GPS (45 page)

What was Paulo waiting on? He could smell the gasoline and was quite sure someone in that giant party of people, no matter how plastered they were, was going to notice it too. Jeff wished he’d kept the flare gun they’d sent with him on his hunting trip that day. It would have been fired five minutes ago.

From each road, the headlights grew larger as they inched closer, their rays getting sharper and more defined as they neared. Jeff tried to fathom who was going to come barreling in here and likely get showered with bullets from both armies. Were they a couple of newcomers, new transients lost in the desert? Maybe this was some part of the plan Jeff hadn’t been told about.

Until he saw Simmons with the knife at his throat, he never would have believed they’d get caught before the first shot had been fired. And Simmons? Never. But there he was. Jeff forced his frozen arms to move again and put his eye back to the scope of his gun.

The guy who had Simmons was just standing there, and although it had likely only been a few seconds, it seemed like ages. Through the flapping reflection of the flames, it looked like he was trying to keep the knife on Simmons with his right hand while fumbling at his side with his left.

The headlights kept coming from both roads.

There were no pink puffs and thankfully no one dared to try to take a shot at the man with the machete. Whether he saw what was happening to his prized sniper below or not, Fonseca hadn’t given the sign for anyone to take a shot, and maybe it was because he
did
see Josh. Maybe one of the snipers on the southeast corner could get a shot at the man from behind, but it would be a risky one.

Realistically, the green light would have to come soon, whether it cost Josh his life or not. The smell of gasoline was more pungent in the air with every passing second.

There was no way Jeff could get a shot off that could save Simmons’ life because the man with the knife smartly kept his own head pinned against the back of Josh’s, even as he fidgeted with his left hand, and kept his body pinned against Josh’s backside. It made him effectively unshootable and he seemed to know it. The guy was stalling too, also waiting to see what happened next.

Jeff strained his eye, trying to see Josh’s face. It looked like the man behind him was trying to talk into a two-way that he wrestled out of his pocket, probably asking whether or not to slit this man’s throat.

Charles must have been onto them somehow. There seemed no other way Simmons could have been abducted. Everything was standing still suddenly, except for the sea of people, the waving wall of flames and the approaching headlights. Josh struck Jeff as someone who always did something, who didn’t argue with himself about every little thing the way Jeff always did. Jeff looked at Josh as everything Jeff could never be. Josh was always ready with his next answer. As Jeff peered down through the scope, reminding himself to breathe, Josh proved he was right.

Simmons took a sudden bow, bending over and trying to flip the man right over his shoulders and onto his back. He had the element of surprise and tremendous upper body strength on his side, and the raging party 100 feet away would mask any sounds of the struggle.

It almost worked, but the man jammed the machete blade home for a split-second as he was being flipped. The giant knife point plunged into Simmons’ neck, ending the attempted flip prematurely and sending both men straight to the ground.

Josh wrestled his way on top of the man and sent a flurry of punches into his face, then fell back, clutching his neck. He stood and began to scramble across the sandy canyon floor toward the ring of Range Rovers and vans and pickup trucks as the screams of drunkenness got louder and louder around him. He left the rifle in the sand, knowing it was far too cumbersome for close-up fighting.

With darkness having enveloped the horizon, Simmons continued to scramble along the ring of trucks, screaming as blood squirted out of his neck in steady, heartbeat bursts. The man with the machete had dropped the knife and gotten to his feet. He grabbed Simmons’ gun off the ground as Josh pulled his hand off the gash on the right side of his neck and face and began wildly flashing the thumbs-up sign in every direction, running around the ring until one of the revolucion hose men spotted him and pulled him to the ground.

The man smartly ripped off his shirt and helped Simmons stem the bleeding. He helped Josh back to his feet, and the two scrambled up into the low-lying rocks on the south side of the canyon below Jeff’s position.

No one had fired a shot at anyone.

