The Devil's Highway (10 page)

“I guess not,” I admitted.

“The ball’s in our court, now, that’s for sure.” Garrett said, suddenly pensive. “This is what it was like before, these people coming into town and jumping on our people, then dusting back out to their screwy compound, and covering for each other. They break the rules, and the rules protect them.”

“Then it looks like time for us to break the rules, too.”

“Which means what?” Deputy Hughes asked.

I smiled at him. “Go out there, break in, and take Brad out.”

Garrett looked at me like I might have just suggested that we go hunting rattlesnakes with our bare hands. “Pardon me for sounding negative, Roland, but just how do you plan to do that?”

I smiled at him, like Big-Hearted Al must have smiled when he sold Brad that used Toyota. “That part’s easy. With your help, Sheriff.”

“Hell yeah!” Hughes smacked a palm with his fist, while Garrett groaned theatrically, and smirked. “I had a feeling you were going to say that, Longville.”

“I got the idea just now that you’d find the notion appealing.”

“Well, that I might, but it also could cost me my job, that is, if Mayor Ferguson and the City Council thought enough of Cushman and his crew to kick up a fuss. But after tonight, they might just go out there with you. I’ve had it with these Redemption Army people causing trouble in Delgado. I think it’s about time somebody spoiled Cushman’s party.”
 

Garrett paused, and gave me a mysterious look, then a sly smile. “But that would be me sticking my neck out for your cause. Are you willing to do the same for mine?”

“Your cause? If you’re asking me to choose sides, Sheriff, I think it’s time everyone here in Delgado realized they were on the
same
side. That is, anyone who isn’t part of the Redemption Army.”

“Glad to hear you say that, Longville. Meet me tomorrow morning at my office. There’s something that I want to discuss with you.”

“I’ll be there.”

I took the elevator upstairs, half expecting more Redemption Army members to be lying in wait for me there. What I found was a much more pleasant surprise; Andrea Herrera, loitering outside my door.

“Roland Longville. Are you following me?” She asked, with a raised eyebrow.

“The Fermosa is the only hotel in town, I might point out. Are you staying on this floor, too?”

“I’m on the next floor up. I just wanted to see if you knew what the excitement in the bar was about.”

I told her what I learned from Garrett and Hughes.

“It’s starting,” she said, her black eyes boring into mine.

I grabbed her shoulders. “Andrea, you’re starting to sound like Cushman when he talks about the Apocalypse. You make it sound as though this was all planned out, just waiting for me to get here.”

“Planned? No. I don’t subscribe to prophecy in my line of work. But do I think it was inevitable, yes. Maybe it really started when Brad Caldwell came here. Delgado, the Redemption Army Compound, all of it; it’s a pot that has been simmering for a very long time. I think you added that little extra heat that’s going to finally make it boil over.”

I just stood there and looked at her. She reached up flirtatiously straightened my lapels and walked past me. “I’m in room 343, if you were wondering.” She whispered in my ear as she walked by.

I watched her saunter down the hall. She didn’t look back.

I like to make my own decisions, but ever since I had arrived in West Texas, I had felt like my every move had been planned out for me. Andrea believed there was a big battle coming, and I was going to be caught in its midst. Something told me that she was right.

A couple of minutes later, I was knocking on the door of 343. Andrea answered the door, one eyebrow arched and a little smile playing at her lips.

“Long time no see.” She turned, leaving the door open. I walked in and closed it behind me. She turned to face me. “Something you wanted?”

“There’s something I’ve been wondering about.”

She came up to me, put her palm on my chest. “What’s that?”

“Fernando Mendoza and you came to Delgado to make a documentary. That was before you ever heard of Brad Caldwell.”

“Yes,” she said, in almost a whisper.
 

“So how did you know about Cushman, and the Redemption Army? You must have already suspected something.”

“Fernando had heard things from immigrants. We were already working on another piece . . . . Fernando wanted to do a film on illegal immigration. Most people think illegals are all from Mexico, when the truth is there are many who make much longer journeys; they come from Mexico, Nicaragua, and points even further south. He wanted to show the public in the United States that the border that needs policing is Mexico’s southern border.”

“And in the making of this other picture, you heard something about Cushman and the Redemption Army? Something that was big enough to draw the two of you here?”

Andrea nodded, and put her head on my chest.

“Some people who had been caught by the Border Patrol and sent back over the border told us about a woman they had met, who told them she had escaped from a large group that was being moved north by some militia group. It was just a rumor, and you hear many on the border. A few weeks later, though, someone told us of some traffickers in Juarez who bragged of selling women to men in camouflage clothes in the desert near Delgado. Fernando decided we needed to know more, so we came here.”

She raised her face up close to mine. “They killed Fernando. I’ve been alone here ever since.”

I put a hand under her chin. “You’re not alone, any more.”

Her face was very close to mine, now. Her eyes were glistening pools of darkness, bewitching, and I ached to be drawn into them. I stepped back.

“I’d better go.”

She took my hand and squeezed it, let it go. “You don’t have to, you know.”

I hugged her once and smiled. I went out the door and closed it quietly behind me.

Chapter 12

I met Sheriff Garrett the next morning in his office. He was still acting a bit mysterious. Deputy Hughes met us in the squad room, eyes wide.

“What’s happening, Sheriff?” I asked Garrett.

Sheriff Garrett went around behind his desk and fetched something from a drawer.

“Roland Longville, raise your right hand, please. And repeat after me.”

I couldn’t help but smile. This was Garrett’s county, after all, and whatever happened, however this bizarre scenario played out, I was a part of it already, getting to be a bigger part of it by the minute. Now, I was about to do something that I never thought I would ever do again, however temporarily, I was about to get back into Law Enforcement.

