“Near El Paso, somewhere. I got cops all over me, I shot one of them. I’m not gonna make it back, sweetheart. They’ll be tearing the farm apart...”
“Sturgill, Sturg...” Panic in her voice.
“I’m sorry, honey, but that’s the way it is. Now listen, listen—when they identify me, they’ll be all over you. Tell them the story we worked out. But the main thing is, stay cool. Don’t mess with that money, it’s safe right where it is.”
“Sturgill, you gotta get away...”
“I’m trying, but it’s not gonna work, I don’t think. They’ll be swarming me, any minute. I’m gonna make a run for it... but if I don’t make it, you’re the only woman I ever loved and I still love you, Janice. Take care of the girls... When things cool off, maybe move the money to Canada. You’re smart, you’ll figure it out.”
“Sturgill...”
“Gotta go right now, sweetheart. Take care, forever.”
“Sturg!”
He clicked off. After shooting the cop, he’d dodged behind one of the buildings, and when he came out the other side, had run as hard as he could, as long as he thought reasonable, and then one building more, expecting at any moment to be shot in the back.
He dodged behind one of the salmon-colored rectangular buildings, then took another chance and scrambled on hands and knees into the grassy field on the other side, and flopped on his belly.
Got a chance, he thought.Got achance.The cops would think he’d be holed up inside one of the buildings and would take a while to figure out that he wasn’t. From where he was, if he slowly and cautiously lifted his head, he could see men with guns on the highway, and then two Border Patrol trucks turned off the highway along a road or a track he couldn’t see, started bumping through weeds, and turned toward him. Had to move: he went north, toward the two redbrick domed buildings. If he could just work his way past them, and into town... into a place with cars that the cops weren’t watching...
—
POOLE HADworked his way south, where he found that the weeds suddenly ended, giving away to closely trimmed ground. The highway was to his left, and he could see a Border Patrol truck a hundred yards down the way, with a border patrolman standing behind it, with a rifle pointed over the hood.
The hippie place, the trailers and teepees, were across a fence, and right there, ten feet away, was a hole in the fence. Had to take a chance, he thought, but first...
He lay on his back, loosened his belt, and used the leather to protect his fingers as he plucked two dozen sandburs from his hands and fingers. Hurt worse than when that dealer in Biloxi shot him. He had dozens more scratching at his legs, right through the denim.
When his hands were free of the burrs, he crawled through the fence, out into the open. His belt was still loose, and he pushed the barrel of the rifle under the belt and down alongside his leg, then retightened the belt.
He crawled behind some trees, found that he could move in a curved path, not easily visible from the highway, toward the middle of the campground, or whatever it was, the place with teepees and trailers. He was doing that when Darling called, to say he was trapped. Poole didn’t know what he could do about that, but if therewasanything, he told Darling, he’d do it.
He would catch glimpses of the Border Patrol trucks down the highway as he walked along the line of trees, but nobody was looking at him: they were looking across the fields toward the low pinkbuildings. It occurred to Poole then that the cops might not know that there were two of them.
That they thought Darling was him.
There was a campground building off to the left of him, and if he could amble over there, find somebody getting into a car...
He started to make that move when he realized that there was no traffic on the highway. None at all. The Border Patrol had apparently plugged it at both ends, keeping traffic away from the ongoing shoot-out. Couldn’t pull out on the highway if that were the case.
He turned away from the highway, saw a woman walking across the campground, a cell phone to her ear. What looked more innocent than somebody walking while talking on a cell phone? He dug his phone out and put it to his ear, and limped across an open area, the limp induced by the gun down his leg.
On the far side of the campground was a parking lot of some kind. Not until he got close did he realize he was looking at a big Border Patrol facility, behind a chain-link fence. He went to his left, and when he was past the Border Patrol fence, took a quick look around and slipped into the high grass in the field behind the Border Patrol lot.
He pulled the rifle out of his belt, crossed through a clump of trees, and found himself coming up behind some kind of concrete bunker. A military facility of some kind? There was a dirt path in front of the bunker, and he looked left and right, and found several more of the bunkers trailing away to his left.
Nobody around. He settled into one of the bunkers and a moment later, saw three Border Patrol vehicles coming down a road tothe north, headed toward the two big domed buildings. Had somebody seen him? He didn’t think so. Darling was down here. That’s probably who they were looking for.
Poole thought about it, thought about Darling. Brought the rifle up, steadied it against the bunker wall, thought about it until he decided it was best not to think about it and fired a burst of a half dozen shots at the first two trucks. The trucks went sideways and he settled back down out of sight.
Heard people shouting...
—
LUCAS HEARDthe gunfire, not from where he thought it should be. The shots came from behind the domed buildings and not down the line of smaller buildings. He called Bob: “Poole’s moved. He’s on the other side of those big brick buildings.”
“We heard,” Bob said. “What do you want to do?”
