by Mark Dawson
He saw the dust cloud. It blurred in the shimmer and drifted north, the faint desert breeze catching it and pushing it back towards the city. It grew into a long yellow slash of dust, gradually rising, eventually growing to a mile long before he could make out the hire car Smith was driving at its head. It bumped off the asphalt and onto the rough track, greasewood bushes and pear cactus on either side, slowing to negotiate the deeper potholes. He put the glasses to his eyes and focussed. Eventually it was close enough for Beau to see Smith at the wheel and, in the back, Adolfo González. The cloud of dust kept drifting north.
Beau still wasn’t sure that he was doing the right thing. He had Adolfo. All he had to do was cuff him, wrists and ankles, put him in the back of the Jeep, cross the border, pick up his money. Smith would have let him do it, too, if it hadn’t been for the girl. Beau had watched as Smith spoke to El Patrón and, although he had kept his voice calm, he had seen the flashes of anger in his eyes. He would never agree to let him have Adolfo now, not until they had gotten Caterina back again. Beau wondered for a moment about drawing down on him, just taking the greaser and bugging out for the border, but there was something about the Englishman that told him that that would be a very bad idea. He didn’t want a mean dude like that on his tail. That, and the fact that he had just saved his life.
They had agreed to meet El Patrón out here in the desert, get the girl but try and get away with Adolfo, too. Beau was taking the risk with the bounty and so Smith had agreed that he should be the one with the rifle. Much less dangerous away from the action. Smith would make the exchange and Beau would provide cover, should Smith need it.
Beau knew that he would.
As a kid in the woods of southeast Texas, Beau had never really been good at much in particular with the exception of hunting. This talent was honed in Vietnam where he was trained as a sniper by the 101st Airborne in Phu Bai. He did his stint on a hunt-and-kill team with the Fifth Infantry Division out of Quany Tri Province. The team included rangers, recondos, jungle experts, snipers, special forces and even a mercenary who was trying to regain his US citizenship after previously hiring out to foreign governments. Beau reckoned that the reaper teams were the most deadly assembled group of specialists in all of ‘Nam.
He learned plenty, like how to shoot.
The sun behind him was a good thing: there would be no reflection off his glasses or the scope. It was climbing into a perfect blue sky, already blazing hot. There was no wind. No cloud cover. No shelter. The air shivered in the heat. The deep shadow of the ridge and the Joshua tree were cast out across the floodplain below him. A little vegetation: candelilla and catclaw and mesquite thickets. He put the binoculars down and mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief. He gazed out over the land. To the west and east were the mountains. To the south, the arid scrub of the barrial that ran out into the deeper desert. He saw another cloud of dust on the 45. He picked up the glasses again and found the road. It was another car, an SUV, with tinted windows. A narco car. It turned off the road and followed Smith down the same long track. He replaced the glasses, took a slug of water from the canteen shaded by his hat, and picked up the rifle. His vantage point was nicely elevated, not too much, well within the range of the Weatherby. He nudged the forestock around until he had the car in his sights. He thumbed off the safety and slipped his finger through the trigger-guard.
The narco who had climbed the mesa behind him had followed him all the way from Juárez. The man was a tracker, a coyote with experience of smuggling people over the border. He knew how to move quietly, how to avoid detection.
Beau never even saw him.
The first thing he knew about it was the click as the man cocked his revolver.
* * *
45.
MILTON GOT out of the hire car. The air was arid and clear all the way to both horizons, where it broke up into morning haze. The heat was already unbelievable. The sun was ferocious. He could feel the skin on his face beginning to burn. It seemed to coat him from the top of his head to the tips of his toes and he broke out into a sweat almost immediately. He felt the moisture seeping into his shirt, sticking the fabric against his stomach.
The Mercedes Viano rumbled down the bare track towards him, the cone of dust pluming in its wake. The sun reflected off the windscreen with a dazzling glare. Milton took off his jacket, folding it neatly and laying it on the driver’s seat. He opened the rear door, took Adolfo by the crook of the elbow and dragged him out of the car. He shoved him forwards so that he fell forwards onto his knees, took the Springfield and aimed at his back.
“Nice and easy,” he said.
The Viano slowed and swung around, coming to rest opposite the hire car. Milton leant against the bonnet. The metal was already searing hot.
The passenger side door of the SUV slid open. Milton looked inside. Too dark to make much out.
“Where’s the girl?” he called.
Two men stepped down. One had a short-barrelled H&K machinepistol with a black leather shoulderstrap. The other had a twelve gauge Remington automatic shotgun with a walnut stock and a twenty round drum magazine.
“She ain’t here, ese.”
Milton racked the slide of the Springfield. “Where is she?”
“Don’t worry. You’ll see her.”
He took a step forward and jabbed the muzzle into the nape of Adolfo’s neck.
“Are you calling my bluff?”
Milton tightened his grip on the pistol.
“Shoot him!” Adolfo screamed at the men.
Milton glanced around. The sun dazzled him. What was Beau waiting for?
A plume of dust kicked up a foot to his left; the cracking report of the rifle echoed across the desert.
