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—
Two hundred yardsfrom Highway 68, he diverted onto a narrow track to the south, rode two hundred yards over dirt bumps and weeds, then turned back toward 68. When he got to the highway, he could see the flashing lights of the checkpoint at 240 and 68. There were three cars at the checkpoint, as close as he could tell, and the police that he could see, small dark figures on the other side of the cars, all seemed focused on the cars. There were no cars trying to get into town.
He took a breath, rolled slowly up to 68, and crossed quickly, into the mouth of another narrow, poorly lit street. Riding in the dark wasn’t getting easier; if anything it was getting harder, more disorienting. Slowing down didn’t help, so he sped up again.
A half hour later, he intersected with the High Road. He checked his watch: 2:46. The sun would be up a little after six, so he had three hours to get as far out the High Road as he could. He had to get far enough out that he could be fairly sure he’d encounter no more checkpoints.
The High Road had a bike lane, which again was an irrelevancy: first, there was no traffic, and second, he had no choice but to take that road, bike lane or not. There were houses and businesses on both sidesof the road, but because of the peculiar culture of Northern New Mexico, many of the houses were enclosed by the characteristiclatillafencing, made of close-set poles, usually at least five feet high. Even in broad daylight, residents of most of the houses wouldn’t be able to see him going by on the road. Much of the road was also edged by brush and trees, blocking the view of houses from the road, and vice versa. After he’d passed the built-up area, he began climbing; an invisible man, feeling the altitude in his lungs and legs.
At the crest of one of the long, rolling hills, he stopped, got off the bike, pulled it into the roadside weeds, sat and drank water. A rare car went by, moving very fast, even for a highway. He couldn’t see it well, but he thought it was civilian, not official. He forced himself to sit for fifteen minutes, then got back on the bike and pedaled south, up and down, but mostly climbing. Unlike daytime riding, he couldn’t just coast down the hills; he had to brake down, keep the speed controlled.
And at five-fifteen, he ran into another checkpoint.
He could see the lights from most of a mile away, and he closed carefully. He was sure he couldn’t be seen; he could barely see the cops, who were talking to a man whose car had been pulled to the side of the highway. The speeding car that had passed him farther back? He didn’t know.
Steep hill on one side of him, sharp drop on the other. He pedaled slowly forward, then dropped into a dip in the road and stopped.
He was stuck, at least for the time being. He crossed the road and pushed up the bank above him. The brush was not dense: there were piñon trees all around, short, prickly, so dark green that he couldn’t see them until he walked into the branches. There were dry weeds around his knees, but he couldn’t see them, either; he spent a minute worrying about rattlesnakes, but then stopped worrying.
A hundred feet off the road, and sure that he was behind several layers of piñons, he put the bike down, kicked around it—snake removal—and sat down, tried to get comfortable. Handicapped by the dark, he opened the top of the backpack, fished out a chicken sandwich, took a drink of water.
Nothing to do now, but wait.
25
One o’clock in the morning, bags of potato chips, a twelve-pack of Dos Equis, a bottle of wine and plastic glasses.
The six marshals, plus Letty, Hawkins, and Cartwright, gathered in Lucas’s room at the Hampton Inn to talk about what to do next. The search of the Los Pandos neighborhood had been a success only in the negative sense—they knew where Scott and Catton had been, but not where they’d gone.
Cartwright, looking around the room, said they reminded her of her team in Afghanistan, when she was in the Army—sitting on the floor, sprawled on the bed, slumped in chairs, with guns, armor, a helmet that somebody had brought with him.
Letty said, “If they’re out, I think we would have heard, unless they headed up into the mountains and are hiding themselves. But if that’swhat they’ve done, with all the bulletins that are out there now, somebody will spot them.”
Cartwright: “The big question, how are they moving? They had two cars that we know of, plus the RV, and you guys stopped the RV and we got Callister’s car down in Santa Fe, and Catton’s rental Cadillac here. So: they must have another car or are planning to get one. We’ve got the plates for Catton’s Lexus, and everybody’s looking for it. You guys got the checkpoints up pretty quick, and we know Foss was here and Callister left from here, so…I think they’re still inside the perimeter.”
“So do I, but they’re planning to get out, somehow,” Lucas said.
Devlin, slouched on the couch next to Rae, pointed out that there might be houses with hidden or non-obvious spaces—the eaves of houses—that would make a real house-to-house tedious and maybe impossible. “We can’t watch everything all the time. We search one block, clear it, and they manage to sneak into that block in the middle of the night, kill the homeowners…it’s whack-a-mole.”
“It’s a problem,” Lucas agreed.
—
“Here’s another question,”Rae said. “How did they find that rental house? Do they know the Wallachs? Couldn’t have just been luck.”
“Gotta find the Wallachs to know that,” Lucas said. He had his head on a pillow, on the bed, and sat up and said, “The guys down in Austin put out a public plea on all the TV channels asking them to call. That’s the best they could do. The local cops are looking for the license plates…they’ll find them, but I don’t know how soon.”
“We know they’re trying to get out, and there’s apparently a little airport here, somewhere,” Hoang said. “Could they have stuck a gun in the ear of a private pilot…”
“That was shut down, first thing,” Letty said. “There are a couple of Army trucks parked across the runway, I’ve been told.”
Rae: “We know he was a mountain biker…could he bike out?”
“His bike is still up at Catton’s place. Apparently they didn’t have room for it in the Cadillac,” Lucas said.
Stuart said, “There gotta be bike shops in town.”
Langer added, “He wouldn’t actually have to ride to Denver. He’d just have to get around the checkpoints and then steal a car. He might be able to do that on a bike.”
