Two Graves p-12

by Douglas Preston

  “Nothing except for a brief unencrypted burst in Spanish. That burst mentioned a place: Cananea.”

  “Cananea,” Pendergast whispered. “Where is that?”

  “A town in Sonora, Mexico… in the middle of nowhere, thirty miles south of the border.”

  “Sketch me a picture of the town.”

  “My research indicates it has a population of thirty thou. It was once a huge mining center—copper—and it was the site of a bloody strike that helped launch the Mexican Revolution. Now it hosts a couple of maquiladora factories on the north side and that’s about it.”

  “Geographic situation?”

  “There’s a river that starts in Cananea and flows north over the border into Arizona. Called the San Pedro. One of the few north-flowing rivers on the continent. It’s a major route for smuggling drugs and illegals. Except that the surrounding desert is brutal. That’s where a lot of those would-be immigrants die. The border along there is apparently remote as hell, just a barbed-wire fence—but it’s got sensors and patrols up the wazoo. Plus a tethered blimp that can see a cigarette on the ground in the dark.”

  Pendergast cradled the phone. It made sense. Deprived of their plane, and anticipating the APB border alerts, Helen’s captors would have had to find a clandestine way to cross the border into Mexico. The Rio San Pedro corridor south to Cananea was as good as any.

  That would be his last chance to intercept them.

  He left the telephone booth—staggered, his head still spinning—and found himself forced to sit down abruptly in the dirt. He was weak, he was exhausted, he was losing blood, and he had not slept or taken nourishment in more than two days. But this sudden weakness went beyond the physical. His mind, his entire being, was wounded.

  He forced himself to examine his shattered psychological state. What he now felt for Helen—whether or not he still loved her—he did not know. He had believed her dead for twelve years. He had reconciled himself to that. And now she was alive. All he knew for certain was that if he had not insisted on seeing her again, if he had not bungled their assignation so badly, Helen would still be safe. He had to reverse that failure. He had to rescue her from Der Bund—not only for her preservation, but for his own. Otherwise…

  He did not let himself think about the otherwise. Instead—summoning every last reserve of strength—he rose to his feet. He had to get to Cananea, one way or another.

  He limped toward the parking lot of the airfield, bathed in sodium lights. A single car was parked there: an old tan Eldorado. No doubt owned by the airport administrator.

  It appeared the man would be doing him another favor.

  + Eighty-Two Hours

  PENDERGAST PULLED THE SMOKING, BATTERED ELDORADO into a gas station outside the tiny town of Palominas, Arizona. He had covered the twenty-two hundred miles without rest, stopping only for gas.

  He got out, steadying himself by leaning on the door. It was two AM, and the immense desert sky was sprinkled with stars. There was no moon.

  After a moment, he went into the convenience store attached to the gas station. Here he purchased a map of the Mexican state of Sonora, half a dozen water bottles, some packages of beef jerky, cookies, some potted meat product, a couple of dish towels, bandages, antibiotic ointment, a bottle of ibuprofen, caffeine tablets, duct tape, and a flashlight. All these went into a doubled-up plastic grocery bag, which he took back to the car. Sitting in the driver’s seat once again, he studied the map he had bought, committing its features to memory.

  He left the gas station and drove eastward on Route 92, crossing the San Pedro River on a small bridge. Past the bridge, he turned right on a dirt ranch road heading south. Driving slowly, the car bumping and scraping along the rutted track, he moved through scrubby mesquite and catclaw thickets, headlights stabbing into the crooked branches. The unseen river lay to his right, outlined in black by a dense line of cottonwood trees.

  About half a mile from the border, Pendergast drove the car off the road into a thicket of mesquite, forcing it in as far as it would go. He turned off the engine, exited the car with the grocery bag in hand, then listened in the darkness. A pair of coyotes howled in the distance, but otherwise there was no sign of life.

  He knew this was an illusion. This stretch of the Mexican-U.S. border, separated by only a five-strand barbed-wire fence, bristled with sophisticated sensors, infrared video cameras, and downward-looking radar, with rapid-response Border Patrol teams mere minutes away.

