Scorpio Rising by Alan Annand
“You know those guys were worse than teenagers – all lies, lies and more lies.”
“Not sex, lies and videotape?”
“Maybe a little sex but never on videotape.”
He chuckled, then turned and walked ahead of her through the door and she saw the big tattoo of the snake across his upper back. “You had breakfast?” he said over his shoulder.
“I had a coffee on the road.” She followed him inside, looking around as she went, having forgotten how shabby his place was.
“Skinny little thing like you ought to put on a few pounds.”
“I like myself the way I am, thanks.”
“So do I. But I was just gonna do a few eggs for myself. Be no trouble to add a couple for you.” Zeke propped the shotgun beside the stove and retrieved a burning cigarette from an ashtray on the counter.
“I’m not really hungry. Let’s just get down to business.”
“Which business is that?” he said, not turning around, trying not to let too much hope creep into his tone.
“Business, pleasure – it’s all the same to me.”
His pulse quickened as he took a carton of eggs from the fridge and laid them on the counter. Over his shoulder he said, “Gimme a minute, I could grab a quick shower.”
Carrie reached behind her back and took the gun from her waistband. “Don’t bother on my account.”
“So you still like it dirty?” He took a last puff off his cigarette and stubbed it in the ashtray.
“Every once in a while for old time’s sake.”
He turned around, his grin evaporating when he saw the Glock in her double-fisted grip. He raised his hand to wave her off, like a flight deck controller seeing a plane coming in too high and fast, but there was more momentum in that terrible moment than he could deflect. This was not the dream I had, he thought, not the way it was supposed to fly…
She shot him and the sound of it, in the enclosed space without the benefit of ear guards like she was accustomed to on the shooting range, startled her. But not as much as it startled him, the impact of the slug hurtling him backwards to slam against the fridge.
There, it was done. Yes, she could have used him to kill Stockwell but then she’d have owed him forever. Given the way he felt about her, he’d never let her forget it. She’d be doling out money or sex, if not both, the rest of her life.
She waited until he fell to the floor before she walked over to where he lay gasping, both hands clutching a chest wound that burbled scarlet down his ribs and onto the cracked linoleum floor. His mouth was moving and there was a panic in his eyes that couldn’t be articulated.
“Sure, I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “We had some fun together and, once upon a time, maybe I did love you in a sick kind of way. But that’s all over now. You screwed up my perfect plan and now you’re part of the mess that needs to be cleaned up.”
She let him have a good close look up the barrel of the Glock. He was still shaking his head, still trying to say no, when she shot him again.
Chapter 71
Jemez Springs
Sixty miles northwest of Albuquerque, Jemez Springs sat right on New Mexico Route 4, paralleling the Jemez River. Hot sulfur springs were the big attraction in the Jemez area. There was a spa in the village and several springs scattered throughout the nearby hills, some accessible only via hiking trails that became congested on weekends when nature lovers arrived by the score to get naked and soak.
Axel Crowe had to stop in the village to ask for directions because for some reason he’d lost his internet connection and couldn’t access Google Maps on his iPhone to find the road Zabriskie lived on. He bought a bottle of water at a country store and asked how to find the Jemez Canyon Trail.
“Who you lookin’ for up there?” said the old guy behind the counter, his creased forehead looking more like rawhide than the weathered hat he wore on the back of his head. A Colt .45 Automatic sat in plain view next to the cash register.
“Old Army buddy.”
“Bullshit,” the storekeeper said. “If you’da said IRS, maybe I’da believed you, although even that’s a stretch with that northern accent of yours.”
“Would you believe the Treasury Department?”
“Sure. Can you prove it?”
Crowe took a piece of well-worn paper from his wallet and laid it on the counter. The old guy looked at the picture on the bill, and looked at Crowe.
“Andrew Jackson, huh? Not much of a resemblance.”
“I was having a bad hair day.”
The storekeeper shoved the twenty across the counter and gestured north. “Up the road, ‘bout a mile ‘n’ a half. You watch, you’re gonna cross the river twice on the way up, then you look sharp, ‘cause just before you cross it a third time you’ll see a dirt road about fifty yards before the bridge. It’s real easy to miss.”
~~~
Crowe found the turnoff the storekeeper had described. There were few mailboxes on the road and he looked closely at each as he passed, but none declared the occupant to be a Zabriskie or Hunter or any name he recognized. He came to the end of the road and saw a mailbox with ‘ZZ’ on its side. Bingo! He parked his rental, a Dodge Neon, on the shoulder and got out. Halfway up a wooded slope the peak of a roof protruded from the trees. Then he heard a gunshot.
He jumped the ditch and headed up through the trees. Seconds later he heard a second shot. He dropped to a crouch and waited a minute before continuing. He moved from one tree to another until he saw two vehicles – a sports car and a pickup truck – parked in the driveway before a small wooden house.
Crowe crept up to the sports car, whose view from the house was screened by the truck. He crouched beside the BMW, unscrewed the air valve cap on the driver-side front wheel and pressed his fingernail on the valve stem. The hiss of escaping air seemed a roar to his ears but it was too little noise to draw the attention of anyone in the house. The wheel rim sank onto the flaccid tire. He retreated into the trees and swung wide of the house to approach it from the rear.
