by Dan Vining
Nate howled in pain. “Try again,” he said.
Rockett hooked both of his arms through Nate’s good arm. It was no use. Rockett was pinned. Nate put both boots on the side of the culvert and his back against the top of the frame of the RV and pushed. It was like some perverse workout in the kind of gym where there’s no music. It worked. The front of the rig pivoted an inch or two and Rockett’s legs were freed up. Nate pulled him onto the roof just as the coach snagged on the bottom again and turned back toward the center of the culvert.
Rockett was on his back, rubbing his right leg. He tried to get to his feet and fell over. “It’s not broken,” he said, without being asked. He was wrong, but neither of them would know that until the night was over.
Nate looked ahead, into the continuing darkness, but there was nothing to see. “We gotta get off of this thing,” Nate said. “I’m getting seasick.”
“Look,” Rockett said. Twenty yards ahead off to the right, rungs of an iron ladder climbed the side of culvert. Nate aimed his lights at it and followed the rungs up. At the top was another, smaller tunnel, intersecting. Just then, the RV stopped dead, as if obeying a command. The mud had gone solid, like cooling lava. Rockett hopped down the RV ladder on one leg before Nate could help him. Then they were both on the mud again. They got to the base of the ladder and climbed.
Once they were up top, Rockett said, “Is this another storm drain? It’s big.”
“A subway line they never finished,” Nate said. “Long Beach to Pasadena. Right under downtown.”
Nate was already walking in that direction. Downtown. Rockett followed. The second tunnel was darker than the culvert, cut off from the light at the end. Before they had gone a hundred feet, Nate had found something: a stuffed dinosaur. The toy was ragged, as if some kid had had it awhile, but it was clean, hadn’t been down there long. Nate looked up.
Another iron ladder climbed the side of the tunnel to an open hatch.
“How close are we to the TMZ?” Rockett said.
“We’re right underneath it,” Nate said.
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Nate and Rockett emerged out of the mouth of the culvert, right back where they’d gone in. They’d retraced their steps to get back to the bird. The dirt underfoot was dry again but it was obvious the flood had passed through. The pitiful sliver of a moon had gone down. Nate had left the Crow on high ground on the bank of the wash. A premonition? As he moved toward it, he slapped the start switch on the upper left arm of his flight suit and the servo motors whirred and the doors scissored up. Rockett hobbled after him with his bum leg and pulled himself up into the second seat. Twenty seconds later, they were airborne.
Carrie came on. “Goodness. What happened to you?” she said, when she saw Nate.
“Singin’ in the rain,” Nate said.
He pivoted to fly toward downtown. Off to his port were the red tanker helos, a flying wedge of six of them, crossing and recrossing above the zone between the Arroyo Seco and Boyle Heights, even though the Zone Three news said tonight they’d be all the way out in Brentwood.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The Crows were at full-throttle, nose-down, leaving Center City on a south-by-southeast course. Off to Nate’s starboard was Tucker, who’d ditched his gunner and picked up Il Cho. Nate and Rockett had come in and refueled but hadn’t even taken the time to wash off the mud. There was still plenty of night left. Nate had the idea that they had to overtake the convoy by daybreak. After that, it’d be a different game involving too many others, outside authorities. Depending on how long the RVs had to wait in the culvert before loading the New Okies coming from the TMZ, they could’ve already made the run by now. Of the two roads that crossed over the border east of the big crossing in Tijuana, Nate was guessing they’d be on 94, the Tecate road. He thought that because of the Tecate beer cans thrown on the floor of the abandoned RV. Highly scientific.
He’d radioed Tucker and then Il Cho as he was flying away from the Arroyo Seco and the culvert. He’d also reached out to two San Diego CROs, friends he’d seen again that bad day on the beach at Coronado. After witnessing a thing like that, his thinking went, a man might be looking for a chance to do some good, something to try to get the world halfway back in balance again. In this case, one of the men who might be looking for a chance to do some good was a woman named Carlisle. She had a first name but considered it an insult when anyone used it. She’d been the one who’d called him when the bodies washed up, the one who’d said there was something down her way he needed to see. She was in her midtwenties and flew that way.
