It slammed the back of Hunter’s head against the headrest and she lost the Stetson. She jumped out of the driver’s side, hurrying to help Danny, but he was already out of the cab and running toward her. Dust and green gas swirled around them, and Hunter vomited when she partially inhaled a ribbon of green gas. She continued to retch as Danny pulled her toward the closed back doors.
Let them be unlocked, Hunter prayed. Danny coughed and gasped. The fumes noticeably increased as they staggered to the doors. Both of them threw up, and reached the doors at the same time. They dropped to their knees, so dizzy and sick they couldn’t stand without falling.
The doors slid open.
Sam and Miguel hurried inside and pulled Danny and Hunter out, then dropped them to the dust as they closed the doors.
Sam coughed, wiped streaming mucus from his nose and said, “Get in the truck!” Hunter and Danny tried to stand, and fell down. Green gas leaked out of the gaps around the doors and drifted down in streams to pool on the ground and spread out in a soft, yellow-green fog.
Miguel grabbed Danny under the arms and lifted him so he coul put the Sheriff’s arm over his shoulder. Sam did the same and put Hunter’s arm over his, and the four of them staggered to the pickup. Sam lowered the tailgate and sat Hunter on the tailgate, then pushed her into the bed, while Miguel placed Danny face up on the tailgate and shoved him beside Hunter.
Sam grabbed two bottles of water from his ice chest in the bed and gave one to each of them, then grabbed two more for himself and Miguel, and they upturned the bottles on their faces to rinse off some of the chlorine.
Sam and Miguel ran their sleeves across their faces and hopped in the cab.
A sound reached them, and they froze. Hunter and Danny raised their heads.
The packing shed groaned. Sam stopped breathing. The shed’s metal roof shook as if it was vibrating from an earthquake. Hand-sized pieces of plaster fell off the tall adobe walls.
Several long splits popped as fast as lightning in the mud bricks, making jagged cracks that reached from the top of the wall to the ground.
Thin green ropes of vapor jetted out from the gaps around loose glass panes in the wooden-framed windows. Small cracks around the doors and along the roof eaves shot out green, playing card-thin, vaporous waterfalls that trailed in slow motion to the ground before flattening and spreading like oil.
Old nail holes in the wooden doors spewed spaghetti-thin tendrils of green vapor ten feet before the weight of the chlorine gas turned it toward the earth.
Sam started the pickup and drove away as fast as he could without throwing Danny and Hunter out of the back. He stopped a minute later and looked at the shed.
The green vapor now only trickled from every crack and gap, flowing down the walls here and there, and weeping from small holes on every side of the building before joining together on the ground in a yellow-green fog encircling the shed for a hundred yards, but no more than six inches deep.
The outflow from the shed slowed to a trickle, and then stopped altogether.
There was no gigantic cloud.
Sam looked at Miguel, “It held. Good Lord, it held.” He glanced into the pickup bed and saw Hunter and Danny patting each other on the back as they splashed water on their faces and their exposed skin, then threw up again.
***
After Lucas received Hunter’s phone call, he notified the authorities of the terrorist situation, and received his next coded action from CISEN superiors in Mexico City.
Grim-faced, he drove to Calle Fronterizo and turned right, leaving him only a block from the main road, Libre Comercio, that entered Ojinaga from the Port of Entry. He approached the intersection just in time to see Guereca pass in front of him, driving the red pickup and singing along with the radio as it blasted a song out of the pickup’s open windows.
Lucas turned in behind the Ram and followed. A minor accident caused them to stop for a minute, and Lucas pushed the button to open his trunk. He hopped out of the car, retrieved a shaving kit from behind a hidden panel, and carried it into the front seat as he slid behind the wheel again.
The traffic moved ahead. Lucas used his right hand to open the shaving kit and remove an FN Five-Seven semiautomatic pistol, loaded with the long, sleek rounds that alternated in the clip so that hollow points and armor-piercing rounds filled it to capacity. He held the pistol in his right and steered with the left. When the next intersection came up and they had to stop, Lucas eased his car to the left lane, lowered the passenger window, and pulled forward beside the red pickup.
Guereca sang along with a corrida entitled el Lobo y la Tejana, as he checked his watch and tapped a beat on the steering wheel with his hands.
Lucas checked traffic and saw no one in any direction. He raised the pistol quickly, aligning the sights on Guereca’s head, and fired three rounds so fast it sounded like one.
He drove away at normal speed, turning left for two blocks, then right for one. Lucas saw no pursuit. He chose a road going up a small hill, hoping he could watch for Hunter and the events on the bridge. A good viewing site with level parking was at the crest of the hill, so he parked.
Lucas put the pistol in the shaving kit and returned it to the hidden compartment in the car trunk. He found the three ejected shells and tossed them into a nearby gulley that ran off the hill. It took only a moment, and when he looked across the river again, there was Hunter in her pickup, leading the tanker truck on a reckless, daring race through Presidio.
***
Holland had parked the Grand Cherokee on a rise in the north part of Presidio to watch the chlorine explosion, and instead saw Guereca abandon the rig, and Riffey lead the woman, Kincaid, and Sheriff Montoya to the tanker. Riffey, being the coward he was, abandoned the other two and ran into Mexico, while Kincaid and Montoya raced out of town with the tanker.
Asadullah was furious. His great plan failed because of two of his own men and the two people whisking away the chlorine right now. If he had been close enough, rather than watching through binoculars, he would have shot all four of them at the rig.