A Cinnabar Sky

by Billy Kring

  The smile faded when, in the rearview mirror she spotted a lone finger of dust in the air some miles to their rear. She continued at her pace, but kept an eye on the dust trail. It wasn’t long before she knew for certain it was coming fast for them. She said, “We’ve got company.”

  “Adan jerked his head to look, “Are you sure it is the same men?”

  “No, but they are coming very fast, and straight for us. There were two turns on this road back there and they passed them both by. We can’t afford to think they aren’t the bad guys.” She drove as fast as she dared, sliding around several turns, with the pickup throwing rooster tails of dust and gravel on each one. Her mind raced, which way to go? Where can I cross? Will they kill us before we make it to Texas?

  She thought of the border areas she knew, and made a decision that would put them in a slim window of safety, if she didn’t slip.

  Cutting left, she abandoned the primitive road and shot across the creosote flat, through a three-strand barbed wire fence with the breaking wire making sounds like strumming an out-of-tune guitar, then onto a ranch road going northeast.

  Adan said, “You’re speeding up.”

  “They’re gaining.”

  “Go faster, then.”

  She did.

  After ten minutes, with the pursuers falling back to several hundred yards behind them, Adan said, “I recognize some of this.”

  “I’m trying to get close to Lajitas to cross through the river.”

  “In this pickup?”

  “We’re gonna try. We won’t have time to do it any other way.”

  Adan though for a bit, “You can jump it, like in the movies.”

  Hunter grinned, “You know a spot?”

  “Downriver, a quarter mile below Comanche Creek where it enters the Rio Bravo. There are small bluffs at the river’s edge that are ten, twelve feet high. You can jump there and maybe get all the way across.”

  She grinned, “Maybe?”

  Adan said, “Even if we don’t, we will hit in the water close to the Texas side.”

  “Where they can shoot at us.”

  He said, “We can swim fast and find safety in Texas.”

  “It’s the best idea you’ve had all day.”

  Adan grinned this time, “All day?”

  She ruffled his dark hair with a hand, then focused on the road, what there was of one.

  Chapter 17

  Raymond and Joaquin rode the rumbling, ancient dozer from the church into La Linda as fast as it could go. Raymond had a death grip on the frame as the older man worked the levers and gears, sliding them onto the main street and down a block to the open doors of an abandoned warehouse. He pulled into it and cut the motor. The sudden silence was eerie.

  “I’ve got that old suburban, you want.” Joaquin said.

  “I need to find Hunter.”

  “You’re not going to catch them from behind. You need to get ahead of ‘em and wait.”

  Raymond was so anxious that his jaws ached from the tension.

  “If she’s as resourceful as you say, she’ll get back to you.”

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  Joaquin rubbed his chin, “That means she’s dead. That kid, too.”

  Raymond knew it was true.

  “If that happens, and god forbid that it does, come back here and look me up. We’ll go hunting.” Joaquin’s eyes showed he wasn’t talking about animals.

  Raymond thought for a minute, “Okay, I’ll borrow your car.”

  Joaquin went to an old cabinet on the wall, opened it and returned with a set of keys on a twisted piece of bailing wire. “She’s full, and she’ll go a long way, if that’s what you need, and I’ll tell you right now, it’s a long road either way you go, to Presidio, or Del Rio.”

  “Thanks. I believe I’ll head to Presidio and wait for her on the Texas side of the river. I can get some more help on that side, too.”

  Joaquin nodded, “Sounds good.”

  “What do I do with your car? How do I get it back to you?”

  “Leave it at the El Soldado Restaurant in Ojinaga. Give the keys to the owner. I’ll pick it up next time I’m there.” He pulled an old Colt Government Model 1911 from his belt and handed it to Raymond. “It’s loaded, with one in the pipe.”

  “Thank you.”

  “De nada, amigo. Vaya con Dios.”

