Hawke's War

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  Rain drummed on the tin roof and I heard water dripping somewhere behind.

  There’s no telling how long I’d been out. I raised my head and saw men gathered around the tables, talking quietly. There weren’t as many as before, and it took a few minutes to realize the guys with the cowboy hats were gone, all except for one in a blue pattern snap-button shirt. I’d have been as afraid of those gangsters as a snake, but he didn’t seem to pay them any attention.

  Makes sense. They were probably locals who got caught in the bar when Chatto and his gang rolled in. They came for music and beer. Instead, they watched the place fill up with snakes. That guy left must be a tough mother.

  Phoebe was nowhere in sight.

  Trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, I saw Chatto sitting at his same table in the far corner with three other men. One was the Mexican officer from before. They were playing cards and not paying any attention to me.

  My back was to the entrance. I dropped my head for a minute, listening. More rustling came from the bar. Turning with glacial speed, I peeked right to find people scattered around the tables and floor. Some were sleeping, others occupying themselves in some way. One I could see clearly was picking his nose. They were all drinking beer, and I bet they hadn’t paid a dime for one single bottle.

  Though it was still pretty dim in the corners, my eyes were accustomed to the light. My chest and shoulder were against the support post and with my head hanging low, I saw it was chipped and rotten where they’d nailed it to the floor. I put some pressure against the 4x4 with my shoulder and watched as it gave a lot more than I expected. I stopped and listened.

  The soft murmuring and slap of cards continued. Someone behind me pitched an empty bottle on top of a pile with a rattle of breaking glass. The jukebox by the front door was dark, maybe broken, maybe unplugged. Either way I wished they were playing that lousy music of theirs right then, the louder the better.

  The nails in the post’s base weren’t angled in properly and had split the wood. After being kicked by countless boots and shoes for decades, the corners were worn smooth. I leaned again, this time pushing a little harder, and a big chunk of pulpy wood broke loose on my side, revealing a single nail. I knew in an instant that if I shoved hard enough, the missing chunk would provide enough room for me to pull the post away from the floor.

  Then I could slip the cuffs’ chains free.

  Someone pushed back from a table. The sudden loud sound of the legs scraping was abrupt. It was surprising enough for the murmuring to momentarily stop before starting again.

  A car door slammed outside.

  “El Molinillo.” The name was whispered in awe. The speaker’s exóópression was a mix of fascination and fear.

  My heart fluttered at the last name I wanted to hear right then.

  Chapter 74

  Wounded by the man with a black shotgun, Tiburón fled down the Posada’s stairs and into the empty lobby. The registration desk was unmanned and he rushed down the short hallway toward the front door. A display of colorful western bandanas in the first-floor gift shop caught his attention. He grabbed two blue scarves off a table to stop the bleeding in his chest and arm.

  He glanced out the front windows as sirens wailed through the streets of Ballard, Texas. The sheriff’s office was only two hundred yards from the Hotel Posada, but the only person there besides the on-call deputy was the young lady in dispatch. For that reason, Tiburón thought he and his men could get in and out before anyone realized they were under assault. His plan went out the window not long after they arrived.

  Killing the two guards outside the doors was easy. The deputy sitting in the corner of the patio had been looking at his phone, his night vision destroyed by the bright light in the palm of his hand. Tiburón’s number-three cholo, Fortunado, simply reached through the ornate iron fence and cut the man’s throat.

  The other deputy watching the front entrance was more alert, but leaning against the wall inside the alcove was his mistake. The inset blocked his sight line down Broadway toward the Ballard Courthouse. It was easy for one of the gangster’s men to move as quiet as a mouse, his sneakers making no noise on the concrete sidewalk.

  Tiburón watched from the shadows in the alley across the street as his man Angel simply stopped against the wall and whipped a machete around the inset. The keen blade nearly took the deputy’s head off and they were in.

