The Rules Of Silence (35 page)

“Yeah, we’ve got a deal.”

“Okay, now it’s your turn to make us believe you, ”Burden concluded. “When you drop him with the Navigator, you’ve got to put him on the phone so we know he’s alive when you leave. We’ll keep talking to him until we get to him. When we’ve got him, you’re in the open.”

“¡Hecho! ”
Macias said, and punched off the phone.

He hesitated a second, calculating, going through the mental paces of what lay before him to make sure he didn’t miss a step that would throw off his timing. Then he punched in a code on his cell phone and immediately pushed the time elapse feature on his watch, setting it for forty-five minutes.

Free pass. Yeah. Did Burden think he was so scared that he’d lost his mind? No fucking way was he going to give up Titus Cain until he was safely out of this mess … and maybe not even then. He’d have to see how it went. But in the meantime, maybe the lie would buy him a little time.

Chapter 56

“Jesus, ”Norlin said.

Burden could feel him looking at him. They were close in the van, their eyes jittering over the screens.

“That, ”Norlin said, “was a ballsy call.”

“You mean heartless, don’t you, ”Burden said without looking at Norlin. “You could’ve said heartless.”

“No, I mean ballsy. If you’re wrong … then it was heartless. You’ve almost got everything you wanted, García. More than you expected you’d get. You could’ve let it go.”

“And I probably would have—if he hadn’t gone back for that laptop. But if he risked his life for it, then I want it.”

“Even if it cost Cain
his
life?”

“Cain is one life. God knows how many lives that laptop could save.”

“What if it can’t? What if it can’t even save one?”

“You’re acting like Cain’s already dead. Look, if Macias believes that Cain’s swallowed a bug, then he’ll leave Cain with the car because he’s got to isolate himself. If he does that, I want Calò to be able to get to him.”

“That’s a damned big if.”

Burden said nothing, ignoring Norlin, his eyes fixed on the monitors.

“And if Macias doesn’t buy that story? ”Norlin persisted.

Burden turned to him. “Think about it, Gil. We wiped out this entire operation. Hell, I can hardly believe that myself. That’s got to scare the hell out of him. I’ve got to guess that at this point Jorge Macias is entirely focused on saving his ass.”

“But what if he doesn’t buy the lie about the swallowed bug?”

“Then he’ll take Cain with him. And even if he does that, he’ll have to be thinking, in the back of his mind, that maybe he’s guessed wrong. That maybe I’m watching this monitor, and I can see Cain’s bug leaving with Macias and not staying with the Navigator like we’d agreed. He’ll remember that I said that if he did anything other than what we agreed on, then he’s a dead man. The second he deviates from our agreement— if he does—he’s going to be sweating blood. People who sweat blood make mistakes. ”He looked at the monitor. “Calò‘s still on him.”

“Yeah, way back, ”the technician said. “More than a mile.”

The van was on the move again, too, just about a mile behind Calò.

Burden kept his eyes on the LorGuides. Up until now everything had worked far better than he’d had any reason to expect it would, but now he had no men to spare, and what happened next was largely out of his hands. All he could do was listen to it happening.

“There’s another way to look at his thinking, ”Burden said. “He knows damn well that his security is tied to Cain. He may hang on to him like a drowning man hangs on to a piece of driftwood. There’s that possibility. If that’s the way it goes, and if he tosses that gun for any reason at all, or loses it, or forgets it in the panic, Calò will go straight to it, and we’re screwed.”

“Cain’s screwed, ”Norlin corrected him.

“They’ve turned off onto South Loop One, ”a technician said.

“Pull up the maps in the southwest part of the city, ”Burden said.

“If Macias continues on his course”—Norlin leaned across and pointed to the map on the largest of four screens—“he’ll go into Oak Hill. He’s headed for an intersection where he’ll have to make a choice between two highways. One, a state highway, goes toward the lakes and on to Llano; the other one, a U.S. highway, better condition, can take you to Fredericksburg or south to San Antonio. All of them go through ranch country.”

Burden stared at the map. Macias was headed into his escape plan. For it to work, he was going to have to drop off the LorGuides somehow. He had to disappear.

