Stalking Moon

by Неизвестный

“She does work at Nonie,” he said. “Man, do they have this fantastic gumbo! Guy's name is Luis Cabrera. I got shots of both of them, of his beat-up old pickup, and the license plate, which I'm having a friend run down now.”

  “Do they live together?”

  Loud gunfire erupted on the phone, drowning out his answer.

  “Rey, turn off that tape. I can't hear you.”

  “Running a training session. Here, I'll go into the next room.”

  The gunfire sounds faded and I heard a door shut.

  “That better?”

  “I was asking, do they live together?”

  “Can't say, but I don't think he's a player. He dropped her off, went to a house in south Tucson. I followed him, but didn't go back to Nonie. I wanted to get the film processed. Tell me where you are, I'll come drop off the pictures.”

  No, I thought, I'm not really up to Rey knowing where I live.

  “I'll come to Nogales tomorrow.”

  “Whatever. Bring five hundred.”

  “That's your fee?”

  “You want to pay me more, please, be my guest. If you were a police department, I'd charge you three hundred an hour.”

  “Thanks, Rey. Did you find out anything about the water man?”

  “Nobody on this side of the border ever heard that term. My contacts are asking around in Mexico. Don't count on it, though. Too many people down there will tell you anything, as long as money's involved. Listen. . . can we get together again?”

  “For what?”

  “Dinner? Whatever, I don't know. I just want to see you.”

  “Please, Rey. Don't complicate my life right now.”

  “Why not?”

  The question so confused me that I hung up on him. The phone rang almost immediately, but I turned it off. Nice thing about cell phones, you don't have to unplug wires or leave receivers off the hook. Just turn them off.

  Would be nice to do that with your memories.

  11

  Some time after four, the faint beginnings of sunrise back-lit the cloud cover over the Patagonia Mountains. Thousands of feet overhead, three vapor trails stretched horizontally eastward. From Montham Air Force Base, the F-5 fighters soared straight up until they were so high that sunlight flickered on their wings. Lower, just above the Coronado National Forest, I saw small planes weaving in and out of the tree line, working a search grid controlled by a BlackHawk Border Patrol helicopter.

  “Busy day,” Meg said, punching in numbers on her dashboard scanner. “Let's see what's happening.”

  “I got it, Mom,” Alex said, leaning out the backseat window and tracking the helicopter with a digital video camera. “What are those dinky little planes?”

  “Remote controlled drones,” Meg said, fiddling with her scanner. “They've got video cameras, just like you. But all the radio chatter is encrypted. I don't know if it's routine or something major.”

  “That's enough, Alex. Save the battery.”

  “Aren't we kinda far south?” I asked Meg. “I thought we were going to ride up Adobe Canyon. Or Alamo.”

  “Yesterday, you said you were bored.”

  “You said, 'Let's go for a long horse ride in the morning.' Not a long drive.”

  “Yeah.” Meg frowned at a road marker and began slowing down. “But when I asked if you had anyplace in mind, you said 'Surprise me.' Whoa! What's this?”

  A white Ford Expedition with Border Patrol markings sat at the edge of the frontage road turnoff. The tinted passenger-side window wound down, a face leaned out of the window as the patrolman talked into a hand-held radio.

  “Jesus,” Meg said quickly. “Put that camera back in the bag.” The scanner crackled and Meg turned up the volume.

  “Cherry-red GMC 3500, four-door crew cab,” the radio voice said. “Pulling a fifth-wheel horse trailer, headed south on 82. Just passed Gunner Road.”

  We rounded a curve. Meg checked her left-side mirror as we hit a straight patch of the road and continued south.

  “Not following us,” she said.

  “That was Three R Canyon,” Mari said from the backseat, a topo map spread across her thighs. “Isn't that where you wanted to take the horses?”

  “Not when La Migra's around. I don't understand all this activity. It's the Fourth of July. It's supposed to be a holiday.”

