Authors: Kathleen Creighton
Morning sun?
Julie lowered her arms slowly to shade her eyes as she watched the ripple and sparkle of sunlight on blue water.
Of course. No wonder I felt as if my directions were turned around!
She had seen a thousand sunsets over the ocean, but not one sunrise. She wasn’t looking over the Pacific Ocean; this was the Gulf of California. The fabled Sea of Cortez.
I know where I am!
Julie’s spirits took another dizzying leap. Those hazy blue shapes on the horizon were islands; therefore, she had to be somewhere in the "midriff’ of the peninsula, south of San Felipe. And not so very far south, either, if they had made it over Baja’s appalling roads in one day.
He’s bluffing, Julie thought exultantly.
With a boat and a little luck I can get out of here.
She drew in her breath and looked around guiltily, afraid that the excitement of her discovery might show in her face. But although she could hear the far–off sounds of voices raised in Spanish conversation and laughter, the only living things visible were the wheeling seabirds and a thin brown dog jogging aimlessly along the beach. Julie smiled grimly after him and set off to find the latrine.
The adobe hut she shared with her jailer had for some reason been placed away from the others, in a little depression that gave it a certain degree of privacy. Behind it and over a rise was a crude outhouse, and beyond this the terrain rose steeply, an escarpment of granite from which boulder–strewn ridges stretched toward the water like the desperate fingers of a thirst–crazed wanderer. The other huts—some of adobe, some wood and galvanized tin, some no more than crude shelters of poles and brush—were clustered together in the cove to the south, with the fishing boats drawn up on the beach and the tantalizing but useless camper parked between the high–tide line and the rocks.
Julie was desert–wise enough to watch for basking rattlesnakes without being intimidated by the prospect of meeting one, so she clambered over the rocks to the north to see what lay beyond the promontory. A secluded little bay curved away to another promontory of volcanic rock—a lovely beach, pristine and unmarked by a single human footprint. The explanation for its serenity lay in a scattered handful of jagged boulders hurled by the same convulsion that had formed the ridges. They dotted the sands and made treacherous dark smudges beneath the quiet waters of the bay, rendering it inaccessible and useless to man.
Buffeted by the wind, one hand pressing her hair flat to her head in a pointless but habitual gesture, Julie shaded her eyes and turned in a slow circle, gazing toward the horizon.
Freedom!
But it was only an illusion, and unbelievably frustrating. In some ways being confined to the stuffy camper had been easier to accept. These seemingly limitless boundaries made her feel vaguely guilty.
I’ve got to do something. I have to get away from them somehow!
But with those beckoning vistas surrounding her, it was hard even to remember that she was a prisoner, hard to remember that the dark man with the electric eyes and a scar that looked like a dimple on his chin was a smuggler—a coyote—and that she was his captive. And utterly at his mercy.
She was conscious suddenly of a hollow feeling that seemed to extend from her breasts all the way down to her thighs. She turned her back to the wind and stared back across the bay to where the boats lay drawn up on the beach.
Fishing. He said he was going fishing.
But the boats had an abandoned look; pelicans and sea gulls roosted on the gunwales, and as she watched, a child scampered across the wet sand with a scruffy dog at his heels, darted to the water’s edge and threw something in. A few of the gulls lifted and circled in a desultory way before settling back to their places.
"So where in the heck is he?" Julie asked aloud, conscious of a curious sense of abandonment, as if she had been brought to a party and then left standing by the punch bowl. Odd, this almost childlike dependence. Odd, and very dangerous.
She chewed her lips, deliberately biting hard enough to cause pain, using the pain as an anchor to reality. She wanted to throw back her head and shout, "I am Agent Julie Maguire of the United States Border Patrol! I am an officer of the United States government!"
So what if she’d been taken hostage and stripped of all the external trappings of her identity? It didn’t change it, or the fact that she still had her duty. These men—all of them—had broken the laws she had sworn to enforce, and it was up to her to do everything in her power to resist them and, if possible, to bring them to justice.
"Step one," Julie whispered grimly. "I’m alive."
