“Slow down, ”Macias repeated.
Titus was confused. They were out in the middle of nowhere, nothing out there in the darkness.
“Okay, see the red reflectors on the fence up there? There's a cattle guard there. Pull over and go through it. Now, quickly.”
There were no cars on the highway in either direction, Titus noticed, and that was the way Macias wanted it. And that was what he got.
Titus pulled off on the shoulder and then turned into the cattle guard. His headlights picked up the caliche ruts of a ranch road. The center of the ruts was grown up with range grass that was already burned up in the July heat.
“Cut the lights and stop, ”Macias said.
Titus did as he was told.
“Roll down the windows, ”Macias said.
The car was filled with the sound of night insects and the smell of range grass. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, the caliche ruts began to glow in the light of the half-moon like dull phosphorus.
“You can see enough to drive, ”Macias said. “Go on.”
Titus put the car in gear and slowly moved along the overgrown road. The tall grass between the ruts dragged against the undercarriage of the car as the road rose up a slight rise and then leveled off after a gradual decline. They could see the rolling hills spread out in front of them in the darkness, the pale, moon gray of the grasses, the charcoal splotches of the woods, and above it all the night sky scattered with icy blue stars.
“Stop here and cut the engine, ”Macias said.
Titus didn't like this.
They got out of the car, Macias carrying his laptop and his gun, and started walking. The hills were covered with rocks and clump grass and scattered cedar trees that rose out of the half-moon darkness like black bears.
As they walked, Titus's heart began to race. He couldn't imagine any kind of resolution here except a bad one. They went down into a draw, stumbling over rocks, barging into cactus, the moon providing just enough light to make them think they could see where they were going but leaving out the details. Then they came up on the other side of the draw to a ridgetop.
“Sit down, ”Macias said, putting the muzzle of his automatic to the top of Titus's shoulder to make the point. Then he pulled out a cell phone and punched a button.
“Estamos aqui, ” he said. “?Andale!?Andale!”
Both of them were heaving and sweating, their shoes full of broken twigs and rocks, their socks riddled with the spines of needle grass.
Titus's mind was lurching. Then he heard a deep, fulsome sound unlike any he'd ever heard, a rapid, accelerated coughing with undertones of a deep whooshing. Looking toward the sound in the far-off star scatter, he saw two stars growing out of the darkness. But their light was bluer than the others, and they were approaching rapidly, driven by an eerie, monstrous chuffing. As the two blue lights grew larger, the other stars around them disappeared, blocked out by the black silhouette of a helicopter descending toward them. The wind of its rotors finally reached them with a blast, and the chopper sank slowly in near silence and hovered in front of them.
“Let's go, ”Macias said, still gripping the laptop and urging Titus to his feet with the barrel of the gun.
As Titus came up from his knees, he brought a rock with him in his right hand, a rough stone the size of a grapefruit. The darkness gave him the only advantage he needed.
He swung with all his might, but the rock slipped out of his hand and the blow was only a glancing one, catching Macias against his left ear, staggering him and sending the laptop flying into the darkness. But he didn't go down. Titus charged him the way Macias had charged Artemio, throwing a shoulder into Macias's stomach with all the strength he could manage. The force of it took both of them off the ground, and they landed five feet away on Macias's back, an impact that knocked the air out of Macias, but not his senses. Immediately he began hammering Titus with the butt of the gun, slamming it again and again into Titus's face as Titus tried to ward off the unstoppable energy of the younger man. Then somehow Titus found another rock and smashed it into Macias's forehead just as he began firing.
Titus rolled away from the gunfire as Macias struggled to regain his senses, dazed, frantic to save himself. His arm came up with the automatic, but he was too stunned to control it. More shots went off bam! bam! bam! into the sky, into the ground, zinging past Titus's face.
Titus fell on him again before Macias could get to his feet and went crazy, beating him with both fists, never even giving Macias a chance to clear his head. The gun went off again, the barrel against Titus's neck when it fired, blasting a seared path upward under the side of his jaw. Now Titus went for the gun, breaking fingers, wrestling the gun away from Macias's hand, and then shooting him-somewhere in the stomach. Then he shot again, blowing off part of Macias's face-Titus actually saw it in the light of the flash. Then again-somewhere, any-where. And again and again and again until the thing wouldn't fire anymore.
At the flashes of gunfire in the darkness, the helicopter hesitated thirty feet above them. A brilliant sapphire floodlight came out of its belly, lighting Titus in a laser blue glare as he stood over Macias's body.
Macias's phone began ringing in his pocket, but Titus's legs gave way, and he crumpled on the hardscrabble ground, slumping beside Macias's body, still holding the gun, heaving, unable to get enough air into his lungs, buffeted by the storm from the rotors of the helicopter.
Suddenly the floodlight went out, and very slowly the star lights came on again and the creature began to slip sideways, the wind and mystery of it drifting away over the tops of the trees. It stayed low. The muted pounding of its engine began to fade immediately, but the diminishing blue lights took longer, and Titus, exhausted, continued watching them recede until they were tiny bright dots and he couldn't even distinguish them from the stars.
Chapter 60
The isolated airstrip was on a private ranch nearly fifty miles northwest of Austin. It was an expensive landing site in the dead center of a long narrow valley a mile and a half off Highway 71. There was a small hangar (empty) with a workshop attached. Two fuel tanks sat fifty meters away. Another fifty meters from the tanks sat an old Cessna Grand Caravan, painted a flat charcoal gray, lights out, doors open for loading, waiting. The pilot and helper were sitting in the dark to one side of the aircraft, smoking.
Baas was the first to arrive, the headlights of Titus's Range Rover flickering through the dense cedar brakes as he came down the side of the wooded hills into the valley. He pulled up to the Cessna as if he'd done it a million times and got out. Quickly the pilot and helper ran over to the Rover to help Baas with the body of Macias's guard. They wrestled him out of the Rover and carried him to the cargo door of the Caravan. The interior of the plane had been stripped for cargo transportation, and the body, already discoloring from the cyanide, was laid on the bare aluminum floor.
By the time the body had been loaded into the plane, Tito was arriving in the Pathfinder, followed by Cope in the car. The job of unloading the three bodies from the Pathfinder was more gruesome because of the profusion of blood.
After the three dead men were piled into the bare cargo hold with the body of the other guard, Tito drove the Pathfinder to the edge of the tarmac by the hangar. They opened all the doors and began sprinkling laundry detergent around the bloody interior. Cope had bought the detergent at a convenience store in Paleface, where the highway crossed the Pedernales River. Then they stretched the water hose from the corner of the hangar and began hosing down the Pathfinder, the suds boiling out of the interior in foaming pink billows.
When that was done, Cope and Tito took off their clothes, washed them with the detergent, too, and laid them over the limbs of the cedar trees to dry in the July night. They all sat down to more cigarettes while they waited for one more arrival.
An hour passed, and then another, with no communication with Calo or Burden. Then Tito's phone rang.
“Tito, ”Calo said, “I'm on the highway approaching the turnoff.”
“What? What's happened?”
“Nothing wrong. Just some unexpected developments. You'll see in a few minutes. Is Luquin there?”
“No. We haven't heard anything.”
