The Devil's Bounty (28 page)

The sweat that had beaded on his forehead started to trickle into his eyes. He blinked them clear. He could see Mendez approaching a dip in the ground and hurtled after him.

Mendez was slowing, and Lock, more used to pacing a foot race, was gaining. The gap closed. He was within twenty feet. Then twelve. Then ten. But Mendez was almost at the dip now. He would reach it before Lock, that much was certain.

Lock raced to estimate the countdown but time had fractured and spun away.
Was there a minute to go? More? Less?

As he planted his left foot on the ground ahead, the answer came in the form of a sky-splitting clap of thunder to the east.

Lock dove for the ground, making himself as flat as he could. High above him, the sky lit up like the Fourth of July as a blaze of white light from a parachute flare obliterated the moon. He began to count.

Fifteen seconds later – the precise amount of time it took for the flare to explode and burn down, like a dying star – he raised his head.

Seventy-five

THE FLARE HAD
been set to go off a half-mile to the east of the yard, the idea being that any pursuers or searchers would read it as a signal that this was where the American rescue party was, and that they were signalling this as the point at which to cross. The Mexican cops would be drawn swiftly towards it, while Lock crossed the border with Mendez almost directly opposite the marshalling yard.

That had been the plan, anyway. And, from the sounds of men tearing out of the marshalling yard and the
colonia
, it was working like a dream. The only problem was that Mendez was gone too.

Lifting his head clear of the ground, Lock watched the stream of excited men running hard in the direction of the flare. A couple of exploratory three-round bursts blew past him in the same direction, as a couple of trigger-happy cops let loose with automatic weapons.

Slowly he got to his feet as they moved off into the distance, his
path ahead clear. He broke into a run, praying that Mendez hadn’t doubled back on him. Within no time, he could see the great span of the corrugated-steel plate barrier looming ahead. There was more gunfire to his left. Then shouts in Spanish. A regular cluster fuck, as they chased each other’s shadows.

He stopped and looked around, his eyes struggling to readjust to the gloom after the intense burst of light from the flare. Ahead, he heard something move in the darkness.

He dropped down, aware that Mendez had his weapon. Staying low, he moved forward, listening, his senses dialled up full. The sound came again. A person. Their movements slow and laboured.

He stayed quiet and inched forward. He was coming to the dip in the ground before the barrier. He radared in on the sound. The person was below him. Except now he could see that it wasn’t a natural hollow where the land fell away. It was a trench, ten feet deep and six feet wide – it had been dug out with heavy plant. A barrier before the barrier. An additional line of defence – perhaps to stop the people from the
colonia
taking a run at the border fence with a car.

Carefully, he leaned over the edge, his movement releasing a tumble of loose earth. There was a sudden break of movement to his right. Mendez was lying at the bottom of the trench, his left hand clasping a twisted right ankle. That was fine. It wasn’t his left hand Lock was worried about. It was the right, which was coming up fast, holding the gun.

Lock dove back from the edge, a round sailing past where his head had been a split second before.
A lucky shot? Or did Mendez have some skill?

Rushing him was out of the question. He’d probably take a
bullet before he was halfway down. And the shot was drawing some kind of chatter from the distracted posse running after the flare. Sooner or later they would come looking in this direction to check it out.

‘Charlie?’ Lock whispered into the darkness, being careful to stay out of sight. ‘Charlie, you can’t move and you can’t stay there either. If we’re both going to get out of this there has to be some trust on both sides.’

A voice came back from the darkness of the trench: ‘Why should I trust you?’

‘Because you don’t have any choice. If I wanted you dead all I have to do now is get out of here and leave our
compadres
over there to deal with you. I lose the money, but if I don’t care about the money it makes no difference to me. I should just get out of here.’

It was a hard sell and he didn’t have time to make a winning case.

‘So, go.’

He needed something else. A distraction. Something for Mendez to chew on, however briefly. Something to buy him the moment of doubt he needed. He patted down his jacket and something crinkled under the fabric. He reached inside and pulled out a wad of paper, waving it over the edge of the trench.

Mendez’s voice came from the void. ‘What’s that?’

‘Your mother gave it to me to give to you. It’s a note. You want it?’

