Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

33. Avtomat Kalashnikov

Prieto seemed healthy, and his hooves stayed in good condition. Other than mosquito bites, sand flea bites, and sunburn, Andy was also healthy. After he had gained his saddle muscles, the long days on horseback became more bearable.

After skirting Veracruz, Laine hugged the coast. In a few stretches with hard sand, he rode Prieto right on the beach, finding it less stressful than constantly looking over his shoulder, as he did when riding on the shoulder of the road. Occasionally, when the surf was light, he’d let Prieto walk in the shallow waves as they lapped up the beach. The horse liked having his hooves in the water. The beautiful scenery was distracting and Andy had to try to keep focused at all times. He had to fight to keep himself in at least a “Condition Yellow” frame of mind. As he rode down the beach, he would sing to himself and to Prieto. He often sang Jimmy Driftwood’s bluegrass song “Tennessee Stud” and snippets of Mexican folk songs that he’d picked up. And whenever Prieto broke into a gallop in the shallow surf, he shouted repeatedly, “I’m coming home, Kaylee, I’m coming home!”

The stretch of coast between the towns of Zempoala and Vega de Alatorre had an “Old Mexico” feel to it, and the locals were friendly. Many of them seemed curious about Andy and his horse. There were fewer horses, mules, and donkeys in this region than he’d seen inland, so young children would often run toward Prieto gleefully, wanting to see and touch “el caballo grande.” Prieto seemed to put up with it well. But once he snatched a straw sombrero off a boy’s head and started chewing it before Laine could stop him. Andy apologized for “mi caballo travieso” and gave the boy a silver peso coin. The boys ran off, carrying the mangled hat and the coin, shouting and laughing. Andy was surprised to have the boy’s mother return a few minutes later, with three quarters of the coin. One quarter of it had been neatly chiseled out, explaining, “You have paid of my son too much for his sombrero.”

As he moved up the coast, Laine’s diet shifted toward bananas, coconuts, and dried fish. There were so many coconuts available free for the taking that he cracked open several extra ones each day. After drinking their milk, he scraped out the insides with his pocketknife and gave the pulpy coconut meat to Prieto, who licked it up eagerly.

Not wanting to make a wide detour around some lakes, Andy opted to ride directly through the city of Tampico. Knowing that it would be a full day’s ride to get through Tampico and the many small towns clustered to the north of it, Andy decided to camp earlier than usual. He let Prieto graze an extra long time in a meadow that was a comfortable four hundred yards from the highway. Later, as he set up his camp in the middle of a large grove of coconut trees, Andy remembered an old Stan Kenton big-band tune that he had heard as a child, played on one of his Grandmother Bardgard’s 78 rpm records. It was called “Tampico.” He sang quietly to himself:

Hearing Laine singing, Prieto gave him a snort. Andy chided the horse to be quiet: “Callate, Prieto. No resopla.” Andy carried on, but just humming, since he couldn’t recall the rest of the song’s lyrics.

The ride through Tampico the next day was unnerving. By ten a.m. the temperature was already in the nineties. As near as Andy could tell, several gangs controlled the city and the surrounding towns. He saw, individually and in pairs, a few men armed with a diverse assortment of AKs, bolt-action rifles, HK G3s, M16s, M4s, and pump-action shotguns. A few of them had neck tattoos that reminded him of the Guatemalans who had robbed him. This made Andy very nervous. Fortunately, none of the men ever tried to intercept his horse.

Several times while he was riding through Tampico, boys on bicycles would ride up next to Andy and ask one-word color questions, like “¿Rojo?” “¿Azul?” “¿Negro?” At first, Andy didn’t understand them, and shrugged in response. Then he came to realize that they were asking Andy about his gang affiliation. He decided to bluff them by shouting, “El fortisimo. Vayanse, chiquillos!” (“The strongest. Go away, kids!”)

Andy didn’t start to relax that day until he had ridden north of the town of Ricardo Flores Magon, late in the afternoon. He was happy to be away from the Tampico gangland. After passing through several coffee plantations, Laine camped that night in a dense grove of trees a hundred yards up from a river. The hillside was steeper than he liked, but all of the level ground in the area had long since been cleared of trees. The moon was starting to wane but was still nearly full. Andy drifted off to sleep, stuffed full of wild bananas.

