Yeager's Law Read online

  “Hey, el jefe,” John Deere Cap said. “Sorry I broke your guys.” He was poised, predator-still, only his head moving as he tracked the Lexus driver around the front of the car. Something about the way he stood plucked at her conscience. Leaving him to be killed would haunt her for a long time.

  “You had to be a hero, hey?” Lexus raised the pistol, leveling it at John Deere’s head. The gunman’s voice rang out clear and loud in the morning stillness, and Charlie could make out every word, despite his accent. “Well, now you are to be a dead truck driver.”

  Charlie dithered, fear warring with her conscience. I have to do something.

  Yeager froze when the white-haired gunman squinted over the pistol’s sights. The guy held the weapon properly, not sideways like the idiots in the movies. His stance, his eyes, and his utter calmness marked him as a pro, not some amateur hijacker.

  Yeager calculated his odds at minus zero and falling. I need him within six feet—even ten would do—so I have a chance to make a play. He might take a bullet. He was prepared for that; he’d been shot before. It sucked then and it would suck now, but if the wound wasn’t immediately fatal, he could come to grips, deflect the pistol, and break the guy’s neck. Simple as nuclear fission.

  “Are you the boss of this outfit of would-be badasses?” Yeager asked. If the guy was talking, he wasn’t shooting. If he wasn’t shooting, Yeager had a chance.

  The older man glared. “It is my responsibility.”

  “To do what?”

  “To take care of my family’s business.” He cocked his head a tiny bit to the right to focus over the sights. He appeared to be savoring the moment.

  Yeager slid his foot forward, edging toward the Lexus and trying to close the distance a bit. If he couldn’t make a play for the gun, maybe he could use the car as a shield. To rush him, Yeager would have to jump over one unconscious body, cross twelve feet of pavement, maneuver around the front of the car, and then disarm his attacker. And maybe pigs will buy first-class airline tickets to Hawaii for their own cookout.

  El Jefe’s black eyes were ice cold, surrounded by darkened sockets, as if the skin around them had been freezer burned. He stood at the front bumper of the Lexus and pointed the pistol directly at Yeager’s forehead.

  The guy could shoot me forty-seven times, go for coffee, come back, and shoot me some more before I covered that much distance. He snorted quietly. Maybe that would be for the better. No bad dreams in Hell.

  El Jefe’s finger tightened on the trigger. Yeager tensed to jump and roll behind the Lexus.

  “Freeze!” a woman barked.

  The hijacker jerked. Yeager let out a shallow breath when the white-haired killer didn’t shoot him in surprise.

  A redhead marched from the restroom breezeway, carrying a nickel-plated, large-frame revolver. She walked with a loose, rolling gait that covered ground fast and swished her skirt around her calves. Yeager blinked, and she didn’t go away, so she had to be real. She held the weapon as though she knew how to use it, too.

  She stopped close enough to not miss if she fired and too far away to be rushed. She assumed a letter-perfect shooter’s stance, big gun braced with both hands, legs positioned to absorb the recoil. “Drop the gun!” she ordered. Her hands trembled slightly, the knuckles gone as white as her face. She was obviously scared spitless, but she was holding it together.

  El Jefe lowered his pistol and looked at the woman with an expression that would have been funny had Yeager seen it in a movie. The triple click of the redhead cocking her massive revolver made Yeager’s butt squeeze. A tiny bit of trigger pull and that hand-cannon would go off, flattening trees and knocking down telephone poles. It was at least a .41 Magnum if not a .44.

  Time stretched, seconds thudding in a delayed beat. The gang leader—more like the gang’s schoolmaster—tensed as if he might go for it. He probably thought the redhead was some white suburban housewife playing with a big firearm that would knock her on her ass the first shot. His face remained inscrutable, except for the eyes. Yeager sensed a reptilian soul living in those dark pits. The guy would be a tough read across a poker table. The question is, will he call or fold?

