Adobe Flats (14 page)

twenty-six

Grant carefully slid back
from the ridge on his stomach, then sat up against a flat rock once he was hidden from the industrial complex on the other side of the hill. Cruz had been close when he'd said Macready's factory was next to the 385. It was actually ten miles north of Absolution on Iron Mountain Road, a straight-as-an-arrow continuation of Avenue K. The desert road went past the factory, then joined the 385 on its way through the hills towards Fort Stockton. Passing traffic used the 385. The army convoy used Iron Mountain Road. That's what had made Doc Cruz nervous driving Grant out there on the same road.

“This is madness. They will see you coming from miles away.”

This while Cruz had kept his battered Ford from bouncing off the uneven road and Grant had kept his head down on the back seat.

“I thought you weren't hiding from Macready, just keeping a low profile.”

“Driving up to his factory is not keeping a low profile.”

“His factory's on the other side of the Iron Mountain. They won't even see your dust unless they're headed back towards town.”

“Exactly.”

“They've just crossed the border heading north. Whoever they've paid to use the trucks will be wanting them back. Once they've dropped the cargo and refuelled, it'll be straight up the 385.”

Grant had been right. There had been no vehicles on the road out of town. He sat with his back against a tombstone rock in the dying light of the day and looked down at Cruz's Ford parked in a cutting behind the hill. Cruz looked unhappy. Grant waved to show everything was all right apart from his aching ribs and the stinging knees. He ran through the factory layout in his head.

The industrial complex was situated in a horseshoe indentation in the side of the mountain. The flat piece of land was perfect for keeping the factory private while allowing secluded access from Absolution and good transport routes along the 385. The factory itself was fairly basic. An L-shaped block. Brick-built storage units along one arm and workshops with a chimney along the other. Two antiquated gas pumps bordered the narrow cutting that formed the entrance, the only way in or out. There was no gate and no security fencing. The factory was protected on three sides by the mountain and a guard hut next to the filling station.

There was ample space in the angle of the L between the storage units and the workshops. That's where the trucks had been parked. Even from this distance Grant had been able to see the swirl of tracks where they'd been reversed for unloading before refuelling on the way out. The trucks were gone now. The pair of army jeeps was parked at the gas pumps. Grant wondered how Macready had swung the extended loan, the jeeps having been parked at Sixto's for the last couple of days. He must be paying a king's ransom to get that kind of cooperation.

Loose rocks rattled down the hillside.

Grant snapped his eyes forward.

Cruz was scrambling up the hill, worry etched across his face. Waiting alone at the car had obviously got to him. Despite the heat and glaring sun, the doctor wanted company more than rest. The climb brought sweat patches out under his arms and down his spine. He was out of breath by the time he sat next to Grant.

“This much exercise—it is not good for your condition.”

Grant smiled at the doctor's discomfort. “Is that your medical opinion?”

“It is the opinion of a man who has just climbed a mountain. A man who still has two knees and no broken ribs.”

Grant couldn't argue with that. His knees were sore but his ribs were the worst. They hurt like hell whenever he moved. Add to that his head felt muzzy and he was running a temperature. Sweat stung his eyes even without the effort of climbing the hill. Sometimes, if he looked down at his feet, the world tilted and spun out of control. Control was something he normally took for granted.

“I'll be fine. I'm only going to take a look inside.”

Cruz shook his head.

“You are not fine. And to look inside, you will have to climb down this mountain. I guarantee you will feel worse at the bottom than you do at the top.”

Grant didn't shake his head. It was already spinning. He took a deep breath and blinked sweat out of his eyes.

“I'll take it easy.”

Cruz didn't look convinced.

“Easy would be to do this after dark. Isn't that what you military types do? Sneak around in the dark?”

The sun was low but still bright. It blazed across the western plains.

Cruz made another point.

“And don't forget, once you have looked inside you will have to climb back up here. That is three climbs too many, my friend.”

At last Grant had an opening for his defense.

“I won't be climbing back up here because you're going to pick me up round the corner.”

“What? You're just going to walk out? In plain sight?”

This time Grant did shake his head and regretted it.

“This side of the factory there's a dry creek. Runs right past the entrance, all the way to where you're going to pick me up. Nobody's gonna see me.”

That's what he kept telling himself, but Cruz was right. Grant should really wait until dark. Trouble was, he didn't think he could last until dark. The fever was taking hold and he felt weak and shivery. If there was any trouble, he doubted he'd have enough strength to defend himself. Back in his army days this mission would be aborted. As it was, Grant was relying on the low sun glaring down the hillside to blind anyone looking this way. After that it would have to be stealth and secrecy.

