“One more thing.” There was a long moment of silence, then, “Tell Dora I love her, I guess. That’s about it.”
Box looked up and screamed, “No!” and Poole was gone. Box shouted, “Call him back! Call him back!”
Annie shook her head. “He’s gone, Dora, and we’ve got to get rid of this phone. If the cops get his phone, they’ll track us...”
She was pulling the phone apart as she spoke, ripped the battery out, tossed the pieces on the table. Rosie said, from the driver’s seat, “I’m pretty sure we can get down there from Van Horn, which oughta be coming up quick. Somebody look at the maps...”
—
THEN KORTspoke up. “Wait a minute. You’re not serious? You’re not going to try to go down there.”
“Not crazy, ugly girl,” Box shouted at her. “We’ve got to get down there. Maybe there’ll be some way we can help them...”
Rosie said quietly, “We won’t be able to help them, Dora, because we won’t know where they are, and we don’t have any way to get in touch with them. We can go down there and look for the money, see if there’s any way to get to it... but we won’t find those men.”
Box said, “Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus...”
Rosie was shaking her head: “That’s the fact of the matter.”
“We know what his number is, we could call him, he’ll keep the phone if he’s on the run...”
Annie nodded this time: “If we can find a phone, we can do that. We’re not going to use my phone or Rosie’s, because that’s the only way we have to stay in touch with the Boss. But we could call Gar if we find a pay phone.”
“I’m laying down the law,” Kort said. “We ain’t going. We ain’t going for Poole, we ain’t going for that other guy, and we ain’t going for the money. There’ll be cops everywhere, and if anyone sees me, knows me from that TV show, they’re gonna put me in a cage until they send me to the chair. Same for Box. We ain’t going.”
“I don’t care if it harelips the Pope, we’re going,” Box said.
“Shut up and sit down, both of you,” Rosie yelled over her shoulder. “If we see anything like a cop, we’ll put you down below. You’ll be safe enough. We’ve run fifty kilos of cocaine through a crowd of dope-sniffing dogs. But if there’s any way to get our hands on that cash, we’re gonna do it.”
Annie said, “That’s Van Horn up ahead. Look for 90 South. Looks like about an hour run down to Marfa, give or take.”
Kort slumped back into the couch. “You motherfuckers. We’re gonna die down there,” she said.
27
LUCAS MOVEDclose to the windows, looking in at the storage area, or whatever it was—he had the feeling that he was missing something important about the building, but he didn’t know what it might be. In any case, he could see past the aluminum boxes and out into the field where the gunfire had come from, north and east of the building.
O’Brien called: “We can’t come in at you like we were trying, but we can come in from the back side of the place and that’s what we’re doing. We’ll have a half dozen guys with you there in five minutes. They’re bringing an extension ladder. We think we can get up on top of the artillery buildings with a sniper.”
“Be good if we can do it...”
He was cut off by three quick shots from the side of the building and then Rae screaming, and Lucas shoved the phone in his pocket and ran down the length of the building where Rae was dragging Bob toward the back corner.
She saw Lucas and shouted: “He’s hit! He’s hit hard! We gotta get him outa here, we gotta get him to a medic...”
Lucas ran toward them and squatted over Bob, who looked up at him and said, “Hurts bad. Legs. He got me in the legs.”
Rae took a folding knife from her pocket and began cutting his pants off, and Lucas saw Bob’s rifle on the ground near the front corner of the building and asked, “Where was the shooter?”
“Down there.” Rae waved south and east. “Never saw him. We were looking in the other direction, up north. We were sitting ducks.”
“Poole’s either got a way to get around without being seen, in which case we’re in trouble right here, or there are two of them,” Lucas said. “I bet that fuckin’ Darling’s down here with him.”
“Then move me,” Bob groaned, and he said, “Ah...”
“I’ll carry him,” Lucas said. “Try to help with his legs.”
Lucas lifted Bob from under his arms and Rae lifted his thighs, and they trundled around to the back of the building and put him on the ground.
