Chapter 12: Napalm Burrito Overdrive

“Tacos.”

I looked over at Delaney. “Do you ever choose anything else?”

“Well, we could go get Thai food.”

“Not without Sheree. She’d never forgive us. Besides, we’re practically in the Taco Grande parking lot already.”

Delaney looked thoughtful. “Maybe we could all run up to get some Thai food on Sheree’s birthday. We haven’t done that in months.” She looked down. “She loves Thai food.”

“You ready for her birthday?”

Delaney gave an uncharacteristically gentle smile. “Yeah. I got everything all ready.”

She’d refused to tell me just what she was planning, but she’d cleared out the “swear jars” a few weeks earlier. I’d settled on buying Sheree a nice purse, since she’d mentioned that the lining in hers was starting to tear. I had no idea what kind or how to pick one, so I just gave Tiffany cash and asked her to find one that Sheree would really like. She was thrilled to help and started talking a blue streak about it, finally telling me she needed to pick up two purses and two wallets so that Sheree would have the right purses. Apparently, according to Tiffany, she’d need one for every day and another one for going out. With matching wallets. I’d just given Tiffany more money; this purse thing was a whole language I didn’t speak.

“I’m thinking of getting an El Diablo combo.” Delaney stretched and patted what little belly she had. Her stomach rumbled in either hunger or protest at the thought of the oversized half-jalapeno, half-beef burrito with the obligatory crunchy taco.

“Extra Diablo?”

She grinned. “Do they make ‘em any other way?”

“That sounds good. May do that myself.”

I pulled into the Taco Grande lot and parked the rollback behind the store so it wouldn’t block out ten economy car parking places. We were just late enough that the lunch rush had died off, but I wanted to be considerate. Or at least not get my tires slashed.

Delaney clomped happily up the walk toward the side door.

The kid at the register made Mooky look like a damn brain surgeon. It took four tries to get the order straight. Mooky gave a half-wave from where he was working in the back. He cast a meaningful; glance toward a corner of the dining area where I could see the sheriff sitting at a table with one of his deputies; he lifted his soda in recognition but kept eating, – probably chuckling over the cashier’s unintentional comedy routine. Of course, he wasn’t on the wrong end of it. The deputy must have been new, and I didn’t recognize him at all.

As we headed out the door towards the rollback, Delaney was ahead of me, looking in the bag. “I got eight packets of Napalm sauce. That should be enough, right?”

“I think so.”

She damn near ran over Billy as he was coming up to the door. He blinked and grinned at us. “Hey, Doc. Delaney. Y’all gettin’ some grub?”

Delaney gave a wolfish smile. “El Diablo combos.”

He laughed. “That’s the good stuff right there. Get yerself a coupla packets a’ that Napalm...”

“Hey, Billy!” A dark-haired guy called from the parking lot. “Get me a...”

Billy’s face shifted; he suddenly looking older and grimly unhappy. “Goddammit, Marco.” He said it softly, almost sadly.

I blinked as I looked at the guy in the parking lot. I didn’t recognize him. But I did recognize the car – a flat-black wide-body Charger.

But it was too damn late. Billy snatched Delaney with lightning speed and pulled her into a chokehold, backing toward the parking lot rapidly. Her soda and the bag fell under her feet. “Stay back, Doc. I’ll break her neck. Swear to God.”

Without looking back, he yelled. “Fire it up, Marco. We gotta go! Now!”

I tossed my soda into the bushes by the door and followed, keeping far enough back not to pressure him.

We were almost halfway to the Charger, moving through the parked cars slowly. Delaney was hanging limp, hands dangling.

“Didn’t want it to be this way, Doc, but it was gonna have’ta happen one way or the other.”

“Look, Billy...”

Delaney suddenly twisted, tucking her chin into his elbow and digging it in, making sure she could breathe. She brought her heavy work boot up and raked it down his shin before slamming it onto the top of his foot with every ounce of strength she had – a classic rear choke-hold counter.

“Shit!” Billy started to react, but it was too late; mostly because Delaney’s left hand came out of her cargo pocket with the Stun gun and slammed it into his thigh with a nasty crackle.

“FUCK!” Billy fell backwards as his leg gave out, and Delaney tore loose, bolting toward me, reaching out. I caught her hand and spun to sling her rolling under a pickup truck. “Go! Go! Go!”

I turned back to Billy. He was scrambling towards the Charger, already shaking off the Stun gun. “Marco. Cover me!”

The driver spun back out of his seat and started to level a remarkably familiar large revolver at me.

I dropped, but there was no chance to flatten myself completely to the ground before several cracking gunshots slammed out in rapid succession.

I saw Marco spin and fall to the ground, the revolver flying out of his hand. The sheriff was moving out through the other door of Taco Grande in a tactical walk, still tracking the gunman with his own gun. His deputy was coming out behind him, ready to back him up.

Billy took two bounding steps and dove easily over the hood of a compact, coming up at the rear of the Charger, snatching up the revolver smoothly.

