With even an ounce of luck, I would hightail it off this rock and make it to civilization before dawn. If so, I wouldn’t need either the water or the towel to protect my neck and head from the daytime sun. But I’d lived and worked in West Texas long enough to have a healthy respect for the high desert. I wasn’t leaving this mesa either by vehicle or on foot unprepared.
As I grabbed the kitchen’s door handle, I did a huge mental finger-cross. I had no idea if the exterior perimeter was alarmed and if so, whether the alarm system had emergency backup battery power separate from the generators.
My luck held! I shot through the door and into the star-studded night without a single siren wail. Dodging clumps of feathery pampas grass and the artistically arranged rocks landscaping the rear of the house, I made for the garage I’d spotted at lunch. My boots hit the winding, hard-packed dirt path, each thud sounding like a rifle shot as I ran for the Hummer still parked beside the garage. I’d pretty well used up my supply of luck but I begged God for one more favor. Just one more. Please! Let it be unlocked.
Okay, two more. Let it be unlocked and the keys be in the ignition.
It was, but they weren’t. Panting, I yanked down the visor. Thrust a hand under the seat. Thumped my palm frantically across the dash. I’d picked up a fair number of skills during my two years in uniform. Hot-wiring a Hummer wasn’t one of them.
I’d almost given up and decided to make a run for it when I spotted the keys lying right there in the driver’s seat.
Thank you, Lord!
I hopped in and hopped right out again. All those episodes of
The Sopranos
had taught me a few things, too. Hefting a rock, I smashed the Hummer’s taillights. No point making it easy for the bad guys to follow me.
I jumped back in the vehicle and cranked it up. To my intense relief, it was an H2 with automatic and four-wheel drive. At least I wouldn’t have to up- and downshift all the way to the bottom of the mesa.
If I made it to the bottom of the mesa. That became somewhat doubtful when I heard a shout and jerked my head around. The dark figure that came running from the house had me shoving the Hummer into gear and stomping on the gas. I didn’t turn on the headlights. I couldn’t see the switch in the darkness and didn’t have time to look for it. Especially not after a loud crack spilt the night—and shattered the rear window!
Thankfully, I could see the dirt track leading to the rear of the mesa clearly in the moonlight. I
didn’t
see the terrifyingly steep angle the track took until I hit the mesa’s edge.
“Shit!”
I yanked the wheel and somehow kept the heavy tank of a vehicle from sailing into dark, empty space. Drenched in the acrid sweat of terror I got all four wheels back on the dirt track again.
I had to put the headlights on then. The track was in shadow and too damned narrow to navigate by the light of the moon. I kept one hand on the wheel and used the other to twist every knob within reach until twin beams stabbed through the night.
As soon as they came on, I yanked the cordless phone out of my leg pocket. I didn’t know how powerful it was. Or whether this rapid descent would block its signal. Or whether my homemade jammer had scrambled its transmissions, too!
Keeping one eye on the steep track and one eye on the phone, I stabbed in a number I knew almost as well as my own and jammed the instrument to my ear. I couldn’t decide whether to shout with joy or sob with relief when I heard it ring. Once. Twice. I was praying again by the third. Almost weeping by the fourth.
I’d yanked the phone away from my ear to try a different number when I heard a terse, “Mitchell.”
“Mitch! It’s me.”
“Samantha! Are you all right?”
I didn’t have time to list all the ways I
wasn’t
all right.
“Yes.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere in Mexico.” The words tumbled out, fast and furious. “I’m in high desert, so I know I’ve got to be east of the Sierra Madre Occidental.”
Thank you, Pen!
(I’d never heard of the Sierra Madre Occidental before her lengthy discourse on the subject.)
“It’s Mendoza, Mitch. He took me.”
“That’s what I figured.”
The hard, flat reply told me he’d received my name tape and whatever message Mendoza had sent with it.
“I have to talk fast,” I said breathlessly. “I stole a Hummer. I’m careening down from a high mesa, and this phone may cut off at any moment.”
Or Mendoza’s goons could be on my tail. I threw a frantic glance in the rearview mirror. Nothing. Yet.
