John Sandford - Field of Prey

At some point, one of the pilots said, “We’re about a third of the way down there, folks. Glen and I grabbed a bunch of sandwiches at a Jimmy John’s, and there’s some water and Pepsi.”

They all ate subs and drank Pepsi, and then Lucas got another call, this one from an ATF agent named Miguel Colson.

“We’ve been talking with your governor, and he asked us to call you directly, to fill you in with what we know.”

“Appreciate it,” Lucas said.

“We were all over these old guys. We watched them unload two bundles of rifles the day before yesterday, and we were covering those. We’ve got those nailed down. We’d also heard that all the rest were going out in one batch, with the payment in cocaine, so we decided that instead of an early bust, we’d go for the big one. Del agreed.”

“He would,” Lucas said.

“Yeah. The meet was out north of El Paso, up in New Mexico. We had precise information on the location, from our bugs, and got out there early. We were all set up, six guys on the ground, eight more trailing in vehicles. Del and Carl were on the ground, on foot, down an arroyo that ran through the meeting site-this was really out in the sticks. Anyway, the buyers showed up, these were a couple of unknowns, but the sellers knew them pretty well, it was all first-name stuff.

“The buyers were driving a Land Rover, so they were prosperous. Anglos. They pulled in, we were monitoring, and there was some talk, and the buyers were looking at the guns, and the sellers were checking the cocaine, and then they were all, ‘See you next time.’ We pulled the trigger, we were all over them, SWAT gear, helmets, lights, everything, and the old motherfuckers in the RV ran for it. I couldn’t fuckin’ believe it. They left the buyers standing there with their dicks in their hands, and took off down this arroyo, and Del and Carl showed themselves and these guys opened up with M-16s, full auto, mostly missing everything because the RV was falling apart, smashing down that riverbed, but they hit Del and Carl, Del and Carl were right there-”

Lucas cut him off: “How bad’s Del?”

“He’s pretty bad, man. Took one in the guts. He was hit in the arm and leg, not so bad. Carl’s dead. Carl’s gone.” Colson sounded frantic with grief and anger. “We had them both down at Thomason in like fifteen minutes, didn’t wait for the ambulance to get there, threw them in a truck and took off.”

“We heard an ambulance,” Lucas said.

“Yeah. We met up eight or ten miles south down the road, transferred them. . I think Del would have died if we’d waited. Carl did, Carl’s gone, man.”

“What happened to the shooters?” Lucas asked.

“They’re dead. All of them. We think we hit two of them right after they opened up, just hosing down the RV, but they got a ways down that arroyo, don’t know where they were trying to get to, but they went over this ledge-like thing and got hung up, and then kept grinding away until the tires caught fire. Then we think one of the old guys went through the RV and shot two of the old people, who were wounded, then shot his wife, and then ate his gun.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“No, he wasn’t there,” Colson said.

“So what do you think? We’re in the air, with Del’s wife.”

After a moment, Colson said, “The docs here are supposed to be really good. I don’t know. Fifty-fifty? I don’t know.”

“We’re coming,” Lucas said.

After a long silence, Colson said, “They were old people.”

They flew into El Paso International, and the limo was waiting, just as the governor said it would be. The pilots would check in to a local motel, and said they’d be available as long as they were needed, and as long as Lucas would pay them. He said, “No problem,” and got in the car.

“Please, please don’t let him be dead,” Cheryl said, as they rolled across town. “Don’t let him be crippled.”

Lucas had been in far too many emergency rooms in his life, and a couple of times, the emergency was him. He’d gotten to dislike the odor of the places, like the back rooms of a butcher shop, with an overlay of alcohol.

Two big guys were standing inside the door and Lucas read them as federal. When Lucas, Letty, and Cheryl came in, they turned suddenly, like they might need their guns, and Lucas said, “Minnesota-Del’s wife, I’m Davenport, with the BCA.”

One of the guys was Colson. He was as tall as Lucas and thicker, with brown hair worn longer than most cops’, and a tight bristly mustache; he looked like a Texas rancher on a TV show. He shook Lucas’s hand and introduced the other man, John Sanchez, also ATF.

With the introductions done, Colson stepped up to Cheryl and put his arm around her shoulders and said, “Del’s gonna make it. You gotta believe that.”

“Where is he?” She’d been alternately calm and frantic during the plane ride, and in the car, but now, in the familiar zone of a hospital, she pulled it together.

“He’s still in the OR, but one of the docs came out a while ago and said they’re closing him up.”

“Let’s go. . Where’s the surgical waiting area?”

“This way. .”

They waited for nearly an hour, sitting around looking at old magazines, with Colson and Sanchez filling Lucas in on the firefight. They’d both been there, in vehicles.

“I’ll tell you,” Sanchez said, at the end, “what Carl and Del did looks stupid, not that I wouldn’t have done the same thing. There was no reason to shoot anyone. There was no way to get away, no point in running. They more or less showed themselves to flag these old people down, you know, let them know that running wasn’t an option. Carl was hit in the head, and was gone. Del got sprayed from the other side of the RV, down lower. He was lucky because he was wearing a vest with heavy plates, we insisted on that. The plates stopped three rounds that would have killed him for sure, but his arms and legs weren’t protected, and when he tried to stop them he had his hand over his head and that apparently pulled the vest up. The slug that did the most damage clipped the bottom edge of the vest, punched through the nylon and into his lower stomach.”

Colson looked at his watch: “Carl’s wife, Jennie, is coming up from San Antonio by car. There were no commercial planes and it looked like a private deal would take a long time to set up, so we called the state guys and she’s on her way with a bunch of state troopers doing a relay. It’s usually a seven-hour ride, but the troopers say they’ll have her here in five. It’s been five now.”

“Mmm, where is he? Carl?” Lucas asked.

“He’s here. They’ve got a temporary morgue in the hospital,” Colson said. “The medical examiner’s right around the corner.”

“I’d just as soon not be here when Jennie shows up,” Sanchez said. “But I got no choice.”

Lucas prompted them for the rest of the firefight:

After the people in the RV opened up with the full-auto weaponry, the ATF guys opened up on the RV, and the four people inside were all eventually killed, one way or another, but Del and Carl Lanning were already down.

Colson and Sanchez kept going back and forth about what had happened and how it had happened and why, and Lucas finally said, “You didn’t do anything wrong: this shit just happens. Just like a couple patrol cops get a call about a possible store robbery, and they roll on it, and it turns out to be three ex-army guys with M-16s, when they were expecting a gangbanger with a piece-of-shit.22.”

They both said, “Yeah, yeah,” and went right back to who, what, why, and how.

Lucas knew exactly why they did that, because he’d done the same thing.

At four-thirty, Sanchez got a call, listened for a second, then said to Colson, “Jennie’s here.” They left. Cheryl said, “This is so awful. I feel like I oughta go down and say something, but I can’t, because my man’s still alive, and she’d be thinking, Why’s her man still alive, and mine’s dead? I don’t think I could handle that very well.”