The Rules of Wolfe (23 page)

p

Provisioned with food and drink in the coolers, Martillo and Pico meander to and fro over the desolate expanse a few miles above the border and between Sonoyta and Sasabe, their unit of paired receivers in constant search of a signal from the kid's tracker. The receivers are small enough to be tucked under the front seats if need be. The single screen is eight square inches and shows a topographical map—a nicety installed at the excellent suggestion of the Azteca technician who coordinated and tuned the receivers. The map's view can be adjusted from a scale of half a mile per inch to twenty miles per inch. At present the view is set to a range of sixty miles in every direction from the Rover. Back in Nogales an associate named Gómez is monitoring a satellite connection with a Sinas communications staffer and will relay to them any reports about Porter.

They drive over haphazard trails, over ground so malformed it would stop most vehicles in their tracks. They take turns at the wheel and in panning the desert with binoculars. They have retrieved their handguns from behind the door panels—Colt Anaconda .44 Magnums with six-inch barrels, now tucked beside them on each side of the console. In the rear, in long cases bearing the Gila Geological emblem and labeled “Transit/Tripod,” are Pico's Remington 700 police rifle and Martillo's Sako sniper model, both with Leupold scopes.

Shortly before dark they spy an SUV they at first take for the Border Patrol. They are ready to explain that they will be in the area for the next few days and nights searching for various types of minerals that glow under ultraviolet light, that Gila Geological has been commissioned by the Arizona Department of Mines and Mineral Resources to find and map the areas of highest concentration of such minerals throughout Pima County. But as the vehicle draws nearer they see it's the Indian police. When the Indians are close enough to read the logo on the Rover door, they wave a hand and drive away.

Amazing, isn't it, Martillo says, the way nobody interferes with geologists? It's as if we're a natural part of the environment. Like one of the gringos' protected species.

Those Indians, they were Papago, right?

Yes, but now they call themselves Tohoho Ododom or something. They even got the gringos to call them that instead of Papago.

Stupid gringos, Pico says. Letting Indians tell them what to call them in English. The gringos say “Mexican,” not “Mexicano,” right? They say “Spanish,” not “Español,” don't they? So why let the Indians tell them to call them Toohohoo Odohoo or whatever the fuck instead of Papago. They're still Papago in Mexico. Try telling us to stop calling them that. The gringos should've told them to mind their own business or they might start calling them Fuckheads instead of Papagos.

My goodness, Martillo says with feigned shock. I had no idea you had such strong opinion about the sovereignty of language.

I am a man of strong opinion on many subjects and you are one who has no idea about many things. It has always been so.

Now, now, my skinny friend. No need to be testy with me because the gringos disappoint you.

p

A wind comes up. Sheets of sand undulate over the ground like live things. The scrub brush bobbing. The sun goes down and the night rises. They leave the Rover's lights off and put on night vision goggles.

Time passes and the wind builds. They get a call from Gómez, who says Sinas operatives in Caborca have reported that a young couple fitting the general description of Porter and the girl left that town a few hours ago with a group of chickens headed for a crossing point not too far west of Sasabe. Both were wearing Hermosillo baseball caps.

So far so good, Pico says. If he can get by the ones at the border it'll be just him and us.

They reduce their patrol to a range of twenty miles east of Sasabe and adjust the topo map on the receiver screen to a radius of the same distance.

p

The wind is gusting harder yet when they get another call from Gómez. But now the transmission crackles and hisses with weather interference and it is with great difficulty that they come to understand there's been a gunfight between Sinas and Espantos crews on the border somewhere near the midway point between Sasabe and Sonoyta. Martillo must ask again and again if the fight had anything to do with Porter before Gómez comprehends the question and then he in turn must once again repeat himself a number of times to make clear that he doesn't know if the fight involved chickens but it is certain that the kid is still at large.

Martillo shuts off the phone and tosses it onto the seat behind them. Piece of shit, he says.

No it's not, Pico says, weaving the Rover through a cluster of saguaros. It's this crazy wind, something weird with the weather.