But the San Diego Crows hadn’t shown up yet.
“I like your bumper sticker,” Tucker said, over the radio. At three hundred mph. On Nate’s fuselage was a sticker that said, “You’re In My Blind Spot.” Nate had bought it at a truck stop out in the desert.
“I should get it tattooed on my forehead,” Nate said back to Tucker. The Crows were flying as close as two cars going down the freeway. “Are you all right back there, Cho?” Nate said. Cho looked spooked, from what Nate could see of him in the second seat behind Tucker. Nobody liked flying with CROs. Cho didn’t like flying, period.
“You guys are crazy,” Cho said.
“Where’s Whitey tonight, Il Cho?” Nate said. He had tried to tap into The Whitey Barnes Show a few minutes ago but it was gone, the feed shut down. Either the time had run out on Nate’s judge friend’s authorized drone surveillance or Whitey had gotten wise, been tipped off. He probably had judge friends, too.
“He’s twenty minutes behind us,” Cho said. “I didn’t call him. He said suddenly all our CIs were telling him Inca RVs were on the road to Tecate.”
“That’s good to hear,” Nate said, with an edge. “I was half afraid we were on the wrong road.”
“He thinks the RVs are empty, just weed-haulers going down to pick up the first load.”
“Did he ask why you didn’t wait for him?”
“We’re all working different things different times,” Cho said, defensively.
“If he’s in the GU helo, by the time that bus makes the scene it’ll all be over.”
“Could be that’s his plan,” Cho said.
“Maybe.” Nate still wasn’t sure which side Cho was on. Or even what the sides were now or what side he was on. The one that wasn’t Whitey’s.
Cho said, “He wanted to know why you weren’t on the comm-link all night.”
“Say again?” Nate said, making a fake radio-breaking-up noise with his mouth.
Rockett leaned forward and pointed over Nate’s shoulder. “There,” he said.
Lights. A mile in front of them. A line of lights. “Hot damn,” Nate said.
In this section of Highway 94—the last miles before Mexico—the two-lane road was under a canopy of trees, oaks as black as everything else around them. At this speed, the CROs were on top of the convoy in seconds. The RVs were running nose-to-tail. The headlights and taillights flashed through gaps in the trees—white and red—blinking like a quarter-mile-long string of party lights.
“Lift, ease off,” Nate said to Tucker. They were flying at a thousand feet.
The two birds slowed to keep from overrunning the RVs and climbed another thousand feet. Nate and Tucker had killed their running lights fifteen minutes ago, over Orange County, and had been dangerously invisible since then. They’d cut off their comm-links to headquarters at the same time. No Carrie, no access to home base tools and personnel. Whitey and Cho were communicating on their own frequency, possibly in more ways than one.
“Nate,” a voice said on the radio, a woman’s voice. Carlisle.
“Hey, girl,” Nate said. He’d pay for that later.
She appeared on the heads-up. “So we’re chasing RVs?”
“Where are you?”
“In front of them a hundred yards. We’re at a thousand feet, flying b
ackward.”
“Cool,” Nate said.
“I’m here, too, mate,” another voice said, this one male and Aussie, pretending hurt feelings.
“Tim Tam,” Nate said. “Did you guys bring gunners?”
“Gunners and guns,” the other San Diego CRO said.
“Go to two thousand feet. We don’t want ’em to panic. The drivers are amateurs and probably high.”
“I don’t think they’re looking up,” Carlisle said. “Third wagon in, the driver has a woman with her face in his lap, riding along. A blonde. He has the dome light on.”
“Jeez,” Nate said, not wanting to think much about it, who she might be.
“What are they hauling?” Carlisle said.
“People,” Nate said.
