by Johnny Shaw
The Oasis guards had created a business that was to everyone’s advantage. It was in nobody’s interest to upset the balance. The criminals who used their service couldn’t replace the guards, and the safe haven saved them time and money. Most were eager to pay. As long as nobody got greedy, everybody would profit. The services were simple: time out of the sun, food, and water. But more importantly, they were Switzerland, an accepted neutral country where you could hide your gold or yourself. As long as you had the money.
In fact, Tomás had admitted to using their services himself. He avoided specifics, but I got the impression that he was a frequent flier. And for that reason, he could not help me in my apprehension of Alejandro and Juan. As much as he wanted to get Alejandro, he didn’t feel justified in violating the trust that he had developed with the Oasis guards.
Tomás said, “Once it’s gone, it is never coming back. The desert gets more treacherous to cross with each year, and the Oasis plays a vital role. Not only for my personal business. The impact on my relationships would be damaged. If word spread that my actions caused the closure of the Oasis, it would be costly.
“You cannot call anyone for help. No police. No La Migra. Nothing. No one. Their participation would not only jeopardize the life of the boy, but mine as well. The people that rely on the Oasis are many and unmerciful.
“The best I can do is to ensure that Alejandro remains within the perimeter. There is only one road into the facility. I can promise that Alejandro never leaves the dunes. But getting your brother back, that’s up to you.”
As I got out of the back of the SUV, I turned to Tomás.
“That guy,” I said, “the one that you tortured for this information.”
“What about him?”
“You lied to me, didn’t you?”
Tomás didn’t say anything.
“You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?”
“No,” Tomás said, glancing at his watch. “He’s already dead.”
It didn’t take long to give Bobby, Buck Buck, and Snout the abridged version. Sobering them up was a different story. Whose bright idea was it to leave them in charge of Morales Bar?
And that’s how I ended up sitting in the passenger seat of Bobby’s Ranchero, heading east on Highway 8 toward Yuma. I wished we were going to Yuma instead of a crooked geothermal power plant somewhere near the halfway point. Bobby was banging his head to some Molly Hatchet tune that wasn’t “Flirting with Disaster,” steeling himself for whatever was to come. I would have turned it down, but I knew better than to touch the original Philco in Bobby’s ride. Snout and Buck Buck were behind us in Buck Buck’s pickup.
I had my posse and we were equipped, hauling trailers carrying two ATVs and two dirt bikes. And in the back of Bobby’s Ranchero were duffel bags filled with every weapon we could find. We were armed to the teeth with all things explosive, ballistic, sharp, and deadly. There was even a sword in one of the bags. A fucking sword. If I wasn’t so juiced on my own fear, if this wasn’t really happening, if a small boy’s life wasn’t at stake, I would have felt ridiculous.
It was just after midnight with only the slimmest slice of moon. I looked at the desert, dimly illuminated by the stars. The scrub and chaparral devolved to sweeping barren sand dunes in the blink of an eye. The change was not gradual, but severe. Even in the day, there would be no visible indication of life.
The song ended, and Bobby turned the dial on the radio to a low roar. His hand trembled slightly. He caught me looking, made a fist, and gave me a light punch on the leg.
“Give me a smoke,” he said.
“You don’t smoke,” I said. “And definitely not in your baby.” I stroked the dashboard.
“Shut up and give me one.”
I shook a cigarette out of the pack and handed it to him. He rolled it in his fingers and then gave it a long sniff. He put it in his mouth unlit and sucked on it.
Bobby laughed to himself. “Remember when we found that pack of cloves in junior high? Smoked like all of them in an hour. That’s the highest I ever felt, ’cause I never felt nothing like that. All spinny and laughy. Then I puked out my spleen and both my intestines until I was heaving air and what tasted like my own piss. Kept me from smoking no more. The smell of cloves still kills me. Hell, I smell pumpkin pie and I get queasy.”
