Spectre Black (27 page)

The Camaro, which would have been invisible except for its lights, shot past them on Highway 11. With a shriek of brakes, the car nearly stood on its front wheels before slewing into the port of entry parking lot, going south. Heading for the port of entry itself.

“What’s he doing?”

“Donuts,” Eric said.

The noise was incredible. The car shrieked like a wounded dinosaur. Lur
ching, stopping, backing up under the sodium arc lights, speeding forward again, stopping, tires squealing, tires
smoking
. Backing up in wild circles before straightening out and stampeding forward again.

People ran out of the building and stood on the walk, helpless and scared. The engine revved. The tires squealed. Suddenly the headlights went out just as the screaming car hurtled forward again, scaring them back indoors. Around and around, carving out space in the parking lot. Pedal to the metal.

Border Patrol agents bolted from the booth. One ran for his car, and was nearly hit by the rogue Camaro.

“A diversion,” Jolie said.

They got out of the truck, having already been careful to turn the door light off. Guns at the ready, moving fast.

“There they are,” Eric said, nodding toward the cars and trucks driving down the access road.

“Right in the Border Patrol’s backyard.” Jolie looked back at the
port of entry. Couldn’t see the car at all, now. But she sure could hear it.

Chapter
36

Landry watched the Camaro squeal out of the port of entry parking lot, nearly sideswiping another car before hitting Highway 11 going north.
Audacious
, he thought.

He followed the car through the G3’s scope. Thought about taking him out, but the kid’s job was done. He’d created the diversion, but Landry had to keep his eye on the ball.

Jace Denboer was the Border Patrol’s problem.

But he was wrong. Ten minutes later he heard the muffled sound of an engine, a big engine. He couldn’t see the Camaro, not now, but he could hear it.

Jace had created his diversion and was coming back for the finale.

Landry trained his eye on the caravan headed for the border fence.

Shakedown Cruise
.

All along, he’d doubted the trucks were empty. Customs had drive-through X-ray machines, but these trucks would have the technology to blank out their X-ray, making the inside of the truck box appear empty. Yes, the BP had dogs, but dogs couldn’t sniff out weapons—guns were just metal and oil. And if the scanners were aced out . . . no problem at all. It was the unexpected thing: they weren’t so worried about contraband being smuggled out of the US into Mexico. But it would be better to go through the fence. It fit with Denboer, who was greedy.

He didn’t want anyone to see his magic trucks. Or even get wind of their passing.

Unfortunately for Denboer, one truck had already crashed. That set the parameters for what came next. Two choices: abort, or keep going, full bore.

The Border Patrol and other cops converging on the scene must be wondering what the hell they were looking at. Landry understood Denboer’s audaciousness in going through with the run. Once the trucks were in Mexico they would stand a better chance of going undetected—especially if Denboer’s people had already chosen a warehouse on the other side to hide them.

He checked in with Jolie. She answered immediately, her voice low. “Looks like they’re taking the easy route. We’re on it. We’re right here. Can you see us?”

“Roger that.”

As they spoke, the lead car went dark, and so did the others. The place was ideal: a dark spot, no lights, no contrast.

A truck engine started to life. Landry focused on the direction of the sound. A dirt lane, little more than a chicken scratch, ran perpendicular to the road along the border. Headlights came on about a half mile up that road. It was dark, but watching through the night-vision infrared scope he could see the vehicle as it jounced down the lane toward the border fence.

A tow truck.

The truck halted a couple of car lengths from the border fence. Two men jumped out of the cab. They were fast and good, used precision tools to cut grooves toward the top of the iron fence—eighteen feet between them—working from opposite sides with plasma cutters shielded by what Landry knew would be lightweight steel shields—a little circle around the nozzle of each gun. Otherwise, the light would be seen for miles.

Miko Denboer jumped down from the passenger’s side of the lead semi, and stood watching the men as they started to work. He held a Heckler & Koch MP5 at his side.

“Good choice,” Landry muttered. The most reliable submachine gun on the market—the same make and model of the gun he’d brought to New Mexico.

It would take them all of five seconds to cut and drop the fence. When the trucks were through, they’d use the tow truck’s pulley to replace the fence and tap weld it here and there to make it seem as if it had never been cut.

The lead semi, which had been idling, shifted gears. In another moment it would nudge the fence so that it would fall flat. And then the semi would roll over it and into Mexico.

Time to stop it.

And that was when Jolie and Eric stepped out of the dark. Jolie held her badge up under her weapon. Eric aimed his G3 at Miko Denboer.

The two men who had been cutting the fence used the opportunity to scurry away into the dark.

The empty tow truck blocked traffic access to the fence.

Denboer’s chief of security jumped down from the cab with his M-16 and waved it around. Started firing indiscriminately.

Jolie and Eric hit the dirt.

