A Cinnabar Sky

by Billy Kring

  Circling all the way around the white hacienda added another hour of walking, and his legs felt it. He crept up to the hacienda’s back adobe perimeter wall and found a stack of cinder blocks at one corner. Moving with care, Adan eased up and looked into the yard. A leafy peach tree was slightly higher than the wall, and it shielded Adan’s movements so he could observe without being seen.

  People talked and splashed in and around the pool, with Mike Hart, Ellis, RL, and five young women in small bikinis making up the group. Drinks sat on the tables, mostly orange juice and vodka it seemed. A large pail of ice cubes rested in the center. Adan could hear the conversations when he cupped a hand behind one ear and angled it toward them.

  Mike said to one of the women, “Babe, you want to make us some more of those screwdrivers? You have the magic touch, girl.”

  The woman looked about twenty, with large breasts and skinny legs, smiled and cooed, “As you wish.”

  When she walked by Ellis, he smacked her on the butt, hard. She turned and said, “Hey, that hurt.”

  “Make it fast, and quit wiggling your ass so much. That’s not where your talent lies.” He pointed at her breasts, “Use those babies.”

  She didn’t say anything, but hurried to make the drinks. Ellis pointed at her breasts, indicating she should uncover them. She removed her bikini top to make the remainder of the drinks while topless. On the return, she gave the first drink to Ellis, and lowed her breasts so he could see them. Ellis grabbed one of the nipples between his thumb and forefinger and squeezed, making the woman wince and attempt to pull away, but he held fast, enjoying her pain.

  When Mike saw tears in her eyes, he said, “Ellis, come on now. I need my drink.”

  Ellis held it a second longer, then released her breast, saying, “Sure thing, Mike.” He wasn’t happy about obeying Mike Hart, Adan could tell.

  When the old man, Winston Hart came out to join them, full highball glass in hand, Adan saw his chance. He dropped to the ground and trotted around the perimeter to the front door and entered in silence, alert and looking for any other people. Adan felt relief, he had the house to himself.

  It felt so cool inside the home that he almost shivered as he walked down the hall to the room with the closed door, the one he’d noticed on the first visit, and the one the elder Hart skipped by while showing them the home. He tried the doorknob, and it opened without a sound. A large bedroom spread before him. It was either freshly cleaned and the bed made, or it had been that way for a while.

  He saw several photos on the wall, and went for a closer look. His first glance sent something like an electric shock through him. The photos were all of his father, from different ages. The last two showed a portion of the photos ripped away where someone else had been in the photo with him, and in a part of the photo was one tier of the white church, just showing behind Vincent’s shoulder.

  Adan opened a drawer on the nightstand and saw nothing, but he was curious because the drawer didn’t open well, almost like something was stuck behind it. He pulled out the drawer and searched. Nothing. Then, as he started to push it back in the slot, his hand went underneath the drawer to balance it, and he felt an envelope taped to the underside. Removing the drawer again, he turned it over and saw the plain five-by-eight manila envelope taped in place. The tape appeared yellowed, and some of the edges had come away from the wood, leaving the envelope sagging.

  A sound came from the back door of the house; voices. Adan froze, listening. They were coming closer, walking down the long hallway. He made his choice. He tore the envelope from the drawer bottom and slid it behind his belt, under his shirt. His heart almost stopped when a shape passed by the open crack in the door. It was Mike, and a second later, Ellis walked by as well. They didn’t notice the door slightly ajar.

  When his heart stopped hammering and his ears felt unstuffed, Adan closed the desk drawer and went to the crack to see when and where he could escape. His hands trembled, but he regained control, and thought of ways to escape.

  When Mike and Ellis reached the living room, Adan slipped out of Vincent’s room and went the opposite way down the hall. He was halfway down it when the back door opened and he saw a shadow of someone else entering the house from the pool area. He looked left and right, and spotted the red room. Adan entered it just as the others came in from the back door.

