9. Deacon
DEACON
It was all hands on deck as Gauge and Dallas brought up my left and right, respectively.
Our motorcycles filled the air with a growl that matched my need for revenge as we soared through the desert.
Rolling nineteen deep through the sandy mire of the place we all called home, we followed those tire tracks with our earpieces in.
The last thing we needed was to be separated.
We were already chopped up enough. With Rat still at Lone Star being looked over by our doctor and Rico standing watch at Char’s, it would take all of us at our best to pull whatever the fuck this was off.
“Guys?” Gauge asked as his voice came alive in my earpiece.
“What?” I asked as I leaned forward, forcing my bike to move even quicker than it was.
“I take it this is a shit time to say that Char talked to a supposed ATF agent last night?”
I resisted the urge to slam on my brakes as we tore through the desert. “Not the best fucking time, no.”
“But that could be the piece we’re missing to all of this,” Dallas said.
“Didn’t we already confirm that this isn’t the government, though?” Plug asked.
“Exactly,” Gauge said, “so who the fuck was talking with Char at our bar last night?”
“Details. Now,” I barked.
Gauge didn’t waste any time. “Well, apparently an ATF agent came into the bar last night around the time we were trying to dig through shit at the mechanic shop. Char was specific enough to tell me that both her and the agent heard Sheriff Nielson’s sirens?—”
“Which means the agent was there while we were at the shop,” I growled.
“Yep,” Gauge said.
“That can’t be a coincidence,” Dallas said.
I bit down onto the sandy grit between my teeth as I kept my eyes locked on that van trail in front of us. “I don’t know what the fuck is happening, but this isn’t ATF.”
“So are we all in agreement that the woman Char talked to wasn’t an ATF agent?” Gauge asked.
I shook my head. “We get Baitfish back, then we talk. But right now, he deserves our focus.”
“The agent could be important to what we’re talking about, though. Gauge, what else did she tell you?” Dallas asked.
“Not much other than that. The woman introduced herself as Special Agent Monica DeFleur, she showed a badge and I.D., but Char didn’t know enough about that shit to know whether it was real or not.”
“What else?” I demanded.
Gauge sighed. “Again, we didn’t talk too many details?—”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” I murmured.
Dallas chuckled and it made me want to strangle him. I could’ve beaten Gauge to pieces for prioritizing his dick over some fucking answers.
I’d strangle him later for it, though. “Gauge!”
“The only other thing that was said was that she was asking about us. About the change in ownership of the bar.”
“And how did she respond to the woman?” I asked curtly.
His silence enraged me, but I couldn’t focus on it, because while we were talking and cruising at damn near 110 through the goddamn desert, the tire tracks just stopped.
In the middle of the sand with nothing surrounding us but a light blue horizon and flourishing cacti, they just fucking disappeared.
I slammed on my brakes and skidded my bike around to a stop so that I could face my men.
“ATF agent or no ATF agent, one of our men was taken by a skilled, practical team,” I said as I addressed my crew.
“All of us know that what we saw on that footage wasn’t law enforcement.
They’re never that organized. They’re never wearing shit without logos blasted onto every surface just so they can announce to the goddamn world who’s in on the action.
So for now, we keep the two issues separate until we have reason to believe they’re connected. Anyone got a fucking issue with that?”
Radio silence greeted me as the sea of heads shook.
“Good,” I said as I swung my leg over my bike. “Now cut your engines and get to looking around. The tire trail’s gone cold.”
The wind kicked up, brushing a miniature dust storm all around us. I watched the tire tracks on the ground as little by little, the sand beads blasted the trail away. Time. We were running out of time. Every second we wasted trying to locate Bait was another second of torture he had to endure.
“We’ve gotta be quicker than this,” I murmured.
My men fanned out, searching all around the cacti and dead bushes for any sign of the continuing tire tracks. I backtracked a few feet, slowly turning as I took in the endless horizon stretched out before me. This had once been a place of solace for us. A place of silence, freedom, and sunlight.
Too much of our blood stained the landscape now.
“Come on, there’s gotta be something,” Dallas grunted.
“Shit,” Gauge hissed.
“Goddamn it,” Plug murmured.
All of the grumblings of my men flooded through my earpiece.
I had half a mind to rip the thing out of my ear just so that I could think straight, but I knew it wouldn’t matter.
The trail had gone cold. For all we knew, that van traveled yet another fifteen fucking miles and the wind simply blew the evidence away.
They were using our landscape against us.
I felt the walls of pressure closing in all around me.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I whispered to myself.
