by Doug Ball
“We think so, too,” Tan said. “What is the terrain like down that way?”
“Slow rolling hills maybe twenty feet up and down. The general trend is slightly downhill, but you probably wouldn’t notice it unless you read your topo map real careful like. I’ve been out there a couple of times, on my days off of course, and it reminded me of the Great Plains, except for the cactus and the rattlers. Rumor has it that the hacienda is surrounded by trip wires and light beams, might even be some mines, but I doubt it. Too many wild critters travel down there for mines to do anything but wake everybody up when some javalina or panther stepped on one.”
“Sounds like he doesn’t want neighbors,” Sara smiled as she said it.
Abdul added, “Weren’t no neighbors gonna hang around long, that fo sho.”
“Quit trying to sound like white trash, Abdul. We all know you’re an educated man.” Tank said.
Tan could not quit asking questions when there was so much info needed. “How many men does he have down there?”
“Estimates run around 50 or so, maybe a bit more. I’d say it depends on what he’s got going and how many are on the road.”
“Armed with what?”
“The best money can buy, you can be sure of that.”
“Radar.”
“Yeah, if you get up on the hill over there and turn your AM on, you can hear every pass. Air search and detection radar according to the signal intel we got from up there. Manufacturer says it’s the top of the line stuff for small airports and private strips. It’s capable of having a friend or foe mode. This one has that. Try to attack that place with an aircraft, you will wake up the neighborhood when the alarm goes off. Who knows what he’s got to stop said aircraft?”
“Sounds like our Mister Borrago doesn’t want company at all. At least not, uninvited company.” Tan was not happy with the information he was getting, not that it was not solid, it just made things more and more complicated. He had seen the movies and TV shows with the drug lords owning the best of everything, but he had always felt that was just hype by the producers, and not a true picture of the real drug lords. He was not happy that he was wrong.
Tan added, “If you were going to stage a legal raid on that place, how would you go about it with the intel you have?”
“I’d call in the Air Force to do high level bombing for an hour and then send in the seals, two or three teams of them. When they gave the all clear, I’d go looking for evidence in the remains.”
“Like that’ll ever happen.” Tank had a hard time with optimism.
15
Between DPS, local PDs, and the AzGuard, all but 22 of the 3,212 escapees from Druggersville were back inside the rebuilt, albeit temporarily patched, fence. Over a hundred were found dead. The number committed to hospitals was estimated at 623, one of which staggered through a cholla cactus patch, and when found, she was so covered with the fuzzy balls of thorns the finders actually thought she was a cactus, the covering was 99% of her body. The Governor cried when she heard these words.
General Rios had a dozen of his men injured during the hunt for escapees. One filled his hands with cholla needles trying to open the airway on the woman found covered with the cactus balls. Another fell out of his Humvee when it turned suddenly while he was standing on the roof to get a better look. The rest were just bumps and scratches from tumbles in the terrain or finding a cactus they were not looking out for. He was happy.
The DPS Director set up a command center in the control building at the compound just outside the fence, ordering his men to patrol the perimeter on horseback if necessary. There were even volunteers for this unusual task. The horseback honor guard had been disbanded years before due to the money crunch, but many of the men had their own horses and were willing to work horseback. The inmates remained quiet through the night.
#
Tan looked the Border Patrolman in the eye, “Let’s get serious. How many men and what kind of weapons?”
“I’d go in with a hundred. Automatic weapons and sidearms. Stealth would be the telling factor. I’d have two men blow holes in the wall on opposing sides with another team hitting the gate. If I could get them, I’d use RPG’s against the buildings and the walls. Followed by automatic weapons through the opening. Blow the gate. Hit from four directions. The first in being at least two choppers or a squad of jumpers landing in the compound, prefer the choppers with their cannons and rockets. If you use jumpers the outsiders would have to cease fire until they were secure and then join them inside to mop up. Even then, I think the casualties would be high,” Ditmyer concluded.
“Well, we got six men and no choppers. I guess we’re outta luck, guys. Leon and Mr. Lawler are on their own.” Tan turned and walked toward his car.
Ditmyer said, “You really gonna go? I might be able to add a few to the numbers, but we’ve got a lousy arsenal here with the recalls of all M4’s. I do have two M-16’s and lots of ammo. We haven’t done much practicing in the past three years and the Mexican Army left a lot behind when they retreated from the supply center they had here. We also have two .50’s from the chopper that crashed over the hill there.” He pointed.
“How many men?”
“Four or five.”
“You guys any good?”
“Every one of us has smelled the gunpowder and heard the close ones. A few of us have even got scars.”
“Now we’re cooking. Can we call in a chopper?”
“Not from our units.”
“Sara, you got any choppers that could support?”
“NO! The Sheriff will never authorize it.”
“Didn’t ask if it was authorized. No one in their right mind would think what I’m thinking.”
#
Leon looked out the window while sitting on the bed. The signs of severe pain were painted on his face. He held his left arm, in its makeshift sling, close to his body and rocked slightly back and forth. He said, “Ain’t nobody comin’ to get us, Ray. We’re on our own.”