Time stretched, as it always did in these situations. Landry was a half mile away, easy. But his rifle was zeroed three power to 55 power. Which meant he could see a wide field of terrain from a great distance and at the same time concentrate on his target up close and personal.

His peripheral vision was stellar, and he had all the magnification he needed.

Suddenly he heard a whoop of a siren.

Border Patrol.

Eric was fast. On his feet in seconds, he used the surprise factor—and the butt of his G3—to knock Denboer’s security chief down.

More Border Patrol vehicles coming, a caravan of them, still a couple of miles away, but coming fast. Dust rose in a scrim around their headlights.

Landry peered through the scope. He had Miko Denboer in his sights. He could squeeze, just the slightest pressure, and blow Denboer to kingdom come.

He wanted to. He was trained for it. He had the man, owned him. It would take the lightest bit of pressure—

But he didn’t.

He stood down.

Then everything changed. Oblivious to the Border Patrol cars, Miko Denboer raised his submachine gun and trained it on Jolie.

Landry took his shot.

Chapter
37

Denboer dropped like a marionette that had abruptly lost its strings—straight down. The MP5 slipped out of his hand and bounced once on the ground beside him. Landry had made the kill shot dead center in the “death triangle”: the area between the eyes and the bridge of the nose.

The world had telescoped down to one small area to Landry. He had the power here. He could choose his shots.

An engine screamed—the muscle car was coming back. The sound so familiar it had ingrained itself into his psyche.

The Camaro roared up the road and skidded to a stop, generating a massive cloud of dust. In the infrared scope Landry saw two men running for the car. One was one of the fence cutters, but the other, Landry recognized. Small, hunched, a monkey of a man. Landry had seen him in another venue, the Tobosa County Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Ron Waldrup reached the Camaro first, dove in, and closed the door behind him, leaving the fence cutter behind. The Camaro slewed around in the dirt and took off.

Landry was about to take him out when he saw something else to the left—a man leaning on the hood of one of the runner cars, raising a submachine gun. Pointed at Jolie.

Easy choice.

Landry put him down, then turned his attention to the Camaro. The dust along the car’s dead-black paint job was just enough to screen the car.

Landry could have still made the shot if he could see the Camaro, but the dust along with the car’s dead black paint job was just enough to screen the car. He aimed for what might be the back window. The window exploded. By then, though, the Camaro had traction. Engine screaming, the car slewed onto the border road, fishtailing in a fountain of dust. Jace overcorrected, banged off one of the iron fence posts, straightened out, and accelerated away.

But the gun battle was still raging, and Landry had to take out whoever was still shooting. He dispatched two other shooters, but let the two fence cutters run off into the desert.

Thinking: that was one fast damn car.

Landry drove north on Route 11. His passengers were both quiet. Jolie stared at the road ahead, but Eric, in the back, was asleep.

Landry kept to a steady fifty-eight on the two-lane road. He didn’t want to attract any interested parties. Like the New Mexico State Police, or worse, the sheriff’s office. As it was, he’d had to drive through three jurisdictions to get to Branch.

The night was bright with stars. Grassland stretched to low mountains on either side of the road like a black ocean. It was quiet.

Jace Denboer had a good head start, a fast car, and a fire under his butt the size of a rocket-propelled grenade. Landry was pretty sure where he’d go. The only question was which Jace would he encounter? The crazy Jace or the normal Jace? He was betting on the crazy Jace.

Eric opened one eye. “Are we there yet, Daddy?”

“Almost.”

Eric closed his eye again. Like any good soldier, he could fall asleep anywhere.

Jolie said, “You think Jace would go straight to his father’s house? He’d be that stupid?”

“We’ll find out,” Landry said. “He could have Waldrup with him. We should be prepared for that.”

“I guess it’s just the three of us,” Jolie said.

“What about the Branch PD?”

“That’s a no go. I wouldn’t know who to trust over there. A lot of those guys are in thick with the sheriff.”

“The chief of police?”

“He’s poker buddies with the sheriff. Quite a few of the higher-ups in the police department have themselves some brand new cars, too.”

“One big happy family.”

“We stopped them from getting those trucks across,” Jolie said. “At the least, they’ll have to regroup. I’ve been asking myself: why don’t we just get out of Dodge? While the getting is good. All the way up here, that’s what I was thinking. Just . . . go.”

Landry said nothing.

Then Jolie said, “But I like it here.” She stared out the window at the low, dark mountains. “I like my job, I like being in homicide.”

She lapsed into silence.

Not long after that, he saw the lights of Deming. It wouldn’t be far, now.

In Branch, Landry turned onto the drive up the curvy road that led to the Denboer place. Taking the corners, enjoying the ride, filing the carnage away as he always did. He could keep his thoughts to himself because no one felt like chatting.

Jace was still on the loose. And so was the sheriff of Tobosa County.

Landry turned onto Jacarunda Drive.