The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: The Butcher and the Black Tide, Part 5 of 13

Lucky Ford and Bucket Hall have been separated from their companions. Their only hope to survive the volcanic storm and their profane enemies lies in the hands of their new ally, the Gallo Rojo.

The Butcher and the Black Tide is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

This is Part 5 of The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: The Butcher and the Black Tide. If you haven’t read Part 1. Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4 yet, check them out before reading any further.

Content Warnings: Mild Swearing, Tobacco Use

MONDAY NIGHT, JULY 12, 1943
ONE OF EL GALLO ROJO’S HIDDEN CACHES
THE SIERRA ESPUÑA MOUNTAINS, SPAIN

Bucket gave his pack of cigarettes a practiced smack, making one jump out. He looked at it for a second, then offered it to Lucky. He shook his head.

“Good,” Bucket chuckled. “I don't have a light anyway.”

He placed it between his lips and began chewing on its filter, his old habit.

“That Espada has got some dedicated troops,” he observed, staring blankly into the black night. “Never seen guys in such a hurry to die like that. Worse than a banzai charge, far as I hear.”

“Emilia said they were gassed during the war, something that drove them nuts, and now - !” Bucket cut Lucky off.

“So Hellbörg's got their sodium-sobrialux locked down? Explains why they'd run into bullets for the bastard.”

“Sodium...” Lucky started. Bucket had lost him there.

“Sodium-sobrialux is used as a temporary chemical suppressant for accumulated of irrsinnium tri-carnozone in the frontal cortex,” he answered, simple as can be.

“Irrsinnium... you have to stop saying things like that,” Lucky joked.

“It’s this neurotoxic nerve gas. Some of the boys call it crazy gas, one of Department Three's toys,” Bucket replied. Lucky remembered hearing Loud MacLeod mention it offhand but never thought about what it was. Bucket kept going:

“It's nasty stuff. First it burns your skin, then you go nuts. Causes hallucinations and muscle spasms, makes you want to kill anything in reach. If you don’t get killed out of mercy or in self-defense, you’ll forget to eat and probably starve. Smoking sodium-sobrialux crystals can hold off the symptoms for a day or two at a time, but they will always need more. If Hellbörg controls the smoke...”

“He controls that army of bolseteros,” Lucky concluded.

“Yeah, an army of addicts, willing to kidnap and kill to get their fix,” Bucket noted. He subconsciously took his pulse on his jugular, a motion Lucky only noticed because of his time as a deputy. Something told Lucky that this talk of addicts had instantly curbed Bucket's willingness to talk. Bucket sat for a while, sucking on his cold cigarette.

“So what's it that got you out here, Ford?” he asked when the silence had gotten awkward.

“For Grease,” Lucky answered. “Because...”

“No, no,” he interrupted. “I mean this hemisphere, to the war. You volunteered for this shit.”

“It was the right thing to do.”

“Don't feed me a line like that,” Bucket grumbled.

“Well what do you want to hear?” Lucky asked, frustrated.

“Let me try a different angle, Ford. You were a cop before all this. Why'd you do that?”

“A deputy. My dad was a sheriff.”

“Heh, that’s an even worse answer than the last one. So why'd you leave? Was your pop in the Army?” he shot back.

“No. It just...” Lucky didn't have an answer for him. “It was just the right thing for me.”

“Right,” he muttered, turning his attention back to nibbling on his already-soaked cigarette.

“Well, why are you here?” Lucky snapped. “You had to have enlisted way before I did if you're a buck sergeant already.”

“Ha,” he chuckled halfheartedly. “Nobody told you? For a good six months, all I got was crap about that. Guess they found something more important than jabber-jawin' about my third stripe.”

“What are you talking about?” Lucky was totally lost.

“I've only been in the Army for eighteen months. Got recruited right off the street by the Colonel.”

“How'd you get rank so quick?” Lucky asked. Even with battlefield promotions, eighteen months was wildly fast to go from recruit to E-5.

“I'm a slick salesman,” he answered, his huge grin again reflecting diffused moonlight when he saw Lucky didn't understand.

“Last year, the Colonel was visiting an Office R and D guy in Manhattan and read an article about me,” Bucket explained. He took off his thick glasses while he spoke. His eyes seemed comically small without those half-inch-thick magnifiers in front of them. “Back then, I was winning design awards left and right. Him and his pal, an inventor, Tesla, came all the way down to my mama's place in Brooklyn to find me. From there it was all supply and demand.”

