She’d vaguely known that about renewal stickers. She’d had to buy three of them for her car in California, and she’d asked about what looked like a random number on it. The DMV counter person told her that the sticker number went to the car’s registration, and that the police could check to see that the right sticker was on the correct car. The California number wasn’t the tag number, but it would identify a specific car or truck.
She pulled out her phone and took a photo of the New Mexico renewal sticker.
Did all the states do that? The next truck was from Texas—and had no renewal sticker. Neither did the next few Texas trucks. Since most of the trucks driven by the militia were from Texas, she thought, she was out of luck.
As she was walking down the line of trucks, looking for non-Texas renewal stickers, Hawkes and a man in a mask, who Letty thought was Rand Low, climbed into the back of a pickup, dropped the tailgate, and hit the switch on an amplifier. Hawkes lifted a walkie-talkie to her face and said something into it. She listened for a reply, then nodded to Low, looked at her watch, said something else to him, and picked up the microphone.
“You all know what this is about,” she said. “We’re planning to stop the caravan that’s coming our way. We will not let them cross the bridge. The last we heard, they should be coming down the hill on the Mexican side around six o’clock, if nothing slows them down. We could have quite the confrontation here. We could be attacked from the east, by our own people, and from the west, by the people in the caravan. We don’t want anyone to get hurt, so we’re asking you, when you see the caravan arrive on the other side of the river,to stay in your homes. Between now and then, you’re free to go about your business. We mean none of you any harm.”
She looked out over the crowd, as if surveying them for signs of acquiescence; there was a shuffling of feet, glances exchanged, but nobody said anything, neither protest nor acceptance. The TV crew was standing directly in front of her, recording the speech.
Hawkes looked down toward the bridge. Letty caught it, and edged out to the side of the crowd and looked where Hawkes had. She saw the shoulders and heads of four men wearing camo shirts and hats sliding under the bridge; they’d apparently been concealed behind a house that stood closest to the riverbank.
Letty worked back through the crowd, where she could see the bridge at an angle. There were six sections spanning the river.
She did the numbers: blowing I-beams would take four chunks of C-4 for each section; six sections, twenty-four bricks of explosive, twenty-four timers, twenty-four detonators. Five support pillars would take more explosive to bring down, but only five timers and detonators. If they were planning to use one on the cell phone tower... twenty-nine detonators and timers. If the Army lieutenant had told the truth, they had more than enough.
Holy shit: they’re going to take out the bridge. And they’re waiting for the caravan to arrive before they do it.
Hawkes was still talking:
“You should know, or if you don’t, I’ll tell you... a lot of you people have been talking to the authorities in El Paso, and, as far as we know, Washington, D.C. We are hoping to convince these people to let us go peacefully, after we stop the caravan. We’ll remove the highway barricade and drive in a convoy to El Paso. We’re hoping that the authorities accept that. But: we’re willing to die if we have to. We won’t go alone. Most of us are, or have been, soldiers.We’ll be a tough nut to crack. We’ve thought this through. We know what we’re doing. We have more armaments than they realize—and if they don’t let us go peacefully, we’ll take them on, and a lot of Americans will die.”
She looked at her watch again, lips moving as she did some math. “Some of you are talking to the authorities. Maybe right now. Maybe you have your phones on. We knew this would happen. But from now on, we’re going to need additional security. So...”
She looked up the hill. Nothing happened. She continued to stare over the heads of the crowd, and people began to look in the same direction, and then,CRUMP.From the bottom of the hill, where they were standing, the crowd could see only the top of the cell phone tower, which seemed to hop sideways and then fall out of sight.
“I think AT&T can afford another one,” Hawkes said. “For now, that’s the end of the cell phone service. We’re also taking out the Internet fiber-optic. We’re trying not to damage it too badly. I know it’s inconvenient, but it’ll be back up in a couple of days.”
A groan rippled through the crowd and almost everyone held up a cell phone to check the screen. Letty did the same: there were no bars for reception. The phone was dead.
On the truck, Hawkes said, “Now, another one of the Land Division leaders would like to explain why we’re doing this, better than I can...”
Letty checked around,peering at the members of the militia who stood at the edges of the crowd. They were, she realized, taking walkie-talkies from their pockets. The militia had communications, but nobody else did. Across the river, the Mexicans were all looking at their cell phones, talking with one another—they apparently only had phone access through the Pershing cell phone tower, which was now gone.
On the pickup, standing next to Hawkes, Rand Low began explaining the reasoning for the attack on Pershing, but the TV crew was backing out of the crowd, heading to their truck. Going to the cell phone tower for a shot of the damage, Letty thought:If it bleeds, it leads.She eased out of the crowd with several other people, started walking up the hill. One of the militiamen asked Letty, “Where you going, girlie?”
“I’m supposed to be looking after the baby. He was sleeping good, but I got a feeling he ain’t anymore. After that blast.”
He nodded, said, “You’re gonna miss the speech,” and she went on, past the first four streets, then down a side street near the top of the rise, then through a scattering of trailer homes, and past a truck parking lot. At the crest of the slope, she saw the TV truck set up to record the downed tower, the camerawoman messing with her equipment while Rodriguez got back into a sport coat. There were still three militiamen at the site, examining the wreckage.
Letty watched for a minute or two, then walked back down the hill to the motel, went into her room, checked the Wi-Fi. The Net was down. She thought about it some more, then got her pack with the Staccato and extra mags, along with two bottles of water and some PowerBars, and went over to the motel office. The old man was there, with a somewhat younger woman, and Letty asked, “Are there any hardwired phones in town?”
The old man shook his head. “Haven’t had those for years. Not even the Mexicans have them anymore, after AT&T put up the tower.”
“Anybody in town got a ham radio?”
Again, he shook his head. “Not that I know about. A few guys got CB radios, but they’re short-range. A couple miles down here. Who do you want to talk to?”
“My mom. I want to tell her that I’m okay.”
The woman said, “You’re gonna have to be patient, honey, like the rest of us. Hope for the best.”
Letty left the motel, crossed the highway, walked back a street, then carefully looked around the corner of a house. From there, she could see the front of the jail and a half-dozen pickups parked in front of it, several men standing outside with guns, people coming and going.
Kaiser had gotten away with it, she thought, or he was in desperate trouble.
Either way, there was nothing that she could do about it.