Within seconds, one, then two, then three and four pink balls of fire with long tails of smoke shot into the air, sending cascading trails crashing down into the crowd, which shrieked more in delight than panic at the sight of them. Without consideration of the FB watchmen he was supposed to take out first and which he still had not even seen, Jeff took aim at the closest tank adjoining the back of the house and tried to force himself to wait before pulling the trigger. He knew Simmons couldn’t live long out here without medical attention.

Fonseca had insisted they wait at least a minute from the time the flares went down until they could take the first shot. He wanted perfect chaos, but as it happened, the chaos was coming at that exact moment, whether they fired the first shots or not.

Both sets of headlights were in perfect view now, set to come rambling into the canyon and at high speed.

- 62 -

Through the main gate to the north came a single, speeding vehicle, which even in the faint glow of the fire was visibly fish-tailing as it came around the ring of trucks toward the rear of the house. Just before it disappeared behind the house’s far front corner, Jeff saw through his rifle scope that it was a silver sedan, Josh’s silver Lexus.

Charles, who’d finally righted himself on the mountain roads around Destinoso thanks to the GPS on the Lexus windshield and had made it to the main highway, knew if he could get inside the main house, get on the radio and call his own men to their guns, even their drunken bullets would find some targets out there tonight. He still had no idea what was actually happening, but he knew his fishing expedition had landed Simmons on an apparent assassination mission.

The Lexus picked up even more speed as Charles curved around the north side of the house, romping right overtop of the yuccas and other brush in his path. Though terrified of being shot, Charles hoped the sight of Simmons’ car would create enough confusion with the revolucion men he knew were lurking in the hills to mask his identity and let him steer around the corner. There he could slip through the back door and sound the alarm before it was too late.

Before he made the corner, the vehicle casting the other set of headlights materialized fully from the abandoned road in the southeast corner. It was a black FB Rover that came storming out into the ranch clearing down to Jeff's right. It too came in at high speed and was also heading for the backside of the house, directly at the oncoming Lexus.

As the Rover sped into the clearing, the shots Jeff and Josh had been waiting for began to ring out from the cliffs beneath the pinkened, smoky sky — one, then a small handful, and then a storm of them — at the sight of what appeared to be some lost, drunken FB soldier who’d found the party via the old mountain road at the worst possible time. Even as bullets began to pop holes into the truck and take out its windows, the SUV was running with such reckless abandon it was impervious to them. It kept on toward the rear of the house and the gas tanks. It actually sounded from Jeff’s distance like the truck sped up when it came into the clearing from the road.

Jeff followed the scene as best he could, keeping his rifle scope on the SUV but not joining the shooters yet. The light of the flames cast a perfect reflection against the side of the Rover, Jeff caught a glimpse of the face of David Hawkins — the guy he’d rear-ended that night outside the stadium — behind the wheel. Even in a distant flash, there was no mistaking his thin, haunted and angry face.

Jeff pulled the scope away and watched with his naked eyes as the SUV raced toward the back of the house. The Lexus had come to a stop but still had its headlights on. Whoever was behind the wheel was going to try to get inside the house. Jeff caught a glimpse of the car’s interior light coming on and the silhouette of the occupant sitting on the driver’s side.

The driver must have thought he’d arrived in the middle of hell, whoever he was. The screams of fright were just beginning, shots were starting to fly in every direction and as Jeff watched the SUV bearing down on the parked car, and the gas tanks behind it, he couldn’t help but want to turn one of his eyes toward the crowd and see the giant ring of gasoline-soaked trucks erupt in flames. He couldn’t see Josh down below, but knew he was likely in a fight for his life that wouldn’t last long.

The FB truck kicked awkwardly up and over a boulder, lost control and spun directly into the Lexus. Just before impact, the Lexus driver — still inside the car — had tried to evade the SUV, pulling the car forward suddenly and in effect helping to propel the Rover into the air, spinning end-over-end and directly into the gas tanks.

