The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (60 page)

A trucker had seen a body on the side of the road.

A pack of coyotes observed tugging on fresh meat.

Vultures wheeling over carrion.

And those were just the bodies that La Frontera wanted them to find.

How many more hundreds—thousands—were buried out here?

The right-hand turn approached. The junction had no stop sign, just thick white lines that had melted into the blacktop. To the right, the road became a dirt track, cutting across the desert like a scar across sun-cooked skin. He slowed the car and pulled to the side of the road. He wound down the window, and hot air rushed inside. He glanced left and right, south and north, and saw nothing at all except heat shimmer and distant silver mirages. He left the engine running, reached across to the passenger seat, took his binoculars, and scanned the country, looking across the caldera towards a low ridge of rock. A mile away on the floodplain were two vehicles parked forty or fifty feet apart. A late-model Ford sedan and an SUV. He lowered the binoculars and looked over the country at large. It was already hot. Stifling. He pushed back his cap and wiped his forehead with his bandana and put the bandana back in the hip pocket of his jeans.

He raised the glasses again. There were men in between the cars. Two of them were armed. One was motionless on the ground. A fourth man was above him, kicking and stamping at him.

Was he too late?

He watched. The man on the ground was hauled to his feet. It was Smith. He was unconscious. They dragged him through the dirt to the SUV. They tossed him inside, and then the other men got inside, too.

The SUV reversed.

Plato dropped the glasses on the seat, pulled out on to the highway, and continued south. After half a mile he swung around on the margin, rattled over the bars of a cattle guard, and stopped. He fetched the glasses. The SUV was on the road and heading back towards the city. There was little he could do: confronting them would be suicide, and he did not have a death wish. He was frightened, for himself and his family. His instinct told him to switch off the engine and let them drive away. But he couldn’t do that. Finding out where they were going would have to be enough. He put the car into gear, pulled onto the blacktop again, and keeping a safe distance behind them, he followed.

CATERINA MORENO had tried everything. The door was locked and the window, too. She had wondered whether she might be able to take a chair and smash it, but it was toughened glass, and anyway, it looked down onto a sheer thirty-foot drop. Then her thoughts had turned to weapons. Could she arm herself? The only cup in the room was plastic and too strong for her to break. There was the chair, again, but it was too well put together to be broken apart and too unwieldy as it was. There was a mirror in the bathroom, and eventually, her hopes focussed on that. She unplugged a table lamp and used the base to smash the glass. A jagged piece fell free, and she picked it up, wrapping the thicker end in a towel. It wouldn’t be easy to use, but it was sharp, and perhaps, if she was careful, she might be able to maintain an element of surprise. She took it to the bed and hid it beneath the pillow.

She returned to the window. It was in the side of the house, looking out onto a stand of pecan trees. She heard the thump of bass from a powerful sound system. If she pressed her face against the glass, she could see a sliver of the rear garden, and occasionally, guests from the party would pass into and out of view. Servants ferried crates of beer and trays of food from a catering tent. They passed directly below her; she banged her fists against the window, but they either could not hear her or paid her no heed.

She went back to the bed but was unable to settle. She got up and started to pace. She returned to the window. The drive to the house snaked through the trees beneath her, and as she watched, a Mercedes SUV approached and stopped. The branches obscured her view a little, but she saw a door opening and then two men hauled John Smith out. It didn’t look as if he was conscious: he was a deadweight, the two men dragging him across the driveway, his toes scraping against the asphalt. A second man followed. Caterina recognised him from the cowboy hat he was wearing: the man from the hospital who had wanted to speak to her, the man Smith had sent away.

She went back to the bed and sat.

Five minutes later, the door was unlocked and opened.

A man came into the room and locked the door behind him.

He was bland. Average. Nothing out of the ordinary about him at all.

“Hello, Caterina.”

She backed away.

“You’ve caused us quite a lot of trouble.”

She sat on the edge of the bed.

“This business of ours—we don’t welcome publicity.”

She shuffled backwards, her hand reaching beneath the pillow.

