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  Now, sitting directly on the ground almost dead center of a vast pine forest over a thousand miles from East Texas, Alonzo Wadler held a Remington .270. The traditional workhorse of deer hunters across the nation was loaded with 130-grain Hornady SST rounds.

  Each morning for the past three days, Alonzo arrived in the dark, sat beneath the exact same tree, and waited above a trail leading to an old trapper’s cabin a mile away. He’d scouted his prey’s tracks on the first day and was confident he’d be by again. It was only a matter of time.

  A pine cone fell from high above, and a tarantula wasp buzzed his head. Time passed slowly after that. Nothing wandered into view, and by noon his stomach pain had intensified to the point of watering his eyes. He closed them for a long moment, trying to decide if he wanted to call it a day.

  When he opened them again, a bearded man stepped into view, returning down a trail he’d walked days earlier. The man shouldn’t have been in Arizona at all. A California felon, he’d jumped bail and left the state.

  Alonzo’s nervousness vanished like water down a drain. The rifle rose almost of its own accord, and the sight picture through the scope jumped into focus. The hunter moved the barrel ever so slightly to the right and acquired first a head and then the shoulder, the only exposed parts in the thick brush.

  The safety came off with the flick of his thumb. Two more steps, and the prey was in the open. Alonzo shifted the crosshairs to his chest and waited.

  The scope’s crosshairs moved to the second button down on the man’s shirt.

  Alonzo’s finger gently tightened on the trigger. He never felt the trigger’s break, but the rifle cracked. Despite the scope’s jump, he saw a fine red mist explode behind the man’s body as the SST round destroyed his heart and lungs.

  Dead before he hit the ground, career criminal and convicted felon Nicholas Barbour fell where he stood.

  One shot and another one down.

  Alonzo shivered in relief, because he’d wanted this one so badly. “Payback, you son of a bitch! I wish to God I could kill you twice.” A sob hitched in his chest and he choked it down.

  Regaining control, he stood without ejecting the spent round and picked up the thin nylon ground tarp he’d been sitting on. Quickly rolling it into a ball, he stuffed it into the small daypack that had also served as a backrest through those long days of waiting. Slinging the rifle over his shoulder, he scanned the ground.

  Two days of waiting, and the only sign he’d ever been there were a few scuffs that most people would miss. Instead of crossing the distance and kicking the man’s face into a pulp like he’d fantasized a hundred times, Alonzo hurried in the opposite direction from the already cooling corpse.

  The day was growing warm when Alonzo reached his four-door Dodge pickup parked on a lonely gravel road in the national forest. He unlocked the door, stripped off his camo clothing, and pitched everything into the back seat before starting the big diesel.

  He chased down a pain pill with a swallow of water from a bottle in the console and shifted into gear.

  Prissy boy, my ass.

  Chapter 2

  The eastbound desert highway west of Alpine, Texas, shimmered under a hot afternoon sun. I thumbed off the Dodge truck’s cruise control at the sight of the blocked two-lane up ahead. The opening riffs of “Gimme Shelter” by the Rolling Stones was too loud at the slower speed, so I cranked the volume down a couple of notches and studied the backup of vehicles.

  Over in the shotgun seat, my black Labrador retriever, Buster, perked up when the engine brake growled, slowing the dually. My cell phone rang. I would have ignored it, but it was Major Chase Parker, commander of the Texas Rangers Special Unit.

  The clot of cars slowed me to a crawl and I pulled onto the shoulder to talk. “Yessir.”

  “I need you to meet me in your office. We have a little situation that’s gonna be your baby.” He spends a lot of time in my part of west Texas, though the Rangers’ Division Headquarters is in Austin.

  “I’m feeling fine, thanks.”

  He was silent on the other end. “Okay. I get it. How’re you healing up?”

  I’d gotten banged up during a little altercation not long before that like to’ve put me in an early grave, so I was once again riding a desk. “Thanks for asking. Like I said, fine. What’s up?”

  He sighed like he usually does when we talk. “We have some kind of vigilante crossing the country, executing people who’ve gotten off murder raps on technicalities, or felons who’re out on pardons. It looks like he’s gonna be here in Texas any day now, from what we’ve been seeing. This one’s right up your alley.”