Titus’s hands were shaking on the steering wheel from the rush of adrenaline that just didn’t stop coming. They drove south on Loop 360, where the city had effused into the rolling hills with up-market developments that overflowed into the wooded valleys and crawled along the crowns of the ridges, their lights spreading like a sparkling mildew into the rolling landscape. They stayed with the Loop as it turned back east on the southern side of the city, and when it intersected Loop 1, Macias told him to turn right and head south.

Macias wasn’t talking, and Titus found it particularly unnerving that he didn’t ease off with the automatic, which he kept screwed into the base of Titus’s skull. He could actually feel the roundness of the barrel, and it felt like a coffin to him.

When Loop 1 intersected Highways 290 and 71, Macias directed him to exit on the access road. From there they headed off into the more traditional housing developments, street after street of ranch houses interspersed with shopping centers and apartment complexes.

“Pull in here, ”Macias said, and Titus wheeled into a new shopping center carved out of acres and acres of new ranch houses. There was a twenty-four-hour supermarket, a twentyfour-hour home repairs complex, a twenty-four-hour pharmacy franchise, a twenty-four-hour restaurant franchise, and several smaller businesses, their common sprawling parking area brightly lighted by towering halogen street lamps.

“Park here, ”Macias instructed, directing Titus to one of the largest clusters of cars in the area. He got out and opened Titus’s door.

“Come on, ”he said, but as Titus turned to get out, Macias reached in and put the barrel of his pistol to Titus’s Adam’s apple. He said nothing, but he pressed so hard that Titus could feel the cartilage of his trachea rolling under the steel. Then Macias jabbed the gun sharply for emphasis, bringing tears to Titus’s eyes.

“Get the keys and hand them to me, ”Macias said.

Titus did, and then Macias stepped back and let him get out.

Standing next to the Navigator, he watched Macias pull out his shirttail to cover the automatic with the suppressor and the mole, which he crammed into the front waistband of his pants. Titus cringed, hoping he didn’t rake the mole off in the process.

Macias put his arm around Titus and draped his left hand over the top of his shoulder. “I know you want to keep your kidneys, ”he said. “Let’s go.”

But Titus froze. “Hold it. This isn’t what we agreed on. They’ll kill you if I don’t stay with the Navigator.”

“They’ll have to find us first.”

“Look, ”Titus said, “I’ve … I’ll be honest with you. I’m hot. I’ve swallowed a bug. They know where I am every second. When they see my signal leaving the car, you’re screwed.”

“Then why in the hell are you telling me this?”

“Because I’m not an idiot. I don’t want to get killed in a shoot-out, and I’m telling you, if I leave this Navigator, they’re going to come after you.”

They were standing face-to-face, and Macias smelled of stale cologne and perspiration. Both men were dealing with fear and with the mystery of the odds of chance. Titus could smell Macias’s breath, too, and he thought it smelled of desperation.

Chapter 57

Rita looked out of the backseat windows of Kal’s Jeep Cherokee as it pulled off the Loop 1 South expressway and into the parking lot of the La Quinta Inn. Kal was driving, Ryan was sitting in the front passenger seat beside him, and Janet was sitting next to Rita behind them.

They pulled up beside a van just as its rear door opened, and García Burden stepped out into the parking lot. They all got out of the Cherokee and stood at the opened door of the van to talk. Rita could see inside the van, its cramped, dark interior glittering with banks of computer screens covered in colored lights. A clutter of transmission noises wafted out to her.

Burden spoke directly to her. “Two things: I don’t have any more people, and before this is over I may need your three bodyguards here. So this is good for me. The other thing, you’re right. If he’s going to die, you shouldn’t have to watch it like that. If this involved a lot of people, as it did earlier in the evening, I wouldn’t have allowed this. But it’s down to just Titus and Macias.

“Titus’s signal has stopped moving, ”he went on, “and it’s coming from somewhere in all those shopping center lights over there.”

He pointed across the expressway. The back of his saggy shirt was black with perspiration. He seemed wrung out. “Calò‘s over there, trying to get as close as he can. If we’re lucky, that’s where Macias is planning to leave Titus with the telephone.”

Ryan turned and stepped inside the van and immediately came back out with one of the technicians, who was carrying a LorGuide that they’d disconnected. They went to the Cherokee and started installing it between the driver and the passenger in the front seat.

