The Territory A Novel

TEN



At 11:30 P.M. Friday night, Marta Cruz sat on the hood of her car swatting at mosquitoes. The air was damp by the river, full of life, teeming with bugs and bats, and she could smell the rank odor of decay. She preferred the dry, scorched smell of sand and rock and wind that surrounded her small adobe house in town. When Marta was a child, her mother had forbidden her and her siblings from playing in the dirty water of the river, and as she had gotten older, her mother’s superstitions took root. The river was not a place for clean, decent people. Her mother said loose girls and boys who were up to no good hung out there, away from the lights of respectable homes. Down by the river was where the no-gooders partied in shanties, stayed up all hours, and earned their money through vice. Marta had never seen the sights her mother described, but the stories instilled in her a strange paranoia about the Rio. She wasn’t happy about spending the night along its banks.

She had arrived two hours prior and backed her car into a thicket of scrub, then pulled additional cover around the front of her car. Border Patrol had scouted out her position and agreed it would work. She was watching the intersection where Josie had seen the lookout car the night before from the watchtower, and waiting for any activity across the river on the Mexican side. Jimmy Dare and Tim Sanchez, another Border Patrol agent, had ATVs camouflaged and parked along the banks closer to the area where Josie had seen the exchange. Like Jimmy, Sanchez was a well-built agent who obviously took pride in his physical condition. Both agents were average height with short dark hair and muscular builds. Sanchez was bulkier, though, and obviously worked out heavily at the gym, almost to the point where Marta wondered if he supplemented with steroids. His biceps stretched the fabric on his uniform sleeves, and his chest was like a rock.

Marta slid off her hood, unclipped her flashlight from her gun belt, and began walking down to the river to wipe mud on her neck and arms to help shield her skin from the swarm of mosquitoes. As she approached the river, she saw headlights coming down the access road to the river on the Mexican side. She immediately turned the flashlight off and ran back toward her car, calling Jimmy on his cell phone as she ran.

“Looks like one car and a pickup with some kind of trailer attached,” she said. She watched the headlights approach through the thick brush and struggled to see what they were driving. “They’ve slowed way down,” she whispered.

The vehicles drove past her on the other side of the river, creeping along, apparently looking for the access point.

“They passed the turnoff we identified yesterday.”

“What are they driving?” Jimmy asked. “We’re down by the river, and I can’t see anything.”

Marta watched the lights for a moment. “It’s a full-size pickup pulling a double horse trailer. The car is a lowrider. Maybe an old Mercury or Buick. They’ve passed you guys up. It looks like they’re turning onto the Flat Rock crossing. The Rio is low enough right now, they could probably drive across it. It spreads out there and gets pretty shallow.”

“As soon as they put a wheel in the river, Sanchez and I will approach on the four-wheelers,” Jimmy said. “I got the driver of the truck. Sanchez will block a rear exit. You block from the front with lights and siren, exit your car, and move to the rear for cover. You let us approach the truck from the rear. Clear?”

“We’re on,” Marta said. “The lead car just nosed into the water, and the pickup is on his bumper.” She started to pull the clumps of scrub bushes from the front of her car and got inside.

“I see them. They’ll try the car first to make sure there aren’t problems before they risk losing the load,” Jimmy said.

Marta kept the cell phone to her ear and started her engine. She drove toward the car, leaving her headlights, flashers, and sirens off. She drove with her head out the window, listening for noise. Timing was key. If they arrived too soon, the drivers would leave on foot and run back into Mexico. They needed the car out of the river on the U.S. side without giving it time to take off. However, they hoped to keep the truck in the river, where the four-wheelers maneuvered easier and they would have the upper hand.

Marta inched her car up, now a hundred feet from where the vehicles had entered the river. They, too, had turned their lights off. The half moon and stars still provided enough light that she could see the truck approaching the water.

The car nosed out of the water onto the U.S. side and up the low bank. Its tires spun for several seconds before grabbing hold and lurching onto land. The truck was halfway into the river when both four-wheelers appeared out of nowhere and doused the area in spotlights. Water splashed, and the ATV’s large tires slung mud and rock as they plunged into the river. Marta took advantage of the noise from the revving engines and disorienting lights. She threw on her own lights and sirens and pulled her car directly in front of what she could see now was a Buick, which was sandwiched between the pickup truck and her own car.

