by Ty Patterson
Bwana still lay prone, his M-4 trained on the sniper hide till he felt a hand clasping his shoulder.
Roger smiled down at him. ‘Don’t go to sleep down there, partner. The day’s still ahead of us.’ He rose, offering a hand to Bwana, helping him rise to his feet, that clasp of hands unbroken to this day.
Bwana looked at the dark shadow that was Roger on the other side of the coals. Roger never spoke about himself. Bwana knew he was an orphan and had grown up with a foster family who couldn’t wait to see the back of him, and had no one else to call family.
That was enough backstory for Bwana. The past didn’t matter, the now and the future did. Family? He was Roger’s family.
Roger didn’t know what woke him, but one moment he was in a deep, dreamless sleep and the next he was awake. He lay still, allowing the night and forest to envelop him. He turned his head towards Bwana and saw the dark shapeless shadow of his bag. He glanced at the dull green numerals on his watch. Two a.m. He lay still, listening, trying to sense what had woken him.
It wasn’t any sound, he decided, nor was it any presence.
‘Yeah, I can feel it too,’ murmured Bwana from the other side of the banked coals.
Roger grinned soundlessly and got up from his bag, Bwana doing the same; two wraiths rising, the still air bending itself around them – habits nurtured in the Special Forces, practiced in far-off dusty lands and now like breathing to them.
The woods had gone silent; the customary sounds of the nightlife deadened – that had woken Roger and Bwana.
Their camp was north of Pena Blanca Lake, in Peck Canyon, and was located in a thicket, caution and the habit of blending in guiding their choice of camp. They were right in the middle of Peck Canyon Corridor, a route for herding illegal immigrants from Mexico to the United States; the Corridor stretched from border crossing points, across the Pajarito Mountains, Atascosa Mountains, and the Tumacacori Mountains… Peck Canyon divided the Atascosas from the Tumacacoris.
The border between the United States and Mexico, about two thousand miles, had steel and concrete fences at places and infrared cameras and sensors at others, supported by about twenty thousand US Border Patrol agents and drones in the air.
This still didn’t deter the flow of illegal immigrants. About half a million of them crossed into the United States each year, many of them guided by coyotes – smugglers who were often armed – who shepherded the illegal immigrants across the border for a fee. Many criminal gangs organized and controlled the flow of illegal immigrants across the border, and most of the coyotes worked for some gang or the other. What the physical and the virtual fence had done was move the flow of immigrants to remote, inhospitable terrain such as Peck Canyon Corridor.
Roger and Bwana were fully aware of the immigrant traffic in the region but hadn’t encountered any during their camping.
Roger crossed to his kit and buckled his Kimber Target II in his shoulder holster, slipping extra mags in his pockets. He strapped a Benchmade to his ankle, slung a pair of night-vision goggles around his neck and stuck a comms set in his ear. He looked across at Bwana, and he was tooling up similarly; Bwana was a Glock man, a Glock 21 tucked away in his shoulder holster, and as Roger looked on, he slung a Heckler and Koch MP7A1 compact submachine gun over his bag. Bwana didn’t believe in doing things by halves.
They looked around, and Bwana pointed to a very faint glow in the skyline about a mile back and headed off at a rapid pace, Roger following. The silence grew louder as they approached, and then as they slowed, they heard it.
It was the shuffling of a large body of people moving stealthily in the night.
Bwana glanced at Roger and quickened his pace, making as much noise as a shadow. He slowed down and faded into the bole of a tree, Roger finding another large trunk to shelter behind – they were two hundred feet away from the human mass.
The dim lighting they had spotted was caused by high-intensity flashlights held by six guards, who were in a rough U-formation around forty people. The bright beams were carefully turned away from the mass of people, and Roger couldn’t make out the details. He looked at Bwana, who shook his head. Coyotes, he thought. There goes our sleep, just our fucking dumb luck.
