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  “We’re not exactly in the same line of work,” Barry had pointed out. “Yours has a lot more rules and regulations than mine does. But you’re right. This baby’s going to get some second looks, especially from people who know trucks, but they’ll forget about it fairly quickly. And there are no readily visible distinctive features to include in a description later, except for the oversized sleeper, and most people won’t remember that. To the civilians, it’s just a big truck. That’s all.”

  “You need to give it a name,” Jake had suggested. “Like . . . the Dog Pound.”

  Barry just stared coldly at him.

  “Okay, maybe not the Dog Pound,” Jake had said. “But I’m sure you can come up with something.”

  So far, though, in the six months that Barry had been driving the truck, he hadn’t. It didn’t have a name, and that was all right with him.

  He glanced in the big side mirror and saw Jake’s pickup tooling along behind him. They were almost the only traffic on this lonely stretch of highway heading down into the bootheel, the southernmost part of New Mexico. Up ahead, Barry could see a dark, irregular line on the horizon to the southwest. That was the Big Hatchet Mountain range.

  An hour later, they pulled into the little town of Hachita. There wasn’t much to the place—half a dozen businesses on one side of the highway, a scattering of trailers, cinder-block houses, and old-fashioned adobes, complete with wooden vigas sticking out along the flat roofs. Those dwellings looked ready for John Wayne to come sauntering through the front door at any moment, Barry thought.

  Some of them had satellite dishes on the roof, though, something you never saw in any of “the Duke’s” movies.

  Barry turned off the highway and drove along a narrow dirt lane toward an old mobile home that looked like it had been there for twenty years or more. As he came closer, he saw a faded metal sign stuck in the ground that read BIG HATCHET TOURS – HUNTING – HIKING – CAMPING. There was a phone number below the name.

  An old pickup that had seen better days was parked to one side next to a vintage Mustang. Barry tried not to wince as he saw how dust covered the faded paint on the Mustang was. The car could have been a beauty if it had been taken care of and kept out of the weather. That wasn’t the case. But he still liked what he could see under the dust.

  Even with the big swamp cooler running, the truck’s approach could have been heard inside the mobile home. So Barry wasn’t surprised when the door opened and a tall, rangy man stepped out onto the wooden deck built on the old trailer. He wore boots, jeans, and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up over deeply tanned forearms. The battered Stetson on his white-haired head had the brim pulled down to shade his eyes. He cradled a gun in his hands.

  The weapon wasn’t an old-fashioned Winchester like the one in the hidden compartment behind Barry. That was what most people would expect an obvious Westerner like this to be carrying, just going by looks.

  No, the man was carrying what appeared to be a fully automatic World War II – era Thompson submachine gun.

  Barry turned off the truck’s motor and opened the door. As he stepped down from the cab, Jake pulled up behind the truck in his pickup. Barry motioned for him to stay where he was, for the moment, and then walked casually toward the mobile home. He wasn’t sure just how touchy Chet was, but it was a good idea to walk soft around anybody toting a Thompson.

  Raising his left hand in greeting, Barry called, “Hello, Chet. How you doin’, old son?”

  “Barry?” Chet Taylor asked in a deep, gravelly voice. “Is that you? Figured it was, since nobody else I know would drive up in a big hoss of a truck like that. But then this decrepit codger climbed out, and I wasn’t sure anymore. You got old!”

  “You’re not exactly a spring chicken anymore yourself, are you?”

  Chet laughed and lowered the Thompson’s muzzle so it pointed at the ground. “Shoot, I was born old,” he said. “Fellas like you and me, that’s how we tend to be.”

  “Not so old that we can’t take advantage of modern technology, though,” Barry said as he came to a stop in front of the deck. “I’m glad you got my message. Even more glad to see that you’re still alive and kicking.”

  Chet grunted. “I’ll be kicking as long as I’m drawing breath.”

  “I believe it.”

  “Who’s that who followed you in here?” Chet nodded toward the pickup as he asked the question.

