They hadn’t actually seen Hoffman’s SUV ahead for about a quarter mile, thanks to all the twists and turns. Joe kept trying the radio, calling out their position, “Heading into the mountains on some national forest road somewhere. Hello? Anyone?” He clipped the mike back into its holder and said to Gil, “I think it’s you and me from here on out, buddy.”
“Then maybe it’s time to catch these guys,” Gil said as he hit the accelerator. The road got steeper, skirting huge boulders half buried in snow, but they saw the Lexus just ahead. Another burst of speed got them within twenty feet of Hoffman’s bumper. Joe snapped a rifle with a scope out of its holder on the dashboard, ready to jump out when it was time.
“Hang on,” Gil said. “I’m going to bump him.”
But Hoffman hit the gas hard, spitting out debris from under his tires. Gil sped up as well, turning the steering wheel to the right to nick the side of Hoffman’s car. The two vehicles made contact, jarring Gil and Joe. Hoffman’s front tires skidded off the road, getting close to the edge of an embankment. He hit the brakes, making the falling snow glow orange in the light of his taillights. But he was able to correct quickly, and plowed ahead down the barely discernible road.
“How in the world are they still going?” Joe asked. “They really should have hit a tree by now or something.” Gil knew Hoffman and Escobar had few options. There were no turnoffs. There were no houses. There was only the forest. Their only real choice was to keep going until they either ran off the road or the drifts got too deep to maneuver through. And one of those things would happen sooner rather than later. It was getting dark, and the snow was coming down faster, bouncing through the beams of their headlights. Gil doubted Hoffman could still see the road. At best, he was looking for the largest open space between the trees, hoping he was still going the right way.
Gil had it easier. Hoffman’s tire tracks meant Gil didn’t have to cut his own trail through the snow, which let him concentrate more on his driving. They were going relatively slowly, given that this was a car chase. What had begun as an eighty-five-mile-per-hour pursuit was now fifteen miles per hour, but the combination of the snow, the darkening night, and the dense woods made this part of the chase much more dangerous.
“They’re going to have to stop soon,” Gil said. “We need to figure out how we want to handle it.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “With any luck they’ll crash the car and hopefully be knocked unconscious. But more likely, they’ll make a run for it on foot.”
“Or turn to fight,” Gil said.
* * *
They strolled past stores where people were handing out hot apple cider. Farther down the street, farolitos outlined even more houses, giving away the shapes of curved archways and long portals. It was clear from the architecture that the haciendas along Canyon Road were among the oldest in town. Many had been turned into galleries, but others still served as residences. But while the houses were old, the Farolito Walk wasn’t. It had been started in the 1970s by the neighborhood association, which at the time was celebrating something as simple as winning a protected zoning ordinance. As for the farolitos themselves, no one was really sure where they came from. Some people thought they were a poor man’s Christmas lights. Others thought they represented a light that would show Mary and Joseph the way to Bethlehem.
Lucy and Nathan turned down a side alley that was silent and only shoulder-width. There was no crowd here. It was cobblestone, with snow along the edges but even here there were farolitos. Lucy had to admit the romance of it all was starting to get to her. She walked a little way ahead, and the cobblestone alley opened into an enclosed courtyard with a huge cottonwood tree at the center, its branches lined with flickering farolitos. Nathan came up behind her and pulled her into a hug.
“Merry Christmas,” she whispered into his ear. “And thank you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
December 24
When it finally happened, there was no warning. Hoffman didn’t even hit the brakes. The SUV just swerved right and went twenty feet down a steep embankment. Gil lost sight of the vehicle but heard the crash—a twisting of metal and a splintering of wood.
Gil hit the brakes hard, which threw him and Joe forward into the dashboard.
“You okay?” Gil asked, looking over at Joe. He was worried he had bumped his head.
“Don’t mind me and my whiplash,” Joe said.
