South

by Lance Charnes

  “There’s a guy flying that thing,” Luis finally said. “A real CBP guy, not some whacked-out ‘roid monster of a contractor. He’s not going to shoot a little girl.”

  “Are you crazy?” Nora snatched Hope away from him, folded her arms around her like a shield. “You’re betting my daughter’s life on that.”

  “You got another plan?”

  Nora looked at the gap, then the slope. It was so high and steep. She didn’t know if she could make it up there, far less pack Hope over the top. “Do we have a way out?”

  “Yeah, but only if she goes first.”

  She peeked at the drone. It drifted up and down in the light breeze, looking like some giant prehistoric insect. If it wanted, that thing could make Hope disappear with a single burst from its gun. If it did, Nora might throw herself out there too, just to get it over with. Then she remembered Luis’ words: there’s a guy flying that thing…he won’t shoot a little girl. True?

  Nora measured the slope again. Every time she did, it seemed higher, more impossible. The gunship blocked the only other way out.

  There’s a guy flying that thing… She had no choice. She had to believe some humanity was left in the world. “All right.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “If you’re wrong—”

  “I know, you’ll kill me. If I’m wrong, I’ll want you to. There’s a white undershirt in the bottom of my pack. Can you get it?”

  Nora plunged into his backpack again, yanked him around probably more than necessary but enough to beat back some of her fear, then plunked the rolled-up tee shirt into his hand.

  “Okay, she should wave this as she goes.” He handed it back to her. “It’s probably better if Mommy tells her what to do.”

  Nora unrolled the shirt, then knelt and grasped Hope’s shoulders. “Okay, Cupcake. I need you be really brave, okay?” Braver than I am. “I need you to wave this at that big…bug out there—”

  “But Mommy—”

  “Shh. Listen. Go along the fence to that hole, then go through to the other side. Lay down on the ground and look at the stars. I’ll come get you in a couple minutes. Okay? Can you do that?”

  “The big bug will get me.”

  “No it won’t.” Nora shot a glare at Luis. “It’s just going to watch you.” Please let that be true…

  Hope leaned into Nora. “I’m scared.”

  “So am I, Cupcake.” She hugged her daughter hard, then kissed her forehead. “Remember what I told you.” She held the hug as long as she dared, whispered, “I love you,” then turned Hope around. “Okay, wave the shirt at the bug.”

  Luis stood and slid forward to the outcrop’s edge.

  “What are you doing?” Nora hissed. “Get back.”

  “I’m not far enough out to be a target. I want to show the pilot how short Hope is.”

  Hope hobbled to the fence, stopped, waved the shirt again.

  The gunship bobbed, yawed to the right a fraction, as if watching.

  Nora stood, hands over her mouth, eyes riveted. Please don’t shoot my baby please oh please don’t I’m begging you shoot me not her please…

  Hope half-hopped, half-limped from one post to the next. At each, she stopped to wave the shirt.

  Nora hadn’t been able to make her lungs work since her daughter lurched into the open.

  Hope reached the gap. She stared at the drone, eyes round and unblinking. She waved the shirt again.

  The gunship sideslipped a few feet to its right. Luis grabbed Nora’s arm, pulled her back into the niche. She didn’t resist.

  Hope turned to face Nora and Luis. “Mommy?”

  “Go through the hole!” Nora called out. “Go through and get away from the fence! Now! I’ll be there soon.”

  Hope’s little chin wrinkled. She nodded. Then she slipped through the gap.

  Nora sagged against the rock wall, gulped down a huge breath. Her heart started beating again. She’s safe. Praise Allah, my baby’s safe.

  “Ready?” Luis said. He gripped her right arm, squeezed gently. “Time to follow her.”

  “How?”

  “I’m going to light the brush on fire. The heat’ll wash out our IR returns, and the smoke and light will turn the pilot’s night-vision picture white. I’ll give you a boost up on the shelf, then hand you a flare. Light it and stick it as far up in the scree as you can, then get up the slope. Drop your pack over the side at the top of the fence, then work your way down. Be careful going down, it’s nasty. I’ll be right behind you. Got it?”

