Juarez Square and Other Stories (4 page)

The Jeep passed through the entryway. The long, rectangular hangars had long since been stripped of the valuable aluminum that made up their walls and roofs, leaving behind enormous skeletons of corroded steel. One hangar at the far end of the runway looked conspicuously untouched. As they got closer Ford realized it was a recent construction. The metal building, brilliantly illuminated by the desert sun, stood in shining contrast to everything around it.

The driver parked the car and Ford followed him inside the hangar. His eyes took a moment to adjust from the outside brightness. The room was a small office, empty of furniture except a single chair, where a man sat slumped over and moaning. His hands were tied behind his back and blood oozed from a gash over his eye. Two Fundie security guards stood over the man, their fists clenched. The door slammed behind Ford and he suddenly felt sick to his stomach. He’d heard of Fundie conversions, but he’d never actually seen one.

“I figured y’all would be done by now,” Ford’s driver said.

One of the security guards slammed his fist into the side of the man’s face. The impact made a sickening thud. The other smiled and said, “Southern Baptist. They always take longer. Them roots run deep.”

Ford’s driver walked around the men, opened the door at the back of the room, and motioned for Ford to follow. The man in the chair, now only half-conscious, moaned again. Ford stepped gingerly around the ugly scene, averting his eyes away from the beaten man and his two tormentors. He felt their stares on his back as he passed through the doorway.

Two steps inside the cavernous hangar, Ford stopped cold.
Drones
.

The enormous space was crowded with drone aircraft. There were dozens of them, lined up in neat rows, filling the hangar from wall to wall. Ford stared, awestruck by the sheer number of them. He hadn’t seen this much tech in one place since before Secession.

Ford took a couple steps toward the one closest to him, then paused and looked at his escort. “What is all this?”

The large man shrugged. “Like I said, take person A to location B.”

Ford walked up and down the rows of remotely-operated planes, running his hand along the smooth, clean surfaces, admiring the gentle curves of the fuselages and the beautifully minimalist, purposeful shapes. The sleek, thin bodies of the high-altitude surveillance drones. The compact, pudgy designs for short-range reconnaissance. The imposing, muscular wings of the bombers.

“Five years, sir! Five years!”

Ford jumped at the booming voice behind him. He turned to see a heavy man in a white suit with a matching wide-brimmed hat striding purposefully toward him. The man was flanked by a pair of shotgun-toting bodyguards. Reverend Zachariah Wright, founder of the Fundamentalist Church of Divine Wrath, was one of the most recognizable figures in the Republic.

“It took us five years to put this little collection together,” Wright said, his powerful voice reverberating off the hangar walls. “Yankees left a few behind. The rest we bought from…,” he paused and winked. “I suppose ‘intermediaries’ might be the right word.”

Reverend Wright approached, offered his hand, and flashed Ford a toothy smile. “Mr. Ford, I can’t tell you how happy I am we finally tracked you down. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Ford extended his hand mechanically, his mind spinning from the wild trajectory of the past hour. The unexpected visitor, the beaten man, the drones, and now Reverend Wright.
The
Reverend Zachariah Wright.

And he knows my name.
The thought sent a shiver of panic running down Ford’s spine.

Reverend Wright knows my name.

* * *

Ford sat with his back to a corner in the rear of the hangar. Reverend Wright sat across from him at a small table. His two bodyguards and Ford’s driver hovered nearby, watching with intense, unsettling stares.

The Reverend removed his hat, placed it on the table, and folded his hands. “I’m sure you’re wondering why we’ve invited you here.”

Ford swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

The Reverend narrowed his eyes. “We do have the right man, yes? Ford McAllister, formerly with the Texas Air National Guard, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Specialist?”

“Yes, sir. That’s me.”

“Good.” Wright stared deeply into Ford’s eyes for a long uncomfortable moment. Then he looked at Ford’s threadbare shirt and shook his head slowly, his expression softening. He smiled painfully, like a worried father.

“Independence has been a tough road for you, hasn’t it, son?” Wright asked.