“Your friend can’t help you. Drop the gun.”
A second shot rang out, this one a foot to his right. The bullet caromed off the rocks and ricocheted away into the scrub.
Milton tightened his grip and half-squeezed the trigger. Another ounce or two of pressure and González’ brains would be splashed across the sand. But what then? The two sicarios looked like they knew how to use their weapons and the man with Beau’s Weatherby was a decent shot, too. He could shoot González but then that Caterina would be killed. He didn’t know what the right play was, apart from the certainty that it wasn’t shooting the man. Not yet.
He stepped back, released his grip, and let the pistol drop to the scrub.
Adolfo’s cuffs were unlocked. He sneered at Milton. He took the shotgun and flipped it around. “Fuck you, English,” he said. He swung the shotgun. The stock caught him on the chin and staggered him. The blazing bright day dimmed, just for a moment, but he did not go down. Adolfo flexed his shoulders, as if he was straightening out a kink, then swung again.
This time, the light dimmed for longer, and he went down. He dropped to the hard-packed dirt and sat there, the taste of his blood like copper pennies in his mouth. His instinct was to get up and so he did. He rose and stood, swaying. A wave of blackness came over him. He took an uncertain step forwards. Blood ran out of his mouth freely now. Adolfo stepped back for extra space and jabbed the stock into his unguarded chin as hard as he could. The black curtain fell and did not rise again. Milton fell face first into the dust.
* * *
46.
PLATO LEFT his cruiser at home and took the Accord. He was dressed in jeans and a white shirt and a trucker’s cap, he had his shotgun in the footwell next to him and there was a box of shells on the seat. He reversed out of his driveway and set off to the south. He didn’t look back; he didn’t want to see Emelia’s face in the window. He wondered sometimes that the woman was practically psychic. She always knew when he had something on his mind. He had managed to avoid her this morning, creeping out of bed and leaving the house as quietly as he could. Even then, he had heard the floorboard in the bedroom creaking as she got out of bed. He’d nearly stayed, then, the reality of just how stupid this was slapping him right in the face. But then he thou
ght of his old man, and his badge, and what that all meant, and he opened the door and set off.
The lights out of the city were all on green for him. One after the next, the whole sequence, all of them green. He wouldn’t have minded if they were all red this morning. He couldn’t help the feeling that they were hastening him towards something terrible.
Plato escaped the ring of maquiladoras arranged in parks on the outskirts and accelerated away. He knew Samalayuca. It was hardly a village, just a collection of abandoned huts. The road, the 45, cut right through the desert. The barrial was a prime cartel dumping spot. He had lost count of the number of early morning calls that had summoned him to Samalayuca, Rancheria or Villa Ahumada.
A trucker had seen a body on the side of the road.
A pack of coyotes observed tugging on fresh meat.
Vultures wheeling over carrion.
And those were just the bodies that La Frontera wanted them to find.
How many more hundreds––thousands––were buried out here?
The right-hand turn approached. The junction had no stop sign, just thick white lines that had melted into the blacktop. To the right, the road became a dirt track, cutting across the desert like a scar across sun-cooked skin. He slowed the car and pulled into the side of the road. He wound down the window and hot air rushed inside. He glanced left and right, south and north, and saw nothing at all except heat shimmer and distant silver mirages. He left the engine running, reached across to the passenger seat, took his binoculars and scanned the country, looking across the caldera towards a low ridge of rock. A mile away on the floodplain were two vehicles parked forty or fifty feet apart. A late model Ford sedan and an SUV. He lowered the binoculars and looked over the country at large. It was already hot. Stifling. He pushed back his cap and wiped his forehead with his bandana and put the bandana back in the hip pocket of his jeans.
He raised the glasses again. There were men in between the cars. Two of them were armed. One was motionless on the ground. A fourth man was above him, kicking and stamping at him.
Was he too late?
He watched. The man on the ground was hauled to his feet. It was Smith. He was unconscious. They dragged him through the dirt to the SUV. They tossed him inside and then the other men got inside, too.
The SUV reversed.
Plato dropped the glasses on the seat, pulled out on to the highway and continued south. After half a mile he swung around on the margin, rattled over the bars of a cattle guard and stopped. He fetched the glasses. The SUV was on the road and heading back towards the city. There was little he could do: confronting them would be suicide and he did not have a death wish. He was frightened, for himself and his family. His instinct told him to switch off the engine and let them drive away. But he couldn’t do that. Finding where they were going would have to be enough. He put the car into gear, pulled onto the blacktop again and, keeping a safe distance behind them, he followed.
* * *
47.
CATERINA MORENO had tried everything. The door was locked and the window, too. She had wondered whether she might be able to take a chair and smash it but it was toughened glass and, anyway, it looked down onto a sheer thirty foot drop. Then her thoughts had turned to weapons. Could she arm herself? The only cup in the room was plastic, and too strong for her to break. There was the chair, again, but it was too well put together to be broken apart and too unwieldy as it was. There was a mirror in the bathroom and, eventually, her hopes focussed on that. She unplugged a table lamp and used the base to smash the glass. A jagged piece fell free and she picked it up, wrapping the thicker end in a towel. It wouldn’t be easy to use but it was sharp and, perhaps, if she was careful, she might be able to maintain an element of surprise. She took it to the bed and hid it beneath the pillow.
