Sulfur Springs

by William Kent Krueger

  I was torn, but the decision was taken from my hands.

  Four men passed below the ledge on which I’d flattened myself. I recognized them. Agent Sprangers and DEA Agent Vega, Sheriff Carlson, and Deputy Crockett. They were headed directly toward the Jesus Rock, but not moving quickly because Sprangers was cutting sign. It was clear that he didn’t know exactly where he was leading the others, and that he had no idea what he was heading into.

  Trust no one in Coronado County. The advice everyone had been giving me since I’d arrived in this desert place.

  Trust only family. Gilberto Mondragón’s advice.

  Then I heard another voice speaking, that of a wise old man: Trust your heart.

  “Sprangers. Carlson,” I called out.

  The men stopped, spun around, and looked up.

  “You’re heading into a firefight,” I said from my perch. “Rodriguez’s people. They have you outnumbered and outgunned.”

  “What are you doing here, O’Connor?” Sprangers said.

  “Are you really surprised to see me?”

  Carlson said, “Where’s Bisonette?”

  “Not up there ahead of you. Keep going and in ten minutes you’ll run into fifteen heavily armed men.”

  “Come down and we’ll talk,” Sprangers said.

  I left the ledge and made my way to where the others stood. “Just the four of you? This is all the manpower of your task force?”

  “Are you on the up-and-up?” Carlson said. “About Rodriguez’s people?”

  “God’s truth.”

  “Is the Vermilion One up ahead?” Vega said. “Is Rodriguez finally making his move?”

  “It’s a mine all right, but there aren’t any drugs there.”

  “And you know this how?” Sprangers said.

  “I’m betting Bisonette told him,” Vega said.

  “Peter has nothing to do with Rodriguez and his drug trade. Look, here’s the story. Six nights ago, Peter rendezvoused with a group of Guatemalan refugees. His intent was to guide them safely across the border and to sanctuary. I’m pretty sure somebody in the Desert Angels sold him out. Carlos Rodriguez and his son Miguel and a bunch of Las Calaveras gunmen set up an ambush. But they weren’t the only ones waiting out there. Someone opened fire on Rodriguez and Las Calaveras. If I had to guess, I’d say it was members of White Horse.”

  “Those goddamned vigilantes.” Carlson spoke with such vehemence I thought he might throw down in disgust the gray Stetson he wore.

  “Peter and his people were caught in the middle of the firefight,” I explained. “But they got away. Carlos Rodriguez was wounded. His son was killed. It may be that Carlos blames Peter for Miguel’s death and wants very badly to get ahold of him.”

  “How do you know all this?” Sprangers said.

  “Does it matter? It’s all true. And now Rodriguez’s men are a few minutes ahead of you, looking for Peter and the Guatemalans. I’m willing to bet they wouldn’t mind killing some law enforcement officers instead.”

  “Call it in,” Sprangers said to Crockett.

  The deputy was carrying a small pack. He took out a sat phone and stepped well away from us.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “We lost you in Cadiz yesterday,” Sprangers said. “This was where we found you before, so I sent a chopper to keep an eye out for you. They spotted you last night before the monsoon came in. Because of the storm and the dark, we didn’t get a start out here until first thing this morning.” He looked toward the Jesus Rock. “Apparently a little bit later than the others.”

  “Why just four of you?” I looked at Carlson. “And aren’t you a little out of your jurisdiction, Chet?”

  “There’s something big going on west of here,” Carlson said. “All of Sprangers’s people have been called in to help.”

  Sprangers said, “You ever hear about the Yuma Fourteen?”

  I shook my head.

  “In May of 2001, a couple of coyotes led a group of twenty-six illegals across the border. They all got lost, spent way too long wandering in the desert before they were found. Fourteen of them died. It was pretty big news. We got word last night that another group was lost out there. Women and children this time. We’ve got agents and other law enforcement scouring all of southwest Arizona looking for them.”

  Crockett returned. “Backup on the way. ETA forty-five minutes.”

