On the last day, she went out to the garage, found Hicks and Sandoval standing at the workbench that ran along one wall. They wore latex gloves. Chance was leaning back against the front fender of the truck, watching them.
She came up behind Hicks. On the workbench were four small blocks of what looked like bright white clay, laid out on thick waxed paper.
“What’s this?” she said.
“What we’ve been waiting for.” Using a plastic knife, he cut a block into two pieces.
“Is that safe?” she said.
“C-4’s stable,” Hicks said. “Inert without a detonator. It’ll burn, but it won’t explode. In Nam, grunts used it to cook. They’d fire up a little piece, heat their rations.”
“Where are the detonators?”
“Over there.” On the bench a few feet away was a gray plastic case the size of a cigarette pack. “They don’t get near each other until game time.”
“How will you set them off?”
“Remote control triggers. Basically radio transmitters set to a certain frequency. I have those already as well. We’re all set on this front.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Trust me,” he said. “Everything’s under control.”
* * *
She woke with a start. The room was dark, moonlight slanting across the bed. In the quiet of the house, she could hear Sandoval’s faint snoring downstairs.
She got out of bed, took her watch from the nightstand—three A.M. She needed sleep, but the nights before work were almost always a lost cause. Lack of rest could catch up with her, she knew, impair her judgment, slow her reflexes. But there was nothing for it. The adrenaline was already starting to work in her, her mind buzzing over last-minute details, possibilities.
Earlier that night, Sandoval had driven the truck out to the turnoff, stowed it up in the rocks. Hicks had driven him back in the black Jeep Cherokee he’d stolen from the airport lot. Now the Cherokee and the second car they’d taken, a nondescript Ford Taurus, were parked in the garage. She’d left her own rental two blocks away.
At the window, she looked out on the backyard. The moon was almost full, lit the snowy peaks in the distance.
She pulled on jeans and a sweater, slipped bare feet into sneakers. Wide awake now, and no use fighting it. She went quietly into the carpeted hall and down the stairs. Sandoval was snoring deeply in the living room. Hicks’s door was closed.
Out through the sunporch and onto the patio. The night was chill. Stars stretched across the clear sky.
There were folding canvas chairs leaning against the wall. She opened one, the aluminum frame cold to the touch, set it by the empty pool.
She sat and looked off at the mountains, thought about the distance, the vast stretch of emptiness that began where this development ended. Thought about Wayne in his six-by-ten cell. How the odds were he’d never see open land like this again in his life.
The porch door squeaked behind her. She turned to see Hicks in the doorway. He wore jeans, a black sleeveless T-shirt.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said. “Heard you moving around out here. Mind if I sit?”
She shook her head, looked off at the mountains again. He came out, eased the door shut behind him, rubbed his arms. He was barefoot.
“You must be freezing out here,” he said.
“I’m all right.”
He sank down on the concrete beside her, sat cross-legged. “Not long now.”
“No,” she said. “You talk to Cota? Tell him we’re on schedule?”
“Called him tonight. He was somewhat reassured. But he’s a very careful and paranoid old man. He won’t relax until those things are on their way across the ocean and he’s got the rest of his money.”
A coyote howled somewhere. She remembered what Cota had told her back in Los Angeles.
“Maybe not so paranoid,” she said. “He’s running a lot of risks.”
“Calculated risks. The only kind he takes. He’ll clear a bundle from this, and not just what he’ll get from the buyer.”
She looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think? On one level, the whole thing’s a scam. After he acknowledged he owned those pieces—if not so much how he got them—he had them appraised for twice their actual value, by a guy he had in his pocket. Then he insured them for the inflated value. When they’re stolen, he’ll file a claim. So he walks away with the money from his buyer, under the table, and collects the insurance as well.”
“He should have told me.”
“I guess he saw it as a need-to-know situation.”
“Insurance claims mean insurance investigators,” she said. “They’ll be out there at the site afterward, taking pictures, measuring skid marks. There’s no way around that. But if they start to suspect fraud, they’ll be all over him as well, poking into his business, finding out who he was talking to, what he was doing, in the days leading up to it. They’ll put pressure on the appraiser, too.”
“Maybe, maybe not. What could they prove anyway? Likely nothing. As far as he’s concerned, it’s worth the risk.”
“That supposed to make me feel better?”
“What you have to understand about him”—he touched his temple—“is he’s always thinking five moves ahead. It’s his gift. It’s how he got where he is.”
“Along with having you to watch his back?”
“I guess I come in handy sometimes. My skill set, that is.”
“A gun for hire?”
“That still bother you? Like I said, when it comes down to it, are we so different, you and me? We do what we do. More importantly, we do what we have to do, to get things accomplished. At least we’re honest about it, right? You know what they say: to live outside society, you must have a code.”
“That’s a joke, right?”
“Maybe not.”
“What’s your code?”
The howling came again.
“Take care of my partners,” he said. “Do what I’m paid to do. Do what it takes.”
