The Devil’s Share (15 page)

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 by 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.

“On the ground,” she said again. “Both of you.”

The guard came out after him, on the same side, hands in the air. He was a kid, in his twenties maybe, the uniform hanging loose on him. He wore a dark automatic in a hip holster.

“Facedown on the road, right there,” she said. “Now.”

The driver knelt, put his hands behind his head without being told. “You, too,” she told the guard, and he looked around, confused. She pointed the HK at his chest.

“Down,” she said.

He looked at her, then sank to his knees.

“Flat,” she said, and they both stretched out on the roadway. She slung the HK behind her, plucked the guard's gun from his holster, pushed it into a jumpsuit pocket. She got out a pair of flexcuffs, knelt on the small of his back. “Take it easy,” she said. “Relax, and no one gets hurt.”

He flinched as she pulled his left arm behind him, then his right, bound his wrists with the flexcuffs, cinched them tight.

The driver had his head turned to the side, watching her. He'd already crossed his hands behind him, not waiting for the command. She flexcuffed his wrists, patted them both down for other weapons, found none.

“Stay there, “she said. The smoke was gone, but the acrid smell of it hung in the air. Where the charge had gone off was a hole about a foot across, a thin tendril of smoke rising from it. It had worked as Hicks said it would.

The driver was still in the truck. Sandoval stood on the running board, shouting at him, banging the butt of his HK against the window. The rear Crown Vic was already empty, both front doors open. The driver and guard, hands bound, were being led away by McBride and Keegan, both in balaclavas. Keegan had his shotgun against the back of the guard's head.

A masked figure came up beside her. Hicks. She pointed at the men on the ground, said, “Get them,” and started toward the truck. Sandoval was still shouting at the driver. The window had spiderwebbed but was intact, the driver fumbling with a cell phone.

With the HK still slung behind her, she sprinted, planted a foot on the truck's front bumper, vaulted onto the hood, knelt there. The driver looked at her through the windshield, and she drew the guard's gun, fired a shot into the air. The casing clattered on the hood. She lowered the gun, pointed it at the driver, the muzzle touching the glass.

He punched numbers into the phone, panicking, and she gripped her right wrist with her left hand, steadied the gun, tapped the barrel twice on the windshield. He looked into the muzzle, exhaled, then tossed the cell phone onto the dashboard in disgust. She heard the click as he unlocked the door.

She slid down off the hood. When the driver started to get out, Sandoval caught his jacket, dragged him down, and kicked his legs out from under him. He fell to his knees, and Sandoval said, “Smart guy, huh?” and drove the butt of his HK into the side of the driver's head, knocked him down onto the road. He tried to crawl away, and Sandoval kicked him hard in the side with a booted foot.

“Stop it,” she said. Sandoval looked at her, anger in his eyes.

“Get him tied and out of sight,” she said. “We need to clear this road.”

She didn't wait for a response, ran back to the lead car, the door still open, engine running. She tossed the HK onto the seat, pulled the door shut, slammed the shifter into drive. Giving it gas, she straightened the wheels, pulled onto the shoulder and drove twenty feet, then cut the wheel hard so the two front tires hung off the edge of the road, the hood tilting down into the arroyo. She shifted into neutral, then killed the engine, grabbed the HK, and got out.

When she looked back, they'd pushed the second Crown Vic to the side of the road, and Chance and McBride were at the back of the truck, working at the heavy padlock with a sledgehammer, Hicks watching them. Keegan and Sandoval had taken the rest of the men behind the boulder.

She went around to the rear of the first car. With her back to it, she gripped the bumper, pushed with hips and heels. The car creaked, protested, then began to roll, got away from her. She caught her balance, turned to see it head nosedown into the arroyo, in slow motion at first, then all at once. It overturned, landed on its roof, glass exploding, then slid down the side of the arroyo to the bottom, dust rising up. She tossed the guard's gun down after it.

Almost dark. She heard the truck's rear door go up on its rollers, ran back toward the others. Hicks and Chance clambered up onto the tailgate lift and into the bed. McBride stood on the shoulder, looking in both directions, his HK at ready.

