by Sean Black
Byron peered through office blinds at the two patrol cars sitting in the parking lot, doors open, sheriff’s deputies standing behind them, guns trained on the entrance.
‘You think this will work?’ Cesar asked Byron.
Byron didn’t know for sure. The cops could get freaked and start firing. He very much doubted that, but it was a possibility. The question was whether it was a risk he was prepared to ask innocent people to take.
He dug into his pocket, pulled out Thea’s phone, tapped on her contact list and scrolled down until he reached the name he was looking for. The name it was listed under was a painful reminder that almost everyone was more than one person. Sheriff Martin was, as far as Byron could see, a petty tyrant corrupted by power. But here, on his daughter’s phone, he was simply ‘Dad’.
Byron hit the phone icon and waited for the call to connect.
85
Sheriff Martin looked in disbelief at the name flashing up on his cell phone. He blinked, wishing it away. The four letters placed side by side hit him harder than a punch in the stomach.
THEA.
Frinz, the kid from the State Department, was wandering back from the grave, his fancy leather loafers coated with dirt. ‘Sheriff? Are you going to answer that?’
Martin glared at him. The little punk. Here they were, not twenty feet from his dead daughter, and this kid was ordering him around.
Thea. Dead.
Sheriff Martin looked around for his guys. He spotted one poring over a paper map of the area with the girl from the CIA and the FBI liaison agent who’d been the only one smart enough not to try to make this a pissing contest. Martin had told his men to give the feds whatever they asked for. If they found Tibor that was all well and good. If they thought he was being co-operative, they might let their guard slip and he would have the chance to kill the sorry sack of shit before they realized what was going on. The girl from the CIA had already made it plain that she wanted Tibor alive. Sheriff Martin didn’t, but he wasn’t going to get anywhere by admitting that now.
‘Hey, JD, do we know if Thea had her cell phone on her?’ Sheriff Martin asked his deputy.
The deputy glanced up from the map. So did the others. ‘Wasn’t on the body ‒ I mean on her. You want us to start looking for it, Sheriff? I can get a patrol to run by her house, see if it’s there.’
‘No, that’s okay,’ he said.
Her name was still flashing on the screen.
‘Son of a bitch,’ he muttered, under his breath.
Frinz and the others were still staring at him. He walked back towards the live oaks, ducking under the canopy as he hit the green button to accept the call.
‘Hello.’
Finally, thought Byron, as his call was answered. ‘Sheriff Martin, it’s Tibor.’
There was silence at the other end of the line. For a moment he thought the call had dropped or that he’d lost the connection.
‘Sheriff Martin?’
‘I’m here. Can you hear me?’ the sheriff asked.
‘Yes.’
* * *
Martin checked over his shoulder to see Frinz moving along the line of trees behind him, trying to eavesdrop. So much for the government’s famed powers of surveillance. Sheriff Martin turned round and angrily waved him away.
He pressed the phone closer to his ear. ‘Good. Because I don’t want you to miss any of this. I’m going to find you, and I’m going to kill you, Tibor. Just like you killed my daughter, you piece of shit. You hear me?’
* * *
Byron took a step back from the window, the blind snapping shut as he let it go.
‘What are you talking about?’ he asked. ‘Thea’s dead?’
The denial only served to enrage Sheriff Martin. ‘Like you didn’t know. You killed her. Her and Arlo and Hank.’
‘No, Sheriff, I didn’t. She was alive when I left her. Hank shot Arlo and Thea shot Hank before he could shoot her too.’ Byron’s mind was racing. ‘Listen, do you have any idea who might have arrived at the ranch after? Who told you she was dead?’
‘Cut the act, Tibor,’ said Sheriff Martin. ‘You killed her. You know you did. Now you’d better keep running. But know this, I will catch up with you.’
* * *
Byron held the phone to his chest, trying to compose himself. He counted slowly to three and put it back to his ear. He looked at the people crowded behind him. To Cesar, who was waiting for his help to help get them out of there. He raised the phone back to his ear.
‘You won’t have to chase me, Sheriff,’ Byron said. ‘I’ll meet you.’
‘Bullshit. You don’t have the stones for that.’
‘The Fashion Square mall. Front entrance on Main Street. Thirty minutes. Before you do what you promised, you’re going to need to listen to me. I didn’t kill Thea, but you probably know who did.’
‘I’ll see you there,’ said Sheriff Martin.
The call finished, Byron stared down at Thea’s cell phone for a moment.
‘You okay?’ Cesar asked him.
‘They killed Thea Martinez.’
‘That the lawyer lady?’ Cesar asked.
‘They think I did it.’
Cesar reached past Byron, pulled down one of the slats and peered out. Two of the cops got back into their patrol car, closed the doors, gunned the engine and peeled out of the parking lot.
‘They’re leaving,’ said Cesar.
‘They think I’m back in town. Probably figure they’re going to need to all the fire power they can muster,’ said Byron, as he opened Thea’s phone with a paperclip, took out the SIM card, and ground it to dust under his heavy work boot.
‘Kind of says it all,’ said Cesar, his eyes still on the parking lot.
