The girl turned to look questioningly up at her mother.
A tear welled up in the young mother’s eye, “Go ahead Elsa,” she said to her daughter. She looked up at Ell, “Muchas gracias,” she said, sounding a little choked. “My name is Lucia.”
Elsa turned and shyly took the burrito. “Gracias,” she said, twisting the burrito in half and passing one half to her mother.
They wolfed the burrito down as if they hadn’t eaten for quite a while. Ell asked, “Where are you from?”
Lucia said, “San Pedro. It is far to the south.” She glanced at Ell, “Well maybe not for you. Where are you from?”
“Nicaragua. It is farther I think, no?” Ell didn’t want to appear to be too knowledgeable.
“Oh yes. San Pedro is in Mexico.”
“Where do you hope to go?”
Little Elsa said, “We’re going to Abilene, Texas… My papa’s hurt and we’re going there to take care of him.”
Ell glanced back up at Lucia who nodded, eyes brimming with tears once again.
While Ell tried to think what to say a reedy man’s voice said, “For those of you who don’t know me, I am Tecate. Do all of you want to go to El Norte?”
The group gathered around Tecate, who Ell instinctively disliked. When he told them that he wanted 30,000 pesos to take them across the border Ell heard Lucia gasp beside her.
Lucia said, “I came here to the Pemex because I heard you were cheaper! I talked to another coyote who only charges 23,000!”
Tecate laughed, “That’d be Roberto.” He tsked, “Roberto’s no good. His last group and the group three crossings before that, they were both caught by the Border Patrol.” He paused and looked around the group, “Roberto himself always gets away though.” Tecate chuckled “23,000 is far too much for a trip with someone whose migrants get caught much of the time.”
Lucia plaintively said, “But we don’t have 30,000!”
Tecate turned to her, “Chica, if you’re part of a ‘we,’ you’d need 60,000 pesos.”
“No! The other is Elsa!” Lucia put an arm around her daughter, “Just a little girl, I’ll carry her, she doesn’t count.”
Tecate snorted, “A child! They’re slow. I charge more, not less for children.”
“Nooo,” Lucia moaned. “I’ll carry her. She won’t slow us down. Please! I have to get to my husband in Abilene. He’s been hurt and we’re going there to take care of him. Please?” Lucia plucked at Tecate’s sleeve, “I’ll pay you back…”
The pleading in Lucia’s eyes tugged at Ell’s heartstrings.
Tecate said, “I can reduce your fees,” he looked around at the group, then back to Lucia, “by 10,000 pesos, but you must work for my bosses in Texas for a month when you get to Texas. Two months for 20,000 pesos.”
One of the other women said, “I can make much more than 10,000 pesos a month in America. Let me pay you back instead.” She dropped her eyes, “I don’t want to work for the syndicate.”
The migrants began trying to wheedle for different deals from Tecate, though he stood resolutely shaking his head. An icy sensation prickled down Ell’s back as she listened distantly. She’d heard of coyotes who exploited their transportees. Some collected the migrants money then simply lost them somewhere in the desert. Such migrants frequently died. Some migrants were promised far more help than they received for the money they paid. Some were forced into a form of debt servitude, assessed additional charges by their employers which resulted in their falling farther and farther in debt. Women could find themselves forced into prostitution.
Ell turned to walk away, thinking that she should find a different coyote. But then she saw little Elsa staring at her. Elsa looked frightened as she clung to her distraught mother.
After a long pause, Ell returned to the group and listened while Lucia bargained away her freedom…
***
Bouncing along in the back of a pickup, heading for their crossing of the Rio Grande about forty minutes outside of Ojinaga, Ell wondered sadly whether Lucia had any idea how many months of servitude it would actually take to pay off her debt to Tecate. Ell had paid the full 30,000 pesos for her own border crossing and tried to think of a way to pay for Elsa and Lucia’s crossing without leaving everyone wondering just why she was crossing to El Norte when she had so much money.