  But Pendergast was unconcerned. He had an advantage few other smugglers or border crooks had: he was going south. Into Mexico.

  Tying up the grocery bag in his suit jacket, he fashioned it into a crude haversack, slung it over his shoulder, and began to walk.

  The movement of his injured leg caused it to start bleeding again. He paused, sat down, and spent a few moments unbandaging the wound by flashlight, smearing fresh antibiotic ointment into it, then binding it up again with clear bandages and the dish towels. He followed this by swallowing four ibuprofen and as many caffeine tablets.

  It took him several minutes to get back on his feet. This would not do: he had a long way to go. He chewed some beef jerky and took a drink of water.

  By keeping off the dirt track, away from the river, he hoped to avoid the various electronic traps and sensors. The huge tethered blimp that hovered unseen in the night sky overhead may have noted his presence, but as he was moving south, he hoped it would not trigger a response—at least, not yet.

  The night air, even in summer, was cool. The coyotes had ceased howling; all was silent. Pendergast moved on.

  The road made a ninety-degree turn to parallel a barbed-wire fence—the actual border. He crossed the road—certain he had now set off various sensors—arrived at the fence, and within seconds had cut the strands and forced his way to the Mexican side. He limped off into the darkness, crossing a vacant expanse of pebbled desert, dotted with catclaw.

  Not much time passed before he saw headlights on the American side. He kept going, angling toward the cottonwoods along the river, moving as fast as he could. Several spotlights flicked on and the pools of light speared the desert night, scouring the landscape until they fixed on him, bathing him in brilliant white.

  He kept going. A megaphoned voice echoed over the field, speaking first English and then Spanish, ordering him to halt, to turn around, to raise his hands and identify himself.

  Pendergast continued on, ignoring this. There was nothing they could do. They could not pursue, and it would be fruitless to call their counterparts on the Mexican side. Nobody cared about clandestine traffic headed south.

  He angled toward the line of cottonwoods along the river. The spotlights followed him for a while, with more desultory megaphoned commands, until he entered the trees. At that point they gave up.

  Hidden within the protective canopy, he sat down to rest on the banks of the shallow creek of the San Pedro. He tried to eat, the food like cardboard in his mouth; he forced himself to chew and swallow. He drank some more water and resisted the impulse to unwrap his freshly blood-soaked bandages.

  He estimated that Helen and her abductors would cross the border around the same time or perhaps shortly ahead of him. It was remote, barren desert country, covered in greasewood and mesquite, riddled with unmarked dirt roads used by illegal aliens and smugglers of guns and drugs. Der Bund would certainly have arranged for transportation on the Mexican side, along one of these dirt roads leading to Cananea, thirty miles south of the border. They would be traveling this web of improvised roads, and he would have to catch them before they reached the town—and the paved roads that led away from it. If he did not, his chances of ever finding Helen dropped to almost nil.

  Standing again, he limped down the mostly dry bed of the river, once in a while splashing through stagnant pools of inch-deep water. He might, even now, be too late.

  About half a mile south, through the thin screen of trees, he spied distant lights. Moving to the embankment, he
peered out and saw what appeared to be a lonely ranch, sitting by itself in the vast desert plain. It was occupied.

  The moonless night provided cover for his approach. Soft yellow lights shone in the windows of the main adobe building: an old whitewashed structure surrounded by broken-down corrals and ruined outbuildings. The gleaming, late-model SUVs parked outside, however, indicated the place was now being used for something quite different from cattle ranching.

  Pendergast approached the parking area at a partial crouch. He saw the momentary glow of a cigarette and noted a man at the front door of the house, watching the vehicles and the approach road, smoking and cradling an assault rifle.

  Drug smugglers, without doubt.

  Keeping to the dark, Pendergast circled the house. Parked to one side was a motorcycle: a Ducati Streetfighter S.

