The Texas Job by Reavis Z. Wortham

Author:Reavis Z. Wortham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2022-01-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-One

The gunfire stopped. Huddled behind their dead car parked sideways on the sand and gravel road, Ermano “Hermie” Genovese and Frankie “Big Nose” Birger reloaded their weapons with the rattle of full magazines seating into receivers as rain hammered their hats.

Squatting on his haunches, Hermie tucked the Thompson’s scarred wooden stock under his shoulder and glanced around behind them, thinking. There was no way the man could have taken out so many of his men in a matter of seconds.

“Cardinella!” They listened, but there was only the rain and water gurgling past in the ditches. “You think he got Mad Dog? Nobody can get Mad Dog.”

Holding a BAR across his body, Big Nose waited with one knee on the wet gravel. “I think I saw Gabby fall, so it was just Mad Dog firing those last shots.”

“I don’t know.” Hermie twisted back toward the rear of their car. “Mad Dog! Easy! You guys all right?”

An unseen crow called, its harsh rasp sharp and close by.

“Mad Dog? Can anybody hear me?”

“I told you they were dead.” Big Nose licked his lips and scanned the dripping woods. Water ran off the brim of his hat. “We gotta get outta here. Let’s make a break for the other car and leave this son of a bitch behind. For all we know, he could be laying out there in those damned woods, bleeding to death. I bet one of us put a bullet in him. Somebody had to, with all the lead we were throwing around. There’s no way all of us could have missed him.”

“You want to run down this road, in the open? I’ve never run away from a fight.”

“No, but we gotta get outta here, and if we run away from him,” Big Nose pointed toward Hog Eye, “we’ll have to walk all the way back to that hayseed town, and there’s no way we can make it without anyone seeing us.”

“Think!” Hermie wanted to slap his friend. “Ferras is supposed to come by in a few minutes. He’ll add another gun when he gets here, and when it’s over, he can give us a lift to the other car.”

They’d met with Clete Ferras earlier that day in a vacant lot at the edge of Hog Eye to hammer out the details of the ambush. Knowing it was Ferras who put together the disastrous attempt at the hotel in Pine Top, Hermie didn’t want to take the chance on another failure. He would handle it, but Ferras was going to be part of this job, or else. Cherubino Moretti’s instructions were to use the man’s knowledge to set up the Ranger, and when it was all done, to kill Ferras, too, before returning to Hot Springs.

But the man hadn’t shown as they prepared their ambush, and Hermie threw a silent prayer upward that he was just late. He’d probably stayed up all night with that skirt and lost track of the time. Yeah, that was it. He was on the way right that minute, probably driving fast to make up for lost time.

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