Back at the cantina, the six footmen watched while the shotgunner tethered the horses to a hitching post and helped Jimmy down. The shotgunner pointed his weapon at a battered station wagon, once white but now eaten by rust. It was a Vista Cruiser with a large smoked roof window for viewing the sky and the sights. Hood let Jimmy drape an arm over his shoulder, then they slowly moved together to the car. The front seats were little more than loose foam, the vinyl having cracked away years ago. The windshield was cracked from bottom to top, a seam that glistened even through the dusty glass. Hood helped Jimmy into the backseat, where he could lie down, then he got behind the wheel and turned the key to check the gas.
The shotgunner came from the cantina with a plastic bag and a neatly folded amount of American cash. Through the driver’s-side window he handed Hood the cash and the bag, and when Hood looked inside he saw a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a roll of white tape and a bottle of tequila.
“Gracias,” said Hood.
“I was trained in the United States. They were decent men. Armenta is looking for Jimmy. They will be on the roads that lead to the legal crossings. Smuggle yourselves in, like we do.”
33
It was dark by the time they made La Bufa. Jimmy lay in the back asleep. Hood filled the tank and bought food and water and began the steep ascent to Creel. The old station wagon was powerful, but the transmission was imprecise and the steering was loose and the worn tires slipped on the fog-slicked rocks. For a while, Jimmy slept, then he sat up. Hood could see the outline of his head in the rearview.
“It’s good to see you, Jimmy,” he said. “We’re going home.”
But Jimmy had said nothing to that point and he said nothing then. So Hood drove. He peeled tortillas off the bundle and ate them folded with one hand as he steered. He handed the pack back to Jimmy. The soft drinks had been warmed by the heat of the lower barranca. He told Jimmy how hard they had tried to find the tour bus and about the powerful monsoon that hit later that day and about the Guardsmen now stationed in Buenavista and the reporters everywhere and all the Americans who wanted to invade to get Jimmy back and all the tension between the countries and how even the president had acknowledged the idea of U.S. military action. Jimmy’s silhouette came in and out of view in the mirror in the darkness, but he said nothing, then lay down across the seat again.
Just after sunrise in Creel, Hood was able to call Ozburn on a pay phone. Ozburn screamed in joy when he heard that Jimmy was alive and free. He called back ten minutes later to say that in four hours a capable Mexican state police captain named Wilfredo Duarte and two of his officers would collect and drive them to the border at Douglas. Customs would be ready for them. They would be back in the U.S. of A. by midnight.
Hood and Jimmy slept through the morning in Creel on two double beds in a small pension room, Hood with his derringer under the pillow and Jimmy snoring. Music came faintly from a room down the hallway, and the air was cool and fragrant with juniper and pine.
They all left Creel at ten A.M. in Duarte ’s white Chihuahua police Suburban. It had a light bar on top and state emblems and green lettering on the sides. Duarte drove. He was middle-aged and had a somber face and a paunch. His men were younger, one muscled and bald and one slender, with thick black hair. One sat up front and one in back with Hood and Jimmy. The policemen spoke among themselves, and Hood snoozed with his face against a window until the heat woke him up. Jimmy watched the landscape roll past and said nothing.
Close to eight P.M., Duarte answered his satellite phone and a long discussion ensued. Hood caught some of it: Armenta’s Zetas were targeting the Douglas crossing. Duarte said that Nogales would be better. Hood reckoned Nogales was another two hours west, which meant another two hours for Armenta’s men to find them. Jimmy looked at him. Duarte listened. He unleashed a string of sentences too fast for Hood to comprehend. He heard the word Ozburn twice. Then Duarte punched off and turned his head slightly to Hood and Jimmy in the back.
“ Nogales,” he said. “Armenta. Is good. Ozburn knows.”
“I need to call Ozburn.”
Duarte picked up the big phone and dialed. A moment later, Hood heard Ozburn’s voice.
“It’s okay, Charlie. Your guys know what they’re doing. Douglas is a bust, man. Use Nogales. You’ll be there in a couple of hours.”
They approached Nogales in the thick of night. The two officers checked their M16s and set them muzzles-down and close by. The satellite phone rang again and Duarte answered with an expletive. He listened. He said if not Nogales, then where, and he listened for a long while after that. He said yes six times in a row, then cursed again and punched off.
“ Nogales is not good,” he said. “But we have a plan.”
They drove west and north toward Sonoyta. The moon struggled up and dusted the desert with light. Hood knew this road by map only and he knew that it was the one paved road for miles and if Armenta’s Zetas chose to patrol it, they would be easily found. The officers became nervous and held their guns close. Hood was pleased by their nerves because he knew that these Chihuahua policemen could deliver them to Armenta for more money than the officers would make in their lifetimes. They cleared a rise, and Hood saw the new border wall. This was badlands, the hills bald and deeply carved by sudden rain and scorched for months by the sun. In the faint moonlight, Hood saw the steel panels of the wall serpentining along the contours of the terrain until it came to a sudden end. Here at the end of the wall, security lights pounded down on the naked land in clusters of four lights atop portable trailer towers that washed the ground white. Hood saw stacks of steel panels and pallets of concrete and mounds of mixing sand and the Cat D4s with the augurs attached and the mixers and the big water trucks casting shadows.
Duarte slowed and eased off the highway onto a dirt road. The road was narrow and rough and the Suburban bounced gently on its long wheelbase. They descended into a gulley and stopped out of sight from the highway and Duarte flashed the lights twice, then left them off. A set of lights flashed an answer across the desert from the United States, from out in the darkness beyond the end of the wall, twice, then once again.
Duarte turned to Hood. “Apúrate, gringos!”
Hood climbed out and helped Jimmy to the ground. He thanked Duarte, then got his duffel off the seat and started down the dirt road with Jimmy beside him. Hood could hear the cars on Highway 2 behind him, but when he turned, he could see nothing of it. The Suburban still sat at idle, lights off, the officers watching them. The road narrowed to a path, and the path led toward the wall. Hood saw empty water bottles and tatters of clothing and plastic bags tied to rocks and bushes used to mark the way north. The pathway followed the low spots between the badland hills and for a moment they walked between the mounds, invisible to the world. But Jimmy slowed, then stopped, and he looked at Hood, then behind them, then ahead. He was breathing hard and very pale. Hood tossed his duffel into the desert and took Jimmy’s arm around one shoulder and together they found a difficult balance and continued.
They followed down a valley and along its bottom, then they climbed again. They came to the crest of the rise and looked out at the wall and the building equipment bathed in the bright lights. He looked ahead to where the headlights had flashed and saw the glint of windshield and for the first time in two days, he allowed himself to taste the hope of making it out of here alive with Jimmy. Jimmy leaned heavily on him and breathed fast.