Letty watched: they’d have to do this six more times. That would take a while.
She backed into the brush, and, careful not to disturb the foliage any more than she had to, she worked her way back across the flood plain, across the dirt track to the mountainside, then up a hundred feet or so, and cut back toward the highway. At seven-fifteen, as she was approaching the highway, the handset vibrated, and she sat down on the hillside and called back: “You there?”
“Here,” Kaiser said.
“Gonna blow the bridge,” Letty said.
“How soon?”
“Don’t know. I’ll find out. Monitor this channel.”
* * *
Before she emerged from the brush, Letty plucked the twigs and burrs from her clothing, then checked across the street. There were townspeople moving around, some walking uphill, some down toward the bridge. Two pickups went by fast, heading down the hill, then another one.
She stepped out of the brush, and walking down the hill, no one paid her any attention. The militia was buzzing, people moving fast, loading up trucks. Two more pickups went by, and near the bottom of the hill, they turned off on a dirt road that she’d crossed on her way to spy on the bridge.
Letty rejoined the crowd at the bottom and edged as close as she could to the front, where a line of militiamen was blocking the American crowd from the bridge.
Hawkes, Low, Duran, and Crain were standing at the near end of the bridge, looking across at the militiamen who still stood in a line nearly at the Mexican side. Rodriguez and his camerawoman were standing next to Hawkes. Ochoa had taken the camera off her shoulder and was resting it on her foot, talking to the husky man who’d been her mobile platform. They apparently didn’t think anything was imminent.
The sun had dropped below the hills on the Mexican side, puffy clouds going orange and then lavender overhead. Letty checked her phone: 7:40.
She felt the handset vibrate. She walked back out of the crowd, up the hill to the locked-up TV truck, stepped behind it, then around to the far side where she couldn’t be seen.
She called Kaiser: “What?”
“Something’s happening here. The guys watching us pulled out. They’re gone.”
“Are they playing you?”
“Don’t think so . . . wait one . . .”
She waited, then Kaiser came back.
“A bunch of pickups just went past, moving fast, heading your way. They must be coming down from the roadblock. What do you want me to do?”
Letty hesitated. They had no plan for this. She pushed the transmit button and said, “Do what we planned, you know, ven aqui.”
Pause: “Got it.”
With any luck, Kaiser would leave the council at the cave, with guns, and would join her near the bridge.
* * *
More pickups went by as she walked from behind the TV truck. They didn’t pause as they went by, the passengers didn’t look at her. As she walked back down the highway, toward the bridge, they turned right at the dirt road and out of sight.
The sky was going dark, and lights were coming on around the town. Six more pickups, running together, went past, took the right, and disappeared. Letty rejoined the crowd, saw the pregnant woman, Alice, who’d been worried about her husband, and stepped close to her.
Letty asked, “Where are the pickups going? Is there a road out down there?”
Alice shook her head. “There’s a gun range a ways down there. Then the old ag plain runs along for four or five miles, then the mountain comes right down to the river. There’s no way out. There’s a deep arroyo, Arroyo Grande, but there’s no way in or out of it that I know of. Maybe you could hide in it . . . Look.”