Send Down the Rain(5)
The freezing rain did little to improve conditions. The roads were mushy and muddy. And the windshield wiper blades had quit working about ten years ago. Juan Pedro drove slowly, wiping the back side of the windshield with a dirty white T-shirt.
In the back seat, Diego trembled.
Juan Pedro followed the map through Bowditch, then Celo, and when the road made a hard right turn at the South Toe River, he let off the gas and began looking for signs. He turned right at Gibson Cemetery and downshifted into first as the big truck rattled onto the dirt road. Diego winced. Juan Pedro hesitated just slightly at the No Outlet sign. He didn’t like being penned in.
They wound up the slowly increasing grade, passing the occasional house or cabin. It was growing dark. Passing a run-down geodesic dome where wood smoke puffed from a chimney, Juan Pedro rolled down the window, letting in the cold and rain, and stared off into the trees. A light flashed twice, then again once. Juan Pedro whistled and turned left onto the muddy road, where rhododendron limbs smacked the windshield.
He parked, left the truck idling, and carried a black bag through the dark toward a guy holding a flashlight in front of a metal barnlike building. Incoherent screaming rock music could be heard from within. As soon as Juan Pedro was out of sight, Catalina handed Diego an empty water bottle. Diego knelt on the back seat and furiously unbuckled his pants. Over the next minute and fifty-six seconds, Diego filled the twenty-ounce bottle, trying not to spill it. Screwing the cap back on, Catalina took the bottle and wedged it beneath her seat. Diego took a deep breath and all three watched the warehouse, hoping, praying Juan Pedro would not return.
A minute later, an expressionless Juan Pedro exited the warehouse with a different black bag, hopped into the truck, dropped the stick into reverse, and circled backward and slowly out the drive. When he glanced in the rearview and noticed Diego was no longer sweating, he slammed on the brakes. The sudden movement jolted everyone forward. The pee bottle as well. Juan Pedro eyed it and, as if loosed from a spring, backhanded Catalina, rocketing her head against the headrest. As blood trickled out the side of her split lip, he lit a cigarette, looked into the rearview, and growled out of the corner of his mouth, “That’s your fault.” He lit a cigarette. “Apologize.”
Diego whimpered, “I’m sorry, Mama.”
Catalina wiped the blood away and shook her head slightly.
Taking a deep draw on his cigarette, Juan Pedro continued down the dirt road. As he made the wide bend toward the asphalt, the headlights of the old flatbed Ford were met head-on by a waiting police officer parked perpendicular to the No Outlet sign.
The officer stood in his rain slicker, water dripping off his hat, a flashlight in his hand. He shined the high-powered LED light in Juan Pedro’s eyes and held out his left hand like a stop sign.
Juan Pedro smiled, waved, and never even hesitated. He slammed the accelerator to the floor, roaring the big block V-8 to life, and, turning the wheel slightly to the left, slammed into the police officer, who spun out through the night air like a helicopter blade.
When Juan Pedro cleared the bright white dot from his pupils, he noticed that the police officer had been smart and not come alone. A second officer knelt alongside his car, pointing a rifle at the Ford’s windshield. His door-mounted Q-Beam lit the entire front and back seating areas, which explained why he had not emptied the entire thirty-round magazine into the truck. The officer maintained his aim while wildly yelling into his shoulder-mounted radio mic. Juan Pedro drew the automatic from his waistline and, knowing the officer would not return fire, emptied his seventeen-round magazine through the officer’s car door. When the smoke cleared, the officer lay on his back in the mud. One leg crossed oddly beneath the other.
While little surprised Juan Pedro, the third officer did when he moved around behind the first officer’s car, trying to get a clear shot without endangering those inside the car. Using the truck as his backstop, Juan Pedro drew the revolver at the base of his back, exited the truck, and walked toward the officer, pulling the trigger six times. When he’d emptied the revolver, he returned to his truck and methodically dropped the stick into drive.
When he let off the clutch, he was met by his first unsolvable problem. All four tires were flat.
He eyed the police cars, but he knew they were equipped with highly sensitive GPS units that would allow someone sitting at a dry desk to track his every turn. His options were few.
Grabbing the bag, a backpack packed for just such an eventuality, and several weapons, he shoved Catalina and the children out of the truck and force-marched them back toward the metal shack.
Drenched and freezing in only a T-shirt, Catalina worked hurriedly to get the stumbling kids into their jackets. The fleece pants would have to wait.
Juan Pedro ushered them through the darkness, prodding them with the muzzle of his rifle. Reaching the side of the building, he slipped through the darkness like a shadow. Ten head-banging, wannabe rockers stood cooking dope inside. The four who sat guard outside were passing something back and forth and stoned out of their minds. Juan Pedro forced Catalina and the kids around the cookshack and up the small hill behind, then sat them next to a giant boulder and, with a clear view of everything below him, waited.
Ninety seconds later, Catalina watched him smile as the sound of sirens reached their ears. Thirty seconds later the night sky was filled with flashing red and blue lights as the entire Burnsville and Spruce Pine police departments descended on the cookshack. Stoking the fire, Juan Pedro fired four shots through the windshield of the first car and seven through the windshield of the second. Doing so brought all twelve vehicles to a rapid stop, whereby a hail of bullets passed between the cookshack, now in utter chaos, and the twelve officers who believed three of their fellow deputies were dead.