Duke City Hit (15 page)

Vic parked next to a fat cottonwood just off Rio Grande Boulevard at a spot where one of the irrigation ditches crossed under the road.

Most of the ditches are lined by dirt lanes so farmers can travel along them to open and close the gates that direct the water. Valley residents use the system of paths for nature strolls and horseback rides. Vic rarely got down here himself. He walked for exercise a few times a week, but he preferred concrete beneath his feet.

He was glad he wasn't wearing his expensive loafers now. The lane along the ditch was dusty and uneven and dented by hooves. He'd left the heavy coat and other cold-weather gear in the Cadillac, but he still wore the boots and jeans, the long underwear and loose denim shirt. Just another Saturday stroller, out enjoying nature, a pistol stashed in his belt.

Yellow cottonwood leaves crunched underfoot as Vic angled toward Zamora's fortress. The bosque underbrush had shed its leaves, too, so the tall pyracantha hedge stood out as a wall of green sprinkled with orange berries. A narrow ditch, dry this time of year, split off from the main channel and ran thirty feet to a three-foot gap in the hedge.

Vic slowed at the gap, trying to see what lay beyond. A wedge of winter-yellow lawn. The white mansion glaring in the sunshine, nearly as tall as the ancient cottonwoods that reached naked arms toward the tiled roof. A broad patio off the back, stepping down to the lawn in three stone terraces.

Vic got just a glimpse of the black-clad sentry who stood guard outside the patio doors. Sunglasses and an automatic rifle, just like the men at the hunting lodge. He wondered how many others Zamora had stationed around the property.

He walked another hundred feet, in case someone was watching, then turned and went back the way he'd come

It wouldn't be a rifle shot this time. He'd have to shoot his way onto the property, which meant pistols with silencers. Take out as many of Zamora's people as necessary to get inside the house. Then go room to room, putting down anybody who got in his way, until he reached the drug dealer and finished him.

He paused as he passed the gap in the hedge. The sentry was still there, and he was looking in his direction, so Vic couldn't stop. Didn't matter. He'd seen what he needed to see. Enough to make a half-assed plan. The rest would be guts and luck.

First he needed to go back to the Cadillac to get ammunition and guns.

Lots of guns.

Ryan smoldered as the SUV crept into the parking lot of the Desert Rose Motel. His Mustang was not parked where he left it. He jumped out, the asphalt cold and gritty under his feet, and went to the door of room eleven. He banged on it a few times, but no answer came from inside.

Where was Tina? Where was his car? Why weren't the police all over this room? Hadn't Tina reported that he'd been kidnapped?

Ryan looked around, but no one was watching him. Hardly any traffic. He climbed into the Ford Escape and backed out of the parking lot. He screeched around two corners, then went straight a couple of blocks before finally jouncing into the gravel driveway of Penny Randall's house.

His Mustang was at the end of the driveway, next to the carport where Vic normally kept his car. The Cadillac was nowhere to be seen. Ryan ran to the apartment door anyway, knocking on it, calling out for Vic.

A screen door banged behind him. He turned to see Penny step out onto the little stoop that jutted from the kitchen door. She was wearing a blue bathrobe.

“Look who's here,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine.”

“Tina said you were snatched—”

“Where is she?” he demanded. “Where's Vic?”

“She's inside,” Penny said. “Vic is, um, out looking for you. Come in and I'll tell you about it.”

She went back into the house. Ryan hurried across the bare yard, rocks sharp underfoot, then up the cold concrete steps.

The door opened directly into the kitchen. Wooden table with four chairs to his left, sink and stove to his right. A tile floor that wasn't much warmer than outdoors.

Penny stood behind the table, looking him over.

“What happened? They turn you loose?”

“Where's Tina?”

“She's in the bathroom. Tell me what happened.”

“Two guys were holding me, blindfolded and handcuffed. I tricked them into uncuffing me, then I roughed 'em up a little and got away. Took their car. Should've taken their shoes.”

He folded his arms across his chest, trying to warm up.

“I'll get you some socks in a second,” Penny said. “Those guys, did you kill them?”

