Crouched in the dirt, he watched the moon rise, and they waited for a truck to roll towards the yard entrance. At last one did and they made their move, running in a low crouch behind it, and using its trailer as cover to take them inside the perimeter as a sleepy-eyed guard waved it through.
Safely inside, Lock found a narrow gap between two stacks of blue and red shipping containers, and Mendez sat down with his back to one. The yard’s security was minimal — the guard on the gate and one more inside. No casual crew of thieves would touch any of the containers: it was all too likely that they would pick one being run by the cartels, and the price for that kind of mistake was death. No cop would be allowed inside to check the containers either, not without a warrant. There was too much risk that they would find something they shouldn’t, something they couldn’t turn a blind eye to.
In the near distance, Lock could see America through a gap in the newly erected border fence. But they weren’t going anywhere. Not yet, anyway.
Seventy-three
An hour passed and the temperature dropped. Behind the marshalling yard, armed police had massed at the edge of the colonia, ready for one more sweep. Officers in riot gear were positioned at fifty-yard intervals, one facing in, the next looking out. Their vehicles were parked so close to the yard that Lock could hear the ticking of engines cooling.
Maybe the woman whose home they had invaded had made a report. Maybe the boys with the soccer ball had decided they could make more than five bucks. Or maybe the cartel had triangulated the position of the calls made from the cell phone. The reason didn’t matter. The cops knew he was close by. But they didn’t know where exactly. They must have assumed he was still in the colonia. They would figure out he wasn’t. The only question remaining was how long it would take them.
With the police so close, Lock spent the time trying to estimate their chance of surviving the dash from where they were to the border fence. At most he believed that a hundred yards out from their current position, they would likely be spotted. Fifty yards further they would probably begin to take fire. Keeping Mendez close to him would present the cops with double the regular body mass and double the target area.
It was possible that he and Mendez would get lucky. Shooting a man at range, or two men, was more difficult than it looked, especially given that the people shooting were cops rather than military. The ability to shoot to kill, more so than killing someone up close, was as much about switching off certain parts of the subconscious as it was about technical skill. Up close with a knife or your bare hands, millennia’s worth of survival instincts kicked in, overwhelming your mind. Killing another human being from a distance took training, repetition and a readjustment of your mindset to get to the point where you could accurately and coolly shoot someone in the back.
So, some things were in their favour, but Lock figured it was a seventy-thirty split against. A thirty per cent chance that they would make it in one piece, and a seventy per cent chance that they would be shot, and those were odds he didn’t like very much.
There was one other major barrier. A bad one. Bad because it didn’t conform to logic. It was a political consideration. Even if a battalion of US Marines was standing on the other side of the border, they wouldn’t be allowed to cross over to help him. They would have to stand and watch while he was killed. All kinds of US government agencies and operatives worked in Mexico with the tacit approval of the Mexican government. That wasn’t the case here.
Here, the local authorities with the supposed approval of the Federal authorities, were engaged in the hunt for a convicted rapist, and the man they were probably by now claiming was his accomplice. In all likelihood, that was how it was being spun, and if it wasn’t, it would be a variation on that theme. Whatever had changed behind the scenes, and the shots from the helicopter told Lock that something definitely had, they wanted Mendez dead — himself too, probably. It was classic spin-control for the cartels. If a situation gets out of hand, let the bodies pile up, shut things down and limit the number of those who can relate to the rest of the world what has gone down.
The land ahead was flat. No points of cover: it was exposed to the east, west and south. Not the kind of terrain you’d want to make a break over if your life depended upon it. Yet they would have to. But not now. They would need an edge and there was no better edge than the one he had in mind. The only snag was that his edge lay another sixty minutes in the future.
Seventy-four
Fifty-seven Minutes Later
Torch beams slashed their way across the darkness of the marshalling yard. A soundtrack of clanging metal accompanied the light show as containers were prised open, checked and slammed shut. Lock sat in the darkness next to Mendez and listened as the searchers worked their way methodically towards them. He rolled back the sleeve of his jacket to take another look at his watch, the seconds creeping slowly forward.
They still had a full three minutes before he’d planned on breaking cover. But in less than three minutes he could be staring down the beam of a flashlight, with a bullet slamming towards him on the exact same trajectory.
He surveyed the route to the barrier and reconfigured his plan. Crunching footsteps echoed through the narrow gap where he was hunkered down with Mendez. He needed at least another two minutes but he wasn’t going to get them.
Shit happens. Deal with it, he told himself.
He brought the index finger of his right hand up to his mouth, a final caution to Mendez. He picked out his features in the gloom and saw that the gesture had been needless. The blood had drained totally from his face.
He tapped Mendez’s shoulder then pointed forwards six feet to where he had already rolled up a section of chain-link fence, ready for them to crawl under. He started to duck-walk towards it, motioning for Mendez to follow him.
The back of his thighs burned. His every shuffled step sounded like an explosion as he inched his way to the perimeter. A babble of excited Spanish seemed to erupt almost directly behind them, but he kept the same careful pace. If they’d been seen, they were already dead. If they hadn’t, a panicked burst of speed would seal their fate.
At the fence, he moved to the side, dipping his hand to indicate that he wanted Mendez to go first. He was treating Mendez as a principal now, a person whose life he was charged with protecting. It was the only way to make this work. His feelings were sealed away, as they always were when he was carrying out close-protection work.
He lifted the sheared strands of wire. Mendez snaked his way under, crawling on his belly, using his elbows and knees for forward momentum. The voices behind them grew louder. Close by, the boom of a container door being slammed made the hairs on the back of his neck shoot to attention.
The soles of Mendez’s shoes cleared the last tendril of wire. He pulled himself clear of the fence, sat up, and turned to Lock, staring at him for a long beat, one side of his face bathed in light, the other lost to the darkness. He reached forward and held up the bottom of the fence so that Lock had room to crawl under it.