by Dirk Patton
Small homes on large tracts of land. The occasional car or truck going in the opposite direction. Soon I began seeing signs alerting drivers to the approaching intersection with the Interstate that ran from the border up to Tucson. Knowing this was prime territory for a radar trap, I reduced my speed to exactly the posted limit. The last thing I needed was for some rural Barney Fife to pull me over and decide to search the truck.
Not that he’d be that interested with Ralph along for the ride. It would just depend on how bored he was. I wasn’t going to take the chance. I’d make up some time once I got on the Interstate with a legal limit of 75 miles an hour. I’d be able to safely push my speed to over 80 without worrying about drawing attention.
11
Monica was waiting for me, parked at the far edge of the massive truck stop. I checked my watch as I wheeled into the lot, grimacing when I saw I had less than 25 minutes to make the meet. Racing across the asphalt, I braked sharply and slid to a stop next to her 15-year-old Honda.
Jumping out, I wrapped my arms around her when she rushed to hold me.
“I was getting worried,” she said, her voice muffled against my chest.
“Me too,” I said, holding her tight. “I have to go. I’m running out of time.”
She stepped away and grabbed my duffel out of her car. Handing it to me, she moved close and put her hand on the back of my head. Pulling my face down, she pressed her lips against mine for a long moment. Breaking the kiss, she looked directly into my eyes.
“I’ve decided something,” she said.
“What’s that?” I asked, antsy to get back on the road.
“I’ve decided you are who I want to be with. Come back to me. Maybe, someday, we can tell our grandchildren about this.”
I was momentarily frozen in place. Surprised. Yes, I’d thought she wanted to say something like this on the phone earlier. Had been thinking similar thoughts myself the entire day. But I wasn’t prepared for her to be so open and frank.
“Did I shock you?” She asked, smiling as she gazed into my eyes.
“Read my mind,” I said, kissing her hard for a brief moment. “I have to go. I’ll be back.”
I kissed her again and jumped back in the truck. Seconds later I was screeching out of the parking area onto a road that headed south. A glance at my watch showed I had nineteen minutes left. I needed to cover seven miles, so I should be on time.
Pushing the truck as hard as I could without risking being noticed by a local cop, I made it south of town and turned onto Indian Route 15 with seven minutes left. Praying for luck, I pressed the accelerator to the floor and raced down the rolling ribbon of asphalt.
Roaring past several slower moving vehicles, I passed the turnoff for Indian Route 53 with three and half minutes left. Glancing at the odometer, which surprisingly worked, I started watching the right shoulder as I reached nine-tenths of a mile. I hadn’t slowed, and when the cut in the desert vegetation that bordered the pavement appeared, I slammed on the brakes and skidded through a turn onto the dirt track.
Fighting for control, I floored the gas and flew across the rough terrain. The truck bottomed out twice and went completely airborne at least once. It wasn’t a Raptor like the Border Patrol drives. As I started into a curve to circle the base of the twin hills, I flew over a rise and heard one of the rear shocks snap off when the truck’s weight came down.
I didn’t slow, keeping the gas on as I struggled with the now ungainly vehicle. There was a dip just before a sharp rise and I hit it at full speed. The impact was brutal, the wheel tearing free from my hands and the windshield cracking from top to bottom. I still had the throttle wide open, but several somethings had been damaged and I was losing speed.
Sounds were coming from the engine and transmission that shouldn’t, but I didn’t care. I was almost there and had less than a minute. Sliding around the curve, I wrenched the steering, trying to maintain control. Keeping the Ranger traveling in generally the correct direction, I let off the gas and stomped on the brakes when I saw a large Dodge pickup and the two cops standing next to it. Their truck was painted dull black with a large gold star on the doors. Casa Grande Sheriff was lettered along the top edge of the bed in the same paint as the star.
The Ford skidded to a stop, wobbling on its damaged suspension. The engine wheezed, stuttered and died as steam began to shoot out of the damaged radiator. I didn’t care. I’d made it in time.
