Highway to Vengeance: A Thomas Highway Thriller (20 page)

I stepped away from the bodies, picked up
the change of clothes that I’d left in the building at the
beginning of the night, and changed out of the wetsuit. Leaving the
two bodies sprawled on the floor of the shack, I walked out into
the cold night air, got into Chris’s car, and drove north.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX

Chris had said that I’d be able to cross the
border at San Ysidro without any problems, but with everything that
had happened, there was no way in hell I could trust the original
plan. For all I knew, Pittman had men posted at the border, waiting
for me to try and cross.

And even if none of Pittman’s men were
there, I would still have to go through the border checkpoint,
which would be crawling with Homeland Security agents. And I wanted
no part of them right now either.

And even if I somehow managed to get myself
over the border without incident, there was no way I’d be able to
get my gun over with me. And there was no way in hell I was going
to walk around unarmed right now.

So the choice was clear; no border crossing
for me. At least, not a legal one.

Luckily I was standing at the most porous
portion of the border in the country, crossed by a few thousand
illegal immigrants a month. Getting over shouldn’t be a
problem.

Although the past few years had seen a rise
in the amount of fencing constructed along the border, I knew the
measures were sporadic and inconsistent. Some areas had triple
fencing, dead zones, stadium lighting and motion detectors, while
others still just had one fence and no technological deterrents.
The key was to figure out where the resistance was the
lightest.

To do this I walked into a run-down bar
outside the Tijuana city limits aptly named THE BORDER CROSSING.
After I told the bartender what I was looking for and gave him a
$100 dollar bill, he made a phone call. Ten minutes later an older,
unassuming Mexican man walked in and sat down next to me. A
ten-minute conversation with this man and another $500 and I had
all the information I needed. It was an amazingly easy process.

The spot the man had guided me toward was on
a street called Cam Al Aeropuerto, a few miles east of the airport.
I parked my car in the shadows of one of the many warehouses that
lined the border on the Mexican side, buildings that nestled up to
within ten feet of the fence.

For almost a full hour, I sat in the car,
waiting and watching the occasional Border Patrol SUV driving in
the hills on the American side, keeping an eye out. Their rounds
were fairly regular, driving by every twelve minutes or so,
stopping in about the same spot, pausing for 30 seconds, then
moving on a couple hundred feet and repeating the process. It
seemed to be a show of force more than a real deterrent.

And more importantly, easy to avoid.

It was a little after midnight when I saw a
group of twenty people moving between the warehouses towards the
fence. It was a motley group, mostly younger males but littered
with a handful of females and even a couple of children. A few
individuals were carrying plastic bags and a couple had old, ratty
backpacks on, but most of them were empty-handed. I was slightly
annoyed at their intent, but considering I’d already killed a dozen
people that night and was also preparing to illegally cross the
border I reserved judgment on their plight and concentrated on the
logistics of getting into America.

I didn’t want to join their group, but I did
want to take advantage of any distraction they might potentially
offer, so I waited until the first of them started scaling the
fence to climb out of the car and make my own way towards the
fence, a good three hundred yards east of their crossing point.

Shortly after reaching the fence, I realized
that they had mistimed their approach. By my calculations, the
Border Patrol vehicle was due back in the area in the next two
minutes, and only half of them were over. There was no way they
would all make it over in time.

I gripped the fence with my hands and
prepared for the ascent. The fence was made of corrugated metal;
difficult to climb but not impossible. But it was solid, meaning I
couldn’t see what was going on just on the other side of it. I had
to rely on my ears to tell me what I needed to know.

I stood there, my body tense with
anticipation, waiting for the inevitable confrontation. With any
luck, there would be more than enough of a diversion for me to
sneak over the fence and into the hills beyond while the Border
Patrol rounded up the group. I hated relying on luck to help me
out, but at this point, I had no choice.

A few seconds later I heard the sounds of a
vehicle skidding to a stop. A car door slamming. Shouting. Orders
barked in English, answered in Spanish. Sounds of a struggle. More
yelling. Then the sound of another vehicle, coming in to help out.
More shouting. Some grunting. Chaos. I debated whether or not to
actually go through with my plan, but I quickly concluded there was
no other choice. I had to get over the border quickly, and this was
going to be my best chance.

I exhaled three times then scrambled up the
fence, my hands and feet finding little nooks in it, pushing
upwards, until my head was near the top. I peeked over the edge and
saw three Border Patrol agents still in the process of rounding up
and subduing the illegals. I hooked one leg over the fence, then
the other, hung from the top and dropped to the ground.

Without hesitation, I started for the
shrubbery hills, running in a low-crouch, moving quickly but
smoothly, my adrenaline spiking, hoping that the agents didn’t spot
me, more for their own sake than mine.

And then I reached the cover of the
bushes.

I immediately dropped to the ground, turned,
and scoped out the situation. The Border Patrol agents had
collected all their quarry and were in the process of herding them
into the back of their vehicles. They appeared to have no awareness
of my presence. Another hurdle cleared. But I wasn’t completely out
of the woods yet. I still had at least a mile of mostly open ground
to negotiate before I came to civilization, and there were sure to
be more agents out there, scanning the area, looking for people
acting like me. But at this point, I was confident I would make it
through unscathed. The hard part was done. All that remained was a
game of hide and seek, I had lots of practice at that particular
game.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN

It went pretty-much as I’d expected. A
couple of tense near-confrontations with Border Patrol vehicles,
but nothing that caused any real problems. Like I’d suspected
earlier, the rounds seemed to be more for show than functional.

And so, fifteen minutes after I’d hopped the
fence, I emerged from a ravine in a residential neighborhood
somewhere outside Otay Mesa. Now pushing 1:30AM, the vast majority
of the houses were dark. Parked cars lined the street.