“That’s what cloves are for,” I said. “It’s like the cigarette fairy plants them for dumb kids like us to find.”
“All that shit we did. All the trouble we got in. When people talk about memories, that’s the shit they’re talking about. All the crazy shit. Hell, most of the time, all I remember is laughing. Laughing our asses off. But I got no idea what we were laughing at.”
“You’re my best friend,” I said, matter-of-factly. “You know that, right?”
“I never forgot,” he said.
We didn’t say anything for a minute or so.
Done with the silence, I turned to Bobby and said, “You going to smoke that thing or just fellate it until it grows from a king-size to a 120?”
He gave the cigarette a long look and then handed it back to me. “You’re right. Can’t let a car this cherry get all smoky.”
“Thanks for doing this,” I said. My tone had turned serious without my conscious consent, bringing us back to our current situation.
“Didn’t even have to think about it, bro. Uncle Bobby can’t let anything happen to his favorite new nephew.”
Knowing we were close, I felt the need to go over the plan. To go over our reasoning. To just go over everything for the millionth time. I needed to make sure that as crazy as this was, that crazy was best.
“We’re doing the right thing, right? Tomás is right, right? Alejandro won’t do anything to Juan until he talks to me. If he wants my money, then he has to call me to get it. And if we can get to him before he calls, he’ll be completely off guard. He won’t know what hit him. We have the element of surprise. He thinks he’s in his Fortress of Solitude, but we’re about to hit him right in the Batcave.”
“Okay, I’m going to interrupt you right there. The Batcave thing was too much,” Bobby said. “Calm it down. Have a drink.”
He handed me a flask. I wasn’t sure that was a good idea, so I took a quick swig. The tequila burned, painfully mollifying.
Bobby shook his head and said, “Griselda is going to be pissed we didn’t go to her. It’s not that this shit is illegal—she’s used to that. It’s just insulting. Like we don’t trust her. I know Tomás said no cops, but fuck him if it means helping the kid. Seems like they’re trapped. We call the cops, the cops show up.”
“Yeah, the Imperial County Sheriff’s Department deals with hostage situations all the time. Their negotiator probably doubles as the janitor.”
“More qualified than us,” Bobby shrugged.
“You’ve been to one of those plants. There’re like ten big buildings. Scattered. That gives anyone any length of time to get rid of any kind of evidence. The cops show up, Alejandro just ditches the kid. All they got him for is being here illegally. They chuck him back to Mexico like a too-small bass. And Juan’s body is hidden in some pipe deep in the heart of the plant. Plenty of nooks and crannies. Nooks big enough to hide a 747. Don’t get me started on the fucking crannies.”
“And we can get in and out without being seen? We’re like ninjas now?”
“Better chance than any cop or government fucker who don’t give a shit about my brother.”
“Griselda gives a shit.”
“I didn’t mean her,” I said.
“What makes a Mexican woman want to be a cop? Crazy. Girlie likes a challenge.”
“You two work, don’t you?”
Bobby laughed, easing a little of the tension. “When and if she finds out, she’s still going to be pissed. Maybe even more pissed than when I tried to do it with her in the front of her patrol car with a drunk cholo passed out in the back.”
“That never happened.”
Bobby gave me
a look that told me it might have.
I said, “How about you do what I’m going to do with Angie. Keep my mouth shut. If we get Juan back safe, she ain’t going to care about any kind of bullshit we pulled. Right now, they don’t even know Alejandro took him, that he’s in any kind of danger. Let’s get him back. Let’s worry about that. First we make sure everyone’s okay. Then we make up a solid lie.”
Bobby gave me a look out of the corner of his eye. “You going to lie to Angie?”
“No,” I admitted.
“You love her,” Bobby said, poking me hard in the ribs.
“I never said I didn’t,” I said. “I never said I stopped.”
“That’s awesome, bro.”