It was a forlorn hope. He should have listened to his doctor, because things were about to get a whole lot worse.

He was halfway down
the hill when the first bout of sickness threatened to empty his already empty stomach. He crouched behind a rock and let the cramps double him over. His eyes were watering. Sweat poured down his face. The cramps eased, but his head was spinning. It was a few minutes before he was able to look around the rock.

The trucks might have gone, but the factory was working full tilt. The noise came up the hill in waves. A dull roar sounded from inside the workshop, and a constant banging and clattering came from everywhere. Smoke puffed around the tall black chimneystack. Voices shouted above the noise. Nobody was trying to be secretive. Everyone felt safe this far out of town.

One of the jeeps started up and crossed the yard to the gas pumps. Grant's eyes followed the movement. A man came out of the guard hut and jerked a thumb towards the fuel gun holstered in the side of the pump. The driver stopped the jeep and began to argue with the guard. Didn't look like he wanted to serve himself, and the guard didn't consider himself to be a gas pump jockey. There was a lot of chest beating and violent movement but no actual violence. Another example of pissing contests coming in all shapes and sizes.

Grant scanned the open space below him. The other jeep was unmanned. There was nobody else around. The only eyes on the ground were too busy arguing about who should work the pump. Holding one arm across his stomach, Grant scurried the rest of the way down the hillside. Easy movements. Careful not to start a rockslide. He reached the gully at the bottom, then dropped to a crouch. His head was spinning. A sudden cramp doubled him over, but he wasn't sick. Sparks of light jumped around behind his eyes. He took half a dozen shallow breaths to clear his head.

The factory noise was louder down here. That was good. It meant he didn't have to worry about anyone hearing him scramble up the riverbank. He poked his head over the top for a count of five, then ducked below the parapet again.

He was at the end of the long side of the inverted L—the storage wing. Several roller shutter doors faced the courtyard. Only one was open. He couldn't see inside from this angle, but sparks flickered in the dark. An electric motor whined, and more banging noises drifted out of the door. A forklift truck? A motorized trolley?

Approaching from the angle of the L was too dangerous. The guard wouldn't be distracted for long, and the thing about factories was that workers might come out of the door at any time. Grant moved to his left so he could see down the outside of the L—the external walls that were protected by the mountain. The side where they felt safe. Like he'd noticed from the ridge, there was no guard position along the outside, but there were three fire escapes. And they were all open to let air into the work area.

Grant moved left and forwards out of the creek bed. He threw one last glance towards the guard hut, where the discussion had reached a stalemate in the dying shafts of sunlight, then approached the nearest fire escape. It was at the top of a rusting metal staircase about ten feet up the sidewall. The other fire exits were at ground level. Grant preferred to view the inside from an elevated position. He paused at the bottom of the stairs and rested one hand on the bottom step. There was no vibration. No footsteps echoing from the top of the solid metal structure.

Walking softly on the balls of his feet, Grant took the stairs one at a time. This wasn't about speed, it was about stealth. Rushing ahead would be a mistake. The way his head kept spinning, this was probably a mistake anyway.

He went up three steps and paused.

No movement up ahead.

He went up three more.

Still no movement or voices at the top.

Another three steps.

The chaotic noise of a workforce in full swing grew louder. Metal banged on concrete. The electric motor whined, stopped, reversed, then whined again. The dull roar was constant. Grant could smell hot metal and flux, like a soldering iron multiplied by a hundred. A furnace.

The next three steps took him to just below the landing. The noises made sense now. It reminded Grant of the steelworks in Sheffield back home, back when there had been a steel industry in Yorkshire. Knives and forks around the world had been made from Sheffield steel. He doubted Macready was making cutlery.

Grant edged forward at a crouch. He reached the landing and peered through the door. At first all he could see was the elevated walkway around the inside of the factory and the foreman's office at one end. In the distance, to his left, sparks jumped and spat when the furnace door was opened.

That wasn't what caught his eye. Molten metal was just molten metal. There was no way of knowing what kind of metal it was until it cooled and oxidized. The factory floor was the place to look.

He crept to the edge of the walkway, keeping low, and looked over the side. Then a voice shouted a warning to his right.

twenty-seven

Grant jerked his head
towards the sound, and the world spun into oblivion. He pushed back from the edge of the walkway and braced himself against the wall. His hands came up, ready to fend off the attack, and his knees screamed as he prepared to push upwards. He turned towards the shouted warning. To his right, the voice shouted again—from the glass and wood office at the end of the walkway.

“I said, watch your back!”

There was a loud bang and a yell from the factory floor. Metal clattered across the concrete, and there was a rending crack as wood splintered. Confusion reigned. There were more shouts—from the factory floor this time—and everybody stopped work as they dashed to help the stricken man.

