Standoff

Five

Gomez was drunk. That made two of us. The Ranger waved a shot of tequila around in front of his shiny face.

“An Arab, a Frenchman, an American and a Mexican are ridin’ down the Interstate,” he said. “The Arab picks up an AK-47, shoots some rounds and then throws the gun out the window. The American asks him why he did that and the Arab says, ‘We got so many of these where I come from, I don’t care what happens to it.’ Next, the Frenchman picks up a bottle of wine, drinks a little and then throws it out the window. The American asks him why he did that and the Frenchman says, ‘We got so much wine in my country, I don’t care what happens to it.’ Then it’s the American’s turn: he picks up the Mexican and throws him out the window.”

Gomez laughed and it was funny and it was his joke and there was plenty of Mexican in him; so what was I gonna say? You can’t tell jokes like that?

A couple of other Hispanics in the bar fixed him with expressions that gave away nothing.

“That’s a good one,” he continued a little too loud, raising his shot glass and toasting it.

Gomez was smart, he could laugh at himself and he knew how to drink to excess. His performance review was certainly shaping up nicely.

“Next one: Why doesn’t Mexico have an Olympic Team?” he asked, believing he was on a roll. “Because anyone in Mexico who can jump or swim is in the United States. Heh heh heh …” He waved at a Mexican-looking character seated down the far end of the bar who gave him no reaction whatsoever. “Your turn, Cooper,” he said.

“Okay …” I said, checking the immediate area. Gomez was the center of attention and, given that no one else in the place was smiling, I figured the natives probably weren’t all that happy about the roast.

“I’m waiting …”

I had to think and there was a lot of tequila getting in the way of that. Something popped into my head. “Okay — two nuns. They’re riding down the back streets of Rome. One says to the other, ‘I haven’t come this way before.’ The other nun says, ‘It’s the cobblestones …’”

Gomez stared into the middle distance, processing the joke and failing to get it. But then a grin spread across his face, his eyes disappearing behind slits. “Ya got me — I was waiting for the racial epithet,” he said.

“I’m slurring religion today. Open season on nuns.”

“Jesus, Cooper. Gimme one fuckin’ good Mexican joke, for Chrissakes.”

I looked at him.

“Give it to me. I can take it,” he insisted.

I sighed. How far was I supposed to push this? “Okay … Why are there no Mexicans on Star Trek?”

“I dunno. Why?”

“Because Mexicans don’t work in the future, either.”

He frowned at me, which made me think that maybe I had, in fact, nudged it over the edge. I didn’t know Gomez that well. “Hey,” I told him. “You asked for it.”

At which point he broke into a grin. “Gotcha,” he said. “Hell, this shit don’ worry me. There are millions of illegals in America. I’m American and I don’ like that as much as any other American.”

“This doesn’t get under your skin?”

“Could be worse.”

“You could be a gay Mexican-Irishman,” I said.

He sniggered. “Look, the jokes are funny because there’s a grain of truth in ’em. And they hurt for the exact same reason. There’s a poor country next to a rich one; what do people reckon is gonna happen? And when you add drugs to the picture …” He tossed back one shot and then another and followed it with a suck on a lemon, which made him pull a face like he just sucked on a lemon. “Ughh — I hate this shit. Gives me the shakes. Can we switch to bourbon now?”

I raised my eyebrows at the barman, pointed at a quart of Jack among the bottles lined up on the shelf in front of the mirror beside him and waved two fingers at the bar in front of us.

The drinks sorted out, I asked Gomez, “How long you been here? Your family …”

“My father immigrated in 1941, after Pearl. He joined up the day they gave him citizenship and he fought on the beaches of Normandy. His youngest brother, my uncle, fought in Nam. I’m just following the leader ’cause I’m not smart enough to pull the rug out from under Warren Buffett. What about you, Cooper? What’s your story?”

I shook my head. “Nope, got no Mexican in my family tree.”

“Shit, Cooper …”

Gomez’s cell rang, distracting him. He picked it up off the bar, looked at the number. He didn’t recognize it but shrugged and answered anyway.

“Gomez,” he said, followed by, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah. Okay, thanks.” He ended the call and put the phone down. “The Sheriff’s Office.” He reached for the shot of bourbon in front of him and threw it back. “The road blocks on 10 and 20. They got nothing.”

