He immediately heard men shouting. He lined up on another truck and squeezed the trigger again. The trucks stopped rolling.
Darling, satisfied for the moment, turned around to begin crawling north again. He’d moved fifty feet when he heard the truck engines working again, behind him. A few more feet and he came to a trampled area in the yellow grass. He’d have to cross it, and when he did . . .
He peeked again and saw people standing behind the glass in the nearest building—he wasn’t sure if they were inside the building or on the far side. Whichever it was, they would be able to see him when he tried to cross the bald spot.
He got on the phone: “Hey, man, I’m trying to get up north. It’d help a whole lot if you could put a few shots through the windows of the second building. There are people either in there or on the other side, looking out here at these fields . . .”
“Give me fifteen seconds . . .”
Fifteen seconds later, he heard Poole open up and the glass shattering in the domed building, and he low-crawled across the bald spot, just as he’d been taught in the Corps. On the far side, he disappeared back into the weeds, now aiming at the space between the two big buildings, the place where the two cops had been when he shot at them.
If he could get into the gap, and if there weren’t many cops, he might be able to break back through.
—
O’BRIEN WAS on the phone to Lucas, after checking by radio with the truck drivers: “Nobody hurt, we’re all okay. Keep moving, I think this is gonna work.”
The trucks began moving again, still at the slow walking pace, and Lucas kept the rifle up. Then a patrolman, two or three trucks over, shouted, “I think I saw him. I think he’s angling toward the space between the buildings. He’s maybe twenty-five yards into the field.”
Lucas shouted back, “If you got a clear line, if you’re not going to hit anything else, put a couple shots in there, see if he breaks out.”
The patrolman did that: Bap! Bap! Bap!
Lucas, who was looking toward the area, thought he saw a wavelike motion in the weeds, somebody moving on his knees and elbows. He aimed Bob’s M4 at the area and fired four more shots: Bap! Bap! Bap! Bap!
A half second later, the trucks took ten or twelve incoming shots from a different angle, from the northeast. “Everybody okay? Everybody okay?” Lucas shouted. Everybody was unharmed except for one truck driver, who’d taken some windshield glass in his shoulder above his vest but said he was okay.
O’Brien, who was with the trucks north of the big buildings, called: “Did you get a fix on those shots?”
“Came down from the northeast . . . but can’t say exactly where from. There’s a whole bunch of concrete bunkers over there, must be part of the old fort. I think he could be in one of the northern ones.”
O’Brien said, “Those aren’t bunkers. They’re artworks.”
“What?”
“Artworks. But they’re perfectly fine bunkers, if you think of them that way.”
Lucas was looking back at the area next to the building, and again, thought he saw movement. He shoved the phone in his pocket and brought his rifle up, and at the same instant two other border patrolmen fired from behind the trucks . . .
Lucas added two shots . . .
—
THE FIRST SEQUENCE of three shots whistled over Darling’s head, and he thought, then, of throwing up his hands and quitting. If Poole was killed, there’d be no witnesses to the shootings in Biloxi, and if he hadn’t killed either of the cops he’d shot at . . . He’d be looking at years in prison, but maybe not the needle. With his wife on the outside, with a ton of cash, he’d have at least a possibility of busting out of prison. A corrupt guard, a prison gang with connections . . .
Then the second deck of four shots came in, three narrowly missing. The fourth hit him right in the asshole, he thought, knifing up into his guts and then out, around his navel. The pain was blinding, and he curled up against it and cried out once, “Ahhhh . . .”
He kicked, once, twice, against the pain, and two more shots came in, one hitting him in the leg, the other knocking the heel off his boot and twisting his ankle.
He couldn’t crawl anymore. He heard the trucks coming, the relentless sound of their engines. He touched his stomach and his hand came away soaked with blood. He got the phone out, called Poole, said, “I’m done for. I’m hit bad, my guts are all over the place. If you need to make a move, I’m gonna sit up and hose down everything I can see. Ten seconds and that’s probably all I got.”
Poole, after two seconds of silence, said, “See you in hell, man.”
Darling choked back a laugh, because laughing would hurt too badly. “See you in hell.”
The line of trucks was only fifty yards away, some of the Border Patrol shooters knew about where he was, Darling thought. He got a grip on his rifle, which was greasy with his blood, pointed it in the general direction of the trucks, and began firing, emptying the rest of a thirty-shot magazine toward them. He hurt so bad that he didn’t think he could go on, but managed to pull out the other thirty-round magazine, dropped the first one, got the second one seated, and he rolled over toward the glass buildings and dumped the entire magazine into them . . .
He was hit in the head by a shot from behind one of the trucks, and was killed instantly.
—
LUCAS WAS shouting at the patrolmen, “Easy now, easy, I think we got him . . . Easy now, watch for that guy out front, in case he tries something crazy . . . watch him.”
Another ten seconds and Lucas saw Darling’s body in the weeds to his left, and when they’d pulled even with the body he shouted, “Stop! Trucks all stop.”
Without real brakes, the trucks rolled to a ragged stop in the yellow weeds, with Darling off to their left. Lucas called, “I’m going to step over to the left. I think I’m covered by the trucks, but you guys, give me more cover. If you see motion over there, kill him . . .”
