“Doesn’t look like much,” I told Junior. “This manhole cover?”
“Yeah. They put it back on.”
I zoomed out. The manhole was in the street a block south of Veronica’s grandparents’ home, a block from the southern end of the development. It didn’t seem to make sense, though—it was an odd place to put a hideout.
“Shit,” said Junior.
“What’s that?”
“You got two police trucks heading your way on the main road. They’ll be there in four or five minutes, max.”
“All right, we’ll go the other way,” I said, laying on the horn. Shotgun ran out of the building, his arms full. “Let’s go. Get in the back.”
He jumped in and I threw the truck in reverse, backing up the hill to the path that ran from the north side of the compound. The first hundred feet or so were rough; I lost the road, rumbling through a shallow ravine before finally regaining the path.
I’d started climbing the hill in earnest, gaining speed, when I heard Junior curse again.
“Shit, shit—I moved the Bird south to see the police. Damn.”
“What’s up?” I asked.
“You got two security SUVs coming up that dirt road you’re on. They’re maybe two minutes away.”
As always, Junior was being ridiculously optimistic: headlights were already streaking up the hillside.
IX
I’ve always believed that the best defense is a good offense.
There’s a corollary to that—you can never actually have too much of a good offense.
Or too many grenades. Especially when Shotgun is handling the launcher.
He cut a hole in the canvas back of the M35 two-and-a-half-ton truck (aka deuce and a half to us old-timers) and set himself up in the back, turning the troop truck into something like a medium tank, sans armor. He rigged an M249 submachine gun in place, threading it with one of the ammo belts we’d found in the house. The grenade launcher—an M79 stand-alone, truly a classic—had to be held by hand. Shotgun saw this as an asset—he armed himself with seven launchers, strapping three over each shoulder and holding a seventh in his hands.
The launcher has a safety, but I was damn sure to avoid as many potholes as possible as we drove out the front gate and started to accelerate. I had the lights off, which added a bit of difficulty to the navigation. Veronica, leaning forward against the windshield, tried helping.
“Curve to the right coming up,” she said. “Watch the fence—big boulders on your left. Oh, shit.”
We glanced off the boulders as I took the turn a bit too fast. “Just tell me how far they are from us,” I said.
“A thousand meters. Seven hundred. They’re moving pretty fast.”
“Shotgun, you ready?”
“Born ready, boss.”
The SUVs had their lights on, and I could see the advancing halos as we started down a particularly steep part of the road.
Something thumped above me. Shotgun had fired the grenade launcher.
The missile hit a rock outcropping just ahead of us to the left, spraying shards of rock in the air. As they splattered across the windshield and hood I involuntarily flinched, pushing the truck to the right and sending my back wheels half off the road. By the time I corrected, the SUVs were only about a hundred yards away.
Thump-thump! FRUUUU-KKKKK. Poooooghhhhh.
Shotgun’s next grenade flew into the windshield of the lead SUV. It exploded with a flash and the front end burst immediately into flames.24 The grenade that followed sailed over the second vehicle, exploding harmlessly to the right. The next hit the road, lifting the front end of its target a foot or so before blowing out its tires.
I’m not sure where the other grenades went, since I was too busy trying to steer around the flaming SUV while staying more or less on the road. The M35 is many things, but I would never compare its handling to a sports car. I grazed the front bumper of the SUV as I struggled to keep the truck on the road. I didn’t think much of that until I heard Shotgun say over the radio that we were on fire.
The next thing I heard was the gentle pitter-patter of bullets ripping the crap out of the passenger side of the truck. A few seconds of wild confusion followed, as I tried simultaneously to hunker down, steer, and push Veronica below the dash. The result was that I didn’t see the second SUV until its side loomed a few yards in front of me. At that point, I had only two choices:
a) hit the brakes and very possibly roll the truck, or
b) nail the accelerator and push the SUV out of the way.
Easy decision.
Head-butted off the side of the road, the SUV shot over the sharp drop at the side of the road and began rolling sideways down the hill. Our truck, meanwhile, continued straight down the road at what now seemed like a ridiculously fast speed. I slapped at the brakes with little success, trying to slow our momentum in time to take yet another sharp turn in the hills. Once again I couldn’t hold the road; my front right tire went off into the ditch and as I jerked to pull it back, the rear of the truck flew out behind me. The wheels sailed over a bump and for a long moment I thought we were going to flip. But the truck managed to find its feet, and glided, more or less, to a stop as the hard-pack ended in a broad, pockmarked field just beyond the edge of the development.
Did I mention we had caught fire?
“Out! Out!” I yelled at Veronica, before realizing she was already on her way. I grabbed at the door handle and jumped out as flames started shooting by the side window. I’m not sure whether they treat the canvas of those trucks with fireproof material or if it just burns funny, but the flames on back of the truck were a strange orange that I’d never seen before. Rather than forming your classic tongues and triangles, they looked like furled towels, flapping slightly on the side of the vehicle.
I ran to the back. Shotgun was busy firing at some of the tangos who’d managed to get out of the second SUV before we hit it.
