RL said, “Got it.”
“After that, contact the Juarez Cartel and ask your friends there what they want. We’ll make money runs both ways, and use each group to help us supply the others without them knowing.”
“I’ll go today, probably be back tomorrow or the next day. Depends on how hard they want to party. You know what I mean.”
“I do.” Ellis drove across the bridge and the men showed their passports to the uniformed officers on the U.S. side. They waved the two men on, and Ellis and RL travelled to a warehouse on the outskirts of town on Bridge Street, two hundred feet north of the Rio Grande. RL used his own set of keys to open the padlock and slide the doors open. Inside were two, four-by-four Dodge Ram pickups, a Buick Enclave Avenir, and a twenty-year-old, two-ton dump truck.
They had parked the dump truck on top of the false floor where guns and drugs were stored. It also marked where the tunnel would soon be finished. The tunnel that would run from a large metal shed in Mexico, on Calle Fronteriza, under the shallow border river, to the warehouse.
It had begun twenty months ago, with Ellis soliciting the Juarez Cartel, and getting a sit-down with Juan Pablo Ledezma, the Cartel’s powerful and ruthless leader. That had been sweaty work, Ellis remembered, with Ledezma sitting close in front of him, talking at length while not blinking, which reminded Ellis of a rattlesnake he once came face to face with while climbing a cliff. The scaled head rose off the rock and hovered motionless two inches from his face. He’d dropped off the short cliff and turned an ankle when he hit, but got away from the rattler.
Ledezma, when he finished talking, listened to the American. Ellis kept it short, direct, and emphasized how much money could be made. The Cartel’s armed units, the Zetas and La Linea, stood behind him, with automatic weapons pointed at Ellis. He remembered that a dozen rifles pointed at him from six feet away definitely left his underarms as humid as a swamp, even with deodorant on them.
In the end, Ledezma gave a small nod and left the room, and that was it. Ellis had the official go-ahead to build his tunnel. The soil around and under the river was a combination of loamy soil, sand and gravel, with a clay mixture, and it ran true all the way from where he would start to where he would end. One of the best things was, nothing under the soil like electrical lines, or sewage and water lines could block the tunnel. The locations sat outside both Presidio’s and Ojinaga’s infrastructure. It was desert and the dry, desiccated banks of what remained of a once large river that was now a remnant of what it had been, nothing else. The warehouses on both sides of the border would hold and hide their work.
The tunnel expert was a former mining engineer who worked silver mines in the Sierra Madres. He was old now, and they’d let him go, so the man was eager for money. They talked at length about dimensions, and Ellis told him what was needed. The engineer, whose name was Conrad Cortes, wrote it all down on an iPad. What Conrad didn’t know was that, when they finished with the tunnel, he would be the first addition in the bottom of the cinnabar mine on the hill.
Don’t leave people to talk, Chapo Guzman told him a decade ago. He’d adhered to it since that time. Chapo had not, and now was in the United States in a maximum-security prison. In all likelihood, he would never taste freedom again.
Ellis had a few things to finish in the tunnel, like the pumped air and lights, along with the last few feet of a small paved floor that would allow multi-ton loads of contraband to move from one side of the border to the other, with small trailers and tugs to push and pull them. He could move guns and women south, drugs and money north. There was room for anything else, too, either way, if they paid enough. His mind came back to the present when his partner touched his arm.
RL said, “You care what I drive?”
“Don’t take the dump truck.”
“Hah! Think I’ll take the Buick. It’s comfortable, and doesn’t draw much attention.”
Ellis said, “It’ll make you almost look respectable.”
“Almost.”
RL retrieved the Buick’s keys from the desk in the corner, and said, “See you soon.” He drove out of the warehouse, and Ellis closed and locked the door. He drove the River Road out of town, past the tall adobe walls of the Fort Leaton museum, and on towards Lajitas, Terlingua, and the Hart ranch. His thoughts drifted to Hunter Kincaid, and the Mexican boy who kept turning up everywhere, what was his name? Oh yeah, Adan something.
**
The first thing Hunter saw when she entered into the United States was Raymond, leaning on a front fender of his Border Patrol vehicle, nervously bouncing the toe of a boot on the caliche road by Presidio’s International Bridge. When he spotted her, the relief showed on his face. He followed her to the Presidio Border Patrol Station where she returned Harris’ truck and changed into uniform. She hurried out of the station, carrying the sack of the clothes she’d worn into Mexico.
Raymond slid behind the wheel and as she got in the passenger side, he said, “So, I’m hoping it was a dull, uneventful afternoon for you, enjoying the sights of Mexico.”
“Not exactly.” She told him all of it.
Raymond thinned his lips and shook his head. “You’ve got to stop taking chances like that.”
“Like you wouldn’t have tried to save that boy’s life in the mine? Give me a break.”
Raymond pulled down on his Zapata moustache with the thumb and index finger of one hand as a way to not talk and hold down his irritation about his young friend’s actions. “I would have taken somebody with me.” He looked hard at her, “You get the drift, what I’m saying here?”
They had a stare-off for ten seconds, then the tiniest of smiles started in the corners of Hunter’s mouth. She let it build and began moving her head side to side, like a child endearing herself to her parent. She said in a girl’s voice, “I got you something, yes I did.”
Raymond couldn’t hold it. “Well, hell. I guess you’re old enough to do what you want.” He paused a few seconds, “What did you get me?”
She reached into her pocket, took out the folsom point and handed it to him.
“Dang, Hunter, that’s a folsom.”
“Took it out of an ice age buffalo while it was still running.”
He turned it over in his hands, running his thumb up and down the long flutes on both sides that reached from the base almost to the point. He glanced up at her, “Where?”