Hell To Pay

by Andrik Rovson

  Her small hand drew his eye and he picked her up, then bore her out, a tiny thing, lanky and lean, probably eight or nine, with two long braided pig tails that slapped at his shirt as he hurried to the truck.

  Helen swung the door open and took her in her lap, pulling her close, brushing her stray hair back to see if she could open her eyes. He reached past his wife for the big half gallon canvas canteen they kept filled and cooling in the air behind their heads, ready to use in situations like this. Watching her tend the girl in her lap, he saw some headlights far down the road and got inside, pulling off and clicking on the emergency blinkers, hoping the person wasn't lit up, chugging a six pack after work for the long drive home, celebrating payday. It was almost a tradition on Friday night if you didn't have a kid playing football for the local high school – beer or football or both.

  "What you think, she okay? She looks messed up," all said while he put the truck in gear and turned around after the other vehicle had passed, heading back to town at high speed. The closest medical facilities were at the border stop only a few miles away, put there to catch kids and adults who tried to bounce the border like she had, if she was illegal. Right now it didn't matter, her life was his priority. He felt driven to hurry by a funny feeling someone had been watching him the whole time he'd stopped to investigate then recover the young Hispanic girl.

  "Where you taking me?" she asked in unaccented English, clearly not a Mexican or Latino from south of the border, "where's my mom?"

  She didn't know if the older couple were accomplices or saviors, but the killer was in the direction they were taking her, back toward their house with her dead parents. Her hard hit on the rock made it difficult to remember much that had happened, only that they were dead at the hands of a cruel, mean man who'd savagely cut off her clothes then stood looking at her, naked on the floor. All that hell was in the direction they were going, making her want to go anywhere but there.

  "We're going back to town, to get you to a doctor," his wife told her, cooing like she was their child, family, making her settle a bit. Maybe she was from around here, one of those housing projects that had popped up halfway to Alpine in the middle of Burroughs ranch, lining the long road up the mesa, 'view' properties, cut out of the side of the mountain. A friend had told him they were all fated to slide down to the bottom in a few years, when they had a rainy period, weeks of constant showers, a rarity but regular enough you had to plan around them, stay away from the dry arroyos that could fill up in a heavy downpour then spill out to wash anything within a few hundred yards down the shallow draw, smashed by the uprooted trees and brush that had grown up since the last flood – a raging river in the middle of a bone dry desert.

  “No!” she shrieked, “they're waiting for us, turn around, we have to go to my uncle's.”

  He was going to ask her who that was, already slowing as he reached the rise and saw the well lit border checkpoint, a large steel arched roof that made an empty cathedral, with a small toll booth sized building underneath it. Three Border Patrol SUV's, white and green, were parked in a line nearby, with a few officers standing by the road that had a line of orange cones that cut across the northbound lane to divert people to the small shack for a little talk about where they'd come from and where they were going.

  “Calm her down, we'll see what her trouble is when we get to the checkpoint,” his stomach flip flopped and that feeling someone was out there came back, prickling the hairs on the back of his head, making him shift in his seat to feel the comforting bulk of his .357, nestled behind his right hip, half concealed and easier to draw than wearing it on his side.

  “Please, don't go there, they'll kill you, get away!” she screamed loud enough their open windows let the sound travel the remaining hundred yards to the checkpoint, alerting the officers who stopped talking to each other and turned to face them. One stepped over and picked up an AR-15 and held it at port arms, just to be sure. People had tried to run past them before, cars full of civilians the cartel assholes would use as human shields, sometimes blazing at the helpless officers, unable to shoot back indiscriminately or abandon their post. Loud noises could mean something bad was coming. You couldn't be too alert this close to the border, where drugs and people streamed by constantly, trying to find a new life or a huge profit inside the U.S. Borders.

  “Put your hand on her mouth for God's sake and let's get this sorted out without holy hell and damnation,” Jonah released his cantankerous old man, normally held in check. Yelling and chaos always set him off, something he couldn't take, the worst situations were heralded by chaos and loud, penetrating noises, rattling him inside, bringing back the dark things that were never far from the surface. That's why they had to live here, where it was always quiet.

