“Listen, Jorge, ”Burden said slowly. “We want to be very careful here, okay? Remember, he lives, you live. Anybody dies, everybody dies. ”He was stretching it out, giving Titus time to switch the mole. “When my men brought you the car at La Terrazza, they jammed an automatic down in between the seats by Cain's right side. He's already found it. It's ready to fire, safety off. I told him to let you have it when you reached over the seat to get it.”
“I'll blow his head off, Garcia, ”Macias yelled, “I've got it to his head right now. I'll fucking shoot him!”
“Damn it, it's no trick, Jorge.”
Macias kept the phone to his ear and spoke to Titus.
“What did he tell you?”
During Macias's exchange with Burden, Titus had carefully peeled the mole from his right arm with his left hand and was now pressing it into the scored handle of the pistol. He was still shaken from the blow against the side of his head, but he managed to move his hand slowly away from the gun to the bottom of the steering wheel as he answered.
“He said not to use the gun that's in the seat here. He said to let you have it.”
Macias calculated the time they'd spent on the phone. Burden really couldn't have said much more than that. He screwed the muzzle of the automatic into the base of Titus's skull and slowly reached over the seat. He found the handle of the gun, jammed between the seats, and slowly brought it out. There was a suppressor on it.
“Now what? ”Macias said into the phone.
“Okay, you see how this is going? ”Burden asked.
“Yeah, I see.”
“We just want to bring this to an end, Jorge. If we get Cain back safely and in one piece, then you get a free pass. You're lucky this time. Very, very lucky.”
Macias knew that Burden was speaking the truth, about this one thing, anyway. He had this little opportunity solo por suerte. Every moment counted now. He'd kept glancing out the rear window. He hadn't seen headlights at a consistent distance, which meant that they probably were locked on to them with a tag, like they said. They didn't need somebody up close. If that was the case, then, that distance between him and whoever was back there-he wasn't stupid, he knew there was somebody back there-that distance was his opening. His only opening. And his next move had to be done in that space, and in absolute privacy.
“What about it, Jorge? Have we got a deal? ”Burden asked him.
“Yeah, we've got a deal.”
“Okay, now it's your turn to make us believe you, ”Burden concluded. “When you drop him with the Navigator, you've got to put him on the phone so we know he's alive when you leave. We'll keep talking to him until we get to him. When we've got him, you're in the open.”
“?Hecho! ” Macias said, and punched off the phone.
He hesitated a second, calculating, going through the mental paces of what lay before him to make sure he didn't miss a step that would throw off his timing. Then he punched in a code on his cell phone and immediately pushed the time elapse feature on his watch, setting it for forty-five minutes.
Free pass. Yeah. Did Burden think he was so scared that he'd lost his mind? No fucking way was he going to give up Titus Cain until he was safely out of this mess… and maybe not even then. He'd have to see how it went. But in the meantime, maybe the lie would buy him a little time.
Chapter 56
“Jesus, ”Norlin said.
Burden could feel him looking at him. They were close in the van, their eyes jittering over the screens.
“That, ”Norlin said, “was a ballsy call.”
“You mean heartless, don't you, ”Burden said without looking at Norlin. “You could've said heartless.”
“No, I mean ballsy. If you're wrong… then it was heartless. You've almost got everything you wanted, Garcia. More than you expected you'd get. You could've let it go.”
“And I probably would have-if he hadn't gone back for that laptop. But if he risked his life for it, then I want it.”
“Even if it cost Cain his life?”
“Cain is one life. God knows how many lives that laptop could save.”
“What if it can't? What if it can't even save one?”
“You're acting like Cain's already dead. Look, if Macias believes that Cain's swallowed a bug, then he'll leave Cain with the car because he's got to isolate himself. If he does that, I want Calo to be able to get to him.”
“That's a damned big if.”
Burden said nothing, ignoring Norlin, his eyes fixed on the monitors.
“And if Macias doesn't buy that story? ”Norlin persisted.
Burden turned to him. “Think about it, Gil. We wiped out this entire operation. Hell, I can hardly believe that myself. That's got to scare the hell out of him. I've got to guess that at this point Jorge Macias is entirely focused on saving his ass.”
“But what if he doesn't buy the lie about the swallowed bug?”
“Then he'll take Cain with him. And even if he does that, he'll have to be thinking, in the back of his mind, that maybe he's guessed wrong. That maybe I'm watching this monitor, and I can see Cain's bug leaving with Macias and not staying with the Navigator like we'd agreed. He'll remember that I said that if he did anything other than what we agreed on, then he's a dead man. The second he deviates from our agreement- if he does-he's going to be sweating blood. People who sweat blood make mistakes. ”He looked at the monitor. “Calo's still on him.”
“Yeah, way back, ”the technician said. “More than a mile.”
The van was on the move again, too, just about a mile behind Calo.
Burden kept his eyes on the LorGuides. Up until now everything had worked far better than he'd had any reason to expect it would, but now he had no men to spare, and what happened next was largely out of his hands. All he could do was listen to it happening.
“There's another way to look at his thinking, ”Burden said. “He knows damn well that his security is tied to Cain. He may hang on to him like a drowning man hangs on to a piece of driftwood. There's that possibility. If that's the way it goes, and if he tosses that gun for any reason at all, or loses it, or forgets it in the panic, Calo will go straight to it, and we're screwed.”
“Cain's screwed, ”Norlin corrected him.
“They've turned off onto South Loop One, ”a technician said.
“Pull up the maps in the southwest part of the city, ”Burden said.
“If Macias continues on his course”-Norlin leaned across and pointed to the map on the largest of four screens-“he'll go into Oak Hill. He's headed for an intersection where he'll have to make a choice between two highways. One, a state highway, goes toward the lakes and on to Llano; the other one, a U.S. highway, better condition, can take you to Fredericksburg or south to San Antonio. All of them go through ranch country.”
Burden stared at the map. Macias was headed into his escape plan. For it to work, he was going to have to drop off the LorGuides somehow. He had to disappear.
Titus's hands were shaking on the steering wheel from the rush of adrenaline that just didn't stop coming. They drove south on Loop 360, where the city had effused into the rolling hills with up-market developments that overflowed into the wooded valleys and crawled along the crowns of the ridges, their lights spreading like a sparkling mildew into the rolling landscape. They stayed with the Loop as it turned back east on the southern side of the city, and when it intersected Loop 1, Macias told him to turn right and head south.
Macias wasn't talking, and Titus found it particularly unnerving that he didn't ease off with the automatic, which he kept screwed into the base of Titus's skull. He could actually feel the roundness of the barrel, and it felt like a coffin to him.
When Loop 1 intersected Highways 290 and 71, Macias directed him to exit on the access road. From there they headed off into the more traditional housing developments, street after street of ranch houses interspersed with shopping centers and apartment complexes.