  Things were getting sweaty and Adan knew he couldn’t dodge everyone forever. He watched as the last group passed and went to Ellis and Mike in the living room. Adan slipped out of the door and hurried down the hall to the back door. He prayed no one else was outside, and stepped into the back yard, not stopping but going to the side gate and exiting as quiet as he could. Adan ran bent over, in a shuffling gait, and was soon out of sight of the white hacienda. Taking the same, longer route away from the mansion took a good while, but he persisted and only stopped to hide once when he spotted two armed men on a rise. They walked out of sight, and he continued, picking up the pace as he hurried toward Terlingua and safety.

  An hour later, he stopped and rested in the shadow of an arroyo wall. The heat was a physical blow on his head and shoulders, stealing his breath and burning his nostrils when he inhaled, like when too close to a campfire. It was a few minutes before he cooled down, and then took out the manila folder from his waistband to open it.

  The flap had been glued down, and the small aluminum wings covered it as well. They lifted easily with a finger, but the flap didn’t. Adan spit on it, hoping that would break the glue’s bond, but it didn’t. For some reason, he didn’t want to tear the envelope because he felt sure his father taped it under the drawer. It felt special, treasured to him. Whatever was inside it, well, that was a hidden treasure for the moment.

  He would steam open the envelope when he returned to Terlingua. He put the envelope inside the waist of his jeans again, covering it with his shirt, and walked down the small arroyo to turn in the main direction toward Terlingua.

  Two men on the far ridge, a half mile distant watched him with binoculars. Ben Zambrano said, “That’s the same kid we caught the other time out this way. The one I tapped in the face with my rifle stock.”

  Anselmo said, “You did more than bop him, you knocked the shit out of that boy.”

  Ben shrugged, “Maybe. But this one’s about to cross where the backpackers bringing in fentanyl are coming. If they run into each other, we have to drop him, maybe drop all of them.”

  “No witnesses that way.”

  Ben nodded and brought the glasses back to his eyes. “There’s the group.” He pointed.

  Anselmo brought up his binoculars and found them immediately, “Yeah, all four. A quartet.” He looked again, “They’re still wearing the stuff Ellis made for them on their shoes.”

  “I let them walk down a draw before, and tried to find their tracks. Their footprints were almost invisible.”

  “It’s a flat, flexible rubber thing he makes, leaves no patterns, only the tiniest flat places, but still flexes over rocks and downed branches.”

  “He should patent that.”

  “Haha. I think he’s making more money off the drugs than he could get with a patent.”

  “How much off this load? They’re bringing fentanyl patches, right?”

  “Street value is about six million, and they are carrying light, so they can make another trip tomorrow.”

  “Sweet.”

  They continued to watch through their binoculars as Adan turned into the shallow, sandy draw to put him on a collision course with the drug mules. Ben and Anselmo rose to move to a better location, to be closer and for a line of fire, and Ben felt his palms sweat because it sure looked like it was going to happen. Shooting a kid, man oh man.

  **

  Six hours earlier, Hunter and Raymond cut the faintest trail they’d ever encountered, like ghosts walking across the desert. What might normally have taken two hours on a trail took six and they still hadn’t found their quarry. Hunter told Raymond, “Stop by that
small mesa and I’ll go up and glass the area.”

  “Let’s hope you get lucky and see something, or we might be on this trail until Christmas.” Hunter gave him a thumbs-up and went to the base of the small mesa, studying the sides and the caprock for a gap to use in reaching the top. She spotted one, and climbed up, steady and sure. At the gap, she checked for snakes first when she saw a gray, shed skin lying in the bottom, then she went up, going carefully and using her hands to pull on the rock while her feet scrambled on the steep incline for footing.

  Raymond put his head out of the vehicle and yelled, “Looks like you’re hanging on a treadmill and sprinting!”

  Hunter didn’t acknowledge her friend until she reached the top, then she shot him a finger, too winded to talk. Raymond laughed and rolled up his window so the AC would cool him while she baked under a brass colored sun that made rocks too hot to touch. She signaled to Raymond to roll down his window, and he did. “What?”