He smirked at the memory.

“You bartered your way into the OCUO?” Lucky realized.

“I knew they wanted me, but I had things that needed to get taken care of at home,” Bucket answered. “You think I won awards and still chose to live in my mama's house?”

Lucky smiled at the joke, but Bucket shook his head.

“She's sick, Ford. That's where all the prize money went. Medicine, nurses, doctors, bills,” Bucket said, getting louder, almost loud enough to hear from outside the spider hole. He caught himself before he gave them away, taking a deep breath before he continued. “I can name every god damn piece of a Model T from memory, but I couldn't remember when to give my own mother her pills.”

He held the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb and took another deep breath.

“The Colonel offered me the promotion to cover the prize money I couldn't win while I was away. And he got her a white doctor out of his own pocket to take care of her when I couldn't.” He put his glasses back on and looked at Lucky. “For all the shit I got for these chevrons, they're not even for me.”

He checked his rank patch as if to check that it was still there, then shook his head.

“I'm no coward,” he said, staring to make sure Lucky was listening. “I heard what the Nazis think of people a whole hell of a lot whiter than me, and hell yeah, I wanted to do something about them, but she's my mom. She wasn't the best mom, or the soberest, and she barely raised me, but she comes first.”

“I understand,” Lucky said quietly.

“So how'd you get this far from Iowa?” Bucket asked, quickly changing the subject from his mother.

“Indiana.” Lucky corrected him, mostly stalling to figure out an answer rather than because he cared about the mistake. Maybe that was why he stalled, because he didn't care about where he'd come from.

“There wasn't anything back there for me,” Lucky answered.

“No family?”

“Not anymore.”

Lucky didn't want to get into the history of cancer and fires and accidents that had whittled his family tree down to a splinter. The sheriff's silver cross felt cold under his shirt, reminding him of the almost-year he spent as a child with the Spanish flu withering away in bed, that same cross pushing down on his xylophone ribs.

“Not even a girl?” Bucket followed up.

“No, not...” Lucky started. “Not anymore.”

“Damn, why not? You're good looking, for a white cat. Hell, I'm married, most of the officials are.”

“You're married?”

“Well, thank you for being so surprised,” Bucket laughed. He pulled a necklace chain free from his undershirt. Threaded on, next to his dog tags, was a gold wedding band. “One of my mom's nurses, Adriana. Married her in the courthouse, right before I shipped. Course, mom hates her, but there's some things a son's just got to do for himself.”

He chuckled and tucked his tags and ring back under his shirt.

“Sorry, but most of you? Even Neff, or Angel?” Lucky asked, trying to think of the most disagreeable potential spouses he'd met so far.

“Well,” he started, considering his answer carefully, “Those there are a couple special cases. You'd have to ask them about that. I ain't one to flap my gums.”

He sat for a minute, playing with his wedding band through the fabric on his chest.

“So what happened to your old lady?” he asked, directing the conversation back to Lucky.

“I wish I knew,” Lucky replied. “It seemed fast, but now I think it probably happened slow. Just growing apart, with different ideas of where we were going and where we were. Then she was gone.”

“Don't sound like a dame worth waiting around on,” Bucket replied.

“No, it wasn't like that. She's gorgeous, smart, funny. Everything I ever wanted in a partner. It's just...” Lucky shook his head. He hadn't said it out loud before. And he still couldn't say her name. He continued:

“After my mom died, things didn't make much sense there. I thought I knew where I wanted to be, but I never took another step to get there. I just got stuck in this rut I didn't want to be, moping, working, drinking, sleeping, start again. I wallowed around so long that I didn't even notice that miserable became normal. And that's how I was when I met her. She was different. She should have been the smiling kick in the ass I needed.”

“So what happened?” Bucket asked.

“She was open and happy to do anything new, anything fun. When I was with her, I felt like I could be the same way.” Lucky was stalling again, trying to explain an answer he didn't want to acknowledge to a question he didn't want to be asked.

“But you weren’t,” Bucket said, nodding.

“If you asked her, she might have a different answer, but now I say it was bliss. You get the numb when you have it. as long as it’s there, you can ignore a lot. What she saw was that I was comfortable in that rut. She expected me to fulfill all those promises, to grow up and go on adventures, but if I could feel happy where I was, why risk it by changing anything? She knew that I that I'd stay miserable while playing happy. Eventually she left me, and all that was left was that same rut, and nothing left to fill it in.”

“Then you found the Army,” Bucket said. Lucky nodded: Bucket knew where he was going.