Looking down, I made sure the front of my shirt was covering the Makarov pistol stuffed in my waistband. Thirteen shots, I reminded myself. Twelve rounds in the magazine and one already in the chamber. Not nearly enough to go into a gunfight with two opponents who were almost certainly better with a pistol than me. But it’s all I had.
Pulling on the handle, I had to ram my shoulder against the door to get it to open. Guess my final mad dash had tweaked the truck’s frame. The door squeaked like the gates of hell as I forced it open and stepped out. The two cops were slowly approaching, plenty of distance between them.
The talker had a phone pressed to his face and I wasn’t happy to see that. It could have been innocent, maybe the wife or girlfriend. It could have been good, telling whoever was watching my parents to call it a day and leave them alone. Or it could have been the absolute worst case scenario and my entire family was about to get wiped out.
“Bobby!” He called out with a smile as he disconnected the call. “You made it!”
“Who were you talking to?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking.
“That? Oh, that was a personal call,” he laughed. “My partner here is the one that will make the call if we need to teach you a lesson.”
My eyes snapped to the other cop, who smiled. It wasn’t pleasant. In fact, it was one of the most soulless, terrifying smiles I’d ever seen. But it wasn’t the smile that told me bad things were about to start happening. It was his eyes.
Some people are good enough at hiding their intentions that you have no idea what’s about to happen. Most aren’t. I had seen this same look in the eyes of the driver of a car in Iraq. He had pulled to a stop at a checkpoint I was assigned to, along with nine other soldiers. Only then, I’d been too young and inexperienced to recognize it for what it was.
I was alive because it was my turn to be behind the up-armored Humvee that was blocking the road. Manning a radio and keeping an eye on our rear. When the bomb in the car went off, I was the only survivor. I still carried some shrapnel in my leg, and my hearing wasn’t what it used to be, but compared to what happened to my buddies that day…
Now, here I was in the middle of the Arizona desert, facing two men who had threatened my entire family. And I’d just seen the same look in one of their eyes as I’d seen in the Iraqi insurgent’s. I reacted without thinking.
With my left hand I yanked my shirt up, right hand already wrapping around the butt of the pistol. Time slowed as I pulled it out of my pants and brought it onto target. I saw the two cops freeze for an instant before they began to react. They had been supremely confident that I was cowed. That I wouldn’t fight.
The pistol came on target, Mr. Evil Eyes, as he began to draw his holstered weapon. I pulled the trigger three times, certain one of the rounds hit him center mass but not sure where the other two went. As he was spinning away I started to turn towards the talker, noting but not reacting to the sound of his pistol firing.
I have no idea where his shot went, but it didn’t hit me. I began pulling the trigger as the Makarov was still swinging onto target. At the same time, I dove to the side, still firing and seeing the flashes from his muzzle as he returned fire. I hit the dirt and rolled towards a shallow ditch, firing a final shot before I was below the level of the road surface.
Remembering hard learned lessons from the war, I started crawling so I could pop up from a different location. As I moved, the world returned to normal speed. I was panting like I’d just run a marathon, but my hands were steady as I came to a stop and stuck my pistol over the l
ow berm. Keeping its movement in sync with my eyes, I scanned for the two cops, spotting both of them on their backs.
Carefully, I climbed out of the ditch and approached, weapon at arms length in both hands. I wasn’t sure how many rounds I’d fired, but knew I couldn’t have more than two or three remaining. Coming closer, I circled the area so I was on the side of the first guy I’d shot.
He was dead. One of my rounds had torn his throat out. But I noticed for the first time that he was wearing body armor. Fuck! I snapped the pistol up to cover the talker, but he was gone. I’d been so focused on the first guy that I hadn’t seen him move.
Looking around, I saw him at the driver’s door of his pickup, holding a radio microphone to his mouth. Son of a bitch! He was calling for help! Running directly at him, I fired. The round punched through the windshield and he dropped out of sight. I didn’t slow, diving to the ground when I was ten yards from the truck’s front bumper.