The front of her car faced the Buick, so Marta swung open her door immediately, crouched, but instead of running behind her own car and staying as Jimmy had instructed, she ran to the passenger side of the lead car. She wanted to take down the driver herself while the agents took care of the truck passengers. It appeared there was only the driver. No passengers. She hoped she hadn’t miscalculated.

Squatting behind the window of the rear passenger door, she banged on the window and yelled for the driver to step out of the car. With the sirens blaring and the truck and both four-wheelers idling behind the lead car, she doubted the driver could hear anything.

The truck’s driver threw it into reverse, gunned the engine, and hit the front of Jimmy’s ATV with the horse trailer as he made a break for Mexican soil. The impact was negligible, as he had little traction in the water. She watched Jimmy give a thumbs-up to Sanchez, which Marta assumed meant he had not been hurt by the truck. She heard gunshots and ducked, then heard the hiss of the tires on the pickup being deflated.

Guns drawn, Jimmy and Sanchez both left their ATVs simultaneously. Sanchez approached the driver’s side of the truck and Jimmy the passenger side. As both men yelled for the occupants to exit, the doors of the truck opened slowly. Two men wearing jeans and dark-colored T-shirts began exiting the truck and were then dragged by the agents out into the water.

While they were securing the truck, Marta turned her back on the two agents, crouched, and moved around to the driver’s side of the car from the back. Her heart banged against her chest as she yelled again for the driver to step out, hands in the air. She was certain the vehicles were transporting weapons, drugs, or both and whoever was driving had a much different outlook on life and death than she did. She yelled in Spanish again for the driver to open his door, and then silently prayed to God to keep her safe for her daughter.

Marta shone her flashlight in the car with her free hand and confirmed there was only one person. Jimmy and Sanchez had both men cuffed and were shoving them noisily through the water toward her. Her main concern was that they were all targets until she secured the man in the car. Marta lifted her metal flashlight high above her head and came down hard on the driver’s window, shattering the glass into the car. She slid the barrel of the gun in through the broken window and connected with the man’s head. He threw his hands up and leaned toward the steering wheel.

“All right, all right!” he screamed.

Marta slowly pulled her gun back out the window, unlocked the car door, then opened it. Hearing the man use English, she shifted her response to English as well. “Slow now. Put your hands and feet out first so I can see them.”

She watched as he shifted his body so his hands and then feet appeared in the opening.

“You have any weapons on you?”

She heard no response and yelled the question again, hitting one of the man’s hands with her gun.

“No! No guns in here,” he yelled.

“Then you ease out of the car. Slowly.” As he slid out of the car with his hands and feet in front of him, it gave Marta time to look more closely into the car’s interior: it was empty except for what looked like a coat or duffel bag on the backseat, too small for a person to hide under.

* * *

Within ten minutes, all three men were handcuffed and lying facedown in the dirt. Marta pulled out driver’s licenses and wallets from pockets while Jimmy drove Marta’s jeep and then the truck and horse trailer up out of the water and onto dry land.

A grassy opening about fifty feet wide separated the river from the road, but they needed to block vehicle access to help control the situation. While Sanchez set up flares and turned his patrol car sideways in the middle of River Road to block traffic, Jimmy used chain link cutters to break the locks on the horse trailer.

Jimmy called out to Marta. “Josie was on it. There’s enough firepower in here to blow that jail to pieces. You better get ATF and request the bomb squad. Border Patrol backup is on their way, but we’re going to need as much help as we can get. These guys had big plans with this kind of firepower.” Jimmy walked gingerly back around the trailer. “This stuff makes me nervous as hell. I bet there’s a half ton of TNT alone.”

As Jimmy inventoried the truck and Marta searched the Mexicans, Sanchez rigged spotlights on top of eight-foot portable poles that he’d stowed in Marta’s truck. He flipped the switch on a small generator, and it cast a surreal light over the vehicles and the men lying in the grass.

Jimmy stepped away from the trailer and approached Marta. In the bright light, Jimmy’s face appeared pale and dripped with sweat. Marta thought he had the wide-eyed look of an adrenaline junkie. “We need to stand clear until ATF gets here.” He pointed to the men lying on the ground. “What do you have?”