  The whole scheme sounded insane. The gunship would tear them apart. But what choice did they have? “Will this work?”

  “Sure.”

  “Liar. Let’s get it over with.”

  Luis twisted off the first flare’s top. “These are bright, don’t look straight at them.” He struck the flare’s end against the top, and the night turned end-of-the-world-Sun-exploding white. Then she heard a foom, and immediately the smell of roasting plants filled her nostrils. She heard and felt Luis disappear, then that evil ripping sound of the drone’s gun and the thunder of bullets plowing the earth just a few feet away. Be careful be careful I can’t do this alone…

  A minute later he stood next to her, breathing hard. Smoke filled the little niche, her sinuses, her head. “Ready?” he said.

  No. “Yes.”

  His idea of a “boost” was to hook his shoulder under her pack and stand up fast with his good hand pushing up on her crotch. She didn’t have time to object. The narrow ledge that had been above her head a moment before was now at mid-chest, and she automatically planted her palms and levered herself up just like on the Army confidence course. He thrust a flare into her hands the moment she stood. She sparked it and stabbed the end into the loose rock to her left.

  Nora climbed. She crawled up the loose rubble, stomping her boot toes into the mess and swimming upwards, sliding back a foot for every three she advanced. She could just about hear the drone’s rotors beating away behind her, angry and confused, its gun hammering the rock and the dirt. She looked back just once, saw Luis a few feet behind her, scratching one-handed against the slope, the inferno below bathing them both in reds and yellows through a fog of smoke that, despite its pleasant woody smell, burned her throat and eyes.

  The rock just above her head exploded, splashing fragments into her face before she could drop and hug the slope. Had it found her? Was she about to die? But the burst didn’t repeat, and she scrambled through the hole with an extra jolt of desperate energy.

  She looked to her right and saw only desert. She’d passed the top of the fence. She braced herself, tore off her pack and rolled it over the side, hearing it bounce down to the ground below.

  Luis wasn’t joking about the downhill side. The rocks slid out at the slightest touch, and more followed them from above. Stones pinballed off her arms and legs. Those flares could have been burning against her wound. Blood dripped into her eyes from a hurt she didn’t remember.

  With ten feet left to go, the slope collapsed underneath her. She screamed involuntarily as the entire patch of rockfall she clung to turned to liquid and careened down, throwing her head-over-heels against the desert floor, then pelting her with stones. She curled into a ball, covered her head with her hands, and waited for the pummeling to stop.

  Eventually, it did.

  She lay there aching in a hundred places, coughing, blood seeping into her eyes and out her nose. Every part of her smelled of smoke and grit. She waited for the gunship to find her in the open and finish her off. It would probably hurt less.

  Footsteps on gravel, then jumbled rock. Luis’ voice in mid-grunt: “There you go.” Then strong, dusty fingers brushing her hair and face. She opened her eyes.

  Hope kneeled next to her, wide-eyed. Then she flopped her face onto Nora’s stomach and wailed out her fear.

  Luis squatted behind Hope. “You okay?”

  Nora struggled up on one elbow, finger-brushed the dirt from Hope’s hair. The gunship hovered
on the other side of the fence, its underside glowing red in the reflected firelight. “What’s he waiting for?”

  “He’s watching, but he won’t shoot. He missed his chance.” He smiled. “Bienvenido a México. We made it.”

  58

  MONDAY, 17 MAY

  Eleventy-bazillion dollars blown on recording every phone call in America, McGinley seethed, and all a body has to do is buy a goddamn Nigerian phone from Walmart and it’s all just shit.

  Ojeda was in the wind. He hadn’t returned a single one of McGinley’s calls, though it was hard telling what number the man used now. He’d dropped off the Feebs’ radar Saturday night—they were real quick to tell McGinley that, like it was his fault—and a Border Patrol report had him and Khaled and a child on the border a few hours ago. Supposedly tried to shoot down a drone, which sounded like pure bullshit. The Feebs said Mrs. Ojeda was cooperating, which McGinley knew was bullshit. That woman wouldn’t turn against her man no matter what got done to her.

