Golden Prey

by John Sandford

  Guiterrez told them that the trip normally would take a little more than an hour and a half from where they were, but he expected to make it quicker than that. They did, but it was still an hour and fifteen minutes before they rolled into the northern outskirts of Marfa.

  Halfway to Marfa, Rae said, “Big country, out here. When was the last time we saw a house?”

  “I can’t remember what a house looks like,” Lucas said. And, “What do you have in your gear bag? More than two rifles?”

  “Nope. Guns for Bob and me—two rifles, extra mags and ammo, boots, helmets, and vests. We threw in that extra vest for you, but no extra weapons. Boots won’t help much out here, they’re heavy and waterproof.”

  “If we find Poole, we gotta think he’ll try to shoot his way through. He knows what’s waiting for him if we take him.”

  “I got that. I’m working up a buzz.”

  Johnson called: “There’s a Border Patrol station on the south side of Marfa, off the highway going down toward Presidio. The patrol guys are willing to set up a checkpoint if you want them to do that.”

  “I’ll look it over when we get there,” Lucas said. “Thanks for that.”

  —

  MARFA ITSELF was a flat town, the high point probably the tip of a radio tower. Lucas had been in any number of flat towns on the northern plains, and Marfa would fit right in there: more pickups than sedans; a venerable county courthouse with a diminutive dome; a brick, concrete, and pole-building main street, no buildings higher than three or four stories; white houses made of concrete block with stucco, and wood-and-plaster; and vacant lots overgrown with weeds. The horizon was low, all around, with distant low mountains like camel humps. Big sky; big sun.

  Unlike most flat high-plains towns, Marfa was also a major art destination, according to Wiki. An artist named Donald Judd had bought an old army fort and set it up as a museum. Lucas had never heard of him; but then, he’d never paid too much attention to painting or sculpture, though his wife was a patron of the Minneapolis Institute of Art and gave them enough money that she and the director were on a first-name basis.

  They rolled through town from the north side to the south, past a water tower and then past a snazzy-looking hotel and out to the edge of town, where Guiterrez led them off the highway to a Border Patrol station.

  They got out of their cars and a border patrolman behind a tall chain-link fence called out to Guiterrez, “Excuse me, sir, are you an American citizen?” and Guiterrez asked, “Have you been drinking, sir?” and the border patrolman said, “How ya doing, Dallas? You leading this shoot-out?”

  “That would be the marshals here . . .” Guiterrez said, nodding at Lucas, Bob, and Rae. He introduced them to the border patrolman, who asked Rae, “Exactly how dangerous is this guy?”

  “He’s killed eight people we’re fairly sure about, including a little girl and a highway patrolman. Who knows how many more?”

  “Whoa. Shoot first and ask questions later, huh?”

  “You mean us, or him?” Bob asked.

  “Us, of course,” the border patrolman said. “Come inside, our revered leader is gonna PowerPoint you or something.”

  —

  THE REVERED LEADER was a tall, white-haired man name Travis O’Brien, who had colonel’s eagles on his uniform, though nobody called him colonel. He shook all their hands and sat them down in his office and said, “This is an unusual situation. I’m not exactly sure where the Border Patrol gets involved in this, but I talked to people at our headquarters and they talked to some guy at your headquarters . . . a guy named Forte? . . . and the word came down that we should help any way we can.”

  “There is a Border Patrol element in this,” Bob said. “This guy is going to try to cross the border with what will look like a good passport, but with an alias. He’s set up a bunch of fake IDs, with backup documents.”

  Lucas, Bob, and Rae took turns filling in O’Brien, who finally asked, “When do you expect him to come through?”

  “Probably in the next couple hours. If he’s coming, he’s well on his way.”

  “All right. Well, we’ll get going, then. I’ve already talked to my folks and we’re going to set up right down the road here, on a curve where the highway leaves town,” O’Brien said. “He won’t see us until he’s right on top of us.”

  “Good enough,” Lucas said. “We want to be on the line here, so . . . let’s get set up.”

