David Lindsey - The Rules of Silence

Titus could imagine Macias kicking him out of the car at some vacant strip center or on some dark street in San Antonio. Then he could walk to a pay phone, and it would all be over. Titus couldn't wait for that, for the whole insane thing to be over. He focused on the center stripe in the highway and tried to keep his mind off of… everything.

But he couldn't keep it off the guy in the backseat. He thought of what Rita had said, that as horrible as it was, she couldn't keep from imagining Charlie tangled in the chain saw, Carla suffocating, gasping for breath. She couldn't help but wonder how all of that had happened, how it had actually happened. Neither could Titus. It was infuriating to him that the man who had orchestrated all of that was sitting behind him and that Titus himself was complicit in his escape. God, and neither Carla nor Charlie had even been buried yet.

“Slow down, ”Macias said.

When it was clear that Macias was taking 290 west, Burden got on the radio with Calo.

“Calo, ”he said, “do you still have your night goggles?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, at this hour of the night the highway's going to be damn near empty. Put on the goggles, turn out your headlights, and catch up with the signal and see if it's the Honda. He's going to be driving the speed limit, so with luck you can catch up with him.”

“What about cops?”

“If you get busted, ditch the goggles and just take the ticket. You've got good ID, right?”

“Yeah. I'll be okay.”

During the next twenty minutes, Kal watched his speedometer while Calo kept up a running commentary of his progress screaming down the dark highway without headlights, the world in front of him apple green and black.

For Rita it was nearly half an hour of unbelievable tension, her eyes glued to the LorGuide, her ears straining to pull more information out of Calo than the typically terse tactical communications provided. Her stomach began to hurt, and she saw nothing of any help in the dash-lighted faces of Kal and Burden as they watched the LorGuide, too, and listened with passionless expressions.

“Got‘em! ”Calo broadcast suddenly. “Brake lights. They're slowing

… way down…”

“Where? What's there?”

“Nothing. Dark ranch country. Nothing. I'm braking hard. I've got to stop…”

Titus was startled back to the moment. Slow down? Was Macias just going to shove him out on the roadside?

“Slow down, ”Macias repeated.

Titus was confused. They were out in the middle of nowhere, nothing out there in the darkness.

“Okay, see the red reflectors on the fence up there? There's a cattle guard there. Pull over and go through it. Now, quickly.”

There were no cars on the highway in either direction, Titus noticed, and that was the way Macias wanted it. And that was what he got.

Titus pulled off on the shoulder and then turned into the cattle guard. His headlights picked up the caliche ruts of a ranch road. The center of the ruts was grown up with range grass that was already burned up in the July heat.

“Cut the lights and stop, ”Macias said.

Titus did as he was told.

“Roll down the windows, ”Macias said.

The car was filled with the sound of night insects and the smell of range grass. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, the caliche ruts began to glow in the light of the half-moon like dull phosphorus.

“You can see enough to drive, ”Macias said. “Go on.”

Titus put the car in gear and slowly moved along the overgrown road. The tall grass between the ruts dragged against the undercarriage of the car as the road rose up a slight rise and then leveled off after a gradual decline. They could see the rolling hills spread out in front of them in the darkness, the pale, moon gray of the grasses, the charcoal splotches of the woods, and above it all the night sky scattered with icy blue stars.

“Stop here and cut the engine, ”Macias said.

Titus didn't like this.

They got out of the car, Macias carrying his laptop and his gun, and started walking. The hills were covered with rocks and clump grass and scattered cedar trees that rose out of the half-moon darkness like black bears.

As they walked, Titus's heart began to race. He couldn't imagine any kind of resolution here except a bad one. They went down into a draw, stumbling over rocks, barging into cactus, the moon providing just enough light to make them think they could see where they were going but leaving out the details. Then they came up on the other side of the draw to a ridgetop.

“Sit down, ”Macias said, putting the muzzle of his automatic to the top of Titus's shoulder to make the point. Then he pulled out a cell phone and punched a button.

“Estamos aqui, ” he said. “?Andale!?Andale!”

Both of them were heaving and sweating, their shoes full of broken twigs and rocks, their socks riddled with the spines of needle grass.

Titus's mind was lurching. Then he heard a deep, fulsome sound unlike any he'd ever heard, a rapid, accelerated coughing with undertones of a deep whooshing. Looking toward the sound in the far-off star scatter, he saw two stars growing out of the darkness. But their light was bluer than the others, and they were approaching rapidly, driven by an eerie, monstrous chuffing. As the two blue lights grew larger, the other stars around them disappeared, blocked out by the black silhouette of a helicopter descending toward them. The wind of its rotors finally reached them with a blast, and the chopper sank slowly in near silence and hovered in front of them.

“Let's go, ”Macias said, still gripping the laptop and urging Titus to his feet with the barrel of the gun.

As Titus came up from his knees, he brought a rock with him in his right hand, a rough stone the size of a grapefruit. The darkness gave him the only advantage he needed.

He swung with all his might, but the rock slipped out of his hand and the blow was only a glancing one, catching Macias against his left ear, staggering him and sending the laptop flying into the darkness. But he didn't go down. Titus charged him the way Macias had charged Artemio, throwing a shoulder into Macias's stomach with all the strength he could manage. The force of it took both of them off the ground, and they landed five feet away on Macias's back, an impact that knocked the air out of Macias, but not his senses. Immediately he began hammering Titus with the butt of the gun, slamming it again and again into Titus's face as Titus tried to ward off the unstoppable energy of the younger man. Then somehow Titus found another rock and smashed it into Macias's forehead just as he began firing.

Titus rolled away from the gunfire as Macias struggled to regain his senses, dazed, frantic to save himself. His arm came up with the automatic, but he was too stunned to control it. More shots went off bam! bam! bam! into the sky, into the ground, zinging past Titus's face.

Titus fell on him again before Macias could get to his feet and went crazy, beating him with both fists, never even giving Macias a chance to clear his head. The gun went off again, the barrel against Titus's neck when it fired, blasting a seared path upward under the side of his jaw. Now Titus went for the gun, breaking fingers, wrestling the gun away from Macias's hand, and then shooting him-somewhere in the stomach. Then he shot again, blowing off part of Macias's face-Titus actually saw it in the light of the flash. Then again-somewhere, any-where. And again and again and again until the thing wouldn't fire anymore.

At the flashes of gunfire in the darkness, the helicopter hesitated thirty feet above them. A brilliant sapphire floodlight came out of its belly, lighting Titus in a laser blue glare as he stood over Macias's body.