  “He send you a schedule?”

  “You want to quit being a smartass?”

  “I can try, but I ain’t guaranteeing nothin’. You at the office now?”

  “I’ll be there at three o’clock.”

  I scanned the chanting crowd. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Fine. See you then.”

  He hung up, and I dropped the phone into an empty cupholder mounted in the floorboard to study the cars overflowing from the Marfa Lights viewing area’s parking lot. More vehicles lined both sides of the table-flat highway.

  “Again?”

  Buster turned his brown eyes toward my side of the cab and woofed.

  “You’re right. Ethan’s gonna be right in the middle of this one, too. It looks bigger’n the last demonstration.”

  A few people were sitting in the viewing center’s shade and smoking. They were a mix of our part of the world out there in far West Texas, white, brown, and Native Americans. I figured they were there to protest the existence of the Trans-Pecos pipeline for the second time in a month.

  Trying to be friendly, I raised two fingers from the steering wheel in a wave, because that’s what Texans do, but no one lifted a hand in return. At least no one used a similar gesture to tell me I was number one.

  Men and women in straw cowboy hats and a bright assortment of do-rag bandanas and wave caps watched with impassive faces as I pulled back on the highway and rolled through the corridor of vehicles. Once clear, I mashed on the foot-feed, knowing I’d find the drivers, and the action, less than two miles ahead.

  I was right. The highway was completely blocked with protestors who had the light traffic choked down to a standstill. Half a dozen sheriff’s department Police Interceptors, highway patrol cars, and trucks idled with their lights flashing both on the shoulder and in the pullout at BranCo’s pipeyard, an enclosure scraped clean of vegetation and full of pipe and equipment. A handful of pipeline workers watched from behind the safety of a brand-new chain-link fence.

  I pulled onto the dusty shoulder and crept past the line of cars, crunching over rocks, sage, and low-growing cactus until I came to a tangle of highway patrol cars and other vehicles belonging to television and news crews. There was an open space between clumps of prickly pear and yuccas. I steered onto the hardpan and stopped at a knot of people milling in the bright sunshine between the highway and a bobwire fence that ended at the pipeyard.

  Buster rose to follow me out of the truck. “Stay. I’m gonna leave this AC going for you, but don’t get over here and lock the doors on me.”

  He woofed an answer and sat back down to stare out the windshield. He’d locked me out a year earlier when I left the big dummy in the truck cab with the motor running. Annoyed that he couldn’t go, Buster pawed at the driver-side armrest and hit the electronic lock. After my runnin’ buddy, Sheriff Ethan Armstrong, finally showed up with a Slim Jim to pop the lock, I took the spare key from the fob and kept it in my pocket from there on out.

  Even with so many people around, I wasn’t worried about leaving the truck running. Nobody was going to get inside with those white fangs of his showing.

  Once outside I was blistered by angry looks from the trapped locals, vacationers in their automobiles, and the protestors between them and the yard gate. A dozen or so activists turned at the slam of the truck
door and stood shoulder to shoulder with the intention of blocking my way.

  Knowing better’n to show any emotion to the angry collection of anti-pipeline marchers, I locked eyes with a Native American demonstrator in a blue bandana. He looked to be ten years younger than my age and sixty pounds heavier. Ignoring the man’s ALL LAND IS SACRED poster, I headed directly toward Big Boy, maintaining a steady pace.

  His glare held solid until I was close enough for him to recognize the cinco peso Ranger badge on my shirt. Big Boy’s eyes flicked up to my new straw Cattleman hat, then down to the hand tooled double-rig belt holding the 1911 Colt .45 semiautomatic.

  I was banking on the Texas Ranger reputation to work its magic, and when I was close, he waved a turkey wing fan in my direction. “You Rangers think you’re something.”

  “We just represent the law.”

  “Your law is allowing this!” A young woman spat in the dirt beside my black Lucchese boot. She held a sign saying, SAVE OUR LAND! “It isn’t our law.”

