Border Cross

Prologue (foreshadows protagonist)

1995

So dry was the air that she began to wonder if she’d be better off holding her breath. Its stillness belied the abundance of life that somehow survived here. Thrived here. This desert teemed with life, even while inhospitably threatening it. On top of that was the human threat, maybe worst of all. How, she wondered, could such a place bring forth a living thing. She blinked slowly through drops of sweat, fighting unconsciousness. Her last, nearly empty water bottle, lying on its side just out of reach, seemed to mock her. Its insubstantial, crinkly plastic a symbol of this entire journey. She didn’t even know where she was. Between here and there. Somewhere between where she had been and where she had hoped to be. Somewhere between a decision and a seething, feverish dream.

She peered through splayed fingers at the afternoon sun. It felt closer than the hard, shingly ground now digging into her other hand, her spine and her bare backside. She’d heard gringos call it “unforgiving,” this place, this crossing. No man’s land. Did she need forgiving? As she screamed in pain and caught a delirious glimpse of the tiny, bloody head emerging from within her, she thought maybe so. I’m sorry, she wanted to say. This isn’t what I wanted. For you. For me. But her stinging, sandpaper tongue was too swollen to form words. So all she heard were her own wretched, primordial moans.

 

Just before sunset, the high-pitched wailing cut through the heat like cool water slowly slaking a parched throat. It came from across the creek bed. The small group of men and women traveling north on foot instinctively followed it. The women among them recognized it. Were drawn to it. 

The crying grew louder as they left the well-worn trail. During their long journey from Colombia, they had encountered seemingly impassable obstacles. Strange and horrific sights and sounds and tragedy, particularly in the Darién Gap. Fellow-migrants in desperate need. Or worse. 

It took them nearly half an hour to descend the crumbly limestone bluff and then navigate ocotillo, prickly pear and cholla constantly grabbed at their arms, legs and clothes. 

 The young woman was naked from the waist down. She lay face-up, her back propped against a boulder. Her slack arms rested around the infant, its tiny body covered in dried, dust-covered blood and teetering on its mother’s lap. The bluish-white umbilical cord still attached.

One woman immediately reached for the child while another felt for a pulse in the mother, first at her wrist, then her neck. She shook her head. Using a small knife that one of the men had carried, the first woman cut the umbilical cord. She gently cleaned the infant using water from a plastic jug. She wrapped it loosely in a light blanket and strapped it to her chest. As they left, the other woman bent down and carefully removed a delicate chain from around the mother’s neck. 

There was no time to be shocked. They continued on their way.

 

The next morning, fifty miles north, a call was made to a local woman. A newborn had been left at the small hospital ER. Would she be willing to care for it until authorities could coordinate with a state adoption agency? Where did the child come from? she asked. We don’t know. The woman knew what this meant. Bring the child to me, she said.

  

CHAPTER ONE  (Introduces protagonist and setting and foreshadows first plot point, primary conflict and primary internal conflict.)

Terra hoisted the heavy red gasoline canister to her lips and took a swig. “The only thing that ran out of gas is your bullshit story,” she said, her sparkling black eyes trained on him.

The young man cuffed to the barbed-wire cattle fence dripped with sweat, despite the fact that clouds had been blocking the sun for the past few hours. He looked ridiculous out here, Terra thought, with his pristine white hoodie and his high wave of stiff slicked-back hair. The hardy foliage and rugged black bark of the massive ebony tree behind him added to the absurdity. Its olive leaves danced in the wind that seemed to be picking up as the afternoon kicked in. The young man’s attempt to flee on foot had been taxing and short-lived. He was nursing a fast-rising lump on his forehead from striking the fence post after an overly ambitious attempt to evade capture. In her six months as a deputy sheriff for Cutler County, Texas, Terra had already learned that you never knew what or who you’d find while on routine patrol—including gasoline cans repurposed as giant water jugs.

“How many are you expecting? Where’s the stash house? Who’s your contact?”

The man spit, but his mouth was too dry, so most of it dropped near his shoes. He couldn’t be more than twenty, not that much younger than Terra herself. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. Like I said, I drove down to hike Closed Canyon trail and see the river. It’s flowing pretty good.”

“You always drive a twelve-passenger van to go hiking?” She looked at his feet. “And wear Vans? Interesting choice of water bottles, too.” She tossed the canister. “Especially considering you’re nowhere near Closed Canyon.”

