I drove south for forty minutes to San Juan Capistrano. I took the Ortega Highway exit and turned inland, toward the Santa Ana Mountains. It was far more than a long shot; it was an act of desperation. But I kept thinking about the mud on the Navigator, and the rain in the mountains, and telling myself it was the only shot I had.
The city fell away behind me as I rose into the hills, my headlights carving deep into the nighttime up ahead. As I rounded a hairpin turn, the high beams caught a coyote in the incandescent glare. It stared at me, twin eyes glowing yellow, and then it vanished like a ghost into the chaparral beside the road.
Soon a gentle mist began to coalesce on the windshield. I switched on the wipers. I was catching up with the weeping clouds that had drifted inland a few hours before. Rounding one particularly sharp turn, I felt the tires begin to lose their grip on the moist pavement. It was a bitter choice to make, but I had to cut my speed a little. Although there was a certain attractive symmetry in the thought of dying in the way that Haley had, it wouldn’t do to sail off into midair above the canyon far below. Not while there was still a chance Olivia might live.
I passed the ranger station, made a right turn onto the small road just beyond it, and continued climbing into the mountains. About a quarter-mile along the road, I hit a wall of rain. It pounded the top of the Bentley like the fists of an angry mob. Water rushed down the slope above me, concentrated by the gullies, and spewed across the road like little rapids. In the downpour and the dark, I couldn’t see the potholes or the places where the thin veneer of asphalt had been washed away. The Bentley scraped bottom, bounced, and then scraped bottom again. I had to slow down even more.
After another half an hour, I reached the place where Medallion and the other guy had nearly killed me. At least I thought it was the place. If I was right, the cattle guard should be about a quarter-mile farther along on the left. I drove at walking speed with the window down, rain soaking my left shoulder as I watched for the cattle guard in the brush beside the road. I had passed it by in broad daylight the first time. The odds of finding it at night in a storm were slim, but I persevered.
Then I saw the rows of pipe. I stopped and stared into the darkness beyond the cattle guard. In Haley’s Range Rover, I had barely been able to go on from that point when the ground was dry. The Bentley would get stuck for sure. Besides, if they were already up there, I didn’t want to announce my arrival with headlights or the sound of a car engine. I drove on another hundred yards and parked out of sight around the next bend in the road. I checked the safety on the M11 again, verified there was a round in the chamber again, and got out of the car.
I returned along the road at a trot, crossed the cattle guard, and set out along the rough path up the hillside. The rain was falling in huge drops, completely soaking through my clothes. It was January, and I was nearly half a mile above sea level, so the water felt like ice cubes slipping down my back.
Soon I came upon the Navigator. They had stopped by the old rock slide at the same place where I had been forced to leave the Range Rover on my first visit to that place. I approached with my sidearm leveled and ready to fire, but the vehicle was empty.
There was a deafening crack and a flash of lightning, very close. In the sudden glare, I saw their footprints in the mud. Then it was pitch-black again. I thought about what I had just seen. Four sets of footprints. One small, three a little larger. I remembered the small person who had been the first to emerge from the Navigator when the police stopped it, and the two men who had gotten out next. Two men and a woman, just as Doña Elena Montes had described Castro’s partners in crime after the home invasion. Maybe they were only three. If so, then the four sets of footprints meant Olivia had still been walking when they had arrived. It gave me a little hope. I moved past the rock slide.
A few yards farther on, a set of footprints branched off to the right, toward the uphill side of the path. It was one of the men, probably, standing guard above the trail ahead in case they had been followed.
I climbed after him. The rain was turning into hail, little balls of ice slamming into the brush and rocks around me with subtle pops like the sound of rifles in a distant battle. It was a lucky break, covering the sound I made as I climbed. I followed a steep path that was covered by a sheet of water streaming downhill underneath my feet. I kept a good grip on the M11 and used my other hand to grasp at trunks and branches, hauling myself up the trail.
At a small level place, I paused. It was a rocky outcrop, a ledge, that seemed to extend to the left along the hillside. It was where I would have stationed myself if I had been detailed to guard the path below.
Ice from the January sky bounced like ping-pong balls on the rock around me. They hurt, but they weren’t big enough to be a danger. I rubbed my free hand against my trousers to clean away the mud. I grasped the M9 in both hands, extending it in the firing position as I followed the outcrop along the hillside. The ledge ahead seemed to run around a little ridge. I eased up to the edge and peeked beyond it. He stood about six feet away, his back to me, looking downhill toward the path. I drew in one deep breath and let it out. With my next breath, I attacked.
He made it easy, standing clear of the hillside instead of closer to it with his back protected. In two strides I was on him. I slammed the barrel of the M9 hard against the base of his skull. He dropped like the hailstones.
I crouched beside him to remove his sidearm from its holster. I slipped it into my belt. I kept searching and found a combat knife in a sheath around his ankle. I threw the knife into the bushes. I removed his belt and used it to lash his forearms together behind his back. There was another flash of lightning, farther away this time, but still close enough to illuminate the scene. I got a good look at his face. He wasn’t Medallion. He was the Other One. As he lay on his side, I removed a wallet from one of his hip pockets, and a cell phone from the other. Using the glow of the phone’s screen I searched the wallet. I found an ID card for Ricardo Nuñez, special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.
I had no time to sit and think about the fact that he was DEA. I stood and retraced my steps along the ledge, and then I went clambering and sliding down the water-soaked trail. Back on the main path, I slipped Special Agent Nuñez’s firearm into a small recess in a boulder. I stared hard at my surroundings, making mental notes of the way a branch hung strangely from a sycamore tree nearby, and the shape of three large stones that seemed almost as if they had been stacked atop each other by human hands. If I survived the next few minutes, it would be important to find that spot later.
With the hiding place firmly in mind, I continued up the path. The hail had mostly abated, but the rain continued pouring down. Gripping the pistol with both hands, I aimed it ahead and quick-walked up the path. Because of the loudly pounding rain, the shack’s glowing window was already in sight above me before I heard Olivia’s screams.
At the sound of her agony, an emotionless, methodical state of mind settled in, the product of a dozen years of training and firefights. I willed myself to think only of the objective. I assessed the situation. There were most likely two enemy combatants in or near the building. The only question was whether one of them was watching the approach, or whether they were both inside the shack. With the heavy rain as cover, I could possibly get halfway up the slope between the path and the building before a guard observed me. That would still leave ten yards of open-fire zone before I reached their position. Climbing the trail to the shack would be suicide if they were keeping watch.
Olivia screamed again, and a vision overwhelmed my thoughts. Suddenly, instead of the shack with its glowing window, I saw Haley’s face contorted with terror in the darkness up above, Haley screaming at a mirror on the wall in her trailer, Haley screaming that she saw Satan, Haley screaming out for Jesus as she slammed her fists against the mirror, breaking it, bloodying her hands and yet slamming on and on. I heard the screams and saw Haley in her final moments and knew that what I saw wasn’t a madman’s fantasy but was instead my true and final memory of our last moments together.