The Ninth Day Read online

  “Just tell the FBI not to shoot at the ambulance. I don’t want to get clear of the cartel and then face another round.”

  Emma reached the driver’s side and checked for the keys. They weren’t hanging in the ignition as she expected. Vanderlock appeared next to her.

  “You know where the keys might be?”

  “In Raoul’s or Mono’s pocket? I’ll get them.”

  Emma moved the driver’s seat all the way back and crawled into the space between the wheel and the seat, checking to see if she could get below the window line. While wedged in between them, a pair of keys entered her line of vision.

  “That is a beautiful sight,” she said to Vanderlock.

  “Let’s turn it around to face out.” When they were in position, Vanderlock took a deep breath. “No time to waste.” Sumner walked to the passenger side. “You ready?”

  Emma nodded. Then a thought came to her. “What about Carlos?”

  “I dragged him to the side door and untied him. Told him that we’re leaving and he’s on his own. He said he’s not interested in us, but getting as far away from La Valle as possible,” Sumner said.

  Emma nodded. “Then I’m ready.”

  “I’ll open the barn door,” Vanderlock said. “Be sure to drive slow at first, give me time to jump in the back.”

  A booming noise at the side door made Emma jump. “What the hell was that?”

  The noise came again. Emma stood on the ambulance’s running board and looked over the bales of hay. The side door shivered with each hit.

  “Someone’s trying to get in,” she said.

  The hits started in a rhythmic pattern.

  “They’re battering it down,” Vanderlock said. Sumner moved back around the ambulance, lifted his weapon, and shot directly into the door. The bullet pierced through the wood, and a man’s cry came from the other side. A hail of gunfire followed, punching holes in the door in a crazy pattern. Emma dove to the packed earth. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Sumner had done the same.

  More gunfire came from the direction of the double doors in front of the ambulance and Sumner crawled on his belly to the vehicle’s side. The double door shook when some large object hammered into it from the outside. Sumner reached the driver’s-side front wheel, rolled onto his back and fired up and into the door. A boom signaled return fire, but this time the bullet ripped a large hole in the heavy wooden double doors. Sumner returned to his stomach and crawled toward Emma. Vanderlock moved up to crouch on her left.

  “That must be a fifty caliber,” Vanderlock said. He hovered at the rear of the ambulance, aimed and fired at the side door, where the banging had stopped briefly. Vanderlock’s shot resulted in another volley. Several bullets pierced the bales of marijuana stacked nearby. Emma saw a small wisp of smoke emanate from one.

  “One of the bales is on fire,” Emma said. “We’ve got to get out of here, now.” More bullets peppered the double doors, shooting holes in the wood. Emma waved at it. “Forget about opening the door,” she said to Vanderlock, “I’m going to drive right through it.” She got behind the steering wheel, keeping her head low while she waited for Sumner and Vanderlock to take their positions. “Stay low until I clear the door,” Emma said to Sumner, who had made his way around the back and reappeared on the passenger side. He slid into the seat and bent his frame to keep low. A quick glance at the marijuana bale told Emma that she had no real choice. The small wisp of smoke had turned into a steady, upward column.

  Emma started the engine, lowered herself to the floor and grabbed the wheel. She put her foot on the gas.

  Chapter 44

  Emma pushed the gas pedal all the way down. The ambulance started to roll, slowly at first, but quickly building speed. She felt the jerk of the transmission as it shifted from first to second gear. Emma peered over the dash, doing her best to keep low but still steer the van. She aimed for the double door edge, near the side that opened, where she thought was its weakest point. Splinters flew from the panel where the bullets were still hammering into it. A cloud of dust hung in the air from the pulverized wood. They plowed into the door.

  The ambulance shuddered with the impact and the hinges ripped from their supports with a creaking, squealing sound. Three bullets hit the windshield, creating a long crack in the glass. Two more bullets pinged off the hood. A dirt path led from the barn to a nearby road, and Emma used it. The van hit thirty miles per hour and was one hundred yards from the barn when the real shooting began. It came from all sides. The windows were lowered and she could feel the bullets zipping past. Muzzle flashes lit the trees, and Emma felt panic rise as the lights revealed the full number of gang members that hid in the trees. The side walls gave off metallic pinging sounds as the ordnance hit the van. Sumner pointed his rifle out the window and began laying down return fire, sweeping the area near the trees. She heard Vanderlock firing from the back.