Ell had developed a healthy dislike of Tecate and by extension, of Hector from Matamoros who had referred her to him. She suspected that Hector hoped to get some kind of kickback from Tecate. She also had a sick feeling that the high proportion of young women in Tecate’s group had something to do with an underground sex industry that he provided workers for.
Would Lucia have agreed to four months working for Tecate if she’d thought that there was a possibility that she might be working as a prostitute? Ell doubted it, but feared that the unworldly young mother was naive enough that such a possibility had not occurred to her.
Little Elsa touched Ell’s arm. When Ell looked down at her, Elsa held out her water bottle. Feeling a little misty, Ell accepted the gift even though she had a full water bottle in her own backpack. The child, becoming comfortable around Ell, had begun chattering to Ell about her life in San Pedro and her papa’s fall off a roof in Abilene. Ell now knew how “Papa’s” leg had been broken so he couldn’t work, even though he’d had surgery to repair it. How Elsa’s mother worried about how to support her father and how they would pay for the surgery.
Lucia had been told that Papa’s employer had insurance that had paid for the surgery but she didn’t really believe it.
The little girl’s world overflowed with worry, yet she often smiled and always offered to share what she had with Ell, which left Ell feeling pretty choked up. And I think I’ve got it tough. She snorted, most people would think that being on the lam from the government after escaping prison was a pretty big problem but then again…
***
Tecate tried to keep the smile off his face as he told his migrants that he recommended they take off their pants to wade the river. He pulled off his own to set an example, feeling goose bumps appear in the cool air and dreading the cold kiss of the river but acting brave about it. The two men in the group took off their pants immediately. After a few minutes of dithering the women began taking theirs off too. The moonlight let him appreciate the show. The taller of the two women accompanying the little girl had beautiful legs he noticed. Too bad she wouldn’t be in debt on the other side. Even with her short hair, her exotic good looks constantly drew his eye. Selling her contract to Señor Ruiz would have been delightful. He would have enjoyed visiting her once she began working in Ruiz’s brothel.
Pants off, the group made their way down to the water, little shrieks telling him that the water was just as cold as it always was in February. When the little girl gasped at the cold, the tall woman gave her backpack to the short woman and put the girl on her back for the wade across.
Once they were on the other side Tecate barked at the group. “No! Don’t put your pants or shoes on yet! I know it’s cold but you’ll appreciate it later if we walk a bit to dry off. There’s a rocky area where you can put your shoes on without getting them so dirty.” He set off and the migrants followed.
At the flat rocky area he said, “Rub your legs and feet off with your hands, then dust off your hands before you get dressed. You don’t want to walk as far as we have to go with grit in your shoes.” While he dressed he positioned himself to watch the tall woman putting her pants back on. Admiring her, he wondered if he could somehow still put her into debt and sell that debt to Ruiz.
Tecate set a punishing pace on a path through the desert’s sagebrush and ocotillo. Certainly Ell found it difficult. Ell had had thoughts of carrying Elsa when the girl got tired, but hadn’t considered her own lack of stamina in the face of extended exercise. It wasn’t bad enough to make her throw up or pass out like had happened when she had to run long distances back in her Academy days, it just had her close enough to the edg
e that she knew she couldn’t take on anything else.
Ell wasn’t the only one on the edge of exhaustion. When Tecate called one of his infrequent rest breaks, many of the women’s faces appeared drawn. Little Elsa flopped down and almost immediately fell asleep.
One of the women asked if they could go slower.
Tecate snorted, “We aren’t going fast! I’ve slowed down because we have so many women, but we have a deadline to make because the trucks expect to pick us up at a certain time. If I have to call them and ask them to come at a later time they will charge us more. Can you pay the extra 6,500 pesos?”
The woman shook her head and Tecate got up, saying, “Time to go, time to go. We don’t want to be late!”