When it seemed that everybody was ready, Lucas risked five fast steps over to the body. He recognized Darling from the photo back at the farm—the one with the girls on his lap.
He didn’t look at all peaceful in death; he looked like he’d fallen in a meat grinder, his shirt and pants soaked with blood, with a gaping exit wound over one eye.
Lucas turned: “We got one.”
A minute later, he was back behind the trucks and they were rolling toward the area where he thought the second shooter was hiding. Lucas was sweating heavily and smelled of sweat and blood, both his and Bob’s, and probably some of Rae’s. He wiped his face with a shirtsleeve and brought the rifle back up.
“Let’s finish it. Drivers, let’s go.”
—
WHEN DARLING opened up on the trucks and then the buildings, Poole crawled out of his concrete bunker, flat on the ground, and around to the other side of it. From behind it, he couldn’t see either of the two domed buildings, but they couldn’t see him, either—and he was visually protected from the highway by the line of trees that ran parallel both to the line of bunkers and to the highway.
He could hear the trucks pushing closer up the open field toward his position. He didn’t think the cops knew exactly where he was, but he had no margin for error. He had to move. He stayed flat, pushing mostly with his toes, for a hundred yards, his rifle in front of him, toward the trees.
Tough going: more sandburs, other thorns and insults. He took a few seconds to wonder if the snakes had already gone underground. He hadn’t seen any, up to this point, but he didn’t want to run into a rattler in the weeds. He didn’t. When he’d gotten into the trees, he carefully moved into a clump of heavy brush where he could stand up to see what was going on.
Behind him, the trucks were coming on, and in front of him, he could see three Border Patrol trucks parked on the highway, with a patrolman standing behind the hood of each one
, looking out over the field. Each one with a rifle. He could easily shoot one of them, but then he’d be dead.
Between himself and the highway, down to his right, he could see two long cigar-shaped white tanks that probably held propane. Off to his left he could see a white house, two stories high with a red roof, and behind it, a water tower.
The thing that most interested him, though, was what looked like a border fence and trees by the house to his left. The trees led all the way from the line of trees that he was in, to the highway. There were possibilities that way, but none the other. He went left—he couldn’t stand, the trees weren’t thick enough, but he could duckwalk, which was a lot better than crawling, and it was only forty or fifty yards.
Again, his hands and arms were burning with burrs and thorns, and he could feel them poking through his sweat-soaked shirt into his chest. He tried to ignore them but couldn’t, not the ones in his hands, and he stopped long enough to pull them out.
A minute later, he was at the intersection of his line of trees, with the trees and fence going out to the highway. He made the turn and, moving with glacial slowness, crossed over the wire fence and let himself down into the yard of the red-roofed house. Anyone looking out a window could see him; he hoped they wouldn’t do that. He moved forward along the fence line, and a few minutes later, he was at the highway.
He couldn’t cross it: too many people could see him, and there was no cover whatever on the far side. But the house had a white stucco wall along the front of the lot. If he crawled north along it, he would be looking into a parking lot with a half dozen cars right across the fence.
—
LUCAS HAD reoriented the line of trucks to move diagonally northeast through the field. When Lucas had nearly gotten himself shot, the shooter must have been at the northeast side of the big field. They were moving straight toward it, on a hundred-yard front, as they’d done with Darling, but nothing was moving.
They were approaching the line of artworks/bunkers. Whatever else they might be, they were also perfect firing platforms. When they’d gotten to them, with no sign of life, Lucas got the sniper to climb atop one of them, where he could see down the arc of bunkers that extended to the south.
“If anything moves, nail it,” he told the patrolman.
On the far side of the bunker, he could see a fairly substantial line of trees a hundred yards away.
To the patrolman coordinating the trucks, he said, “I’ll bet he’s in the trees. I’m going to take a couple of guys and go over and work through there. You finish sweeping the field, and if you don’t flush him, turn around and back us up.”
“You take care,” the patrolman said.
“Yeah, and you, too,” Lucas said.
Lucas got two volunteers and as the trucks spread out for another sweep, Lucas and the other two men stayed behind them until they could step into the trees. The trees thinned to the south and were more widely spaced, so they turned north.
“Like this,” Lucas said to the other two. “Always keep a tree directly in front of you. When you get to it, stop moving, keep your rifle up, check out the area in front of you, looking around from behind the tree. When you think it’s safe, say so, and the next guy will move past you. Don’t ever go more than ten or fifteen feet at a time, so if the shooter pops up, the guy in back will take him out. Got it?”
They got it, and they began working their way north. They’d gone only a short distance when they came to a fence and a thinner line of trees, leading out to the highway, past a red-roofed house.
“What do you think?” Lucas asked, his voice quiet. “Go north, or out to the highway?”
One of the patrolmen said, “The trees look like they’re getting thicker the further north they go. If he sticks inside of them, he’ll eventually get back to town.”
“He’ll have to cross a street to do that,” the other one said.
“Yeah, but the sun will be down in fifteen minutes and it’ll get dark quick. Once it’s dark, he could get lost in town,” the first one said.
