The American side of the border remained silent.
Until it wasn’t.
The first news of the massacre hit the airwaves three days after the Ciudad Juarez raids began. According to early reports, six people, women and children, had been found dead on the Mexican side of the border. They were protesters, and their bodies had been riddled with bullets. Over the course of the morning, the number increased: six, then twelve, then finally twenty-six people, all women and children, found shot to death on the banks of the Rio Grande. Everyone figured it for a drug cartel hit.
Then the footage came out.
Ellen saw it on the evening news, as the network anchor intoned, “What you are about to watch is very graphic. Younger viewers are advised not to watch.” She then cut to grainy, close-range video of a man in a National Guard uniform, from behind, walking up to a group of tents. “Get out of thar,” the National Guardsman said in a thick Texas accent. “Get out of thar, you little wetbacks.”
A few children, rubbing their eyes, came scurrying out of their tents, their mothers following. Seeing the barrel of a gun, they raised their hands. The screen went white with the fired shots: flash after flash, again and again. When the night vision calmed, the smoking bodies of two dozen innocents lay on the ground.
The screen cut back to the anchor. “Our sources on the ground tell us that this tape has not yet been verified,” she said. “No one has yet claimed credit for this horrific attack. Calls for comment to Ellen Hawthorne, chief of staff to Governor Bubba Davis, have gone unreturned.”
Ellen quickly took out her phone—and sure enough, there in her messages were two voice mails from a 212 area code. Son of a bitch, she thought.
Now the phone rang again.
“Ellen,” said Bubba, “get your ass back to Austin tonight.”
“I want some answers on this, Ellen,” Davis said, pacing back and forth, his thick body tense with energy. “I’ve got the president of the United States calling me every five minutes, and I’m putting him off for as long as I can.”
Ellen gripped her fists. “I didn’t ask for this, Bubba. I did it as a favor to you.”
“Some favor,” he said. “I’ve got two dozen dead kids and their mamas and a boy in a National Guard uniform responsible for all of it. A boy I kept here in Texas instead of sending him to New York like Prescott wanted me to do. Do we know who the little bastard was?”
“Yes,” she answered. “We do.” Before leaving for Austin, Ellen had spent the night questioning all of the command-level National Guard officers she could get her hands on. A consensus seemed to be emerging on the name and nature of the culprit. And it wasn’t pretty.
“His name,” she said, “seems to be James Eastin McLawrence. Buck sergeant.”
“Don’t they all have three names,” Davis muttered.
She passed him a photo of a young man in National Guard uniform. His eyes were open a shade too far, bright blue and off-putting. His mouth was slack. “McLawrence joined the Guard after dropping out of high school and getting his GED. Not a stellar candidate for higher rank. Barely at the bottom rung. He’s full active duty. His parents live over near Lubbock. No friends in the Guard, at least none that wanted to speak with us.”
“What set him off?”
“We don’t have any hard info on that yet, Governor. But there are at least a couple of rumors. One says that he had it out for illegal immigrants ever since his dad lost his job at a manufacturing plant that moved south of the border. Another says he was short on cash and paid by the cartels. The third says he’s just crazy. Simple as that.”
‘That doesn’t make things simple for me. Who’s the cameraman?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Davis leaned back against his desk. “Ellen, I need you to go to New York.”
“Why New York?”
“Prescott wants me there. And I don’t want to go. I can’t go. I’ve shown him up in front of the entire country, and now he wants me there to humiliate me in front of the entire country for this massacre. Hell, he could have a local DA down here draw up charges against me so that they’re frog-walking me when I get off the plane. It’s a setup.”
Ellen shook her head. “I still don’t understand.”
“They won’t touch you because of Brett.”
That actually drew a laugh from her.
“What’s so funny?” asked the governor.
“You just don’t know Prescott. He hates Brett. He’s always hated Brett.”
“But that doesn’t matter, Ellen. Your husband’s a national hero. You go to New York, the story isn’t gonna be some dead Mexicans south of the border. It’s going to be the reunification of the soldier and his wife. Prescott won’t see it coming. He’ll want me to negotiate with him, and instead, I’ll be giving him the V-J Day nurse picture. Your husband’s still got his admirers.”
Ellen had to admit that the idea appealed to her. She hadn’t seen Brett in nearly a year now; she’d missed him awfully. Every time they flashed his face across the television, her chest ached from missing him so much.
“And what do I say to Prescott?” she said.
“You tell that son of a bitch that we’re not going to back down off the border, not for him or anybody. And if he asks you about McLawrence, you tell him that we’re investigating. Turn down any federal offers for help. We don’t need the feds down here mucking up our operation.”
“That won’t be easy. Cross-border murder falls under federal jurisdiction.”
“He’s busy. He won’t mind. And it’ll allow him to save face, to put me up for public scourging. I’ll be the bad guy southern hick who won’t let the sweet-faced Yankee down here to fix things. That’s what the media’s looking for anyway, right?” He sighed.
“And what’s your endgame?” she said.
“Endgame? Darlin’, this thing here’s been going on since the Alamo. There’s no endgame. Just a game that won’t end any way except us holding our ground or cutting and running. But don’t worry—you just play him for time. We’ll find our Private McLawrence. And we’ll string him up by the balls. You say that to the cameras. How soon can you be ready to fly?”
Her heart beat heavily in her chest. Brett, she thought. Brett.
“I can be ready tonight.”
Her phone rang as she sat in the National Guard terminal, waiting for her flight to gas up. It wasn’t a number she recognized. It came up as a 212 area code; this time, she figured, she’d best pick up to at least hear what the media had prepared. At worst, she could give a “no comment.”
But when she picked up, it was Brett.
“Honey, don’t come to New York.” He sounded winded, hoarse.
“Brett, what’s going on?”
“I can’t say for certain yet. Just don’t come to New York. Something bad is going down.”
“How do you know that?”
“No time to explain…”
The line went dead.
Soledad
