Chuy sneered, “Qué lástima, what a shame. Like you haven’t killed kids before.”
Adan shook his head, “Bastardo.”
Rodolfo said, “You two won’t kill anybody. Those fancy little flying things Hiyoki has are going to take care of the job. We’re only here for cleanup in case something goes wrong.”
Antonio said, “Those things make me nervous, carrying that sarin in them. What if one crashes into us?”
“Adan said, “You can kiss your ass goodbye.”
Rodolfo’s phone rang. He answered, listened and said, “Bueno,” and then said to the others, “They’ve launched. We can watch from here, and when they pass, we follow.”
As Hunter pulled out on the highway from the caliche road, she saw something in the distance, near a van by the road, maybe a half-mile from them.
Her eyesight caught it and her skin crawled because she knew immediately what it was.
Hunter turned the wheel and accelerated south on the road to Black Gap. David said, “Where you going?”
“We’ve got trouble behind us.”
The boys looked, and Lonny said, “What is that?”
“Those are the drones, the ones from across the border.”
They grew quiet, then David said, “What are you going to do?”
“I’m thinking.” She drove faster, glancing often in her rear view mirror, and it seemed the drone flock wasn’t gaining. She thought about what to do, and then realized Buck Ward’s ranch was down this same road. She squirmed in the seat, reaching behind her back to pull the phone from her rear pants pocket and dialed his number, hoping he was at the house and not out in one of the pastures where reception was almost nonexistent.
Buck answered on the second ring. “Hey, Hunter. What’s up?”
“I’ve got a bad situation going here. I’m coming your way, maybe ten minutes out, and I’ve got, like, two hundred drones on my tail.”
There was silence for several seconds, “Drones like the ones with the sarin?”
“Yes. And I’ve got three boys with me too. I’m gonna need some help, and some shelter. They aren’t far behind me.”
“Slide up to the front door and come running, I’ll have the door open. I had the front gate open on the highway earlier, so you won’t have to stop to open it.”
“Thanks, Buck.”
“Get the lead out, come on.”
Hunter glanced at the rear view mirror and saw they were about the same distance behind. So the drones were keeping pace, as if they weren’t worried. Something else caught her eye further back beyond the drones. A pickup and a large van, and she spotted a rifle barrel sticking out of the passenger window of the first one. She accelerated a bit, but not enough to slide off the road on the curves or dips, and thought about what they would do.
She saw Buck’s open gate a hundred yards ahead, and she prepared to take it as fast as she could. She said, “Hold on, boys.” Steering into the oncoming lane to give her a better angle to go through it allowed her to not slow down much. She turned at the last minute and slid through the gateposts in a tire-squealing mix of blue smoke, and an instant later, pale caliche dust as she shot through the opening.
The drones sailed over the barbed wire fence at thirty feet and made a gentle curve to keep coming on Hunter’s pickup. The pickup and the van came through the gate at a slower pace and remained two hundred yards behind the drones.
Hunter saw it all in her mirrors and she pushed the gas pedal down for the last dash to Buck’s home.
The boys were wide eyed and silent, and Hunter said, “I’m going to stop really fast in front of Buck’s and you three need to get out and run to the house, and I mean run like you’re in a race.”
David swallowed hard and said, “We will.” The other two nodded, their eyes large.
The road was almost a straight shot to Buck’s home, except for two shallow curves that went around the base of two low, ocotillo and cactus dotted hills. When Hunter made it around the second one, a bullet splanged as it hit her rear fender. She floored it.
Hunter kept the pedal down even though she felt the truck tires bouncing in the washboard places on the road, and once she wound up sideways but steered it out and across the pasture in a half-circle to come back on the road. It cost her distance and when she looked in the rearview, both the drones and the vehicles had closed the distance by half.
She saw Buck standing on his porch, watching. Even at two hundred yards she saw the rifle in his hand, the barrel hanging loose beside his leg. It was going to be close…