Standoff: A Vin Cooper Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

got here,” I continued.
    “Lemme guess, he jumps the fence,” said Gomez. Whelt had stretched his lead, almost gone. “You think that’s what this guy’s gonna do?”
    I doubted tunneling was on his mind.
    Ahead, another hill. Whelt was already beyond the crest, only his dust visible.
    Gomez shouted: “It’s a movie, so … he makes it, right?”
    “No, he gets … hung up on the fence.”
    I wasn’t ready to give up. And anyway, it was this or paperwork. I steered toward the crest, foot to the floorboards. We came over the rise, the jeep’s motor racing, tires spitting gravel, the dust thick inside the cabin.
    “Whoa!” Gomez yelled, bracing for impact as we shot over the crest.
    My left boot beat him to it, standing on the brake pedal. The jeep slid sideways one way and then the other as we ploughed down the hill, coming to rest while a rolling ball of our own dust overtook us. Below, in the crook between the hill we were on and the one beyond it, was a crowd of people and vehicles. A crowd of illegals – Mexicans. Significant numbers of Border Patrol Agents were marshaling them together. There were well over fifty people and a dozen off roaders down there, out in the middle of nowhere. The attraction that brought everyone to this particular point appeared to be a break in the fence, a five-by-ten-foot section of the steel mesh simply cut out by an oxyacetylene torch. On the other side of the fence, the Mexican side, were chewed-up tracks of numerous vehicles that, presumably, had brought the illegals to this point. A departing dust ball on the southern horizon confirmed it.
    Several of the BPAs were looking up at us, presumably wondering who we were and what the hell we were doing. One of them was starting to move in our direction, hand on the butt of the pistol on his hip, coming to investigate. I scanned the area for Whelt and found him on the crest of the hill opposite. He’d stopped and was looking back at us. Okay, so the guy wasn’t upside down in midair but he was still flipping us the bird. No way were we gonna negotiate our way through this parking lot and catch him.
    Gomez wiped his mouth clean with a wad of Kleenex. “Shit.”
    “You were saying about real life?” I asked him.
    My cell was buzzing in my pants pocket. Taking it out and looking at the screen, I saw I had half a dozen messages from a familiar Maryland number: Andrews AFB, home of the people keeping me in the style to which I ought to have left far behind by now at age 34 – the OSI. Gomez wandered down to talk with the BP Agent coming up the hill, his ID and badge held above his head, while I checked in. My supervisor and buddy, Lieutenant Colonel Arlen Wayne, picked up after a ring and a half.
    “Vin …” Arlen said, the signal sketchy. “Where are y …”
    “Where am I?”
    “…”
    “I can’t hear you,” I said. “I’ll call you back later.”
    “… NO …”
    There was a bar and a half of signal strength registering on the display. I walked around, trying to find another bar or two. “That better?”
    “Yeah. Where … you?”
    “On the border with Gomez letting Doctor Whelt slip through our fingers.”
    I noticed a major dent in the Patriot. The panel just below the front fender had been stove in. I bent down to have a closer look and saw a pool of hot engine oil spreading on the gravel between the front tires, ants running from the steaming black tsunami. I hoped I’d checked the insurance box on the rental agreement and, if not, that Thrifty were a bunch of understanding folks.
    “For … bout him,” Arlen said.
    “Did you just say forget him?”
    “They . . . his buddy, Spon …”
    “They found Sponson?”
    The rest was even more garbled though I gathered he wanted to know how far away from El Paso we were. “Thirty miles, give or take,” I told him.
    Arlen sounded like he was in a dentist chair, a drawer full of cutlery in his mouth. But I caught the key message: Get to Horizon Airport at El