  Moving now with exquisite care, Pendergast approached the house from its blind side. A low adobe wall separated the scrub desert from the dirt yard. He crouched at the wall and, with a cat-like movement, hopped over it and darted across the dirt yard, pressing himself against the flank of the house. He waited a moment for the stabbing pain in his leg to recede. Then, reaching into his pocket, he removed a small but exceedingly sharp knife and continued along to the corner.

  He waited, listening. There was the murmur of voices, the occasional cough of the man smoking outside. After a moment, he heard the man drop the cigarette butt and grind it out with his foot. Then came the flick of a lighter, the faint glow of indirect light over the dark yard, as a fresh one was lit. He heard the guard inhale noisily, breathe out, clear his throat.

  Pressed against the corner, Pendergast felt in the dirt, picked up a fist-size rock. He tapped it softly against the ground, then waited. Nothing. He scraped the rock in the dirt, making a somewhat louder noise.

  Around the corner, the man fell silent.

  Pendergast waited, then scraped again, a little louder.

  Silence still. And then the low, furtive crunch of footfalls. The man approached the corner of the building, paused. Pendergast could hear his breathing, hear the faint rattle of his rifle as he moved it into position, getting ready to charge around the corner.

  Slowly, Pendergast lowered himself into a deeper crouch, controlling his pain, waiting. The man suddenly whipped around the corner, rifle at the ready; in an instantaneous movement Pendergast sprang up, the tip of his knife severing the flexor tendon of the man’s right index finger as he simultaneously knocked the rifle upward and brought the rock down hard on the man’s temple. He went down without a sound, out cold. Pendergast detached the rifle—an M4—and slung it over his shoulder. He crept up to the Ducati. The key was in the ignition.

  The beastly, skeletal-looking bike had no saddlebags, and he slung the improvised haversack over his shoulder, next to the M4. Once again, keeping low and to the shadows, he crept around to the three SUVs parked in the dirt lot and worked the point of his knife into a tire of each one.

  He moved back to the Streetfighter, slid onto the seat, and pressed the ignition. The massive engine immediately roared to life, and—without wasting even a second—he kicked the shifter down out of neutral, eased off the clutch, and cranked the throttle wide open with a violent twist of his right hand.

  As he laid a huge spray of dirt tearing out of the driveway, pushing the RPMs up past eight thousand while still in first gear, he could see in his rearview mirrors the drug dealers boiling out of the ranch house like bees, guns drawn. He briefly squeezed the clutch and kicked the bike up into second as a fusillade of shots sounded. The lights of the SUVs fired up as they started the engines, then more shots and cries of vengeance… and then all was behind him, disappearing into the dark night.

  He continued south, working his way up through the motorcycle’s gears, tearing across the vacant desert. He had to intercept them before Cananea…

  He urged the Streetfighter on ever faster as the immense night sky, studded with stars, wheeled overhead.

  + Eighty-Four Hours

  WELL BEFORE DAWN, HE SAW A FLICKER OF RED IN THE immense desert blackness—the taillights of a vehicle moving fast through the distant brush. It was off to the southwest. Five miles farther south, he could see the glow of the town of Cananea.

  Veering off, he cut across the open desert until he intersected one of the parallel tracks to the east. The vibration of the bike on the rough road, the slashing of brush against his legs, had shaken loose his bandage, and he felt blood creeping down his leg, the drops hissing on the hot muffler. He fished out another quartet of ibuprofen tablets and popped them into his mouth.

  The vehicle was now invisible in the brush somewhere on his right. He raced along, the lights of Cananea growing in intensity. According to Mime, the first thing they would encounter would be several small maquiladora factories north of the town. Paved roads ran from the factories into town, where they joined a major highway. He could not let them reach one of those paved roads. He had to catch them in the desert.

  He accelerated further as the glow in the southern sky brightened, allowing him to increase his speed. Cananea was now only two miles off. Figuring he was about even with the unseen vehicle, Pendergast swerved to the west, tearing across the empty landscape, the bike leaping ditches and popping through brush. In another minute he saw the vehicle’s lights virtually due west, running parallel, and he was close enough to see that there were actually two vehicles, one behind the other—Escalades, by the look of them. They were moving fast, but not nearly as fast as he.