The TV monitors scattered around the bar were tuned to the local news, which had spent the best part of the day rehashing what the Sheriff’s Office chose to divulge about the events out at Horizon. From what I could see through my tequila goggles, it wasn’t much — just the bare facts: there’d been a massacre; 27 people shot and killed; no suspects taken into custody. And that was the burr in the shoe right there. Where was the guy who’d run amok with a semi-auto before turning it on himself, the way these things usually went? There were suspicions that persons from across the border had perpetrated the crime, which wasn’t being denied in the TV news report. Just as I was thinking this, Matheson’s red face and curly blond locks bounced in front of the cameras. He began deflecting the only two questions anyone cared about: who did this, and why.

I gestured at the bartender and he hit us again.

“You still agree with the drug delivery theory?” Gomez asked, throwing back the shot.

“Senseless otherwise.”

“Still think it was …” He waved his shot glass around. “You know …”

I didn’t know. I looked at him. He was swaying.

“Think I have to go,” he said, belching wetly, sliding off his stool like something made of rubber and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

I followed, finding my feet with some difficulty and only after I realized they were at the end of my legs where they usually were.

“Floor’s moving,” Gomez said, leaning to one side while we both fished around in our pockets for cash to leave on the bar. “I need one more for the road.” He slapped a wad of ones and fives on the counter.

“Shhure,” I slurred, adding to the pile and signaling the bartender.

“No, no. Not a drink, a joke. C’mon, hit me. A Mexican joke. I’m religious. No more poking fun at nuns.” He grinned at his own drunkenness and then stumbled toward the door buried in darkness below a couple of faintly illuminated exit signs.

“Two Mexicans in a car,” I said, the bourbon coming back up and scalding my throat. “Who’s driving?” I pushed open the door, noise from the highway hitting us and causing me to stumble a little.

“Dunno. Who?”

“A cop,” I said.

Gomez cackled. “Heh heh heh … That’s one of mine.” His eyes slid off my face, the grin fading. “Going back to the motel to throw up in private. You?”

The thought of lying down on the sidewalk and closing my eyes was overwhelmingly appealing; but then just as I was considering what to use as a pillow, a cab pulled up beside us.

I woke, head pulsing like it was expanding and contracting, bladder brimming with cold acid, tongue thick and dry. I stumbled out of bed, made it to the toilet and leaned against the wall with an outstretched hand, a warmth spreading through my groin as I stood there, head back, letting go into the bowl. “God,” I said aloud to no one in particular and for no reason other than acknowledgment of the simple heavenly relief of taking a piss.

Next stop, the sink. I washed my hands and face and drank four glasses of water, stripped off my shorts and took a shower. It was only then that I looked at my watch: 4 AM. I stood under the steaming jet, waited for the pounding in my head to become bearable as the nightmare images from Horizon Airport once again began to play across my mind. From there, I moved to the hospital and then out into the hospital parking lot. Largely because of Gomez and me, the resources of Texas law enforcement had been uselessly diverted to stretches of highway over four hundred miles away. Had we missed something? Or had we just read the signs wrong? Or was this about something other than drugs? El Paso sat on the Mexican border and yet somewhere I’d seen a sign proclaiming that it was “the safest city in America”. How had it managed to pull that off with Juárez, the second-most violent city in the world, sitting literally a stone’s throw across the dry ditch grandly known as the Rio Grande? For sure El Paso would have its share of stash houses full of drugs, cash and weapons, its cartel-paid stooges, Mexican-Americans acting as hit men, go-betweens, drug smugglers and fixers operating on both sides of the fence. Maybe what had happened out at Horizon was just a new phase in El Paso law enforcement’s corner of the war on drugs.

I belched tequila with a bourbon chaser. Fifteen minutes had passed under the shower and I was no closer to any kind of revelation. I was, however, more or less sober. I turned off the hot tap and wound on the cold.

A short while later, I threw on my standard non-uniform uniform — a navy polo shirt, khaki chinos, low-cut walking boots, followed by an ankle safe holding a pair of Smith & Wesson cuffs. The Sig came aboard next, but not before a run through the usual checks ensuring a full 13-round mag with one in the pipe, ready to fire. The Sig Sauer 228 was the standard OSI issue. It was a heavy weapon — far heavier than a Glock, say — but it felt good in the hand. I slid the weapon into the Raven concealment holster clipped to my belt in the region of the small of my back, made sure the shirt wasn’t hooked up on it, and checked the weapon’s positioning. I used a left-hand holster, but located the pistol so that I could reach around, like I might be getting my wallet from my back pocket, and draw it right-handed.