  We passed more frontage roads, more white Ford Expeditions straddling the entrances and blocking all traffic. Meg continued south, and we passed the Nogales International airport and eventually turned east, driving in silence until we reached Kino Springs. The crew cab windows were all closed, the aircon fan buzzed at high speed, but once Meg turned off the engine, we heard a solid chump-chump-chump somewhere outside. I looked all around, saw nothing but the four-horse trailer swaying solidly behind us, its front end anchored firmly on the pickup bed.

  “Upstairs,” Meg said, sliding back the moon roof cover.

  Alex started to unzip the camera bag, but Meg quickly stuck her right arm between the front bucket seats, pressing Alex's hands down hard.

  “Company's coming,” she said. “Smile, everybody.”

  A black helicopter hovered fifty feet above us. Meg stuck her right arm out the moon roof and waved.

  “Who the hell is that?” I said.

  “More Border Patrol. One of their unmarked Black-Hawks. They're making sure it's really me. I don't usually come this far south.”

  “Meg Honey!”

  A voice on her scanner. She adjusted the squelch, gave a thumbs-down signal, and zipped her fingers across her mouth, warning us not to talk. She tilted her face slightly to the microphone clipped on her sweatshirt.

  “Who's that?”

  “Jake Nasso. Long way from home, Meg Honey.”

  “Not my fault, Jake. How come you guys blocked off FR 812 and 215?”

  “Ahhhh, it's another busy day.”

  “Who's busy on a holiday?”

  “Tucson Sector set a record for detentions. As of midnight, three five oh niner apprehended. Douglas Sector, another record. One seven niner deuce. Half of Sonora seems to be coining across today. So. Where you headed, honey? And why?”

  “Right here. Kino Springs. I've got paying customers from Missouri, they want to ride up into the Patagonias.”

  “You're right on the border, baby. You know we don't much like that. What kind of paying customers we talking about?”

  “Documentary film crew. A TV special about the National Park System.”

  “Why don't you take them up north? Lots of parks in Utah.”

  “Jake, c'mon. They've been to Utah. I'm just trying to earn a living here. It's a holiday, for Christ's sakes. There's a nice trail at Kino, we'll just ride a few miles up Providencia Canyon, eat a late breakfast, be gone by noon.”

  “Okay, Meg. I don't like it, but just 'cause it's you, no harm, no foul. But we want you to turn on your GPS beacon.”

  She stabbed a green button on the dashboard.

  “Gotcha. Listen. Be warned. Three times last night ranchers traded gunfire with coyotes. Shotguns, AK-47s, lots of attitude out there. We've intercepted five groups in the past hour, but a lot of illegals got away, and who knows where they are. Once you guys get on horseback, don't forget to squawk us and carry the portable beacon. We'll keep our eyes on ya, honey. You packing?”

  “Say again?”

  “I said, are you packing?”

  “Mossberg 590.”

  “Outstanding weapon,” he said. “But if you think you need to use it, you just squawk us the location and then ride like hell the other way. Comprende?”

  “Roger that.”

  The chopper wobbled left and right, then spun sideways off toward the sunrise. I swiveled in my seat, staring at Meg.

  “What's going on here?”

  “We're pissing off the Border Patrol. Big time. If we can get away with it, we'll ride up into Maria Santisima del Carmen overlooking the border. By the time La Migra figures out whether to arrest us, Mari will have all the f
ootage she needs.”

  By seven-thirty, the heat already felt like ninety-five degrees. After just a few miles of riding, we were all dripping with sweat, but the horses seemed okay.

  “Hey!” Alex shouted. “Look.”

  Twin flashes of red and blue streaked among the trees east of and above us.

  “Dirt bikes,” Meg said disgustedly. “Oughta ban them in national forests.”

  We rode single file, the horses picking their way carefully on the sandstone shale as we moved down toward the Santa Cruz River bed. We'd unloaded the horses at Kino Springs, and Meg had deliberately left her GPS transponder inside the pickup. The horses saddled quickly, glad to be free of their aluminum trailer stalls. The river bed was dry in the July heat. Clumps of grass mingled with wands of white flowers bursting like horses' manes out of a stand of yucca.

  Man and Alex rode ahead of us, and Meg nodded confidently.

  “Said they could ride all day,” she told me. “You never know, but I warned them that down here we'd have to move quick. In and out.”