He was awakened by a snort from Prieto. Laine sat halfway up in his bivy bag and listened. He could hear something moving through the undergrowth, twenty yards downhill from his camp. In the moonlight Andy could see Prieto standing just ten feet away, with his nose pointing downhill. The horse’s ears were alternating between being perked up and laid back. He was obviously wary about something. Andy’s first thought was that it might be a jaguar. Then Andy heard a cough-a human cough. Laine slowly unzipped his bivy bag’s “no-see-um” netting and pointed his SIG pistol in the direction where he’d heard the noises. Only his head and forearms protruded from the bag. Realizing that making any sound could prove fatal, he decided not to move. He couldn’t further extricate himself from the bag without making noise. Listening intently, he could identify the sounds of two people walking up the hill.

Soon Andy could see that two figures were climbing the hill, coming directly toward Prieto. As they climbed up closer, Andy began to see some details. Both were muscular young men. Both were shaved bald-headed. One of them was wearing a white tank top. The other was wearing a white T-shirt. Both of them carried AK-47s and small rucksacks. Andy was uncertain if they might be local ranchers or coffee growers. When they were just five yards away, he could see that they were both looking at his horse. They hadn’t yet detected Andy, who was sitting in a spot that was shaded from the moonlight. As they stepped closer, one of them shouldered his rifle and thumbed down its safety lever with a loud clack. It was then that Andy could see that they both had tattoos covering most of their arms and ringed around their necks.

Andy lined up the glowing green sights of the SIG on the head of the man who had raised the AK and pulled the trigger through twice, rapidly. The bandit went down instantly. Then he quickly shifted his sights to the other man, who was turning to point his rifle toward Andy’s muzzle flashes. Andy fired rapidly, five more times, at the chest of the second man. He, too, went down, shouting. Andy took careful aim and shot each of the men twice more in the head. The shooting startled Prieto, and he shifted backward, dragging his hobbled front hooves in an odd jump. The horse snorted anxiously. The two bandits continued to thrash on the ground, bleeding out. A dog barked, far in the distance, perhaps a half mile away.

Andy fumbled in his sleeping bag, searching for a spare magazine. Finding it, he ejected the one in his gun and slapped in the spare. He tapped the butt of the pistol twice with his free hand, ensuring that the magazine was correctly latched in place. He was gasping, and he fought to control his breathing. After a minute, the two bandits finally stopped moving. He quietly wormed his way out of the bivy bag. His ears were ringing, and his hands were shaking.

Were there others? If so, how far away? Should he sit tight or flee? He decided to wait and listen. He waited for a very anxious half hour, hearing only the quiet sounds of Prieto breathing and the occasional high whine of mosquitos. He prayed silently and then decided that it was time to go. He holstered his pistol and then, after rolling and stowing his bivy bag, groped around until he retrieved the partially expended pistol magazine. He made a mental note to refill it when he had daylight available.

Moving quietly but quickly, he saddled and tacked up Prieto, but he left the horse’s hobbles on for fear of his running off. He rubbed the horse’s neck consolingly and whispered in his ear: “Bueno, Prieto, muy bueno. Muchas gracias. You are Superhorse.”

He stepped down the hill to examine the bodies of the bandits. Both of them looked like they were in their twenties. The moonlight was just bright enough to make out their tattoos by. He could see that one of them had some large numbers tattooed on his neck. Most of the rest of the markings were swirling and geometric patterns. These were obviously crude prison tats.

He stripped the men of their rucksacks. The small packs were surprisingly heavy. He looped them over his saddle horn. Then he picked up their guns. He flipped up the one safety lever that had been released. One was a folding-stock AK, but the other had a wooden stock. The wooden stock, he saw, had been split and cracked-pierced by two bullets from Andy’s SIG. Neither of the guns had slings, so Andy pulled a hank of OD parachute cord from his left saddlebag and quickly cut off two four-foot lengths. He tied them on as makeshift slings. Andy slung both AKs across his back. Then he inserted Prieto’s bit, saddled him, and removed the hobbles. He walked north for two hundred yards, leading the horse through the dense trees and up onto level ground. Based on the setting moon’s position, he judged the time to be about three or four a.m.

