“I think we’re pretty good already,” Darling said. “That whole trip down here, didn’t see a single cop.”
25
LUCAS HADtaken three calls from Highway Patrol’s Johnson over the past half an hour. The cell phone companies had spotted the burner approaching the checkpoint on I-10, then, not moving on I-10, at the checkpoint.
On the third call, Johnson said, “Goddamnit, Lucas, T-Mobile is saying Poole’s phone is west of us now, heading into El Paso. I can positively tell you that Poole didn’t come through here. We looked in every car and truck including the eighteen-wheelers, and we got six illegals and probably five pounds of marijuana, but no Poole.”
“Could have gone back north, I suppose, if he’s been talking to Box. Maybe figuring he can get Box back.”
“Or he could be right on top of you, like we were saying—if that was him in Fort Stockton. Maybe he figured we were tracking him and he dropped the phone in one of the pickups or something.”
“We’ll give it until dark, anyway,” Lucas said. “If he’s not coming this way, I don’t know what our next move would be.”
—
DARLING WASat the wheel when they came around the curve at the south end of Marfa and saw the cars piling up and the roadblock, and Darling jabbed the brake and blurted, “Ah, shit!” and swerved hard right into the mouth of a dirt alley. Poole had been looking at the paper map and didn’t see the checkpoint and grabbed the door handle to keep himself upright and said, “What? What happened?”
“Goddamn roadblock. See anybody coming after us, anybody?”
Poole looked in the wing mirror as they rattled down the alley and a dog on a chain lurched out at them, barking, and Darling hooked left into a clutch of trailer homes and Poole, looking left, saw flashes of red on the highway, which was parallel to them, and said, “Two trucks, silver SUVs, pulling out. Shit, they’re coming fast as they can. Get us out of sight...”
“Lots of white pickups back here, that’ll slow them down if we can get around another corner...”
They were on a dirt road that appeared to lead into the trailer park, and Poole shouted, “There!” and Darling took another right, weaving between closely parked mobile homes and cars and more pickups, including some that were white, and then Darling chargedleft through somebody’s bone-dry yard and around behind a trailer and then back on a road...
Poole had both hands braced on the dashboard and was chanting, “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”
He popped open the glove box and took out a.40mm Glock, shoved it into his belt, then popped his safety belt and knelt on the seat, pulled out a.223 rifle that they’d stuck in the back. “They don’t know you, so you could still talk to them, maybe. I’m gonna bail,” he said. “Find a place to park and play it cool.”
“What? What?”
“I’m gonna bail.” They were shouting at each other as Darling wheeled crazily between the mobile homes. He ran over a plastic Big Wheel that crunched like an egg, banged across an automobile bumper that was lying in a side yard. “Park the truck, find a place to hide. If it looks like they’re about to get you, ditch the phone. If I make it out, I’ll call your wife and we can hook up.”
“Man, man, I dunno...”
—
LUCAS HADpassed the word to the border patrolmen, and to Bob and Rae, who were now sharing a truck, about the phone being west of the I-10 checkpoint. He was gnawing his way through a package of Snackimals animal crackers when he saw a white pickup truck hit the brakes two blocks up the highway to the north, then swerve, nearly out of control, into a side street to the west.
Bob rolled up next to him and shouted, “You see that?”
“We’re going,” Lucas shouted back. He had O’Brien, the Border Patrol boss, on speed dial and punched him up, and O’Brien pickedup and said, “We saw it, we got guys who’ll be coming up behind you. We’ll get some more going around the south end of town so they can’t get out that way. You think that’s him?”
“Find out soon enough,” Lucas shouted, and he dropped the phone on the passenger seat and focused on keeping the car under control. Bob had swung past him as he was talking to O’Brien and led the way to the point where the white pickup had turned off.
And found themselves in a short dirt alley, and at the end of the alley, a T-intersection. A half dozen white pickups were scattered around a trailer park, on both sides of them, nothing moving.
Bob and Rae went right and Lucas went left, then took the next right deeper into the trailer park past a burned-out trailer and a loose dog. He bounced through a deep swale, his head banging off the roof of the truck, and he realized the beeping sound he kept ignoring was the safety-belt warning alarm, and then he was on a real blacktopped street... and nothing was moving.
He stopped, and looked out his passenger-side window, and saw Bob and Rae’s truck a couple hundred yards away, also at a full stop.
Where had the pickup gone? Two Border Patrol trucks came up behind him, and Lucas got out and ran back to them and told the drivers, “Keep an eye on those white trucks, the parked ones, it might be one of them. Otherwise... I dunno. And keep your guns up. This guy is a killer, and I don’t want him riding off in one of your trucks, and you dead.”
Bob called: “There’s a road going south and some dust in the air, I think he might have gone down there.”
Lucas: “I can see it, I’m coming, I’m right behind you.”
—
