by Billy Kring
The air heated to the point it burned their nostrils when they breathed, and soon the men shed their shirts. Later, they shed their pants and shoes. They complained to each other about how terribly hot it was, talking as if Adan wasn’t there. Adan felt as if he was being roasted alive.
Six hours later, one of the men convulsed, shaking and moaning on the floor as his feet moved so his heels occasionally drummed the wood underneath.
An hour passed, and they all heard the man’s death rattle.
Two more died in the next hour.
Adan knew he had to do something or he would join them soon. His hand touched the iron spike. He grasped it, then felt for a gouged place he noticed earlier in the plank floor.
When his fingers found it again, he realized it was where someone had dug at the wood before, someone else who had been trapped in the boxcar. Slivers of wood lay scattered around the rough groove, and a few curls of wood still were attached to the floor at the edge of it.
The last man alive besides Adan made a moaning sound, and thrashed on the floor. His naked body made raw, obscene sounds as flesh tore and skin ripped from the rough wood planks. He asked for his mother in a childlike, quavering voice, which made the hair on Adan’s neck rise, and he moved close against the wall so the moaning man asking for his mother wouldn’t find him in his delirium.
Adan hacked and wriggled and pried with the point of the spike against the wood, slowly deepening and widening the groove already there. He didn’t sweat, his moisture was all gone. He was certain the blood was only dust in his veins. His skin felt as though it would burst, like a hot dog he had once seen explode in a microwave. It was so hot…
The last man died an hour before sundown. His breath whistled through his open mouth in uneven notes at the last, and his body didn’t move except at the very end when his arms spread wide and then relaxed in death.
Adan was scared in this dark, hot, smelly place with four dead bodies near him. He dug some more, even though his hands tore from the rough head on the iron spike. They ached from the effort. He couldn’t cry, there was no moisture for tears.
Adan missed his mother…
As the sun left the sky, a bit of relief from the heat came to Adan inside the boxcar, enough to revive him and leave him with a horrible, burning thirst like he had never experienced before.
Hours passed, and the thin beams of light faded away, but he continued to work with the improvised knife. Blood oozed from both hands and covered his shirt front where he wiped the slickness from them to dig again and again.
Adan didn’t notice at first when he punched through because of the darkness outside. It was only a small breath of cool night air that came through the hole and caressed his cheeks and forehead.
Lying on his stomach, Adan put his face down on the hole and breathed cool, sweet air for the first time in what seemed like forever.
Moving his face from the hole, he dug again with renewed strength, and although his energy did not last long, he widened the hole so that his nose, mouth and chin went through to the outside night air. Bodies behind him made unusual noises as the gasses built in them, and he felt goose bumps on his arms from it. Digging again made his hands bleed and ache, so he picked up the dead man’s discarded shirt and wrapped the head of the spike in it to make the iron less rough on his palms. Adan worked himself to exhaustion, and while lying on his stomach with his face in the hole, fell asleep.
During the night hours before first morning light, a half-grown coyote walked by the railroad car and smelled death inside. He sniffed, and found the human’s face sticking from the hole. This one was alive, but not by much. The coyote considered licking and nibbling at the exposed face, the soft lips, but was too put off by the human smell. It studied the young human for several minutes, then loped away into the night to find some mice or rats, or even a rabbit if it was lucky.
The sky became a dull gray as morning began, and as first true light cracked the horizon, the day animals stirred. The sun rose in a cloudless sky and as the heat climbed, the yellow disk became faded brass as the temperature topped one hundred before eleven AM. Adan did not move. He lay face down, and was beyond sleep. He had drifted deeper. Adan was unconscious.
**
Hunter and Raymond returned to the same area the next morning, and worked until noon looking for sign along the river before moving into the hills and looking for other walkers.
Raymond said, “It’s like looking on Mars for tracks. Nothing here.”
Hunter said, “There’s not even much old sign.” The AC wasn’t keeping up because they rode with the windows down to better look for tracks. She wiped the grime and sweat from under her hat and her forehead, “Let’s check one more place. I haven’t checked it in six months.”
“Ok. After that, let’s get something in town that’s cold.”
Hunter nodded and turned on an old road leading into the dry hills north and west of Terlingua.
At two PM, Raymond said, “Hold it!” Hunter stopped, then backed until her partner said, “Right there. We’ve got vehicle tracks coming out of the gate up this hill.”
“No other traffic?”
“Nope.” He examined the vehicle tracks a moment before saying, “Pull up to that old gate up there. Let’s look for foot traffic, see who opened and closed it.”
Hunter turned the wheel and they drove on the side of the road so as not to wipe out any sign. It was rough, and many rocks under the wheels bounced the two Agents hard against their seatbelts when they parked on the side of the road. Both of them exited the Suburban.
“Look here,” Raymond said. “These look familiar.”
Hunter walked to him and looked at the footprints in the caliche dust. She pulled out her phone, scanned through the photos and enlarged one, then held it down by the track. “Same, exactly.”
“Who is it?”
“That guy, RL, from out at the Hart ranch.”
Raymond walked to the gate and played with the lock using an old set of lock picks, “Oops, this is open.”