I took a cab ride in darkness out to Horizon. The driver sat on the other side of a Plexiglas shield, which kept the questions to a minimum, like why I was going to the site of the massacre. He dropped me at the airport’s access road where a black and white was parked. I got out and walked. A flashlight came on and a female deputy approached. She was compact and round-shouldered with a large head and no neck to speak of and reminded me of a clothed basketball, but the image may have been prompted by the name on her chest — Wilson. She was young, maybe twenty. A light was on inside the vehicle and another young deputy was occupying the passenger seat, head tilted back like he was inspecting the lining. I heard snoring. This was the graveyard shift, so probably these were the SO’s youngest, rawest deputies, paying their dues.

“I’m sorry, sir, but this facility is closed,” Deputy Wilson said.

I handed over my credentials. “Much going on?”

“What’s your business here, Agent Cooper?” she replied, examining the ID under the flashlight and ignoring the pleasantries like she was the one who was hung-over.

“I’m already on your clipboard, Deputy.”

She went to the cruiser, retrieved it from the roof and rolled on back, flipping through a couple of pages as she walked. “Here you are … OSI, working with the Rangers. Why so early, Mr Cooper?”

“I left something lying around here yesterday.”

“Oh, what did you leave? Someone might’ve handed it in …”

“My common sense. You find one with a few holes in it, it’s mine.”

The deputy turned the Maglite in my general direction. I gave her a smile. “I can’t put that down, sir …”

“I’m just walking the crime scene, Deputy. Having a second look. We lost a man here.”

“We?”

“The Air Force.”

“Well, I suppose that’s all right. But stay out of the taped-off areas. Forensics hasn’t finished yet. It’ll start getting busy again here around first light. That’s in …” she checked her watch, “… 45 minutes from now.” She handed back my badge wallet. “Any theories about what went down here, sir, other than it was drug related?”

I shook my head and told her I had nothing. I hadn’t changed my mind about the special delivery, but I was equally sure that something important had been missed, or maybe misinterpreted. I doubted forensics had overlooked anything, but I have found through the years that going over old ground can sometimes help, or at least didn’t hurt. I told the deputy to have a nice day and she told me she’d keep an eye out for that thing of mine with holes in it.

It was a few minutes after five and there was no hint of the coming dawn as I headed for the ramp. The area itself was dark but I could still make out the pale shapes of the shade tents hovering like ghosts over the places where the victims had had their photos taken. A low chain separated the access road from the tarmac. I stepped over it and kept walking toward the runway. The cool desert air was still and quiet. I tried to imagine the airport as Bobbie Macey might have seen it before all hell broke loose here almost exactly 24 hours earlier. This small, cozy family facility didn’t have a tower or even a permanently lit runway. Macey and her co-pilot had split up prior to the flight for some reason, Macey going for a stroll out to the end of the runway, while Rick Gartner — the man in the coma — had stayed close to the Learjet.

I walked west, toward the airport’s few buildings. Sometime before first light, the two King Airs had arrived from the south at low altitude, flying nap-of-the-earth to avoid radar detection. Once on the ground they’d taxied to the ramp where their passengers had dispersed to kill everything that moved. It made sense to me that the shooting had started once the invaders were spread throughout the facility. Having reconnoitered what they were up against, they’d probably then just worked their way back to their aircraft on the ramp, taking care of business as they moved.

I crossed one of the few roads in the facility. Nothing to my left but black empty desert, lit with the occasional insufficient light. To my right was a row of Quonset huts. One of them had a shade tent set up out front, indicating a DOA. From this angle I could see some kind of vehicle in the hut, something classic that reminded me of my own car, a Pontiac Parisienne. This was a long way from the runway. Whoever hit this place was very thorough about it. I kept walking, kept mulling everything over. There was a chance that the bad guys had flown in prior to the assault and cased the joint. If so, there was a chance the aircraft registrations would be recorded either digitally or in a log or ledger. Equally likely, they could’ve driven here and had a look-see. In that instance there’d be no record — nothing.

I found myself in a paddock of sand, and stopped. The morning was utterly silent, nothing to disturb the high-pitched whine of tinnitus in my head, the legacy of too many explosions and a long period of incessant calling from my ex-wife’s lawyers. Though it was still relatively cool, a single droplet of sweat trickled down my temple and the Sig felt clammy in the small of my back. I flopped my shirt back and forth to get some ventilation going. Still no sign of the coming dawn except that the stars had vanished, frightened off by the coming white-hot furnace just below the horizon.

