by Doug Ball
The phone went dead as Miguel smiled a malevolent smile. ‘And if I leave the oldest daughter alive for me to enjoy for a while, who is to know.’
#
Sasabe, a quiet town of a couple dozen buildings, was still asleep as the group gathered at the picnic table in front of the store, each of them rattling off their experience during the night. Sara won the prize. She had watched as two couples parked just below her position high on the rocks where she had waited for the night to unfold. “They arrived laughing and clowning around. The two pairs grabbed blankets from the trunk of the car and went in different directions. One couple moved around the point out of sight of the car and wasted no time getting their clothes off as if it had been rehearsed a few times. I thought about scaring them by sneaking down and taking their clothes while they were occupied with each other, but decided not to. Instead I tossed a rock across them to a cluster of bushes thirty feet the other side of them. The real show began as they tried to cover, dress, check out the noise, and stay quiet all at the same time. They gave up and returned to the car. I guess the magic was gone from their evening. The other couple took over an hour to return despite the horn being honked more than a few times.”
As they all laughed, the front door of the store opened, “You folks been waiting long? Come on in. The coffee’s on and I got a pan of cinnamon buns in the oven. Be out in about ten minutes.”
“Thank you, Ma’am. We’ll be in to join you in a few.” Tan really wanted a cup of tea and he was sure the others needed their coffee.
Abdul told his story in detail.
Tan said, “You did a great job, lots of detail that will help and even a few speculative conclusions. Let’s try the coffee.”
An hour later they were confused, concerned, and completely filled with coffee and cinnamon rolls. They all went to get some sleep.
On the way Tan called the Governor to report.
“So, you’re telling me that your old team mate and the father of the hero are either dead or will be dead shortly.”
“Yes, Governor. At least two shots were heard. The blue chopper was sighted heading for the hacienda of this Borrago fella. I don’t supposed you’d authorize me, unofficially and privately, to enter Mexico and see what’s up over there, would you?”
“Emphatically, NO!”
“Dang the luck.”
“I, too, have info on Mr. Borrago.” She told him what Spiderman had said.
“Any chance getting your source to assist us in this, like invite us to blow that place off the face of the earth after we rescue the captives or find their graves?”
“I’ll see if he swings by today and ask him. Gotta run. Get some sleep, you sound whupped.”
“Bye, Mom.”
“I’ll Mom you.” The phone went dead from her end.
Tan called his wife and talked with her for the rest of the trip to the motel.
#
The CSI crew at the tunnel finally broke through the dirt into the tunnel proper. With all the digging they uncovered more evidence of possible Military involvement like brand new boots on the last man found, an issue sidearm stamped as belonging to the Mexican Army, ammo containers also stamped, and an ID card in a wallet.
The lead man called his Sheriff. The Sheriff called the DPS Director. The DPS Director called the Governor. The Governor called a certain Spiderman in Mexico.
He, of course, was not available at that moment, but would call the senorita back within the hour, or so his secretary said. This was the first time she had ever called the Colonel in his office and used the prearranged name of Isabella in an attempt to contact him directly. He would know it was important, or so she hoped.
In the meantime, she called her General.
“General Rios’s Office. Specialist Alton speaking. What may I do for you today?”
“Well, you could let me speak to the General.”
“Who may I say is calling?”
“The Governor of Arizona.”
“Oh, sure, Governor. He has orders that all your calls be sent on as quickly as possible, but he isn’t in right now. He left to go on an exercise with his driver.”
“Yeah, and I’ll bet his driver hangs out in a golf bag.”
“I wouldn’t know, Governor.”
“Would you happen to know where … Oh, never mind, I have his cell number.” She hung up.
After dialing his cell number, she waited.
“What do you want, Governor? I am just about to get a birdy putting me in the lead against this retarded sailor I get to play with once a week. He’s never let me beat him before.”
“You tell the Admiral that you need the humility lessons more frequently. How soon can you get to my office?”
“For a visit and chat, two hours. If it’s important and you don’t mind a sweaty man, twenty minutes.”
“See you in twenty minutes.”
“On my way.”
“Thank you, General.”
14
After talking with his Segundo, Borrago decided that what they needed was a strong diversion to take the heat off his man and the plane, and the best diversion was something that would take up border guarding resources along the central section of the border. The second tunnel they had been working on was almost ready to open the north end to the sky. If they could get folks focused on that tunnel, life would be easier. He was tired of playing with tunnels anyhow. It was no great joy of his to inspect the tunnels. They were not producing like they used to and the cost of workers was sky high due to the danger of the Border Patrol finding it and blowing it up at any time.
The Segundo finally said, “Why do we not blow the Druggersville fence and warehouse like we were planning days ago. This tunnel is of no importance to the Yankees and there is no need for it at this time, but Druggersville is very important to them. They have many people there just because they do drugs and don’t want to change. The people in that place are howling for drugs and there are few drugs for them. If the government does not confiscate anything, they get nothing. With the fence down these people will run away from there and take with them their appetite for the drugs. They will give their best friends and their bodies to get drugs, which will increase their need making them better customers for our product.”
