“Yeah,” Peter said, nodding. “I’ve been thinking about that. At first I wondered if it might have been Border Patrol. But they opened up without giving any warning and without a lot of regard for the fact that there were women and children in the line of fire. It was just lucky I was the only one hit.”
“What do you know about White Horse?”
“They’re not happy with what I do, or the others trying to help the refugees crossing into the desert.”
“Have they ever threatened you?”
“Not me personally. I’ve tried to keep a low profile.”
“I think you haven’t done a bad job. If it was White Horse who started that firefight, I don’t think they necessarily knew it was you guiding the Guatemalans. I’m pretty sure you didn’t pop onto everyone’s radar until Rainy and I showed up. That includes the Border Patrol. They believe Rodriguez has been stashing drugs in one of the old mines down here, and they think you might know where that is.”
“Jesus, are they barking up the wrong tree.”
“They’ve put together some kind of task force—DEA, the Coronado Sheriff’s Department, probably FBI, among others—with Carlos Rodriguez especially in their sights. They’d love to get their hands on him. You too, now.”
“I’m compromised. My work with the Desert Angels is finished. I just want to get those women and children we left at the mine somewhere safe, get them to sanctuary. After that, I don’t care what happens to me.”
“Your mother cares. Your father, too.”
“Mom would understand. My father?” He shook his head. “Who knows?”
I’d known Rainy for years and loved her deeply, but her two children were grown and had been away all that time. I’d met them only once, all too briefly, at our wedding in April. I’d liked them well enough, but they were Rainy’s family, not mine. Peter had simply been a smart, handsome young man with a tough history. I hadn’t made a place for him in my heart.
That was changing. What I knew of him now, his passionate willingness to risk everything to help all these desperate people who were strangers to him, struck a deeply familiar chord in me.
We entered Arivaca, a ramshackle little town nestled among hills with mountains to the east and desert to the west. Peter directed me to an old ranch house off the highway just north of town. When I pulled up and parked, a border collie leaped off the front porch and began to bark. Although it wasn’t a big dog, it set up one hell of a ruckus.
“That’s Duke,” Peter said. “We’ll stay here until Papa Doc comes out.”
A moment later, a tall man with a long, white ponytail and a substantial paunch stepped outside. He stood eyeing us but made no move in welcome.
Peter rolled down his window and hollered, “It’s me, Papa Doc. Peter Bisonette. Call off your bodyguard.”
The man gave one sharp whistle, and the dog returned to the porch and sat down beside him, quiet but still watchful.
I got out of the truck, helped Peter down, and gave him my shoulder to lean on as he hobbled to the house.
“Don’t suppose you shot yourself,” the man said when he saw the bloody gauze bandaging on Peter’s thigh.
“Papa Doc, meet Cork O’Connor. Kind of saved my ass.”
The man barely acknowledged me. “Come in before God and everybody spots you here. Last thing I need is Border Patrol swarming all over my place.”
Papa Doc, whose real name turned out to be Dave Salisbury, was a retired veterinarian. He’d moved to Arivaca years before to escape a world he’d become pretty disgusted with.
“Out there, it’s all about money and fame. We’re a culture of celebrity. We bow down before the gods Kardashian. Fuck Wall Street and fuck Hollywood. The only real people left in the world are the ones standing on street corners with a sign asking for a handout.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that last comment, but he had a needle in his hand and was sewing up the wounds on Peter’s leg and I wasn’t about to argue some vague point with him. He gave Peter a shot of something and then some pills to fight infection.
“I need to use your phone, Papa Doc,” Peter said. “I’ve got folks in the desert that need help.”
“My kind of help?”
“Nothing that serious. I just need to get them to sanctuary.”
“I’m not sure what’s going on, and I don’t think I want to know the details, but there’s been a shitload of Border Patrol activity around here the last few days. You have anything to do with that?”
“Maybe. About that phone?”
While Peter made his calls, I stepped out onto the ranch house porch and turned on my own cell phone. I found that I had three bars. I texted the number Mondragón had used to set up my meeting with him and Rainy at the Goodman Center. The text read simply, Got him.
The phone rang moments later.
“Where are you?” Rainy sounded a little breathless.
“Arivaca.”
“We’ll be there in a couple of hours.”
I told her how to find the ranch house, ended the call, and turned off the phone. Peter joined me. He was wearing different pants, a little big around the waist, but with both legs intact.
“A pair of Papa Doc’s,” he explained.
“Why do you call him Papa Doc?”
“The Doc part’s pretty obvious. Papa because, despite the gruff exterior, he’s got a heart of gold. He says he moved out here to escape the crass, modern world and maybe that was part of it. But for the last fifteen years, he’s been instrumental in helping refugees survive their ordeal in the desert.”
Papa Doc came out with tuna sandwiches and cold beers. We sat on chairs in the porch shade, while Duke lay down beside the old veterinarian. When I’d handed out the jerky and power bars at the Jesus Lode, Peter had refused any food. He wanted to be sure the others had plenty. Now he downed his tuna sandwich in a few quick bites, and Papa Doc brought him another.
“Got transport squared away for your people?” the vet asked.
