Hawke's Fury

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  The SUVs headlights illuminated the empty interior at the same time lights on top of the vehicle came alive, flashing in the darkness. After a moment, doors opened and two Border Patrol agents cautiously bracketed the car as they approached. One stayed on the highway. The other’s footsteps crunched on the rough shoulder.

  Incencio rose from under the hood to find what he expected. He directed the flashlight beam toward the officer’s waist to avoid shining it directly into his face. “Good to see you guys.” He spoke perfect English.

  The Hispanic Border Patrol agent walking on the highway turned on his flashlight and glanced inside the car. Finding it empty, he directed the beam onto Incencio, lighting the gangster’s black slacks and white T-shirt covered with a light sport coat, perfectly appropriate for the weather.

  The agent in the familiar green uniform stopped when he reached the front tire and spoke in accented English. “Good evening, sir. Car troubles?”

  Incencio couldn’t see the other agent on the other side of the raised hood, but the man’s flashlight briefly skipped over the drift of tumbleweeds before coming back to the front of the car. Incencio’s beam rose to the first man’s chest and flickered across Agent Trevio’s nametag. “It just quit.”

  “Would you please lower your flashlight?”

  “Sure.” He directed the light back onto the exposed engine. “You’d think a car that cost this much wouldn’t just die for no reason.”

  The other officer Incencio figured to be Agent Nelson faced the car, peering at the technology under the hood. He whistled at the engine packed under the hood. “Man, what a car, but they’re not made to work on, are they?”

  “No.” Incencio spread his hands. “All I can do is put gas in the tank.” He aimed the beam at the engine. “It took me half an hour to find where to put the washer fluid when I first bought it. I almost added it to the oil.”

  “You live around here?” Agent Trevino’s question wasn’t a surprise.

  “No. El Paso.”

  “Where you headed?” The question came from Nelson, who now had his back to the blackness of the fence and pasture beyond. His flashlight beam swept across the tangle of hoses, wires, and parts.

  “Midland.”

  The agents alternated questions. It was Trevino’s turn. “Taking the scenic route?”

  “You can say that. I was down in Alpine for a couple of days.”

  “Business?”

  “Yes.”

  “I love that town. Where’d you eat?”

  Incencio’s eyes widened slightly. He hadn’t expected such a specific question.

  Agent Nelson noticed. His demeanor changed. He rested his hand on the butt of the Glock on his hip.

  Suddenly charged with tension, both agents had their attention on Incencio when a shadow materialized from the darkness. Sensing the sudden presence, Nelson whirled to face the threat. Before he could draw the weapon on his belt, the razor-sharp edge of a twelve-inch machete blade sank into the side of the border agent’s bare neck, biting deep enough to nearly sever the man’s spine.

  At the same time, Incencio lurched forward and wrapped Agent Trevino in a bear hug, pinning both arms against his body and preventing the agent from drawing his weapon. They went over like toppled trees. Flashlights skittered across the hard pavement and onto the gravel shoulder, splashing beams of spinning yellow light across the pavement.

  The flashing lights on the agent’s SUV added to the surreal, horrifying sight of a bloody geyser spurting into the air as Geronimo yanked the blade free of Nelson’s neck and struck again. The second swing was unnecessary. Nelson’s forehead slammed the edge of the raised hood and the dead agent fell hard.

  Geronimo rounded the car and knelt over the fighting men. Trevino shrieked in terror, then pain when the sicario grabbed a fist-sized rock and slammed it into the agent’s head and face over and over.

  The addled man quit fighting and held up one weak hand to ward off the blows. “Don’t. Please don’t hit me anymore.”

  Breathing hard, the cartel members gained their feet to stand over Trevino’s writhing body. Incencio glanced up and down the dark highway. Satisfied no one was coming, he retrieved his flashlight and kicked the moaning agent in the side. “Can you hear me?” His strong Spanish accent was back. He kicked him again in the same place, harder.

