“Get the first shift of bridge guys out there. Nobody goes across, either direction...”
“I know, we got that,” Dick said. “We got the Customs guys nailed down, inside, but I kept the fast-reaction team here in case there’s trouble. I could send them to their positions if you think it’s time.”
Hawkes shook her head. “Keep them here until the bridge guys are set up...”
The Customs and Border Protection employees were holed up inside the building, and some were armed. One of the El Paso militia members, wearing camo and armor, was negotiating with them, standing by the front door, shouting through it.
The negotiations went on for fifteen minutes, and the camo-clad man eventually walked away from the door and down to where Hawkes had met with Low, Duran, and Crain.
“They’re being stubborn, but they’re arguing among themselves,” the camo guy said. “I think we’ll need the demo.”
“Okay with me,” Low said. “Me ’n Vic will tell everybody.”
“Like we talked about,” Hawkes said. She was wearing a gunbelt with a Beretta nine-millimeter in a holster. She took the gun out, and when Low and Crain finished circling the trucks, Low waved at her, and she pointed the gun in the air, over her head, and fired a single shot.
At her signal, all the men around the trucks began firing in the air, downriver, where there wasn’t much but desert. One full thirty-round magazine, they’d said. Hawkes put her fingers in her ears as eighteen hundred rounds went downriver.
The border station employees quit. Three militiamen went inside the station and collected sidearms, got keys for a secure file cabinet from the man in charge, and locked the weapons in the cabinet.
“I knew that would happen,” Hawkes told Low. “As long as everyone thinks they can give up and nobody gets hurt, they’ll do it.”
“But they’re pissed,” Low said. He looked up the hill to the houses of the town. “And there are guys up there in town with guns as good as anything we have.”
“We gotta stay on top of them. Pass the word to keep patrolling.”
A while later,as Hawkes and Low were checking with their various militia squads, making sure their missions were on track, they heard the paddling sound of a helicopter, coming in fast.
Hawkes said, “Here we go,” and Low said, “Holy shit,” and the Black Hawk screamed down at them and the men in the trucksbegan shooting at it, and Hawkes dropped behind the pickup andboom, the .50-cal got in the fight and the chopper turned and climbed out, and as it went by a second time, Hawkes could see a man watching them from the door gunner’s window, and a silent machine gun pointing down at them.
And from the ground,bapbapbapbapbapbapbapbapBOOM...”
The chopper disappeared over the mountain and Hawkes said, “Okay, we need to get the news to them that we’re all mixed up with civilians. We need to get these trucks spread out, right close to the houses, like we planned. We don’t want them to be able to blow us all up in a big cluster like this... That M240 would take us apart.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Low said. “Dick’s gotta get the bridge guys out there, why don’t you find the TV guy and send them a message?”
“I’ll do that,” Hawkes said. And, “Hey, nobody’s said anything about the cops.”
“They won’t be any trouble,” Dick said. “We disarmed all four of them, made sure they didn’t have any guns hidden in their houses. They’re all part-timers, and Patty said she talked to all of them and they promised not to give us any trouble. They basically take drunks to jail. If they had a real problem, they sorta counted on the Border Patrol guys to help out.”
The TV truckwas parked on the shoulder of the highway, the right side pressing into the brush that lined the shoulder, fifty yards up the hill from the border station. Three militiamen, all with rifles, were standing beside it. Oliver Rodriguez was standing next to the truck with a camerawoman, named, Hawkes thought, Cherry something. They’d met once before, on a patrol along I-10; neither one of them had actually seen Hawkes’s face.
She tightened her mask as she walked up, made sure hersunglasses were firmly on her nose; nothing to do about her hair, but her hair wasn’t distinctive yet. In a week, it would be red, and her eyebrows were blond enough for red hair to look natural.
Rodriguez saw her coming and nodded, recognizing the green triangle on her hat and her general shape. “Jael,” he said. He waved at the town. “Is this you?”
“I’m one of more than a hundred, all equal,” Hawkes said. “We now have this town and we will not let the caravan pass.”
“Say that again, in one minute,” Rodriguez said. He turned to the camerawoman and asked, “Sound?”
The camerawoman nodded. “I got it while you were talking. You can go ahead.”
Rodriguez nodded, turned to the camera, and said, “The town of Pershing was invaded this morning by the Land Division, a local militia intent on stopping the caravan now approaching the border crossing at Pershing, Texas. They have arrested the mayor and the city council, and are holding them in the city jail. The local policemen and the Customs and Border Protection employees have been disarmed. At the latest report, the caravan of migrants, most of them from Honduras and Guatemala, is nine miles out and moving steadily toward us...”
He turned to Hawkes and said, “I only know you as Jael, the leader of the Land Division. I don’t suppose you’d remove your mask for this interview?”
“Might get COVID,” she said. The COVID pandemic lingered on, though few people still wore masks. “I’ll keep it on.”
“You have conquered this town,” Rodriguez said. “What are you going to do with it?”