  It was impossible for Emma to stay as low as she wanted and still drive. She rose slightly, keeping her foot down. Her headlights bounced with the ruts in the road, occasionally illuminating a shooter in the trees. The hammer bounced at her feet in the foot well.

  Holes punctured the windshield, multiplying second by second until it finally shattered and showered down on Sumner and her. She closed her eyes and felt the bits of glass hit her face. Fear focused her mind, making her stare at the darkness around her, but keeping her foot frozen on the pedal. The ambulance picked up more speed.

  Emma kept driving. The van lurched when the front, then the back, tires deflated. Sumner fell against her, and she pushed him back to his side. He aimed and continued to fire. The ambulance hit the rims and the entire vehicle slowed on the inadequate wheels. She heard a booming noise and a bullet hammered into the engine. Flames erupted from the front.

  “Someone’s got another fifty caliber. We’ve got to get out of here before the gas tank blows up,” Sumner said.

  The van still moved forward, but was slowing. Emma grabbed the hammer and put it on the gas pedal. Sumner jumped out his side, and Emma rolled out of hers. She hit the ground, bent her knees, and kept moving to absorb the shock of the fall. The ambulance shot past her. She started to race toward the trees, with Sumner hot on her heels. She heard a second engine start up, and seconds later Vanderlock came roaring past on the motorcycle. The van picked up speed, shimmying from side to side, fire spouting from the engine. Vanderlock waved them to him, braking the cycle to wait. Emma ran for it, with Sumner in front of her. A car pulled next to Vanderlock and Emma saw a swarthy man aiming a weapon at her. She veered off, leaping over a small bush into a stand of trees. Behind her she heard Sumner’s rifle fire, followed by return fire. She kept moving, running at an angle through a stand of trees.

  She was 150 yards in when she saw movement in front and to her right side. She slowed, moving from trunk to trunk, using them as cover, trying to figure out if the movement came from a ring of FBI agents or from the gang members. The darkness all around made it difficult to see anything. She glanced at the sky, and could see a lightened area of wispy clouds that covered the moon. The breeze was soft. The moon would emerge from its cover, but not immediately. She had time.

  She moved from tree to tree, keeping low and doing her best not to make noise. The battle at the barn continued, with bursts of staccato gunfire cracking through the night. She huddled by a large trunk, the last in a row. The next grew a full forty feet ahead, across a small expanse of grass and two-foot-tall wildflowers. Emma paused, hating to reveal her position for even the short time it would take to get across the area.

  A volley of fire to her immediate left made her crouch lower, tighter against the bark. She slid around the trunk to keep it between her and the source of the noise. The clouds moved, and a weak pool of light illuminated the clearing.

  La Valle stepped into sight, and it was all Emma could do not to gasp at his sudden appearance. He held a gun in one hand and the wicked looking knife in the other. Four men materialized to hi
s right from the trees, pushing a man in front of them. The man looked to be in his late thirties, wore dark clothes and had an empty gun holster attached to his waistband. La Valle raised his own pistol to aim at the man’s face.

  “I’m Agent Roland of the FBI. You don’t want to do that,” Roland said.

  La Valle didn’t move, but he didn’t fire, either. “You think I’m afraid of you?”

  Roland shook his head. “It’s not a matter of being afraid, it’s a matter of position. We’ve got the barn surrounded.”

  Emma thought the man showed courage, but she doubted the barn was surrounded. If it had been, she would have hit the line of FBI already. The fact that she had run as far as she had without encountering any meant there were holes in the perimeter. She removed Carlos’s weapon from her waistband and flicked off the safety while she analyzed the men in the circle, deciding what would happen to Roland if she fired first.

