Hawke's Fury

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  Tires squalled around the corner and a truck running without headlights came into view. The Beretta rose in my hands and I almost put holes in the windshield before a woman’s hand waved through the open driver’s window. Fosfora pumped her arm up and down as she braked Alejandro’s pickup to a shrieking stop.

  She stuck her head through the open window. “Get in!”

  Instead of heading toward the passenger side like she ordered, I hoofed it to the driver’s side. “Move over!”

  She didn’t argue, or put the pickup in park. It was rolling when I grabbed the handle and yanked the door open. She’d already thrown herself over the console and into the passenger seat when I slammed the transmission into reverse. Three men rounded the end of the block at a run, all carrying weapons. It was time to get gone.

  There was barely enough light to see when I squinted into the side mirror. The tires threw up a cloud of white smoke until there was enough room to turn into the alley where Esteban disappeared. A gangster with a machine pistol appeared in the arched opening. Muzzle flashes strobed the area as the weapon raked left to right spraying a little house several feet away. I hoped there was no one home and threw the transmission into drive.

  “Buckle up!” I hit the foot-feed. We shot forward into what I thought was an alley, but turned out to be a narrow dirt street. Tall earth-tone colored stucco walls flashed past on either side, broken only by gated openings into the tiny patios. I hoped no one stepped out to see what all the fuss was about, because the truck’s side mirrors had only inches to spare on each side.

  The block wasn’t long, and when I slowed at the next street, a set of headlights came on. It was still light enough to make out Esteban standing half in and out of a Toyota Tacoma pickup. I partially opened the big Dodge’s door to he could see who was behind the wheel.

  He nodded and dropped down into the seat, gunning the truck’s engine and waving at us to follow. After half a dozen turns, some down similar alleys, we were soon out of town. I followed right on his bumper as we shot west down a two-lane road. I glanced in the rearview mirror. No one was following, yet.

  I had to force my hands to relax on the wheel as we trailed Esteban’s taillights down the highway. “What’n hell just happened back there?”

  Fosfora pulled several strands of thick black hair from her face and tied a thick ponytail with a strip of leather to keep it from whipping in the slipstream. “Mira wey. I don’t know.”

  I let her sarcasm pass. “What did you see?”

  “One of the food carts opened back up after you went inside, and I went over to get something to eat. I was finishing my tortilla under one of the trees and saw some cholos coming down the street, walking. They were carrying guns, but that’s not unusual. They always have guns out to scare everyone.

  “A nice man I didn’t know came up to me and told me to talk to him. He said that if he was with me, the cholos might not notice me. He hates the gangsters that have taken over his town. So I acted like we were together while two went inside the store where you were. I was going to stay there until they came back outside, but the next thing I know people are shooting.”

  “The ones you saw?”

  “No. Others. People I hadn’t seen. They were suddenly everywhere. I ran to the truck and jumped in it when neither one of you came back outside. I thought you two might have gone out the back, so I drove around to find you and that’s when the shooting started. Where’s Alejandro?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Her face went blank. “Neta? No manches?”

  “Yeah, for real.”

  She licked her lips and turned to look back over her shoulder, as if I wouldn’t have let her know if someone was coming up behind us. “We need to get back to Ciudad Acuna.”

  “The only way is back through town, and I’m not interested in doing that right now.”

  She jerked her head toward the windshield. “So we’re following who?”

  “My contact. Name’s Esteban.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Wherever he takes us.”

  “Let me out at the next ejido.”

  “I don’t know when that’ll be, and it’s probably not safe for you to be in some strange one-horse town by yourself.”

  “Horses?”

  “It’s an old saying. You don’t need to be alone anyplace around here, especially little . . . como se dice . . . community?”

  “Comunidad. As for your one-horse town, we would say pueblo pequeno, but it isn’t as descriptive.”

  “Well, no matter what you call it, I don’t feel right dropping you off in the middle of nowhere.”

