The Excoms

by Brett Battles

  “A quarter mile,” Rosario said, a minute later. She was monitoring their progress on her computer, which was hooked through her satellite phone.

  Suddenly the front driver’s side of the truck lurched downward. Ananke jerked the tire back onto the level surface and brought the vehicle to a stop.

  “Nice driving there, boss,” Ricky said.

  She climbed out and took a good look at the road ahead, or, more accurately, the missing road. Apparently at some point in the not too distant past, a tributary of the now dry river had cut across the road, wiping away a fifty-foot section. The drop they experienced had been the truck dipping over the edge where the road had started to disappear.

  Concerned that the sand might be soft enough to get stuck in, she walked onto it. Though it was loose on top, it seemed to have a fairly solid base. She walked farther out to make sure that consistency remained the same. That’s when she noticed the tire tracks.

  After cupping a hand around the end of her flashlight, she turned it on and knelt down.

  There were at least half a dozen imprints. A few were narrow enough to identify as belonging to motorcycles, while the others had been created by larger vehicles. From the design of the tread, she could tell none of the tires were made for off-roading. Street cars, then.

  Perhaps even an RV.

  She followed them across the wash to the other side where the road picked up again, before returning to the truck and telling Rosario and Ricky what she’d found.

  “It’s them,” Ricky said.

  “How can you know that?” Rosario asked.

  “A hunter knows.”

  Ananke drove them across the tributary, sticking to the same path the other vehicles had used to avoid any sand traps.

  “This is it,” Rosario announced a few minutes later.

  Ananke coasted to a stop and they all climbed out.

  “If they’re at the mine, don’t do anything on your own.”

  “I won’t,” he said sincerely. This was the Ricky she liked, the focused Ricky, the cooperative Ricky.

  “Stay safe.”

  “You, too, boss,” he said, and then climbed into the driver’s seat and drove off.

  Ananke adjusted her backpack and looked over at Rosario. “Shall we?”

  __________

  “LOOKS QUIET TO me,” Dylan said. He handed the binoculars back to Liesel so she could take another look.

  The abandoned homestead consisted of a house, a collapsed pile of wood that had probably been some kind of storage building, a separate stable, and a large area that had once been fenced in, where horses must have roamed. Neither of the still-standing buildings had a roof anymore, and only the stable had all its walls intact.

  Liesel lowered the glasses. “No sign of anyone.”

  “Shall we make sure?” Dylan said.

  She nodded. “Low and slow.”

  Crouching and with Liesel in the lead, they moved carefully through the scrub brush to the remains of the split-rail fence and took another look at the buildings. Still no movement.

  When they reached the stables, Liesel motioned for Dylan to stay where he was, before she disappeared around the front of the building. He tried to listen for her footsteps, but she moved so quietly that he jumped when she suddenly walked up behind him and whispered, “Empty.”

  “How about scuffing the ground a little first, huh?”

  She looked at him, not understanding.

  “Never mind.”

  They moved on to the house.

  The shorter wing of the L-shaped structure was in much better condition than the longer one. They crept to a window and peeked inside. Graffiti adorned the walls, and trash covered the floor. But there was nothing to indicate anyone had been there in a long time.

  They moved around the front to the main, now doorless, entrance. Liesel gestured for Dylan to hold back while she went inside. As she neared the entrance, something caught Dylan’s eye. It took a second before he realized it was a line, hovering in the doorway a few inches above the jamb, and Liesel was about to walk right into it.

  “Stop!” he yelled as he launched himself through the air. He wrapped his arms around Liesel and knocked her down a second before her foot would have touched the line.

  Though she lay still, her eyes darted back and forth. “Is someone coming?”

  Dylan climbed off her, shaking his head. “You were about to kill both of us.”

  He walked back to the doorway, pulled out his flashlight, and shined it across the threshold. His eyes had not been playing tricks. It was a trip wire, ankle high.

  Liesel pushed off the ground and moved in behind him.

  Her eyes widened. “Thank you.”

  “You can buy me a pint later.”

  She retrieved her own flashlight and they both played their beam through the room. More debris and trash, but no other trip wires.

  Liesel stepped inside, keeping her feet as far from the monofilament as possible.

  Dylan swore under his breath and reluctantly followed.

  Taking great care, they traced the monofilament along the wall into what must have once been a closet. There the line ran straight into a trigger box. A second monofilament line was also attached to the box. It ran out the other side of the closet, no doubt to another door. Attached to the other side of the box were four wires that ran, one each, into four bricks of C4.

  Liesel stepped toward the explosives.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dylan said. “Not sure we want to be messing with that.”

  She glanced back. “You have experience with explosives?”

  “Damn right I do. I avoid them at every chance.”

  Moving much faster than he wished she would, she pulled the wires out of the bricks. With each yank, he flinched. When the last one came without a boom signaling the end of life, he let out a long breath.

  After examining the trigger box, Liesel picked up an old nail and jammed it near where the trip wires were tied off. Next, she cut the three monofilaments, leaving a tail no more than a foot on each.

  “Here,” she said, and tossed the box at Dylan.