“The driver of the lead car has an American accent but no identification on him. The two men who were in the truck both have Mexican ID cards.” Marta stuck her foot out and with it poked one of the men in his hip. “This one is confirmed Medrano. I know the name.”

“A Medrano. Go figure. You fellas headed over to our jail?” Jimmy stood above the men who lay on their chests, their heads turned to the side. “Try and bust your kinfolk out tonight, huh? That load of explosives just might send you away for the long haul.”

Sanchez left the generator and walked over to join Jimmy. “We’ll need a special Medrano wing at the jailhouse.”

“Look,” Marta said, and pointed downstream, to the Mexican side of the river. A line of headlights were driving slowly down the gravel access road. “They’re probably two miles from here.”

Jimmy yelled to Sanchez to cut the lights, and he and Marta reached for two of the suspects, attempting to pull them up to a standing position to get them into Marta’s jeep. Neither of them budged. All three had gone limp, their bodies dead weight. Marta placed her gun in the back of the head of the lead driver, ordering him to move, but he refused. It became obvious a contingency plan was about to be carried out, and Marta feared the three officers were seconds away from a group execution.

Jimmy pulled his gun and shot the driver of the pickup in his upper arm. “I’ll shoot all three of you if you aren’t up and in the back of that police car in ten seconds!”

The sound of the gunshot and their partner screaming in pain prompted the other two to scramble up on two feet and move. As the cars approached the river crossing, Jimmy was stuffing the third gunman into the backseat of Marta’s squad car, a jeep barely large enough to hold four people. Marta got in and started the engine as Sanchez squeezed next to her. Jimmy placed one knee on the passenger seat, facing backwards toward the oncoming cars and hanging on to the open door frame for support.

“Go!” he shouted.

“What about the explosives?” Marta asked. Her head was pounding, and she prayed in the back of her mind as she tried to keep her focus on the approaching cars. She had heard countless stories of cartel members torturing police officers, and she felt her throat constrict in fear.

Still in four-wheel drive, she shoved the jeep into first gear and spun gravel as she pulled her car onto River Road. Sanchez’s thigh was pressed against the gear stick, and she had difficulty shifting into second gear. Jimmy ducked back inside the car and faced the backseat. He pointed his gun directly at the three men and began shouting in Spanish not to move and to stay quiet or they were all dead men. Marta tried to block out the cries of the man in the middle who had been shot in the arm.

They heard gunfire from across the river.

“They’re shooting at the explosives truck! Jesus, they’re going to blow it up!” Jimmy yelled.

Marta pulled off the road and into the desert scrub to the north of the river to get space between their car and the horse trailer.

“Now circle around, cut your headlights, and get the car pointed back toward the river so we’ve got a good visual,” Jimmy said. “You stay in the car and keep a gun on the prisoners. Sanchez and I will keep guns trained on that explosives truck. I just talked to Border dispatch. ETA on backup is five minutes. I talked to Josie. She’s on her way with everyone she can find.”

Once she’d maneuvered the jeep into place, Marta kneeled in the driver’s seat and faced the three men in the backseat of the jeep, crowded in on top of one another, with one man bleeding and moaning, and all of them worried the night sky was about to light up with an explosion that might kill them all. Sanchez and Jimmy were outside the jeep, standing behind the opened driver’s and passenger side doors with two .45-caliber pistols facing what appeared to be a small army of Mexicans across the river. The Mexicans had spotted them and were standing down. Marta hoped it was enough to keep them across the river until backup arrived.

A lone siren was heard coming from the north. Marta was certain it was Josie. Josie parked her car ten feet behind Marta’s jeep, and Jimmy waved her car up next to theirs. She rolled down her windows to speak with them.

He yelled, “We’ve got three prisoners in the back of the jeep. Keep your lights and sirens on. We need a huge presence here as fast as we can get.”

Josie yelled back over the sound of the sirens, “Sheriff’s department is on their way. Martínez is right behind me.”

Shortly after, a trail of two sheriff’s deputies and two DPS cars approached from the east. Within minutes, the area was teeming with local police vehicles as well as Border Patrol and DPS, their cars pointed toward the river, sirens blaring, officers crouched behind car doors for protection. An ambulance arrived and Josie directed them to Marta’s jeep.

