Shades of Mercy by Bruce Borgos

Author:Bruce Borgos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER 22

At its heyday shortly before the First World War Gold Point was a decent gold producer, its mines in the eastern mountains drawing prospectors and merchants from all over the west in search of a better life. It had three saloons, a handful of stores, and a post office. By the end of the war, the mines were played out, and the town evaporated about as fast as morning dew on a cactus. Even at 8,000 feet, there was precious little moisture in the air most days, so finding a natural water source could be the difference between life and death.

The town’s few dozen remaining structures, in various states of decay and worn by wind and sun and vegetation, appeared as abandoned as ever, roofs caved in or blown off, wood slowly devoured by insects and brick broken by time. Shiloah and Mercy were tucked into the woods behind a log shack, the last building in town and at the base of the old cemetery, built on uneven ground and supported by a rock foundation. It had a single entrance and probably once served as a toolshed for the shovels and picks men used to dig and cover the graves of the dead.

It had been a long time since Shiloah had been camping, since before her mother died, but somehow it all came back to her. She had quickly erected an orange backpacker’s tent and a couple of folding camp chairs and table, careful not to trip over Mercy’s many black computer cables that were strung everywhere.

“I still don’t understand,” said Shiloah as she removed a sleeping bag from its stuff sack, fluffed it, and threw it inside the tent. “How can transporting guns to the drug cartels not be illegal?”

Mercy, surrounded by electrical cords, a power strip, and a small Honda generator, shook her head, typing some commands with her left hand into the special laptop PC Shiloah had procured for her. In addition to the computer, she had two larger monitors relaying critical instrument data, chief among them fuel state and altitude. Her right hand was on the control stick piloting the Reaper, its camera relaying video of the sheriff’s truck as it moved through the desert. There was no hurry in returning the military’s principal unmanned killer. It had been airborne for almost four hours now, and it would fly for another twenty or so if needed. It would take even longer than that for the Air Force to crack the code she used to get it. Even then, the multiple VPNs she was using were bouncing her signal all over the world, concealing her location.

Shiloah stood up. “Did you hear me? How can transporting guns to the drug cartels not be illegal?”

“Well,” Mercy responded, clicking her mouse a few times. “I have done some quick checking on that. I admit I should have done that at the beginning. Your father is breaking no state or federal laws in transporting the guns. They can be seized at the border, but it says here it is very infrequent that this happens.

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