Two Graves (8 page)

He accelerated further as the glow in the southern sky brightened, allowing him to increase his speed. Cananea was now only two miles off. Figuring he was about even with the unseen vehicle, Pendergast swerved to the west, tearing across the empty landscape, the bike leaping ditches and popping through brush. In another minute he saw the vehicle’s lights virtually due west, running parallel, and he was close enough to see that there were actually two vehicles, one behind the other—Escalades, by the look of them. They were moving fast, but not nearly as fast as he.

They had not yet, apparently, seen his headlight.

He unslung the M4 with his left hand and, keeping his right hand on the throttle, steadied the rifle across the handlebars, bracing it against his side. He checked to make sure it was in fully automatic mode.

But now the vehicles had seen his lights: they began to veer away from him, going off-road, crashing through the sparse brush.

They were too late. He was moving faster, he was nimbler, and off-road the big SUVs could not accelerate well. Coming in at an angle, he aimed the bike for the gap between the two vehicles and darted into it, braking hard in order to match their speed. The maneuver allowed him to identify the occupants of both vehicles, and it took only a moment to pick out Helen’s frightened face in the back window of the second. A man leaned out of the first and fired ineffectually at him with a handgun; Pendergast gunned the Ducati’s powerful engine and pulled away, accelerating alongside the first vehicle while letting loose with the M4, raking the car at chest level as he accelerated past. The SUV veered off, went into a skid, and then flipped, rolling over and over before bursting into a fireball.

The second vehicle had braked rapidly and was now far behind. Applying sharp pressure to the rear brake, Pendergast brought the Streetfighter into a power slide, throwing up a huge curtain of dirt, ending up with his back to the town, facing the Escalade. He waited to see what the vehicle would do.

Instead of stopping to fight, it veered off farther and went lurching over the rough plain, tearing through the low creosote bushes, heading for the paved road at the edge of town. A steady sound of futile gunfire came from the vehicle, punctuated by flashes of light.

Pendergast gunned the Ducati, fishtailing into a ninety-degree turn and then accelerating after them.

He rapidly caught up, keeping to the south in a flanking maneuver, forcing the vehicle into an easterly trajectory, away from the factories and the town. But the road to the nearest factory, lined with sodium lights, was approaching fast.

More shots rang out from the vehicle, kicking up dirt to one
side of him. A man was aiming out the back window with a handgun. But the Escalade was lurching so violently that Pendergast was in little danger of being hit. He accelerated the bike, again tracing a track behind and parallel to the Escalade. He eased the rifle into position once more. More futile shots came from a man leaning out the window.

Pendergast swerved into a converging trajectory and goosed the bike, eking out one last burst of acceleration, bringing himself alongside the car and letting loose with a burst aimed low and front, taking out a front tire. At the same time, a fusillade of gunfire from the car struck the Ducati, breaking its chain and sending the bike into a slide. Pendergast rapidly worked the front and rear brakes to avoid going into an uncontrollable spin. As his speed abruptly dropped, he leapt off into a creosote bush before the bike tumbled into a narrow ravine.

Immediately he rose with the rifle, aimed, and fired again at the receding car. The Escalade was already slewing about on the burst tire, and the shot took out the rear wheel on the same side, the SUV fishtailing to a stop. As it did so, four men leapt out and knelt down by the car, unleashing a steady fire.

Pendergast threw himself to the ground and—as the bullets kicked up dirt all around him—aimed carefully. His superior weapon took out first one man, then another, in rapid sequence. The remaining two retreated out of sight behind the vehicle and stopped shooting.

Unfortunate.

Pendergast rose and, running as fast as he could—barely more than a shambling limp—charged. He kept up a continuous fire as he did so, making sure his shots went high. Suddenly both figures appeared at one side of the vehicle; one was dragging Helen with a gun pressed to her head, and the other—the tall, muscular, snowy-haired man who had piloted the plane—was crouching behind, using the others as protection. He did not appear to be armed—at least, he was not firing.

Once again Pendergast threw himself down and aimed, but he did not dare fire.

“Aloysius!” came a thin scream.

Pendergast aimed afresh. Waited.

“Drop your weapon or I will kill her!” came a sharply accented cry from the man using her as a human shield. The three figures were backing up now, away from the Escalade, the white-haired man keeping behind the other two.

“I will kill her, I
swear
!” the man screamed. But Pendergast knew he wouldn’t. She was his only protection.

The man fired at Pendergast twice, but the handgun, at a distance of a hundred yards, was inaccurate.

“Let her go!” Pendergast cried. “I want her, not you! Let her go and you can walk away!”

“No!” The man gripped her desperately.

Pendergast slowly stood, letting his rifle fall to one side. “Just let her go,” he said. “That’s all. There will be no problems. You have my word.”

The man fired another shot at Pendergast, but it went wide. Pendergast began limping toward them, rifle still held to one side. “Let her go. That’s the only way you’ll get out of here alive. Let her go.”

“Drop your gun!” The man was hysterical with fear.

