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“We’ll look for them.”
She punched Lucas off and as Hawkins threw her clothes at her, called Cartwright: “Out of bed. Get your rifle. We’re going. Five minutes, no more, gotta be out of here in five minutes.”
“What…?”
“Don’t talk, just dress. Get the gun.”
—
They ran outof the motel five minutes later, Letty carrying Hawkins’s nearly empty suitcase. They all piled into the same SUV, with Cartwright driving because she’d taken the Special Activities Division driving course. Along the way, Letty, in the back seat, extracted Cartwright’s rifle, a long, monstrous camo’d weapon with an aluminum stock and stainless barrel that must have weighed fifteen pounds. She loaded it with Cartwright urging her not to touch the scope: “Don’t touch it! Don’t even breathe on it.”
Letty snapped back, “Quiet! I know what I’m doing.”
And then she laid out what they’d do when they got to the airport: “Go in slow. Fast right up to the airport, slow the last hundred yards. If she’s there, we don’t want her to see somebody coming in like it’s a big emergency. Alec and I go in, carrying Alec’s bag…”
“Ah, that’s why you took the bag,” Alec said. “Even smarter than I thought you were.”
“Thanks a lot, Hawk.”
“You were about to say…”
“We check out the waiting area, though she shouldn’t be here yet. It’s an hour and a half, more or less, from Taos to here, and that’s in thedaylight, and she’s probably not driving fast, because she wouldn’t want to risk being stopped by cops. So, we should be in time. Barb, I want you outside with a clear view of the front entrance.”
Cartwright: “In the rifle case, the side zipper, check and see if there’s a box of ear plugs and a sandbag, small sandbag…”
“Got ’em, got ’em.”
“I’ll park and set up to shoot from the back window if I have to, but that’s not ideal. I’ll get in the…holy fuck, get out of the way, you asshole…” She leaned on the horn. “Honest to God, give a guy a Porsche…”
“Don’t tell that to Lucas,” Letty said. “He’s got two. You were saying…”
“I can shoot from the car if I have to, but I’d rather be high…” Cartwright glanced at Hawkins. “Got your gun?”
“Ah, no, it’s in the room. I don’t carry by default.”
“It’s okay, I’ve got mine,” Letty said.
Lucas called again: “The airport opens at five for the early flights, so there’ll be people there…How far out are you?”
“Two minutes. Barb’s driving like a maniac.”
“Good, that’s good. How are you setting up?”
She told him about the sniper rifle and that she and Hawkins would go inside carrying the bag…
“You should have the photos. So. You got it, kid. Be safe as you can be. Don’t let her pop the cork on any of those bottles.”
—
Letty called upthe photos on her iPad, looked at them, then handed the iPad to Hawkins, who showed it to Cartwright, then passed it back to Letty.
They made the turn off Airport Road into the airport entrance road, past a junkyard full of wrecked cars. “You sure this is right?” Cartwright asked, “I don’t see a control tower, I don’t see shit, we’re in some kind of slum…”
“Buildings up ahead…” Hawkins said.
“They look like machine sheds on my cousins’ ranch,” Cartwright said.
“This is right, we’ve been here,” Letty said. “They’re rebuilding the place.”