“Well, you sure as hell don’t look like a Flynn,” he sneered, trying to look tough as he nodded toward the name tag pinned to her khaki uniform shirt. “Or like a fuckin’ Texas sheriff or whatever. More like some tight little indigenous Meh-hee-cana babe.” He raised his eyebrows and let out a laugh. “But no way are you from around here.”

That stung, for reasons she barely understood. You know nothing about where I’m from! she wanted to shout. Hell, she hardly knew herself. “You’d be surprised,” she said.

The police radio from her F-150 crackled. “Terra…Terra, you read me?”

She walked to the truck and grabbed the mic. “I read you, Sheriff.”

“Border Patrol needs our help. A group of illegals east of your location. Gunshots heard. Border Patrol says that the illegals were caught in the turf war between Zetas and Jaliscos. Last seen headed your way—or trying to. Southwest corner of Zino Ranch. I’ll text you coordinates. Get over there fast, but do it slowly, if you know what I mean. Ronnie and I are still in Hades, dealing with the shit-show at that goddamn church. We’ll head your way ASAP.”

“Roger that, Sheriff. I’ve got their ride cuffed. He’s not going anywhere. I’ll head east, hugging the river as long as I can.”

“And Terra. Bring your rifle.”

 

She drove fast for ten minutes along a rutty gravel track, her ponytail bobbing up and down to the rhythm of small rocks pinging against the wheel wells and undercarriage. She slowed down to negotiate a sharp turn-off into roadless open ranch land. She jerked the wheel left and right, weaving the pickup around juniper, blackbrush and creosote while keeping an eye on her GPS app. To her right the Rio Grande wound its way in and out of view, blocked by sand dunes and by larger mesquite trees and the dense, puffy golden bloom of huisache. The light precipitation earlier helped keep down the amount of dust kicked up by her wheels, minimizing the chance of her being spotted by anyone scoping out law enforcement on either side of the river. As the terrain became rockier, she slowed down until the rock rose abruptly in front of her. She slammed on the brakes and got out. 

After grabbing her mini binoculars and Camelback, she slung her rifle over her shoulder. Wasting no time, she scaled the rocky slope, some 70 feet high, making quick work of its steep rise and jagged outcroppings. Just short of the top, she crouched behind a boulder and scanned the landscape. The wispy clouds had dispersed as a breeze picked up, leaving behind a nearly unbroken expanse of turquoise. A pair of hawks rode the thermals before slowly dropping out of sight in the Chihuahuan wilderness to the south. From up here, especially at this time of year, one could begin to appreciate the Rio Grande’s serpentine elegance and robust greenish brown current. Just over 300 feet at its widest point, here it spanned closer to half of that, making it intermittently and unpredictably deeper and more perilous.

Across the river, set into a rocky cliff that afforded panoramic views of the winding river below, she could just make out a primitive hut, erected of small and medium-sized stones. A cartel lookout post. Found along the border, these were well-provisioned shelters manned round-the-clock by spotters whose job was to guard cartel territory, monitor the movements of coyotes and migrants and keep tabs on U.S. Border Patrol and law enforcement. She could see a single opening, a small window without glass, strategically situated to afford the occupant a broad vista. Slightly protruding from the opening she could make out the shiny barrel of a gun.

She watched that barrel over the next several seconds through her binoculars. It pivoted gradually, almost meditatively, from west to east along a horizontal line, as if tracking a target below. It reminded Terra of a stalker undressing a woman with his eyes as he contemplates the perfect moment to pounce on the object of its leering. She looked where it seemed to be pointed, at first with the binocs, then with her naked eye. 

Below her a dozen people spurted recklessly in no particular direction, their faces taut with panic. Vague sounds of distress reached her across the breeze. Shit, Terra thought. Exactly the kind of chaos she hated about the border. She preferred straightforward law enforcement in accordance with a criminal code. Investigating crimes, apprehending suspects, making arrests, enforcing court orders. Clear-cut stuff that you could get your mind around. Scenes like the one below she found sad but frustrating. Even annoying. Who was in charge? Whose jurisdiction is it? Who are the good guys and bad guys? Which parties are on which side of which country’s laws? Too many gray areas and no clear answers.

A shot rang out. A group of three, lugging bags and water jugs, hugged the base of the rock face, scattering like ants. A few others darted back and forth among the sparse riverbank brush. Some could barely run, reluctant to abandon their meager belongings or provisions. A few, having already crossed the river at a shallower point, disappeared from her line of sight. 

