patted him and apologized, then wiped the seat dry and remounted.
Roscoe’s hooves sank into the wet sand as Carson nosed the horse once again in the direction of the hills. In minutes the heat returned, the desert began steaming, and he felt thirsty. Not wanting to exhaust his water supply, he dug into his pocket for a stick of gum.
Topping a rise, he froze, the gum halfway to his mouth. Tracks crossed the sand directly before him: a mounted horse, showing evidence of the same poor shoeing job as Roscoe. The tracks were fresh, made after the rain.
Popping the gum into his mouth, Carson followed. At the top of a second rise he saw, in the distance, the horse and rider posting between two cinder cones. He immediately recognized the absurd safari hat and dark suit. There was nothing absurd, however, about the way the man handled his horse. Pulling Roscoe below the rise, Carson dismounted and peered over the top.
Nye was trotting at right angles to Carson, riding English. Suddenly he reined his horse to a stop and fished a piece of paper out of his breast pocket. He flattened it on the pommel and took out a sighting compass, orienting it on the paper and taking a bearing directly at the sun. He turned his horse ninety degrees, nudged him back into a trot, and soon disappeared behind the hills.
Carson remounted, curious. Confident in his own tracking skills, he let Nye gain some distance before easing his horse forward.
Nye was leaving a very peculiar trail. He rode in a straight line for a half mile, made another abrupt ninety- degree turn, rode another half mile, then continued the process, zigzagging across the desert in a checkerboard pattern. At each turn Carson could see, from the hoofprints in the sand, that Nye halted for a moment before continuing.
Carson continued tracking, fascinated by the puzzle. What the hell was Nye doing? This was no pleasure ride. It was getting late; clearly, the man was planning to spend the night out here, in these godforsaken volcanic hills twenty miles from Mount Dragon.
He dismounted again to examine the track. Nye was moving faster now, riding at a slow lope. He was riding a good horse, in better physical condition than Roscoe, and Carson realized he would not be able to follow indefinitely without exhausting his own horse. With a little exercise, Roscoe might be the equal of Nye’s mount, but he was “barn sour” and they were still many miles from the lab. Even if Carson turned back, he would not get back before midnight. It was time to give up the chase.
He was preparing to mount when he heard a sharp voice behind him. Turning, he saw Nye approaching.
“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” the Englishman said.
“Out for a ride, same as you,” Carson replied, hoping his voice didn’t betray his surprise. Nye had obviously noticed he was being followed and doubled back in a classic move, tracking the tracker.
“You lying git, you were stalking me.”
“I was curious—” Carson began.
Nye moved his horse closer and with invisible knee pressure turned him expertly on the forehand, at the same time laying his right hand on the butt of a rifle sheathed beside the saddle.
“A lie,” he hissed. “I know what you’re up to, Carson, don’t play stupid with me. If I ever catch you following me again I’ll kill you, you hear me? I’ll bury you out here, and no one will ever know what happened to your stinking pishogue of a carcass.”
Carson quickly swung up on his horse. “Nobody talks to me that way,” he said.
“I’ll talk to you any bloody way I like.” Nye began to slide the rifle out of its scabbard.
Carson jabbed his horse in the flank and surged forward. Nye, taken off guard, jerked the rifle free and tried to swing it around. Roscoe slammed into Muerto and threw the security director sideways in the saddle; at the same instant, Carson dropped his reins and grabbed the barrel of the rifle with both hands, yanking it out of Nye’s grasp with a sharp downward tug.
Keeping an eye on Nye, Carson opened the breech and removed the magazine, tossing it into the sand. Then he extracted the wad of gum from his mouth and jammed it deep into the chamber. He snapped the breech shut and winged the gun far down the hill.
“Don’t ever unship a rifle in front of me again,” he said quietly.
Nye sat on his horse, breathing hard, his face red. He moved toward the rifle but Carson spun his horse, blocking him.
“For an Englishman, you’re a rude son of a bitch,” Carson said.
“That’s a three-thousand-dollar rifle,” Nye replied.
“All the more reason not to wave it in people’s faces.” Carson nodded down the hill, “If you try to use that gun now, it’ll misfire and blow off your little ponytail. By the time you’ve cleaned it, I’ll be gone.”
There was a long silence. The late-afternoon sun refracted through Nye’s eyes, giving them a strange dark gold color. Looking into those eyes, Carson saw that the fiery tints were not completely a trick of the sun; the man’s eyes had a reddish cast, like the inward flames of a secret obsession.
Without another word Carson turned his horse and headed north at a brisk trot. After several minutes he stopped, looking back. Nye remained motionless on his mount, silhouetted against the rise, gazing after him.
“Watch your back, Carson!” came the distant voice. And Carson thought he heard a strange laugh drift toward him across the desert, before being whisked away by the wind.
The portable CD player sat on an outspread
De Vaca stood to one side of the immaculate control room, wondering if the T-shirt was a joke. “You said you’ve never fixed a CD player before,” she said nervously.
“
“Well, then how do you ...?” She let the sentence hang.
The figure muttered again, then popped a chip out of a circuit board, holding it up with a pair of plastic- coated tweezers. “Hmmmph,” he said, and tossed it carelessly on the newspaper. Working the tweezers again, he popped out a second chip.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” said de Vaca.
The figure eyed her over a pair of reading glasses fallen halfway down his nose. “But is not fixed yet,” he protested.
De Vaca shrugged, sorry she had ever brought the CD player to Pavel Vladimirovic. Though she’d been told he was some kind of mechanical genius, she’d seen no evidence of it so far. And the man had even admitted he had never even seen a CD player before, let alone fixed one.
Vladimirovic sighed heavily, dropped the second chip, and sat down heavily, pushing the glasses back up his nose.
“Is
“I know,” said de Vaca. “That’s why I brought it to you.”
He nodded and indicated with his palm for her to sit in a chair.
“Can you fix it or not?” de Vaca said, still standing.
He nodded. “
De Vaca took a seat. “Do you have a replacement?” she asked.
Vladimirovic nodded and rubbed his sweaty neck. Then he stood up, moved to a cabinet, and returned with a small box, green circuit boards peeping from its open top. “I put back together now,” he nodded
De Vaca watched while, in a burst of activity, he cannibalized parts from the box full of circuit boards. In less than five minutes he had assembled the player. He plugged it in, inserted the CD that de Vaca had brought, and waited. The sound of the B-52s came roaring out of the speakers.
“Aiee!” he cried, turning it off. “
“Thank you,” de Vaca said, real delight in her voice. “I use this just about every evening. I was afraid I’d have to spend the rest of my time here without music. How’d you do it?”
