Chapter 10

HUNTING

It was inevitable that I would have to go back to work. My world was fantastic for a few weeks until a client in Houston called. He needed a fugitive picked up that was hiding in El Paso. He was in a bind and willing to pay a bonus for a quick recovery. That usually means it's going to be dangerous. I called Steve and asked if he was up for it. He was at my door in less than half an hour.

We said goodbye to the girls. Both women kissed us lovingly and sent us on our way. They were looking forward to being alone, with time to explore their own love.

Steve and I left hauling our gear in the back of my truck. My contact in Houston had faxed me mugshots with identifiers on our target. He was a South American drug dealer wanted for murder and trafficking. Steve and I studied the pictures and information until we knew it by heart.

We arrived in El Paso and checked in to a out of the way motel, then went directly to the address on the data sheet. We questioned why, if we knew where this man was, then why didn't the police? I guess twenty-five thousand a year will only get you shot at so many times. Why be killed protecting people from themselves. This guy was only supplying what the public wanted.

We knew why the police hadn't rushed over to arrest Adame when we did a drive by to case the place. It was a fortress. It was going to be impossible to penetrate without someone's rights being violated, or killed.

We took a vantage point on a overlooking hillside and watched. The Adame property was surrounded by walls and the grounds were patrolled by armed guards who were assigned regular areas to patrol. That was their weakness, they were predictable. We worked out a route and a timed assault that if all went well we should be in and out before anyone knew we were there.

It would normally have been a very dangerous case, but we had an edge. We didn't give a shit about their rights and we were not the ones who would be killed. The rumors are true, bountyhunters don't play fair. We backed-off and waited for nightfall.

During our wait we went over our plan in detail. We would have to disable two guards at a minimum. They were the key to our plan. Speed and stealth were crucial from the onset of the assault. The guards would be missed in a short time and that would bring other guards. It was a simple hit and run. Running was standard in the past. We knew on this trip we had other options.

We watched and thought until a decision was made. We wouldn't be changing a thing by simply recovering Adame. A quick promotion would keep everything going. The drugs would keep coming and Adame would live like a king in the joint..

We needed to send a message to South America. The kind that made grown men rethink what they were doing. We felt if we were going to risk our lives and possibly take the lives of others it had to be for a better reason than money.

Night came and everything was in place, our target was in sight, and the time had come. Steve and I crept to the first wall and listened for the first of our target guards to pass on the other side. He was right on time. He passed by our position slowly. We both heard the muffled yawn from our position. He was not expecting trouble.

I went over the wall first and silently took the guard by surprise. A sharp blow to the back of his head and he went down. The crack was louder than it should have been. I knew I had crushed his skull. I dragged him to the wall and tossed him over. Steve came over the wall and we went after guard number two.

He was positioned on top of a lower inner wall and came to his check point where he should have met the first man we killed. When he wasn't greeted as planned he dropped off the wall to look for his buddy. He jumped into our waiting arms. Steve nearly took his head off. We left him into the shadow of the wall and approached the house.

We moved as silently as a pair of ghosts. We were about to enter the house when our target and a beautiful woman rose from a meal and came to us. They were going for a late night swim. The guards were noticeably absent. The reason became clear when the woman stripped and waded into the pool up to her buoyant tits.

The man was taking his clothes off when we made our move. Steve moved into the light and drew Ramon Adame's attention for an instant. An instant was all I needed to turn out his lights before he shouted for the guards.

Steve had drawn his weapon and put a finger to his lips implying that the woman's life depended on her silence. She apparently didn't think much of her life. She screamed and splashed as though the pool was filled with piranha.

Steve being the gentleman that he is, and not wanting to waste such a nice pair of tits, pointed to the far wall and moved to cover me as I carried Roman to our exit point. The guards were quick to fill the void we had made but not quick enough. They were counting on two dead men, and that left us a way out.

We ran like cowards. Steve watched my back as we crossed the open yard to the outer wall. Steve went over the wall and I was about to toss Ramon over right behind him. We almost made it before the first shots were fired. Bullets from automatic weapons raked the ground and wall around me. They were trying to avoid shooting their boss, but once he was clear of the wall I would be a sitting duck.

Steve popped his Mac-10 over the wall and laid down enough cover fire to drive the guards to cover giving me the time to clear the wall with Ramon. We didn't get a chance to breath before we heard cars leaving the main gates and circling to our location.

Our escape route crossed a private dirt road that circled the property. I carried Ramon in a fireman's sling as Steve led the way. We crossed the road ahead of the cars and dropped into a deep ravine. It was cut up enough to give a person plenty of places to hide, and wait. They were going to have to split up and come after us on foot. We had them right where we wanted them.

Security swarmed the area where they lost sight of us. The unnatural speed and strength we possessed made it possible to circle behind them where we left Ramon with the first guard's body. They had rushed past that point after finding the dead man and were busy chasing shadows in the ravine. They didn't know they had become the hunted.