One among the fleeing appeared to be laboring to move at all. With the binocs Terra could see a patch of shiny bright red on his left side. The man stumbled along the southern riverbank. She looked toward the hut. Another shot. This time she saw the muzzle flash before she heard the crack. It echoed back and forth between the steep rock faces on either side of the river. The wounded man, hit again, this time in the shoulder, tumbled down the gently sloping riverbank. His limp body smacked the water with surprisingly little splash, then disappeared. His blood-red backside bobbed to the surface. In half a minute he was lost from view.

Terra looked up in time to see a man walking quickly away from the hut on foot, rifle in hand. Headed away from the river, he disappeared. He must have hit his target, a coyote for a rival cartel, and was headed for another hut. He probably wouldn’t be back for awhile. Probably. The question was what could, and should, she do now? No fucking idea, she thought. 

She came into this job to enforce federal, state and county law. Right and wrong were anything but fuzzy concepts to her. As military police this distinction, this clarity, was never in question. She saw no reason why the transition to deputy sheriff shouldn’t be seamless. The law was a set of regulations, set down in writing, beyond dispute. She liked that. A lot. What she didn’t like was this. Illegals, migrants, chaos, lawlessness, flouting of laws. She grew up believing a border meant something. Boundaries matter. Where was the border? What even constitutes the border? Is this it? The Rio Grande? Yes and no. Not so simple. 

Thinking there may be more wounded or injured, Terra bounded down the rocky slope like a mountain goat. She pushed through thick brush that gave way to sand, in which she could make out indistinct footprints and bits of torn clothing. As she kicked aside an empty red gasoline canister, she imagined the despair someone might feel at this point along a northward journey, having lugged such a heavy canister of water all this way and then depleted it. They were a long way from the next chance for water, let alone whatever destination they had in mind. The audacity of it appalled her. Gutted her.

She emerged from the low dune, past a a small but obvious cairn, a common sight in the borderlands, marking a northward trail. As she slid down to the river, taking in the scene at ground level, it seemed oddly familiar, though she’d never been here. From somewhere within the river’s whooshing meander came a dreamlike memory as indistinct as the sandy footprints. Or was it foreboding?

She turned left, keeping a vigilant eye on the hut. No sign of the rifle or shooter. A faint cry of distress wafted over the low rush of water. Were there more wounded? injured? Was it a trap set by the cartel? She scanned the opposite bank. The people she’d seen earlier were nowhere in sight. To her east the riverbank narrowed on both sides and gave way to a steep canyon that cut a perpendicular path to the north and south, bisected by the river. She checked her GPS and her topo map. 

Her portable radio crackled to life. 

“Terra, where are you?” 

“I think it’s called Black Canyon.”

 “I know the place. What’s your plan?”

 “Best guess, a cartel guy took out a rival coyote. He’s laying low. There may be more wounded or injured across the river. What do you advise?”

“Focus on the shooter. Stay in a sheltered position and keep an eye out for him ‘til we get there. Maybe twenty minutes. If he fires in your direction, defend yourself. Otherwise, sit tight.”

 “And the illegals? Like I said, there may be injuries. Or worse.”

 The line was silent for several seconds.

“Jeezum Christ, I feel for the bastards, too, Terra. But they got themselves into this. Besides, more ‘n likely some of ‘em are goddamn miracle seekers making a beeline for Holy Angels. Adding to the shit-show. Ain’t our responsibility anyway. And you’re no good to me if you’re shot. Bottom line: don’t try too hard.”

She heard another echoing cry. It came from the area near Black Canyon.

“Roger that, Sheriff.”

Everything was a shit-show with him. Hell, was his daily shit a shit-show? She promptly dismissed that image. He’d misunderstood her. Sure, she felt for these hapless migrants. Who wouldn’t? But her job didn’t include making herself an easy target for some sniper. She’d dealt with plenty of them in Kandahar and the nearby Sulaiman Mountains. The only taste she had for bodily harm these days involved rock climbing and the gym. 

She heard another cry, more distinct this time. From high above her. She looked, shielding her eyes from the sun. A hundred feet up the opening of Black Canyon, overlooking the river, a woman teetered on a barely perceptible ledge. Stray strands of long, dark hair fluttered across her face in the light wind. Beneath those ruffling strands her eyes, even from this distance, were shimmering black pools of terror and uncertainty. A small child swaddled to her chest, she had her back pressed against the rock. The woman had frozen.

 Terra stopped breathing. In the moment before instinct propelled her to help the woman and child, a feeling washed over her. Like the one a few minutes earlier, but much stronger. A stirring of recognition akin to déjà vu but laden with dread. Was it the woman? Her small child? The terrain? Terra started breathing again. And felt her feet carrying her. With urgency. 