‘What’s it say?’

‘How would I know? Look, do you want it or not?’

Lock edged forward until his head was back over the lip. He tensed, ready to spring back, but Mendez lowered the gun by a fraction.

‘Throw it down.’

‘Okay,’ he said, shuffling forwards on his elbows.

He swung his legs over the lip so that he was sitting on the edge of the trench. ‘I could bring it down to you,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Mendez. ‘I don’t trust you.’

‘Hey, you’re the one with the gun but, okay, I’ll throw it down.’

He folded it up, first into halves and then over again so there was a bit more weight to it. He reached down and tossed it towards Mendez. It fell about a foot from his reach. He looked up at Lock, eyes out on stalks, finger back on the trigger, waiting for him to try something. But Lock stayed perfectly still.

Mendez shuffled on his hands and knees towards the paper. Still Lock didn’t move. Not a muscle.

Withdrawing his left hand from his ankle, Mendez grabbed the note, struggling to unfold it with one hand.

‘Can you read it?’ Lock asked.

Mendez screwed up his eyes as they tracked the white piece of paper, the gun loosening in his right hand.

Heels already dug into the side of the trench, Lock pushed off as hard as he could, launching himself into the air directly above Mendez, the air rushing around him, the ground and the barrel of the gun, which was coming up fast.

Mendez’s body cushioned the landing. There was a shot, and a piercing scream as Lock’s knee came down hard on Mendez’s left ankle.

Lock knew better than to concern himself with whether he’d taken the stray round. You fought until your body stopped you. He threw a big, swooping right elbow at Mendez catching him high on the chest, just enough to send him off balance.

Mendez tried to twist his right hand around to get the angle for
another shot but Lock dug the heel of his boot back into his ankle, drawing another shriek of pain. His hands grabbed at Mendez’s shirt, and he crawled up the man’s body so that they were face to face, so close that the gun was now redundant.

Lock head-butted him. It was enough to loosen the gun. He prised it from Mendez’s fingers, clambered off him and stood up.

The shouts were getting closer, the flare a busted flush, the search party no doubt pivoting round and moving back towards them, realizing they’d been punked by what was known in the trade as a come-on – the oldest but most effective trick in the book.

Lock reached down, grabbed Mendez’s hair and yanked him to his feet. Using sheer brute force, he began dragging him up the shallower side of the trench and towards the barrier. Now he could only trust that the coordinates he’d given Ty were accurate. If they weren’t, there was no way he could manhandle a fully grown man with an injury over ten feet of sheer steel on his own.

He was almost there. He let go of Mendez’s hair and instead threw a supportive arm around him. Mendez began to struggle.

Fuck it
, thought Lock, as he half turned, planted his feet and unleashed a ferocious right hand to Mendez’s head. Mendez folded like an old dollar bill and began to sink to the ground. Lock picked him up, slung him over his back and staggered towards the wall of cold metal as the first live rounds slammed into the ground behind them.

Half walking, half running, he stumbled onwards, his heart sinking with every step as he saw only sheet metal. He was already contemplating a dive back towards the trench when he heard the sweetest words: ‘Yo! Over here,’ Ty shouted, all six foot four of him materializing like a phantom from the darkness, falling into a
crouch and letting loose a volley of covering fire towards the advancing search party.

Looking towards him, Lock saw the access door, three feet wide and a little over six feet tall, swing open. He ran for it as Ty moved in front of him, still firing. A round pinged off the steel barrier.

Barely through the door, he crouched and dumped Mendez unceremoniously on the bare ground. Mendez sprawled on his back, legs and arms flailing in the air, like a turtle’s. Lock drew his leg back and kicked him hard in the side for good measure. ‘Welcome home, asshole.’

Seventy-six

TY DROVE THE
vehicle in which he had arrived at the RV point, the white Ford Ranger, as Lock sat in the back with a cuffed, shackled and subdued Charlie Mendez. Ahead of them lay a mile and a half of rutted farm track, not that anyone farmed cattle so close to the border. From here they would pick up a secondary road that would lead them eventually to the freeway. By Lock’s calculations if they made it that far they would have slipped, at least temporarily, from the cartel’s grasp. A set of headlights behind them, though, and they were done.