Gil jumped out into knee-deep snow and took his gun out of its holster. The Explorer’s headlights showed that the path the Lexus had carved out as it went off the road and down the dark ravine. He made his way to the back of the Explorer, wading through the snow. Joe joined him at the back, holding the rifle. Gil opened the back of the vehicle and put a couple of extra magazines into his jacket pockets, then slung a shotgun over his shoulder. They already had on their body armor, as was department policy when assisting in any SWAT scene. Gil whispered, “Search-and-rescue protocol,” as he handed Joe one of the handheld radios and held up six fingers. Joe nodded, knowing that, according to policy, Gil would contact him on channel six if they were separated for more than ten minutes. These radios might work in the terrain (even though the vehicle’s radio did not) because they didn’t need to bounce a signal off an antenna, only off the other radio. But the deeper they got into forest, the more trees there were to act as barriers, and the less likely it was that the radio signal would get through to the other person.
With a nod from Joe, Gil started down the embankment, following the tire marks left by the Lexus. After about ten feet, Gil crouched down in the snow to get his bearings. He unzipped his coat as quietly as possible and found the flashlight he had stowed in the outer pocket of his body armor. But he didn’t turn it on, not wanting to ruin his night vision. Plus, the light would only bounce off the flakes, much like car high beams in a winter storm. They started down the steep hill, guns in hand, trying not to sink too deep into the drifts. The Lexus had made it to the bottom of the ravine, where it had crashed into a large boulder, but not before ripping down several aspen trees and leaving a trail of broken branches. Both front doors were open and the headlights were on, revealing a steep hill ahead much like the one they had just come down, leading up and away into the dark forest. Gil and Joe took cover behind the trunk of a ponderosa pine to catch their breaths and get a better look at the scene. Joe nodded to the right and headed in that direction, while Gil stayed still, surveying the area, ready to provide cover fire if needed.
Joe crouched low as he made his way forward, and stopped behind another pine tree. He nodded to Gil, who took a breath and headed left. He made his way toward the back bumper of the Lexus SUV and he knelt behind the vehicle, looking at the steep cliffs above and the cover of trees below for movement. He looked over to Joe’s position, but couldn’t make him out. Gil would just have to assume that Joe was covering him. Gil popped his head up to look in the back window of the vehicle, but the headlights of the Lexus bouncing back off the snow didn’t provide enough light for him to see inside. Still crouched down, he moved forward, along the side of the car, toward the front driver’s-side door. He stopped when he was flush with the back side door and popped his head up again to look at the inside of the SUV. He could see the interior more clearly now. One of the rifles was lying on the backseat. But there was still no movement inside. He kept low and made his way forward the last two feet to the open SUV door. From this angle, he could see that the driver’s-side airbag had deployed, but there was no one in the driver’s seat.
Movement on the other side of the car made Gil duck for cover again. He raised his Smith & Wesson, but he saw a flash of red hair and realized it was just Joe mimicking Gil’s path along the passenger side of the car. Joe made it to the open passenger-side door, only his side of the car wasn’t empty. The airbag there had deployed as well—not that it mattered to Lupe Escobar, who was slumped over in the seat, dead, a rifle wound to her head. They hadn’t heard the shot, but the falling snow had probably muffled it. Her face had alrea
dy been bloodied from the kick of the shotgun, when she shot at Gil and Joe; her weapon was still lying on the car floor. Hoffman really didn’t like leaving an accomplice alive, Gil thought, even if she was the mother of his child. Joe rummaged quietly around her body, pulling out from her pocket a box of shotgun rounds, with one shell missing. He showed them to Gil, who nodded. Tyler only had a rifle, with at most ten rounds.
Gil and Joe were still crouched next to the open doors on either side of the car when the windshield shattered above their heads. A second shot hit the front part of the Lexus with a thud. Gil reached forward and fumbled around until he hit a switch, killing the Lexus headlights, which suddenly threw him and Joe into darkness. He closed his eyes, wanting them to adjust more quickly to the black. When he opened them again, Joe was using the space between the open door and the car frame as a rest for the rifle. He was peering through the attached night scope, scanning the dark forest ahead of them for movement. A third shot hit the door that Gil was crouched behind. A microsecond later, Joe fired a round from his rifle. He shot again. And again, giving Gil the time to get away from the vehicle, which Hoffman was probably using as his target. Unlike Joe, Hoffman probably didn’t have a night scope on his rifle, meaning that, with the headlights off, he could no longer see Gil and Joe. At best, he could see the dark outline of the Lexus against the snow. By the time Gil made his way behind the trunk of another ponderosa pine and looked back toward the car, Joe was gone from his position. Gil scanned the edge of the tree line as best he could in the dark. He saw no sign of Joe. But he knew what Joe would do. Stay to the flank. Move up the hill. Shoot on sight.
