Taylor finished his beer, took a fresh one offered from Ruck then a cigar from Hunter, and listened to the team joke and share stories of times afield and of doing the cartel’s bidding. Everyone promised that the work was far and few between but the pay and benefits beyond compare. Taylor laughed and said that he was shocked a Mexican drug cartel had a Human Resources Officer and even more so at his explained his benefits. The team admitted that they too were shocked but that the cartel had lived up to each and every promise they made toward the team.
“I just hope taxidermy’s part of my benefits package,” Pearce said. “’Cause if I take out some cave monkeys tomorrow, you know I’m gonna get one mounted!”
The team laughed and Ruck added to the fun by saying that a monkey was about the only thing Pearce ever could mount. Pearce raised his beer in salute at the insult then accepted a huge bear hug from Ruck and laughed some more. The drinking and the camaraderie grew late into the evening and by the time they all retired, Taylor felt that he had made the right decision in finally accepting Hunter’s job offer.
17.
Dejah Lopez did her best to keep up with her mother and uncle, but they and the group they were a part of were moving too fast, weaving through the terribly difficult thorn scrub brush on narrow goat trails with only the moon and stars to light the way. Keeping up was made even more difficult given Dejah’s ill-fitting shoes. The sneakers had passed down through three older sisters before they got to Dejah and they consisted of nothing but paper-thin leather and slick rubber soles.
Dejah’s mother hurried her along once more with a quick snap of her wrist and Dejah felt her shoulder pull. She released a small cry of discomfort and was quickly shushed by her mother and those ahead of her. Dejah pouted at the instructions and grimaced but followed her mother through the tangles of mesquite and huisache trees to a small opening littered with plastic bags and water bottles, discarded clothing, and other sundries.
“We cross just over there,” the leader of the group whispered. “The water is only about two feet deep but the current’s pretty strong so stay alert.”
The group nodded and some took on looks of worry or concern.
“Crossing the river is when we’re out in the open and the most vulnerable so remember to hurry and keep as quiet as you can,” the leader continued.
Again, the group nodded.
The travelers tightened up their backpacks and cinched their belts and made sure their bags were tied tight over their shoulders. Some wore looks of excitement, others worry, and others crossed themselves and said prayers. Dejah’s mom crossed herself and asked God for protection and for him to lead her and Dejah to their family that was already established and waiting for them in Austin. Dejah listened to her mother’s prayers and crossed herself as well then tried one more time to tie her shoes so that they would be tight on her feet.
The frontrunner led the group of travelers out of the clearing and down a narrow path that wove through the scrub and onto the bank of the Rio Grande. The shore was muddy with a sprinkling of rocks and gravel that glowed in the moonlight. The group followed in a single-file line as they were led down the bank and into the river. Dejah held her mother’s hand tight but then broke free of her grip when her shoe became submerged in the mud at the river’s edge. Dejah leaned down and pulled the ratty sneaker back on her feet.
“Hurry, mija,” Dejah’s mother scolded in a deep whisper. She grabbed Dejah’s hand once more and led her into the river with a firm jerk.
The water was warm but considerably cooler than the air, and Dejah’s body shuddered as a shiver ran up her spine. She followed her mother the best she could but pushing through waist-high water—even while being pulled along—was difficult and the river was wider than she thought it would be. She was a third of the way across when her shoe slipped from her foot. She pulled her hand from her mother and leaned into the black water to grab it before it slid completely off. The current grabbed Dejah and pulled her forward and under. She spun over and came to the surface to breathe and to right herself, but the pull of the water wouldn’t allow her to plant her feet. She struggled to stand or to turn around, but the water became deeper and faster. She saw her mother and another from the group reaching out across the darkness, as if willing her to stop or to return. She tried to call to them but instead swallowed a mouthful of silt-heavy water.
