Missing White Girl

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  On the other hand, the fact that the three vehicles continued roaring up the Mexican high desert plain toward them indicated that something was happening here, or would be soon. Maybe not a good something, but something just the same.

  As they came closer, he saw, etched in the headlight beams of the first vehicle, a tall barbed-wire fence. The vehicle—a pickup truck, he could make out now—kept coming, straight toward it. Without seeming to slow, it tore into the fence, then through it. It advanced what looked like a few more feet, then came to a sudden stop next to a bulky rock outcropping, the headlights dying at the same time as the engine, as if it had undergone a massive systems failure.

  Behind it, the same thing happened to the other two trucks. The wind died for a few seconds, and Oliver heard squeaking doors, slams, shouts and the cracks of gunfire, louder than before.

  “Any of those the white girl you’re looking for, Lulu?” Oliver asked.

  Her lips were parted, her eyes wide and liquid, and in the moonlight her cheeks looked flushed. “I don’t know,” she said, her voice a breath, the merest hint of a whisper. “I just don’t know.” She paused. She couldn’t look away from the trucks. “I think I have to get closer.”

  That, Oliver thought, is just about as bad as an idea can be.

  10

  At Buck’s insistence, Scoot Brown flipped on lights and siren and leaned on the accelerator, racing down 191 at more than a hundred, spraying sheets of water off the side of the highway. Buck had only gone as fast on this road once before, when an armed robber in a stolen car had led law enforcement on a high-speed chase that eventually involved twelve vehicles. The chase had ended on a wide curve when the guy just hadn’t been able to keep his car on the road and flipped into a rancher’s field, startling the shit, quite literally, out of a handful of cows that had been peacefully grazing there.

  This time, because of the hour and the weather, traffic was light. The few vehicles they did encounter pulled over at their approach. Scoot cast a longing glance at the Elfrida station as they raced past, but didn’t mention the bathroom inside or the fact that Buck had been on duty since morning, was wounded and bleeding from the face, and could probably use some medical attention. Buck didn’t like the fact that informing Raul’s family and girlfriend would be delayed, but Raul was gone and Lulu, for the moment, still lived. He wanted to make sure it stayed that way.

  Where 191 hit Highway 80, beside the Motor Vehicles Division, Scoot hung a screeching, high-speed left, barely maintaining control over the SUV. “Easy, son,” Buck said. “Won’t do anybody any good if we’re dead when we get there.”

  Scoot nodded and kept driving, through the red light at Pan American and into town, following the directions Oliver had given Buck. They passed through Douglas on Fifteenth Street, then stayed on it when it became Geronimo Trail, a rutted dirt road that ran toward the Perilla Mountains that abutted the borderline. Their headlights swept over barbed wire and rolling pastureland, then the barbed wire fell behind them and the landscape took on a rougher, untamed aspect. “We ain’t going to Mexico, are we, Buck?” Scoot asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Buck answered. “But Bowles has been out of signal range on his cell for a while now, so I figure we’ll either stop when we see his car or when we hit the Gulf of Mexico.”

  Scoot glanced over nervously. “That’s a joke, right?”

  “It’s a joke, Scoot. We’ll know if we reach the border, and we won’t cross the line. That’d be illegal.”

  Scoot looked like he was going to say something else, but he swallowed it back and focused on keeping the Yukon on the road. After another fifteen minutes or so, a green Subaru appeared in their headlight beams.

  “That’s it!” Buck said. “Pull in behind it.”

  “Looks empty,” Scoot observed.

  “They’ve gotta be somewhere around.” Before Scoot had stopped the Yukon on the edge of the narrow road, Buck opened his door and stepped into the muck. When the engine noise stopped and the wind slackened, he heard a sound from the south like someone raggedly ripping a giant sheet of aluminum foil.

  “What’s that?” Scoot asked.

  “Small arms fire,” Buck said. “Sounds like full auto.”

  “This guy Bowles own a machine gun?”

