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Wayne smiled and leaned back in his chair. “You miss it. But if you want this to be just business, then fine. I can do that. The door’s always open, either way.”
He reached into the middle desk drawer and pulled out a manila folder. It was an inch thick, filled with papers and eight-by-ten photos. “Here,” he said, and slid it to Hunter.
She opened it and pulled out a few sheets. Wayne talked as she read, “It’s a smuggling group working the river around Redford. May be the same ones that got through the other day,” Hunter glanced up at him, then down at the file. “I thought you might want to know about it. They’re supposed to cross a group of twenty through Polvo tonight.”
“How’d you come up with this?”
“Fifteen years developing contacts. They tell me things.”
“Who gave you the time and place?”
Wayne sighed, “I can’t give you my informants, Hunter. I can give you my cooperation, but not my informants. They talk to me, nobody else. They took too long to develop, and I won’t risk losing them.”
Hunter closed the file, “Fair enough.”
“That’s yours,” Wayne indicated the file.
“All right.” Hunter stood up and put the file under her arm, “I’ll let you know if this pans out.” Wayne walked her to the door, towering above her, his hand resting low on her back, just above her gun belt.
This is not the time to make something of it, she thought. Instead, she turned at the door and tapped Rockman on the chest with the file. “If we get anything, I’ll see you get the credit.” She walked away before he could reply.
***
Pages and photos covered the couch on both sides of her as she yawned and went through the file for the second time. She’d changed into shorts and a tee shirt at the house, poured a Dr. Pepper over ice and started in on the papers. Lots of information. Good descriptions of routes and vehicle types, nationalities of those smuggled in, and some names of suspects in the lower ranks of the organization. No names or hints of the higher-ups. The photographer used a telephoto lens, and the blowups had a grainy appearance, fuzzing some faces and street signs. Texas license plates were readable in several of them, and on the back of those photos Wayne had written down the information on the owners and their addresses. He had run 10-28’s on the tag numbers, and then followed with TCIC, the Texas Crime Information Center checks on the registered owners.
Nothing startling on any of the checks. Addresses in Odessa and El Paso, negatives on TCIC. She fingered the
last page, with today’s date:
SUBJECT contacted this officer at 0450 this AM by phone and stated a large group of approx 20 aliens will be crossed at Polvo late evening this date. SUBJECT stated crossing time will be during Border Patrol shift change (2300 hr) to avoid Agents. Group consists of ten Guatemalans, ten (+) Mexicans, to be taken to Colorado. SUBJECT said info is reliable. SUBJECT’s information in the past was reliable.
Hunter yawned again, drank the last of her Dr. Pepper, feeling the ice click against her teeth, and then she reached for the phone to call the office and set up things.
***
It was cold on the riverbank. Hunter wore her dark green jacket zipped to the neck. Joe was next to her, with Gary a hundred yards downstream. The evening shift stayed over and was a quarter mile behind them, out of sight. A bright half-moon was up and Hunter used her binoculars, with Joe using night-vision goggles, as they watched the far bank. They had spotted two darker shadows a few minutes earlier. The silent figures moved with caution out of the thick brush and carrizo cane, watching the United States side for any movement, any sign of la Patrulla, the Border Patrol.
The two appeared satisfied as they motioned to the shadows behind them. People emerged, huddling close, except for one small female holding back a few steps as she brought up the rear. The group moved in silence as they followed the two coyotes to the riverbank. Seventeen men and three women, with the small female staying a little apart. Hunter couldn’t hear the smugglers, but she watched them using arm gestures as they talked to the group, pointing across the Rio Grande, making snaking movements with their hands to indicate the winding trail they would follow. Hunter knew what they were describing because she had walked it twenty times in the last several years. The smugglers waded into the water, followed closely by the group of men and women.
The water made gurgling sounds as the group struggled through the waist-deep stream, and the small girl at the back of the group moved up to help the other two women. Pale ropes of froth trailed downstream from their waists like thin, fluttering ribbons. They crossed in less than four minutes and crouched in the deeper darkness under the tall, white-tufted river cane.
Hunter whispered, “We’ll come in behind them after they leave the vega.”
Joe nodded and talked quietly into his mike, telling Gary to join them and telling the evening crew to come down the trail so they’d have the group between them. Things were set, and they waited.
***
For an hour, nothing happened. Then the group appeared, shuffling up the thin ghost of a trail in single file, each one close enough to touch the person in front. Hunter noticed the girl bringing up the rear was constantly looking over her shoulder.
Hunter eased around and sat on her heels, Indian style.
“How the hell do you do that?” whispered Joe.
“What?”
“Sit like that. I tried that, I’d fall flat on my back.”
“Sounds like you’re carrying too much weight on the backside to me.”