“I’ll keep the phone on. Try to get a lock on its signal.”
“It’s already in progress. Donati put a tap on my phones right after you disappeared, in case you tried to get hold of me.”
Thank you, Paul!
“I’m heading north. I think. Toward the border.”
“Don’t cut across the desert,” Mitch warned sharply. “We’ve found too many abandoned vehicles mired in the sand or nose-down in gullies.”
With dead or dying victims nearby. He didn’t give me the latest head count. He didn’t have to. It made the news regularly on both sides of the border.
“I’ll get . . . ati . . .”
Oh, no! Not already!
“Mitch,” I almost cried into the phone, “you’re breaking up!”
“Don’t . . . up. I . . . find you.”
The line went dead on the fierce promise of those last two words. I took a big gulp of air and clung to the memory of the experimental device we’d tested last year that could raise signals from dead cell phones. The technology for that device hadn’t made it into the commercial marketplace yet, but the Border Patrol was part of the Department of Homeland Security. They—and the FBI—had access to all kinds of whoo-whoo gadgets.
Dropping the phone on the passenger seat, I held on to Mitch’s promise with the same ferocity I gripped the steering wheel. The tension racing up and down my spine lessened only marginally when I took the last turn and the steep incline flattened.
A dirt track stretched straight ahead, like a pale ribbon banded on both sides by the darker shades of the desert. I muttered a fervent prayer and floored the Hummer. I’d gone maybe two hundred yards when I caught a flash of light in the rearview mirror.
Headlights. Two laser-like beams. Stabbing the night sky behind and above me. Making me wish to hell I’d had time to break into the garage and disable whatever other vehicles Mendoza kept in his stable.
The beams’ angle indicated my pursuers were only halfway down the mesa. That gave me at best a ten-minute lead. And five seconds to weigh the odds that the heavy Hummer could outrun whatever they were driving.
Not bloody likely! These suckers were built for durability, not speed. I sucked air, killed the headlights, kicked into four wheel drive and did exactly what Mitch had warned me not to.
One wrench of the wheel sent the Hummer off the track. It rocketed across the rough earth, flattening a cholla and humping over a prairie dog mound before I regained control. I had to wait for a relatively unencumbered stretch to risk a quick glance over my shoulder.
“Ha!” I flipped a mental finger at the distant spear of lights. “Catch me if you can, you bastards.”
Wrenching my gaze forward again, I gave the desert every ounce of concentration. My best hope—my only hope—lay in covering as much distance as possible before dawn broke and showed Mendoza and company where I’d left the road.
THAT was the plan, anyway. It might have worked, too, if I hadn’t sent the Hummer into a dry gulch. It hit sideways, two wheels fighting to grab the bank, two wheels sinking into nothingness. I fought the steep pitch but couldn’t get level. The sour taste of fear filled my throat as the heavy vehicle tipped onto its side and started to roll.
Dumb idea to drive across the desert without lights, I thought on a flash of sheer panic. Reeeeally dumb.
The driver’s side slammed into the rock-hard bank. My head slammed into the side window. The airbag exploded in my face. Bright yellow stars spun in front of my eyes, and the coppery taste of blood filled my mouth.
When the stars faded, I was still strapped in but my seat was now horizontal. I wiggled tentatively and confirmed that all my moving parts still worked. The pain, I concluded, came from whacking my head against the window, the blood from biting my lower lip when the air bag punched into me.
Grimacing, I dragged my tongue over the raw, bleeding patch and fumbled for the seat belt release. Took a few tries but I finally managed to push up the passenger side door and haul myself through the opening.
The effort left me so dizzy and disoriented I almost blacked out. I spread both feet and forced myself to breathe slow and deep until the dizziness passed.
Okay. All right. Time for plan B. Or C. Or whatever I was up to at this point.
“Think, Spade,” I muttered, willing my rattled brain back to full operation. “Think.”
I wasn’t worried about tackling the desert on foot. Pen had drummed volumes of information into my unwilling head with her lectures. Sergeant Cassidy had contributed some extremely useful but not particularly appetizing tidbits, as well. Special Ops types live, eat, sleep, and operate in some really gross situations.