  Caught off guard, he fumbled with the device and almost dropped it.

  “Careful,” she snapped.

  “You might give me some warning next time.”

  “That nail should not come out.”

  He looked at the box. “What happens if it does?”

  “Those cylinders on the other end of the wires—they are detonators.” She mimed an explosion with her fingers. “It probably would not kill you, but would at least blow your hand off.”

  “Maybe you should carry it.”

  “You are the courier.”

  “Now you’re just stereotyping.”

  __________

  RICKY DECIDED ANANKE’S instructions were more guidelines than hard and fast rules. She’d been erring heavily on the side of caution. She was good at that. But walk in the final mile? That was more overkill than he was willing to be subjected to.

  A quarter mile would have been more reasonable, but he was willing to give in a little, so he stopped the truck a half mile away from the mine. He hurried across the desert and up the ridge that separated him from the mine site. When he neared the top, he dropped to all fours and crawled to the crest.

  From this elevated position, he scanned the mine area through his binoculars, and confirmed what his senses were already telling him. This wasn’t the place.

  There were no RVs, no motorcycles, no cars, no trucks, no vehicles at all. And by the lack of tracks, nothing had been up here in months.

  “Bummer,” he mumbled.

  He glanced out at the valley, wondering which of the other two groups had drawn the lucky straw, and almost instantly saw a muted glow.

  He raised the binoculars. Reddish orange, and flickering.

  A campfire.

  It was about four or five miles away. Maybe a bit more. But definitely in the direction of the two homesteads.

 
; Now whose spot is that? Ananke’s and Rosario’s, or Liesel’s and Dylan’s?

  Ricky wasn’t sure. He hadn’t paid quite as close attention to the map as he probably should have. One of the pairs would be there, though, and the last thing they needed was for him to be walking around an abandoned mine while they needed help.

  He pushed to his feet and scrambled back down the hill to his truck.

  37

  A LITTLE OVER halfway into their hike, Ananke and Rosario crossed the dirt driveway that connected the road they’d driven in on to the abandoned home.

  Kneeling, Ananke swept the palm-controlled beam of her flashlight over the ground. More fresh tracks, like those on the river tributary—motorcycles and four-wheeled vehicles.

  They continued on toward the homestead until a faint crackling ahead caused Ananke to whisper, “Down!”

  She listened again. More crackling, tiny pops with no discernible rhythm, but distinct. A fire was burning somewhere ahead, maybe a hundred or hundred fifty yards away.

  Staying close to the ground, they moved forward.

  From the satellite image, they knew the property consisted of a main house, the remains of what had probably been a three- or four-vehicle carport, and an outbuilding of some type. The latter was not quite large enough to be a barn, more like a big storage shed or workshop. It was also the one least damaged by time. So it was the silhouette of this structure that Ananke looked for.

  When she finally spotted it, something was strange about it. It seemed longer than it should have been, almost like it had grown a rectangular tail that pointed toward the ruins of the house. She looked at it through her binoculars, and then handed the glasses to Rosario.

  “You were right,” Ananke said. “They’re here.”

  The extra shape was not part of the outbuilding. Even though it was mostly just a dark shadow, there was more than enough starlight to pick out wheels at the corners. It wasn’t a building but a large vehicle, the same size and shape as the RV that had left Yosemite pulling a trailer full of motorbikes.

  She swung the binoculars to the other side of the outbuilding, and for a moment thought there was another vehicle about twenty feet to the side of it. After staring at it for a few seconds, she realized it was a giant cylinder lying on its side. The properties’ water tower, most likely, that had fallen over who knows how long ago.

  She moved her gaze back to the vehicle. Nothing had changed. After clicking on her comm, she said, “If anyone can hear me, we’ve got eyes on the RV.” She waited a moment, but there was no response. “Liesel? Dylan?” A pause. “Ricky?” Still nothing.

  She started to pull out her sat phone, but Rosario touched her arm and pointed toward the outbuilding. At first Ananke couldn’t figure out what she was supposed to be looking at, and then she saw someone halfway between the RV and where she and Rosario were, heading their way.

  Ananke exchanged the sat phone for her switchblade and opened the knife, but the figure didn’t come all the way to them. Whoever it was stopped about fifty feet away. A man, most likely, based on his shape, though that wasn’t a given. What was clear was the barrel of a rifle sticking up over his shoulder.

  They heard a zipper, and then a dull splash of a stream hitting the ground.

  Definitely a man.

  If they were closer, they might have been able to sneak behind him and take him down before he could raise an alarm, but at their current distance, the chance of him hearing them was too high.

  When he finished, he zipped up and walked back toward the RV.

  With Rosario following her, Ananke arced to the left, on a path that would take them into the desert on the other side of what was left of the house, and far from the RV and the man with a rifle.

  When they stopped again, Ananke checked the breeze and confirmed it was blowing away from the house before she pulled out her sat phone.

  Her first call was to Dylan.

  “No one here,” he said. “But Liesel does owe me her life.” He told her about the C4.

  “We need you to get over here quick. We found them.”

