The back of Robert’s neck dripped with streams of sweat. At 109 degrees in the shade and climbing, the Chihuahuan Desert sun would cure his skin into leather. Robert and his colleague Harlan Woodman had been there six hours, which was not long by stakeout standards, but this particular Friday afternoon seemed endless.
Their shade was man-made, generated by a white-tarp lean-to propped up inside a wiry tangle of mature creosote bushes.
Robert sneezed for the umpteenth time, overcome by the plant’s pungent odor, and Harlan said, “If we don’t get word in five minutes, I’m sending you out.”
“That’s what you said five minutes ago.”
Harlan trained his binoculars on a boulder fifty yards off. “Allergies like that have got to be contagious.”
“Consider yourself inoculated.”
The boulder was no mere rock, but the marker for the entrance to a tunnel that dropped twenty feet down into the ground and then ran due south for three quarters of a mile, out of Arizona and into Mexico.
This tunnel was one of a huge network that connected Mexico to the southern United States. Miles and miles of tunnels dug out and exploited by everyone from solo coyotes to gangs to cartels with the intention of avoiding border patrol. No one this side of the border knew for sure how extensive they really were. Robert liked to imagine that the tunnel system was so pervasive that one of these days the whole unstable border would collapse and turn the route into an impassible ravine.
Three days ago, Harlan’s team had received a tip from Mexico’s federal police that the notorious Salazar Sanso would be personally involved in a bordercrossing drug run sometime today. The criminal mastermind was wanted in twelve countries for the sale and distribution of some billions of dollars of illegal substances. Sanso lived like a nomad lizard, never staying in the same hole long enough to be tracked.
Harlan was the only man who fully understood Robert’s personal dedication to cornering the man and bringing him to justice.
“So when this is over, what’s next for you?” Harlan asked, lowering the binoculars and turning over onto his back. His boots broke off several brittle branches.
Robert rubbed his eyes. “There’s always another Sanso.”
“Somehow, for you, I don’t think that’s true.”
“It’ll have to be. I’m too young to retire.”
Harlan’s radio crackled, and the voice of their task force commander came over the waves. “Sanso and company are in. Undercover officer is with them. ETA to your location ten minutes.”
“Copy that,” Harlan responded. The other surveillance teams echoed their awareness. Robert checked his watch.
“What’s it going to cost us to bring this one in, you think?” Harlan asked.
“If AFI does its job, we should have a zero casualty rate.”
“Optimist.”
“I’m just saying. Their agent has put Sanso in our crosshairs faster than any other informant we’ve recruited.” Robert sneezed again.
“Which makes me wonder if Sanso is really in the dark about him.”
“Well, the rabbit’s in the tunnel now with foxes at both exit holes.”
“Rabbit doesn’t match his profile.”
“When did you stop being my enthusiastic mentor, O wise one?” Robert checked his pocket-size GPS console to verify the positions of the six other surveillance teams in the area. Two choppers were at the ready but keeping their distance. With Sanso’s Mexico-side tunnel entry less than a mile away, all operations would have to go down on the Q.T. today.
“You never needed a mentor. You are hungrier for justice than anyone else I know. That’s all you ever needed to do well at this job.”
“What about fear? Gotta be a little afraid, you always told me.”
“Yeah, well that was for my sake.”
“Misery loves company.”
“Twist it how you want it, Lukin. The more aware you are of the fact that cockiness will get us all killed—”
“The better chance I have of staying alive.” Robert mimicked Harlan’s voice. “You look undead enough by my standards. You might have to revise your little rule.”
“If I’m still undead when I retire, I’ll think about it.”
The friends fell into an easy silence and trained their attention on the small, irregular slab of limestone that covered the tunnel entrance while the minutes ticked by and Robert’s nose twitched with the need to sneeze again.
The Mexican AFI—their Federal Agency of Investigation—had been working with the American DEA in a cooperative effort to corral Salazar Sanso for the past twelve years. This tip that Sanso would make a rare journey to accompany a payload into Arizona today had come from Javier Alanzo, an AFI special agent who’d devoted two years to infiltrating Sanso’s cartel. Because Sanso’s American citizenship was his only authentic one among dozens of false passports, the AFI had agreed to an arrest on American soil and later to extradite him to Mexico—then to the long line of other countries that wanted a piece of his skin.
The possibility that the man who had murdered Robert’s family was in reach caused the second hand to tick around the clock in slow motion.
When eleven minutes had passed, Robert wiped the sweat out of his eyes. "Something’s wrong.”
Harlan radioed his officer. “No sign of the target.”
“Hold your position.”
Robert got off his stomach and crouched instead, studying the limestone for movement. A fly bit him on the neck. He slapped at it and swore.
“Patience,” Harlan said.
“I have about thirty seconds’ worth left.”
“He’ll show in thirty-two.”
A soft thwack sound caused Robert to stand. Harlan’s radio lit up with surveillance teams shouting for Robert to hold his cover.
Another thwack penetrated the chatter. The sound of a roofer throwing old tiles off a roof three blocks away. But there was no residential neighborhood in this sprawling wasteland. Thwack, thwack. The sound of paintballs jettisoned from an air pistol.
No recreational areas around here either.
Or the sound of a gun going off underground. Robert plunged through the creosote and dodged Harlan’s hand, outstretched to restrain him. The spiny tip of an ocotillo branch caught his cheek, drawing blood as he flew by.
“Hold your position!” Harlan hissed.
“He’s not coming up,” Robert shouted. “I’m going down. I want him on my turf, Woodman.”