At the truck, she climbed up into the driver's seat, took the cell phone from the dashboard. The screen read
SEARCHING FOR SERVICE
. She pulled her own phone from her pocket. It read the same.

The engine was off, but the keys were still in the ignition. She started the engine to save them a few seconds, then climbed down, lobbed the driver's cell phone out into the arroyo.

Hicks and Chance were up in the darkness of the truck bed, flashlights on. In their light, she saw three heavy crates bound to the far wall with bungee cords, sandbags laid at their base. The
lamassu.
There was another crate beside it, a quarter of the size, secured the same way. Then a fifth, smaller than the rest.

Hicks stood by the larger crates, playing his light up and down them. He knelt to inspect the others, then turned and jumped down from the truck bed. “Everything's here. We're good.”

Chance climbed down after him. To McBride, she said, “You two go. We're clear.” He jogged back toward the Taurus.

Chance reached up, caught the handle on the door, pulled. It came down loudly on its rollers, slammed into place. He threw the crossbar.

Hicks had the other Crown Vic in neutral, was pushing it back again, holding the wheel through the open driver's side window. She ran to help him, shoved on the front left fender, avoiding the jagged metal of the shattered grille. The rear tires went off the edge of the road, and he stepped clear as the car slid backward into the arroyo, the hood pointing up at the sky for a moment, then dropping down out of sight. She heard metal crunch as the car went down.

“I'm gone,” Chance said. He climbed up into the truck cab. McBride and Keegan were already back in the Taurus, balaclavas off, Keegan driving. He pulled onto the shoulder, then made a long turn to swing around, head back the way they'd come.

She heard the truck's gears grind, stepped away. Chance steered to the left, using the big side mirror for guidance, negotiated a three-point turn. He pulled off his balaclava, lifted a hand to her as he drove past. The truck rumbled off in the Taurus's wake.

It was over. The road was clear. The only shot fired had been hers.

Dark now. Behind the boulder, Sandoval had all five men on their knees, facing the stone, hands bound. The Cherokee's engine was running, headlights on. Hicks was storing the last of their equipment in the back. The other three had left their weapons with him. Sandoval stood behind the men, his HK at port arms, still chewing gum.

The older of the two guards, gray hair in a military cut, uniform smeared with red dust, craned his neck to look behind him.

“You know what's in that truck?” he said. “It's not what you think. It won't be any use to you.”

“Don't you worry about it,” Sandoval said, and flicked the guard's ear with the HK's suppressor.

The guard twisted his head away as if in annoyance, looked back at him. “You ever use that weapon? Man to man? Shooting at someone who's shooting back?”

“Shut up,” one of the men said. It was the driver of the truck. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead. “Just do what they say.”

“They're not gonna hurt us,” the guard said. “They aren't killers. They're punks.”

Sandoval laughed, came closer and slammed the butt of the HK into the guard's shoulder. He grunted, fell facedown in the dirt. Sandoval put a boot on the back of his neck, held him there. “You should listen to your friend.”

“Enough,” she said. Sandoval looked at her, then took his boot away, stepped back.

The guard coughed and struggled back to his knees, trying to catch his breath, looking at the ground now. The other four were watching him. The driver she'd taken out of the first car was breathing shallow and fast, his face shiny with sweat.

“What's your name?” she said to him.

He closed his eyes, swallowed, then looked back at her. “It's okay. I'm with you. Everything's okay.”

She frowned, wondering what that meant.

“Your name,” she said.

“Why?”

“Answer her,” Sandoval said.

She felt Hicks come up alongside her.

The driver turned his face away. He was starting to hyperventilate. “Charles.”

“Charles what?”

“Conlon. You're going to kill us, aren't you?” His breathing was ragged, his shoulders trembling.

“Listen to me, Charles,” she said. “You're all going to be okay.”

He had his eyes shut tight again, and there were tears coming out from under them.

“All of you, listen,” she said. “Before long, someone's going to be out here looking for you. A half hour tops, probably less. Either way, you'll all be fine. Later tonight you'll be telling this story to your wives and girlfriends. Don't give us any trouble, stay calm, and everybody gets to go home.”