“Who the fuck are they to arrest anyone?” Kaiser asked.
The waitress shook her head and let the door swing closed. Kaiser said, quietly, “Over there,” and tipped his head: Letty looked back up the street, where the pickup they’d seen, partially blocking the highway, had stopped a truck coming into town. “Checkpoint,” Kaiser said.
On the way farther down the hill, to the motel, Letty called Greet: “A woman at the local diner says they’ve arrested, detained, the mayor and the whole city council, for what that’s worth. We’ve seen one armed checkpoint coming into town.”
“Keep the information coming, you’re the only good on-the-ground resource we’ve got there. I’m not giving your number to anyone, I’m routing all the traffic through our command center at FEMA. If somebody needs to hook up directly with you, we’ll patch them through. We haven’t seen any media coming . . .”
At that moment a Black Hawk helicopter swooped in over the town, moving fast, crossing into Mexico, and then banked and came back over, moving slower, and then, bapbapbap BOOM bapbapbap. The gunfire came from scattered places around the town, and the helicopter swooped back out, climbed, swung over the town again, much higher up, and Greet was shouting into the phone, and bapbapbap BOOM bapbapbap . . .”
Letty put a finger in her off ear and yelled, “What? What?”
“Was that gunfire?”
Kaiser reached out and took the phone and shouted into it: “A Black Hawk came over, way too low, took small-arms fire, almost all AR-15s, although I heard a bigger gun, could be an AR-10, and then another for sure was a .50-caliber that let off two rounds. You better tell your troops to get up higher and faster if they come back . . .”
Letty took the phone back. “Where’s that caravan that’s coming here?”
“They’re still coming. I can’t tell you how far out they are right now.”
“Find out,” Letty said.
Kaiser held out his hand and took the phone again: “They need to bring in Delta or the SEALs if there’s gonna be a fight. This is not something you want to try to do with the National Guard. These guys are all mixed in with local civilians.”
Letty: “We’re gonna do some recon . . .”
“I’ll get all that going,” Greet said. “Call me! Call me!”
* * *
At the motel, Kaiser said, “About the recon thing. We oughta split up again. If they were watching us at all, up in Midland or in El Paso, they know it’s a skinny chick with a big guy. We can cover twice as much ground if we split up.”
“Every time people split up in a movie, somebody dies.”
“Try not to do that.”
Letty nodded and said, “Most of them are down by the border station. I’ll wander down there. Why don’t you get in the truck, like you’re trying to get out of town, see what the reaction is at that checkpoint. If we’re lucky, you could make it up to the roadblock, make an assessment. Count the guns. The Feds are gonna want a live count.”
“What if they wave me through?”
“Doesn’t sound like they can. If they do, turn around, say you wanted to see what was allowed, you have to go back and get your wife and kid.”
Kaiser nodded. “Good. You take care. You get killed, I won’t get a gold star in my notebook.”
* * *
Letty’s phone rang. Senator Colles. He said, “I know you’re life-and-death busy, but give me a one-minute recap.”
“I will, but don’t let on that you’ve got a source on the ground. They’re willing to use their guns—they tried to shoot down an Army helicopter.”