  Vega had a pair of binoculars to his eyes. “I see them.”

  I used my own field glasses. Rodriguez’s men were climbing down the yellow rocks around the Jesus Lode. I figured they’d ascertained that the mine was empty, and I hoped maybe they’d leave. They gathered, palavered, then one of them separated from the others and began to scout the ground. He found something and even across the distance that separated us, I heard him whistle. He signaled the others and began to cut sign, leading them toward us.

  We all stepped behind the blind of the outcropping on whose flattened top I’d been lying when Sprangers and the others showed up.

  “We need to leave,” Carlson said. Wisely, I thought.

  Sprangers said, “Let’s just make ourselves scarce. I want to keep an eye on them.”

  I said, “If that guy in the lead is any good at tracking, he could find sign of us all. Then it probably won’t matter where we hide. There’ll be a firefight.”

  Vega said, “I’m with Carlson. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Ditto that,” Crockett said.

  “If they have field glasses, they’ll spot us.” Sprangers scanned the area where we’d gathered. “Up there.” He pointed above us to a little overhang in a rock face maybe a fifty-yard climb away. “We position ourselves there. Then, even if they get wind of us, we’ll have the advantage. We can hold them off until help arrives.”

  “Maybe,” Vega said. “And maybe not. It isn’t worth the risk. We go. We keep low. And even if they spot us, we’ve got distance. Let them try to catch us.”

  “We go, we could lose them,” Sprangers argued.

  While they fought among themselves, I stepped away and checked on the progress of Rodriguez’s men.

  “Guys,” I said. “They’re running.”

  “Which way?” Sprangers said.

  “Away.”

  Sprangers and the others joined me, and we watched as Rodriguez’s men made their way back toward the desert floor, moving fast.

  “Something must’ve spooked them,” Vega said.

  “Get on the sat phone,” Sprangers said to Crockett. “Get a chopper out here ASAP to track those men.”

  Crockett stepped away to make the call.

  It took them less than half the time to reach their vehicles than it had taken them to climb to the Jesus Lode. We watched the black SUVs turn around and head south, toward the border.

  “Let’s go see what there is to see,” Sprangers said. “You mind leading the way, O’Connor?”

  The Jesus Lode was empty, as I knew it would be. Vega used a flashlight and went deep into the tunnel, Sprangers and Carlson with him. I stayed outside with Deputy Crockett.

  “Gotta see a man about a horse,” I said. “Okay?”

  Crockett nodded. “Make it quick.”

  I stepped behind a rock that blocked me from the agent’s view and took the opportunity to send Mondragón a text: Lulabelle. I turned off my cell phone, put it away, and rejoined Crockett just as the others emerged from the mine.

  “Nada,” Sprangers said. “He was here though, wasn’t he, O’Connor? Where is Peter Bisonette now?”

  I was happy he’d asked in that way, because I could tell him the truth. “I have no idea.”

  “Maybe if we cut sign, we’ll find him,” Sprangers said.

  “What you would find is women and children who ran away from hell looking for nothing but a little peace. You want the big fish, right? I’ll make a deal with you. You call off your agents, we go back to Cadiz, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  “Will it get me Rodriguez?”
>
  “It will get you closer than you are now.”

  Sprangers thought it over. Finally, he held out his hand to me.

  “Deal,” he said.

  CHAPTER 30

  * * *

  Sprangers was in the interview room with me. Vega was there, too, practically filling the small room all by himself with his great size and his restless pacing. I figured Sheriff Carlson and his deputy were watching the proceedings on a monitor in another room.

  I explained about Peter’s phone call that had brought us to Arizona, about Los Angeles del Desierto, about Rainy still being alive. Although I told him about Mondragón, I left out the part about him shooting Rainy’s assailant.

  “Whose blood was all over the ground at Robert Wieman’s place?”

  “I have no idea.” Which was the truth. I knew no name.

  “Where’s your wife?” Sprangers asked.

