Borderland

by Peter Eichstaedt

  Despite his newfound pleasures, he was still angry. Angry that his father had kept him away from this thrill for so long. Angry that his father had kept him in the shadows, putting Vincente front and center, in line to take over the family business.

  But no more. “I am Carlos Borrego, and my time has come,” he said aloud in the office to no one but himself. Carlos pulled his silver bullet-shaped cocaine vial out of his pocket, twisted it a turn, held it to his nose, and snorted. He felt the soft, white powder work its magic, numbing his nose, racing through his brain. He held the vial to the other nostril and inhaled deeply. Yes. Yes. That’s better. Carlos turned to the door, twisted the handle, and stepped outside his office. It was time to try out the new weaponry.

  Chapter 34

  Colonia Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico

  Serna’s warning dominated Dawson’s thoughts as he drove south into Mexico. Back off. The words burned in his ears. What am I supposed to back off from? The investigation? He was going to find his father’s killers, despite Serna.

  The pieces of the puzzle were there. The revolving $20 million in bank credit. The port of entry. The convoluted way that Rancho la Peña came to be. His father’s death. The El Guapo assassination. Frank Perkins and Hosteen Jim shot to death. Now Serna wanted him to get lost—not a request, but a threat. No way. Serna should have known better. It only made Dawson more determined.

  He drove slowly down the paved streets lined with leafy trees in Colonia Juárez, a well-kept Mormon community in northern Mexico, two hundred miles southwest of El Paso and Juárez. The drive had taken nearly four hours, and his legs were stiff as he pulled up to a large, white temple rising into an azure sky. He got out, stretched his aching legs, and sucked in the hot and roiling air. Shielding his eyes, he gazed at the bright white spire and saw that his father had duplicated this temple at Rancho la Peña.

  He turned to the dark, rugged mountains to the west, the fabled Sierra Madres that rose from the windswept eastern plains of sand and mesquite. During the Mexican Revolution, these forbidding mountains and deep ravines had hidden Pancho Villa and his troops after their infamous raid on Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916.

  Dawson had done his homework. When the Mormons had first arrived in Utah, having found their promised land on the shores of the Great Salt Lake with Brigham Young in 1847, it was still part of the Mexico’s vast northern territory of Alta California. Just a year later, Utah became the Utah Territory and part of the U.S. Rather than being a blessing, it brought trouble. Women’s rights activists agitated against Mormon polygamy, enough so that Congress passed laws against polygamy. As punishment, thousands of Mormons lost their right to vote and sometimes their property.

  Many Mormons reloaded their wagons and drove their teams of oxen south across the border and into northern Mexico, where they continued living as they chose, duplicating their clean-swept towns and productive fields and orchards. For decades, life went well—until the Mexican Revolution. Mormons were viewed like the wealthy Mexican landowners whom populist leaders like Villa drove out, burning their farms and stores.

  Dawson climbed back into his car, glanced at his handwritten directions, and continued through the town. He crossed a bridge over a small river, then drove out a country road, stopping at a gate in a barbed wire fence. A sign read: Madsen Farms. Apple and peach orchards stretched into the distance. Behind him, fields were full of leafy, green chili plants, recently harvested. For a moment, he forgot that he was in Mexico. It looked like the tidy, prosperous farms of Utah, not the crusty farms and ranches of northern Mexico.

  He followed a long graveled drive to a white, two-story farmhouse with a wide front porch. A man in his mid-sixties, with a slight stoop, white hair, and a leathery face smiled and waved. Dawson stopped at the side of the porch, climbed out, and scaled the steps. The man grabbed his hand with the gnarled fingers of a lifelong farmer and shook it vigorously as he introduced himself as Brigham Madsen.

  Brigham bore a strong resemblance to his cousin Micah, Dawson thought, as he was ushered through a tidy living room filled with what he suspected were valuable antique pieces of furniture. In the large kitchen, he was greeted by a stout woman wearing a white cotton blouse and light blue apron, who introduced herself as Dorothy. She had a warm smile, kindly blue eyes, and tanned cheeks. Tucking a lock of loose white hair under her blue paisley scarf, she asked Dawson if he would like iced tea.

