The Un-coyote

I had to chuckle.

"I wouldn't call it exciting. It was dangerous though. If we'd been caught, you and your mother would probably be going to a Sacrevista jail right now."

Maria stroked my arm.

"We aren't though and that's because of you. Is there some way I can show my thanks?"

"No, not really."

Maria frowned.

"I can't even buy you a cup of coffee?"

"No. You and your mother need to get settled before you do anything else."

I said good-bye to Maria at the relocation center in Los Encinos and then drove home. I'd rented an apartment just ten miles from the relocation center by then, so fifteen minutes later, I was sitting on my couch and sucking down a beer. It was only about six in the morning, but doing what I'd just done had pumped me up. The beer would help me fall asleep.

It was about two when I woke up and looked for something to eat. My fridge was pretty bare, so I got dressed and went grocery shopping. I was back home and waiting for my frozen pizza to cook when my cell phone buzzed. The caller ID said "North Mexico Unemployment Office". In reality, that was the relocation center, and I wondered why they would be calling me. They had strict orders from Juan to never call me unless it was some sort of emergency.

I recognized the voice as soon as she spoke.

"Mr. Gaines?"

"Maria, how did you get this number?"

"The secretary went to the restroom so I looked up your name on her phone list while she was gone. I hope you don't mind, but I would like to talk to you."

"Well, Maria, I've done about all I can for you. The relocation center will help you find a job and a place to live. Just give them a little time."

"What I need to talk to you about is me. Can we meet somewhere, somewhere private?"

"How private?"

"Somewhere nobody can hear us."

Call me a suspicious bastard if you want, but I didn't want to be seen picking anyone up at the relocation center. The name on the front of the building was "North Mexico Unemployment Office", but it was possible the Sacrevista Bureau of Investigation had figured out what it really was and might be watching it. It would be better for both Maria and I if I picked her up someplace else. She was waiting in a little taco shop three blocks from the relocation center, and she smiled around a mouthful of taco when I walked inside.

I bought a couple of tacos for my dinner, and Maria followed me out the door to my truck. Five minutes later we left the city limits behind and drove out into the open country.

Maria was quiet until I pulled off the road and into a long lane that led back to a farmhouse. I shut off the engine and then turned to Maria.

"So what was so important you didn't want anyone else to hear?"

Maria was looking at her feet.

"When you brought mother and me across the border I was really scared, but it was also really exciting."

"OK. So what does that have to do with wanting to talk to me?"

"Well, I liked the exciting part and I want to do it again."

"You want to go back?"

"No, not ever, but I do want to help you bring other people across."

I shook my head.

"Maria, you don't want to do that. You should be finding a job in North Mexico and getting on with your life. That's why I brought you across, so you could do that. Your mother needs you too."

Maria looked up at me and smiled.

"Mother has relatives in Mexico City and she's on a bus to there now. She'll be fine without me. The job I might find is supervising in another factory. I like doing that, but it's not very exciting."

I shook my head again.

"Maria, I don't need a helper."

"Yes you do. If I hadn't helped you, you'd never have gotten us all across before daylight. A couple of the men were afraid you wouldn't, and if you left them behind, they were going to try to make it across on their own. If I hadn't been there helping, they'd have tried to do it and they'd have gotten caught. Then Sacrevista would find out how you get people across the border. They'd have waited until the next time and arrested you and everybody you had with you."

I'd figured out that much from hearing the two men she'd talked about. My Spanish isn't great, but it was good enough I understood the conversation between the two men. As much as I hated to admit it, Maria had a point. By the time most people were within a mile of the border, they'd do anything to get across, and if those two had made a run for it, they'd have endangered me and everybody else. I wasn't ready to give in though.

"Maria, you don't have any idea what you'd be getting into, and I don't want to have to be thinking about keeping you safe and getting people across the border at the same time. That's a recipe for failure at both."

Maria frowned.

"You wouldn't have to worry about keeping me safe. I can do that all by myself."

