The Ninth Day (37 page)

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

Chapter 44

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mma 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 his 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

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mma 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.