Olmos elbowed him again, whispering, "Turnoff for 82."

Leeds nodded, slowing for the upcoming turn.

"Any way the local cartel could have been directly involved?" said Flagg.

"I think it's unlikely," said Leeds. "The cartel took a beating."

"Where is El Pedro now?"

"Last I saw, he was in hot pursuit of the two SUVs."

"Sorry to bring up an indelicate topic in front of Ray," said Flagg, "but why aren't you with them?"

"They left me in the dust long before I found Ray," said Leeds. "I got lucky with this car. Had to create a roadblock with dead bodies to get one of the cartel stragglers to stop."

"All right. I need to get on the line with El Pedro and my primary cartel contact. It sounds like the Mexicans are our only hope at this point."

"If it's any consolation, Petrov can take the money he saved on Chukov's contract and contribute it to the effort."

"Oh, he's going to open his wallet. They all are," said Flagg. "I'm taking a different approach with this, based on what happened in Nogales. I'm going to tell the ONC council that we received a tip from one of our cartel contacts that some gringos were smuggled over the border in Mexicali on the same night as the Marine convoy ambush. Further digging suggested the presence of a CLM covert operations group operating out of the city, moving back and forth into California through a series of tunnel systems. I'm bringing the Fishers and David back to life. Basically saying that they somehow escaped the ambush and were spirited away by CLM."

Leeds was stunned by the idea. It made sense. Quinn and Fisher had so far demonstrated an uncanny ability to slip out of Cerberus's grasp, and there was no reason to think it couldn't have happened again, especially with CLM on their side.

"You could use this to justify escalating hostilities against CLM, and accelerate the timeline of our California operations," said Leeds. "I don't think this would be a tough sell, especially with Petrov's tacit support."

"I could pitch this in my sleep. How does this sound?" said Flagg. "It's obvious that the secessionist movement has progressed far beyond a gra.s.sroots political movement. The days of organizing rallies and pressuring voters has yielded to hijacking police drones and fielding special operations teams. If we don't take broad, decisive steps today to combat their shift in tactics, we risk losing everything. Pull out your wallets."

"Not bad at all. Here's a question, though," said Leeds. "Aren't they already paying a small fortune for Cerberus's services?"

"Things have drastically changed over the past few days. CLM is up to something on the California border, and they just ambushed a Cerberus team in Nogales."

"I'm not following," said Leeds.

"I didn't report all of our casualties from the Marine convoy attack. I had a feeling those lost bodies might come in handy to explain my sudden interest in Mexico. I'll report that a four-man team, led by Olmos, was ambushed while investigating a lead in Nogales. Is Olmos capable of verifying that story?"

"I'm sure he won't have a problem with that," said Leeds.

"Good. With enough money, One Nation, through Cerberus, can order carte blanche from the menu. They can put a nationwide price on Fisher's head. All of their heads. Lock down the CLM movement in the Wastelands and beyond. This allows us to refocus our efforts on California, where the real battle will be fought."

"What if Fisher, or any of them, slips through the cracks?" said Leeds.

"With the cartel on the job, they'll be dead within a few hours of surfacing," said Flagg. "I don't think a cop killer will pull at any heartstrings. Neither will a Marine deserter with ties to CLM activists. Not before they succ.u.mb to unnatural causes."

"Sounds like a welcome shift in strategy. We're coming up on the airport," said Leeds. "You don't think Petrov will have a problem with us borrowing his jet, do you?"

"I'll call Petrov and square away the jet," said Flagg. "And don't get comfortable after you land. I need you at the Mojave site as soon as possible. That will be the next domino to fall."

"That's a big domino."

"We need something big right now," said Flagg, then disconnected the call.

Leeds craned his neck, looking past the hangar buildings for the white jet that would deliver them from this h.e.l.lhole.

CHAPTER 48.

David studied the line of cars ma.s.sing a few hundred yards behind them, trying to guess the cartel's new game. Up until a minute or so ago, they had sent one or two cars forward at full speed, trying to ram their SUV off the road. He'd been able to repel each attempt by focusing long bursts into each vehicle, until the approaching cars swerved off the road with a presumably dead driver or dropped back after absorbing casualties.

Only one of the dozen or so vehicles sent had made it far enough to hit the SUV, nearly knocking them off the road. He'd emptied a full ammunition drum into the truck when it tried for a second hit, stopping it dead in the middle of the highway. The swarm of vehicles opened to let it through their ranks, closing up as soon as they had raced past. Now he sensed a different strategy forming.

"I think they're getting ready for a ma.s.s attack," yelled David.

"I'm surprised they waited this long," said Alpha. "How are you doing for ammo?"

"I used the last drum on the pickup that hit us," said David. "I'm set for magazines."

