Standoff

Eight

Around twenty minutes later, by my reckoning we had to be almost there. “How much farther?” There were almost no streetlights out here where the cotton fields bordered the roadway on local Route 20. And pretty much the only traffic was the passing of Border Patrol vehicles every fifteen minutes or so. A sign announcing the town of Fort Hancock slid by. From what I could see, that’s all the town consisted of — a sign.

“There’s a track coming up on the right soon that’ll take us across the irrigation channels,” said Roy the Rookie.

“Y’know, all this accommodating you’re doing,” the corporal told the kid, “it might be considered aiding and abetting.”

“Actually,” I countered, “by being cooperative while I hold a loaded gun to the head of this extremely average man I have here in the back seat, Roy’s just guaranteeing that I let y’all live. So Roy, no doubt there’ll be some inquiry about all this. You just make sure you tell ’em how threatening I was and you’ll be okay.”

“Yessir.”

The corporal grunted.

“We’re close, now,” said Roy. “Slow down … That’s it there.” He pointed and the corporal eased on the brakes and turned off the main road.

We drove along the narrow unsealed track crowning the irrigation canals. We cut ninety degrees left and right half a dozen times before coming out onto a broader track that ran along the bank of a dry sandy canal.

“Where does the fence end?” I asked.

“Just coming up on it. Mexico starts the other side of the Rio Grande out the window there.” He nodded to his right at a dry, sandy depression.

“That’s the Rio Grande?” I said.

“Yessir.”

“What happened to all the water?”

“Cotton’s thirsty.”

On the far side of the riverbed, on the Mexican side, lay a network of irrigation channels and, around half a mile beyond it, a large farmhouse commanding several fallow fields, its old whitewashed walls supporting what appeared to be a thatch roof. Nothing moved that I could see.

“Looks peaceful.”

“That’s because the Sinaloa Cartel has killed all the law enforcement and murdered or run off all the farmers so that they can occupy the farmhouses and use them as staging posts for the drug couriers,” the corporal said. “If they catch you, as I’m sure they will, they’ll laugh while they rip your arms and legs clean off your torso, and then they’ll leave all your bits and pieces scattered on the freeway for the crows and vultures to pick over.”

“So what you’re saying is that my only option is to turn myself in to you before this goes any further.”

“I’m glad you’re comin’ round to my way of thinking,” said the corporal. “No one’s been hurt. You’ve been nice and reasonable. You got no alternative from where I sit.”

“And you’ve got a severe case of goldfish brain. You seem to have forgotten about all those deputies I gunned down at Horizon.”

“You okay back there, sir?” the corporal enquired of Chalmers, changing tack.

“He’s still breathing, aren’t you?” I prodded Chalmers in the ribs with the Sig maybe a little harder than I needed to.

Chalmers bared his teeth and snapped, “You’ll get yours, asshole. I’m just praying I get to see it.”

“Okay,” said Roy. “This is it.”

I glanced out the windshield and saw the end of the fence. The rookie was right. No guards, no razor wire, no lights. It just … ended. I recalled it looking like a freight train. Edge on, it seemed almost flimsy. A single, hopeful camera sat perched on top of the mesh aimed at the fourteen-mile gap that yawned beyond, which was almost funny. Almost.

“Pull up on our side of the fence,” I said. “Keep those hands where I can see ’em. You too, Roy.” I reached out and had the door unlatched before the Charger had come to a halt. I backed out of the vehicle and kept the weapon trained on Chalmers. “Out of the car,” I told the officers, “or the guy in the ten-dollar suit gets it.”

“We’re gonna hunt you down,” the corporal promised me.

“What? Over there?” I asked him, gesturing south. “Sure you are. Now get out.” I opened his door. The corporal stumbled onto the dirt and placed his hands behind his head, his face white with rage. “Walk where I can see you, past the front of the car, and keep walking till I tell you to stop.” I kept one eye on the rookie. His hands were still welded to the dash. “Your turn next, Roy. You know the drill.”

“You’re not going to kill us, are you?” he asked.

“You, no.” I nodded at Chalmers. “Him, maybe.”

The officer carefully took his hands off the dash like it might suddenly all fly apart beneath them, opened his door and got out.

“Follow your supervisor,” I said. “Hands behind your head.”

When he started to walk, I breathed easier. The setting sun had become a red-hot coal plucked from a forge, smoldering moodily on the horizon. The night to come would be cool.

“Go join your friends,” I instructed Chalmers.

“There’ll be payback for this, Cooper,” he hissed as he shuffled out of the back seat on his butt bones.

“You’re taking this way too personal,” I said as I helped him to his feet. He shrugged his elbow out of my grasp. “That’s far enough!” I called out to the officers and then leaned in and removed the Charger’s ignition keys. Ten yards away the officers stopped and turned, hands still behind their heads.

“You really murder all those people?” Roy called out as I approached. It was my first opportunity to get a good look at him, the corporal, too. He was a kid of no more than nineteen with glasses, acne and teeth that reminded me of a beaver’s.

“That’s what they say,” I replied. I walked up to him, removed the cuffs from his belt, then took the corporal’s, a jowly man in his mid-fifties with a gut and a flat-top haircut.

“You’re gonna regret this, son,” he said.

“Maybe,” I said. “Gimme the keys.”

“In this pocket,” the corporal said, motioning with his chin to the pocket on his shirt.

I reached in and took them. I looked at the kid. “Yours?”

“Same, same,” he replied.

With their keys in my possession, I removed Arlen’s cuffs from Chalmers’ wrists, then handed the officers’ cuffs back to them.

“Now let’s put these on and make a nice daisy chain, shall we?”

I grinned at Chalmers. He ground his teeth back at me.

No one moved so I leveled the Sig at the spook, which won some compliance. “What’s your eyesight like?” I asked Roy.

“Long sight’s okay,” he answered, “now I got these here glasses.”

“Good.” I lobbed the Dodge’s ignition keys and the cuff keys twenty or so yards down range and watched them kick up a puff of dust beside a dry bush. “You got that?” I asked him.

“Think so,” he replied.

“Oh yeah, one last thing … Drop your pants. All of you.” Chalmers’ lips were as narrow as his eyes when I looked at him and said, “This is the personal bit.”