“Ten minutes,” Kaiser said.
Letty took a two-minute shower and brushed her teeth, dressed in jeans and a white blouse, tightly tucked in, slipped the 938 into its Sticky Holster, and checked to make sure it wasn’t printing on her pocket.
She was reaching for the doorknob when Kaiser knocked. “You got your baby gun?”
“I do.”
“I don’t want to carry until I know what’s going on,” he said. “If anyone checked me, they’d find it. I’ll be counting on you for protection.”
“I’m a better shot anyway,” Letty said. “Think you could slide a couple extra mags in your sock?”
“Of course. What else are socks for?”
* * *
The old guy was standing outside the office, looking down the hill toward the Customs and Border Protection station. He turned when he heard them coming and said, “Something going on.”
“No kidding,” Kaiser said. “I haven’t seen that many black pickups since I got caught in a goatfuck at an Air Force base in Grand Forks, North Dakota.”
“Those guys got guns.” The old guy cocked his head. “You guys with them?”
Letty shook her head. “No. We’re just . . . You don’t think . . .”
The old man said, “I don’t know what to think. I gotta talk to my wife, see what she thinks.”
As he turned back to the motel door, Letty asked, “Is there a diner here where we could get breakfast?”
The old guy said, “Up the hill, on this side. Jeff’s. Food is decent, but I’d stay away from the open-faced beef sandwich, that sucker will repeat on you. If you tell them that Roger sent you, he’ll put a dollar in a jar for me.”
* * *
Kaiser asked, “Diner? Given the situation . . .”
“Best place to hear stuff in a small town,” Letty said. “Diners and beauty shops. Beauty shops won’t be open yet. But first . . . there’s people walking down the hill. Let’s get in with them.”
A couple of dozen townspeople were walking, in small groups, in fits and starts, down toward the Customs and Border Protection station.
“We should split up, in case somebody saw us in Midland or Monahans,” Kaiser said. “We’re more conspicuous together. Watch your phone.”
Letty joined a group of women walking down the hill, Kaiser went off on his own. They stopped at a concrete wall that marked the edge of the parking lot around the border station. Letty did a quick count of the pickups that clustered around the station and came up with fifty-two, almost all of them black. One or two men with rifles were standing behind each of the trucks. Another truck came down the hill, and one left.
A man dressed head-to-foot in camo, and wearing a heavy military-style bulletproof vest, was standing near the front entrance of the Customs station and was shouting through the door. Letty couldn’t make out the words but could hear somebody inside shouting back.
After several minutes of that, the man in the vest turned and walked away from the entrance, between two trucks, where he joined three men and a woman; Letty thought the woman was Hawkes. The woman was masked with a cowboy-style bandanna but had Hawkes’s build.
The group talked for a moment, then two of the men walked away, stopping at each pickup in the cluster, to speak to the militiamen standing behind the trucks.
“Oh, no. They’re going to shoot,” said a woman in Letty’s group.
As Letty watched, the woman—Hawkes?—raised a pistol above her head, pointed it at the sky, and then fired a single shot: Bam.