  They bypassed the main entrance, rounding the corner, and slipped through the arched patio gates. It was a simple matter to force the doors to the closed hotel bar, and they were inside in seconds. Luis and Fortunado disappeared into the kitchen with instructions to find a way to the second floor where the Hawke women were hiding and come into the hallway to catch the room in a pincer movement.

  Tiburón and Angel waited until the desk manager went into the office and crawled past the registration counter. From there it was nothing to take the stairs that bore their weight without a creak. They were surprised to find a Hispanic jornalero, farm hand, at the top of the stairs with a shotgun. Angel waved at the same time he charged the man, expecting him to freeze in fear at the sight of his frightening tattoos and bloody machete.

  Instead, the farm hand leveled the shotgun as if were part of his body and pulled the trigger. Tiburón absorbed some of the shot that hit Angel full in the chest and draped him across the top steps.

  Now bleeding in the gift shop, Tiburón saw a shape limping down the hallway and recognized Luis. “Amigo,” he whispered.

  The gangster’s face went white and he jumped at the sound. Recognizing Tiburón, he ducked into the dark shop. “You are wounded.”

  “Not bad. Where is Fortunado?”

  “He bled out in the kitchen after that old man shot him three times.”

  “Which old man?”

  “The one that came out to the trailer.”

  Tiburón wondered how his plan could have failed. He should already be bragging about how easy it was to kill the Hawke family and burn down the hotel. Now those people were still somewhere inside and the building was undamaged.

  Tiburón was in trouble in more ways than one. He glanced around at the shelves full of souvenirs, candy, drinks, and T-shirts, as if there was something there that would help him decide what to do. His T-shirt was wet with blood that seeped from the holes in his chest. His breathing was wet and labored. “We need to leave. Those pellets went deep, and I’m losing a lot of blood. La policía will be here soon.”

  Their driver Erasmo waited in the car parked across the railroad tracks. Tiburón had an idea. He whispered so low it was barely a breath. “We set fire to the building and get out through the back.”

  Luis held out a bloody hand “What will you start the fire with? You have a can of gasoline in your pocket? I’m shot, too, cabrón!”

  Tiburón scowled into the darkness at the same time blue lights appeared on the street as a highway patrol car skidded to a stop near the entrance.

  “They’ll see that dead deputy,” Tiburón said. “They won’t come inside for a few more minutes.”

  “Do you hear those other sirens? They’re coming from all directions. We need to get out now.”

  “We can’t go out the front. How?”

  Luis pointed. “Past the counter and through that big room there. The back door opens onto the inside pool. There’s another door on the other side and we come out in the alley. From there we run to the next street over and that takes us to the car.”

  Impressed, Tiburón slapped him on the shoulder. “Lead the way!”

  Running in a crouch, they rushed out of the gift shop and turned left, intending to charge through the lobby that had already proven empty. The door to the office behind the counter opened and a man stepped into view. Tiburón shouted to frighten the manager. “Stay back or we will kill you!”

  Their charge ended when something that sounded like a cannon exploded in the darkness. Luis went to the floor without uttering a sound at the same time the cannon fired
again. This time Tiburón’s entire chest and face felt like a swarm of bees had attacked all at once, stinging him everywhere.

  They writhed on the floor in pain as a shrill voice filled the air. “Stay down or I’ll give you the other loads! Help! They’re down, I need help in here!”

  A flashlight pierced the darkness and through the increasing fire in his body Tiburón heard a deputy’s voice at the entrance. “Andy! Don’t shoot again. I see them. You two stay down! Show me your hands! Show me your hands!”

  Writhing in pain, Tiburón refused to listen, covering his bloody face with both hands. Luis would never move again.

  “Do what he says. The next time I shoot this ol’ Judge, you won’t get .410 loads. The rest are .45s . . . and ever’thing.”

  Chapter 75

  The eastern sky was gray and the rain had stopped by the time Javier and Pepito arrived at the barricaded bridge. Their trip downriver was uneventful until then. The gangsters were surprised to find a ragged hole cut high in the chain-link fence blocking the La Carmen bridge.

