Chapter 32

Snake Knox crouched behind the desk in the sod farm office, his mouth open and his hands lightly over his ears. Junelle Crick stood over him, begging him not to go through with it. Snake told her to shut up and get down.

His fling with the VK mama had paid off in spades. This morning she’d told him that his passport and other ID had been delivered two days ago, but that Toons Teufel had locked both in the company safe. Toons had also ordered two of his men to stay behind and make sure Snake didn’t leave the compound. After hearing this, Snake had lost no time liberating enough plastic explosive to blow the safe with a shaped charge. He’d planted the charge five minutes ago, after the security guys jumped on an ATV and went out to help change a PTO implement on the farm’s main tractor.

Snake glanced at his watch. At the last instant, he reached up and snatched the babbling Junelle down behind the desk, saving her from the flash and possible mutilation by shrapnel. It wasn’t gratitude that had prompted this action, but his awareness that he might yet need an ally in this location, despite his immediate plans.

While Junelle shook her head in shock at the explosion, Snake got up, walked through the smoke, and crouched before the open safe. He found his new ID documents in a manila folder with Chinese characters on it. He laughed cynically as he got up. To get these documents, the white-supremacist bikers had dealt with local Arabs who then procured the desired articles from a Chinese supplier.

As he walked past the desk, Snake picked up the flight bag he’d packed earlier and headed toward the door. At that point, Junelle finally figured out that he was leaving, and what his departure was likely to mean for her future. As she begged him to take her with him, he said, “Sorry, hon, my plane only holds one.”

“But—but they’ll kill me,” she said. “Toons will kill me!”

“Tell him I made you tell me about the IDs.”

“He won’t believe me.”

“Yes, he will.” Snake drew his pistol from the holster on his hip and cracked her across the face with it.

Junelle dropped like a sack.

He kept his pistol out as he left the office and crossed the open space between it and the airstrip, listening for the sound of the ATV’s engine returning. He knew they had tried to sabotage his plane, but the bikers were amateurs when it came to that kind of work. Snake had slipped out before dawn and repaired the wires they’d cut.