Steven Havill: Before She Dies

“All right. Sit tight and stay on the line,” I said, laying the receiver on the seat. I didn’t know what to think, since I assumed Carlos Sanchez would be meeting someone at the border… someone who would collect the vehicle and, I thought, hand over a lump of cash-perhaps ten, maybe fifteen thousand for such a vehicle.

But as yet, I saw no clear way for Sanchez to return to Posadas once the deal was made. Maybe that was his plan. Maybe this time he was headed south along with the Suburban. Two murder raps made for powerful motivation.

Down below, a blast of light illuminated the area around the garage. The backup lights of the Suburban were bright, and for a moment, perfectly clearly, I could see the wooden doors, open wide. Sanchez pulled out of the garage, stopped to get out and close the doors, and then drove out of Mateo Esquibel’s yard. I tracked the Suburban as it drove through the village and reached the pavement. “Turn right to Mexico,” I said, and as if he heard me, the vehicle turned toward the border. I started the Blazer and pulled out, lights off. By the time I reached the pavement, I could see the brake lights of the Suburban flash as Sanchez braked for the tight curve just before the customs’ gate. I accelerated hard, wanting to narrow the distance while the slight rise of hill separated us.

As I approached the curve, I shoved the gear lever into neutral and clicked off the engine. I wanted to roll to a stop just as I crested the hill, so that when Carlos Sanchez got out of the truck, he wouldn’t hear the engine or tire noise of my old Blazer.

At the same time, hidden behind a hillock on the Mexican side of the border, Captain Tomas Naranjo of the Federales had promised that he’d wait for my signal before making a move-in case our quarry somehow slipped through the gate.

Our timing was perfect. Our luck could have been better.

Carlos Sanchez never looked back. If he had, he’d have seen the silhouette of my vehicle a hundred yards away, squatting in the middle of the road. He got out of the Suburban, walked to the border gate, and unlocked it. Simple as that. As Nick Chavez had once said, theft was simplest if the thief had a key. I wondered who Carlos Sanchez had bribed for that useful copy.

He reached for the top bar and started to swing the heavy welded pole gate toward the American side.

I started the engine of the Blazer with one hand and barked into the cellular phone, “Move it, Robert.” At the same time, a light show erupted from south of the border as two vehicles exploded from behind a long creosote-bush-studded sand dune.

Sergeant Torrez had not waited at the turnout. When he’d seen the Suburban pull out of the village, he’d coasted down the hill and now was less than two hundred yards behind me.

I saw the flashing lights across the border; the Blazer’s back tires chirped as I floored the accelerator.

Carlos Sanchez froze in his tracks for only a heartbeat as lights converged from both directions. With a lunge, he pushed the gate away and sprang toward the Suburban. Just as Tomas Naranjo’s jeep slid to a stop in a cloud of dust and sand thirty feet from the gate, Sanchez accelerated hard, all four massive tires chewing sand and gravel. The Suburban spun to the west, its shiny back bumper narrowly missing the gate as it turned.

I yanked the wheel to the right, thinking to block Sanchez, but back up the highway was not where he had in mind. The Suburban shot off the side of the road and bounced across the ditch, paralleling the border fence. For two hundred yards, the fence was high and solid, welded rails and wire. But farther on in both directions, it shrank to nothing more than six strands of barbed wire.

If Sanchez was headed up the line, where he could drive the vehicle right through in a tangle of posts and snapped wire, he’d face two squads of eager Federales, itching for some excitement to cap their day.

Even as I swung off the pavement in pursuit, I saw Bob Torrez’s old pickup truck slide in a circle and catapult off into the sand and bushes.

But the border wasn’t what Carlos Sanchez had in mind, either. His truck thundered along the rough fence access road, dove down through an arroyo, and, as it crested the other side, swung back to the north.

If I had had the speed, I could have cut him off when he turned across my path. But I hadn’t engaged the front hubs of the Blazer, and was caught off guard. Now, stuck in two-wheel drive, I couldn’t keep up, as my back tires churned and spun in the soft sand. Bob Torrez guessed Sanchez’s route back toward the village, and angled to intercept him.

I saw his pickup hit a hummock of grass and go airborne, shedding its spare tire, oil cans, tools, and part of the right taillight assembly. In between bounces, I grabbed the police radio microphone off the dash.

“Three oh seven, make sure that highway’s blocked,” I shouted. “Take it at the first switchback.” Mears wouldn’t have any trouble putting a cork in the highway. All he had to do was park sideways at the turn. The steep mesa face would take care of the rest.

As we approached the south side of the village I could see two sets of red lights coming down the hillside as Mears and Bishop cut off Carlos Sanchez’s escape to the north.

Ahead of me, the lights of the Suburban disappeared as the vehicle plunged down into the main arroyo that split the village in half. I turned away from the edge, knowing that it was a sure trap for two-wheel drive. Bob Torrez spun north, and just as the Suburban roared up and out on the west side of the arroyo he reached the dirt path that was Regal’s southernmost main street.

Sanchez didn’t flinch as Torrez’s old truck plunged into his path. The two vehicles met with a crash, the impact spinning the pickup around so that it faced back the way it had come. With a scream of bent metal against rubber, Sanchez flogged the battered Suburban into one of the side lanes.

By then I had worked my way north along the arroyo to the lane, and when I reached the crumpled pickup I paused just long enough for Torrez to dive in, shotgun in hand.

“He can’t go anywhere,” I said, and even as I spoke we saw the Suburban pull into Mateo Esquibel’s side yard.

“Howard, we’re going to need you down here at the house,” I said into the mike. “Tom, stay up on the highway.”

I approached Esquibel’s tiny adobe slowly. The Suburban sat in the driveway, door ajar, dome light on.

“You think he slipped out the back?” Torrez breathed.

“Be careful,” I said, and he was out of the Blazer like a shot, weapon at high port. I slid the truck into gear, turned off the lights, and got out.

I knew Carlos Sanchez had not slipped out the back. I couldn’t imagine that walking was his style, especially in this country. His return to the house could have been for only one reason. He had to figure that Mateo Esquibel was his ticket to Mexico.

I stepped forward and shut the door of the stolen Suburban, and the yard was plunged into darkness. The dog inside was yapping, and I could see only one light. It was so faint it would have frustrated the most dedicated Peeping Tom.

“Sanchez!” I shouted. “Come on out.”

Other than the old dog, there was no response from the house.

“We don’t want to hurt either you or the old man. Come on out.” Still no response. I cursed and turned as Howard Bishop’s patrol car idled into the yard. He started to get out of the car, but I waved a hand as I walked over. “Stay in the car and keep on the radio,” I said. “Bob’s around back. I don’t think our man is going anywhere.”

I turned back and walked toward the front door. Just in front of the small front stoop I stopped, hands on my hips. “Carlos! I want to come in.” The damn dog started yapping again, and I heard a dull thud, like furniture being moved. “I’m at the front door,” I shouted. “Don’t do anything stupid.” Going through the door wasn’t one of the brighter things I’d ever done, but I was in no mood to stand out in the dark, trying to negotiate with silence.