Pendergast slowly laid his gun down, stood up, hands raised.

“Aloysius!” Helen wept. “Just go,
go
!”

The man, dragging Helen backward, fired at Pendergast again, missing him. He was too far away—and too panicked to shoot straight.

“Trust me,” Pendergast said in a low, measured voice, his arms held out. “Release her.”

There was a moment of terrible stasis. And then, with an inarticulate cry, the man abruptly threw Helen to the ground, lowered his pistol, and fired point-blank into her body. “Help
her
or chase me!” he cried, turning and running.

Helen’s scream pierced the air—and then, abruptly, cut off. Taken completely by surprise, Pendergast rushed forward with an inarticulate cry and within moments was kneeling beside her. He saw instantly that the shot was fatal, blood flowing rhythmically from a hole in her chest—a bullet to the heart.

“Helen!” he cried, voice breaking.

She grasped him like a drowning woman. “Aloysius… you must listen…” Her voice came as a gasped whisper.

He bent down to hear.

The hands clutched tighter. “
He’s
coming… Mercy… Have
mercy
…” And then a gush of blood stopped her speech. He placed two fingers against the carotid artery in her neck; felt the pulse flutter in her very last heartbeat, then cease.

After a moment, Pendergast rose. He limped unsteadily back to where he had dropped the M4. The white-haired man appeared to have been as surprised as Pendergast by this development, because only belatedly had he started to run, following the shooter.

Pendergast knelt, raised the weapon, and aimed it toward his wife’s murderer, a fleeing figure now five hundred yards distant. In a curious, detached way he was reminded of the last time he had gone hunting. He sighted in the figure, compensated for windage and drop, then squeezed the trigger; the rifle bucked and the man went down.

The white-haired man was a powerful runner; he had already overtaken the killer and was now even more distant. Pendergast took aim, fired at him, missed.

Taking a slow breath, he let the air run out, sighted in on him, compensated, and fired at the man a second time. Missed again.

The third attempt clicked on an empty magazine even as the man disappeared into the vastness of the desert.

After a long moment, Pendergast put the gun down again and walked back to where Helen’s body lay in a slowly spreading pool of blood. He stared at the body for a long time. Then he got to work.

T
HE SUN STOOD HIGH IN A SKY WHITE WITH HEAT. A DUST
devil whirled across the empty expanse. Blue mountains serrated the distant horizon. Scenting death, a turkey vulture rode a thermal overhead, turning lazily in a tightening gyre.

Pendergast dropped the last shovelful of sand onto the grave, slapped it down with the flat of the rusty blade, and smoothed the sand into place. It had taken him a long time to dig the hole. He had gone deep, deep into the dry clay. He did not want the grave disturbed by animal or man.

He paused, leaning on the shovel, taking shallow breaths. The wound in his leg was once again bleeding freely from the exertion, soaking through the last of his bandages. Beads of sweat, mixed with the mud, trickled down his expressionless face. His shirt was torn, slack, brown with dust; his jacket shredded, his pants ripped. He stared at the patch of disturbed ground, and then—moving slowly, like an old man—bent down and took hold of the rude marker he’d fashioned from a board he had taken from the same abandoned ranch house where he’d found the shovel. He did not wish it to be too obviously a grave. He took the knife from his pocket and scratched, in an unsteady hand:

Limping to the head of the grave, he pressed the sharpened base of the marker into the earth. Taking a step back and raising the
shovel, he took careful aim, then brought the head down onto the marker’s top with a bone-jarring impact.

Whang!

Pendergast swayed, gasping with the effort of the shovel’s blow. He wiped one unsteady forearm across his brow. Mud and sweat smeared the tattered sleeve of his suit. He waited, standing in the blazing heat of the sun, trying to catch his breath, to summon the final dregs of his strength. Then, once again, with a gasp of effort, he lifted the shovel. The weight of it caught him off balance and he staggered back, fighting to steady himself. His knees started to buckle, and before he tottered yet again he brought the shovel head down onto the marker with all the strength he could muster:

Whang!

He had dropped the shovel without realizing it. It lay across his shoes, askew, the point half buried in the loose soil. He knelt to pick it up, then quite abruptly fell to his knees; he reached a hand out to steady himself but it slipped and he collapsed to the ground, the side of his face in the dirt.

It would be easy, remarkably easy, to stay like this, lying here above Helen’s body. But he could hear the slow
drip, drip, drip
of blood onto the sand and he realized he could not let go until the work was complete. He raised himself to a sitting position. After a few minutes, he felt just strong enough to stand. With supreme effort, using the shovel as a crutch, he stood—first the left leg rising, then the right. The pain in his injured calf had gone away; he felt nothing at all. Despite the fierce glare of the sun, darkness was creeping in around the periphery of his vision: he had but one more chance to set the marker permanently in the ground before he lapsed into unconsciousness. Taking a deep breath, he grasped the handle of the shovel as hard as he could, raised it with shaking hands, and—with a final spark of strength—swung it down against the headpost.

Whang…!