Coming into view in front of me were the unlit shapes of semi-trailers. Recalling the overhead photo of Horizon and the placement of bodies, there weren’t any victims indicated among them, but I was here now so I pushed on.

Down the back of the facility it looked less like an airport and more like a boneyard for old long-haulers. At least thirty trailers were lined up in rows while others were parked at random angles. In another fenced-off area beyond, an unimpressive sign announced that this was the headquarters of the National Truck & Transport Company.

I went up to a couple of trailers and slipped between two refrigerator units, the air in the confined space smelling of grease and brake dust. Nature was calling so I took a leak on a tire, second for the morning, and allowed my mind to drift. The killers had swept through the area while the cargo was offloaded. They murdered everyone in the area to make sure there were no witnesses. Keeping the assumptions going, I imagined the perps also wouldn’t have been happy for the type of transport vehicles they used to be common knowledge. Or the time the vehicle or vehicles had departed to be known. But were there other cards the killers were keeping close to their chests?

I zipped.

The assumption that sent the DPS off to Abilene on I-20 was the one that the perps were driving their cargo to Dallas. No doubt, DPS had also covered I-10. I kept moving between the trailers. And then it hit me. Maybe there was another reason. Maybe possible witnesses were killed not just to keep them from informing authorities about the transfer of drugs to vehicles that could be identified, but that the transport vehicle or vehicles had never left the airport at all. And what triggered this sudden revelation? The fact that I had just come around the end of a trailer to find myself face to face with two young guys dressed in oversized gangsta chic, bandanas on their heads and jeans belted tight halfway down the backs of their legs. They were twenty years old, maybe less, and were the image of Mexican gangbangers. And the other dead giveaway to this epiphany of mine? Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine guns hung off their shoulders.

The three of us looked at each other for what seemed like a full minute, but was probably closer to a second or two. They knew who they were. And they knew I knew who they were. They reached for their MP-5s and I went for the Sig. My fingers found its handgrip and I pulled the weapon clear as my legs got themselves pumping. I moved to the left, putting one shooter in the way of the other while allowing me to fire with my right arm extended.

One of the men panicked and began firing his weapon in my general direction, before it was properly aimed, half a dozen rounds drilling into the dirt maybe ten feet behind and beside me. The other man, the one who was obscured, was trying to untangle his weapon, which seemed to have been caught up somehow in the deep open scallops of his tank top. I got off two shots as I ran. One of these rounds smacked the guy wrestling with his weapon in the cheek. I knew that from the way a hand went to his face, and from the way he fell to his knees and discharged his weapon straight into his buddy. I couldn’t see the specific damage but I knew it was fatal by the way the second guy fell.

And the need for me to run ended, just like that. I went into a crouch. My heart was now competing with my breathing to give the tinnitus a run for its money. The survivor was on his knees beside his dead pal. Keeping low and my Sig aimed, I moved in and kicked their weapons clear. I pushed the man holding his face headfirst down into the dirt, planted my knee firmly in his back, and pulled one of his hands behind him and reached for my cuffs. A loud noise distracted me. Looking up, I scanned the area. It was a trailer twenty yards away. One door had banged open. The second door was following, swinging wide. Two dark shadows jumped down from the trailer. I heard them whispering hoarsely in Spanish to each other. I holstered the Sig. The guy beneath my knee — I snapped Smith & Wessons on his wrists.

One of the shadows had a flashlight, which also meant they probably had lights on inside their trailer. That suggested there was a good chance their night vision was shot. And if that was the case, it meant I would have an advantage for a small period of time. The guy face down in the dirt started groaning, the pain making itself known. Time to move. I crawled over to the MP-5s in the dirt, took one, dropped the magazine out of the other and shoved it in a pocket. I then ran at a low crouch toward a group of three trailers parked on the far side of the area.

“Aemellio! Crisanto! Aemellio …!”

It was the shadows calling. The gunshots had made them nervous and they ran back and forth, sweeping the area with their flashlight, searching for their pals, both of whom were immobilized, one permanently. The deputies on the front gate would have heard the gunshots along with anyone else in the vicinity. And pretty quickly this truck stop would be crawling with law enforcement.

The flashlight beam eventually found what they were looking for. The shadows raced up to their buddies, shouting and swearing in Spanish and English. Meanwhile, I came around the other side of the lot behind them and headed for the trailer they’d been occupying, the doors of which were wide open. I reached the trailer without being spotted, the shadows preoccupied. Inside, I could dimly make out chairs, bedrolls, food packaging and water containers. There were also boxes stacked to the roof. I didn’t have to wonder too hard about what might be in them.

