“Never!” A biker shouted out, fist pumped into the air. The others met his conviction, shouting at the top of their lungs.
“We are brothers, all of us,” he addressed the clubs, “and tonight… tonight, we fight together. Follow my lead. When we arrive at the safe-house, our mission is to rescue every kidnapped girl we find, and put a bullet in the head of every sack of shit cartel member we find. Once we’ve cleared the place, you can fill your saddle bags with as much goddamned cash as you can carry, but make it fast. We want to be in and out before any of their friends arrive. To all who will join me… let’s show these fuckers how we do shit in Texas. BOYS, LET’S GET SOME!”
The bikers roared into a chorus of cheers, jeers, and vicious taunts as Hunter walked up to me, utilizing the quick distraction.
“We’ll be fine,” he told me, apparently sensing my apprehension. “And I might have a little surprise for you…”
“A surprise?” I shouted, the roar of engines deafening within the confines of the water tank.
“I think we might just find your cheerleaders tonight…”
“What?” His words practically blindsided me. I immediately demanded: “How?”
“According to the Desert Owl and the little rat bastard he’s keeping company, the cartel’s been having trouble selling those girls.”
“You’re fucking kidding.”
“Not at all,” he replied calmly. “I guess the national media attention made it hard to pass off their pretty little faces… Nobody wants that kind of potential heat.”
“…Then they might just be here, tonight,” I realized with a mixture of hope and disbelief. “That’s one hell of a lucky fucking break, Hunter.”
“Not as lucky as you’d think. My old friends have been getting brash. I’m banking on the hope that they’ve gotten sloppy, too…”
Could it be true? Would we find the missing cheerleaders tonight? I thought about those implications for a moment as he continued. Maybe my career didn’t have to end. If I showed back up to the lieutenant with those cheerleaders in tow they’d give me the goddamned key to the city!
But… After all I’d done out here… Did I want to go back?
This wasn’t the time to be thinking about that… It was time to ride. Hunter stepped over his bike and helped lift me onto the seat behind him. In a deafening roar, we rolled out into the desert. It was about twenty minutes later that we finally met a trail. Hunter swung us south, guiding us along the dirt road until we finally came up on a dilapidated complex in the distance. We stopped for a moment, the anticipation around us buzzing like electricity.
“What the fuck is that?” I hissed over the engine. “Is that the place?”
“Welcome to Víboras Verde,” he grimly replied. “This is where they’re basing all their ongoing operations… Right in my own fucking back yard.”
“That’s no safe house I’ve ever seen, Hunter,” I told him with mounting fear. “That’s a fortified goddamn compound… do we have enough men? Can we even fight that?”
“Well, Detective… we’re about to fucking find out,” he replied. His body tensed as he hit the accelerator, roaring us forwards.
18
As we skidded to a stop around the side of the complex, Hunter leapt off the bike. Dragging me to the dirt with him, he hissed into my ear:
“You sure you’re ready for this?”
I nodded, pulling my Glock from my holster.
He reciprocated the nod, rising up beside me with his hand against the outer wall. He slipped me a pair of goggles and put his own on as the bikers swung out around us, kicking up a fierce cloud of dust with their arrival.
I covered my mouth and held my breath with my free hand, following his vague shape as he pressed forward along the side of the building. I could hear the others dismounting, locking, and loading as a swarm.
The cloud began to dissipate just as the moon came through the cloud cover. It shone down on the complex, and I studied it quickly at a glance.
It was a low-hung set of adobe buildings, with a small warehouse attachment. A northward tower looked to be in construction, and some unfinished and half-assembled lights were laying about atop scaffolds and on the rooftops.
Hunter was right.
If we’d waited any longer to strike this place, we’d have lost our chance to hit them hard. They were still setting up shop, but soon, this place would be a fortress.
“This is it,” he murmured, hiding behind cover near the open front entrance. I crept up to his side, flanked in my approach by at least a dozen bikers. “Fortune favors us tonight, detective. This base is one hell of a shit-show…”