Hailey's War (10 page)

I licked my lower lip, surprised at how adamant she seemed. “Nidia,” I began. Then I turned and walked over to the window. The sheer inner curtains were drawn, but I could see the parking lot outside, the peach glow of the lights. I wasn't looking for anything or at anything: I was about to say something delicate.

“I don't want to offend you by talking about something that's personal, but Serena told me about Johnny, your fiancé,” I said slowly. “He obviously cared about you a great deal. What do you think he'd advise you to do here?”

There was no hesitation before I heard her say, “Johnny would want me to go.”

I turned around to face her. There wasn't any doubt in her green-hazel eyes. “Okay,” I said. “Then I'll take you.”

She relaxed. “Good,” she said. Then she added, “My
abuela
needs me. That's why.”

I picked up my cell phone from the dresser. “Listen, I'm going to go out and get a drink,” I said, scooping up my hoodie off the back of a chair. “Don't wait on me. Get some sleep.”

I called Serena as soon as I was far enough away from the motel room not
to be overheard through the walls. She obviously recognized my number on caller ID and answered with, “So?”

“She wants to go,” I said, turning my face up against a light breeze. “I'm taking her.”

“Told you.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, watching the white lights of the freeway in the distance. “Serena, you know I love you, right?”

“Wow, you get over being mad quick,” she said, amused.

“That's not what I'm saying,” I told her. “What I'm saying is, I love you, but don't ever throw my dead father into a conversation to score points off me again.”

I'd hoped that the world-weary-but-nice-looking guy from poolside would
be in the bar, but he didn't show in the time it took me to nurse two margaritas, so finally I just paid and left.

Mexico
.

Crossing the border wasn't a big deal. The traffic was the worst of it, inching up to the low brown structure of the border checkpoint, where forbidding signs advised that bringing a firearm into Mexico was punishable by Mexican law. But after showing our various forms of ID—my driver's license and passport, Nidia's Mexican birth certificate—we were told to drive on. They didn't even ask about a gun. I smiled and finger-waved like an excited tourist as Nidia and I pulled away, the Airweight taped under my seat.

Then we were into the crush and color of Juarez, American logos competing with old Colonial architecture. Most of it I'd expected from pictures. Little things surprised me, though, like passing a storefront church advertising meetings of
Alcoholicos Anonimos
. You didn't expect things like that in Mexico.

After that, we drove on the main highways in broad, bright daylight, jockeying among big semi-trailers. It was hot, and I worried about the air-conditioning straining the Impala's engine, no matter how new and well-maintained the car, so I cycled the a/c on and off, alternating with the whipping wind of two rolled-down windows.

Our second day, we started out early, because this was the day I believed I'd
get Nidia to her destination. I wanted to leave us plenty of time to navigate the smaller, secondary roads we'd take once we got off Highway 16. We'd be climbing up into the mountains, and I had visions of the Impala inching along behind a flock of sheep being
driven by a sheepherder on foot, or following a lumbering farm truck at twenty-eight miles an hour.

And I was worried about Nidia, who'd shown a minor tendency toward car sickness even on the straighter roads. She never complained, but several times when I stopped for gas, she'd asked me for ginger ale, to settle her stomach.

Now we were beginning to climb up into the mountains. The sun had just gone down, and the traffic had thinned out as the trees and brush on the roadside got thicker. The surrounding landscape reminded me of the mountains of eastern Nevada, but more extreme: steeper, lusher, more remote.

Nidia had taken out her knitting again. When I asked her what she was working on, she told me it was to be a sweater: It got cold in the mountains at night, regardless of the season. I had to take her word for it—not about the weather, but that the knitting project would someday be a sweater. It was shapeless now, though I liked the yarn she was using, a dun brown variegated with pale pink.

We didn't talk much, and I cruised the radio dial for any kind of American music. Like Herlinda had suggested, I'd taken to driving down the center of the road—there was no dividing line, anyway, and no traffic going the opposite direction. Once or twice, I thought I spotted a car about a half-mile behind us; I saw it on lower switchbacks in the highway, when I glanced in the rearview or out the window.

Ahead, in a steep mountain face, the dark opening of a tunnel yawned before the Impala. I slowed down and edged the car to the right side of the road in case of oncoming traffic, and as we drove into the narrow dimness of the tunnel, the radio cut out as though turned off. I reached down to flick on the headlights, and they flashed off what looked like a low wall of dark metal in front of us, a wall that resolved itself into a stalled car, sideways, blocking the road.

“Jesus!” I hit the brakes so hard that Nidia's body snapped against the restraint of her seat belt and the shapeless knitting project bounced off the glove box and onto the floor. We skidded to a stop about six feet from the dark, stalled sedan.

“Sorry,” I said to Nidia, touching her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Then I noticed headlights behind us. It was the car I'd caught glimpses of in the rearview. Unlike us, they didn't have to brake hard or skid to a stop. They rolled up behind us to a smooth stop. It looked a lot like planning.

There was also a strong similarity in the make and color of the two cars, front and back. The driver of the car behind us had stopped in a diagonal position, so that we were effectively hemmed in. I did not like this.

“Que pasa?”
Nidia said, frightened into her native language.

“I don't know,” I said. I reached down and hit the electronic controls, locking all four doors at once.

Now, in front of us and behind, men were emerging from the cars. White men, well-built, with guns.

“Que pasa?”
Nidia said again.
“Que pasa?”

“Calmate,”
I said, although I wasn't at all sure that calming down was appropriate.

The men spread out around us in a circle. Seven white men in rural Mexico. This didn't make any sense.

Nidia had her hands to her face.
“El padre,”
she whispered.

I reached under the seat and wrenched the Airweight free of its tape, but for the moment, I kept it out of the men's line of sight. I didn't want to start the shooting. I was far too outgunned.

