All the Wrong Moves Read Online Free PDF Page A

sixteen hours. Doc Allen will give us a better fix.”
    So much for my theories on decomposition! I was counting backward fourteen hours, trying to figure out how close I’d come to finding these guys still alive, when Mitchell indicated me with a jerk of his chin.
    “I take it she found ’em.”
    Not being particularly partial to chin jerks, I muscled in on their cop party.
    “She did,” I replied crisply. “Lieutenant Samantha Spade. I’m in charge of a DARPA test facility a few miles north of here. And you are?”
    “Jeff Mitchell. This is Tess Garcia.”
    Agent Garcia treated me to a friendly smile. I started to return it when Mitchell nodded toward EEEK. “Is that what you were testing?”
    “Yes.”
    “Alone?”
    “Yes.”
    “At night?”
    “Yes.”
    I had a good idea where this was going. Sure enough, Mitchell’s mouth took a sardonic twist.
    “Let me make sure I have this straight, Lieutenant. You went for a midnight stroll, alone, along one of the most permeable stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border. One highly favored by the scum who run drugs and human traffic across it nightly.”
    I could do the chin thing, too. Mine tilted at a sharp angle to match the acid in my response. “First, I was in constant communication with my base.”
    Not totally true. The radio had remained clipped to my belt for most of the run. Mitchell didn’t need to know that, however.
    “Second, I wasn’t out for a stroll. I was conducting a controlled test of an expensive and highly sensitive piece of equipment.”
    Unfortunately Sheriff Alexander felt compelled to amplify on my reply. “Lieutenant Spade ran her equipment through the buzzard b—er, bodies.”
    “What?”
    “Plowed right through ’em.”
    Mitchell and Garcia flashed me identical looks. On her, incredulous was okay. On him, it was not.
    “She also kept the coyotes off,” the sheriff added. “Or tried to.”
    That produced a sympathetic glance from Garcia and a grunt from her cohort.
    “Before you check out the scene,” the sheriff advised, “you might want to see this.”
    He handed over the bagged ID. Mitchell took one look at it and let out a long, slow hiss. Garcia’s eyes widened.
    “Holy shit! It’s him!”
    Once again I had to force my way into their cop circle. “Him who?”
    Six pairs of eyes swung in my direction. Each pair blazed with varying degrees of elation and fierce, almost feral, satisfaction. Agent Mitchell clued me in.
    “The ID belongs to Sherman Brown, of Dennison, Texas. Brown reported it stolen a few weeks back, along with all his credit cards. We got a tip that someone attempted to use one of those stolen credit cards in Mexico two days ago. Someone matching the description of Patrick James Hooker.”
    The name sounded familiar. Enlightenment burst a moment later.
    “The American mercenary?” I gasped. “The one suspected of selling the stolen arms used in that ambush down in Colombia last year?”
    The ambush had made headlines. Six Colombians and three U.S. Marines moving in to raid a drug cartel’s headquarters had died in a lethal crossfire. Hooker’s role in the incident didn’t come to light until he was captured in a similar raid some months later.
    “That’s him,” Mitchell confirmed grimly. “Bastard was extradited to the U.S. and spent four months in pre-trial confinement before a judge ruled the U.S. government didn’t have sufficient evidence to try him. He was being shipped back to Colombia for trial when he escaped.”
    Tess Garcia picked it up from there. Her delicate face had hardened into something almost ugly.
    “We got a tip he intended to slip back into the States. Presumably to set up another arms deal. FBI, TSA, CBP and law enforcement officials from coast to coast have been on the watch for him.”
    “We didn’t get him,” Deputy Dawg said with profound regret, “but the desert did. Too bad the traitor wasn’t still alive when the varmints started gnawing on him.”
    “He probably