  “I have my pistola.” She laid it on the seat between us, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it in her hand. Her eyes widened, and a second later she was on her knees, leaning over the console and digging around in the back. “Where’s that little ametralladora?”

  I wondered that myself. “I have a good idea Esteban has the Scorpion now. Is that Cordura bag still back there?”

  “Cordura?”

  “Tough material. The gray backpack.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hand it up here.”

  Snagging it by the straps and passing it over, she flipped back around like a pensive child. “How’d he get Scorpion? When did he get it?”

  “That’s a good question.”

  I unzipped the pack with one hand and felt around inside. The Beretta’s magazines were still there. Maintaining a light touch on the steering wheel, I ejected the almost empty mag from the pistol’s butt and snapped another in its place. Releasing the slide, I tucked it under my leg and put the bag on the floorboard.

  The blazing orange and yellow horizon ahead would have been something to admire in any other situation. It lost its appeal half an hour earlier when people were shooting at us.

  She settled down without putting her seatbelt back on. Someone must have monkeyed with the electronics under the dash, because that annoying warning bell didn’t go off. “Don’t worry about me. My brother will come get me tomorrow, since I haven’t called in.”

  “Do I have to point out that we’re on our way to somewhere else?”

  “He does not look too smart, but he is. I told him about the houseware store in El Cruce. He will call when he gets there and sees what happened.”

  “Call where?”

  She dug in her purse and held up a battered cell phone.

  I snorted. “Yeah, well, mine didn’t get a signal there in town.” Realizing I hadn’t checked my own phone since before we went into the store, I dug it from my back pocket. As I figured, there was no service. “And it sure as hell ain’t gonna ring right now.”

  “You don’t live here. We have learned to communicate when we have to. He will find some place in town with a signal and will call tomorrow at noon. If I don’t answer, or call him five minutes after that time, we will try again at six.” She watched the depressing landscape flash past. “I will find a signal somewhere. They are stronger when we get closer to the border.”

  “Y’ all work the system.”

  She gave me a grin. “Sí. It is how my people have survived revolution after revolution, by working the system.” She intentionally emphasized her accent, making it sound like see-stem.

  I didn’t take the bait. “But we’re not going to the border, I don’t think.”

  “Yes, we are. I know this road.”

  “Where does it come out?”

  “Cuenca Seco.”

  “Dry Basin. What a name for a town.”

  “It’s what you call a one-horse town.”

  Chapter 25

  The moon was full and bright enough that we drove without headlights, plowing a hole in the darkness as cool desert wind whipped through the open windows. The dim glow from a distant pair of headlights popped up over the horizon far behind us. We hadn’t seen more than a couple of vehicles since we left.

  Back home, we’d have been passing the flickering posts of bobwire fences,
along with brush and mesquite trees and a steady string of cars destined to places unknown. Here it was nothing but scrub brush alternately growing close to the two-lane, then an expanse of open ground.

  Once, well off to the right, we saw dozens of flickering campfires. Silhouettes of cars and other unidentifiable vehicles flashed between us and the fires. Out close to the highway, a dozen men squatted in the darkness beside a pickup, watching us pass.

  When we neared with our headlights off, two rose, as if in challenge.

  Esteban’s little Toyota truck didn’t slow and neither did I.

  The fires disappeared into the distance. I twisted the light switch, turning on the dash lights enough to check the gas gauge. There was still a quarter of a tank left, and I wondered what kind of mileage the old Dodge was getting these days. I flicked it back off. “Who are those people?”

  “Inmigrantes, probably from Guatemala. They are walking to Texas.”

  For every mile we traveled, the headlights came closer. When they reached a distance of about one hundred yards, the car slowed and paced us. The moonlight was bright enough for them to see our vehicle, and I was sure the reflectors warned them that we were ahead. I flicked on my own lights and kept going, waiting for them to pass. They didn’t. Taking my foot off the gas, I slowed. They slowed also. I didn’t like that one damn bit. “Keep that pistol handy.”