  “Absolutely,” he said with a smile.

  She gurgled amber tea into tall glasses filled with ice cubes and set the metal pitcher on the table with a clunk, near where Brigham had spread a few black-and-white photos. Brigham motioned for Dawson to sit.

  “I decided to get out these photos of the family since you said you were interested in Micah’s ties to this community,” Brigham said.

  “You must be proud that someone like Micah has a chance of being the next U.S. president.”

  Brigham nodded. “Well, yes. We’re proud. It’s quite a shock, though.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “After all that the Mormons have suffered at the hands of the U.S. government? And now a Mormon could be president? God works in strange ways.”

  “Brigham, we all know that Micah has been in politics his entire career,” Dorothy said. “It’s not a shock, really. It’s a blessing.”

  “But he rose from such humble beginnings,” Brigham said. “We—”

  “We always knew Micah would make something of himself,” Dorothy said.

  “Why is that?” Dawson asked.

  “Well, he—”

  “Even when he was just a youngster, he had a special glimmer in his eye,” Dorothy interjected. “You knew that he had the drive to be someone.”

  Brigham sighed and surveyed the photos like a child who had taken his favorite toys out of the box. He picked one up and offered it to Dawson. “This is the only photo I have from when we were kids. It must have been taken fifty years ago.”

  The photo showed two sandy-haired boys, arms around each other shoulders, grinning in the bright sun. “Have you seen your cousin Micah since?”

  “I’m getting to that.” Brigham pushed another photo toward Dawson. “Now this is his father, Roger, who was born here, and my father, William, who is Micah’s uncle.”

  “It was about 1915 when Micah’s grandfather took the family back to the United States. They initially settled in the Mesilla Valley, New Mexico. A lot of Mormons had to leave Mexico then. Most never came back.”

  “You’ve had no direct contact with Micah for years?”

  Brigham shook his head. “Just a few visits when he was young.”

  Dawson tapped his pen on his notebook for a moment.

  “You said you’re Sam Dawson’s boy?” Brigham asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I was sorry to hear what happened. He was good to us. Ensured we had warehouse space at Rancho la Peña.”

  Brigham pulled another photo from the back of the book. “This is your father here. He came to visit us a number of times.”

  Dawson picked up the photo and winced, suppressing a sudden sense of loss. His father looked happy. Having removed his white cowboy hat, Sam squinted in the sun as he stood beside Brigham. He realized how little he knew about his father’s life. “That’s a nice photo of my father. When did you take it?”

  Brigham shrugged. “About ten years ago. You can keep it if you want.”

  Dawson smiled and nodded. “Thanks,” he said, slipping the photo into his shirt pocket. He leveled his gaze at Brigham again. “How do you get your produce to the U.S.?”

  “Like everyone. Trucks.”

  “Whose trucks?”

  “The Mexicans. They control the trucking industry. We contract with them. We sell the produce and load up the trucks. That’s the last we see of it.”

  “What trucking company?”

  “It’s owned by the Borrego family.”

  “The Borrego cartel?”

  “The Borrego family has a lo
t of businesses. Trucking is one. Your father helped with the contracts with the Borrego trucking company.”

  “Once the trucks are loaded, do they stop along the way?”

  “We don’t know,” Brigham said. “They could stop ten times.”

  “What we do know is that the Borrego family doesn’t take no for an answer,” Dorothy said.

  “What do you mean?” Dawson asked.

  “A couple of families around here didn’t want to work with Borrego,” Brigham said. “They made trucking deals with other haulers in Chihuahua. But the trucks were destroyed.”

  “Borrego eliminated the competition?” Dawson said.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” Dorothy said. “They kidnapped a Mormon family just down the road and burned their house to the ground. They took the family into the mountains and demanded a ransom. The whole community pitched in. It wasn’t cheap.”

  “Old man Hinkle died not long after,” Brigham said.

  “Who?” Dawson asked.

