They began to collect members from her ResistUS base and the other local militias. People with military experience and the right kind of enthusiasm. With Low leading, and, tentatively at first, they began to patrol the U.S. border east of El Paso. They found and held illegals for the Border Patrol. Some of the patrolmen began to talk to them about favored crossing points, places where they could use extra eyes.
Hawkes called it “The Land Division,” and designed a flag for them, a triangular green mountain on a blue field. The nascent force was asked to standardize vehicles—four-wheelers, either Jeeps or pickups, for those who could afford them. American trucks—F-150s, Rangers, Silverados, Sierras, Colorados. Everybody had guns, of course, twenty different makes of .223 AR-15s or 7.65x39-millimeter AK-47s. They trained, under Hawkes’s eyes and Low’s direction. They did firing exercises in the barren mountains east of El Paso and north of I-10.
They had cookouts, brats and beer.
Romances sprang up among the troops.
* * *
Four men sifted out of the collection of veterans and enthusiasts who called themselves Jael-Birds, the hardest of the hardcore. In addition to Low, they were Max Sawyer, their armorer and gun enthusiast; Terrill T. Duran, the oldest of the group, a former Air Force sergeant who had done ten years in a Texas prison for bank robbery and had met Low, who was serving a short stretch for driving a stolen car. And Victor Crain, a recovered meth freak and sometime car thief, who, like Low, had spent time in Afghanistan and who, everyone agreed, was a little nuts. In a good way. He’d been the one to introduce Low to the stolen-car business, but hadn’t been arrested when Low was.
The Land Division had been patrolling the border for a year, holding their cookouts and guerrilla training and live-fire exercises out in the desert, when the thing they’d been edging up to actually occurred.
Low and the other three men, in two pickups, were patrolling near Fort Hancock, Texas, when they came across two illegals walking parallel to I-10, headed northwest toward El Paso. The illegals, dirty from their travels, carrying backpacks slung over T-shirts, both wearing ballcaps, one wearing sunglasses, looked over their shoulders as the trucks caught up with them.
“What do you think?” Low asked.
Sawyer, who was riding shotgun, said, “I’m good with it.”
Low got on his cell phone, called Crain, who was riding shotgun in the second pickup. “What do you think? What we been talking about?”
“Haven’t seen anyone for an hour,” Crain said.
Duran, driving the second pickup, said, “I say go for it.”
Sawyer said, “I’m with Terry.”
The two trucks caught up to the illegals, stopped. The illegals had tried to keep walking, while half-turned to keep an eye on the gringos in the pickups. The four militiamen got out, all with their AKs.
Low took a last look around, then, “Do it.”
The illegals were buried in an untracked piece of desert, deep in the soft sand.
* * *
The four men didn’t talk about it, they all told one another, but somehow, other members of the militia knew, or suspected. A week after the shooting, Hawkes cornered Low and asked him directly.
Low said, “We had to draw a line and we did.”
“You murdered two people?” She was appalled . . . and maybe awestruck.
“We didn’t murder them,” Low said. “We killed them. There’s a difference. They were criminals committing a crime. We were defending the United States of America.”
Hawkes was rocked . . . and she nodded, and went along.
The next time she saw Low, she hooked him by his shirt placket, pulled him close, and said, “Here’s your mistake: two wetbacks aren’t a problem. It’s a million wetbacks that are the problem.”