Devils and Dust (2 page)

“Yeah. Well,” Jules said, “that’s good to know.”

Keller looked at her and his face softened. Angela felt a stab of jealousy. She quickly snuffed it out.
You took another road long ago
, she scolded herself,
and now you’ll see it through. To the end
. “Actually,” she said to Jules, “I don’t know if I want Jack to help me with this. There’s someone else I want him to talk to first.”

Keller looked up. “Who?”

Angela slid out of the booth and stood up. “Lucas is with me. He’s across the road.”

“Who’s Lucas?” Jules said.

“Another friend,” Keller replied. He nudged Jules slightly with his hip. She got up slowly, her face expressionless. “So,” she said in a flat voice, “you coming back?”

“Yeah,” Keller said, “I am.”

“You can come with us if you like,” Angela said. “This affects you, too.”

“You’re goddamn right it—” Jules began, then she stopped. She looked at Angela. “I can?”

“Like I said, Jules,” Angela said, “I’m here as a friend. On behalf of a friend. That’s all.”

Jules looked at her. Then she smiled slightly. “Okay,” she said. “Look, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be,” Angela said. “It’s okay. You coming?”

Jules shook her head. “No. I got a business to run here.” She looked at Keller. “And don’t take all day,” she said severely. “It’s Friday, and this place is gonna fill up fast come five o’clock. I’m gonna need you.”

Keller smiled. “I know. I’ll be back.”

The bright sunlight felt like a physical shock as they stepped out of the bar. A semi roared past on the two-lane desert highway in front of them, diminishing rapidly into the far distance, leaving only whirling dust and empty silence behind. There was no other traffic. A black Cadillac CTS with a sticker from a car-rental company was parked across the highway, in front of one of the units of a worn-out looking motel. A sign in front announced it was the DES RT S NDS INN.

“Yeah,” Angela said as they crunched across the gravel parking lot. “I bet the place really jumps.”

“You’d be surprised,” Keller said. “I don’t know where they come from, but they start showing up right after five. The place fills up. The motel makes a few bucks giving them a place to sleep it off.”

“Everybody wins,” Angela said. They crossed the road. “Lucas said he’d be at the pool.”

He was. Major Lucas Berry, U.S. Army Medical Corps (Ret.) sat at the edge of the postage-stamp-sized swimming pool behind the hotel, dangling his legs in the tepid water. He was dressed in a brightly colored pair of swimming trunks that provided a sharp contrast to his dark-brown skin. A cooler of iced Tecate beer sat on the edge of the pool beside him. When he saw Keller and Angela, he swung his legs out of the water and stood up. He was taller than Keller by a couple of inches, and broader. He extended his hand. “Sergeant,” he said. His voice was a deep baritone that sounded like it should be coming from a burning bush.

Keller shook his hand. “Major,” he smiled. Then the smile faded. “You here to see just how crazy I am?”

“Pretty much,” Berry said. “Pull up a chair. Have a beer.” Keller pulled up one of the plastic chairs that ringed the pool. He shook his head at the offered beer. Berry raised an eyebrow slightly at that, but made no comment.

“I’m going back in the room,” Angela said. “This heat’s too much for me.”

As she walked away, Keller asked softly, “How’s she been?”

Berry shrugged. “Worried sick about you, for starters.”

Keller grimaced. “Sorry,” he muttered and dropped his gaze to the floor. “When did she and Oscar get married?”

“About three months ago.” Berry grinned. “Funny story, really. She asked
him
.”

Keller looked up. “She did?”

“Yeah. He wasn’t going to ask her, for fear she’d think it was just for the green card. But, good Catholic that he is, he was getting more and more conflicted about just shacking up. So she broke the logjam for him.”

“Sound like you’ve all talked a lot.”

“Yeah,” Berry said. “Just as friends, though. Not professionally.” He raised his sunglasses and looked directly at Keller. “But I’m not here to fill you in on Angela’s life. She can do that herself. I’m here to talk about you.”

Keller sighed. “I’m fine, Lucas.”