Inside, Carrie Cassidy pulled on gloves and searched Zeke’s place for the money she’d given him last night. In the bedroom she jerked open dresser drawers, looked in the closet and under the mattress. Then the living room where she opened a wooden chest that doubled as coffee table, finding Zeke’s dope stash and Penthouse magazines, before tearing through a bookcase filled with porn videos and paperbacks of true crimes and war histories.
She was getting a little frantic now, knowing she shouldn’t linger any longer than necessary. It wasn’t about a measly twenty grand when she stood to take down a couple of million. But if the police found the money they might not theorize a drunken argument ending in a shooting, something that happened often enough in these parts. They might suspect something bigger…
She flung open the kitchen cupboards, dumping stuff all over the place, finding only cereal in cereal boxes and coffee in coffee tins, before continuing into the fridge, coming up empty again. Only the bathroom left now, where she swept the contents of the medicine cabinet onto the floor, flipped the lid off the toilet cistern and ka-ching, there was her twenty grand in a plastic container floating on rusty water. She stuffed the money in her jeans and went out the door at a trot.
As soon as she reached the car she saw the flat tire. What the hell? She crouched and ran a hand over the tire, expecting to find a protruding nail, but there was nothing. Shit! She’d never changed a tire in her life and she didn’t want to start now. She needed just enough air to get to the nearest service station.
She popped the trunk and looked inside. No pump. She didn’t even see a spare tire! She looked in the back of Zeke’s truck. There was a big aluminum toolbox but it was locked. She looked inside the cab. A key dangled from a string beneath the rearview mirror. She grabbed the key and unlocked the toolbox. She found a hand pump, fitted its hose to her deflated tire and started pumping.
Crowe, having circled to the back of the house, heard the
Cassidy finished inflating the tire. As she replaced the valve cap she thought she heard something from Zeke’s house. She listened. All she heard was her own labored breathing. She stood and tossed the hand pump into Zeke’s truck.
Crowe edged along the house to its front corner, from where he saw Carrie near the truck. He switched the safety off and pumped the shotgun to feed a cartridge into the breech.
Cassidy spun at the sound and pulled the Glock from her waistband. She saw a head protrude from the corner of the house and a shotgun barrel pointed right at her.
“Carrie Cassidy, you’re wanted by the New York police. Drop your gun and raise your hands.”
She fired two quick shots. The guy was no more than ten yards away but she was hurried. This wasn’t the target range with all the time in the world to steady her hand and squeeze off a slow one. The bullets went wild. He ducked out of sight.
Cassidy jumped into the BMW and started it. The guy’s head appeared again. She fired another quick three shots, blowing off a few shingles as he ducked out of sight again. She threw the car into gear and gunned the engine.
Crowe ran out from behind the house, kneeled and aimed at one of the BMW’s rear tires. The shotgun boomed. Before he could pump a second round, the car was out of range at the bottom of the driveway but he saw its rear end slump as it turned from view.
Cassidy swung the BMW onto the road, narrowly missing a blue Neon parked near the entrance. She stopped, leaned out the window and fired three shots into its gas tank. She hit the jackpot and the tail end of the Neon exploded. She matted the gas and shot off in a trail of dust down the Jemez Canyon Trail.
Crowe climbed into the Ram Charger, laid the shotgun across the seat and started the engine. He hadn’t driven a manual transmission in a while but it was like riding a bike, once you’d mastered it, you never forgot. He put the truck in gear and descended the driveway. Swinging wide of his burning Neon, he turned onto the dirt road and shifted into second. Ahead, a cloud of dust drifted off the road and into the trees. He kept the truck in second gear as he skidded through the downhill turns, struggling to keep it in the middle of the road, hoping he wouldn’t meet another car. Just as he rounded the last corner, he saw the BMW turn south onto Highway 4.
~~~
San Ysidro, New Mexico
Seventeen miles of twisting river road lay between Jemez Springs and San Ysidro. After that it was open country to Bernalillo and the I-25 South to El Paso and the Mexican border three hundred miles away. Observing the speed limit entailed a six-hour drive, but Cassidy was intent on doing it in far less. She went through the village of Jemez Springs at 60 mph, smoke roiling off a flat rear tire, scaring the shit out of motorists and pedestrians alike. People were barely over their outrage when a black pickup barreled down the road in pursuit.
Odds-makers would have had a challenge on their hands. Although the curve-hugging Z4 was made for roads like these, its flat tire made it hard to control, never mind hit top speed. And with its 345-horsepower V-8 engine, the Ram was powerful but its high center of gravity made it a liability on curvaceous Highway 4.
As Cassidy raced down the serpentine road she could smell over-heated rubber and hear the rear tire flapping. Behind her, Crowe maintained the pressure, matting the gas on the straight-aways, fighting to make it through the curves, always keeping the BMW in sight.
Cassidy roared through San Ysidro, barely slowing for the Highway 550 intersection where she ignored a stop sign to slide around the turn, and then she was on a straight stretch toward Bernalillo. She looked in her rearview and saw the pickup a hundred yards behind.