  “I don’t know. We all thought it best to keep me in the dark about that, in case Rodriguez got ahold of me.”

  “How do you communicate?”

  “I’d rather keep that to myself.”

  “I thought we were going to trust each other.”

  “I trust you. I don’t trust your whole organization.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “For starters, Rodriguez’s men out there this morning. How’d they know where to look?”

  “Bugged your pickup. They did it before.”

  I shook my head. “I checked that pickup top to bottom. You were there because of the Border Patrol helicopter that spotted me. Rodriguez’s men were there because somebody in your organization leaked that information.”

  Sprangers didn’t argue. Instead he said, “How did you know about Bisonette and his Guatemalan refugees and about the ambush in which you claim Carlos Rodriguez was wounded and his son killed?”

  “I have better current intel than you. I’m not going to tell you how I got it, because I don’t want to put lives in danger. But I’ll tell you this. I think the other people involved in that ambush were White Horse.”

  Vega, who’d been pacing at my back, paused.

  “How would White Horse have known about the rendezvous?” he asked.

  “Good question. Maybe whoever leaked that information to Rodriguez also leaked it to White Horse.”

  “To what end?”

  “I think they were hoping to decimate Las Calaveras,” I said.

  “White Horse,” Sprangers said. The name clearly left a bad taste in his mouth. He looked at Vega behind me, and some unspoken communication must have passed between them. “A man in Sulfur Springs was killed by a car bomb a few months ago.”

  “I heard.”

  “He was one of ours, working undercover. Like I told you before, there’s a lot of drug product moving through Coronado County. We’re pretty sure that Las Calaveras is the supplier, and we think that a good deal of it is being handled by the trailer community north of Sulfur Springs.”

  “Paradiso?”

  “Right. Our man infiltrated Paradiso. Someone made him, blew him up in his truck.”

  “I heard he was White Horse.”

  “He was trying to work his way into the group when he was killed. We’re pretty sure that a lot of the residents of Paradiso are White Horse. These guys are bikers, disaffected vets, men who want to live off the grid for all kinds of reasons. Bitterness and disappointment are pretty much what they all have in common. They’re disposed to disliking everyone, but their hatred seems to be fixated on the illegals and the government.”

  “A lot of them use?”

  “A lot of them. But the product is distributed way beyond Paradiso and Coronado County.”

  “So why would they want Rodriguez dead?” I said. “If his organization supplies the product they use and someone there is moving it?”

  Behind me, Vega said, “Maybe somebody hired White Horse to ice Rodriguez.”

  “Who?” Sprangers said.

  “Somebody who offered a better deal. Somebody who wanted to eliminate the competition and take over Rodriguez’s territory.”

  The room was quiet for a long moment.

  Then Vega said, “Mondragón.”

  Sprangers looked at me. “Mondragón,” he echoed. “A man whose family has dealt in every form of illegal trafficking across the border. And now he just happens to be here, in Coronado County. Along with his son, who knew the location of the rendezvous.”

  I felt as if we’d just moved back to square one.

  “His son was wounded in that firefight in the desert,” I said, trying not to sound as frustrated as I felt. “Why would Mondragón put his son in that kind of danger?”

  “Maybe it didn’t go down the way you think it did,” Vega said. “Who told you about the firefight? Bisonette?”

  He was right, but in his current state of mind, I didn’t want to confirm his thinking. Instead I said, “What kind of man would lead a group of women and children into an ambush knowing there would be gunfire?”

  “What kind of man is Bisonette?” Vega asked. “All we really know about him is that he’s a drug addict and the son of a man whose family runs a powerful cartel. As for the women and children, we’ve seen no evidence of that. Maybe it’s all part and parcel of some wild story to placate you and your wife.”

  “Look,” I said. “I understand the need to question everything. I was a cop, too. But at some point, you have to trust someone. I trust Peter. I saw the women and children he was leading. I’ve spoken to Mondragón. He has nothing to do with whatever it is that’s going down in Coronado County. He’s here because he loves his son, and his son is in trouble. If you want to know why White Horse might have been involved in ambushing Rodriguez, I think I know someone you should talk to.”

