The Ambushers

XVIII

IT WASN'T QUITE that cut and dried, of course; and some thirty-six hours later, watching the sunrise from a barren knoll behind Antelope Wells, New Mexico, I kind of wished I'd made the statement sound a little less definite.

There was, after all, no law saying that Catherine Smith absolutely had to go through the town below to reach the Nacimiento Mountains. I mean, there was only the one road, but like most roads it had two ends. By making a detour of several hundred miles yesterday, she could have found a place where the border was open all weekend, and then swung far down into the Mexican state of Chihuahua to approach the Nacimientos from the south. It would have involved a lot of hard driving, but it could have been done. If it had been, we could wait here forever and get nothing but a few cactus needles for our trouble.

There was an even simpler route she could have used When she found the gate closed at The Wells. It required only a pair of pliers or a fence-cutter, some knowledge of cross-country driving, and a little nerve. I mean, the international fence between the United States and Mexico runs through endless miles of uninhabited wasteland and can hardly be called impenetrable.

You can slip through on foot with little risk of being caught; many people do. Even getting a car across the line unseen isn't prohibitively difficult. Of course you're in trouble the first time you're stopped and asked for your papers, but down in the desolate area towards which Catherine was heading, this wasn't a problem serious enough to act as a deterrent.

I guess I was betting on her accent. I was hoping that, accustomed to the well-guarded frontiers of Europe, she wouldn't realize that all that stood between her and Mexico was a few strands of lonely barbed wire. I was gambling that in any case the idea of leaving the established road to drive off across the trackless desert would be foreign to her-a lot of people, particularly women, just aren't aware of how far off the pavement an ordinary car can be made to go if you don't mind beating it up a little.

There was also the consideration that she's probably made arrangements for an eventual rendezvous with Max, based on her entering Mexico through Antelope Wells, and that she'd rather stall a few hours waiting for the gate to open than make a drastic change of plan.

This was all very logical, but it didn't help my state of mind greatly as the sun rose and the morning wore on and I watched the little town through my binoculars, waiting for a white station wagon with Arizona plates to put in an appearance, or any car driven by a well-stacked blonde.

At last Sheila, who'd been catching up on her sleep in the

Volkswagen, came up to join me.

"Anything yet?" she asked. I shook my head. "What if she doesn't come?" Sheila asked.

It wasn't a question I wanted to have to answer, but I tried to sound confident as I said, "Then we'll head down into Mexico and try to pick up her tracks. She's got to hit that road somewhere."

"It seems-" Sheila hesitated. "It seems like a long chance."

"It's always a long chance," I said irritably. "Would you rather have been the one who held Gerda Landwehr's arms while I used the soldering iron on her face and asked the questions? This way Catherine's done the dirty work for us. I like it that way and so, I think, will Washington. There's less chance of a kickback. And don't forget, the girl's got a cover story that'll get her into von Sachs' hideout, complete with documents. We can use that. We can use her. The problem is just catching her and maneuvering her into a position where she's got to cooperate."

"But she wants von Sachs alive."

"Sure," I said. "So what? Once we've got our hands on the general, let 'her try to keep him that way. I told her, any doublecross and all bets were off. Well, they're off. I can play just as crooked poker as any bleached blonde." Sheila frowned dubiously. "Aren't you being, well, just a little Machiavellian?"

"If it works, don't knock it." I kept my voice casual.

"And it's working. Here she comes."

A white station wagon was approaching down the road from the north, dragging a cloud of yellow dust behind it. I passed the binoculars to Sheila. She took a moment to adjust the focus for her eyes; then she nodded.

"I can't quite see her through the glass, but that's the car Max was following me around in. What do we do now?"

I didn't answer immediately. I reclaimed the binoculars and watched the station wagon drive on, past the trailer and shack that housed the American border man, who wasn't interested in people going south. The White car passed through the open gate and was stopped on the other side by a Mexican official in a khaki uniform. Catherine got out. The morning sun was bright on her elaborate hairdo. She was wearing her loose flowered blouse and snug white shorts. Even at the distance, the leg-display was impressive. I lowered the binoculars.

"We might as well break out the supplies and eat," I said. "The Mexican border routine takes a while; and we want to let her get well on her way before we put in an appearance down there. I'd better figure out a place to hide the rifle. I seem to recall they're kind of sensitive about firearms…"

An hour later we went through the border formalities in our turn, with the.30-06 Winchester tucked inside the Volkswagen's rear-seat cushion, and various other weapons distributed about our persons, but the Mexican officials seemed to be concerned only with the engine number of the car. Once we'd located that, and paid fees for both humans and machinery, it was plain sailing, and we drove on with a little sticker on the windshield to prove we were in the country legally.

A mile or so beyond the edge of town I checked my watch, stopped the Volkswagen, and got out to examine the ground ahead. Already the road was no more than a pair of ruts running south into a flat, barren landscape of mesquite and cactus, with bluish bluffs and mesas showing around the distant horizon. I got back into the car.

