Winterkill - C. J. Box [83]
BOOM!
Joe hit something metal and solid so hard that his head jerked back and bounced off the rear-window glass. He slumped forward over the wheel as bright orange spangles washed across his eyes. Then smoke, or steam, enveloped the cab of the truck in darkness. Trying to shake his head clear, he looked up and smelled the steam. It was bitter and smelled like radiator fluid.
The spangles had shrunk to the size of shooting sparks when he fell out of the door of the pickup and landed on his hands and knees in the dirt and snow. His hat was smashed down hard on his head, and he pushed it up so he could see.
The twisted grille of the light-colored pickup furiously spewed green steam. A pool of radiator fluid smoked on the ground, and was beginning to cut its way through the snow toward him. Standing, Joe retrieved his shotgun from the seat. He walked around the back of the BLM pickup toward the vehicle he had smashed into.
The windshield of the light-colored truck was marred by a single spidery star where a man’s head would have hit it. Joe skirted the steam and looked into the cab to see a man slumped over the steering wheel, a cap askew over his face and dark rivulets of blood coursing down from under the cap into the collar of his coat. Joe recognized the coat, and the logo that was painted on the truck’s door even though a thick smear of mud had been applied to obscure it.
It was a flying T-Lok shingle with wings.
Joe opened the door, and Rope Latham, the roofer, moaned and rolled his head toward him.
“How bad are you hurt, Rope?” Joe asked.
“Bad, I think,” Rope said. “I think I’m blind.”
Joe reached into the cab and lifted the baseball cap that had fallen over Rope’s eyes. A three-inch cut ran along Latham’s eyebrows. The cut looked like it would require stitches, Joe thought, but it didn’t look much worse than that.
“I can see!” Rope cried.
“Climb on out of there,” Joe ordered, prodding Rope Latham in the ribs with his shotgun. “Turn around and put your hands on the truck and kick your feet out.”
Moaning, Latham obeyed.
Joe pulled each of Latham’s arms back in turn and snapped handcuffs on his wrists. Then he turned Latham and pushed him back into the truck. Joe saw a Motorola Talkabout hand-held radio on the seat that Rope had obviously used to communicate with the other truck.
“Two trucks,” Joe said. “Two identical Bighorn Roofing trucks. One goes down the hill and pulls over at the last second into the brush. Another truck that looks just the same starts up the other side of the hill where it’s been parked out of sight. Looks like one truck that crosses the draw and goes on up the other side. Makes the poor BLM guy think he can cross the draw just like that other truck just did. Pretty good trick, even though he didn’t die out here like you two intended.”
Latham grimaced. Blood was pooling in his eyes as it ran down his face.
“There’s a six-foot drop down there once you clear the brush, isn’t there?” Joe asked.
“Spud thought of it,” Latham said. “But we waited a couple days for that BLM guy to bite. It worked pretty good before.”
Joe didn’t say that seeing twin antelope fawns had led him to think of how they’d pulled it off.
Keeping Rope Latham in his peripheral vision, Joe stepped back and looked up the opposite slope. Spud Cargill, the other half of Bighorn Roofing, had stopped at the top of the hill and was looking back with binoculars. Joe grabbed the hand-held radio from Spud’s pickup and held it up to his mouth.
“We’ve got you now, you son-of-a-bitch,” he said, then tossed the radio back inside. Joe raised his arm and pointed his index finger at Cargill, who was still looking back through binoculars, and pretended to shoot him.
Spud’s truck started to move again, and vanished over the top of the hill.
While Joe waited for Jamie Runyan to arrive in his pickup, Rope Latham began to tremble. He hoped Latham’s injuries weren’t worse than they appeared.
Joe read Rope his Miranda rights, then turned on the micro-recorder that he hid in his shirt pocket.
“Why were you targeting the BLM boys?