City Without Stars

by Tim Baker

  ‘Fifteen minutes now. Two hours earlier. What does it matter? It’s too late. We’ll never catch them.’

  ‘Pilar, calm down.’ She wants to slap Juan Antonio but instead pulls away from him, furious with his patronizing attitude. She nestles against her window, remembering again what she saw earlier that morning. She fights against the sorrow and the horror welling within her. It’s not that something inside would break if she started to sob, it’s that the broken parts that are already there would rise up and rip her to pieces if she ever did lose control. Juan Antonio tells her to calm down. He has no fucking idea what that means. It feels like she’s spent her entire life trying to calm down.

  ‘Even if they drove without stopping, we’d still probably get them at the roadblock,’ Gomez says, as though explaining to a child.

  ‘What good is probably?’

  ‘Probably is the best we’ve ever had,’ Fuentes says. ‘So I’ll take it. Besides, I don’t think they’re going to Juárez.’

  Gomez gives him a look. It could be surprise. It could almost be fear. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Ciudad Juárez is way too far for the patterns. They’re much closer to home.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been telling you: the car came from the maquiladora.’

  The car hurtles forwards, as though trying to escape the tension inside. Pilar glances at the speedometer. Something rushes past outside: a flash of sunlight on the river. A memory. The coward moon, peering behind the hills like a witness behind a curtain, not daring to answer the victim’s scream for help, but unable to find the courage to tear its appalled gaze away from the crime. ‘There it is,’ Juan Antonio says, pointing to the maquiladora, looming low and ugly to the north. They comet past the main gates. Pilar looks back in confusion. ‘You’re not stopping?’

  ‘I have two cars on their way there right now.’

  ‘Two cars of what – the same police who have spent years not finding the killers?’

  Gomez grunts. ‘Pilar, enough!’ Juan Antonio says, his face creased in anger.

  The car humps across a cattle guard, vibrations protesting through the chassis with a grinding hum. Fuentes swears, the car slurring to a stop. He’s already out. Gomez strikes a match hard, lighting a cigarette between cupped fists before joining him. Pilar gets out of the car, the sudden standing making her dizzy. Three days with so little rest. She sways, the ground shifting out of focus for an instant. Fuentes has her arm. ‘Take it easy.’

  She pulls away from his touch. ‘Don’t worry about me, worry about her!’ Gomez passes him a phone, as though trying to block her out. Fuentes listens for a moment, his face flayed with annoyance. ‘When will it be available?’ He kills the call. ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Lying assholes.’

  ‘No helicopters available,’ he says to Pilar, then turns away and studies the horizon. ‘That way is too close to the border. Too big a chance of being noticed. And that road leads back to the highway.’ He points straight ahead. ‘We have to keep going.’

  53

  Fuentes

  They drive through a landscape which has slowly abraded itself with desert winds and brutal sunlight into an ochre blur. What is left is not so much a terrain as a fading stain. Juan Antonio sighs. ‘How much longer is this going to take?’

  Gomez turns in his seat, a malicious smile on his face. ‘Didn’t your gringo friends teach you that time is a different commodity on our side of the border?’

  ‘I don’t have any gringo friends.’

  ‘Really? I thought the gringos would be falling over themselves to help an agitator like you.’

  ‘Tell him to shut up,’ Pilar says to the rearview mirror. But Fuentes doesn’t hear her. He’s not even aware of the arguing all around him. He’s already seen it.

  He saw it as soon as the road started descending into an arid basin ribbed by rose-colored hills and the sun-crazed flicker of quartz: a dirt-track turnoff, leading through a low canyon. At the other end is a ranch house, hunched low in shadow as though trying to hide.

  He brakes, everyone bowing forwards in unison, like pilgrims arriving at their destination. He grabs the binoculars out of the glove compartment. The ranch house is protected by a perimeter fence. There’s a black SUV parked in front, next to a red pickup. He passes the binoculars to Gomez. ‘That’s it,’ he says, his voice on the verge of breaking from his effort to contain his emotions. He is almost overwhelmed by recognition. This is a moment he has always wanted but was never sure he’d ever get. Yet now that it has arrived, there is no time to savor or even acknowledge it. It is already passing into the next stage: swift and violent action.

