Hunter ran towards Adan, who was down on his knees holding his bloody arm. The black vehicle spun in a tight turn around the pumps, still firing out of the windows.
Adan panicked and sprinted toward the store. One of the men driving the black vehicle sped up, and circled to come on the boy as Sam continued to rain bullets on them. When he drove close to Adan, he opened his door and snatched the boy from the ground like he weighed nothing.
The Suburban spun gravel and was gone up the road beyond the gas station.
Hunter stood there.
Sam’s pickup was shot to pieces, with oil running from underneath and three tires flat. Carlo had bits of glass, like shrapnel, stuck in his face.
She went to him and picked them out with her fingers. He said, “That jalopy of yours at the pump still run?”
“Unless it was hit, I think so.”
“Get on their trail. Sam and I will catch up. We’ll bring Raymond and the others, too.”
Hunter kissed him on the undamaged cheek, then she gave Sam a quick hug. As she turned to leave, he handed her his Colt Government Model .45. “Noticed you don’t have your usual jewelry on you today.”
“Thanks.”
“Go get that boy.”
Carlo gave her a shoo motion with his hand as he talked on his cell. As she drove away, Carlo called out, “We’re all coming, find him and call us.”
Hunter checked the gauge, saw Adan had managed to put a quarter tank’s worth of gas in before the bad guys arrived. It would be enough, she would make it enough. She pushed the battered pickup to its limit, with the loose front fenders rattling and the shimmying wheels so out of alignment from the rough roads they made her hands vibrate on the wheel. She noticed in the rearview mirror that some dark smoke issued from the tailpipe, so there was engine trouble, too.
After she was out of sight, Sam said, “Dammit, I forgot to give her my phone.”
Carlo said, “So did I.”
She drove in the direction they last went, up highway 118, and she had a hunch she knew where. She kept watch in the distance for any sign of them or the black Suburban. She passed the Christmas Mountains on her right ten minutes later and, just ahead saw the faint dimness of dust in the air. Slowing, she followed the dust trail in the air, laid out like a ghostly finger pointing into the distance. It hovered directly over the road that led to the Hart Ranch Headquarters. She stopped at the gate, and found it locked.
Hunter backed up and turned to the side, then paralleled the fence to where it crossed a four-foot-deep arroyo. She turned the pickup into it and drove under the wire, scraping the windshield and roof with screeching sounds that made her grit her teeth until she was through. Driving out of the arroyo took a bit of maneuvering. She used the front of the vehicle to cave in the walls so she could reverse gear, then go forward again and drive up the fresh pile of dirt and gravel to come out on top beside the road and inside the ranch fence.
Thinking about what might be ahead made her nervous. They had the weapons to take her out at eight or nine hundred yards, and probably the shooters to do it, too. She had Sam Kinney’s .45 pistol, which she had never shot.
She turned off the main road on a rough ranch trail and hoped it would take her through the hills to the back of the mansion, all without being seen. The trick was not to stir up dust, because they would see it and know it wasn’t theirs, so the drive was slow, and that ate at Hunter’s nerves.
Right before driving behind a small ridgeline, she saw a dust trail far back behind her, on the main ranch road. She stopped and watched. It boiled up a heavy cloud of dust behind it, evidence of the speed it was going. “Oh man,” she said to herself. Bad men in front of her and behind her, and a twelve-year-old boy in the middle of it all, like a fawn surrounded by wolves.
There wasn’t any time to lose. She sped up, bouncing across terrain and brush before coming finally to the last slope. She didn’t hesitate and drove down it, straight toward the great white mansion.
Sliding the pickup so the passenger’s side stopped only six inches from the perimeter wall around the backyard let Hunter hopped out from behind the steering wheel, and climbed up on the roof, then over to the top of the wall and down into the large yard.
She hurried to the back door and slipped inside the home just as a barrage of gunfire began in the front of the house.
Chapter 19
Raymond and Norma stopped in front of the mansion and exited as RL and another man stepped from inside the home and said, “Turn around and leave. Now.”
Raymond stepped clear of the driver’s door to show the BAR. Norma rounded the front of the vehicle with a shotgun, which she racked.
The man with RL jerked in reaction, raising his AR-15.
Raymond and Norma opened fire before the man squeezed the trigger. The explosive boomboomboomboomboom of the BAR echoed through the house as both men fell backward to hit the door and slide down to the floor.
Norma said, “Wait a sec,” and she slid three rounds of buckshot into the shotgun. Raymond hadn’t heard her fire. “Let’s go,” she said.
They pushed open the doors and entered, ready for anything and looking for Hunter and Adan.