Bull Mountain(66)
“And that is?”
“When’s your next cash run to Georgia? I need every detail. I’ll be running it.”
CHAPTER
21
HALFORD BURROUGHS
2015
1.
“Boss, Scabby Mike just checked in. Two bikes are coming up the east bend, five minutes out.”
“Good,” Halford said. He sat in the great room of the main house on the compound, at a huge oak table made from a tree he’d cut down himself. It used to serve as a drying room back when weed was the family’s largest cash crop, but the meth industry required much less space. These days, Halford used it more as an armory. The place was fully stocked with loaded gun racks and metal cabinets lining the walls for the assault weapons and long guns. Military-grade footlockers stacked up on the floor were all full of handguns and ammo. A thin yellow blanket was spread out over the table, and shotgun parts sprawled across it. The room smelled rich of gun oil.
“Why don’t you come in here for a second?” Halford said to the scruffy messenger lingering outside the door.
“Uh, yessir.” The young man snapped to attention and walked in, his rifle slung over his shoulder. The screen door slammed behind him.
“Sit down,” Halford said.
The young man did.
“You’re Rabbit, right? Holland’s boy?”
“Yessir.”
“How long you been workin’ for me, son?” Halford picked up the blued steel barrel of the 12-gauge, looked down it, then blew through it.
“Going on my first year, I reckon.”
“You reckon, or you know?”
The boy was nervous. He was aware of his hands shaking so he kept them out of sight, but he couldn’t keep his knee from bouncing spastically under the table. “I know, sir. Next month will be a year.”
“And how long you been on the shit?”
The boy said nothing. His throat was suddenly frozen shut.
“Did you hear what I asked you, Rabbit?” Halford took a long hooked piece of wire from the table, attached a bit of oiled cloth to the tip, and fished it down the gun barrel.
“Yessir.”
“Then answer me.”
“I . . . I . . .”
“You know the rules around here, don’tcha, boy?”
“Yessir . . . I . . .”
“I consider that anyone doing my crank, on my time, is stealing from me. You know how I feel about stealing, right, Rabbit?”
The young man found his voice. “I swear I ain’t stealing, Mr. Burroughs, sir. I ain’t. A few fellas and me just like to party sometimes, but it’s always on our own dimes. I would never take from you, sir. Everybody knows that would be . . .”
Halford looked up from the gun parts. His eyes were almost black in the low light seeping through the canvas-covered windows. “That would be what, exactly?”
The young man choked out the rest. “That would be . . . crazy.” The roar of multiple Harleys pulling up outside filled the air. Halford looked to the window, and the scruffy kid caught his breath. Halford swiftly assembled the gun and wiped oil off his hands with a paper towel. “I’m going to have a talk with your deddy, see how he wants to handle it. Holland is Scabby Mike’s second cousin. Am I right about that?”
“Yessir.”
“That makes you kin. It’s also the only reason you’re still breathing right now. You get me?”
“Yessir. Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me yet. Your deddy might still kill you once he gets word.”
Rabbit looked down at his bouncing knee.
“But today is the last time you show up anywhere near here with that shit in your system. I find out you even dipped the butt of your smoke in that shit before you come to work and it won’t be up to your deddy what gets done. You understand that, Rabbit?”
“Yessir.”
“Good. Let your fellas know the good word, too.”
“Yessir, I will. I promise.”
“Now get out.”
The young man nearly fell and broke his neck trying to get his ass out of that seat and get outside. He managed to reach the door without having a full-on heart attack. Once Rabbit was out, Halford laughed a little to himself. He rose from the table and stretched his bones before following Rabbit through the screen door with a recently cleaned Mossberg over his shoulder.
2.
“Goddamn, Bracken, what the hell happened to you?” Halford ran his hand over the damage done to Bracken’s bike.
“We got jacked right outside Broadwater.”
“By who?”
“No idea. I was hoping you could tell me.” Bracken took off his helmet, hung it on the handlebar of his battle-scarred Heritage. His passenger, Moe, stepped off the bike, and when Bracken followed, it was clear from his careful manner the big biker was feeling the effects of laying his bike down at forty miles an hour. Romeo and Tilmon got off the second bike and crowded behind Bracken.
“You think it was mountain folk?” Halford asked.
“No, I don’t think so. Ex-or current military would be my guess.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Something about the way they talked to each other. The lingo. The vibe was professional. They were equipped with pro gear, too, but nothing like our hardware. They had all their bases covered, too. Massive intel, like they didn’t have a care in the world that we were on the side of a public highway. They knew we’d be alone out there.”