“I don’t like that he didn’t answer,” I said.
“Maybe out of cell phone range?” Peter offered.
“Were you ever completely out of cell phone range when you were exploring the Coronados?”
He shook his head. “One of the reasons I wanted to set up sanctuaries there.”
Harris walked to the entrance and stared into the rain.
“Maybe Rodriguez got them, too.” He spoke in a dead voice.
“I’m going to wait in the Jeep, in case Mondragón calls back,” I said.
“Why don’t we all wait there together?” Peter suggested.
Peter and I made a dash, but Harris came slowly, oblivious to the downpour. When he reached the Jeep, he was like a man who’d taken a shower fully dressed. He sat slumped in the backseat and, just as he had in the mine, simply stared at the rain.
“I hate just sitting,” Peter said.
“Have you ever hunted?” I asked.
“Never.”
“Just sitting is a lot of what you do. You learn to be patient.”
“I’ll kill him,” Frank said quietly at our backs.
“Kill who?” I asked.
“Rodriguez.”
But I knew Rodriguez wasn’t to blame for Frank Harris’s misery.
My cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number.
“Mr. O’Connor, this is Deputy Crockett. One of our Border Patrol picked up your wife, and Gilbert Mondragón, on the Old Douglas Road. They asked that we notify you.”
“Where are they?”
“On their way to meet you at Wieman’s ranch house. Agent Sprangers is with them. They should be there soon.”
“We’re not at the ranch house.”
“Where are you?”
“Until this rain lets up, stuck in a mine in the Sonora Hills. What did my wife and Mondragón tell you?”
“Just that there’s a hostage situation. Sheriff Carlson’s working on pulling together a team for that. We assume you have Joaquin Rodriguez.”
That surprised me. Why wasn’t Rodriguez with Rainy and Mondragón?
“We’ll get to the ranch house as soon as we can. There are some things Sheriff Carlson and Sprangers should know. Have them call me.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“What’s up?” Peter asked when I’d ended the call.
I explained things to him and to Harris, who seemed to be coming around now.
“We need to get to Jocko’s,” I said.
Peter looked at the brown torrent that was gushing through the wash and shook his head. “Going to be a while.”
And it was. We waited an hour for the storm to pass and then more time for the run of water in the wash to ease enough to risk driving the Jeep out that way. Hunter though I was, I found myself growing more and more impatient, and finally I decided we had to leave.
“Buckle in,” I said. “We’re going.”
But before I had a chance to move, a big black crew-cab pickup truck with wheels like those I’d seen on earthmovers came crawling up the wash. The grille was high above the water, which swept around those great wheels as if around the legs of a dinosaur. The truck swung out of the current toward the Jezebel Mine and the place where Peter and Harris and I sat in the Jeep. I couldn’t see through the windshield.
“Hand me the Winchester,” I said to Harris.
He passed it up to me, and I chambered a round. The truck parked facing us, the grille like a huge, skeletal grin. The back door on the passenger side opened and a man got out. Hispanic, tall, muscular, dressed in black, with an automatic rifle in his hands. He walked to the other side of the truck and opened the back passenger door. He reached up with one hand and helped someone down from that raised chassis. I recognized Michelle Abbott. Her hands were bound behind her back with duct tape, and a strip of tape was across her mouth as well. Next came Jocko, bound in the same way. The man said something to them, and they walked forward a few steps then stopped, with the man directly at their backs. The driver’s side door opened next, and another man got out. He kept his back to me and I couldn’t see him clearly. He walked to the other side of the truck, opened the door, and helped Jayne Harris down. Like Jocko and Michelle, she was bound with duct tape. The man walked her to where the others stood and placed her in the front line with Jocko and Michelle, then took his place behind them along with the other man.
The first man, I didn’t recognize. The second man I knew well. He was wearing a tan cowboy hat with a colorfully beaded band around the crown. Deputy Crockett.
They stood facing us, with the storm behind them in the distance still battering the land.
CHAPTER 39
* * *
Deputy Crockett. The mole. It made perfect sense. The task force had been trying for some time to intercept Rodriguez’s shipments, always in vain. With someone like Crockett on the inside, with the knowledge of where the Border Patrol agents stationed themselves and when and where the rolling checkpoints were to be set up, it wouldn’t be difficult for Rodriguez to move his product through Coronado County. In the Santa Margaritas, he’d been the one to make the call on the sat phone for backup just before Rodriguez’s men fled from the Jesus Lode. He must have called Rodriguez at the same time. Probably the only reason they’d been there in the first place was because Crockett had relayed the report from the Border Patrol helicopter that had put me in the area. And when Marian Brown had come under suspicion, he must have relayed that information, and the next thing you know Brown is dead.
“Let’s get out slowly,” I said. “Put the Jeep between us and those guys.” When we were out and positioned, I called, “So what now?”
“Now we negotiate,” the first man called back.
“Ernesto Rivera?” I said.
“Corcoran O’Connor?”
“Talk to me.”
“It’s very simple. You hand over Joaquin Rodriguez and we give you these three. Three for one, quite a bargain.”
“What about all the drugs in the mine?”
“I don’t care about the drugs. You want them, take them. Believe me, there is so much more where that came from. Where is Joaquin Rodriguez? In the mine?”
“Jayne!” Harris called suddenly. “Jayne, are you all right?”
“She is perfectly fine, Mr. Harris. And she will stay that way so long as we settle our negotiation.”
“Jocko!” Peter called. “You okay?”
In truth, Jocko looked in pretty bad shape, swaying a little as he stood, but he gave a nod, exaggerated so that we could see it clearly.
“You okay, too, Michelle?” I called.
She nodded.
“A requirement in our negotiation, O’Connor,” Rivera said. “Put down your rifle.”
“And lose all my leverage?”
“Leverage? You have no leverage. Because this is what I’m going to do if you don’t put that rifle down. I will kill one of these three people. And then I will ask you again to put your rifle down, and if you do not, I’ll kill another. And then we’ll repeat that process one more time. And then, if we have to, we’ll use our rifles on the three of you. I understand that you’re good with the Winchester. But I’m sure you realize your antique is no match for a couple of American-made M16s.”