  “Far as I know he doesn’t even own a cap gun,” Buck said. “I think he’s one of those pacifist types.”

  “Someone’s shooting an automatic weapon at him, it’s gonna take a big peace symbol to keep him safe.”

  “We’re the cops,” Buck reminded him. “That’s our job. Call for backup.”

  He snatched the Remington 12-gauge from the vehicle, clicked on his Maglite and ran toward the noise. A couple minutes later he spotted Scoot behind him, his own flashlight beam bobbing and dipping.

  After ten minutes at full gallop, his face burning from the wind, lungs ragged, legs thrashed by the brush, Buck reached a point at which he could see the muzzle flashes from the guns. He stopped short, thumbed off his flashlight and raised a warning arm to Scoot. When the deputy pulled up alongside him, Buck pressed down on his shoulder and they both lowered to a crouch.

  “Can you tell what’s going on?” Scoot asked.

  Buck had been in the process of trying to determine just that.

  Fortunately the thinning clouds allowed more moonlight to limn the scene. The gunfire came from people who had taken up positions behind two trucks, and seemed to be directed toward a third truck a hundred yards or so ahead of the first two. At this distance, Buck couldn’t tell who any of the people involved were. He only hoped that Lulu and the Bowles couple were not the targets.

  “Let’s move up,” he whispered. “Stay low and keep your light off until we’re close enough to do some good.”

  “Right,” Scoot agreed. Buck caught a quiver in his voice. He didn’t blame the kid. He was scared too, scared and in pain. Each spot where the shot had entered his flesh burned again, as if someone poked at him with a burning incense stick. He dug some loose Advil tablets from his pocket and dry-swallowed them, then started forward, hunched over. He kept his right index finger pressed against the cold steel trigger guard of the Remington, ready to slip it inside if he needed to.

  He hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, but more and more it looked like that hope would be in vain.

  11

  The trucks rumbled down the graded all-weather Border Road, slowing about every fifty yards to let soldiers out, two at a time. They carried long guns and moved with military precision, taking up positions across the road from the tall border fence made from Vietnam-era landing mat. Whatever else Carl might have been—and at this point Barry recognized that could be a long list of things—he seemed to be a good drill instructor, or at least a skilled noncom. His men were efficient and did as they were told, neither of which had always been true back in Vietnam.

  The black Expedition had joined the line behind the two trucks. The farther from the ranch they got, the worse the road became. The landing mat fence fell away and only seven-string barbed wire, cut or pushed down in spots, marked the boundary line. Every now and then Carl leaned out his open window and shouted “Hold the line!” to the soldiers, who responded with thumbs-up signs or grim-faced nods. To Barry it looked like they all knew they would potentially face combat tonight, like this was much more than a drill.

  He wondered how much they knew about the things Carl had told him earlier, about magic and whatnot. He realized that he was having a hard time keeping a grasp on it himself; it slipped out of his mind like water through cupped hands no matter how hard he tried to hang on to it.

  Finally, after the trucks had emptied their passengers and returned to the ranch, Marc brought the Expedition to a halt. Connie and Carl opened their doors at the same time and slid outside into the wind and rain, which had lessened to a mere sprinkle. Carl opened the back and pulled out three automatic rifles. He handed one to Connie and put one in Barry’s hands. “M-16A2,” he said. “You know how to u
se it, right?”

  “Lot different from the last gun I fired,” Barry said. “Think I can figure it out though.” The weapon was lightweight, shaped like a dagger, wide at the buttstock and tapering to the muzzle, except where the handguard stuck out. He turned it in his hands, pointing it toward the ground, and wrapped his trigger finger around the guard. “Looks like a nice weapon.”

  “Three-second bursts in semi-auto,” Carl said. “Thirty rounds in the magazine. That should be adequate for our needs.”

  Since Barry didn’t know what their needs might entail, he simply nodded.