He stood without using his hands, stretched. She felt him move behind her, then his hands were on her shoulders, gentle but firm. He began to knead the muscles there, press his thumbs into the knotted tension in the back of her neck. She closed her eyes, felt a slow release as the tendons relaxed. He put his left palm on her forehead, gently guided her head back while his right hand worked at her neck.
She started to give in to the gentle pressure, and then suddenly it all felt wrong. She opened her eyes, stiffened, and he felt the resistance there, stopped what he was doing. He let his hands rest on her shoulders. She hunched, and he took them away.
“Sorry,” he said.
She rolled her shoulders. They were looser now. She looked back at him. “We’ve got work.”
“I know.”
“Maybe afterward.” Lying.
“Yeah, right.”
“You should get some rest. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
He turned and went back inside without a word. She listened until the sound of his footsteps was gone, then turned back to the night and the moon.
FIFTEEN
The vultures were just black specks at first, outlined against the low sun. Through the binoculars, she watched them glide lazily on the thermal currents, three of them now. They began to make long slow circles far above.
“Zopilotes,” Sandoval said behind her. “When I was a kid, sometimes me and my sister, we’d mess with them.” She lowered the binoculars, looked at him. He was in the passenger seat of the Cherokee, door open, an HK across his lap. He was using a cloth to wipe it down.
“We’d go out in the desert, lie flat and just wait,” he said. “It wouldn’t take long. Ten, fifteen minutes. We’d see ’em way up high at first. Then they’d come down, check us out. The trick was not to move. Then, when they were like five feet above us, ready for that first taste, we’d jump up and yell. They’d fly away twice as fast. It was fun, you know? Fucking with th
e carroñeros.”
The Cherokee was parked in the shadow of the boulder. Hicks was up on the road, kneeling on the blacktop, an entrenching tool and a now-silent blowtorch beside him. He’d used the blowtorch to soften a section of the roadway, and the smell of hot tar was in the air.
He and Sandoval wore desert camo jumpsuits zipped high over Kevlar vests, loose green army surplus scarves looped around their necks. She wore a black jumpsuit over street clothes, work boots. They hadn’t offered her a vest, and she hadn’t asked.
“Down by the border, though,” Sandoval said, “they get their share of human meat. All those mojados who try to come across and don’t make it. They die from thirst or hunger, sunstroke, freeze to death at night. Sometimes the coyotes they pay to take them across just leave them out there in the desert. If they don’t shoot them first, rape the women. The birds eat well then. They get a taste for it.”
To the north, a dust cloud on the road. “Car,” she said.
Hicks got up, brushed himself off, went to the Cherokee and opened the rear hatch, put the blowtorch and e-tool inside. He pulled up on his gloves to tighten them. “We’re good.”
“You looked like you knew what you were doing out there,” she said.
“Let’s hope.”
A vehicle materialized out of the heat shimmer. She moved back farther behind the boulder. A minivan blew by without slowing, left dust in the air.
When it was out of sight, Hicks took a pair of bolt cutters and a black utility bag from the Cherokee, started toward the cell tower. She followed.
Usually, just before the actual work, she was calm, steady. But now she felt a vague anxiousness, thinking of a dozen ways things could go wrong. She’d had to trust others more this time, give up control of certain elements, things she was used to handling herself. She knew it was for the best, but it still left her uneasy.
When they got to the chain-link fence around the equipment compound, she said, “You sure this isn’t electrified?”
“We’re about to find out.”
“Not funny.”
“I’m sure. If it was, there’d be insulators every few feet, ground wires. I don’t see any.”
He nodded at the fence. She gripped a section of the chain-link with her thin leather gloves, held it taut while he used the bolt cutters to snap through links, starting at the bottom. Halfway up, he stopped, wiped sweat from his forehead. She gripped the fence higher, feeling the slack in it now. He cut through links up to head height, then across. When he was done, he set the bolt cutters down, and together they bent the flap of fence out and back onto itself, hooked it there. He carried the utility bag inside.
The phone in her side pocket began to buzz. It was one of a set of disposables she’d bought the day before. They each had one.
“We’re on it,” Chance said. “Just passed the mile marker here. As advertised.” Meaning the convoy was on its way, the number of vehicles as expected.
“Anything between you and the follow car?” she said.
“Nothing. We’re a ways back, so someone else might get in there. But I’ll deal with it if it happens.”
Hicks had the utility bag open, was kneeling beside a thick silver pipe that ran from one equipment cabinet to another.
“ETA?” she said.
“Thirty minutes,” Chance said. “I’ll call back in fifteen. We’re all set here.” He ended the call.
Hicks looked back at her.
“Thirty minutes,” she said.
“Plenty of time.”
She put the cell away, watched him. He’d already molded a piece of C-4 around the pipe, was fitting a silver tube into the center of it. When he was done, he shaped another piece around a second pipe that right-angled from a low metal box. The humming was loud here, the feeling of electricity in the air.
“No chance someone gets on the wrong frequency by accident?” she said. “Radio-controlled airplane or something? Detonates that before we’re ready?”
“Unlikely, all the way out here.” He grinned up at her. “But if you see one flying around, shout.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“A little. But at some point you have to stop worrying and trust your equipment. These detonators only work on a dedicated frequency, and that’s keyed to the trigger mechs I brought. Trust me, it’ll be fine. We’re done here.”
