The Carrion Birds (29 page)

“You know where Tom is, then?”

“Luis said he took one of the horses from the
stable and went after Ray.”

T
om
waited five minutes, counting the seconds, too nervous to move from behind the
protection of the rock. An awareness growing in his mind that by allowing Ray
his revenge, Tom was now responsible for what had happened to Pierce. It had
been his decision to let Ray go, and now he knew he needed to bring Ray in,
whatever that might mean for him.

Tom waited, building his confidence. Trying to find
the courage to go forward with the things he needed to do. Any one of those
seconds he expected a bullet to come whistling through the air, and when none
came he slowly rose into the open. Waiting still for the bullet to come and spin
him sideways as it had done Gil Suarez three days before. No shot. No sound of
ricochet, or thump of sand.

Ray and he weren’t family anymore, not in the way
that Tom had always thought they’d be. They were something else now. Ray had put
him in the sights of that rifle ten minutes before and pulled the trigger. He
could have killed him, could have cut him down off that horse any time he wanted
to. But he hadn’t, and Tom had to believe there was still some good in Ray. Some
small bit of humanity that wouldn’t allow him to pull that trigger and kill
him.

With the fear gradually dying back inside him, Tom
went on up the hillside, following the trail left in the dusty soil, Ray’s boot
prints in the ground and the white scrape of the horse’s hooves over rocks. The
slope steep in front of him. Pinyon and aloe growing tight to the ground. Even
without the horse, Tom thought he was making good time, the valley below, and
the thin line of the highway that cut through its middle.

By the time he caught the first clank of a harness,
the trees had thinned away in front of him and he could hear the rough
mutterings of the horse up ahead and something else beneath—Ray’s labored
breathing.

R
ay
was aware that Tom hadn’t given up. That he was still back there, behind him,
following him up the hill. Down by the oil station he’d shot at Tom, meaning
only to buck the horse, to scare Tom off, but Tom was still coming. He didn’t
want to shoot him, but he would. He’d do whatever it took to get away.

Somewhere along the way Ray’s body began to fail
him, the rasp and catch of spittle deep in his throat as he sucked at the air,
searching for moisture. Hours since he’d shed a drop of sweat. And now a
wheezing cough, a hand held to his mouth, and a thin speckling of blood on his
hand. It was too steep to ride the horse, and all the effort he was putting into
wrestling her up the hill was that much more of a strain against his weakened
body.

Rounding a corner, he heard Tom’s footsteps through
the trees, close behind. Without even a look, Ray cut into the forest, leaving
the horse. His feet slipping on a loose rock, he slid down the mountain for
thirty feet before managing to stop. Searing pain in his gut and a collection of
rocks scattering out beneath him, tumbling down along the slope toward the
valley below. Ray lay there at the bottom of a steep chute, a protective hand
held down over his stomach.

Low pine trees everywhere growing up out of the
burned red soil. The sound of boots on rock above, and Tom’s voice calling down
the chute to him.

There was nothing left for Ray, the family he’d
once planned to have, the fantasy of a happy life that just couldn’t be. The
realization of this felt deep within him where he lay against the rock, fired
all the way through and dimming away like an ashen piece of coal, slowly burning
toward its death.

All he’d wanted was to go home. But everything had
changed and nothing was as he’d thought it would be. Up the hill Tom’s voice
calling down the chute to Ray. No hope left.

Ray brought up Dario’s .45 and fired a shot in the
direction of the voice. He heard the bullet hit rock, the echo caroming off over
the valley below.

He was up and running before he heard the last
reverberation fade away behind him.

K
elly
rose from where she knelt with Tollville over the hoofprints in the sand. The
far-off sound of a gunshot opening up in the air to the north. Her shoulders
squared already, looking toward the mountains, ready for anything.

Still night out there and the echo of the shot
drifting through the air.

Tollville stood, examining the Hermanos. The
eastern sky lightening in shades of violet and blue with the valley stretched on
before them. “Handgun,” Tollville said.