The current threw her against a rock and the sudden pain in her back brought tears to boil in her eyes. She spun around and tried to grab the rock that had momentarily paused her race down the shallow water but wasn’t able to and slipped by it. She turned in the current over and over and fought to stand or at least to right herself so that she might swim. The current slammed Dejah into another rock and then another. She grabbed ahold of the next one and pulled herself up and partially out of the water. She thrust her legs underneath her and finally found the river bottom. She stood to realize that the water was now only to her upper thigh. She brushed her long black hair off her face, caught her breath, then studied her surroundings.
The moon and stars cast light down on a bank of large rocks and boulders. The treeline was high above a jumble of car-sized rocks. She looked for her mother and the group upstream but saw that the river curved and that she had been swept down and around at least one bend. She coughed, wadded toward the shore, and climbed out of the river. Both her shoes were gone, and she was suddenly cold.
“Don’t yell,” she told herself in a heavy whisper. “The man said not to make noise.”
She ambled gingerly up the steep bank on bare feet and away from the river. She serpentined through and over rocks, broken limbs, and damp vegetation. Dejah made it twenty yards from the river when the vegetation between two rocks she stepped upon gave way, and she plummeted downward and into a deep hole. She landed hard on her leg, and her ankle gave and twisted. Dejah looked up at the hole she fell through some twenty feet above her, rubbed her ankle, and wept.
18.
Héctor Abrego collected his thoughts as the rest of the travelers did their best to console a hysterical Maria. From what Hector could tell, Dejah had lost her footing and was swept downstream by the swift current. Through convulsions of pain and sorrow, Maria explained that Dejah was a good swimmer and was absolutely, without a doubt, alive. Not only that, but Dejah was probably waiting for the group just a little bit downstream.
Héctor listened to the mother’s pleas then laid out the realities of the situation.
“If we don’t make the truck at the scheduled time, they’ll leave,” Hector assured the group. “And the nearest place to hitch your ride is another 15 miles in.”
“I’m not going back,” one traveler blurted out.
“Neither am I,” another added.
“We have to find her,” Maria wept. “We have to.”
The group talked to among themselves and agreed to spend a half hour looking for the child before returning to the trail and ultimately making their way to the truck.
“After a half hour, I’m taking everybody to the truck,” Héctor decreed before looking to Maria and adding, “Everybody that’s wanting to go.”
Maria was hysterical at the decision of the group and began to argue and make threats. She was consoled by her brother Carlos who said that a half hour was all the time they needed to find Dejah.
Héctor led the caravan down the muddy banks of the river on the American side. He kept the group close to the treeline and in the shadows. They had traveled only 10 minutes downstream before Héctor spotted a dark figure kneeling at the side of the river some 50 yards away.
“Dejah!” Maria called out into the darkness.
Many in the group responded to Maria’s call with immediate directives to shush and to be quiet.
Maria nodded and with Carlos’s hand in hers, ran toward the still-kneeling figure.
“Dejah, mija. Mija!” Maria called in a loud whisper as she ran forward. “Dejah!”
The figure turned and rose from its crouche
d position and growled. The night sky reflected a maw of ivory fangs chattering in some primordial cry of excitement. Maria’s brain registered the danger of the situation, and she and her brother both skidded to a halt. The creature’s jaws opened to release a scream of warning and attack. Teeth flashed and vaulted through the air and toward her.
Maria didn’t feel her neck slice open.
Only the flood of warmth that poured from it and the sudden euphoria release it brought about.
19.
Dejah stifled her tears at the sound. It was the faintest of calls, the whisper of her name on the wind. She stood then grimaced at the pain from her ankle and stared up at the moonlit hole high above her in hope. The call came once more, this time louder and more distinct.
“Dejah, mija. Mija!” it called.
Dejah called in return.
She screamed for her mother as loud as she could.
Then stopped.
In between her cries for her mother, she heard something.
She heard the growl of an angry dog.
The screams of men.
The howling of what must have been a pack of wild dogs, their cries angry and feral.
She heard the crying of women.
And the angry yells of men.