Ell glanced at the exhausted looking Elsa and lifted her chin at Tecate, “I’ll pay the 6,500 pesos. Let us rest a little longer and then let us go a little slower.”
If Tecate looked astonished, it was because he was. He’d used this ploy many times in the past and never had anyone offer to pay money to slow down before. He had had a few women go a little deeper into debt bondage later in the trek when they were totally exhausted. He shrugged. It didn’t actually cost him more, it was just a ploy to get more money—and it had just worked. The next payoff would come when they started to get thirsty and he could sell them water. He would have to “take them out of his way” to the water Felix always stashed for him. He could charge them both for the detour and the water.
Chapter Nine
Breaking news—Although unofficial, rumors swirling out of the Guantanamo Naval facility in Cuba allege that Ell Donsaii has escaped from the prison there! Many of the rumors state that she never actually arrived, escaping somewhere in route to the prison grounds, however an absolute beehive of activity there at Guantanamo Bay suggests that she escaped somewhere in the close vicinity. Will we be seeing Donsaii’s face on wanted posters?
Stockton closed her eyes, seething. I am surrounded by incompetents! Opening them she lifted a finger and hissed through a jaw she could barely unclench, “So, we don’t know how she escaped,” she lifted another finger, “how her guards got stoned,” another finger, “where she went,” another finger, “why we can’t find her,” the flat hand slammed down on her desk, “or, who’s responsible?”
Stockton had kept Amundsen on as Secretary of Defense. He’d started as Teller’s Secretary, then stayed on as that fool Flood’s Secretary. So he’d been brought in by Stockton’s own party and as she set up her Cabinet she had wanted to keep someone as evidence that she wasn’t just handing out political plums. Keeping someone who’d come into office with her party in the first place had seemed a good way to do it. That the man had been universally held in high regard had cemented her decision.
Now she had her doubts.
Amundsen seemed unperturbed by her tirade. “If you had asked I would have strongly advised you against the steps you have been taking in regards to Donsaii. In addition to being, in my opinion, smarter and more innovative than anyone else who has ever existed on this planet, Dr. Donsaii is highly ethical, moral and a very good person to have on our side. Making an enemy of her was a serious mistake.”
Stockton took a breath to interrupt the idiot but he held up a palm to stop her and continued, “You should not be surprised that a genius of her caliber was able to find a way to escape from common holding methods such as are used to hold ordinary criminals.”
Stockton raised a trembling finger to point it at Amundsen, “Tell your deputy that, as of this minute he is the acting Secretary.” With a snarl, “Get out of my sight.”
***
Ell’s eyes narrowed. She’d finished the last of the water in the two bottles Tecate had told them all to bring quite a while ago. Two liters of water wasn’t a lot for trekking all night. Tecate told them they walked at night to keep warm and avoid the Border Patrol, but it left them worn out. Now the fifteen women and two men were sprawled about, sleeping in the relatively warm, late morning sunshine. Tecate said they’d meet the trucks that night but that they still had quite a ways to walk.
In his instructions before they left Ojinaga, he’d told them to pack two liters of water and a breakfast burrito. Since it was nearly noon the next day Ell suspected that all the women were out of both water and food. They would have to go without eating lunch or dinner in addition to being very thirsty. Not fatal, but certainly unpleasant.
Empty water bottles and other discarded items littered the area, suggesting that this was a location where Tecate’s migrants usually stopped. Evidently Tecate took a longer route than other coyotes, because Lucia said her husband Enrique had only hiked overnight, not part of the next day like they were doing. Ell put her empty water bottles in her back pack then held the back pack to her stomach. Peering down into the open top of the backpack she used her umbilical port to fill the two bottles, then looking around at the sleeping camp, she pulled out the full bottles and stashed them under a nearby bush. Getting up she took her empty backpack and filled it with empty bottles from a nearby cluster.
