Aim and Fire (24 page)

The backyard was only about ten yards from the door to the other house, but it felt like the longest distance Nate had ever covered in his life. Even though they had taken out the roof guard, and the guys in the hall would have to fumble around to find their weapons, the gang would not take this lying down. And as he expected, just as they hit the alley between the two houses, gunshots exploded in the night.

Nate hunched instinctively, expecting to feel the impact of a bullet in his back at any second. Adrenaline-charged blood pounded in his ears, making it difficult to pinpoint where the shots were coming from. He saw Tracy racing for the truck, and followed her as fast as he could, propelling Lopez in front of him with hard prods of his pistol.

They burst out from between the two houses and headed for the vehicle, their shoes slapping against the pavement. Lopez stumbled and went down hard, shouting in pain as he skidded across the pavement, almost taking Nate with him.

“Get up right now!” Nate grabbed his shoulder, trying to get his prisoner off the street.

“Fuck you, asshole. I think I broke my ankle!” Lopez rolled back and forth, clutching his lower left leg. Nate glanced back to see lights and motion in the alleyway. The truck roared to life a few yards away. Leveling his pistol at the alleyway, he squeezed off several shots, making the approaching gangbangers duck and cover.

The truck roared as it powered over the curb to skid to a stop next to him. Tracy rolled the passenger window down. “For Christ’s sake, get him in here and let’s go!”

Nate was already moving. Wrenching open the back 220

door, he hauled Lopez up and threw him into the backseat, then scrambled in himself. “Go!”

Tracy slammed the gas and spun the steering wheel, making the Silverado buck and sway as it ran over the curb again.

“Take the second street on your right!” Nate said while prying Lopez’s hand away from his ankle and raising it to where he could handcuff him to a restraining bar set in the ceiling. The truck skidded as she took the turn a bit too fast, making Nate fall into Lopez as the big vehicle rocked back and forth. Behind them, they heard the loud pop of gunfire, but no bullets struck them.

“Go up two blocks and turn left on Seventh!” Nate began patting Tracy down, his hands roaming over her sides, back and chest.

“What the hell are you doing?” She tried to shrug him off as she whipped the wheel to the left.

“Seeing how badly you got shot, dammit!” Under her legs, his probing fingers found something soft and mushy.

“Shit, did that hurt?”

“No, but it feels kinda wet and warm. Why, what’d you find?” Tracy, while still breathing hard, had slowed the vehicle down to a respectable speed while keeping an eye open for police cruisers.

“I don’t know—it’s too thick to be blood.” Nate held his fingers up to his nose. “Refried beans—what the hell?”

He felt Tracy’s body shake in her seat, and for a panicked moment he thought she was going into shock. But as she drew breath, he realized she was laughing—tinged with just a hint of hysteria, but laughing all the same.

“Must have been that huge burrito. I slipped on it when I went down the stairs. Just as the shotgun went off. Damn thing saved my life.”

Aim and Fire

221

Already strung out by their narrow escape, Nate sat back and guffawed at the ludicrous thought. “Saved by Mexican food. Who’d have thunk it?”

Tracy’s mirth had subsided and she looked back at Nate.

“I think I’m all right—we can check later. I’ve got a T-intersection coming up—which way?”

Shaking his head, Nate pointed. “Hang a right on Oregon, and we’ll head up to Missouri, where we can get on the highway.” Still chuckling, he kept a close watch behind them as they sped through the dimly lit streets with their prize.

Holy shit, it’s a good thing Paul can’t see me now,
Tracy thought as she drove the Silverado through the neighborhoods of north El Paso.
He’d probably think I’ve gone
completely insane.

She blinked rapidly, trying to slow her racing pulse. Her senses were on input overload. Everything around her—

from the flashing traffic lights to the oncoming cars to the hum of the off-road tires as they propelled the truck down the streets—seemed preternaturally sharp and bright and loud. She took a deep breath, held it for a second, then let it whoosh out of her lungs. She took another one, and felt her pulse begin to slow.

She had lost count of the laws they had broken. She concentrated on their goal of getting the information they needed to make sure that nuke didn’t go off. She told herself if that meant busting the chops of some low-life gang members who were already breaking half a dozen laws when they got out of bed every morning, that was a trade-off she could live with.

