Cody's Army by Jim Case Read Free Book Online

best not be your crew, El Gato. If any shooting starts, lad, you’re going to catch the second shot fired.”
    Ruiz, who had been dubbed The Cat by drug agents on both sides of the border for his ability to walk away from death every
     time it came looking for him, appeared, in his silk shirt and pressed slacks, cool as a guy out for a Sunday jaunt, or maybe
     on his way to drop in on some border-town police chief with the month’s payoff.
    “Certainly those are my men,” he purred with barely the trace of an accent, his pencil-line moustache curved upward at the
     ends with his smile. “And you will not kill me, gringos. If I die, you most certainly will die. I suggest you pull this vehicle
     over at once and allow me to rejoin my friends, or I am afraid—”
    Caine rapped Ruiz sharply in the mouth with the butt of the Beretta.
    “Shut the fuck up,” he said quietly.
    Ruiz lost some of his composure, his hands flying to his mouth with a yip of pain. He spat out red-specked pieces of teeth,
     cussing hotly in Spanish.
    “Oh-oh,” said Hawkins. “Trouble up ahead too, if I read this right.” Caine looked over Hawkeye’s shoulder, out the front windshield
     at what the Texan behind the wheel saw: a Jeep coming fast at them, growing from a dot on the horizon. A look over his shoulder
     told him the same kind of vehicle, behind, was gaining, too.
    “Trouble is right,” the Brit grumbled. “I thought this was going to be one of those easy ones, mate. I thought this whole
     bloody bounty-hunter business was supposed to be a piece of cake.”
    “There you go again,” Hawkins sighed, scanning either side of the road they roared down without slacking speed. “Always griping
     about a little hard work. You got to earn your pay once in a while.”
    Caine’s eyes followed Hawkeye’s.
    “That high ground to the right,” he said as if reading the Texan’s mind. “Those rocks. We can make them if we’re lucky.”
    “Luck’s got nothing to do with it, pard,” Hawkeye growled. “Hold onto your tea bags.”
    He palmed the wheel. The four-wheel-drive vehicle bulleted off the blacktop toward an outcrop of rock at the base of an incline
     toward one of the buttes, perhaps a quarter-klick away.
    The vehicles closing in on them veered off the highway the moment those drivers ascertained what Hawkeye was up to and began
     speeding in from different angles about one-half a kilometer behind, clouds of dust spiraling up behind all three vehicles
     as the four-wheel-drive led the pack toward the base of the butte.
    Ruiz watched his men closing in from behind.
    “You have no chance,
Senors,”
he gurgled between broken teeth. Crimson spittle stained his shirt. “You are outnumbered. The Jeeps will be in radio contact
     with others—”
    “You just don’t take a hint, do you, hairbag,” Caine sighed. He whapped Ruiz across the temple with the butt of the Beretta.
    El Gato’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he slid to the floor of the backseat of the bouncing vehicle.
    “Now maybe we’ll have some peace and quiet,” said Hawkeye, glancing back out their vehicle’s rear window at the two Jeeps
     closing in fast from different directions. “At least for a minute or two,” he added.
    Felipe Gallegos set down the hand-held transceiver after having summoned reinforcements from the hacienda. He held onto the
     frame of the Jeep to keep from being tossed from the vehicle as the driver kept the accelerator pressed to the floorboard.
     His rifle rode between his legs, aimed up and out, and the three men in the back held on too as the Jeep bounced along off
     the road in pursuit of that four-wheel-drive vehicle up ahead. It was like riding a bucking bronco, but Gallegos, as the man
     in charge of security at
Casa
Ruiz, thought far more about what El Gato would do to him when this was over than the danger of being thrown from this vehicle,
     or of having to deal with the bounty hunters who had the boss.
    The two men could