“The thing is, he probably doesn’t know where the trees lead,” Lucas said. Then he said, “Look, you two go on, in the trees. Really careful. I’m going to take a quick jog out to the highway. If there’s nothing out there, I’ll be right back. Don’t shoot me when I come back.”
“Let me call everybody and tell them what you’re doing,” one of the patrolmen said. He took a radio out of a vest pocket, made the call, describing Lucas: “Doesn’t have a hat, he’s in a light-colored shirt, and he’s wearing a vest.”
When he’d finished the call, they all agreed that they’d all be careful. Lucas climbed the wire fence and began moving out to the highway, while the two patrolmen pushed farther north in the trees.
—
POOLE HAD crossed the fence on the north side of the red-roofed house’s front yard, and sat only partially concealed by a clump of weeds. He’d been moving for a long time, and now, sitting still, his major sensory input was himself: he stank.
Ahead of him, not more than ten or twelve yards away, several cars were parked outside a low building with a sign that said “El Cósmico.” He realized that he’d managed to run in a circle, that he was back to the hippie place with the teepees and weird trailers.
There was no traffic on the highway, which had apparently been blocked at both ends of the gunfight. He needed one of those cars and he needed the driver, because he needed the driver’s keys. If he could grab a driver, he could force him into his car, hit him on the head with his .40, shove him onto the floor. The cops would have to open the highway when it got dark, they couldn’t keep it closed forever.
If he could hold out until then.
And he saw a single driver come out of the El Cósmico place, walking toward the cars in front of him. He set his rifle aside, slipped out the .40, waited. She was walking to a car almost directly in front of him. Perfect. The nearest Border Patrol car was a hundred yards away, and if he did it quickly and quietly . . .
She came around the back of the car, a tall, thin, redheaded woman, a Texas-looking woman with freckles, her keys in one hand, stepping toward the car. She couldn’t go out on the highway, she must’ve checked into one of the teepees or whatever . . .
Poole stood up and lunged toward her. She didn’t see him coming until he was ten feet away and he said, fairly loudly, because there was nobody else close enough to hear him, “I’ve got a gun and if you make any noise or scream, I will shoot you.”
She dropped the keys and said, “Oh, no . . . are you . . .”
“Yeah, the cops are going to kill me if they catch me, so I don’t really give a shit at this point.” He was right on top of her, took her elbow, said, “Get into the backseat . . . We’re gonna hide out for a while. Keep quiet and you won’t get hurt.”
When she sat down, he thought, one fast hard blow to the head would take her out, maybe permanently. What it was, was what it was.
She was scared, but not quite frozen with fear, said, “My keys . . .”
He stooped quickly, picked them up, pushed the button that unlocked the car: “Get in.”
—
LUCAS HAD moved slowly down the fence line. Near the end, he saw a border patrolman, one of the ones standing behind a truck, watching him. He stood, waved the rifle over his head, patted his armor; the border patrolman was talking into a radio, and a few seconds later, waved him on.
Lucas moved on up the fence, hurrying now. He could see nothing along it, wanted a quick look along the front of the house and then he’d get back to the trees. When he’d turned the corner in the front yard, he looked down to his left and saw Poole talking to a redheaded woman beside a gray foreign car. He couldn’t see a gun, but Poole was talking rapidly and the way the woman was standing, Lucas thought he probably had a gun in the hand Lucas couldn’t see.
He brought the rifle up and
walked across the yard, moving as noiselessly as he could. He was completely out in the open but Poole was talking to the woman, and then bent over, and Lucas thought for a second that he’d been seen or heard, but then Poole stood and handed something to the woman—keys?—and Poole said something that Lucas couldn’t make out, and Lucas was close enough and shouted, “Poole, if you move, I’ll kill you.”
But then the woman, who’d been standing beside Poole from Lucas’s perspective, lurched between them. Poole, reacting almost instantly, swung his gun hand up around her neck and shouted, “I want a car!”
Lucas, looking at him through Bob’s red-dot sight, saw Poole’s head looming behind the woman’s, big as a gourd. He didn’t listen to what Poole was saying, but concentrated on the red dot and his trigger squeeze, and shot Poole through the nose. Poole went down as though somebody had hit him in the face with a fastball, but with his arm still crooked around the woman’s neck, and she went down on top of him.
The woman started screaming and rolled off the body, and as Lucas walked toward the fence, his gun still up in a shooting position, she got up and ran frantically back toward the El Cósmico building.
Lucas crossed the fence, while behind him a couple of Border Patrol trucks revved up.
Poole was dead on the ground.
The sun had just hit the horizon, scarlet rays playing across the gravel parking lot and over the supine body, which was leaking blood into the parking lot. The El Cósmico door slammed as the woman lurched inside, and Lucas looked down at Poole and said, “Gotcha.”
28
THE FOUR WOMEN had seen any number of unusual things on their way south to Marfa, including a huge white blimp called a radar aerostat, according to the sign outside the launch site. When Rosie looked it up on her smartphone, it turned out it was a radar platform used to search for low-flying drug planes coming across from Mexico.
Golden Prey Page 29