  Pilar gets out of the car with the others and stares down at the eroded vista. Even if she had noticed the house, which was unlikely, she wouldn’t have thought anything of it. It is perfectly camouflaged just by being so unremarkable. She feels a reluctant respect for Fuentes, who is already on the phone. ‘Tell them not to use sirens, and stay off the radio,’ he says. ‘That goes for the ambulances too. And that’s an order.’ Fuentes opens the trunk of the car. There are three shotguns in the back: a Mossberg and two Remingtons. He loads the Mossberg, then starts filling his jacket pockets with shells. Gomez whistles when he sees the guns. ‘Where the hell did they come from?’ he asks, taking a Remington and racking it.

  ‘From people who don’t need them anymore.’ He offers the other Remington to Juan Antonio. ‘Know how to use it?’

  Juan Antonio takes a step back, staring at the shotgun as though it were being aimed at him. Pilar snatches it from Fuentes. ‘Careful!’ Gomez says, as he jumps out of her way, feigning being scared. He puts his hand out to take the gun from her. Pilar keeps hold of it. ‘Come on, what the hell do you know about guns?’

  ‘I know not to short shuck,’ she says, pumping the slide action with a single fluid movement.

  Gomez whistles. ‘Check out the Queen of the Pacific.’ He turns to Fuentes with pissed-off eyes. ‘So why are you arming civilians?’

  ‘To defend themselves. In case something happens to us.’

  ‘Please tell me we’re waiting for backup.’ In the silence that follows, Gomez can hear the wind sighing through the windows of the car; moaning a warning. ‘The cars from the maquiladora will be here in fifteen minutes, twenty tops!’

  ‘We can’t risk it.’

  ‘But we can risk getting killed?’

  Fuentes points down to the ranch house. ‘They don’t know we’re here. How long will that last? You know I believe police are involved. You think so too. We have to go in now. While we can still surprise them.’ He turns to Pilar and Juan Antonio. ‘When we get there, stay in the car. Keep down.’ He looks at Pilar as he slams the trunk shut. ‘And do not use that unless you absolutely have to.’

  They speed towards the turnoff, the deep silence inside the car one more of meditation than fear or anger. It is a constructive silence, respectful and aloof, like a prayer beside the bed of a dying stranger.

  Fuentes takes the turnoff fast, following a rutted river bed with a higher eastern bank. Gomez swears. ‘Watch it, you’re trailing dust!’

  Fuentes looks in his side mirror and slows. Pilar peers up at the high river bank on their right. Something catches her eye before disappearing. She stares back and sees it again; movement at the top of the ridge. But before she can react or even shout a warning, the turkey vulture launches itself into the air, flying with ponderous disbelief across to the other bank. Gomez watches Pilar watching it disappear, then gently pushes her barrel so that it’s pointing perfectly upwards towards the roof again. ‘Nervous?’

  She glares at him. ‘You?’

  He gives a cynical laugh. ‘I’m never nervous when I’m forced to do something crazy.’

  The car stops just before they leave the protection of the river gully. ‘You stay here with them,’ Fuentes says to Gomez. ‘As if that’s going to happen.’ Less than fifty meters away, they can see the red pickup parked outside the fence. Fuentes gets
out and creeps around to the front of his car, peering across the clearing. The other car is obscured by a strange rock formation, like a ruined cathedral stepping up into the void of the empty sky. Beyond is the house.

  Gomez turns to Pilar. ‘Stay down. And if the police arrive while you’re still here, do not let them see that fucking gun.’ He opens the door and slips out silently, stopping next to Fuentes. ‘Is it the Navigator?’

  ‘I can’t tell. It’s behind those rocks. We’ll use them and the cars as cover to approach the house.’

  Gomez races hunched and low to the outcrop. Fuentes covers him, then waits for any movement or noise. Nothing. He joins Gomez, both of them with their backs to the rock. Gomez scans his side, almost level with the rear of the pickup. There’s no sign of any movement. Fuentes peers out his side. The Lincoln Navigator is empty.

  Juan Antonio and Pilar watch through the windshield as Fuentes and Gomez disappear from sight, heading in the direction of the ranch house. There is a pause. Then Pilar gets out of the car.