He tutted and waggled a finger at her. “Don’t,” he said, nodding towards the bed. He took out a pistol and pointed the barrel up to a tiny camera on the wall that Caterina had not seen.

“Who are you?”

“You can call me Adolfo.” He stepped further into the room. “Let’s have a talk.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Why have you been writing about me?”

“What?”

“The girls.”

She thought of what Delores had told them.

He was nothing special, by which I mean there was nothing about him that you would find particularly memorable. Neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin. Normal looking. Normal clothes.

“It’s you?”

“I can’t take the whole credit. Me and a few friends.”

She tore the pillow off the bed, grasped the shank, and rushed him. He pulled the gun quickly, expertly, and held it steady, right at her face. She stopped. She thought about it, calling his bluff, but her legs wouldn’t move.

He nodded to the shank.

She dropped it.

“Your hand.”

She had taken the glass too hastily and had cut her index finger.

“I’ll send someone in to wrap that for you,” he said.

“Don’t bother. I don’t need your favours.”

“We’ll see. I am going to speak with your friend, the Englishman, and then we have some business that needs to be seen to. Once I am finished, I will be back. We have lots to talk about.”

ANNA STRAPPED herself into her seat as the captain of the Gulfstream announced that they were on their final descent into Fort Bliss. She had been working for most of the flight, ostensibly refining her report on John Milton but, in reality, observing everything she could about the six agents. There was very little conversation between them: some slept, others listened to music.

She pulled up the blind and looked out onto the New Mexico landscape five thousand feet below. It was desert for the most part, with nearly two thousand square miles of terrain within its boundaries and adjacent to the White Sands missile range. The populated area was set on a mesa, was six miles by six miles and housed several thousand soldiers and civilian personnel. It was practically a small city, and the biggest US Army base in the world. She watched as the plane arced away to port and then dropped into its glide path. Details in the desert became clearer, the mountains and the blue sliver of the Rio Bravo, and then the asphalt strip of the runway at Biggs Army Airfield. The pilot cut the speed, raised the nose, and executed a perfect landing, taxiing across to the parking area.

Anna disembarked, following Pope down onto the runway. It was unbearably hot. The heat wrapped around her like a blanket, and she quickly felt stunned by it. There was pressure in the air. A hundred miles away to the south-west she could see lightning flickering. Faint sheets and bolts of dry electricity discharging in a random display.

A soldier with colonel’s pips was waiting for them. “Welcome to the United States,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“I’m Stark.”

“Captain Pope.”

“Good flight?”

“Straightforward, Colonel.”

“Glad to hear it. I’ll be your liaison here. Anything you need, you just holler. Can I do anything for you now?”

“Not really. We’d just like to get started.”

“No sense in delaying.”

“That’s right.”

“Thought you’d say that. We’ve got you a couple vehicles ready to go. We’ll get your gear unloaded and repacked, and then you can be on your way.”

“The border?”

“That’s all arranged. The Mexicans know you’re coming. We’ll get you straight across.”

“That’s very helpful. Thank you, Colonel.”

“My pleasure.” He took off his cap and squinted against the sun. “Don’t suppose you can tell me what you folks have come all this way to do?”

“Afraid not,” he said.

He laughed. “Didn’t think so. Completely understand.”

Two identical SUVs were standing at the edge of the taxiway. Pope led Anna to the nearest.

“You’ll be with me,” he said. “We’ll speak to the police. I’ll send the others to the restaurant; see if they can find anything out there.”

“Fine.”

Anna turned to watch as the army technicians started to unload the cargo from the Gulfstream. The weapons were ferried to a cart and then wheeled across to the SUVs.

They had a lot of firepower.

She wondered whether they would need to use it.

MILTON CAME around. He was groggy, and as awareness returned, so did the pain. He assessed the damage. Red hot spears lanced up from his face. His head throbbed. His arm was difficult to move. A couple of ribs broken? He tried to open his eyes. His left was crusted with dried blood, and his right was badly swollen; he could only just open the first, and he could see nothing through the second. There were bones broken there: the orbital, perhaps, and something in the bridge of his nose. He felt a stubborn ache from his shoulders and realised that his hands were cuffed behind his back.

