The Vortex
Page 13
The line looked much smaller than it had earlier, but it was easily visible and it was not time to turn back now. At precisely 11:30 he squeezed off his first round.
Even though the sound and the flash surprised him, he could see the line jerk as his first round hit. Rapidly pulling the bolt back and re-loading, he aimed carefully and fired again: another hit. When ejecting his second cartridge, he noted reaction from the compound, but concentrated on his aim for the third shot. This time he could see no reaction to his shot, so he concluded that it was a miss. On his fourth shot, to his surprise, the entire compound went dark, and he could hear shouting and the sound of jeeps starting. Not waiting, he hastily picked up his ejected cartridges, and ran down the hill towards the arroyo, quite out of breath after only a few yards. Again the altitude made heavy exertion, for someone not accustomed to it, quite difficult.
As he approached the shallow arroyo, he saw Sheila mounted on a horse holding another.
“Did you get it?” she shouted as he came up. In answer, he held the rifle up with his right arm in a victory signal. She whooped with joy and shouted,
“My bursitis is gone!” Mounting quickly, he followed Sheila as she galloped down the arroyo. After about ten minutes they emerged and galloped across the desert to a group of small, rocky hills. There they were met by Hawkins and two men.
“Let Carlos and Roberto have your horses,” Hawkins shouted, waving them down. “Come with me,” and he ran to the opposite face of the hill.
Watching the two cowboys ride away in the darkness, Curt wondered, as he ran behind Sheila to catch up with Hawkins, just what else they had planned. Hawkins was waiting in a Jeep with its lights off.
“They won’t be able to track us on these rocks,” he said, accelerating as soon as they entered the Jeep, “but hold on.”
It was the bounciest ride Curt had ever taken. Many times he was afraid they would be thrown out or the Jeep would turn over, but Hawkins, who seemed to be enjoying himself, never slowed down.
“Don’t worry about Carlos and Roberto. They’re going back to their ranches and will lead anyone tracking them to a large herd of horses. They think you’re doing this for Ernesto, so you can rely on them.”
Roaring onto a highway, Hawkins at last turned his lights on and drove back to Santa Fe.
Even though Curt had little hope that the destruction of the ionic balance of the counter would return Elizabeth and all the others who had been sucked into the vortex, when he and Sheila approached the front door of 1214 Silver Avenue, he tried to hide his misgivings. Sheila was as well aware as he that there was precious little possibility that Elizabeth would return but because she loved her so much, she hoped the opposite. Curt did not want to add to her disappointment.
“If we don’t find them,” she asked, “do you think we might at least have stopped…”
“I don’t know,” Curt answered. “I suppose it depends on the importance of the physical counter in the whole phenomenon of the vortex. But no matter what we do now - there was a counter.”
She opened the door slowly and they walked in.
The End