Martillo studies the topo map on the screen and points to a spot approximately where Gómez said the fight occurred. If the kid's group was there, he says, it was almost certainly where
they were planning to cross. A lot of gates around there. And if
they had to run for it, they'd go west, away from Sasabe, wouldn't they? He studies the screen and then circles his fingertip over a small section of it and says, To somewhere around in here, that's where I'd cross. From here they have a fairly clear line back to the Sells road up . . . here, where I'll bet you they were headed in the first place. The guide probably has a pickup point a little south of town.

Pico stops the Rover and regards the screen map. What about these mountains here? he says. The Aguilas. They have to go around them. He moves his finger on the screen and says, Unless . . . is this a pass?

Very good, my sharp-eyed little friend. I wondered if you'd see it. What they'll do is cut through that main pass and come out right here. From there they can bear around the south end of this next little range—what is it? the Viudas—and from there it's a straight run up this way to the Sells road.

You could have been a great coyote, Humberto. The best of them.

I could have been a great president of Mexico as well. But where is the fulfillment in occupations like that?

But what if they start from somewhere closer to either end of the Aguilas? Pico says. It might be shorter for them to go around the mountains than through the pass. If we position ourselves somewhere in here—he indicates the open ground between the Aguila and Viuda ranges—we can watch the pass and also have a clear view to both ends of the range. Whichever way they come, even if the fucker doesn't turn on the tracker, we'll spot them.

That is a truly excellent proposal.

It is, isn't it?

p

They are circling around the Aguila range when Pico gestures westward and says, Look there.

The starlit horizon appears to be elevating.

Looks like a hard rain coming, Pico says. Big help that's gonna be.

But as the swelling cloud looms closer they see it's not rain. And minutes afterward are forced to a stop, arrested under the tidal wave of dust. . . .

30

Rudy and Frank

It seems a lot longer than the thirty-three minutes it takes Aunt Laurel to get back to us with the calibration code. Frank writes it down and thanks her and is about to cut off when she says something else.

“I'm sorry, tía,” he says, “it's really all I can tell you for now. Thanks again. We gotta go.”

He thumbs off the phone and looks at me. “She knows it's about Eddie. She didn't say so but I could tell.”

We decide he and I will take the Cherokee, get the receivers and a satellite phone, and head out to start patrolling for Eddie's signal. Félix will stay at the hotel and i
f
Tacho or Roberto calls him with more information he'll let us know.

p

An hour later we're bouncing over a narrow stony trail winding westward, me at the wheel. We've got plenty of water and a big sack of sandwiches, a pair of high-power binoculars, the Berettas, and the M-4s. Our receiver hookup's tuned and looking for the Buddha's signal.

The wind's really blowing when we get to Sasabe, which turns out to be a ragged-ass little place of dirt streets lined with cantinas and a few ramshackle hotels and motels serving mostly as holding pens or so-called “safe houses” for groups of chickens waiting to be taken across. The main street is full of late-model pickups and SUVs, a lot of them without license plates.

“Gee, I wonder what kinda business the owners of all these fancy wheels might be in?” Frank says as we slowly roll through.

“Think he might be here?”

“No. If he's smart enough to get this far he's smart enough to know every town along this stretch is bound to be overrun with Sinas people looking for him. Little bitty burg like this, he'd be made right off. My money says he hooked up down south with some independent who's crossing his bunch farther out in the big nowhere.”

Now we're past the town. The sky ahead has turned solid black.

“What the hell
is
that?” Frank says.

Then we're hit by the biggest bastard dust storm we've ever seen. The Cherokee's rocking and the dust is so thick we're blinded by the reflection of our own headlights. I cut down to the parking lights and we can scarcely make out the shape of the trail a few feet in front of us. There's nothing to do but turn around and creep our way back to Sasabe.

