Hunter sighted through the scope on the man drawing the big .45, putting the crosshairs on his chest and pulling the trigger quick before the man fired at her.
Adan made “uh-uh-uh” sounds as the small .22 rounds struck him one-two-three. He felt them, but the tough killer wasn’t down. He refocused his sights and got off one shot as he felt other stinging rounds strike him.
Hunter moved the crosshairs up and saw the Mexican re-aiming. She fired again, fast, and saw the red, round spots appear on the man’s hand and neck and in his cheek. Adan’s .45 round hit beside her head, spraying her with stinging pieces of adobe, but otherwise not injuring her.
Her scalp crawled as she watched the bleeding man steady himself and raise the pistol again. She sighted in a hurry and fired.
The .22 round hit Adan in the eye, going into his brain, dropping the man so he toppled off the dozer, his body loosely flopping under the grinding tread tracks.
Antonio saw him fall, but was unable to stop the dozer before it crushed his friend under the machine’s enormous weight. He howled, shouting, “Adan!” The blade shielded him from the shooter, and he thought about pulling his pistol and going after them, but he knew this unseen shooter was good, dropping Adan like that as the dozer bucked and wobbled on the mound of debris.
The fire continued to spread, so Antonio backed the bulldozer from the crumbling home, making sure to keep the large blade up for protection.
Adan was dead, and Antonio wanted to scream. Catching the Kincaid woman’s pickup parked in front of the half-destroyed house gave him focus, and he drove the bulldozer to it, working the blade on the truck’s body like an enraged mechanical rhino. When he punctured the tires and ripped the sides and truck bed apart, Antonio pushed the destroyed vehicle into a small draw, where it rolled on its side. Satisfied, Adan drove the dozer to the pole barn where Rodolfo waited.
Rodolfo said, “You lost Adan?”
“They had a shooter, someone I didn’t see.”
“The woman.”
“Kincaid? Are you sure it wasn’t the old man? This shooter is very good.”
Rodolfo said, “I saw her. She popped out of a hole in the debris pile and shot him with a little rifle, a .22 I think.”
Antonio said, “I’ll kill her for this. Adan was my friend. We grew up together.”
“Be patient. We’ll see what the fire does, then make plans if that doesn’t work. They won’t get out alive, that is a promise.”
Antonio nodded, then said, “I wish those were gone,” he pointed at the mass of drones in the sky, “I keep looking over my shoulder for one of them to spray me by accident the way they’re always buzzing around close to us, like angry hornets.”
“Keep focused. We will do the job and get our money, that’s what counts.”
Antonio said, “And let Hiyoki have this border country. I’ve never seen so many things that will stick you or bite you, even the flies here bite.”
Rodolfo glanced at the flames consuming the half-demolished house, “The way the fire is gro
wing, we will be out of here by tomorrow.”
Antonio said, “I hope that Kincaid woman burns slow.” He looked at the flames, “I wonder if they’re already cooking in there.”
Chapter 10
Buck found a trickle of water leaking from a broken pipe and he used cupboard hand towels to moisten and make masks for the boys.
The young ones were not panicking, and they put on the masks, looking like old west outlaws with their faces covered with bandannas, but the moist cloth did help filter some of the smoke. David said to Buck, “What are we going to do? We need to escape.”
Buck said, “We need to get out, but I don’t want you three to get shot when we do. We still have time because adobe doesn’t burn, only the wood. We’ll get you out, Hunter and I.”
David said, “We can help. We’ve been looking around in the back of this part and we found some tunnels through the boards and stuff big enough for us to crawl through.”
Hunter appeared after coming out of the opening where she had disappeared and said, “Can we all fit through them?”
David said, “I don’t know. We didn’t go all the way through them.”
Buck turned to Hunter, who sat on an unbuckled portion of the wooden floor, reloading the 10-22’s round clip from the box of shells in her pocket. He said, “The draft is pulling smoke that way, so it’s a possibility.”
David said, “Let us check it out. We’re small.”