Ramirez’s breath billowed before him. He fished in the brush with gloved hands until his finger closed on something taut; pulling, he opened a crude gate wrapped with an equally crude camouflage of brush to reveal a smaller road leading off the main track.
“She’s ready,” he called.
The truck eased through the gap, turning. It began to slip and drop. Oscar double-clutched as the vehicle tipped off; it seemed to fall, sliding down the incline in a shower of dust, coming at last to rest on an even narrower road. Ramirez swung the gate shut and scrambled down.
The truck picked its way down the switchback in the dark. Ramirez hung out of the cab, watching. It was tough work. Twice the fool Oscar almost killed them, halted by Ramirez’s cry, “No! No! Jesus Mary,” only inches before spilling them off into blank space. It was a younger man’s game and Ramirez’s heart beat heavily. Once he even walked ahead, aware of the dark peaks all around him, of the stars and the scalding cold air and the half-moon, whose presence unnerved him. He’d never been here before in the gray moonlight. He crossed himself and swore to light a candle at the shrine of the Virgin.
Finally he ordered, “Kill it.”
Ramirez climbed out of the cab and went back to the rear doors.
If you’re going to do it, here’s the time.
He took out the pistol. He opened the doors. He could smell the men inside, dense and close.
“Let’s go, little boys. Nothing but American money up ahead,” he joked in Spanish, and stood back to watch them clamber gingerly out. They came one by one — five youngsters and an older man — shivering in the piercing cold. Ramirez waited, not sure what he would do.
He backed off a little and whispered, “Hey, gringo. Come ahead. We’re waiting. Cold out here.”
There was no sound from the truck.
“Hey? You fall out? What’s with this hombre, eh?” He leaned forward, into the interior, and could not quite make out if —
The blow smashed him to the earth. Before he could rise, the man was on him. He could feel a blade.
“Patrón, patrón!” shouted Oscar, rushing to them with a shotgun.
The pistol was pried from Ramirez’s fingers; the man rose and stood back.
“Hey,” called Ramirez. “Don’t do nothing stupid. The gun is for your protection. From federales.”
“What should I do, patrón?” asked Oscar.
“Tell him to drop that shotgun,” said the man.
“Drop it,” yelled Ramirez. The gun fell to the dust.
“Now get up,” the man said.
Ramirez climbed to his feet, shaking his head. He’d been hit with something heavy, something metal.
“I was just making sure you don’t bounce out,” he said. “Don’t do nothing crazy with that gun.”
The tall man tossed the pistol into the scrub. Ramirez marked its fall next to a saguaro cactus that looked like a crucifix. He could pick it up on the way back.
“Okay?” he asked. “No guns now. We’re friends.”
“Let’s go,” said the man.
Ramirez walked ahead, pushing through the knot of men. He didn’t wait to see what the tall man would do. He walked ahead a short way down a path, hearing them shuffle into line behind him. The moon’s soft light turned the landscape to the color of bone. Ramirez turned.
He spoke in Spanish, quickly and efficiently.
“Now say it for me,” said the tall man. “I don’t have that language.”
“Just telling them how it goes from here. Two hundred meters down the slope. Then a flat place, over a dry creek, then through some trees. A gully, a last field to cross. Okay? No tricks. Just the truth, just a walk in the moon. Some compadres of mine wait on the other side. And you are with your Tio Sam, eh?”
“Then do it,” said the man.
Ramirez led them down the incline, thinking of himself, stupid! stupid! and trying not to mourn excessively the lost fortune. This hombre was a smart one!
The ground was stony and treacherous, strewn with cactus and jumping cholla and other bitter little plants, leather things that caught and tore at him. The feathery moonlight fell, light as powder. Ramirez licked his dry lips. The trees, twisted little oaks, were widely spaced among tufts and rills of scrub and he guided the clumsy party until at last they passed between the last of the trees and came to a stream, dry now, leaped the bed, and gathered finally at the edge of a moon-flushed meadow.
“Hold up, muchachos,” he called. He could hear them breathing laboriously behind him.
He scurried ahead. Here was the guarantee: a geographic freak in the landscape, where the underlying sandstone had been drained away until the land itself collapsed, forming this depression, this sudden, unexpected, unmapped flat stretch in the heart of otherwise impassable mountains. Accessible only by the lost road, it was a place where a man could walk across, where no fences had yet been built, where no border patrolman had ever set foot. He’d discovered it in 1963 and had been guiding the drug shipments through since then, three, maybe four times a year, during the dark of the moon, and never been caught.
But never before in the moonlight. He glanced at the white thing above him, feeling its cold.
He crossed himself.
He peered ahead. A cool breeze pressed against his face.
He took a flashlight from his coat.
Out there, if the arrangements had worked, were two Americans awaiting his signal.
Holy Mother, let them be there. Let them be efficient, dedicated gringos who follow orders.
He blinked twice.
Come on, damn you. You had plenty of time to get ready. The money is good.
A minute passed.
Come on, damn you.
Two blinks in answer.
He scuttled back.
“Done,” he said. “Another five hundred meters. Then you pay — right, amigos? Then they’ll take you to Arivaca by back roads. And you’ll be in the American Nogales by sunup.”
“Thank you, Virgin,” somebody said.
“Hurry, damn you all. They won’t wait. You too, gringo.”
They filed past him, the norteamericano last, his pack across one shoulder.
Good-bye, strange man. I hope never to see you again.
They picked their way across the flat in the moonlight. In a little while Ramirez lost them, even with the moon. They’d made it, made it easily, and then the searchlight came on and a harsh voice was yelling over the loudspeaker, “Manos arriba! Manos arriba! Hands up, hands up, motherfuckers!”
They froze in the light. Ramirez watched.
Curse my mother, that whore, he thought.
The voice from above: “Don’t move, amigos. Get those hands up. Get ’em up! Manos arriba.”
They stood stiffly, hands high in the glare of the single beam.
Ramirez thought, I ought to get out of here. Jesus Mary.
For Christ Jesus’ sake, run, he told himself. But he watched in sick fascination.
An American officer — in the deep green of the Border Patrol and a baseball cap and carrying a shotgun — came into the light.
“Face down. Down, goddammit. Descendente pronto!”
The men in the light looked at each other in panic. One young boy turned back to Ramirez. The gringo stood erect.
“Down, down,” screamed the policeman.