  They had not yet, apparently, seen his headlight.

  He unslung the M4 with his left hand and, keeping his right hand on the throttle, steadied the rifle across the handlebars, bracing it against his side. He checked to make sure it was in fully automatic mode.

  But now the vehicles had seen his lights: they began to veer away from him, going off-road, crashing through the sparse brush.

  They were too late. He was moving faster, he was nimbler, and off-road the big SUVs could not accelerate well. Coming in at an angle, he aimed the bike for the gap between the two vehicles and darted into it, braking hard in order to match their speed. The maneuver allowed him to identify the occupants of both vehicles, and it took only a moment to pick out Helen’s frightened face in the back window of the second. A man leaned out of the first and fired ineffectually at him with a handgun; Pendergast gunned the Ducati’s powerful engine and pulled away, accelerating alongside the first vehicle while letting loose with the M4, raking the car at chest level as he accelerated past. The SUV veered off, went into a skid, and then flipped, rolling over and over before bursting into a fireball.

  The second vehicle had braked rapidly and was now far behind. Applying sharp pressure to the rear brake, Pendergast brought the Streetfighter into a power slide, throwing up a huge curtain of dirt, ending up with his back to the town, facing the Escalade. He waited to see what the vehicle would do.

  Instead of stopping to fight, it veered off farther and went lurching over the rough plain, tearing through the low creosote bushes, heading for the paved road at the edge of town. A steady sound of futile gunfire came from the vehicle, punctuated by flashes of light.

  Pendergast gunned the Ducati, fishtailing into a ninety-degree turn and then accelerating after them.

  He rapidly caught up, keeping to the south in a flanking maneuver, forcing the vehicle into an easterly trajectory, away from the factories and the town. But the road to the nearest factory, lined with sodium lights, was approaching fast.

  More shots rang out from the vehicle, kicking up dirt to one side of him. A man was aiming out the back window with a handgun. But the Escalade was lurching so violently that Pendergast was in little danger of being hit. He accelerated the bike, again tracing a track behind and parallel to the Escalade. He eased the rifle into position once more. More futile shots came from a man leaning out the window.

  Pendergast swerved into a converging trajectory and goosed the bike, eking out one last burst of ac
celeration, bringing himself alongside the car and letting loose with a burst aimed low and front, taking out a front tire. At the same time, a fusillade of gunfire from the car struck the Ducati, breaking its chain and sending the bike into a slide. Pendergast rapidly worked the front and rear brakes to avoid going into an uncontrollable spin. As his speed abruptly dropped, he leapt off into a creosote bush before the bike tumbled into a narrow ravine.

  Immediately he rose with the rifle, aimed, and fired again at the receding car. The Escalade was already slewing about on the burst tire, and the shot took out the rear wheel on the same side, the SUV fishtailing to a stop. As it did so, four men leapt out and knelt down by the car, unleashing a steady fire.

  Pendergast threw himself to the ground and—as the bullets kicked up dirt all around him—aimed carefully. His superior weapon took out first one man, then another, in rapid sequence. The remaining two retreated out of sight behind the vehicle and stopped shooting.

  Unfortunate.

  Pendergast rose and, running as fast as he could—barely more than a shambling limp—charged. He kept up a continuous fire as he did so, making sure his shots went high. Suddenly both figures appeared at one side of the vehicle; one was dragging Helen with a gun pressed to her head, and the other—the tall, muscular, snowy-haired man who had piloted the plane—was crouching behind, using the others as protection. He did not appear to be armed—at least, he was not firing.

  Once again Pendergast threw himself down and aimed, but he did not dare fire.

  “Aloysius!” came a thin scream.

  Pendergast aimed afresh. Waited.

  “Drop your weapon or I will kill her!” came a sharply accented cry from the man using her as a human shield. The three figures were backing up now, away from the Escalade, the white-haired man keeping behind the other two.

  “I will kill her, I swear!” the man screamed. But Pendergast knew he wouldn’t. She was his only protection.

  The man fired at Pendergast twice, but the handgun, at a distance of a hundred yards, was inaccurate.