  —

  THE BORDER PATROL knew all about highway checkpoints and had it set up in ten minutes. A double lane-change zigzagged through orange-and-white-striped plastic barrels, with green-and-white Border Patrol Chevy trucks at the ends of the lanes so that the lane shift couldn’t be avoided. Cars coming from the south could be waved straight through, but cars from the north had to slow for the lane shift.

  Armor-wearing border patrolmen carrying Colt M4s manned the end of the lane, checking drivers against the photos of Poole. Guiterrez, the state highway patrolman, parked at the south end of the lane where he could give pursuit if anybody did try to run the checkpoint.

  Lucas walked through it and was satisfied that Poole wouldn’t make it through, and with Bob and Rae, set up both of their vehicles pointed back toward town, in case Poole tried to do a U-turn away from the checkpoint.

  Then they were ready.

  Rae sat with Lucas, with Lucas in the driver’s seat now, Rae ready with her rifle, already zipped into her vest. She borrowed Lucas’s iPad to look at his selection of music, chose to shuffle a selection of Delbert McClinton songs, and they both sat back and waited, looking up the highway through their sunglasses.

  Forte called a half hour later: “Poole’s back on the grid, still on I-10. He’s coming up to the roadblock. We ought to know something in half an hour. You want to stay there, or head back north?”

  Lucas mulled it over and finally said, “Look, we’ll wait here until they’ve got him. We wouldn’t get there in time to help out anyway.”

  When he and Forte broke off, Lucas hopped out of the truck, walked over to the border patrolman who was in charge of the checkpoint, and said, “We got word that he’s still on I-10. We’re gonna wait until we hear something, but we might be able to tear it down in the next half hour or so.”

  Lucas walked back to his truck, stopping only to pass the word to Bob. Bob scanned the checkpoint and said, “Damn. I was kinda looking forward to this.”

  Lucas checked his face, decided that Bob was serious. “You ever been shot?”

  “Been shot at, not hit,” Bob said. “Not yet.”

  “It’s not exactly the recreational moment you seem to think it is,” Lucas said. “I got shot in the hip one time. Six inches over, would have hit me in the balls. Sort of clarified my thinking about shoot-outs.”

  “C’mon, don’t spoil it for me,” Bob said.

  24

  TWO HOURS EARLIER, Poole and Darling had stopped at a Burger King in Fort Stockton, and Poole said, “About goddamn time. I was getting tired of McDonald’s.”

  Darling smiled, but it was only a reflex. He said, “I’m thinking on this, and the more I’m thinking, the more I believe that going into El Paso is a mistake. The cops must have been tracking Dora. I mean, how’d they know exactly where she’d be, so they could grab her off the highway? And then how did these lesbos get in a spot where they could take her away from the cops?”

  “I figured they got her tags, somehow . . . neighbors or something,” Poole said.

  “That’s a goddamn thin possibility,” Darling said. “Who looks at tags? How would they have found that person? The Neighborhood Watch took your tags?”

  He shut up as they got to the counter, where they ordered Whoppers and TenderGrill Chicken Sandwiches and fries and shakes, and carried them to a table away from other patrons. Darling took a bite from his chicken sandwich, chewed for a minute, then said, �
��Cell phones.”

  “How’d they get onto the cell phones?” Poole asked. “We’ve been buying burners every fifteen minutes.”

  Darling shook his head. “I don’t know. But goddamn women, are we sure that Dora threw away her main phone, or left it behind? Sure she didn’t call any relatives that the cops would know about?”

  “She said she didn’t.”

  “Yeah, but you know about women and cell phones,” Darling said. He chewed for a while. “She probably had all kinds of information on her main phone—e-mails and shopping stuff and phone numbers. Websites. If she turned it off, figuring that it wouldn’t hurt to take it with her . . .”

  “I could call her back,” Poole said.

  Darling thought about that for a moment, then shook his head. “Suppose something else . . .”

  “Go ahead.”

  “What if some federal agency figured out the burner she was using and started monitoring it . . .”