“How about that?”
Raymond swung open the gate and Hunter drove through. Raymond hooked the gate closed behind the vehicle but didn’t close the lock. The road ran for several hundred yards into the hills, and ended at the boxcar. “Let’s check it out,” Raymond said.
Hunter noticed the quietness around the railroad car, enough to make her feel uneasy. She walked to the door and worked out the latch pin, then pushed it to the side on its rails.
Four bodies lay close together. Hunter hissed, “Damn.”
Raymond joined her and they looked at the scene, not talking for a minute. The smell of decomposition was faint, but filled the rail car’s interior. Raymond said, “Want to give me a lift up?”
“No, I’ll go.’ She pushed with her palms on the bottom of the opening and swung one leg to the side like an Olympian on a pommel horse, hooking her foot on the edge of the floor and pushing up so the other leg’s knee also came down on the rail car’s wooden floor. She stood, catching the flashlight Raymond tossed her, even though morning light filled the interior. She moved among the bodies and noticed a smaller fifth body, male, against the back wall near the corner. He was face down and not moving, but something made Hunter lean down and check him. His back was warm, and she felt the slightest rise and fall of breathing.
“We’ve got a live one, Raymond. Call the EMS, and better call Carlo, too.” She knelt by the boy and gently turned him so he was face up. Hunter felt a flush go through her when she saw his face. “It’s Adan.”
“What the hell?”
She touched Adan’s forehead, “He’s burning up. Can you bring the water?”
“On it.” She heard his boots scrunch on the gravel and caliche as he ran to their Border Patrol vehicle. He returned in less than a minute. He put all of their water inside the boxcar where Hunter could reach it, and said, “EMS is on their way. So is Carlo.” He looked around the piles of debris and trash scattered arou
nd, then trotted to the end of the boxcar and returned with a discarded Igloo cooler. Using it for a step, Raymond pushed up and crawled into the interior to help Hunter.
Hunter had Adan’s shirt open and trickled water on his chest and stomach, using her handkerchief to keep it there and not allow moisture to run off him. “His skin’s burning, like touching a hot oven.”
Raymond handed her his handkerchief, “Soak this one and put it on his neck.”
She did, and talked to the boy as she wet the cloth and placed it over the large veins running up his neck, close to the surface, “Adan, hey buddy, can you hear me? We’ve got you now.” She didn’t know if he would make it or not, but she said to him, “You’re gonna be all right.” She used her moist handkerchief to wet his lips and squeeze drops between them into his bone-dry mouth.
The corners of his mouth were crusted, and she noticed the cracks there, the insides of them showing blood. His tongue was so swollen it looked as if someone had inserted an air needle and inflated it.
She dribbled more water in his mouth, and this time he swallowed, then coughed. “That’s it, that’s it, Adan. Drink a little more.” She continued to feed him drops of water and he continued to swallow, although with difficulty.
Raymond looked over the other bodies, “These are the four fentanyl mules.”
“Any of them shot?”
“No. Looks like they were locked in here and left to die.”
Hunter said, “The only reason we came up here was we spotted those vehicle tracks and then RL’s shoe print at the gate, otherwise nobody would know about them.”
“Those are some cold bastards.”
Hunter dripped a few more drops of water into Adan’s mouth, “No kiddin’.”
Both heard the faint sound of a siren coming their way. Raymond said, “Help is coming.”
The small sips of water seemed to be working, and Adan moved his legs, moaning softly as he exhaled.
“It’s okay, Adan. We’re here with you,” Hunter said. She wiped his forehead again with a moistened handkerchief.
They heard the EMS vehicle pull up beside the boxcar, and Buddy and Brandi hopped out and came to the two Agents. Their eyes grew big as they looked inside, and Brandi wrinkled her nose as she looked at Hunter. They had Adan out of the boxcar in less than a minute, and Brandi had an IV sending fluids in his arm shortly after that.
Carlo drove up in his Sheriff’s Department vehicle and came to the open rail car door. As he got out, the ambulance left with Adan. Carlo said to Raymond and Hunter, “You two attract things like this, don’t you, like a big magnet attracts nails. Jesus H. Christ.”
“You have any other people coming?”
“What, like I’m CSI or something? It’s not hard to see what happened here, the problem is finding out who.”
“We think we have a good idea.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“Those Hart Ranch employees, Ellis and RL.”
Carlo waited for more, and Raymond said, “Their tracks are here.”
“All that means is that they were here, and that’s only if the tracks were made from their shoes and not someone else wearing the same type footwear. You know that.”
“It’s all we have, until that tough little kid in the ambulance wakes up.”
Raymond hitched a thumb at the boxcar, “How about the bodies?”
“That’s the county coroner’s work.”
“We know they’re from Mexico. These are the backpackers we found yesterday.”
“The ones bringing in Fentanyl, and that got away from you.”
“Yes.”
“Does that happen often with you two?”
“Don’t you start that, Carlo. We’re sensitive enough about what happened.”
Carlo grinned, “I know, I was just jerking your chain.”
Raymond said, “You’re doing a good job of it.”