They let the group get a lead and tracked back to scan for a rear guard – there was none.
‘Illegals crossing the border,’ murmured Bwana. ‘Thing is, do we let them go or do we play the heroes?’
‘Let’s warn the Border Patrol,’ replied Roger, and they slowed down further, and Roger powered up his phone. ‘Shit, hardly any bars on this. How about yours?’
Bwana checked his phone and shook his head. Roger dialed a number and held it to his head and then gave up after a while. ‘No ring going out.’
He fished out the sat phone they used to communicate securely with Broker and Bear, and shook his head disgustedly when he saw they’d forgotten to charge it.
They followed the group for over a mile and noticed two other coyotes in the front who were acting as scouts. All the coyotes were heavily armed, and even in the darkness, through the distance, they could see the dim outlines of AK-47s and AR-15s on the three closest to them.
‘Is that standard wear for coyotes?’ muttered Bwana.
Roger shrugged; the weapons didn’t bother him. ‘How long are we going to follow them?’
‘You got anything better to do? Other than sleeping?’
Roger shook his head silently, and they pressed on. It was dark and cloudy, but the light reflecting off the walls of the canyon gave them enough visibility to follow. They weren’t able to make out the details of the group from behind, but noticed that they were of average height and some of them were female, from the long hair. The coyotes took care not to direct the light on the group as they hustled the group along at a rapid pace. They prodded the slow ones with their rifles or slaps and muttered curses. One slap felled an illegal to the ground, and the coyote grabbed an arm, dragged him upright, and slapped him again to prod him on.
Roger tightened inside and drifted closer to the group, a hundred and fifty feet separating him from them.
The group turned around a large rock outcrop that narrowed the track, and they lost sight of the mass momentarily. They slowed down their pursuit… it was a good place for an ambush. Roger tried his phone again and after a while put it back in his pocket in disgust. Bwana crept forward, hugging the far end of the ravine, and peeked beyond the outcrop. After a while, he made a hand signal, and they surged forward.
The main body of people was flagging – they had probably been on the move all night, and the heat and the pace was telling on them. The coyotes were growing increasingly angry, and the frequent sounds of slaps and curses punctuated the air. Bwana looked across at Roger expressionlessly. He would have the same expressionless face if he was breaking the arms of the coyotes.
Roger looked at the group, looked back at the trail, and what had been gnawing away at him became stronger. He came to a halt and dug into another pocket and drew out a military compass and checked his bearings. He pictured their location in his mind and placed the compass on it and then zoomed in and out on his mental map.
He frowned, looked up to signal Bwana.
Three shots rang out.
Chapter 14
There was a haze of dust in the air, further dulling the visibility. But the aftermath of the shots was clear, even from their distance in the dark.
Two illegals lay on the ground; a couple of others hunched over them.
The coyotes were loosely strung out and were threatening the group of illegals with their guns. All eight of them. The rest of the illegals were huddled together, cowed.
Roger couldn’t make out the expressions on their faces, the darkness and distance rendering the faces into pale blobs, but none of them were showing any signs of aggression. Roger and Bwana hugged the rocky outcrop, invisible against its dark shadow beyond the dim light of the flashlights.
One of the illegals crouching over the dead
, a woman, sprang suddenly at the coyotes, shrieking, her arms outstretched. The heavy closest to her stepped back without a word, upended his AK-47, and with a lazy, casual swing hit the woman across the face. The woman fell back and then collapsed in an untidy heap without a sound, and seconds later the dull watermelon-like thud of the impact reached Roger and Bwana.
The coyotes shouted and prodded the rest of the group who resumed shuffling along the corridor. The coyote who had felled the woman hawked and spat on her body and stepped across her as he followed the group.
The gang started hazing and herding the illegals, urging them to go faster. The last one bent over the fallen woman and felt something on her body. He then rose and fired a short burst into her body. Point blank. He then stepped across the body, went to the wall of the ravine, hitched his shirt up with a loud sigh, and urinated a long stream. Just another day in a coyote’s life.