He'd replenished his tactical vest with spare magazines from one of the duffel bags pulled from the cargo compartment, stashing the rest throughout the backseat area. Any magazines he couldn't stuff in a cup holder or door had been dumped onto the seat. Running out of ammunition would not be his problem. Putting it to effective use against a coordinated attack was the challenge.

Each magazine held thirty-five rounds, which he could burn through in seconds, requiring him to pause for a few seconds to reload. With all of the vehicles advancing simultaneously, he'd be lucky to knock two or three of them out of commission before they overwhelmed the SUV and moved on to overtake the Fishers' vehicle. Maybe these crazies were smarter than they acted, luring him into expending all of his higher-capacity ammunition drums before the big attack.

"Switch to three-round bursts," said Alpha. "Take one vehicle down at a time."

"Got it," he said, flipping the selector switch to burst.

Dozens of cartel gunmen simultaneously leaned out of the windows and stood up in pickup truck beds behind them and began firing on full automatic. Bullets pinged against the back of the SUV and cracked past the side windows, some rattling through the cabin.

"Here they come!" said David, pressing his rifle's fore grip against the seat back.

Before he stared firing, the SUV veered left, and for a fraction of a second, he thought Alpha had taken a ricochet to the face. When he looked over his shoulder to check, he saw the Fishers' SUV drop rapidly into place next to them.

A puff of white smoke left the back of the adjacent SUV, trailing away behind them as the Fishers' SUV rocketed ahead of them again. David turned his head toward the approaching swarm in time to see the chrome grille of a black lowrider pickup truck explode. The truck instantly swerved right and decelerated, barely clipping the back end of a red sedan before disappearing behind the swarm.

"Direct hit!" yelled David.

A white SUV raced from the back of the pursuing pack to take the lowrider truck's place. One down. Too many to go.

David fired, concentrating his bursts on the raised yellow pickup in the middle. The pickup took several hits across the windshield before it slowed and tucked behind the front line. He switched to the adjacent sedan, placing his first burst into the gla.s.s directly in front of the driver. The vehicle swerved left into the void left by the yellow pickup, dropping out of formation.

Two down. And the cartel had closed two-thirds of the gap. This was about to get interesting.

Alpha changed lanes again, letting the Fishers' SUV fall rapidly into place next to them. Another puff of smoke sailed toward the advancing horde, followed by a crunching detonation at least twenty feet behind the farthest cartel vehicle. s.h.i.t. Fisher had gotten lucky with his first shot. A dozen bullets slapped into the back of the adjacent SUV before it sped forward again, leaving David's vehicle to absorb the brunt of the cartel's fusillade.

They were about to take more than bullets. A white truck veered diagonally from the left side of the formation, heading straight for the SUV.

"Speed up and turn right!" yelled David.

The truck drifted quickly into his rifle sight, taking two successive bursts to the windshield, which failed to stop the rapidly closing vehicle. He pressed the trigger until the magazine was empty, then braced for impact. The truck slammed into their rear right corner, violently jarring them forward. David was knocked backward against the front pa.s.senger seat, dropping his rifle in the foot well. By the time he'd retrieved it, the white truck loomed in the rear pa.s.senger side window, at least three gunmen aiming rifles into the SUV.

"Hang on!" said Alpha, slamming on the brakes.

The white truck zoomed past, exploding a moment later from a grenade fired by Fisher from the back of the lead SUV. Alpha kept on the brakes, sending them straight into the swarm. The cartel drivers reacted instinctively to the unexpected maneuver, swerving desperately out of their way. They sc.r.a.ped down the side of the shiny yellow pickup truck, dropping back a dozen or more car lengths before Alpha hit the accelerator.

David reloaded his rifle and leaned through the s.p.a.ce between the two front seats, aiming through the front windshield. "Looks like that f.u.c.ked them up."

"Not for long," said Alpha, speeding back into the group.

The semiorganized formation broke apart, more than half of the cars decelerating. David fired several bursts, spread between the slowing vehicles, as Alpha swerved past them to reach the Fishers' SUV, which led a small cl.u.s.ter of cartel cars by a mere car length. Their surprise move had only delayed the inevitable.

"How far out is Jose?" yelled David, reloading.

"I don't know!" said Alpha, ducking when a bullet struck the top of the steering wheel.

Another bullet hit the top of the dashboard and ricocheted into Carlos's shoulder, splashing David's face with the dead man's blood.

"What do you mean you don't know?" he said, snapping off bursts into the yellow truck's rear window.

"He's close!" said Alpha. "Left side! Left side!"

David shifted to the window behind Alpha and began emptying the magazine into a car that had sped next to them. Dozens of bullets answered, thumping against the ballistic gla.s.s and protected door. A few pa.s.sed between the front and back doors, striking the driver's seat back and exploding into the cabin. If David had been at the opposite window, he would have taken a few of them in the back. At this point, it was only a time before a cartel bullet found its mark.