  It was barely light enough to see the blocked bridge and high above the surface, a folded-down flap of chain link pushed toward the Mexican side. Pepito pointed. “Someone made a hole for us to cross.”

  “It wasn’t for us, and it goes into Mexico. No one crosses in that direction.” Javier rubbed his forehead in thought. They were crouched against the concrete barricade. He scanned the low scrub around them, wishing he could see over the bluff and down over the riverbank steep and deep enough to hide a hundred men. The high water gurgled and splashed down below. “We have to go now. It’ll be too light in ten minutes.”

  Desperate to get into their country before the sun rose any farther behind the clouds, he led the way and they scrambled over the barriers and climbed to the fence high above.

  * * *

  Jerry rose upright in the car seat. They were parked in a wide turnout fifty yards from the river. Both windows were open, admitting cool air. “Is that Perry Hale and Yolanda climbing up through the fence?”

  Arturo shook his head. “I don’t think so. One of them is the right size, but the other one is too big.”

  Frightened, Jerry thought about flicking on his headlights, but settled back instead. “What do we do now?”

  “You keep asking me that.”

  “Hey, this part was your idea.”

  The shapes paused at the top, and scampered back down. Arturo was the first to figure it out. “They went through a hole up there. Those are people crossing into Mexico.”

  “Then we can, too.”

  “Oh hell no. I’m not going over there.”

  “Look.” Jerry pointed at a cinder-block building and two shapes that were barely visible. “That’s Perry Hale and Yolanda. I can tell by the way they walk.”

  “You have to be kidding.”

  “No, when Dad took us out in the desert to shoot with them, Perry Hale showed me how to move. That’s them. I know it. Man. I want to help. Let’s figure out what to do on this side.”

  “And what’ll that be?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Chapter 76

  Dark clouds still held the sky despite the rising sun. On the Mexican side of the bridge, Perry Hale and Yolanda made their slow, quiet way toward four battered Humvees parked bumper to bumper at Paso La Carmen’s only three-way intersection. The cluster of abandoned roofless buildings were all that remained of the ghost town. South beyond the vehicles was nothing but desert.

  The second dirt road cut to the left, eastward, past the metal building bearing the sign Camiones Cisternas, River Bend Trucking, and followed the serpentine river until it dead-ended at a bar.

  Perry Hale tapped Yolanda’s shoulder, pointed at his eyes, and then at the trucking building.

  Keep an eye on that one.

  Their weapons were at high ready and pointed at the silent Humvees full of sleeping soldiers in front of the trucking company building. Though the two veterans practiced working in tandem out in the desert for the past few months since they’d met, Perry felt a difference. Their training came back with surprising ease, and it felt like old times across the water in the Sandbox. He knew she’d make the right moves at the right time and his confidence level rose with every step.

  They’d discussed their dangerous new lives as Sonny Hawke’s Shadow Response Team. Both had come to grips with the idea they’d be moving along the fringes of right and wrong back in the states. Neither had entertained the idea they’d be on foreign soil, though, armed invaders who could spark an international incident. If they were captured with the weapons, they’d probably never see each other, or their home country, again.

  Ten feet separated the couple to present more difficult targets and divide their opponents’ fire if they were spotted. They were past the Humvees when Yolanda froze in mid-stride. Perry Hale caught it in his peripheral vision. He stopped, ready. She made eye contact and jerked her head down at the way they’d just come. She pointed at the ground at the tracks they’d left. Two distinct sets of footprints were the only marred places in the otherwise untracked mud.

  She twisted her lips into an expression of yikes, we’re in trouble now.

  Perry Hale answered by widening his own eyes, whadda ya gonna do?

  Simultaneous shrugs put a period on the silent conversation, and they continued on their way. The trucking company was completely buttoned up, the door padlocked. Perry Hale continued past the dark building and covered their advance.

