“For what? This is no place to be, it is dangerous.”
“I didn’t know.”
He looked at Raymond a good minute without speaking, then said, “You from Odessa, uh?”
“Yes.”
“I got some friends there, maybe you know them. Johnny Sanchez, Pancho Islas.”
“Nope, don’t know them.”
“Where did you go to school up there?”
“Odessa High.”
“Not Permian?”
“Nope.”
“What’s the school mascot?”
“Bronchos, spelled with an h. Only one in the country spelled that way.”
The man smiled, “That’s right.”
He thought some more, looked in the back, then motioned to the others to separate the heavy-duty pickups so Raymond could get through. He put his hand on Raymond’s open window sill, “Don’t come down here like this again, you understand?”
“Yes, I do.”
The man motioned him forward, and Raymond drove between the pickups while beads of sweat trickled down his temples.
He began to see traffic, and houses in the distance as he approached Ojinaga from the southeast. The town seemed busy, and he slowed as he passed through on the main road to the Port of Entry.
Raymond spotted one of the men he knew there, and timed his approach so he got that one at the bridge. If he was caught with a pistol, they would put him under the jail, and his career would be shot. He slid the weapon under his thigh and smiled.
Raymond drove up slowly, smiling and giving a small hand wave of acknowledgement. The man recognized Raymond, smiled and waved him through. That brought a huge sigh of relief as he went to the U.S. side and presented his passport and visited with the men he knew there. Still, it was stressful. He mumbled to himself, “I’ll need a couple of shots of whiskey tonight.”
He turned for the River Road to drive to Lajitas and Terlingua, thinking, and hoping, that Hunter would show up there, or at least be in the vicinity and could call him. He said a small prayer for her as he passed Fort Leaton and the area where Hunter’s father had been murdered.
He’d looked up the incident report on it, because Hunter didn’t like to talk about such things when she first got to Marfa as a trainee. She had opened up to him later, when they became good friends. Her father had been ambushed, shot in the back with a shotgun in the days before Border Patrol Agen
ts began wearing bullet proof vests. It wasn’t enough for the killers, who then shot him ten more times up close, and cut him to pieces with machetes. They’d found a photo of Hunter as an eight-year-old child in his wallet, and pinned it to his chest by burying the blade of a hunting knife through it.
Once when Hunter opened up, she told him that it caused an ocean of grief that she wasn’t sure she could ever get across. He’d been surprised by her openness, but she continued to talk to him after that and they grew very close. He knew Hunter considered him her best friend, and he valued it, treasured the feeling. Several friends kidded him about being her protector.
He didn’t correct them, but he knew that the young woman he was so close to need no protector. She was fearless, smart, and incredibly tough, even though she was not big or tall. She was funny, too, very witty with a dry sense of humor, and the thought of her lost or dead in Mexico sent a pang in his heart. He worried about losing Hunter. If he did, that ocean of grief might be there for him to cross. He focused and took his thoughts to more optimistic visions of her showing up.
He called Carlo Diaz and told him. Carlo was already in Terlingua, so Raymond headed that direction. On the way, he called several of his Border Patrol friends and told them, knowing they would spread the word unofficially to other Agents. They might drift down this way, he thought, even if they were assigned to other locations. It would be good to have them around, many of them combat veterans from the recent wars, and excellent in the field and in tough situations.
Raymond was out of the official picture since he was still suspended, but that was the beauty of “unofficial.” These Agents would also be here in that capacity, for him and for Hunter. It made his heart swell to think of it. These were his brothers and sisters in a way it was hard to explain to civilians. Military people understood, he knew that. Because he was also former military, being a Ranger during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
When he arrived in Terlingua, it was like he’d gone back in time and ridden into the signing area for Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. There were three men in western hats and boots wearing pistols and carrying rifles, and sitting on the porch of the Starlight Theater was Raymond’s friend, Sam Kinney, and another two armed men, one dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts, and military boots. The other man looked like someone off of an old Vietnam war documentary, wearing camouflage gear. Both men carried M-40 Sniper rifles. Two women stood near as they talked to the men. They were also armed, and Raymond recognized the female Agents, Lynne, from Sierra Blanca, and Norma, from Del Rio. Both good friends of Hunter. Raymond nodded, for this was shaping up to be what was needed this day. He headed toward Sam.
Sam ran his hands over the stock of a Browning Automatic Rifle, called a BAR, made in the 1940s and in fine condition. He knocked off the flour-like layer of recent dust as it rested on his lap, with a cardboard box beside him with twenty magazines of twenty-round 30-06 bullets in each of them. He picked up a faded green bandolier made of canvas, and slid the individual magazines in each pouch. Four hundred rounds of 30-06 bullets fired at full auto, now that would wreak havoc if a firefight began, Raymond thought. He remembered that the BAR helped make the mad-dog killers Bonnie and Clyde terminal.
Some tourists walked by, wide-eyed at the many guns around. Sam smiled and said, “I hope you enjoy your stay here.”
Another tourist walked up to Sam. He was a big guy, built like a power lifter, and not tall, but with black hair and a good smile, and a beautiful woman on his arm that Sam heard the man call, “Cass.” The big man said, “Is there trouble coming?”