'Why?'
He pointed. 'That is the Villareal, the motel where the federales stationed here reside.'
But they weren't just residing there; they were waiting for them in military trucks parked across all four lanes. Bode slammed on the brakes and swung the Mercedes around into the northbound lane. He stomped on the accelerator and sped past the policia and soldados heading southbound.
'Go left on Abraham Lincoln,' the doctor said.
Bode turned left and accelerated.
'Now right on Constitucion.'
He swung right.
'Faster! No alto! '
'Don't worry, Doc. I ain't stopping.'
They flew through the stop sign at Venezuela.
'Left on Peru.'
Bode hit the brakes and turned the wheel hard. The sedan fishtailed and sideswiped a Tacos y Barbacoa vendor truck. He straightened out and headed west.
'Now go very fast,' the doctor said.
Bode went very fast. The traffic was one-way, and they were going the right way for a change. They sped past cantinas with drunks loitering outside and small restaurants. In the rearview, Bode could see flashing lights. But they had a lead on them. His breathing came faster now.
'Bode, are you okay?' Lindsay asked.
'I'll get you home.'
'There!' the doctor said. ' Calzada De Los Heroes. The highway west.'
Bode steered onto the highway. Four lanes headed west, so Bode pushed the sedan. They soon cleared the dense part of the city.
'We are outside the city now. Perhaps they will not follow.'
'They're following,' Lindsay said.
'Faster!'
Bode pushed the sedan to ninety. The pain in his gut had gotten worse. Much worse. He clenched back a groan.
'What's that?'
Up ahead, he saw red taillights, as if cars were being stopped.
' Bandidos. '
'You gotta fucking be kidding me.'
'Do not stop, Governor.'
He didn't. He swerved into the oncoming lanes and around an eighteen-wheeler then back into the westbound lanes.
'You drive fast very well, Governor.'
'I been driving in Texas all my life.'
'We will turn soon, toward the river.'
'Bode,' Lindsay said, 'they're getting closer.'
'There!' the doctor said. 'The white cross… Turn!'
Bode slammed on the brakes and veered off the highway.
'There's no road.'
'A dirt road leads to the river.'
Bode steered down a path cut through the desert. The car bottomed out, so he couldn't go fast. His face felt hot; he fought not to pass out.
'They turned in behind us,' Lindsay said.
'The river is just ahead,' the doctor said.
'They're closer!'
'Just beyond that bluff is the river.'
'How do we get down to it?'
'We drive over the bluff.'
'Over the bluff?'
'It is a low bluff. We will drive right into the river. It is not deep, because of the drought. The colonia is just on the other side.'
'Lower the windows.'
'Punch it, Governor.'
Bode punched it.
'Hang on!'
The big Mercedes-Benz sedan flew off the low bluff and belly-flopped into the Rio Grande. The air bags deployed and cushioned the blow. The car settled into the river. They climbed out the open windows and into the river. The water was only a few feet deep. Lindsay and Bode pulled the doctor out of the river and to dry ground against a ten-foot-high bank.
'We must get to the riverbank above,' the doctor said. 'We will be easy targets down here.'
'I'll get you up, Doc.'
Bode hefted the doctor onto his shoulder again, and the pain told him that this would be his last living act. Lindsay scrambled up the dirt side as if she were that tomboy back in ninth grade. Bode grabbed a cane shoot with his left hand and pushed with his legs, the doctor hanging on and Bode's body bleeding out, and his right knee with the four scars burned hot with pain and his mind pulled up memories of lying on a football field with ligaments torn apart, of taking the pain and fighting through the pain, and sucking in air as he was now, and just as then, Bode Bonner refused to give in to the pain. Lindsay reached down to him and he reached up to her but he saw his sister Emma now and he wanted to make the Bonner family proud, so he grunted out one last massive effort… and he stood in Texas again. He dropped to his knees, and the doctor tumbled off his shoulder.
'Thank you, mi amigo,' the doctor said from the ground. 'You have saved our lives.'
Flashing lights appeared across the river.
'They're here!' Lindsay said. 'We've got to get into the colonia.'
She helped the doctor to his feet. He put an arm around the governor's wife. Bode pushed himself to his feet, but his time had come. He was born in Texas, and he would die in Texas. But he had gotten his wife home. He had come for her, as she knew he would. His last great adventure wasn't winning the White House-it was saving his wife. He now looked east and saw the sun rising over the Rio Grande. Over Texas. Perhaps it was the adrenaline or perhaps the delirium that now consumed his mind, but William Bode Bonner stood to his full six-foot-four-inch height and raised his good arm to God and shouted to Texas.
'That was a hell of an adventure!'
Just as he lost consciousness and his body collapsed to the ground, shots rang out from the other side of the river.
FORTY-FOUR
Dying is a way of life on the border.
Lindsay Bonner knew that now. She was a nurse, but she could not deny death. She was a married woman, but she loved two men. Four men had come for her, but only one man would go home. She reached across the hospital bed and touched his face.
Bode Bonner opened his eyes. He blinked hard to focus. He was lying in a bed. In a hospital room. His wife sat next to him. He remembered.
'Doc?'
His wife clenched her jaws and shook her head. He felt tears come into his eyes.
'How long?'
