Joe Lansdale - Hyenas

1:30 came and they didn’t. Had Smoke Stack given me a line of shit? I felt like I was going to burst out crying.

Five minutes later we saw a car with two of the guys that had been with Smoke Stack in the house that night. The skinny, pot-bellied guys.

The car was a replacement for the one they had originally stored in the shed Marvin told us about. A brown, speedy model. They parked it in a slot and sat for a moment. I got out of the car with the .22 and laid it over the roof. I was a good distance away, and I had a limited shot over the roofs of parked cars. My stomach fluttered.

Way I figured, those guys in the brown late model would hit the bank, rush out and into the getaway car as it arrived. Smoke Stack, Brett and Kelly and Stumpy would be in that car. Brett would be at the wheel. When the robbery was done, the others would jump in the getaway car and go. Brett would have to drive them out of there. I hoped like hell she didn’t try to get cute, wreck the car. She did, they’d kill her or the wreck might. With Brett, you never knew. She was a fighter.

Way they planned it, if things went wrong with the pick up they had a spare car in the lot. But the best thing was to have a getaway driver waiting so the robbers wouldn’t have to start up and back out. It wasn’t elaborate. It was simple. Simple was what worked.

The two shit heads got out of the car, ready to go in the bank. They had on gloves and jackets under which I was sure there were guns.

I had the .22 beaded on the back of the head of one of them. A .22 isn’t a heavy firing weapon, but it doesn’t recoil much and in matters like this, it isn’t fire power, it’s aim. The .22 had another advantage. It wasn’t particularly loud.

I took a deep breath, two more, then slowly let out all my air, steadied the rifle. My face was beaded with sweat and a drop ran into my eye. I wiped it away quickly with my arm. The sweat had spoiled my aim.

They paused, and the one I hadn’t sighted talked on his cell phone. That would be the call for the getaway car which would be nearby. And that would be the pause I needed to set my shot again.

They started walking toward the bank entrance. I sighted down the barrel, took three deep breaths again, let out all my air and gently tugged the trigger. The sound of the shot was like someone snapping a whip. The guy I was aiming at folded his legs under him and sat down quickly like he was about to start meditating. I knew there would be a small hole in the back of his head, but the front would have one the size of a half dollar. There would be a punch out of bone, an explosion of blood and brains on the concrete. As I watched, he leaned forward slowly, his forehead hitting the cement.

The other man with him wheeled and pulled a gun and darted back toward his car. I shot and hit him in the side before he made it. He went down. I could hear him scream from there. He threw the pistol aside and got up on his knees and held both hands up in surrender; he was a professional quitter.

I could tell he hadn’t seen me yet, had no idea where the shot had come from. He was rapidly turning his head from left to right, front to back, holding his hands up.

He yelled out to no one in particular, “I haven’t got a gun. I give up. I quit.”

All I could think about was Brett.

I timed the turn of his head and shot him between the eyes. He fell back. I tossed the .22 in the backseat and climbed back in the car. About that time, people came out of the bank. They gathered around the bodies.

We sat where we were. People were looking in all directions. I took deep breaths and let them out.

“Easy,” Leonard said. “Two down.”

Then we saw a black SUV pull into the lot.

Brett was at the wheel. Smoke Stack was beside her. One of the other shits was in the back; the one Smoke Stack called Stumpy. I didn’t see Kelly.

I GOT OUT of the car again with the .22, keeping it held down low. But when Smoke Stack saw the situation at the bank, the crowd, his boys down in the lot, he had Brett drive on. Nothing speedy. She just eased out of the lot. So far, no one even knew the SUV was supposed to be part of what was going on.

I was sure neither Smoke Stack or Stumpy had seen me. I got in the car and we eased out of the lot with our hats pulled down low, and followed the SUV.

It went slow as it turned down the street toward the square, and then it hit South Street and turned. Holding a ways back, but not too far.

My cell rang. I answered.

It was Marvin. “You on them?” he asked.

“On them,” I said.

They went along for a few lights, driving casual, then they turned on highway 7. We pulled down a little dirt road and got out and pulled off the pin striping and threw it and our hats into the bushes. It was most likely wasted energy, but it was the only clever thing we had had time to plan, and frankly, it wasn’t that damn clever.

We got back in the car and went after them, finally caught up and stayed behind them at a goodly distance. Another car passed and got between us. But that was all right. It was a kind of camouflage. We all three drove out highway 7.

We went on for quite some time, and then the car between us turned off, and we fell back a little. There was road work ahead, and they fanned the SUV through, but stopped us. We sat there and waited. It was a cool day, but I was sweating. They were getting ahead of us.

“Should we run it?” I said.

“Stay cool,” Leonard said.

That was like asking a polar bear to stay cool in Albuquerque in mid-July.

Finally they waved us through. Leonard put his foot to the floor. We didn’t see them. We had lost them.

I CALLED MARVIN.

“Man, we lost them. We’re gonna need you out here to help look. We got to do back roads. Shit, I don’t know what we got to do.”

“Take it easy,” Marvin said.

“Easier said than done. Goddamn road work. It got us hung up.”

“Where are you?”

“Out Highway Seven.”

“Highway Seven. We’re coming… Wait. Donny. He wants to talk to you.”

“Fuck him.”

“It’s about where they might be.”

“Then put him on.”

“Hap,” Donny said, “I want to help.”

“Then you better not be wasting my time with a chat.”

“Smoke Stack, if he’s out Highway Seven, he’s going to The Take Off. That’s what he calls a pasture out there. I think his family might have owned it. It’s about twenty acres, used to be a hay field, has some aluminum buildings. He keeps an Ultra-light there. That’s why he calls it The Take Off. He uses the pasture as a kind of airport. He could be going there. I was there with him once. Went out to help him get a car from one of the sheds. One we had stored for the getaway, before you found out about it. He could have stored the car back there.”

“For a trade off?”

“Maybe. But that’s a place he could be. Maybe they’re just hiding out there. I don’t know. But it makes sense.”

He gave me the directions. It was down a county road. We had passed it. Leonard wheeled the car and we drove back.

THE PLACE WASN'T hard to find, not once we knew which road to take. Donny explained all that over the phone. There was a line of trees, and then a pasture. From the directions, we concluded we were at the right place.