TRIAL BY FIRE (31 page)

“Did he see what kind of vehicle?”

“It was too far away. An American sedan of some kind. That’s good for us. If the road’s as bad as I think it is, that should slow him down. With any kind of luck, we’ll be able to lead that deputy right to him.”

Ali thought of how many high-speed pursuits she had reported on during her days as a newscaster in L.A., always with the voice of the eye-in-the-sky helicopter providing the narrative. They had often lasted for hours—endless hours of stultifying boredom, punctuated by appalling crashes and spectacular spinouts, with a dozen police cars converging on the resulting wreckage. But this lonely stretch of desert wasn’t a place where dozens of police cars could be summoned as backup.

Whatever happens will be up to us and that one deputy,
she thought.

“If it comes down to him or us,” Ali told Robson, “I’m carrying a Glock and I know how to use it.”

Robson gave her an appraising look. “Don’t go all Annie Oakley on me. I thought you were strictly media relations.”

And I thought you were strictly a jerk,
she thought, but that wasn’t what she said.

“I’m wearing a vest. I’m a decent shot, and beggars can’t be choosers. I have a feeling you’re going to need all the help you can get.”

“Shooting someone’s no joking matter,” he said. “Target shooting is one thing. Shooting another human being is the very last resort.”

“I know firsthand about that,” she said.

Maybe there was something in her answer that told him she had done that, just as he had, too. When he finally figured that out on his own, he grimaced and gave her a grudging nod.

“All right,” he said, “but not unless I say so, as in giving you a direct order, and not if we don’t need the help.”

Ali nodded back.

“I understand,” she said. “Believe me,” she told him, “Sheriff Maxwell will be furious if I end up being a part of a shooting incident outside the boundaries of Yavapai County. He specifically asked me to avoid that.”

Fortunately Robson didn’t ask where she carried her Glock. The discreet small-of-the-back holster she wore under her tracksuit was none of the ATF agent’s business.

After that, Robson fell silent for several minutes while
he stared at the ground. “There,” he said pointing. “I see the road.”

Ali looked where he was pointing, and she could see it, too—a silver ribbon of highway winding through an otherwise brown and green landscape. Soon she could see the other road, too, a dirt track leading off into the wilderness from the paved highway.

“The deputy just got there,” Robson announced. “They’re moving the spike strips so the deputy can get around.” He turned to the pilot. “Can you take us up higher so we can see more? As slowly as he was driving when he first turned off on that, he can’t have gone far. We should be able to spot him.”

Obligingly, the pilot took the helicopter up.

“There,” Ali said. “That plume of dust has to be him.”

Nodding, Robson went back to speaking to the people on the ground. “It’s looks as though he’s a mile or two away, driving hell-bent for leather.”

Moments later, Ali could see a green older-model car tearing up the road and spewing up a trailing cloud of dust.

“It’s an old Ford Gran Torino,” Robson said into the radio. “A muscle car, but that’s not going to help him on this road. It looks rough. Something’s going to break on that old crate and he’ll be stuck.”

Suddenly, as though Robson’s words carried the power of psychokinesis, the fleeing vehicle stopped abruptly, slewing off to one side as though something really had broken.

“Tie rod, I’ll bet,” Agent Robson diagnosed. “That guy’s not going anywhere.”

But as they watched, a tiny man scrambled out of the vehicle and trotted back to the left rear wheel, where he squatted down to assess the damage. Then, hearing the clatter of approaching helicopter blades, he shaded his eyes with one hand and stared up at them. With barely a pause, he leaped to his feet, flung open the back door, and grabbed something from inside the vehicle. Only when he aimed the weapon at them did the people in the helicopter realize what he was doing.

“Holy shit!” Robson exclaimed. “That crazy bastard’s got a rifle. He’s shooting at us. Take us up! Take us up!”

The highly motivated pilot required no urging. They were rising straight up with stomach-churning speed before the words were out of Robson’s mouth.

Ali didn’t have to hear the sound of the shots to know they had been fired upon or to know the degree of menace involved. The man on the ground was desperate. He had no intention of
being taken alive. He was armed and dangerous and prepared to fight to the death.

“Shots fired; shots fired,” Robson reported over the radio. “Looks like a rifle of some kind,” he said to the pilot. “We need to stay out of range.”