  Two hours later, Raymond drove the long route to Presidio. He figured it was still hours to go before he reached the border at the international bridge there. His thoughts stayed on Hunter, enough so that he caught himself rubbing his lips with a finger.

  He drove the road for four more hours without seeing another vehicle, and when he was sixty miles from Presidio, he spotted the roadblock. They weren’t police, or law enforcement of any kind. What Raymond saw was four hard-looking men armed with AKs, standing behind the Dodge Rams parked crossways on the road, their front bumpers touching in the center of it.

  Raymond slowed as he approached them, and his heart thudded as if it were suddenly twice as heavy in his chest. He put his Glock in his left hand, hiding the weapon between the door and his thigh. He wasn’t as good a shot with his left, but he didn’t have another choice if things went south.

  He stopped far enough from the vehicles that he could spin out and evade them to either side if need be. One of the men, a fat one with a pink face came to his vehicle, carrying an AK in one hand. Raymond felt the sweat on his pistol grip.

  He said, in English, “Who are you?”

  “John Sanchez. I’m from Odessa, looking around down here.”

  “For what? This is no place to be, it is dangerous.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  He looked at Raymond a good minute without speaking, then said, “You from Odessa, uh?”

  “Yes.”

  “I got some friends there, maybe you know them. Johnny Sanchez, Pancho Islas.”

  “Nope, don’t know them.”

  “Where did you go to school up there?”

  “Odessa High.”

  “Not Permian?”

  “Nope.”

  “What’s the school mascot?”

  “Bronchos, spelled with an h. Only one in the country spelled that way.”

  The man smiled, “That’s right.”

  He thought some more, looked in the back, then motioned to the others to separate the heavy-duty pickups so Raymond could get through. He put his hand on Raymond’s open window sill, “Don’t come down here like this again, you understand?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  The man motioned him forward, and Raymond drove between the pickups while beads of sweat trickled down his temples.

  He began to see traffic, and houses in the distance as he approached Ojinaga from the southeast. The town seemed busy, and he slowed as he passed through on the main road to the Port of Entry.

  Raymond spotted one of the men he knew there, and timed his approach so he got that one at the bridge. If he was caught with a pistol, they would put him under the jail, and his career would be shot. He slid the weapon under his thigh and smiled.

  Raymond drove up slowly, smiling and giving a small hand wave of acknowledgement. The man recognized Raymond, smiled and waved him through. That brought a huge sigh of relief as he went to the U.S. side and presented his passport and visited with the men he knew there. Still, it was stressful. He mumbled to himself, “I’ll need a couple of shots of whiskey tonight.”

  He turned for the River Road to drive to Lajitas and Terlingua, thinking, and hoping, that Hunter would show up there, or at least be in the vicinity and could call him. He said a small prayer for her as he passed Fort Leaton and the area where Hunter’s father had been murdered.

  He’d looked up the incident report on it, because Hunter didn’t like to talk about such things when she first got to Marfa as a trainee. She had opened up to him later, when they became good friends. Her father had been ambushed, shot in the back with a shotgun in the days before Border Patrol Agen
ts began wearing bullet proof vests. It wasn’t enough for the killers, who then shot him ten more times up close, and cut him to pieces with machetes. They’d found a photo of Hunter as an eight-year-old child in his wallet, and pinned it to his chest by burying the blade of a hunting knife through it.

  Once when Hunter opened up, she told him that it caused an ocean of grief that she wasn’t sure she could ever get across. He’d been surprised by her openness, but she continued to talk to him after that and they grew very close. He knew Hunter considered him her best friend, and he valued it, treasured the feeling. Several friends kidded him about being her protector.

  He didn’t correct them, but he knew that the young woman he was so close to need no protector. She was fearless, smart, and incredibly tough, even though she was not big or tall. She was funny, too, very witty with a dry sense of humor, and the thought of her lost or dead in Mexico sent a pang in his heart. He worried about losing Hunter. If he did, that ocean of grief might be there for him to cross. He focused and took his thoughts to more optimistic visions of her showing up.