"We can't keep this up much longer!" he yelled, slapping a new magazine home.

"We don't have a choice!"

I guess not. David returned to the window, searching for the car he had just riddled with bullets. The scene around them had changed dramatically in the past few seconds. They were sealed in on the left. A quick glance behind them and to the right revealed the same problem. They were boxed in.

"Get down!" screamed Alpha, sending David diving flat onto the backseat.

The highway on both sides of them exploded, lifting the back of the SUV into the air. When the vehicle slammed down on the road again, it didn't bounce hard off the road like he expected. It slammed flat into it with a heavy metallic crunch and screeched as metal ground against concrete until the SUV slowed to a stop.

"Holy s.h.i.t," muttered Alpha.

David lifted his head far enough to look through the front windshield. The shiny yellow pickup truck drifted slowly across the right shoulder of the northbound lanes, continuing its trajectory until it came to a sudden, brutal stop against a short, stout tree.

Nathan's SUV was stopped on the opposite side, a little farther down the highway. A white puff of smoke appeared in its rear lift gate window, followed a sharp detonation that engulfed the pickup truck.

"Holy s.h.i.t is right," said David.

"Take a look behind us."

David peeked over the seat back. The shattered, smoking remains of six automobiles lay scattered across the highway several hundred feet back. He stared at them for a few seconds before he noticed that the entire back quarter of their own SUV was missing.

"Uh . . . we seem to have a problem."

"And I smell gas," said Alpha, opening his door in a hurry.

"I'm pretty sure the gas tank is gone, if that's what you're worried about."

Alpha opened his door and helped him out, then walked ahead of him to the back of the SUV, where he stopped and shook his head. David saw it, too, when he joined him: the jagged metal edge where the back had been torn away. Smooth, evenly s.p.a.ced symmetrical holes riddled the frame.

Nothing either SUV might've done could've produced these results. Jose must have placed a line of claymore mines across the highway and detonated the mines in the adjacent lanes.

"Your boss is f.u.c.king crazy," David said.

"More like a f.u.c.king a.s.shole," muttered Alpha under his breath.

"What?"

"Nothing," said Alpha, an unsettled look on his face.

David looked at him for a moment before glancing back at the shredded metal. A few of the claymore mines' steel b.a.l.l.s had struck within a foot of the rear pa.s.senger door. It finally fully hit him. "Jesus," he mumbled.

"Yeah," said Alpha, patting him on the back. "Let's get out of here."

CHAPTER 49.

From the side of the interstate a quarter mile north, Jose scanned the ambush point with his rifle scope, seeing nothing he could cla.s.sify as a remaining threat. Some of the vehicles caught in the detonation had tumbled across the median into the southbound lanes, and others had careened into the desert brush on the other side. Judging by the damage done to the cars in plain sight, he wasn't at all concerned about survivors.

He shifted the magnified view to the lone SUV several hundred feet beyond the first piles of wreckage. Carlos sat lifeless in the front pa.s.senger seat, head hanging forward over his bloodied vest. Judging by the dark color of the blood covering the headrest and door window, Jose a.s.sumed that Carlos had been killed long before they reached the ambush point.

David Quinn and Alpha stood next to the rear of the disabled vehicle, examining the damage. Alpha patted Quinn on the back, and they both started jogging in the direction of the other SUV and Jose.

Jose was confident the two of them had put it together after a look at the condition of the back of the SUV, given the depth of their familiarity with claymores. They'd also know it would have been impossible to remote-detonate the mines and guarantee their safety. It had been pure chance that Quinn and Alpha had survived.

In a few minutes, he'd have to face the men he'd essentially sacrificed to keep Fisher safe. Until then, he had work to do. They were still hundreds of miles inside cartel-controlled territory, with zero confirmed information regarding what to expect from the Sinaloa in terms of a wider response.

Cerberus had no shortage of money to throw at the problem, so they should a.s.sume for now that the Sinaloa would make a real effort to find them. With Tucson less than thirty miles north, they needed to reach the first of the Green Valley exits within no more than ten minutes. Moving west on the side roads out of Green Valley would give them a shot at avoiding the primary cartel lookout points. Of course, if Cerberus threw serious cash at the cartel bosses, they could face a cartel snitch at every intersection from here to Las Vegas.

He jogged across the highway to Jeremy Baker, who had just dispatched a two-person team to check the yellow pickup truck. The rifle grenade fired by the surprisingly resourceful Nathan Fisher appeared conclusive, but n.o.body was taking any chances.

"Jeremy. Get in touch with Vegas station and have them deploy a scout team to clear Route 93. Ideally, I'd like to know if that route's viable by the time we reach Phoenix."

"That might be a little tight."

"We can go twenty miles past Phoenix on Route 60 before making a hard decision, so they have some leeway."

"Maybe we should default to the western route and head up through Havasu City. The closer we move to California, the less cartel activity."