“We’ll have to spend another night at the Jesus Lode.”
“We?” Papa Doc said. “You should stay off that leg for a while.”
“I’ve got people counting on me. I need to get food back to them. Cork’s power bars won’t sustain them long.”
“I’ll take the food,” I said. “You wait here for Rainy and your father. You still want to get back to your people, Mondragón can bring you. In the meantime, I’ll do what I can up there.”
Peter started to object, but Papa Doc said, “Don’t let your stubborn nature get in the way of clear thinking, kid. It’s a reasonable compromise.”
Peter gave in with a reluctant nod. “We’ll follow you this afternoon. If anything goes wrong . . .” He didn’t finish, probably because there were so many things that could go wrong.
“Nothing will go wrong.” I stood up and offered my hand to Papa Doc. “A real pleasure.”
“One question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“You happen to know Garrison Keillor? I love listening to that guy on the radio.”
* * *
I bought food at the mercantile in Arivaca, which I put in a big backpack Papa Doc had loaned me. I set out for the Jesus Lode a little after 2:00 p.m. The jeep trail was a rough drive, and I took it easy with the pickup. In the rearview mirror, I could see those dark clouds mounting, as they had the day before, building toward another monsoon downpour. I was doing fine until I cleared the southern end of the Santa Margaritas. That’s when the chopper picked me up.
I caught it out of the corner of my eye, a dark flicker across the sun. At first, I thought it was a vulture, that bird whose biological adaptation to the desert Agent Sprangers so admired. But it tracked me, and I finally stopped and pulled out the binoculars, and knew I’d been made. I had no idea if it was Border Patrol or one of the other interested parties in all this, but I was certain if I kept going, they’d follow me right to the Jesus Lode.
I considered my alternatives. I
could stop and let the storm overtake me. The clouds were rolling in fast, lightning alive inside them, spitting bolts at the ground. I figured the violence of what was coming would probably drive off the chopper. But if the day before was any indication of what to expect, I’d have to make my way in a torrential downpour, into and out of swales that might be flash-flooded. I could simply wait where I was until the storm had passed, but I had no idea how long that might be. And if there was flooding, I couldn’t even guess how long it would take for the swales to become passable.
The other possibility was simply to continue moving until I neared the Lulabelle, since both the Border Patrol and Rodriguez’s people already knew about my visit to that area. I wouldn’t be far from the Jesus Lode.
In the end, I went on.
The storm overtook the Santa Margaritas about the same time I came abreast of the Lulabelle. As I’d anticipated, the chopper retreated, swung off to the south, and disappeared. I picked up speed, hoping I didn’t crack an axle on a high rock. Just as the rain began, I reached the place where, according to my GPS, I’d parked the truck that morning. I stayed out of the swale where I’d hidden the pickup—didn’t want to risk it getting washed away—but pulled off the jeep trail behind a gathering of mesquite that provided some cover. I got out, shouldered the food pack, grabbed my Winchester, and started into the Santa Margaritas, leaning into the violence the storm had begun to throw at me.
In that monsoon rain, the desert became a liquid thing. Water poured off the rocks in sheets. The soil was viscous and slippery, and as I struggled up the slope, I knew I was leaving deep prints that, unless the rain washed them away completely, would easily lead anyone who was interested right to the Jesus Lode. But I didn’t have much choice. I kept moving, soaked to the bone, with lightning slashing at the hills around me and thunder shaking the ground under my feet.
They were all gathered at the entrance to the mine, watching the storm from behind a little waterfall that leaped from the rocks above. They moved aside to let me through. I sloughed off the pack and opened it. At the mercantile in Arivaca, I’d selected food that would require no cooking, since a fire, or the smoke from it, could be seen from a great distance. I pulled out the bread, peanut butter, jam, canned fruit, and trail mix I’d bought. In that narrow tunnel, with the storm raging outside, the women and their children ate, while I parked myself behind the waterfall and watched to be certain they were safe.
The storm passed in the late afternoon. I went outside and took up a position in the rocks that gave me a good view of the desert. With my binoculars, I could see where I’d parked the truck a mile or so distant. I waited for Peter and Rainy and Mondragón to show. I heard a noise at my back, and found that one of the children, a boy of eleven or twelve, had left the mine and climbed to where I sat.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he replied.
“You speak English?”
“A little.”
“Have a seat.” I gestured to a place next to me.
He sat and stared at the desert, where the storm still battered the sky far to the west.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Juan.”
“Cork,” I said and offered my hand.
He took it easily. His palm was rough, heavily callused.
“You’ve worked hard,” I said.
“Strong.” He flexed his arms to show me his muscles. “I cut cane.”
“Sugarcane?”
He nodded. “Until the men came.”
“What men?”
Juan shrugged. He wore a beat-up Dodgers cap. I tapped the bill and said, “Where’d you get the hat?”
“It was my brother’s.”
“You like baseball, Juan?”
“Yes. Most of the boys, they play soccer. But I want to be a pitcher, like my brother.”
“Where is your brother?”
