She felt the handset vibrate. She walked back out of the crowd, up the hill to the locked-up TV truck, stepped behind it, then around to the far side where she couldn’t be seen.
She called Kaiser: “What?”
“Something’s happening here. The guys watching us pulled out. They’re gone.”
“Are they playing you?”
“Don’t think so... wait one...”
She waited, then Kaiser came back.
“A bunch of pickups just went past, moving fast, heading your way. They must be coming down from the roadblock. What do you want me to do?”
Letty hesitated. They had no plan for this. She pushed the transmit button and said, “Do what we planned, you know,ven aqui.”
Pause: “Got it.”
With any luck, Kaiser would leave the council at the cave, with guns, and would join her near the bridge.
More pickups went byas she walked from behind the TV truck. They didn’t pause as they went by, the passengers didn’t look at her. As she walked back down the highway, toward the bridge, they turned right at the dirt road and out of sight.
The sky was going dark, and lights were coming on around the town. Six more pickups, running together, went past, took the right, and disappeared. Letty rejoined the crowd, saw the pregnant woman, Alice, who’d been worried about her husband, and stepped close to her.
Letty asked, “Where are the pickups going? Is there a road out down there?”
Alice shook her head. “There’s a gun range a ways down there. Then the old ag plain runs along for four or five miles, then the mountain comes right down to the river. There’s no way out. There’s a deep arroyo, Arroyo Grande, but there’s no way in or out of it that I know of. Maybe you could hide in it... Look.”
Letty looked.
Low was walking up the hill with a megaphone. “Let me have your attention, folks. We’ve gotten word from our people at the roadblock that the Army is clearing out the roadblock and is coming down the hill with troops. There’s gonna be a hell of a fight down here, all over town. You gotta get out. Get in your cars and get out... we’re turning the Customs loose right now, follow them out of here. This is gonna be a goddamn nightmare, this is gonna be a free-fire zone. We understand they’re coming in with Black Hawk gunships to take us out, and we ain’t going, we’re gonna fight back...”
Most of the crowd began to move, headed up the hill, slowly at first, then more quickly; some people began to run. The front door of the border station opened, and the captured Customs and Border Protection employees surged out and began jogging up the hill and into the town, headed for their homes and families.
Low was chanting into the megaphone, “You gotta hurry, you gotta run...”
Bapbapbapbapbapbap.
There was a burst of gunfire, picked up by other guns, to the side, and far up the highway,
Another man, up the hill, began shouting into a megaphone, repeating the message.Army’s coming in...
Letty ran with the crowd, but when she got to the TV truck, she stepped behind it, and then around into the brush beside it. Dark back there. Stars were popping out overhead, with a bare orange line defining the tops of the hills on the Mexican side of the river.
Her handset buzzed and Kaiser asked, “Where are you?”
Had to risk it: the militiamen seemed too busy to be monitoring the unused radio channels and she blurted, “Behind the TV truck.”
“Two minutes.”
The orange linethat defined the Mexican hills was fading when Kaiser appeared. He had come down the hill inside the brush line, and had the shotgun slung behind his shoulder along with an AR.
“I’m clean,” he muttered. “I didn’t see anyone watching me.”
He unslung the rifle and handed it to her. “One mag, thirty rounds.”
She took it. “The council’s okay?”
“Still up at the cave, but I don’t think the militia cares anymore. They’re evacuating.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. “You okay?”