The forklift truck had reversed away from the jaws of the furnace just as two workers were wheeling a wooden crate across the floor. Their attention had been on the conversation they were having instead of what they were doing. They didn't hear the warning beep as the motor went into reverse.

Crash.

The foreman dashed to the nearest stairs at the far end of the walkway on the other side of the office. Using both hands on the railings he slid down, his feet barely touching the steps on the way. Another man jogged towards the accident carrying a first-aid box. The other workers formed a circle around the crash site, all facing inwards towards the injured man.

Grant's head continued to spin. He felt nauseous but managed to fight off the stomach cramp that threatened to double him over. This was an opportunity too good to miss, but he was almost too ill to take advantage of it. He glanced towards the office—the place where any documentation would be kept. Invoices, transport orders, and cargo manifests; the place to look for evidence of Macready's activities. That's if Grant was looking for evidence. For now, all he wanted to know was what the Texan was bringing in from Mexico. This wasn't going to court.

Manifests and transport orders were the sort of things a legitimate enterprise would require. The army convoy across the border wasn't a legitimate enterprise. Any paperwork filed for tax purposes would be false and misleading. The real evidence was on the factory floor in the crates being emptied into the furnace. Grant ignored the office and went in the opposite direction.

The walkway tracked the back wall around the factory. Metal handrails gave some cover but not much. Grant stayed low despite his screaming knees and kept his back to the wall. His head was just above the angle of the walkway's edge, giving him a view down into the gathered workforce. He passed the nearest set of stairs and continued to the end nearest the furnace. From the outside, the inverted L shape looked like two separate wings, the storage units and the factory. Inside, it was all one big workspace: the smelting works at one end and the factory floor at the other. The roller shutter doors were simply delivery bays with loading docks for the trucks. Most of the wooden crates were stacked at the loading docks.

Most but not all.

Grant paused at the top of the stairs. Down on the factory floor, the circle had widened so the injured man could be treated. The first aider was examining the man's extremities while talking to keep him calm. Grant wondered how Doc Cruz would have handled the situation. He remembered how he'd dealt with the frightened boy at the Terlingua medical center. He doubted the foreman would be giving out sweets. With the examination over, the first aider opened the box and began to splint the man's leg. Another helper unfurled a folding stretcher. This was going to take a bit of time. Grant took advantage of the distraction.

The steps were metal, like the fire escape. Heavy footsteps would sound the alarm. Grant tiptoed down one step at a time, keeping balanced and light and aware of the group in the middle of the floor. He reached the bottom without incident and quickly sidled behind the walkway supports. One final glance at the gathered workforce, then he turned his attention to the furnace.

It wasn't Sheffield steelworks, but it was big enough. The door was large and circular. Whatever they were feeding it was poured in through the door. Whatever was coming out ran in a glittering stream of liquid metal. The narrow trough split into rectangular casts about six inches by three. Ingot size. Smaller than the ones Auric Goldfinger had been making out of the metal parts of his Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. Same principal.

Gold ingots. Made in Texas. Stolen from Mexico.

That was obvious the moment Grant saw the molten stream. What wasn't clear was just what kind of gold they were smelting. It wasn't body parts from a Rolls Royce, that was for sure. The broken crate was too far away for Grant to risk taking a look. The spillage was too indistinct to identify: small stuff, certainly, and some bigger pieces, all glittering in the overhead lights.

The furnace door was closed, but the next mouthful was waiting at the side. A sturdy wooden crate with the lid off, ready to be emptied. Grant checked the crowd. They were in the middle of the floor on the other side of the spillage. The forklift truck blocked Grant's view. Good. That meant it blocked theirs as well. The furnace was in a darkened corner of the factory, a rough-hewn alcove of dirt and grime. The shadows highlighted the sparks and molten metal. The sparks didn't light the corner Grant was hiding in or the crate he wanted to check.

One final glance, then Grant walked to the crate. Upright and steady. Not rushing, not crouching; looking for all the world like he belonged there. Nothing to draw attention to himself. He reached the crate in four easy strides, then bent to look inside.

The world spun again. Not because he felt dizzy but because of the brilliance of what he saw before him. Light danced off the contents, and he thought he understood the reason Humphrey Bogart had gone gold crazy in
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
. He dipped a hand into the crate to make sure it was real. Then a door opened behind him and he heard the flush of a toilet.

The man was rubbing
his hands together as he came out of the darkened corner. A stenciled sign above the door read
restrooms
. It didn't specify gender. Judging from the workforce, this was an all-male environment. The man wore grease-stained overalls and heavy work boots. He paused mid wipe and performed a comedic double-take.