  He called Carlo Diaz and told him. Carlo was already in Terlingua, so Raymond headed that direction. On the way, he called several of his Border Patrol friends and told them, knowing they would spread the word unofficially to other Agents. They might drift down this way, he thought, even if they were assigned to other locations. It would be good to have them around, many of them combat veterans from the recent wars, and excellent in the field and in tough situations.

  Raymond was out of the official picture since he was still suspended, but that was the beauty of “unofficial.” These Agents would also be here in that capacity, for him and for Hunter. It made his heart swell to think of it. These were his brothers and sisters in a way it was hard to explain to civilians. Military people understood, he knew that. Because he was also former military, being a Ranger during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

  When he arrived in Terlingua, it was like he’d gone back in time and ridden into the signing area for Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. There were three men in western hats and boots wearing pistols and carrying rifles, and sitting on the porch of the Starlight Theater was Raymond’s friend, Sam Kinney, and another two armed men, one dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts, and military boots. The other man looked like someone off of an old Vietnam war documentary, wearing camouflage gear. Both men carried M-40 Sniper rifles. Two women stood near as they talked to the men. They were also armed, and Raymond recognized the female Agents, Lynne, from Sierra Blanca, and Norma, from Del Rio. Both good friends of Hunter. Raymond nodded, for this was shaping up to be what was needed this day. He headed toward Sam.

  Sam ran his hands over the stock of a Browning Automatic Rifle, called a BAR, made in the 1940s and in fine condition. He knocked off the flour-like layer of recent dust as it rested on his lap, with a cardboard box beside him with twenty magazines of twenty-round 30-06 bullets in each of them. He picked up a faded green bandolier made of canvas, and slid the individual magazines in each pouch. Four hundred rounds of 30-06 bullets fired at full auto, now that would wreak havoc if a firefight began, Raymond thought. He remembered that the BAR helped make the mad-dog killers Bonnie and Clyde terminal.

  Some tourists walked by, wide-eyed at the many guns around. Sam smiled and said, “I hope you enjoy your stay here.”

  Another tourist walked up to Sam. He was a big guy, built like a power lifter, and not tall, but with black hair and a good smile, and a beautiful woman on his arm that Sam heard the man call, “Cass.” The big man said, “Is there trouble coming?”

  “We hope not,” Sam said. “You and your fine lady just enjoy yourselves. If there’s any trouble, it won’t reach you or anybody else up here.”

  The man walked to Sam and stuck out his hand, “I’m Mitch, and if you need any help, I’ll be around.”

  “Thank you, Mitch. Tell the bartender your first rounds are on me. Name’s Sam Kinney. Where are you and the lady from?”

  “Sabinal.”

  “Down by Uvalde? I know it, know a couple of people there. Kenneth Chapman, and Mike Colvin.”

  “They’re friends. If you come down, look me up. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee, or a cup of whatever you want. We have a bar in town now.”

  “Progress is wonderful.”

  “It is that.” Mitch and Cass nodded and walked into the bar.

  Raymond came over to stand beside Sam and glanced down at the rifle, now wiped clean of dust by Sam’s hands. “That might come in handy when Hunter gets close.”

  “You’re assuming she’s still alive.”

  “Until I know for certain she’s not, I’ll keep on believing she’s coming.”

  “Well, she does have more lives than a cat. I like that lady, you know.”

  Raymond looked at the other armed men, “There’s a lot of I like Hunter going on around here. They might as well be wearing campaign buttons saying it, you know, I like Ike.”

  “You’re not old enough to remember that.”

  “I’m not, but I used to read old magazines in the library, Life and Look. Great photos, too.”

  “Oh hell, fellas, we have a reader among us.”

  Raymond put his hand on Sam’s shoulder, “There’s two of us right here.” He motioned for the others to gather around. “Time to plan out how we’re gonna work this.”