  “I don’t like this pipeline any more than y’all, but I have my job to do, just like you.” I waved a hand toward a local news crew filming the protest. “They got what you wanted. Let’s just do it without any real trouble and everybody get in out of this heat, how ’bout that?”

  Big Boy took my measure for a beat before stepping back to let me pass. I nodded my thanks. “Much obliged.”

  I kept walking, ignoring a barrage of comments thrown at my back, and hoping none of those folks were violent. I couldn’t hold my own right then because I hadn’t fully healed up from a bullet wound on my side.

  There was more rattling and yelling behind me, but it was for the benefit of the camera that swept in our direction. A cluster of officers gathered around half a dozen demonstrators who’d chained themselves to the pipeyard’s access gates.

  Looking cool and collected, Presidio County Sheriff Ethan Armstrong knelt on one knee, talking to a female protestor. Gathered in a semicircle around them, the demonstrators of varied races in bandanas, feathers, and matching T-shirts were all waving signs, flags, and Indian totems. Seeing me, Ethan rose and tilted his Stetson back. “Howdy, Sonny. Somebody call you?”

  Despite his calm voice and demeanor, I saw the fire in my high school friend’s eyes. “Nope. I’s headed to Alpine when I came up on this little demonstration.” I scanned the ring of shouting protestors. “Most of these folks are strangers.”

  “Might near everyone.” Ethan leaned in close so I could hear over the noise. “I sent Malone for some bolt cutters and then I’ll clear this bunch out.”

  “You taking any of ’em to jail?” I didn’t see anyone in cuffs.

  “Not yet. I’m gonna get these dummies loose from this gate and give ’em a chance to leave on their own. If they don’t, then I’ll cuff ’em up.”

  The crowd was there protesting the new pipeline going through our county and under the Rio Grande, a hundred miles away. In a way I was kinda with them. The pipeline was an eyesore, and those cleared dirt highways through the desert brush were custom-made for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers to travel north from the Rio Grande, to disappear into the American fabric. They usually followed landmarks along dry creek beds and arroyos, power lines, and even railroad tracks, but the easement made it faster and easier.

  One of the BranCo construction crews still working on the pipeline called in when a red Chevy Avalanche following a temporary access road drove by bigger’n Dallas. Border agents arrived in minutes and made a bust that was on the national news that night. Five hundred pounds of grass packed in the Chevy had a street value of over a million dollars, and it was the first time we’d caught drug runners using the new “superhighway” over the buried pipeline.

  I took a good long look around us. The mixed group waited on the shoulder and in the highway to see what would happen next. A couple of the deputies were urging them to clear the road while the drivers caught in the protest were getting increasingly irritated.

  Ethan held a hand up to a shouting demonstrator who shook a sign. DEFEND THE SACRED! “Hold your horses, bud. We’re gonna be here for a while yet.” He turned back to me. “You look like you’re feeling better.”

  I rolled my shoulders in answer. “Better. Still a little stiff. I’ll be on the desk until the Major turns me back out.”

  “You’re doing a lot of that lately. You’re the only Ranger I know who spends more time off duty than on. Maybe you need to stay out of trouble.”

  “Well, I’m trying. I’ve been out of circulation for a while, but then again, when I’m on, it’s intense.”

  He chuckled and scanned the crowd, which hadn’t stopped chanting from the moment I arrived, “Stop the lies, water is life, stop the lies, water is life!” That one was about the threat of oil leaks and the pipeline’s potential to contaminate the water table. Water is precious anywhere, but in the arid high desert north of Texas’s Big Bend National Park, its value is even higher.

  I studied the crowd that was growing angrier by the minute. “How long ago did you send for the bolt cutters?”

  Ethan shrugged. “Half an hour.”

  “I have a pair in the truck.”

  His eyes lit up. “Good. We can have ’em loose by the time Malone gets back.” He whistled through his teeth and waved the highway patrol officers back to the gates. I went to the truck. The crowd around us parted like water around a rock as I cut through the pack. A DPS helicopter clattered overhead, circling the blockade.

