LUCAS GOTthe idea from pheasant drives: he wasn’t much of a hunter, but he’d heard enough about the drives from people who were, like Virgil Flowers. O’Brien had a few ideas of his own, and a half hour before sunset, seven Border Patrol trucks bumped off the highway down into the dry field south of where the second shooter was.
“Don’t have much time,” Lucas shouted to the drivers. “We have to move right along. You shooters, you guys stay close to the trucks—don’t stick anything out but one eyeball.”
The trucks arrayed themselves across the field, spaced fifteen yards apart, giving them a sweep of more than a hundred yards. A border patrolman stood on the back left corner of each truck carrying a rifle, using the truck for cover.
The truck drivers sat in the passenger seats, low enough that nothing but their eyes were above the dashboard. Each of them had a traffic cone on the driver’s side, the tip of the cone pressed against the gas pedal. It was ugly and awkward, but it worked. They had no way to brake, but wouldn’t be traveling any faster than two or threemiles an hour. Even at that slow pace, they’d cover a hundred yards in a bit more than a minute, and only had to cover a couple hundred yards to sweep the field.
The drivers were put in the passenger seat because everybody agreed that if the shooter opened up on the trucks, he was most likely to try to hit the driver... in the driver’s seat. They used traffic cones to push on the pedals because it was what they had that would work.
When everybody was lined up, Lucas looked at the lowering sun and yelled, “Let’s do it.”
Lucas was behind the truck closest to the buildings, carrying Bob’s rifle. The trucks began edging forward, Lucas and the border patrolmen walking behind, their rifles already at their shoulders, ready to fire.
—
DARLING HADshot at the two cops, the short white guy and the tall black woman, hitting one, he thought, from the way the woman screamed and the guy went down. He hoped that the Border Patrol hadn’t yet become fully involved with lots of personnel, that if he could rid himself of the cops from the silver SUVs, he might have a little more freedom of movement.
When the heavyset cop went down and was dragged out of sight, he began moving north, as quick as he could without giving away his position, snaking along in the grass. He stopped once, to call Poole and tell him what was going on.
“I don’t know where you are,” Poole said. “I think I might have hit one of the cops. I saw him peeking out from behind one of thebuildings. If there were only two or three of them in those trucks, we might have knocked out two of them.”
“I’m going to get as close as I can to those glass buildings,” Darling replied. “If I get the chance, I’ll rush them, see if I can take them out. It’s about our only chance.”
“All right. I’m in this concrete bunker. I can see the tops of both of the roofs. If they try to put a sniper up there, I’ll clean him off for you. Let me know if you break through.”
“Soon as it happens,” Darling said. “We’ve only got maybe thirty or forty minutes until sundown.”
Darling hung up, and still with a bit of hope in his heart, he continued crawling north, trying not to leave a rippling motion in the grass and weeds.
He was almost even with the back of the nearest building when he heard the trucks rushing down the highway. He risked a look over the weeds, saw the line of Border Patrol trucks heading south and then turning out onto the field. He said, “Goddamnit,” aloud, crawled a few feet into a dense cluster of dead dark brown weeds, and used the cover to take a longer look.
The trucks were spreading out across the far end of the field, their headlights pointing toward him. They were going to try to flush him, he thought—and they’d do it, too, if he let them get close. The brown weeds were looser than the yellow grass, and after considering his dwindling options, he carefully moved into a prone shooting position, lined up on the driver’s-side window of the middle truck, and fired a single shot.
He immediately heard men shouting. He lined up on another truck and squeezed the trigger again. The trucks stopped rolling.
Darling, satisfied for the moment, turned around to begin crawling north again. He’d moved fifty feet when he heard the truck engines working again, behind him. A few more feet and he came to a trampled area in the yellow grass. He’d have to cross it, and when he did...
He peeked again and saw people standing behind the glass in the nearest building—he wasn’t sure if they were inside the building or on the far side. Whichever it was, they would be able to see him when he tried to cross the bald spot.
He got on the phone: “Hey, man, I’m trying to get up north. It’d help a whole lot if you could put a few shots through the windows of the second building. There are people either in there or on the other side, looking out here at these fields...”
“Give me fifteen seconds...”
Fifteen seconds later, he heard Poole open up and the glass shattering in the domed building, and he low-crawled across the bald spot, just as he’d been taught in the Corps. On the far side, he disappeared back into the weeds, now aiming at the space between the two big buildings, the place where the two cops had been when he shot at them.
If he could get into the gap, and if there weren’t many cops, he might be able to break back through.
—
O’BRIEN WASon the phone to Lucas, after checking by radio with the truck drivers: “Nobody hurt, we’re all okay. Keep moving, I think this is gonna work.”
The trucks began moving again, still at the slow walking pace,and Lucas kept the rifle up. Then a patrolman, two or three trucks over, shouted, “I think I saw him. I think he’s angling toward the space between the buildings. He’s maybe twenty-five yards into the field.”
Lucas shouted back, “If you got a clear line, if you’re not going to hit anything else, put a couple shots in there, see if he breaks out.”
The patrolman did that:Bap! Bap! Bap!
Lucas, who was looking toward the area, thought he saw a wavelike motion in the weeds, somebody moving on his knees and elbows. He aimed Bob’s M4 at the area and fired four more shots:Bap! Bap! Bap! Bap!