  Yolanda made a clicking noise with her tongue and he stopped, waiting for what might come next. She inclined her head at the same time the sound of an engine approached from the south. Caught in the open, Yolanda pointed at a missing door in the nearest abandoned building to her right. He nodded and ducked across the muddy road. She led the way into a gaping black hole and Perry Hale followed, swinging the muzzle of his rifle one more time to cover the street before backing inside and out of sight.

  Her voice came soft and low in the darkness. “Here.” She’d ducked around the right side of the door. The enclosure was dark and shadowy but open to the lightening sky. Her boots crunched on gravel and broken glass.

  Perry Hale sidestepped so they could cover the road from two different angles. The engine slowed as the driver entered the ghost town. “He’s turning this way.” He waited, knees flexed and the rifle at his shoulder. His eyes grew accustomed to the dim light coming from above.

  A black Suburban turned onto the muddy two-lane track and passed the empty building. They relaxed only for a moment as the car made the slight incline and stopped in front of the American View bar. Doors slammed and distant voices came without definition.

  Yolanda whispered. “That’s not going to help.”

  Voices arose from the direction of the Humvees. Someone hawked and spat. Doors slammed. Another voice laughed, and the sounds of men moving told them the soldiers were up.

  “New game.” Perry Hale chewed his lip. “We stick right here for a minute.”

  “It’s about to get too light to move.”

  He glanced up at the gray clouds. “Pray for more rain.”

  Footsteps came their way. She shouldered her rifle. “We’re gonna need more than that.”

  Chapter 77

  Raging with fever, I felt like death warmed over on the floor of that nasty bar. Everything hurt, even my eyeballs. The infection was tearing me up, and it was everything I could do to keep it together.

  I hadn’t realized how hot and thick the bar had become with cigarette smoke, body odor, and musky testosterone. The door pushed open, bringing in dim morning light and fresh, rain-washed air. Gathering what strength I still had, I twisted around to see who was coming inside.

  It was a skinny, gray-haired guy in baggy old-man clothes who reminded me of someone’s grandfather. Several people spoke his name again, El Molinillo, in hushed tones, as if a priest or famous athlete had arrived. Most of them stood, whether in respect or fear I couldn’t tell. Chairs
scraped and one fell over, its clatter loud in the silence.

  The little guy didn’t react to anyone standing straight and quiet, as if presenting themselves for inspection, or to show they weren’t holding weapons. Instead, his eyes locked on me and he walked inside like he’d just gotten home. Ten paces later, he slipped both hands in his baggy gray pants and tilted his head, like a scientist observing a rare specimen.

  “Este guardabosque nunca ha visto a un demonio como yo.”

  If he thought I was going to be afraid and quiet, he had another think coming. I was too tired and sick to care what happened next. As usual, I still couldn’t understand everything he said, but I picked out one important word, demonio. “You’ll see the demon if I can get my hands free.”

  His face split into a wide grin revealing yellow and rotting teeth that hadn’t seen a toothbrush since his first baby tooth came in. He spoke in English. “This one is going to be a pleasure.”

  “It’ll be a pleasure to kill you.”

  Audible gasps behind me said I’d probably gone too far. The truth is, he could have shot me in the head right then the way I felt and it would have been a relief.

  Chatto’s voice came over my shoulder, almost filled with pride. “I told you this one was different.”

  “No.” El Molinillo’s voice suddenly took on a different tone and his face fell, as if overwhelmed by a flood of sad memories. “They are all the same when they feel the blade. He will cry at first, then scream himself silent.” He brightened. “It is a pleasure by then, because their cries hurt my ears.”

  Chapter 78

  Javier was the first to see the boot prints in the mud, leading from the bridge, around the Humvees, and toward the bar. Snores coming from the transport vehicles sent them in another direction to find a way around. Neither wanted any type of interaction with the Mexican soldiers.

  Javier whispered and pointed. “Who do you think this is?”

  The little gangster shrugged. “No lo sé.”