Tío watched his message go then gazed out at the flat, dry land passing by. His old self, the man who had stayed in his hilltop hideaway for eight years, would not have sent the message. That man was cautious, careful, risk-averse, always with an eye on the future and doing what he could to safeguard it. He looked down at the seat next to him where the framed photographs of his daughters lay next to the printout of the burned skull. He had no future now. ‘Pull over,’ he said and the Jeep crunched to a halt on the side of the road. ‘Get out.’
The driver glanced at the guard in the passenger seat, then they both got out.
Tío closed the messaging app and opened another, which looked like nothing more than a big red button. He tapped in his password – carlosmariasofia – the middle names of his three dead children, then got out of the car.
The taller of the two guards stepped forward, finger on the trigger of his M60, his eyes alert. He was called Miguel, had a father in the cemetery and a mother called Maria-Louise he sent money to regularly and who lived in a nice bungalow on the Baja coast. The other guard was Enrique but everyone called him Cerdo because he ate like a pig and looked a little like one too.
‘Look back down the road,’ Tío told them, and they obeyed, neither of them quite sure what they were supposed to be seeing.
Tío could just make out the buildings of the compound perched on a hilltop about three or four miles back. It appeared tiny at this distance. Insignificant. It was supposed to. Anything big or grand would have attracted attention. The only thing drawing attention to it now was the smoke coming from one of the outbuildings. Tío lifted the phone, took one last look and tapped the red button on the screen.
There was a rumbling like thunder that shook the ground then the whole vista erupted in dust and fire as all the defences tripped at once.
Miguel and Cerdo raised their guns and instinctively moved towards Tío as a second series of explosions shook the ground and the whole hilltop disappeared in a cloud of dust and debris. Tío watched until it settled enough that he could see everything was gone. His whole world for the past eight years, swept away at the push of something that wasn’t even a button. So much for his legacy.
‘Let’s go,’ he said and got back in the car.
They drove away, following the signs to Highway 15 that would take them north to the Arizona border.
Tío never once looked back.