  She heard him pull the phone away and say, “Ananke and Rosario found them!” Then he was back. “We’ll get there as fast as we can.”

  Next came Ricky.

  “Almost there already,” he said.

  “What about the mine?”

  “The place was deserted.”

  “No trip wire? No bomb?”

  “Bomb?”

  “Liesel and Dylan found a booby trap at their location.”

  “I guess there might have been one,” he said.

  “You didn’t check?”

  “I got a good enough look at the place. But then I saw the campfire, and I knew that’s where I needed to be.”

  “Just hurry,” she told him. “And don’t do anything else stupid.”

  “What do you mean anything—”

  She hung up.

  Wanting to get a better look at the kidnappers’ setup, she and Rosario circled around the water-tower end to the back of the property, sticking far enough in the desert that they wouldn’t be noticed. From there, they could see the campfire Ananke had heard and Ricky had spotted. Its glow allowed them to get a better view of the RV and verify it was the one they were looking for. And if that wasn’t enough to prove they were in the right spot, parked near the front of the RV were three touring motorcycles.

  Ananke studied the setup through the binoculars. The RV abutted the far corner of the outbuilding, creating a wind and visual block for anyone approaching from the front of the property. The fire pit sat within the L the vehicle and building made. Though the light was too weak to cut through the darkness beyond the building’s open garage-type door, it was enough for Ananke to pick out four men—two sitting near the fire, one leaning against the building wall, and the last lying on a lounge chair near the RV door, fast asleep.

  She studied the area, wanting to commit as much as she could to memory—the placement of boxes, the bags of trash, the table next to the lounge with what looked like a radio on it, the portable barbecue off to the side.

  As she did this, a sudden, pulsating beep sounded near the RV. The four men were instantly in motion, three of them rushing toward a container next to the vehicle. Just as they reached it, the camper’s door flew open and two more men hurried out.

  The guy who hadn’t run toward the container was the one who’d been peeing. She could tell because the rifle she’d seen slung over his shoulder was now in his hands, the stock pressed against his shoulder.

  She looked back at the others as they pulled more rifles out of the plastic box and handed them around.

  One of the men stepped over to the small table and touched what she’d initially thought was a radio. The beeping stopped.

  Ananke didn’t know how or where or who had done it, but she knew one of her team had set off an alarm and taken away the advantage of surprise.

  __________

  LIKE ON HIS approach to the mine, Ricky was not about to walk a mile in, especially now that they knew for sure the kidnappers were there. So when he found the rutted path that served as the mile-long driveway, he turned onto it and drove as far as he felt he could push it.

  Unfortunately, without headlights, he didn’t see the trip wire strung across the road a quarter mile back from where he finally stopped.

  This line, instead of setting off a stash of C4, triggered a beacon that activated an alarm at the kidnappers’ camp.

  Ignorant of what he’d done, and happy as a lark at what he was sure would soon be another heroic Ricky moment, he cut across the desert toward the house.

  __________

  THOUGH THEY DIDN’T know it, Liesel and Dylan left the SUV only about two dozen feet from where Ananke and Rosario had been dropped off.

  They covered three quarters of a mile as fast as the terrain would allow, and then proceeded more cautiously from that point forward.

  They were maybe a hundred yards from the big buil
ding when Liesel tapped Dylan’s arm and pointed toward the west side of the property. He saw a shadow moving fast, away from the buildings.

  “What is that?” he whispered. “Coyote?”

  “I do not know. How big do coyotes get?”

  “I don’t know. Seemed kind of big, though. Should we check it out?”

  They watched the shadow for a few more seconds, then Liesel shook her head. “If it was important, Ananke would have let us know.”

  They continued toward the buildings, the moving shadow quickly disappearing into the vast valley.

  38

  CARTER SLEPT IN fits and starts, his dreams an unending rollercoaster of disaster, all with him in the starring role.

  When the beep of the perimeter alarm went off, it wove for a moment into his nightmare before his mind registered it was real. He shot up and looked around.

  Whitmore and Nyland were already out of their beds, pulling on clothes.

  “Get a move on it!” Nyland shouted at Carter.

  Carter managed to say, “Right behind you,” and then watched as the others rushed out of the camper.

  The alarm could mean only one thing. It was over. Those who had gone after Danny were coming for them. Soon Carter would be either on his way to jail for the rest of his life or dead.

  Only if you do nothing.

  He blinked. Right. He’d prepared for this.

  He scooted off the bed, shoved his feet into his shoes, and snatched his pistol off the counter. After attaching the suppressor, he grabbed his getaway bag from the cabinet near the exit and eased the RV door open.

  As he’d hoped, the others were out of sight, headed off for the defense positions McGowan had assigned them in the event of trouble.

  Carter crept down the steps and slipped along the side of the camper to the workshop. There he stopped and looked around.

  He could see the feet of the person lying across the top of the RV. That would be Nyland, if Carter remembered McGowan’s assignments correctly. Rocca would be around the front of the RV, low on the ground. The only other position he could remember was McGowan’s. He’d be over near the collapsed house, giving them a wider view of whatever was coming.