“Just a little tae kwon do. They'll live. But here's the weird part: They were holding me at that vacant house where I met Vic. Don't you own that house?”

“Not exactly. It's tied up in court.”

“Why did the kidnappers take me there?”

“Beats me,” Penny said. “Maybe they followed you there the first time and saw that it was still furnished and all.”

“Nobody followed me,” he said. “Maybe they followed Vic.”

“I doubt that,” Penny said. “Vic's too careful.”

“Is he okay?”

“He's been worried sick about you. Tina, too. She came straight here after they grabbed you. I've been looking after her.”

“She's in the bathroom? Tina!”

His voice boomed in the hallway that branched off the kitchen. A door at the far end flung open and Tina burst out of it, laughing and crying and screaming all at the same time. She sprinted the length of the hall and slammed against him in a ferocious hug.

“It's okay, Tina. I'm okay.”

“I knew you'd come for me,” she said into his chest. “I knew you'd save me.”

“Save
you
? Save you from what?”

Tina pointed an accusatory finger at Penny. “She held a gun on me!”

Penny shook her head.

“It's right there in her pocket!”

Now that she mentioned it, Ryan could see the butt of a pistol jutting from the pocket of Penny's robe. Looked like one of Vic's favored Rugers.

“I had to do something,” Penny said. “She was hysterical.”

“She's lying! I was trying to call the police!”

Penny rolled her eyes. “I told her she couldn't do that. She'd put you in danger. Put Vic in danger.”

“Where the hell is Vic?”

“He went looking for you,” Tina said. “At that white house in the North Valley. I saw a photo—”

“Whose house is it?”

“A guy named Joaquin Zamora,” Penny said. “He's a drug dealer who's got it in for Vic.”

“How long ago did he leave?”

She glanced at the clock above the stove. “More than an hour ago. He's probably on his way back by now.”

“Call him,” Ryan said. “Tell him I got loose.”

“He never answers the phone when he's working,” she said. “Doesn't want the distraction.”

“Try it anyway.”

Penny went to the phone on the wall and punched numbers.

Ryan put his arm around Tina's shoulders and whispered in her ear. “I'll take you back to the motel, then I'll go see if I can help Vic.”

“She said it's too late—”

Penny hung up the phone. “Went to voice mail. I told you he wouldn't answer. He's out of contact. Doing what he does best.”

Ryan said, “Tell me how to find Zamora's house.”

Half an hour passed before Vic got back to the gap in the hedge, but the sentry was still in place on the patio. Black sunglasses, black clothes, black gun. Bulky under his clothes. Probably wearing a Kevlar vest. Which meant a head shot if Vic wanted him to go quietly.

Shit. Couldn't anything about this be easy?

Up close, the pyracantha was a tangle of stiff branches covered in waxy leaves and orange berries and three-inch-long thorns. It was, however, a row of plants, not a solid wall, and there were bound to be gaps. Vic crept along the hedge until he found a space between two branches, just wide enough for him to see the sentry, forty feet away on the patio, his rifle pointed at the ground while he busily picked his nose.

Vic thought about tossing something over the hedge, get the guard to come closer, but he quickly ruled that out. Zamora's men were on full alert. The slightest noise was likely to be met with raking gunfire.

He pulled a silenced .22 from the back of his belt and gingerly snaked his arm through the gap in the bushes. Thorns raked his sleeve, but the denim protected his skin. Standing with his feet braced wide apart so he was the right height to see through the hole, Vic lined up the shot, the front sight even with the guard's forehead.

The man beamed with success as he dislodged what he'd been mining in his nostril. Vic pulled the trigger. The sentry's head snapped back and he crumpled to the ground. Bright blood blotted the white wall behind him; some spattered across the panes of the French doors, too. Vic froze, waiting for an alarm to go up inside the house, but nothing came.

One down.

He carefully extracted his arm, then walked briskly to the gap in the hedge. He stepped into the dry ditch, leaves crunching underfoot. Without hesitating, he strode across the lawn toward the patio, the elongated pistol alongside his thigh, the gym bag in his other hand.