He looked out across the desert. “The men who came, they killed him. My father. My uncle. They burned the sugarcane.” He was quiet, then said, “I want to pitch for the Dodgers someday.”
“You like the Dodgers?”
“Hugo Pivaral pitched for them.”
He reached into the back pocket of his dirty jeans and brought out a worn baseball card. Hugo Pivaral, a player I’d never heard of. According to the card, Pivaral played for the Dodgers’ minor league team in the mid-nineties. He was from Guatemala.
I handed the card back. “It’s a tough road, Juan. I hope you make it.”
Other children drifted out and joined us. Juan introduced them, but it was clear that he was the only one who understood English. The women wandered out, too, and the sun went down, and the stars began to appear, but Peter and Rainy and Mondragón did not come.
CHAPTER 29
* * *
The night was clear, the stars like white dust against the black heavens, the moon a lopsided, yellow balloon. The vehicles came just before dawn.
I’d been sleeping fitfully among the rocks. It was Juan who shook me awake.
“Lights,” the boy said.
They came from the south, following the jeep trail, three sets of headlights. I studied them with my binoculars and watched them stop on the desert floor directly below the Jesus Lode. The moon gave me some light, but not enough to see details. The interior lights came on as the passengers exited, but I couldn’t tell who they were or how many.
Once the headlights and the interior lights were out, I couldn’t see anything. It could have been Peter and his people. It could have been Mondragón’s men, the same ones who’d saved our asses at the Lulabelle. Or even, I supposed, Border Patrol. The worst-case scenario was that it was Rodriguez’s goons. I had no way of knowing. If they came up, it would take them less than an hour to reach us.
“Wake up everybody,” I said to Juan. “Tell them we have to move.”
The boy left me and went among the others, who’d found places to sleep on the rocks outside the narrow tunnel of the Jesus Lode. I continued to scan the folds of the hills that led up to where we’d thought we were safe, but I couldn’t make out anything useful.
“They are ready,” Juan said at my back.
The moon, what there was of it, dimly illuminated the ground. It was enough, if we went carefully, to see our way. I considered waiting until the sky lightened a little with predawn, which was not that far off, but I couldn’t take the chance. Whoever it was below us might already be on the move.
“Follow me.”
“Where?” Juan said.
“Where you were before.”
“The other mine?”
I nodded. “The other mine.”
I did my best to remove any evidence that anyone had been in the mine, put all the food and the waste from what had already been eaten into the pack. Four of the women each took one of the gallon water jugs. Then I led them away single file from the Jesus Lode.
I cursed myself silently, knowing that the prints I’d left in the mud on my climb during the storm could lead anyone directly to where these people had been safe. I tried to think. If they weren’t Peter and his people, or Mondragón and his, how did they know where to come looking? The chopper? That would have given them only a general idea. But maybe that was all they’d needed, and then they’d spotted my truck. So it could well have been either Rodriguez’s men or Border Patrol.
Christ, I was getting sick of playing at this guessing game. There were too many sides in this struggle, too many unanswered questions, too many threatening possibilities.
The sky began to lighten, and we could see more easily and move more quickly. I picked up my pace, wanting to put as much distance as I could between us and those people behind us. When I calculated that we were roughly halfway to the Lulabelle, I stopped.
“A rest,” I told Juan, and he spoke to the others.
After they’d all sat down, I pulled Juan aside.
“Do you think you can find your way to the other mine from here?”
The boy turne
d and studied the steep slopes and folds of the hills to the south, all of it gray in the dim morning light. “Yes,” he finally said.
“You’re sure.”
“Yes. But why?”
“I’m going back. I want to find out who those people are and make sure they haven’t followed us. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
“Will you explain to the others? I don’t want them to think I’m deserting you.”
He spoke to the others in the language he’d used all along and that I’d heard Peter use. The women talked among themselves, and then to Juan, and then stared at me.
“They are afraid,” Juan said. “But we have been afraid before.”
“I’ll come back to you just as soon as I can.”
Juan said, “I believe you.”
I unshouldered my pack, which contained the food. “Can you carry this?”
“Yes.”
“Five more minutes of rest, then go.”
I turned and headed back the way we’d come.
I moved fast now, with the early morning light illuminating the Santa Margaritas. When I was near enough to the Jesus Lode to use my binoculars, I found a tall, flat outcropping and lay myself down on it. I could see the Jesus Rock, but not the mine opening. I scanned the hillsides below the mine. I saw them coming, like ants swarming.
They were spread out and it took me a while to count them. Fifteen men, all carrying weapons. They weren’t dressed in the military fatigues Mondragón’s men had worn, nor did they wear Border Patrol uniforms. They were Rodriguez’s people. As I watched, I realized that there was one man in the lead, moving slowly, studying the ground. A tracker. He led them to the rocks surrounding the entrance to the Jesus Lode, and they all disappeared where an hour earlier the women and children had been sleeping.
I considered my options. I could slide from the rock and return to Juan and the others, who, if they weren’t already at the Lulabelle, would be there soon. Or I could maintain my position until I knew what Rodriguez’s people would do next. If the man in the lead was a good tracker, he’d probably find signs that would lead them all to the Lulabelle.