  “My nephew Jake. We work together sometimes.”

  “I didn’t know you had a nephew. Of course, you never were much of one to talk about family.”

  A grim look came over Barry’s features for a moment. “That’s because, other than my dad and now Jake, most of ’em were on the sorry side. But he’s a good kid, you can count on that. Doesn’t really like it when I call him a kid, though.”

  “Most kids don’t.” Chet leaned his head toward the door behind him. “Tell him to come on, and we’ll all get inside outta this sun.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Chet Taylor was about the same age as Barry. His seamed, weathered face was the color of old saddle leather, making it very evident that he had spent most of his life outdoors.

  After introductions were made, he led Barry and Jake into the mobile home, which was comfortably cool, especially after the heat outside. With the bone-dry humidity around here, a swamp cooler worked just fine. The big unit attached to the mobile home looked like it might be fifty years old, but judging by the quiet humming sound of its motor and the cool air it was putting out, it still worked like a top.

  Taylor hung his hat on a hook, set the machine gun on the kitchen table, and went to the refrigerator. “Get you boys a beer?” he asked.

  “A cold beer would be mighty tasty about now,” Barry agreed.

  Jake was staring at the Thompson. He frowned, pointed at it, and asked, “Is that real?”

  “Of course it is,” Taylor replied.

  “Federal law—”

  “Federal law says this fully automatic machine gun is completely legal as long as it was manufactured and registered before 1986,” Taylor said. “I’ve owned it since 1975, so I guess that answers that question.”

  “You use it on those hunting trips you make into the Big Hatchets?” Barry asked. “That doesn’t seem very sporting.”

  Taylor grunted. “I don’t do much hunting myself. I hire out as a guide to folks who want to get themselves a bighorn sheep or a mountain lion. No, I keep that Tommy gun around for humans.”

  He popped the caps off three beer bottles and set two of them on the table next to the machine gun.

  “You may have to explain that,” Jake said.

  Taylor sat down in an old recliner with his own beer and regarded Jake coolly.

  “No offense, son,” he said, “but why do you reckon I owe you an explanation for anything?”

  “Jake works for the FBI,” Barry said. “He’s picked up the habit of asking questions.”

  “And it sounded to me like you just admitted to shooting people with that thing,” Jake said.

  Taylor said, “I’ve shot in their general direction, but to the best of my knowledge I’ve never hit any of ’em, and nobody’s ever accused me of it. But if you’ve got a bunch of coyotes hanging around, a burst or two from that old Tommy gun is usually enough to scare ’em off.”

  “Coyotes,” Jake repeated. “You mean people who bring in illegal immigrants from Mexico?”

  “Well, actually I was talkin’ about the four-legged kind,” Taylor replied dryly, “but I reckon the other description might apply, too. Since the Feds cut back on their funding and manpower and patrolling, the whole bootheel down here is like a smuggler’s highway. Plenty of illegals coming through. Some of them pay their way by toting packs full of marijuana or other drugs across the border for the cartel. There are plenty of full-time mules, too, who make their living carrying drugs through the mountains and then walking back across the border.”

  “They work for the Zaragosas?” Barr
y asked.

  Taylor’s shoulders rose and fell. “Whichever bunch is running things that week. The way they fuss and feud, you don’t hardly know which cartel’s in charge from one day to the next. The thing of it is, it doesn’t really matter. No matter what they call themselves, each cartel is the same thing: vicious.”

  Jake pulled out a chair at the table, sat down, and picked up one of the beers. “If it’s that bad,” he said, “why do you stay here?”

  “Because I’ve been here for a long damn time, and I’m a stubborn old man. I’m not gonna let scum like that run me off my own place.”

  Barry snagged his beer from the table and sat down across from Jake. “I hear you,” he said. “I’d feel the same way. And I’d still be squatting here, too.”

