made GPS and satellite phones useless.
The first round struck Weathers in the shoulder from behind, and it felt more like a hard punch than a bullet. He landed on his hands and knees, his mind blank with astonishment. It was only when the report cracked and echoed through the canyons that he realized he'd been shot. There was no pain yet, just a buzzing numbness, but he saw that shattered bone protruded from a torn shirt, and pumping blood was splattering on the sand.
Jesus God.
He staggered back to his feet as the second shot kicked up the sand next to him. The shots were coming from the rim above him and to his right. He had to return to the canyon two hundred yards away-to the lee of the rock pillar. It was the only cover. He ran for all he was worth.
The third shot kicked up sand in front of him. Weathers ran, seeing that he still had a chance. The attacker had ambushed him from the rim above and it would take the man several hours to descend. If Weathers could reach that stone pillar, he might escape. He might actually live. He zigzagged, his lungs screaming with pain. Fifty yards, forty, thirty-
He heard the shot only after he felt the bullet slam into his lower back and saw his own entrails empty onto the sand in front of him, the inertia pitching him facedown. He tried to rise, sobbing and clawing, furious that someone would steal his find. He writhed, howling, clutching his pocket notebook, hoping to throw it, lose it, destroy it, to keep it from his killer-but there was no place to conceal it, and then, as if in a dream, he could not think, could not move ...
2
TOM BROADBENT REINED in his horse. Four shots had rolled down Joaquin
Wash from the great walled canyons east of the river. He wondered what it meant. It wasn't hunting season and nobody in his right mind would be out in those canyons target shooting.
He checked his watch. Eight o'clock. The sun had just sunk below the horizon. The echoes seemed to have come from the cluster of hoodoo rocks at the mouth of the Maze. It would be a fifteen-minute ride, no more. He had time to make a quick detour. The full moon would rise before long and his wife, Sally, wasn't expecting him before midnight anyway.
He turned his horse Knock up the wash and toward the canyon mouth, following the fresh tracks of a man and burro. Rounding a turn, a dark shape sprawled in front of him: a man lying facedown.
He rode over, swung off, and knelt, his heart hammering. The man, shot in the back and shoulder, still oozed blood into the sand. He felt the carotid artery: nothing. He turned him over, the rest of the man's entrails emptying onto the sand.
Working swiftly, he wiped the sand out of the man's mouth and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Leaning over the man, he administered heart massage, pressing on his rib cage, almost cracking the ribs, once, twice, then another breath. Air bubbled out of the wound. Tom continued with CPR, then checked the pulse.
Incredibly, the heart had restarted.
Suddenly the man's eyes opened, revealing a pair of bright blue eyes that stared at Tom from a dusty, sunburnt face. He drew in a shallow breath, the air rattling in his throat. His lips parted.
'No . . . You bastard . . .' The eyes opened wide, the lips flecked with blood.
'Wait,' said Tom. 'I'm not the man who shot you.'
The eyes peered at him closely, the terror subsiding-replaced by something else. Hope. The man's eyes glanced down at his hand, as if indicating something.
Tom followed the man's gaze and saw he was clutching a small, leather-bound notebook.
'Take ...' the man rasped.
'Don't try to talk.'
'Take it...'
Tom took the notebook. The cover was sticky with blood.
'It's for Robbie . . .' he gasped, his lips twisting with the effort to speak. 'My daughter . . . Promise to give it to her . . . She'll know how to find it. . .'
'It?'
'. . . the treasure . . .'
'Don't think about that now. We're going to get you out of here. Just hang
» m-
The man violently clutched at Tom's shirt with a trembling hand.
'It's for her . . . Robbie . . . No one else . . . For God's sake not the police . . . You must. . . promise.' His hand twisted the shirt with shocking force, a last spasm of strength from the dying man.
'I promise.'
'Tell Robbie ... I... love ...'
His eyes defocused. The hand relaxed and slid down. Tom realized he had also stopped breathing.
Tom recommenced CPR. Nothing. After ten futile minutes he untied the man's bandanna and laid it over his face.
That's when it dawned on him: The man s killer must still be around. His eyes searched the rimrock and the surrounding scree. The silence was so profound it seemed that the rocks themselves held vigil. Where is the killer? There were no other tracks around, just those of the treasure hunter and his burro. A hundred yards off stood the burro itself, still packed, sleeping on its feet. The murderer had a rifle and the high ground. Broadbent might be in his sights even now.
Get out now. He rose, caught his horse's reins, swung up, and dug in his heels. The horse set off down the canyon at a gallop, rounding the opening to the Maze. Only when he was halfway down Joaquin Wash did Tom slow him to a trot. A great buttery moon was rising in the east, illuminating the sandy wash.
If he really pushed his horse, he could make Abiquiii in two hours.
3
JIMSON 'WEED' MADDOX hiked along the canyon floor, whistling 'Saturday Night Fever,' feeling on top of the world. The .223 AR-15 had been field-stripped, wiped clean, and carefully secreted in a crevice blocked with stones.
The desert canyon took a turn, then another. Weathers, attempting the same ploy twice, had tried to lose him in the Maze. The old bastard might fool Jimson A. Maddox once. Never twice.
He strode down the wash, his lanky legs eating up the ground. Even with a map and a GPS he had spent the better part of a week tramping around lost in the Maze. It hadn't been a waste of time: now he knew the Maze and quite a bit of the mesa country beyond. He had had plenty of time to plan his ambush of Weathers-and he had pulled it off perfectly.
He inhaled the faintly perfumed air of the canyon. This was not so different from Iraq, where he had done a stint as a gunnery sergeant during Desert Storm. If there was a place the opposite of prison, this was it-nobody to crowd you, nobody in your face, no faggots, spies, or niggers to spoil the peace. Dry, empty, and silent.
He rounded the sandstone pillar at the entrance to the Maze. The man he had shot lay on the ground, a dark shape in the twilight.
He halted. Fresh hoofprints in the sand headed to and from the body.
He broke into a run.
The body lay on its back, arms by its side, bandanna carefully spread over its face. Someone had been here. The person might even have been a witness. He was on horseback and would be heading straight to the cops.
Maddox forced himself to calm down. Even on a horse, it would take the man a couple of hours to ride back to Abiquiii and at least several more hours to get the police and return. Even if they called a chopper it would have to fly up from Santa Fe, eighty miles to the south. He had at least three hours to get the notebook, hide the body, and get the hell out.
Maddox searched the body, turning out the pockets and rifling the man's day pack. His fist enclosed over a rock in the man's pocket and he pulled it out and examined it by flashlight. It was definitely a sample, something Corvus had pointedly asked for.
Now the notebook. Oblivious to the blood and entrails, he searched the body again, turned it over, searched the other side, kicked it in frustration. He looked around. The man's burro stood a hundred yards off, still packed, dozing.
Maddox undid the diamond hitch, pulled off the packsaddle. Yanking off the manty, he unhooked the canvas
