The Renegades Read Online Free PDF Page A

what I do when a situation gets tight. Helps settle the nerves, okay? Even walking up to the van I see it’s all wrong—windows open, windshield smeared, liftgate up. Up close, there it is, two men inside shot dead, all sand and blood, sure, we check for life but it’s fucking pointless and we both know it. All this had happened minutes ago. Not hours, minutes—”
    “The Baja Cartel couriers, Lopes and Vasquez. This was all in the papers, Draper.”
    “We didn’t know who they were. We call it in and wait for the crime scene people and the coroner and the dicks. We set up the detour cones then close the ramp. Hardly any cars using that exit in the middle of the desert at two a.m. An hour later the dicks and sergeants don’t need us anymore so it’s back in the cruiser to finish our shift. Not long after that we see the truck, a red Chevy half-ton, just like the caller said, and he’d gotten most of the plate right, so we flash the truck at the ruins off the Pearblossom Highway, where the utopia used to be.
    “The tipster said he’d seen an older red pickup truck speeding away from the Avenue M off-ramp where the van was parked. We figure there’s a good chance that the guy in the truck did the shooting. But the truck driver plays good citizen and pulls right over when we flash him. He parks by the river-rock columns of the old Llano commune. Terry and I get out and put a few yards between us. We both have our flashlights up and our hands on our gun butts.
    “The driver gives Terry his license but he looks high, tweak city, shaggy hair and a beard and a black T-shirt. I can see blood spray on his upper left arm and when Laws gives me a look I know he sees it, too. The inside of the Chevy stinks like ammonia, you know, meth sweat. Terry orders him to get out of the vehicle. When he steps out I see he’s about six foot seven or eight—Laws was six-two and this guy made him look small. He’s looking at us like he wants to eat us.
    —I haven’t done nothing wrong tonight, he says.
    —For a whole night, says Laws, congratulations.
    “Then Terry hands me the guy’s license. Shay Eichrodt, thirty-four, six-eight, three hundred. I’m going to run it for warrants just as soon as we get this guy cuffed and stuffed.
    “I look in the truck bed and see four suitcases, the big rolling kind, all lying flat. Like this guy’s headed to the airport for a vacation, right? Terry tells Eichrodt to turn around and put his hands on the truck and spread his legs. Eichrodt turns around. He sways and loses his balance and I can see he’s not just high, but drunk, too. Son of a bitch falls down to his knees then groans and pitches over facedown in the dirt, prones himself right out for us. Terry takes a wrist restraint and goes to lock him but Eichrodt kicks Terry’s shins and knocks him ass over flashlight. Eichrodt is up, fast as a cat, and I’m drawn and yelling but he and Terry are already going at it and there’s no way I can fire, so I holster up and draw my baton and jump right into the fun. I hit him hard on the knee, so he picked me up and threw me against the cruiser. I weigh one-eighty, and none of it’s fat, but he threw me like I was a doll. Even Eichrodt wasn’t strong enough to lift Terry and all of his muscles off the ground, but I could see them in the cruiser lights, Terry with the baton and Eichrodt with his fists, bludgeoning each other like a couple of giants in combat. So I charged back just like I had good sense, working his legs and knees before he could hit or kick or throw me. But that bastard just wouldn’t fall. He was a bloody mess. So were we. For a minute I thought he was going to win.
    “When Terry hit Eichrodt over the head with his baton for probably the tenth time, Eichrodt went down hard and he didn’t move.
    —He looks dead, says Terry.
    —He’s breathing, I say. He’s alive.
    “We cuff him with two pairs of restraints on his wrists and two on his ankles. Then Terry and I check