Firepower, John Cutter [best summer reads .txt] 📗

down the hill, into the brush, and take off your shirts! Down to the skin, so I can see you’re unarmed. Then you walk back the way you came and you leave town! You do not get to stay! If you don’t leave or if you go to the cops, I’ll watch and wait and I’ll get you. One at a time. That’s my only offer. You’d better take it, Rendell!”

Rendell shook his head. He’d had one humiliation at this Vince’s hands already. He wasn’t having another. Besides, he had a good understanding with Sheriff Woodbridge here. That was not something he’d find, not easily, somewhere else. No. This guy had to die. And it was still three against this one man.

“Rendell?” Scarecrow hissed. “Fuck this! Let’s do what he said!”

“Nope,” said Rendell. “You try to run, I’ll shoot you myself.”

“Rendell.” Tutty whispering this time. “We can pretend to agree — then regroup. We’ve got more guns in your truck.”

“No, you fool, he’ll follow us. It’s two miles to the road. We’re gonna tell him okay, tell him we agree. You’ll say that — I can’t shout right now. Then we’ll all three open fire up that slope. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Then we move back along the trail to that fallen pine tree — you see it? We’ll run behind it and then we’ll split up and hunt him down.”

“Rendell,” Scarecrow whispered, his voice shaking, “I really think that—”

“Don’t think, you’re no good at it!” Rendell growled. “Tutty — tell him it’s a deal. Then we open fire.”

“Hey, dude!” Tutty yelled. “We’re okay! We got a deal!”

“Now!” Rendell yelled. They jumped up and fired up toward the densest part of the vegetation, where this Vince was probably hiding. The guns cracked and rattled, tree branches spat splinters, pine cones fell, gun smoke thickened around them.

“Run!” Rendell yelled.

*

Vince smiled, hearing the gunshots cracking into the woods where he’d been before. He’d moved on from the “duck blind” he’d made in the brush, immediately after he’d given his ultimatum, running behind a series of granite outcroppings to the pine woods back down the trail. He figured the gang would go for the cover of the big fallen pine tree. If they went anywhere else, he’d still be able to see them head there from the outcropping he crouched behind now. He had a good view of the trail above the creek.

They did not disappoint him. As he crouched behind the rocks, he could see them running directly to the big fallen pine. They scuttled around the stump to hunker down behind the supine trunk. They were right there, in front of Vince, their backs to him, about forty-five feet away.

The clean-up was going to be such a pain in the ass. Just get it done.

Well, he wasn’t going to just shoot them in the back. That was something he was willing to do when he had to, if it was a righteous target. He just didn’t feel like he had to now.

He stood up, aimed the AR-15 carefully, then shouted, “I’m back here, idiots!”

They all spun around, Scarecrow even getting off a burst from his AK, the rounds cracking into the boulder that half concealed Vince. Tutty tried to run. Rendell was trying to aim.

He didn’t have time for that. Vince squeezed off three semi-auto rounds, firing the rifle like a carbine, and the top of each man’s head, starting with Rendell, just vanished in a welter of exploding blood, brains and bone.

None of the gang got off another shot. They slumped like puppets with their strings cut.

The echoes of the shots faded, and Vince listened for a reaction, from off in the woods. He’d scouted the area for a quarter mile in four directions and hadn’t seen any campers or fishermen or rangers. But you couldn’t be sure.

The only reaction to the gunshots came from blue jays, squawking in the branches, and a couple of crows flying away.

Vince had noticed Rendell’s Desert Eagle. He’d make some calls and see if it was registered to Rendell. If the cops stopped him with it, he didn’t want to be associated with a gun owned by a missing man.

Good chance it wasn’t registered to the dealer. Kind of guy who’d want to keep his name off his murder weapons. That being the case, he could appropriate it. It was a good weapon to have. The AKs — naw. Bury them with the bodies.

Vince sighed. He wasn’t looking forward to dragging the three men to their graves. He had more graves ready. He’d figured that Rendell might bring four men. He’d been close.

Burying them was the right thing to do. And you couldn’t just leave bodies around in the woods. The sheriff’s department would be alerted, at the least.

Vince shrugged, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and went to Rendell’s body. He dug through Rendell’s pockets, found his car keys, then took the heavy corpse by the ankles, and started dragging. The others he could transport one at a time with a fireman’s carry.

“You’re going to give me a back-ache, Rendell,” he muttered. “I hope you feel bad about that.”

Getting them all planted, covered over, the graves hidden, his footprints removed from the area — it took time to do it right.

He got it done, then he had to take Rendell’s truck off into the woods, off-road it into a good hiding place.

It was early afternoon before Vince walked up to the cabin. He was hungry. He’d cook up some of the hamburger Rose had left him, along with some home fries.

His phone ran as he was stepping up onto the porch. Vince didn’t recognize the number. He answered, “Yeah?”

“Vince? It’s Shaun Adler. Um — look — I’m going out to… to see a friend, out near where we first met, in