“Get out!” I shouted.
“We got one more,” he answered.
Something tinged nearby. It wasn’t until then that I realized we were under fire.
A long burst from Shotgun put an end to that. I reached up to pull him out, when there was a loud swoosh and a fog enveloped me. Heptafluoropropane or some other environmentally proper alternative to Halon whooshed over the back and side of the truck, beating the crap out of the flames.
Veronica wielded the hose on the extinguisher like a pro, attacking the flames at their base and snuffing the strange orange curls into black and green knots of smoke. She got me and Shotgun for good measure, and we coughed our way over to the side of the road.
The front end of the truck had been mangled so badly that it was undrivable, even by me.
“We’re going to have to set up another ambush,” I told Shotgun between coughs. I was hacking like a three-pack-a-day smoker. “We can get above them on this hill as they come over it, fire down. We’ll take out their trucks.”
When I went to call Junior on the radio, I realized my radio had come undone somewhere along the way. I fished around for it, and found the wires dangling apart. I reconnected them, and Junior’s voice practically exploded in my ear.
“They’re turning around, they’re turning around,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Dick, do you hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“I’ve been trying to tell you—the two police cars backed up as soon as they saw the bodies on the ground. They got the hell out of there.”
“All right. Good.”
“Are you all right? I saw you guys get out of the truck, but then the radios started fuzzing out.”
“Yeah, yeah, we’re good. See if you can get Shunt to tap into the police network and find out what’s going on.”
“Uh, OK. You already gave him a lot of stuff to do.”
“Tell him to close out one of his chat-room feeds and he’ll have plenty of time.”
Shunt is brilli
ant when it comes to computers, but he’s probably the only human being alive who believes those pop-up windows saying LonelyHeartXXXX is looking for love in his hometown. He routinely keeps a dozen chats going, claiming it’s his way of giving back.
“Slide the Bird back over the condos and find out what’s going on,” I told Junior. “We’ll go out that way—I’ll steal a car.”
“On it.”
Between the computers and everything else we’d taken, we had far too much to carry down with us. We left the guns and ammo, but took everything else over to a nook on the hillside about fifty yards off the road. I stacked a bunch of guns and ammo there as well.
“Don’t call attention to yourself,” I told Shotgun. “If somebody comes, you stay down and be quiet. Firing at them is only a last resort.”
“Got it.”
“Swear to it.”
I’m not saying he has an itchy trigger finger, but … he has an itchy trigger finger.
“I swear,” said Shotgun. “On my last bag of Cheetos.”
“I’ll be back with a car as soon as I can. If something goes wrong with the radio, I’ll pull up in front of the truck and blink twice. Wait for me to come to you.”
I turned to go back down the hill. Veronica started walking with me.
“No, no,” I told her. “You stay with Shotgun. It’ll be a lot safer.”
“I know this place better than you,” she told me, continuing ahead.
“I’m only going to steal a car.”
“That’s fine. I can do that.”
“Listen—”
“At a minimum, you need a lookout. Besides, I’m better with my hands than you.”
I never argue with a woman who says that.
* * *
The best car to steal is the easiest car to steal. We climbed the hill overlooking the condos and headed toward the dead end at the east, where I had seen two cars parked outside. The street was parallel and one over to the one where Veronica’s grandparents had lived. It was also, by coincidence, the one where the two tangos had disappeared into the sewer.
Since we were going there anyway, it made sense to take advantage of the opportunity and scout the manhole. I could do that while Veronica stole the car—assuming her bragging was backed up by facts.
“I wasn’t kidding,” she said as we entered a backyard near the street. “I can steal cars. I learned from the best.”
“The FBI antitheft ring?”
“Hell no. When I was undercover I met Candyman Lopez, the Detroit junkyard king.”
The Candyman had a hefty procurement chain to supply his salvaged parts business. Veronica immediately ticked off the procedures for jumping the two pickups on the street.
“Which one do you want, white or brown?”
“White. Brown’s never done much for me.”
I waited until she got close to the truck. Then I slipped out to the middle of the street and had a look at the manhole.
Why exactly would a condo development that covered far less than a square mile need a storm sewer system so large that it required manholes?
Answer: it wouldn’t. Especially in the desert.
So to my mind, the hole had to be the entrance to some sort of underground hiding place, or maybe a way of getting into one of the nearby houses without being seen from above. Unfortunately, the only way to find out was to look.
I got down on my knees, and using the barrel of my submachine—heresy, I know—I pried the cover up and slid it to the side.
The tunnel was dark. I stuck my head down, but couldn’t hear anything.
Obviously, more research was needed.
“Veronica, how are we doing?” I asked over the radio.
“I just got to the truck,” she said.
“I’m going to go down the sewer hole here and see what I see.”
“Do you think that’s wise?”
“No. Bring the truck around and wait for me near the hole, OK? I’m not sure how the reception will be once I’m down there.”
“Well, don’t get lost.”
“I’m not planning on it.”
I found a metal rung ladder on the side and went down a few steps, pausing and listening. The hole was dark, and smelled about the way you would expect a drainage tunnel to smell. I took the night-vision binos from the pack and cinched the MP5 tight against my shoulder.