Ford shifted in his chair and answered cautiously. “No rougher than it’s been for a lot of folks, Reverend.”

Wright reached over and gently squeezed Ford’s forearm. “Ain’t that the truth, son.”

The Reverend’s face wrinkled with concern. His meaty hand on Ford’s arm emanated sincerity and trust. Beneath the nervous thumping of his heart, a part of Ford marveled at how effortlessly Wright played the role, how he could turn on the compassion as easily as flipping a light switch. It seemed almost impossible this was the same man he’d seen a few weeks earlier, delivering a frightening speech at the town square.

Ford had happened upon the Fundies’ annual rally just as the Revered took the podium. The content of the message had been nothing new: same old Fundie conspiracy theories, same old religious paranoia. But Wright’s delivery was unlike anything Ford had ever seen. The Reverend had entranced the crowd, moving them with his words, provoking tears and laughter, amens and applause. Eventually he’d stirred them into such a berserk frenzy that Ford had worried for his safety. There’d been an ominous sense of barely contained violence in the air, like an overheated pressure cooker ready to explode at any moment.

The Reverend stood, turned toward the planes, and spread his arms wide. His voice boomed throughout the hangar, echoing off the walls. “In these trying times, we may not be blessed with material comforts and riches, but at least now, by the grace of God, my people have the means to defend ourselves against our enemies.”

Wright turned to Ford and clasped his hands together in supplication. “Son, we need your help.”

* * *

“Yes? You said
yes
?” Esmeralda raised her hand to her mouth in horror. “
¿
Est
á
s loco?
That man’s a lunatic.” The sleeping baby whimpered and squirmed in the crib at the strain in his mother’s voice. Ford reached out to touch his wife’s arm, but she jerked it away.

“It’s only a few weeks, Esme. Two months at the most. All I have to do is teach his people how everything works, then I’m done. And the money’s good, more than enough for visas.”

“What does he want with all those planes and weapons? Did you stop to think about that?”

Ford looked away from her disapproving stare. “I don’t know,” he answered a bit sheepishly. Wright had shared no plans, offering only vague comments about protection from his enemies.

Esmeralda shook her head, incredulous. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

Ford shrugged. “Maybe he’s going to help some politico make a move on another territory, or maybe he’s looking to carve out a territory of his own. This is Texas, Esme. Guns and politics go together. Always have, always will.”

Esmeralda snorted in disgust. “
Pinches gringos
.”

“Look,” he said, raising his voice a notch, “if I would have said no, you know what would happen? He’d just keep searching until he found someone else. I’m not the only drone jockey in the world, you know.” He tried to ignore the stab of guilt in the pit of his stomach.

Esmeralda turned away from him. She crossed her arms and stared out the window at the empty desert. “And what happens in a month or two, when they don’t need you anymore?”

Ford sighed. “Listen, Fundies are intense and weird, I’ll give you that, but they pride themselves on dealing square. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re Catholic,” she said skeptically. “You think they don’t have a problem with that?”

Ford swallowed, recalling the Fundie conversion he’d walked in on. “I’ll be careful,” he said.

Esmeralda turned toward him, her eyes pleading. “Don’t go back to that snake’s nest, please.”

“I have to,” he said.

She grabbed his shoulders and leaned in close, her face almost touching his. “We can leave right now. Just leave.”

“What good would that do?”

“We have enough money to get to the border and—”

“And then WHAT?” He yanked away from her grip. The baby jolted awake and began to cry. Ford raised his voice above the baby’s wailing. “Suppose we make it across. Suppose by some miracle we don’t get killed by bandits or blown to bits by border drones. Suppose we actually make it. What kind of life would have we have in the States as illegals?”

Esmeralda picked up the baby and bobbed him up and down. “It worked out for my parents.”

Ford cheeks flushed hot with anger. “How?” he shouted. “How exactly did it work out? Your parents came to the U.S. dirt poor, they lived dirt poor, and they died dirt poor. You think I want to live like that? Working shit jobs the rest of my life, always looking over my shoulder, sweating deportation if a cop stops me for broken taillight? What the kind of life is that, living like some illiterate peasant?”