Sure, five rounds is all most civilians will ever need. If you can't shoot your way out of something with five rounds, you can't shoot your way out of it at all
. It had sounded good at the time.

“Nidia,” I said calmly, “take off your seat belt and get on the floor, as low as you can.”

She was staring at the gun in my hands. She didn't move.

I reached over and unclicked her seat belt. “Down!” I said.
“Ahora!”

She slid down, whispering what I assumed were prayers.

My mind was working pretty well in that cool, empty space where fear should have been and wasn't. This had to be a case of mistaken identity. They thought we were carrying drugs, or drug money.

One of the men approached. Even from a distance, he was familiar, and up close he became the Young Nice Guy Businessman from the pool of the El Paso hotel. He gestured for me to roll down my window.

Carefully, still keeping the gun out of sight, I rolled down my window to a gap of about two inches and said, “We're not carrying anything of value. No drugs, and no money.”

He stepped closer, close enough now to see the gun in my hands, but it didn't seem to worry him. He said, “We want her.”

Nidia?
“Why?” I said.

He said, “Not your problem.”

He was surveying me with what almost looked like friendly curiosity. He said, “Please just put the gun down and unlock the doors. My friend over there will take Miss Hernandez gently out of the car and your role in this will all be over.”

I understood that I was not going to shoot our way out of this, not with five rounds, probably not with three times that, had I been better armed. But the Impala was still in drive. If I hit the gas and smashed straight into the back end of the sedan in front of us, maybe I could just bull our way out.

Three problems: One, they could start shooting. Two, even if they didn't, Nidia was on the floor without a seat belt and could get banged up pretty badly. Three, two of them were standing right in front of the car.

Of course, it was better for Nidia to get banged up than shot. As for the guys in front of the car, could I live with myself if they died of their injuries? Yes, I could, if it was Nidia's life and mine against theirs.

I inhaled as though steadying my nerves and said to the guy outside the car, “Okay, just let me explain to her. Her English isn't very good.”

Turning to Nidia, I spoke in Spanish, telling her,
Brace yourself
.

Then, crouching low behind the steering wheel, I stepped hard on the gas pedal. The Impala's engine roared in response. The last thing I heard was gunfire.

The first thought that came to mind, when I woke some time later, was that I
was in the barracks, that I had overslept and was going to be late for morning formation. When I opened my eyes and looked around, I realized that wasn't it.

“How are you feeling?” an accented voice nearby asked.

The speaker was a tall, heavyset man with a broad, kind, copper-brown face and the sort of brushy, full mustache that only Hispanic men look good wearing. He was also wearing a white lab coat. He was a doctor. I was in a hospital. At my side, I saw an IV needle taped to my wrist.

“Are you having difficulty understanding me?” the doctor asked.

I cleared my throat to speak. “No, I understand you,” I said. “You're speaking English.”

He smiled indulgently. “So I am.”

I realized that wasn't what he'd meant.

He shone a small light in my eyes. I blinked, but tolerated it.

He pulled up a rolling stool. “Do you remember your name?”

“Hailey,” I said. “Hailey Cain.” My voice was thin and dry.

“Well,” he said, “it's a pleasure to finally know your name. We didn't know. I've been calling you Miss America.”

“That's flattering.”

“Do you know where you are?”

“Mexico,” I said.

I knew that automatically, but less clear was why. I hadn't been on vacation. I hadn't flown down; I had been driving. And something had gone wrong.

Suddenly I stiffened. “Was I shot?” An impossible idea, yet as soon as I said it, I knew it was true. “Doc?”

“Yes,” he said. “You were shot, twice. You also had some blunt-force trauma to your face.”

From when the Impala hit the tunnel wall. Now I remembered.

“Nidia,” I said. “Where is she? Is she all right?”

The doctor looked thoughtful. “You mentioned that name before,” he said.

“Before?”

“Do you remember being awake earlier?”

“Vaguely,” I said. “What do you mean, I mentioned her? Isn't she here? Haven't you guys treated her?”

He drew in a deep breath. “About most of this,” he said, “you'll need to speak with the police. It's out of my area of expertise.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“You weren't asleep; you were in a coma. For eight weeks.”

Jesus. Then something occurred to me. “How did you know I was going to wake up when I did?” I asked. “You were right there.”

“I woke you up,” he said. “The coma you were in wasn't natural.”

“I don't understand.”

“It was medically induced,” he said. “You needed time to recuperate from internal damage from the gunshots and from loss of blood. The best thing for your body was a short-term coma.”

That was a hard thing to wrap the mind around. How screwed up did your body have to be for it to need a coma to get better?

“Plus,” the doctor added, “during the brief periods when you were awake, you were agitated. You were interfering with the tubes and your IV.”

He talked to me a little bit about my injuries, the two gunshot wounds to the chest and the damage they'd done. Then paused, frowning slightly. “Do you remember saying, ‘They were white'?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Do you know the significance of that?”

“I'm not sure.”

“You said it twice. It seemed to be very important to you.”

I shook my head again, and the doctor got up from his stool. “Try to rest.”

“Wait,” I said. “You already know something about Nidia, don't you? Is she dead? You can tell me. I'm strong, I won't go into shock.”

He said, “You were traveling alone, Miss Cain.”

The rest of it I learned from an officer of the state judicial police. His name was Juarez. He was taller and thinner than the doctor, though with that same mustache. He took down some basic introductory details first, my full name, where I lived.

Juarez went on to tell me that I was found just outside the tunnel, alone on the edge of the road, bleeding profusely, without ID, money, or a car. The farmworkers who found me had believed that I was in a bizarre hit-and-run in which I had been walking on a remote highway. No one had realized I'd been shot until I was examined at the hospital.