The thing we were there for was happening. Ethan and I were acting as security on the set of The Mexican Pipeline, a controversial movie that the Hidalgo Cartel in northern Chihuahua had targeted. They threatened to kill everyone involved if they continued filming the story depicting a fictionalized version of their cartel activities.
They were also known as 1518, the numbers signifying the year before Cortez landed on the shores of Mexico to conquer the Aztecs. The last year of their power before the destruction of an entire civilization.
A hard-looking tattooed gangster squeezed the trigger of what I took to be a Bushmaster spraying indiscriminate. 223 rounds left and right. More men than I could have imagined streamed from the dusty SUVs and strolled casually through the movie set, firing on the terrified actors who scattered like quail. The guns in their hands belched fire and the assistant director tangled his feet and went down as rounds blew out his chest.
The chaos was complete. Actors and crew members screamed, scrambling for cover. Guns were everywhere, half in the hands of actors armed with blanks, and each one registered as threats to me and Ethan.
He and I charged into the melee, not by design, but because the only cover in the area was behind all the equipment used to film the movie. He jumped behind a stack of thick cases, using the only concealment he could find.
The words “thank God, thank God” repeated over and over in my mind, a chant of relief that my wife Kelly and our teenage twins Mary and Jerry weren’t on the set. They’d been pestering me for weeks to come out and watch one day’s shoot and I’d almost relented that morning.
My .45 came up and a guy holding a Bushmaster disappeared behind the front sight. I squeezed the trigger and he went straight down.
Before I could swing the muzzle to a second guy crouched not far away, he dropped from a round fired by Ethan. We weren’t the only ones fighting back. My dad, Herman Hawke, was thirty feet away. He was also making a few extra bucks acting as the set’s wrangler of two dozen head of cattle and horses used as backdrop stock.
A retired Texas Ranger, he was always armed. The Old Man took cover behind his pickup parked just off camera and drew his Colt. Sighting across the hood, the .45 barked. He shifted and fired again. His presence and demeanor in the suddenly real shoot-out was as calming to me as a Xanax.
I squeezed the trigger and my pistol barked again, heeling a gangster when the bullet’s impact knocked one foot out from under him. I never said I was a good shot. A firm believer in the anchor shot, the Old Man drilled the wounded gangster twice more to keep him down.
Cameras exploded, bodies fell, and the roar of gunfire filled my ears. The cartel members continued to hose the area, spraying at random. Everything snapped back into real time as I juked behind a large metal box full of electronics and used the shoulder-high container as cover.
One of the only things on the law-enforcement side was that in all the gunfire, most of the bad guys weren’t certain who was sending in return gunfire. Terrified movie people ran for cover in all directions and incongruously, I saw two of the actors return fire with their weapons loaded with blanks. Purely instinctive, their actions caused some of the cartel gangsters to take cover behind their own vehicles, but others returned fire, murdering the terrified extras.
A hard-looking young man swung his cuerno de chivo in my direction. He was standing in the open, probably the way he’d seen it done on television or in movies. I shot him twice and he crumpled. Ethan emptied his Glock and dropped the magazine.
A string of explosions stitched the dirt around me. The guy who popped up slightly behind me would’ve had us both had his own mag not run dry. He was close enough to see the surprise in his eyes as he fumbled to reload. Ethan and I both put him down.
As three others sprayed the area with gunfire to keep our heads down, their tattooed leader struck a pose beside the car, fists on his hips, and shouted above the gunfire. “La mujer del diablo de Chihuahua, la reina del Chihuahua, the Devil Woman Queen of Chihuahua says that this movie will not be completed. Next time we will kill everyone here!” He waved. “Vamos, chicos!”
Doors slammed seconds later and the three SUVs filled with their surviving gangsters spun in tight circles, speeding away back down the same dry pasture road. I rose and punched holes in the windows and sheet metal until they were out of range.
As soon as they were gone, the air was filled with dust, cries, and screams. I sensed the crew members rushing around as I kicked the weapons away from the real cartel members on the ground.