  One eye squinted, El Jefe took a deep breath and let it out, still holding a murderous frown. He lowered his handgun and engaged the safety. “Is okay,” he muttered. Then louder, he called to her, “See? We are going.” He turned to the older hijacker, the one still holding his balls, and spoke in Spanish. “Get your brother into the car. Everyone. In the car.”

  Yeager’s border Spanish was good enough to keep up with El Jefe’s instructions. Like an angry father herding his children into the family vehicle to go on vacation, El Jefe watched his flock of would-be gangsters slink away. The limping guy helped Zorro into the backseat. The boy cradled his arm like a baby, and his brother took care not to jostle it. The first guy Yeager had decked, the one with the flopping hair, slid into the passenger seat, glaring in capital letters at Yeager as he passed within arm’s length.

  “See, mi hermosa, we are going.” El Jefe stalked, stiff-legged and angry, to the door of the Lexus. Yeager noted that he tucked the automatic under his shirt at his back as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

  The redhead tracked the driver the entire way, laser focused. She swallowed hard enough that her throat moved. It took strong arms to hold a gun as heavy as her Smith & Wesson on target, yet she managed to keep her aim as steady as a marble statue.

  Yeager didn’t breathe again until the Lexus zoomed away and headed up the entrance ramp, turn signal flashing. How courteous. He’ll jack your truck and threaten to shoot you, but he practices defensive driving.

  The sedan accelerated onto the highway and disappeared from view, carrying away the load of juvenile crooks and the old killer with the ice-cold eyes. Yeager frowned. That meant the hijackers were ahead of him, somewhere on the road. And they were pissed.

  CHAPTER 3

  Highway 67

  Near Judsonia, NE Arkansas

  “Thanks for the rescue,” Yeager said. Oddly, he found he was feeling pretty good for having had a close brush with death. Better than he’d felt in days. “It wasn’t your fight, but I’m glad you got involved.”

  Slumped as if all the air had leaked out of her, the woman held the revolver loose, down by her side. “Well, I didn’t have anything else to do this morning.” She laughed, but it sounded shaky.

  “You look a mite pale. Why don’t you sit down for a minute?”

  The taller-than-average, lean, and long-limbed woman wore a sleeveless shirt-dress that she filled out nicely. Her thick mane of coppery-red hair, the color of last year’s pennies, flared as a gust of wind stirred across the soybean fields. “Good idea. I think I’m going to throw up.”

  Yeager touched her gently on the elbow and led her to one of the concrete picnic tables, where she sagged more than sat. He took the bench across from her and gestured at the shiny Smith & Wesson she laid on the table.

  “May I?” He pointed at the gun.

  She hesitated a second but nodded. He picked it up and broke open the cylinder. Six fat .41 Magnum cartridges rested in their chambers. He plucked one out. Hollowpoint. Holy cow.

  He snapped the cylinder closed and laid the weapon back on the table. “You plannin’ on killin’ a bear today?”

  “Daddy told me that if I didn’t hit ’em, at least I’d scare ’em to death.” She flashed a weak smile. Red blotches colored her neck and the exposed skin at the open collar of her dress. She had clear sky-blue eyes, direct as sunlight, and a delicate face with high cheekbones and a slim nose.

  “Muzzle blast alone ought to do it. You handled that situation like a pro. Are you a cop?”

  “No, not even close.” She tried out another shaky laugh. “My first showdown.”

  “Will you be okay here? I need to go call the cops. I’ve got a CB in my truck, and that’ll be faster than using a phone.”

  “Sure.”

  Yeager walked to his truck an
d fired it up to start the power going. He reported on the emergency channel, giving his location and a description of the Lexus. By the time he signed off and returned to the picnic table, the lady seemed composed. The gun had disappeared, presumably back into her purse. At a distance, she appeared to be the type of lady he’d see coming out of a Nordstrom’s or sipping iced tea on the porch of a mansion. Upon closer inspection, the laugh lines and the dusting of freckles said tomboy.

