Five miles short of Pershing, they got to the grove of palm trees and Low pulled off and waved the rest of the convoy on. At the end of it, five trucks pulled off on the shoulder with them. The roadblock action team.
Low and Hawkes got out of their truck and Low said, “Let’s get it on, guys. Get the pulley up on the other side.”
“We got it,” somebody called back.
Twenty tall palms stood on one side of the road, three even bigger trees on the opposite side. Two men hooked a block and tackle to one of the three big palms, and somebody else fired up a chain saw. The first palm fell a minute later. One of the men working the block and tackle hooked an end of the pulley line to the top of the downed palm, and the other end to the receiver on the back of an F-250. The truck surged ahead and pulled the downed palm all the way across the highway.
The rest of the palms came down one at a time and were dragged across the road, piled atop one another, to make a barrier of heavy entwined palms six feet high. The men were working fast and efficiently. When they’d finished, they retrieved the block and tackle, and then the chain saw crew dropped the three palms on the other side of the road, on top of those already down.
“That’s a fine mess,” Low said, pleased.
A tractor-trailer was coming down the highway from I-10, slowed and stopped. The driver watched them putting the tools away, then got out and shouted, “How long to clear it?”
“Couple days, anyway,” somebody called back.
“Couple days? What am I supposed to do?”
“If I was you, I’d back it up and go to El Paso,” he was told.
One of the chain saw crew clambered atop the pile of palm logs with an AR-15 in one hand. “Nobody coming through,” he shouted at the driver.
Hawkes was watching. She clutched Low’s biceps and said, “I’m fuckin’ high on life here, Rand. We’re doing it.”
Low looked at her and said, “You know, this isn’t the real big test. The big test is tonight.”
* * *
Five trucks and six men and a woman were left at the roadblock as guards. Hawkes gave them a pep talk—“We’re absolutely counting on you. If you let anybody through, we’re screwed. We’ve all rehearsed what you’ve got to do, what you’ve got to say. Keep your faces covered and we’ll be coming for you tonight. If you get more than you can handle, either call me or get on your walkie talkie. If things go right, won’t be any phones after noon.”
“Got it,” the woman said.
“And you got your bullhorns and your food and drinks.”
“We’re good,” the woman said. “You get on down there, Jael, we got your back door.”
In the truck again, Hawkes took a phone call, listened, and said to Low, “We got the Customs people penned up. They’ve still got their weapons, but we’re working on it.”
“How about the ones who were off-duty?” Low asked.
Hawkes relayed his question to the militia man in Pershing, who said, “I know we got people at their front doors, but I don’t know what happened. Frank told me we got the mayor and the city council locked up.”
“We’ll be there in five minutes. Keep the lid on,” Hawkes said.
“We got it. We’re running smooth,” the man said. “Oh: Rodriguez and the TV truck made it. They got here a while ago.”
* * *
The town of Pershing started with a series of truck parking lots on both sides of the road, then two trailer courts, then the houses, most manufactured, some concrete-block, some wood-frame. They went by Jeff’s Diner, where they’d eaten when they were scouting the town, and the motel, where they’d gone swimming, and down the long slope to the Rio Grande, which was nothing more than a thread of water sitting in a narrow gorge thirty or forty feet below the level of the towns on either side. The bridge over the river was empty.