The next step was to escape.
The distant cry of a seabird made her aware of the silence. Except for the wind and that lonely call there was no sound at all. No footprints on the beach, and no sounds of human voices. She might have been alone on the planet. Swallowing fear and loneliness, Julie turned back toward the village. As she searched the foot and handholds for basking rattlesnakes and listened for the dry whir of a warning rattle, she knew that she was alone, and without friends. If she were to escape, it would have to be by her own wits.
The sun was getting higher now, and she was hungry. "I’ll go and find Rita. I’ll feel better after I’ve had some coffee and breakfast." Speaking aloud seemed somehow to reassure her. Her hands went absently to the brightly woven belt at her waist.
Well, maybe not entirely friendless.
It occurred to her as she scrambled back over the ridge that this would be a good time to retrieve her bra from the camper. She would ask Rita where she could wash out her clothes.
As she angled upward across the beach toward the camper, she had to pause every few steps to shake the annoying grit out of her huaraches. Finally she just sat down to take them off, and it was then that she heard the voices. The same voices she had heard discussing her fate while she lay bound hand and foot in the camper loft, except now there was no bawdy banter, no coarse laughter. The discussion was terse and businesslike, and conducted in low tones Julie had to strain to hear.
Casting a quick glance around, she carefully hitched herself backward on the seat of her pants until she was snuggled right up against the camper’s rear wheel, directly under the window.
The discussion was in Spanish, of course, and Julie had to listen hard for a few minutes before she could make sense of it. They were discussing the last smuggling run—the near disaster. And how it might affect their next run—the "big one." Geraldo and Pepe seemed concerned about using the same route again; Chayne was pointing out that using the same route would be like hiding in a place that had already been searched.
"It’s the safest route we could possibly use." Julie heard a muffled thump, as if he had brought his palm down on the tabletop for emphasis. "It’s too late to try out a new route. The risks involved in attempting an untried trail through the desert are much greater than the remote possibility that the patrol will pick that moment to be in that spot. No—" another thump "—we must stay with our plan."
He was so adamant that the others capitulated; the unshakable note of certainty in his voice was a powerful influence. Julie wondered how he could be so sure, and then realized with chagrin that he was quite right. It had been a fluke, her being in that particular place that day. She had missed a turnoff and gone perhaps ten miles beyond her usual patrol range. She had topped the ridge, realized her error, and had been turning her vehicle around when she had spotted the camper’s dust.
But how had he known that?
"Has Gabriel decided how many?" There was a note of asperity in Chayne’s voice. "May we at least know whether we are going to be able to do it with one truck?"
"One squad," Geraldo said promptly. "Six men. Plus the three of us." He gave a dry chuckle. "It won’t be first–class accommodations, but this truck is adequate."
"Just six," Chayne murmured, adding something in a mumble too low for Julie to catch.
A cold, clipped voice answered him.
Pepe.
"Surely you know a small force, properly trained and equipped, can accomplish as much as a larger one, and has the advantage of being easier to transport and conceal. With these six men we will make Lebanon seem like a fiesta."
Chayne cut in impatiently. "All right, agreed. Have the targets been set?"
"The convention center will be the primary target, of course. We will be given details of the secondary targets when we arrive at the depot to pick up the rest of the dynamite."
"And the location of the depot?"
Pepe’s voice was steely. "That too is something we will learn when it is necessary for us to know."
"Of course." Chayne’s voice sounded taut with frustration. "And in the meantime, we sit here and wait."
Geraldo laughed, the same lazy chuckle Julie had heard from him last night outside the hut. "Oh–ho, I know how hard that will be for you. You gringos do not like to wait for anything. Listen, my friend. Relax a little. Fish a little. Make love…maybe more than a little!"
There was more laughter; the business meeting was over. But in any event Julie had heard more than enough. Now she only wanted to get clear away from the camper before she was discovered. If she was discovered she was as good as dead. Not even Chayne would be able to save her. She felt cold and sick; her knees were weak and her hands shaky, but she managed to get silently to her feet and back to the beach before collapsing onto the sand beyond the rocky point, out of sight of the camper.