Roger felt loose and light. He could smell and taste each molecule of air that brushed his face and feel the blood steadily pulse inside him. He looked across at Bwana. He knew Bwana understood. Nothing needed to be said.
They moved like a well-oiled machine, countless missions in hot spots of the world perfecting every step they took. They drifted along, flanking the group from both sides, narrowing the gap.
Bwana was closest to the last gangbanger, the one who had fired into the prone woman.
One moment the coyote was trotting to catch up, his AK-47 held loosely in his left hand, feeling deeply satisfied with the night’s activities. The next moment, a steel band whipped across his throat, and a knife pierced his ribs. Before his neurons could transmit and his brain could decode, Bwana’s rocklike arms snapped his neck.
Bwana dragged the body to the side, lengthened his pace, and drew abreast of Roger.
The coyotes had not yet realized that one of theirs was missing, and were still loosely bunched together behind the illegals. Roger smiled grimly as he counted seven of them. None of them had gone ahead of the group.
The rough track had started widening, and the coyotes started pushing the group faster, shouting and cursing. Roger glanced at Bwana briefly. With the terrain opening, the risk of one or more of the coyotes heading to the front of the group increased.
One of the illegals stumbled and fell, and the coyote closest to her roared and lifted his rifle to strike her.
‘Hola, amigos,’ Roger called out softly and immediately stepped to his right.
The coyote froze, and the others jerked as if burnt and whirled. Flashlights stabbed the night, rifles leveled, and a query of voices rang out. Roger could make out English, Spanish and a few other languages that he didn’t recognize.
The gunmen squinted against the lights, peering in the darkness, trying to see past the shape and shadows of the valley.
One of them let loose a fusillade at where he thought the voice had come from.
Bwana took him out with a head shot and dropped down prone.
Roger stepped sideways again, his Kimber coming up smooth and fast, the lights painting bull’s-eyes on his targets, six shots roaring death in the ravine, double taps that felled three gunmen. He fell prone, rolled a few feet away, his gun tracking the group, and saw the remaining three drop as Bwana got them.
He kept the fallen heavies in his sight as Bwana approached them cautiously, not in a straight line, and confirmed the dead.
He joined his companion, and they walked around the group of illegals, who had come to a stop and were watching them vacantly. Bwana went up close to a few of them; they didn’t step back, just looked at him. He shook his head and approached a few more and got no reaction.
Roger watched for a moment and then looked around for the woman who had attacked the gunman. He found her deep inside the group, shivering violently as she stared at him.
He approached her slowly, his arms spread wide, harmlessly.
‘Hello.’
She didn’t respond to his greeting but stood there motionless, shivering and watching.
‘Hola,’ he tried again and got no response.
‘Ola.’ Nope, just shivering and a blank look back at him.
He scratched his head and tried in French and got nothing in return. He cursed under his breath and shrugged out of the jacket he was wearing and went forward to drape it across her shoulders.
She flinched as he went closer, but did not utter a word when he had wrapped it around her. She pulled the jacket closer and stared back at him.
Roger realized she was young, maybe in her mid-twenties. With sudden shock he looked harder at the rest of the group, pushing his way in deeper – he had given the group only cursory glances till then since he had been focused on the coyotes.
All of the illegals were young white women. All of them maybe in their twenties.
He sought out Bwana, who nodded when he met Roger’s gaze.
‘Yep, I noticed it too.’
‘Are they carrying any drugs?’
‘Nope, but then I didn’t search them,’ replied Bwana. He checked his phone again. No signal still.
‘Yours?’
‘Nope. No idea how big the dead area is,’ Roger said, referring to the lack of mobile coverage. ‘We’ll press on to the nearest town and hand these women to the police. Why don’t you try talking to them and see if you have better luck than me?’