Aim and Fire

223

Besides, the rush she had gotten when they had infiltrated the house and pulled Lopez out had given her a jolt that no amount of DHS training could. She had gone through the basic firearms training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, and she shot at the range at least twice a month to stay current, but that couldn’t compare to creeping through the pitch-black house using only night vision, but still feeling completely in control of the situation. Even when it had started to go bad, she hadn’t freaked out, but had stayed focused on the mission. She hadn’t held them up during their withdrawal.
Maybe it’s
time to consider a different assignment when I get back,
something more field oriented.

But first we’ve got to find out what this scumbag knows.

Checking the rearview mirror, she saw Nate keeping an eye on Lopez, who was hunched over as best he could with his arm restrained, his head leaning against the window. “He all right? He might be going into shock,” she said.

“Hey, Lopez, you gonna make it?” Nate reached out and grabbed the Latino’s chin to see his face, then yanked his hand back as the gang member snapped at him with his teeth. “Oh, he’s still got some fight left in him, don’tcha, bucko?”

“I swear, my people are gonna track you both down, stake you out in the desert and leave you for the ants and the coyotes.” Lopez’s cold gaze flicked from Nate to Tracy and back again. “You and your
puta
are walking dead—

you just don’t know it yet.”

“I’d be more worried about you making it through the night yourself first, tough guy. After all, it’ll be hard for your buddies to do anything if they never find you again.”

Nate leaned close to him, putting his face right next to the other man’s. “And you won’t be giving any orders from a shallow grave,
pendejo.
”

224

Tracy swallowed hard in the driver’s seat. She knew they were going to interrogate him, which meant they might have to resort to less-than-legal methods to get what they needed, but from the tone of Nate’s voice, she could have sworn that he planned to kill the man afterward, no matter what. The line between the necessary means and the ends, already blurred by what they had just done, stretched out in her mind. Was torturing a suspect to get information okay? Was killing him? She squared her shoulders and concentrated on driving. Once they got to the desert, she’d pull Nate aside and find out exactly what he planned to do.

They left the city behind, and Tracy followed Nate’s terse directions as they headed into the rough Texas plains just south of New Mexico. As the lights of El Paso dimmed, the dark desert seemed to expand all around them until Tracy felt as if she were traveling through a dark alien landscape with the insignificant glow of the high beams illuminating only a tiny portion of it. She slowed down to turn off the main highway onto a two-lane paved road, then turned off several miles later onto a rough dirt road, where she slowed even further to navigate the winding, narrow lane. Lopez had ceased issuing threats and now hunched in sullen silence behind her. Nate sat across from him, his eyes never leaving the gangbanger.

Tracy drove for at least another dozen miles, until they were in the middle of nowhere.

Suddenly Nate leaned forward. “Stop here.”

She pulled the Silverado over as he unlocked the handcuff from the bar, but not from Lopez’s wrist. “Ow, man, that fuckin’ hurts!”

Nate yanked the cuffs hard. “That was the point. You’re getting out here, and I don’t want any bullshit from you.

Otherwise, I’ll drag you out by the cuff,
comprende?
”

Aim and Fire

225

Lopez nodded. “Don’t worry, I ain’t going anywhere with this busted leg, in case you forgot.”

“Cover him while he leaves. I’ll meet you around the other side,” Nate said to Tracy. He slid out of his seat and came around the front of the vehicle. He gave Tracy a look that she recognized immediately, as she had been on the receiving end of it from Gilliam several times during her tenure at DHS—follow my lead, and don’t ask any questions.

She nodded once, but her overriding thought as she turned the engine off, leaving the headlights on, was
I’ll
go along—for now.
She kept her pistol out and trained on Lopez as he hopped out of the Silverado. He almost lost his balance, but managed to stay upright by leaning against the vehicle’s side. Out here, Tracy was surprised how chilly it was, the desert having rapidly lost the heat it had soaked up all day long. She shivered, glad for the long-sleeved shirt as she realized the other reason Nate had brought Lopez all the way out there.

“All right, hobble your way out there in front of the lights and turn around so we can get a good look at your sorry ass,” Nate ordered.

