Minor in possession

CHAPTER 19

We loaded the bound and muzzled Paco and Tony into the Trooper and taped them into place with more duct tape, fastening them securely to seat belts and seat supports. Guy taped the stripped-down AK-47 to Tony's shoulder. That way, it would be invisible through the blacked-out side and rear windows, but for someone up on a mountain watching with binoculars, the silhouette of the weapon would be clearly visible through the windshield. Meanwhile, Rhonda had the presence of mind to put together a packet that contained a blanket, thermos, and enough food to make us look like a pair of legitimate picnickers.

Rhonda took my. 38, checked it in a very businesslike manner, and put it inside her jacket pocket. I took possession of the 9-mm. Owens disappeared into his bedroom and returned carrying his military dress-uniform side arm, a formidable Colt. 45 that looked more like a cannon than a handgun.

Years before, Rhonda told us, she had been to Montezuma Pass on a weekend camp-out with a Girl Scout troop that had hiked the Huachuca Mountains' Crest Trail. Since she knew the way, Rhonda drove. Like a bat out of hell.

The Beretta had shown a mere twelve hundred miles on its odometer when we had picked it up at Sky Harbor International earlier that morning. None of those miles could have been nearly as tough as the ones Rhonda put on it that afternoon. By comparison, our jaunt up Yarnell Hill in her Spider several days earlier could have been a tame carousel ride.

Once we were off Highway 92, the road was paved for only a mile or two. As soon as it changed to chuck-holed gravel, we started climbing. The road was steep and full of switchbacks and one-lane turns, but Rhonda drove with fierce concentration, heeling the Beretta around corners and gunning the engine on the straightaways.

"How'd you know it was JoJo's briefcase?" I asked. Making asinine conversation helped take my mind off her driving.

"I told you. I recognized it, initials and all. He hasn't used it in years, I'm sure, but he's physically incapable of letting loose of old briefcases. He must have a dozen or so lined up out in his garage. He had half that many when I move out, and obviously, if he still has this one, he hasn't thrown away any of them."

"And the combination? How did you know that after all these years?"

"His birthday. Not very original, is it?"

The car sawed dangerously as she wheeled it around a washboarded curve faster than she should have. I swallowed the lump in my throat as she fought the bucking Beretta back under control.

"What are we going to do when we get there?" she asked.

"Find a place discreetly close to the blue Blazer, throw down our blanket, and neck up a storm."

"Are you kidding?" she demanded.

"No. I'm not kidding. There's nothing so boring as watching somebody else neck. If we make it embarrassing enough, maybe Monty will forget about us entirely."

"It'll be dangerous, won't it?"

"No more dangerous than being shoved around by that creep in the 4-X-4 last night. Besides, if Guy's got his information straight, there'll be three of us and only one of him. But we'll have to move fast, before he figures out how come his friends aren't getting out of the Trooper."

She nodded her understanding, and I reached over to pat her leg. "Are you scared?"

"Not yet. Later, I guess, right?"

"Right," I answered. "Later."

By then we were nearing the top of the pass, but the idiot light in the dashboard was beginning to glow dully. The engine was overheating. The Beretta was built for sedate freeway driving. Rhonda Attwood was treating it like a damn mountain goat.

With the temperature light glowing bright red and a cloud of steam rolling out from under the hood, we pulled into the rest area parking lot near the top of the mountain. There were only three other cars parked in the lot, two of them sedans side by side near the restroom building. One was a robin's-egg-blue Dodge Dart with South Dakota plates, while the other, a four-door Dodge Aries from Arizona, wore a bumper sticker that said, "We're spending our children's inheritance."

The blue Chevy Blazer occupied the parking spot nearest the road and as far away from both the restroom and the other vehicles as possible. Like the 4-X-4 that had pursued us in Phoenix the night before, the Blazer was another window-blackened behemoth.

I attempted to glance inside the Blazer as we pulled into the lot. No one was visible, but I didn't want to attract attention by appearing too interested.