The hole above her suddenly eclipsed.
Dejah stared upward and made out the shape of a man’s upper body crawling into the narrow opening.
“Down here! I’m down here!” she cried.
The man above her was jerked backward and out of the opening. He cried and his cries were answered by a guttural roar.
The wet sounds of feeding.
Of bones snapping.
Several objects rained down from the opening.
They hit the cave floor with a series of light thuds.
Dejah bent down to identify the objects.
They were severed fingers.
Severed human fingers.
Dejah collapsed to the ground, weeping in fear, and scooted away from the light and into the darkness.
20.
Taylor’s dreams were fueled by alcohol, nicotine, fatigue, and the anticipation of what was to come. He’s mind took him through vivid memories of death and loss, serving and killing, compassion and regret.
He saw his daughter at her happiest.
Her prettiest.
He watched her celebrate birthdays and Christmases, long summer days at the lake and winter days accompanying her father afield for deer hunts. He watched again the courtship of his wife and their wedding, their making love, and their welcoming their daughter.
The joys of life gave way to the harsh realities of a soldier.
Taylor watched himself cross deserts of burning sand, trudge through tunnels of stone and rock, and walk through villages of the oppressed and the starving. He saw himself fight for his team and for his life. He lay witness to his protecting life and taking life.
These images twisted and warped and transported him to his daughter’s hospital room. He stood over his baby girl, once so innocent and pure, now a lifeless shell connected to machine after machine via tubes and needles. He saw her gravestone. Watched his wife screaming blame after blame and insult after insult at him. He saw the .45 he held under his chin and the tears in his eyes that for some reason kept him from pulling the trigger.
He awoke and scanned the room that was his reality. He let his eyes adjust to the dark then pulled on a pair of pants and unlaced boots. He made his way past others of his team that slept on beds or against the wall and stepped outside.
Hunter stood on the porch, smoking a cigarette. He acknowledged Taylor with a nod and the offer of a cigarette and his lighter. Taylor took them both and gave a nod of thanks. He lit a cigarette and handed the lighter back to Hunter. The two men stood in the dark, smoking in silence, in an understanding that need not be spoken.
21.
Cletus Lee King didn’t hate the border wall.
He loved the idea.
Loved that his country would be illegal free after its completion.
What Cletus Lee didn’t like about the wall was that he had to supervise its construction.
This meant hour after hour of driving down half-assed roads carved from the brush to the middle of absolutely nowhere. The roads were pockmarked and driving over them, even in his Ford Super Duty F-350 at 20 miles per hour, shook his almost 300 pounds of morbidly obese body around like a plate full of Jell-O in the hands of someone in the midst of an epileptic seizure.
The rattling about his truck was so bad that Cletus Lee couldn’t drink coffee or beer—depending on the time of day—as the liquid splashed all about the truck cab and all over his clothing. Not only that, but the crappy roads had caused him to miss his spit cup on numerous occasions, and more than once, he had exited his truck looking like a kid with a leaky diaper had been rolling around on his lap.
The road to Angel’s camp was especially horrible and long. It was almost 20 miles in length, cut through some of the thickest stands of cedar and mesquite Cletus Lee had ever seen, going over and through hills, outcroppings of limestone, and other rock. There was no way to travel the road other than in four-wheel-drive and its proximity to a town of any significance was the reason Angel and his crew were camping on site. They’d apparently done well at their assigned duties as Cletus Lee hadn’t heard nearly a peep from them.
Until yesterday.
Angel had called on his satellite phone with word that his boys had accidentally dug into a cavern that looked like it could swallow their equipment whole. Cletus Lee told Angel to sit tight until he could get out there to survey the situation, and Cletus Lane left his office at five AM that morning to do just that.
It took him almost four hours to make it to Angel’s camp and when he did finally arrive, he was furious that no one rushed up to his truck to meet him. Cletus Lee angrily threw his truck in park and exited the vehicle. He stepped to the brush line to relieve himself and then walked back to the truck to retrieve his Copenhagen. He placed a huge wad in his lower lip and scanned the campsite before him.