“Agent, stand down.”
But Robert did not stand down. He reached the limestone cover in four seconds and had it hauled off the entrance in two. In two more he swept the vertical hole with his gun and a flashlight, determined it to be empty, and began his descent on the rungs of an iron ladder.
When he was halfway down, a beam from Harlan’s light blinked over Robert’s head.
“You’re gonna blow the past fifteen years in fifteen minutes.”
Robert took the last four rungs of the ladder in a jump and hit the ground, then looked up.
“Three quarters of a mile and he’s back in Mexico. Don’t hold me back.” Robert bolted into the passageway.
This particular tunnel was one of the more elaborate that Robert had been in. He ran on a concrete slab under lights powered by some unseen generator. A filtration system pushed fresh air past his face, and sump pumps placed at intervals along the ground rattled and vibrated, sending the summer rains back to the surface.
Robert supposed a billionaire like Sanso who slept in snake holes rather than haciendas would invest in creature comforts where he could.
The tunnel was more or less straight for a hundred yards, then curved west about thirty degrees. At the turn, one of the fluorescent lights mounted high in the wall had gone out, casting the angle into a shadow.
Robert sprinted through it and found himself airborne before his mind registered that he had tripped. He sprawled, his palms and chin taking the brunt of the concrete, then was back on his feet with the agility of a cat.
He would not have stopped to see what took him down except for a sixth sense that the information was important. He turned, using his flashlight to cut through the shadows until it caught the shape of work boots and the hem of worn denim jeans.
A body. His flashlight traced the figure up to the man’s face.
Javier Alanzo’s body, with a blood-black gunshot hole in his right cheek. A pool of blood beneath his head. Not far from the body, a pair of leather cowboy boots lay on their sides, ruined with blood spatter and muddy blood caking the soles. Robert raised the flashlight to the light panel in the wall. Its plastic covering was shattered. From one of the gunshots that he had heard maybe, sent off in a scuffle.
He did not have time to do more than assess these basic facts as he bolted toward Mexico, no time to speculate what might have gone wrong, because after he had run a mere fifty more yards, the tunnel forked.
This was new information. Javier had never said anything about branches off this particular tunnel; maybe he didn’t know about it himself. Maybe this lack of knowledge had been his undoing, the surprise that blew his cover.
Which way? If Sanso was the rabbit with foxes at both ends of his hole, and the foxes didn’t know but two of these paths, the rabbit would go where there were no foxes.
Robert turned down the branch that led west. He radioed Harlan but did not get a response. This far underground, he’d have no backup but his own instincts.
The concrete paving down which Robert ran ended in dirt at yet another fork. The dirt that lined these branches looked darker, recently cut, but the illusion could have been caused by the temporary lighting, low-wattage bulbs in cages strung every ten to twelve feet. Stale air rather than fresh came out of these passages, and Robert realized he had not seen a water pump for nearly three hundred yards.
He believed he was still heading west. Maybe west by northwest.
Robert stopped to bring his breathing under control so he could hear. He listened for footsteps, talk, the rustling sound of pants as a man walked. He closed his eyes. Nothing.
He removed his flashlight from his utility belt and turned the beam onto the ground, looking for shoeprints or some other disturbance. Five desert pocket mice scurried away from his light in single file.
Finding nothing, he turned his attention to the walls, still listening. Halfway up the far wall of the left fork, at about shoulder height, he saw a smudge darker than the dry red soil. Blood?
Had Sanso been wounded during the confrontation with Javier? Was Robert following Sanso anymore, or someone else? Confident in the likelihood that the drug lord wouldn’t have exited these tunnels by the same entrance, Robert followed the blood smear like a road sign, taking the route as silently as a sidewinder down the center of the corridor. It took a sharp left—south—and Robert’s heart rate spiked at the prospect of losing Sanso to Mexico and another fifteen years of searching.
It stayed elevated when he rounded the corner and a metallic punch caught him square between his eyebrows. Robert reeled and hit the opposite wall but kept his feet.
A gun went off. Not his. Rock spray from the wall hit his face and got in his eyes. He shouted a protest, trying to locate his attacker with his other senses. Impossible.
A body slammed into his and clipped his wrist, making him lose his gun. Robert heard it bounce. Dropping the full weight of his body to his knees, Robert broke free of the grip and landed on top of his firearm. His eyes were running with tears to rinse out the grit, but he couldn’t will his lids to open.
A hard blunt object—the butt of a gun?—came down on Robert’s spine and he yelped. Fire shot down both legs and instantly flared into a tingling chill. He rolled, coming up with his gun. A voice that he imagined belonged to Salazar Sanso swore under his breath as if the words were a prayer.
Robert aimed at the voice and pulled the trigger, then rolled again, three times until he hit a wall. His boots scrabbled on the dirt, pushing him to slide up the wall and stand, leg nerves still buzzing, one hand on the gun, one hand working furiously at his eyes to clear them. He had to see his target.
The cursing intensified, then waned. Robert blinked until the dark tunnel formed shadows.
Ten feet away, his attacker had doubled over on his knees like a grief-stricken boy, clutching his stomach and mumbling. A weak lightbulb shone on his stocking feet, and Robert thought of the boots by Javier’s body, perhaps kicked off to avoid creating a blood trail.
The man swayed on his knees, then collapsed on his side, sweating and unconscious. Robert jumped to the body and turned it over, groping for a pulse. Salazar Sanso faced him from the ground, his hand falling away from a bloody wound in his side.
The enemy he’d hated for so long had become a mere man.