J. Curtis - Calexit - The Anthology

He looked across the lake into Nevada and noticed several white and green trucks parked on the far shore.

“Looks like they’re expecting someone,” he said into his headset. He pointed toward the trucks.

Jackson turned to look, then something on the surface of the lake caught his eye.

Mark watched as the insect-like shape of the helicopter drew nearer. He was letting his breath out as it seemed to pass in front of them without changing its course, but then his heart sank when he saw it bank and come around to pass behind them.

He raised his hand to point, but Luke and Ted were already reacting.

“Get that motor going!” Luke shouted, all hope of a quiet crossing gone.

Ted twisted the key in the console, and they listened as the engine cranked. It coughed once, twice, then caught. The motor roared as Ted pushed the throttle as far forward as he could, and the nose of the boat bounced as it hit the small waves the morning wind was kicking up on the surface of the lake.

Jen felt herself rise up from her seat, and both she and Mark clung to the stiff upholstery. Underneath them, they could feel the vibration of the motor as it propelled them across the lake.

With a cry like a hound sighting a fox, Jackson pointed at the boat as it left a wide wake in the water beneath them.

“That’s them! That’s them!” he shouted excitedly.

The pilot maneuvered her craft to cut in front of the boat, but merely flew over the top of it on her first try. Jackson watched as the boat rocked in the turbulence of the helicopter’s passing, but it kept on its course across the lake.

“Run them down!” he shouted into his headset as he hauled back on the charging handle of his carbine and clawed at the handle to his door. Juan copied his movements on his side of the chopper.

Ted heard the helicopter coming around for another pass and hauled the boat’s wheel over to try to angle away from it. Jen screamed as shots rang out from the aircraft, cutting a line of splashes across the water in front of the boat before several bullets smacked into the hull just forward of where Luke sat.

“We’re OK,” Ted shouted, more for himself than for his passengers. His father had climbed down from the platform at the bow, and Mark pulled Jen down to join him on the floor of the boat. The helicopter roared in front of them again, the pilot trying to slow to a hover so that they would have to either turn away from shore or ram into the aircraft.

“They’ve reached the border!” The copilot said over the intercom.

The scream of the helicopter’s slipstream garbled the message in Jackson’s ear, so he leaned back into the chopper and screamed “What?”

“They’re in American waters!” The co-pilot said firmly. “We have to break off!”

“Fuck that!” Jackson shouted back. “Sink that fucking thing and we’ll pick up the survivors!”

The co-pilot turned to confront his passenger, then stopped when he saw the agent’s finger on the trigger of his carbine.

“You got me, fucker?” Jackson snarled across the intercom.

“I got you,” the co-pilot said. He turned back to his controls.

Gus Patterson sprinted up the hallway of the Border Patrol command post in Stateline, Nevada. He normally supervised the monotonous night shift, but he had been greeted by the region commander and several suits who had flown up from Las Vegas. He and every other agent that usually just manned the ill-used border crossing on the edge of town had been put out to patrol the lake shore all night. The suits had ensconced themselves in the post’s conference room, while the commander had spent the evening in the radio room.

The commander, a tall, lean Texan named Davis was now bent over the desk next to the dispatcher, listening as calls came in.

“Chopper’s coming back around. I think I hear gun shots,” a voice on the radio reported.

“Which side of the lake are they on?” Davis asked. The dispatcher relayed the question, then waited for the reply.

One of the suits was right behind Patterson. “Is that them?” he said breathlessly.

“Well, if it’s not, then the Cali’s have some outstanding Fish and Wildlife enforcement going on,” Davis said drily.

“Outpost Seven says that they’re about half a mile out from shore.”

“That’s Hernandez and Chung up by Zephyr Cove,” Patterson said. “That’s on our side of the border.”

“Well, then,” Davis said, “maybe we should remind them of that.” Patterson thought he caught a glint in the older man’s eye as he turned to the dispatcher. “Put me on the guard freq.”

Ted cursed into the wind as the helicopter dropped until its skids were a few feet over the water, then maneuvered to get in front of him. The boat skipped across the surface once more as it hit the aircraft’s wake again.

Jen screamed as she was thrown up into the air, then bounced against the seat at the back of the boat. Ted reached for her, taking his hand off the wheel to do it, then the boat hit another wave, throwing her up and over the side of the boat.

The frigid water struck her as if she had leaped onto concrete from the top of a building, sending her tumbling across the surface for a heartbeat before she sank beneath the waves. A moment later, something tightened around her neck, and she felt herself being dragged back up.

Jen bobbed to the surface, the orange skin of her life vest scratching at her neck and cheeks. The air was filled with the roar of motors and she felt the wind beat against her.

Juan whooped as he saw the form of one of the fugitives tumble into the water, then pop back up. He sighted along the barrel of his gun and let off another stream of bullets at the boat as it turned around to pick up the orange blob bobbing in the waves. Unlike Jackson, who had brought along his personal carbine for the search, Juan had grabbed one of the old belt fed guns from the back of the van. Jackson had complained about its bulk in the close confines of the helicopter, but now he cheered as Juan braced himself against the frame of the small door and pulled the trigger again.

He walked a line of tracers into the path of the boat, then watched as they bisected it lengthwise. Immediately, a black plume of smoke erupted from the rear of the small craft and its nose came down as it slowed to a stop a few yards from the person in the water.

“Get us down there!” Jackson screamed excitedly.

Ted cried out in pain as splinters from the fiberglass and plywood making up the boat lanced through his jeans and into his calf. Mark, who had been running to the front of the boat to help Luke grab Jen and pull her back aboard, pulled himself up shakily just as the engine died. He looked around for something to throw to his wife as he heard the helicopter come closer.

Luke was pawing at one of the canvas cases, trying to open it with hands made stiff from the cold and wind. He had it half open and was tugging at the rifle inside when another burst of gunfire stitched across the bow of the boat next to him. He and Mark threw themselves to the deck.

The pilot was banking around to hover above the small boat, now riding lower in the water, when the radio squawked in her ear.

ATTENTION CALI AIRCRAFT OVER LAKE TAHOE. THIS IS THE UNITED STATES BORDER PATROL. YOU ARE VIOLATING UNITED STATES AIRSPACE AND FIRING ON A VESSEL IN OUR WATERS. CEASE FIRE IMMEDIATELY AND RETURN TO YOUR SIDE OF THE BORDER OR YOU WILL BE FIRED ON. OVER!”

Jackson turned to the pilot when he heard the message over his headset and screamed, “Just get me down there!” He put his hand on the butt of his pistol.