  Like I figured, no one had bothered the truck, and Buster was looking cool as a cucumber sitting there behind the wheel in air-conditioned comfort. He was keeping an eye on two young men leaning against a nearby car parked half on and off the shoulder. I knew if they so much as stuck a finger inside the truck, they’d draw back a nub.

  They’d already figured that out for themselves.

  I was reaching for the back passenger door handle when I looked over the bed and past the young men’s vehicles to see a silver four-door Ford F-150 caught in the traffic jam. The windows in the back seat were blacked out, but I had a good view of the passenger’s distinctive profile through his open window. He looked familiar, and I ran through my mental files, trying to remember where I’d seen him. It took a moment to recollect he’d been on a wanted poster I’d seen only a couple of hours earlier.

  We don’t get the old-fashioned paper posters mailed to us anymore, but Ethan’s secretary always prints those that come through email and pins them to the bulletin board in the sheriff’s office. I also get them through email from the FBI and other entities, as well as from Major Chase Parker.

  The driver saw me looking in his direction and his head snapped back so fast I almost heard his eyeballs click. The passenger with a nose that looked to have been flattened with a shovel raised his right hand as if to adjust his cap, keeping it against his cheek way too long.

  A name popped into my head. Miguel Torrez. Wanted for armed robbery, drug trafficking, and assault with a deadly weapon. I suspected the driver to be Eric Navarro, his cousin, whose résumé was much longer.

  “Buster, you have the truck.”

  I swiveled to find Ethan, but he’d knelt back down to speak with one of the people chained to the gate, and I couldn’t see him. The rest of the deputies were turned away from me, and I couldn’t catch anyone’s eye. Luck was on my side. Navarro had stopped close to a Nissan coupe in front and couldn’t back up because of a jacked-up white Chevy pickup right on his back bumper.

  Or so I thought.

  Torrez said something to his cousin behind the wheel, then swung back around to see if I was paying any attention. My eyes were still on the truck, and that’s all it took. Navarro snapped something to Torrez, who reached down for what I assumed to be a weapon. Navarro shifted into reverse and slammed against the Chevy truck with the lift kit. The distinctive thump and crunch of collapsing metal floated over the crowd as the Ford’s tailgate caved in under the Chevy’s high bumper.

  There
was no subtlety at that point. “Ethan!”

  The people nearest me quit chanting. Their silence spread like ripples across the crowd, and nearly every head there focused on the apparent accident. Navarro dropped his truck into gear and hit the gas, crunching the Nissan coupe’s back bumper and shoving it into a sedan in front.

  He jammed the Ford back into reverse to make a three-point turn. I was fifty yards closer than any of the other lawmen who were rushing to converge on the scene. From those circling in the helicopter, it must have looked like filings drawn to a blue Ford magnet.

  I drew my .45, the smooth Lexan-covered Sweetheart grips familiar in my hand.

  The entire situation was a nightmare. Too many cars, too many civilians, and a possibly armed felon who didn’t care about anyone but himself. That possibly armed qualification evaporated when Torrez stuck his arm through the open window and swung an old-school Mac 11 subcompact machine pistol in my direction.

  My stomach dropped. “Everybody down!”

  He squeezed the trigger, streaming a burst of .380-caliber rounds in my direction. At the same time, Navarro spun the wheel to U-turn into the open lane and escape back the way they came. He stomped the gas, burning rubber and white-smoking the tires. The truck jerked forward when the Goodyears shrieked on the concrete.

  I zigzagged between the parked cars as the truck’s rear end slewed when Navarro dodged a car parked on the shoulder. Centrifugal force jerked Torrez’s arm and widened the arc of spraying bullets. Hot lead punched holes in half a dozen vehicles between me and the escaping felons, spiderwebbing windshields and side windows. People dropped like wheat before a scythe.

  A deputy opened up with his service weapon at the same time Navarro centered the truck in the westbound lane to get gone. The distinctive gunshots hammered the air, crisp as hammer blows. A second pistol joined in, doubling the volume.

  I raced around the tail end of the white Chevy pickup, close enough to see Navarro behind the wheel, swinging a pistol around in my direction with his right hand. He fired three times over his left bicep as the truck accelerated.