Immortal (13 page)

‘Go ahead.’

The rattling, croaking voice filled her with a loathing that she struggled to conceal.

‘It’s done.’

‘Good. Where is Tyler Willis?’

‘Your men took him when we hit the labs,’ Saffron said. ‘You’ll have to ask them.’

‘Excellent work, Saffron. I’m very proud.’

‘I want your word,’ Saffron demanded. ‘Not a mark on him, understood?’

A moment later, the line went dead.

Saffron shut the phone off and slipped it back into her pocket before gazing out over the cruel beauty of the New Mexico wilderness. She sighed and wondered again if she was doing the right
thing. Colin Manx was a weak man, and weak men did the bidding of the strong. All that she could hope for was that she had hit Manx hard enough, both mentally and physically, for him to fulfill his
role.

And that she had the strength to do what she had planned for so long.

‘We’re chasing rainbows here, you know that, don’t you?’

Ethan drove with one arm trailing out of the Mercury’s open window, letting the desert wind blow in. He preferred it to the cold caress of air con, and while the car was moving it was cool
enough to let him get away with it.

‘We don’t have much else to go on,’ he said to Lopez, who was sitting with her long hair rippling in the breeze and her sneakers resting against the dashboard on which a
printed image of Saffron Oppenheimer and Colin Manx was taped. ‘Without Willis, we don’t really know who or what we’re after.’

‘I doubt we’ll find enlightenment out here,’ Lopez said. ‘Chances of a bunch of drop-outs knowing anything about experiments at Los Alamos is pretty unlikely,
doesn’t matter who their grandpa is.’

‘You got any better ideas?’ he asked Lopez. ‘The troopers reckoned this was the likely escape route for Saffron Oppenheimer and Colin Manx after they ditched their original
vehicle outside Los Alamos, but they don’t have the resources to scour the entire desert.’

Lopez laughed, shaking her head.

‘What?’ Ethan asked, smiling in bemusement.

‘The whole of New Mexico’s state police don’t have the resources to search a million square miles of desert,’ she said, ‘but you’re driving the two of us out
here because you think we somehow do. I can’t wait to see how you pull this off. Divining rods? Sifting tea leaves?’

Ethan grinned and shrugged.

‘You’ve got to be in the draw to win it. For all you know, one of them will come walking right to us out of this town.’

‘Ten bucks says no way,’ Lopez said, extending her hand, her eyes dancing with the unfettered joy of a sure bet.

Ethan chuckled and shook her hand as they cruised through the small town of Algodones. They crossed the railway line and passed a small diner, an elementary school and scattered houses that gave
way to open scrubland, the railway line now to their left.

‘Looks like you’re ten bucks down,’ Lopez said as they left the town behind. She settled down deeper into her reclined seat and closed her eyes. ‘Win some, lose
some.’

Ethan didn’t reply as he eased off the accelerator, indicated and pulled into the side of the road. He leaned out of his window as the man he’d seen flagging them down staggered
over, his face and shaggy hair a dusty mess and blood trickling from a badly broken nose.

‘Need a lift, stranger?’ Ethan asked with a smile.

‘You goin’ Santa Fe way soon?’ the man asked, his voice thick with pain.

‘Sure,’ Ethan said.

Lopez opened her eyes, curious now. Ethan said nothing as the back door opened and Colin Manx slumped into the rear seat in a cloud of dust, slamming his door and
looking at them.

‘Thanks, I really appreciate this.’

Lopez’s jaw dropped as Ethan, his face aching from trying not to smile, reached out and pressed a button on the dash, instantly locking all the doors.

‘So do we,’ he said, turning in his seat to face Manx and showing him his bail bondsman badge. ‘We’ve been looking for you.’

Manx stared in confusion at the badge, then at the image of himself taped to the dashboard.

‘I’m not on bail.’

‘Nope,’ Ethan said, ‘but you’re wanted by the sheriffs office so we’ll be taking you in.’

‘Fine by me,’ Manx said sulkily, folding his arms. ‘What I was coming here for.’

Now, it was Ethan’s turn to be surprised.

‘You’re turning yourself in?’ Lopez asked, finally overcoming her disbelief enough to speak.

‘Damn right I am!’ Manx snapped. ‘They’re insane, all of them, especially that bitch Saffron. She’ll kill somebody before she’s done, and I don’t want
any part of it.’

Ethan eyed Manx. ‘You know where she is?’

Manx nodded, jabbing a thumb out the window up in the direction of the nearby hills.

