vehicle and get out of there. There were plenty of hours until sunrise. If he stayed off the road there would be little chance of anyone spotting him. At daybreak he could flag someone down and offer them money to take him back into town. There, he could make a phone call and arrange for someone to pick him up.
Making his plan calmed him. Everything was going to be okay. He opened the driver’s door and that was when he saw him. A guy standing next to the man who had just put the girl into his vehicle. They were talking: the conversation was animated — a disagreement. From the look of him, the second guy was almost certainly an American. He was tall, over six foot, and more than wiry but a long way short of muscle-bound. And there was an intensity to him that crackled, like the air before a flash of lightning.
A sedan had pulled up next to the Escalade and an elderly man had got out to take a look at the accident. Charlie didn’t recognize him, but by the time he looked back across the highway, the vehicle the girl was inside was pulling away. The second guy was still there, standing at the edge of the highway, staring straight at Charlie, even though the tinted windows and interior cabin of the Escalade must have blocked his line of sight. It was as if the Escalade didn’t even exist. Charlie felt himself meet the man’s gaze, and shuddered. He had seen that look before, in the eyes of the lead prosecutor at his trial. It was the look of someone who had already weighed and measured him, delivered his own judgement and was now set to carry it through.
From the chaos of grinding metal and gunfire, fear rose in him. He turned and ran. Across the barrier, down the slope and into the barren desert.
He didn’t look back. He didn’t have to. He already knew that the man was coming after him.
Fifty-four
The smell of sweat and vomit came at Lock like heat from a blast furnace as he opened the door of the Escalade. He took a deep breath, drawing the fetid air into his nose and down his throat, searching for the coppery tang of blood. There was none.
A five-second check of the interior revealed no one balled up in a footwell, only empty space. He got back out, opened the rear tailgate, made sure it was clear and ran to the barrier.
About a hundred yards out there was movement. Mendez. Or maybe the bodyguard. He vaulted the barrier and watched the person make a final break from the cover of a juniper tree. From the figure’s outline, he was sure it was Mendez.
He skidded down the slope, letting the gradient and gravity do the work as Mendez took flight, heels kicking up in a steady pulse. He was moving at a good pace, while Lock was going about as fast as he could manage. Mendez was a surfer, young and fit. It would be no easy foot chase but maybe he’d have an edge when it came to stamina. He settled into his stride, hoping that his quarry would overreach himself and tire quickly.
The decision to go after Mendez, rather than stay with Ty and the girl, had been a snap one. Something that defied his own logic. Ty’s gambling instinct had suggested they rescue the girl and take Mendez. Lock had argued that to split the mission reduced the chance of attaining either goal. Cold calculation said the same, even by the roadside. Getting Julia back to her parents, or better yet straight across the border and to sanctuary, was hardly straightforward. An extra body would always be useful — not fundamental, but useful. Throw an entirely separate and ongoing hostile extraction of Mendez into the mix and things got very complicated. In short, it was a bad idea.
That was still Lock’s thinking as they had watched the Escalade pull over. Assuming they might have been spotted by the bodyguard, they had kept moving. They were on a highway. Unless the bodyguard was going to drive back down it the wrong way, he had nowhere to go and no way of losing them. They had coasted along until they were out of sight.
Ty had got out and moved back down the road on foot. He had watched as the occupants had popped out of the vehicle, happy that they hadn’t been following a decoy. He had jogged back and relayed the news to Lock, who had decided that this was the best opportunity they would get. But by the time they had found a gap to cross to the other side of the highway, the girl had already made a run for it.
Lock had been there to see her dash for freedom. The echo of Carrie’s death had brought his heart into his mouth and a fresh rage to his heart. Julia had made it, but all of a sudden, standing at the edge of that dark desert highway, ghosts had been all around him, popping up like so many plants after a summer storm. He looked back to the desert and they were everywhere, completely real. The men who had pursued his fiancee to her death stood like gunslingers, staring at him. At their feet, Carrie lay dying. Melissa Warner was there too. The girl whose rape and subsequent death he had come to avenge.
As Ty had put Julia into the RAV 4, the pull of the dead, and the rage he felt towards Mendez, had sucked his heart into his boots. His decision was made. There was no time to do anything other than tell Ty to get the girl out of there and that he was going to find what they had come down here for: justice for Melissa Warner.
Now, without the vantage-point afforded by high ground, Lock stopped for a moment, scanning the dinner- plate flat landscape for Mendez. The desert breeze rustled through his shirt. He was five hundred yards out from the highway. Flashing lights near the jack-knifed truck announced the arrival of the authorities. Lock doubted Mendez would double back and risk running into cops who might not be aligned to the cartel. Lock couldn’t go back in case they were. That left no turning back for either of them.
He plunged forwards into the darkness.
Fifty-five
Police Chief Gabriel Zapatero listened quietly, put the phone down and walked outside to find the others. The atmosphere was light and festive. A mariachi band played on a raised dais over-looking the swimming pool. Waiters circulated with trays of food and drinks. There were no wives but lots of girls, beautiful but hard-faced professionals. The men were businessmen, lawyers, cops, one or two doctors.
The first person Zapatero saw was Manuel Managua, who was working the assembled guests like a true politician, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he already had the votes of everyone here, and that hookers rarely made it to the polls on election day. The problem with telling Managua was that in a crisis he panicked. He was the one who had most wanted the American girl, yet now that she was a problem he would no doubt deny he had ever said any such thing. A classic politician.
Zapatero smiled broadly at the crowd of people surrounding Managua as he lectured them about how the unions would destroy the prosperity of the area if they weren’t reined in. ‘Excuse me. I need to borrow our country’s future president. We will only be a moment.’
He led Managua off to one side.
‘Is she here? The American girl?’ he asked, as eager as a child on Christmas Eve.
Zapatero wondered what it was with politicians and situations they shouldn’t be within miles of. ‘No, she’s not here yet,’ he said, choosing his words with care. ‘But let’s go inside.’
‘Why? What’s going on?’ Managua asked, picking up on the tension.
‘Let’s wait for Federico,’ Zapatero said.
It wasn’t a long wait. Federico Tibialis, the boss of bosses, strode in, buttoning his shirt. He poured himself a drink. He seemed the calmest and most collected of them all. That was why he always made the final call. A man in his line of work who was unable to cope in a crisis usually lasted all of five minutes. The narcotics trade was one of perpetual crisis management, and his job as pressured as that of any Fortune 500 company CEO. He took big decisions every week. Decisions that involved life and death.
Managua shifted from foot to foot, apparently beside himself that he seemed to be the only one out of the loop. Zapatero felt like slapping him but instead he poured him a drink and told him to sit down. ‘There’s been an accident,’ was how he phrased it. ‘The girl and the other American. They’re gone.’
Managua’s brow furrowed. ‘Dead?’ And then he was off, spinning the whole thing in his mind before anyone had the chance to correct him ‘That’s not so bad in a way. I mean, if it was an accident, a real accident, it may solve many of our problems with-’