‘I think you broke one of my ribs,’ Mendez whined.

Lock glanced at him. ‘If that’s all that’s broken you can count yourself lucky.’

‘So, what now? What are you going to do with me?’

The question prompted Lock to trade a glance with Ty. Lock took a deep breath. ‘That’s down to you. And your family.’

Ty twisted around in his seat. ‘Say what? We’re handing him
over. Or have you forgot about that promise you made to the girl’s momma?’

Lock checked the surprise that registered on Mendez’s face. ‘There’s five million if we don’t versus a couple of hundred grand if we do.’

Ty didn’t seem appeased. ‘And you think we can trust this piece of shit?’

Mendez seemed to forget his bruised ribs. He bounced forward in the seat. ‘You can. I promise you.’

‘Like your word counts?’ growled Ty. ‘Naw, Ryan. Hell, naw. We know the government will pay out, but this guy? Dude could peel a banana in his pocket and we wouldn’t know about it.’

Lock eased back in the seat. ‘That’s why we’re going to see the first three million in an offshore account by midnight tonight. Isn’t that right, Charlie?’

Mendez’s cheeks filled with air and he exhaled slowly. ‘That’s a lot of money to move all at once.’

Lock smiled, thinking back to their previous conversation about how the cartel had been paying to protect him. ‘But someone in your family must know how to get it done, right?’

Ty turned round to stare at him – badder cop to Lock’s bad cop. ‘Course, we could just drop you off with the Feds.’

‘I’ll make the call,’ said Mendez.

They kept moving, at first tacking north to put more distance between them and any pursuing cartel members, then heading west.

Forty miles further along Interstate 10, they passed an Arizona State trooper parked on a crossway. His head swivelled as they passed. He pulled out, tucking in behind them for a few miles. It
was no great surprise. This was a well-known drug route, and three males in the same vehicle were bound to attract attention. Ty stayed cool, keeping to the speed limit. After a few more miles the trooper grew bored and passed them, giving them a final sideways glance as he roared off into the distance.

‘Here,’ said Lock, handing Mendez his cell phone. ‘Time you spoke to Mommy.’

They drove through the rest of the day. After some tense early calls, Mendez made the final arrangements for the initial transfer of funds. The money was scheduled to move at midnight. Ty would call the bank to confirm it had been lodged.

In the meantime, exhausted, they decided to take a break. They pulled into a motel parking lot a few miles shy of Phoenix. Lock got out first, leaving Ty in the car with Mendez, who had already fallen asleep, like he had in the shack: Lock had noticed then how he slept like a baby – not a care in a world. He guessed that was what money bought you: the knowledge that, no matter how bad things got or how far you screwed over other people or destroyed their lives, it would always get you out of a corner.

Lock pushed open the door of the motel office and walked inside. The carpet stuck to his feet. There was a Coke vending machine to one side and a long desk, behind which sat a young Hispanic man wearing blue jeans and a bowling shirt.

He smiled at Lock. ‘How can I help you, sir?’

‘I’d like two rooms. Adjoining if you have them.’

The hotel clerk rose from the stool he was perched on and walked over to check an old-fashioned ledger. His fingers traced over the paper. He looked up. ‘I think we can accommodate you. Just the one night?’

‘Yeah. One night,’ said Lock. ‘What time’s check-out?’

‘Eleven o’clock on the button. Not a moment later,’ said the clerk. ‘We like our guests to be punctual when it comes to checking out.’

‘Got it,’ said Lock, reaching over to take the single key fob.

With Ty babysitting Mendez in the room, Lock headed out to grab some food and supplies. In the parking lot of a nearby Wal-Mart, he dug out his cell phone, powered it up and checked his messages. There was one from a man whose name he didn’t recognize, but who obviously worked for Miriam Mendez, saying that matters had been taken care of and the money would be transferred at the designated time. Lock smiled to himself and punched in a Santa Maria number. He got a switchboard operator and asked to be transferred to Police Chief Gabriel Zapatero. He was informed that the chief was a busy man. Lock gave his name, asked to be put through to his secretary, if the chief wasn’t available, and waited.