Gil struggled through the deep snow and up the steep incline, toward the location where Hoffman’s last shot was fired. Despite his thick combat boots, Gil slipped and tripped as much as he climbed. He tried to stick close to the tree trunks, where less snow had built up. Every few feet, he stopped to listen for movement, but all he could hear were thick clumps of snow falling off the branches above and into the drifts below. He looked at his watch. He’d been at this for five minutes. According to the department’s search-and-rescue protocol, he had another five minutes to search before he would have to break radio silence and try to contact Joe. If that failed, he was to wait another ten minutes and try again. After that, if there was still no contact, he was required to head back to the Explorer, where they would rendezvous. There they would regroup and wait for backup. Gil had gone another thirty feet up the slope when he saw a flat shadow in the snow ahead. He crouched down and tried to make it out. It looked as if something or someone had trampled down a patch of snow. He waited for movement, then repositioned himself. It was hard to tell from this angle if a person or animal had made the large indentation. He took the flashlight out of his pocket and for one brief second turned on the light. The quick strobe showed a scattering of boot prints next to a bright red puddle on the white snow. Somehow, Joe had hit his target. They were now tracking a wounded suspect, which made their job both easier and harder—a wounded man cannot travel fast, but he will fight much harder.
Gil looked at his watch. Another five minutes had passed. Time to contact Joe. He took out the radio, made sure it was on channel six, switched the volume to low, and hit the mike key three times. If Joe heard the signal, he would hit his mike key three times as well. Gil waited. There was nothing. Gil hit the mike three times again. Still nothing. He looked at his watch again. It was now two minutes past contact time. Gil needed to keep moving if he wanted to catch up to Hoffman. He took a chance and keyed the mike, saying quietly, “Joe.” There was no answer. He said it again. Still no response. Either Joe wasn’t there or the radio signal was bouncing off too many trees to reach him. Gil put the radio back and started out again, picking up the pace as the hill started to flatten out. He followed the tracks and the drips of blood through the snow, but fresh flakes were quickly covering them. A few feet ahead, he heard a sound and crouched again as he tried to calm his breathing enough so he could listen. Something was moving through the snow. He could hear the crunching of feet. Gil stayed still—as still as possible. The sound was coming closer. Gil quietly slid the shotgun off his shoulder and leaned it against the tree next to him, within grabbing distance if need be. He leveled his Smith & Wesson in the direction of the sound, knowing it was just as likely to be Joe and not Hoffman—or even a bear. The sound stopped. Gil waited. His right calf was starting to cramp, but he didn’t dare move, knowing that if the person was Hoffman, he would shoot at the smallest sound.
Then he heard someone whisper, “Olly olly oxen free.”
“Joe?” Gil asked quietly, as he kept his gun pointed straight in the direction of the voice.
“Yo,” came the reply. “Please don’t shoot.”
Gil lowered his gun while Joe covered the few feet between them in just a couple of steps. He offered his hand to Gil to help him up from his crouch. “It’s good to see you,” Joe said, as he gave Gil a quick hug. Without another word, they started to move forward. Gil knew Joe had probably been working his way toward the spot where Hoffman had been shot when he came across the same boot trail and blood drop trail that Gil was following. Otherwise, it was doubtful they would ever have met up, and both would have had to return to the rendezvous point to regroup.
