His heart slowed again. Once more, he thought, Floyd Riffey dodged another bullet. As he drove, Riffey inventoried the vehicle, going through the glove compartment, and the compartment under the middle armrest, where he found forty dollars and eleven thousand pesos. The only thing ab
ove the sun visors was a photo of a young girl, maybe ten, smiling into the camera. It was pinned to the driver’s visor.
When he saw the photo, Riffey felt bad about leaving the man, and hoped the man and girl would be safe. He turned left on Avenida Independencia, driving through areas at the edge of town where both traffic and houses were fewer. When he was sure no one followed, he turned the Buick on a path that would intersect with the Chihuahua Highway.
It had more than the usual amount of traffic on it because people were fleeing Ojinaga. Riffey melded into the flow as traffic sped across the Rio Conchos. Riffey then slowed, hearing the honks behind him of people wanting to pass.
He pulled onto a flat area near a large, green field of peppers, and as the cars passed, the people put their arms out the windows and shook their fists at him. He waited for a while, gathering his courage, then pulled on the highway and drove until he came to the ranch.
Where Holland lived. The man who also went by Asadullah.
There were no vehicles at the house, so Riffey drove into the yard. Looking into the open barn showed no one. The helicopter was gone, but the twin-engine Cessna was there. The door had been repaired from where it bent at the frame when the undercover agent leapt out while they were in the air.
Riffey hadn’t been on board when that happened, but he heard about it when they landed, and he saw Holland’s black eye and Guereca’s swollen nose where the agent knocked the crap out of them before leaping out with the briefcase, taking Holland’s handwritten plans with him.
He walked inside the barn and opened the door to the electronics room. Cleaned out. Only tables, chairs, and a few wires and cables were left.
Riffey trotted to the house. The door was unlocked. Lucky, lucky, lucky today, he thought as he went through the house methodically but fast, but found no weapons.
Outside, he thought about Holland, about what the batshit crazy terrorist would do next. He studied the Cessna for a moment, and returned inside the house. Kitchenware was still in the drawers. He took a knife, then rummaged through the small kitchen closet and found a quart plastic bottle of charcoal lighter fluid.
He took it, noticed a Bic lighter on the table and grabbed it, too. The pile of cut and split mesquite firewood near an open fire pit was his next stop. He loaded one armful of mesquite, and smiled to himself.
Riffey carried his supplies to the barn and put them down to check the Cessna’s door.
It opened easily, and he gathered the wood, lighter fluid and lighter, carried it all inside and placed it all in the cockpit. Riffey sat on the floor to arrange the mesquite under the instrument panel.
He emptied all but an ounce of the bottle on the wood, also spraying the instrument panel for good measure. Fumes made his eyes water, so he backed away, giving the fluid a full minute to soak. When he was satisfied, Riffey left the Cessna and found an old newspaper and squeezed it into a ball, doused the last of the lighter fluid on it and, leaning through the door, lit it and tossed the ball into the front of the plane. There was a small whump, then the yellow flames rose from the wood and the instrument panel.
Riffey left the barn, turning once to see flames and smoke filling the Cessna. Black smoke poured out of the Cessna’s open door, and rose to the roof of the barn, where it roiled and spread wider, then deeper, trapped in the high enclosure, looking like a storm cloud inside a building.
He climbed into the Buick and drove out of the ranch, continuing southwest for a mile before parking again.
He didn’t want to miss this. Taking a path through the foothills that kept him off the road, Riffey walked to a point overlooking the ranch and took a seat on a piece of ledge rock shaded by several yuccas. Black smoke escaped in a steady stream out of the top third of the barn doors. Several cars slowed on the highway, but no one turned in to investigate.
Twenty minutes later, Riffey was ready to leave when he saw an old pickup coming down the highway. It slowed and turned at the ranch. Asadullah exited the driver’s door and hurried to the barn, but stopped outside the doors. He looked at the surrounding hills, and Riffey hunched lower, but knew the terrorist couldn’t see him.
Asadullah entered the house. Riffey waited for the terrorist to come out, but he didn’t. After ten minutes, and with faint sounds of multiple sirens coming his way, Riffey backtracked to the Buick, happy with himself, and positive that it was only a matter of minutes before Asadullah would be captured or killed. It would have been fun to watch, but he didn’t want to get caught.
***
Inside the house, Asadullah moved the bedroom dresser from the wall and pried off the cover of a hidden compartment to remove a thin, cloth money belt. Inside it was money, two credit cards and a U.S. passport with his photo and the name David Lane. He lifted his shirt, unbuttoned and unzipped his pants, and slung the money belt low around his hips so it rested below the beltline. He readjusted his pants while listening to approaching sirens, still faint in the distance.
He entered the kitchen and turned off, then disconnected the propane line from the stove, took a light bulb out of a short table lamp, broke the glass but left the filament intact, and screwed it back in the lamp. He placed the lamp on the floor beside the front door.
Using the knife blade on his Leatherman, Asadullah cut the electrical cord and peeled an inch of plastic insulation from the wires. He disassembled the doorknob with the Leatherman’s screwdriver blade, and spliced the bare ends of separate wires inside it so that when someone turned the handle, the light bulb would brighten.
The plug slipped into the electrical socket a foot off the floor, with the wire going up to the knob, then down to the lamp. Holland gave the door a test run. The filament glowed white hot. “Yes,” he said. Leaving the door open, he returned to the kitchen and turned on the gas. When he left, Holland pulled the door closed without turning the knob.
One more thing, he thought, and walked to the last small tank of chlorine near the barn. He lugged it to the old pickup and tied it to the inside wall of the bed.
Asadullah returned to the burning barn and ducked under the smoke as he walked to the last room at the far end. He opened it, rummaged through a box and found a short coil of Det Cord. A drawer in the small desk contained a wooden box the size of a brick that contained six electric blasting caps.
He put the contents in a small sport bag and returned to the pickup, then took his time looking around for whoever set the fire. When he was satisfied the culprit was gone, Asadullah got in the pickup and drove across the fields, away from the ranch and the highway.
He drove slowly, making sure not to raise dust as he took the field roads east to hide his presence from anyone on the highway.
When he was a mile from the ranch, the faint sound of an explosion reached his ears, sort of a low, muffled whooom that reminded him of distant thunder. He exited the pickup to watch a mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke rise from the ranch house, then he resumed driving.