  Yeager pushed his cap back on his head, acutely aware of his underarm sweat, worn clothes, and bristly face. “So what do I call you? Besides my hero, I mean.” Something stirred south of his belly that hadn’t been heard from in a while. Not since the wreck, anyway. It wasn’t much more than a twinge, but he crushed it quick. No use letting wild thoughts of happiness take root. That road led to nowhere but the town of Disappointment, population him. Anyway, she’s way out of your league, Abel. You can’t even buy a ticket to a game in her league, let alone play there.

  She extended one slim hand. “Charlotte. Charlotte Buchanan. But my friends call me Charlie. And you? Are you Abel Yeager?”

  Yeager stiffened. “How’d you know that?”

  “That’s what it says on the door of your truck. Abel Yeager Trucking, McAllen, Texas.”

  “Ah.” Yeager glanced at his truck. “I’m a genius.”

  “So what was all that about?”

  “Hijackers. I suspect they were after the copper.”

  She cocked a questioning eyebrow. A breeze blew a red ribbon of hair across her face, and she pushed it back over her ear.

  “Copper wire,” he explained. “Street value’s damn near as high as cocaine. And it’s easier to sell.”

  She nodded. “That happen a lot? Hijackers?”

  “Not to me, but yeah, especially since the cartels started fighting it out down in Mexico. Lots of bad guys these days, looking for new ways to make money.” He looked away—Charlotte Buchanan’s eyes had hit him with an almost physical force—and studied the parking area. “You handled yourself pretty well there. You always that cool under pressure?”

  “No, never. I don’t know what I was thinking. I can’t even return something to a store, I hate confrontation so bad. I’m like the UN because I’m always the peacemaker.” Charlie smiled and shook her head. “How’d they know what you were carrying?”

  “I imagine they followed me from the wire factory down in Benton.”

  An eighteen-wheeler with a PetSmart trailer rolled into the rest area and came to a stop at the far end of the parking lot. The parking brakes hissed. Yeager waited for the driver to come out so he could warn him about the hijackers, but the truck door remained closed. The diesel idled, sending vibrations through the ground to his feet.

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  “Well, if I’m lucky, they’ll catch them old boys somewhere down the road and send ’em all to jail. If I’m really lucky, those guys’ll run off the road and all die in a fiery crash.” An image of the young hot-wire kid came to mind, and he winced. That boy ought to still be in high school, not out boosting trucks. “Ah hell. I don’t really mean that. I don’t think they ought to die, but I hate the idea of wasting time testifying in court. Or worse…”

  A crow cawed from the far side of the soybean field, and another answered from near the picnic bench.

  “Or worse what?” Charlie prompted.

  “Or worse, they’ll be laying for me somewhere down the road, and the next time I won’t see ’em coming.”

  The state cops were efficient but in no particular hurry. They listened to Yeager’s account of the attempted hijacking, took notes and digital pictures, looked in the cab of his truck, and then made him go through it again. They turned serious and a little tense when they discovered Charlotte Buchanan carried a whopper of a gun in her oversized shoulder bag. She let them take it out and unload it before she put it back in her purse. The cartridges disappeared in a pocket of her dress.

  A slim, black cop with a dusting of snowy white in his hair filled out a form on a metal clipboard. He stood eye-to-eye with Yeager, at about six feet tall. “Did you get a tag number?”

  “No, they had one of those paper tags that car dealers use, had a date instead of numbers.”

  “Got it. Well, maybe we can pull something from the video.”

  “What video?”

  They were obvious once the trooper pointed them out. A brace of cameras covered the parking lot and the vending machine area.

  “The state installed security systems at these rest stops a couple of years ago. Somebody got raped in one down south of here and sued the state for lack of security. We’ll get the Highway Department out here to open the door so we can pull the recording.” The trooper dug out a blank form from the back of his box-like clipboard and turned to Charlie. After the basics of name and address, he asked where she worked.

  “I own a bookstore in Austin and an online book business,” she said.

  Abel watched her while she answered the questions. A pulse beat steadily in her throat.

  She held her hair back with one hand. “My store is called Book Finders. You know, like book binders? But with an F? I was on my way to St. Louis to buy a bulk load of mass market remainder books for my online division.”

  She produced a business card and handed it to the trooper. He clamped it under the clip and copied information from the card onto the form.