He was huddled on the ground, shouting into the microphone. I saw blood on his arm and leg where some of my bullets had found their mark, then our eyes met. He stopped talking, frozen as he stared at the pistol I was aiming at his head. We stayed like that for a couple of beats, then I pulled the trigger. His head snapped back and his lifeless fingers released the microphone, which was pulled back into the cab by its coiled cord.
12
I slowly climbed to my feet and looked around. That’s when the shakes hit. Standing there in bright sunshine and over 100-degree weather, and I was cold and shaking. I’d experienced it before and knew it was just my body’s reaction to the intensity of the fight. I gave it a few seconds to pass. Taking slow, deep breaths helped and soon I was thinking again.
“What the fuck did you do, Bob?” I said aloud. “What did you do?”
Two cops dead. From my gun. And one of them had gotten a radio call out. I wasn’t terribly panicked about that. Yet. The desert is a big place and it was very unlikely there were any other cops in the vicinity. In the city, backup can arrive in minutes if not seconds. Out here? I’ve heard stories that it can take half an hour for the closest unit to arrive.
But I couldn’t count on it. We weren’t that far from town. Maybe one of the local police was on the way, which meant I could be hearing sirens any moment. I took a step forward, intending to hop into their truck and get the hell out of the area, pausing when a thought hit me. In this day and age, that vehicle was almost certainly equipped with a GPS tracker. Shit!
Making up my mind, I looked to the north across the open desert. Rugged terrain with a series of low hills stared back at me, but I’d been in deserts all my life. I respected them, but I wasn’t intimidated by them.
Run. I could make it to Casa Grande in maybe an hour and a half on foot. Thumb a ride across town to where Monica was waiting, then disappear. No one other than the two dead men knew who I was. I seriously doubted the talker had been providing a description over the radio. He had been screaming for help. If I could get away, I was home free.
I had gone three steps before skidding to a stop on the dirt track. Fingerprints! My prints would be on all of the fired brass from my pistol and all over the Ford truck. It would take the cops about five minutes to run my prints, which had been taken by the Army when I enlisted. They wouldn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to identify me.
Turning, I dropped the magazine out of the Makarov and held it up. It was empty. Pulling the slide back, a glittering round ejected and tumbled through the air to land in the dirt. Scooping it up, I blew the dust off and inserted it back into the chamber.
That meant I had to find twelve empty shell casings. Casting around, I spotted one where I’d been prone on the ground when I shot the talker in the head. It went in my pocket and I moved to where I’d been standing when I started firing. I found eight more shells quickly. Three to go, and I wasn’t seeing them.
That’s the thing about brass in the desert. It’s small, and the color is very close to that of the sandy ground. Plus, they have a tendency to bounce and roll, especially if they hit a rock. Moving in a small, slow circle with my head bent down, I searched. And found two more. One of them was on its end, leaning against a small rock, and I knew I was very lucky to have seen it. One to go.
It took me nearly three minutes, though it felt like an eternity, to finally find it. It was in plain sight in the very middle of the track, but until I looked from the right angle and saw the way it reflected the sunlight, it had been invisible. With a feeling of relief, I grabbed it up and turned to look at the Ranger.
Fire. That was the only way. The truck had to burn. It wasn’t just prints I had to worry about. I’d driven the damn thing for several hours. My DNA would be somewhere in the cab. The only problem was; I didn’t have a lighter or matches.
Rushing to the closest dead cop, I ran my hands over his pockets, hoping he was a smoker. I came up empty. Dashing to the second one, the talker, I had the same results. Straightening up and cursing I spotted a pack of Marlboros and a cheap butane lighter inside the cab of their truck. Leaning inside, I picked up the lighter, careful not to touch anything and leave another print.
Running back to the Ford, I dropped to my hands and knees and peered beneath it. Drawing the Makarov, I aimed and fired, using my last round to punch a hole in the fuel tank. Gasoline streamed out, soaking into the sand beneath the truck. As I watched it flow, the distant sound of a siren reached my ears. I was out of time.
