Paul Levine: Illegal

Could it be?

He was the size of her Agustino, but she could not make out the boy's face.

"Lemme make it easy for you." The policeman's tone had gone hard. "We've got your kid. Give a signal you're in there."

"No! Mami, hide! Run!"

Tino's voice!

The policeman grabbed Tino's neck. "I don't want to hurt anybody."

Tino flailed, tried to twist free. "I'll kill you, cabron." Sounding as if he was choking.

"Let him go!" Marisol screamed, pounding a fist against a window plank. "Let him go! And take me!"

The old truck wheezed to a stop alongside an earthen levee. Payne heard a chuga-chuga. The pump station. Peering up from the cargo bed, he saw the grille of an old Chevy poking out of the dirt, where it had been left after a flood thirty years ago. He had passed this place on his horseback ride.

Rutledge leapt out of the truck cab and trudged up the slope, his boots sinking into the wet clay, the color of cinnamon. The rain had slowed. Lightning blinked to the northwest, the storm past them now.

Payne waited until Rutledge had crested the levee, which stood twenty-five feet above the surrounding fields. Louisville Slugger in hand, Payne climbed out of the cargo bed and scampered on all fours up the levee. He lay on the ground at the top, peering at the pump station straddling the stream. A concrete-and-steel structure resembling a dam, the station channeled water into three separate culverts. Utility poles topped by sodium vapor lights gave the streams an orange, toxic tint.

Payne watched Rutledge at the foot of the levee, yelling into his cell phone.

"Where the fuck are you! Do you have her?" He whisked the Tejano from his head and slapped it against his thigh, shaking water from the brim. "Okay, good work, Javie. Now get her the hell over here."

Javier Cardenas again. And he has Marisol.

Payne sized up the situation. One man with a kid's baseball bat against one man with a gun and knife. That was bad enough. But two men with guns? He had to take out Rutledge before Cardenas got here.

Rutledge walked along the shoreline, crouched on his haunches, and peered toward the sluice pipe, the artery that carried the lifeblood of his empire. Payne calculated the distance between them. Down the side of the levee and across a flat space to the culvert. Ninety feet. Maybe a hundred.

Rutledge's back was turned. Payne figured that the noise of the pumps and the angry flow of the water would mask his footfalls. It better. The fear rose in his chest, and for one paralyzing moment he questioned whether he could do it. Then he thought of Tino and Adam, and all that had been lost, and all that could still be saved.

Payne got to his feet and crab-walked down the muddy slope, cutting a diagonal path across the levee.

Eighty feet away.

Rutledge stared into the water. Was he looking into his past? Three generations of men who lusted for land and water. Men who built wealth and power on the backs of the poor, all the while telling themselves they were pioneers and visionaries and men of the soil.

Seventy feet.

Payne's Nikes squished in the mud, the suction slowing him down.

Sixty feet.

Rutledge rose from his haunches and stretched his neck, working out a kink with the palm of a hand.

Fifty feet.

Payne raised the bat to shoulder height. Tripped on a rock embedded in the muck. Caught himself but lost a step.

Forty feet.

Rutledge cocked his head, as if sensing something.

Thirty feet.

Payne planned his swing. He'd smash Rutledge's skull right above the temple.

Twenty feet.

Rutledge pivoted. "You? You sorry son-of-a-bitch!" He pulled the big revolver from its holster.

Payne drew back the bat.

The gun was waist high, the barrel sweeping toward Payne's chest.

Three more steps. I won't make it.

Payne let the bat fly. Just as Rutledge pulled the trigger, the Louisville Slugger caught the tip of his shoulder. The slug smacked the mud at Payne's feet.

Rutledge grunted and dropped the gun. Payne went low, aimed for Rutledge's knees. Tackled him, shoulders square, a linebacker wrapping up a running back.

The men toppled backward, rolled over each other. A flailing of arms and elbows and knees. Both men struggled to their feet. Rutledge got his hands around Payne's neck. "You stupid shit! You could have been rich."

Payne broke Rutledge's grip and threw a left jab that caught him squarely on the nose. A snap of cartilage and a fountain of blood.

Rutledge roared. More in anger than pain. He came at Payne. They collided head-on and tumbled into the culvert, the sluice pipe dousing them from overhead. Waist deep, the water slowed their movements. Scrambling to get their footing, they each clawed their way to shore like prehistoric amphibians. Payne slipped and Rutledge got to dry land first. Diving face-first into the mud, Rutledge reached for the gun, which slipped from his wet fingers. Payne leapt onto Rutledge's back and squeezed his right arm around the man's neck. Gripping his right wrist with his left hand, Payne pulled upward, catching Rutledge in a choke hold. Rutledge spat mud, grunted, snorted an unintelligible curse, and jackknifed an elbow backward, burning Payne's right ear.

Rutledge was strong and slippery, all long muscles and hard bones and wiry gristle a dog couldn't chew. Swallowing his own blood, he lurched to his knees, dipped a shoulder, and tossed Payne off his back. Payne clambered to his feet just as Rutledge came at him. Payne shifted his weight to one leg, swiveled a hip, and used Rutledge's momentum to toss him to the ground, the gun out of reach.

Payne saw the bat on the wet ground. Scooped it up. Turned, thinking Rutledge would still be going for the gun, several yards away. Instead, the man was just an arm's length away, drawing the foot-long knife from the scabbard on his leg. Payne sidestepped a forward thrust. But a downward slash sliced him from the tip of the left shoulder halfway to the elbow. The cut long but shallow.

The movement left Rutledge off balance. Before the pain from the wound even reached Payne's brain, he latched both hands around Rutledge's wrist. Payne twisted the arm outward, Rutledge yelping with pain.

The knife fell to the wet clay.

Payne, bleeding from his left arm, threw a straight right into Rutledge's already shattered nose. Rutledge staggered backward, blood pouring from his nostrils and soaking his brushy mustache. But still, he didn't fall. He wobbled side-to-side, arms down, eyes unfocused. Payne picked up the knife and tightened his grip.

Lightning blinked in the distant sky. In Payne's mind, a flare burst with dazzling images of startling clarity. Adam, so young. Sharon, stoic in her loss. Tino, filled with life and promise. Marisol, what horrors had she known, and what dread must she feel now?

Payne sized up just where he would bury the blade. The gut? The chest? Maybe the neck. Let him drown in his own blood. He would kill the man for Adam and Tino and Sharon and Marisol. And for himself.

He would plunge the knife to its hilt, tearing tissue and ripping organs from their moorings. He would hear the steam explode from pierced lungs. He would yank out the blade, time and again, to the satisfying squish of flesh sucking at steel. He would strike a hundred times, baptizing himself in the bastard's blood.

Holding the knife in an underhand grip, Payne advanced a step. Rutledge's eyes seemed to clear, to focus on the blade.

Let him taste the fear and hear his own last breath.

A gunshot echoed off the concrete walls of the pump station.

"Freeze, Payne!"

Cardenas stood atop the levee, aiming his 9mm Glock at Payne's head, Marisol and Tino a few steps to one side.

It had all come crashing down, Payne thought, the weight of his actions pounding at him. He had tried to save Marisol but succeeded only in delivering her-and Tino and himself-to wet and lonely graves.