  Noticing that I kept looking behind us, Fosfora glanced in the mirror on her side. “What’s wrong?”

  I tilted my head. “Guy back there’s pacing us.”

  She didn’t like it any better than I did. I didn’t want Esteban to get too far ahead, so I gave it the gas and we caught back up with him.

  We plowed on through the darkness until Esteban’s brake lights flickered. He slowed and drifted off the road, onto the shoulder. I thought he was dozing off, or stopping to deal with the car behind us, but my headlights picked up a two-lane track angling off toward a ridgeline to the north. He hit the dirt with a rooster tail of dust and kept going at a slightly slower pace than when we were on the highway.

  I let off the gas and followed, rocks rattling against the undercarriage. Growing up on dirt roads, I knew to back off from the plume of dust rising from beneath his Toyota. “Roll your windows up.”

  She did and my stomach knotted with the question of what was going on. Nothing made sense at that point. Was Esteban leading us into an ambush? And who was in that car behind us. If he wanted to kill us, he could have let that happen back in town.

  He rounded a bend and slowed even more. An SUV was waiting in the darkness, facing our direction. The headlights flashed on and Esteban stopped.

  Squinting into the brightness, I slammed on the brakes and slid to a stop. “Dammit. Is this another shakedown, in the middle of the night?”

  I saw Fosfora’s head shake in the lights of the dash. “No. It might be smugglers or coyotes, or even the road leading up to a cartel ranch house.”

  The whole thing was a mess, and I wanted out. Shifting the transmission into reverse, I twisted to see over my shoulder and back up. Old habits die hard, and I wasn’t going to trust the mirrors. The car that had been following caught up to us and slid to a stop. I figured they had us.

  Before I could stomp the gas, the night behind us exploded with the flash and roar of automatic weapons fire directed at the sedan. There was an ambush all right, but it was directed on the car that had been following us. I had the Beretta in my hand as the light show flickered through the truck’s back glass, the sounds of gunfire muffled by the closed windows. The yellow bursts of at least three weapons on both sides of the dirt track looked like sparklers in the darkness.

  It was surreal, sitting in a settling dust cloud while chaos ensued in the rearview mirror, and calm reigned thirty feet ahead. There was no return gunfire from the car that slowly drifted at idle speed off the track and into the desert.

  Blocked in from the danger behind, I threw the gearshift lever into drive and almost stomped the gas, but Esteban stayed where he was, blocking any escape attempt I had in mind. Driving across the desert was impossible. In our headlights, boulders that had rolled down the ridge were scattered everywhere, along with thick stands of banana yucca, lechuguilla, and a buttload of tree cholla rising up toward the sky.

  The light show ended, and the desert was once again silent. Esteban opened the door and stepped out, waving for me to follow. “It’s all right. These are friends.” Without waiting for an answer, he dropped back in the truck and crept forward past the waiting vehicle.

  Still not sure of what was happening, I hesitated, thinking. A man stepped into the open between us and the parked SUV, backlighting himself. He waved. I accelerated gently, holding the Beretta on my right thigh. “Keep that pistol of yours ready.”

  We drew close to the car and my eyebrows rose. The guy in the headlights was an anglo dressed in desert camo and loaded with battle gear. He would have been right at home in Iraq. I slowed and he twirled his finger, ordering me to roll down my window. I did and pulled forward.

  “No more lights, sir.” The hard-looking young man with a high and tight haircut exuded military testosterone. He wore an expensive set of night vision goggles up on his forehead and leaned forward to peer inside before giving me a big smile and speaking with a distinctly southern accent. “Nice shirt. Your last name’s Hawke?”

  Surprised, I sat there with my mouth open. It was a good thing there were no flies swirling around my head. One sentence I’d memorized in high school Spanish popped into my head. En boca serrada, no entran moscas, or loosely translated, Flies cannot enter a closed mouth.

