Letty looked.
Low was walking up the hill with a megaphone. “Let me have your attention, folks. We’ve gotten word from our people at the roadblock that the Army is clearing out the roadblock and is coming down the hill with troops. There’s gonna be a hell of a fight down here, all over town. You gotta get out. Get in your cars and get out . . . we’re turning the Customs loose right now, follow them out of here. This is gonna be a goddamn nightmare, this is gonna be a free-fire zone. We understand they’re coming in with Black Hawk gunships to take us out, and we ain’t going, we’re gonna fight back . . .”
Most of the crowd began to move, headed up the hill, slowly at first, then more quickly; some people began to run. The front door of the border station opened, and the captured Customs and Border Protection employees surged out and began jogging up the hill and into the town, headed for their homes and families.
Low was chanting into the megaphone, “You gotta hurry, you gotta run . . .”
Bapbapbapbapbapbap.
There was a burst of gunfire, picked up by other guns, to the side, and far up the highway,
Another man, up the hill, began shouting into a megaphone, repeating the message. Army’s coming in . . .
Letty ran with the crowd, but when she got to the TV truck, she stepped behind it, and then around into the brush beside it. Dark back there. Stars were popping out overhead, with a bare orange line defining the tops of the hills on the Mexican side of the river.
Her handset buzzed and Kaiser asked, “Where are you?”
Had to risk it: the militiamen seemed too busy to be monitoring the unused radio channels and she blurted, “Behind the TV truck.”
“Two minutes.”
* * *
The orange line that defined the Mexican hills was fading when Kaiser appeared. He had come down the hill inside the brush line, and had the shotgun slung behind his shoulder along with an AR.
“I’m clean,” he muttered. “I didn’t see anyone watching me.”
He unslung the rifle and handed it to her. “One mag, thirty rounds.”
She took it. “The council’s okay?”
“Still up at the cave, but I don’t think the militia cares anymore. They’re evacuating.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. “You okay?”
“So far. But they’ve set charges on the bridge.” She told him about talking to the woman who said there was no way out along the river, but that it appeared all the trucks were going there.
“Then they’ve got a backdoor, somehow. Maybe there’s a ford up there, somewhere. They head into Mexico, come back across one at a time, maybe at another ford.”
“I don’t know . . . Let’s take a peek.”
They edged around to the front of the truck and looked down the hill. A couple of townspeople were lingering there, along with a crowd of militia. Everybody was looking across the bridge.
As they watched, in the lights from the Mexican border station, the line of militia at the far end of the bridge, the Mexican side, suddenly and all at once, broke and began trotting toward the American side. The militiamen on the near side of the bridge jogged into the border station’s parking lot and began loading into the pickups parked there.
Across the river, the school bus edged onto the bridge.
Rodriguez, Ochoa, and her husky helper hurried up the hill, and as they got close to the truck, turned back, and then Ochoa, with a boost from Rodriguez, got on the shoulders of the big guy. She began recording the militia running off the bridge.
“They can’t, what’s going on?” Letty asked. “I told the people in El Paso to warn the caravan to stay off the bridge, but they’re coming . . .”