Chapter 1
PARKER COUNTY, TEXAS
“It’s better you let me and Duvall do the shooting,” Vince Millner said from behind the wheel of the stolen Crown Victoria.
An unfiltered Camel cigarette bobbed in the corner of his mouth.
“If you have to pull, make damn sure you aim for the belt buckle, just like I showed you. If the first shot don’t kill him, there’s not a man alive with the wherewithal to shoot back while he’s holding in his own guts. ”
Ricky Lee Pink gave an exhausted groan from the passenger seat. Vince Millner was like an older brother, but this constant nagging weighed on him like the Texas heat—and it was hot as hell.
“We’ve gone over the plan a million times. You act like this is my first job.”
Millner clutched the steering wheel so tight his knuckles flushed white around his prison tattoos. His shoulders twitched like he was nervous, but Ricky Lee knew him better than that. Millner was just restless. Time in the joint could do that to a man.
“You listen to me, kid,” Millner said. “Prying off the back window of the American Legion is a hell of a leap from hitting an armored truck in broad daylight. There’s gonna be blood on this one.”
“I hope so.” Ricky Lee didn’t mean it. It just sounded like something that would impress his friend. “You ever seen a real diamond?”
“Sure,” Millner said.
“I haven’t,” Ricky Lee said. “Not up close, anyhow.”
“What about your mom’s wedding ring?”
Ricky Lee shook his head. “No rock. Probably not even real gold, knowing my dad. Anyway, my mama wasn’t one to let me get a close look at her jewelry.”
“Well, buddy,” Millner said. “We’re about to see five million dollars’ worth of diamonds.”
A baby face and unruly black hair gave Pink the look of an earnest farm boy.
Even his eyes were kind—until they were not.
When he was younger his mother once told him that his eyes turned cloudy when he was angry—like he was “about to make it rain.” She said it scared her, which was probably why his parents left him in Texas and moved to Arkansas with his brother and sisters.
Six-foot-four with shoulders like a barn door and hands the size of shovels, he didn’t have much experience in the armored car robbing business, but he was big enough to be useful. What he didn’t know, he could learn.
Millner was the real pro, with no less than nine robberies under his belt, ten if you counted the botched 7-Eleven job that earned him four and a half years in the Texas Department of Corrections.
It was just dumb luck that an Oak Cliff patrolman had decided on that moment to take advantage of the convenience store’s generous policy of free coffee for on-duty cops.
Millner had used the old finger-in-his-jacket-pocket trick instead of a real gun or he would have gotten more time—maybe even been shot by the cop.
At sentencing, the judge had threatened him with ten years on account of the sniveling little store clerk had peed himself.
He ended up with eight, which turned into a little over four with early release for good time.
Still, he’d switched to a real-guns-only policy after that.
Four years was long enough to see all of prison he ever cared to see. He was not going back.
Millner glanced at the rearview and smacked the steering wheel like he’d seen something he didn’t like.
Ricky Lee craned his neck around. The self-described brains of this outfit, Allen Duvall, was two cars behind them in a 1965 Buick LeSabre.
Like the Crown Vic, the Buick was stolen.
You didn’t pull a job like this in vehicles that could come back to you—or that you ever wanted to use again.
Millner’s eyes flitted between the armored truck ahead and the LeSabre in the rearview mirror. “Son of a bitch needs to make a decision.”
“You’re just ticked off on account of Duvall gets to drive the Nailhead and we’re stuck in this granny mobile.”
“I am ticked off because I’m ready to get this done.” His shoulders bounced in time with his words. “We’re getting way too close to Weatherford.”
Ricky Lee gave a tight chuckle. “‘M, I, double L, NER,’” he said, mimicking the “Tigger” song from the Winnie the Pooh cartoon. Millner’s experience made him “bouncy” like Pooh’s stuffed tiger friend—sleeping with one eye open in prison for four and a half years.
Ahead, the armored truck loomed larger as Millner closed the distance.
Ricky Lee rubbed a hand across his chin, then reached down to ease back the slide on his shotgun. He checked the chamber for the fifth time.
Millner glanced sideways with one of his disapproving frowns. “Knock that shit off. You checked it already.” He grabbed the pack of Camels from his T-shirt pocket and shook one out, shoving the pack toward Ricky Lee. “Burn one of these. It’ll help your nerves.”