"How would you do that? You were born and raised in the city. You don't know about the desert and you sure as hell don't know anything about the Sacrevista Border Patrol."

Her face looked like she wasn't going to give up very easily.

"I know a lot more than you think I do. My neighbor was an SBP agent. He liked me and since I wanted to leave, I thought it might be good to know what they do and how they do it so I sort of convinced him to tell me."

"Oh, and just how did you convince him to do that? From what I hear, all that stuff is top secret in Sacrevista. He could have gotten into a lot of trouble by telling you."

Maria giggled.

"I convinced him the same way any woman would convince any man to do what she wants him to do. I slept with him until he told me what I wanted to know."

"You pimped yourself out?"

"No, it wasn't like that. He was kind of a nice guy so I just let him do what he wanted to do. I didn't ask him to tell me anything, but after a while, he started telling me about what he did every day at work."

"So you think you know all about them now?"

"No, but I know enough to know how not to get caught."

"But you don't know about the desert, do you?"

Maria smiled.

"In high school, one of our required classes for each grade was environmental science. My senior year, we studied the desert for six weeks and we took three field trips there. I know about rattlesnakes, gila monsters and scorpions and what to do if I see one. There's nothing much else in the desert that can hurt you except the heat, so you just don't do much out in the sun. What else is there to know in order to stay alive in the desert?"

I thought I had her with that.

"How about finding directions in the dark or fixing up somebody who does get hurt?"

Maria grinned.

"Well, you have to have something to do, don't you?"

I didn't like the idea at first. I'm sort of a do-it-all-myself kind of guy. It had worked very well for me for most of my life and I had to think about what having a partner would mean. I was still thinking I didn't want any part of that when something caused me to reconsider.

If I'd been watching for anything going on around us like I normally would have, I probably wouldn't have changed my mind. When I heard the tap on my side window and turned around, I cursed myself for being so careless. The barrel of the pistol pointed at my face looked like the barrel of an M1A4 tank at that range, and the guy holding the pistol wasn't smiling.

"Driver, get out of the truck. Passenger, put your hands on the dash and stay where you are."

It was obvious the guy wasn't a cop. A cop wouldn't have stood right in front of my driver's side door. He'd have been standing a few feet away and covering me with his pistol. That was so what I was going to do couldn't happen.

When I swung the truck door open, I did it with as much force as I could muster. It caught the guy by surprise and knocked him flat on his ass. I was watching his pistol as I jumped out of the truck and ran around the door to keep him down. He didn't drop it like I'd hoped. Instead he lay there on his back with the pistol pointed at my belly.

He wasn't a cop, but he'd had some military training at sometime or other. What he'd done was the same thing I'd been taught in the Army -- no matter what, never lose your weapon and never take your eyes off your opponent. I raised my hands and stood there while he slowly got to his feet.

"Nice try, asshole", he said. "Now, lean against the truck and spread your legs."

I was in the process of doing that when the blast of a small caliber pistol barked from inside the truck cab and the guy grabbed his belly. He was still standing when there were two more shots from the truck. I saw two small red spots appear in his chest just before he fell to the ground.

Maria ran around my truck a few seconds later with her purse in one hand and a small semi-automatic pistol in the other. When she saw the guy wasn't moving, she moved the safety on the pistol to "safe" and put it in her purse, then looked up at me.

"Is he dead?"

I felt for a pulse on the guys neck, but couldn't find one.

"Yes, he is, but where did you get a pistol and why did you shoot him? I could have talked our way out of whatever he had in mind."

Maria was shaking like a leaf. She took a couple deep breaths to calm down before she answered me.

"No, you couldn't have. I know who he is, or at least what he is. He's an undercover SBI agent. He'd have taken us both back to Sacrevista."

"Maria, how did you figure all that out just by seeing him?"

"Look at his pistol. Notice anything different about it?"

I really hadn't paid much attention to the guy's firearm except to watch where it was pointing. When I picked it up, I saw what Maria was talking about.