  Agent Trevino grunted at the pain. Squinting, one trembling hand shaded his eyes from the intense beam. Blood flowed from half a dozen deep facial and head wounds and his answer was liquid from the river of blood running down from the back of his throat from a badly broken nose. “Yes.”

  “Your partner is dead. Repeat that.”

  “What?”

  “Repeat what I just said.”

  “Don’t kill me.”

  “I won’t. What did I just tell you to say?”

  “That my partner’s dead.”

  “That’s right. Nelson is dead. But we wanted you to live. Do you know why?”

  Trevino shook his head. Giving up on keeping the light out of his face, he wiped at the eye that wasn’t swollen shut. “No.”

  “Because he failed us. That is why he’s dead and you now work for us.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you do. Listen to me.”

  Standing nearby and still holding the fist-size rock, Geronimo checked the highway for the glow of headlights. “We need to hurry.”

  “I know.” Incencio nudged Officer Trevino with the toe of his shoe. “Do you still understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. You hold the life of your entire family in your hands at this moment. We know where you live, your wife’s name, the names of your children and where they go to school. We know your relatives, and their names, and where they live. We know if you have a dog, and where you buy your groceries. Comprende?”

  “Yes.”

  “Repeat what I said.”

  “You know everything about me and my family.”

  “Bueno! Come se dice destilado?”

  “Distilled?”

  “Sí. You have distilled everything I told you, so you will remember everything about this night. We owned Frank Nelson, and knew everything about him, also. He did not give us the information we needed to move some of our product through here and has paid the price. He knew the cost, just as you do. His family will soon join him, because we told him the same thing you just heard. Only he didn’t listen.

  “We own you now. When they find you here, you will tell them that you don’t remember what happened tonight. You don’t know how your compadre died. It is all a complete blank. You will not provide the policia with any information at all. When they let you get back to work, you will be one of us. If you do that, you and your familia will live.”

  “Amigo.” Geronimo’s voice was full of concern. “Faster, before someone comes.”

  Blinded by the light, and the blood in his eyes, Agent Trevino couldn’t see the men standing over him. He closed his eyes and laid back.

  “You will be contacted again soon by one of us.” Incencio wasn’t finished. “That is when you get instructions on the cars and trucks you will not stop. They may have product or people inside them. If you do pull them over by mistake, you will let them go. Every time. If you do not, we will kill your entire family and turn them over to los sanguinarios. We will skin their bodies and use their faces for the dia de los muertos, the Day of the Dead. Comprende?”

  Even through his pain and terror, Trevino understood the term for the “blood thirsty ones,” or “blood-drinkers,” low ranking members of the cartels who butchered their victims.

  “Please. Don’t hurt my family.”

  “Do not beg. They will not see the sanguinarios if you do what I tell you.”

  Trevino swallowed blood draining down the back of his throat and gagged. “I won’t.”

  “Bueno. And look on the bright side, we are going to pay you also. A token of our friendship. The money will help you keep everything quiet. You are no
w a rich man.”

  Using a bandana from his pocket, Geronimo took Trevino’s duty weapon from his holster. He pitched it over the tumbleweeds and bobwire fence along with the radio. After he patted the agent down, he rose. “No camaras on him, or in the automovil.”

  Incencio pointed to Nelson’s body. “Him, too?”

  “Sí.”

  Incencio flashed a dazzling smile, one that attracted the ladies wherever he went. “Then we are done here. Trevino, you stay where you are until someone finds you. Escucha, listen to me, you do not remember what happened this night.”

  Trevino nodded. “I’m still listening.”

  “Say it.”

  “I don’t remember what happened.”

  “Bueno. That is what you will tell everyone.”

  Trevino’s arm dropped as the Devil Woman’s sicarios returned to the car, slammed the doors, and steered around the agent’s body. The flickering emergency lights shrank into the distance as Incencio drove exactly two miles over the speed limit to look as normal as possible.

  In the passenger seat, Geronimo lit a cigarette. “Do we take care of the other agent’s family tonight?”

