John Factor said, “I’ll be back in a few days.” He left in the Land Rover, leaving a tall cloud of dust in the air as he drove into the distance.
Flavio said, “He’ll take care of the problem, and we can get back to business. I have two-hundred-thousand single-dose patches of pharmaceutical grade fentanyl, two hundred keys of coke, and forty keys of heroin.”
“Mexican brown?”
“Brown Sugar, baby. Sweet and pure.”
“Nice.”
Flavio said, “How do you plan on getting all that across, and on to Odessa?”
“If the volume is heavy on the international bridge, we can hide it in other products and send it across that way. They won’t let the bridge get too congested and will wave traffic on through to keep control of the flow.”
Flavio said, “The traffic volume is down. I checked.”
“Well crap. Then we go to plan B and we can take it across the river, transfer it to a vehicle and hide it in there, and take it cross country. I have keys to every ranch between here and Interstate 10, and can go cross country and never touch pavement until then.”
“Where’s the Border Patrol?”
“We have to be careful crossing, and sometimes they patrol the ranch roads, but running into them on a ranch, well, we can take care of the problem.”
Just make sure you get it there. I’ve got guns and ammo coming back.”
“We can handle that, too.”
“You have loyal drivers, and enough vehicles?”
Ellis said, “And enough guards, plus RL and me. Whatever you need transported, we will guarantee it to get there.”
RL looked out of the corner of his eye at Ellis. That was a rash statement to make, and it sounded like he expected RL to go into Texas, even though every law department in West Texas was looking for him. Oh, he didn’t like Ellis saying that at all.
Flavio rubbed his hands together, “We’re going to make some major coin with this one.”
Ellis clapped RL on the shoulder as he said, “What I’m planning on.”
RL flinched, but no one seemed to notice. He wondered if there was a way he could skip town, go somewhere far away, maybe Alaska, or down south to Cancun, some place like that. He thought about that one boy still loose and out there somewhere, the boy who had seen all the terrible things as they happened.
**
Adan covered a lot of desert on his first day walking. He stayed far enough away from the highway that he couldn’t see it from the rises, but close enough that he heard vehicles travelling up and down it.
Odd things he noticed while walking kept him busy, even though most of them were discarded items tossed from passing vehicles and the wind had carried them far into the desert on vague paths. Some caught on thorns, some against large rocks, and others lying in the open, deflated as a flattened birthday balloon. For some reason, Adan thought of a red balloon like the one in the Stephen King novel, It. The book was one of those his mother bought at the store for him, bringing it and the other home in a sack. He liked the King books, all of them.
Adan picked up several plastic bags that weren’t torn on thorns and snags and put them in his pocket for later use in food gathering. A mile further on, he found an empty water bottle, complete with the screw-on lid. Opening it to sniff told him it had only contained water. He carried it in his hand at first, and later put in in one of the plastic sacks and tied the sack on a belt loop. A pitaya the size of a truck tire grew in the shade of a huge gray boulder and Adan inspected it to find the fruits plentiful among the thousands of thorns, which told him the birds and javelinas hadn’t found it. He found two pieces of a dry lechugilla stalk and used them like tongs to pick out the fruit. He wound up with a double handful of the red, juicy morsels and ate half of them. The flavor burst in his mouth and he let the juice trickle down his parched throat before chewing and swallowing. The remaining half went into his plastic sack.
Feeling recharged after eating the fruit, Adan continued on toward Terlingua. One of the animal watering places caught his eye and he walked to it, even though it was close to the highway.
One vehicle went by, but he didn’t think they saw him, and he continued to the guzzler.
**
Anselmo spotted the kid’s head bobbing through the pasture, but continued driving so the kid, Adan, wouldn’t run. He said to Ben, “You see him?”
“Who?”
“That kid.”
“Adan?”