  Five men, including La Valle, all armed and all prepared to kill her and Roland. If she fired they’d likely dive to try to save themselves, but someone would surely take out the FBI man in the process. She thought La Valle was the player most likely to eliminate Roland. Roland represented authority and La Valle wouldn’t allow anyone in his vicinity with higher status than he thought he commanded. The other gang members would protect themselves, because in Emma’s experience to date she’d never seen a group of criminals risk their lives to save each other. Once their leader was down the organization inevitably splintered.

  La Valle waved the gun. “Give me your walkie-talkie and get down, face-first.” Roland handed La Valle a small transmitter and then slowly lowered himself to the ground, keeping eye contact with La Valle as long as he could. When he was on the grass, face-first, La Valle spoke into the walkie-talkie. “I have Agent Roland. He’s alive, but only for three more minutes. Either agree to let us pass, or I kill him. Not fast, but slow. You can all listen.” La Valle shoved the walkie-talkie into Roland’s face. “Tell them to lower their weapons. We get safe passage to the airplane on the runway.”

  Agent Roland hesitated. La Valle kicked him in the side. Roland flinched, but remained silent. La Valle put his knife to the back of Roland’s ear and pressed. Emma saw a dark line of blood run down Roland’s cheek. She swallowed, but her throat was dry. She didn’t want to watch La Valle cut off the man’s ear, but she couldn’t look away, either.

  “They have me hostage,” Roland said into the walkie-talkie. La Valle kicked him in the side.

  “The airplane. Tell them!”

  Roland looked up at La Valle with a confused expression. “We don’t have an airplane nearby. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” La Valle pressed harder and the blood trickle behind Roland’s ear became thicker, wider. He groaned.

  “Liar! There’s an airplane on the runway not a thousand meters from here. On my runway.”

  “This is Cameron Sumner of Air Tunnel Denial.” Emma heard Sumner’s voice pour through the transmitter. “That plane is mine. You want it, come get it, but you’d better have Roland alive when you step on the tarmac. Because if he isn’t—”

  “If he isn’t, then what! You kill me? You think I’m afraid of you?” La Valle screamed into the small walkie-talkie. The cords on his neck bulged with the force of his anger and spit flew from the edges of his lips. Emma watched as a drop of blood ran from his nose down his face, over his lips. He wiped it away with his arm.

  Emma looked at the base of the tree. Roots rose from the edge, and a few large rocks sat a foot away. She reached her arm out, slowly, straining to collect a rock. She grasped it and held it in her left hand, feeling its weight. She rose in a fluid movement.

  She raised her weapon and took aim at La Valle’s torso with her right hand while she threw the rock with her left, flinging it as hard as she could in the direction behind La Valle and his crew. It hit a small bush with a thudding sound and making the branches shudder. As she’d hoped, the entire group spun in that direction.

  Emma fired, hitting La Valle in the midsection, the bullet entering through his side, but not in a vital location. She doubted the hit would kill him. La Valle bellowed in a mixture of anger and pain. His body jerked sideways and he squeezed off a shot that missed Emma and her tree by inches. Roland catapulted himself to his left, toward Emma. She fired three more times in rapid succession, making sure to hit La Valle again, this time in the calf, and then aiming at the fleeing cartel members. Predictably, the gang members scattered. La Valle, though, was still standing.

  “Agent Roland, get over here!” Emma called to the man. He gained his footing and started toward her. La Valle staggered from the bullet in his calf, but raised his weapon toward Roland. Emma shot again, hitting him in the shoulder. Another hit not guaranteed to be fatal. But La Valle jerked as the bullet slammed into him and he landed on the ground, hard. He didn’t move.

  Roland reached her tree and crouched in position next to her. He gave her a searching look.

  “You’re Emma Caldridge,” he said.

  Emma nodded. “How many are we facing and where do you think they’re located?”

  “We’re in the ring. I’d say there’s about thirty. Less now.” He indicated La Valle lying in the field. “He has my gun in his waistband. I need to go get it.”

  “Don’t touch him. He’s got a disease. I’ll get the gun. I’m already infected.”

  Roland looked at her. “With what?”