He swung up into the saddle unsteadily, unaccustomed to the extra weight of the two AKs. He nudged his heels into Prieto’s flanks, prodding him forward. The horse went immediately into a trot. “Let’s go, Prieto. We gotta lot of ground to cover before daylight,” Andy urged.

He didn’t stop for either breakfast or lunch. He rode hard, halting briefly only to water his horse at creeks. By six p.m. his stomach was growling, and he was feeling saddle sore. Even with regular shifting of the guns from side to side, the thin parachute cord that he’d used for ersatz slings was digging into his lower neck, rubbing it raw. He had covered nearly eighty miles, paralleling Highway 180 and intentionally bypassing the town of Aldama. Now, just ten miles short of La Coma, he dismounted and walked Prieto for the last half mile to cool him down. He halted in a small grassy opening in a forest far from the nearest ranch house.

After reloading the partially expended SIG magazine and unsaddling and hobbling Prieto, Andy dug into his pack and wolfed down some carne seca and an apple. Then he groomed the horse thoroughly. He heaped praised on the horse as he did so. He said over and over, “You are Superhorse,” “Muy bueno, Prieto,” and “Some of God’s blessings come with four legs.”

As he did the grooming, he thought about the two rifles that he’d taken from the dead men. He concluded that it would be wise to keep one of them. Both of them were selective-fire models, with a full-auto selector position. Ideally he would have kept the fixed-stock AK, since they are more accurate and more comfortable to shoot. He had never liked the feel of folding-stock AKs with underfolding stocks. Their skeletonized butt plates were uncomfortable on his shoulder, and his cheek wobbled on the thin rails.

Working in turn, he unloaded both guns, popped off their top covers, and pulled out their bolt assemblies. Looking closely at each, he could see that he should keep only the folding-stock gun. The wooden stock on the other AK looked beyond repair, and the gun was old and rusty. Looking down its bore with a bit of white paper tucked into the receiver ahead of the open bolt to act as a reflector, he could see that the wood-stocked AK had a dark, badly pitted bore. But the folder AK was nearly new and it had a very good bore. He also realized that for some of his upcoming travel, he’d have to keep the gun concealed. For that, the folding-stock AK would be the obvious choice.

Andy oiled and reassembled the folding-stock AK. Then he reloaded it. He decided to keep the magazine and the entire bolt assembly from the fixed-stock AK to use as spares but discard the rest of the gun. He just left it on the ground. He mused about who would eventually find it there, and when. Perhaps an archaeologist. He whispered to himself, “Durobrabis.”

Next, Laine searched through the bandits’ rucksacks. One of them had three spare loaded AK magazines, and the other one had two more. One of these magazines was a black polymer Bulgarian waffle magazine. The rest of them were typical Russian steel magazines, mostly in good condition, although one of them had heavy pitting. There was just one magazine pouch that held three magazines. He decided that it would be the largest size that he could comfortably carry on his belt, positioned on his left hip, so that it wouldn’t bump up against the back of his saddle.

The packs also contained a Chinese-made LED flashlight, a cheap pocketknife, a bag containing marijuana and cigarette rolling papers, two bottles of insect repellent, and three pairs of socks. There was also a large plastic bag containing two dozen tortillas in an old bread bag, a half pound of some foul-smelling chicken meat, some refried bean paste in a Ziploc bag, and some rice. This food was suspect, so he buried it along with the marijuana eighty yards outside his camp, so that it wouldn’t attract scavengers and so that Prieto wouldn’t get into it.

That evening Andy had difficulty getting to sleep, so he put on some insect repellent and spent an hour braiding a sling out of seventy-five feet of parachute cord, praying as he worked. The resulting sling looked presentable and functional. He made it extra-long so that it would be usable when the rifle was slung across his chest. Then he crawled back into his bivy bag and zipped the mosquito net closed. As he tried to get to sleep, the events of the night before kept replaying in his mind. He concluded that there was little that he could have done differently. If he had tried to warn them off, he probably would have been shot and killed. If he had tried to flee, he probably would have been shot and killed. And even if he had surrendered and handed over everything that he owned, he probably would have been shot and killed. Andy whispered out loud, resignedly, “Same, same.” Then he prayed, “Forgive me, Lord, for taking those lives. You know your Elect. I doubt they were saved, but I pray that they were. And please grant me rest, O Lord.”