  “Yes. I sent Esteban. He is taking three hombres with him who want to prove themselves to be sicarios.”

  “Esteban is muy malo.” Geronimo smoked the cigarette down to the filter, then flicked it out the window. “If that pendejo back there talks, I want to do his wife. I have seen her in photographs. She is one of the most beautiful anglos I have ever seen.”

  Incencio grunted. “Sure. I do not care, but I think you will wait a long time. This one will not fail us, I think. He is of our blood. He understands and believes.”

  Chapter 3

  It was dark, and I was grilling steaks under our patio lights. Country music came through the screen door, along with the sounds of my wife Kelly rattling dishes. The comfortable smells of supper cooking on the stove reminded me of when I was a kid at my grandparents’ house.

  I wasn’t really hungry, and my nerves were still jangling like old-style telephone ringers, but Kelly had already invited Perry Hale and Yolanda over for dinner that night. It was probably good to take my mind off what had happened earlier that day.

  Approved by the governor, although in a closed room with the admonishment that we were never to disclose the conversation in public, they were military veterans who I called my Shadow Response Team, or SRT. We’d worked and trained together over the past several months, and they were both tough as nails.

  They aren’t sworn officers of the law, even though they carry badges authorized by the governor. They are my backup and operate on the dark edge of right and wrong, which means under my direction they occasionally step over the line, like when they shoot bad guys as dead as a T-Rex and simply walk away. The three of us are throwbacks to the Rangers of old, those who were assigned a job and handled it without politics or outside interference.

  We’d grown closer to the couple than I would have imagined, and our high school twins loved having them over. We all knew Mary had a crush on Perry Hale by the way she acted when he was around, waiting on him hand and foot. It was funny to me, and Kelly called it sweet, but kinda pitiful. On the other hand, I watched how Jerry acted when Yolanda showed up. He laughed loud, and a lot, whenever she was talking.

  Teenagers.

  I didn’t hear them come in, but Yolanda opened the back door and waved from the porch. In jeans, untucked fitted shirt and ball cap, she looked not much older than Mary. “Hey buddy!”

  “Howdy gal. Steaks’ll be ready in a little bit.”

  “Don’t burn ’em up.”

  “Who’s milking this duck?”

  She laughed and disappeared back inside at the same time Perry Hale came through the back door. He thumped a bottle of Bombay Sapphire on the picnic table and began mixing a gin and tonic. “Thought you might be running low.”

  “Appreciate the thought.”

  “Nice shirt by the way.”

  I was casual, wearing a yellow Aloha shirt Mary gave me for my birthday. She said that I needed to relax every now and then, and that I didn’t need to always look like a Ranger. I was growing to like the blousy, palm frond-covered shirts that hid my .45 when I wasn’t working. “Thanks. They’re comfortable.”

  “That’s what my old aunts said about those ugly house dresses they wore when I was a kid.”

  “This isn’t a house dress. It’s a Hawaiian shirt, and Mary gave it to me. You can take it up with her.”

  “Nope. I’m afraid of teenage girls.”

  “You’re smarter’n you look. How do y’all like your steaks?”

  “Just the hot side of mooing.”

  I sprinkled the T-bones with salt and pepper.

  Putting one of the drinks beside me, he opened a bottle of cabernet and poured two glasses. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I leveled the coals while he was inside delivering the drinks to the girls. He was back out by the time I forked the steaks onto the grill.

  He settled into a lawn chair and tilted back his gimme cap. “Hey, I meant to tell you. Yolanda’s cousin Suzette is house-sitting in that new addition just south of town. You know, the old Rogers Ranch.”

  “Vista Ridge.”

  “Yeah, have you been in there?”

  “Not yet.” A drop of fat hit the coals with a smoky sizzle.

  “They broke it up in different size lots. Some are a half acre. I think one’s something like twenty acres. They’re calling it an innovative community approach.”

  “You guys thinking of buying a house?”

  “Nope. Not the point. Yoli and I went out there to have drinks the other evening and watch the sun go down.”