  “Okay. I don’t know how they’d do that, but okay,” Poole said.

  “She was talking to you about hiding the money and the cops were chasing her, and we figured they’d catch her. Then she said one was up ahead, on the road, and there was a helicopter overhead, and she threw the phone out the window. We know that much for sure. Now suppose one of the cops saw her do that. Or suppose they didn’t see her, but when they found out she didn’t have a phone, they figured she’d thrown it away, and they started calling that number until they heard it ringing. If they found that phone, it’d have the number of your burner on it. We’ve still got it and it’s still turned on.”

  “Well . . . shit,” Poole said, glancing around the restaurant. There weren’t many patrons, and none looked like cops. “If all that happened, then why haven’t they grabbed us?”

  “Because they wouldn’t know exactly where we’re at. We’ve been dropping service all the time. They might know more or less that we’re on I-90, heading west. If that’s what’s going on, we’ll run into a checkpoint that we can’t get out of.”

  Poole rubbed his nose, picked up a french fry and shook it at Darling, and said, “All right. Goddamnit, I’m going to finish eating, I don’t care what they know. Then I’m going to buy some water and some snacks and gas . . . and then I’ll worry about it.”

  “And we might be worried about nothing,” Darling said. “They might not have any idea of where we’re at.”

  “Better safe,” Poole said.

  When they finished eating, Poole drove the truck to a gas station and when they’d finished gassing up, he looked across the lot at an RV, stuck his head in the truck door and said to Darling, “Write down the phone number we got from the lesbos, then erase it from the burner and gimme the phone.”

  Darling did that, and passed the phone to Poole. “What are you going to do?”

  “Watch.” Poole ambled past the RV, where the owner was putting in diesel. “Nice vehicle,” he said. “Heading for California?”

  “Yeah, and maybe up through Phoenix to the Grand Canyon and so on.” The RV had Michigan plates; the owner was a Midwesterner fleeing the oncoming winter, Poole thought.

  “Good trip. Hotter than hell out here, though,” Poole said.

  “Not a place I wanted to stop,” the man agreed.

  “Well, take ’er easy,” Poole said. He walked around the back of the trailer, which had an exterior spare tire in a rack. He wedged the burner behind the tire and out of sight and then continued on into the store. He bought peanut butter crackers and water and orange soda, and a paper road map, carried them out to the truck.

  “Saw that,” Darling said. “I like it.”

  “They still got my picture, if we run into a checkpoint,” Poole said. He unfolded the map and traced his finger down to the south. “We go this way. Away from El Paso. Cross the border, then go up to El Paso on the other side, cross back over.”

  “Oughta work, unless they’ve set up the checkpoint on the other side of town, right here.”

  Poole looked at the map. “You know, they could have done that.” A young woman was gassing up a beige Nissan Cube at one of the other pumps, and Poole said, “Give me one more minute.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Girl’s got Florida plates,” he said.

  He got out of the truck again, walked over to the woman, and said, “You’re not heading eastbound on I-10, are you?”

  She nodded, a little reserved talking to this man, and said, “Yes, me and my boyfriend. He’s inside.”

  “We’re heading west, but we heard part of the westbound highway was closed off because of a wreck. You see anything like that?” Poole asked.

  She shook her head. “We came through there a few minutes ago. No sign of an accident, either side of the highway.”

  Poole nodded and said, “Well, thanks, ma’am. Didn’t want to get stuck out in the desert.”

  Back in the truck, he said, “We’re good. Let’s go. Give me your burner, I’m gonna call the lesbos, tell them what we think.”

  He called, and Rosie answered. Poole asked, “This the lesbians?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Let me talk to the woman you picked up. This is her friend, but I don’t want to say names.”

  After a few seconds of silence, Rosie said, “Wait one.”

  Another minute passed, then Box came on: “You okay?”

  “We’re worried. If they found that phone you threw out the window, they might be on to me and Sturg.” He told her the rest of the theory and said, “We’ve turned south. We’re going to cross the border at Presidio and come up the other side to El Paso. We don’t think anyone’s going to find the money at the border, and if they’ve tracked us down I-10, this would be our best shot at getting away from them.”