  “A fast-moving, mutating bacteria that mimics leprosy.”

  Emma could feel Roland steel himself not to recoil from her. She gave him some more points for courage.

  “I’d have you cover me while I go out there, but you’ll have to hold my gun. Do you have a piece of cloth? Anything we can wrap the handle with? Just as a precaution. I don’t think the disease is transmitted quite that easily, but I’d hate to take the risk.”

  Roland pulled his shirt up, and unbuttoned the bottom. “Hand it over.”

  Emma placed the gun’s butt in his palm, which was now covered by the shirt. “I’ll be right back.”

  She jogged to La Valle’s body and turned him over. His knife stuck out from his stomach, where he’d fallen on it. He was still breathing in short, shallow gasps, and opened his eyes to look at her.

  “You fell on your knife,” Emma said.

  La Valle grimaced at her. “I won’t die,” he said. “I can’t die.” Blood ran from his nose. Emma didn’t respond. He would die, and by his own hand. She thought of Octavio’s claims that La Valle was cursed. At that moment, staring at a man riddled with sores and with his own weapon piercing his body, Emma believed.

  His eyes closed and he stopped breathing.

  Emma searched his pockets and found a second weapon. She removed it and jogged back to Agent Roland, leaving La Valle’s body where it lay.

  Chapter 45

  Emma placed the weapon on the ground next to Roland. “This yours?”

  Roland nodded.

  “Maybe you wipe the butt before you handle it,” Emma said.

  Roland returned Carlos’s weapon to her before wiping off the butt of his Beretta.

  She heard a massive explosion from the barn’s direction.

  “They blew the barn,” Roland said. “What about the leaves? Banner said burning them spreads the disease.”

  “Now you ask me?” Emma was aggravated and didn’t bother to hide it.

  Roland gave her an apologetic look. “I didn’t trust your report to him.”

  Emma pulled out her compass and checked her direction. “And now?”

  He nodded. “I saw the sores on La Valle’s arms. Now I do. Should we evacuate?”

  Emma handed him the transmitter. “Yes. Tell everyone to move as far away from the barn as possible.” She jerked her chin at the walkie-talkie. “Wipe it first.”

  Roland gave the order.

  “Let’s move,” Emma said. She waved him forward, moving quickly in the direction she thought would be parallel to the road. They jogged a
full minute without coming upon any cartel members.

  They took off. Cowards, Emma thought. She ran faster, cutting between trees and jumping over low-lying bushes. Roland stayed with her, and after five minutes was breathing heavily in her ear. She kept going, not willing to slow down until she was sure the remnants of the barn’s smoke couldn’t reach her.

  After ten minutes she emerged from the trees onto the road. Emma turned onto it, running faster now that she had a flat surface to use. Roland picked up his pace, too, but he was breathing heavily in and out, sounding like a bellows, and clearly would be stopping soon.

  “You go. I’ll catch up,” Roland said.

  Emma slowed. “I think we’re far enough away.”

  Ten minutes farther, and Emma saw the runway off to her right. She and Roland turned off onto a beaten earth path that led straight to it.

  A small plane sat on the runway. The waning moonlight hit some reflective sections, and they glowed. Oz’s motorcycle was parked next to it with Vanderlock still sitting on the seat. Seconds later a car pulled up, driving past them and stopping about twenty feet away.

  Banner stepped out of the car. Emma thought it was the second time that evening that she was profoundly happy to see someone. Sumner came out of the passenger side and his eyes went right to her. He looked relieved, then glanced at Roland. Banner walked up.

  “Everyone all right?”

  Emma nodded, not sure she could speak normally quite yet and wondering how it was that Banner could.

  “Surprised to see you in the States, Vanderlock,” Banner said.

  “Not as surprised as I am to be here,” Vanderlock replied. He took a package of cigarettes out of his pocket, lit one, and inhaled.

  Banner turned to Roland. “Glad to see you got out alive. How’d you do it?”

  Roland jerked his head at Emma. “Your operative was hiding in the trees. Lucky break for me.”

  “In that case, can you vouch for her? Cancel the warrant?”