“Gentlemen,” Chad said, getting bored with his whole coup de grâce routine.
“Who’s that?” The three young men behind the barricade jumped up like someone had stepped on their tails. They jerked around, pointing their rifles at Chad’s chest.
“Go easy, boys. I’ve got a buddy out yonder and he’s got an itchy trigger finger. Damned kid can shoot the dick off a gopher.” Chad treated them to his most dazzling smile. He’d left the NVGs in the car this time. Boredom made him sloppy.
Truth was, they had accumulated more stuff than they could carry in both cars. He would rather do some horse trading with these guys than rob them. Rawlins was a bigger town compared to the one-horse barricades they had been robbing.
“What’re you doing sneaking up on us?” one of the boys asked in a drawl. Then the boy suddenly decided they had the advantage. “Give me your guns.”
Again, Chad hit them with the smile. “How many?”
“How many what?” the other boy asked.
“How many of my guns do you want?”
The Wyoming boys looked at each other, confused.
“How many you got?”
Chad thought about it. “I’ve got a truckload of guns, plus booze, plus freeze-dried food, plus drugs, plus beer, plus weed, plus a really nice bear rug. What’re you guys trading?”
“Trading?”
“Yeah.” Chad knew he wasn’t dealing with the sharpest knives in the drawer. And, in fairness, he had blindsided them. For whatever reason, the dumbest guards got the night shift.
“Gentlemen, you’re not taking anything from me by force because I don’t have anything on me and because my sniper buddy will shoot you if you try. Instead, how about I make you a great deal on some supplies?”
The young men looked at one another, then sidled closer together so they could confer in private.
“You say you got weed?” one guy asked Chad.
“Yessir.” Chad clapped. “We dealing here or what?”
The guys conferred for another moment. “Tell you what,” the apparent leader stepped forward, “we’ll go get the mayor, and you can make a deal with him. For going and getting him, give us some of that weed.”
Chad wasn’t sure he was following. “You want me to give you some weed for going to get the mayor?”
“Yeah. It’s real late. He’s gonna be pissed.”
Chad laughed out loud. “Okay, boys. I’ll give you one ounce of high-grade Wyoming marijuana for bringing the mayor here right now.”
One of the guys whispered something to the spokesperson, apparently a reminder. The spokesman nodded.
“And you can’t tell the mayor about the weed.”
Chad doubled over laughing. When he got himself under control, he agreed. “Okay, mum’s the word about the Mary Jane. Go get the mayor.”
One of the guys took off toward town on a dirt bike. Chad fished a radio out of his pocket. They had picked up a couple of FRS radios from the last roadblock robbery.
“Pacheco. You still alive?”
“Sí, Chad.”
“Hang tight. They’re getting the mayor to negotiate. Please don’t shoot the mayor, okay?”
“Sí, Chad.”
I might just adopt that boy.
They had apparently awakened the mayor from a dead sleep, based on the fantail at the back of his head. Even so, he seemed downright jovial.
“Sir!” the mayor climbed down from his giant pickup truck and thrust his hand out to Chad. “I’m Mayor Spears.”
Chad shook his hand, noting how small men always seemed to have the biggest trucks. As a man of “moderate stature” himself, Chad made a mental note never to buy a big truck, no matter how strong the urge. Too predictable.
In the age of firearms and coach airline seating, being a large man offered few advantages. Chad would rather be “moderately sized” and overly badass. At least that’s what he told anyone who brought it up.
Chad was pleased he was about two inches taller than the mayor.
“These boys tell me you have a sniper out yonder, and you’re both military boys who want to trade?”
“Yessir, though I didn’t tell them we were military.” Chad liked to hold back information whenever possible.
“So are you military or not?” It seemed important to the mayor.
“Okay. So what if I’m a Navy SEAL, let’s say?” Chad had no idea where this was going.
“Well, son, if you are a Navy SEAL, I have a proposition for you.”
More curious than anything, Chad decided to proceed. “I am a SEAL and my buddies out there are under my command.” Chad lied about the number of men and lied with the implication that they might be SEALs, too.
“Fantastic.” The mayor rubbed his hands together. “I’d like to offer you a job.”
Chad waited. Usually, people had a hard time believing he was a SEAL, because a person so rarely met a true Navy SEAL. The mayor seemed excited to believe him, which should have set off alarm bells.
After an awkward silence, the mayor went ahead. “Our Walmart distribution center—the one that belongs to us—was overtaken by bandits. We think they’re bandits. Well, they might be Rock Springs police and some bandits. Maybe they’re truck drivers.”
The mayor was rambling. Chad got the idea, though. They had no idea what was going on with the Walmart distribution center other than someone else was there, presumably with guns.
The mayor gathered his thoughts for a second. “We need someone to get it back for us.”
“What’s in it for me?” Chad asked.
“What do you need?”
“I need a lift to Salt Lake City.” Chad had no idea how a podunk town would give him a lift to Salt Lake City, but he might as well negotiate big.
“Perfect!” The mayor slapped his hands together. “It’s a deal. You get our distribution center back, and we’ll fly you to Salt Lake City.”
Chad thought about it for a second. Fly to Salt Lake? That hadn’t occurred to him.
“Four passengers, plus gear?” Chad raised an eyebrow.
“No problem, son. We’ve got a municipal airport, planes, pilots and plenty of gas.” The mayor thrust out his hand to shake on it.
Chad knew how these kinds of deals worked; they grew hair. If he agreed to this, it was going to get weird, guaranteed.
“Why do you want to take control of the distribution center?”
The mayor answered with certainty, his hand hanging in the air. “We have people who’ll die without the medication in that warehouse. Rock Springs has the regional hospital and the folks there refuse to share medicine. The next best source is Walmart, but our local Walmart is running out of pills for our old folks and kids.”
Chad’s B.S. meter was going redline, but he really liked the idea of a flight to Salt Lake City. He was bored with jacking roadblocks, and eventually he or Pacheco would end up killing one of the young idiots guarding them. That would definitely suck the fun out of the whole enterprise.
Assaulting a Walmart distribution center fit his modus operandi perfectly: pull crazy shit that makes for a great story later.
Chad returned the mayor’s handshake. “Okay, I’ll do it. I’m going to need twenty guys, including these three.” He motioned to the barricade guards.
“Done.”
With that handshake, Chad became the ranking military authority of Rawlins, Wyoming.
The Walmart distribution center sat almost smack dab between Rawlins and Rock Springs, making the mayor’s claim of ownership a bit cloudy. Chad supposed the real claim of ownership went to the town of Wamsutter, if the town had been anything more than a few dozen rusted-out, double-wide trailers. The sparkling new distribution center stood just off the Wamsutter freeway exit.