Josie split the prisoners up, and the sheriff sent two of them to the Arroyo County Jail with a sheriff’s deputy. She asked an EMT driver to get the man who’d been shot stabilized but to stay on-site and prepare the Trauma Center team. It was too soon to leave with the county’s only ambulance.

After things quieted down, Josie pulled Marta into her squad car and shut the doors. Marta filled her in on the details, her voice still unsteady from the stress of the night. Josie sat in the driver’s seat listening.

“How do we deal with this? How can one small town fight an army equipped with this kind of firepower?” Marta finally asked.

“The sheriff and I called several ranchers along the border and asked them to be on alert tonight. We talked to six families, all living within a half mile of the river.”

Marta looked surprised. “They aren’t trained for this kind of fight.”

Josie pointed to the row of police cars, lights, and the similar row of cars facing them from across the river. “We’re beyond training. We’re just trying to hold the line. I’ve already called Moss and told him we’ve got to get National Guard presence immediately. He doesn’t want to admit we can’t handle this on our own, but surely he realized it tonight.”

At five o’clock in the morning, the situation resolved itself when the Mexican contingent pulled back and left the explosives and trailer, apparently resolved to the fact that there was no chance of crossing into the U.S. in front of, by that point, eight police cars from five different police agencies and a helicopter guarding the trailer of explosives. By 5:30 A.M., officers from ATF were dismantling the truck, inventorying, and removing everything inside. Crime scene technicians from the Department of Public Safety were going over the area, and after preliminary paperwork was started, local law enforcement was dismissed. Marta drove home to her daughter, prayers answered yet again.

* * *

An hour later, Josie pulled onto Tower Road and saw Dillon’s car parked in her driveway. He met her at the front door and pulled her into his chest when she walked inside.

She pulled back slightly and saw the exhaustion in his face. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

He closed his eyes and rested his forehead on hers. “Josie. I’ve been worried sick about you. Artemis has been all over the local news.”

“Have you been up all night?” she asked. Invariably it caught her by surprise to find someone emotionally affected by her well-being. She wasn’t sure if she should apologize for being an inconvenience.

“I couldn’t sleep last night, so I got up and turned the radio on. The DJ was talking about the standoff in Artemis along the river. I called your house and then gave up and came over here to wait on you.”

“Guess I should have called to check in.”

“You had bigger worries. I’m not mad. I’m just glad to see you. Are you upset I came over?”

“No, of course not. I’m just exhausted. Let me take a shower and we can talk.” She kissed him on the cheek and left him sitting on the couch in the living room. He looked as tired as she felt.

Standing in the shower, she let the hot water beat against her back and replayed the conversation with Dillon in her head. Second-guessing her actions and wondering if she had said or done the wrong thing; the frustrations she had wrestled with throughout their last involvement were coming back to her. Her body ached and eyes stung and she wanted nothing more than to slip between the sheets and give in to sleep. She did not want to worry about another human being’s feelings.

She slipped on a light nightshirt, pulled her hair into a ponytail, and found Dillon standing at her bedroom window, tucking a comforter over the curtain rod. Although it was daylight, close to eight in the morning, the room was the color of dusk.

He pointed to the bed, his expression kind. “Take your nightshirt off, climb in, and lie on your stomach.”

Dillon turned from her and she pulled her nightshirt over her head, pushed the cover and pillows away, then pulled the sheet over her bottom and lay flat on her stomach, her arms to her side. She closed her eyes and felt Dillon’s weight settle onto the bed, his knees straddling her hips. She listened to his hands rub together and knew he was warming lotion between his palms, a treat she’d missed since he’d been gone. He laid his hands flat on the center of her back, applying slight pressure. He let the warmth of his hands settle into her body before moving them slowly up and down her spine, gently pushing the heels of his palms into the tauter muscles. He dug his thumbs into her neck and shoulders until she sighed with relief.

“Let me feel your skin,” she whispered. “Lie beside me and hold me. I’ll be asleep in minutes.”

Dillon curled in behind her, slid an arm under her pillow to hold one hand, and found her other hand to hold against her chest. He pulled her into his body and tucked his bent knees into her own. He kissed her shoulder and rested his head above hers on the pillow. Her body melted into his, her attention fading with the knowledge that she was happy and safe and content.