“She walked out in October of '41. I got worse for a while, sitting around feeling sorry for myself, introducing myself to all the Black Labels I could find. Pearl Harbor happened, and that lit me up, but it took a while for me to do anything about it. I stayed, kept on at what I was at, thinking my badge meant that I was doing my part. But that spark that Pearl lit kept burning. It gave me something to focus on, so I joined up.”

Bucket nodded silently and took a swig from his canteen, then handed it to Lucky, like they were passing a whiskey bottle around a campfire. Lucky took a quick sip. The water was still stale and gritty.

“And you went to war for a girl?” Bucket asked, grinning to break the dark mood.

“No, not like that. I needed the change, me,” Lucky tried to explain, but his rationalization rang hollow.

“And you went to war for a girl,” Bucket concluded for him. Even Lucky couldn't help but grin.

“Guess so,” he agreed. No matter how strange it got told, his was a story as old as women and war. Lucky took another slug of the warm water and passed it back to Bucket.

Bucket leaned back and chewed on his cold cigarette. Outside, the sounds of their hunters had died down, and nothing had moved for some time.

TUESDAY MORNING, JULY 13, 1943
THE FOREST OUTSIDE LAS ENCRUCIJADAS
THE SIERRA ESPUÑA MOUNTAINS, SPAIN

Near as Lucky could figure, with the sky obscured and no watch on his wrist, he and Bucket didn't leave Emilia’s spider hole 'til after midnight. They checked their weapons, polished off the canteen, and set out into the forest.

It took them an hour to navigate the falling ash using Bucket's compass and the landmarks described on Emilia’s hand-scrawled map. Her trail of unique brownstone formations and distinctly fallen trees led straight them to the sleeping forest town of Las Encrucijadas.

It was a village really, a cluster of less than twenty wooden buildings clustered around a well, a small church, and the meeting of three dirt roads. It was notable only in it having the bad luck of having been founded so close to the Romanian’s future hunting grounds.

Emilia had told them that Las Encrucijadas owed her. Since January, the Gallo Rojo had stopped the bolseteros from taking six families from this one town. The townspeople were scared and started moving north. It took just a few months for the population to dwindle to a couple dozen desperate people under the leadership of a priest. Their appeals to local authorities went unheeded; only the Gallo Rojo offered them any protection.

Officially, Captain Espada was the military liaison for the entire region, a title purchased wholesale with Hellbörg’s gold. The tormentors of Las Encrucijadas were also their keepers. He kept his jurisdiction quiet, paid its tithes to the capitol, and used the trapped people as his own personal supply of patients.

Emilia repulsed the half-dozen abduction attempts against Las Encrucijadas over several months, but since Berto’s death, she could only been in one place at a time. The Romanian's men raided other towns throughout the valley with impunity. They took so many others that six rescued families hardly made a dent in Hellbörg's schedule.

Still, the bolseteros needed more bodies. Their attempts on this town and others became more aggressive, and so too did Emilia's rebukes. Fewer and fewer bolseteros began returning from their missions. It was Emilia's defiance more than her results that enraged Hellbörg. The fear that this crimson-clad phantom inspired in his men slowed his work more than any lack of subjects.

The Romanian demanded results. He forced Espada to take direct command of the bolseteros' field work. He called his old war contacts, those voyeurs and provocateurs who’d become the madmen behind Department Three. Their influence led to his contract with O’Laughlin, the Irish assassin merciless in his pursuit of blood and gold.

Emilia’s efforts had earned her an army of killers on her heels and now her refuge was in ruin. She had no options but to turn to the very people she’d been protecting. She, and Lucky, Bucket, and Miller, needed somewhere to regroup, to rest, and to figure out their next move. The only place she had was Las Encrucijadas.

Lucky was on point when he and Bucket entered the town. He scanned the dark buildings through the iron sights of his Colt 1911. There was no light, no sound, and no movement ahead. Bucket took up the rear, watching their six down the barrel of his Thompson.

They advanced past the outer buildings, making their way between empty shops and boarded-up houses to the edge of the dusty square formed by the crossing of the three dirt roads.

Lucky put his right fist up and ducked into the shadow of a general store. Bucket melted into the darkness behind him. Just enough moonlight breached the ashfall to give Lucky a view of the square, his gaze sweeping back and forth with .45. Bucket edged up alongside him, bringing his Thompson up to cover their forward arc.

