CHAPTER 56.

Sergio Morales sat deep inside an abandoned restaurant along Highway 93, drumming his fingers on a sand-covered table. The wind battered the outside of the rickety building, the old timber frame creaking and groaning with each powerful gust. The constant airflow through the restaurant's main salon did little to ease the sweltering heat. A satellite phone and digital tablet lay in front of him. To his right sat Jorge, who closed a laptop and shook his head.

"The drone's down," said Jorge. "Sorry."

Sergio hadn't expected it to last very long with the storm this close. An expensive sacrifice. The RQ-16 Whisper represented the latest in short- to medium-range military drone technology, and his boss wouldn't be happy to hear that it was out of commission.

"What was their last location?"

"Approaching the town of Nothing."

"Nothing? For real?"

"Not kidding," said Jorge.

Sergio shook his head. At least the people who named that town had a sense of humor. Nothing was right. He touched the tablet screen and used the digital mapping application to make a few quick calculations. Their target was now roughly twenty-six miles away, putting them at the primary ambush point in twenty minutes, maybe more depending on the road conditions.

The dust storm had intensified at an alarming rate over the last half hour, arriving ahead of predictions. At this point, his crew would have to weather the storm in Wikieup. He didn't see any way to avoid it. The closest inhabited town was Congress, and that was halfway back to Phoenix. No. They'd get to spend the next several hours hiding from the wind in Wikieup, another nothing town.

The front door banged opened, ushering in a swirl of sand and wind. Three men wearing red bandito scarves and sungla.s.ses stepped into the restaurant. Sergio motioned them to approach. The guard watching the parking lot from the outside reached inside and closed the door. Sergio's team leaders trudged to the table through the deep layer of sand covering the floor.

"Good timing," he said, standing up. "They're about twenty minutes out."

"You sure you want to go out there, boss?" said Marcos, one of the team leaders.

Marcos shrank from Sergio's sharp look. Under normal circ.u.mstances, a question like that might have earned him a bullet, but today Sergio genuinely believed his loyal subordinate meant no disrespect. US military drone strikes had risen steeply over the past few weeks, particularly in western Arizona. The worst of it was down south, but they'd recently lost a few high-ranking members of the organization on the northern roads. The fear was real, not a symptom of cowardice. Still, it didn't help his reputation to hide inside while his soldiers took all the risks. That kind of caution led to resentment.

"They wouldn't risk one of their cowardly drones in this weather," he said, gathering the tablet and phone. "Is everything set?"

The team leader a.s.sured him that nothing would get through the ambush point.

"Perfect. I need to make a quick call. Marcos, I'll meet you at your observation post."

"It's an honor, boss," said the team leader. "You can fire the first RPG."

"I would like that," said Sergio. "As long as everyone else is firing at the same time. It's been a while since I've used one of those."

The men laughed for a few seconds before excusing themselves to leave. Sergio dialed his own boss, who was probably watching the storm arrive from his air-conditioned mansion on the outskirts of Phoenix. Rank had its privileges. Hopefully in a year or so, some of that privilege would find its way into Sergio's pockets. He was getting tired of driving through the desert, shaking down his Wastelands fiefdom.

"It's done?" asked a digitally altered voice.

"Twenty minutes or so. I'm heading out to personally oversee the ambush."

"I'm counting on you, Sergio. There was a big f.u.c.kup this morning down in Nogales. El Pedro was killed."

He hadn't heard any of this. "Killed? By the organization?"

"No. No. He was killed on the highway, trying to run these people down. Don't take any chances."

"We're not taking any chances. I have enough firepower to stop an army battalion in its tracks."

"Good. Call me as soon as it's done. How is the storm out there?"

"Coming in fast," said Sergio. "We'll be stuck here for a while."

"That's a smart call. This is one of the biggest I've seen in a while. Phoenix is completely dark right now. Power is going down everywhere. Make sure to call me."

"I will, jefe."

His boss didn't ask about the drone, though he surely knew it had gone down. This told Sergio that their targets were extremely important. He pocketed the phone and grabbed the a.s.sault rifle leaned against the table, then nodded at Jorge. "Let's go."