Within a month of Sacrevista becoming a country, all firearms, even BB and pellet guns, had been outlawed, and importation of any into Sacrevista was banned. Sacrevista then offered a reward for any information about any existing firearms, and within a year, almost all had been confiscated and destroyed.

The only remaining legal firearms were with the military and the SBI, and those were imported from China under a special exemption. They were also easily identifiable by the words "Property of Sacrevista" in a light green ceramic coating on the slide or receiver. The words served one specific purpose. It was nearly impossible to remove the ceramic printing without leaving evidence of doing so, so any firearm so coated or that had been stripped would stick out like sore thumb as a stolen firearm.

If any person except a member of the military or SBI had one, it had to be stolen. By back-tracing the serial number hidden inside the frame, the person originally issued the firearm could be charged with neglectful storage and prosecuted. The penalty for losing your firearm was twenty years in prison. As a result, the holders of those firearms kept track of them better than they did their wives and kids. There had been only one case of a stolen, government issued firearm since they'd first been issued, and that rifle had been stolen after the SBI agent had been killed in a car chase with an illegal emigrant.

"OK, so he has to be an SBI agent because of his pistol. Where did you get the one you used to kill him and how the hell did you learn to use it?"

Maria shrugged.

"There are still guns in Sacrevista if you know who to ask and if you have enough money. Remember I told you about my neighbor? He told me about a suspected gun-smuggler they were watching. I knew by then that I was going to try to leave, and I didn't know what I might find when I did. There are other men bringing people across, but they're like the gang members who used to bring people from Mexico to the US. I thought I should be prepared to defend myself.

I went to that man's house and bought my pistol and a hundred bullets. That night after it got dark, I put the pistol and the bullets in a plastic bag and hid them in one of the downspouts of my neighbor's house so even if someone searched my house, they wouldn't find anything. I knew they'd never search my neighbor's house since he worked for the SBI. The night I left, I got them back and took them with me.

I learned to shoot back before guns were illegal. My dad liked to shoot and took me to a range and taught me how when I was ten. I'm a pretty good shot as long as the target isn't too far away. I haven't shot a pistol in years, but I didn't forget how to do it."

"Why didn't the SBI track you down and arrest you? I'm sure if they were going to raid the place, they were monitoring who went in and out."

Maria grinned.

"Oh, I knew they were, but the person they saw at the house was an older, white woman, not a young Hispanic woman. I padded my clothes a little and wore a wig and makeup to make me look that way. I also knew they'd follow me, so after I bought my pistol, I went to a crowded park and went to the restroom. I went into a stall, took off the wig and makeup and changed into the clothes in my purse. By the time they would have checked to see what I was doing in there so long, I was on a bus and going home."

Maria seemed to be pretty smart because she'd thought things out a lot better than I expected, but I still had one more question.

"Why did you think it was necessary to kill him?"

Maria frowned.

"One of my employees at the factory tried to get over the border by himself. I saw on television that the Border Patrol had caught him and that he was sent to prison without even getting a trial. That's what happens if they catch you trying to escape, you go to prison and they take everything you left behind. The only way to stop that from happening to both of us was to kill him."

I'd heard as much from Juan about people apprehended trying to cross the border without the required papers. Sacrevista knew if they let the person go, they'd just try again, so they made sure the person couldn't. It was sort of like when the US had put suspected terrorists in the prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba. They went in, but few ever came out alive.

Those captures and imprisonment were intentionally made public to deter anyone else from trying to do the same thing. It didn't stop anybody except the unlucky people who got caught, but I suppose the government of Sacrevista thought it would.

Well, now I had a problem I couldn't very well handle by myself. Sacrevista would know where the guy was supposed to be and when he didn't check in, the SBI would start looking for him. If he was even halfway competent, he'd have left information about what he was looking for and where. When he was found dead, I'd have more than one SBI agent on my tail, and my people smuggling days would be over.

Once I'd made a couple of trips, Juan had given me a new cell phone, a cell phone encrypted using the latest military software and hardware. That way, we didn't have to meet so he could tell me about my next trip. I used that cell phone to call Juan.