  Meg's moods shifted like summer breezes. I enjoyed riding with her in the early morning because she'd rarely talk. Like a flywheel, she had a certain way of building up inertia for the day. Even when we rode side by side, her eyes stayed focused somewhere beyond the trees and hills, her face slightly tightened against personal contact. If I said anything, she'd nod or grunt but mostly withdraw further, as though she'd drifted into an emotional fog bank and found protection there. But now, with the sun in our faces, her pinto beside my Appaloosa, I could tell she'd dispelled the fog.

  A hundred yards ahead of us, the dirt bikes suddenly burst out of a clump of cottonwoods, their four-stroke engines braying like chainsaws. One of the helmeted riders looked over his shoulder and saw us. Both bikes quickly slewed around and stopped to watch us. Alex reined her horse to a stop, dropped the reins, and worked the Sony with both hands. I could see the telephoto lens move out toward the bikers. One of them raced his engine brrrrrrr brrrrrrrr, and Meg pulled the Mossberg shotgun out of the leather sheath and pointed it above her head. The bikers abruptly turned away, tore along the river bed and around a curve and out of sight.

  Ahead, Mari and Alex had stopped, waiting for us to catch up.

  “Were they coyotes?” Alex asked.

  “That wasn't cool,” Meg finally said. “They saw you taking their picture.”

  “So, like, who were they? What kinda gun is that?”

  “Look,” I said to Mari. “I think we oughta turn back.”

  “No.”

  Mari took a topo map from her saddlebag, trying to steady her horse at the same time. Meg maneuvered next to her, holding the horses steady.

  “The ranch is supposed to be here.” She stabbed a spot on the map. “The Myron family. Just mom and pop, kids moved away. How far are we from the border? And what kind of security fences, or whatever, could I see there?”

  “Two, three miles southwest.”

  “Can we get there along the river bed?”

  “Yeah, but. . . look, Mari. This isn't smart, to keep going toward the border.”

  “Gotta do it. You want more money, just tell me.”

  “No. Money's not going to solve any trouble we get into.”

  “With the Border Patrol?”

  “They're the least of my worries.”

  “Did those bikers weird you out?” Alex said.

  Meg looked at the sky and east toward the distant tree line of Mount Washington, pivoting round and round in her saddle while she worked out an answer. She finally eased the Mossberg back into the saddle sheath and nodded to herself.

  “Everything down here weirds me out,” she said finally. “Any minute, one of the Border Patrol choppers is going to come along, and I'll really catch hell from them.”

  “Okay,” Mari said. “Can we ride up onto the slope of that mountain? If the border's only two miles away, Alex can put in the long lens, get some shots. Then we'll head right for the ranch.”

  “Yeah. I'll settle for that. I know a trail that will take us up three or four hundred feet. You'll catch the border from there. Plus, when we take a dogleg back toward Duquesne Road, you'll see one of the ranch properties with the cyclone fences.”

  “Razor wire?” Alex said excitedly. “Cool.”

  She kneed her pinto, turned him toward the mountain, and Man followed.

  “Razor wire is cool” Meg said with resignation. “God, I am so glad I'm not a fifteen-year-old kid.”

  We rode high enough for a three-mile panorama of the Mexican border. But there was little to see from so far away. Alex fitted the long lens onto the video camera, but after panning back and forth, she snorted with disgust.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just a stupid little three-wire fence. I thought there was this big concrete wall all along the border.”

  “You're thinking of Berlin, honey,” Meg said.

  “No. She's thinking of Tijuana,” Mari said. “That's where we were last week.” Far away, rising faintly on the wind, I could hear a helicopter. “Nice view up here. You can see forever.”

  “Okay,” Meg said. “We leave now.”

  “You don't think it's a nice view?”

  “So does the Border Patrol. This is the kind of place where they use night vision scopes. Two men up here can see twenty, thirty miles. When groups jump that wire and come across, the spotters can direct a dozen different vehicles.”

  “Night vision scopes? Like we used in Desert Storm?”