Rhonda parked three spaces away, halfway between the other vehicles and the Blazer. As soon as she stopped the car, Rhonda got out and stretched, looking as though she'd been driving for hours. When I got out of the car and came around to stand beside her, she flung her arms around my neck and kissed me passionately on the lips.

"You want necking, fella?" she whispered in me ear. "I'll show you necking."

I pushed her away. "Let's go use the restroom," I said. "We'll try to get the lay of the land."

We stopped long enough to open the hood of the car and let billows of steam roll skyward.

"Should we add water?" Rhonda asked.

"No," I said. "Don't worry about it. It'll cool off of its own accord."

Guy Owens had told us that he'd give us a ten-minute head start, so there wasn't much time for reconnoitering. The restroom, built from roughhewn stones, would have made every environmentalist's conservationist heart go pitter-pat. A brass plaque affixed to an inside wall announced that the chemically treated composting toilets were a totally nonpolluting system and had been manufactured by some little one-horse company in Newport, Washington-wherever that is.

Unfortunately, I was far more concerned with finding adequate cover than I was with nonpolluting toilets. I tried looking out the eye-level window in the men's room, but that was no good. It faced in the wrong direction.

Back outside, I mingled with the occupants of the other two cars, touring retirees holding an informal coffee klatsch, as they drank coffee and munched sweet rolls. They were all totally oblivious to the drama unfolding around them.

One of them, a white-haired little woman leaning on a four-pronged cane, looked up at me and smiled. "Nice weather after all that rain, isn't it?"

I nodded and said nothing. What I wanted to do was tell them to get the hell out of there. To run for cover while spending their kids' inheritance was still an option, but I couldn't. Any sudden change in behavior would have alerted our quarry that we were onto him.

Rhonda still hadn't emerged from the ladies' room when off to the left, just above the parking lot, I spied a slightly raised ledge with a small bench on it. When she finally did appear, I seized her by the hand and dragged her in that direction.

"Let's go sit up there," I urged.

She nodded happily and trotted along, looking for all the world as though she was having the time of her life. People seeing her from a distance would have thought she didn't have a care in the world. They couldn't see the troubled look in her vivid blue eyes.

"What's going to happen?" she whispered anxiously, leaning close to my shoulder.

As if I knew, but I took a stab at it anyway. "We'll sit up there to begin with. Then, when we see Guy pulling into the lot, we can split up and go in opposite directions. At least that way he won't be able to get all of us at once. If it looks like he's getting away, shoot for the tires or the radiator, not the interior. We might hit Michelle."

She nodded. "Okay," she said, but she punctuated the word with a quick hoot of laughter that made it sound as though I had just cracked some incredibly funny joke.

Still laughing, she scampered over to the Beretta to fetch the thermos and bag of food. She came back toward me, smiling and swaying her hips-showing off. It made me wish we were all wearing flak jackets. Whatever was about to go down, I didn't want any harm to come to Rhonda Attwood's sleek little frame. Or my much larger one either, for that matter.

According to Ralph Ames, Rhonda was a talented artist. Now I learned firsthand that she was also a consummate actress. She was vibrant. She was happy. She was brimming over with infectious laughter. She was on. We made our way up to the bench, but she set the thermos down without pouring coffee. Instead, she wrapped her arms around my neck, ran her fingers through my hair, and pulled my face close to hers. The ardor in her probing kisses set fires in my system that almost made me forget why we were there.

Eventually, laughing again, she drew away. "Can you see anything?" she whispered.

"Can I what?"

"See anything. Through the windshield."

"No," I said, chuckling too in spite of myself. "I had my eyes closed."

She punched me in the arm, playfully and seriously at the same time. "Look this time, dammit." And then she kissed me again.

Below, I heard the sound of a vehicle laboring up the hill. Almost ten minutes had passed, so I was sure it was Guy Owens. It had to be. I pushed Rhonda away so I could peer over her shoulder and get a clear view of what was happening. Across the parking lot, the group of retirees chose that exact moment to begin dividing up into separate cars.