I never heard what happened to the guy. Juan just told me to drive back home and he'd take care of it. I never saw or read anything about a guy being found dead out on a country road or an abandoned car or anything else related to what happened. I also didn't ask Juan what happened. I figured it was better if I didn't know.

I did take Maria back to my place then. I wasn't sure if the guy knew who she was or not, but the risk was too great to take her back to the relocation center. On the way, I did some thinking.

Maria was one gutsy woman and she'd saved both our asses. There had been a few times I'd wished I had someone I could trust along with me on one of my trips. I was doing all right by myself, but like I said, my Spanish isn't all that great. Sometimes it was difficult to explain what I wanted my clients to do.

Little kids were often a problem. They were scared to death anyway, and a strange man telling them what to do only made that worse. Maybe a woman like Maria might have better luck.

There was also the problem I had with some women. Women tended to get emotional at times and stop thinking straight. It had been a tough job to convince a couple that they'd be all right if they just did what I said. Maria could probably be more convincing than I could.

When we got back to my place, I called Juan again and explained what Maria wanted to do and asked what he thought about it. He said he'd do some checking and get back to me.

Getting back to me took a week and a half, during which Maria lived with me. I had a two bedroom apartment at the time, so she took my spare bedroom. It was a little odd having someone there all the time. It was more odd after that first night.

All I had in the fridge was some frozen pizza and dinners and a case of beer. That first night, Maria ate the pizza and drank a beer, but asked if I'd take her shopping the next day. I needed some stuff anyway so I said that would be fine.

It took most of eight hours before Maria was satisfied. She'd been cashing her paychecks and keeping the cash at home for months, so our first stop was a money broker. Maria didn't do too bad, considering the state Sacrevista was in at the time. She got about fifty percent when she exchanged her Sacrevista currency for US dollars.

I stood around with my thumb up my ass while she picked out clothes so she'd have something to wear besides her black jeans and black shirt. Three hours and four stores later, the back seat of my truck was filled with sacks and boxes. We hit a grocery store then, and that set me back a couple hundred. Maria did let me buy a few frozen dinners, but the rest went to staples, meat, and milk.

That night, I ate like I would have in a restaurant. Maria's fajitas were as good as any I'd ever had, and she promised a pot roast for the next night. By the end of the week and a half I was starting to feel my pants getting a little tighter.

It was the Monday before the next new moon that Juan called me.

"Mr. Gaines, I have ten people who will be at the meeting center in two days. That will give you a day to get them to your cave and you can cross the next night. Six are adults and four are children under the age of six. I assume you can be ready."

Ten was a lot of people given the current border conditions, so I told Juan I'd rather take them in two groups. He was apologetic, but wouldn't change his mind.

"Mr. Gaines, I understand your concern, but unfortunately I can not split them up. They are mostly one family -- two brothers and their wives and children, and two other people. You should not have a problem if you take Maria along."

"Maria checked out?"

"Yes, Mr. Gaines. She underwent a level one background check before being escorted to your meeting place. She has no record of anything improper. This time we investigated her parents, grandparents, and one sister. Her grandparents and father are deceased, but you brought her mother across with her and her sister has asked to return to North Mexico and will be part of the this group. I have no doubts Maria will be an asset to you and I welcome her to our little team."

The next night, Maria and I loaded up packs with enough supplies for ten people. After the car from the relocation center dropped us off in a gorge hidden from the border, Maria and I hiked to my cave. With just the two of us, slipping across while the guards were at the end of their rounds was pretty easy. Half an hour later, Maria and I were in my cave and getting things ready for the next trip.

I've never used lights in my cave because it's pitch black in the desert and any light shows for miles. It usually doesn't bother my clients because they're tired from walking from the vineyard to the cave and go to sleep quickly. As a result, Maria and I had to go about getting everything set up by using our night vision goggles. They were the latest panoramic view design and used infrared LED's to project a cone of infrared light that was then reflected back to the sensors in the goggles.