Grant held an intricate gold medallion in one hand and stood still. He felt like a naughty boy caught with his hands in the cookie jar. For a split second. Then he moved fast. Three strides towards the restrooms as he dropped the medallion into his pocket. He walked right up to the worker and didn't slow down, driving the heel of one hand into the man's throat, then grabbing him under the arms as he collapsed, gasping for breath. He walked the man backwards under the stairs and laid him gently on the ground.

“Sshhh. Take it easy. Breathe slowly.”

He remembered that Doc Cruz hadn't done anything apart from reassure the Mexican wife beater until he'd got his breathing regulated, and Grant hadn't hit this fella anywhere near as hard. He was a factory worker, not a wife beater. Not one of the bad guys, just a bad guy's employee. He patted him on the shoulder—“You'll be fine in a couple of minutes”—then walked to the nearest fire exit before the other workers noticed their friend was taking a long time in the restroom. The ground floor fire door was open like the others for fresh air. Grant was through the door and scrambling down the dry creek bed before the strain caught up with him.

Lights blinked in his eyes again.

His head felt like it didn't belong to him.

His stomach most definitely did. It cramped fit to cut him in two. Despite having nothing on his stomach, he doubled over and threw up. Dry heaves brought acid phlegm up his throat. Sweat stung his eyes and ran down his neck. His entire body shivered despite the heat. His face felt like it was burning up.

There was no time for this. He forced himself to keep moving even though he couldn't stand upright. That was a good thing because the gully wasn't deep enough for him to stand up straight and remain hidden. He shuffled and walked past the bottom of the inverted L. Past the enclosed yard where the trucks had parked. He could smell petrol fumes and almost threw up again.

He risked a quick look over the top of the embankment. Both jeeps were still at the pumps, but only one was being refueled. The last patch of sunlight from the hillside lit the filling station and the guard hut. A golden haze to end the day. The rest of the factory was in shade. Nobody came running out. Not yet.

Grant kept low and crabbed his way along the gully. The first driver was still arguing with the security guard while he struggled with the filler cap. Fumes drifted around him like a heat haze on the highway. The second driver ignored the discussion and simply worked the pump. The soft
ding
,
ding
,
ding
came down the embankment. Grant was level with the filling station. He kept going. Fifty yards ahead, the gully swung to the right around the bottom of the hill. Not far to go before he could collapse into Doc Cruz's car and listen to his “I told you so.”

He didn't get fifty yards, just ten before the factory siren broke the silence. Three men came dashing out of the fire exit and around the side of the storage wing, shouting and screaming. They waved to catch the guard's attention, then pointed along the gully.

Grant tried to move faster but that only made his head spin worse and his eyes go out of focus. Running blind and dizzy on a rock-strewn riverbed was a recipe for disaster. Disaster was coming for him anyway.

The guard saw him first and yelled for him to stop. He didn't draw his gun. In that regard he showed more sense than the two drivers, who were also armed. The first man abandoned the filler cap and stepped into the cloud of vapors. The second left the pump nozzle in the side of his jeep and drew his weapon. Both took a two-handed firing stance like they must have seen Dirty Harry do.

Grant kept going.

The guard waved for the drivers to lower their weapons.

The first driver had had enough of the guard pulling rank. He racked the slide to chamber a round. His partner did the same. Grant wondered if Texas filling stations had warning signs at the pumps—the ones that said not to use your cell phone when filling up or the ones about not smoking. He was pretty sure there weren't any signs about discharging a firearm while standing in a cloud of petrol fumes, it being the fumes that ignited more than the petrol itself.

Grant tried to zigzag to throw off their aim. It didn't matter. The delay between petrol fumes igniting and the petrol catching fire became a moot point. Both drivers fired simultaneously; the muzzle flash was like striking a match. The ball of flame engulfed them, then immediately flashed back to the source: the gas pumps. The nearest pump blasted apart, sending a fireball and shrapnel flying into the air. The second pump took a second longer. A moot point because both drivers were out of action and the security guard was diving for cover.

The fireballs combined. The pumps disintegrated, leaving two holes in the ground gushing flames. The guard hut was a scorched remnant. The guard was afire, patting himself furiously to put out the flames. Nobody was interested in the intruder. Nobody was going to be driving through the only exit from the factory.

Grant slowed to catch his breath. He could barely see the bend in the river. He could hardly walk without falling over. He didn't hear the car come round the corner or see it skid to a stop. His vision was so blurred by the time he got in the car he didn't even know it wasn't Eduardo Cruz picking him up. Five minutes later he didn't know anything at all.