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“We still don’t have a damn thing from the Sheriff’s office. No copies of their reports, their findings, nothing. It’s starting to piss me off.”
“Well,” Raymond said, “You just stay cool on that. You’re in enough crap without stirring up any more. They’ll get the reports over, just on their timetable. You know how Wayne is.”
“Wayne isn’t the only one who can investigate things.”
Raymond turned to look at her profile, “You’re going to keep digging on your own?”
“Yep.”
“I can’t talk you out of it.”
“Nope.”
“You know you’re going to get in deep shit again if you don’t let the Sheriff’s office do it. The Chief will have a fit.”
“Yep.”
“Fine, long as we got that settled.” They passed several minutes in silence, then Raymond said, “You need some help, let me know.”
“I will,” Hunter said as she looked through the binoculars.
***
An hour later Hunter spotted a light coming out of the foothills fifteen miles into Mexico. It was a vehicle, so far away the two headlights looked like one, but still easy to see in the clear desert air.
“I see it,” said Raymond.
“Little late to be out driving.”
“Especially on that road,” said Raymond.
“Maybe this’ll be it. Be nice if four nights sitting out here will pay off.”
They watched for the next hour as the vehicle snaked closer, occasionally blinking out as it w
ent behind low foothills and drove around the far side to re-emerge and keep working north, toward the River.
It was an old, one-ton stakebed truck with floppy canvas sides and top, and it came to a slow stop near the shallowest crossing on this part of the Rio Grande. Men got out of the cab and out of the back, Hunter counted fourteen total, then someone else still in the back tossed down seven duffle bags. “They look full,” Hunter said. “Marijuana or coke, I’ll bet.”
“As soon as they cross and we can tell which trail they’re gonna take, we need to work our way down, pick our place.”
Hunter said, “You want the shotgun, or you want me to take it?”
“You take it, stop them from the front. I’ll be behind, so we’ll have them surrounded. They’ll have to give up, right?” Raymond grinned as he said it, the adrenaline already pumping because there were only the two of them against fourteen men packing narcotics through some of the roughest country in the southwest.
Raymond and Hunter set up in Fagan’s Draw after watching the group line out for the draw’s dark mouth. Raymond waited in a side cut, while Hunter settled in at the edge of a sharp turn in the dry arroyo thirty yards beyond Raymond. She leaned against the side of the dirt and gravel wall as she heard them coming, and she bent a little to blend with the thin night shadows. They got here quick, Hunter thought as she eased around the corner to take a better look. The dark figures were coming two abreast, with the ones carrying bundles in the middle of the formation.
Hunter shined a flashlight as she ordered the group in Spanish to halt. “Parense! Somos Oficiales!” She barely got the words out when a number of bright flashlights lit her up like daylight and she heard the unmistakable snick-snack of a weapon. She whirled and ran to put some distance between them when she heard Raymond yell in Spanish he was a federal officer, then heard him grunt and curse as he scurried away.
Five strides up the draw Hunter turned, shotgun at the shoulder, and watched over the sights for followers. Nobody came, but the light stayed on from at least one of their lights. Where she stopped was too steep and crumbly to climb out, so she waited for their next move and cursed herself for being too lax.
After several minutes, she heard a low hiss above her and looked up to see Raymond in silhouette at the arroyo’s edge. “They’re gone,” he said.
“There’s one or two left with a light,” Hunter said and pointed to the reflection ahead of her.
“They propped one light in a mesquite, tied it with string and then took off. Nobody’s there, I made sure.”
“They drop any bags? Were we that lucky?”