  Taylor snorted. “No, you wouldn’t. As long as that bunch leaves me alone, I leave them alone. If it was you, you’d be out there in the brush at night, lying in wait for them and making them pay a toll in blood for every shipment of drugs they bring across.” He waved a hand. “I’m not sayin’ you’d gun down the mules or the migrants. Some of them are decent hombres who just want a better life for themselves. But you’d soon figure out who was running things and go after them.”

  Jake took a swig of the beer and said, “Don’t give him any ideas, Mr. Taylor. He’s liable to retire one of these days, and that sounds just like how he’d spend his golden years.”

  Barry laughed. “You don’t think I’ll be sitting in a rocking chair, taking life easy?”

  “Not hardly,” Jake said.

  “Well, there’s probably some truth to that,” Barry admitted. “But what’s been going on around here lately that made you respond to my message, Chet? Something worse than usual?”

  “Not worse, necessarily. Just more of the same. Enough more to notice it.” Taylor pushed back in the recliner, stretched his legs in front of him, and crossed his ankles. “I’m up in the mountains nearly every day, and I’ve seen more strangers in the area than have ever been there. The cartels check out their smuggling routes and make sure there are no Border Patrol or sheriff’s department units in the area, but normally they wouldn’t be there more than twice a week. Like I said, now it’s every day.”

  “Have they given you any trouble?” Barry asked.

  “No, because I steer well clear of them,” Taylor replied. “I know how to keep my head down. I see them, but they don’t see me.”

  “Doesn’t the Border Patrol use planes to patrol the area?” Jake asked.

  “They did, but all their crates have been grounded for a while. Mechanical difficulties, I hear. Could be the government just doesn’t want to pay for the fuel. So what you have are some hardworking agents in jeeps and pickups, living in what are called forward operating bases, mostly travel trailers. They go out at night with thermal imaging cameras to hunt for folks who shouldn’t be out there.”

  Taylor sipped his beer and continued. “What they’re really doing is taking their lives in their hands, because they’re liable to run into cartel soldiers protecting the routes. There was a time those old boys would hesitate to shoot at American lawmen because they didn’t want to call too much attention to their operations. Now they don’t care. They know they can get away with it.”

  “That retirement project’s starting to sound better and better,” Barry said. “But right now, our main goal is to find out why the cartel activity has increased. We have intel saying that they’re moving a special shipment across the border sometime in the near future.”

  Taylor nodded and said, “I can believe it. That’d explain why you can’t hardly turn over a rock out there without some two-legged varmint scurrying out from under it.” He looked at Jake. “This is an FBI operation?”

  “No, I’m here on my own time,” Jake said. “Just giving my uncle a hand with it.”

  Taylor nodded knowingly. “So this is Dog pokin’ into it. Well, that ought to make it interesting.”

  Jake looked at Barry and said, “He knows about Dog?”

  Barry shrugged. “Chet’s given me a hand a time or two in the past. I’m a good tracker, but he’s probably the best I’ve ever seen.”

  “Flattery’ll get you another beer,” Taylor said with a smile. “But what you really want is for me to take you into the Big Hatchets so you can have a look around for yourself. Isn’t that right?”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Barry agreed. “We can pay for your services as a guide, too.”

  “You don’t have to offer me money—”

  Barry held up a hand to stop his old friend. “It’s not coming from me,” he said. “I know that’d offend you. This comes from higher up.”

  “Those mysterious people you work for but can’t talk about.”

  “That’s right.”

  “In that case,” Taylor said, “I’d be happy to take the money. But it’s too late to start today. Why don’t we head out first thing in the morning?”

  “That’ll work.”

  “You’ll have to leave that behemoth of yours here, though. We’ll take my truck and Jake’s, and there’ll probably come a point where we have to walk. It’s pretty rugged country down there. A fella’s got to know what he’s doing.”

  He looked pointedly at Jake.

  “I was an Army Ranger.”

  “Good enough,” Taylor said with a nod.

  CHAPTER 10

  “What’s the story on him?” Jake asked that evening as he and Barry were sitting in the sleeper/living compartment of the Kenworth.