‘What does?’ Byron asked him.
‘Well, even in the middle of this shit show, one bad-ass American still counts for more than a thousand Mexicans about to make a break for it.’
Byron turned back to where the assembled prisoners were waiting for his signal. ‘Be grateful for that,’ Byron told Cesar. ‘At least this one time.’
86
Sheriff Martin turned back to the feds, who had assembled at the ranch house, ready to deploy to the jail. Four men in tactical gear were standing beside a silver-grey SUV, talking in low whispers while they ran through a final weapons check. Lauren Stanley was hunched over some kind of computer tablet, staring at the screen in a way that suggested it held an ancient secret.
Sheriff Martin marched over to her. ‘Shouldn’t we be moving out?’
He was already pissed that, even though they had traced Thea’s cell phone to the jail, Lauren and Frinz had told him not to send any men over there unless they gave him the all-clear. They were hunting the man who had killed his daughter, and they wanted to push him out.
Lauren looked from the tablet. ‘There’s no “we” here, Sheriff. Leave this to us.’
‘The hell I will,’ said Martin. ‘This is my county. I have jurisdiction.’
Frinz joined them. He stood, hands in his pants pockets. ‘This is a very dangerous individual, Sheriff. We have the resources to deal with him. You don’t. It’s as simple as that. There’s no offense or disrespect intended.’
When he had mentioned resources, Frinz had made a point of shooting a glance towards the four heavily armed men who were now clambering back into the SUV.
‘He killed my daughter,’ Martin protested.
‘Precisely,’ said Lauren. ‘That’s what he does. He kills people. Without hesitation or remorse. That’s why this is better left to us.’
She turned her back to him, the conversation over, at least as far as she was concerned. Martin stood there, knowing she was right. He couldn’t risk issuing any of his men with orders that would place them in harm’s way. Arlo was already dead. Mills had come close to being killed.
* * *
Lauren walked over to the black Escalade with Nick Frinz. ‘You ready to do this?’ Frinz asked her.
She w
as.
They climbed into the back seat. Frinz leaned over to take a peek at the images on the tablet computer. In a few minutes they would be running live, everything they did. The entire operation would be relayed back to a situation room in DC. Drones were in the skies. Their heat-sensing capabilities meant that anyone moving in a thirty-mile radius outside the jail would be picked up and tracked. They would also pick up any vehicle movements. The border patrol had been drafted in to establish roadblocks at five-mile intervals on the three roads that ran into and out of Kelsen. So far only half a dozen vehicles were out there and three of those were County Sheriff patrol units that had now been ordered to return to headquarters until further notice.
The last location they had for Thea Martinez’s cell phone had been logged just under seven minutes previously. That was the call Tibor had made to Martin from the jail. Unless Tibor had developed the ability to fly, which they had covered anyway via air traffic control, he would have been picked up by now. Even though the cell phone was dead, he was in the jail with no place to go.
The only question that remained for Lauren was just how Tibor planned on making his extraction. Would he conceal himself among the other prisoners and make them drag him out, or would he surrender to the inevitable?
He had nowhere to go. If he did try to leave the jail, they had more than enough fire power in the skies to kill him. They wouldn’t even need the kill team on the ground. It could be done by the press of a button from a T-shirt-clad operator in the drone control facility outside Vegas.
Tibor wouldn’t know anything about it until it was already too late for him to take evasive action.
87
Cesar gave the signal to a group of two dozen prisoners, made up of men, women and a couple of children, and they darted out into the darkness. With enough food and water for two days, this group wanted to return across the border. They would head east before tacking south.
Other groups had decided to press north and take their chances there. Some were heading west before moving south. Their route had been left up to them. A few were staying.
Byron looked to the heavens and said a silent prayer. He figured it couldn’t hurt. It wasn’t a prayer for him. It was for the others. He knew that the people he had once worked for, once killed for, were out there. He knew what they were capable of.
Cesar and some of the others were busy helping the next group prepare. He handed out clothes, water and food that had been requisitioned from the jail’s kitchen to each person who passed.
Byron shuffled along at the back of the line. This was his group, at least for the first part of the journey. He planned on staying with them only as long as was necessary. His presence among them would bring extra danger to an already hazardous situation. He collected extra water and food as he reached Cesar. He figured that the least he could do was be a water-carrier. And he had the Glock.
Cesar put out his hand. ‘Good luck.’
‘You too,’ said Byron.
Cesar was leaving with the final group. They would attempt to head north and west, to continue the journey that had been interrupted in Kelsen County. The irony hadn’t escaped Byron. He was heading south into Mexico to escape America while Cesar, a Mexican, was trying to escape the land of his birth and settle in America.
Byron took one last look at Kelsen County Jail and followed the others outside. Minutes later they were swallowed by the vast, black emptiness of the desert at night.
A woman in her early twenties with a little boy of about four, called Hector, was bringing up the rear of Byron’s group. They hadn’t gone three hundred yards before the little boy was struggling to keep up with his mother. They would fall further and further back until they were separated from the others.