Stiff gusts of wind pelted him with sand as they jogged toward a rusted-out school bus parked perpendicular to the highway in a gas station parking lot. A half-dozen derelict cars lay in the desert scrub next to the lot, many of them hiding cartel gunmen. An RV park entrance across the highway, flanked by several gutted mobile homes about thirty feet back from the road, housed a second team. The third group was spread out to the immediate north, manning heavy machine gun positions hidden in the brush on both sides of the road. Nothing was getting through this gauntlet.

The bus's folding door opened when they arrived, revealing Marcos in the driver's seat. Sergio pushed his goggles onto his forehead and stepped inside, surprised to find that it was mostly sheltered from the weather. A few broken windows on the side let in air, but the bus wasn't filled with sand like the restaurant. He had just found his new headquarters for the night.

Marcos led them to the back of the bus, which faced the highway. From the backseats, they had a nice view to the south, despite the rapidly decreasing visibility. A colossal wall of sand, stretching as far as he could see in either direction, loomed thousands of feet over the eastern horizon, in stark contrast to the blue skies and scattered clouds to the west. They'd be digging out from this one.

"Crazy, isn't it?" said Marcos, gesturing to the sand cloud. "I hope they get here before this. .h.i.ts. A storm like this might stop them on the road."

"That's why I picked this s.h.i.thole town. They'll see it on their maps and slog it out to get here, no matter how bad it gets."

"That's why they made you the boss," said Marcos, pointing at him.

He didn't like the way Marcos said that, and he certainly didn't appreciate the finger pointed at him. They hadn't made him the boss-he'd earned the position. Maybe Marcos's question in the restaurant hadn't been so innocent. He'd deal with this later. Marcos pressed a finger to an ear, listening to a transmission over the radio net. Sergio had forgotten about his earbuds. He reached into a pocket on his tactical vest for them, but the conversation had ended by the time he'd stuffed them in his ears.

"What's up?"

Marco pointed south, down the road. "Same car that pa.s.sed through a few hours ago is on the way back."

"Scouts," said Sergio.

"Must be. They didn't see s.h.i.t on the way through. Everyone was out of sight."

"They wouldn't come back through if they saw anything, so we should be able to take them by surprise. Hit them with RPGs. I don't want them warning off the others."

"You want to do the honors?" he asked, lifting an empty RPG-9 launcher from the seat behind them.

"No. I'd like to make sure we hit the car on the first try," said Sergio, pressing the "Transmit" b.u.t.ton on his vest. "Team leaders, I want you to coordinate a simultaneous RPG strike on the car coming through. Use it as practice for the convoy."

"Binoculars?" said Marcos, holding a pair out for him.

"I'll use my rifle," said Sergio, unslinging it and aiming south.

Through his magnified sight, the road came in and out of view between billows of sand. The vehicle appeared, headlights announcing its presence long before the rest of it materialized. When it reached the first SUV on the opposite side of the highway, trails of smoke raced forward from hidden positions on each side of the road, simultaneously slamming into the car an instant later.

CHAPTER 57.

Jose stared at his phone, puzzled. From what he could tell, the satellite network hadn't disconnected the call. He had full coverage, so he a.s.sumed that the scout team was in the same situation, unless the storm had somehow hampered the signal. From what he knew about satellite communications, he didn't think that was the case.

"Pull over," he said over the radio net.

"What's up?" said David, following the lead vehicle to the shoulder of the road.

"I just lost contact with Ranger. There was no interference or signal bleed. They were there one second, gone the next."

"Dead battery?" said David.

"They know better," said Jose. "And they have a backup."

He activated his tablet and examined the satellite map. The scout team had just reentered Wikieup, twenty-two miles away. They had cleared the town two hours ago, but a lot could change in a few hours.

He saw a few options. The most prudent would be to turn around and connect with Interstate 10. He should have taken Jeremy's advice on that one. They could have holed up near the California border and waited for the storm to pa.s.s. The only problem with backtracking was that they would undoubtedly get caught in the storm before reaching the interstate, running the distinct risk of having to pull over and ride out the storm even deeper in cartel territory. The closer they got to Interstate 40, the better.

