Fifty-eight
With the desert landscape still cloaked in darkness, Lock continued his search. A four-armed saguaro cactus loomed over him, spines ready to spear him. He skirted it as the land dipped, then levelled out. For the most part the terrain had been flat and even: ground he could cover at a rapid clip. It was cold but not freezing, and dry.
He could see the outline of a man ahead on a ridge. He was standing perfectly still. Lock held his position. There was no way of knowing whether Mendez knew he was there and was watching him or whether he was simply catching his breath.
The outline moved over the ridge and out of sight. Lock took a bearing from the point he had last seen him and broke into a jog, splitting his attention between the ground beneath his boots and the far horizon. His chest felt tight as his heart protested at the continued exertion. The sweat on his back had cooled and now ran uncomfortably into the crack of his butt. In contrast, his feet were hot and swollen. His boots chafed at the back of his heels and he could almost feel the blisters as they formed. He switched his mind to Melissa, staggering into the hotel lobby, bleeding and so close to death that he had felt its presence as he had rushed her, cradled in his arms, to his car. The image pushed away his fatigue. He doubled his pace, taking measured breaths, every stride drawing him closer to Mendez.
At first he took the distant wash of noise he could hear to be the pounding of the blood in his ears but then it grew louder and more persistent. He stopped for a moment, and turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees, searching out the sound. It was coming from behind him — the distinctive thwump of rotor blades slicing through the air. A helicopter was buzzing low overhead, searching them out. A near-celestial arc of light from a front-mounted searchlight swept the landscape.
Lock was closing in on Mendez, but someone up there was closing in on both of them. He’d thought he had hours to hunt down his quarry, but now he realized he had minutes. He broke into a run. The ridge where Mendez had stood moments before was empty. Behind him, he watched the helicopter sweep sharply to his left, then double back.
He scoured the terrain for movement. Nothing. Not that it was barren. Far from it. They had come further than he had imagined. The edge of the city was within striking distance, and with it the urban camouflage that would shield him from the aircraft. But it was also a place for Mendez to find refuge if Lock didn’t reach him first.
Fifty-nine
A lone cloud swept silently across the moon, plunging the land into darkness for the briefest of moments. Charlie Mendez watched it pass as the helicopter faded into the distance. The man following him was gone, swallowed by the vast landscape. He had kept moving, putting one foot in front of the other, until his pursuer had been lost in the shadows, and with him Charlie’s fear.
He had made it and now straight ahead he could see a row of low buildings. He dug into his front pocket and pulled out a roll of dollars. It was more than enough to buy him sanctuary, a place to hide out until he could be picked up. No one would ask too many questions. No one around here did. People like him, crazy gringos in trouble, simply materialized, and then they were gone.
Tired after the long trek, and on the down slope of an adrenalin rush, he started forward. Less than two hundred yards away there was a tiny one-room shack, one wall made from cinder blocks, the others cobbled together from pieces of wood with a corrugated-iron roof. A child’s bicycle lay on its side. Next to it were two large cooking pots, left out for the rats and mice to clear. Charlie picked up the bicycle and stood it up. It was too small for him even to attempt to ride it. He let it fall back to the ground.
He kept moving. There were more shacks and, beyond them, he could see lone pairs of headlights signalling a road. Sooner or later he had to find someone who could give him a ride, and if the money didn’t cut it he had a back-up plan, something he had rifled from the Escalade.
Sixty
A thousand yards. That was all that stood between Lock and the retreating figure of Mendez as the colonia folded around them. Mendez was pushing open a three-bar gate, which guarded the entrance to the row of shacks. Beyond was a road.
The beam of the helicopter patterned the ridge above them, the edge of the cone of light seeping over to touch the shack. As Lock ran, his foot caught on something. He stumbled and fell. The back wheel of a child’s bike spun where his trailing leg had caught it. He got back to his feet and set off again, breaking into a full-on sprint.
A car was heading down the road. Mendez had stopped in the middle and was waving his arms, trying to flag it down. Lock still had four hundred yards to go as the car slowed and halted.
As he reached the gate, he saw Mendez lean towards the driver’s window, speaking to the driver, and waving something at him or her. The next word he heard was ‘ Gracias ’, and then Mendez was skirting around the car. Drawing his weapon, Lock screamed at the driver to stop as the helicopter roared above him and he was engulfed in a blinding light.
The car — clearly the driver had thought better of their offer — sped away, leaving Mendez stranded in the middle of the road. The helicopter dropped lower, Lock still in the circle of light, as people emerged from the nearby shacks, roused by the commotion, curiosity getting the snap on fear.
Lock ran towards Mendez, aware that he could be taken down at any minute by a hail of gunfire from the helicopter. For a second, Mendez seemed paralysed by Lock’s sudden appearance or, perhaps, by how close he’d been to getting away. He stared after the departing car. When he looked back, Lock was a hundred yards from him, and the circle of light was covering both men as the helicopter rose into the air on an updraught of desert wind.
Lock gun-faced him. ‘Don’t move!’
But Mendez wasn’t about to start doing as he was told. He pivoted round and made a break for a patch of ground next to the road, beyond which was another set of shacks, the fringe of a bigger, more densely packed colonia.
The blacktop behind Mendez splintered as a couple of rounds dug into the tarmac. They had come from the helicopter because Lock had yet to fire. It banked to one side, the pilot moving into position so that whoever was firing had a better angle from which to take out Mendez.
Mendez zigzagged across the ground as the helicopter moved alongside him, the pilot struggling to keep it steady, the searchlight punching its cone of light into the colonia. Lock saw the barrel of a semi-automatic pop out from the side door as another gust of desert wind caught the helicopter, lifting it fractionally and taking out the gunman’s angle.
He took the shot anyway, the mark of an amateur, and a three-round burst fractured the air, threatening everyone but Mendez. The downside of the manoeuvre was that the searchlight lost Mendez as he sprinted towards the colonia.
Lock went after him, temporarily holstering his weapon, and charging over ground littered with broken glass. Mendez slipped through a gap between two houses as the downdraught from the aircraft blew up a thick cloud of dust.
In the narrow alley, as the helicopter climbed, Lock looked around. There was no sign of Mendez. He walked slowly now, trying to block out the noise of the thrashing rotor blades and pick out his target, but it was an impossible task.
The alley, if it qualified for alley status, was about three feet wide and ran for about eighteen. It seemed devoid of life. Lock slowed before he stepped out into the street — and from nowhere a fist slammed into the side of his face just below the right eye, throwing him off balance.
Lock stumbled, taking two steps back, then found his balance and moved on to his toes, like a boxer. He shook his head, centred himself and looked to his left. Charlie Mendez was right there, but he had frozen again. Lock rushed him, driving his shoulder hard up into Mendez’s chest, catching him slap-bang in the solar plexus. He followed with two quick but full-force elbows to the man’s face. By the time the second landed, Mendez had his hands up but Lock hadn’t finished. Stepping in close, he butted his opponent full in the face, hearing the satisfying dull crunch of the cartilage in his nose cracking with the force of the blow. Mendez let out a whimper as Lock stepped back, fished in a pocket for some plastic ties and went to work securing his wrists. When they were cinched tight enough to be painful, Lock gave him the fastest of pat-downs.