No more sentries on this side of the house. Vic bent low as he reached the landscaped terraces that stepped up to the patio, in case someone happened to look out a window.

Movement to his right. A fat man came around the corner of the house. He wore baggy khakis and a plaid flannel shirt with the tails out. His eyes widened when he spotted Vic. He reached under his shirt, digging for a pistol at his belt.

Vic dropped to one knee, steadying himself. The .22 puffed, sending two grams of lead rocketing into the fat man's neck. He grabbed at his throat with both hands. Blood spurted through his fingers. Vic adjusted his aim and fired again, hitting the man in the cheek, flattening him with hardly a sound.

Two down.

The broad patio was paved with square concrete tiles. The black-clad sentry lay on the far side in a pool of red. Blood flowed along the grout between the tiles, creeping across the patio in a geometric pattern.

Vic considered taking the sentry's rifle. He might need rapid-fire for what was to come. But he'd have to pass in front of the French doors to get to the fallen man. Too much exposure. Instead, he tucked into a corner of the patio, stucco walls meeting behind him, pistol scanning back and forth in front of him.

Still no shouts or alarms, but it wouldn't be long before someone came looking for the dead guards. Vic needed to find Zamora and get this finished.

Tina wrung her hands, her back pressed against the motel room door, as if that would do any good, as if she could keep him from going.

“Don't do this, Ryan. Don't leave me alone again.”

He sat on the end of the bed, pulling on his black jeans. “I have to, hon. Get some stuff together and I'll drop you at a different motel, where you'll be safe.”

“It's not me I'm worried about.”

“I'll be careful.” He began putting on his socks and boots. “Maybe it'll be like Penny said. All over but the shouting.”

“I don't believe Penny,” Tina said. “She's been lying to us.”

“About what?”

“All of it. The kidnappers. The phone calls. Zamora.”

“How is that lying?”

“She's hiding something. While you were gone, she was on the phone a lot, whispering with people other than Vic.”

“So?”

“Who was she calling in the middle of the night?”

“It doesn't matter,” he said. “What matters is right now. Vic's risking his life because of me. I can't leave him hanging.”

He lifted his black leather jacket off the back of a chair and slipped it on, settling its weight on his shoulders. He still wore the
KISS ME
shirt she'd bought for him, and it looked ridiculous with the biker jacket.

“You could be killed.”

“I'll be fine.”

“I thought you were dead already,” she said. “I thought I'd never see you again. Now you're back with me, safe and sound. And you're going to run off and get into a shoot-out with drug dealers.”

“I'll just go make sure Vic's okay.”

She shook her head, her black ponytail dancing. “I don't want you to go.”

“I have to, Tina. He's my father.”

“Two months ago, you'd never heard of the man. Now you're going to throw your life away on him?”

He didn't answer. He opened a dresser drawer and dug among socks until he came up with an extra magazine for his gun.

“You don't really know anything about these people, Ryan. You don't know what they're mixed up in.”

“I know more than you think.”

“Well, I don't! I don't understand any of this! It's crazy. People running around with guns—”

He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. He kissed her forehead, then gently steered her toward the closet.

“Get your things.”

“I don't want you to go.”

“You've got to trust me, Tina.”

“I do trust you. I don't trust
them
.”

Vic edged along the side of the tall white house, peeking in windows, looking for Joaquin Zamora.

A shout arose behind him. A man's voice, gabbling in Spanish. Vic couldn't make out the words, but it was clear the bodies had been found.

He hurried along the wall, no longer bothering to duck under windows. He'd almost made it to the front yard when a shout went up there, too. Two men with automatic rifles came running from the driveway gate, yelling at him.

He raised the pistol and fired twice. The shots went wide. The men stopped in their tracks and raised their rifles. Brass glinted in the sun as shells arced away from the chattering guns. Bullets kicked up turf near Vic's feet, spattering his jeans with mud.

He fired twice more, but he was already running, covering twenty feet of open ground to reach the fat trunk of the gnarly cottonwood that dominated this side of the yard. Bullets whizzed all around him. He crouched behind the tree, its rough bark comforting against his back while he reloaded the .22.

