Read Online The Border Lords by T. Jefferson Parker - Free Book Online

crouching, and Bradley shot him in the middle and the man collapsed just as the second sicario came down the hallway with a machine pistol blazing, trying to control the muzzle rise with his left hand, and Caroline shot him twice and the man stopped but kept firing and the muzzle of his machine gun rose up spitting bullets into the wall, then the ceiling, then into his own face. The gunfire was deafening in the small home and the air filled quickly with smoke. When the machine gunner fell, a very small man sprung up from behind him swinging his pistol on Caroline, and Bradley shot him in the temple and the man pitched forward with his face to the floor tile and his gun still clutched in one hand. The woman came from the kitchen with a sawed-off shotgun, and Bradley took two steps and launched himself. Midair he dropped his gun. He clamped both hands to the shotgun and rammed her chest with his face like he used to as a linebacker and he felt her feet leave the floor and his airborne momentum carry them backward into the little kitchen where they crashed into the refrigerator and sank to the floor. He wrenched away the gun and dumped it into the dining room and stood over her with a boot on her wrist, panting. He wiggled the potato peeler very slightly to see how deep in it was. He’d driven it in farther when he tackled the woman, and now it hardly moved. The pain was breathtaking and the blood poured forth through the groove of the peeler as from a tiny bayonet. He thought of his wife, Erin, and vowed that he would not be forced to say good-bye to her by a potato peeler.
    He backed off the woman and handcuffed her to the refrigerator door. Then he took up his autoloader and followed Caroline Vega as she burst into the first bedroom, then the next. There on the floor they found him, his mouth gagged and taped and his eyes looking up at them in terror and his hands bound behind him with plastic ties.
    “Hi, Stevie,” said Bradley. “ ’Sup? You’re okay now, little man.”
    They cut the cuffs and unwrapped the tape and Stevie Carrasco cried without making a sound. Tough as Rocky , thought Bradley.
    “That’s bad, Bradley,” said Vega, inspecting the potato peeler. “It’s almost to the handle. Those sharp edges are cutting you up.”
    “Feels like a cherry bomb went off in there. Let’s get him out of here.”
    “You don’t move until I get paramedics.” She called dispatch for medics and the coroner team.
    Bradley stood the boy up and he and Caroline Vega walked him onto the front porch. It took just a few seconds for Theresa Brewer and Erik to arrive, Erik already shooting away with the shoulder camera and Theresa stepping in with her microphone raised. Clovis and Klotz came from the backyard. Bradley hefted the boy up into the crook of his right arm and smiled at Theresa. When he looked down, there was more blood than he thought there was. He handed the boy over to Caroline and tried to understand Theresa Brewer’s question but it made no sense to him at all. He smiled at the camera again and sat down on the porch with his feet on the steps and sighed and listened to the approaching sirens. Theresa Brewer pressed the mike toward him, an uncertain expression on her face. He sensed the world letting go of him, and then it did.

9
    Ozburn circled the landing strip south of Puertecitos for his lucky third time, then tipped Betty into her descent. He looked out at her yellow wing afloat in the blue morning sky. Poetry in motion, he thought with a smile.
    Betty was a 1947 J3 Piper Cub and Oz had bought her nearly eight years ago, swept up every dollar he could find and borrowed the rest from his father. She’d run him $26,750, and he had felt guilty buying the gifts of flight and freedom for so little.
    Betty had been a pampered little princess of a plane. She still was. She was delightful and loyal and calm. She was a prop-start, and to Ozburn there was nothing like that transfer of power from his body to hers