Byron paused next to them. He put down the supplies he was carrying, scooped the little boy up in his arms, hoisted him onto his shoulders, picked up his supplies and kept moving. Hector squealed with delight. His mother hushed him.
Byron covered the ground with long strides until they were nearer the front and he could lead the way for the others. High above them he could hear the signature whine of a drone. He said one final silent prayer, and kept walking with little Hector on his shoulders.
88
The silver-grey Escalade screamed to a halt in the parking lot. The doors sprang open, the Escalade’s engine still running, and the four-man kill team got out, rushing towards the jail entrance in a tight deployment pattern, rifles raised, fingers on triggers.
A few moments later, the two black SUVs arrived. Lauren climbed out with Frinz and waited for the all-clear signal from the kill team before rushing towards the administration building entrance. She pushed through the door and went inside.
It was empty.
Her cell phone chimed with an incoming message. She pulled it out of her jacket pocket, read the message and swore under her breath.
‘What is it?’ Frinz asked her.
She pulled the tablet computer from the bag slung over her shoulder, pulled up the live feed from the surveillance drones and tapped the screen so that Frinz could see a map of the area around the prison. Tiny clusters of green dots moved out from the prison in every direction. Each dot denoted a person. Lauren counted at least thirty clusters before she stopped counting.
She didn’t have to explain to Frinz. He got it.
As she studied the screen, one cluster split, about two miles from where Lauren and Frinz were standing. One section, maybe six people, went west, the other east.
She and Frinz stood, transfixed. It was like watching cells divide under a microscope. Every few minutes a group would split into two. Every split made their task harder.
One of the kill team marched back down the corridor towards them. He was pushing a white man with red hair ahead of him.
‘This guy says he has some intel on Tibor,’ said the kill-team member.
‘Let’s hear it,’ said Frinz.
‘I want to know what’s in it for me,’ said the red-headed inmate, who was sporting a couple of nasty bruises.
The kill-team member pressed the hit end of his rifle into the man’s back. ‘How about I don’t blow your head off? How’s that sound, Red?’
The inmate began to babble. His words rushed out in a semi-coherent torrent that gave no clue as to where Tibor was or might be.
Lauren’s eyes fell back to the tablet screen as the green clusters moved further and further away in every direction, pushing the search area into a wider circle.
‘We’re going to need help,’ she said to Frinz, who had already walked away from the inmate and was on a call, his cell phone pressed to his ear.
89
The little boy on Byron’s shoulders squealed in delight and jabbed a chubby little finger up at the sky. Byron didn’t want to look. Certain air-to-land missiles left a blazing trail of light that a child might easily mistake for something magical and benign.
The others in the group slowed and stared up, grateful to take a break from walking, if only for a few seconds. Although Byron was carrying the slowest among them, he had set a blistering early pace that some of the older people had struggled to maintain.
They were two hours out from the jail and, by his crude estimate, they had covered half of the distance to the border. The rumble of the drones had fallen away only to return. He hadn’t heard one in the past twenty minutes, but that wasn’t to say they wouldn’t be back.
Reluctantly, Byron stopped and scanned the sky where the others were looking. A falling star faded to a dim ember. Little Hector clapped his hands. Byron signaled for the others to take a drink and rest for a minute. They were due a break.
Ahead of them lay the same carpet of junipers and sequoia cactus that had accompanied them since they had left the jail. They moved, but the landscape stayed the same. It was an easy place to get lost. If you didn’t have a direction and the ability to navigate, the desert would swallow you.
Byron was about ready to start everyone moving ag
ain when he saw the headlights. They started out as two pinpricks to the north and slowly grew bigger. He lifted the little boy from his shoulders, handed him to his mother and stepped away from the others. Signaling for them to stay where they were, he walked slowly towards the headlights, tacking right in a big loop so that he approached the vehicle side on, cutting out the glare of the lights and taking the others out of the potential line of fire. As he walked, he plucked the Glock from where he had shoved it into his belt.
Byron found himself looking at a double-cab, red pickup truck. Two men sat up front. Both were white, decked out in hunting gear, and looked to be in their fifties. The nearside passenger had his window down and was pointing a rifle at Byron’s chest.
Despite the gun pointing at him, Byron felt an overwhelming sense of relief. If it had been a Border Patrol vehicle, he would have faced a dilemma. They would have wanted to take everyone into custody. Trying to explain that the party he was leading was heading south, into Mexico, wouldn’t have cut any ice. Byron wouldn’t walk into government custody voluntarily. By the same token he had no appetite for killing two Border Patrol agents. Despite his sympathy for the people he was with, he believed in the right of a nation to protect its territory and control those who entered as it saw fit.
These guys weren’t Border Patrol. Their truck had no markings. They were almost certainly members of some unofficial local militia.
‘Keep your hands in view,’ the passenger barked at Byron.
Byron brought his hand round from behind his back, leaving his Glock where it was for now. He raised his hands, palms open and facing the truck. Normally he would have stayed silent, let them show their hand first, but under the circumstances, he figured that an American accent would carry more weight than anything else with these two guys.