  “Yeah?” Vega said. “And who’s that?”

  “Marian Brown.”

  “Brown?” Sprangers said.

  “Mayor of Sulfur Springs. She’s White Horse, or working hand in glove with White Horse, I’d bet my life on it. And you might talk to the town cop in Sulfur Springs. I’m pretty sure he’s White Horse, too.”

  “Mike Sanchez?” Vega said, incredulously. “His family came from Mexico.”

  “Okay, maybe he’s not actually White Horse. Maybe he’s just a partner in what they do in Paradiso.”

  They asked a few more questions, but I’d already given them all I was going to for the moment. Before we left the interview room, I said, “One more thing.”

  “What’s that?” Sprangers said.

  “Take the drone off me.”

  I could tell from the look on his face that I’d hit home.

  “I can do us all a lot more good without you constantly looking over my shoulder.”

  Sprangers said, “We’ll be in touch.”

  * * *

  Outside the law enforcement center, I turned my cell phone back on. I had two missed calls. One was from the car rental insurance guy, who’d left me a message requesting in no uncertain terms that I call him back to discuss the blown-up Cherokee. The other was from Michelle Abbott, just checking in to make sure I was okay. I also had one text message, which had come from Mondragón. It read: Safe. Everyone. Which was a relief on so many fronts.

  I headed first thing to the hospital in Sierra Vista to check on Jocko. I felt responsible for the beating he’d taken, although I knew it was something he wouldn’t blame me for. It was just one of the risks of doing the good work of the Desert Angels, which I understood. The faces of Juan and the women and the children stayed with me. Maybe they weren’t innocent in the eyes of the law, but there’s something more important than the law, and that is simply compassion. That might sound strange coming from a man who’s spent a good deal of his life behind a badge, but laws are made by human beings and human beings are not infallible. We make laws for all kinds of reasons, and not always the right ones. One of the most powerful motivations for the enactment of legislation is fear, and when you act out of fear, you risk becoming exactly th
e kind of monster you’re trying to bar the door against. I couldn’t help thinking that we were putting those women and children—and the men, too, who came looking for nothing more sinister than a job and a quiet life—through a monstrous ordeal. And I understood why Peter and the other Desert Angels were willing to risk everything to help them.

  I found Jayne Harris at Jocko’s bedside, which surprised me. Frank had led me to believe Jocko’s condition was too difficult for her to deal with. Clearly, she was stronger than either of us had given her credit for. She was reading to him. When I came in and she closed the book, I saw that it was West with the Night.

  “Bush pilot,” Jocko said, looking and sounding so much better than the night before. “If I had it all to do over again, that’s what I would’ve been. A bush pilot.”

  Jayne hadn’t seen me since I’d been worked over. She studied my face. “Frank told me you’d had a run-in with someone.”

  “I survived.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I can’t say for sure. Out here, the possibilities are numerous.”

  “Rodriguez?”

  “I’ll know soon enough.”

  That intrigued her. “You’re onto something?”

  “I’ve got a better handle on a few things.”

  She nodded toward my face. “I hope you get there before someone kills you.”

  There was another chair in the room, and I sat down. “Where’s Frank?”

  “Seeing to the vineyards. Harvest isn’t far off and there’s plenty of work to be done. Especially now that both Peter and Jocko are out of commission. Any word on your wife or Peter?”

  “Nothing official,” I said.

  “I’m sorry.” She looked down at Jocko, lying beat up on the white hospital sheet. “I told you and Frank that getting involved with those people would end up badly.”

  “Those people?” I said.

  “The Desert Angels.”

  “You knew?”

  She laughed, but there was a brittle edge to it. “You can’t keep secrets from someone you share a bed with.”

  Which hadn’t been true for Rainy and me, but maybe Jayne and her husband were different.