She returned to the window. It was in the side of the house, looking out onto a stand of pecan trees. She heard the thump of bass from a powerful sound system. If she pressed her face against the glass she could see a sliver of the rear garden, and, occasionally, guests from the party would pass into and out of view. Servants ferried crates of beer and trays of food from a catering tent. They passed directly below her; she banged her fists against the window but they either could not hear her or paid her no heed.
She went back to the bed but was unable to settle. She got up and started to pace. She returned to the window. The drive to the house snaked through the trees beneath her and, as she watched, a Mercedes SUV approached and stopped. The branches obscured her view a little but she saw a door opening and then two men hauled John Smith out. It didn’t look as if he was conscious: he was a dead weight, the two men dragging him across the driveway, his toes scraping against the asphalt. A second man followed. Caterina recognised him from the cowboy hat he was wearing: the man from the hospital who had wanted to speak to her, the man Smith had sent away.
She went back to the bed and sat.
Five minutes later, the door was unlocked and opened.
A man came into the room and locked the door behind him.
He was bland. Average. Nothing out of the ordinary about him at all.
“Hello Caterina.”
She backed away.
“You’ve caused us quite a lot of trouble.”
She sat on the edge of the bed.
“This business of ours––we don’t welcome publicity.”
She shuffled backwards, her hand reaching beneath the pillow.
He tutted and waggled a finger at her. “Don’t,” he said, nodding towards the bed. He took out a pistol and pointed the barrel up to a tiny camera on the wall that Caterina had not seen.
“Who are you?”
“You can call me Adolfo.” He stepped further into the room. “Let’s have a talk.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Why have you been writing about me?”
“What?”
“The girls.”
She thought of what Delores had told them.
He was nothing special, by which I mean there was nothing about him that you would find particularly memorable. Neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin. Normal looking. Normal clothes.
“It’s you?”
“I can’t take the whole credit. Me and a few friends.”
She tore the pillow off the bed, grasped the shank and rushed him. He pulled the gun quickly, expertly, and held it steady, right at her face. She stopped. She thought about it, calling his bluff, but her legs wouldn’t move.
He nodded to the shank.
She dropped it.
“Your hand.”
She had taken the glass too hastily and had cut her index finger.
“I’ll send someone in to wrap that for you,” he said.
“Don’t bother. I don’t need your favours.”
“We’ll see. I am going to speak with your friend, the Englishman, and then we have some business that needs to be seen to. Once I am finished, I will be back. We have lots to talk about.”
* * *
48.
ANNA STRAPPED herself into her seat as the captain of the Gulfstream announced that they were on their final descent into Fort Bliss. She had been working for most of the flight, ostensibly refining her report on John Milton but, in reality, observing everything she could about the six agents. There was very little conversation between them: some slept, others listened to music.
She pulled up the blind and looked out onto the New Mexico landscape five thousand feet below. It was desert for the most part, with nearly two thousand square miles of terrain within its boundaries and adjacent to the White Sands missile range. The populated area was set on a mesa, was six miles by six miles and housed several thousand soldiers and civilian personnel. It was practically a small city, and the biggest US Army base in the world. She watched as the plane arced away to port and then dropped into its glide path. Details in the desert became clearer, the mountains and the blue sliver of the Rio Bravo, and then the asphalt strip of the
runway at Biggs Army Airfield. The pilot cut the speed, raised the nose and executed a perfect landing, taxiing across to the parking area.
Anna disembarked, following Pope down onto the runway. It was unbearably hot. The heat wrapped around her like a blanket and she quickly felt stunned by it. There was pressure in the air. A hundred miles away to the southwest she could see lightning flickering. Faint sheets and bolts of dry electricity discharging in a random display.
A soldier with colonel’s pips was waiting for them. “Welcome to the United States,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“I’m Stark.”
“Captain Pope.”
“Good flight?”
“Straightforward, colonel.”
“Glad to hear it. I’ll be your liaison here. Anything you need, you just holler. Can I do anything for you now?”
“Not really. We’d just like to get started.”
“No sense in delaying.”
“That’s right.”
“Thought you’d say that. We’ve got you a couple vehicles ready to go. We’ll get your gear unloaded and repacked and then you can be on your way.”
“The border?”
“That’s all arranged. The Mexicans know you’re coming. We’ll get you straight across.”
“That’s very helpful. Thank you, colonel.”
“My pleasure.” He took off his cap and squinted against the sun. “Don’t suppose you can tell me what you folks have come all this way to do?”
“Afraid not,” he said.
He laughed. “Didn’t think so. Completely understand.”
Two identical SUVs were standing at the edge of the taxiway. Pope led Anna to the nearest.
“You’ll be with me,” he said. “We’ll speak to the police. I’ll send the others to the restaurant, see if they can find anything out there.”