“Hey, ”Norlin said from inside the van. “It looks like the signal’s leaving the Navigator.”

Burden was instantly back inside the van, and the others crowded around the opened rear door.

“This’s a big supermarket, ”Norlin said, pointing to the schematic graphics on one of the screens. “It looks like the signal’s going in.”

Burden got Calò on the telephone.

“Yeah, I see that, ”Calò said. “I’m easing into the lot. I’ll try to get to the Navigator.”

Nobody had to say it: This wasn’t good. The signal was on the gun. Titus was supposed to be on the phone talking to them when Macias left the van. He wasn’t.

Rita remembered her conversation with Burden earlier. She’d been stubborn, wanting to be closer to it all, and now here she was. She’d be damned if she’d fold and get whiny. She wasn’t going to do it. Titus wasn’t dead. She would know it if he was. She’d feel it, like the vibrations of a tuning fork, some subtle fibrillation within her stomach. She believed that as surely as she believed the sun would come up again in the morning. She stared into the dark van and waited.

Titus started walking, and they headed for the supermarket.

Inside the huge and brightly lighted store, Macias slowed down and they walked as casually as possible past the cereals and the soft drinks and the refrigerated goods, past the fresh produce and the meat market, and headed through the double swinging doors into the back of the store. Some of the workers threw them curious glances, but they weren’t being paid enough to be too curious, and Titus and Macias went right on through to the back of the warehouse and out the back metal door into the alley without anyone saying a word to them.

Outside again, Macias glanced around to see that they were still alone. Now he had his gun out in the open and jammed into Titus’s kidneys again and shoved him forward, fast walking down the alley, past the Dumpsters with their rancid odors hanging in the still summer air. On the other side of them, a tall fence of wooden slats ran the length of the long alley behind the stores, hiding it from the housing development.

To Titus the alley seemed more isolated than the Antarctic, but Macias kept checking the rears of the stores, and when he passed into the shadows between the security lights over the back doors of a pet store and camera shop, he guided Titus with pressure from his pistol barrel, and they veered to the fence.

They slowed to a walk, then a slow walk, then they stopped and went back a few steps. Macias scanned the backs of the stores again, seeming to check his bearings, and then they went up to the fence, lifted the bottoms of three adjacent slats, and crouched into the backyard of a small ranch house. The yard, lighted by the street lamps in the adjacent alley, was overgrown with weeds; the house was dark.

Macias unlocked the back door of the house and pushed Titus in first. The alley lights were the only thing that lighted the darkened kitchen through its small windows, and then Titus saw a seam of light at the bottom of a closed door.

“Over there, ”Macias said, and he pushed Titus forward. When they got to the door, Macias told him to open it, and they stepped into the garage. A black Honda Accord was waiting there, backed into the garage, and there was a man sitting on the trunk, his feet on the rear bumper.

“Whoa, ”the guy said, suddenly alert and getting off the car cautiously, eyeing Titus with alarm. “Oh, shit, what’s going on here, Jorge?”

He was in his late twenties, maybe, Hispanic, though he didn’t speak with an accent. He wore jeans and a short-sleeved nylon shirt, open, over a white T-shirt.

“No questions, ”Macias said.

Titus was judging the younger man’s reaction. He looked as though he wanted to bolt, his eyes darting back and forth between Titus and Macias.

“Look, ”the young man said, “when you called me and told me to be here, you said you’d pay me off. I … don’t want anything to do with this.”

“You don’t have anything to do with it, Elías, ”Macias said. “You’ve got one more chore and you’re through.”

“One more? I thought I was coming here to get my last payment for the photographs. And you said you’d reimburse me for them taking my laptop.”

Titus looked at the young man. This was the guy who had taken the pictures of Rita? Macias must’ve been reading his mind, because he again jabbed the automatic into his kidney, telling him to keep his mouth shut. Titus’s lower back was getting sore from his repeated jabbing.

Macias pulled the Navigator keys out of his pocket and tossed them to the young man.

“In the shopping center over there, there’s a Lincoln Navigator parked in front of the supermarket. Dark blue. I want you to go over there and get it and drive it to San Marcos. Watch for the first Texaco station on your right as you come into town. Exit off there and go to the station. You’ll find another Navigator just like the one you’re driving. Your money’s in the glove box. Drive off. You’re through.”