I headed towards the row of cars and started
checking doors. The fourth one I came to was unlocked. It was a
beaten-down black Jeep Wrangler that looked to be at least fifteen
years old. Perfect.

I slipped into the vehicle, hotwired the
engine, and took off down the street.

A short time later I parked the Jeep outside
a 24-hour mini-mart, where I used some of my remaining cash to
purchase a pre-paid cell phone. From there, I started walking. I
eventually came upon a hole-in-the-wall bar named Rocky’s. I
spotted a cab in the parking lot and approached the driver, who was
sitting in the vehicle with the window rolled down, smoking a
cigarette.

“Need a ride?” asked the cabbie.

“Yeah, but I need to make a phone call
first,” I said. “Can you wait here for a couple minutes?”

“No problem. I have to run the meter
though.”

“That’s fine. Just make sure you don’t take
any other calls.”

“No problem, pal. As long as the meter’s
running, you can take all night.”

I nodded and walked towards the back of the
building, near the dumpster. The smell was horrendous but that was
fine. Good actually. It would virtually guarantee nobody would come
close enough to hear my conversation.

I opened the cell and called the number
Holland had given me back on the pier. He picked it up halfway
through the second ring.

“Agent Holland here.”

“It’s Highway,” I said. “We need to
talk.”

“That’s funny,” Holland said. “I was just
thinking the same thing. Tell me where you are and we’ll get
together, have ourselves a little parlay.”

“I don’t think so. We can talk on the
phone.”

“If you wish.”

“But I want you to know one thing up front,”
I said. “If I get even a whiff of your guys trying to track my
location through my phone, this call is over. And you won’t hear
from me again.”

“We’re not tracking you,” Holland said.
“This is my personal line, I told you that when I gave it to
you.”

“Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you want,” Holland said. “But
this is just me and you talking. Nobody else is listening in.
Nobody else even knows we’re having a conversation.”

“Well, I’ll keep this short anyway, just to
be sure.”

“Whatever makes you happy,” Holland said.
“But before you get started, we need to get some things straight,
right up front. I’m not exactly sure what you thought you were
going to accomplish with this conversation, but you need to know
that I am fully aware of the situation you’ve gotten yourself
into.”

“And what situation would that be?” I
said.

“Come on now, Mr. Highway. We both know you
killed Ferdinand Montoya sometime within the last few hours.”

I had figured Holland would already know
about Montoya—was counting on it, really—but I was surprised to
hear him blurt it out so suddenly. I thought I’d have to draw it
out of the agent; if he could get it out at all. Still, I couldn’t
let him have the upper hand so easily. I didn’t want him taking
charge of the conversation.

“Who’s that now?” I said.

“Don’t play dumb,” Holland said. “It doesn’t
become you.”

I laughed under my breath. “Suppose I did
kill Montoya. How the hell did you find out so quickly?”

“It wasn’t difficult to put together,”
Holland said. “Your interest in his brother-in-law, combined with
you slipping our tail, added to the fact that you crossed over the
border at San Ysidro a few hours before Montoya ended up dead under
mysterious circumstances paints a pretty vivid picture. What
was
confusing, however, was trying to figure out how you
learned so much about Montoya in such a short period of time. I
mean, here you went from poorly tailing Montoya’s brother-in-law to
expertly infiltrating his highly-secure ranch and security systems
in less than 24 hours. Quite an impressive feat, if I may say
so.”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Really?” I said. “And what do you think,
Special Agent Holland?”

“I think you had outside help,” Holland
said. “In fact, I’m convinced of it. It’s the only thing that makes
any sense, really.”

“And what if I did have help?”

“Then I implore you to tell me everything
you know about these people so we can hold them, instead of you,
responsible for Montoya’s murder.”

“Are you saying I can walk if I help you
out?”

“If the information is helpful enough?
Absolutely.”

I looked at my watch. I’d been on the phone
for about 30 seconds. If they were tracking me through the
phone—and despite Holland’s pleas to the contrary, I had to act as
though they were—they would probably be able to get a pretty decent
estimate of my location within the next couple of minutes, if not
sooner. I needed to wrap this call up.

“Why would you do something like that?” I
asked. “No offense, but I get the impression that you don’t
normally go out of your way to help someone wiggle out of a murder
rap.”

“Let’s just say that Ferdinand Montoya was
very important to us,” Holland said. “And to me, personally.”

“How important?”

“Important enough that I’m willing to make
you a sweet deal for information on who helped you kill him. That’s
all you need to know.”

“Not good enough,” I said. “I need
details.”

“I can’t give them to you,” Holland said.
“Not over the phone.”

“Screw that. Tell me or we’re done talking.
You can solve this riddle on your own.”

The line was silent.

“Five more seconds,” I said. “Then I hang up
for good. Five. Four. Three.”

“Montoya was working for us,” Holland
said.

I laughed. “Bullshit.”

“I assure you that it is not.”

“You don’t really expect me to believe that
you turned the leader of a major drug cartel into a stoolie, do
you? That’s ridiculous.”

“You can believe whatever you want,” Holland
said. “But you asked why Montoya was so important to us and I told
you. It’s up to you what you do with the information.”

I had no reason to believe it was the truth,
but it certainly changed the nature of the game if it was. I
decided to probe him a little further, see if I could get a better
feeling for the veracity of Holland’s claim.

“What was he doing for you guys?” I
asked.

“Sorry, but I’ve already said more than I
should have over the phone,” Holland said. “If you want more
details, we’ll need to speak in person. Nothing official, just a
feeling-out session, so to speak. We can each put some specifics on
the table, decide if we want to take this thing to the next level.
You can even choose the place if it makes you feel better.”

“I need some time to think about it,” I
said. “I’ll call you back at this number tomorrow morning to let
you know what I’ve decided.”