“Yeah, Carly, I’ll try to find you something special.”
She grinned, disappearing back inside the vehicle.
“Thanks.” Michelle climbed up into her SUV and waved as she exited the yard. We finished prepping the bikes.
Baseball caps, aviator glasses, shaded windows up and air conditioner cranked to full, I took us to Hwy 8. This section of the range was down for maintenance this week, so getting approval was easy.
I bypassed the range road, heading for one of the old herding trails. It wouldn’t be easy. The trails were broken down, sections washed out or blocked by rock slides. If not for 4-wheel drive, we wouldn’t have gotten far after we left the highway.
Lutz huffed as we bounced. “Why are we going in this way?”
“Because this is how the locals get in.” I gripped the wheel as we tilted over a small slide of rocks. “Pretty obvious if we came in on the range road.”
“Yeah…” He braced. “I think this is rougher than going off-road.” He pointed to the side of the trail.
“Probably, but we don’t damage more than we have to.”
“It’s a bombing range!”
I rolled my eyes at his point, valid as it was. “Yes, but it’s still owned by the Cocopah.”
He huffed again at a rough wash out, maybe a bit louder than normal, for emphasis.
I ignored him, sticking to the remnants of the road. It took longer to reach the trail I’d mapped out. “There’s the box canyon where we can hide the truck.” I pulled in, parking Billy’s old beat up truck up under a mesquite tree.
Lutz cringed at a scrapping noise. “Sure he won’t complain about scratches?”
I could see the limb on the hood, but shrugged. “Did you look at the truck as you loaded it? He’s way past worrying about a shiny paint job.” I shoved the keys down between the seats and cracked the window a few inches. “Get the bikes.”
Lutz cracked his window and got out, thumping around as he unload the truck. I located the trail and rejoined him. We went over the map before mounting up.
The route wasn’t any more than goat and sheep trails. The local tribes turned their herds loose here when monsoons made the desert plants grow wild. A little water and the ravines turned into beautiful gardens. Those plants changed the flavor of the goats’ milk and meat.
The tribes coordinated mission and grazing dates and pilots learned fast the retribution if they went off track and shot up a herd of goats. However, sheep and goats wandered where they wanted, so it was deemed a no-foul if they grazed over the line.
Right now their four-legged paths were our way in. We tangled our way up steep ravines and through narrow passes, until I could see the flags for RS4 and RS5. I pointed them out to Lutz.
Not far off trail was a decent-sized Torote tree. Fed off whatever little bit of rain that trickled down the steep hill behind it, it provided some shade during the worst heat of the day. We tucked the bikes behind the tree and took a water break for ourselves.
Lutz sat under the tree, wiping sweat off his neck. The helmet wasn’t the high-tech model we wore on duty. It had ventilation, but no fans to cool our heads. “Think we made it in undetected?”
“No guarantees.” I joined him, giving the tree a token of our thanks with a splash of water before I took my own drink. Lutz remembered and gave his own offering, humoring my ritual teachings. I took a second drink. “I don’t see any tampering with the path, but they wouldn’t expect anything but animals to come up this way.”
“Let’s hope.” He took one more drink before putting his bottle away. “Where now?”
I pulled out the map. “We go on foot along this ridge. It will give us cover.” I pointed to an area on the aerial map of the range. “That’s Surveyors Tank, RS5 and the wash we went down.” My finger settled into an area between the three. “I suspect this point is where we need to go. This trail will bring us up over the top of that target.”
“Huh, looks like a step carved into the side of the mountain.”
“A perfect point to hide without us picking them up on satellite updates, unless we were looking for them.” I folded up the map and checked my camera. It was an old digital model, not hooked up to any com lines that could be hacked. “Let’s get up there.”
CHAPTER
11
This wasn’t our first hiking adventure. I’d been putting Lutz through my own desert survival training and he was learning. We took breaks, but the last half-hour the most brutal with an almost vertical ascent. We set rappel ropes for our descent. Fortunately the path was fairly level the rest of the way. Twenty more minutes and I pulled Lutz down behind a boulder.
“Here we are.” I’d caught the briefest glimpse before taking cover. We both edged up enough again to see past this outcropping of rocks. Sure enough, on a plateau below us were buildings mashed up against the cliff face. Set in a point of almost perpetual shade. “Got’em.”
We dropped back down. “I need to get pictures without them seeing me. See that brush, break me off some of the branches and drag them up here.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Lutz skidded down the incline. At this altitude the shrubs didn’t get much water, so they grew short and sparse. He broke off some of the branches, paying for them with the remains of a bottle of water, before he dragged them back to me. I built an impromptu blind, getting into place as Lutz pulled the last branch over us. He hung onto it as I raised my head over the rocks again.
“There’s no activity.” I started clicking pictures of the buildings. “One building looks rather large and newer than the other one. The second one looks reminiscent of an old miner’s shack, or
