Without thinking about it, she’d been talking into the microphone, and a man asked, “Who is this?”
Letty said, “I’m a DHS investigator in Pershing. Who is this?”
“Oh my God. Wait, I gotta, I gotta make a phone call, we’re gonna have to figure out how to . . . hang on . . .”
She could hear some fumbling around at the other end of the link and she kept her eye on Rodriguez and the camerawoman. Then a man’s voice, not loud, but who she recognized as the first unidentified man from earlier in the day, asked, “Letty?”
“Yes. This is me. They blew the cell phone tower.”
“We know that . . .”
“They’re getting ready to blow the bridge. You’ve got to keep the caravan off the bridge. I think they’re going to blow it up when they try to cross it.”
“Okay, that’s interesting. Tell me why you think that?”
She explained about the number of bridge sections, about the camoed men going under the bridge, the numbers of spans and support columns and the numbers of detonators and timers. “I can’t be sure, but I believe that’s what they’re planning to do.”
“We’ve had people call us and say that they were planning to come out peacefully, more or less . . .”
“You believed that?” Letty asked.
“No, I didn’t. Some people think it has to be considered as an option. We’ve also had reports that they plan to crash the Mexican side and disappear into the backcountry there.”
Letty said, “Right.”
“Then what are they going to do?”
“I’m about ninety percent sure they’re going to blow the fucking bridge,” she snapped. “After that, I don’t know.”
“What else you got?”
“Militia trucks have been tearing out of here toward that cave John was talking about and I saw a swarm of people around the jail. I’m about seventy-five percent that he pulled it off. Seventy-five percent and climbing. I should know for sure, later this afternoon. I’m going to walk back into town and do my lost-fuckin’-waif act. See what I hear.”
The unidentified man laughed: “Keep it up, babe. You’re doing good. Is there anything we can do for you? Can do for you?”
“Yes. You can threaten this Rodriguez guy, the TV guy, about what will happen to him if he gives me up. And make arrangements for me to talk to you through this TV link.”
“Have you checked other commo—”
“Yes, I’ve checked on everything. Even the Mexican side is shut down. They cut the fiber-optic cable, so no Net. They’re using commercial walkie-talkies to communicate, so if you could monitor them somehow, that’d be good. There’s only one other possibility that I can see, and that’s CB. There are some tractor-trailer trucks stuck behind the roadblock, and if I could get to one, and use his CB, I might be able to communicate that way. Range is only two or three miles. But that’s a long walk and I really need to get back to the bridge. You might tell the cops on the other side of the roadblock to monitor channel . . . what? Sixteen? For a call from Letty?”
“We’ll do that, but we expect this TV truck to be in the thick of it, so why don’t you focus on what you’re doing right now? I’m exceptionally good at threatening people, so if you’d put Rodriguez on . . . And, hey, babe, easy does it. Okay?”
“Call me ‘babe’ again and I’ll shoot you in the balls when I see you.” She’d gotten that line from a Minnesota cop friend.
“Then thank God I haven’t identified myself,” he said, laughing. Letty suspected that she would like him. “Give me Rodriguez.”