“Uh-huh. That’s why you got up out of a hospital bed, checked out against medical advice, and walked off without saying a word. And why you headed for, of all places, the desert.”

Keller closed his eyes. It hadn’t made any sense to him either. He had never had an easy life, but it was the Kuwaiti desert where things had really gone bad for him. He saw the burning Bradley fighting vehicle, heard his men screaming.
Burning, they’re burning
…he took a quick, deep intake of breath and opened his eyes. Lucas was looking at him.

“I—we—spent years getting you out of that desert in your head,” he said softly, “and yet you end up here. In the real one.”

“Well,” Keller said, “getting out of that desert meant starting to care about things again. About people. And that’s what put me here.” Lucas acknowledged the point with a nod of his head.

“And,” Keller went on, “to tell you the truth, it’s not bad here. I’m working. And I’m not wrecking myself doing it.”

“You don’t miss it?” Lucas said. “The hunt? The takedown? You used to say you lived for that. It was the only thing that got you up in the morning.”

“And you used to tell me how fucked up that was.”

Berry chuckled. “That I did.” He fished another beer out of the cooler. “So you won’t be coming back with us.”

Keller looked at the water, shimmering in the blazing sun. “I didn’t say that.” He stood up. “How long are you staying?”

Berry gestured toward the nearly empty motel. “Well, much as I hate to leave this fine resort and its luxurious amenities, probably in the morning.”

“I’ll let you know then,” Keller said. He walked off toward the bar.

A
T LEAST
the truck wasn’t bouncing as badly anymore. It was still stifling, and the smell from the toilet buckets was overwhelming. The last of the battery-powered lights was failing, so it would soon be pitch dark as well. The people crammed into the back of the truck sat shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, knees drawn up, their misery wrapped around them.

“Why is this taking so long?” Edgar asked his older brother Ruben. “They said we’d only be in this truck a little while.”

Ruben shrugged. He put his arm around his brother. Everything had taken longer than the
coyotes
said it would: the plane ride to Mexico, the bus ride to the little border town where they were taken to a warehouse, then packed like sardines into the truck, and now this. Ruben thought back to the moment a few hours ago when the truck had stopped. He was sure the sound he had heard was a gunshot. So were most of the other people, but they had stopped talking about it when the truck began moving again. Now, everything was silent except the roar of the engine and the whining of the wheels. It sounded like they were on an actual paved highway rather than the rough gravel roads they had traveled on for so long.
We must be north of the border.
So why aren’t they letting us out like they said
? The truck ground to a stop. The passengers stirred. There was a brief silence, then a loud creak, a banging noise, and the cargo compartment was flooded with bright light as the back door rattled up. Ruben tightened his grip around his brother’s shoulder.

The people in the truck put their hands up, shielding their faces from the light. Two Anglo men were standing on either side of the entrance. They were holding weapons pointed at the people inside. A young girl near the entrance screamed. One of the men swiveled his weapon toward the sound. He had a shaved head and a scraggly beard. Ruben could see the tattoos on his arms beneath the sleeves of his black T-shirt. There were more tattoos on his neck. The tattooed man looked for a long moment at the girl who had cried out. She was barely into her teens, and pretty, her long black hair tied in a ponytail. She tried to back away, pushing up against the side of the truck in panic. The tattooed man stuck out his tongue and waggled it obscenely at her. The girl whimpered in fear, causing the tattooed man to laugh.

“Save it,” the other man said in English. Ruben knew the language from school. Papa had written that he should study English for when he came to America.

The other armed man seemed younger. He had a full head of blond hair slicked back from his forehead and the coldest blue eyes Ruben had ever seen. Even in the stifling heat of the truck, Ruben shivered.

“The piss buckets,” the blond man said. “Pass ‘em out.” No one moved.