He rose, zipped up the utility bag and slung it over his shoulder. When he came through the fence, she pulled the chain-link flap free and let it sag back into place. They walked back to the Cherokee.
Sandoval was standing outside the open rear passenger door, the duffel bag of weapons on the seat. He took out a suppressor, began to thread it into the muzzle of his HK. Hicks was right, it made the gun look even more threatening, more deadly.
“You got enough joy juice on that thing?” Sandoval said. He took out a full magazine, rapped it against his knee, then fit it into place in the rifle, pushed it home.
“All we need,” Hicks said. “Just a kiss. It’ll do the job.”
“Happy to see you still got the touch, homes.” He worked the bolt to chamber a round, put the safety on.
Hicks set the utility bag in the back of the Cherokee, went around and got a black leather case from the glove box, unzipped it. “Have a look,” he said to her.
Inside were two small olive-drab boxes with toggle switches on the front, red buttons on the sides. He took out one box, thumbed the toggle. A green light began to glow above it.
“This one’s for the tower charges,” he said. “Come the time, you want to do the honors?”
She shook her head. “Tell me again how it’s going to work on the road.”
“Just like I said. The space I hollowed out is only about ten inches deep, but when the charge goes off, it’ll activate the black powder in there as well. Way I planned it, we should get a little pop, then smoke will start pouring out like the blacktop’s on fire. Won’t damage the road too much, but it’ll make them stop.”
“Will all the charges go at the same time?”
“No. Different frequencies, and I have to manually trigger both. The two in the tower will go first, but that’s good. They see the smoke from that, it might slow them down before the road charge detonates. And that way we knock out their cells first thing. They’ll be confused, and that’s better for us. It’ll make them easier to handle.”
The sun was sinking behind the mountains, the Cherokee falling deeper into shadow. Sandoval took balaclavas from the weapons bag, tossed one to Hicks, then another to her. She caught it.
Her cell buzzed again.
“Fifteen,” Chance said. “Car got between us, but then the convoy slowed, so it passed. You’ll be seeing that one soon, blue Chevy Capri. Nothing else in front of us.”
“You three all set?”
“Good as we’re gonna be.”
“Last call unless there’s an emergency,” she said.
“Right. See you when we get there.”
She put the phone away. Hicks and Sandoval were watching her, their balaclavas on, two masked figures in the desert twilight.
“Get ready,” she said.
* * *
From here, just heat shimmer, dust. She focused the binoculars, and now she could see the lead car, a black Crown Victoria. Behind it, maybe two car lengths, was the truck.
“Here they come,” she said.
There was a slight curve in the road up there, and when they hit it, she could see all three vehicles. The follow car, another black Crown Vic, was keeping the same distance. A half mile behind it was another dust cloud. Chance and the others.
Hicks had taken two HKs from the duffel bag, fit in suppressors, set the rifles on the roof of the Cherokee, in easy reach. Sandoval stood with his at port arms, his jaws moving beneath the balaclava. He was chewing gum.
She put the binoculars on the front seat, pulled at the chin of the balaclava to adjust it, then flexed her fingers to tighten the gloves. Hicks stood b
y the front of the Cherokee, watching the road. The two detonator switches were laid out on the hood.
“You ready?” she said.
“As ever.”
She took down one of the rifles, checked to make sure the safety was on. She saw him flick one toggle switch, then the other. Green lights glowed on both boxes.
She moved close to the Cherokee, out of sight of the road. The sound of tires on blacktop grew louder, closer. He looked at her, and she nodded.
He picked up one of the boxes, said, “Fire in the hole,” and pressed the red button.
Two loud cracks, and puffs of white smoke billowed up over the equipment compound. Bits of metal rained down, and then the smoke drifted higher, dissipated in the wind.
She turned just in time to see the road charge go off. Another crack, not as loud, and a cloud of dust and smoke shot up out of the road, ten feet high, then seemed to spread and solidify, hang suspended in the air.
The lead car braked, swerved and went into a skid, passed sideways through the black cloud, rocked to a stop. A scream of brakes as the truck stopped behind it, and then the rear car thumped into the truck from behind, the grille and headlights crunching as they met the truck’s loading deck. The Taurus came up behind it, braked to a stop.
She ran into the dust and smoke, reached the lead car, saw the two men inside, their stunned faces. She aimed the HK at the windshield, shouted, “Get out! Get out now!”
When they didn’t move, she grabbed the latch on the driver’s side door, pulled. It was unlocked, and as it came open she nearly lost her balance, stumbled back. The driver was in his thirties, balding with blond hair, wearing street clothes and a dark zippered jacket over a white shirt. The man beside him was in a blue uniform with yellow shoulder patches that said SECURITY. He was younger, skinny.
She steadied herself, aimed the HK at the driver, yelled, “Both of you! Out now, on the ground!”
The driver raised his hands. She moved toward him to reach in, grab his jacket, but he swung his legs out of the car, said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” She stepped back to give him room. There was shouting all around her now.
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