“You all right?”

He looked to his left. It was Beau.

“I’ll live.”

“You don’t look so good. They worked you over some. I saw when they marched me down the mountain. They pretty much had to pull Adolfo off you.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“Really? Doubt that, partner.”

Milton winced; his lips were cracked and bloodied.

He looked over at Beau. His shirt was ripped to the navel, revealing a tiger’s tooth that he wore on a chain around his neck. He was sitting down, leaning back against the wall. His arms were shackled with FlexiCuffs behind his back.

“You got any bright ideas?” Beau asked.

“Not right at this moment. Has anyone been in to see us?”

“Not yet.”

“Where are we?”

“Back in the city. South side. Looked like a pretty swanky neighbourhood, at least by standards around here. My guess is we’re in one of El Patrón’s houses.”

“And this room?”

“First floor. End of a corridor. I didn’t get the chance to see all that much.”

“Anything else?”

“Only that I’m not sure why they didn’t just cap us out in the desert.”

“He strikes me as the kind who’d want to make a point.”

“I reckon that’s right. The way I’m thinking, that roughing up they gave you out there ain’t going to be a pimple on a fat man’s ass compared to what they’re going to do to us next. It ain’t going to be pretty for us.”

“Or them.”

Beau laughed bitterly. “Jesus, man. Has anyone ever told you you’re full of it? Look around, will you? We’re cuffed, in a locked room, waiting for a psychopathic motherfucker to come and do whatever the fuck he wants to us. This ain’t the time for bravado.”

“It’s not bravado, Beau. They should have killed me when they had the chance. They won’t get another.”

Beau was quiet for a minute. Milton assessed himself again: save his face and some bruising down his arms and trunk, there were no major breaks or internal injuries. He flexed his muscles against the cuffs. The sharp edges bit into the skin on his wrists.

“You think the girl’s still alive?” Beau asked him.

“I don’t know.”

“If she is, she probably don’t want to be.”

THEY DIDN’T have to wait long. The door was unlocked, and Adolfo and another man stepped inside. He was older and bore a passing resemblance to Adolfo. His skin was unnaturally smooth; Milton guessed there had been a lot of plastic surgery involved.

“Hey, Adolfo,” Beau said.

“
Hola,
Beau.”

“I’m guessing this is your old man?”

“I am Felipe,” the man said calmly. “You are Señor Baxter, and you are Señor Smith?”

“That’s right. I don’t suppose you want to get these cuffs off me?”

The man smiled broadly. “I don’t think so.”

“I was saying to Adolfo earlier, things don’t have to be unfriendly between us.”

“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it? You came here to murder my son.”

“Come on, man. Who said I was gonna murder him? I was paid to deliver him.”

Another indulgent smile. “We both know that would have been the same thing.”

Milton tensed against the FlexiCuffs again. The two men were close enough to him—if he could free his hands, he knew he could take them both—but the plastic was too strong. He tried again. There was no give at all. Dammit.

Felipe noticed him. “Señor Smith. Unlike Señor Baxter, I know very little about you.”

“Not much to know.”

“I doubt that. You are mysterious—hiding something, I think. You will tell me what it is.”

“You think?”

“They always do.”

“They’re not like me.”

“You talk a good game.”

“Where’s the girl?”

“She’s here.”

Milton sat forwards and then got onto his knees. “I’m going to give you one chance. Give her to me, give us a car, and let us leave.”

“And if I don’t?” Felipe asked.

“Then it won’t go well for you.”

Adolfo stepped over and backhanded him across the face. Fragments of broken bone in his nose ground against each other and his nerve endings.

Milton looked up at Adolfo and smiled. “Or you.”

Adolfo drew back his foot and kicked him in the ribs. Pain flared, and Milton gasped.

Felipe put a restraining hand on his son’s shoulder. “Enough. You will both stay here for now. We have business to attend to. We’ll send for you when we are ready.”