The silence stretched for several seconds. “Understood,” he replied.
“Good,” Rene said, then hung up the phone. He returned to the balcony and called Jesus inside. They had some planning to do.
Dinner the night before with Rivers and his young family had reinforced Bolan’s opinion of the man—he was one of the good guys. His wife, Olivia, was a down-to-earth, dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty from a wealthy Greek family. They had a wonderful eight-year-old daughter, Katrina, who was the spitting image of her mother and had the laugh of an angel. Bolan was charmed by the little girl. Her dark eyes stared directly into his as she asked very adult questions about everything from where he was born to why he carried such a big gun. The evening had been a pleasure, with good food and laughter and the sharing of peaceful company—a situation Bolan valued more with each passing day of his life. Colton Rivers was obviously a family man of the first order.
Early the next morning, Bolan found himself some black coffee and a woman selling warm tortillas and eggs from a hot cart near his hotel. He drank the coffee and ate his breakfast while he waited for Rivers to arrive. Once he did, they headed out of town, following Highway 80 West, then cutting north toward Tombstone. Rivers explained that there was a lot of big empty nothing out there—mountains, desert, cacti and the occasional cougar hunting free-range cattle when the opportunity arose. “And in between Bisbee, Tombstone and Sierra Vista, there’s an area of about a hundred square miles where we’ve seen a lot of illegal traffic in the past year or so.”
“You do flyovers, right?” Bolan asked.
Rivers nodded. “Sure, but it’s a big desert and we’ve got limited resources. The only reason we were out that night is because one of the unmanned drones picked up some unidentified movement during the day that was too big to be humans. We figured maybe a couple of mules—the guys who run illegals up into Tucson or Phoenix—had some trucks out there.”
Ten miles or so outside of Tombstone, Rivers cut back west, using a dirt track that made the one Tony lived on look like a well-maintained, big-city street.
“The San Pedro Conservation area is about ten miles west of here, but it gets a lot of tourist traffic—bird watchers, mostly—so the illegals tend to avoid it.” Rivers pointed to a series of large, rocky hills in the distance. “That’s where we were when they hit us.”
Bolan nodded, glad he’d brought his sunglasses along. The desert sun was reflecting off every light-colored surface and would have been blinding without them. “Let’s start there, then,” he said. “I want to see where you were positioned.”
Rivers guided the SUV around rocks, saguaro cacti, a few stunted mesquite trees and plenty of low, pointy scrub brush. The wandering route made Rivers chuckle. “Tony says that everything out here will stick you, prick you or kill you. Some of those damn Mesquite needles will puncture a tire.”
They were within a couple hundred yards of the rocky terrain. “This is close enough,” Bolan said. “You came in this way with your men, right?”
“More or less,” Rivers replied. “There’s hardly a path.”
“Let’s walk from here,” Bolan suggested.
The agent shrugged and pulled the SUV to a stop, cutting off the engine. Both men climbed out and into the staggering heat. Rivers unpacked a shotgun from the back and offered it to him, but he shook his head. It wouldn’t make sense for any of the illegals to still be in the area after the recent firefight. Their operations depended on not getting caught in the open.
They moved across the intervening terrain, and Bolan noted that there were plenty of tire tracks and crushed plants to show how much vehicle movement had occurred in the area. “Are all of these from your guys?” he asked, gesturing at the imprints in the sand.
Rivers nodded. “We had to bring in a flatbed to pull our vehicles, plus the ambulance and field people. It was a goddamn mess.”
“I bet,” Bolan said, scanning the horizon. They were in a lousy position, and although he didn’t expect trouble, it never paid to be stupid about such things. They climbed up the rocky hillside and surveyed the lee where the ambush had happened. There was still plenty of evidence that a little gate into hell had opened down there.
“They were moving over there when we spotted them,” Rivers said, pointing to the valley floor and another, still larger set of rocks and hills, perhaps three-quarters of a mile or a little farther away. “We checked it out the next day. They left some tracks, but we still haven’t figured out how they got there.”
“Odd,” Bolan said, thinking. The agents’ post was a good place to watch the area, with plenty of cover. “I’m trying to figure out how they got so close to your position.”
“It happened damn fast, Matt,” Rivers said. “I saw them moving around and they disappeared. We were getting ready to pull out, and I saw them again, and then bam, they were on us.”
“Maybe—” Bolan started to say when a shot rang out, and the back of Rivers’s head exploded in a gruesome shower of blood, bone and brain.
Diving for cover, the Executioner cursed to himself. The Border Patrol agent was dead before his body hit the ground, and now Bolan was out here without any backup and no idea where the shot had come from. He rolled to a well-protected spot behind a cluster of rocks and drew the Desert Eagle from his shoulder rig. Unfortunately, the round that had killed Rivers was from a rifle, and a handgun was not a long-distance weapon.
He heard scuffling feet and rolling rocks and turned, scanning in every direction. From the far side of another collection of boulders, a voice called, “Do you want to die, too, gringo?”
The sounds of movement were now surrounding him from all sides, and Bolan knew he was in real trouble. “Not really,” he called. His assailants had him cornered. All they were trying to do now was avoid casualties on their end. “On the other hand, I’m happy to take some of you with me if this gets out of hand.”
The man Bolan presumed was the speaker stepped out from his cover. He had a Heckler & Koch sniper rifle over his shoulder and was now pointing a simple, tactical shotgun on Bolan. He wasn’t a big man, but he was compactly built, with the lean muscle and steady gaze that said he was not a man to screw with.
“You don’t have to die today,” the man said. “But if you don’t throw down your weapon, you will.”
Bolan nodded and got slowly to his feet. He had considered fighting back, but the moment Rivers hit the ground, he’d decided that would be counterproductive. He was alone and outnumbered, and allowing himself to be captured would give him access to the people behind all of this.
“Easy,” Bolan said. He dropped the magazine out of the Desert Eagle, then worked the slide, emptying the chamber. He reversed the gun and held it out butt-first to the man. “It’s my favorite, so I’d just as soon not throw it on the ground.”
The man nodded and whistled softly. Six more men appeared from hiding, their weapons trained on Bolan, who kept his hands up. “I understand,” the man said, moving in and taking the weapon from him. “I’ll see that it’s well taken care of.”
“I’d appreciate it,” Bolan said. “What now?”
“Now?” the man said. “We drive.”
* * *
BOLAN WAS IN the back of a truck that was rattling along on either a rutted dirt road or barely a road at all. He was blindfolded, and his hands were tied together with plastic zip ties, as were his ankles. The men had searched him, confiscating his wallet, keys and the other documents he had on him.
Gritting his teeth at a massive bump, Bolan tried to hold himself