“Hell of a thing,” Waltz said. “Hell of a thing. The Alamo.”
“You got our publication on what to do when you get home?” Hawkes asked.
“Yup. Makes sense to me.”
“Keep your mouth shut, and when people ask if you were here . . .”
“Smile.” He laughed, his head bobbing in delight at the thought. “So they’ll know, but they won’t know.”
“Use cash in the gas stations, stay off your credit card . . .”
“I got it,” Waltz said.
They drove on, and then Waltz, looking in his rearview mirror, said, “Look back there. A helicopter.”
Hawkes looked back, and she could see a brilliant light shining down on what had to be Pershing, a police helicopter with a searchlight. “Too late,” she said. “Too late.”
“Might not be looking for us,” Waltz said. “Might be looking at that bus.”
“Might be,” Hawkes said. She didn’t want to think about the bus.
* * *
An hour after they left Pershing, they hit the farm service roads. Most of the trucks turned to the right at the first state highway, heading toward an on-ramp at I-10. Hawkes pointed Waltz to the left, and, two hours after they drove out of Pershing, directed him onto a highway that went northwest into the backside of El Paso.
They made it into the city shortly before midnight and Waltz dropped her at the twenty-four-hour Walmart where she’d left her Subaru. They spent a minute pulling duct tape off his license plates, then she gave Waltz a hug and said, “Stay under the speed limit, take care, Carl. I don’t know your plans, but if I were you, I’d head on up to Albuquerque tonight . . .”
“I got it,” he said. “I’m going through Albuquerque all the way up to Santa Fe and then cut cross-country back home.”
“Maybe I’ll see you up there someday,” Hawkes said.
“Always got a place for you.”
* * *
When Waltz had gone, Hawkes got out her burner phone and tried to call Low, then Crain, then Duran, and got no answer from any of them. Something bad had happened, she thought. And maybe something bad should have happened, since Low had delayed the blowing of the bridge.
She got on I-10 a few minutes after midnight, pointed the car at Tucson, four and a half hours away. She’d find a motel there, with her new ID, get some sleep, change her hair color, and head north into the Rockies.
She had a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash, an AR and a Beretta, and a bottle of L’Oréal Paris Excellence Crème Hair Color in the Red Penny shade.
A new life coming up, a life underground.
Red hair and guns.
Made her heart beat harder.
* * *
By the time Letty and Kaiser got to the roadblock, the first militia trucks were turning onto I-10, streaming up toward El Paso, although some turned back toward Van Horn, planning to catch I-20 north toward Midland, or to simply stay on I-10 east.
The few available police and military helicopters didn’t make it to the Pershing area for more than an hour after Letty requested them and they found nothing. Police on the highway north of the roadblock managed to drag the palm trees out of the way, but it was more than three hours after the bridge explosion before the first police cars nosed into Pershing.
With directions from people who had stayed in town, the first cars carefully followed the dirt track to the gun range, and then on to the Arroyo Grande, where the cops saw the newly carved-out escape route. The police cars were too low-slung to follow past the arroyo, and it was the next morning before the first official truck covered the entire route out.