‘Up there, a couple of miles north of the reservoir with about thirty others. They’ve got the animals with them in an old GMC. God knows what she’s going to do next.’

Ethan looked at Lopez.

‘They can’t go off-road in their truck, it won’t take it, and there’s only one way up or down.’

‘One on the high ground, the other on the road,’ Lopez agreed, sweeping her long hair back behind one tiny ear with her hand. ‘They’ll be forced out on foot.’

Colin Manx looked at them both in alarm.

‘What the hell are you two talking about? I want to go to a police station, turn myself in.’

‘We need to find Saffron,’ Ethan said. ‘It’s important.’

‘I need to make a statement first,’ Manx complained. ‘I want the police to know I turned evidence for all of this. I don’t want to go to jail.’

‘You’ll be going to jail anyway,’ Lopez snapped. ‘It’s too late for that, but we can tell the police everything.’

‘Then tell them now!’ Manx shouted and began yanking desperately on the door handle beside him.

‘Sorry,’ Ethan said, pulling onto the main road and accelerating the Mercury south. ‘We need to get to Saffron before the police do.’

Colin Manx quivered with futile rage and thumped the seat beside him.

‘You can’t do this! This is abduction!’

Lopez reached back and grabbed Manx’s throat with an iron grip.

‘It’ll be goddamned assault if you don’t quit whining.’

Lopez shoved Manx back into his seat. He massaged his throat, tears in his eyes as he shook his head in despair and looked at Ethan’s reflection in the rear-view mirror.

‘Jesus Christ, has every woman on earth gone insane?’

‘No,’ Ethan murmured, keeping his eyes on the road. ‘This is fairly standard behavior.’

‘She’ll likely resist arrest,’ Lopez said as she pinned her hair back into a ponytail, clearly anticipating a fight, ‘and she’s tooled up with at least a shotgun.
We’ve got nothing and we don’t know the terrain.’

Ethan glanced in the rear-view mirror at Colin Manx’s sulking face.

‘We’ve got a guide.’

‘Like hell,’ Manx spat. ‘I’m not going anywhere near that bitch again.’

‘Didn’t say you had a choice,’ Ethan shot back. ‘Besides, the more you do to help us the more likely you are to get leniency from a judge and jury. Course, if you go
against us . . .’

Ethan let the words hang in the air between them. Manx huffed and puffed, but as they approached a junction where a road led off to the right round the edge of the huge reservoir, Manx pointed
gloomily for Ethan to follow it. Tamaya Boulevard wound its way for almost two miles out of the town of Bernalillo before ending at a small campsite on the edge of a large dam. Scrub and thorn
bushes peppered the slopes of hills stark against the hard blue sky, the canyon scored by deep and ancient gullys.

‘They’ll stay close to the reservoir,’ Manx muttered. ‘The animals need a lot of water in this heat.’

Ethan nodded.

‘So will Saffron and anybody with her. It must be at least an hour’s walk into Bernalillo.’

Ethan climbed out of the car, peering back down to look at Lopez.

‘You hold the road in case they make a break for it in their truck,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can’t get hold of her or flush them all out.’

‘How come you get all the fun jobs?’ Lopez complained.

‘Because I want to bring her in alive.’

He was about to leave when Manx grabbed his arm.

‘Be careful,’ Manx urged. ‘She knows some kind of kung fu or something.’

Ethan nodded, eager to get Manx’s grubby hand off his arm, and set off up the track that led around the edge of the reservoir.

The heat was already intense with only the merest wisps of white cloud drifting above the distant peaks of the mountains. He knew the temperature here could easily break ninety degrees on most
days, and summer still had a few more weeks to go. It crossed his mind that he had no water on him, but he consoled himself with the fact that he would find some soon enough, given the obvious
tracks left in the desiccated soil beneath his feet.

Ethan had never been an expert tracker, and as an officer in the United States Marines he had left point duties on patrol to those more naturally gifted. However, following a pair of
eight-inch-wide tires was a sight easier than tracking footprints through a mangrove swamp, and after only twenty or so minutes an unnatural shape ahead caught his attention. A mound of thick brush
loosely concealed the sharp angles of a man-made object, almost certainly the vehicle used by Saffron Oppenheimer. Ethan slowed as he crossed a ridge, crouching down to avoid exposing himself
against the horizon to anyone out on his flanks. Old habits die hard, he reflected, as he found himself tapping his waist with his right hand, searching for the long vanished webbing pouch
containing his ammunition. Right now he would have felt a great deal better with an M16 cradled in his grip and a rifle platoon behind him.

