"Jesus, get a room."
He folded the newspaper, stood, and headed up front to join Ranger Hank and the pilots.
"I'll be in the cockpit."
"Me, too," Mandy said with a little giggle.
She slid down his lap and unbuckled his cowboy belt. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes "Bode, honey, are you a member of the Mile High Club?"
— and listened to the engines humming outside while inside Mandy "Oh, baby."
Two hundred fifty miles due south of the governor's Gulfstream, Jesse Rincon said, " El bebe viene de pies. "
"What does that mean, Doctor?" the woman cried in Spanish.
"That means your baby is coming out the wrong way. Feet first. That is not good. Inez!"
Over six thousand men, women, and children lived in this colonia, many more children than women or men. He had never met this woman named Alma until she had walked into the clinic an hour ago fully dilated and experiencing contractions. She had awakened that morning in Mexico, but when contractions began she had waded across the Rio Grande; she wanted her child to be an American citizen. She knew the doctor in Colonia Angeles would deliver her baby. There were now Mexican businesses that arranged tourist visas and stateside vacations for wealthy pregnant Mexican women-often wives of drug lords-offering a stay at a luxurious resort, facials and body wraps at a spa, shopping sprees, and delivery of an American citizen at a private hospital with a birth certificate to evidence that fact.
Poor women just waded across the river.
Alma should be admitted to a hospital for an emergency C-section, in case complications arose, such as the umbilical cord compressing or wrapping around the baby's neck and depriving the child of oxygen; and an anesthesiologist should be on stand-by. But Jesse did not even have a receptionist standing by.
"Inez!"
Of course, the hospitals would turn her away. She was a Mexican without money. He might have to perform a C-section there in the clinic. Alone, if Inez did not return soon.
"Inez! Why is she always gone when I need her?"
The woman named Alma screamed with pain.
"?Ay, Dios mio! "
"Oh-my-God!" Mandy said. "Is there any place to shop?"
Bode chuckled. Okay, she wasn't Phi Beta Kappa, but she had skills. She was buckled in, applying lipstick, and staring out the window as they landed at the private airstrip on John Ed Johnson's ranch outside Fort Davis, population 1,000, in far West Texas. Located four hundred miles west of Austin, one hundred seventy-five miles east of El Paso, and eighty miles north of the Rio Grande, the deserted, desolate land might seem a perfect drug-smuggling route for the Mexican cartels. But wolves and mountain lions and even black bears roamed the land and made the journey north tricky if not deadly. From the air, the land seemed as barren and drought-stricken as the rest of Texas. But on the ground, in the Davis Mountains, hundreds of springs kept the land alive. Bode felt a sense of excitement surge through his body. He couldn't wait until the next morning when he would saddle up a horse and ride the land.
And shoot a lion.
The woman cried at the pain as if she had been shot.
"Inez!"
The clinic felt like a steam bath. Jesse wiped sweat from his face. He sat on the stool between her spread legs and crouched close to the birth canal, waiting and hoping the child would deliver without complications. He put his hand inside her vagina and spread his fingers, trying to create room. One tiny foot appeared. Now the other. And the legs. The buttocks emerged next, then the back, and then… the head did not follow.
The baby was stuck.
Jesse did not pull. He waited. But he could not wait long because the baby's head would compress the umbilical cord against the birth canal. The baby could suffocate. Jesse slid his fingers deep into Alma's vagina and along the baby's face. He found the nose then pushed his hand back against the canal to create space so the baby could breathe. He waited. And sweated. Alma screamed. He heard the clinic door open, but with his hand inside Alma, he could not raise his head enough to see in the mirror on the wall.
"Inez, where have you been? Wash your hands and put on gloves. Hurry."
He heard the water running. But neither the scent he now inhaled nor the voice he now heard belonged to Inez Quintanilla.
"Is it breech?"
Jesse froze. Was it his imagination or was it really her voice? He slowly turned to the voice… to the governor's wife, standing there in full, pulling on a white coat and latex gloves. The first thought that entered his mind as he sat there with his hand in one woman's vagina while he stared at another woman was, She changed her itinerary. The second thought was, Yes, there truly is such a thing as love at first sight. Alma screamed again.
"Yes."
"We need to get her to a hospital."
"No money and no time-the baby is here."
A few minutes later, he breathed in the scent of birth. Dr. Jesse Rincon delivered his 1,164th baby. He still had never lost a mother or child during birth.
John Ed Johnson carried himself with the bearing of a man accustomed to getting his way. He was seventy-one years old and stood six feet three inches tall just as he had when he played defensive end for the Longhorns back in the late fifties and early sixties. He sported a bald head that was now covered by an LBJ Stetson; he wore a plaid flannel shirt, khaki pants, and brown round-toed boots. He boasted a net worth of $5 billion. Often.
"Governor."
John Ed greeted Bode Bonner with a big smile and a strong handshake as soon as he got out of the Hummer his host had sent to pick them up at the airstrip.
"Damn, John Ed, you're still strong enough to break a halfback in two."
"Those were the days."
John Ed had led his team in tackles, sacks, and opponents' broken bones. He could have gone pro, but the pay back then didn't merit his time. He had majored in oiclass="underline" how to find it, drill it, produce it, sell it, and get rich off it. For the last fifty years, he had done exactly that. He slapped Bode on the back but his eyes went to Mandy.
"And who's this little gal?"
Mandy stuck out her manicured hand and offered her perky professional pose.
"Mandy Morgan, the governor's aide."
"And what exactly do you aid him with?"
"Whatever he requires."
"I like the sound of that."
John Ed greeted Jim Bob and Ranger Hank then led them into the lodge. John Edward Johnson's hunting lodge was not a rustic cabin with Spartan accommodations. It was a twenty-room log structure with an indoor hot tub, swimming pool, sauna, billiards room, bowling alley, tennis court, skeet range, concierge, private chef, and Hummer driver.
Oil had been good to John Ed Johnson.
"This here's Pedro," John Ed said by way of introducing the middle-aged Latino who greeted them at the front door. "Anything you need, Governor, you tell Pedro, he'll take care of it."
"Lunch is served, Senor John Ed," Pedro said.
"Hope you folks are hungry," John Ed said. "Rosita's cooked up a mess of Mexican food special for the governor of Texas."
They followed John Ed through the foyer and into a great room with a two-story wall of windows offering a majestic view of the Davis Mountains. The room featured a manly aroma from the wood and leather and animal heads on the wall and a full-grown grizzly bear stuffed and standing there as if about to pounce on its prey.
"Shot that big bastard up in Montana," John Ed said. "Right between the eyes."
The Johnson ranch comprised twenty-five square miles, the entire perimeter of which was surrounded by a twenty-foot-tall game fence. Inside the fence exotic game roamed freely. Outside the fence Mexicans tended to the grounds, cleaned the lodge, and cooked the food.