Moving the dozer to the gas tank, Antonio worked the blade carefully, pushing and rolling the plastic tank up on the collapsed porch and front wall portion until it was seven feet above the ground, resting on broken timbers, splintered wood, and adobe bricks. When he backed the dozer away, he saw five or six small holes in the tank, all dripping diesel fuel in pale yellow streams onto the wood underneath.
Everyone inside the house smelled the fuel, and Hunter was near the hallway so she could see under the collapsed area where the diesel leaked on everything. Buck said to her, “I can’t even go out the front door, it’s wedged with debris.”
“Have you checked the back?”
“Yeah, same thing.”
Hunter checked the leaking fuel again and said, “It’s not burning yet, so we’ve got a little time.”
“They’re gonna light it, you know that.”
Hunter said, “I know.” She looked under the half-collapsed roof in the living room again, “I have an idea.”
“What?”
“I’ll try to slip between that collapsed lumber, maybe get an opening I can get my head through. If I can, I’m gonna shoot at that guy on the dozer, and maybe anybody else I can see. I think that if I can stir them up, you might be able to get a shot with the thirty-ought-six.”
“I’d like a chance.”
“Wanna try?”
Yeah. Give me a couple minutes to get to the far side of the house and find a place where I can shoot.”
Hunter nodded and said to the boys, “Can one of you go with Mr. Ward and relay a message to me when he tells you to?”
All three hands went up. Hunter said, “Okay, you three chose among yourselves who’s going with him.”
They talked it over for less than a minute before Carlos said, “I’ll go with Mr. Ward.”
Buck said, “Good. Come on, Carlos.”
They walked to the least damaged side of the house’s interior as Lonny and David stayed with Hunter. The noise of the diesel motor increased, and they knew it meant the bulldozer was returning to the house.
Antonio drove to the rear of the house, where he half-collapsed one corner, and walked the dozer up the debris pile, working the blade to help clear some roofing and wood. Adan was on the dozer with him, and because the ride became so uneven going up the pile, Adan only carried a pistol in one hand while hanging onto the dozer’s structure to keep from falling. The pistol’s nickel-plate coating shone in the sun like a mirror. Adan felt proud of the Colt .45 Commander, a favorite of many cartel members.
Adan leaned his head closer to Antonio and said, “If you get the dozer higher on that rubble, I’ll toss this on the diesel.” He held up an oily red cloth rag.
“Do you have a lighter?”
Adan showed him the small Bic.
“Andale.” Antonio drove the dozer on to the broken wall of the ranch house and moved forward to do more damage as Adan lit the red rag and readied to toss it on the leaking gas tank and the spreading diesel.
When he tossed it, the smoking, burning rag half floated, half fell, landing below the tank where dripping fuel ignited and the flames spread.
It wasn’t an explosion like with gasoline, but rather a steadily spreading fire, the smoke a sooty black like that coming off a cheap candle.
They heard the yells and screams of children as Antonio backed away to watch it burn.
~*~
Buck found the right place to see through the broken boards and demolished adobe just as the flames caught. It spread fast and steady, going wide and not in a line. David yelled, “There’s a fire!” Buck scrambled to the boys and got them away as the walls and roof continued to collapse from the dozer’s destruction.
The broken wood and adobe plaster and bricks shook as the dozer backed off the pile, and Hunter wormed her way up through a small, tunnel-like opening in the rubble until she had her upper torso and the Ruger at the mouth of the opening.
Black diesel smoke drifted across her face, making her cough as she put the short .22 rifle to her shoulder.
Adan heard the cough. He pulled his shiny .45 and lined up the sights on the woman coming out of some invisible hole in the debris like a slender ferret.