he did or not, he would most certainly give away his position.

     But he heard nothing, other than his inner demons.

     And that bought Parrish just a little more time.

     The deputy chief retrieved the table and holstered his weapon just long enough to carry it across the alley to the fence. He positioned it a few inches from the fence, at a place where he would see his target’s full body.

     Then he crawled atop the table and carefully peeked over the fence, half expecting to have his head blown away.

     But Robbie Benton had his thoughts focused elsewhere.

     He saw movement in one of the houses on the other side of the street. A front door opened and someone was preparing to step out into the yard.

     It wasn’t a threat to Robbie, or to anyone else. It was old Mrs. Greer, Chief Martinez’ last neighbor, going outside to get some fresh air.

     But Robbie didn’t know that. All he saw was the door opening. He assumed it was a policeman who’d checked the home’s back yard and was coming out the front door to continue his search.

     He trained his sights in the open doorway, about where he expected to see a blue uniform emerge.

     At that instant, Parrish called out in a booming and commanding voice, “Freeze, Benton!”

     But Robbie didn’t freeze.

     Robbie turned, his weapon moving in Parrish’s direction.

     And he took six shots to the chest and abdomen.

     Parrish knew there were no other gunmen. He knew that no one would work with Robbie Benton in a plot to kill San Antonio cops. For one, no one else had anything to gain. Robbie didn’t either, but his own twisted mind wouldn’t let him accept that.

     For another, Parrish knew that Robbie was a lone wolf. He didn’t like partners. He craved his solitude and would rather work twice as hard in order to do something by himself. He just wasn’t the type to ask for help in a murder spree.

     Parrish climbed over the fence, then hopped down into the yard, muttering a few choice curse words when he landed hard and almost threw out his knee.

     He hobbled over to Robbie, felt for a pulse and found none.

     He picked up the killer’s weapon and unhooked the gate latch, then walked into the front yard.

     He checked the number on the house.

     “This is Eagle Two. Suspect is dead. All units converge at 4241 North Hein Road. Charlie Nine, return to the original crime scene and secure it until we can get our boys back home again. How’s Woods doing?”

     “He’s dead, sir.”

     “Damn it!”

     Parrish walked over to the chief’s house to check on him.

     But he already knew what he was going to find.

-50-

     Two more days passed until Sara, Tom and Stacey reached the city limits of San Antonio. They’d gotten a little extra sleep and set out just after midnight, so that they could continue to ride after the sun came up.

     While in San Antonio they would need to be up during the daytime in order to find the old Zavala Library which had been converted to a reunification center.

     The best way to do that would be to tough it out and stay up all day long, then to fall asleep exhausted the following night.

     Sara yawned.

     “Hey Tom, can we talk now?”

     She took off her night vision goggles and let them hang across her chest by their leather strap. It was almost sunrise and she could see without them.

     “Yes,” he answered. “Go ahead.”

     Tom had forbidden them from talking at night to avoid giving themselves away. They’d walked at a slow pace on horseback, on the grass median, for over thirty miles. The center of the median was one hundred and fifty feet wide, and allowed them to walk past abandoned vehicles on both sides of the highway virtually silently. Talking would have alerted others to their presence. It would have told the nomads who frequently slept in abandoned tractor trailer rigs that there was someone out there in the dark.

     Now though, traveling in daylight, they wouldn’t be quite so stealthy.

     The first rays of the sun peeked over the horizon, and bathed young Sara’s face in warmth. She missed the sun. Wasn’t a night person at all. She understood the need to ride at night. It was safer that way, and they were in no real hurry. So it was the prudent thing to do. But the night vision goggles, with the ugly green-gray glow they tinted everything with, were starting to give her a headache.

     And she had a very small head, which wasn’t unusual for a petite woman. The goggles were made for a person with a bigger head, and didn’t fit well even with the straps completely tightened. She was getting blisters, one on each side of the forehead, from the strap’s buckles which rocked back and forth against her face with every step her horse took.

     Tom called over his shoulder, “Hey Stacey, you awake back there?”

     “Yes, sir.”

     “Y’all watch for any sign of people, okay?”

     “Yes, sir.”

     The trio sauntered on for another hour and saw not a living soul, human or otherwise.

     Nomads were day people. They spent their lives on the highway in the long stretches between cites. They typically found an abandoned truck, from Walmart or one of the other big retailers. A typical truck was a gold mine when fully loaded. Most of the food was bad by now, several years after the blackout. But the nomads would toss the expired canned goods, clothing, dishes, and other things they couldn’t use unceremoniously out the trailer’s door and into big piles on the highway.

     The things they could use… the dried beans and soup mixes and macaroni and cheese, provided nourishment and kept their bellies full.

     Typically a fully loaded trailer would keep a group of four to eight nomads fed for six months to a year.

     Then they’d simply move on until they found another truck.

     As the trio walked on through the early morning hours, they saw truck after truck with huge piles of discarded trash behind them. Stacey asked why that was, and Tom explained to her about the nomads and their way of life.

     “It’s as good a way to live as any, I suppose. They’re a peaceful people, mostly. They know there’s no reason to fight each other for a truck, when there’s probably another truck that hasn’t been touched yet over the next hill or around the next bend.”