Zooming in on the area around Wikieup, Jose noticed some possible side roads to the east. If they could sidestep Wikieup and get back to Highway 93, they could drive blind to Interstate 40 if they had to. GPS road mapping was accurate enough to keep them from driving off the road, if they didn't push their speed.

"Jeremy, I just lost contact with Ranger," Jose said. "What do you think about trying to skirt around Wikieup? I see what looks like a partial state road leaving the highway south of the town," he said over the net.

"I see it. Route 159 . . . turns into Cholla Canyon Road?"

"That's it."

"That would get us around and put us about five miles above Wikieup. Might be a rough road, though. I don't get the impression road maintenance has been a priority up here for a long time."

"I'd prefer a rough ride to another gunfight," said Jose.

"What about the river running along the road? Should be hard packed like cement."

"Should be, but we can't afford to get a vehicle stuck. I'd rather crawl along Cholla Canyon Road."

"Copy that. I'll input the route and make sure we can find the turnoff. Visibility will be s.h.i.t by the time we get there."

Jose glanced out of the side window at the towering wall of sand. They really didn't have much time before it enveloped them. The best they could do was get off the highway and move as carefully as possible.

"All drivers stay as close as possible to the vehicle in front of you," he said. "We can't use headlights."

"We can pop a few IR chem sticks and tie them to the license plates," said one of the drivers. "Night vision will pick those up through the dust."

"All right. Make it happen. Back on the road in thirty seconds," said Jose, turning to David. "I got ours."

Jose fought against the wind to open the door, sand and pebbles blasting him when he stepped outside. The door slammed shut without his a.s.sistance. He walked to the back of the SUV, knelt behind the license plate, and removed a chem stick from his vest. Nathan appeared next to him, shielding his eyes from the blowing sand.

"I got this," said Jose, taking a small spool of parachute cord from a pocket.

Nathan knelt next to him. "I'm a little concerned about riding this out in the vehicle. We have no way to keep the sand out. It's already hard to breathe."

His concern wasn't trivial. Jose had just been too preoccupied with the route and communicating with the scouts to address it. "We have some N95 respirators in the medical kit. I wish we had some heavier-duty breathing gear."

"The respirators will help for now. I'm more concerned with later. This storm could last several hours."

"Once we get off the highway and find a safe place to stop, we'll work on plugging all the cracks. It's the best we can do," said Jose. "Let me finish up here and grab the med kit."

Nathan nodded. "Do you really think the scout team got hit?"

"I don't know," said Jose. "Wikieup is the only town with more than one or two buildings on Highway 93, so it would be a logical place for an ambush-especially with the storm heading in."

Jose cut a section of cord and looped it through the end of the chem stick, tying it to the license plate holder.

"You forgot to crack it," said Nathan.

Jose laughed. "A lot of good that would have done us." He took the plastic tube in both hands and bent it until he heard it snap, mixing the IR-emitting chemicals. To the naked eye, nothing appeared to have changed.

"My dad used to bring home boxes of them when I was a kid," Nathan said. "We gave them away as party favors at my birthday parties. He could be cheap like that."

"I bet you were pretty popular with your friends," said Jose, standing up.

"Not really. All the other parents did the same thing. I didn't go to school off base until ninth grade."

Jose smiled. "I'm looking forward to meeting your father," he said, patting his shoulder.

As soon as they'd shut the car doors, the convoy rolled forward, quickly picking up speed. Jose distributed the respirators, keeping his in the center console so he could talk over the radio net without sounding garbled.

By the time they reached the turnoff fifteen minutes later, the sky had darkened to the point where he could barely see the outline of the SUV in front of them. Brake lights glowed weakly from time to time, illuminating the sand blowing between the vehicles. Jose reached into the foot well and pulled his helmet off the floor. He knew from experience that everything was about to go pitch-black. With the helmet tightened in place, he lowered the night-vision goggles and found the chem light on the rear of the first SUV, which burned brightly through the sand.

"Can you see him turning?" asked Jose.

"Barely," said David, tapping the brakes.

"You have at least twenty feet separation. You're good. Start easing us over in four. Three. Two. One. Start the turn. I'll tell you when to straighten out."

Their SUV followed the lead vehicle onto Route 159.

"Right here," said Jose. "What can you see now?"

"Brake lights. Kind of."

The storm had swallowed them.