  So McGinley lied and said it was all part of a plan and he had an agreement with Ojeda, who was due to check in that morning. The Feebs said they’d leave things be. That’s where it stood a few hours ago. If the sorry sumbitch didn’t surface pretty soon, McGinley would have enough egg on his face to keep Waffle House going for another year.

  A news alert popped up on his screen. McGinley stabbed it with a finger. As the Fox News video played, he felt his face get redder and hotter. Those goddamn Feebs had lied to him.

  59

  MONDAY, 17 MAY

  It used to be a truck stop and roadhouse: a flat-roofed, cinder-block building a little larger than a double-wide, its daisy-yellow paint peeling, the front roof overhang sagging between its pipe supports, derelict trucks and RVs in back, a graffittied, once-silver propane tank on one side. Now it was a refugee camp, a stop on the trail of misery between Mexicali and Nogales.

  I guess we’re refugees, Luis figured. He sat at a plastic picnic table in a patch of shade cast by one of the half-dozen Red Cross tents laid out in two rows east of the bar and café. The tent’s skirts were rolled up, as were those of three others, turning them into canopies; the bath tent and clinic were fully enclosed. The three dozen or so other people at the camp stayed away from him, peeked at him from lowered eyes or carefully turned heads. Probably the pile of body armor and weapons on the ground next to him put them off. If he was a sicario, he was a target, or they were.

  The chilaquiles were pretty not-bad, though he tried not to think about what exactly was in them or on the grill that made them. The coffee—black, Americano style—was hot enough to kill whatever swam in the water. After a day of eating not much more than energy bars, anything hot and filling was a feast.

  A familiar thrumming behind Luis made him twist to scan the sky. A conga line of a half-dozen helicopters threaded westward over the mountains south of the camp. He figured they were headed for the distant rumble to the southwest. Someone was fighting someone down there, had been long enough to get artillery involved.

  “Blackhawks?” Nora’s voice asked.

  She stood across the table from him, more-or-less clean—they’d both been dust-gray from top to bottom when they stumbled out of the desert a few hours ago, and he still was—eyes bloodshot, hair damp, wearing a wrinkled black button-down blouse and fresh blue jeans. Her hands linked under Hope’s butt, forming a sling.

  “Yeah. How you guys doing?”

  Nora plopped Hope on the nearest plastic chair, unloaded her own pack and perched carefully. “They cleaned and repacked my wound and gave me a tetanus booster. They say I’ll live. They also said you did a good job, by the way. Miss Cupcake here—” she ruffled Hope’s hair; Hope scowled “—has a bad sprain, but only a sprain.”

  “What’s that?” Hope asked, pointing to Luis’ food. A pink tee shirt and blue sweat pants had replaced her cross-country clothes.

  “It’s called chilaquiles.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Breakfast. Want to try some?”

  “Is there pork in that?” Nora asked.

  “Nope. Chicken.”

  “Okay,” Hope said. Luis cut a little-girl mouthful and held out his fork. Hope chewed for a while, swallowed, and smiled. “That’s good.”

  “I’ll bet if you ask your mom, she’ll get some for you.”

  Nora frowned at them both. “No, thanks. I got MREs from the Red Cross people, I’ll stick with those.”

  “Chicken. Save those for the trip. Between the meds and the power bars, your gut’s gonna be screwed up for a week anyway. Get something hot in you.” Luis gathered a big-girl mouthful, held it out to Nora on his fork. “Here, try it. Don’t look like a wimp in front of your daughter.”

  Nora scrunched her face at him, but took the food. “Hm. Where’d you get that?”

  “In there.” He pointed to the roadhouse. “Let me finish and I’ll get you something.”

  “Well…okay.” Nora watched while he ate and gave Hope another bite. “What do we do now?”

  Luis had already worked up his to-do list. It felt good to be able to plan ahead again, not just react. “I’ll call Ray once I get cleaned up. He may be able to send someone out to get us, but if there’s fighting, maybe not. We may end up on the bus to San Luis or Mexicali. The next one comes through at 10:40-ish.”

  “Are the buses still running with all the fighting?”