“Tell me about it,” the pilot said furiously. “What do you think I am, some kind of idiot?”

Ali was thinking about her Glock. If the guy was armed with a rifle, that meant her Glock wouldn’t be much help, and neither would whatever concealed weapon Agent Robson was carrying. No doubt he was armed with a handgun, maybe even two, but up against a rifle they would be seriously outgunned.

“DPS cars have shotguns in them. They may have rifles as well. Maybe we could borrow—”

“Borrow nothing,” Robson declared. “We’ll bring him and whatever firepower he has along with us.” He turned back to the pilot. “Fly us back to the junction,” he ordered. “See if you can find a spot in this godforsaken place to set this thing down.”

The pilot swung the helicopter in a tight circle, returning the way they had come. Below them they could see another towering plume of dust rising skyward as a Gila County deputy roared toward the shooter’s position. Since the bad guy was no longer moving, the distance between the two vehicles was closing fast. Robson, for his part, was trying to send out a warning that the deputy needed to exercise caution in approaching the scene, but due to varying frequencies between agencies, no one seemed to be in direct communication.

When Robson finished with the radio transmissions, Ali touched the pilot’s shoulder. “What about the coordinates you put in from the e-mail?” she asked. “Can you show me where
that was? While you guys go after the shooter, maybe I can find Sister Anselm.”

Knowing they were out of range, the pilot nodded and sent the helicopter into a steep dive. “There,” he said a minute or so later. “Isn’t that her, there on the left, down in that gully?”

Ali peered outside, straining to pick out details on the ground. Finally she saw a tiny spot of something that was bright green—not the grayish green of the surrounding desert shrubs and prickly pear. If the figure dressed in brilliant green was Sister Anselm, she was lying in the middle of a deep gully, stretched out on a bed of reddish-brown sand.

“See that big rock back up by the road?” the pilot said. “If you use that boulder as a marker and go straight north from there, you should be able to find her.”

“Good thinking,” Robson said. “You go to her and see what you can do to help her. In the meantime, that DPS officer and I will fly back in to give the deputy some backup.”

Ali knew he was right. From the looks of it, and especially if Sister Anselm had been shot, they were already too late to save the nun’s life, but the deputy was driving solo into an ambush.

Back at the highway, the pilot determined that the only place he could set the aircraft down was on the blacktop itself. Once they landed, Robson leaped out of the helicopter. The man didn’t look like much of a sprinter, but he was. He galloped across the distance between the helicopter and the parked patrol car with surprising speed. Ali hesitated for only a moment before she, too, leaped from the helicopter. By the time Ali caught up with Robson, he and the highway patrol officer, Milton Frank, were already retrieving weapons from the DPS vehicle.

As Frank and Robson started toward the helicopter, Ali
stopped them. “While you two handle the shooter, please give me your car keys, Officer Frank. We spotted the woman that man kidnapped a mile or so from here. She’s lying in a gully just off the road. She may already be dead, but it’s possible she’s injured. I need to help her.”

Frank turned to Robson. “Is she a cop?” he asked.

“Yes,” Gary Robson said. “She is.”

“Oh,” said the officer, tossing her the keys. “Why didn’t you say so? It’s against regulations, but under the circumstances, I think they’ll give me a pass. Do you know how to use a police radio?”

“I can figure it out.”

“There’s some first-aid equipment in the trunk if you need it.”

“Water?” Ali asked.

“That, too. Be careful you don’t run over the spike strips as you leave.”

With that, he and Robson set off at a run for the helicopter. Once the aircraft was airborne again, Ali looked up and down the deserted roadway, hoping to see some sign of arriving backup, but there was none. Grabbing first one set of spike strips and then the other, she dragged them off to the side of the road and left them there. Then, as she scrambled into the patrol car, she heard the familiar text message alert coming from her cell phone.

Inserting the key in the ignition, she was tempted to ignore the message, but she didn’t. When she looked at the readout, she was astonished to see the text message was from Sister Anselm. It contained one word only: “Help.”

“Coming.” Ali sent her one-word text message reply, then she started the patrol car’s powerful engine and swung it around in a circle and then on to the rutted dirt road.

