The Collected

brakes, the rig stopped completely.

Nate didn’t like it one bit. By his estimation, they still had at least twenty miles left to go before they reached the border. He highly doubted traffic would be backed up this far south. An accident, then?

The truck’s engine roared as the semi moved ahead a few feet before halting again.

Nate knew he needed to take a look and get a sense of what was going on. It would be a gamble, but he figured if he stayed low and leaned around the passenger side, there would be little chance someone would notice.

He snaked his head and shoulders around the lower end of the metal partition. He checked the side mirror first to make sure the driver couldn’t see him, then looked down the road.

There were at least thirty vehicles ahead of them, inching forward at a mind-numbing crawl. Farther down the road, he could see a few flashing lights, but couldn’t tell if they were from police cars or fire trucks or perhaps even an ambulance.

Though part of his mind was thinking that it might very well be an accident, his intuition was saying, Get out of here.

Again, the truck moved, this time traveling about a dozen feet. At the front of the jam, another truck also pulled forward, but it was able to keep going, having cleared whatever the problem was. Once it was out of the way, Nate could see three of the emergency vehicles.

There wasn’t an ambulance among them. Not a fire truck, either.

Police cars only.

“A roadblock,” he whispered to himself.

Even if the cops there weren’t looking for him, given his unconventional seating arrangements, he would not go unnoticed.

He examined the side of the road. About thirty feet ahead, the highway crossed over a bridge that spanned shallow wash. The scrub grew tall along each bank, while scattered patches of bushes had sprung up down the middle.

It was a better opportunity than he could have hoped for.

He waited patiently as the truck continued to move foot by foot toward the bridge. When the cab finally reached it, Nate grabbed his bag, stepped onto the road, and dropped down into the gulch. Ducking under the bridge, he held his position as the truck and the next few cars behind it passed by.

No one honked or shouted at him.

He was just starting to think he’d made it without being seen, when he heard a whomp- whomp-whomp approaching. Using the bridge to conceal his presence, he looked toward the sky and spotted a helicopter descending toward the road.

It was dark in color and large, and though there were no discernible markings, it looked distinctively official, not private. He crawled farther under the bridge, hoping they were just doing a flyover and he hadn’t been spotted, but the rotors continued to increase in volume until their constant beating echoed through every inch of the semi- enclosed space.

Suddenly a voice crackled over a loudspeaker. “El hombre que esta abajo del puente, quedese en donde esta. No intente correr, o le disparamos.” The voice then switched to English. “Under the bridge. Do not run. You will be shot.”

Even if Nate hadn’t understood either language, the message was clear: He was screwed.

More orders were shouted over the speaker, telling the cars parked on the road to move out of the way so the helicopter could land.

Nate moved to the far side of the bridge. Beyond were twenty feet of open space, then a thick growth of shoulder-high scrub shooting up out of the soft sand.

The helicopter sounded like it was nearing the ground.

Now or never.

He sucked in a breath, then raced over to the brush and kept going. He wanted to look back, had to look back, but forced his eyes to stay forward.

Go, go, go!

He weaved back and forth through the scrub, trying to build up as much of a gap as possible between himself and the cops who would soon be chasing him, and searched for a place to hide.

Instinctively, he’d been counting off the seconds since he left the cover of the bridge. Thirty-seven turned out to be the magic number. That’s when he heard shouts from back near the bridge, and knew they had discovered he wasn’t there anymore. Add a few more seconds for them to get organized, and he figured he had, at best, a forty- second lead. Not great, but not as bad as it could have been.

He came to a fork in the wash. To the left, the dry bed rose gently as it narrowed in width. Most likely, it went on for only another fifty feet or so before petering out. The fork to the right, though, continued as it had been.

Knowing the latter would be the direction they expected him to go, he chose the shallower route. Ten feet shy of where the wash disappeared, he found what he’d been looking for. A portion of the sidewall had been cut away by a recent storm, creating an overhang just large enough for him to fit into. If he could pull some dirt on top of him, or cause the overhang to collapse, they might never find him.

As he dropped to his knees and started to roll into the space, a loud roar raced overhead.

“Do not move! You are being covered, and you will be shot dead.” The voice from the helicopter didn’t even bother with Spanish this time.

To emphasize the point, a bullet slammed into the dirt three feet from Nate’s head.

His mind raced, trying to come up with something else he could do. He’d made it this far; there had to be some other way out. But the pounding feet nearing his position forced him to realize all his options had been exhausted.

The job was over.

CHAPTER 4

“I Zquierda ,” a voice said.

Nate was jerked to the left, the plastic cuffs around his wrists cutting once more into his skin.

They walked in a straight line for twenty-three paces before he was yanked to a stop.

He heard a door open not too far ahead. By the sound of the latch, he knew the door had to be sturdy, probably reinforced metal. If it weren’t for the black bag over his head, he would have known for sure. Still, he’d trained hard to hone all his senses, and was confident his guess was right.

Once the whine of the hinges stopped, he was pushed forward across the threshold.

Unlike moments before, their footsteps now echoed loudly. A corridor, he guessed-concrete, or possibly tiled, with unadorned walls.

The hallway was surprisingly long. It wasn’t until they reached their seventy-sixth step that the man doing all the talking said, “Derecha.”

Again there was the quick tug as their direction changed. This time they only went seventeen steps before Nate was stopped again.

Another metallic door clanged. Once the sound stopped, Nate was shoved hard in the back and sent sprawling forward. With his arms secured behind his back, the only thing he could do was twist as he fell to the floor so that he didn’t land face first. Instead, it was his hip that took the brunt of the fall. Behind him, a door slammed shut, and a key turned in a lock. A moment later, he heard the muffled footsteps of his two escorts receding down the way they’d come.

Slowly, he worked his way back to his feet, wincing for a second as the pain shooting out from his hip joined that of the ache in his back caused by a rifle butt that had whacked into him when he was captured.

Using the toe of his shoe as a guide, he found one of the walls, placed his head against it, and tried to work the bag off. Unfortunately, the cord running through the open end around his neck wouldn’t loosen to allow the bag to slip over his chin.