  “Oren Hinkle. He was one of the local church elders,” Dorothy said. “He and his family were held hostage for about a month. It was hard on him. Did him in.”

  Jesus. Silence hung in the air.

  “Which way you going back?” Brigham asked.

  “Main roads. Same way I came.”

  “Watch yourself,” Dorothy said.

  Dawson looked at her for a moment, then at Brigham.

  “The police are in on it,” Brigham said. “They’re enforcers for the Borrego cartel.”

  Shit. Dawson tapped his pen on his notebook, then gazed at them both again. “Why do you stay?”

  Dorothy looked at Brigham, then at Dawson. “This is our home. Four generations. Where would we go?”

  Dawson nodded and closed his notebook. “Thanks. This has been very helpful.”

  “No problem,” Brigham said. Dorothy smiled and nodded.

  Chapter 35

  Nuevo Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico

  Dawson drove north out of Colonia Juárez and into a long stretch of open highway through empty land. It was clear that Rancho la Peña was a transit point. His father had helped get the produce across the border and into his warehouses. Not just fruits and vegetables, but weed, cocaine, heroin, and meth. Guns and cash were going south. Did Sam know? Or was he being used? Regardless, his father had been in the middle of it. Shit. Dawson pounded the steering wheel.

  Anita had been right. She’d warned that he might not like what he found. She knows more than she’s saying. It didn’t matter now.

  Had Sam foreseen how the development would evolve? It would have taken an enormous amount of planning and foresight to set the whole thing up, far more than Sam was capable of. Even if Sam had been blind to the eventual realities, the creation of a residential and commercial land development project on the border presented an unmatched opportunity for the right people. Dawson suspected that the drug dealing inevitably evolved to what it was now.

  More importantly, he was pretty sure Sam was not a drug dealer. But he could have been. Easily. Especially back in Florida, when tons of cocaine rocketed across the Caribbean in bullet boats powered by banks of 250-horsepower outboard motors. It was not the way Sam’s mind worked. Sam disliked drugs and disliked the people who sold them and used them. feared them because they played for keeps. No screwing around. No mistakes. No accidents. Nothing gets lost or taken. Every debt is paid, one way or another.

  Sam liked to work the edges, play the odds, work the gray areas under the cover of legitimacy. Which brought Dawson back to Rancho la Peña. Sam had been in the middle of it all. How could he not know? How could he not have been involved?

  Thirty minutes on the road and already Dawson was coming again into Nuevo Casas Grandes, which he had passed through on his way south. It was a scruffy Mexican town compared to the neat and tidy Mormon community he’d just left. Once through this town, he’d be back on Highway 10 headed north, where he’d connect with Highway 2 and make the long run back into Juárez and back to Rancho la Peña. Another four long hours. His backside already ached. His head hurt.

  At the edge of town, he passed cinder-block buildings painted bright colors and surrounded by broken-down fences. Dawson heard the wail of sirens and looked into his rearview mirror. A cluster of Mexican police vehicles, sirens screaming and lights flashing, barreled toward him. He pulled to the side of the road to let them pass. But the police vehicles screeched to a halt on the pavement, one sliding to a stop in front of him. Another one pulled beside, and a third one behind. Men outfitted in SWAT gear surrounded his car amid shouts, weapons trained on him.

  Dawson’s heart pounded, his eyes darting from side to side, looking for escape. He was trapped. What the hell? One of the policemen jerked his car door open and another grabbed him by his shirt, yanked him out, and threw him to the dirt. He was quickly pulled to his feet and slammed against the car. A blinding light of pain exploded in his head. Dawson’s legs buckled and he fell to his knees, only to be hoisted again. Handcuffs snapped on his wrists. He was shoved into the back seat of a police car.

  He groaned and slumped against the back seat, his head thumping in pain, sweat oozing from every pore. He felt the warm trickle of blood drip down the side of his neck. Fuck. The bastards had split his head open. He straightened and leaned forward, clenching his teeth and scrunching his eyes tightly, sweat stinging his eyes, in a futile effort to fight the pain permeating his skull.