“Forty-five?” Kelly asked.

They were already moving back toward the helicopter
as Tollville signaled the pilot.

T
he
bullet had passed just over Tom’s head, close enough that he’d felt the air
move. Much closer than Tom would have thought Ray was willing to take it.

Below, out of sight down the chute, the loose rocks
from the strike of the bullet were skittering away down the hill toward the
valley. Lifting his head now, he could almost see to the bottom of the chute, a
rush of wind moving through the pine trees. Then across the slope, thirty feet
below, the brief glimpse of Ray’s shirt flitting through a break in the trees.
Tom up on his feet, gun raised—the back of Ray’s shirt again—then gone
again.

Tom slid down along the rocky chute to where he’d
seen Ray last, following him into the stand of pine. A thin stream of dust still
hanging in the air from Ray’s movement. But no Ray, and the wind pushing the
dust up along the slope and into the trees, where it too disappeared.

He followed, rounding a corner of the hillside,
only to see Ray crouched on the slope between two pines with his gun drawn.
Diving headfirst down the slope, Tom heard the bullet hit the earth where he’d
been standing only a moment before.

He lay there listening. The heels of his hands
scraped and bloodied from where he’d broken his fall. The feel of dirt all over
him, and the painful sting from a cut on his head. No sound. Looking back up the
slope, he kept his eyes on the forest above. When he thought himself safe, he
looked down at his hands, each scraped pink with blood where the skin had come
away. The blood beginning to collect and run down along the insides of his
wrists, he pressed them to his pants, feeling the shriek of fresh nerves on his
jeans.

No idea now where Ray was.

T
here
was little to be seen out the cockpit of the helicopter. The spotlight moving
below as they went, skipping past rocks and trees, until they came up on the
snow-topped ridge and ran along it for a time before dipping back down toward
the valley below. For twenty minutes they cut back and forth, with only a small
hope they would find something.

The first five minutes of the flight, Kelly had
leaned out looking down at the flatness of the desert below them, then, as
they’d come to the hills and mountains farther on, she’d drawn herself up in the
seat, picking what she could from the night. The sky to the east of them taking
on the dull gray that came just before the dawn and the muted washed-out light
that fell now along the slope over which they flew.

“Continue?” the pilot asked, turning to look back
at Tollville.

Moving away from the rear window, Tollville told
him to keep going, motioning with his hand for the pilot to make another pass.
His voice, heard through the helmets they all wore, vibrating with the wash of
the rotors. Like Kelly, he still wore the brown sheriff’s department vest, his
loose at the shoulders to allow for movement as he scanned the earth below. In
his hand he carried his service weapon. His legs stretched wide for balance as
the helicopter turned and moved back into a search pattern.

They were running a short grid of the area, and
they hadn’t seen anything yet but trees and rock. The sound of the blades
fighting with the altitude as they climbed again, heading for the ridgeline.

B
elow
him, Ray heard the helicopter rotor working up through the elevation. The sound
of the blades still several miles off to the west.

Leaning into the hillside, he let his weight down
and turned over on his back. With one hand on the .45 still, he unbuttoned his
shirt to look at the wound. His stomach stained red with iodine where he’d
cleaned the skin.

Minutes before he’d coughed up blood. None of it
was a good sign. The bullet hole seemed too low on his body to have hit a lung,
but his breath was definitely tougher to come by, and he tasted the alkaline
flavor of his own blood now on his tongue.

Around him the pines were all but gone, and a mix
of low grass and high desert rock was covered in places by a dusting of snow.
Nothing ahead of him but the razed curve of the pass for a quarter mile or more,
until at the end, the slope began its gradual decline toward the other
side. In the distance to the north the thin ethereal light of the highway where
it came through the mountains, and down below the larger swath of city
light from Deming, another ten miles or so beyond.

T
om
moved up out of the ravine just as the DEA helicopter went past. The white
underbelly of the machine moving by along the ridge and the light splashing down
everywhere.