  ‘Pilar!’ Juan Antonio’s whisper shrieks across the desert silence. Pilar puts a finger to her lips, then dashes to the red pickup. Juan Antonio swears, looks all around, then follows her all the way to the passenger side. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  She doesn’t answer, but goes to open the door. Juan Antonio’s grip on her wrist is fierce. ‘What if there’s an alarm?’ She pulls her hand away as though she’s received an electric shock. Pilar slowly creeps up to the front of the pickup, watching the house over its hood. Juan Antonio scans the landscape. They’re protected from the ranch house, but totally exposed from the river. He curses silently.

  Fuentes and Gomez have rushed over the crumbling terrain of exhausted creosote bush and ancient termite nests, raising a shallow bloom of red dust behind them. They pause behind the Navigator. The fence gate is closed but there’s no sign of a padlock. The windows of the house have been papered over and there’s glare on the windows. They look at each other … Then run.

  The gate is locked. Gomez passes his shotgun to Fuentes, then hoists himself over the fence, somersaulting down onto the other side, landing in a crouch. Fuentes passes him both shotguns, then climbs over, slower than Gomez, tearing his jacket as he drops to the other side. He takes his shotgun back from Gomez, both keeping low as they move towards the steps, eyes scanning the windows for any movement, listening intently for any sound.

  Gomez motions with his head – he’s going around the side of the house. Fuentes watches him disappear, then slowly mounts the steps, listening for the betraying creak of wood or a footstep behind him; or the cocking of an unseen weapon.

  Pilar watches Gomez moving fast along the side of the ranch house towards the back, hunched low as he passes under the windows. He vanishes from view. She leans further out, watching Fuentes reaching the front door. Juan Antonio tugs her back behind cover. ‘They’ll see you!’ She shifts the shotgun from one hand to the other, wiping her palms dry against her jeans.

  Fuentes stands close to the door, his ear against the wall, straining to hear inside. There’s a murmur, low and indistinct; rhythmic. Voices. Maybe music.

  The shotgun blast is so sudden that he jumps away from the wall and hits the floor of the porch, not even sure at first if it was aimed at him. There is the answering shot of a handgun and then the sound of footsteps coming fast towards the door.

  Fuentes braces himself on one knee and targets the front door. Someone explodes out of the house, a Walther P-38 in one hand. He jumps down the steps, losing his balance as he hits the ground, rolling and spotting Fuentes for the first time as he gets to his feet. There’s another gunshot from inside the house. Fuentes aims his shotgun at knee level. ‘Drop it.’ The man raises his arm to shoot. Fuentes fires. The blast takes the man’s legs out from under him and spins his upper body forwards, catapulting his chest and face into the earth.

  Pilar stares in shock, Juan Antonio hovering behind her. They watch Fuentes enter the house, sweeping his shotgun from one side to the other. A moment later there’s a shot, and a bearded youth bursts through one of the covered windows on the side, landing hard on his knees in a rain of glass, dropping the gun in his hand. He stands up, swaying for a moment, his face lacerated, then snatches the gun from the ground. He looks back at the smashed window and fires twice into the house, then starts running towards the back of the building.

  There are more gunshots inside. Juan Antonio pulls Pilar to the ground, pushing her under the pickup. There is the tang of contact somewhere above them and then the sing-scatter of broken glass. Pilar covers her head with her arms, breathing in the rich dank smell of desert sand and fear.

  Fuentes shelters behind a door jamb. There is another exchange of fire from the back of the house. Someone bolts towards him, a gun in his hand, his face falling apart when he sees Fuentes, who stands and fires, going for another low blast, the force of the shot sending the gunman smashing backwards through a wall, disappearing inside a puff of plaster powder. Fuentes peers through the hole in the wall, then kicks the room’s door in. There’s a woman, tied to a bed. The gunman is trying to crawl away from Fuentes on his elbows, his broken legs rolling impossibly then catching together, feet pointing the wrong way as they drag a smeared trail of blood and gristle. Fuentes raises his stock and brings it down on the gunman’s collarbone. There is a sharp crack, then the silence of coma.

