18 – Shoot out
Dan parked the van on the side of the road.
Before them, slanting down, the half-constructed highway stared back like a
ghost town, heavy equipment in place of broken-down saloon and black smith shop.
A few dirt lanes extended down into the valley in neat slices between the
trees, wounds from which the forest would never heal.
"This is crazy, Dan," Lance
protested. "Nobody's going to believe I'm Mike. I don't even look like
him."
"It's the way Mike wants it," Dan
said stiffly. "Argue with him when he gets back."
"If it's a trap, we won't be alive to
argue," Chris said, hand on the side door waiting for Mike's signal to
exit the van. "God knows
the
pacifist won't help me in a fight."
"But Mike will," Dan snapped.
"He's out there somewhere, waiting and watching."
Mike had met them at five, down the road from
where they were to meet Gil, shutting Dan aside in a series of whispers. Secret
strategies
from which this foolish plan had emerged.
"Don't worry," Lance said, bitterly.
"If it is a trap, I'll make sure they shoot you first. That way you won't
have to worry about what I'm doing."
Chris stared up startled. Point one for Lance
who had heard pacifist insults since his first day in basic and had learned to fight
back.
"Both of you shut up," Dan hissed.
"Someone's coming."
Tapping sounded from the walls of the van,
glimpses of men in ski masks showed at the windows, each man armed with a
rifle. One yanked open the side door, weapons poking in.
"Which of you are going?" the man
asked gruffly with a Mexican or Indian accent.
"Those two," Dan said, pointing at
Lance and Chris.
"All right then, out," he said, his
men stepping back with their weapons raised. Starlight made ghosts of them,
though Lance saw anger in their darting glances.
"Now, Mister L.A.," the masked
figure said to Dan through the open passenger window. "Why don't you just
drive off and forget you ever saw us. Okay?"
"What about them? Where do I pick them up
when you're through?"
The man laughed. "The morgue if they're
lucky. Just forget them, too," he said and banged the glass with the
barrel of his gun. "Unless you want to join them."
Chris, who stood close to Lance's shoulder,
shifted, her arms suddenly taunt as her hands gripped something deep in her
jacket pockets, the point through fabric suggesting the captured pistols.
The
ache came roaring into Lance’s head, filling the vacuum that came before every
fire fight. His stomach tightened with a tinge of fear. Someone was going to
die, and no matter how fast Lance was, or how good his medicine, he could not
save that life.
He touched Chris' elbow. She glared at him and
shook off his hand.
Dan glared through the windshield; his grim
face just barely exposed under the brim of his hat in the star light. He
engaged the gears and turned the van back up the way it had come, wheels spurting
soil as it completed its three-point turn. The rear right fender struck one of
the gun men. The man nearest Lance lost his face, a bullet making its exit
where the nose should have been. The echo of the shot set the others loose into
a firing frenzy, shooting at the shadows out of which the shots had come.
Sparks lit up the night as Chris dragged Lance down, her own two pistols active.
Mike rolled out from under the van, his own pistol popping.
The
fury shook the masked men, and they ran back into the hills.
Lance rushed to one of the fallen men, his
hands pressing closed a gaping wound in his chest. The heart pumped out the
blood through his fingers. The man moaned from under the mask.
"He's dying, damn it!" Lance shouted
as Chris rose up beside him. "Do something."
The man's eyes opened and stared up at her
face. Blood bubbled out from the corner of his mouth. The eyes widened.
"You?" he groaned.
Chris lifted her pistol and fired into the
tattered mask. The heart and moans ceased.
"You--You bitch!" Lance roared and
rose. "You didn't have to kill him?"
"It's what they intended for us,
friend," Chris said.
"But we're not supposed to..."
"This isn't the army now," Chris
said, pushing her pistols back into her pockets. "We don't have rules
here. We survive."
The firing went on in the hills as other,
unmasked strangers appeared out of the shadows on the far side of the road,
climbing up after the masked men like a small army.
One of this group paused near them.
"Where's Mike?" he asked.
Chris motioned towards Mike who was still near
the van.
"Took you people long enough," Mike
said, pocketing his own pistol. "I thought we were going to have to do
them in all by ourselves."
"You expected these people?" Chris
said, obviously angry. "And didn't tell us?"
"I wasn't sure they would get here in
time," Mike said. "And they almost didn't. What happened?"
"Road blocks," the stranger said,
glancing around, the star light revealing the mingled features of a mixed breed
Indian. His soiled
blue
jeans and work shirt suggested an immigrant worker from the citrus groves. But
his steady gaze reminded Lance of the Ranger units from missions deep in the
jungle, as shaggy and ill-kept as displaced villagers, yet deadly. "The
cops know something's up and are trying to snag people to find out what."
"I don't understand," Lance said.
"Why were those people trying to kill us? And who are you?"
"I'm from Gil," the Indian said.
"And those others are one of the many rival gangs, looking to make a name
for themselves. You friend got careless in trying to contact us."
Dan lit a cigarette and said nothing, though
his half-shaded face might have been blushing.
"They figured on snatching me as a
prize," Mike said. "Word's out that I'm back, and they figured they
might get some kind of reward from the cops."
"So now do we get to see Gil?" Chris
asked. The killing fire had died in her eyes, and she looked somewhat tired.
"Yes," the stranger said. "I'm
Gil."
"You?" Chris said, glaring at the
man, her gaze moving up his slim form in obvious disbelief. "How do we
know?"
The Indian smiled. His face had a chiseled
look, with the mouth and cheek bones protruding too much to ever seem handsome.
"Because I told you," he said. "Though Michael was wise enough
to seek me out. But come, this is no time for talk. The authorities will have heard
the shooting. We must leave here quickly."
Gil paused. Lance's face must have betrayed
some of his horror. He couldn't shake the shooting from his head. Even Vietnam,
he'd not seen worse, except maybe from the CIA men.
"What's wrong with this one?" Gil
asked, his soft voice puzzled.
"Nothing," Chris said. "He's
pacifist. All this violence makes him cry like a baby."
"They're dead," Lance mumbled-- his
words coming back to him like an echo from a great distance. "They're all
dead."
He wasn't sure of whom he meant. The few
broken figures on the mountain side, or the mounds of bodies he'd seen rotting
at the edge of the jungle. The green and black seemed to mingle into a confused
mass inside his head. "And I couldn't save them."
Gil's features softened, his long fingers
touching the wet streaks rolling down Lance's cheeks.
"Yes, they're dead," he whispered.
"But there are some in this world not worth saving. Come now. We shall
heal your wounds later."
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