“Careful, Kincaid, you’re in enough of a mess as it is.”
“For what?”
Ellis swung a backhand at her face, but Hunter ducked under it and butted his chin with her head.
His teeth clicked and Ellis staggered, losing his footing to fall on his back.
Mike Hart stepped to Hunter’s side and grasped her arm, “Hold it!” He didn’t look angry, only worried.
Ellis climbed to his knees, then his feet and rushed at the woman, but Mike stepped in front of her, “Nope, you brought that on yourself.”
Ellis looked at him, a hard, mean stare. He opened his mouth to talk, but Winston said, “Behave, Ellis.”
Hunter said, “Why do you want us?” I’m a federal Agent and you could get in a ton of trouble for this.”
RL stood to the side, shifting his feet.
Winston smiled, “Wonderful, you are a Federal Agent, oh my.”
Hunter wasn’t sure what was going on here, but she was ready to fight if she could.
Winston said, “You’ve stirred up a mess you can’t even fathom. But I’m here now, and we will take care of it, and take care of you two.”
Hunter’s nostrils flared with anger, but she was scared, too. Glancing out of the church entrance, she glimpsed Raymond in the distance, coming across the bare ground in a crouching run.
Her heart raced. Her friend was alive. He found them and was coming. She almost teared up, but held the emotions in check and turned to face Winston. The old man said, “In one way, you two helped me out. When my son, Vincent went missing, I thought that was the end of it because he’d opposed me at every turn after he hooked up with that Mexican whore.”
Hunter said, “I don’t understand.”
“He wanted to marry her, a goddamn Mexican. Well, I couldn’t allow that to happen. We Harts are not mongrels.”
Mike Hart stood stock still, listening as a feeling like a finger tickling his spine came with his father’s words.
RL walked to the entrance and scanned the terrain, uneasy for some reason. He also didn’t want to hear what Winston Hart said about Mexicans and Vincent Hart, the man’s own son.
He spotted something moving through the brush at a distance of one hundred yards. RL thought a coyote at first, then realized it was a man, one he knew. Raymond Flores, the Border Patrol Agent. He wasn’t in uniform, but he was armed. “Shit!”
The others looked at him and he said, “Guy coming on foot.” He pointed at Hunter, “Her partner, the other Agent.”
Winston Hart kicked a small stool and said, “That damn nigger said he killed Flores.”
RL said, “There’s been a resurrection, then, because he’s right out there.”
Ellis motioned for the others, then led three of them outside, where they opened fire at Raymond with machine guns and shotguns.
Raymond crouched behind some dry brush when the shooting began, and one of the first bullets cut through the gray and brown twigs to spray his face with exploding dry branches and leaves, filling his mouth with stiff pieces of the plant. He kneeled and coughed and spit the pieces out on the ground like a mouth full of old potpourri.
Bullets zipped and popped and whined all around him while he lay on the ground and used a finger to scrape stiff bits of plant from his mouth and tongue. The firing increased, sending rounds within inches of him, and Raymond backed down the slope to be out of range.
Ellis said to the others, “He’s below the rise. We’ll go out and flank him, get him in a crossfire. Let’s go.”
Ellis took a reluctant RL with him, and the others moved to the south side. They went at a slow walk, with rifles ready at their shoulders, searching for the man they wanted to kill.
Raymond had already departed by the time they talked. He waded waist-deep in the Rio Grande by the time they circled the area where he had been. Raymond knew it served no good if he was killed while trying to rescue Hunter and the boy. He wasn’t in a panic of flight, but instead, waded upriver until he made a circle all the way around the church and the armed men, then snuck into the town of half-demolished and abandoned buildings, spotting some old, yet serviceable heavy equipment that someone kept in repair. The one in the best shape was an old, yellow D-7 cable bulldozer from the forties.
He climbed the bank through a narrow trail in the river cane, and peered over the bank’s edge at the church. The armed men still scoured the rise, working their way toward the river, but were a half-mile behind from where Raymond watched them.
A movement near the D-7 caught his attention, and he spotted a slender man, seventies, wiping his hands on a greasy rag as he watched the church area from the safety of an old building near the bulldozer.