“Christ damn,” Frank says. “If he's out there he's gonna drown in dirt.”

p

The main street's now empty of traffic but the street sides are lined with vehicles parked every which way and the dust is so thick it's all I can do to keep from hitting any of them as I make my way along. Near the neon haze of a cantina, I make out a spot between two big SUVs and pull into it. We're not about to leave the Cherokee unattended with the stuff we've got in it, so Frank gets out—admitting a charge of dust that whirls through the Cherokee—and goes into the cantina. A few minutes later he's back with a couple of cold ones, admitting another dust flurry when he gets in. Then we sit there and sip beer and watch the dust roll by.

And keep an eye on the receiver screen.

Monday

31

Eddie and Miranda

The dust pounds through the pass, the wind in frenzied swirls. Eddie cannot see farther than the end of his outstretched arm. He hears muted yellings through the wind. Then the nearer cry of Miranda as she falters and falls. Her sudden release of his backpack upsets his balance as he starts to turn toward her and he loses his footing and falls on his ass. The dust drives into his face, chokes him, burns his eyes. He tries to get up but cannot, and for a terrifying second thinks he might be partly paralyzed, then realizes the pack is snagged on something. A rock, a scrub root. He writhes rearward and comes free of the restraint, then gets up, coughing, covering his nose and mouth with one hand, squinting against the dust.

She's calling, Chacho! Chacho! and sounds no more than a few feet away, but the crazily whirling wind makes it difficult to fix on the location of her voice. Here! he shouts. I'm here! He hollers for her to stay in one place and keep yelling, don't stop yelling. He moves carefully over the uncertain ground, now a little to his right, now to his left, hollering, I'm here! I'm right here!

From his left she calls, “Aquí 'stoy, Chacho!
Aquí!
”

He puts out his arm and waves it slowly from side to side as he sidesteps toward her voice. Then sees her vague form and finds her arm and draws her to him.

She unzips the tote and takes out bandannas and they tie them across their lower face bandit-style to defend against the dust. They hear the hackings of others, muffled cries. Eddie tells her to hold tight to his pack strap again and don't let go even if she falls. They move together through the darkness and dust, yelling, Here! We're over here! And soon reunite with a Fonseca brother and his fat cousin and the Panama guy, clinging to each other and all three also with bandannas over their mouths and noses. They next find the Martínez couple, coughing like consumptives, their hats lost to the wind. Miranda gives them her last two bandannas. Eddie flinches when Beto yells, Where are you? from right behind him. He turns and Beto and the kid appear before him like phantoms.

They hold close to one another in a chain of joined hands and shuffle about in search of the other three, yelling, We're over here! This way! In a few minutes they find the Sando uncle and nephew. It takes a while longer to find the last of them, the other Fonseca brother, whose cries are of pain. He's on the ground, his ankle broken in a misstep.

Beto says there's nothing to do but leave him with water and food. They have to keep going, he says, even in the dust, or they'll be too late for the pickup at dawn and the Border Patrol will easily find them in daylight. The dust will anyway stop very soon, it always does. When they meet with the pickup people, he'll send someone out to retrieve this hurt man.

The other two Fonsecas are distressed by the idea of abandoning their kinsman, but the injured one says not to worry, he'll be all right with enough to eat and drink until someone comes back for him. His brother and cousin give him most of their food and water, and the cousin jokes, You will get fat as me if you eat it all. His brother gently eases the shoe off the foot with the fractured ankle so he might be more comfortable, and he promises to return with whoever is sent to get him. I'll see you soon, the injured one says. Damn right, the brother and cousin say, and each hugs him good-bye.

All right, Beto says, let's get over to the wall. We'll follow it all the way out and that way we won't get lost from each other.

Which
wall? the Panama guy says. We've been turning all around in this fucking pass. I got no idea which way we were going.

I do, Beto says. I turned only once, and this one with the broken foot was behind everybody else and I'm still facing the way I came to him. So we turn around and go that way. Now let's get over to the wall and stay close together.