Bwana drifted over to the group as Roger went to the dead bodies and collected all the rifles and smashed their barrels on a large stone. He went to the nearest body and removed the jacket the illegal had been wearing.
You won’t need it. Not where you are now, he thought and, dumping all the magazines in it, fashioned a rough rucksack.
He stood up as Bwana approached him, shaking his head.
‘No luck. All of them are drugged to the gills. Not a single word from them. We need to get them to civilization quickly before the effects of the drugs wear off.’
Roger pulled out his compass from his pocket, and then it came back to him in a flash.
‘These folks were all heading the wrong way.’
‘Wrong way? What do you mean?’ asked Bwana quizzically.
‘They were heading TO Mexico. Not stateside!’
Chapter 15
Bwana looked at the group and then at the trail they had come from.
‘Are you sure?’
Roger nodded, pointing in the general direction the bandits and illegals were heading. ‘That way is Nogales. Nogales, Sonora, in Mexico.’
Turning back, he waved his hand. ‘And that’s where all the aliens and drugs head to. The I-19 from Nogales to Tucson distributes product, whether human or drugs. These guys were definitely heading toward Mexico, not deeper into the US. That’s not the normal route for illegal immigrants to take.’
There was a pause as Bwana digested this. His face grew grimmer. ‘Young white girls being smuggled to Mexico. We can guess what for. I’m glad we erased them. But more likely, they’re part of a gang.’
He went to the bodies and started searching them. Roger joined him, and they went through the eight bandits thoroughly.
Half an hour later, they had laid out the results of the search on the ground. Wallets with no identity documents, a mobile phone, keys, loose change, magazines for the rifles, handguns, knives, but no documents, nothing that said, ‘Mr. Coyote, Gangbanger.’
Roger investigated the phone. ‘Burner phone. Just one number that has been dialed from it. No signal on this either.’
He slipped it in his pocket and turned to Bwana. ‘Some of them look European, which would be a bit unusual for gangs doing this. You notice the mark on the wrist?’
Bwana nodded. ‘Never seen it before, but then I am yet to do my PhD on gang tats. Looks like a playing card, a five of clubs.’
Roger thought for a moment and then shrugged. ‘Nothing we can do till we get a mobile signal. Let’s press on. Nearest town should be Rio Rico, that away, so let’s get going now.’
The gangbangers had carafes of water wit
h them, which Bwana and Roger shouldered. They went to the group of women, who were standing passively, watching them, and silently offered the water to them. Some of them drank thirstily, others just stared back blankly.
Bwana went ahead of the group and said, ‘Let’s go,’ and the group moved obediently. Roger took one last look at the dead guys and made a mental note to wreak grievous bodily harm to any other gangbanger he met, and followed the group.
The bandits had clearly been following a well-trodden route and probably had a rendezvous with others at some point – others who would start pressing silent panic buttons when they didn’t show. Bwana and Roger kept a careful watch and rotated the lead between them, but encountered no one else.
A couple of miles further, dawn broke, bathing the valley in silence, the vast and towering landscape making them feel like the only living beings on the planet.
A mile on, they got a mobile signal.
About forty-five minutes later they heard the Customs and Border Patrol chopper, which on spotting them swung low, and a loudspeaker came on, asking them to follow it to a clearing.
The chopper settled down in the clearing, and three heavily-armed Border Patrol agents jumped out and spread wide as they approached the group. Two other agents covered them from within the chopper, their H&K UMP .40 submachine guns tracking them. Bwana and Roger kept their hands empty and relaxed, conveying a nonthreatening message.
One of the agents walked up to them, his hands free but close to his H&K P2000 holstered pistol, while the other two circled the group of women and started offering water. Roger noticed one of those two was also carrying a medical kit with him.
He drew his attention back to the agent in front of him.
‘Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Gonzalez,’ the agent introduced himself. ‘You guys had a long walk, it looks like. Need anything? Water? Chow? Medication?’