While filling those bottles and stashing them under the same bush, Ell asked Allan to find a brand of granola bar that was sold in Mexico. Once he’d determined that Clif bars were sold in many stores near the border she had him check Amazon. Sure enough, they had Clif bars wrapped in pairs to fit through their four inch sales port. Having filled seventeen water bottles and stacked them under the bush as if someone had hidden them there, Ell had her waldo deliver her ten pairs of granola bars. She would have liked to have gotten more but figured that was as many as she could plausibly claim to have had in her back pack all along.
Tecate woke the migrants. With satisfaction he saw many of them trying to get a few more drops out of the last of their bottles.
Sure enough one of them asked, “Where can we get water?”
“I only brought enough for me. I can’t carry water for all of you. I told you to be careful.”
“Two liters isn’t enough for a long hike like this!”
Tecate shrugged, “If you knew that, why didn’t you bring more?”
“You didn’t tell us it was so far or that it would be more than twenty four hours before we could get water.”
“Well, there is a place where we can get water, but it’s out of our way, can you pay for the detour? It would be an extra 6,500 pesos. You could split it amongst yourselves.”
“You said you’d take care of us!” one of the women spluttered.
But then the tall woman, looking at Tecate like he were some kind of bug she’d found on her shoe, said, “Don’t worry, I found a stash of water over under that bush.” She waved a negligent hand and the women turned that way.
Tecate’s eyes widened as he looked over where she had pointed. All he saw was what looked like just another pile of empty bottles.
However the women moved that way in a herd and began exclaiming as they passed full water bottles out amongst themselves. What puta had put water there?
Before he could wonder if he could still get them to pay extra for food, the tall bitch started passing out granola bars to the migrants. Only one each admittedly, but it would doubtless keep them from getting hungry enough to pay him any more money.
She might have nice legs, but Tecate had begun to hate her. As they started to hike again, Tecate considered ways to put her back in her place.
When night had fallen Tecate told the lead migrant to keep walking and he waited as the group walked past him. They were on a little dirt road, no more than two ruts worn by trucks on the local ranch. When the tall girl came by he called her aside, “What’s your name?”
“Elsa.”
“Elsa, we’re going to take a break a little ways farther. I need someone to stay back here and warn us if any vehicles come down this little road. Can you whistle like a bird?”
She stared at him suspiciously for a moment, then pursed her lips and let out a low “tooowheep.”
“Yes, good. If someone comes, do that three times, pa
use then do it again. Then walk up beside the road on the left. That way you will run into the rest of us. We’ll have hidden to the left of the road.”
Ell stood watching Tecate and the rest of the women move away up the road, wondering what he was about. If a truck drove up this road at night they would hear it and see its headlights long before it got there. He certainly didn’t need someone watching for approaching vehicles on a quiet night like this, so there must be some other reason he’d asked her to wait. She had Allan lift the hoverbike off from its hiding place in Ojinaga and send it her way. Once it had crossed the border a couple of miles she had it lift up to two thousand feet and asked Allan to switch the cameras over to infrared.
Tecate chuckled to himself, proud of the plan he’d hatched. He guided the migrants off the right side of the road and up a shallow gully. The tall, stupid woman he’d left behind would soon be lost in the desert. She’d given him his last problem with the rest of the migrants.
He’d come back and look for her once he’d dropped the others off. If he couldn’t find her, nothing lost, he already had her 30,000 pesos. If he found her he would refuse to help her find her way back to civilization unless she agreed to a contract with Señor Ruiz. He got a little thrill out of that thought. Having that particularly good looking woman contracted to Ruiz would be quite a win even without the bonus Ruiz would give him for bringing her in.
Allan spoke in Ell’s ear, saying that the hoverbike was approaching the area. As the crow flies they’d only walked about twenty miles from Ojinaga. So, at 120 miles an hour it hadn’t taken the hoverbike long to reach them. She dug in her backpack and got out her headband, slipping it on so she could see what the hoverbike saw in the HUD.
Defiant Page 21