“People,” she repeated.
“New Okies. Dust Bowlers.”
“How many?”
“Maybe twenty in each rig. They’re taking them to work in the fields in Mexico. Or to dump in the dark in the middle of nowhere. I’m sure they already got all the money out of them.”
“People suck,” Carlisle said.
“Yes, they do,” Nate said.
“They’re slowing down, way down,” the Aussie pilot said. “Are you seeing this?”
“Hold,” Nate said.
“How far from the border are we?” Il Cho came on and said.
Tucker answered, “We’re twenty miles from Tecate.”
“Are they stopping?” Cho said.
“Maybe taking a whiz,” Tucker said.
Nate was studying the same onboard map Tucker had, the lay of the land ahead. The road in this section was uphill, but there had been twists and turns and hills and valleys before and the convoy hadn’t slowed. They’d been running hot ever since Nate and Tucker had picked them up, apparently unaware of the cops above them. Nate looked over the side but couldn’t see much. He needed a better view.
“High and live,” he said, to the air, to the onboard computer. The Crow had its own link-up for navigation apart from HQ. After a hesitation, the heads-up read: LIVE SATELLITE VIEW UNAVAILABLE. “What else you got?” Nate said. “Dead and low?”
“You talking to me?” Tucker said.
The computer put up an archived daylight sat-view of the area. This part of Highway 94 ran through a mostly unpopulated area, a ranch house or two along the way, well off the road. It was the same story the rest of the way to Tecate, at least according to the archived daylight view.
“We got a mesa up here, top of the hill,” Carlisle said. “A gap in the trees, level.”
Nate found it on the daylight sat-view four miles ahead. “Got it,” he said. He dropped the hammer again and flew forward until he was over the mesa. In real time, looking down, it was just a black hole, blacker and emptier than everything around it.
Tucker stayed right with him. “Hey, look what we found,” he said.
Nate looked down and back over his right shoulder. He could make out in the dimness the blind curve of the highway before it opened out onto the mesa. It looked like a good place to stop the convoy. Or it looked like a trap of some kind, a big round bear trap just waiting for something or someone to set down on it and trip it. But who would have set a trap for them? The rigs hadn’t shown any sign of knowing the four CRO helos were up there.
After the mesa, the trees closed in again. It wasn’t now or never…but it was now.
“We’ll take ’em down here,” Nate said.
“Affirmative,” the other three pilots said.
Nate could feel Rockett tightening up in the gunner seat, getting ready, the adrenaline starting to pump, the blood thumping in his young ears. Nate remembered how it used to feel, heading into something like this. His own pulse was probably lower than it had been eight hours ago when he’d stood on the roof at HQ looking at that bloody Eagles sunset. Was it a good thing that his heart didn’t race anymore when a lot was at stake, when with a wrong turn he could wind up dead?
“Carlisle, Tim, come forward,” he said. “Tucker and I will be on the flanks, east and west, five hundred feet off the deck, dark,” Nate said. “You guys will be at the front door, same altitude, backward, everybody dark, everybody pointed in. Then all at the same time we’ll hit ’em with a ton of light and drop in.”
“That’d scare the shit out of me,” Tucker said. “If I was flying along, stoned, out here in the middle of nowhere.” He gave it a beat. “Wait, I already am.”
They all moved into position, the San Diego birds north of the mesa, Nate to the west, Tucker to the east, like points on a compass or nine, twelve, and three on a clock.
“Hold up,” Cho said.
“What?” Nate said.
“Whitey’s coming in,” Cho said. “Four klicks out.”
Nate looked to port, back toward the far dome of incandescence that was Orange County and LA. A ball of light was coming toward them, growing in size.
“I see him,” Nate said. “Tell them to get on our frequency. Let’s hope the drivers don’t look up. Or have their windows down.”