Eddie senses that the group is reassured by Beto's confidence—the man does seem to know his stuff. With Miranda again clutching his pack strap, he once more positions himself directly behind Beto and the boy. Feeling their way along the rock wall, the group presses on through the darkness, catching each other in stumbles, breathing dust, coughing and cursing.

p

Mules

Seven nights from now, after a week of daily high temperatures of not less than 105 degrees, a crew of drug carriers bearing heavy backpacks will come through this pass under the bright beam of a quarter moon and find Alberto Fonseca lying crippled in an open patch of moonlight amid empty water bottles, prattling in hoarse unintelligible whispers like some becrazed wilderness prophet. Absent all pity for yet another fool come to this, they will pass him by without pause. All but the last mule in the line, who will stop and regard him for a moment. And then, in merciful impulse, reach down to him and cut his throat.

32

Eddie and Miranda

As the darkness ahead becomes less dense, they know they have come to the end of the pass. Yet the torrent of dust persists, and even after emerging from the pass they are still but ambiguous shapes to each other. They pause to rest, gulp water, spit mud, blow their noses with their fingers.

But there's something odd. Eddie feels it. Then someone behind him says it. The wind has changed direction.

Beto says that's so. It is sometimes the way of these crazy storms, he says. It's a good sign. It means the dust will soon end.

They tell each other how much they hope so. Dear God, if only this damned dust would stop!

Eddie overhears Beto telling the boy that the mouth of the pass is facing east, and although they can't see them in this dust, the Viuda mountains are no more than two hours ahead. They have to go around the south end of them. If the sky was clear enough to see the mountains against the stars, they would go straight toward the end of the range and from there head northeastward and would strike the road near the pickup point. But in this dust, if they try to estimate where the south end is and then miss it, they might go too far southward and not know it until too late and miss the pickup. The thing to do is head a little to their left and be sure they don't miss the mountains altogether. They will then have to sidetrack to get around them and that will add to their walking distance, but they still have enough time to make it to the road in time to get picked up.

If you had a compass, tonto, Eddie thinks, you wouldn't have this problem.

All right, let's go, let's go, Beto says. Very soon we'll be on a nice comfortable ride to Tucson!

They follow him into the dusty blackness. Over the stony ground of scrub and cactus. Across sandy dry washes large and small. But feeling strong for being closer to the end of their journey.

p

They move on through the relentless haze of a world without form or measure of time. And then as suddenly as if by the turn of some cosmic switch the wind is free of dust and they can see each other more distinctly. Eddie guesses it's been two hours since they went through the pass, maybe three. They must be very close to the Viuda range by now.

They remove their bandannas and revel in the pleasure of deep breaths. They dig into their food supplies and feed ravenously. Only the Panama guy is without rations, and he asks the Fonsecas if they can spare him something. We were all supposed to provide for ourselves, the fat one says, but gives him a candy bar anyway. The man takes it without thanks and tears into it.

As Eddie and Miranda share a bottle of water and some of the jerky, she whispers that she's been thinking that if the Border Patrol catches them, he is the only one who won't get sent back. He is an American, he's already home. In case I do not have the chance later, she says, I want to say I am very grateful to you for helping me get this far.

I've been thinking about that, he whispers back. Listen and remember this. If we run into any kind of cops I'm a gringo reporter doing a story on illegal border crossers. You're my Mexican wife and came along to help my cover. They want proof of any of that, I can get it.

You can? How?

Never mind. I just can.

And you would tell the Border Patrol a . . . you would say that for me?

Don't worry, you're not going back. By next week you'll have a Texas birth certificate.

She hugs his arm and presses her face to his shoulder.

The sky remains solid black and the wind is still gusting, but Beto tells the group the clouds will soon break and they'll be able to make out the mountains ahead. They are probably within a stone's throw of them already. You are my best bunch ever, he says. Not even a dust storm could stop you. Come on, let's get going. No time to lose.

p

But the cloud ceiling does not break. And then the wind assumes an unmistakable scent and they hear the first rumble of thunder.

Oh wonderful, Beto says.
Now
the rain.

In the distance the sky abruptly brightens in an incandescent web of lightning and then goes black again and a prolonged roll of thunder follows.