“Goddamn it,” the blond man said, “you people are going to have to learn English sometime. This is your first lesson.” He gestured at one of the overflowing buckets with his weapon and looked at the old man sitting next to it. “You,” he snapped, “bring it out.” The old man didn’t move. The blond man racked the slide on the shotgun. The old man scrambled to his feet so quickly that the tattooed guard giggled. He picked up the bucket. Awkwardly, he tried to get down off the tailgate with the bucket clutched in his hands. It sloshed a little, and some of the brownish-yellow sludge splashed on the ground. The blond man leaped back, but a few drops splashed on the legs of his khaki pants. The blond man screamed in outrage and grabbed the old man by the shirt. He hauled the old man from the truck and tossed him sprawling to the ground. He raised the shotgun to his shoulder and pointed it at the old man.

The old man rose to his knees, tears streaming down his face. “
Por favor,
” he croaked, “
por favor
…”

The other men in the truck stirred restlessly. Some began to get to their feet. The tattooed man raised his own weapon, grinning. “I wish you would,” he said softly. “I wish you would.”

The old man was still on his knees, begging for his life. A dark stain appeared at his crotch. The blond man laughed at that. Then he kicked the old man in the chest. The man screamed as he went over backward. The blond man advanced on him and kicked him again, this time in the balls. The old man’s scream trailed off to a ragged croak and he doubled up from the pain, writhing in agony. The blond man reached to his belt and pulled something away from it. It was a stiff whip, about four feet long. The whip seemed to be made out of some kind of hide, rolled tightly, tapering from about an inch thick near the wrapped handle to a narrow point at the tip. The blond man swished the whip through the air, back and forth. It made a terrifying sound, like the beating of a demon’s wings.

Suddenly, there was a third man there, striding purposefully around the side of the truck. He walked over to where the old man was squirming on the ground, pulled a black automatic from a holster on his belt, and shot the old man in the head. There was another chorus of screams from the truck and the man with the pistol looked up. Ruben had thought the blond man was a demon; this man was the devil himself. He was small, his shaved head barely coming up to the blond one’s shoulders, but he gave off an air of tightly coiled and barely contained madness. His head was almost perfectly round like a cannonball, and his ears were small and lay flat against his skull. He looked over the people in the truck like a serpent regarding a boxful of white mice. There was no spark of humanity in his dead gray eyes, no pity or compassion. A couple of the women crossed themselves.

The man with the pistol turned to the blond. “We don’t have time for games,” he said. Despite his small size, his voice was powerful, the voice of a preacher or a politician. “Get the buckets emptied, get the water bottles in there, and get back on the road.”

“What about him?” Blondie said, gesturing with his weapon at the body on the road. His face was sulky, like a child denied a favorite toy.

The man with the pistol didn’t look down. “Leave him for the vultures,” he snapped. He walked off.

“All right, you people,” the tattooed man said. “Get that other bucket out.”

This time there was no hesitation. The people moved slowly, as if they were in shock, but they moved. In a few moments, the other toilet bucket had been handed out to a young, bearded man who had been summoned from the inside of the truck to the road. His name, Ruben remembered, was Diego; he had been one of the few who had bothered to introduce themselves to Edgar and Ruben at the beginning of the trip. Diego took the bucket silently and stood by them, staring sullenly at the road.

“Good,” the blond said. “You’re already learning not to eyeball your betters.” He gestured at the buckets, miming pouring something out of them. Diego picked up one bucket. Blondie pointed at the old man’s body. “Empty it there.”

Diego’s back stiffened. Blondie pushed the shotgun up under his ear. “Do it,” he said silkily, “or I’ll fucking stick your head in it and drown you while Benny over there fucks you up the ass.”

“Awww,” the tattooed man said in a mock-whiny voice. “An’ I was saving myself.” He cut his eyes toward the girl he’d been ogling earlier. The girl started to cry.

Diego picked up first one bucket, then the other, and emptied them over the old man’s body. He walked back to the truck, his head down, and climbed in. Benny threw the still-stinking buckets back into the truck. Blondie shoved a pallet of bottled water in and pulled the door down. It clanged shut like the gates of hell. They heard the truck start up again. Another woman began weeping. Ruben glanced over at Diego. He was sitting with his head down, looking at the floor between his knees. Then the battery gave out on the light and they were in total darkness.