  She said, “Payback is a bitch!”

  Raymond laughed, “I’ll go next time, it’s only fair!”, and rolled up the window.

  Hunter grinned, then wiped sweat from her forehead under the hat, and scanned the country around her, using her ten power binoculars. Five minutes later, she spotted two men lying on the crest of a low ridge just over a mile distant, and looking down into a draw that paralleled the ridge and angled toward Hunter’s mesa. She walked fifty feet to the east and turned the glasses to the draw.

  A single small figure, Hunter felt certain it was a young boy, walked north up the draw. In the distance and around a long gentle curve were four people with backpacks, coming south. The two men lying prone were above the bend in the draw. At the backpacker’s pace, Hunter judged they would meet the boy in about fifteen minutes. Then she saw the prone men adjust rifles and look through their scopes at the boy.

  She scrambled down through the rock gap and Raymond saw her coming at a reckless, stone kicking, foot sliding run down the slope. He had the vehicle ready, with the passenger door open for her by the time she reached the bottom. Raymond gunned the engine and scattered gravel and dust from the wheels even before Hunter grasped the top edge of the door and leapt on the gunwale like she was jumping on the boxcar ladder of an accelerating freight train.

  Raymond said, “What happened?”

  “Two men are setting up an ambush.”

  “On who?”

  “Either a boy, or four backpackers, or all of them.”

  Raymond steered around a cluster of car-sized boulders, “Tell me where we need to go, and what you want to do.”

  “To that low ridge,” she pointed. “We’ll go up after the shooters.”

  “They have rifles?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Raymond licked his lips, “And we have a pump shotgun. One pump shotgun.”

  Hunter said, “We’re true of heart, we have the strength of ten.” She winked at him. “You take the shotgun, and I’ll make sure they don’t shoot a woman.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll draw their attention with my feminine ways. You yell at them, say you’ll blow them to pieces with the shotgun if they so much as twitch, something like that.”

  “This feminine thing to get their attention, you’re not gonna rip open your shirt and flash your boobs at them, are you?”

  “No, Raymond. Jeez, some of your ideas, I swear.”

  Raymond looked away, hiding the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He bit at his lower lip, “Would have been a great plan.”

  “You have anything else?”

  “Nah, we go with Plan A.”

  “Okay, loan me your flexcuffs.”

  Raymond dug into his cargo-pant thigh pockets, “You got it.”

  She put them with her own, winked at Raymond, and left him on the ridge.

  Raymond said, “Girl doesn’t even realize she’s giving me more gray hairs doing this.” He smiled a little, then started off the ridge.

  Chapter 7

  Hunter crept off the ridge and hit the bottom of the flat in a dog-trot, going on a path that would circle by the other parties while keeping small hills and ridges between her and them. She picked up her speed, going at an eight-minute-per-mile pace over bushes and weaving around cactus and yuccas. She stumbled once when she stepped on a baseball-sized rock and it rolled under her foot, but she flailed her arms and regained balance without falling.

  Hunter rounded another pile of boulders and moved to the base of the ridge where the two gunmen waited in ambush. She slowed and went up the incline in a silent walk, every sense alert. She knew Raymond was working his way down to pin the back-packers between them, and hopefully, get the others as well. If she pulled this part off, they would be off to a good start.

  She was so close that their voices reached her. Ben said, “Let’s shoot the kid first.”

  Anselmo said, “Why? He’s got nothing. The others have the dope, which is mucho money for us.”

  “Ellis don’t like him, that’s why.” He sounded angry.

  They were silent for almost a minute when Anselmo said, “He’s right below us, you want to do it.”

  Hunter moved to the crest, coming up forty feet behind the two men. She ghosted forward on silent feet until she stood ten feet behind them.

  Both men were preoccupied with sighting on the targets in the draw and didn’t hear her.

  Hunter said, “Not a good idea.”

  Both men hunched as if hit, then Ben turned and swung with his rifle, ready to bring it up and shoot from the hip. As his barrel first rose, he saw the muzzle of Hunter’s pistol already pointed at him.

