Dead Man's Land by Jack Patterson (digital e reader .txt) 📕

neck to look onto the road and saw nothing.

The bus continued to swerve back and forth, drawing plenty of shouts and yelps from the players.

“Hey! What’s going on up there?”

“You falling asleep at the wheel?”

But there was no reply.

Cal stood up in his seat and peered down the aisle into the darkness. The driver appeared to grasp the wheel firmly with both hands, continually checking his side mirrors. Someone was trying to run him off the road.

“What is it?” Prado asked.

“I’m not sure, but it can’t be good.”

Cal glanced out the window and caught a glimpse of the culprit—a black Hummer H2, weaving back and forth. At first Cal dismissed it as a drunk driver, but as he studied the scene more closely, he noticed this wasn’t an inebriated joy ride—this was intentional.

Then a gun came out of the passenger-side window, gesturing for the bus to pull over.

“What the—”

Prado tugged on Cal’s shirt. “What’s happening?”

“I think someone is trying to force our bus off the road.”

Cal barely noticed Prado scrambling to open the window. It wasn’t until he felt Prado’s back against his shoulder that he noticed his new Cuban friend was terrified. Prado leaned back and kicked the window with both his feet, providing a sufficient hatch from which to escape.

“What are you doing?” Cal asked.

“They’re coming after me,” Prado said.

“Who?”

Prado didn’t answer. Instead, he jumped out of the window and landed on his feet. Cal watched him sprint into a nearby thicket.

Wasting no time, Cal stood up in his seat and prepared to follow him. He froze when he heard the voice of a man bellowing at the front of the bus. The faint outline of two men appeared in the shadows at the entrance. Cal slowly crouched down.

“Lights,” said one man, jamming his gun into the driver’s chest.

The driver flicked on the lights.

“Where is Vicente Prado?” the other man asked.

The barrel of his shotgun glistened beneath the cabin lights. Nobody said a word.

“I said, ‘Where is Vicente Prado?’,” the man repeated.

Cal waited until the man looked away from his direction before he leapt onto his seat and jumped out of the window. He ran toward the last place he saw Prado before he disappeared.

“El Roque!” Cal whispered as loudly as he could without drawing the gunmen’s attention.

Cal noticed a hand waving toward him in the bushes.

“Over here,” Prado said.

Without hesitating, Cal broke into a dead sprint and raced toward Prado. He didn’t look back over his shoulder until he reached the shadows. He knelt down and looked back toward the bus in time to see one of the gunmen poke his head through the window opening and hear him let out a string of expletives.

Cal looked at his new friend. “How did you know they were after you?”

Prado shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”

CHAPTER 6

ANGEL TORRES DIDN’T HEAR the pair of feet hit the pavement in the distance. He was too busy seething while he shoved his gun into the faces of terrified players. He stomped down the aisle near the front of the bus before he grabbed the microphone again.

“I’m only going to ask this one more time: Where is Vicente Prado?” he said.

He noticed the large number of Hispanic players on the team and said it again in Spanish.

“¿Dónde está Vicente Prado?”

Still nothing.

He fired a shot, shattering one of the windows. The players gasped and didn’t move.

“Someone better tell me where he is right now!”

Hector Suarez, seated the near front, broke the silence. “He didn’t make the trip. He was sick.”

Torres, flanked by Ortega, reared back and slapped Suarez across the face. “Don’t try to make a fool of me. I know he was on this bus.”

Mudcat stood up. “He’s right. Prado hurt his shoulder and remained in Yakima for treatment.”

Torres fired another shot. “I don’t believe you! Where is he?”

Ortega grabbed a program left on one of the seats near the front of the bus and handed it to Torres. “This might help.”

Torres looked at it and smiled. “Okay, fine. We’ll do it the slow way. I’ve got a picture of everyone of you bastards and I’m going to match you up until I find Prado. Got it?”

A few of the players nodded.

“I said, ‘Got it?’”

All the players mumbled, “Yes.”

Torres systematically went down the aisle, inspecting each face and pairing it with the player’s photo. He marked off each one to make sure there was no trickery taking place.

As Torres completed his checklist without finding Prado, he glanced down at his program again and furrowed his brow. He stopped and looked up before noticing one of the windows was open near a pair of empty seats.

“Who was sitting here?” he asked as he surveyed the nearby players.

They shrugged.

“I’m not going to ask again,” Torres said. He pulled out his gun and shot the window, the shattered glass clinking onto the pavement outside.

James Goodwin stood up and pointed at the window. “Prado left through the window.”

Torres got near him and jammed his gun into the bottom of Goodwin’s jaw. “You’re not messin’ with me, are you, kid?”

Goodwin shook his head.

“Well, let’s go have a look.” He snatched the back of Goodwin’s shirt and marched him outside. Torres guided his prisoner near the bus window that he’d shot out only moments before.

He took a deep breath before yelling into the night. “Vicente Prado, if you’re out there, you better come to me now. I don’t want to put a bullet in your friend’s head.”

Torres peered into the night but heard nothing.

“I’m not going to say it twice.”

Still nothing.

Torres waited another minute before he shoved Goodwin back toward the bus. “Get outta here before I shoot somebody. We’ve got work to do.”

Once Goodwin climbed back onto the bus, the driver fired up the engine and jammed his foot on the gas. Torres watched the vehicle disappear into the night and turn east onto I-84.

Ortega slipped up behind him. “Don’t worry. We’ll find him. He couldn’t have gotten far.”

They rushed