More rifle fire, chewing up the far side of the trunk. The ancient tree was so thick that two grown men couldn't reach around it, but Vic still tried to be as narrow as possible. Chunks of bark flew off the tree, littering the lawn around him. He pressed against the trunk, his gun up near his face, the familiar scents of gun oil and cordite mixing in his nose.

A red-haired man peeked around the corner at the back of the house. Vic saw him immediately, had been expecting gunmen to come from that direction. Hadn't expected a gringo, though.

He aimed at the spot where he'd seen the redhead. As soon as the head popped into sight again, Vic pulled the trigger. The bullet chipped stucco off the wall, spraying the man's freckled face. He shouted and fell back.

A moment of silence, gun smoke wafting away on the breeze. Vic shifted behind the tree to look around the trunk. The riflemen had spread out, trying to get the angles on him.

A window slammed open upstairs, and Zamora appeared there. He'd changed out of his hunting clothes, and now wore a loose white shirt over jeans. He fired a pistol almost straight down at Vic.

Bullets thudded into the soil as Vic rolled away. From flat on his back, he fired the silenced pistol four times, the bullets shattering the window and splintering the sills. Zamora vanished from sight.

Vic rolled back behind the tree as the riflemen opened up again. Sod and bark and hot lead filled the air as he hugged the ground.

A moment's hesitation. Vic heard the unmistakable sound of a magazine slamming home. He peeked around the trunk and saw one of the gunmen looking down as he reloaded.

Vic squeezed off two quick shots, hitting the man in the chest. He crumpled to the ground.

The other rifleman opened fire. A bullet sheared another chunk of bark off the cottonwood, and it caromed off Vic's head. A quick sharp pain on his scalp, easily ignored for now.

No way to win this shoot-out, not trapped out here under a tree. Zamora's men could come from too many directions. How long could he hold them off? How long before the police arrived?

An engine roared out front, and he peeked around the tree, expecting to see cops. A black SUV raced backward into the driveway and crashed through the clanging gates, then slewed around crazily in the driveway, tires screaming.

The rifleman who had Vic pinned down whirled to shoot at the vehicle, but he was too late. It hit him square-on, the front bumper knocking him down. Tires bumped over his body, pressing it into the sod. The SUV skidded sideways as it came to a stop, tearing black stripes in the dry lawn.

The driver's door opened and Ryan spilled out, falling to one knee, his .45 already in hand, his head whipping around as he looked for someone to shoot.

“Son of a gun,” Vic said.

Ryan aimed and fired past him, the .45 booming, the slug taking another chunk out of the corner of the house where the redhead continued to play peekaboo.

“You all right?” Ryan called to Vic.

“Yeah. You?”

“Never better.” Ryan hurried over to him, staying in a crouch. “I got away from those guys who were holding me. Penny told me where to find you.”

“I must say, your timing's excellent. But why did you come roaring through the gate
backward
?”

“I didn't want to get punched in the face by the air bag.”

“Ah. Good thinking. But you lost points on the dismount.”

“What about for parking on top of a guy?”

“Probably get you a ticket.”

A gunshot hacked another chunk of bark from the tree, just above Vic's head. He turned in time to see the redhead duck back out of sight.

“This fuckin' guy,” Vic said.

He aimed the .22 at the spot where he'd last seen the redhead.

Ryan said, “You want me to—”

“Just hold on.”

The redhead peeked around the corner. Vic shot him in the forehead.

“There,” he said. “Now we can get to work.”

“Shouldn't we just get out of here? I'm not kidnapped anymore.”

Vic shook his head. “There's stuff going on here you don't understand. You should leave. I'll finish up.”

“I'm not going without you,” Ryan said. “You need someone watching your back.”

“I never have before.”

Ryan scanned the windows of the house. “We can both leave.”

“Nah. Zamora will be pissed now. He'll never drop it.”

“You sure he's inside?”

“I saw him in a window upstairs, but I haven't actually made it indoors yet.”

Ryan grinned. “What are we waiting for?”

“The cops will be here any minute.”

“Then we'd better hurry.”