No Honor Among Thieves: An Ali Reynolds Novella (Kindle Single) (8 page)

“Which may leave your guys in the middle when all hell breaks loose,” Joanna objected.

“Yes,” he agreed, “but we’re in better shape to deal with that than you are. We’re armor plated. You’re not.”

“Yes, Chuck,” Cami’s voice said from the backseat. “I can hear you.”

“Wait, Deputy Ruiz,” Sheriff Brady said. “Let’s see if there’s an update.”

Cami delivered the pilot’s words in the rapid-fire fashion of a trained interpreter. “Just flew over. They seem to be forming up in a convoy. Four of the trucks are already in line.”

“Crap,” Joanna muttered, turning to Deputy Ruiz. “We don’t have much time, so don’t wait around for Jaime any longer. Whoever doesn’t show up doesn’t show up. Those trucks have three miles of dirt road to travel. Even if they leave right now, they won’t be going fast. You should be able to get your strips down and be past Holzmann Road with additional ones for Jeremy before they hit the highway. Go now. It’s going to be a squeaker.”

Ruiz was off in a flash. “Okay, Chuck,” Cami was saying. “Thanks so much.”

“Wait,” Ali said. “Don’t hang up. Ask him if he can do us a favor and come get us.”

“Come get us?” Joanna demanded. “Are you kidding?”

“If this is war and you’re the general,” Ali said, “wouldn’t we all be better off if you’re somewhere that will allow you to see all the action as you direct your troops?”

Joanna turned to Cami. “Ask the pilot if he can keep us out of range of automatic weapons fire.”

Cami asked the question and came back with another. “He wants to know what the bad guys are carrying?”

“At least one AK-47 and maybe more.”

There was another brief pause. “Chuck says that he flew over AK-47s in the Middle East, and unless they have grenade launchers handy, his bird will be just fine.”

“Then I guess we’re going airborne,” Joanna said. “Tell him to land on the highway just in front of the roadblock. Come on.” She clambered out of the driver’s seat.

Stunned by Joanna’s sudden change of heart, Ali started after her, just as her phone began to ring. Ali knew who was calling: B. If she answered and told him what was happening, she also knew exactly what he’d say, too:
Don’t go.
Instead of answering, she let the call go to voice mail. By the time Ali was on the ground, Joanna had opened the autolocking back door so Cami could step out of the Yukon.

“Wait,” Cami said, not moving. “Does this mean I’m coming, too?”

“Everybody’s coming,” Joanna said, “but only if you want to. Can you handle a weapon?”

“No,” Cami stammered.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re our dedicated com girl for the day, in charge of keeping us in touch with the mother ship. What about you, Ali?” Joanna asked. “Is that weapon in your small-of-back holster just for decoration, or do you know how to use it?”

“I can use it,” Ali said. “But I’d rather not need to.”

Joanna gave her an appraising look. “That makes two of us,” she said.

•   •   •

On the one hand, Joanna Brady knew she had no business involving civilians in what was bound to be a dangerous operation, but without Cami’s and Ali’s capable help they wouldn’t be here right now. The GPS evidence that had brought the Holzmann Road destination to Joanna’s attention would still be waiting to be transported to the crime lab in Tucson. By the time the lab got around to processing it, the trucks would be long gone.

In other words, she owed Ali and Cami big-time. They would be involved in the firefight without having signed one of those legalese CYA forms civilians always had to sign before doing a ride-along. The board of supervisors would be appalled. To make matters worse, Joanna was bringing a multimillion-dollar helicopter into the mix. If this went south, Joanna figured she’d probably be better off dead than caught up in the middle of a liability lawsuit hurricane.

“Come on, ladies,” she said with as much confidence as she could muster. “Time to saddle up.”

Walking around the Yukon, she had to climb up on the front bumper of the patrol car parked behind hers to reach into the cargo space. Her hand emerged holding not one but two Kevlar vests. She handed the smaller one to Cami and the larger to Ali.

“Put these on,” she told them. “They won’t fit exactly, but they’ll do.”

When Joanna had been pregnant with Dennis, her added girth required that she move up to a larger-size vest. After Denny was born, she went back to her original one, but she kept the other in reserve. Cami pulled it on. The petite young woman seemed to swim in the thing, but Joanna deemed it better than nothing.