Ethan joined me beside the first young man I’d shot. “I think I’m gonna go back to smoking again.”
Before I could answer, the wounded man’s arm rose, beckoned, then fell.
“This guy’s still alive.” I knelt beside him, patting the kid down to make sure he didn’t have any other weapons. Finding none, I pulled the bandana with a skeleton’s face down to reveal a smooth, unlined face.
Someone joined me and I saw it was Gabe. He ripped the boy’s shirt open to reveal a dark puckered hole in his upper chest and covered the wound with the palm of his hand.
“This looks bad.”
The Old Man’s voice came from behind me. “It is. There’s two more holes down lower.”
Blood welled from between Gabe’s fingers. His eyes were filled with sadness. “He’s not much older than Angie.”
I understood how he felt. Angie was his high school-age daughter, and I had a set of twins the same age. “He’s older than he looks, and he also tried to kill us.”
The boy’s eyes flicked open and he whispered. “Padre.” It took a second to realize he was looking at Gabe’s priest collar. “Quiero confesion.”
Gabe shook his head and answered in Spanish. “No soy un sacerdote.”
I’m not a priest.
“Confesion.” The boy turned his pleading gaze to me. He must have recognized the cinco peso badge on my shirt. “Guardebosque, to lo ruego. Pidele que me confesion.”
Guardebosque is what some Mexicans call us Texas Rangers.
“It won’t hurt to hear him, Gabe.” The Old Man’s voice was soft.
My eyes burned, because I was watching a boy die from my gunshots. I know, he’d been trying to kill me, but I also saw my son Jerry lying there.
The dying man groaned and switched to English. “I need to say something.” The statement was a shock, because he spoke with little accent. “I need to tell you something.”
The back of my neck prickled.
Gabe met my eyes, then leaned down to better hear. “Adelante.”
The dying man held Gabe’s hand and whispered in his ear for a moment, as the ranch hand cum actor cum priest, listened intently as his voice weakened, then stopped. The gangster’s eyes lost focus and drifted off to the side as he gasped, convulsed, and went limp.
His death brought me completely back into the real world of panicked victims, crying men and women, and unheard orders issued to people who simply wandered among the bloody carnage with vacant expressions.
Licking his dry lips, Gabe straightened. “Oh my God.”
I saw fear in his eyes and leaned in. “What’d he say?”
“He’s a federal agent, undercover, and there was another agent with these guys, too.”
My head reeled at the thought of shooting a brother in arms. The attack unreeled in my mind. He was firing his weapon, but I hadn’t seen anyone fall. Was he shooting over everyone’s heads?
No. I’d looked directly down the muzzle of his weapon when it was aimed at me and remembered seeing muzzle flashes. My stomach clenched. “Is that what he confessed?”
“No. Worse.”
When he told me what the dying boy said, my blood went cold.
“He says the 1518, the Mujer Malvada cartel is sending more hit teams between here and Van Horn. They have a plan to clear a path through the Border Patrol for the drugs and people coming across the river. More people are going to die.”
My blood chilled. An organi
zed hit team targeting the Border Patrol was in my country, and I wasn’t going to stand for it.
Photo by Shana K. Wortham
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
REAVIS ZANE WORTHAM (his middle name honors the great western novelist Zane Grey) launched his acclaimed Sonny Hawke thriller series with Hawke’s Prey and followed up with Hawke’s War. He is also the award-winning author of the Red River Mystery series, including Gold Dust, Unraveled, The Right Side of Wrong, Vengeance is Mine, Dark Places, Burrows, and The Rock Hole (winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award). He is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the Writers’ League of Texas, the International Association of Crime Writers, Western Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. Each week Reavis pens a self-syndicated weekly outdoor column for numerous Texas newspapers, writing on everything from fishing to deer hunting. He lives in northeast Texas with his wife. Please visit him on Facebook or at his website, reaviszwortham.com.
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