“Looks like everybody's asleep,” he whispered over Lucky's shoulder. Not even a stray cat had disturbed the smooth blanket of accumulated ash. Behind them, Lucky heard cinders and gravel crunch beneath a boot.

“Almost everybody,” he whispered to Bucket. He turned around expecting to see Emilia only to find a Russian PPD-34 sub-machine gun in his face. He reluctantly raised both hands in the air.

“Levantan las manos,” a gruff man ordered. He was weathered and wrinkled with a thick mustache covering his upper lip, staring Lucky down behind his gun.

“Holy hell...” Bucket mumbled, then lifted his Tommy gun above his head. More grim people materialized out of the darkness around them, all silent and heavily armed.

Hands slipped through the shadows behind Lucky, taking the Colt out of his hands and rummaging through his pockets and webbing, slithering away with the last of his ammo and his trench knife. Bucket had been similarly stripped of his Thompson and Super Colt.

“Vuélvanse,” the first man ordered. Lucky didn't understand the words, but his gesture with the gun was obvious enough. Bucket and Lucky turned around.

A crowd of a dozen men and women had encircled them. Each was carrying a Russian long gun, their sights staying squarely on the intruders. They were dirty and dressed in rural workers' clothes, but had the hardened, patient manner of a trained unit.

A wizened old man in black stood at the center of the group. He was a full four inches shorter than even Bucket. His beard was long and white, so much so that it nearly concealed his Roman Catholic collar.

The priest held his gnarled hands out. Bucket’s Thompson materialized out of the silent crowd and appeared in them. His slight frame made the gangster-style machine gun look massive.

Lucky wracked his brain for the right word, the one he'd heard Zorro calling Spanish priests on the radio:

“Padre, uh, un momento, por favor,” Lucky stuttered, trying in vain to string a sentence together.

“¡Silencio!” the man behind them barked through his thick mustache, jabbing Lucky in the back with his machine gun.

“How did we let a bunch of hicks catch us?” Bucket wondered aloud.

“They had help,” a familiar metallic voiced answered. The crowd split in half like Moses himself was coming through. Emilia, her face hidden behind her helmet, walked to the old priest's side. Miller was close behind her. Lucky let out the breath he had forgotten he was holding.

“Padre Mandario, estos son mis amigos,” she said to the priest.

“No queremos extranjeros en Las Encrucijadas,” the little man warbled. “Extranjeros llevan problemas, incluso a los amigos del Gallo Rojo.”

“What's the old fart saying?” Bucket asked under his breath.

“I thought your wife's name was Adriana,” Lucky whispered.

“Yes, it is,” Bucket hissed, “Her family speaks Spanish, and me not knowing a lick of the language cuts down on awkward conversations with the in-laws.”

“A good strategy,” Lucky whispered.

“Flawless,” he confirmed.

“Gentlemen,” Miller interrupted, “The Gallo is trying to secure shelter for you. Father Mandario and his people are wary of strangers, so please do be quiet, at least for a moment.”

Mandario mumbled something through his beard to Emilia, so low that Lucky couldn't even hear him, much less understand his quick Spanish. Emilia nodded, the pointed nose of her mask bobbing up and down.

“Show him your names,” she translated, echoing through the helmet.

“Show him my name?” Bucket asked.

“Your dog tags, Sergeant,” Miller interpreted impatiently, “The Gallo means your dog tags.”

Lucky reached down his collar and dragged his tags out by the chain. The sheriff's dangling silver cross caught what moonlight could filter through the ash. Next to him, Bucket was was doing the same, showing off his gold wedding band to the old priest. Father Mandario saw the cross and the ring and smiled. It was not as much of a smile as his whole wrinkly face crinkling upwards. He nodded to his people, and they all lowered their weapons.

For the second time in less than a week, Lucky thanked heaven that he still carried that cross. He was also thankful for the low light, because he wasn’t completely sure that there wasn't a dried scrap of Isaak Gerhardt's face still melted onto it. Lucky wouldn't have been too excited to learn the padre's thoughts on that topic. The old priest mumbled through his beard at Emilia again. She translated for Lucky and Bucket:

“He says that any honest Christian is welcome in Las Encrucijadas.”

Father Mandario's face crinkled again as she echoed his words. He set the safety on Bucket's custom Thompson and handed it back to him. Lucky's Colt, knife, and ammo, and Bucket's Super Colt were returned. Mandario began issuing instructions to the gathered townspeople in Spanish, still too low and fast for Lucky to comprehend.