“That is better. Men from the border will be called to that place to recapture the ones who run, which they will want to do as quickly as possible. The attention of the press in Arizona will be on the breakout at Druggersville and not on the border for a change. Do it.”
“Si, Patrón. Within the hour you might feel the earth shake.” He turned and walked out.
“I just hope it is not my hacienda blowing up,” he said as the door closed.
#
Tan’s phone rang just as he fell into deep sleep. It rang again. He missed it both times.
#
Chuck put his phone on the desk and scratched his head. The info on Druggersville seemed too good to ignore. All he had left to do was call the DPS office and hope for the best. He wouldn’t normally do it, but the snitch said, “Anytime now.” Chuck believed her.
The DPS office informed him that the Director was out. He left word with the second in command.
The Governor’s Office said that she wasn’t available.
He took action.
“Let’s go for a ride, Rachel. Another adventure is at hand. Bring your kit and weapon.”
“My weapon is always with me and my kit is in the trunk of my car. So many adventures, so little time. What’s up?”
He ran the info by her.
She agreed.
Within minutes the car was rolling north and east toward the valley of the Verde River. Chuck let DPS dispatch know where he was going and why, with another request that the Director be notified as soon as possible. Chuck drove even though his mind wasn’t on anything except the lost date. He fingered the ring in his pocket.
#
After almost a year, Arizona’s drug problem got worse.
The
fence at Druggersville exploded in six places. Two inmates were killed as they hung on the fence waiting for their drugs to be tossed over the fence. Most of the 3,212 others scrambled to the freedom of the desert northwest of Bartlett Lake, some so stoned they had no idea what was happening. For some it was death, but for most it was freedom they hadn’t known in a year.
At the hacienda, the phone rang and reported each successful step. For the first time in a year the future was looking bright for Armado Borrago. His phone rang.
“Hola,” the happy Borrago answered.
“What have you done, Armado?”
“El Trinchante, how nice to hear from you. Five millions worth of product is now being pushed in Arizona.”
“Borrago, I told you we could not use the California route, or the New Mexico route, and what do I get a call on just now. One of your planes just made a drop. Would you like for me to give you the route of that plane?”
“No. I know the route. We needed to get the product in or lose our connections inside the state, Patrón.”
“Your plane needs to pay a half million dollars to the Californios. That needs to be transferred to them within the hour. You do have a half million dollars, don’t you?”
“I am not sure. I will pay them tomorrow with your permission as the cash returns on the truck tomorrow.”
“You will have to negotiate that with them. I am about ready to terminate my working relationship with you. Armado, you do not follow directions. I am going broke because you cannot get my route open. I feel generous. You have 48 hours to produce a route into Arizona.”
“Si, Patrón. I will succeed.”
“You better, or you will be finished.”
The phone went dead.
#
Tan’s phone was buzzing on the nightstand. The room phone was buzzing on the desk. He was trying hard to shut down the bomb that was buzzing in his dream until it exploded. Sitting up in bed, he looked around. Nothing had exploded, yet the buzzing was still there.
His cell. He grabbed it and punched answer, “Hello.”
Chuck told him about the Druggersville breakout. “Stay on it, Chuck.”
He hung up and things were buzzing again. The room phone, “Hello.”
Sara told him of a call from the Governor, “She wants you to call her, now.”
The Governor answered on the first ring and gave him a confused report on the Druggersville situation. He had never heard her so shaken before. “I want every effort made to contain these people and their dope. We do not need the free run of drugs on our streets again. Do something, Tan, do something. I will only be satisfied when they are all back inside solid fences.”
“Governor, I have Chuck and Rachel working on that problem as we speak. Calm down and all will be well. Those Druggersville people have miles to walk before they hit civilization and most of them couldn’t walk across the street to buy drugs. Be calm.”
She hung up after saying, “Oh.”
He got up and went to wash his face. The cell buzzed again. “Yeah.”
“Mr. Brown, this is Border Patrol, Sasabe sector. We have found a campsite that apparently belonged to a Mr. Ray Lawler and another man, Leon Baldinado. Mr. Baldinado appears to have been a cop with DPS. Your number is on his cell phone, which is a throwaway. I was wondering if you could explain why he would be out here with a throwaway phone with only one number on it, yours.”
“I can and will. I am with the Governor’s office as a special investigator. Contact the Governor’s office or the Santa Cruz County Sheriff to verify my credentials and then call me back.”
“Where are you, Mr. Brown? What is your first name?”
Tan gave them the info and headed for the shower. On his way there, the room phone rang again. He ignored it. Information overload is not a good thing when your brain isn’t working too well. His was still asleep.
Twenty minutes later, Sara and he were headed for Sasabe once again. This time they would take a left just after the grocery store and travel five or six miles down a road that more or less paralleled the border to the spot of the campsite. Tan had called Abdul and given him orders for himself and Tank. Lenny and Bruce were working on the info from the big tunnel CSI preliminary report.