Carlo held up his hands in surrender, “I’m following the EMS, Buddy and Brandi are going to Alpine this trip. You two coming?”
“We’ll be there after the bodies are taken to the morgue. They’re on their way.”
Chapter 9
The EMS trip to Alpine went fast and smooth, with Buddy driving, and Brandi monitoring Adan. Brandi said, “He’s responding well.”
Buddy said over his shoulder, “Young kid like that, he’s resilient. We’ll have to ask Hunter later on how he was mixed up in those deaths. He should never have been in that boxcar.”
Hunter and Raymond followed behind as they made their way into the City Limits and through town to state road 118, which went by the Big Bend Regional Medical Center.
Ellis and RL listened to much of their traffic on the police scanner in the vehicle. RL noticed Ellis’ face was dark with anger. “What do you think?”
Ellis said, “That damn Kincaid woman is messing up everything. And that kid, we need to fix him before he starts talking.”
They listened to more traffic on the scanner and heard their names as suspects to be found and arrested. “Shit,” RL said.
“Let me make some calls.” Ellis used his phone and called, then said on the phone, “We’re in a mess. Any suggestions?” He listened for several minutes, then said, “Okay, we’ll be waiting.”
RL said, “Who was that?”
“Old man Hart.”
“Did he say what we should do?”
“Yep. We need to go to the Sheriff’s Office and turn ourselves in, say we heard they were looking for us on our scanner, so we’re the law-abiding type and are doing the right thing.”
“The hell you say.”
Ellis winked at RL, “We won’t be there for long. Help’s coming.”
“I hope you’re right.”
They drove to the S.O. and walked inside, where they spotted Carlo. He saw them at the same time, but before he could speak, Ellis said, “We heard you were looking for us. Thought we’d turn ourselves in.”
Carlo processed the two men, and let the jailer take them to a cell, where Ellis and RL reclined on their beds, smiling and smirking.
The jailer, an older man named Curtis, who still looked tough said, “You two think being up on a murder charge is funny? You’re a special kind of stupid.”
“Screw you, old man. We’re innocent until proven guilty. This is America, the U S of A.”
Curtis said, “That’s why you’ll ride the needle.”
Ellis looked hard at the jailer, “I’ll be seeing you around, old man.”
“I might just be the last thing you see. Your meals are coming in about twenty minutes. Enjoy ‘em.”
RL felt his stomach flop. The jailer’s words struck him hard. He said to Ellis, “Man, I don’t want to die.”
“Don’t sweat it. We’ll be out of here before nightfall. Guaranteed.”
**
Hunter and Raymond left the hospital when they were sure Adan would recover. Raymond drove into Alpine, and ready to head home to Marfa when he spotted a sky-blue helicopter lower and sit down near the S.O. Exiting the craft was a tall man with dark hair, wearing an expensive suit. He carried a briefcase and walked into the building as the helicopter idled.
“Wonder who that is,” Raymond asked.
“Let’s go see.” The two friends drove to the rear of the building and she and Raymond entered through the back door. They were just in time to see Ellis and RL escorted from the premises.
“No handcuffs,” Raymond said.
Hunter pushed forward and found Carlo, looking somber and more than a little pissed. “What’s going on?”
“Big shot lawyer. He’s got them out on bail already.”
“No way.”
“You know how it is, money and power.”
“They’re being released today?”
“Right now.”
As Ellis and RL stopped at the curb to wait for their ride, Ellis turned to look at the crowd. When he saw Hunter, he blew her a kiss.
Hunter started toward him and said,
“That son of a–”. Raymond stopped her before she could get too far.
Raymond said, “This isn’t over, so play it cool.”
“I’d like to cool him.”
“You may still get that chance. We can watch him all you want. He can’t stay out of trouble, and when he messes up, we’ll be there.”
Hunter’s phone rang and she answered it. It was Sector Headquarters. A voice said, “Is this Hunter Kincaid?”
“This is Kincaid.”
“Is Raymond with you?”
“Yes, Raymond is with me.”
“The A-Chief, Frank Saunders, and PAIC Oscar Molina are here in Frank’s office. They need for you two to come as soon as possible.”
Hunter looked at Raymond. She raised her eyebrows and pointed at the phone. “We’re on our way.”
“What was that all about?”
“Frank and Oscar want us to come to Frank’s office, like pronto.”
“What did we do?”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
They parked at Sector and went in by the front office and down to the A-Chief’s office halfway down the hallway. The door was closed, so Raymond knocked.
Frank’s voice said, “Come in.”
They entered and were pointed to two chairs off to the side. Frank was sitting behind his desk, and Oscar was in another chair, facing the two Agents. A third man was relaxed in another chair. It was the Attorney they saw getting out of the helicopter.
Hunter whispered to Raymond, “He travels fast, doesn’t he?”
Raymond hid a grin with his hand.
“Something funny?” Frank said.
“No sir. Nothing at all.”
“Agent Kincaid, Agent Flores, this is James Goldstein, attorney for the Harts.”
Hunter checked him out closer. He had salt and pepper hair, a South Florida tan, an immaculate Armani suit, top of the line. His shoes gleamed like mirrors.