  “She’ll kick your butt if she hears you calling her that.”

  “I’m not that afraid of her. Anyway, the house is on top of a little ridge, and they have a helluva wraparound porch on that place. You can see Ballard from there. I didn’t realize what kind of bowl it sits in. We all know there’re mountains around us, but it sure looks different from so high up. Anyway, about sundown I heard something in a deep draw behind the house. Suzette calls it a valley, but anyway, it’s a pretty good-sized cut down the east side of the house. I looked over and saw movement at the bottom and thought it was javelinas, but I’ll be damned if wasn’t people.”

  “Hikers?”

  “Illegals, I think. Yoli’s cousin says she’s seen quite a few people trailing down through there, on their way down to the highway. She says vans are showing up at that little picnic area on Highway 90, where 67 cuts in.”

  “Their pick-up point. Then they’re taking them to a drop house after that.”

  “I imagine.”

  “I’ll tell Ethan and he can holler at the Border P.”

  “Already did. They called Border Patrol, but the thing is, there’s a lot of illegals moving through here these days.”

  “They’re tightening the border downriver. That’s forcing the illegals to find different routes. The National Park Service is arresting more and more coming through Big Bend. They’re the lucky ones. They’re finding a lot of bodies in the park, and on some of the ranches down around Chalk Canyon, a few miles west of Langry. It’s not as rugged as the park, but they are seeing an increase of illegals and smugglers coming across.”

  The Big Bend sector is the largest sector of the U.S. southern border and is composed of seventy-seven Texas counties and all of Oklahoma. The operational area is a mind-boggling 165,154 square miles. The Sector is responsible for patrolling 510 miles of river front along the Rio Grande

  The Big Bend National Park is 1,252 square miles. It includes the Sierra Blanca sector that has one particular highway checkpoint that’s notorious for large drug busts. Unfortunately, the sector where we live has the smallest staff of Border Patrol agents in all of the nine national sectors that stretch all the way to California.

  “It’s everywhere.” I didn’t like the idea of illegals running the canyons and arroyos
so close to my house. I didn’t want to go too far down that rabbit hole after what had happened, so I changed the subject. “We need to go out and do some target practice. I need to take the kids.”

  “That sounds great. We’re getting tired of just going to the range, let’s go out to the ranch. I got this new rifle and need to sight it in. A friend gave me a bolt action 7mm mag that I fell in love with.”

  “Dang. That thing’ll kill anything on the North American continent.”

  “Yep, and it doesn’t scare people as much when they see it. I know a lot of snipers who have these tricked-out rifles, but I still like the simple things.”

  “I didn’t know you were that much of a long-distance guy.”

  He dead-eyed me. “I wasn’t, until we tangled with that freak out in East Texas here while back.” Perry Hale looked at his boots as if he’d scuffed the toe. “Fightin’ that guy made me decide that I’d rather reach out and touch them from a distance, if I can.”

  “Bothers you, huh?”

  “Man, he came out of nowhere.” He rubbed his chest where a .38 caliber bullet had impacted his tactical vest that night. “I even have nightmares about that face of his. How do you handle it?”

  I fended the question, my thoughts immediately back to the slaughter on the movie set earlier that day. I took a long swallow of icy Bombay to settle my stomach. Killing so many men in such a short period of time was taking its toll on me. For the past few months, it felt like every time I turned around, someone was shooting at me, and I was putting people in the ground. “Does Yolanda have the same issues?”

  “No. She’s hardcore, man.”

  I knew better, but wasn’t going to get into a psychological discussion with him. I drained the glass and poked at the steaks with a pair of long tongs.

  He took the opportunity to press the question again. “How are you handling it?”

  “Not well.” I squinted into the darkness, half expecting to see someone slip past.

  Chapter 4

  Frank Nelson, the sixty-year-old murdered Border Patrol agent, didn’t have much family. Widowed ten years earlier, he had only one estranged daughter who lived in Hawaii with her husband and their two kids.