The Second Saladin Read Online Free

through. The searchlight vanished. The tall man dropped to one knee and swiftly changed magazines in his weapon. He rose and fired again, and the truck detonated in an oily orange flash that filled the night with heat and color.
    Ramirez blinked as the dust and gas from the blast pushed across him. He saw purple spinning circles before his eyes from the bright flash. He squinted them away and turned back to the
spectacle
before him. Rolling flames from the ridge illuminated the valley.
    The tall man had moved to the fallen Border Patrol officer. Ramirez watched in astonishment as the tall man bent to the man he’d just slain, and seemed to close his eyes and a hanging jaw. Then with one hand he pushed the flattened body to its side and turned it toward Nogales. Then he grabbed his pack and ran into the darkness.
    The roaring of the helicopter became huge. Dust began to whirl and rise and Ramirez could see the dark shape of it, lights blinking, start to settle out of the sky. A searchlight beam sprang from the port to play across the stones.
    Ramirez drew back. He knew that inside an hour the
federales
would arrive, summoned by the Americans. He knew that more Americans would come, and more and more. He knew he’d better get the hell out of there. He prayed that the Americans wouldn’t find his gringo
compadres
, who’d obviously been spooked by the passing patrol.If they found them and they talked and they told of Ramirez …
    Ramirez crossed himself. Holy Virgin, I’ve lied and cheated and stolen and killed, but spare your sinning child. He prayed intently as he scurried through the moonlight up the hill. He saw his van ahead and knew he’d make it. He even paused by the cactus to fetch his pistol.
    “What happened?” asked Oscar. “Mother of Jesus, it sounded like a war.”
    “Mother of Jesus, it
was
a war,” Ramirez said, thinking of the tall one, for he suddenly realized he’d seen a kind of soldier.

2
    B ill Speight pulled the Chevette to the side of the road, puzzled by what he saw. He must have lost track of the numbers a while back—some of these little houses out in the western Chicago suburbs were set so far back from the street you couldn’t read the figures. He reached for and opened his briefcase and sifted through the papers.
    Come on, come on, old fool, he told himself, and at last located the address. Yes, it
was
1104 Old Elm Road. Could he have gotten off the expressway at the wrong town? But no, he’d seen the exit—he’d been careful, very careful so far. He was in the right place.
    A Roman Catholic church? He searched his memory, yet he could unearth no remembrance of Paul Chardy that touched on any issue of religion. Had Chardy gone strange—the brave ones had more than a little craziness in them anyway—and joined the priesthood? Another priesthood. As if Special Operations wasn’t religious order enough. Yet he could not imagine that famous temper hidden beneath a priest’s habit, nor could he see a large-boned, impatient, athletic man like Chardy, a man of Chardy’s peculiar gifts, listening in a dark booth to pimply teenagers telling tales on themselves.
    But he looked at the church and saw it was one of thosemodern things, more roof and glass than building. A spindly cross way up top stood out against the bright blue spring sky; otherwise the place could have been some new convention center. Speight’s watery blue eyes tracked back to the sign and confronted it squarely: O UR L ADY OF THE R ESURRECTION R OMAN C ATHOLIC C HURCH AND S CHOOL , the letters white and blocky, slotted onto a black background, and beneath them the legend: L EARN TO F ORGIVE Y OURSELF . Speight winced at the advice. Could he? Could Paul?
    But the school part made some sense. He could imagine Chardy among children, not among nuns and priests. For Chardy had still a little of the athlete’s boyishness, the gift for exhilaration which would captivate children. That was his best half, his mother’s half;