  “I'm trying, settle down girl, stop your fussin',” she hugged the small struggling child tight, to keep her from grabbing the steering wheel she'd jumped at when the older woman's large strong hand had covered her mouth. It made her feel bad, but she knew she could let go in a few seconds when they made the covered checkpoint and got out to sort things with Bill and Scott, the two officers she recognized as they slowed down, approaching the brightly lit space. Jonah veered off, going to the far side of the small guard shack, to the outer lane, so other people who were going through wouldn't be delayed as they figured out what was this young girl's problem.

  “Let me do the talking, just hold on to her if you can,” his wife gave him one of those stares that made him shudder, knowing his suggestion she might not be up to it would piss her off instead of keeping her alert to the unknown child's shenanigans.

  “Bowie,” Bill Bamburger called out a greeting of recognition as, smiling as he waved him in, confirming his choice of the outer lane. The stocky, very muscular young man was a former football star who'd lucked into one of the local federal jobs, ones you couldn't lose unless you fucked the boss's daughter or smoked pot after work. Not tall but big so everything he wore looked too small for him, his uniform blouse stretched when he moved his meaty arms, waving them to the side, telling them to slow down even more, seeing the agitation in the older man's eyes.

  “Burg, we got a problem...” and that was all he said, the flat trajectory of the sniper rifle from three hundred yards away hit Jonah Bowie just behind his ear as he leaned out the window to start talking to a young man he still remembered returning a fumble for a touchdown, winning the only state championship in this area for ten years – a local hero.

  The bullet spun and tumbled as it continued through Bowie's skull, doing to it what Oswald's rifle had done to Kennedy's head many years before in Dallas, creating a short, fast pressure wave in the gooey jello of his brain tissue that made the backside of his head blow out spreading the bloody mass out onto the side view mirror and the driver's side of the wind shield, making a red splash that made his wife start to faint as Bill reacted for a single heart beat then stepped back – just one step. But he never felt the pavement meet the bottom of his new boot as his head exploded next, spraying his skull fragments, bloody, messy shrapnel, into the face of his partner and senior patrolman, Scott Peters.

  The spinning hell of red material included chunks of bone, one took out Scott's eye, another opened up his cheek as he'd started to lift his rifle to start scanning down the road. He'd sensed something bad about the bright yellow pickup that had raced south thirty minutes ago then reappeared, trailing Bowie. It had returned, then stopped short, quickly turning off to park at the top of the small rise over three hundred yards south of the check point's lonely, defenseless redoubt.

  Scott staggered, blinking one eye that was awash in blood and brain tissue, trying to aim his rifle. The searing spike of his punctured eye on the other side dazed him enough to make him stumble over Bill's dead body and fall flat on his face, making the rifle in his hands fire off. He'd flicked the safety off as he curled his finger around the trigger, ready to shoot. Reacting to his fall, he'd unintentionally released a round that penetrated the gas tank
of the pickup next to him. A clear pool of gasoline dribbled out, rapidly spreading under the cab seconds later. He rose up off the ground and took the third sniper shot through his good eye and fell down again, making a 'X' – laying across his partner's body, both dead and still.

  The explosions from the sniper rifle boomed across the desert followed by the last report, echoing off the nearby mesa to wash over the three dead men, mixing with the eerie shrieks of both females, very young and very old, in the pickup cab, almost identically high pitched, different only because of their wide separation in age.

  The third officer was the control point commander Lieutenant Anna Alcazar, not that her higher rank meant anything more than she had responsibility for anything that happened in this desolate station. For this burden she was paid a little more money than her two fellow officers every two weeks. She had never been the type to swagger or flaunt her power over the two men. She ran the station's night shift as a three person team over which she had final say if they disagreed, which was rare with her style of leadership.