Shit, Beto says. They said it was going to be a light one.

In another ten minutes bright jagged forks of lightning are coming one after the other, and each crackling thunderclap is louder than the one before and follows more closely on the heels of the lightning. Rain begins to pelt them in fat drops—and then comes crashing on them like a cataract, saturating them, rapping on their heads.

At least it will wash this damn dirt off us, the fat Fonseca says loudly, prompting a few dull snickers.

p

The lightning illuminates a ragged line of mesquites up ahead, and when they get there they see that the trees mark the bank of a wash thirty feet wide and five feet deep, its bed with a slight upward incline to their left. At the moment only a thin sheet of water is rushing over the sandy bottom but they all know what's coming.

Beto and the boy jump into the wash, and Beto yells up at the group, Quick! Hurry! Before it hits.

He sends the boy running to the opposite side to help the others out when they get there. As the chickens descend into the wash, Beto yells for them to go, go, shoving them past him.

In the glimmers of lightning Eddie and Miranda run splashing across the shallow current and Eddie boosts her up to the boy on the bank, who takes her hands and pulls her out. As Eddie scoots up beside them he feels the Taurus slip from his waistband and he tries to catch it but misses. He has an impulse to go down and get it, but the boy is already assisting the two Fonseca men to climb out, and he thinks the hell with it, they've made it to the States and are anyway still armed. Now the Fonsecas are out and helping the Mart
í
nez couple to get up the bank.

But the Sando uncle has fallen midway across the wash, his bag of goods whisked away on the stream. Beto was right behind him and stops to pull him to his feet, and the nephew runs back to help.

They half-drag the uncle to the bank and they're pushing him up to helping hands when Eddie feels the ground begin to quiver. And then, as the nephew starts to climb out, the flash flood erupts from the darkness roaring down the wash like a train, and snatches him and Beto away in a black blink.

On all fours at the edge of the bank, the boy yells, “Beto!” and leans out to try to see him—and the bank rim gives way under his hands and he plunges headfirst into the churning flood and is gone too.

p

They stand huddled close under the driving rain and stroboscopic lightning, nearly shouting to make themselves understood above the thunder and the booming of the current in the wash. All but the Sando uncle, who sits at a distance with his face in his hands.

They are agreed that all three are surely drowned. No one could survive a current like that. And who knows how far the water might carry their bodies? For miles. The Martínez woman says it's terrible that they can't bury them, and her husband agrees, but he agrees too with the lean Fonseca who says there's nothing they can do now but go on.

Go on where? the Panama guy says. We got no idea where the fuck we are.

We go due east, Eddie says. We'll come to—

East? the Panama guy says. Which way's
that
?

The way we were heading, straight across the wash, Eddie says. We keep going that way and we'll come to another low range. It can't be much farther. We go around it to our right and then follow a straight line a little to our left and we'll come to the road. I think we can still get there in time to get picked up.

How you know all that? the Panama guy says.

I heard the guide say it.

Yeah? Well I'm not so sure
he
knew what he was talking about. We could be heading into fucking nowhere. Listen, where I come from, a gully this size usually runs past some farms. I say we follow it to one and get some kind of ride from there.

A farm? Miranda says. Out here?

Nobody asked you, bitch.

Nobody asked you either, asshole.

What?

You heard me.

Eddie steps between them. You go whatever way you want, he says to the man, but I'm going the way I said. Anybody who wants to can come with me.

The man fumbles at his clothes and in the next blue radiance of lightning he is pointing a small semiautomatic pistol at Eddie.

They're all going with you, the man says. But the food and water goes with me. Now empty your bags. Everybody!
Now!
You, he says to the fat Fonseca, put it all in one.

They crouch to empty their bags on the muddy ground. Eddie takes off the backpack and unbuckles it and slips his hand inside and fingers the safety off the MAC and brings the gun up and in a single blazing burst fires its seven remaining rounds into the man's center mass, prompting shrieks from the Martínez woman and one of the men.