It was getting too dark to see Hoffman’s trail, so Gil took out his flashlight; Joe did the same. Every few feet, Gil would break a branch, which would act like a trail of bread crumbs when it was time to head back with Hoffman. Within a few feet, the blood trail was gone. Maybe Hoffman had bandaged up his wound. But his tracks through the knee-deep snow were still easily visible. They followed in his footsteps so they wouldn’t have to cut their own trail. It meant they could go more quickly than Hoffman, who would have to expend extra energy fighting his way through the drifts. Plus, Gil doubted Hoffman had dressed for this kind of weather. Without gloves or a hat, he would already be losing heat in his extremities. All of that meant Hoffman would tire out well before they did. Both Gil and Joe were wearing parkas, hats, scarves, gloves, and waterproof combat boots, but even so the cold was still slowing them down. Their jeans had been soaked through and were starting to freeze. And they were breathing hard, as much due to the physical effort as the elevation, which Gil guessed was close to eleven thousand feet, given the change in vegetation and terrain.
Ahead, the dense forest started to thin out. As they got closer, Gil could see they were at the edge of a rockslide area, which was common at the higher elevations. Within a few more feet, they left the deep snow of the forest and were starting up a boulder-covered hill. With the cover of trees gone, the storm had nothing to hold it back. The blowing snow stung Gil’s face, and he pulled his wool hat down over his ears, which were getting eaten raw by the wind. They walked on rocks peeking through a hard layer of snow that was swept smooth by the continual wind. They could move more quickly now, but every few feet, one of them would step onto the snow and break through the crust, sinking up to his knees into crevices between the boulders.
For the first ten feet or so, the ground was almost level, and they could follow the edges of Hoffman’s footprints as he cut his way across the open area. Then the tracks were gone, wiped clean by the wind. Gil heard Joe yell something into the howling wind, likely a curse against the weather. Up to this point, Hoffman’s trail had required no special skills to follow. Now Gil would have to actually put his tracking skills to the test. His father had taught him to track when he was seven. It had come in handy on the job, mostly when they were searching for lost kids or Alzheimer’s patients who had wandered away from home.
Gil tried to yell over to Joe, “I need to cut for sign.”
“What?” Joe yelled.
“I need to cut for sign.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Just stand there and don’t move.”
Cutting for sign was a method of looking for a trail after tracks had been lost. Gil walked an S pattern as best he could in the terrai
n, away from where Joe was standing. Following a trail across a rock field meant looking for tiny details—a groove made by a boot hitting some ice, or dirt that wasn’t the same shade as the surrounding surface, except Gil had to do all this during a blizzard. The wind and snow would quickly erode any signs Hoffman had left behind. The only good thing was the darkness. Tracking at night was much easier than during a sunny day. That’s because tracking is a game of light and shadows. A tracker can use a flashlight to make shadows the noontime sun would blot out. A print not visible from above will be clear if a tracker crouches down, shines a light on it, and looks from the side.
It took a minute, but Gil found a rock displacement. A larger rock had been moved slightly, resulting in a half inch of disturbed soil above it. It was enough to tell Gil that Hoffman had pushed the rock backward with his foot as he walked toward the north. He whistled over to Joe, who came to join him.
They moved forward, with Gil crouched low to the ground with his flashlight, looking for the next groove that would tell them they were on the right path. The hill got steeper and the rocks got bigger, but the wind was unchanging. Gil found a toe dig in a small pocket of snow, which showed that Hoffman had dug in the tip of his boot as he pushed himself up to grab a rock above. Gil and Joe holstered their weapons, unable to keep a grip on their handguns while trying to climb up the boulders on the slope. Gil got small cuts on his wrist where his gloves did not quite meet his jacket. And he felt blood on his knee after he slipped and cut himself on a sharp edge. He heard Joe give a muffled “ouch” a few times as he tripped.
“We should head back,” Joe said, close to Gil’s ear so they could hear each other in the wind. “We can call in backup.”
“Just a little while longer,” Gil said. “We have to be gaining on him. He’s wounded.”
Joe shook his head, but kept going. They lost the trail two more times, forcing Gil to spend long minutes cutting for sign among the boulders. Gil was starting to have a hard time feeling his fingers. He tried to wiggle them slightly, knowing that if he had to pull the trigger, a stiff finger would make for a slow response time.
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