  He froze, the rifle barrel still pointed at the ground. Her eyes were grim, scary, and she stepped forward. From Ben’s perspective of four feet away and directly in front of her, he could see her left eye aligned on the pistol’s sights, the barrel pointed directly at his face.

  She didn’t blink, didn’t say anything.

  Anselmo dropped his rifle and held up his hands. Hunter’s eyes remained on Ben Zambrano as she tossed a flexcuff to Anselmo. He slipped them on his wrists and pulled it tight with his teeth.

  “You gonna do something?” She asked Ben. The pistol didn’t waver. “Make up your mind.”

  Ben felt paralyzed, like he was locked in cement.

  She said, “Put it on the ground and raise your hands or I’m going to shoot. You’ve got five seconds. Five.”

  Ben looked at her.

  “Four.”

  He dropped the rifle to the ground, still staring at her, angry.

  “Three.”

  Ben felt a small shock, “What? I dropped it!”

  “Two.”

  Anselmo said, “Raise your hands, pendejo! Raise ‘em!”

  “One.” She stepped to within three feet of Ben, and the opening in the pistol’s black hole looked as large as a one-inch pipe.

  Ben’s hands shot up like he was reaching for the cirrus clouds above them.

  Hunter slipped out a flexcuff and looped it around Ben’s wrists, then put her pistol in the holster.

  All three of them heard the sounds of feet on the incline, and shortly after, Raymond appeared with Adan in tow.

  “Look what I caught.”

  “Looks a little small, you might have to toss it back in.”

  Adan looked at the ground, his cheeks flushed.

  Ben and Anselmo looked at the boy, and sent silent glances to each other. This kid was the one that Ellis wanted done away with and his body buried deep. Ellis had told them, “I don’t want a single piece of that little bastard’s DNA left for anyone to find.”

  Hunter said, “Adan, what are we going to do with you?”

  “Whatever you have to, but please remain my friends. That is all I ask.”

  Raymond looked at Hunter, “Well, hell. I was going to be mean, and now…”

  Hunter nudged the other two men forward. “We need to hurry down off this if we’re going to catch the backpackers.”

  “Go first,
and take Adan with you. We’ll put these two between us.”

  “Use some cuffs to tie them together, I only had two.”

  Raymond had three sets of flexcuffs in his hand, “Way ahead of you.” He ran them through the men’s cuffed wrists and looped the others together so they could walk, but not run without stumbling. It took seconds, then they worked their way off the ridgeline.

  The four backpackers were candy.

  Raymond went through their packs and whistled at the contents. He held a few up for Hunter to see, with each dose of fentanyl individually packaged, “Dermal patches still in the wrappers. Their backpacks are stuffed.”

  Raymond asked the drug mules if they knew how much was in each pack. They said they didn’t know.

  Hunter said, “I’m guessing, but I think they’re carrying about a million each, street value.”

  “That’s gonna hurt somebody’s pocketbook.”

  **

  Ellis and RL watched Hunter and the others from two hills farther east. Ellis used a twenty-power spotting scope resting on a large gray stone the size of a table. RL kneeled beside him, silent and absently toying with a forty-five bullet.

  Ellis said, “They’re moving now, going to the SUV. That Flores, he’s making our four guys carry the fentanyl.”

  “What do you want to do? That’s about six million. We can’t afford to lose that much.”

  Ellis turned the scope and looked away from the Agents and into the distance. He’d spotted the two men earlier, and now returned them to the scope’s view. It was the Terlingua residents he’d seen many times, they ran the water truck, did odd jobs around the area: Santino Robles and Bobby Sotomayor. They were finishing work on repairing a ranch fence.

  “We won’t.” He folded the small tripod legs on the scope and slid it into a carrying bag. “We need to boogie, get closer to them.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “There’s a place on the road where it narrows, they’ll skirt a steep, sloping area, goes down about a hundred feet to the bottom.”