“I’ve told you,” Ricky Lee said. “They don’t agree with me.
” The truth was, he liked the smell of the Camels, but he’d have to practice smoking them somewhere by himself, where Millner couldn’t see him doubled over and coughing his head off.
He looked in the side mirror again. Millner was right.
Duvall needed to make a move. The chances of getting caught rose astronomically the closer they got to town.
For such a little wide spot in the road, Weatherford, Texas, was Cop City USA.
All the diamonds in the world wouldn’t be worth much if they got themselves caught by the law from the jump.
Ricky Lee grabbed the folded map from the dash—something he did almost as much as he checked the shotgun.
“I’ve known you for what,” Millner said out of the blue, nodding slowly, as if something had just occurred to him. “Three years now, and I never asked where you got the name Pink.”
Vince Millner was always bringing up subjects out of left field. He probably thought it would calm Ricky Lee’s nerves before the job.
“What do you mean, where’d I get it from?” Ricky Lee’s voice was half an octave deeper than Millner’s. “It’s my name. I got it from my dad.”
“I know how names work!” Millner scoffed, sounding exasperated. He hit the gas, chewing up more distance between them and the armored truck. “What I mean to say is, you don’t hear of many Pinks. What kind of name is it?”
“My mother told us it’s German,” Ricky Lee said. “The sound a hammer makes on an anvil. You know, pink, pink, pink—”
“That’s right.” Millner glanced sideways, looking him up and down. “You did tell me that once. Makes a hell of a lot of sense.”
“Why’s that?” Ricky Lee bristled. “You got something against blacksmiths?”
“Simmer down, kid.” Millner chuckled. “It makes sense on account of you’re as big as a damned ogre, that’s all. You’d make a good blacksmith.”
Ricky Lee relaxed. He nodded. “I think I would, too.”
Duvall’s voice crackled over the CB radio.
“Mile marker 397. The Brock cutoff. I’ll flash my headlights to signal.”
That was two miles ahead—less than two minutes.
Millner glanced sideways through narrow eyes. “You sure you’re up for this? Don’t forget, if you have to—”
“I know,” Ricky Lee groaned. “Aim for the belt buckle. I’m fifteen, Vince. I’m not an idiot.”
The black velvet bag full of diamonds was locked in a quarter-inch steel vault about the size of a carpenter’s toolbox.
This box was secured in the back of the TexSafe Armored truck, which, when novice guard Robert Foster thought about it, was just a bigger metal box.
Mr. Moffit, the company’s lead supervisor, had been at the pickup point to oversee the loading before heading west for other business in Abilene.
Moffit and the client, an Eastland, Texas, rancher named Hiram Dietrich, had locked the strongbox and signed the seal, ensuring that none of the guards helped themselves to even a tiny portion of the cargo.
As a measure of extra security, Moffit, who talked like some kind of antebellum plantation owner, had assigned an armed guard up front with the driver, in addition to the standard one in the back.
Twenty-two-year-old Robert Foster drew the front passenger seat.
As far as this armored car business went, Foster was about as green as could be.
Just a couple of months ago, he’d been grating coleslaw at the Long John Silver’s in the College Park Shopping Center while his wife worked double shifts at the fried pie shop on the Weatherford courthouse square.
They weren’t even getting by, not really.
Now here he was in a TexSafe uniform making enough money they could actually pay his wife’s grandparents some rent for their little farmhouse.
Foster took a sip of coffee from his thermos and pondered how easy it would be for someone to knock over an armored truck.
The company paid better than Long John Silver’s, but it wasn’t like they gave their guards any training.
You got a half day of orientation—which was mostly telling you what not to do—then they issued you a hand-me-down uniform and a .
38 Special revolver that had probably belonged to Eliot Ness.
After that, you hit the road. One minute the supervisor, Mr. Moffit, was counting out twelve .
38 Special cartridges like they were precious gemstones, the next you were in a truck guarding …
well, precious gemstones. Moffit knew guns and stuff and got all pissy if you called cartridges bullets.
“The bullet is what comes out of the gun, not the whole cartridge,” Moffit would chide.
The older guards told him to shove it that he knew exactly what they meant.
Foster said, “Yes, sir” and took his issued bullets … cartridges.