#
Ray washed Leon’s wounds again. One had gone through the love handle on the right side hampering his ability to carry a gun on that side. But, he did not have a gun to carry on either side. The second wound was a bit more concerning. It was just under his collar bone on the left side and out through his back taking out a chunk of the shoulder blade. Ray had used a piece of coat hanger to clean out the wound as best he could after using the heat from a light bulb in the ceiling light to sterilize the wire.
Leon asked, “You a doc or something?” Sweat covered his face as he winced from the pain.
“No, just a man who spent some time in the Boy Scouts and taking enough classes in first aid to be dangerous. I got my merit badge when I was thirteen and was just overwhelmed with ways to save people and stop bleeding, along with keepin’ them breathing. I happened upon a man havin’ a heart attack one day in an A. J. Bayless grocery store and supposedly saved his life by making him take an aspirin and lay down. I ordered an associate to get blankets and keep him warm. We got his feet propped up on bags of sugar. All in all, he survived. I got a certificate from the local hospital and police. I thought about being a medic after Sharon died, but I couldn’t handle the blood and the dying. Very first run I went along with as an observer was a major car accident with five killed and one survivor losing a leg. It was crushed and had to be cut off in order to get him outta the gas soaked wreck.”
“I’m bleeding.”
“Yeah, but you’re a friend, and have a great chance of staying alive from these wounds. In that situation, not so much.”
The door swung open. Their guard came in with an early lunch or a late breakfast. They had not eaten since being taken.
“You are hungry, no?”
“Yes. Just put it on the dresser until I finish here, por favor,” Ray pointed.
“Si, I will do that. Is there something you need?”
Leon took that one, “Yeah, real bandages, antibiotics, and we need outta here. Since when are people taken captive in North America for no reason except sitting on top of a hill counting the stars?”
“Very funny, señor. You have guns, night vision goggles, and you were in that spot the night before. We saw your tracks. You are looking for something, maybe yes?”
“Looking for a rare collision of two stars. You know you’d think there’d be a bazillion star collisions with all the stars that are up there. Did you ever wonder about that? Why do they not bounce around like balls on a billiard table?” Leon pushed the idea a bit.
“No.” He turned and left the room, locking the door from the outside. The footsteps could be heard as he moved down the hall and a set of stairs.
Ray had checked the door and windows after he first entered the room carrying Leon as instructed. Leon got the bed and he walked from window to window until he had checked all four of the windows. Then he checked the door, locked. Leon was in pain, so he dressed the wounds using his top shirt, ‘which should be the cleanest,’ he thought.
Leon stood and staggered a bit. “Did you check the closet?”
“No. How does one get out of a room through a closet?”
“I don’t know. Never tried. Let’s look.”
In the first closet they found nothing. No clothes, shoes, nothing, except dust. In the second was a set of badminton rackets and a couple of shuttlecocks. “We no have something to do while we sit here and wait quietly for them to decide what they will do with us,” Leon said.
Ray kept searching. The continued search netted them two nice long sleeved shirts and an old pair of slippers from a chest of drawers standing against the wall behind the entry door.
Leon sat on an overstuffed chair while Ray walked around. Leon took one of the rackets and hit a bird to R
ay. Ray joined the game and they soon started counting to see how many times they could pass it back and forth without missing or hit it astray. After an hour or so of practice, they decided 156 whacks without a miss was good enough. Ray put his racket down with the shuttlecock underneath. Leon checked out the racket he had used. Finding that the head was screwed onto the handle, he unscrewed it. In his hand was a short spike. The end with the threads was somewhat pointed to make screwing it together easier.
He looked around. Seeing a rock on the floor, in position to be a door stop, he asked, “Ray, would you bring me that rock, please.” His mother had raised no dummy.
Ray said nothing, just went over and brought the rock to Leon, “Where you want it?”
“Right here.” He indicated the arm of the chair.
Leon started rubbing the threaded end on the rock. After a dozen strokes he took a look at his handy work. “Yessiree. I got me a weapon. In ten minutes I’ll have a spike here that will go through a man’s body like a hot knife through thick, white gravy and the chicken fried steak under it.” He began stroking the point again.
Ray looked at his racket thinking on what it would be like to shove the steel rod through the men that had killed his son and decided to do the same thing.
“If we don’t kill all the threads by grinding them away, we can still put the rackets together and play our games some more and no one will be the wiser. They’ll get so used to us having the rackets in our hands that we will be able to carry them anywhere, maybe.”
“It’s worth a try, Leon. I’m not sure I could shove one of these through a man. Half way and wiggle it around some maybe, but not all the way.” Ray smiled.
Leon just shook his head as he continued stroking, smiling.
#
“You can see here how they left here by dropping down into this wash and heading south, the two of them together,” said the Border Patrol officer, Harry Ditmyer. “We followed them to the border and had to come back. You can see the tracks of their walk from the border; they headed right on south until you cannot see the tracks anymore. I’d say they were heading for Borrago’s fortified compound down there about five miles. Two of them against that mob ain’t got a snowball’s chance of survival. Death won’t be easy unless they were killed in the shootout.”