“At the moment, they are after the four of us,” Butler snapped. “So why don’t you help us figure out how to get out of here without getting caught.”
M did not reply for several long moments and was much more composed when he did. “You’re right, Butler. I apologize. We’ve got your GPS position and we have been monitoring law enforcement communications out there and know where the sheriff’s roadblocks were as of one hour ago.”
“They going thermal once the weather clears?” Butler asked, fearing a helicopter with a thermal-imaging system picking up the Land Cruiser.
“Not that we’ve heard, but it is the logical next step,” M said. “Start driving as soon as Purdy is stable. We’ll get you out of there long before they put a bird back in the sky.”
“Roger that.”
“And when you get free, Butler, I have decided that we are going to finish Cross. Then we’re going back to Mexico to pay a visit to Emmanuella herself to end this.”
“The Maestro leaves his podium?”
“I’ve waited a long time for a face-to-face, Butler. I want that murdering bitch to know who destroyed her and the cartel her brother built.”
Chapter 76
Raphael Durango and five of his remaining men were holed up in a motor home parked deep in Bureau of Land Management property some forty miles east-northeast of Laramie. They’d been there since before dawn, sleeping, eating, and talking their way through the battle, as warriors do.
Durango’s instincts told him to move on at dark, to head east and then south toward Denver, New Mexico, and the border. But before that, he had to face his half sister.
He gave his men a bottle of tequila and ordered them outside before starting the motor home and booting up the satellite internet base station. When he had a solid feed on his laptop, he routed it through a VPN to give himself partial anonymity and then routed it through a second VPN to assure an untraceable connection.
Durango made the sign of the cross, opened Skype, and called Emmanuella.
Her face soon appeared. Her eyes flashed when she saw him.
“I was worried,” she said in Spanish. “I’ve heard many, many dead. Is this true? Did you wipe them out?”
Durango knew not to sugarcoat anything, not with his half sister. “No.”
“Did you get M?”
“Maybe,” he said. “We shot at least twenty people there. Men, women, kids. You said to kill everyone.”
Emmanuella swallowed hard. “It was the only way. What about this Butler?”
He shook his head. “He and three others, two men, one woman. They were professionals, ex-military, they had to be. They retreated into the mouth of a canyon, took positions where we couldn’t hit them. They had the advantage.”
“Advantage?” she cried angrily. “I sent you with an army and every weapon we could buy!”
“And they killed more than forty of our men before I pulled back.”
Emmanuella blinked. “Forty?”
“And wounded six more, who probably won’t make it,” he said.
The cartel leader went stone-faced for several moments. “What happened to Butler and the other three?”
“Escaped deeper into that canyon behind the ranch,” Durango said.
“I wanted them dead. I still do.”
He finally lost his cool. “I know what you want, sister, but how in God’s name am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to find them with the FBI crawling all over the area?”
“I thought you were some great manhunter, Raphael. Great Indian tracker. Special Forces animal. You tell me how to—”
Emmanuella stopped her rant abruptly, frowning. Her eyes ran left and froze there, as if she were puzzling out some odd thought or hearing a distant voice become clearer. Then she said, “Wait a second.” Emmanuella began typing on her laptop. She hit Return and sat back. “He’s there! I knew he’d be there.”
“Who?”
“Cross,” she said, almost smiling as she returned her attention to her brother. “He’s still wearing that belt with the GPS transmitter. It says he’s in Laramie. Wait, there’s a history function.”
She typed, hit Return, and covered her mouth as she moved her head closer to the screen. “He was all over that ranch and that canyon today.”
“Makes sense.”
“That’s true. But it doesn’t change things. If I’m right and Cross is a secret ally of Maestro, he will meet up with Butler and his men very soon. You only have to follow Cross until it happens.”
“You don’t think we should come back to Mexico and let things cool down around here?”
Her smile vanished. “No, Raphael, I want you to finish this. Follow Cross wherever he goes. Sooner or later, you’ll find Butler. And if I’m right, you’ll also find M.”
Chapter 77
Swan River Valley, Montana
Three mornings later, Sampson and I were up early and wolfing down a hearty breakfast at a lodge overlooking beautiful Holland Lake in the remote Flathead National Forest. Above the thick pine-and-spruce canopy, towering peaks rose, forming the western boundary of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
I don’t think I’d ever seen Sampson so excited.
“I feel great,” he said as he buttered his toast. “Slept like a log.”
“I did too,” I said and sipped coffee. “All the fresh air.”
“And the eight-hundred-mile drive.”
“Woke up a little stiff from that.”
“You’re going to get stiffer.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever ridden a horse for more than an hour before.”
We were done eating by seven. Five minutes later, we were outside with all our gear and calling home one last time.
“Be careful out there,” Bree said.
“Don’t get eaten by a grizzly,” Ali said.
“I’ll try not to,” I said. “I love you all and we’ll talk in six days.”
I was about to shut off my cell phone for the duration of the trip when it rang. Paladin showed up on the ID.
I really didn’t want to, but I answered. “Cross.”
“Steven Vance here, Dr. Cross,” the CEO said, sounding excited. “We found something we believe you are going to be interested in.”
Sampson was making We have to leave motions and I nodded. “Steve, can you tell me this quick? I’m actually in Montana about to go on a trip into the wilderness for the next six days.”
“Love Montana,” Vance said. “Lucky you. I’ll keep it brief. We did find chatter and traffic between southern Wyoming and that same small town in Mexico on the day before the attack. We also picked up a satellite-phone signal from the wilderness beyond that ranch. A satellite phone positioned in central Manitoba answered.”
“Manitoba?”
“Near the town of Herb Lake.”
“Do you know what was said? How long it lasted?”
“Seven minutes, but we have no idea what was said,” Vance said.
“Can you relay this information to Special Agent Mahoney?”
“Of course. Enjoy your trip.”
“What’s up?” Sampson said, sounding defensive when I hung up. “There’s no way we’re pulling out of this now.”
“No way,” I said. “That was Vance. He says the night after the attack, there was a sat-phone call from the wilderness beyond Fell’s Creek Canyon to an obscure town in Manitoba.”
“M is in Manitoba?” John asked incredulously.
“Kind of my reaction,” I said as a white dually pickup pulled up.
Our outfitter and horse packer, Lance Bauer, was a lean, long-legged man in his fifties who chewed Red Man and laughed at just about anything. He climbed out and helped us load our gear in the pickup bed while Pork Chop, his Australian shepherd, bounced all around.