The surface of the Forest Service road had never been intended for use by ordinary passenger vehicles. The patrol car, which was fine on the highway, had a hard time managing on the primitive surface. Periodically the vehicle would scrape bottom on the low spots, and the wheel base was the wrong size to negotiate the ruts left behind by the heavier vehicles and equipment that usually traveled this way.

Over the police radio, Ali heard the sound of voices speaking urgently back and forth, but she was too preoccupied with concentrating on her driving to listen to what was being said or to guess how much of it applied to the current situation. The only thing she did manage to make out clearly was the single announcement that backup units were en route. Ali’s desperate hope was that those backup units were headed her way.

The boulder the pilot had pointed out earlier turned out to be a lichen-covered monolith. Once Ali reached it, she had difficulty finding a suitable place to pull off and park. She didn’t want to leave the DPS car blocking access for other arriving vehicles.

Finding a wide enough stretch of shoulder, Ali parked, took the keys, and hurried around to the trunk. Inside she found a case of bottled water, a chest labeled
First Aid,
and a lightweight survival-style blanket. She took the chest, two bottles of water, and the blanket. Not that Sister Anselm needed a blanket for heat right then. It was just the opposite. From what Ali had seen, the injured woman seemed to be baking in direct sunlight with no chance of shade. Ali hoped to use the blanket to create some shelter from the scorching sun.

Carrying the supplies, Ali raced back to the boulder. Once she left the roadway, Ali found she was in desperately rough terrain. Twenty yards or so from the road, she was standing at
the edge of a deep ravine. She was shocked. The view of the scene from the helicopter had flattened the landscape. There had been no way to tell the depth of the gully, or that there was a twelve-foot, boulder-laced dropoff between the surface where Ali now stood and the spot where Sister Anselm had landed, lying still and silent, sprawled facedown in the sandy bottom.

“Sister Anselm,” Ali called. “Can you hear me?”

There was no answering response, no movement.

There was no sign of footprints leading up or down the steep path, and there were none leading to or from Sister Anselm’s body. She hadn’t walked there or been carried there. She had been thrown there. Or pushed.

Ali was outraged.
The bastard just dropped her,
Ali thought.
He tossed her away like she was so much garbage.

“Sister Anselm,” she called. “I’m here. I’m coming as fast as I can.”

Again there was no acknowledgment from the prone figure in the sand below.

Ali soon discovered that climbing down the steep bank was easier said than done. For one thing, it was eroded. Places that appeared to offer a firm foothold crumbled when she put any weight on them. Unable to manage the steep descent safely while carrying her load of supplies, she finally gave up. First she stuffed the blanket inside her tracksuit. Then, taking care to aim them in a direction where they wouldn’t pose any further danger to Sister Anselm, Ali sent the water bottles and the first-aid kit tumbling down the bank.

Close to the bottom but with no visible footholds remaining, Ali finally jumped the last three feet or so, making a jarring two-point landing. The sand looked soft but it wasn’t. She grunted as sharp pains radiated out from both knees, then scrabbled
across the hot sand to retrieve her supplies. When she finally reached Sister Anselm’s side, she knelt near her head, hoping to shield her from some of the sun’s fierce heat.

“Sister Anselm,” she said. “It’s Ali. I’m here. Can you hear me?”

Again there was no answer.

“Please,” Ali said aloud, praying again. “Please show me what to do.”

For a moment, all she did was examine the extent of Sister Anselm’s injuries. Her eyes were closed, her breathing shallow, her face beet red. That could have been from heatstroke or sunburn, or maybe a combination of both. Her scrubs had been torn to shreds. The pieces of bare skin that were visible were bruised and bloodied. Her right leg lay at an unnatural angle to the rest of her body. Either her leg was broken or her hip was. Her right hand, folded into a fist, appeared to be buried in the sand. Closer inspection revealed a death grip—on her iPhone. Since that wireless device had been Sister Anselm’s only lifeline, Ali made no attempt to pry it loose.

“Help is coming.” Ali tried to sound confident and reassuring, but even as she said the words, she knew she was lying. The kind of help that was available right now wasn’t the kind of help Sister Anselm needed. If she had broken limbs or worse—if her back was broken—she would need to be airlifted from the scene in a real medevac helicopter. There was no possibility that they would be able to load her into one of the cramped seats of the ATF helicopter where Ali and Agent Robson had ridden.