With two motorcycles riding scout, flanking the operation like prowling dogs under the perfect yellow of an Arizona sun, the two wreckers and Salsa's armed 4x4 approached the blockade at a creep. Valentine hung out one door by a safety strap, searching the road for signs of mining. Salsa did the same, from a slightly more conventional position in the passenger window.
The expedition stopped fifty yards from the blockade. Valentine smelled burning tire.
Vultures rose from the wrecks when Zuniga blasted the Rover's horn.
"Okay, Argent, go earn your coin", Salsa said as the vehicles halted.
"Seen-yority", Swell said, swinging the now-uncovered gun to cover the wrecks. "It's got its privileges".
Valentine trotted up the median of the highway with carbine held ready against his shoulder - there was precious little cover on the road itself, and if he had to go to ground, he at least wanted the dry-looking brush in between him and the Jaguars.
The eight bodies were laid out between the wrecks in a pattern that might have been trying to be a flower, or a boat propeller. All were hollow-socketed and opened at the rib cage. Valentine guessed that the heart and liver were missing at least, along with more obvious extractions of eyes, noses, and tongues. Taking a deep breath, he knelt beside one sandy-haired corpse and looked in the nose.
They'd spooned out a good deal of brain as well.
Valentine heard a flutter and whirled, but it was just a crow. The black bird opened its mouth, an angry "Kaww!" contesting the bodies.
Valentine paid it no attention and did a fast search of the trucks
and vans. He found three more bodies, similarly picked at but not arranged in any fashion save what was needed for a quick extraction of organ meat.
He heard a chatter of machine-gun fire and the sudden gunning of a motorcycle. He hopped up in a pickup bed - the contents had been stripped as hastily and messily as the bodies - and saw one of the bikers taking off against a running, sun-browned figure. The runner had a bad limp, with blood and dirt caked on his leg.
The biker stopped his bike, lifted an oddly thick rifle, pumped its action three times, and fired. Valentine saw a thick dart blossom in the back of the runner, who flopped over again.
The biker answered a hoot from one of the wreckers with a wave of his leather cap, and turned his bike back for the road.
Somehow the Jaguar rose again, a thin spear lodged in a grooved thrower. Valentine brought up the Steyr and sighted on the dark blotch of armpit hair under the Jaguar's raised right arm. The gun boomed, startling more crows.
Valentine didn't watch the effect of his shot. Instead he scanned for more threats.
Valentine watched the misthrown spear change trajectory, from straight up to straight down. The biker glanced over his shoulder, turned his bike again, and made for the spot where the Jaguar fell. He raised himself in the saddle and bumped over the body in a figure-eight pattern, making sure this time. Valentine scanned the countryside, wondering if the wounded warrior had been sacrificed to draw the biker into a trap, but no other threats emerged from the brush and cacti.
With the killing that couldn't quite be labeled a skirmish over, Valentine waved the Rover forward, and Salsa gave the okay for the wreckers to come up.
Valentine grabbed a bungee cord and a shovel off a bracket on the back hatch of the Rover. Using the bungee around the ankles, he pulled the bodies one by one off the road, lining them up in the median. When the corpses were lined up, he loosened some soil with the
pick end of his worm hook and threw loose dirt over the butchered collection.
Swell rinsed his mouth out with a canteen and spit onto the front windscreen. Zuniga activated the wipers. "You don't mean to bury all those bodies?"
"I do", Valentine said.
The bikers roared up, curious. "Hell, man, the birds and coyotes will take care of them with a lot less sweat", the fat one with the beard said.
Valentine ignored him.
The one who had chased after the Jaguar, a lean, greasy-haired man who looked as though he'd crossed New Mexico dragged by the bike rather than in the saddle, put his bike on its stand. "Coot, be a mensch for once", he growled. "Have a little respect".
The biker slid into the median and took up the pick. "Name's Loring", he said. "Zeb Loring".
"Max Argent", Valentine said. "Mucho gusto".
"Aye-yup", Loring said.
"Never met a Zeb before", Valentine said. "That short for Zebulon?"
Loring had his share of scars. His leathers were carefully stitched up, his face much less so. "My father never made it much past Genesis in the Bible. Mom was a rabbi outta New York. It was a compromise".