—
HE HOPPED OUTof the truck, walked over to Johnson, who was drinking one of Lucas’s Diet Cokes and sweating mightily, and asked, “You got this?”
“If he shows, we got it,” Johnson said.
“His phone’s off the grid. I’m worried that he’s turned south, heading for this Presidio place, down on the border.”
“Think he’s got a passport?” Johnson asked. He rolled the cool Coke bottle across his forehead.
“His girlfriend did,” Lucas said. “A good one, under a fake name. I’m thinking that me and Bob and Rae should head down to this town Marfa, take a look at cars coming through. If we go right now, we should beat him down there. Not by much, but by some.”
“I’ll send a car with you,” Johnson said. “Give you an extra gun and some extra speed going down. I’ll call around, see if I can shake loose some Border Patrol guys to help out at Marfa. If they’ve been planning to cross into Mexico, they might have been looking at Presidio the whole time. There are lots of people looking at faces in El Paso, on both sides of the border. And Juàrez’s got a bad rep, if that would work into their thinking.”
“Then we’re going,” Lucas said. “Get him, though. If he comes through here, get him.”
“We surely will,” Johnson said. “And you take care of your own self.”
—
THE HIGHWAY PATROLMANwho went with them was named Dallas Guiterrez, a big rangy guy who seemed happy to be moving. “There’s some interesting road between here and Marfa,” he told them. “I mean, the road surface is good, but there are some curves where you can get thrown. Don’t push me too hard and I’ll get you down there without breaking your necks.”
“Lead on,” Bob said.
Rae rode with Lucas, offered to drive in case he needed to talk on the phone or look at his iPad. He took her up on it, and she tucked in behind Guiterrez and Bob came up behind them.
The countryside was as barren as anything Lucas had ever experienced, hard desert outside the car windows, with low mountains that looked like they’d been worked over with God’s own blowtorch, shimmering in the heat. About a billion squashed rabbit corpses littered the shoulders of the road, tumbleweeds were jammed into ranch fences. Despite the heat and rock, the only comparable landscape Lucas had crossed, in terms of bleakness, was on a winter run to Canada through the lowlands of Northern Minnesota, which looked like a black-and-white photograph.
Guiterrez told them that the trip normally would take a little more than an hour and a half from where they were, but he expected to make it quicker than that. They did, but it was still an hour and fifteen minutes before they rolled into the northern outskirts of Marfa.
Halfway to Marfa, Rae said, “Big country, out here. When was the last time we saw a house?”
“I can’t remember what a house looks like,” Lucas said. And, “What do you have in your gear bag? More than two rifles?”
“Nope. Guns for Bob and me—two rifles, extra mags and ammo, boots, helmets, and vests. We threw in that extra vest for you, but no extra weapons. Boots won’t help much out here, they’re heavy and waterproof.”
“If we find Poole, we gotta think he’ll try to shoot his way through. He knows what’s waiting for him if we take him.”
“I got that. I’m working up a buzz.”
Johnson called: “There’s a Border Patrol station on the south side of Marfa, off the highway going down toward Presidio. The patrol guys are willing to set up a checkpoint if you want them to do that.”
“I’ll look it over when we get there,” Lucas said. “Thanks for that.”
—
MARFA ITSELFwas a flat town, the high point probably the tip of a radio tower. Lucas had been in any number of flat towns on the northern plains, and Marfa would fit right in there: more pickups than sedans; a venerable county courthouse with a diminutive dome; a brick, concrete, and pole-building main street, no buildings higher than three or four stories; white houses made of concrete block with stucco, and wood-and-plaster; and vacant lots overgrown with weeds. The horizon was low, all around, with distant low mountains like camel humps. Big sky; big sun.
Unlike most flat high-plains towns, Marfa was also a major art destination, according to Wiki. An artist named Donald Judd had bought an old army fort and set it up as a museum. Lucas had neverheard of him; but then, he’d never paid too much attention to painting or sculpture, though his wife was a patron of the Minneapolis Institute of Art and gave them enough money that she and the director were on a first-name basis.
They rolled through town from the north side to the south, past a water tower and then past a snazzy-looking hotel and out to the edge of town, where Guiterrez led them off the highway to a Border Patrol station.
They got out of their cars and a border patrolman behind a tall chain-link fence called out to Guiterrez, “Excuse me, sir, are you an American citizen?” and Guiterrez asked, “Have you been drinking, sir?” and the border patrolman said, “How ya doing, Dallas? You leading this shoot-out?”
“That would be the marshals here...” Guiterrez said, nodding at Lucas, Bob, and Rae. He introduced them to the border patrolman, who asked Rae, “Exactly how dangerous is this guy?”
“He’s killed eight people we’re fairly sure about, including a little girl and a highway patrolman. Who knows how many more?”
“Whoa. Shoot first and ask questions later, huh?”