Oh God, she prayed silently, what am I going to do?
It was so much worse than she had imagined. Not coyotes—terrorists. Who were they? Leftists? From Central America? Cuba? Not that it mattered. All that mattered was that a squad of guerrillas planned to launch a terrorist attack on the Pan American Exposition in Los Angeles. And she was the only hope of preventing it.
A gust of wind buffeted gently against her back, lifting sand to sting her bare ankles. Julie drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin on her knees as she gazed across the little bay toward the beached boats. Dangerous or not, those boats were still her only chance. It was hard to judge from a distance how big and heavy they were, and she didn’t dare go closer. They had outboard motors but didn’t look very large. Could one person launch one of them? The surf was very flat; even with the wind kicking up white caps the waves slapped gently at the sand. If she could just get a boat to the water’s edge…
There was a burst of masculine laughter, and the camper door banged shut. Julie stayed crouched where she was, and after a while the three men appeared on the opposite curve of the bay, making their way down the beach toward the boats. There were shouts, and a fourth man emerged from a wooden hut in the main cluster of dwellings to join them—an older man, this one, with gray hair and a beard. The child Julie had seen earlier skipped at his heels, and several dogs dashed in joyful circles, scattering the seabirds and kicking up sand.
Her heart sinking, Julie watched strong men put their shoulders and backs into the launching, two to a boat. How foolish she was to think she could manage it alone. Once the boats were afloat the men still pushed, wading in the shallows, guiding them through the gentle surf to water deep enough to float the outboard motors. And then at last, perhaps a hundred yards out, the motors were lowered, the men scrambled aboard, and the racket of small diesel engines ricocheted off the rocks at Julie’s back. The fishing boats aimed for the hazy island shape on the horizon, followed by a screeching, wheeling cloud of seabirds and the frenzied yipping of the dogs.
Julie got to her feet, absently brushing sand from her rear end and shading her eyes against the sun. As she moved slowly down the beach, she gazed thoughtfully after the disappearing fishermen.
So the bay was shallow. Another reason why it wasn’t a thriving fishing or tourist spot? Not more than knee–deep, even a hundred yards out. It must be low tide now.
Julie moved closer to the beached boats. The child and the dogs had gone back up the beach to disappear among the huts. The seabirds, those too complacent to follow the fishermen, had settled back on the gunwales of the remaining boats and ignored Julie as she wandered among them. Only one or two were discomfited when she bent to put her shoulder against the bow of their roost and give it a hopeless push.
To her surprise and delight, and to the disgust of the birds, it moved.
She pushed harder, and the heavy wooden boat slid a good foot toward the water. Julie knelt and brushed away the sand beneath the boat’s keel and discovered a layer of poles—a rolling platform. A launching ramp!
By God, she could do it! It was only a few feet to the water, and with one of those poles as a lever, she could do it. She must do it, and soon.
Tonight.
She would need food, drinking water or beer.
Rita.
She would need to get help from Rita, or at least learn from her where the camp stores were kept. Tonight she would head north, toward San Felipe.
Julie’s stomach gave a loud rumble, reminding her of more immediate needs, and she almost laughed aloud with the exhilaration she felt at the thought of finally taking action.
She had no trouble locating Geraldo’s hut, where she had suffered such a humiliating defeat the night before. The child was playing in the dust before the doorway, pushing a small wooden truck over highways only he could see and making the uninhibited engine noises only a child can make. At Julie’s approach he hopped up, converting the truck instantaneously into an airplane, and ran down to the beach to the accompaniment of a truly amazing jet–engine roar. After watching him for a moment Julie reached into the hut’s dim interior to rap on the open door and call hesitantly,
"Hola, Rita. Con permiso…"
"
Buenos dias, Señorita
," a soft voice replied, then added in laborious English, "Please come in." Looking as pretty and normal as she had the night before, Rita came forward, wiping her hands on her blue–jeaned thighs and smiling shyly.