“Honest Christians? Good thing he don't know us too well, huh?” Bucket kidded, and poked Lucky in the ribs with his boney elbow.

“Hush, Sergeant,” Miller whispered, shooting Bucket a cold stare.

The villager who had greeted Lucky with the PPD threw his weapon over his shoulder. He tried his best to smile at them, but the expression was forced and unfamiliar. He had the look of a man who had spent too much time around violence, with only loss to show for it.

“Ven conmigo,” he said, then beckoned the officials to follow him toward the center of town. The three of them clung tight, with Emilia, the priest, and the rest of the crowd following in their wake of kicked-up ashes.

“Pueden dormir aquí,” their escort grunted. Lucky didn't know those words either, but the man was pointing at a boarded-up inn next door to the town center’s church, “Pero han que salir al amanecer.”

“Se llegue la sonrisa jamás,” Emilia responded, looking up into the falling soot. Lucky followed her gaze. The blizzard of toxic cinders showed no signs of letting up.

“What did he say?” Lucky whispered to Miller.

“He told us that that is where we will sleep tonight, but only until sunrise,” Miller translated while wiping grit from the lenses of his gas mask.

“And what about her?” Lucky asked.

“The Gallo wondered if the sun would ever rise over this place again.”

Emilia's words stopped Lucky in his tracks. The sun had been dark for two days now, but it would always be there.

Their escort pulled on the boards that were nailed across the inn’s doorway. They creaked open on a cleverly concealed hinge, revealing a reinforced oak door. Three knocks convinced those inside to open it, and past a pair of guards and their shotguns, Lucky found a stack of bedrolls, several baskets with bread and cured ham, and a dozen ceramic jugs dripping with condensation. His stomach growled in anticipation of the food, and his body ached to stretch out on one of those bedrolls.

Bucket shoved past and snatched up a side of ham and loaf of bread. He kicked out a bedroll while he gnawed on the cold food, laid down, and fell asleep on the thin down mattress with his mouth full. All of this was done in less than thirty astonishing seconds.

Lucky sat down next to him, took the ham out of his hand, and carved a steak-thick slice from the unchewed end. He leaned back against the wall and took a bite. The Spanish ham was soft but chewy, sweet on the outside, with a heavy brine flavor closer toward the bone. It reminded him of home. He took off his helmet and set it on the floor next to him.

He hadn’t seen where Emilia went. Somewhere secluded, and dark. She had to be boiling under that helmet. He hoped she’d relax enough to breathe.

On the other side of the room, Miller had made a space for himself and had disassembled his M3 grease gun. He'd even gone so far as to remove each .45 caliber round from the clip so he could clean the fine volcanic dust from the magazine spring. The sound of the wire brush cleaning ash from the M3's stubby barrel was hypnotic.

Lucky leaned his head back against the wall. He was too tired to reach out the six feet to the pile of bedrolls.

A loud horn blared twice outside.

He felt like his eyes hadn't been closed a whole minute. The drop-dead exhaustion that had leeched into Lucky’s marrow was flushed out with a torrent of white-hot adrenaline. His Colt was in hand, safety off, before he was on his feet.

Bucket woke with a start, scrambling for his Tommy gun and Super Colt on instinct. Miller's re-assembled M3 was ready to spit death at whatever had come to Las Encrucijadas through the choking fog.

Miller went straight for the front door, only for Emilia, armored and helmeted, to block his way.

“No!” she hissed. She had a bladed Webley in one hand and a flare gun in the other. “They know what they are doing, the priest helped them prepare.”

She hunkered down by one of the boarded windows, saying:

“Until they need us, we watch.”

Lucky understood. The Romanian was farming these remote towns and saw the people as crops. So far, he'd only tried to have one or two families picked off at a time, despite having the strength and will to wipe the remaining community off the map. Las Encrucijadas would not survive provoking Hellbörg and his entire army of hired killers, and Emilia knew it. Revealing that they were harboring the Romanian’s enemies was a surefire way to bring the full weight of his forces down upon them.

Lucky understood. They had to remain hidden, for now. He sidled up next to Emilia and peered through the window, between a gap in the boards.

Diesel engines roared out there, howling like unchained beasts. Their horns were mournful. Three sets of bright headlights pierced the sulfurous gray blizzard. Lucky could hear men yelling in Portuguese, their cries furious and unhinged. He readied his pistol.

The bolseteros had returned to Las Encrucijadas.

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Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Dudu Torres. Spanish translations by Caitlin Gilmore.