“You sure?” Jason asked the man. The gun in Jason’s hands confirmed the man’s connection to Cameron and Anna without a doubt.
“I’m very sorry. Your brother seemed like a cool guy. He loaned me your gun and some ammo to help me make it to Idaho. I’ve got people up there. I had to use most of the ammo to get here. Sorry about that.”
“No worries.” Jason closed the gun case and handed it back to Sal. “Why don’t you keep this?”
“Seriously? Thanks, man.” Sal reverently put the gun back in his backpack, almost as though he were handling Cameron’s remains. In a way, he was.
Jason shook Sal’s hand. “Good travels, friend.” Sal turned away and headed toward a big truck parked on the road outside the tent city.
Tommy came back around and stood beside Jason and Chad.
“We’re going to go get them, right?” Tommy asked.
“Indeed we are,” Jason answered.
Salt Lake County Fairgrounds
Salt Lake City, Utah
“Francisco, where is my Gabriel?” His mother hovered over him. Francisco sat at the dinette in the luxury RV. His mama refused to take a seat. His sister stood beside her. Both of them were thick around the middle and both struck an angry pose. Hands on the hips. Heads jutting forward.
Right now, Francisco despised this RV. The rope lighting, stone countertops and fancy woodwork condemned him as the leader he now knew he was, a cheap imitation of greatness.
So much had gone wrong. Yesterday he hadn’t seen any way he could lose. He shook his head with the mystery of it. How could fifteen hundred men be defeated by forty? Maybe there had been more white people than forty but, even with ten times that many, how could they have defeated his army and his armored tanks? Almost the entire battle had taken place where he couldn’t see, and the radio communication with his men had broken down almost as soon as the shooting started. Worst of all, he didn’t have a clue where his brother was. He had been lucky to get out of Oakwood with his own skin. Actual military tanks had suddenly appeared from behind him on the mountain. Where the pinche madre had they come from?
“Mama, I don’t know where Gabriel went. I told him to stay out of the fight yesterday. He might be on his way back home right now,” more a lie than wishful thinking and Francisco suspected his mother knew it.
“Pancho, I’m going home to Rose Park. Maybe Gabriel will return to me there. I don’t want your big homes or your big talk anymore. I want my son.”
Francisco noticed she had said “son” singular, not plural. And he had no illusion she meant his younger brother. She had just invited him out of her life.
After losing a fight, especially one so costly, Francisco would be lucky to survive the day. It wasn’t the gangbanger way—to lose and then keep on as captain. One or more of his lieutenants would come for him. Maybe Crudo would be the one to slit his throat or shoot him in the back. Francisco wasn’t sure Crudo had even returned alive from the battle.
He couldn’t afford to grieve the loss of his brother or worry about his mother’s disdain. Once again, his own survival would come first.
Ross Homestead
Oakwood, Utah
Jason smelled Doc Eric before he saw him coming up the steps to the office colonnade. Back in the days of his youth, when Jason had been an Eagle Scout, one of his Boy Scout advisors smoked the cherry-blend Swisher Sweet cigars and now they reminded Jason of the outdoors. Even though he could easily afford Cuban cigars, Jason had taken to smoking Swisher Sweets when fly fishing in the backcountry of Yellowstone.
Days were shorter now that October had overtaken the Oakwood hills. The Homestead was festooned in a red-and-yellow patchwork of changing oaks and maples, the trees steeling themselves for another winter. The last of the day’s light faded as Jason watched one of the big oil refineries in the valley burning with flames so massive they could be mistaken for the doorway to Hades.
“That’s one big-ass fire,” Doc took another drag of his little cigar.
“You got another one of those, Doc?”
Doc Eric pulled out a pack and handed it over. Jason fished one out and leaned toward Doc, completing the ritual. Doc cupped his lighter around the end of the cigar while Jason pulled on it, igniting the tip and releasing the fruity aroma.
Doc had been single long enough to forget how to live with family. Even so, Doc Eric took good care of his friends.
“Your daughter’s in need of some consideration,” Doc Eric said gingerly.
“Why?” Jason’s reverie broke with a jolt.
“For one thing, she’s downstairs right now doing surgery on a man, alone.”
The words made sense, but Jason couldn’t grasp the meaning. “I’m not following you.”
“Emily brought back an enemy combatant and snuck him into the surgical suite. She’s up to her elbows in the dude’s guts and nobody’s around. I just went in to check on Jeff’s kid and caught her operating… solo… she’s just a med student. I have no idea how she figured out the anesthesia without killing the guy already. Kirkham made it clear: nobody but Homesteaders and the neighbors were to be treated in the infirmary. We aren’t supposed to be providing medical care to enemy combatants. What do you want me to do?”
Jason thought about it for a second. “Give me the rest of your cigar and get down there and help her.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
Doc handed over his half-smoked Swisher Sweet and walked away. Jason carefully scraped the cinders off onto the ground and slipped the remainder of Doc’s cigar into his pocket for later.
17
“…I CAUGHT A CALL FROM a Drinkin’ Bro in Boston, Massachusetts. He’s hiding out at the top of his dorm building at Boston University. He’s surrounded by co-eds, but that’s the only good news. Boston is completely ransacked and full of looters. Being trapped with a bunch of co-eds would’ve sounded like a porno flick to me before this. I’m guessing the fun goes out of that proposition in about what? Four days without a shower?
“Sounds like my Drinkin’ Bro Zach outside of Salt Lake City, Utah is giving me the invite to join them there, so I’ll be working my way north to join their group. I got plenty of ammo but I’m running low on food. I still haven’t figured out if they’ll let me into Utah without multiple wives, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough…”
Ross Homestead
Oakwood, Utah
For whatever reason, the meeting reminded Jason of one of those historical military surrenders where one general hands another general his sword.
“Jason Ross, I’d like you to meet Don Tobler, head of security at the Maverick Oil Refinery.”
The men shook hands.
“What can I do for you, Don?” Jason wanted a friendship, not a surrender.
“I’d like to turn my refinery over to you in exchange for a seventy percent cut of the profits. We’re seventy; you’re thirty.”
Jason knew he was being worked. The refinery would have been overrun yesterday by the gangbanger army without the help of the Homestead Special Forces garrisoned there. Nearly a hundred Latinos had approached the refinery, which apparently had been a target of opportunity. Between the three security guards and Jeff’s men, working together, they had fought off the attack.
The refinery guards wouldn’t have been able to defend against fifteen gangbangers, much less fifteen hundred, without the help of the Homestead. The refinery would have burned just like the Chevron refinery had been burning for the last two days.