“Knew that when we started, didn’t we?”
“I supposed so. You know it would be nice to see the boys in camo rolling over the fence out there, but it ain’t gonna happen. How far you think we’ll get with our little surprises here?” He held his badminton racket handle up.
Ray laughed, “About ten feet out that door if we die slow and run fast.”
“I guess I’ll be dying fast, cuz I can’t run at all.”
They heard their guard working the key in the lock and quickly screwed the ends on their handles and started batting the birdy back and forth. The door opened and the guard motioned for Ray to come with him.
Ray batted the bird back to Leon and rose to go. “See ya later.” He walked out the door with his badminton racket in his hand.
Leon did not like be alone and vulnerable.
#
Chuck wandered around the sites of the explosions at Druggersville wondering how the inmates got enough explosives to blow the fence. Rachel had left for an hour or so to buy some boots for her and get them something to eat. As Chuck walked by a fence post that was still standing in the midst of five that were blown, he noticed a piece of fuse sticking out of the ground. Slowly, with a small stick, he dug around the fuse down to a stick of plastic explosives the size of a cigarette pack.
“No wonder the holes are so big around these blown fence posts, this charge is big enough to elevate one of these posts a few hundred feet in the air if not connected to the fence.” Somehow this fuse had not triggered the plastic. He pulled the fuse to remove the cap from the block of plastic and the fuse came out without the cap. It had not been crimped. One of the DPS officers came along and said, “Hey man, you ain’t supposed to do that. We got EOD over there by that van, get them.”
Chuck laughed, picked up the block of explosive, and carried it to the EOD van. “Here ya go, one for the barrel.” He handed them the block of plastic and then the cap.
You would have thought he threw it at them.
“Hey, those caps are dangerous.”
“I know. I was EOD in the service for a while.” He added, “All those charges set on the outside of the posts like that one?”
“Yeah. Someone tried to break out the dopers rather than the dopers doing for themselves. Now all we gotta do is find out who.”
Another man asked, “Who you working with?”
“Governor’s Office, Special Investigator’s Office. Fun stuff on light duty.”
“How’s a guy get a cushy job like that?”
“About get killed on a two wheeled Highway Patrol beat and then ask for a nice cushy office job. I have only been shot at for the first time, about blown up a couple of times for the first time, and had to answer to a secretary for the first time.” He looked up, “Here she comes now with my food.”
The others turned to see her.
“Wow. Nice secretary. She could boss me around any old time.”
“Watch it, that’s my future wife, just she ain’t caught on yet.”
They laughed as he walked away to meet Rachel and assist with the bag she was carrying. “Nice combat boots with your business suit.”
“Shut up and eat.”
#
The Governor’s phone rang. “Governor’s Office, Josie . . .”
“Spiderman here.”
“Wait one.”
The Governor was talking with a delegation from the Society for Prison Reform and hearing how they thought it was cruel to make prisoners work when Josie stuck her head in.
“Governor, the President and he says it is urgent.”
“Ladies, I thank you for your opinions and the data you have so carefully shown me, but I have to talk to the President. Good bye. Josie, show them out, please.”
“Yes, Governor. Right this way, ladies.”
The Governor waited until the door shut, “Yes, Mr. President?”
“Spiderman here, Governor.”
The Governor laughed, Josie came up with some great ways of getting the job done and keeping the distractions to a minimum. “Spidey, I need some help.”
“How may I assist, Senora?”
“I need you to clean up that place of Borrago’s and rescue my two citizens.”
“Oh, is that all?”
#
“I could get used to eating from this store on this picnic table after a while. Two meals in a row made up of coke and cinnamon rolls is going to do nothing for my girlish figure.” Sara was laughing the whole time she said it. “How about we find another café for supper and splurge a bit so my diet is balanced?”
“Sounds like a plan.” Tan was not too happy with the meal, either. “I guess we could have bought some real food and cooked on the grill by the picnic table.”
“Nah, then we would have had to get firewood.”
#
“Thank you, Spidey. I will owe you a few after this night.”
“Yes, Governor, you will. I just wish I had been stationed on the border when things got hot and heavy. I might have been able to put a cork in the violence before war broke out.”
“Me, too.” She hung up after the phone went dead.
#
Tan sat in his car calling in every favor he had coming, but none would go along with his idea except Sergeant Bubba in Flagstaff. “I can get down there in six hours or so. If you’re still on this side, I’ll join ya. If you’re on the trail, I’ll catch up. Leave me a map.”
“Won’t need a map. Go west on Antelope Road outta Sasabe for little over 10 miles. Our cars will be parked along the road. Go due south from there a bit over 5 miles. You’ll see the lights or hear the noise.”
“On my way. Save some action for me.”
Tan plugged his phone in the charger and said out the window at Tank. “Add one.”
“One outta all them calls.”
“That’s it. No one wants to be a part of a major border blow up.”
“Where’s the fun in sittin’ at home?”
“Ask my wife.”
