“Why the charade?” Flavio asked.
“Since we’ve tightened up the corridor crossings in El Paso, the smuggling networks have shifted west to the more dangerous desert and mountain zones. We’re not just after coyotes and soldiers on the pad. We want to shut down this operation on both sides of the border before the Bootheel turns into a sieve like southern Arizona.”
“Why did you keep the undercover agent’s identity secret?” Flavio asked.
“Because we think he was only suspected of being a cop,” Hazen replied. “Confirming it would have blown the operation completely.”
“What about the van I saw on the highway?” Kerney asked.
“Found abandoned in Phoenix. We matched the tires on it to tracks in the desert.”
“Agent Bratton is in over his head,” Kerney said. “I suppose Fidel wants it that way. Put the rookie out there with no training or guidance, give him a lot of misinformation, and let him flounder around for all to see. But why drag me in on it?”
Hazen smiled. “You and Sapian were doing too good of a job. Fidel had to coopt you, so he borrowed Mendoza as a target and fed you a line of bull to get you to back off.”
“He could have just leveled with me.”
Hazen smiled and shrugged. “It was his call.”
Kerney didn’t smile back. Although he’d been played by Fidel for a good cause, he still didn’t like being used as a patsy. “Okay, enough history. What’s the status of the investigation?”
“Sorry, I can’t tell you that.”
“Do you or any other federal agency have any other interdiction operations under way I should know about? ATF? DEA?” Kerney asked.
Hazen shook his head. “Nope. Why do you ask?”
Feeling unnecessarily exploited, Kerney decided not to voice his suspicions about Walter Shaw. “Just curious.”
“Can I tell Agent Fidel that you’ll continue to assist him?”
Kerney pushed back his chair. “I’ll play along. What was the dead agent’s name?”
“Roberto Sisneros.”
Kerney stood and shook Hazen’s hand. “Thanks for your candor. Tell Fidel that he can expect to hear from me about his little game playing the next time we meet.”
Hazen laughed. “I’ll pass it along.”
Johnny Jordan stood at the barricade to the Playas access road. Traffic had been closed so an aerial camera could film an overhead master shot of the town. A few steps away Susan Berman was talking to the second unit director and his cameraman. When the plane passed overhead, cars on the streets had to be moving, pedestrians had to be walking about, and kids had to be playing in the ball field or riding their bikes on the sidewalks.
Up at the village dozens of extras were standing by, waiting for their cue. Johnny was astonished at the effort it took to get a fifteen-second bird’s-eye view of townspeople going about their normal lives.
He glanced over at Susan Berman. Last night she’d turned down his invitation to drive to Deming for dinner at a Mexican restaurant, but he hadn’t given up on her. Three weeks in Playas without a woman just wouldn’t cut it.
After the plane took off from the Playas airstrip, the pilot made a few practice runs before the actual shooting began. Then it was all over in a matter of minutes. Johnny turned to see his sister’s car approaching the barricade. He walked to her, and she stopped on the pavement.
“I hear you’re playing house with Barry Hingle,” he said with a grin and shake of his head.
“Have you seen Kerney?” Julia asked.
Johnny hunkered down at the side of the car. “Not since yesterday. What’s up?”
“I just heard his wife got sent to Iraq.”
“No shit? He didn’t mention it to me. Have you come to comfort him?”
“Is that all you can think about?”
Johnny laughed. “Don’t kid a kidder, Sis. I was there when you first started twitching your hips at all the boys.”
“And you were the first to take advantage of it.”
“Those were the days,” Johnny replied.
Julia stuck her tongue out. “Do you know where Kerney is?”
Johnny shook his head. “Did he have a run-in with Shaw?”
“If he did, Walt didn’t say anything about it to me. Why do you ask?”
“Kerney pumped me for information about him. Except for telling him that Shaw was once your lover, I really didn’t have much to say.”
Julia put the car in gear. “You’re such a jerk, Johnny.”
Johnny leaned in and kissed Julia on the lips. “Are you ready for the cattle drive? We start shooting it tomorrow.”
“It should be fun.”
Men removed the barricade from the road. Julia waved ta-ta with her fingers, smiled, and drove away.
During the next three days Kerney had little time to think of anything other than herding cattle back and forth for the cameras along a ten-mile stretch of the Jordan ranch. Johnny’s rodeo cowboys, and the character actor who played the rancher bedeviled by the BLM officials, all knew how to sit a horse, as did Johnny, Julia, and the locals hired as extras. But the ingenue was a complete disaster on horseback. Although she’d taken riding lessons in preparation for her role, she bounced in the saddle like a raggedy doll whenever her mount broke into a canter.
When her stunt double took over, things went fine. However, several scenes with dialogue required the young woman to be mounted. She had a hard time controlling her horse and jerked the reins every time it moved, making it shy and turn away from the camera. After several failed attempts Usher shot the scenes with her dismounted.
As a circle rider Kerney ate dust on the perimeter of the herd. He wondered if he’d feel self-conscious when cameras started rolling, but he was far too busy prodding cattle back into the fold to pay any attention to them. Fortunately, he had a sound cutting horse with a good mouth named Lucky who did most of the work.
On the second and third mornings there were predawn calls for wardrobe and makeup. All the working hands, stuntmen, and actors exchanged their costumes for identical outfits that were a bit more grungy, and then had their faces smudged and dirtied to make it look like they’d been driving cattle for days. The real cowboys from the area ranches who’d hired on for the movie got a big kick out of it.
Two of the cowboys were Kent Vogt and Alberto “Buster” Martinez, who worked full-time at the Jordan outfit. Vogt, a cheerful, talkative man in his late thirties, loved movie trivia.
During one break Vogt reined in his mount next to Kerney and said, “Did you know Steve McQueen filmed most of Tom Horn just across the state line in the Coronado National Forest?”
“I didn’t know that,” Kerney replied.
Vogt pushed back his cowboy hat to reveal a white forehead above a rosy brown, tan face. “Did you see that movie?”
“I did, a long time ago.”
“Well, I played the boy sitting on the fence who got bushwhacked. My fifteen seconds of fame.”
“No kidding?”
Vogt nodded. “This will be my second time being in a movie. Ain’t that a hoot?” He flicked a rein gently against his horse’s neck. The animal turned smoothly and trotted away in the direction of Buster Martinez.
Grim and reticent, Martinez was the complete opposite of Vogt. Although Kerney didn’t recognize him, the MVD report had listed Martinez as the owner of the pickup truck that had arrived behind Shaw’s panel van at the barn. Kerney had watched Shaw and Martinez drive south toward the Sentinel Butte Ranch where he later found the landing strip and signs of a recent cargo drop.
Kerney’s attempts to draw Buster out had gone nowhere. Pushing fifty, Martinez had an oval face with small, narrow eyes that made him look like he was always squinting. He had a beautiful saddle, obviously custom made, with silver conchos on the cantle, a horn embellished with a sterling silver cap that bore his initials, and fenders tooled in a basket weave pattern. It had to have cost at least three or four thousand dollars new. Kerney wondered how a working cowboy could afford such a luxury.