  What an odd thing to remember at such a strange time. My mouth closed with a pop.

  “Lights, please.”

  I snapped them off. “Funny meeting you here in the middle of nowhere.”

  The guy frowned and threw out another question. “I need confirmation. What LEO agency are you with, sir?”

  “Why?”

  “Just wanted to make sure who I was talking to. I’m Judge.” He didn’t offer his hand. It rested on the grip of the battle rifle slung over his chest.

  “Pleased to meet you, Judge. Sonny Hawke, Texas Ranger.”

  “How long you been on the job, sir?”

  Those two questions told me a lot about those guys. “Been with them for ten years. Before that, I was highway patrol. It’s really me.”

  His grin returned. “Right answer. Come on in, sir. You’re safe now.”

  I threw a thumb over my shoulder. “Those guys in the car back there?”

  “Neutralized. They were the bad guys. Hidalgo Cartel. The car and the occupants will be gone in fifteen minutes.”

  “Hard country.”

  “They made it that way, sir. Not us.”

  “My turn with the questions.”

  His grin widened even further, but cut me off. “Can’t say much, sir, but we’ve been working with Esteban for a good long while now. We’re the good guys.” Still grinning, his eyes flicked to Fosfora. “Ma’am, you can point that weapon somewhere else now.”

  I realized she had the muzzle pointed more in my direction than toward the undercover agent. I pushed it away with a fingertip. “Yeah, I’ve been shot enough this year.”

  “Yessir. Left trapezius. See? We know who you are.” Judge pointed north. “Follow Esteban around that copse of brush. We have people and rations there.”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “Besides Esteban’s call, we got another one from higher up. Voice told us a friend of yours code name Perry Rodriguez said you might be coming this way.”

  Good old Yolanda Rodriguez and Perry Hale.

  But then again, I was frustrated that Esteban had a Sat phone and I didn’t. I made myself a promise that I’d get one as soon as I got back to the states, and damn the cost.

  Chapter 26

  The Special Operations unit was making a cold camp against the sloping wall of the high ridge I’d seen from the highway.
Another SUV was parked nearby, all four doors and the rear cargo hatch standing wide open. They’d either removed the light bulbs, or had rewired the vehicle so the dome lights didn’t come on when someone opened the door.

  We didn’t need the lights once the moon came up, washing the desert in pale, cold light. Esteban’s Toyota pickup wasn’t there. Instead of stopping at the camp, he’d driven on past and was gone. I didn’t like that one little bit, because I couldn’t figure out why he’d led us there in the first place.

  At first, Judge didn’t seem inclined to talk. Other than to tell us there were other guys in the group, but they were busy dealing with the ventilated sedan full of cartel bodies.

  He leaned into the Dodge and knocked the dome light out with the butt of a large knife. “Sorry sir. We can’t have lights coming on and off out here tonight.”

  “It’s not my truck, but I doubt that little dome light’ll make much more of an impact on the night than your ambush back there.”

  “You’re right about that.” He slid the knife back into its sheath on his chest. “But it’s protocol.” He led us over to the rear of the SUV backed against a cluster of large boulders. “Sorry we don’t have spare NVGs for you guys, but your night vision will sharpen with the lights off.”

  Some kind of desert bush I didn’t recognize created a natural screen around the vehicle. The cargo section was packed with a variety of boxes and bags. A collapsible table set up at the rear was filled with packets of Meals Ready to Eat, also known as MREs.

  He dropped the NVGs into place. “I wouldn’t be using these, except it’s damn dark in here.” While Fosfora took in our surroundings, he rustled around in the back of the SUV, fiddled with a plastic bag for a few minutes before reaching into a pocket and pulling out a small plastic collapsible cup. He filled it with coffee. Half-sitting on the rear of the SUV, he held it out. “MRE coffee. Only comes in packets that make six ounces, which ain’t much, but’s hot and has caffeine. That’s all I can say.”