Guy and I had spoken briefly about what he would do. Spilling the money was an old trick, trite and cliched, but it had already worked once that afternoon, and it might work again. He planned to get out of the Isuzu, walk close enough for Monty to see it, and then let the money go tumbling all over the parking lot. We figured the diversion would give Rhonda or me or both of us time to get close to the Blazer.

But we hadn't counted on a crowd scene right there in the parking lot.

"Get moving," I urged fervently, willing the old folks to leave.

Rhonda pulled away from me. "Not you," I whispered. "Them! We can't do any shooting at all while they're still in the line of fire, understand?"

She nodded, her body tense and shaking with anticipation, but it never came to that. The crooks must have had some kind of fail-safe system, some prearranged warning code, that told the driver of the waiting Blazer that something was wrong. Long before the Isuzu crested the final ridge, and just as the Dodge Dart started for the rest area's exit, the engine of the Blazer roared to life. It lurched out of its parking place and shot off down the western side of the pass in a cloud of dust, leaving two carloads of shaken tourists staring in its wake.

There was never any question of us firing a weapon after him. It would have endangered a good half-dozen innocent bystanders.

Rhonda and I had leaped off the bench and were racing back to the Beretta as the Trooper came into sight. Frantically we waved at Owens, motioning for him to follow the fleeing Blazer. Fortunately, our desperate message got through. Without slowing down, the Trooper lunged past us and down the other side of the mountain while we were still clambering into the car and groping for seat belts.

We didn't take time to discuss strategy. It wasn't necessary. Rhonda dove for the driver's seat, and I climbed in the other side, rolling down the window as I went, preparing to fire from the vehicle if that proved necessary. The 9-mm was a far better weapon for that purpose than the. 38 would have been, and I had no doubt that I was the better shot.

After all, Rhonda Attwood's business was painting pictures. Mine was catching killers.

We knew both vehicles were ahead of us, but not because we could see them. The steep grades and blind curves limited the sight line. Occasionally we caught sight of the glint of sun on metal, but mostly what we saw were the two distinct clouds of dust that roiled up over the horizon, muddying the clear mountain air behind the fleeing vehicles.

Now, instead of the idiot light glowing, we could smell the odor of overheated brakes. The downgrade was incredibly steep, rocky and washboarded in spots, and crisscrossed by boulder-laden streams still swollen from recent rains.

Rhonda deftly picked her way through them, side-stepping the biggest rocks, avoiding the worst of the ruts. Once or twice the low under-carriage of the Beretta dragged on something, and I worried about what Alamo would have to say this time. But at least we weren't in Mexico. According to my calculations, the international border was at least a good half mile away.

We came down out of the mountains into a rolling rangeland that seemed like a mistake. It was as though we had left the red Arizona desert on the other side of the Huachucas and landed in the middle of the Great Plains. For miles before us spread a vast valley of lush green rolling hills, dissected by the narrow, rutted road meandering through it like a willful stream.

A herd of curious white-faced cattle hurried toward the road to watch us pass and see what all the excitement was about. Meanwhile, ahead of us, the two separate clouds of dust still pointed the way.

"Where the hell are we?" I demanded. "This doesn't even look like Arizona."

"It's the San Raphael Valley," Rhonda answered. "It's usually one of my favorite places, but not right now. How will we ever catch them?"

Her question was answered with terrifying immediacy. Like anxious flight controllers watching the separate blips of planes on a radar screen, our hearts sank as the blips suddenly merged, as the two clouds of dust became one that billowed skyward in an explosive eruption.

"Jesus!" I exclaimed.

"What happened?"

I knew instinctively what had happened although I couldn't have explained how. Thinking the Trooper was his only pursuer, the driver of the Blazer must have rounded a blind corner and then stopped, lying in wait until the Trooper rounded the same corner and then ramming it as it came by.

"Hurry," I commanded. "But don't get too close. Try to stop while we're still out of sight."

Following directions. Rhonda slowed and stopped in the middle of the narrow, rutted road just before the crest of a small hill. We left the Beretta where it was and scurried up the bank, using a small stand of scrub oak for cover. In the basin ahead of us, the smashed Trooper lay on its side with the two upper wheels still spinning, but the attacking Blazer hadn't escaped unscathed.