  Marc took a fourth weapon from the back and closed the door. “What we’re doing here, Barry,” Carl said, “is setting up a perimeter. In this case, the perimeter line is the border. Anyone crosses it gets to deal with us. We aren’t law enforcement and we don’t have the power to arrest, and the weapons are, of course, strictly for self-defense. But if I’m right—and I think I am—then we’ll be needing them tonight.”

  Even with his fatigues, Marc wore his straw cowboy hat and his mirrored sunglasses. He held an unlit cigarette between his lips and clenched it with his teeth when he smiled. “Surely do hope so,” he said. “Been a long time since I shot anything smarter than a whitetail. Deer’s got good ears and a decent sniffer, but it don’t pose much of an intellectual challenge, you get my drift.”

  “Can you see with those on?” Barry asked him. “At night, I mean? Pretty dark out here.”

  “Got us here, didn’t I?”

  He’d followed the taillights of the truck in front of him most of the way out, but Barry didn’t think he ought to press a man so anxious to shoot someone.

  They hadn’t been there for more than a few minutes when they heard the staccato burst of automatic gunfire. Carl thumbed a radio he carried on his belt. “All units!” he said. “Are any of you involved in that?”

  A few staticky negatives came back to him. Many had heard it, but none of the American Pride soldiers were part of it. “Keep out of it,” Carl ordered. “Repeat, do not engage. I’ll check it out. Everybody else hang back and wait for my signal.”

  He tossed Barry a grin. “Ready for some action?”

  The sound of gunfire had turned Barry’s bowels to liquid, and he clenched so he didn’t lose control of them. “Sure,” he said, even though he had not meant to. He had wanted to argue, to try to find a way out of this, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak the words. “Sure,” he said again.

  “That’s good, because I think this is what we’ve been waiting for.” Heading east, toward the gunfire, Carl led the way, followed by Barry, with Connie and Marc bringing up the rear. Every fiber of Barry’s brain told him he should be running the other way, even if he had to train his gun on his companions to escape, because there could be no good outcome to this. His muscles refused to respond, carrying him along after Carl as if that man, not he, controlled them.

  A quick dash brought them to the top of a rise where they could look down into a wide valley slanting toward the south. The gunfight was happening down there, where three trucks were grouped, two in one spot and one by itself. It almost seemed as if Carl had known where the fight would be and had chosen that place for himself, letting his soldiers take the stretches of border where nothing was happening.

  Carl squatted at the top of the rise, where the brush would hide them from anyone below. “There she is,” Carl said.

  “She?” Barry asked.

  “That’s right,” Carl said. He didn’t offer to elaborate further.

  “Looks like the people in the back there are doing all the shooting,” Marc observed.

  “They’ll stop when their targets are dead,” Carl replied. “Then we can move in.”

  “We’re not gonna help those people?” Barry asked. “They’re stuck there, bein’ attacked.”

  “They’re no friends of ours,” Carl said. “They’re Mexicans, same as the ones shooting at ’em. Let ’em waste their own ammo on each other. What I want isn’t going to be hurt by a few bullets.”

  “Unless they blow the gas tank,” Connie said. “That could hurt her, maybe.”

  Carl spat into the dirt. “Could be,” he said. “Damn it. I guess we do have to move in.” He pointed to a big mesquite, its gnarled branches waving in the wind. “When we get to that mesquite, I figure we’ll be in range. That looks like about two hundred yards, maybe two-twenty, from those two big trucks. Let’s stay low and dark till we get there, then light those motherfuckers up.”

  Connie nodded. Marc, grinning again, chewed on the unlit smoke. “Works for me,” he said.

  Barry didn’t respond, but he was pretty sure his input wasn’t needed or wanted. Carl started down the hill. On their own volition, Barry’s legs followed him.

  12

  Jeannie clutched Oliver’s hand so tightly he thought he would lose circulation to his fingers. He didn’t urge her to release it, however, because he wanted to hold on to her just as much. Lulu crouched beside him, so close that he could feel her breathing, the swelling of her torso when she inhaled bringing her back into contact with his arm, the cool air when she exhaled moving her back away.