Snatching the brass case off the ground, I began using the butt of my pistol to carve a small channel into the sand, extending it away from the rapidly growing pool of gasoline. Fuel flowed along the trench, following me as I opened some distance. The siren was growing closer, but I could tell it was still on the pavement, at least a couple of miles away.
The edge of the dirt road dropped away a couple of feet, providing a berm for me to shelter behind. When I had scraped a track all the way across its surface, I dropped into cover and held the lighter over the gas soaked sand. Flicking it, I thrust it against the fuel and watched flames spring to life and race towards the truck.
Dropping completely below the level of the road, I covered my head with my arms. It was only a matter of moments before the fuel tank exploded with a dull whoosh, a wave of heat washing over me. I gave it another couple of seconds, then leapt to my feet and began running north.
I ran like the hounds of hell were at my heels. And I knew they would be soon. I’d covered maybe a quarter of a mile when the sound of the siren changed. I could tell the police vehicle had rounded the base of the hills and had reached the site. A quarter of a mile isn’t all that far, certainly close enough for me to be spotted, but I was hoping the new arrival’s attention would be focused on the burning truck and the two dead bodies.
Doing my best to stick to the lowest part of the terrain, keeping bushes and the occasional tree between us, I pushed as hard as I could. More cops would be coming. Fast. Probably a helicopter, too, once the call went out that officers were down. Even dogs. I knew they’d pull out all the stops to track down a cop killer.
Half an hour later I had slowed to a jog. I was in relatively good shape from doing physical labor to earn a living, but roofing doesn’t exactly improve your stamina for running. I was thirsty as hell, too. Extreme exertion in the middle of the day is generally best avoided, especially when you have no shelter from the blistering sun.
I’d been hearing the faint sounds of a helicopter for the past ten minutes, thankful that it hadn’t drawn any closer. I had no idea if it was searching for me, but wasn’t about to assume it wasn’t. What I did know was I had to get out of this desert and into town before dark. Both the Border Patrol and state police would have Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR), and once the sun went down I’d stand out like a sore thumb against the rapidly cooling ground.
Following a dry arroyo that was bordered by heavy growths of creosote bushes, I rounded a turn and almost fell when I skidded to a stop. A small group of people were sitting in the soft
sand. Two men, three women and a child. They had dirty faces and their clothes were sweat stained. Illegals, making their way north.
They had stopped in the meager shade provided by a stunted palo verde tree. One of the women had been holding a canteen out for the child, a small girl of no more than eight or nine. She froze for a moment when she saw me, then scrambled to wrap her arms protectively around what I suspected was her daughter.
The two men leapt to their feet, placing themselves between me and the women, drawing knives. I held my hands up, palms facing them, then hooked a thumb over my shoulder in a southerly direction.
“La Migra!” I said in Spanish, meaning the Border Patrol was behind me.
Fear passed across all their faces and without a word, they turned and began running. The woman scooped the little girl in her arms and carried her. I fell in behind them, keeping some distance in case one of the men took exception with me following. But they didn’t seem to care. They’d made it this far and were determined to keep going.
We stayed in the arroyo as it wound its way through the hills. The helicopter sounded like it was growing closer. Slowing, but not stopping, I looked over my shoulder. Nothing but a sun bleached sky. I couldn’t spot it.
Turning back to the front, I was surprised to see the small group had pulled well ahead of me. Nearly a hundred yards. I froze, then dove behind a scraggly stand of bushes when voices began shouting ahead of me and several figures dropped into the arroyo just in front of the fleeing illegals.
I recognized the dark green uniforms of the Border Patrol as they surrounded and captured the group. Squirming deeper into cover, and hoping I didn’t encounter a rattlesnake or scorpion, I peered through the branches to see what was going on.
All of the Mexicans, well they could have been from anywhere else in Latin America for all I knew, were made to get on their knees and place their hands on their heads. They were searched, the knives taken from the men who were then restrained with flexi-cuffs.