  Earlier, the two of them had gone with Taylor to have supper at one of the two cafés in Hachita, where Taylor had mentioned casually to the friendly waitress that he was taking the visitors into the mountains in the morning to hunt bighorn sheep.

  Later, when they were back at the mobile home, Taylor had explained that while the waitress had laughed and joked around with them, she couldn’t be trusted. Not fully, anyway.

  “Most of the people who live around here have relatives on the other side of the border, and they’re all afraid of the cartel. Even the ones who work for the cartel are afraid. So they keep a pretty close eye on me and everybody else in these parts who’s not part of the operation. They see anything suspicious, they’re gonna pass it on. There’s a pretty good grapevine between here and Janos and Colonia el Camello, the closest towns on the other side of the line in Chihuahua.”

  “So you’re saying they spy on you,” Jake said. “Even that pretty little waitress.”

  “Yeah. Elena has a brother I’m pretty sure works for the Zaragosas. They won’t think anything of me taking a couple of clients up into the mountains to hunt, though. That’s pretty common.”

  “I’m surprised they leave you alone,” Jake had said.

  “I guess they know I’m a tough old buzzard who wouldn’t be that easy to kill. But I mind my own business, so it’s easier for them to just ignore me.”

  Barry had pointed out, “Except you’re not minding your own business now.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t know that.”

  Now, in the truck, Barry said in answer to Jake’s question, “Chet was a legend in Special Forces. Was an operator in all the world’s hot spots for ten years. But then he’d had enough, and he walked away from it. Came back here to the area where he grew up.”

  “Not everybody can walk away.”

  Barry nodded. “I know. Some men get it in their blood and can’t go back to living a normal life.” His mouth tightened. “I tried. I did it for a while. But it didn’t pan out. Chet managed to make it work, though. Maybe because he’s still outdoors most of the time, still makes his living with a gun in his hand.”

  “Bighorn sheep don’t shoot back, though,” Jake said.

  “That doesn’t mean what he does is easy—or without its dangers. And since the cartel moved in, it’s worse than ever. He’s too stubborn to give up, though, like he said.”

  “You think this is where they’re going to move whatever the shipment is?”
r />   “I haven’t heard anything from my other contacts that sounds more promising.” Barry was sitting in a swivel chair in front of the computer workstation. He swung around to face the computer and moved the mouse to wake it up. “Let’s take a look and see what we’re working with.”

  The powerful satellite uplink allowed Barry to call up a detailed map of the area. Jake looked over his shoulder as he pointed out the little settlement of Hachita, where they were, as well as the rugged Big Hatchet Mountains stretching to the south and the thin line of the highway to the west, running down to the border.

  The bootheel shape of this corner of New Mexico meant that directly east of the Big Hatchets was the uppermost part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Barry pointed to a spot just east of the border and said, “See that?”

  Jake leaned closer and frowned at the concentration of large, dark circles visible on the satellite image. “What is it? Looks like a bunch of oil tanks or something.”

  ‘No, those aren’t tanks at all. They’re fields. They’re cultivated and irrigated in those circular shapes. The system’s called center-pivot. The irrigation equipment rotates around a hub. As dry as it is around here, you have to drill deep wells and irrigate if you’re going to grow anything, and that system’s proven to be efficient. But that’s not really what I’m talking about.” Barry’s fingertip almost touched the monitor screen. “Right there next to those fields.”

  “Oh. Yeah. It’s a little town, isn’t it?”

  “Colonia el Camello. Chet mentioned it. I don’t know how heavy the cartel presence is there, but it’s really close to the border, about two miles away. If you were to cross there, go through the southern end of the Big Hatchets, and angle northwest, you’d eventually come to State Highway 81. From there, it’s less than a two-hour drive to Interstate 10, and once you hit the interstate . . .” Barry shrugged. “The whole country’s wide open to you from there.”

  Jake nodded slowly. “Sounds like it would work, all right. But they’re already bringing in drugs and illegal immigrants, according to Chet, and having plenty of success at it. Why all this added attention?”