I mean, the tracks just stopped. I rushed back to the point where the tracks ceased to exist, and even with the sand whipping around with the wind, I saw how sharp the stop was.
The skid marks. The lack of tire tracks as the grooves of sand became deeper before stopping altogether.
No, the van didn’t go any further than this point.
We didn’t see any sort of skidding or groove marks up until that moment.
“Keep your eyes open for anything out of place, this van stopped here for a length of time. We need to know why,” I said.
Lizards skittered about and the cracks in the dry ground creaked against the weight of our footsteps.
I lifted my head, gazing out onto the horizon as my men kicked about around me.
I heard them kicking sand and turning over rocks.
A cactus got tipped over in my peripheral while a bush got yanked out of the ground in front of me.
We picked up rocks that got chucked further into the desert.
We shielded our faces from the harsh winds as sand swirled around us like miniature tornadoes.
Anything to figure out how in the absolute fuck a van simply disappeared out of thin air.
Then Mace’s voice came alive in my ear. “Got something!”
We all took off running, a fucking stampede through the goddamn desert as we all made a break for Mace.
He wasn’t far, maybe thirty or so feet away from where the tire tracks stopped, and he was crouched behind a massive rock.
I shoved my way through the throng of men that gathered around him, all of them rubbernecking to see what Mace found.
And after finally shoving my way to the front of the pack, I furrowed my brow at the sight.
Plug cleared his throat. “Is that?—”
“A handle,” I said as I crouched down. “Good work, Mace.”
He stood and backed away. “Thanks. It was under a smaller rock that sat against this bigger one. They interlock almost perfectly.”
I found the rock off to the side and wiggled it back into place. He was right, the grooves of the smaller rock fit the larger rock to perfection.
Nothing was that perfect in nature.
“All right, everyone,” I said as I grabbed the handle, “stand back.”
Dallas’s hand came out of nowhere and grabbed my wrist. “You sure about this?”
I slowly looked up at him. “You see any other options out here?”
“It could announce us,” Gauge said as his shadow loomed over me.
I looked up at him. “Do we have a choice?”
“It could be a trap,” Mace said. “This could be exactly what they want.”
“Whoever ‘they’ is,” Plug murmured.
Their own hesitancy gave me pause. I knew what happened last time. The ambush we walked into because one of our prospects was taken from us. The charge my father led directly into the line of fire.
The bullet he took for me that pierced his heart…
I released the handle and stood as another gust of wind whipped around us.
Flashes of my father’s dead body at my feet bombarded my mind.
His eyes, dead and cold. Wide, as if the pain of the bullet wound accompanied him in death.
I balled up my fists before flexing out my fingers.
The cold burn of that metal against my palm haunted me as images of my father’s funeral flashed before my very eyes.
Bodies that turned to dust, only to be carried away by the desert wind.
Dad always loved this place. The sand. The grittiness of it all.
It only made sense to send him off with the wind after he died.
“Deac,” Dallas said.
He placed a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged it off. “Gauge, divide the guys up into three groups. I want two out here keeping eyes on the horizon while another group stands by in case I need to go somewhere.”
“Go somewhere?” Gauge asked.
“What are you thinking?” Dallas asked.
I shook my head as I reached back down for the handle. “We need to be ready for action, no matter what happens after I pull this handle. Gauge?”
“Plug! Pick five guys and cover our north and east. Mace!”
“South and west, got it,” he said.
“We’ll go in with you,” Dallas said.
I grabbed the handle and braced myself. “You guys should stay out here and?—”
“No,” Gauge said plainly.
I closed my eyes. “Fine, but no one else. Just the three of us. Got it?”
I looked up at both of them and watched them nod.
Then I drew in a deep breath. I braced the icy cold handle against my palm and yanked myself upward, shocked at how easy the handle unfolded and clicked upward.
The resounding sound seemed to echo off the expanse of the world around us, announcing our presence.
But that clicking sound had nothing on the gigantic hiss that rattled the ground.
“Fall back! Fall back, everyone!” I roared.
I released the handle and grabbed my men. I ripped Dallas and Gauge back with me as the ground beneath us trembled. The cracks in the dry, crusted dirt shifted, obliterating the rest of the tire tracks within our field of vision that walked us right up to that handle’s doorstep.
What in the fucking hell did we come across?
A gust of wind sucked in sand, and I looked down long enough to watch the shoe strings of my boots being tugged in that same direction.
The hissing sound gave way to tremors, and those tremors gave way to swirling bouts of wind that seemed to try and devour us whole.
And as we all watched with widened eyes, the desert ground opened up, revealing a dark, cavernous opening.
An opening that was certainly big enough for a van.