  The other trooper returned from the patrol car and led Yeager over into the shade of another picnic area canopy. An SUV pulled into the rest stop. It slowed, the family inside staring at the police activity. They must have decided they didn’t need to stop after all because they drove back out onto the highway. Yeager didn’t blame them.

  “So where’d you learn to fight like that?” The cop took off his Smoky Bear hat; the strap left a mark across the back of his scalp. “Taking out three guys, I mean.”

  “Marines. I spent some time in the sandbox.”

  “Iraq or Afghanistan?”

  “The Stan.”

  The officer nodded. “I was in Iraq. Logistics battalion.”

  Yeager looked across the green soybean fields bordering the rest stop. A hawk turned in the air, wings spread to catch the breeze. The PetSmart truck still idled at the far end of the lot. The driver was probably in the sleeper, catching a nap.

  “How long will this take?” Yeager asked. “Not to sound like I’m bitchin’, but I’m losing time here.”

  “Should be about done.” The trooper glanced back at where his partner was talking to Charlie. “She’s a looker, huh? Classy, too.”

  “Yes, she is that.”

  Charlie must have sensed their gaze. She looked up and smiled at them.

  “That’s a woman would make a potato sack look like a prom dress,” Yeager added.

  “You gonna ask her out?”

  Yeager croaked a startled laugh. “You see that gun she carries? Besides, I’m a truck driver, made it through high school thanks to kindhearted teachers. I got no business thinking about a woman like that.”

  The state troopers took another half hour completing their paperwork before releasing Yeager and Charlie. While the cops climbed in their patrol car, Charlie glided over to Yeager with that fluid, rolling gait of hers and extended her hand for a shake. She had a firm grip.

  “Well, until the next time you meet some hijackers…” she said.

  “I’ll be sure to call you.” Yeager twisted his lips in a strained smile. The muscles around his mouth weren’t used to the expression.

  She dug out another business card, prompting Yeager to go into his wallet and find one of his. His card looked as though it had seen better days, coming out of his wallet like a homeless guy from a shelter.

  “Thanks,” Charlie said, with no apparent disdain for the tattered card. “I’d say let’s do this again, but I don’t want to tempt fate.”

  “No problem. And thank you for saving my ass.”

  Charlie smiled, said goodbye, and
headed for her car with brisk, businesslike strides. Yeager stood for a moment and enjoyed the sway of her skirt and the way her hair bounced on her shoulders. Better get back in the truck, Abel. Got miles to go.

  CHAPTER 4

  Humberto Santiago Cruz guided the black Lexus off the highway at the first exit past the rest stop. He took the two-lane country road for about a mile before he found a spot wide enough to pull over.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he told the moaning Jaime. “You cry like a woman.”

  Hector, Jaime’s brother, huddled in the back seat with one arm around the injured kid. “His arm is broken. We need to get him to a doctor.”

  “What do I look like to you? Blue Cross Blue Shield?” Cruz yanked out his cell phone and stabbed at the buttons. “We should maybe go to a hospital and say please fix my friend’s arm? Huh? How did he break it? Well, we were stealing this truck, and some gringo, some motherfucking truck driver, kung fucked the shit out of us. Now shut up.” Cruz put the phone to his ear and barked, “Chupa? We have a problem.”

  A dusty red tractor puttered toward them. The farmer jouncing in the seat gave a lazy wave as he passed. Cruz sneered and didn’t wave back.

  “Where are you?”

  “Searcy. At the Carl Jr’s.”

  “Yes, good, you’re close. I need you to find the rest stop on 67 outside Judsonia.”

  “Donde?”

  “Judsonia, cabrone! Look it up on the fucking map. Find the copper wire truck—”

  “The Yeager hombre’s truck?”

  “Yes, that one. It’s a long story. Now shut up, and do what I tell you. Follow the truck. Don’t let the guy see you. Soon as you can, put a tracker on the cab. I want to be able to find him again, comprende? Bueno. I have to dump this car and somehow steal another one here in Dog Tick, Arkansas.”

  Jaime moaned again.