In the second before the canyon was engulfed by the light and thunder of a petroleum explosion which gradually echoed away to leave the sounds of human screams and heavy gunfire, the SUV with Hawkins inside — which was still showing as a red dot on the monitor in Simon’s bedroom just a few feet away — smashed head-on into the fuel tanks. Instead of exploding with them, straight into the air, however, the Range Rover seemed to just disintegrate into the green towers without ever making contact with the back of the ranch house, which immediately after the blast had the orange glow of flames beginning to leap out from the eaves of its roof. The tanks had erupted in giant blasts of fire, and in a bizarre, domino effect, the ring of FB trucks ignited one-by-one in a merry-go-round of bursts.

The people inside scrambled like angry ants.

- 63 -

The Lexus was thrown forward by the might of the blast.

The surge of heat that washed over the canyon was enough to knock Jeff back and nearly onto his butt. It was followed by a wave of suffocating black smoke which blanketed everything, and for a moment darkened the inferno below. It obscured the entire canyon for a few minutes before organizing into several distinct, billowing towers stretching into the sky.

As soon as the blast rocked the canyon, Jeff stood, steadied his rifle on his shoulder and waited for enough clarity below to find a target. When the smoke filtered, he locked the scope on Josh’s would-be killer, just getting to his feet after being blown down by the force the explosions. Jeff dropped him dead with one shot to the chest. He then began scanning the edge of the burning vehicles for FB men trying to flee.

There weren’t many of them, so after just a minute or so, he stood and began scaling the rough terrain down to the ground floor of the canyon, knowing that friendly fire was his greatest enemy.

But he had to find Josh and get him out alive, if he still was alive. He lost his footing at the base of the canyon and fell onto his side, forcing him to look at the scene from the ground up. What he saw was the entire canyon being overrun by smoke and flames. There must have been more fuel tanks inside the long, flat building on the north side of the canyon as well, because there were also massive black plumes coming from the building’s wooden skeleton.

The ring of burning cars imprisoned its occupants. The massive bonfire the partiers themselves had ignited now served as an incinerator, sending out its own waves of heat while the flames from the tanks and the cars sent their own heat right back, squeezing the life out of those trapped inside. The men in the cliffs were largely unneeded, as few of the people on the canyon floor were able to escape in their direction. Those that did were mostly not looking for a fight when they got out, and they had been gunned down by snipers without retaliation.

The chaos Paulo dreamed about was in full swing, and none of his own men were being sacrificed. The hose men had done their jobs, and the FB trucks kept the entire canyon illuminated.

While Paulo very likely stood still and watched in awe, Jeff was thinking of the giant map on the wall at the stadium, the sea of black pins. As he scrambled toward the inferno to find Josh, he wondered how on earth things would play out from here, and not just tonight but tomorrow and beyond. There would be hell to pay for this, but he supposed that was well understood.

At the second the initial explosion thundered through the canyon, Jeff had seen the Lexus shoved forward. If it was still running, there was a chance to rescue the car and get Josh out, but he had no idea if he would be able to make it back up the spiraling hill to his own car. Even if he was, would it still be there?

His eyes adjusted to the action at ground level, and Jeff saw a group of men crouched behind a stand of rocks with guns aimed at the ranch, so he ducked his head and sprinted in their direction. When he arrived, the five or so men first reared back and turned their guns in Jeff’s direction until a familiar voice, Josh’s voice, shouted hoarsely. He was lying on his back with a tourniquet around his bleeding neck. “Don’t shoot, assholes, it’s Delaney! Delaney! Get us out of here!”

His blood suddenly boiling in anger at the sound of Josh’s weakened voice, Jeff pushed the other men aside. “Come on, Josh! You gotta stand up and put your arm around me. Use your other hand to keep the pressure on your neck. Come on man! What’s the point of dying now?”

They hurried along the edge of the canyon wall toward the house, shots still flying from the cliffs, and a nonstop tone of despair coming from the crowd, some of which had now stampeded through the ring of trucks on the north side and spilled out onto the main road and out of the ranch.

Burned from the blast, stunned from the impact of the Range Rover vaulting up and over the Lexus and staggered by the tidal wave of smoke which had filled the cabin of the car, Simon Charles came staggering out of the Lexus in a daze.