Ethan huddled against the side of a low ridge of bushes some fifteen yards from the concealed vehicle and peered over the top. Nothing moved, and there wasn’t a sound. He gently levered
himself up off the ground.

‘Don’t move.’

The voice was calm, controlled and icily cold.

‘Get on your feet, slowly, hands in the air.’

Ethan obeyed, turning to see Saffron Oppenheimer standing with the sawn-off Beretta pulled deep into her shoulder, the barrel pointed unwaveringly between his eyes.

‘You found me,’ Ethan said. ‘Saved me a job.’

‘I’ll do the jokes,’ Saffron snapped. ‘How did you get here?’

‘Car,’ Ethan said, aware that Saffron might not know of Lopez’s presence and deciding to tell the best kind of lie, one that involved telling as much of the truth as possible.
‘I came out here looking for you and found one of your lackeys limping down the road.’

Saffron’s eyes narrowed.

‘Colin Manx. He okay?’

‘He’s got a dent in his nose and an even bigger one in his pride, but he’ll live.’

Saffron glared at him from over the barrel of the shotgun for a few moments, and Ethan decided to try her patience and see what he got. He lowered his hands.

‘Keep them up!’ Saffron snarled.

‘What for?’ Ethan asked, keeping his voice reasonable. ‘You’re not a killer, Saffron, and you don’t want to be.’

‘What the hell would you know about it?’

‘15th Marine Division, Iraq and Afghanistan,’ Ethan said. ‘Two tours in each theater. I know what someone looks like when they’re trying to kill you, and you’re not
it.’

Saffron shifted her weight to the opposite foot, glancing down the hill for anyone else backing Ethan up.

‘There’s nobody else,’ Ethan said. ‘I dropped Manx off with a patrol car and came out here. He’ll be giving a statement by now in Santa Fe.’ He looked at the
barren hillside around them. ‘There’s nowhere to run, Saffron. The game’s up.’

‘I’ll decide when the game’s up,’ Saffron snapped, but the venom in her voice had weakened.

‘No, you won’t,’ Ethan said. ‘Once word gets out about the attack, you’ll have the entire state police on your ass, maybe even US Marshalls. You’re
effectively a fugitive with an already high profile. How long do you think you’ll last out here before you quit, or somebody else sells you out for a lenient sentence?’

Ethan saw the barrel of the shotgun slowly dropping, not from resignation but from muscular weakness as the weight of the weapon strained Saffron’s arms. Saffron saw the direction of his
gaze and yanked the barrel up, and as she did so Ethan made his move and lunged forward, one arm outstretched as he tapped the shotgun barrel sideways and up into the air to point over his
head.

Saffron leapt backwards to avoid his charge, but Ethan was already inside the weapon. He shoved the barrel further up as his other hand slammed down across the stock, smashing it out of
Saffron’s grip as her wrists failed her. Ethan leapt backwards as he twirled the heavy shotgun through his hands to point upside-down at Saffron, his finger finding the trigger.

‘We need to talk,’ he said.

Saffron’s shoulders sank, and she sighed. ‘About?’

Ethan opened his mouth to speak, just as he realized that she was feigning. Her left boot whipped up and knocked the shotgun barrel to one side as she plunged inward and drove her right boot
into Ethan’s belly with ferocious force. He barely got clear of the blow, catching it on his midriff hard enough to drive the air from his lungs. Saffron danced forward in a graceful
pirouette as Ethan staggered back and drove one flat palm up toward Ethan’s jaw. He whirled the shotgun in his grasp, the butt of the weapon smashing her wrist aside with a loud crack. He
heard her cry out but she did not fall back. Instead she rushed closer to stamp one boot painfully onto his right foot as her left elbow snapped round to catch him on his jaw.

Ethan saw the world quiver as he toppled off balance and slammed down hard onto the unforgiving earth. Saffron was on him in an instant, grabbing the shotgun and twisting it sideways before
pushing the stock down onto Ethan’s throat, leaning all her weight in behind it. His eyes bulged and he gagged as the weapon crushed his windpipe. He pushed back hard, lifting her slightly,
and then drove his knee into her side. Saffron lurched off balance as Ethan pushed the shotgun upward and then yanked it sideways between them, hurling her off him. Saffron relinquished her grip
and rolled neatly away, reaching to her waist as she did so. Ethan scrambled up onto one knee in time to see a Bowie knife flicker in the bright sunlight. He aimed the shotgun at her.