Starting down, I realized I’d been spending a lot of time in sewers since coming to Mexico. There was something appropriate in that.
Every time you descend into the darkness, you’re one unlucky kiss of Murphy away from getting your head shot off. But Murph must have gone to bed, exhausted from his various hijinks back at the farm. No one grabbed my leg as I stepped down off the ladder into the large tunnel beneath the street. No one came at me from behind with an ax, and no bullets whizzed past my face. Nothing, in fact, happened.
What a letdown.
The tunnel I descended into ended a few yards to my right in a thick block wall. It extended to the north, bending downward and then twisting to the left. It looked exactly like a storm sewer, right down to the slime-green liquid—I won’t call it water—coating the bottom and the red eyes of sewer rats, or other suitably disgusting vermin, near the curve.
I held my breath so I could hear any faint echo in the distance. Lingering runoff from the earlier rain dripped somewhere nearby; the only other sound was the light scratch of a rodent looking for food.
Holding the MP5 ready, I started walking as quietly as I could. The floor of the tunnel, constructed of cement bricks, was pitched so that the crown was dry. I turned my feet sideways to get slightly better traction and lessen the chance of landing on my butt, which had already taken more than enough abuse for the week. I used the night binos to see, which slowed me down some and made it a little harder to keep my balance.
As I came to the curve, I noticed that there was a bulkhead door to the right. This was not unlike the sort of full height hatchway you would find in, say, a submarine. It had a large wheel in the middle, which turned a set of arms that latched into the top, bottom, and sides of the frame. It had a chain lock on it, the sort you might use to keep a bike secure (well, almost secure) in a city.
By my reckoning, the portal was about where Veronica’s grandparents’ house would be. The fact that it was locked from this side meant that the two tangos who’d run from us hadn’t gone there.
I continued down the tunnel, walking another thirty or forty yards. I passed two more locked portals before the tunnel angled sharply to the left.
Until now the tunnel had been empty, except for the slimy water and the rodents. The floor was solid brick, the walls concrete block. While the width varied a bit, I would say it was always in the area of six feet, just wide enough so that I could barely touch or barely miss the sides. After this turn, the tunnel straightened and widened to roughly eight feet. There were grooves in the center of the floor. My first thought was that they were for drainage, but as I studied the area ahead I saw what looked like a low-rise coal car in the tunnel. The wheels beneath it fit into the grooves. I walked toward it slowly, not exactly sure what I’d stumbled on: an ancient Inca subway system?
More like a tunnel to the border.
But that was a mile away. Would they really burrow that far?
I looked at the car doubtfully. It was made of wood, sturdy two-by-eight planks fitted as the floor and sides. There was no engine, and the tunnel didn’t smell of diesel or gasoline.
A metal panel about the size of a garage door was hung on rails at the side. It had a chain lock like the hatchways I’d seen earlier, fastened to a set of thick steel loops top and bottom. I went over and put my ear against the panel, thinking maybe I’d hear something. But all I could hear was my own heart, pounding away in my chest.
I’d been down for a long while—too long, really. I tried checking in with Veronica but couldn’t reach her. I turned and began making my way back as quickly as I could.
Moonli
ght streamed down from the two small pry holes as I approached, dust drifting in the shaft of yellow-silver light. I stopped, suddenly wary.
“Veronica, are you there?” I asked over the radio.
There was no answer.
The rungs felt cold to the touch. I went up slowly, keeping the gun ready. I pushed the edge of the cover up tentatively, looking around. The moon was strong enough that I didn’t need the glasses. Not seeing anything, I lowered the cover and tried on the other side.
Nothing. But it would be easy enough to stand across the street in the shadows.
I climbed up a rung, put my shoulder to the cover, then jerked it upward, ready and yet not really ready at the same time. That one last instant before something happens is a mix of anticipation and adrenaline, with a sprinkling of fear. It comes, it hits you; you push through it.
Nothing.
I took a breath of fresh air and looked around. There was no one there: no Veronica, no phony Mujahedeen, no cartel slugs, no development security people.
Climbing up out of the sewer, I saw the nearby houses were all dark, the street deserted. I slid the sewer cover back into place and ran over to the side of the nearest unit.
“Veronica?” I said over the radio.
This time, Shotgun came on the circuit. “Dick, what’s going on?”
“I’m looking for my ride,” I told him. “Did she drive up to you?”
“Negative.”
“She say anything?”
“Hasn’t been on the air that I heard. You need me?”
“Stay with the stuff,” I told him.
A rock or something was kicked nearby.
I raised my gun and took a step back, staring at the edge of the building. When nothing appeared, I backed around the side of the condo, turned the corner, then ran as fast as I could to the other side. I came up to the front, where I saw a figure crouched on the lawn, head swiveling slowly as he looked toward the side of the building where I’d been.
His back was turned.
My first two steps were slow and stealthy. The next two were quicker, and probably not as quiet. I took another but my foot hit a soft piece of turf; off balance, my other foot fell harder and louder than I wanted.
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