Andy searched his memory. After a pause he quoted: “Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through Our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.”

Then he asked himself, “Were they saved? I have no way of knowing. You can sort ’em out, Lord.”

The next morning he awoke feeling more sore than usual. He tied the new sling to the folding-stock AK and oiled the gun thoroughly. He folded the stock closed, leaving the gun in its more compact configuration. Once it was rolled inside his extra sweater and raincoat, the AK was unrecognizable to the casual observer. Andy felt better, knowing that the gun was there and could be loaded fairly rapidly if he ever needed it. He decided to get into the routine of loading, oiling, and inspecting the gun each evening when he made camp in the woods. But he decided the risk of arrest was too great if he carried it openly when riding. It would be wrapped up strapped atop his pack each day.

The additional gear made getting on and off Prieto even more difficult than before. Raising his right leg over the pack was an almost gymnastic feat. From a standstill, it was in fact often easier to dismount in reverse, by twisting his left foot in the stirrup while lifting his right foot over the saddle horn instead of over the back of the saddle and pack.

While riding in the open country between Las Norias and San Fernando, Andy started looking at the trash by the side of the road. He was searching for a scrap of cardboard or a large flat cardboard box. After half a mile he found an eighteen-inch-square cardboard box that was just four inches deep. He dismounted and picked it up, saying, “This’ll do nicely.” Walking and leading Prieto, he took a one-mile detour from the road.

Laine hobbled his horse and pulled a pen from his saddlebag. He drew a one-inch dot in the middle of the bottom of the box. He switched to the magazine with the pitting, henceforth designated his “target and hunting only” magazine. Laine left Prieto grazing and walked a hundred yards ahead. He set up the target box and stepped back twenty-five paces to zero the AK. After digging out the earplug case that he had brought from Afghanistan, he got down prone and deliberately fired a three-shot group. He found that the AK’s sights were correct in the left-right axis, but the rifle shot high. He cranked up the front sight with his Leatherman tool until the rifle shot dead-on at twenty-five paces. Then he stepped back to seventy-five paces and fired again. In the entire process, he fired just seven rounds. Satisfied, he rewrapped and stowed the AK.

Still saddle sore, he rode only another ten miles before leaving the road to make camp northwest of San Fernando. He had to camp farther off the road than before to be out of sight, because the clumps of trees were becoming thinner and more infrequent.

Andy spent considerable time cleaning the bore and chamber of the AK. He wasn’t sure if the ammo he’d taken from the dead bandits-all with Cyrillic markings-was corrosively or noncorrosively primed, so he wasn’t taking any chances.

In his Ordnance Corps officer basic course at Fort Lee, Virginia, Laine had been taught that the rule was to clean a gun’s bore, chamber, and bolt face for three successive days after shooting any suspected corrosive ammo. This was the only way to be sure that the corrosive priming salts were completely removed. Laine also took the time to unload all of the magazines and inspect each of them and every cartridge. He sorted the cartridges on his spread-out raincoat. Any cartridges that were dented or had loose bullets or corrosion were segregated and loaded into the “target and hunting only” magazine.

The grazing was becoming sparse, so Andy hobbled Prieto more loosely. But the next morning he found the horse standing just fifteen feet away.

Andy’s breakfast was dried fish and two oranges. Prieto ate the orange peels. Just an hour later Andy reached a long-awaited goal: the fork in the road near the tiny town of Ampi La Loma. If he continued ahead to the northeast, Highway 101 would take him to Brownsville, Texas. But if he turned northwest, Highway 97 would take him to Reynosa, which was less populous. He veered his horse to the left at the fork (skipping the paved cloverleaf loop) and let out a whoop. He brought Prieto’s pace up to a canter. Texas was so close that he could taste it.