  Fuentes checks the woman’s dorsal pulse. She’s alive. There’s an explosion of automatic gunfire behind him, holes punching high through the wall, sunlight spotlighting the ceiling. An AK-47. Someone’s reached an armory. That means their chances of getting out fast and unharmed just plummeted.

  Fuentes cuts the unconscious woman’s bindings, then lifts her off the bed and places her down in the corner in a recovery position. He upturns the bed so that its frame and mattress offer some protection. He takes the gunman’s Beretta, engages the safety and slips it behind his belt in the small of his back. Then he heads towards the gunfire.

  Only when he’s outside the room does he realize the gunfire’s no longer coming from inside the ranch house, but somewhere further away. He racks his shotgun, then returns to clearing the house. He kicks in a door, sunlight rushing into the hallway. The room’s window is shattered, torn scraps of newspaper swarming in the wind like disturbed insects. He checks the next room. Also empty. He moves slowly towards the kitchen – the last room. Two bodies. One with a .38 Long Colt, the other with a Ruger M77 rifle. Both killed by shotgun blasts. There’s no sign of Gomez. He grabs the Ruger in his free hand and peers through the back window at a blockade not twenty meters away.

  A youth squats beside a doorframe, his beard matted with blood. He fires again, raking the house indiscriminately. Fuentes ducks behind the stove. Something jumps in the room: one of the dead bodies, taking more rounds. Silence. Fuentes hollers Gomez’s name. A shotgun blast in response. Gomez must be outside, maybe pinned down by the kid.

  Pilar is just emerging from under the pickup, trying to catch any movement from the front of the house, when a burst of gunfire makes her drop down behind one of the wheels. Juan Antonio pulls her towards the back of the car. ‘We have to go.’ But a second, prolonged burst of gunfire sends them both diving to the ground for cover. They lie there, searching for an answer in each other’s eyes about what to do next.

  Fuentes can see the kid through a bullet hole just above the skirting board. Everything shifts back into the containment of training, Fuentes emptying his mind as he automatically works the bolt and adopts a preferential shooting position, lying on the floor, his legs spread, ankles inward, his elbows firm against the ground, his right cheek inclined as he sights, the stock heavy against the muscle padding of the pectoralis major. He exhales. Takes the first pressure. Fires.

  The kid disappears with the recoil.

  He waits, watching until he has a sign – the tremor of one of the kid’s shoes shuddering into stillness. ‘Gomez?’

  ‘All clear
out here.’

  Pilar looks up at the ranch house, hearing Fuentes’ response. ‘All clear in here.’ Gomez steps out from behind a velvet ash tree, in the posture of a hunter, the shotgun aimed at something she cannot see. He disappears from sight behind the house. Seeing Gomez makes her realize she doesn’t have her shotgun. She runs back to the pickup and slides under the chassis. It’s still lying there in the dust.

  Fuentes kicks open the back door and slowly walks towards where the youth has fallen, the rifle at his shoulder, covered on his right by Gomez, who is moving in behind the stockade.

  They both gain full sight of the body at the same time. There’s an entrance hole in the kid’s forehead. ‘Jesus Christ, you must have—’ Gomez’s voice fades. He’s heard it too.

  They both slowly turn, looking up at the hill, two police cars speeding towards them, the urgency of their flashing lights mocked and eliminated by the glare of sunlight; the sirens not so much a shriek of urgency as a howl of outrage against the incompetence and treachery of the officers inside the cars, deliberately disobeying orders. ‘Those motherfuckers,’ Gomez says.

  Beside the pickup, Pilar has retrieved the Remington and is getting to her feet when the sound of a car starting sends a shudder through her. She spins and from behind the rock formation sees the Lincoln Navigator accelerating towards them.

  Pilar steps out from behind the pickup and aims at the man behind the wheel.

  Fuentes and Gomez split up when they hear the shot from the front, running on either side of the house. Gomez gets to the fence first, vaulting it with one hand, the Navigator already crumpled into the wall of the gully where it crashed, the back wheels spinning with a still-powerful intent, as though trying to burrow through stone.

  Fuentes jumps down the front steps. The gunman he wounded is no longer there and the gate is open. Fuentes follows a blood pattern across the earth to where the Navigator was parked.