  “What the hell?” she shouted, amped up by the screeching women. Watching everything unfold from the window of the guard shack, she'd bailed out of her seat, dropping down in the small office to quiet them down after the first rifle report reached her guard shack window, not able to see what it had done to Jonah. She kept low, yelling at Bill to take cover when his head blew up like Bowie's had only a few seconds before. Transfixed, she'd witnessed the tragedy unfold for her fellow officer, shocked by the ungodly wave of bone and blood that blew out the back of Bill's skull. It reminded her of a fire fight in Iraq where jumbo rounds from a 'special' pickup with a heavy machine gun had sprayed across her platoon, taking out half of them in seconds before they could drop for cover or hop behind a nearby wall. The huge 20mm rounds ventilated each body they hit and making identical torrents of torn flesh, wide sprays of bloody mangled guts and muscles that projected from the back of each soldier's body, killing or horribly wounding them instantly.

  Bringing up her ingrained combat mode she called in for reinforcements over the small microphone hanging off her shoulder, telling them she was taking fire. She knew the helicopter that rotated through this area, on call for anything that required fast response, was at the far end of its orbit, a hundred and ten miles away, since it's normal surveillance pattern was as predictable as the sun rising and falling, if nothing came up to make it deviate and assist someone on the ground. As she called out over her mike the third round hit, killing her second team member, Scott.

  “Coming, but I'm over a hundred miles from you, forty minutes at least, can you hold out,” he paused then added, “I've got everyone coming your way, everybody.”

  “He's picking us off, fast too, hasn't missed in three shots from that rise South of the station. All I know is he's driving a fairly new, bright yellow pickup with big off road tires. You got to hurry, keep this channel for me, out.”

  Leaving her shack she worked around the back, opposite her approximation of the sniper's position, keeping low, so he couldn't see her. She'd faced snipers before in the dusty garbage strewn streets of the middle east, where nothing worked but people persisted, living on the bones of civilization's founders who'd seen worse, whose rulers had done unspeakable evils, starting a long tradition new generations revived with vigor. Those poorly trained Iraqi bastards with their hand me down Russian sniper rifles were never as good as this guy. The person shooting at them was able to fire then reacquire a new target, striking home with a deadly head shot without fail – all at amazing speed. She was facing a relentless reaper who'd snuffed out three lives in one long breath. He was going to kill them all.

  Forgetting the helicopter, she oriented on the wails of the terrified woman and girl in the pickup cab. Forced to sit next to Jonah's dead body, it took away their ability to think or move. Hoping he was trying to acquire them, the kind of ruthless edge every soldier sought in combat, it gave her a chance that she took, throwing herself across the wide lane painted beside the guard shack to roll to a stop in front of the pickup – its engine still idling, patiently waiting to leave. Crawling to the passenger door, the safest exit, the only exit, she worked it open, staying down. Her adrenaline ratcheted up higher smelling then seeing the spreading pool of leaking gasoline at her feet. She'd seen what a holed gas tank could do to a vehicle and the soldiers in it.

  “Get the hell out of there, NOW!” she lost all feminine moderation, yelling over the wails of the two shocked and terrified females in the pickup cab. She pulled the older woman off the seat violently, so she fell into her, then caught herself, hanging on Alcazar's stiff shirt to feel the bullet proof vest under her uniform blouse, thick and solid.

  “Stay low, down, to the front,” she spoke softly, apologetic for her screeching demand, watching the old woman crawl away on hands and knees toward the front the the truck, the safest place at the moment, ignoring her tender skin dragging over the hard concrete surface. Still stuck inside, the shrieking little girl sounded like a wounded animal. Stunned by the carnage outside the truck, the little girl kept reacting to Jonah's brains dripping down the inside of the door and his body, crumpled into the steering wheel. The worst thing she could imagine was right in front of her, exactly what she'd tried to avoid, leaving her shattered, the terrible scene invading her mind endlessly.

  Breaking cover Alcazar stood up and grabbed at the terrified young girl's small foot, who oddly fought back. Panicking, she was trying to stay in the pickup that was going to turn into a fireball when the sniper skipped a round under it, trying to seek out their legs or feet and take them down before he switched positions to pick them off from the passenger side of the truck. That was what Lt. Alcazar would do if she was trying to kill them as quickly as possible, without mercy. They were all targets and this pickup with its leaking gas tank was a ticking bomb that would kill them if they kept using it for cover.