As for the one she handed Ali, it had once belonged to Deputy Dan Sloan, her department’s only fallen officer in the course of Joanna’s seven years in office. Dan was wearing the vest the night he was gunned down, shot in the abdomen where there was no Kevlar protection. After Dan’s funeral, his widow brought the vest back to the sheriff’s office in the hope that someone else could use it. Joanna accepted it even though she had understood even then that, out of respect for Dan, none of her other officers would ever agree to wear it. Not only did Joanna accept the vest, she kept it, too, more as a reminder than out of any expectation that it would ever again be used. Once Ali slipped it on, Joanna was gratified to see she was tall enough for the vest to fit fairly well. And since Ali didn’t know the vest’s backstory, Joanna thought it better not to pass it along.

Another battle-dressed guy showed up just then. “Why’d the van leave without me?” he demanded. “I told them I was coming.”

“Good of you to join us, Detective Carbajal. The TAC team left without you because there wasn’t time to wait around any longer,” Joanna said. “I needed them to deliver spike strips to the other roadblock. That had to happen sooner than later, but as long as you’re here, you’re now in charge.”

“Where are you going to be?”

Jaime’s question was drowned out by the noisy clatter of an arriving helicopter. “In that, apparently,” she said with a nod toward the chopper, which was hovering for a landing.

“Sheriff Brady!” a woman’s shrill voice called over the noisy racket from the helicopter. “Sheriff Brady! They won’t let me through!”

Joanna glanced over her shoulder in time to see Marliss Shackleford twist away from the young deputy who was trying to restrain her and come striding forward.

“Can I have a few words?” Marliss asked. “Please?”

“Your first duty as incident commander,” Joanna hissed in Jaime Carbajal’s ear, “is to get that woman out of here.” Then she turned to face Marliss herself.

“Sorry,” Joanna told the determined reporter. “I’m afraid this isn’t a good time. Get out of here. Now!” Then she turned back to Cami. “What’s the pilot’s name again?”

“Chuck,” Cami answered. “His name is Chuck.”

It took some doing for the three women to climb on board. The steps were taller than either Cami or Joanna could manage on their own. Fortunately Jaime was right there to give them a needed boost.

“Earphones,” Chuck said as they settled in. Joanna inserted her radio’s earbud before putting on the aircraft’s padded earphones. Ali made no attempt at introductions until after they were all seated and strapped in with their earphones properly in place.

“I’m Chuck,” the pilot said with a half salute in Joanna’s direction. “At your service, Sheriff Brady. What can I do for you today?”

“Take us back to where you saw those trucks, and keep us out of range.”

“Will do,” he said agreeably. “As for staying out of range, I don’t want a hard landing any more than you do.”

They took off then. The aircraft wheeled into the air and set off toward the northwest. Joanna didn’t watch the altimeter. Her eyes remained focused on the horizon. A minute or so later she spotted what she was looking for: plumes of dust rising skyward.

She pointed. “That’s got to be our guys. Follow the highway but stay a long way above it. Once they hit that, we need to know which way they turn.”

Chuck took a position and held steady, hovering far above the spot where Holzmann Road intersected with the highway. The slow caravan came up to the intersection and stopped. Then, to Joanna’s dismay, they turned neither right nor left. Instead, they continued straight on, crossing the paved highway and continuing southward on a narrow dirt track that was far less traveled than the portion of the road north of the highway.

“Why are they going there?” Joanna demanded. “That part of road goes nowhere. The ranch at the end of it was abandoned years ago.”

Chuck turned the aircraft ninety degrees. From that vantage point it was easy to see that the road came to an end all right, stopping in front of some kind of metal structure large enough to be a pole barn.

Joanna went back on the air. “All units, continue to man the roadblocks on Highway 92. We still have the possibility of an active shooting situation here. TAC Team, suspects are continuing to travel south on Holzmann Road on the south side of Highway 92. Gather up some of those spike strips, come back here, and establish a third roadblock on Holzmann somewhere south of the highway. The suspects are either making a run for the border or they may be headed for a large structure of some kind that’s located a mile or so north of the border. And, Dispatch? Contact Leo Guzman, the local Border Patrol commander. Tell him we’ve located a possible smuggling operation here. See if he can have some of his agents respond, approaching the scene from the south. There’s no road there, but that’s why the Feds buy all those green and white SUVs.”