"What were you looking for?" Sheila 'asked when we were rolling again, if you could call it that. The road didn't encourage any speed beyond a slow crawl.

"I wanted to make sure I'd recognize her tire tracks," I said. "Not that we're likely to hit enough traffic to confuse the issue. And I doubt that tracking is going to be necessary in any case." I glanced at my watch again. "She's only an hour and fifteen minutes ahead of us. We'll poke along behind, making sure the wheels don't fall off this bug. I'm betting we'll find her within fifty miles. She'll be sitting by the roadside waiting for us-well, for somebody."

"What do you mean?"

I said, "That's not the most patient girl in the world, and I don't think she's had much experience with this kind of country and this kind of driving. She's been delayed, remember. She had a head start from Tucson but she's lost it. She knows that if Max failed to stop us we'll be breathing down her neck. She may drive carefully at first, but pretty soon she'll gain confidence and start pushing. And you just don't do that out here. Sooner or later she'll hit a bump or a rock or a soft spot a little too fast. Scratch one junior-grade Ford. All we've got to watch out for is that we don't pile up this little heap, too, and put us all on foot. And that we don't run into any cute little ambushes and let her take it away from us."

I'd called it very close. Actually it was fifty-three miles before, leaving the VW below a rise and scouting ahead on foot, I spotted the white station wagon stuck in a sandy arroyo. I went back to the car, pulled up the rear seat, got out the rifle, and loaded it. I gave it to Sheila, who'd come around the car to watch.

"You'll cover me," I said. "She's hung up in a wash about a mile and a half ahead. I'll give you time to get into position on that little 'ridge to the west. Then I'll drive up dumb and innocent and let her get the drop on me. It's safer that way. If we try to surprise her, somebody might get killed."

"Safer!" Sheila's voice was concerned. "If what she wants is our car, what makes you think she won't simply shoot you?"

"She doesn't just want the car," I mid. "She'll want to know what happened in Tucson after she left. She'll want to know about Max. She'll talk before she shoots. Now let's get our signals straight. Assume I'm covered, with my hands in the air, like this. If I close the right one like this-my right-that means you put a shot into the ground somewhere near us to let her know you're there. If I close the left one, shoot a leg out from under her. Under no circumstances shoot for anything but arms or legs. We want her alive. Remember that."

"Right, dirt. Left, leg." Sheila's face was a little pale, but her voice was steady. "All right, Eric."

"If I drop flat, that means things are about to get really tough, and you're supposed to open up to distract her from me. But watch what you're doing. That.30-06 packs a respectable wallop. We don't want her dead, or me either. Okay?"

"Okay." She looked down at the rifle in her hands. After a moment she looked up. "Be careful, darling."

"Sure," I said. "I'll give you hail an hour. On your way."

As she turned from me, I realized that maybe I'd been supposed to kiss her or something. After all, we'd made love and shared some fairly intimate conversation. However, I was too busy thinking about the problem ahead to keep track of what sentimental gestures might be expected of me. It was kind of like going into the bush after a man-eating tigress that, although dangerous, was worth a lot of money if it could be delivered alive to the zoo.

I moved away from the car a reasonable distance and settled down in the mesquite to watch. After all, Catherine could have heard us coming. That little air-cooled engine isn't the most silent mill in the world. She might not wait for us to come to her.

Nothing moved in the mesquite or along the road. The sky was clear and blue and the sun was bright and hot and there was no sign of life on the desert. Up ahead the saw-toothed silhouette of the Naciinientos was visible now, low on the horizon. Behind, in the direction of Antelope Wells, there was nothing but the endless ruts of the road in the barren plain.

I gave Sheila the full half hour I'd promised her. Then I got back into the Volkswagen, started it up, and drove slowly forward along the road, such as it was. At a guess, this had once been the main north-south Indian trail through this region, later followed by ox-drawn Mexican carretar cutting deep tracks that had been elaborated by the rubber-tired vehicles of more modern times. When the old tracks got too deep in a given spot, the next guy coming along had just moved the thoroughfare off into the desert a few yards and started making new ones. In places I had a choice of three or four different routes, all terrible.

Presently I reached the edge of the arroyo. I stopped on the bank, looking at the station wagon out there. She'd really got it dug in. Coming too fast, she'd apparently been caught unawares by the sudden drop and plunged down the bank to hit the rough crossing below much too hard. She'd lost control and swerved out into the soft sand. Trying to back out, she'd buried the rear wheels to the hubcaps.

There was nobody in the station wagon. Nothing moved in the low brush along the bank. I got out of the VW, taking the keys with me. I walked down the bank and across the sand to the white car. There was chewed-up brush around the rear wheels where she'd tried to get traction and failed. I bent over to pick up a handful of sand at the rear of the wagon. It smelled strongly of gasoline. She'd not only managed to get herself stuck, she'd apparently put a rock through the gas tank as well.

Still bending, in the most helpless and tempting position possible, I heard her rise from the mesquite on the bank above and behind me.

"When you straighten up, Mr. Evans," she said, "I want to see your hands above your head. Don't turn until I tell you."