Perhaps it had been a trick of the landscape, the
sound waves bouncing from one ridge to the next, or maybe just the pulse of his
own breathing and the scrape of his efforts up the loose rock, but he hadn’t
heard the helicopter till then, thinking it was a mile or so more to the
west.

He stood, watching it move away down the line of
the pass, suddenly there, then gone again, following the open track of rock and
grassland that separated the south slope of the mountain from the north. No sign
of Ray.

R
ay
heard the helicopter break free over the top of the pass. Not there, then there
in a sudden shimmer of light, just a quarter mile to the west of him. The shadow
of his movements now falling before him on the rock as he went. His gait crooked
as he ran over the open, wind-scraped ground toward the far protection at the
other side of the pass.

He went on, holding his stomach with one hand, the
.45 in the other. The rifle still strapped to his back and the blood from his
wound dried coarse and brittle into the fabric of his shirt.

The helicopter moving toward him, with the
spotlight beam now just a few hundred feet away. “Come on,” he said, urging
himself forward. His teeth clenched and the air pushed up out of his mouth
tasting metallic and sour.

He ran, scrambling over rocks and into hummocks of
dirt and sedge. His face contorted with pain, the top of his stomach tight
beneath his hand. The strain evident in the rigid gait of his movements and the
warmth of the wound felt on his bare palm.

He ran with difficulty, the climb behind him and
the strength gone from his legs. Snow everywhere now on the rocks and in the
shallow indentations between. He slipped, one leg going out from under him while
he reached a hand out to catch himself. He gasped with pain as he came down, the
shock of his movements cutting through
him.

The light moved across him for a moment and then
came back, wavering above him like a celestial body, floating there a hundred
feet above. The sound of the machinery and the rush of wind suddenly all around
him.

Looking ahead, there was still a chance of making
the tree line a hundred yards away. He brought the rifle off his back, desperate
with the idea of escape. The beat of the helicopter’s rotor splashing down
everywhere along the bare rock. Pain echoing up out of his stomach, and the
ever-present thirst in the back of his throat.

T
hey
were taking shots to the body of the helicopter. Kelly could hear them digging
through the metal. Something sparked and the lights on several of the onboard
displays blinked red, then faded, a warning signal sounding as the helicopter
began to list.

“Move!” Tollville yelled, his voice more frantic
now, telling the pilot to drop, to pull the helicopter down to the east and get
beneath the ridgeline. Another bullet hit, breaking through the underside and
ricocheting off the ceiling of the cabin.

Kelly turned to see if Tollville was hit but they
were falling now, faster than Kelly thought possible, the pilot pulling the
helicopter hard to the left and the nose dropping toward the protection beyond
the ridge.

T
om
began to run. Scrambling from one rock to the next over the gradual rise of the
pass, then cresting the top, he saw Ray out in front of him running down the
slope toward the line of squat trees farther on.

Tom had heard the shots, watching helplessly as the
helicopter wavered there in the air for a second, then dipped hard to the left
and fell away.

Running, he followed after Ray till his cousin was
lost from sight in the low pines and stunted juniper that clung to the wind-worn
ridgeline. With fifty yards still to go, he couldn’t hear the helicopter anymore
and he went on, knowing that if he was going to catch up to Ray it would have to
be now.

Breaking past the first couple trees, Tom slowed,
listening to the air around him. Shadows thick within the trees. He stood in a
deepening stand of pine. The sedge that had covered the pass appeared in sparse
pathways between the trees, poking its grasslike stalks from the snow.

Ahead, on the ground, the heel of a boot print in
the snow one place, then the toe of another five feet on. No telling where Ray
had gone and Tom following, trying to make sense of what little trail he could
take from the snow before it, too, disappeared.

Tom went on, his gun held out in front of him as he
took his steps carefully, pausing to sweep the undergrowth and watch where he
put his feet. Ray’s footprints visible ahead of him for maybe thirty feet,
disappearing into the gloom. The sun just beginning to rise, and the air filled
everywhere with the stark contrasts of light and dark.