  “Que pasa? What is going on?” Dawson croaked in Spanish.

  No response.

  “Please,” he begged. “Tell me what is going on. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Callaté. Shut up,” one of the cops barked, elbowing him in the side of the head, his skull exploding again in pain.

  He groaned and slumped back against the seat, tossed from side to side as the vehicle swerved through town. The vehicle slid to a stop at a large metal gate that clunked then slowly rolled open. The vehicle entered what he guessed it was the back of the police station. I’m fucked. Now no one would know what had happened to him. His car had been left by the side of the road. He figured it would be stripped clean when and if he ever saw it again. To hell with the car.

  Police jumped out of the vehicle, dragged Dawson from the back seat, and shoved him forward. He stumbled, with two black-clad policemen holding him by his arms, dragging him up the steps and down a dimly lighted hallway to an office, where he was shoved onto a metal folding chair.

  His hands cuffed behind him, Dawson bent forward and groaned. The throbbing pain extended down his shoulders and along his spine to the backs of his legs. He saw the black, shiny boots of the three men who stood nearby. Shit. You’re in trouble here. Get a grip.

  They left him alone. The blood trickling down his neck slowed, and he could feel it beginning to coagulate and crust on his skin. After what seemed like an eternity, the interrogation room door opened behind him. Dawson saw polished brown loafers and neat gray trousers step beside him. He slowly straightened up.

  The man standing over him looked to be in his fifties. A face of worn leather, creased with cynicism and belligerence; a thick mustache topped full lips and matched his head of salt-and-pepper hair. The man sat partially on the metal desk, folded his hands on his thigh, and introduced himself as Captain Maximiliano Lopez, of Nuevo Casas Grandes Police.

  “Mucho fucking gusto,” Dawson said.

  “I suppose you are wondering why you have been brought here, Mister…. What is your name?”

  “Dawson. Kyle Dawson.”

  Lopez plopped Dawson’s briefcase on the table, extracted his laptop, and set it aside. He turned the briefcase upside down and let the contents clatter onto the table top. Lopez sorted through the clutter, then opened each of the bag’s zippered pockets, fishing through them with his fingers. From one he extracted Dawson’s passport, which he opened and began to flip through the pages. Finished, he put the passport aside.

  “Would you mind telling me what you
are doing in this country?”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong. You have no reason to hold me.”

  Lopez opened the passport again to glance at it. “Señor Dawson. You didn’t answer my question.” Lopez frowned, as if he’d eaten something distasteful. He flicked a finger to one of the men. Dawson’s thumping head exploded in white pain again and he toppled onto the floor as a sharp jolt shot up his neck from his shoulder. He felt himself lifted into the chair again. He flopped forward onto his thighs with a groan.

  “I can keep you as long as I want to, you know. So, let me ask you again. What were you doing in this country?”

  Dawson twisted his head upward. “I…I’m a journalist. Check my credentials. I’m with the Washington Herald.”

  “Credentials? Where are they?” Lopez asked.

  “My wallet.”

  Lopez flicked a finger to the men. Dawson’s wallet was pulled from the back pocket of his jeans and handed to Lopez. Dawson was pushed back into the chair as Lopez extracted his driver’s license and credit cards. Dawson watched as he sorted through the cards and came up with the press pass. Lopez looked at it, flipped it over, then flicked it onto the table. “What were you doing in Colonia Juárez?”

  Dawson took a deep breath and tried to straighten up. “I have a fondness for the fruits and vegetables of Mexico.”

  “Interesting,” Lopez said, his eyes flashing with anger. “But I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true,” Dawson said. “Ask my mother.”

  Lopez waved a finger to one of the officers, who slapped Dawson’s head again, sending a jolting pain careening inside his skull and knocking him to the floor again. He was hoisted to his feet and held as he struggled to stand. But his knees would not hold. A fist slammed into his stomach, sinking deeply. He doubled over, nausea gripping his body. He coughed and gagged and was thrown back onto the chair.