“I hope not. That wasn’t the intention,” she said. That wasn’t her intention; she had no doubt that Low and some of the others hadfully intended to blow the bridge with people on it, and no doubt that some had been killed. Low hadn’t told her in advance because he’d known she’d refuse to go along.
She’d gone along too many times, she thought now, nodding when she shouldn’t have, beginning with the killing of the two illegals in the desert. Nodding when the men had proposed the killings of the Blackburns and Winks. Sending Max Sawyer off to die...
For a good cause? She still thought so, but might there have been another way? One in which the Blackburns had been allowed to live? Winks... she didn’t care about Winks, she admitted to herself. Max Sawyer she cared about.
The pickups in front of them were running dark, barely visible in the thin moonlight, a loose caravan kicking up dust as they passed the gun range. They could see the truck in front of them bouncing over rough spots, so they could slow for them. Everything seemed to be working except... there were no trucks trailing them. They were the last in the long line and Hawkes kept looking back, wondering: Low in one truck, Crain and Duran in the other. They should be coming up from behind, but they weren’t.
They took twenty minutes to drive the five miles to the hole, the Arroyo Grande, where there was another ten-minute wait, the pickups slowly going over the edge, men getting out to look at the situation. When it came their turn to go over, Waltz said, “I dunno.”
One of the El Paso militiamen was standing on the edge of the arroyo, knocked on the driver’s-side window, and when Waltz lowered it, said, “You’ll be fine. No problems so far with trucks less good than yours. Don’t hit the gas hard going up the other side. Just drive up, you don’t want your wheels spinning.”
“Like I was on ice.”
“I dunno, I never been on ice. But glad you could make it, buddy,”the militiaman said. “Say hello to your folks back home. And take it easy, you got a valuable passenger there.”
Waltz took it easy, and they went down, over, and up. On the far side, they caught up with the end of the caravan and Hawkes said, “We should be good now. It smooths out.”
“I looked at the maps. I’d like to get on the interstate, but what do you think?” Waltz asked. “You’re the brains of this operation.”
“When we get up to that loop... the farm loop... we should keep going north instead of cutting over to I-10. If there are any cops hunting for us, that’s where they’ll be. The farm roads are fast enough and we get ten more miles in, there’s a whole network of roads, branches all over. Might not be the fastest, but it’d be the safest.”
“Safe is good for me,” Waltz said. “Think we made it on national TV?”
“Oh, yeah. Before we took the cell tower down, I talked to our intel guy in El Paso,” Hawkes said. “He told me we were on every network, all the time.”
“Hell of a thing,” Waltz said. “Hell of a thing. The Alamo.”
“You got our publication on what to do when you get home?” Hawkes asked.
“Yup. Makes sense to me.”
“Keep your mouth shut, and when people ask if you were here...”
“Smile.” He laughed, his head bobbing in delight at the thought. “So they’ll know, but they won’t know.”
“Use cash in the gas stations, stay off your credit card...”
“I got it,” Waltz said.
They drove on, and then Waltz, looking in his rearview mirror, said, “Look back there. A helicopter.”
Hawkes looked back, and she could see a brilliant light shining down on what had to be Pershing, a police helicopter with a searchlight. “Too late,” she said. “Too late.”
“Might not be looking for us,” Waltz said. “Might be looking at that bus.”
“Might be,” Hawkes said. She didn’t want to think about the bus.
An hour afterthey left Pershing, they hit the farm service roads. Most of the trucks turned to the right at the first state highway, heading toward an on-ramp at I-10. Hawkes pointed Waltz to the left, and, two hours after they drove out of Pershing, directed him onto a highway that went northwest into the backside of El Paso.
They made it into the city shortly before midnight and Waltz dropped her at the twenty-four-hour Walmart where she’d left her Subaru. They spent a minute pulling duct tape off his license plates, then she gave Waltz a hug and said, “Stay under the speed limit, take care, Carl. I don’t know your plans, but if I were you, I’d head on up to Albuquerque tonight...”
“I got it,” he said. “I’m going through Albuquerque all the way up to Santa Fe and then cut cross-country back home.”
“Maybe I’ll see you up there someday,” Hawkes said.
“Always got a place for you.”
When Waltz had gone, Hawkes got out her burner phone and tried to call Low, then Crain, then Duran, and got no answer from any of them. Something bad had happened, she thought. And maybe something badshouldhave happened, since Low had delayed the blowing of the bridge.