  They watched a massacre. Whoever had been in the first truck didn’t seem to be armed, but the people in the other two peppered it with enough bullets to kill a brigade. In the dark it was hard to be sure, but he didn’t think he’d seen anyone alive around the front truck for some time—occasional motion was probably just the bullets twitching plants. Those that didn’t hit the brush chunked into the truck like a louder, more destructive version of the night’s monsoon rain. A burnt smell—gun smoke, Oliver guessed—wafted their way on the wind.

  “I think she’s in there,” Lulu said, her voice a raspy whisper.

  “I hope you’re talking about the statue, Lulu, because there’s no one alive in there,” Oliver answered.

  “No, in the back, I think she’s in the back.”

  The truck’s open bed was the part that faced the gunmen. “There’s definitely no one alive back there.”

  “But I need to get closer,” Lulu said. “She needs me.”

  He grabbed her arm, more roughly than he had to. “It’s suicide, Lulu. Maybe if those guys in the other trucks leave we can check it out. Until then we stay right here.”

  “I was supposed to meet her right when she crossed over,” Lulu argued. “Not sit back and watch her from a distance.”

  “If she needs you, she needs you alive, honey,” Jeannie said. “Just wait until the shooting’s over.” Oliver squeezed his wife’s hand, glad for her sensible presence beside him.

  Lulu shifted her weight and Oliver held her arm tighter, afraid she would bolt. “Just be patient,” he said.

  She pulled a little, but didn’t yank her arm from his grip. She turned to him, mouth opening as if to speak.

  A burst of gunfire from a new source silenced her.

  This time, the shooting came from over Oliver’s right shoulder, between them and the border, a little farther away from the trucks. For a change, it was directed toward the men with the guns. On the two trucks grouped together, window glass shattered and steel shredded. One of the men there screamed and threw up his arms, his weapon flipping into the air and out of sight in the darkness.

  Other men, taking shelter on the far side of the trucks, returned fire. They still didn’t shoot directly at Oliver, Jeannie and Lulu, but their fire angled more in that direction than it had before. A few inches’ change of the guns might spray lead right toward them.

  “Stay low,” Oliver said. “This tree isn’t much cover, but it’s all we’ve got.”

  “Who do you think that is?” Jeannie asked, with a jerk of her head toward the newcomers.

  “I’d like to think it’s Buck and his crew,” Oliver replied. “But there’s no guarantee of that.”

  “They’re using military hardware, but that’s not law enforcement,” another voice said. It sounded male, and close behind them. Oliver released Jeannie and Lu
lu and spun around, nearly losing his balance and falling into the thorny mesquite.

  “Oh God!” Lulu said. A sob almost eclipsed her words.

  “Who—?” Jeannie asked.

  A man stood casually behind them, as if people weren’t shooting each other in the dark. He looked short, slight, with a prominent nose, a shiny, bulging forehead, and a weak chin. Dark hair was parted to one side. He wore a dark-colored polo shirt and jeans that looked like they’d been ironed, and his arms and chest were hairy, tufts of it curling up from the open neck of his shirt.

  “It’s him!” Lulu said.

  “The one who—” Oliver began.

  “Lulu and I are old friends,” the man said. “I’ve missed you, Lulu. You led me on quite a chase.”

  Oliver wished he had one of the guns with which everybody else around here seemed to be equipped. He didn’t know how the guy had found them—he must have followed from their house—but he wanted the man dead before he could threaten or harm Lulu any more. “You just walk away from here,” he said, “and I won’t kill you. But if you bother this girl again, I will, and don’t think I can’t.”

  “Everybody can,” the man said. He smiled, jamming his hands into the pockets of his crisp jeans. “Can is not the hard part. Will is the hard part, and while it may sound contradictory, the fact is that most people never do it, and most of the ones who do only do it once, by accident or out of rage. But the others—the ones who do it because they want to, because they have the will—often find that only the first one is truly difficult. You have not had that first, and I do not think you have the will to start now.”

  “There’s always that rage thing you mentioned.”