  “Looks that way. One came by eastbound while you were getting cleaned up. Anyway, I’ll see if he’s heard from Beto or Paul. If he hasn’t, I’ll ask him to send some guys out to look.”

  Nora propped her elbows on the table and put her face in her palms. Luis could hear her breathing deeply. After a moment she looked up, her eyes even more tired and sad than before. “Okay. Are we safe here?”

  He shrugged. “Safe enough. Nobody messes with the CRM. Everybody—”

  “The what?”

  “Cruz Roja Mexicana. Everybody needs them too much. It’s like they don’t mess with the banks or breweries or distilleries, and if someone does, everyone tracks them down and makes them suffer. Thing is, we can’t stay here forever. We still need to get you guys to England, right?”

  She nodded. After a few moments, she reached out and took the hand he rested on the table. “Thank you.”

  Holding her hand felt weird. Not bad, just strange. “For what?”

  “For keeping your promise.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  Nora gave him a tired but genuine smile. “It’s rare.”

  Luis stood in the shadow of the tiny boxlike chapel just to the west of the roadhouse, showered, re-patched, in his other set of clothes. Even though the normals stayed away from him, he didn’t need eavesdroppers, and he didn’t want Nora to hear if he had to unload on Ray.

  Three rings, then Ray’s voice said, “Si?”

  “It’s me.”

  A moment passed. “God damn, hermano, you finally call. You know the FBI’s after you?”

  “I told you that.”

  “No, I mean seriously after you. It’s on the news. There’s a reward.”

  What? McGinley was supposed to get them off his back. “A reward? How much?”

  “Five million. Careful, or I’ll turn you in myself.”

  What made him worth five million bucks? If it was Nora, then the FBI was even more desperate to get her back than either of them imagined. “If you do, split the reward with Bel. Hey, why I called. We’re over the border, off CF 2. Can somebody pick us up?”

  “Been there long?”

  “A few hours. Can someone get us? We’re not in great shape.”

  “You’ve got the bruja, right? And the other kid?”

  “Answer the fucking question.”

  Ray sighed. “Look, it’s tough getting through San Luis right now, you know? Truth is, the Zetas have it, since Saturday. We’ve got a full-up battle going on a few miles south of there. If you can get through San Luis, I can have someone waiting for you on the other s
ide. Better yet, make it Mexicali.”

  Luis kicked at the gravel as he tried to decipher what he heard in Ray’s voice. He sounded distracted, but also a shade pissed off. “Sorry to ruin your morning, compa.”

  “No, no, it’s not that. I just moved down here last night. It hasn’t been a great morning.” By “down here,” Luis assumed he meant Baja. “The Zetas are kicking our ass and the FBI just raided a bunch of our safe houses. There’s a million things that need doing and I’m way behind. Help me out here, okay?”

  You wanted this, Luis didn’t say. Then he rewound a sentence. “Wait a minute. They raided the safe houses? Were they after Nora?”

  “Fuck if I know. That’s like eleven on my top-ten list, you know? Just get on the road.”

  “Fine. I’ll call you when we land somewhere. You hear from Beto? I can’t reach him.”

  “Beto? Yeah. He’s in Mexicali with the bruja’s husband and the boy. He couldn’t get through to your number. They’re fine.”

  Couldn’t get through? Since Sunday morning? No voicemail? And Nora had been trying to call Paul’s burner, also with no success.

  Something crawled up Luis’ neck. It wasn’t a bug.

  McGinley was on his way back to the JTF building from Camp Pendleton’s Navy Exchange when his phone rang through on his car’s comm console. “McGinley.”

  “Can you talk?”

  He damn near drove the car into the ditch by the road. McGinley had been waiting for this call but didn’t really expect it anymore. “Ojeda, you dumb sumbitch, we had a deal!”

  “And the FBI has a reward out on me, so I guess you broke it.”

  The man had a point. McGinley pulled into the nearest parking lot he could find so he didn’t drive into a tank or some such. “You listen. I talked to them, and they said they’d back off. Someone on their end put that reward out on you, I knew nothing about it ‘til this morning. I reckon you’re on the other side now?”

  “Yeah, we are. Guess you saw the drone footage.”