Read Online Taken by Robert Crais - Free Book Online

canvas for graffiti that served as a history for pretty much every local high school class and romance for the past forty years. Even after all these years, a dim outline where the land had been scraped to create a landing strip could be seen by how the brush grew.
    “This is where you left them?”
    “Yeah. We were by the plane. That’s where everyone hangs out, you see how it’s kinda clear where the old runway was? You can build a fire, cook if you want, just kinda hang. Jack left his car out here ’cause he has that Mustang, so Chuck and I drove over, and parked by the wreck. It gets dark, bro, it is
black
out here. I turn on the floods.”
    Trehorn had a light bar bolted to the top of his truck.
    “Where did Jack leave his car?”
    “Couple of lengths behind us, I guess. Chuck went on to the plane, and Jack and Kris climbed in with me. He can’t drive his Pony over that stuff.”
    I slid out of his truck.
    “Let’s take a look.”
    “We can drive.”
    “Walking is good.”
    A long time ago the United States Army taught me how to hunt men in wild places. People in black T-shirts with loud voices taught us how to move and hide without leaving signs of our passing, and how to find and read the signs left by others. Then they sent us to dangerous places and gave us plenty of practice. I got to be pretty good at it. Good enough to survive.
    I did not go immediately to the airplane. I went behind Danny’s truck to see the tracks his tires left, then walked along the road until I found the same track leaving the road for the airplane.
    “This is you. See? Let’s follow you.”
    Six days after they were here, his tire tracks were still readable. We followed the trail he had left of broken creosote and manzanita, then left his trail for the airplane. It rested twenty yards off what would have been the landing strip, where it had slid sideways to a stop. Older tracks and ruts cut across the clearing were visible, too, along with discarded water bottles and beer cans that looked as if they had been there for years.
    Graffiti covered every square inch of the wreck like psychedelic urban camouflage that was alien to the desert. It was a small airplane, and now, dead on its belly with missing engines and broken windows, it didn’t seem like much of a reason to drive so far.
    The old airplane’s carcass had long been stripped of anything valuable by scavengers and souvenir hunters. The seats were gone, and eye sockets gaped from the control panel where the instruments had been removed. In the back, where the smugglers had probably strapped down bales of weed, were more crusty cans layered with dust.
    We continued past the nose to a clear area, where Trehorn pointed out the black smudge that had been their fire, then made a general wave toward a break in the brush.
    “We parked there, put on some tunes, and built the fire. See the cut wood? People come out, they scrounge shit from the brush, but that stuff makes a shit fire. Chuck brought real wood. It gets cold out here.”
    “Was the fire still burning when you and Chuck took off?”
    “Embers, maybe, but that’s all. It was pretty much done.”
    I circled the plane, found nothing, and was thinking we had driven out for nothing when I saw a brassy glint in the dust ten feet in front of him. I walked over and picked it up.
    Trehorn said, “Whatcha got?”
    “A nine-millimeter shell casing.”
    The brass casing gleamed brightly, indicating it had not been exposed to the elements long enough to tarnish. I held it up, but he wasn’t impressed.
    “People shoot out here all the time. That old plane has more holes than Swiss cheese.”
    I found two more casings a few feet away, and then a spent 12-gauge shotgun shell so new it looked like it had just come from the box.
    Trehorn wandered off, searching along with me, then called from the center of the clearing.
    “Shit. That’s a big sonofabitch.”
    “What?”
    He pointed at the ground.
    “Tires. I run