“Ten-four.”
I smiled in the dark and my pulse clicked up about thirty notches. The message meant that Carlos Sanchez had left his house. Estelle Reyes-Guzman had no folder for anyone, but Carlos Sanchez, if he was listening to the police scanner, had no way of knowing that. Gayle had managed the complex and dull alert message without a hitch.
The cellular phone on the seat beside me chirped, and I picked up the receiver. Bob Torrez’s voice was distant.
“Sir, he’s heading west on State Fifty-six.”
“All right. Don’t let him pick up your headlights coming out of town.”
“I’ll stay back. What about Tomas?”
I glanced out across the sleepy village toward the border crossing. “No sign of him. But he said he’d be there.”
“I’d sure hate to see this guy slip through.”
“He’s not going to do that, Robert. Mears should be a minute or so behind you.”
“I can see him right now. He’s at the filling station on Grande.”
“Don’t let him get itchy. I want to see how Sanchez plays his game. Remember, if he stops at the bar, get to Gayle in a hurry. You go on past, and make sure Mears turns up Fourteen.”
“Yes, sir.”
The inside of my mouth was dry as I sat in the dark, trying to picture the flow of traffic southwest on 56. Carlos Sanchez had to be feeling confident. If he didn’t have a scanner, he was stupid. If he did have one, all he knew was that Deputy Mears was tied up at the hospital. There had been no word on the movements of anyone else. The night was ordinary.
I took a deep breath and settled back in the seat.
Eleven minutes later, the telephone chirped and I startled so hard that I almost hit my head on the roof.
“What?”
“I think he stopped at the bar, sir, but if he did, it was just for a minute. No more than that. I didn’t have time to go on by. He’s headed south.”
“All right. Stay back. Remember the scenic pull-out halfway down on this side. That’s where you stop.” Off in the distance to the south, I saw a single flash of light, as if someone had swept a spotlight in a circle, shooting the beam up into the night. “And Tomas is in place,” I said, hoping it wasn’t wishful thinking.
At 9:38, I saw the headlights high up on the switchbacks from Regal pass. They descended sedately, almost poking along.
“Come on, you son of a bitch,” I muttered. All I could see were the lights, but I could picture the old truck putting along, inconspicuous and legal as all hell. A rancher going home after checking the cattle, or a kid out in his daddy’s truck, going home nice and early just like he was supposed to. There were no state police on this section of highway, and Carlos Sanchez knew-and I hoped he was gloating-exactly where the deputies were.
The truck passed the turnoff to the water tank and kept going. If Sergeant Torrez had crested the pass, he’d dumped his lights, because the mountain behind us was black.
Like a homing pigeon, Mateo Esquibel’s old truck idled into the village, turning first this way and that, finally backing right into the old man’s yard, back bumper crowding the hitch of the wood-laden trailer. Resting the binoculars on the steering wheel, I watched the figure get out of the truck, illuminated by the faint rays cast by the dome light.
Sanchez was a believer in taking time with his cover, apparently. If he’d allowed Tammy Woodruff to drive a stolen truck to the border, he’d used the old man’s truck, hooked to the trailer, when he’d driven back up the highway to check on her, knowing that no one would give him a second glance.
From where I sat behind the water tank to Mateo Esquibel’s old adobe was at most 300 yards. But even with the binoculars, the figure was nothing more than a vague, drifting shadow.
Somewhere off in the distance a dog barked; it was soon joined in chorus by half a dozen others. The dogs didn’t know what the hell was going on, and neither did I. My telephone chirped again, and when I answered Bob Torrez said, “I’m at the pull-out.”
“All right. Sit tight and stay on the line,” I said, laying the receiver on the seat. I didn’t know what to think, since I assumed Carlos Sanchez would be meeting someone at the border… someone who would collect the vehicle and, I thought, hand over a lump of cash-perhaps ten, maybe fifteen thousand for such a vehicle.
But as yet, I saw no clear way for Sanchez to return to Posadas once the deal was made. Maybe that was his plan. Maybe this time he was headed south along with the Suburban. Two murder raps made for powerful motivation.
Down below, a blast of light illuminated the area around the garage. The backup lights of the Suburban were bright, and for a moment, perfectly clearly, I could see the wooden doors, open wide. Sanchez pulled out of the garage, stopped to get out and close the doors, and then drove out of Mateo Esquibel’s yard. I tracked the Suburban as it drove through the village and reached the pavement. “Turn right to Mexico,” I said, and as if he heard me, the vehicle turned toward the border. I started the Blazer and pulled out, lights off. By the time I reached the pavement, I could see the brake lights of the Suburban flash as Sanchez braked for the tight curve just before the customs’ gate. I accelerated hard, wanting to narrow the distance while the slight rise of hill separated us.
As I approached the curve, I shoved the gear lever into neutral and clicked off the engine. I wanted to roll to a stop just as I crested the hill, so that when Carlos Sanchez got out of the truck, he wouldn’t hear the engine or tire noise of my old Blazer.
At the same time, hidden behind a hillock on the Mexican side of the border, Captain Tomas Naranjo of the Federales had promised that he’d wait for my signal before making a move-in case our quarry somehow slipped through the gate.
Our timing was perfect. Our luck could have been better.
Chapter 37
Carlos Sanchez never looked back. If he had, he’d have seen the silhouette of my vehicle a hundred yards away, squatting in the middle of the road. He got out of the Suburban, walked to the border gate, and unlocked it. Simple as that. As Nick Chavez had once said, theft was simplest if the thief had a key. I wondered who Carlos Sanchez had bribed for that useful copy.
He reached for the top bar and started to swing the heavy welded pole gate toward the American side.
I started the engine of the Blazer with one hand and barked into the cellular phone, “Move it, Robert.” At the same time, a light show erupted from south of the border as two vehicles exploded from behind a long creosote-bush-studded sand dune.
Sergeant Torrez had not waited at the turnout. When he’d seen the Suburban pull out of the village, he’d coasted down the hill and now was less than two hundred yards behind me.
I saw the flashing lights across the border; the Blazer’s back tires chirped as I floored the accelerator.
Carlos Sanchez froze in his tracks for only a heartbeat as lights converged from both directions. With a lunge, he pushed the gate away and sprang toward the Suburban. Just as Tomas Naranjo’s jeep slid to a stop in a cloud of dust and sand thirty feet from the gate, Sanchez accelerated hard, all four massive tires chewing sand and gravel. The Suburban spun to the west, its shiny back bumper narrowly missing the gate as it turned.
I yanked the wheel to the right, thinking to block Sanchez, but back up the highway was not where he had in mind. The Suburban shot off the side of the road and bounced across the ditch, paralleling the border fence. For two hundred yards, the fence was high and solid, welded rails and wire. But farther on in both directions, it shrank to nothing more than six strands of barbed wire.
If Sanchez was headed up the line, where he could drive the vehicle right through in a tangle of posts and snapped wire, he’d face two squads of eager Federales, itching for some excitement to cap their day.