  “Except when there's a full moon. The spotters like that even better. People who lead packs of people across the wire, they also have electronic scopes that pick up our scopes. So the Border Patrol loves a full moon. Great light for stalking coyotes.”

  A prong-horned antelope danced nimbly up the trail in front of us, bounded sideways out of sight as the horses nickered. Meg held her hand up quickly, motioning us all to stop and be quiet. I heard crunching noises from the other side of a rise and suddenly a flood of people ran across the path, one of them bouncing off of Meg's pinto. He reared on his hind legs, struggling to move sideways. Meg bent forward to lie against his mane, talking into his ear to gentle him while at the same time pulling out the Mossberg. Seeing the shotgun, most of the people immediately flattened to the ground, some kneeling, one woman running a rosary through her fingers.

  “Vamanos!” Meg shouted. “Get outa here!”

  She flicked her left hand at them, waving them away.

  “We can go?” a man said, standing up slowly. “You're not LaMigra?”

  “No. Andale. Alex, put that goddam camera down. Now!”

  Alex shifted the video camera to her side, holding it by the handle, but I could see the red recording light on. The man motioned for everybody to get off the ground and then walked tentatively up the side of the rise, then everybody broke into a run, and I saw that they were all women.

  “Yes,” Mari said to herself, and worked her horse next to mine. “You notice anything about them?”

  “You mean that they're all women?”

  “What kind of women? You see anybody that looks Mexican?”

  “No,” I said shortly. “They seem kinda. . . I don't know, European?”

  “Exactly.”

  I thought immediately of Xochitl Gálvez and the two murdered women with European names.

  “I got a lot of it, Mom,” Alex said. “The woman with the rosary, I focused right in on her hands.”

  Meg took her Uniden transceiver out of a saddlebag. Flicking the dialpad, she caught a burst of chatter and thumbed up the volume dial so we could all hear a border patrolman reporting angrily that he'd found the GPS transponder in Meg's pickup. She switched to another channel.

  “Checking in, checking in, guys. Where y'all at?”

  “Meg, where the hell are you?”

  It was the voice from the BlackHawk helicopter.

  “Got a little lost. Thought we were headed up Providencia Canyon.”

  “Lost, my
ass. Where are you?”

  “Coming down-slope off the Mount Washington foothills.

  I'd say we're about a mile from Duquesne Road. Don't quite know exactly where we are, though. But a few seekers of the better life just crossed the trail in front of us.“

  “Move your ass along, quick. There's three bunches in those foothills.”

  “Roger that, Jake.”

  “Stupid. Leaving your GPS in the truck.”

  “Roger that,” she said again, randomly flicking the dial-pad. “You're fading out, but I'll keep my ears on for you.”

  “Fading out, my ass. You're gonna be restricted, lady, you're gonna be. . . ”

  She set the transceiver to autoscan ten Border Patrol frequencies.

  “Okay. I promised you razor wire,” she said to Mari. “But we're really going to have to move. The ranch is just over that rise.”

  She let Mari and Alex ride ahead.

  “Listen, Laura,” she said. “I'm going to be in a shitload of trouble because of this. When we get back and trailer up the horses, there'll probably be Border Patrol all around me. If you want, jump off before we get there and make your way out to the highway and hitch a ride.”

  “I'll be okay. Meg, tell me, what the hell are we doing down here? I get the distinct impression this isn't just some scenic ride.”

  “She's looking for water.”

  “Water? Here? In July?”

  “Something about water. That's all she told me. That's what she paid me for, to take her any place in this valley where there might be a river, a creek, a spring. Water.”

  “How many trips have you made?” I asked.

  “Eleven. Some of them we did by car.”

  “Did you find any water?”

  “Here and there, but not really anything that interested her.”

  “Did she say anything about a water man?”

  “Nope. Just wanted to see this particular ranch. Don't know why.”

  “I've got really bad feelings about all these Border Patrol types.”

  “You know what it's like down here. Relax, they're not after you.”

  Maybe, maybe not. I'd already thought about how I was going to avoid getting involved. My driver's license for Laura Cabeza would hold up in any legal check, but I didn't want any law enforcement people inquiring about me.