It stood drunkenly on two flattened tires, steam spilling from a ruined radiator. I wondered hopefully if maybe the driver had been injured, but just then the door swung open and a giant of a man emerged. He opened the back door and reached inside, dragging out something that could have been a helpless kitten for all the ease with which he picked it up and tossed it over his shoulder.

And then he was walking in my direction, striding toward the lifeless Trooper. As he came closer, I realized with a clutch of despair that the limp form slung across his shoulder was the inert body of Michelle Owens. Behind me, I heard Rhonda's quick intake of breath, but I turned and motioned her to silence, because in the crook of his other elbow he carried another death-dealing AK-47.

"Shit!" I whispered.

"What are we going to do?" Rhonda returned.

"He's got another rifle," I told her. "Guy must be injured or unconscious. I'll have to try to get closer, to get within range."

With that I started running through the trees. They were situated beside a small streambed that ran parallel to the road for about a quarter of a mile. I half expected Rhonda to follow, but when she didn't, I could hardly blame her. Why should she put her life on the line?

Monty-that had to be the giant's name-dropped Michelle on the ground and went to the disabled Trooper. He tried the back door, but it was apparently jammed. Next he looked inside. Setting his gun down so it leaned against the roof of the crippled vehicle, he clambered up onto the side. With nothing but his bare hands, he wrenched the door from its hinges. He plunged his arm down into the interior, but whatever he wanted was farther away than his outstretched arm could reach. Shaking his head in disgust, he dropped into the Trooper and momentarily disappeared.

Maybe he went to get the money, I thought, all the while dreading the bark of a gunshot that would tell me he had also had some other, more murderous purpose.

I ran then, straight out, breaking across the open field. The sheltering trees had allowed me to get even with the Trooper and go a little beyond it, so now as I cut back toward the road, I was coming from the south and slightly toward the west, the place from which he was least likely to expect an attack.

Monty and I must have heard the sound of the approaching vehicle at exactly the same time. His head popped out of the top of the Trooper like a gopher peeking out of its hole. He looked back up the road the way he had come. Just as quickly, he disappeared back inside without even glancing in my direction.

I looked to see what was coming and was astonished to see the Beretta hurtling down the rutted road toward the Isuzu. I still wasn't quite within range when he reappeared in the door of the wrecked car. As soon as I saw him the second time, I knew what was in his hand-Guy Owens' cannon-sized Colt. 45.

Cringing, I thought about how a powerful slug from the Colt would slice through the thin metal shell of the Beretta and through the soft flesh of Rhonda Attwood as well.

Monty was leaning on the frame of the Trooper, using it to steady his hand and arm. There's a moral decision to make the first time you fire a weapon at another human being. You make that decision once. That's the hardest. It's never as tough the second time.

He fired and I fired. With a yelp of pain, he jerked back into the Trooper while the. 45 spun away into the dirt.

Mine was a bad shot. A terrible shot. I'd aimed for his heart and hit him in the goddamned arm.

Beyond the Isuzu, the wounded Beretta clanked and clattered as the timing belt broke and the pistons pounded into the valves. Mortally injured, it kept on coming, making no attempt to brake, no attempt to stop even when the seizing motor quit with an explosive bang.

She's dead, I thought wildly. Rhonda's dead! The son of a bitch killed her!

The Beretta, caught in the ruts of the road, waddled on past me like a faltering drunk, then scrapped to a stop against an uphill bank ten yards away.

I ran like a man on fire, ran to the car and ripped open the door, but the car was empty. No one was there. A flat river rock the size of my shoe was duct-taped to the gas pedal.

I'll be damned! I said to myself.

Turning, I looked back up the road. Rhonda Attwood was running toward me, waving my. 38 over her head in triumph. In the other hand she carried Guy Owens' much-used roll of duct tape.

"We got him," she crowed as she came down the hill. "We flat out got him!"