Harrison nodded.
“Those shots were a message,” he said. “He doesn’t want a fight and our orders haven’t changed.”
The copilot understood. Eckers had stressed that they were to avoid using their guns on either the boat or the Sword man, were to refrain from firing at all absent a deadly and immediate threat — and even then there must be absolutely no other recourse. The mission’s success hinged upon it looking like an accident.
He lowered the Steyr’s barrel from the gunwale.
“What now?”
“We radio Beauchart,” Harrison said.
“That gutless prick?”
Harrison nodded.
“Eckers is down,” he said. “Gutless or not he’s next in command.”
The copilot frowned at him. “I don’t like it,” he said.
Harrison wrenched the wheel to his right and went sheering away from the pontooner.
“Beauchart can have the choppers pick this up or do whatever else he bloody well wants,” he said. “It’s out of our hands from here.”
SEVEN
They had started out in the dodge coupe from their appointed meeting place in Sonora and driven south on State Route 99 to cross the San Joaquin River some miles above Fresno. There Lathrop turned onto a series of local roads that took them eastward through the rolling dry country with its hills of eroded sandstone and occasional clumps of rough grass, sagebrush, and pinons on their dull, sunbaked faces.
The air conditioner worked well enough and they kept their windows shut as the temperature outside steadily climbed. Ricci sat in the passenger side saying very little, observing the monotonous scenery, and sipping coffee from the lid of the thermos bottle in the compartment between them. It had a thin, stale taste that got less palatable as they rode along, and was barely lukewarm by the time he noticed Lathrop slow the car coming up on a sign for some place called Amaranto.
Ricci remembered the smell of the coffee Julia Gordian had brought and how it had spread pleasantly in his dining room. Then he lowered his window partway, and as the hot air outside hit him, he extended his arm away from the flank of the car and sloshed what he had left in the plastic thermos lid onto the dusty blacktop.
Lathrop looked over at him.
“Don’t like my brew?”
“No.”
“Neither do I,” Lathrop said. “But it’s all we’ve got and I have to drive awhile longer.”
Ricci didn’t respond. He pressed the button to shut his window, put the lid back in place on the thermos, and glanced at the fuel gauge. The needle had fallen to just above the eighth-of-a-tank mark.
“We’re low on gas,” he said.
“I know.”
Ricci motioned toward the road sign. It had a generic pump symbol below it.
“We should probably fill up,” he said.
Lathrop shook his head.
“Not in Amaranto,” he said. “Unless you want to find trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“The sort with eyes and ears connected to the Quiros family,” Lathrop said.
Ricci grunted.
“Makes sense why you’re riding heavy on the brakes,” he said.
Lathrop gave him a small nod.
“I don’t want to get stopped by any badges,” he said. “They’re the ones with the high-speed connections.”
Ricci thought a moment. “How much farther to that ranch?”
“I told you, a while,” Lathrop said. “About five minutes after we pass the town exit, there’ll be an unmarked turnoff on the right. We’ll have to take it north for fifteen, twenty miles through a whole lot of nothing.”
Ricci leaned back, returned his eye to the fuel gauge.
“We’re cutting it close,” he said.
Lathrop shrugged, his hands on the wheel.
“Salvetti’s expecting us,” he said. “He’ll be ready with whatever we need.”
The turnoff led to a narrow, undivided road that ran away from the shoulders of the hills in meandering curves. Soon the ridges had almost disappeared behind them in the incessant flood of sunlight, and the surrounding landscape leveled into plains stubbled with more sagebrush, creosote shrubs, and, increasingly, widespread mats of those hardy grasses that somehow manage to thrive across the alkaline flats.
As they went on, the paved road became cracked and rutted from lack of maintenance and, with several bumps that seemed a final, rattling protest against this gradual but complete deterioration, surrendered to a hard dirt track that actually proved smoother by contrast. Looking out his window, Ricci saw brown- and white-fleeced goats grazing at the patches of grass in loosely defined groups, and then a weathered old barn with a couple of workhorses outside in a corral and chickens penned near some big, lounging mixed-breed watchdogs.
They rode for another three-quarters of a mile or so. Then Ricci spotted a vehicle up ahead in the glaring sun, a red open pickup truck. He could tell at once it wasn’t moving and, as they got closer, realized it had been pulled across the track to block their advance.
Lathrop nosed the Dodge to within a few yards of the truck, stopped, cut the engine, and waited. The pickup’s driver was its sole occupant, and a minute later he got out and approached the car. A solid, broad- shouldered man of about fifty with thick, neatly cut waves of salt-and-pepper hair, dark brown eyes, and a clean- shaven face with a firm, squarish chin, he wore a white T-shirt, dungarees, and cowboy boots.
Lathrop turned to Ricci.
“He’s going to want to put a name on you,” he said. “Any preferences?”
“Yeah,” Ricci said. “Mine.”
Lathrop shrugged and brought down his window as the man came around his side of the car, tugging a work glove off his right hand.
“Lathrop,” he said, and leaned over toward the window. “Been a long time.”
Lathrop nodded.
“Don’t know how you always manage to look the same.”
“That’s for me to know, and you to find out.”
“Sooner or later,” Lathrop said, “I will.”
The pickup driver grinned, reached his gloveless hand through the window, and gave Lathrop’s shoulder a masculine squeeze, his eyes going to Ricci’s face at the same time.
“Al Salvetti, Tom Ricci,” Lathrop said. “Ricci, Al.”
Salvetti took his hand off Lathrop’s shoulder and stretched it over the back of his seat. He grasped Ricci’s and shook it, holding his gaze on him a few seconds longer.
“Good to meet you,” he said, then shifted his attention back to Lathrop. “I’ll turn my truck around and you can follow me up to the house. Got some food in the fridge, and everything ready for working out the details of the flight.”
Lathrop looked at him.
“We’re on fumes,” he said. “That old service station off the main road closed down and I wanted to steer clear of those sons of bitches in Amaranto.”
“Can’t blame you,” Salvetti said. “Hang on, I’ll bring a jerrican from the truck, put some gas in your tank to be on the safe side.”