  “The Deputy said he’d play rover on the roads behind us as close backup, and if something happens he can get there fast,” Sam said.

  One of the ranchers named Oscar, a man of about fifty and sun baked as hard as the county around him said, “For my two cents, with the thin number of people we have, we need to spread out on this side of the river and watch, but be close enough to bring help when we see her.”

  Raymond liked it that he said, when we see her. “Anybody have disagreements with Oscar’s plan?” No one did.

  One of the others said, “Find some high points, boys and girls.”

  Norma said, “You want, a few of us could slip across to the other side, be waiting a little closer to cover her.”

  The man in the Hawaiian shirt said, “We can cover out to three-quarters of a mile from this side. So, if you go, you’ll need to be farther than that.”

  Norma said, “We’ll think about it.”

  “Let us know. Hey, Norma, didn’t we dance together the last time I was in Del Rio?”

  Norma smiled, “You bet. I shined your belt buckle real nice on the slow ones.”

  He nodded in remembrance, “Fine times.”

  She winked, “That buckle’s getting a little tarnished, I’m noticing. Might be time to polish it up again.”

  “Oh, I believe so. Between you and Hunter, you can wear a guy out dancing.”

  Raymond listened to the group talk among themselves a bit longer, then turned his mind to Hunter. He wondered where she was right now.

  Chapter 18

  Hunter figured they were about twenty miles due south of the Rio Grande, and on a bone-jarring trail through a ranch pasture of boulders, potholes, washes and draws that caused her vision to blur for a moment when she hit them too fast. Her upper back and neck were as tight as iron rods from driving and steering, and from the two arrows of dust showing behind them. Two vehicles coming like racecars toward her and Adan.

  When she spotted another trail of dust in the sky, coming toward them from the west, she knew these men came for blood. Adan was large-eyed as he watched the vehicles behind them. He said, “Do you have any plans?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Maybe you can think fast? They are approaching muy rápido, very fast, all of them.”

  She thought of the country in her head and mentally pictured it like a topographic map. There was a desperate route she could take, and she was sure about most of it. There were other parts of the map she thought might stop them, or crash them.

  Adan talked as if he read her mind. “We must take your path, even if it is peligroso. We have no other choice.”

>   “Okay, pull your seat belt tight.” Man, she liked this kid.

  Hunter waited until they were passing the low line of rocky hills and ridges on the east side of the pasture, then turned a hard right behind the last one and gunned the engine.

  It surprised the pursuers. That allowed Hunter to put some ground between them as she rocketed across the flatter areas and bounced crazily over the others. Several shallow washouts crossed their path and when the front wheels hit them, it tossed the pickup into the air, nose down at a fifty-degree angle. The impact coming down knocked the air out of Adan and made Hunter yelp when they hit.

  The pickup landed on all four wheels in a cloud of dust and flying debris to continue across the almost barren landscape, going east and south into even more desolate, rugged terrain. She looked far ahead to try and figure out the route to take, and glanced back to see the first pickup come around the hill after her.

  They were too close. She pushed the pedal down and sent their pickup flying across the flats, the wheels bouncing every five seconds or so into the air to come down hard and keep going. She spotted something odd in the distance, a dark spot in the direction she drove. On a hunch, she swung slightly to the left and made a long slender banana-shaped turn back on the original path, but beyond the dark area.

  The move allowed the pursuing pickup and men to close the gap, and the driver, realizing he could drive straight and be right on Hunter’s bumper, accelerated.

  Hunter watched in the mirror as he hit the dark spot, which was an area of dead, rotten brush and sand nestled in a hard-sided ditch. The pickup flew into the air as if a bomb exploded underneath it, somersaulting the vehicle frontward, end over end. A man flew out of the passenger side when the door snapped open. He slapped hard into a pile of boulders and didn’t move.

  The pickup finally landed upside down before sliding hard into another boulder and crumpling like an accordian to half its size. Adan said, “The driver is dead. I see his top half hanging out of a hole in the windshield.”