“Okay, thanks. But suddenly, I feel like I just walked into a tampon ad. I love the shit out of her, but it’s time we put on our man pants.”
“Let’s crank it up.”
Bobby quickly turned up the dial, and Bread’s “Baby I’m-a Want You” blared from the speakers.
I gave him a look, but he just shrugged, saying, “Mix tape.” We let it play, not so much banging our heads as gently swaying.
We pulled into the large dirt expanse of the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreational Area just outside of Gordon Wells. In any season other than summer, there would be dozens of RVs and tents scattered in the make-do parking lot. But in early September, only the hardcore fanatic braved the thousand-degree, no-shade heat to ride a man toy in a giant sandbox. That night there were two RVs and a pickup with a dune buggy on a trailer. A bonfire burned at the north corner of the hardpack. From the look of the men around the campfire, my guess was that the RV occupants were hunters wisely using this as spillover parking. Because it was not an official campground, there were no fees. And while the dunes had no life, the All-American Canal banks a mile away were solid dove killing grounds.
We parked as far away from the other vehicles as possible, staking our claim at the southeast corner. The Oasis was about a mile through the dunes where the sand leveled out and gave way to scrub.
If we took the single road that led to the Oasis, we’d be detected. Surprise was our only advantage. We were going to have to approach the facility from the back. Through the dunes. A direction no one would be expected to take, even if they weren’t expecting anyone. Whoever was going to the Oasis would either come from the west road or from the border to the south. We were going to hit it from the north, trekking at night Boy Scout–style and using the stars to lead us until the lights of the facility became visible.
The noise of the bikes and quads would telegraph our arrival even at a half mile. So we would have to walk them through the sand, using them only as our getaway.
Bobby and I got out of the Ranchero and untied the tie-downs holding the vehicles onto the trailer. Buck Buck and Snout pulled up next to us and got out, doing the same thing. Snout gave me a big wave and a smile. Buck Buck farted loudly and then laughed. I loved those idiots.
When I had asked them to join me, the entire conversation had gone like this:
Me: “Fellas, Alejandro took Juan.”
Them: “Let’s go get him.”
Me: “It could be dangerous.”
Them: Laughter.
Walking uphill on the side of a sand dune is hard enough, earth giving and sliding down right under your feet, the ground like liquid. Sinking calf-deep, it’s hard to maintain balance while at the same time making any kind of forward progress. But when you’re also trying to walk a dirt bike through the porous sand, it feels next to impossible. When I tried to show off by mentioning what a Sisyphean task this was, Bobby agreed that it was about as much fun as having an STD.
It took a disastrous first dune for me to get the hang of it: don’t go straight up, but at a gradual, zigzagging angle. In the deep sand, the wheels did little good. I ended up dragging the bike most of the way. Buck Buck and Snout didn’t have any better time with the quads, but they weren’t complainers and muscled through it.
Downhill was easier, but that’s because it consisted mostly of falling, sliding, and burying myself in the sand at the bottom of each dune. Gravity fucked with me coming and going.
It took the better part of two hours to travel what I guessed to be about three-quarters of a mile. Tomás’s directions were predictably perfect. We followed Orion’s belt and whatever the group of stars to the left were (he had only drawn them). Cresting the top of a particularly bastard dune, the Gordons Well Geothermal Plant came into view. Its yellow lights illuminated the desert haze around it.
We all sat down on the sand, the eerie glow of the multi-structure complex creating a hypnotic effect. It was hard not to think about what would happen next, and I assumed that’s where everyone else was. With all the necessary preparation, I hadn’t had much time to think. Which was probably a good thing.
Bobby broke the silence. “We’re going to have to kill Alejandro.”
My mind raced to come up with an opposing argument. I didn’t have much luck.
Nobody said anything for a minute.
Buck Buck finally broke the silence. “It is what it is.”
“There’s got to be another way,” I said.
“World won’t miss him. Be a better place, more than likely,” Bobby said.
“Is that our decision?”