The Sig was suddenly ripped from the holster in the small of my back. Shit, so much for the preoccupation.

“Hey, you gringo fuck. You gonna die for this. Shoot you with your own stupid gun.”

The guy’s breath smelled of Cheerios, beer and cigarettes.

“Drop it,” he said, referring to the MP-5. I set it on the ground with one hand, the other raised a little above my head. In the space between the two trailers, I saw a couple of patrol cars come power sliding from out behind the airport buildings two hundred yards down range, their rooftop LED lights firing rapid staccato flashes of red and blue into the night. The lead vehicle hit its high beams, washing the truck stop with a blaze of blue-white light. Whoever was driving knew where to come. The cavalry was on its way. All I had to do was survive another dozen seconds or so, which maybe wasn’t gonna to be so easy.

“¡Chingao!” snapped the guy who wasn’t pushing the Sig into my kidneys. “¡Dispara al cerdo!”

I had enough Spanish to translate his suggestion that the pig — me — needed to be shot. Any subtext, I missed it.

But then, perhaps glimpsing the reality of their predicament, his pal hissed in English: “No! We go’ need his pig ass!”

The guy with the gun was considering a hostage situation, using my life as a bargaining chip, negotiate for their freedom. I could almost hear the gears turning. How else were they going to get away? But after the violence done here at Horizon, I didn’t like their chances — or mine — of coming out of that negotiation alive. Pretty soon there’d be a lot of angry lead flying around and not all of it would be carefully aimed. So I pushed back against the Sig, which only made the guy reciprocate with a push of his own, digging it hard into my flesh.

“They’re gonna kill you after what you did here,” I said.

“We’re American just like you, chocha. We have rights,” snarled the jerk, the one who smelled like he poured Budweiser over his breakfast cereal.

“You’re gonna die here, fool,” I whispered. “And maybe sooner than you think.”

“Kill him,” hissed the asshole who wasn’t holding my Sig.

“Yeah, you know what? Fuck you, cerdo!” sneered the guy who was.

He forced the weapon into my back harder, just the way I wanted it. And then the trigger was pulled. I heard the hammer smack the stops as the shockwave of metal hitting metal snapped through the barrel, leaped the thin polo-shirt barrier and bit into my skin. But there was no blast, no bullet ripping through my kidneys.

There was nothing at all. And I knew why.

The guy holding the Sig was momentarily confused, which maybe gave me a couple of seconds before he pulled the trigger again. I turned and grabbed the gun with my right hand. As I spun, lifting the weapon and twisting it hard in a clockwise direction, his index finger became trapped inside the trigger guard. Bones snapped like fresh carrots as I kept the turn going. The man had to bend forward to take the pressure off his rotating hand and arm. But his pal had no such inconvenience. He raised the MP-5, brought its ugly short barrel up. So I whipped the Sig around, squeezed the shattered finger against the trigger and this time the weapon fired, as I knew it would, the round hitting the man just below the sternum. It seemed to happen in slo-mo. As he died his muscles contracted, squeezing the trigger of the MP-5 in his hand. The submachine gun discharged, and a short subsonic burst of lead ripped into his buddy’s thigh and groin. I felt the impact of the absorbed rounds jumping through the man’s hand and into my own as he screamed.

The Sheriff’s cruisers skidded to a halt in the gravel behind me and the doors flew open.

“DROP THE WEAPON!” a man shouted.

This time I wasn’t going to argue. I twisted the Sig and felt the weight come off it as the man fell away to the ground and kept up with his screaming.

“On your knees!” the shouting continued. “Hands where I can see ’em!”

He meant mine, so I put my hands behind my head, interlocked my fingers and got down on my knees, like I’ve made folks do a hundred times. He didn’t know that I was one of the good guys, and opening my mouth now in this highly charged situation might get me shot.

The deputies felt confident enough to approach, and rushed at me with their weapons raised, one either side of me.

“I know this guy,” said a woman.

I recognized the voice. It was Deputy Basketball.

“He’s OSI,” she said.

“What the fuck’s that?” replied the guy who seemed in some kind of command.

“OSI — United States Air Force,” I answered.

“Shut the fuck up,” he said. “Who asked you?”

“I’m gonna get my ID,” I replied. “It’s in my back pocket.”

“You ain’t gonna do shit. Don’t fuckin’ move. Not a fuckin’ muscle.”