A hard day of riding brought Andy nearly to the city of Reynosa. Before looking for a place to camp, he made inquiries with some local women who were carrying bundles of firewood on their backs. They told him that the Pharr Bridge across the Rio Grande at Reynosa had been roadblocked and the border station had been shut down. A narcotraficante gang ruled the town, they warned. A sporadic crackle of gunfire in the distance confirmed their warning. But they also told Andy that twenty-five miles west, at Nuevo Progresso-just north of Camargo-and opposite Rio Grande City, the bridge was open, and that the border stations were unmanned.

After a quiet ride to Camargo, Andy spent the next twenty-four hours quizzing the locals and reconnoitering the border crossing. From the woods on the south bank of the river, he used his binoculars to size up the situation on the Starr-Camargo Bridge. All through the day he saw people walking back and forth, over the pair of concrete bridges. Many people pushed wheelbarrows and carts filled with trade goods. There were no signs of anyone being impeded. He couldn’t get a clear view of the border-crossing complex on the far side of the river, but there were obviously people passing through. He only heard two gunshots during the day. Both of those were in the late morning, about twenty minutes apart, and the sound came from the American side of the river.

Andy spent that night in the woods, a mile upriver. Seeing Texas on the other side of the river made it seem tantalizingly close. There were just a few small individual lights that he could see in the distance. Presumably they were candles and lanterns. The town of Rio Grande City, with fourteen thousand inhabitants before the Crunch, and now slightly less, was quiet and dark. He didn’t hear any vehicles or generators operating after sunset. The only noise came from a few barking dogs. He fretted and prayed through much of the night.

The next morning he awoke to the sound of a dove cooing in a nearby tree. He bathed with buckets of water carried up from the river, and he shaved using one of his precious remaining scraps of soap. He combed his hair and tried to beat the grime out of his trousers. Then he brushed his teeth. Laine wanted to look presentable, just in case he was stopped. He said another prayer and saddled up. As he inserted Prieto’s bit, he said to the horse: “Well, fella, this is our big day. You only speak Spanish, so let me do the talking.”

Andy was anxious as he crossed the upper bridge. With Prieto at a trot, he passed two pedestrians on the bridge, both pushing wheelbarrows full of corn on the cob. The brown-painted border crossing station building was deserted. It was eerie, seeing the inspection booths unmanned. Aside from one abandoned pickup (on blocks and minus its tires) and some new graffiti spray-painted on two of the booths, the station looked intact and unmolested. Andy kept Prieto at a trot. As he rode, Andy whistled the tune “God Bless America.”

He soon rode into an open-air market that was set up in the border crossing parking lot. Most of the tables displayed seasonal produce. Some of it was simply spread out on tarps on the ground. The vendors were mostly Mexican, and the customers were mostly American. A few came in pickups, but there were plenty of horses and mountain bikes. Both were kept close at hand by their nervous owners. Nearly everyone seemed to be armed-either with holstered pistols or slung long guns, or both. Horses caused a few comical moments as the naughty animals snatched produce from the stalls unless their reins were held tightly.

With a grin that never quit, Andy bought a large sack of oranges, a bag of carrots, two candy bars, a can of peanuts, and some horsemeat jerky. He paid in silver pesos. His change was in the form of U.S. silver dimes and two pie-slice-shaped silver bits that had been chiseled from a Morgan silver dollar. The prices at the market seemed greatly inflated, compared to what he’d experienced in Mexico. But at least his silver peso coins were readily accepted.

Before leaving, Andy patted Prieto and praised him for being “un caballo caballeroso” (a “gentlemanly horse”) and fed him a carrot. Andy walked Prieto to the gate. Before climbing back up on the saddle, he unstrapped the inherited AK-47 from atop his pack, unwrapped it, and slung it over his shoulder. After swinging up into the saddle, Laine reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a full thirty-round magazine. He swung the AK around to his chest and inserted the curved magazine. He gave a sigh of relief and said, “Ahhh… back in the land of the free.”

In the coming days, Laine would habitually carry the AK slung across his chest with the sling looped around his neck, ready for quick action. If a situation looked particularly dicey, Laine would halt his horse and rotate the AK’s stock to its extended position so that he’d be able to shoot accurately.