Below the aircraft, the moving caravan slowed to a crawl as the road went down into a steep gully. On the far side of that, the road was reduced to little more than a cow path.

“TAC Team, a mile and a half or so in from the highway, the road seems to be a lot worse. Yes, the van is four-wheel drive with good ground clearance, but I’m not sure it’ll negotiate both the gully and the sharp turn right after it. Set up north of the gully. We want that Sprinter ready to rock and roll if we need it.”

“Do you think they know we’re onto them?” Ali asked.

“If they’ve seen us up here, maybe,” Chuck replied. “But that road looks pretty challenging. I have a feeling they’re too busy driving to be watching the sky.”

As the moving trucks continued creeping southward, Larry Kendrick’s voice came through the radio. “Border Patrol has been notified. Officers are en route. TAC team is traveling south on Holzmann Road and will let us know once they’ve established their position.”

By now it was clear that the metal-roofed building itself was most likely the trucks’ intended destination. “Pull back up before they get there,” Joanna warned Chuck. “If they get out to open the door, they’ll hear us. On the off chance they don’t know we’re here, let’s try to keep it that way.”

Chuck immediately complied, taking the chopper a fair distance to the west, away from both the moving trucks and the barn, before hovering again. “This should put us out of earshot,” he said. “There’s a pair of binoculars stowed back there. They might be strong enough to give you a view of what’s happening on the ground.”

A moment later Ali tapped Joanna on the shoulder and passed the binoculars forward. It took a moment for Joanna to adjust them to the size of her face. After that, it took even longer for change the focus and eventually locate the barn. She found it just as the first truck reached the barn and rolled right inside without pausing and without needing someone to get out and open the door. The other trucks followed.

“Whatever that building is, it has an automatic door of some kind,” Joanna informed the others. “They’re all inside.”

The helicopter hung motionless in the air while Joanna continued to peer through the binoculars. Finally Chuck spoke. “Maintain position or . . .”

Joanna held up her hand. “Wait,” she said. “They’re coming back out.”

“The trucks?” Ali asked.

“No, some other vehicle—one vehicle only. TAC Team, heads up. Bad guys are coming your way. Are you in position?”

“Roger that,” Deputy Ruiz replied.

“There’s another bird in the air,” Chuck said, nodding toward the east, where a dot on the horizon gradually resolved itself into an approaching helicopter.

“That’ll be Border Patrol,” Joanna said.

On occasions like this, it was beyond frustrating that ongoing differences in radio frequencies made it impossible for Joanna to communicate with Border Patrol radios directly, but she was glad reinforcements were arriving on the scene. Even though she wouldn’t be down on the ground with her TAC team where she felt she should have been, she could, thanks to Ali Reynolds, be her guys’ eye in the sky.

“Let’s move in a little closer,” Joanna told Chuck. “Okay, TAC Team, the vehicle appears to be a black Hummer. Looks like it has one occupant. Repeat, one occupant only.”

“There were five trucks and five drivers,” Ali said. “What happened to the others?”

“I hate to think,” Joanna answered.

Deputy Ruiz was still talking spike strips. “Those strips of ours aren’t going to help much with a Hummer. The guy will hit the gas, go off road, and drive around them.”

“If that happens,” Joanna said, “then somebody had better figure out another way to take out his tires. Four-wheel drive is fine. On rims? Not so much.”

“We’re on it.”

“Jaime, are you there?”

“Here, boss. What do you need?

“What’s the situation where you are?”

“City of Bisbee has officers on-site to man the roadblock. I can take two deputies and go serve as backup for the TAC team.”

“Do that, but have somebody take my Yukon out of the roadblock, bring it along, and fill that spot with another vehicle. I left the keys inside. Once I get out of this helicopter, I’m going to want to have my own wheels.”

Chuck had moved the helicopter closer to the action. They were high enough to see the moving Hummer on one side of the curve and gully and, half a mile or so beyond it, the TAC team’s Sprinter parked with the front of the vehicle pointing back the way they had come. That way, if they needed to leave in a hurry, they wouldn’t have to turn around first.

“Okay, TAC Team, he’s incoming,” Joanna announced. “He just ducked into the gully. When he tops the rise, you should have visual contact, but so will he.”