Mitch had also shared stories about people whose cars or trucks had broken down while they were trying to sneak across the border. In that situation, conventional wisdom said to stay with your vehicle and spread every loose object you had with your around the car’s exterior so it could be spotted more easily from the air.
Conventional wisdom presupposed, of course, that you didn’t have a slime like Mendoza on the hunt for you. A slime who could call in his own light plane to aid in the search. I knew I had to make tracks before Aviator Glasses arrived on the scene.
Correction, I thought with a frown that sent fingers of pain across my brow. The goal was to
not
make tracks.
“Think, Spade. Think.”
I had water. A dishtowel to protect my head and neck. Sturdy boots. Pants and a long-sleeved shirt to provide air circulation and keep my sweat from evaporating too quickly. And, I thought as I spotted a piece of the Hummer’s broken side mirror, a means of signaling for help. If worse came to absolute worst, I also knew—again courtesy of Pen—which cacti could provide drinkable liquid and which couldn’t.
I didn’t have the phone, though. That, I discovered when I crawled back inside the Hummer to search for it, had smashed into the instrument panel with the same force with which I’d smashed into the side window. I gathered the pieces on the faint hope Mitch or Paul Donati could trace any residual signals and stuffed then in my pocket.
I wasn’t sure how long I had until dawn. Not more than two or three hours, I guessed. Luckily the gully bottom was so dry and cracked that it wouldn’t show boot prints. Just to be sure, though, I broke off some creosote limbs and used them as a makeshift broom.
I followed the gully for several hundred yards, sweeping behind me as I went. I continued to sweep after I climbed out. The twisting and bending slowed me down. It also made me dizzy as hell. I kept it up as long as I could but finally had to quit. I could only hope the fragile breeze fluttering the petals of the night-blooming cereus cacti would stir up enough dust to cover my trail from here on out.
I knew I’d overdone it when my temple began to thump with the same rhythm as my boots. Soon every step boomed inside my head like artillery fire. Gritting my teeth, I plowed ahead.
I retained enough clarity to change direction several times. North, then west, then north again. Although high desert nights aren’t anywhere near as hot as days, I forced myself to stop and drink at more or less regular intervals. I took full swallows. Tiny sips wouldn’t sustain my level of activity. Noel had driven that point home by describing in graphic detail how one of the men in his squad had died of dehydration with a half-full canteen.
When the horizon took on faint shades of pink, I knew I had to find shelter. My head felt as though Slut Shoes was right behind me, beating a meringue on my skull with her four-inch spikes. I dragged on until I spotted some spindly mesquite bent almost to the ground in their desperate attempt to draw moisture from another parched gully.
I could barely place one foot in front of the other by now, but knew I had to put something between the ground and me. When the daytime sun baked the rocks and sand, you didn’t need a skillet to fry eggs.
I chose a mesquite that squatted low enough for me to fashion a perch on a fat, twisted branch. My hands shook from exhaustion and pain hammered at me from all sides but I managed to fork two higher branches through the sleeves of my ABU shirt. The fabric’s digitized tiger stripes made the improvised canopy almost invisible among the silver and green of the mesquite’s leaves.
My standard, yucky brown T-shirt provided little protection as I settled onto my perch and propped my back against the scaly trunk. The dishtowel I draped over my crossed arms to protect them from scratches. The broken mirror piece I slid into the pants pocket closest to hand.
My lids drifted down. I blinked awake. Dozed off again. Jerked and almost tumbled off my branch. Desperately, I tried to hang onto my balance and my rapidly scattering thoughts.
Mad dogs and Englishmen. Mad dogs and Englishmen. The line kept looping through my fried brain. Don’t ask me where I heard it. All I could remember was that it had something to do with the noonday sun.
The phrase was still looping when my chin hit my chest and I blacked out.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BELLS? Were those bells?
I kept still, my eyes closed, and tried to determine if that slow, sonorous bonging originated inside or outside my aching head.
Outside, I decided as the deep, resonate sounds knelled again. Definitely outside.