Kaiser: “There are seven. I not only counted them, I talked to them. Six men and a woman.”
“Okay. If you say so.”
A slight skepticism in the voice. Kaiser rolled his eyes and then snapped: “Seven! Exactly!”
Letty: “There are twenty of them—that’s another exact number, by the way—blocking the bridge. They are on the Mexican side of the bridge. The bridge has six spans and they are about halfway across the last span. The Mexicans have taken positions on the other side, but there has been no shooting. They are shouting back and forth in Spanish, so that’s well thought out.”
She gave them numbers of militia she’d counted in town, as well as armament and personal protective gear: rifles, sidearms, bulletproof vests. She told them that the border station personnel had been disarmed and most of the employees were being held in the station, and that two others had barricaded themselves in a house above the station.
“We’ve talked to those guys,” somebody said.
Kaiser chipped in, “Most of the guns are AR-15s, with a mix of AR-10s and AKs and at least one Barrett .50-caliber that I’ve seen. I haven’t seen anything bigger. No grenades, no M320s. Everyone has a sidearm.”
Letty: “They are very well organized into teams: the bridge team, the blockade team; there’s a fast-reaction team, there are thirty-five members in it, equipped like full-on military with all the gear. There’s a medical squad, five nurses. The leaders are this Jael woman, who I believe to be Jane Hawkes, and a man called Rand Low. Billy Greet has files on both of them . . .”
Jackson: “Are they digging in?”
Kaiser: “Yes. In a way. Not in the sense of emplacements of any kind, but the houses here are built on a slope, and the downhill sides of the concrete foundations are two or three feet high. They are setting up behind those foundations, which, in my judgment, is pretty substantial protection. If there was a real fight, it’d get ugly, overlapping fields of fire all the way down the hill to the river. And they’ve got that Barrett, if you thought you might send some choppers over . . .”
Greet jumped in: “For anyone who wasn’t told yet, John is a former Delta master sergeant.”
Jackson: “Good to know.”
Letty: “They’ve detained the mayor and city council and are saying that they plan to put them on trial for treason because they let that other caravan across the bridge.”
Colles: “We heard they were arrested. Are they talking about executing them?”
“Haven’t heard anything about that,” Letty said. “But . . . treason.”
Kaiser: “The council’s being held in the city jail, guarded by two guys with ARs. Letty and I could take them out of there and make a run for the mountain. There’s a tourist cave and a campground up there, a beautiful defensive site. If we could get the mayor and those guys to the cave, with some food and water, no way they could take us out.”
Letty: “Right now, they’re talking about being here until the day after tomorrow.”
They could hear a cacophony of voices then, arguments breaking out among the listeners, and Jackson said, “Hold there, for a minute . . .”
Then Colles: “You don’t know when this trial is going to be?”
“We expect we’ll find out at the noon meeting,” Letty said. “They’ve asked everybody in town to come to the meeting . . .”
Jackson: “Sergeant Kaiser . . . you believe there are only two guards at the jail?”
“Yes, sir. Letty has seen them.”
Another buzz of voices, then a new one: “Kaiser, you’re a stud. Could you take out both of the jail guards? Not kill them, but jack them up and push them into the jail? Lock them up? Take the hostages out of there?”