  “Oh my God, oh my God. The stories you hear about Mexico . . .”

  “We’ll be able to protect ourselves,” Poole said drily. “We’ll meet you in El Paso when we’re sure the heat’s off. Check into a Holiday Inn and we’ll find you.”

  —

  POOLE GOT OFF the phone and handed it back to Darling. They passed the RV on their way back out to the interstate. “Taking the phone to the Grand Canyon,” Poole said, unscrewing the top on one of the orange sodas. And, “Wonder what Mexico is like?”

  “Took my old lady to Cancún a couple of times,” Darling said. “I liked it okay, but I don’t think that’s really Mexico. Cancún is to Mexico like Miami is to America. Hard to figure out.”

  As they took the turn south on Highway 67, Darling said, “Isn’t this the goddamnedest country you’ve ever seen? Yellow and brown, except for those scrubby little trees. My part of the country is so green I get tired of looking at it, sometimes. But this . . . you gotta be a different kind of human being to live out here. Wonder if it ever burns? Looks like all that grass and shit would burn all the time.”

  “Cowboy country,” Poole said.

  “Haven’t seen many fuckin’ cows,” Darling said. He was looking at the paper map and then out at the highway ahead. “You can pick up the speed a little. Won’t see any cops out here, or damn few. I’d like to get to Presidio before dark.”

  —

  EVEN EARLIER in the day, Annie, Rosie, Kort, and Box were cruising south on I-20 in the RV. They would get there after dark. Annie and Rosie had agreed that they shouldn’t try to meet with Poole until the next day, when they had some light.

  “He’s not going to trade!” Kort shouted at Annie and Rosie. “He’ll try to kill us. He’s not going to give up millions of dollars for this . . . this . . .” She waved at Box.

  “He’ll trade,” Box said. “We’ve been together a long time. He’ll want to figure out something tricky, so you can’t kill him. With all your guns and everything . . . I’ll tell him about those . . . he won’t take you on.”

  “Best he do
esn’t,” Rosie said. “We’ll kill his cracker ass.”

  Rosie and Annie told Box that she’d be sleeping on the couch in the sitting area, which was a pull-out affair, made for guests. “Seems mean, but we’re gonna put the cuffs back on,” Annie told her. “Getting this money back is a big deal for us. Big payday. You get loose and we got nothing.”

  “Where am I going to run to?” Box asked. “They’re looking for me all over Texas.”

  That being the case, Rosie told her, if the cops stopped them, there was a very cleverly built space between the cargo compartment and the floor of the bus where Box could hide if the cops stopped them. “It’s where we put the cocaine when we’re transporting,” she said. “It’s not real comfortable, but you can lie on your back and move around a little—we can give you a yoga mat to lie on.”

  Rosie showed Box how a tack-strip on one side of the carpet pulled free. The carpet, when rolled back, revealed nothing but a wooden floor. Annie pushed a concealed button under the dash, and a piece of the floor then slid smoothly aside, revealing the space below. “Custom work from this good ol’ boy out in San Diego,” Rosie said.

  Box looked at the hideout and said, “My God, that’s a lot of coke. How much can you get in there?”

  “Five hundred kilos is the most we’ve ever done. Had to drive back roads everywhere, to dodge the scales,” Annie said.

  “Don’t tell her all this shit,” Kort wailed. “What’re you doing? She’ll tell the cops.”

  “If the cops get her, she goes to prison, or worse,” Annie said. “No percentage in telling the cops anything.”

  —

  AT MIDLAND, they stopped at a convenience store for snacks and then at a Buffalo Wild Wings for a meal before heading south. Kort argued that Box should be chained up and locked in the hidden compartment before they left the RV, but Box looked so defeated that Annie and Rosie made her promise not to run away, or cause a commotion, and Box said, “Like I keep saying, what am I gonna do, call the cops?”