Blacktop Wasteland(65)
Locusts bleated in the marshy woods behind him. A rivulet of sweat ran down from his forehead and dropped into his right eye. He rubbed his eye with the back of his gloved hand, then crab walked across the dry, shallow ditch and edged up closer to the road. The sun had set two hours before but heat still radiated from the asphalt. Beauregard checked his watch again.
“Come on. Come on,” he whispered.
Beauregard touched the butt of his .45. It was tucked into the small of his back. He knew it was there but touching it was reassuring. There hadn’t been time to get any pieces from Madness. Just another example of how far he had let his standards slip when it came to this particular pinch. But this wasn’t a normal score, was it? His desperation and Ronnie’s greed had landed them all in a hornet’s nest surrounded by vipers. Yet despite the startling lack of preparation and the sharp vicissitudes he had experienced in his fortunes since they’d knocked over the jewelry store he still planned on getting out of this alive. Lazy had made the same mistake a lot of people made about him. People like his own mother. Or the boys at Precision. The folks at the bank. Ariel’s mama’s people. Even sometimes his own wife. They all underestimated him.
His Daddy used to say when Bug set his mind to something he was like a boulder rolling down the side of a mountain. And God help anyone who got in his way.
The throwaway phone in his pocket vibrated.
Beauregard pulled it out and checked the screen. It was a text from Kelvin.
Here they come. Five minutes away.
Beauregard stood up straight and slipped the knapsack off his shoulder. He unzipped it and pulled out a road flare. He ignited the flare and trotted over to a shabby, rust-flecked gray 1974 Lincoln Continental. Once he’d explained the situation to Boonie the old man had insisted on helping to get the vehicle Beauregard needed for his plan. This was after he’d unleashed a ten-minute profanity-laden diatribe about Ronnie Sessions and the circumstances of his birth. He’d tried to keep Boonie out of this, but like many things lately, that hadn’t worked out like he’d planned.
The pungent scent of gasoline emanated from the Lincoln in nauseating waves. Beauregard tossed the flare through the Lincoln’s open driver-side window and jumped backwards. The car burst into flame with a loud WHOMP. Beauregard had diluted the gas just a bit so the car wouldn’t explode but instead burn with a nice and steady flame. He slipped back into the woods, pulled a pair of night vision binoculars out of his pack, and resumed his crouch. He’d parked the Lincoln horizontally across the narrow back road. A standard non-interstate dual-lane road varied between ten to twelve feet wide. A Lincoln from bow to stern was roughly nineteen feet long. Cars barreling down Pine Tar Road would not be able to maneuver around it in the best of conditions. Now that it was engulfed in flames and blocking the road they’d have to stop.
At least that was what Beauregard hoped would happen. He texted Ronnie and Reggie.
Get in place. Ten minutes.
He put the phone back in his pocket. The light from the flames engulfing the Lincoln cast odd shadows across the blacktop. The burning leather and plastic sent black plumes of smoke up toward the quarter-full moon and the bluish black sky that served as its backdrop. Beauregard could see why they had picked this route. He hadn’t seen a car in over an hour. Pine Tar sliced through several counties whose total population was less than one borough in Manhattan. It was a route he would have picked.
The sound of two vehicles approaching broke him out of his reverie. A pair of powerful LED headlights chased away the darkness. A white Econoline van crested the hill followed by a black four-door SUV. The driver in the van probably didn’t expect to see a car on fire in the middle of the road at ten o’clock on a Thursday night. Beauregard watched as he stood up on the brake pedal and the van started to fishtail. The weight of its payload was throwing off the handling. Beauregard filed that away for later. The black SUV slammed on the brakes as well. For a second Beauregard thought the SUV was going to rear-end the van but the driver of the SUV had the advantage of better brakes and superior handling and stopped the vehicle three inches shy of the van’s rear doors.
That was the one thing Lazy’s man had definitely gotten wrong. It wasn’t a truck that was transporting contraband for Shade, it was a van. Burning Man had called them the day after they had watched him ventilate Quan with that little tidbit of information. Their inside man had called them in a panic. Beauregard wondered what he was more afraid of, Shade or a lost hookup. When Beauregard had asked for the make and model of the van Burning Man had been incredulous.
“What difference does that make?” Burning Man had asked.
“I need the license plate number too,” Bug had said, ignoring the scarred redneck’s question.
“I kinda wish I could see what you planning, boy,” Burning Man said with a chuckle. Beauregard made himself not crush the cheap flip phone into a thousand pieces. Lazy’s inside man got them the info but it wasn’t until this precise moment that Beauregard truly believed he’d gotten it right. The van was just as he had described it. A 2005 Ford Econoline with only driver and passenger windows. The type of vehicle you saw on the road every day and hardly noticed because it was so ubiquitous.
The driver of the SUV turned off his headlights but kept on his parking lights. Beauregard peered through the binoculars.
Three men exited the vehicle. They walked around to the front of the van, which still had its headlights on full blast. Even though it was in the high 70s two of them were wearing light, loose-fitting hoodies. Between the illumination from the headlights and the glow of the fire Beauregard could clearly see the bulges in their waistbands under their hoodies. The third man, the driver, made no attempt to hide his weapon. He carried an AR-15 in his wide mahogany hands. The triumvirate stared at the immolating car, then glanced at each other, then turned back to the fiery mess of melting steel and shattering glass that blocked their way. Staring through the binoculars gave everything an emerald sheen. Even the flames from the car seemed to give off a chartreuse radiance.