They both drank and Sam motioned to the plate of nachos, “Help yourself. I won’t eat ‘em all.”
Hunter did, and they didn’t talk again until all the nachos disappeared from the large plate. Hunter sipped more beer and said, “You hear about the murders?”
“Uh huh. Talk is, both were drug deals that went south. That why you’re down here?”
Hunter ignored his question and said, “Have you seen anything odd, especially at night?”
“Not at the ranch. Howdy Fowler, you know him, cowboy out of Marathon works all over this country?”
“I know Howdy.”
“He told me that a flock of something whizzed overhead one night while he was camped out a half-mile from the river. He guessed there were seven, maybe eight that flew over.”
“Did he say when that was?”
“That would have been three days ago, and he said it happened the night before.”
“Thanks. Is Howdy around?”
“Nope. He was headed out to Toyah, gonna work cattle on a ranch there. Bunch of wild ones he said.”
“Okay. Do you know where he was camped when he heard them?”
Sam slid a napkin in front of him and used the ballpoint pen in his shirt pocket, “I’ll draw you a map. He wasn’t on a road.”
Hunter and Sam talked for another half-hour about things in general, then she left Terlingua with the napkin map as a guide. She found the location of Fowler’s campsite easily enough, and spent the next hour scanning the mountains in Mexico for, well, for anything. “I might as well be looking at Mars,” she said. She turned toward her vehicle when a glint of something high on the mountain in Mexico caught her attention. She looked through the binoculars again, and saw nothing but a faint plume of dust. Maybe a vehicle, she thought, with a reflection off the windshield. Another half-hour produced zero, so she hopped into her pickup and drove toward Marfa, thinking about how she could spy on Pasqual Osorio without being caught and tortured – or shot on sight. The thoughts made her palms sweat.
Chapter 2
Hunter saw David, Lonny, and Carlos waiting beside the putting green as she drove into the Marfa Municipal Golf Course. Lonny was taller than David, but the same slender build. Carlos was short and stocky, with a buzz cut. All three wore tee shirts with Drone Kings across the chest and a Star Wars-type image of a quadcopter drone on steroids, sailing though outer space.
She parked and joined them, shaking hands with Lonny and Carlos as David introduced them. David said, “We didn’t want to start until you got here.”
“I’m here, why don’t you show me what these babies can do.”
They led her to the of
f side of the main building where they had their gear, and where they’d set up a flight course of different obstacles. Hunter pointed at the obstacles, “What are those made out of?”
“PVC mostly, “Lonny said.
“Nice work.”
“We modeled them after some that are used at nationals.”
Some were bent in a circle and anchored to the ground, leaving the circle as the target, and a few of them were only a few feet in diameter. Others were poles crisscrossed at different angles to leave an uneven path through the X portions, while others stood as upright poles with fluttering colored flags of paper on them. There were other obstacles, too. Various trees, some with spaces between limbs marked with colored flags, and two pup tents, open on both ends.
Hunter said, “Some of those look pretty tough.”
David grinned, “Wouldn’t be any fun if it was easy.”
She watched Carlos place his quadcopter drone on the grass and don his goggles while holding the control box under his arm. The other two boys did the same, and all three stood side by side to start their machines. The red drone lifted first and moved toward the obstacles, followed seconds later by David and Lonny’s drones.
The boys moved their machines through the air and began the course. The drones were faster than Hunter expected. The boys looked odd, flying the aircraft while wearing the virtual goggles that blinded them from anything other than what was in front of their drone. She smiled as they moved their bodies in response to what they saw through the goggles, so that when the drones banked hard right, they reacted as if they were in a car making a hard right.
It became apparent that Carlos was good, Lonny was better, and David was the best by a long shot. The boys flew for over an hour, taking the small ships through barrel rolls, in and out of large pipes, over and under hurdles, between tree limbs where there was barely enough space, and making tight, sweeping loops to do it all again. They stopped three times to recharge the batteries and make adjustments. When they stopped for the last time and took off their goggles, David asked, “What did you want to ask us?”
She examined each of the fliers, studying their structure. “Are all of them made the same, with this basic design?”