“So far. But they’ve set charges on the bridge.” She told him about talking to the woman who said there was no way out along the river, but that it appeared all the trucks were going there.
“Then they’ve got a backdoor, somehow. Maybe there’s a ford up there, somewhere. They head into Mexico, come back across one at a time, maybe at another ford.”
“I don’t know... Let’s take a peek.”
They edged around to the front of the truck and looked down the hill. A couple of townspeople were lingering there, along with a crowd of militia. Everybody was looking across the bridge.
As they watched, in the lights from the Mexican border station, the line of militia at the far end of the bridge, the Mexican side, suddenly and all at once, broke and began trotting toward the American side. The militiamen on the near side of the bridge jogged into the border station’s parking lot and began loading into the pickups parked there.
Across the river, the school bus edged onto the bridge.
Rodriguez, Ochoa, and her husky helper hurried up the hill, and as they got close to the truck, turned back, and then Ochoa, with a boost from Rodriguez, got on the shoulders of the big guy. She began recording the militia running off the bridge.
“They can’t, what’s going on?” Letty asked. “I told the people in El Paso to warn the caravan to stay off the bridge, but they’re coming...”
“Somebody didn’t get the message,” Kaiser said. “Or they didn’t believe it. Or us. Or something.”
Hawkes and Low were with Rodriguez, Duran, and Crain farther down the hill, all watching the bridge. They heard Hawkes call to Rodriguez and Ochoa, “One minute. One minute...” and then “...Thirty seconds...” and then “...Ten seconds.”
Ten seconds passed, nothing happened.
Hawkes shouted at Low, “What happened? Are we—”
Low interrupted her, shouting back, “I told them to add on five minutes.”
“What? What are you talking about?” Hawkes looked back toward the bridge. “You’ll kill them.”
“Gotta draw the line,” Low shouted. “We’re drawing the line. You wanted the Alamo, you got it.”
“What! What!”
Letty: “Did you hear that?”
Kaiser: “He delayed...”
The school bus, with one good headlight, rolled farther onto the bridge; the Mexican border patrol let it go.
And Kaiser said, “Oh,shit!”
Letty leaned theAR against the TV truck and turned into the brush, and began pushing through it, away from the highway and then down the hill.Five minutes,she thought. Now four-forty. Now four-thirty. Now four-fifteen... Now four.
There was a thrashing behind her and she realized that Kaiser was following, not delicately, but bulling his way through the brush. She let him come. They broke out of the thicket near the end of the bridge. On the other side, a crowd was walking parallel to the school bus, on both sides of it. Letty and Kaiser ran onto the bridge and started across it, Letty screaming,“Detente! Detente! Stop! Stop!”
Kaiser was looking at his Rolex and shouted, “Three-thirty.”
Letty continued to scream, but the bus and the crowd kept coming, and Kaiser unslung the shotgun and aimed it up in the air and pulled the trigger.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Letty began screaming, “Hay bombas abajo del puente! Detente! Regresa!”
Kaiser shouted, “Three!” and “Go back! Go back!”
The bridge was three hundred yards long, the school bus already fifty yards out from the Mexican side when they reached it. The bus was driven by a heavyset woman who looked out the driver’s-side window, which was missing, and Letty shouted at her,“Hay bombas! Hay bombas abajo el puente!”
The woman seemed confused.“Que? Hay bombas?”
Behind and beside the bus, the crowd had slowed its march, and some, not many, had turned back. Letty kept screaming“Hay bombas!”and Kaiser shouted “Two!” and Letty screamed out the countdown:“Hay bombasindos minutos.”