#
Ray returned to the room with a crash of the door hitting the cabinet, and expedited by two soldados kicking him through the opening. They motioned for Leon to come with them. When Leon was slow getting off the bed, they grabbed him and pulled him, toes dragging, out of the room, dropping him on the floor of the hall so they could close the door.
Ray had not been hurt. Now he feared for Leon, they knew he was a cop.
#
Sara returned from her tasks with no good news. “No one will fly south. The Sheriff says he doesn’t want to know anything, and wishes us good hunting. I have three men coming which gives us what, at thirty per cent increase? All of them ex-military and have smelled the fear and the gunpowder. My husband told me that if I left him to raise those boys alone, he would never speak to me again. He would like to come, but would just get in the way. He shoots at the range but that’s about it.”
Lenny and Bruce rolled in about 4 PM. They had no problem with the plan. They bought camos for themselves and the three others that needed them before leaving Tucson.
Tan had said, “Black if you can find it. If not, the darker the better.”
On the way to Tucson they got a call from Chuck who had just finished at Druggersville. He had nothing pressing to do and neither did Rachel. “Get us some camos, too. We’ll go by the office and hit the gun safe. Should be down there by 8. Don’t leave without us.”
Two of the guards at the Governor’s Office were just leaving when they stopped by the gun safe and happened to see them walking down the hall to the back exit. “What’s up?”
“Nothin’.”
“Don’t give me that crap. You ain’t carrying all them guns and all that ammo for a nothin’.”
They told the two of them about the situation.
The two of them looked at each other, “Well?” said the tall one.
“We’ll meet you at Sasabe about twenty minutes after you get there. If you can’t hold up, leave a note.”
They all left.
The Governor had been going out the back way also and heard the conversation from around the corner. She turned back to her office.
Arriving she punched Tan’s number on the speed dial.
“Tan, here.”
“Tan, you have help coming. About 50 men in black will meet you at the fence. You will need to have a pair of headlights shining toward the border by 8 PM for them to find you. The rest of your office is headed that way and two of my bodyguards are joining them. They are off tomorrow for a time of rest from the labors of guarding my person.”
“What are you talking about, 50 men in black?”
“Don’t ask any questions. Just add them to your group and go get Leon and friend back.”
“How did you know?”
“I am Governor.”
“Yeah, and I’m the Star Lord.”
The Governor ended the call after giving him a cell phone number and telling him to stay off the radios.
Tan sat staring at his phone. “I just don’t believe it.”
The Governor made another call, “I need a couple of your choppers tonight, General. They will need to be smart enough to figure out when they are needed and when to leave. Oh, yeah, and when to keep their yaps shut after an operation.”
#
The hacienda was a quiet place. Ray was alone in the room wondering what they were doing with Leon. He had been gone for a long time. He looked out the window next to his chair and saw a procession of men walking slowly across the courtyard. In the middle were three men. Two were fighting with the one in the middle who appeared to have rags on for clothes.
They marched across the courtyard to a large cottonwood tree. The two men struggled to get the man in rags to stand with his back against the tree and pull his arms back around the tree. The man looked up. It was Leon.
As Ray watched, the group tied Leon’s hands to the tree by tying off one hand then running the rope around the sizeable trunk to the other hand
and, pulling it tight, tied the rope to the other hand. Leon was obviously in much pain from the contortions of his face.
As Ray watched, two men came to Leon with a long spike in the hand of one and a five pound single jack hammer was held by the other. Leon swore loudly at them, so loudly that Ray could hear him through the locked window and across the distance. He could not make out the words, but knew Leon was cussing them out with passion.
The spike was pushed into the joint of Leon’s wrist. The second man swung the hammer and Leon fainted. The shouting stopped. Two men came with buckets of water and dowsed Leon with them. Leon’s head rose and he began screaming at them as they put another spike in the other hand and pounded it in, one slow stroke at a time. Even Ray could tell they were trying to prolong the agony. Quickly, they grabbed his feet and nailed each to an exposed root spread apart about three feet.
The men of the hacienda began chanting at Leon. Each time the retired cop dropped his head, they would dowse him with water again until the dirt at his feet was a bloody mud hole. Ray could watch no more. He knew they would come for him next.
He frantically looked around for a way out they had not discovered in their first look around. He found nothing. Then he remembered the closets. Checking them again, in the second one, the one most toward the middle of the house, he found access to the attic. Sunlight from a window was bright enough for the lines in the paint to show its outline. From the paint job and lack of dirty fingerprints he surmised that this route into the attic was little used, if at all.
He grabbed his badminton racket handle and pushed up on the cover. It moved a bit and stopped. Checking closer, he saw that it was paint holding the panel in place. The picture on the wall next to the door had a glass cover. He broke it. He took a shard into the closet and climbed the shelves with his back sliding up the wall until he could use the glass shard to cut the paint around the opening. Three times he scribed it. It broke loose on the next push. He climbed the rest of the shelves and was in the attic. The cover slid easily into the opening, seating itself in its original position.
