A False Dawn

FIFTY-EIGHT

It was after midnight when I parked my Jeep about a half mile away from the migrant camp. I left the Jeep on the side of a dirt farm road, sprayed on mosquito repellent, and began hiking through the palmettos and Australian pines, dodging an occasional car headlight and gaining ground. It was a long shot but one worth taking.

Moving stealthily, I could hear the sound of Latin music and cursing coming from one trailer. A chained dog howled. A man swore at another in Spanish. The odor of burning garbage lingered in the night air. Two pickup trucks were parked in front of the last trailer at the end of the dirt road. A man came out of the trailer, turned, and said something to a woman. He swore, shook his head, and drove off in one of the trucks.

I almost didn’t see it. To the far left of the last trailer was a dark-colored van. I crouched down near the front of the van. I could smell human urine, a sickly smell that was produced from cheap wine passing through a diseased bladder.

I stepped to the rear of the van, turned over on my back and wedged beneath the undercarriage. Using the small flashlight I brought, I started searching. I looked up into the wheel area and around the straps used to secure the exhaust system. There was nothing but mud. I crawled over to the other rear tire and began the same examination. Just as I was about to chalk it up to a good effort, I saw it.

Wedged in fresh mud, was a small piece of green. I used my penknife to scrape the mud away and removed the leaf from the undercarriage. The tire had tossed mud over the leaf and sealed most of it like a caterpillar in a cocoon. The leaf looked identical to the leaves I’d found at the bottom of the rut in the national forest. I cradled it in my hand like a tiny broken wing of a butterfly.

I slipped a Ziploc bag from my shirt pocket and placed the leaf inside. After I closed the seal, I started to shimmy out from underneath the van.

The van rocked.

The door opened and slammed too fast. Someone had seen me. The driver knew I was under the van when he started the motor. I had maybe five seconds. I lay as flat on the ground as possible. I turned my head and body away from the transmission gearbox. The driver gunned the engine. Tires spun and the van lurched forward. Part of the undercarriage raked across my chest and tore through the skin.

As soon as the van cleared over me, I rolled to one side, grabbing the Glock and springing to my feet. I leveled the pistol at Juan Gomez’ face just as he was pulling a gun from his belt.

“Drop it!” I yelled. Gomez held onto the pistol and slowly lowered it to his side.

He said, “You’re one dumb asshole!”

“Toss the gun! Now!”

Gomez grinned and threw the gun a few feet away from him. “You’re trespassing again, ex-cop. Thought someone was stealin’ the van. Lucky we just didn’t shoot you.”

I pointed the Glock straight at his head. “It’s over! Murder. Black-market sales of human organs. You’ve got a date with a lethal injection.”

The driver in the van turned around and hit his high beams. Gomez was between the van and me. He was a silhouette, the high beams blinding. I yelled, “You move, you die!” The driver fired a shot from the van. The round hit a tree directly behind me.

The van gunned toward me. The instant I saw the muzzle flash I heard the bullet whirr less than an inch from my left ear. I fired one round into the van’s front windshield. I rolled out of the way, scooping up Gomez’s pistol as the van came straight for me. It missed my leg by inches and crashed hard into the tree.

When I jumped up, Gomez had vanished. In the red glare from the van’s taillights there was no one. The engine raced, throttle stuck. A loud hiss coming from under the hood. I could smell coolant, oil, and raw gasoline.

I pointed the Glock at the driver’s window, approaching the van. The driver slumped over the wheel. I opened the door and held two fingers against Silas Davis’ wrist. He was bleeding from his mouth, but his heart was still beating. I put the pistol under my belt and pulled Davis from the van, sliding him at least fifty feet though the dirt. The smell of gasoline was strong. I turned and started jogging toward the county road as the van’s engine exploded. I looked over my shoulder to see flames half as high as the pine tree.

Through the roar of flames, I could hear the chained dog howling like a lone wolf in the night.