A heavy silence fell over the room. Esmeralda stared dully at the floor, her eyes moist with tears. She clutched the baby, who’d gone eerily quiet.

Ford silently cursed himself for his rash, hurtful words. He cursed himself for everything: their deplorable situation, their miserable hand-to-mouth lives. Cursed himself for not packing up and leaving when he had the chance. When Texas seceded, he was the one who’d insisted on staying, foolishly believing the politicians’ hype about a Texas-sized economic boom. And afterwards when the economy did a Texas-sized belly flop instead and millions poured into neighboring states looking for work, he’d been so sure things would get better if they only stayed and stuck it out. Then the politics had gone to hell, with the border states complaining about the
refugee problem
, blaming Texan migrants for driving up crime rates and undercutting wages. How quickly everything had happened next, catching them unaware. The States passed the Emergency Frontier Containment Act, sealing up the border with hastily-erected walls, the U.S. Army, and hundreds of airborne drones on constant vigil.

So many times she’d begged him to leave, and he’d always convinced her to stay. Then suddenly leaving was no longer an option. Almost overnight, it seemed, they’d become cut off. Stranded in Texas.

The mess they were in was one of his making. And training the Fundies was the only way out of it.

* * *

The control room became known as the sweat box. The air in the long, narrow space was hot and stale, and there was only enough room for two folding chairs and small table. The wall facing the table was covered by a large display screen, which was subdivided into a dozen smaller ones, each showing a live camera feed from an airborne drone. A constant stream of data scrolled horizontally across the bottom of each feed, sending air speed, altitude, fuel consumption, and other flight information to the control room.

Tucked into a rear corner of the hangar, the sweat box had been Ford’s workplace for the past six weeks. He spent long days teaching Fundie engineers, mechanics, and technicians the ins and outs of drone management. The exhausting shifts were interrupted only by two quick meal breaks, which he was thankfully allowed to take outside the sweat box in the relative cool of the airy hangar.

Ford sat with his belly pressed against the table. He looked up at the display, then down to the slate on the table, sliding his finger along one of the colored controls. A young Fundie engineer, his muscular arms covered with tattoos depicting biblical scenes, sat next to him and observed intently.

“See the wind direction there,” Ford instructed, pointing to the screen at the top left corner. “You can save a fair amount of fuel if you work with the wind.” He lightly tapped the slate. “Small change of course a few degrees to the north and we’ll get five, maybe ten percent better fuel efficiency.” He slid the slate over to the engineer and pointed to another of the feeds on the wall. “Now, try to do the same thing with Alpha Bravo over there.”

The engineer furrowed his brow in concentration, looked up to the screen, then back to the slate. After a moment’s hesitation, his finger hovering in doubt, he carefully tapped in the adjustments.

Ford nodded and patted him on the shoulder. “That’s perfect. Nothing to it, see? Easy peasy.” The engineer smiled and exhaled in relief. “We’ll finish up with the recon software in the morning,” Ford said, standing and wiping the sweat from his forehead.

A gunshot rang out somewhere beyond the room and he ducked reflexively, coming down hard onto his chair. The engineer’s eyes were still fixed on the display. He hadn’t even flinched. Ford asked if they were taking target practice. The engineer shrugged and said, “Maybe shootin’ targets, maybe something else.”

Ford swallowed and repeated his daily, silent mantra.
Just get the job done, get paid, and we’re out of here.

He exited the warehouse and found, as he did at the end of each workday, the Fundie security guard who’d first come to his apartment. Cade was the man’s name, and he was Ford’s assigned body man, equal parts chauffeur and babysitter. He drove Ford to and from the hangar every day and stayed close to the sweat box during working hours. As the weeks passed, Ford came to understand that Cade wasn’t a Fundie. The man was simply a hired hand not unlike himself. And once Ford got over the man’s intimidating size and twin shotguns, he found Cade to be friendly and likable, even chatty at times.