We stayed in the shadows behind the cars that had turned into command central. One officer gave orders to the lower ranking men going into the ravine. He was target number one. He sent a man two hundred yards ahead in each direction to watch top side. They were told not to let us out of the ravine alive. They were two and three. Steve and I would enter the ravine ahead of the pursuit and split up the rest to meet in the middle.

I approached target number one and took him out, sharply twisting and breaking his neck. He dropped like a rag doll. We hung in the shadows along the mansion side of the road moving toward targets two and three. They died in the same quick fashion as their commander.

I knew Steve was feeling the same transformation as we dropped into the ravine ahead of the two units in the gully. They had split up to search in both directions. I waited in the shadows for the point man to approach me. He moved toward my position fully alert, ready to kill or be killed. It didn't go the way he expected. He walked directly into my hiding place, and me. He stepped into a whirl of claws and fangs. He body fell on top of his severed hands that still held on to his weapon. His throat was raked out leaving only a spine to hold his head in place. I stepped over him and moved further along the ravine.

When the point man didn't report back, the main patrol radioed command that they had made contact and awaited their orders.

Command or secondary command didn't respond. They were staring at the stars with surprised expressions still on their unmoving faces.

The patrol officer took charge and sent two replacements to take point and ordered the others to spread out to avoid being caught in a cluster fuck. They were adhering to predictable, standard military procedures.

"Come and get me.", I thought, as I watched from a shadowy overhang.

The patrol passed underneath me, nervous now after failing to hear from Command. The leader of the group had positioned himself as rear guard. The coward was my next target. Just before he stepped around a curved wall of the ravine I sprang. His scream died in a fountain of blood as I tore his head off and tossed it forward, into the middle of the four remaining guards. They were not happy.

Gunfire erupted from three hundred yards behind me and in front of me at almost the same time. Steve was having similar fun with the help. The men in my pack opened fire in a colossal waste of ammo. Everyone fired at once, at where their leader's body had fallen.

I had stepped out of sight even before the boss's head had hit the ground. They were terrified and shooting at nothing. At least, until they ran out of ammo. Their panic prevented them from doing what they had trained to do, and the lack of leadership left them to fend for themselves.

As the hammers clicked on empty chambers and men started cursing and praying, I leapt into the middle of their group. They were convinced Satan had come to collect for all their past sins. I tore out the throat of the man nearest me and he coughed blood into the face of the next to die with his torso ripped open and his guts falling onto his boots.

The two remaining guards froze. One pissed his pants while his amigo's arm was ripped off, and handed back to him while he bled to death. The last man was still clicking the hammer on his weapon when I pulled his head back to expose his throat. I sank my fangs into him tasting his blood as he died, gurgling muffled screams into my mouth.

The gun fire had died on all fronts and I moved to meet Steve in the middle. We came face to face as werewolves for the first time. We were both covered in blood and studied each other for a moment. We were basically the same, but still there were things that were different. Just like humans.

We moved out of the ravine to finish our plan. We had to pick-up our prisoner and leave before more people showed up to ask questions. There wasn't any need to hurry. Every man at the mansion had been killed or captured. The woman was left to be our messenger to South America.

We had returned to human form before we got back to Ramon. He was coming to when we sacked him and carried him to the truck. We loaded him in the back and returned to the motel to wash away the blood of fifteen men we had just savagely murdered. We hoped it wouldn't be for nothing.

The great Ramon Adame was safely handcuffed, gagged, and stuffed into a large canvas bag in the back of a pick-up. His return would gross one tenth of his ten-million dollar bail. It would be split in half, after deducting our expenses. We wouldn't have to work for the rest of our lives if we didn't want to.

Steve and I decided not to return Adame to Houston to avoid any reprisals along the way. We selected Dallas as the lucky city to hold him until transport could be arranged. With the warrants in the National Crime Information Computer (NCIC) we could drop him off at any jail in the Country.

Dallas County had Adame booked in and transport arrangements made with Houston within the hour. It seemed everyone there was glad to see the fucker back in custody. They took our names to contact us if they had any questions. I still feel that they thought bountyhunters were just as much criminals as the people they hunted. Maybe they were right, but I'm sanctioned by the same government that they are. I called my client in Houston and let him know Ramon had been returned to jail. After verifying the arrest he transferred the money to my bank and so far, we had got away clean.

It almost seemed to easy or at least it was to odd. The El Paso incident went completely unmentioned in the local newspapers. Over a dozen men had been brutally killed and not one sound came from the press. Someone had worked hard to keep it quiet. But that wasn't our problem. We had been paid and Ramon Adame was now the state's headache. We drove home planing to celebrate on a large scale and to shamelessly enjoy our reward.