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

him after we capture him? You speak Spanish well enough, don’t you?”

Hampton leaned back in his seat and put his hands behind his head before letting out a long breath. “It’s just odd, that’s all.” He paused for a moment. “And I’ve never been kept in the dark about something this long in all my years working for the bureau.”

“A whole two years?”

Hampton glared at Waller, who kept his eyes on the road. “Yeah, a whole two years. How many times has this happened to you, oh great grizzly veteran?”

“More times than I can count.”

“And you just went along without asking questions or wondering aloud what the whole manhunt was all about?”

Waller shrugged. “Depended on how inquisitive I was that day.”

“I’m very inquisitive—all the time. That’s why I work for the FBI.”

Waller picked up his coffee cup and took another swig. “Maybe you should’ve been a scientific researcher.”

The Waylon Jennings song ended and Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff” pumped through the speakers.

“Really? This song is on your special manhunt CD?” Hampton said.

“The three dirtiest words in our line of work are ‘local law enforcement.’ They don’t do anything but get in the way.”

Hampton’s phone buzzed and he answered it.

Waller looked at the sign off to the right of the road: Umatilla National Wildlife Refuge.

Here we go.

A minute later, Hampton hung up and started to relay the contents of his conversation. “That was HQ. They said they got a call about something going down off U.S. Route 26.”

“And does this involve the man we’re chasing.”

“It does. And the boss emphasized how important it was for us to get to him first, even before any local law enforcement.”

Waller held up his finger. “Not those three dirty words.”

“Sorry. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

A sly grin spread across Waller’s face. “Or the deputy.”

Hampton moaned. “You’re incorrigible.”

“So what exactly is going down?”

“He said there’s been a report of two suspicious men in the area.”

“Armed or not?”

“They didn’t say. They just said we better get to them first.”

Waller eased onto the accelerator pedal as their car roared faster down the two-lane highway. “I hate disappointing the boss.”

CHAPTER 9

ANGEL TORRES HUNCHED over the steering wheel as he eased down the desolate road well outside Baker City. He had no idea if he was going in the same direction as their target, Vicente Prado. They’d tracked Prado to a farmhouse but couldn’t find anyone, even after they woke up the farmer who owned the place and forced him at gunpoint to turn all the lights on and help them. Their only other lead was a truck that roared off in the same direction they were traveling.

It’d been well over an hour since they started bumping along State Highway 7 toward Umatilla National Forest and they still hadn’t seen a thing.

“I think we lost them,” Ortega said over his shoulder, taking a momentary break from straining his eyes to see any movement along the highway.

“Or maybe they were never in the truck,” Torres said.

“I swear I saw two people jump into the back of that flatbed. You know I wouldn’t lie to you about it.”

Torres’s thoughts switched between fear and anger. Fear of the man who threatened to break his hands if he didn’t have his money by the end of the following week. Anger for letting Prado get away in the first place. His nostrils flared when he considered that the biggest mistake he made was listening to Ortega and following the lone truck. He should’ve known better. Ortega once punched an innocent woman in a bar room brawl because he thought she looked like a man who he owed money to. Sure, Ortega was drinking, but he reacted to certain situations in ways that made everyone wonder if he was either completely mad or legally blind.

After stewing for a few moments, Torres finally responded. “Did either of them look like that guy in the bar you punched?”

Ortega laughed and then slugged Torres in the arm. “Give it a rest, will ya?”

“But she was a woman. I’ll never give that one a rest.” Torres slapped the front of Ortega’s chest and snickered.

The Hummer Torres was driving veered off the shoulder and rattled over gravel and dirt.

Ortega reached across the front seat and pushed the wheel sharply to the left. “Watch where you’re going! You almost killed a guy back there.”

Torres looked in his rearview mirror and saw the outline of a man illuminated only by their vehicle’s red taillights and walking in the opposite direction.

“I almost hit him?”

Ortega nodded. “Yeah, but why don’t you slam on the brakes and see if he can help us?”

Torres stopped the vehicle and put it in reverse, backing up until he came next to the man. Ortega rolled his window down.

“You guys need to be careful. You almost killed me back there.” He then let out a string of expletives and punctuated it with a middle finger salute.

Ortega leaned out of the Hummer, resting both arms on the door. “So, you might not be interested in helping us?”

“Screw you, man. Get outta here.”

“Not even for a hundred bucks?” Ortega waved a hundred dollar bill in front of the guy.

The man froze and then snatched the money. He stuffed it into a side pocket on his backpack. “Okay—what do you want to know?”

“We’re looking for a couple of guys who were traveling in a flatbed along this way. Do you remember seeing anything like that in the past thirty minutes or so?”

The guy nodded. “Back up at the 26 Junction, I was about a hundred yards or so north when I saw a flatbed truck come to a stop. Two guys jumped out and took off running. The driver got out of the truck and fired his gun in the air. It was like he didn’t know they were back there.”

Torres leaned toward the window. “How long ago was this?”

“Maybe five minutes or so. You can see the junction once you go around this bend here,” he