Lopez seemed to finally realize the seriousness of his situation. “Look, whatever you want—drugs, money, women, children—I’m sure we can work something out.”

Nate drew his pistol and pulled the slide back. “Go.”

Lopez hopped out in front of the lights, his satin boxers rustling in the breeze as he tried to maneuver on the hard-packed dirt without falling over.

“That’s far enough,” Nate said.

Lopez managed to turn around and stood in the glare of the headlights, shielding his eyes with one hand. “All right, you made your point. Now what the fuck do you want?”

226

“I always knew you were a businessman at heart, Lopez.” Nate holstered his pistol and walked out in front of the lights. “Now I’ve got a deal for you.” He reached up and took off the black knit mask, eliciting a snort of disbelief from the Mexican.

“Spencer?
You
broke into my house, dragged me all the way out here and broke my fuckin’ arm and leg? Do you know how dead I’m gonna make you?”

Tracy didn’t know who was more surprised, her or the gang leader. They knew each other—and had for a while, apparently. She snapped her mouth closed and focused back on the conversation.

Nate tossed the cell phone into the dirt near Lopez. “I’ll be fine, and so will you. I ran into one of your boys near the border, running illegals across the border with a couple of
zetas
earlier today. When I saw his tattoo, I knew you’d lied to me about what we’d discussed yesterday.”

Lopez tried to cross his arms, but only winced when a stab of pain reminded him of his broken collarbone. “So one of my boys is running wetbacks into the U.S. What’s that got to do with this?”

Nate shook his head. “Don’t shine me on, not now, and definitely not out here. The Barrio Aztecas are involved in everything that comes through El Paso, especially from the south. You knew about the Middle Easterners and that they were carrying something, but you didn’t want to give me any more information than necessary. You told me what you thought I needed to know, including the dead end of your two boys, then sent me on my way, didn’t you?”

Lopez looked as if he was going to plead ignorance again, then shrugged. “Hey, man, when word of the job came my way, I had no idea it would get so out of hand. But once it did, we were gonna take care of it our way, you know?”

Aim and Fire

227

“I figured as much—you were also way too cool about your two
vatos
getting killed. But I’m gonna do you a favor. With your help, I’m gonna take these guys down for you.”

Lopez frowned and shivered in the cool air. “Really?

You can’t even find these guys, but now you’re gonna take care of ’em for me?”

“Yup. After you get on that phone and tell whoever your contact is that one of the illegals survived the slaughter in the desert, and is at Providence Memorial Hospital, in room 305—and get that number right—I don’t need an innocent getting killed over this.”

Lopez nodded as he reached down and picked up the phone. “And you’re gonna set out the welcome mat and see who comes to call, right?” He flipped the phone open, his finger poised to dial. “Huh, can’t believe I get a signal out here.”

“Yeah, it’s as far out as we could get to have this little talk and still have you reach whoever you need to reach.

And just in case you get any ideas about sending a few of your boys over to Providence to wait and see who shows up, remember where you are right now, and who’s your only ride out of here at the moment.”

Lopez paused just long enough for Tracy to realize that’s exactly what he had been thinking about doing.

After making the call, Lopez flipped the phone closed.

“He’ll get the word out, but I’d get your welcome party set up sooner rather than later. My boy wasn’t too keen on not being in on the action himself. I managed to keep him out of the way for you—for now.”

“Good, ’cause I’d hate to have to run him in on obstruct-ing justice and attempted-murder charges,” Nate said.

“Yeah, like bustin’ into my house and dragging me out 228

into the middle of the desert is approved procedure.”

Lopez’s entire body was shaking, and he kept his balance with an obvious effort. “Could we at least finish this in the car. I’m freezin’ my cojones off.”

“In a minute.”

“Goddammit, I made the fuckin’ call—what more do you want! You’re really pushing me, Spencer.” Lopez’s face grew sly as he thought it through. “Or is that what you’re anglin’ for, huh? You doing me this favor so I owe you one, is that it?” He looked down at his limp arm and oddly bent leg. “After all this shit you did to me, we’re not even by a long shot,
rulacho,
and I ain’t gonna forget it.”