  She reached in, forgetting to crouch, losing the cover the pickup bed gave her, grabbing at the young girl who kept kicking at her, making her stand there fighting off her bare feet covered with light blue socks that had a small red logo on the ankles. The distinctive design made a small part of Alcazar's mind try to remember what company had that unusual symbol. The bottoms of her socks were caked with dirt collected by the red/black blood she'd walked through, nearly a half hour ago. One heel had fresh blood seeping out. It all locked into her picture memory without trying, part of the adrenaline rush effect.

  Opening her mouth to yell at the girl to stop fighting her, the sniper fired at Alacazar and missed, partially. His round skirted the back of her head along the rear of Alcazar's scalp, her bushy hair saved her, breaking up her head's outline in the dark. The streaking round parted a few inches of skin like a knife had sliced over the bone, making the skin above her pony tail sag then gape wide as the rich blood supply in her scalp poured out. The impact of the glancing round gave her an instant concussion, knocking her out. She crumpled to the ground, apparently dead, like her two friends and co-workers, Bill and Scott. Helen, her maternal instincts roused, hurried back to the cab to help. In that moment she saw the last border agent fall, the stiffly formal Latino woman who'd slowly gained her trust and respect over the last year. They were all dead so it was up to her to save the little girl who refused to leave the safety of the cab.

  “Who the hell are you?” the old woman screamed at the little girl who'd crawled deeper into the cab, hiding on the floor, tucked up under the dash near Jonah's boots. She hoped to talk her out of the pickup after watching Alcazar fight to pull her out, then die for her efforts.

  The last round fired from far away did what Alcazar had guessed. Aimed low, to bounce under the pickup, trying to hit the last living officer, the female who'd dropped out of sight, it skittered across the government spec concrete. The new, smooth surface, had a higher than normal grade of finish and strength, thicker, better reinforced than the foundations of almost all the houses scattered around this now very
quiet outpost. The bullet hit the fine sand bound with the cement, making a spiraling cascade of small sparks, all very high temperature, compared to the heat in the bullet, air cooled by its journey to a few hundred degrees above the fifty seven degrees Fahrenheit of the frigid, dry desert air, not enough to fire off the gasoline that had flooded out of the tank and onto the ground under the pickup. However, the sparks made by the bullet were hundreds of degrees over the ignition threshold. One bright spear of heat stabbed the gasoline vapor that had spread out, only a few inches above the leaking pool of gasoline, igniting it first.

  The young girl looked at the old woman bent over, her hands beseeching her like she was praying to God for her redemption, poised like a statue on the concrete, a few feet away. The small child was scared and angry her warning to hide deeper in the desert, to go to her uncle's house five miles away had been ignored. They could have been saved if they'd listened instead of taking her back in the direction she'd been running from, after she'd miraculously escaped the evil man who'd borne her off into the cold desert night, the evil man who'd tracked her down to kill her like he had her parents.

  “Mary Anne Mis...” and the entire front of the pickup exploded in a yellow and red gasoline fireball, lifting the bed like a bucking horse kicking out both its hind legs. The boiling yellow explosion expanded and filled the entire fifty foot wide space under the strong metal roof of the border station that instantly buckled up. A few thick steel roofing panels flew off like long, rectangular frisbees to scatter around the bloodbath the sniper had created in less than a minute. The intense fire filled both female's lungs, searing their intricate and delicate lacework, making a black crusty layer out of the filigreed tissues filled with blood moving through their lung's fine gas exchange networks, evolved to take up oxygen and pass off carbon dioxide, ending their utility for this basic function. That searing destruction started the clock to their death by asphyxiation in a few minutes, if they didn't burn into blackened shells first. Panting but unable to breathe added to the agony generated by their deeply burned skin that sloughed off as they moved in jerks and kicks, tortured by the impossible agonies of being burned alive – immolated and suffocated at the same time.