T Parker: The border Lords

Then Ozburn turned and looked through the driver's side window. A faint smear of condensation spread on the glass, and Oz used a fingertip to draw two eyes and a happy smile. Then the smear and the face faded to nothing. Hood saw that Oz had shaved off his mustache and started a full beard-it looked like he hadn't shaved since Hood saw him last. Ozburn watched as two of the men approached. Then he swung open the door and grasped the car body and pulled himself out, the car wobbling with his weight. Two beer cans spilled out and clinked to the asphalt. He stood uneasily and raised his hands and Hood saw what he had feared.

"It's not Sean! Not Ozburn! Let's move!"

Hood dropped the binoculars and sprinted to the fire ladder and flung himself down the rungs fast as he could go. He sprung off early, hit the ground hard and drew his sidearm. He rounded the building in time to see Velasquez on his Kawasaki bounce into the parking lot, and Bly's Jeep screech into a highway-patrol turn. Morris cleared the spires of the fence top and landed with his gun up.

Then Hood heard the screaming:

"United States agents! Drop to the ground! I'm ordering you to-"

Fuck, man! Don't shoot! Don't shoot!

"Police! On the ground! Now!"

I'm on the ground! I want a lawyer!

Then the squealing of tires as two more SUVs stormed through the gate into the lot. Hood saw that all four of the gangsters and Ozburn's stand-in were proned out now and Velasquez and Bly had already cuffed the tall driver and were working on another. Morris alone was cinching another. Hood ran to the fourth, a skinny kid who glanced up at him, then popped upright and ran for the building. Hood ran, jamming his gun into his waist holster. He caught up and crashed into the boy and they rolled once and Hood came up on top with a knee on the kid's back and one of his arms pulled back from the shoulder and up at the elbow, on the brink of outrageous pain.

"Be cool, man. Be. Cool."

"Fuck your-"

Hood held the kid's face against the asphalt and Morris kicked away the gangsta's loose gun. The blued steel pistol skidded away with a clatter. Morris lashed the ties, then jumped off the kid and circled one hand over his head like a victorious calf roper, grinning at Hood.

"We're good," said Morris. "God, we're good."

Hood helped Bly cuff the Ozburn double and stand him up. He was tall and overweight and his hair and clothes were filthy and he reeked of alcohol and old sweat. Hood pulled off the man's scratched sunglasses and looked into his face.

"What's your name?"

"Billy."

"Billy what?"

"I'm innocent, man. Guy paid me five hundred to drive up here and do this. I wasn't supposed to drink until it was over but I had the five hundred. You know? It was some dude who looked like me if I didn't drink so much beer. He said FATE would understand. Or was it ATF? One of them. I'm innocent. Those handcuffs are tight."

Hood slid the sunglasses back onto Billy's face and walked to the black Tahoe. He swung open the rear liftgate and saw the terrified girl looking back at him, her eyes dark and wide and her mouth plastered with duct tape. Her ankles and wrists were bound with rope. He spoke to her in Spanish.

— No one is going to hurt you, Silvia. You are going home to Agua Blanca soon. Don't be afraid of us and don't cry.

He touched her hand gently, then cut the rope from her wrists and ankles with his pocket knife.

He waved Bly over, then strode toward the warehouse, lifting his vibrating phone from his hip.

"Mr. Hood, this is Nurse Marliss Sharer at UCI Med Center. He showed up, the husband, like you said he might. He had all these guns and he looked deranged. I thought everybody was going to die. We all thought we were going to die. Some were praying out loud. He growled at us. He just now walked out. I called security and police and you. He held his wife's hand and spoke into her ear and kissed her once; then he left. I'm still shaking. Really hard."

Ozburn drove the minivan south at the speed limit. He'd bought it for two grand cash the day before at a used car lot in Victorville, just after he'd picked up the big, long-haired man standing near the highway entrance with a WILL WORK FOR BEER sign. Ozburn had taken the man's cursory resemblance to himself as an omen, though he wasn't positive that Billy would be able to stay sober long enough to get the Malibu, money and guns to Vernon.

Ozburn now figured three hours max to Buenavista, then another five to Nogales. At a convenience store in Corona he got gas and provisions and two hot dogs each for himself and Daisy. He was famished. He would not let Seliah's pale sleeping form leave him: He saw the road and the cars and the sky before him through her ethereal, dreamlike face.

The next thing he knew he was pulling up to Charlie Hood's home in the foothills outside Buenavista. No cars anywhere, lights on over the garage and the porch and inside the kitchen. He jimmied the side door to the garage and when he and Daisy were inside he laid his shoulder into the door that led to the house and it burst open without much fight. He carried Daisy's kibble and bowls into Hood's house and filled a bowl with food and the other with water.

Ozburn knelt down and opened his arms and Daisy, sensing catastrophe, very slowly walked over, tail low, head down, ears relaxed. He hugged her and told her Hood was a good guy, take care of him and of yourself.

He petted her for a moment, then stood and swung the splintered door shut behind him and made sure the garage door was closed tight. Daisy started howling. He got back into the van and lifted his sunglasses to empty the tears that had built up behind them, then headed down the dirt road toward the interstate. Yuma. Tucson. Nogales. Ozburn crossed the border easily and followed Mexico 15 south from town to a wide dirt road that took him into the hills. He came to Betty and the nice little landing patch. He rousted Miguel from his trailer. The young man was happy to get his money though Ozburn noted that he kept his distance and seemed eager for Ozburn to be on his way. He gave Miguel twice what he'd promised.

— Where is your dog?

— She's with a friend.

— She will not fly again?

— Unless she grows wings.

Ozburn stowed his duffel but stashed a freshly loaded Love 32 up in the cockpit. Miguel had filled the tank. He offered to man the prop but Ozburn waved him away and threw the big propeller himself, thrilled as always at the way his minor strength was magnified by Betty, turned into something that could roar and fly. It took him a few tries. When he walked back around the wing to the cockpit he felt nothing in his feet and little in his legs.

He settled into the rear seat using his hands to arrange his numb legs, nodded at Miguel in the darkness and taxied out to the flat, groomed swatch of desert. Seconds later he was airborne and climbing, the sound of Betty's engine right there in front of him like a steady old friend leading the way. He headed west along the invisible border, just sprinkles of lights separated by chasms of darkness. San Miguel was a flicker, Sonoyta a bigger flicker. Then the black bulk of the Agua Dulce Mountains, and the Cabeza Prietas and the Gilas. Later the sprawl of Yuma far ahead and he saw that the dawn was chasing him now, a frail phantom of light gaining from the eastern sky behind him. The needle on his fuel gauge was just above empty.

He followed the California-Mexico border as the sun rose. The towns became cities and the cities grew and he veered north until he could see San Diego, a panoramic, sun-blasted tangle of buildings and freeways already dense with cars in the clean morning light. He looked down on the graceful blue Coronado Bridge and the flat shimmer of Glorieta Bay, and when Point Loma had scrolled away beneath Betty, there was the vast silver Pacific stretching as far as Ozburn could see and beyond. The engine sputtered and caught.