Adrian McKinty - Fifty Grand

“Why didn’t you cross in Juárez?”

He leaned forward. “Vientos Huracánados,” he said in a whisper.

I nodded. One of the newer, nastier drug gangs. They don’t kill you. They go to your house and kneecap your children. Then they go to your mother’s house and torch the place with her in it. And then they go to the cemetery and dig up your father’s corpse and behead it. Not to be fucked with.

“What did you do to them?” I asked.

Francisco shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it.

“I was a mechanic in Belize, I can speak English,” the Guatemalan kid chimed in. I nodded and put my sunglasses on-see, that’s why you don’t make conversation; now here I was caring about two people.

I pretended to doze.

The two boys started to chat about soccer and the old man next to me began chanting some ancient Gypsy ballad.

After a while I really did sleep.

Hector says the mammalian brain is the most amazing thing in the world. Even when you’re asleep your brain is taking stock of things, measuring the temperature, processing auditory input, sniffing the air.

When I woke I knew immediately that something was wrong.

The bitter taste in my mouth was adrenaline.

The Land Rover had stopped.

“What is it?” I asked.

“There’s a car in front of us,” Francisco said.

I looked through the filthy windshield. Sure enough, about a quarter click ahead, a red Chevy pickup. New one. Big one.

“Pitufos,” Francisco speculated, but they didn’t look like cops to me.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“We’re northwest of Palomas at a junction called Bloody Fork. Just south of the road. This is our way up,” Pedro said.

“Can we go round ’em?” Francisco asked.

Pedro shook his head. “Only way is back the way we came, and they’d catch us.”

“They won’t chase us over the border,” I said.

“Won’t they?” Pedro muttered.

“So what are you going to do? Just wait?” I wondered with impatience.

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s the border patrol.”

“What’s happening?” the old man asked, suddenly becoming aware of the situation.

“Cops, or something,” I told him.

“We should get out and make a run for it,” Francisco said.

Ni madres . “Are you crazy? On foot? Across the desert?” I exclaimed.

“They can’t chase all six of us,” Francisco replied, attempting to open the rear door of the Land Rover.

Pedro turned around in his seat. “Everyone stay put!” he snapped.

“I can’t afford to get deported back to Mexico,” Francisco said, pushing at the door. He looked at me. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“If we run for it, they get us all sooner or later. Get the old-timers first and then us,” the kid from Guatemala said.

“They’re going to murder us,” the old man said, insanely grinning at this prospect.

“Look, they’re coming up,” Pedro muttered. “Everyone relax and stay put and let me do the talking.”

The big truck gunned the tires and came toward us in a cloud of dust. When the two vehicles were about six meters apart the cabin door opened and a man in a baseball hat produced a rifle and a bullhorn. He wasn’t pointing the weapon at us but he made sure everyone got a good look at it.

“Everyone out of the vehicle,” he said through the speaker.

“Everyone has to get out,” Pedro said in Spanish.

No one moved.

“Everyone out,” Pedro repeated.

I didn’t like the look of it. “He’s not wearing a uniform,” I said.

Pedro took the keys from the ignition and opened the driver’s-side door. He exited and walked toward the truck with his hands up.

“Lie down, with your arms and legs spreadeagled,” the American said.

Pedro lay down.

“The rest of you. Come out slowly with your hands in the air,” the man said, still hiding behind the door.

Nothing else we could do. “Pedro took the keys,” I said.

Logic worked us; we got out of the Land Rover and lay down next to Pedro on the desert floor. When they were sure that everyone had exited, the two American men cut the Chevy’s engine and walked over, one carrying a hunting rifle, the other a double-barreled shotgun. They were both tall, wearing boots, jeans, plaid shirts. The one with the rifle had a John Deere hat pulled low over his face. The other was sporting a baseball cap of some description. Both seemed to be in their early thirties.

“Well, looks like we got ourselves something better than javelinas here, Bob,” the John Deere man said.

“Fuck it, Ray, they’s sorry-lookin’ wetbacks, maybe we should just leave ’em,” Bob said.

Ray shook his head and dropped the bullhorn.

“Please, sir, we got lost, we were driving-” Pedro began, but Ray kicked him in the ribs before he could finish.

“Listen up, dinks, nobody speaks till they gets asked a question. Is that understood?”

I didn’t know if all of us could follow English but the message was clear enough.

“Everyone’s gonna have a stash, Bob, keep ’em covered and I’ll shake down their gear,” Ray said.

“Why do I have to keep ’em covered?” Bob asked a little nervously.

I stole a look at him. He was the younger of the two-might be persuadable if things got hairy.

“Cuz you have the shotgun. Anyone gives you any trouble, plug ’em. Hear that, dinks? Anyone moves and Bob here will blow your fucking head off, comprende ?”

We nodded dutifully, mushing our faces up and down in the dust.

Ray went to the Land Rover and began violently opening our stuff.

“Hurry up, man,” Bob said.

“Shut the fuck up, Bob,” Ray told him.

Ray rummaged in our backpacks for a couple of minutes. What he didn’t find there made him angry.

“Well?” Bob asked.

“Search the dink driver.”

“What you get so far?”

“Squat, a couple of hundred, few bags of c, some grass. Nothing.”

“Let’s go, man, let’s get out of here.”

“Somebody’s holding. Search the driver… hell, we’ll search all of them. Two hundred bucks won’t cover our expenses.”

One by one he turned us over and began patting us down.

Pedro had about a hundred dollars in a billfold but apparently none of the rest had much of anything. If they looked in my ratty sneakers they’d have themselves a handy little score but I knew they wouldn’t think to do that.

When they flipped the Guatemalan kid they found that he had wet himself.

Both men laughed. Bob’s mood lightened.

“Probably shitted himself,” Bob said.

“Yeah, well, I ain’t checking. He can keep that coke he jammed up there too,” Ray replied and they both laughed some more.

Ray flipped me with his boot.

“Look at this little piece of fucking ass,” Ray said. I could see him now. ID him pretty easily. Flinty brown eyes, light tan, hard gray stubbled chin, hog nose.

“Little spitfire, you can tell,” Bob agreed.

“Not your type.”

“How do you know?”

“Seen your ex-wife. This one, nothing to hold on to. One-twenty, one-twenty-five. Can’t be five-five. Pretty little thing, though. Let’s see what she’s holding. Turn out your pockets.”

I came up with about fifty bucks in assorted bills. Ray patted me down and didn’t find anything else.

He stood up, looked into the sun.

“This is one sorry bunch of dinks,” he said.

“What about the Land Rover?” Bob asked.

“Land Rover’s a piece of shit.”

“So what now?” Bob asked.

Ray signaled his friend to come over. They leaned against the hood of the Chevy and looked at their plunder. Ray opened Pedro’s bag of junk cocaine, cut with God knows what-meth, rat poison, whatever. Kind of shit that made you want to shoot at people from freeway bridges. He took a pinch on the back of his hand, snorted it, and shook his head. It was practically worthless.