I heard more voices through the radio in one of the Sheriff’s vehicles.

“What are you doing?” the boss behind me wanted to know.

“Calling this in, sir,” came the reply.

BRRRAAT!

Automatic fire.

I turned in time to see the deputy in the car lose the side of his head and slump sideways out of the car, toppling onto the dirt. The shooter was the guy giving the orders, a Sheriff’s deputy. He had one of the MP-5s, and he was bringing it round, looking for more targets. He found one.

BRRRAT!

Deputy Wilson’s mouth was open. I watched her fall down dead, one of her eyes a black hole.

BRRAT! BRRAT!

The weapon discharged a couple more times, but I didn’t see who wore the rounds as, at that moment, I was diving between the wheels of the trailer. I crawled forward as fast as I could, my hands, knees and feet kicking up the dust. What the fuck was going on? I asked myself. I didn’t need to think too hard about that to come up with an answer. In the trailer above me was over a hundred million dollars’ worth of reasons.

I scrambled out from under the chassis and crossed beneath another one beside it, went forward and crossed again, putting as much distance and metal as possible between me, the killer and his Heckler & Koch.

A flashlight beam swept beneath the trailers. “You can’t hide forever, asshole,” the rogue deputy called out. “Gonna be just you and me out here for another ten minutes at least.”

A burst of automatic fire exploded and a spray of jacketed rounds rattled and pinged off heavy metalwork somewhere nearby. The deputy was firing randomly, spraying the shadows beneath the trailers, hoping for a low percentage shot to take care of business.

“You a cop killer, Mr OSI!” he shouted into the night. “Ought’a be ashamed of yourself. They gonna hunt you down, gonna kill you right back for what you done here.”

I crawled out from under the trailer and rolled beneath its neighbor as another burst of machinegun fire shredded the quiet. The flashlight beam played beneath the trailers was reaching out for me, its thrust blunted in a brown halo of dust. I sat with my back to a tire and caught my breath, each exhalation a hoarse wheeze, my throat constricted and raw, coated by the same fine dust diffusing the flashlight beam. I coughed to clear my throat, spat on the ground and sat there for a minute, listening, the noise of my thumping heart obscuring almost everything. I looked down at my hands and saw the Sig cradled in my left. I couldn’t think when I’d had the opportunity to grab it. I’d been lucky, the weapon’s weird design foible saving my life. I pushed my palm against the end of the barrel, which shifted the slide back. Doing that had the effect of putting some distance between the hammer and the round’s primer cap, preventing detonation. By jamming the weapon hard into my ribs, the shithead had handed me a chance. I love the Sig.

A burst of fire. This one was close. Lead slammed into the tire close to my feet. The flashlight beam snapped on, bathing me in light. I’d been found. Dust kicked up all around me, the rounds sparked against steel chassis members and buzzed like angry insects as they ricocheted, leaving trails in the suspended dust lit up by the flashlight. Down on my back, I fired wildly at the ball of light between my boots — three, four, five shots. My eyes closed on those last couple, blinded by the dust. The beam went out suddenly, a man screamed and the shooting stopped. The threats also came to an abrupt halt. Had I killed the guy? I worked my way backward on my elbows until I felt the security of a wheel and tire behind me, the pumping of my own blood roaring in my ears.

I dropped the magazine and counted. Eight rounds fired, six remaining.

Noise crackled through the police radio. The sound was close by, closer than I thought. “Officer down! Officer down!” the deputy yelled breathlessly. There was stress in his voice. He was wounded. Badly, I hoped. I pictured him with the mike at his mouth, slumped in the cruiser’s open door, leaking blood from a mortal wound, talking with a last breath over the dead bodies collected around him. “Horizon Airport, near the trucking company,” he gasped. “Suspect is a white Caucasian male, thirties, fair complexion, over six foot, two-thirty pounds, wearing chinos and a navy shirt. Suspect has departed the scene and is armed and dangerous. Approach with extreme caution. Repeat, approach with extreme caution.”

In other words, if you see this guy, shoot first and maybe get around to asking questions at his funeral.

The dispatcher garbled something unclear.

“You’re fucking dead, motherfucker!” the deputy yelled out, stronger than he’d sounded talking to the dispatcher.

A police siren. It was distant but approaching, the volume of the sound building. Time was running out. I glanced around the side of the tire at my back. Open ground and fresh air lay beyond. I crawled out of the shadow, got up and ran, the desert beneath my feet now a grey monotone in the dim awakening of first light.