The sound of the GU helicopter would reach them any second, the thudding of the blades and the low-register rough roar of its engine. A Bell Twin Ranger was like a moving van compared to a Crow. It was coming in fast, unmuffled and fully lit up, the way you fly into a poor neighborhood when you want the people on the ground to know the cops are on scene and don’t much care what you think about it.
“Stand off, Whitey,” Nate said, into the radio. “And kill the light.”
A moment slid by before Whitey spoke. “You’re the boss,” he said.
Whitey wasn’t alone. Two more heavy helos were behind the GU bus—flying in a straight line—Bell Twin Rangers, too. One slid out to the right of the GU rig, one to the left, revealing themselves. They were immigration enforcement cops, ICE. It was written on the foreheads of the helicopters, the first thing you saw when they came at you. All three birds killed their lights, obeyed orders, pulled up, and backed off.
“Why’d you bring ICE, Whitey?” Nate said. “I heard you thought the RVs were empty.”
“I try to keep an open mind,” Whitey said.
“Stay back.”
“Yeah, you already said that,” Whitey said.
“Here we go,” Tucker said. “They’re going into the big blind curve.”
The motor homes had slowed to a crawl as they climbed the highway toward the mesa. They were bumper-to-bumper when they broke out of the trees. Then they came to a dead stop, the whole line of them. One by one, they turned off their headlights. It looked almost like surrender, except no one was getting out with their hands up. A minute passed with the RVs just sitting there.
“What are they doing?” Cho said.
“Thirteen of them,” Rockett said.
“Quiet,” Nate said. Then to everyone else, “Somebody dot ’em.”
Everybody responded, aiming and firing their light-guns, painting phosphorescent tracking dots on the top deck of each RV.
A full minute passed. Then another. “Are they just going to sit there?”
“OK, on the downbeat,” Nate said.
“I don’t know what that means,” Tucker said.
“Hit the NightSuns. Now,” Nate said.
“Wait, wait,” Carlisle said. “They’re heading out again.”
It was as if the lead driver had just been waiting for the convoy to bunch up before he pulled out again. And he pulled out fast. One by one, the rigs sped away, drag-racing across the mesa, lights out, headed for the trees on the other side, a hundred yards distant.
“Oops,” Whitey said.
“Hit it,” Nate said to his team.
All four NightSuns exploded at once, making it high noon on the mesa. The Crows were so low the light seemed universal, lit up every bit of the scene, threw intersecting sha
dows across everything. It looked like a rock show. The escaping drivers looked up, squinting, as they sped away. It was impossible to say if they were surprised or not by the arrival of the police. More than a few were grinning big.
“Stay in front of them, Carlisle,” Nate said. “Close the gate.”
Carlisle and the Aussie pilot were already dropping, positioning themselves between the convoy and the trees and the highway that went on to Tecate. They all but set down on roadway, hovering ten feet above the blacktop, their forward lights aimed at the first RV, like the rudest, highest high beams ever. The idea was to make the lead RV stop.
Nate was hot after the rigs crossing the mesa. The RVs were as close together as boxcars on a rolling freight train. Nate was flying a foot off the road, flying like a twenty-year-old, right on the tail of the last coach, tailgating it. Tucker was right behind him, coming up on the left flank of the convoy, low to the ground, too, but not suicidally low.
The lead RV showed no signs of stopping. “Carlisle, I guess you’d better lift,” Nate said.
Carlisle and Tim-Tam floated up a foot, just enough for the convoy to pass underneath. The driver in the first coach looked up and smiled a satisfied smile. “We got us a cowboy in the front vehicle, a black hat,” Carlisle said.
At the rear of the train, Nate and Tucker stayed in position, but the trees were coming up fast. At the last second, Tucker bailed, went high and left, all but trimming the top of the first oak. Nate stayed low and centered. And then all the rigs were back under the trees with Nate right behind them on the tail of the last motor home, close enough to read the expiration date on the license plate. The coaches were still running with no lights. The tunnel of trees was as black as a cannon barrel.