Edge of Battle

“My name is Victor, Victor Flores. I need help.”

“Victor? El coyote?” another asked.

“Si.”

“Victor! What’s happening, my man?” The older man with the tire iron ran over to him. “I am Jorge. You brought me and my brothers across the border many times, my friend.” He handed Victor a bottle of warm malt liquor; Victor nearly puked on it, but he gulped down a few mouthfuls. “What has happened to you?”

“We must get out of here, Jorge,” one of the other workers said. “The sheriff will be back.”

“Shut up, Carlos. This man has helped me more than you ever have.” Jorge looked at Victor carefully and said, “They say there was a shooting back there. Were you involved in that, Victor?”

“Let’s get out of here, dammit!”

“Look, Jorge, help me,” Victor said. “I was not involved in the shooting, but the ones responsible will find me if I’m caught by the police.” He produced the hundred-dollar bill the one called Zakharov had given him. “This is all I have, but it’s yours if you help me.”

The one named Carlos licked his lips and made a step toward the money, sensing its value even in the darkness, but Jorge blocked his way. “Vete a hacer punetas, puta avara!” he swore. “Victor has helped me many times in the past—now I will help him.” He turned to Victor and said, “We are waiting for a ride to a farm in Indian Wells, my friend. We can take you as far as that.”

“Gracias, amigo,” Victor said, holding out the money to him.

“Keep your money, Victor—you may need it later,” Jorge said. “Just tell me you were not involved in a shooting.”

“I saw what happened,” Victor said. “A group of Ernesto Fuerza’s pollos killed four Border Patrol agents and some migrants. I…I got away.”

“?Mi Dios!” one of the workers gasped. “Comandante Veracruz? He attacked la Migra?”

“Him and a pollo, a big guy.”

“The fight for freedom and liberty from American repression must be underway!” the worker said happily. “Comandante Veracruz has been calling for the workers of the world to rise up and resist the American oppressors! He must have raised an army and the fight is beginning!”

“Shut up, you idiot,” another worker said. To Jorge, he said, “You cannot let him travel with us—we will all be taken to prison or killed by the Border Patrol in retaliation if he is caught with us!”

“I said Victor will go with us, and he shall,” Jorge said. He looked at Victor. “But Carlos is right, my friend—it is too dangerous for you to stay with us.”

“I won’t,” Victor said. “Indian Wells would be fine. I can find my way from there.”

About an hour later, a large produce truck stopped near the service road overpass, and the men piled in. No one spoke to Victor for the rest of the trip. When the truck stopped and everyone got out, no one at all said a word—they just walked off toward their destination, none of them expecting Victor to follow them. He didn’t.

He watched the sunrise as he lay against a rock about two hundred meters away from Route 74 outside Indian Wells—secretly he hoped the rock hid a rattlesnake or some other desert predator that would just put him out of his misery. But thinking of suicide was sinful, an affront to Jesus the savior, and he immediately regretted those thoughts.

Instead, he thought about going home. He was born not far from here, and he had not been back in many months. Technically Thermal was not his real “home,” since his parents were migrants from Mexico and he didn’t have a real home, but he always considered the fertile, expansive Coachella Valley his home, and that’s where he thought he should go. He knew he shouldn’t risk it—he was an American citizen, so he assumed the government knew a lot about him, including his place of birth and the names and addresses of his closest living relatives, so that’s where they were sure to look for him—but he was tired, bone-tired, and still more scared than he had ever felt in his entire life. He had to do something, or the fear would surely cause him to go out of his mind. After a few more minutes’ consideration, he got up and started walking toward the sun rising over the Orocopia Mountains, toward home…and, hopefully, some rest.

The air was crisp, clean, and not yet hot; there was a gentle breeze blowing from the west that actually seemed to help him as he headed east. Yet the horrible, stupefying stench of death and guilt encircled his head like cigar smoke, and would, Victor was certain, remain with him for the rest of his life.

CHAPTER 1

HENDERSON, NEVADA

LATER THAT MORNING

“Don’t talk to me about bigotry, xenophobia, or racism,” Bob O’Rourke said even before the country-western bumper music faded completely away. “Don’t you dare call this show and call me a racist. I’m mad enough to chew nails right now, my friends, and I might just lose my temper.”

Fand Kent, Bob O’Rourke’s producer and call screener on the top-rated nationally syndicated talk radio show The Bottom Line, smiled broadly as she turned the gain down on her headphones. If you looked up the term type-A personality in the dictionary, you might find Bob O’Rourke’s picture there. He was always head-strong, dynamic, animated, energized—but he was even more so behind the microphone. During their one-hour production meeting before each show in Bob’s office, he had the usual array of national newspapers stacked up on his desk and his ever-present tablet PC notebook ready to take electronic notes, but today when she walked in for the meeting there were just as many newspapers on the floor, and crumpled up and tossed toward the wastebasket.

Bob O’Rourke’s loud, deep, rapid-fire voice with just a slight Texas twang in it was exactly opposite of his physical appearance, which Bob carefully worked to conceal (and which cost the jobs of a few other producers when they slipped up and released unflattering descriptions of their boss): he was five six and weighed one-forty soaking wet, with thin black hair, a thin neck, very light skin, despite living in a town with eleven months of sunshine a year, and rather delicate-looking features. He was so self-conscious of his physical stature that he wore a cowboy hat, boots, and sunglasses all the time, even in the studio, and had trained his voice to become deeper. Some might call it a “Napoleon complex,” others might call it ego and vanity carried to the extreme. Fand Kent knew enough to keep her mouth shut whenever that subject was broached. You never knew when a rival producer or media reporter was nearby.

“If you ask me, my friends,” O’Rourke went on, “this attack, this assault, this brutal assassination is every bit as serious and troubling as the terror attacks in San Francisco, Houston, and Washington in recent months. Don’t give me that look, Fonda. Don’t you dare roll your eyes at me! You know what I’m talking about!”

Fand was busy with the phones and her computers and hadn’t even looked up at him, but it didn’t matter—he constantly accused her of disagreeing with his comments and ideas, which were all part of the show. She was smart enough never to let him know her true opinions.

“I know, I know, it’s not Fonda, it’s ‘Fand,’ the Celtic goddess of truth, goodness, happiness, understanding, and Kumbaya, or some such nonsense that you were named after. To me, it sounds like ‘Fonda,’ another liberal tree-hugging ‘everyone be happy let’s all get along’ character, so that’s what I’m going to call you. I’m warning you, Fonda, the O’Rourke trap is open and you’re one step away from getting chomped, young lady.” Fand only shook her head and smiled as she went about her work.

“I am not talking about numbers of dead or injured, my friends,” he went on to his worldwide radio audience. “I’m not talking about weapons of mass destruction. I am talking about the enormity of the attack, the audacity, the sheer brazenness of it. You liberals think that an attack against the United States has to kill hundreds or thousands of persons, or law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty aren’t to be considered victims of an ‘attack.’ Well,