He saw hammocks and chairs, empty bottles and cans, food wrappers and half-empty water bottles, and a sea of cigarette butts.
“Goddamn pigs, the lot of them,” Cletus Lee exclaimed aloud before spitting a huge mixture of spittle and phlegm up on the ground. “Goddamn pigs!”
He walked from the truck and into the campsite. He walked past the garbage toward the Porta Potty. He knocked on the door and, when one no one answered, opened it to find it empty. He turned from the portable commode and caught the glare of the early morning sun reflecting off a mirror on the excavator parked somewhere past a stand of mesquite. He walked toward it.
The expanse before Cletus Lee exploded in darkness. Dozens of buzzards, each black as midnight and carrying a wingspan of upwards of five feet, vaulted from the ground, from low-lying limbs, and from cacti. They turned the sky dark with their forms and their wings stirred a cloud of stench, decay, and rot. The air thundered with their flapping wings and the screeches of scavengers surprised and avoiding danger. Cletus Lee clutched his chest in surprise and fought to catch his breath. He watched the vultures fly higher and higher then circle in wait for his absence.
Cletus Lee’s eyes were brought back down to earth by the deafening buzzing of flies. He trained in on the source of the noise to see what was left of a human form twisted and mutilated in death and by the fight for scraps by animals and avian prey. He stumbled backward at the site and vomited. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stepped closer to what he saw was the first of several half-eaten human forms. He knelt next to the first body and studied it for any sign of identification, but the almost complete lack of a face made that task impossible. He thought of checking the body for a wallet then thought the better of it. He started to stand than noticed a print forced into the blood-soaked mud that pooled outward from the body.
It looked like a child’s handprint.
Only different.
The fingers were that of a child, but the palm was twice as long as it should have been. The pinky and thumb were oddly spaced and situated further away from the rest of the fingers. Cletus Lee wiped his mouth once more, returned to his truck, and retrieved a Taurus Judge handgun from the center consul. He nervously checked to make sure it was loaded then put it in the waistband of his pants at the small of his back. He put a fresh dip of Copenhagen in his sour mouth then dialed 911 on his satellite phone.
22.
Dejah awoke in the dark and in pain. At first, she didn’t know where she was but soon remembered her ordeal and what had transpired that led her to where she was now.
She was in a cave of some sort, alone, hungry, and scared.
She had no idea where her mother was or what happened to the rest of the group. She remembered the man in the hole above her, his screams, and how his fingers rained down upon her. She shuddered this thought out of her mind and stood. She was relieved to find that her ankle didn’t hurt nearly as bad as it had only last night. She was also relieved to see that she wasn’t in total darkness. In addition to the manhole-sized beam of light shimmering through the hole she fell through, there were other beams of light. More like pinpoints of light, these narrow splinters shone down from cracks high above to reveal a huge cavern. It was a dark expanse that seemed to go on and on forever. It reminded Dejah of being out under a star-filled sky.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the faintest sound of rushing water. She stared out into the void and saw that one of the needles of light pointed downward to a small stream. She edged down the slippery rock bank and toward the water, feeling before her with outstretched arms for dangers in the dark. Each step took her deeper into the cave, and she shuffled her feet before her to ensure she didn’t fall or trip on something unseen. She reached the stream and kneeled beside it. The light cast down on an area the size of her foot and in that she could see that the water was relatively clear and free of debris. She cupped her hands and drank. The water was warm but tasted fine. She drank four more handfuls then made her way back up the steep rock toward the hole that she’d fallen through. Without looking down, she kicked the fingers from within the light and into the darkness, feeling with her feet that the area was clear of dangers, to directly underneath the hole and shouted upward for her mother. Her cries echoed back at her and waved throughout the cave. She continued calling for her mother then changed her call to that of help.
The Tunnel Page 5