Damn it, who was that guy? If she didn’t lose him by the time she got onto the I-25, the smoke pouring off her rear wheel would attract someone’s attention. Before long, a State Police cruiser would pull up next to her, asking where the fire was. Then it would be all over except for the crying. She had to ditch her pursuer before he became a bigger liability.
A mile ahead on the right, Cassidy saw a ridge of hills that defined the edge of a mesa. Between her and the ridge was open land too barren for pasture, too far from civilization to be developed. Across that open expanse ran a dirt track worn down by hunters or prospectors, something that wasn’t on the maps. She slowed the car, angled into the ditch and climbed the other side to follow the dirt track toward the hills.
Moments later, Crowe braked on the shoulder, watching the sports car tear across the open ground, churning dust in its wake. He crossed the ditch and gunned the pickup in pursuit of the BMW.
Cassidy drove as fast as she could although the sound of the undercarriage striking rough ground beneath her was a reminder she wasn’t on friendly terrain. Up ahead was a V-shaped notch in the rocky ridge.
As soon as she passed though the notch, she swung the car hard left and into the entrance of an arroyo. She hit the brakes just short of getting hung up on a jumble of rocks and climbed out of the car. She hurried back twenty yards and crouched behind a rocky outcropping.
A hundred yards back, Crowe approached the notch in the ridge where the BMW had disappeared. He had a feeling of déja-vu like some old cowboy movie where the cavalry is lured into a box canyon, from the upper walls of which the Apaches let loose a hailstorm of arrows and gunfire. When he was three-quarters through the notch his premonition came true.
From the corner of his left eye he saw Cassidy emerge from behind some rocks. His door window blew open, showering him with glass. He swung the wheel hard left and matted the gas, hurtling the Ram straight at the rocks where he’d seen her.
Cassidy fired twice more into the Ram’s windshield as it barreled up the arroyo at her. Its big square grille loomed above her as the truck lurched over the rocks. She fled.
Slouching below the dashboard, Crowe stomped the gas, thinking that with the high undercarriage he could climb the rocks, but the engine screamed as the wheels tore uselessly at gravel. The truck was hung up on the rocks. He grabbed the shotgun and went out the passenger door, moving to the rear of the pickup, trying to see where Cassidy had gone.
Fifty feet away on the other side of the arroyo, Cassidy aimed her pistol, wondering if she could hit him at that distance. Before she could decide, his shotgun boomed and a hail of pellets buzzed over her head. Shit, there was no walking into that hornet’s nest. She turned and ran from the arroyo, exiting on the west side of the notch. She looked back. The guy was following her. Worse still, he was between her and the highway.
She broke into a trot. She was west of a low ridge of hills. Two miles south was the mesa plateau. If she could make that ridge, she could leave her pursuer completely behind or ambush him from higher ground. She looked back and saw him following her. Well, she was in good shape and wearing running shoes. She’d leave him in the dust. She accelerated her pace and headed for the mesa.
Crowe jogged after her wondering, where was the cavalry when he needed them most? He tugged his phone out and called the number for the regional FBI office.
Chapter 72
Albuquerque
The first call came into the FBI’s Albuquerque office just after noon, a man claiming to have information regarding a fatal car fire in Los Alamos earlier this week. The dispatcher took the caller’s name and phone number and transferred him to the regional officer’s weekend designate. Special Agent Paul Kramer listened skeptically to Axel Crowe’s account of how he’d uncovered a three-way murder conspiracy involving victims in New York, San Francisco and Los Alamos.
Crank calls were all too frequent ever since 9/11 and the subsequent Homeland Security alerts that had raised the average citiz
Kramer dithered a minute. Special-Agent-in-Charge Liam Cobb was visiting friends in Santa Fe and was loath to be disturbed on one of his rare days off. So Kramer spent ten minutes with the National Crime Information Center’s database to confirm Zabriskie’s existence, noting that his Army conviction for theft of ordnance had earned him both a dishonorable discharge and an entry in the NCIC records. When he saw that Zabriskie had received demolitions training while in service, the light went on.
He picked up the phone and called Cobb’s number.
~~~
After getting Cobb’s go-ahead, Kramer mustered a six-man SWAT team and scrambled a chopper. The Bell Jet Ranger that landed on the roof of the FBI field office had a five-seat capacity. It departed Albuquerque with pilot and three SWAT officers, leaving one seat vacant as it headed north to pick up Cobb in Santa Fe.
Kramer and three other SWAT officers drove a Ford Explorer north to Bernalillo, preceded by a New Mexico State Police cruiser to clear the way for their high-speed run to Jemez Springs. They overshot the Jemez Canyon Trail by one bridge too many. By the time they realized they’d missed their turnoff and doubled back, five minutes passed, during which a smoking BMW Z4 pursued by a Dodge Ram Charger hit the NM-4 south of them and fled the scene.
Apologizing to his Santa Fe hosts, Cobb got his wife to drive him to nearby Franklin Miles Park on the south side of the city where he rendezvoused with the chopper. His wife was left with the car and a suggestion that their hosts shouldn’t delay dinner on his account, there was no telling when he’d return.