Trial By Fire

“Sister Anselm,” she said. “It’s Ali. I’m here. Can you hear me?”

Again there was no answer.

“Please,” Ali said aloud, praying again. “Please show me what to do.”

For a moment, all she did was examine the extent of Sister Anselm’s injuries. Her eyes were closed, her breathing shallow, her face beet red. That could have been from heatstroke or sunburn, or maybe a combination of both. Her scrubs had been torn to shreds. The pieces of bare skin that were visible were bruised and bloodied. Her right leg lay at an u

“Help is coming.” Ali tried to sound confident and reassuring, but even as she said the words, she knew she was lying. The kind of help that was available right now wasn’t the kind of help Sister Anselm needed. If she had broken limbs or worse-if her back was broken-she would need to be airlifted from the scene in a real medevac helicopter. There was no possibility that they would be able to load her into one of the cramped seats of the ATF helicopter where Ali and Agent Robson had ridden.

Knowing she must have additional resources, Ali was reaching for her phone when Sister Anselm’s eyes fluttered open. For a moment she seemed puzzled by her surroundings. Then, seeing Ali’s face, she managed a tiny smile.

“You came,” she croaked. “You must have gotten my message.”

“I got all your messages,” Ali returned. “Just a minute.” Punching Redial, she called Dave’s number and let out her breath when he answered after only one ring.

“What the hell’s going on there?” he demanded.

“We’ve found Sister Anselm. She needs an air ambulance as fast as you can get one here.”

“Where’s here?” Dave wanted to know.

“Log on to my e-mail account,” she said, giving him the name and password. “Open the last e-mail from Sister Anselm. You can get the GPS coordinates from that-or else the helicopter pilot can. They’ll know they’re getting close when they see a DPS car parked along the road. Tell them to take a heading north from the big boulder just to the west of the vehicle. We’re down in a gully.”

She could tell he was still writing. “How bad is it?” he asked.

“Bad. They’ll have to put her on a stretcher. Even with one of those, I’m not sure how they’ll get her up and out.”

“Hanging up now,” he said, “so I can call it in.”

Ali turned her attention back to Sister Anselm. Her eyes were closed again.

Ali was sure the injured woman was dehydrated, but with her face sideways in the sand, there was no way to offer her a drink from one of the bottles.

Ali opened the first-aid kit and rummaged through the scrambled mess inside until she found a roll of gauze. She pulled off a hunk of that, soaked it with water from one of the bottles, and then held it to Sister Anselm’s parched lips. Then she poured the water from the other bottle over Sister Anselm’s hair. At the touch of the water on her skin, her eyes blinked open again.

“Water,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

“Suck on the gauze,” Ali told her. “When you get the water out of that, I’ll wet it again. Can you move?”

“No. I think my hip is broken. It hurts,” she added. “Hurts like crazy, and that’s good. It means my back isn’t broken, and I’m alive.”

Just barely, Ali thought.

She loaded the strip of gauze with another dose of water. While Sister Anselm sucked on that, Ali peered up at the sun. It was setting, but the stark line of shadow that now divided the gully in half was still a good foot and a half away from Sister Anselm’s overheated body. Hoping to create some shade, Ali pulled the blanket out from under her shirt and flapped it open. By draping the blanket on her left arm and holding it out straight she was able to create a small patch of temporary shade. With her right hand, she pulled a laminated sheet of first-aid instructions out of the kit and used that as a fan.

The whole time she had been climbing down the bank and scrabbling around in the sand, she had been half listening for the sound of gunshots. Even if a shoot-out occurred a mile or more away, she expected that the sounds of weapons being fired would travel long distances in this empty landscape. Once or twice she heard what sounded like the remote clatter of the helicopter’s rotating blades.

Now, though, fa

“More water,” Sister Anselm murmured. “Please.”

Giving her more water was a two-handed procedure. Ali had to let go of the blanket in order to pick up the bottle of water. After saturating the hunk of gauze again, she returned it to Sister Anselm’s lips.

Ali was about to pick up the blanket again when she heard a metallic ka-chunk. A distinctive sound. The sound of a shotgun round being chambered. She froze.

“Where are the keys?” a man’s voice said. “I want the keys!”

Ali glanced up. The man stood at the top of the bank, aiming a loaded shotgun down into the gully. Ali knew enough about shotguns to understand that, from that range, being hit by a blast from a shotgun would be fatal.

“Bring me the keys,” he ordered. “Now!”

Ali realized in a split second what must have happened. Somehow the bad guy had managed to take possession of the Gila County deputy’s vehicle. Had the deputy also been shot?

Far in the background, Ali heard the distant clatter of the helicopter, but what did that mean? Had the shooter somehow managed to baffle Agent Robson and the others in the helicopter with a change of vehicles? If so, by now they must have realized their error.

They were coming, but Ali knew they were too far away to provide any kind of counterforce to the man staring down from the bank with his finger clamped to the trigger of a loaded shotgun.

She stood up and faced him. He was a small man, middle-aged and balding. He had a slight paunch beneath a worn Grateful Dead T-shirt and jeans. He was the kind of man who wouldn’t merit a second glance in a grocery store or post office, but with a shotgun in his hands, he commanded her absolute attention.

“Who are you?” she asked. “What do you want?”

“Insurance,” he said. “You’re my ticket out. Come here now or I’ll kill you both.”

Ali glanced down at the woman lying at her feet. Sister Anselm was helpless, and perhaps near death. Looking into the barrel of that shotgun, Ali realized that she, too, was near death. But she wasn’t helpless. Her knees may have been knocking, her heart hammering wildly in her chest, but Ali was armed. Sister Anselm was not.

“Move!” he ordered.

He probably wouldn’t expect that she would be carrying a weapon. It occurred to Ali that once she started climbing the bank, she might be out of his line of vision long enough to draw her Glock, but that wouldn’t be easy, especially since climbing down into the gully had been a two-handed job. She suspected that climbing back up would require both hands as well.

She had no idea how long she hesitated, but it was too long for his purposes. “I mean now!” he ordered. “Move or I start shooting.”

Ali didn’t doubt that he meant it. She moved, plowing through the hard-packed sand and making her way toward the steep bank. Approaching it, she looked for a route that would provide some cover.

“Come up right here,” he called, pointing with the barrel of his weapon.