Garrett looked at me solemnly, and began: “Do you, Roland Longville, solemnly swear to uphold the laws of the City of Delgado and of the State of Texas—“

* * *

A little while later, it was a matter of public record: Deputy Hughes signed a document witnessing my swearing in, and notarized it himself. After that, he begged off to go grab himself some breakfast. Garrett and I talked for a few minutes, and he suggested we do the same. May’s Place was convenient, so we decided on there. We walked outside, though, to an unexpected gathering.

Andrea met us in the street. She gazed at me levelly; there was no hint of what had transpired the night before in her eyes. Hughes and Ira Greywolf were with her.

“Don’t even think that you two are going out there without us.” She indicated herself and Ira. My suspicions were confirmed that the two were working an angle earlier, then, though an angle I now well understood.

“Who says that we’re going anywhere?” Garrett asked, innocently.

Andrea faced him, her hands on her hips. “Deputy Hughes, here, has a huge crush on me. He told me you were sworn in as an acting Deputy.”

“Andrea!” Hughes said behind her.

“Damn it, Hughes,” Garrett said, shaking his head. Now we all understood Andrea’s mysterious source of inside information.

“You didn’t say it was a secret about Longville’s swearing in, Sheriff,” Hughes said, but he looked pretty embarrassed.

Andrea went on. “My guess is, Sheriff Garrett here deputized you so that you can help arrest any Redemption Army people who come to town to cause trouble, after you go out there and storm their citadel and rescue poor little Brad Caldwell.”

“We haven’t even made any plans yet, let alone one about storming the Compound,” Garrett informed her.

“Well, all right, then, we better get to it,” Andrea stated, matter-of-factly.

Garrett looked at Ira Greywolf. “Now just what do you think you’re doing here, Ira?”

The old man drew himself up to his full height. “Don’t you forget, Sheriff, I’m a decorated combat veteran. I’m sober as a judge, too. Haven’t had a drop in a week.”

“You have my respect as a combat veteran, but Vietnam was a long time ago, Ira,” Garrett began.

“It was my idea to bring him along,” Andrea interjected.
 

We all turned to look at her again.

“He’s our way in.” She said. “He’s been out there more than anyone who isn’t part of the Redemption Army.”

Ira nodded. “I’ve been out there a dozen times, fixing leaks and doing other plumbing work. They all know me. The first time, a guard followed me around, but not anymore. They hardly pay me any attention.”

Garrett turned on his heel. “Okay, come on. Let’s plan this crazy thing out.”

Two minutes later, we were back in Garrett’s squad room; breakfast had been postponed. I yanked a piece of paper out of the printer and drew a rough map of the compound, based on what I’d seen on my first visit.

“From what I could tell, there’s just the front gate, and the other one at the far rear. It’s too far away to be of use as an exit, which means it looks like we’d have to go in, and come back out, the front. There’s a guard at the front, and I’ve seen that they keep an AK-47 in the guard house. There’s also the matter of the front guard tower. They’ve probably got a sharp-shooter up there. Once somebody gives the hue and cry that we’ve got Brad, we’ll probably be fired on if we try to force our way out.”

Ira nodded. “There must be a hundred locks on that back gate. Beyond that is the shooting range. Lots of old cars out there they use for target practice. Awfully rough going, too. You’d never get through that way.”

“So how do we get out?” Asked Andrea.

“Oh, you’d have to get back out through the front, somehow, or climb the twelve-foot fence that’s around the place. The guard in the tower would pick you off, no problem, if you tried that.”

“If you’re coming back out of the front, you’ll need suppressing fire,” Sheriff Garrett put in.
 

Ira nodded. “That’s what I’d do.”

“Suppressing
what
?” Andrea looked at them both. “I know you’re both veterans, but what do you suggest, we call in an air strike?”

Garrett tilted back his cowboy hat and looked very solemn. “After the run-ins folks here in town have had with the Redemptionists, I’ve had to think hard about what I’d do if we had to go out there and arrest Cushman, or one of his people. Those people are heavily armed. You might get in there under some pretense, which is probably the best way in, but once you arrested one of theirs—or, in this case, rescued—it would be getting out that would be the tough part.”

He put a finger on my hastily drawn map. “Here’s the problem, as you’ve pointed out, Roland. The front gate. Once the alarm is sounded, any of us inside would be in big trouble. Cushman’s men would lock down the front gate, and that would seal off your only exit. They’d also put the guard tower on alert, there on the front corner. So you’d be trapped, if they didn’t just shoot you outright. So you’ll have to have someone out here with a rifle, on the bluff, making them keep their heads down while you make your getaway.” He pointed to a blank area, clearly meaning the bluff where he and I had talked the day before.

“Any ideas who we could get to do that?” I asked him.

Garrett smiled. “I was a sharpshooter in the Army. I also do a fair share of hunting. Old Betsy and I can keep them crouching, all right.”

“Old Betsy?”

“That’s his hunting rifle,” Hughes said. “The Sheriff can make a believer out of you at three hundred yards, no problem.” He smiled mischievously. “And I can whip up something that’ll add some real ‘shock and awe’ to this caper.”

 
“Then what are we waiting for?” Andrea asked.

“Yeah, let’s go get this kid,” Ira put in.

“You know,” I said to everyone, “I’m really starting to like you guys.”

Chapter 13

A few hours later found us on the highway to the Redemption Army compound. Ira had received a call from the compound a day or two before, something about a toilet out of order. He frequently employed helpers on his trips to the compound, so today I was playing that role. Andrea would hide out in a drum in the back, right next to Deputy Hughes’ big surprise.

We drove right up to the gate. There was only one guy on duty today. Luckily, he wasn’t either of the two who’d been manning the gate on my first trip. I’d given the place a good enough once over before, although there will still holes in my knowledge of the compound.