***
The thorns were a nightmare. Johnny had a dozen punctures in his fingers and hands before he got the first of the ocotillo branches apart. He sucked his thumb and looked at all the ones left. “It’ll take us a damn hour to get through all this,” he said.
Jesse looked for a moment and said, “We’ll go underneath, crawl through it.” They made it past the first one, but the others were varied in height, some lower, some higher. The low ones snagged their backs with the stiff, fiery thorns, and they had to help each other get unhooked. The brothers crawled back and sat in the trail, looking at the wall of thorns. “We’re gonna have to think about this,” Jesse said.
Johnny groaned, laid back and looked at the fast-darkening sky, “You think. Christ, I gotta rest
.”
***
Anda rejoined the two women and took the lead down the switchbacks. The three women hurried as dusk filled the valleys in shadow. They reached the bottom and Alicia sat down to rest, but Anda said, “Not yet. A little further, then we rest for the night.” Maria was too tired to argue, and they followed a narrow game trail as it made a weaving path through the foothills.
It was dark when the women came to a caliche road as luminous as bone, stretching out of sight in both directions. Maria said, “Which way, little thief?”
Anda was dirty, itchy, tired of carrying the heavy extra weight of cocaine. She didn’t answer, but studied the road for several minutes. She was sure it went to the Rio Bravo if they went to the right, and on the other side would be another fifty or sixty miles of mountains and desert before they would reach a town. The other direction should, if they were lucky, take them to more traveled roads that led to Ojinaga. “We go left,” she said.
Maria snorted, “I think we should go right.”
“Go ahead. The river’s there, then a hundred kilometers of desert after that.” Anda walked away, and Alicia followed her. Maria waited a moment, studied the road to the right, hesitated, then went left to join them.
They had only walked in the darkness for fifteen minutes when Anda stopped. Smoke. She turned her head to find it again, and caught it, faint, seeming to come from the area between the hills to the right. Alicia was close beside her and said, “Maybe someone has a camp?”
Anda said, “Maybe, we will see.” She moved forward and saw where vehicles had crushed the brush as they drove into the cluster of hills. The women walked with caution and a quarter-mile later Anda saw a pale flicker of light reflect on a hillside. She led the two women up an adjacent hill where they eased to the top and looked into a wide, flat-bottomed draw where the fire burned.
There was a lot of activity. Men in fatigues moving back and forth, several tents, four military vehicles, and one old stakebed truck with the bed covered in military-style canvas. Anda saw some of the men cleaning weapons, others sitting by the fire and eating, still others came and went from the tents. Every time a tent flap opened, light spilled out to brighten the area in front of the stakebed where several men filled duffel bags with brick-shaped, plastic wrapped packages. Alicia touched Anda’s arm, “Is that…?”
The three women watched until the men had seven duffel bags filled and tied. Anda said, “We need to leave this place.” They snaked their way back using the cover of brush and boulders. Halfway to the road, dark shapes seemed to rise from the ground beside them.
Men grabbed Alicia and Maria and threw them to the ground. Anda ducked under another man’s grasp and made three fast steps before another man grabbed her braid and yanked her to the ground. He placed his foot on her chest and touched the muzzle of a rifle barrel to her forehead. She felt the hollow center where the bullet would come out.
“Bring them,” said one of the men, and the soldiers jerked the women to their feet and pushed them toward the camp.
When they stopped close to the fire, the men in camp converged to look at the women. Others came from the tents, their figures like black cutouts with the strong light behind them.
The group parted and a slender man dressed in crisp military fatigues walked up to the women. He had the thinnest mustache Anda had ever seen. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
Anda stayed quiet, and Maria finally said, “The River, we were going to the river to cross.”
“It’s in the other direction. Where are your men?” Anda noticed his shiny pistol in its fancy holster.
“There are no men, just the three of us.”
The man was silent for a moment. “Put them by the fire until I decide.”
“Wait,” Maria said, “We don’t-”
The man moved so quick it startled Anda. He hit Maria hard in the stomach, doubling her over and knocking her to the ground where she curled into a fetal position and moaned. Alicia and Anda pulled Maria closer to the fire and sat down.
Anda didn’t look into the flames, but sat so she could see what was going on. As the moon crested the hills and highlighted the area in shades of pewter, she watched several men load the seven duffel bags into the back of the old stakebed truck.
Alicia was looking into the fire, and Maria was sitting up and holding her stomach when the tent flap opened and the slender man came out again. An envoy followed him, their faces hidden in shadow. He stood at the edge of the fire and looked at them like one looks at a bug.
He put his fists on his hips. “I am Colonel Felipe Godoy, and you three have made a big mistake.”
“But, my Colonel, what have we done?” Maria asked.
“You’ve interfered in my operation.”