“They’re all moving,” Kaiser said. “It’s under way, whatever it is.”
“It’s like a fuckin’ nightmare,” Letty said. “One of those where you’re trying to find your school locker and you keep running from one to the next, and it’s never yours.”
Letty and Kaiserwent up to their rooms to wash their faces and hands, then walked back to the pizza place again to get dinner.
Greet called as they were finishing the pizza and said, “I’m not getting anywhere. I can’t find anyone to talk to at the electric company; the gas company says they don’t have a Rand Low in their billing system. He has a driver’s license, he renewed it when he got out of prison, but he doesn’t live at the address on his license, not anymore, and that’s the same address that’s on his truck tag.
“His truck tag wasn’t renewed, but a guy at the state patrol office said he’s probably peeling the renewal sticker off somebody else’s truck and putting it on his own. Nothing on any of the big three cell services, he’s probably got a burner. I don’t see a Visa card under his name, but I did find an active Visa and an active MasterCard under Hawkes’s name, so he could be using one of those... The statepatrol hasn’t issued recent traffic tickets to Crain, Duran, Low, or Hawkes. So far, I’ve struck out with the banks.”
“Billy, I know you gotta be annoyed with us...”
“No, no, we need you to keep pushing, I’m here all night if you need me to be,” Greet said.
“We know they’re anti-immigrant. Would the Border Patrol have anything under their names?”
“Shit. If you didn’t hear it, I just slapped my forehead. Let me see who I can wake up and ask.”
Letty and Kaiserwalked back to the hotel, frustrated, agreed that if Greet called back with anything significant, Letty could wake up Kaiser anytime. “I’m going to finish that Furst book and then go to bed,” Kaiser said. “Maybe things will get clearer overnight.”
“Or blow up,” Letty said.
“Wash your mouth out with soap.”
Greet called backat ten o’clock, which would be midnight, Washington time—Letty had been confused about time zones for a bit, until she found out that El Paso was in the Mountain Time Zone, unlike the rest of Texas. “I was looking for the right Border Patrol intelligence guy, and it turns out he’s in a motel in El Paso. He’s there because there’s a big caravan of Central Americans headed your way, fifteen hundred people or so...”
“I saw something in the El Paso paper,” Letty said. “They’re supposed to get here when? Day after tomorrow?”
“That’s what this guy thinks. Maybe as soon as tomorrow night. Anyway, he says that there has been a militia patrolling along the river southeast of El Paso for several years. They’ve been especially active the last year or two...”
“Because they got operational money,” Letty said.
“Maybe. They’ve actually spotted and stopped a number of illegals and called in the Border Patrol. He said that they are armed. They claim that they only carry weapons in case they should run into armed drug mules coming across.”
“That doesn’t sound so terrible, if you gotta have a militia in the first place,” Letty said.
“Maybe not. But here’s the relevant part. He thinks that the militia may be run by a woman. His border patrolmen have encountered her a few times and she does the talking, not the guys. And she drives a Jeep.”
“That’s her,” Letty said. “Jane Jael Hawkes.”
“I sent her Army ID photos and her driver’s license photos to the intelligence guy, he’ll put them in front of people who’ve met her. That won’t happen until tomorrow, though.”
“All right. Well, I don’t know what we’re doing tomorrow, but something is going on. If you can think of anything, let me know.”
“Try not to break into any more houses,” Greet said.
“I can’t promise anything,” Letty said. “You know what? I’m scared. I finally got there.”
NINETEEN
Back up in the mountains well east of El Paso, ten miles off I-10, Hawkes could see almost forever to the southeast, with the orange ball of the sun dropping toward the horizon at her right hand. Curls of pale dust rose from the wheels of the pickups winding up the desert road toward the meet. It was hot, but no longer oppressive, and would cool quickly in the night. The skies were perfectly clear, and the stars and the moon would be a spectacle.
“We already got sixty and we’re still an hour away,” Rand Low said. He was exultant, pacing back and forth on a rocky ridge above the meeting area. Down below, sixty pickups were parked in a semicircle around what would be a bonfire later in the evening, after it got dark.
Militia folks wandered among the trucks, introducing themselves, drinking a little beer, eating cheese sandwiches, men and women in jeans and boots and cotton shirts, a sprinkling of camo.The license plates were from all over, Washington State, Oregon, Idaho, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Arizona, four dozen from Texas. “We’ll have seventy, eighty trucks before the night’s done, more than a hundred guns.”
“Wonder how many of them are FBI?” Crain asked, with a tight grin.
“Might be one or two, but I sorta doubt it,” Hawkes said. “These are the cream of the crop. I’ve looked at every one of them six ways to Sunday. Still, we can’t take a chance.”