“Tonight it is,” Bobby said.
I sat on the sand, absorbing the truth of it. There was no way that Juan, Angie, or I could have any peace if Alejandro was still around. He would always be a threat. And right now with Juan as his hostage, I knew that he had to go.
I dug my fingers into the sand, letting the grains run over the back of my hand. I slowly lifted it, letting the sand run off. I kept a small pile on the back of my hand and then brushed it off.
We said nothing for ten minutes, passing a flask around and staring at the lights of the Oasis. I almost jumped when Buck Buck broke the silence.
“I got so much sand in my butt crack,” Buck Buck said, “I could shit a castle.”
Snout laughed and then said, “I got so much castle in my shit that I could sand a butt crack.”
It didn’t matter that it was more about the fear and exhaustion. At that moment Buck Buck and Snout were the funniest men on the planet. I laughed with them, Bobby joining me soon after. The laughter was contagious. Very quickly I couldn’t even remember what I was laughing about. I was laughing at the laughing. And every time I tried to stop, every time I tried to catch my breath, it only made it worse. A whole new wave of hysterics rose. I almost rolled off the hill I was laughing so hard. Trying to wipe away the tears, I stuck a fingerful of sand right into my cornea. It stung like hell, but only made me laugh harder.
But even in my hysterical state, I couldn’t shake the nagging foreboding. The Big Laugh always seemed to bring tragedy with it.
Apparently there wasn’t a whole lot that one could steal from a decommissioned geothermal plant. Or at least that’s what the scant security measures suggested. A chain-link fence surrounded the grounds. Little more. No razor wire. No dogs. None of those cool red laser beams from the movies. Just crappy schoolyard chain-link. Easily climbable chain-link.
Snout was pissed. He was the one who had lugged the bolt cutters through the dunes.
There was no visible movement on the grounds of the facility. Not even wind. On the trek through the dunes, I had created an image of a movie POW camp with guards walking the perimeter. In reality, the guards were probably sitting in an office somewhere, drunk and reading pornography. If they were awake at all. It wasn’t like they were expecting us.
The five main structures of the power plant didn’t exactly loom over us as much as they squatted. Three massive warehouse-type buildings abutted two enormously wide, but short smokestacks. The warehouses had loading docks and multiple doors. My guess was that these were where the generators were housed. Catwalks, staircases, and pipes connected all the buildings like an enormous hamster cage. There was even a strange wheel. Its function was beyond me.
A double-wide temporary office stood on its own just south of the main facility.
The floodlights were blindingly bright, their hum the only sound. I was glad I hadn’t bothered to get decked out in black. I would’ve stood out even more.
We left the motorcycles and quads out of sight in a gully about fifty yards from the north fence. We hid beneath a long windbreak of tamarisk.
“According to Tomás, there’re only two, three guards at any one time. But no way of knowing how many people they’re housing,” I said. “Tomás said coyoteing dips in the summer. But a lot of smugglers use the Border Patrol’s aversion to the heat and getting out of their trucks to their advantage. You got to love a wily criminal’s ability to adapt.
“The guards are definitely armed, but it’s not like they’re badasses. They’re just regular guys who had a good idea. They’ll be interested in protecting their investment, but probably not enough to get hurt. They shouldn’t give us any shit, as long as we just fuck with Alejandro.”
“We can try talking to the guards first,” Bobby suggested, surprisingly nonviolent.
Buck Buck and Snout laughed.
“Don’t got nothing to offer,” I said. “Alejandro paid them. And from what Tomás suggested, this service don’t come cheap. Especially if they see he’s got a kid with him. I ain’t got money like that.”
“They’ve got to be thinking that’s his kid and he’s on the run,” Bobby said. “If they know they’re accomplices in a kidnapping, maybe they’ll balk.”
“You’re talking about Guantanamo candidates. Their list of felonies is long and federal. Who knows who they’ve let into the country?”