Two Graves

He angled toward the line of cottonwoods along the river. The spotlights followed him for a while, with more desultory megaphoned commands, until he entered the trees. At that point they gave up.

Hidden within the protective canopy, he sat down to rest on the banks of the shallow creek of the San Pedro. He tried to eat, the food like cardboard in his mouth; he forced himself to chew and swallow. He drank some more water and resisted the impulse to unwrap his freshly blood-soaked bandages.

He estimated that Helen and her abductors would cross the border around the same time or perhaps shortly ahead of him. It was remote, barren desert country, covered in greasewood and mesquite, riddled with unmarked dirt roads used by illegal aliens and smugglers of guns and drugs. Der Bund would certainly have arranged for transportation on the Mexican side, along one of these dirt roads leading to Cananea, thirty miles south of the border. They would be traveling this web of improvised roads, and he would have to catch them before they reached the town—and the paved roads that led away from it. If he did not, his chances of ever finding Helen dropped to almost nil.

Standing again, he limped down the mostly dry bed of the river, once in a while splashing through stagnant pools of inch-deep water. He might, even now, be too late.

About half a mile south, through the thin screen of trees, he spied distant lights. Moving to the embankment, he peered out and saw what appeared to be a lonely ranch, sitting by itself in the vast desert plain. It was occupied.

The moonless night provided cover for his approach. Soft yellow lights shone in the windows of the main adobe building: an old whitewashed structure surrounded by broken-down corrals and ruined outbuildings. The gleaming, late-model SUVs parked outside, however, indicated the place was now being used for something quite different from cattle ranching.

Pendergast approached the parking area at a partial crouch. He saw the momentary glow of a cigarette and noted a man at the front door of the house, watching the vehicles and the approach road, smoking and cradling an assault rifle.

Drug smugglers, without doubt.

Keeping to the dark, Pendergast circled the house. Parked to one side was a motorcycle: a Ducati Streetfighter S.

Moving now with exquisite care, Pendergast approached the house from its blind side. A low adobe wall separated the scrub desert from the dirt yard. He crouched at the wall and, with a cat-like movement, hopped over it and darted across the dirt yard, pressing himself against the flank of the house. He waited a moment for the stabbing pain in his leg to recede. Then, reaching into his pocket, he removed a small but exceedingly sharp knife and continued along to the corner.

He waited, listening. There was the murmur of voices, the occasional cough of the man smoking outside. After a moment, he heard the man drop the cigarette butt and grind it out with his foot. Then came the flick of a lighter, the faint glow of indirect light over the dark yard, as a fresh one was lit. He heard the guard inhale noisily, breathe out, clear his throat.

Pressed against the corner, Pendergast felt in the dirt, picked up a fist-size rock. He tapped it softly against the ground, then waited. Nothing. He scraped the rock in the dirt, making a somewhat louder noise.

Around the corner, the man fell silent.

Pendergast waited, then scraped again, a little louder.

Silence still. And then the low, furtive crunch of footfalls. The man approached the corner of the building, paused. Pendergast could hear his breathing, hear the faint rattle of his rifle as he moved it into position, getting ready to charge around the corner.

Slowly, Pendergast lowered himself into a deeper crouch, controlling his pain, waiting. The man suddenly whipped around the corner, rifle at the ready; in an instantaneous movement Pendergast sprang up, the tip of his knife severing the flexor tendon of the man’s right index finger as he simultaneously knocked the rifle upward and brought the rock down hard on the man’s temple. He went down without a sound, out cold. Pendergast detached the rifle—an M4—and slung it over his shoulder. He crept up to the Ducati. The key was in the ignition.

The beastly, skeletal-looking bike had no saddlebags, and he slung the improvised haversack over his shoulder, next to the M4. Once again, keeping low and to the shadows, he crept around to the three SUVs parked in the dirt lot and worked the point of his knife into a tire of each one.

He moved back to the Streetfighter, slid onto the seat, and pressed the ignition. The massive engine immediately roared to life, and—without wasting even a second—he kicked the shifter down out of neutral, eased off the clutch, and cranked the throttle wide open with a violent twist of his right hand.

As he laid a huge spray of dirt tearing out of the driveway, pushing the RPMs up past eight thousand while still in first gear, he could see in his rearview mirrors the drug dealers boiling out of the ranch house like bees, guns drawn. He briefly squeezed the clutch and kicked the bike up into second as a fusillade of shots sounded. The lights of the SUVs fired up as they started the engines, then more shots and cries of vengeance… and then all was behind him, disappearing into the dark night.

He continued south, working his way up through the motorcycle’s gears, tearing across the vacant desert. He had to intercept them before Cananea…

He urged the Streetfighter on ever faster as the immense night sky, studded with stars, wheeled overhead.

+ Eighty-Four Hours

WELL BEFORE DAWN, HE SAW A FLICKER OF RED IN THE immense desert blackness—the taillights of a vehicle moving fast through the distant brush. It was off to the southwest. Five miles farther south, he could see the glow of the town of Cananea.

Veering off, he cut across the open desert until he intersected one of the parallel tracks to the east. The vibration of the bike on the rough road, the slashing of brush against his legs, had shaken loose his bandage, and he felt blood creeping down his leg, the drops hissing on the hot muffler. He fished out another quartet of ibuprofen tablets and popped them into his mouth.

The vehicle was now invisible in the brush somewhere on his right. He raced along, the lights of Cananea growing in intensity. According to Mime, the first thing they would encounter would be several small maquiladora factories north of the town. Paved roads ran from the factories into town, where they joined a major highway. He could not let them reach one of those paved roads. He had to catch them in the desert.

He accelerated further as the glow in the southern sky brightened, allowing him to increase his speed. Cananea was now only two miles off. Figuring he was about even with the unseen vehicle, Pendergast swerved to the west, tearing across the empty landscape, the bike leaping ditches and popping through brush. In another minute he saw the vehicle’s lights virtually due west, ru

They had not yet, apparently, seen his headlight.

He unslung the M4 with his left hand and, keeping his right hand on the throttle, steadied the rifle across the handlebars, bracing it against his side. He checked to make sure it was in fully automatic mode.

But now the vehicles had seen his lights: they began to veer away from him, going off-road, crashing through the sparse brush.

They were too late. He was moving faster, he was nimbler, and off-road the big SUVs could not accelerate well. Coming in at an angle, he aimed the bike for the gap between the two vehicles and darted into it, braking hard in order to match their speed. The maneuver allowed him to identify the occupants of both vehicles, and it took only a moment to pick out Helen’s frightened face in the back window of the second. A man leaned out of the first and fired ineffectually at him with a handgun; Pendergast gu