His face was flat and emotionless. He glanced over at me as I rolled to cover but decided I wasn’t important. At least for now. He took a crouching step back, obviously calculating his chance at getting into the driver seat and taking off. But he’d have been headed into the lines of fire of both the sheriff and the deputy.

No good odds there, not with the two men already focused on him.

The fallen gunman looked up at him and reached weakly toward him. “Billy...”

Whatever else Marco was going to say, he never got the chance. Billy fired one shot into his head with cold precision, then sprinted through the maze of parked cars, headed for the highway. He ran like a damn gazelle, only slightly favoring his leg, jinking through the cars with startling ease.

The sheriff rushed forward, checking the dead gunman and moved after Billy while his deputy ran for his cruiser.

I stood up fully just in time to see a small SUV on the highway screech to a stop to avoid hitting Billy. The driver paid for his attempted kindness. Billy smashed the driver’s window, reached through and yanked the door open, slamming the revolver into the driver’s head before pulling him out and tearing down the road in the SUV.

“What the holy fuck?” I looked down at Delaney as she came up beside me. We watched the sheriff run back to his Tahoe and follow his deputy out in pursuit, sirens blasting.

We walked over to the dead gunman, just as Mooky caught up to us, staring down at the body open-mouthed. He blinked and gulped. “Dude. There’s, like, a dead guy in my parking lot. Half his head is gone. And I’m the acting manager today.”

“Traffic cones.”

He looked at me. “What?”

“Put traffic cones around the body until the sheriff gets back.”

“I don’t have any...” He twitched. “Would the yellow ‘wet floor’ signs work?”

“Yeah, I think they’d work just fine.” I pointed at the small crowd of people helping the carjack victim. “And call an ambulance for him.”

Mooky rushed back inside, shaking his head and calling for his guys to round up the signs while he grabbed the phone.

“We staying here?” Delaney looked off into the distance, where the SUV and the sheriff had disappeared.

“We have a police band radio in the rollback. Sheriff might be able to use a rolling roadblock.”

She frowned. “He won’t want us anywhere near this.”

I grinned. “He will. He’s going to want to know just what the hell is going on. He’ll want us close.”

“We don’t know anything.”

“That’s true ... but he doesn’t know that.”

She bolted ahead of me to the rollback, swerving to snatch up the bag with our food. Despite everything, her priorities were still in order. At least for her.

Delaney waved gleefully at Mooky from the rollback as we rolled out, and he resignedly set his wet floor signs up around the body.

We drove in silence for a moment until we got a fix on the chase. The sheriff had called on every agency in the area. I could hear responses and coordination across several agencies, from state police to an odd pair of railroad patrol officers who’d somehow gotten involved.

I flicked the disco lights on as I called in on the net. “This is Dawes’ Salvage. Seven tons of cold steel rollback. We can act as a blocker. Over.”

He didn’t even debate it. “Dawes’ Salvage. Hang back at the Spring Road junction. I’ll call you forward as I figure which way he moves. Hopefully, we can use you to choke off an escape route.”

“On the way. Dawes’ Salvage, Out.” I pulled the new .45 out and checked it before wedging it down next to me.

Delaney watched me do it, then slouched. “We should have put in the hides.”

“We will. I think this mess is out of our hands, though.” I slowed to a stop alongside the junction. “Glad you remembered how to deal with a chokehold.”

We’d spent some time going over stuff like that. Simple stuff that might be handy.

Delaney gave a twitch of a smile. “Yeah. Me too. Glad I remembered the Stun gun.”

“That too.”

She stared down the road. “What the hell is going on?”

“They catch Billy we can ask him. Maybe the overdoses.”

“He killed his partner without even thinking about it. He just ... bam.” She shook her head and shivered.

“His partner knew too much about something.”

She frowned. “Pretty fucking cold.”

I nodded.

Delaney leaned back into her seat, staring through the windshield. “Fuck.”

The radio snapped. “He’s headed down Spring End. He’s managed to get himself backed up against the river. Needles bring up the rollback. Deputy Roberts will show you where to block.”

“Roger. This is Dawes, moving up. Out.”

We rolled up until we saw the young deputy waving to us and gesturing us to block the bottleneck about 500 yards before the road widened out in front of a derelict house on the river’s edge. I could just see the stolen SUV parked haphazardly in front of it. At least nine vehicles with law enforcement markings were tactically positioned to prevent escape.

The deputy backed us off, just out of line of fire from the house and gestured for me to maneuver the rollback into position to close the road off.

Once I had it in park, the deputy raced up and jumped up on the steps on my side. “The sheriff wants to know if you’re strapped.”

Delaney leaned forward and shot him a predatory grin. “He’s old school. Ya gotta ask him if he’s packin’ heat.”

He stared at her and yanked his radio mike up from his shoulder. “Sheriff, he has a kid with him. We need to get her out of here.”

The radio snapped alive almost immediately. “Roberts, this is Hyatt on dispatch. That kid has been in more firefights than you have. Just let it be.”