POOLE BAILED OUTof Darling’s truck at a T intersection. On the other side of a fence was a shed with a sign that said “Mañana.” The ground was cut to stubble on the right side of the shed, but on the left there was enough grass to cover him. He took his rifle and said, “Be cool, buddy, and if I don’t see you again, it’s... been real.”
“God bless you, man,” Darling called back, and Poole slammed the door and Darling dropped the pedal to the floor and headed west; when the door had been open, and Poole was bailing, he thought he could hear every siren in the world, all coming for him.
He sped past a low white building that said something about the Border Patrol, and a bunch of Border Patrol trucks sat motionless behind a high chain-link fence. When he got to the end of the road, he could turn either north or south; north would take him back toward the sirens, so he turned south and sped down the narrow road, thinking a few seconds later that he may have made a mistake, because he was out in the open for what must have been a quarter mile; but at his speed, that was only fifteen seconds.Corners, he thought. He had to get around corners.
He took the first one he saw, another narrow street heading west, then another going south. At the next corner he stopped, for a few seconds, to assess his position. He was breathing hard, purely from the adrenaline. He had a choice of going farther west, but from where he was, it looked like a dead end. If he turned east, he might get closer to the sirens, but he was also closer to the highway to Presidio. If he could only get back to the highway, without the cops seeing him...
That was unlikely.
He had to think logically: the truck was probably done, the money under the floor was probably gone. He really had to get away from it. His main thought was: get away, at least until he could assess further.
He turned east. At the end of the road, he found himself looking down a long row of faded salmon-colored buildings, and off to his left, a parking area behind the buildings, with two white pickups parked in it.
He went that way, jammed the truck into a parking place between the two other trucks. What did he need? He needed his bag, he needed his gun, his phone, he needed to simply hide, to get out in one of the surrounding fields and lie down.
What if they brought dogs? Okay, he needed to get away from the sirens, find a car...
He got out of the truck, ran around to the back, grabbed a duffel bag, spilled the clothes out of it, got his rifle, a Bushmaster Minimalist-SD in.223, stuck two thirty-round magazines and four bottles of water in the bag, hesitated, said, “Goddamnit,” jumped into the truck—only take a few seconds—pulled up the floor, grabbed a wad of cash, then another, stuffed it all in the bag, closed the floorboard, was out of the truck. He started toward the field behind him, stopped, swore again, went back to the truck and stuck the keys under the rubber mat on the driver’s side. Then he turned and ran toward the field...
—
POOLE,out of the truck, on the ground, clambered over the fence on the left side of the Mañana shed and got down on his hands andknees and began pushing through the stiff yellow grass and weeds, moving as fast as he could while staying out of sight; it was like swimming, with thorns, and he was getting burrs in his hands and could feel them clustering on his shirt and jeans, sharp little knobs, and fifty yards into the field the palms of his hands and fingers were burning with them, and when he looked at one hand there must have been twenty sandburs embedded in his flesh...
Up ahead, when he took a moment to peek, he could see a scattering of hippie-style brightly painted Airstream trailers, and some white teepees. Like Darling, he could hear what sounded like a million sirens.
He needed a car. He needed to find a single person in a car turning south. If he could get the person to stop, for an instant, he could kill him and take the car and get out into the countryside, where he’d have some options. He might have to kill his way west, but once he got to El Paso, he could find Box. She had hidden a million and a half in cash and gold, and if that didn’t convince the lesbos... then he’d have to kill himself a few lesbians.
He moved on; couldn’t see much, but he had to keep moving.
—
BOB WENTstraight down the road where he’d seen the dust in the air, paused at an intersection to check for the fleeing truck, saw nothing, and Rae shouted, “Go,” and he went straight past a sign that said “The Chinati Foundation” and into a gravel parking lot to a low salmon-colored building with a “Visitors” sign out front and three cars in the parking lot, but no white pickups.
Lucas went right, toward a narrow road out of the parking lot tothe south—and saw Darling fifty yards away, running down the track, a canvas bag on his back. Lucas jammed on his brakes, got out, and shouted at Bob and Rae, “He’s running, he’s running.”
Bob and Rae got out of their truck, both carrying their M4s, and Lucas was already running south after the fleeing man, and Bob and Rae, coming up behind him, saw the man go over a fence into the heavy weeds in an adjacent field. Lucas had his pistol out and fired two shots in that general direction, and Bob thought,Not much chance at that distance...
The man in the field went down, then popped up again, only six feet back in the weeds, and from the way he came up Lucas saw that he had a rifle and he screamed, “Gun,” and went flat, got some dirt in his mouth and a sudden chill, on the ground, exposed. He began rolling, scrambling, left toward the buildings, looking for anything to get behind.
He heard a series ofbangs, rapid rifle fire, and Rae shouting, and when he looked back, Rae was on her back and Bob was climbing over her, covering her, and Lucas looked back down the road where the man had been and saw him jump back over the fence and run across the road into the cover of the salmon-colored buildings, which were adobe or brick or concrete, not something you could shoot through.
The man was moving fast, no longer carrying the bag, but still carrying the rifle. Lucas got off one shot, to no visible effect, and then he crawled backward, gun still pointing at the place where the man had disappeared, back toward Bob and Rae, where Rae was sputtering, “Get off me, get off me,” and Bob said to Lucas, “She’s bleeding...”
The shooter was nowhere in sight, and Lucas shoved Bob off Rae and found blood over Rae’s shoulder and cuts on one hand. “Get the vest off her,” Lucas said. The vest had side snaps, and they unsnapped it and peeled it back and Rae said, “Doesn’t hurt... much... hand hurts the worst.”
With the vest off, Lucas unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it aside and found a series of shallow cuts across the knob of her shoulder.
“Not bad, nothing penetrated,” Lucas said. “Looks like somebody slashed you with a knife.”
He looked around, picked up her M4. The gun had a gouge down what would have been the outside of the top-mounted Picatinny accessory rail. “Slug hit the gun,” he said. “If it hadn’t, you’d have a hole in your face.”
She sat up. “That sonofabitch. I’m gonna pop his ass.”
“You might need stitches,” Bob said.
“I’ll get them later,” she said, rolling to her feet. She flexed her right hand. “When the gun came out, it yanked on my thumb. Gonna have a bruise, but I’ll live. Where’d he go?”
“Ran behind one of the buildings,” Lucas said. “I’m going around to the other side. Try to flush him out. Bob, call the Border Patrol guys, tell them what’s going on, get them on the highway on the other side of that field, and get some more guys down here in armor.”