Two other migrants had tried to help but had gotten no further than ten feet up. One was a boy of about twelve, dripping wet. A series of numbers scrawled on his arm marked him as an unaccompanied minor. The phone number of an older relative in Oaxaca or Guatemala City or Chicago. Someone to call if he made it through. Or if he didn’t. The ink had started to run, the result of hiding and hunching in the water for some time, Terra surmised. Before she even heard him pleading with her—“Man was shooting. She try to escape. You can help? Please?”—Terra had already unloaded and dropped her rifle, tossed the binoculars and begun assessing the quickest route up the nearly vertical face. 

Though it offered plenty of small outcroppings and jagged handholds, Terra knew that limestone readily crumbled. Nonetheless, ten minutes’ efficient scrambling brought her nearly halfway to the woman. Though in her element, Terra relied as much on adrenaline as experience or skill. Every few minutes she would call out to the woman: I’m on my way…It’s going to be all right...Está bien. Soon she stood about twenty feet below and at an angle to the woman and had her in sight. She seemed to be adjusting the child in the makeshift wraparound cloth carrier. Terra could see bits of rock cascading down as the woman adjusted her precarious position. 

“No te muevas. Try not to move,” she told her in an upbeat tone that masked her growing concern. 

The child seemed in distress, and its mother naturally wanted to soothe it. The thin ledge offered little margin for error, however, meaning that the slightest slip could be disastrous.

“Almost there,” Terra said after another five minutes of climbing. Then she heard crunching gravel followed by a woman’s scream. She looked up and over in time to see the child tumbling down beyond the reach of the mother’s outstretched arms. “NO!” she cried out. Terra watched in dread as the child fell past her, oblivious and unimpeded, its tiny arms extended as it slowly rotated in the air. Then came the surreal thump of the body smacking the firm, sandy ground below. It rolled twice, then came to a stop. Hearing no sound from the motionless body, the mother began to wail. Her right foot had slipped off the edge. She had instinctively grabbed the nearest protruding rock, which somehow held, allowing her to remain on the ledge in a squatting position.

“Terra! What the hell you doing?” came the sheriff’s voice from below and upriver.

“A child fell!” Terra barked. “Find her!”

“Got her!” called out Deputy Ronnie Criss a moment later. He had run up from the other direction.

She knew she’d catch hell from Welter. She knew she violated regulations. Normally, she would have been the first one to question the judgment of anyone doing what she was doing. What had gotten into her? What was her excuse? All she knew is that this wasn’t normal. Nothing about the borderlands was normal. It was its own crazy space, an alternate reality with its own set of rules that were not rules. The opposite of everything she knew about law enforcement and everything she wanted to believe about humanity. 

None of that mattered at the moment, against the backdrop of the mother’s weeping. Terra forced herself to block it all out, push down the lump in her throat, as she’d learned to do. 

“Look at me!” Terra called. Look at me!” Louder this time.

The woman remained awkwardly squatting on the ledge, her back to the rock. Face smeared with dust and desperation. Frantic eyes peered over and down to where Terra was ascending the final distance between them.

“I’m going to get you down,” she said in a calm monotone. “I promise. And your baby will be fine. Está bien. Prometo. But I need you to take a deep breath. Respiración profunda.” 

A few minutes later, she squatted beside the woman and put an arm around her. She could understand the woman’s terror. From where they stood, more than a hundred feet up a steep rock face, the exposure was real. Anyone but an experienced climber would be hard pressed to function, let alone stay calm and move fluidly to safety. She could also imagine how the woman must have ended up here, fleeing for her life, thinking she was moving to safety and before she knew it finding herself and her child stuck and paralyzed. But where the distressed and now grief-stricken woman saw no escape, no way back, Terra did.   

“I’m Terra,” she said. “¿Cómo te llamas?”

 She managed to say, “Isabella….Isa.”

 “Okay, Isa, you’re going to be fine. I promise. You and I are going to walk to the bottom.”

 “Mi niña,” she sputtered.

 “Yes, we’ll find your baby. Juntos. Together.”

Over the next thirty minutes of coaxing, assisting and on occasion supporting the woman’s entire body-weight, Terra guided them to the bottom. Isa rushed to take the child from Deputy Criss. He said he had made several attempts to get her to swallow some sips of water from his canteen but wasn’t sure she had taken any. The little girl was breathing, but unconscious.

Sheriff Welter, who had his rifle in hand, said that he had seen no human activity, including at the cartel lookout hut. He had called Cutler County Hospital and that they were standing by. He looked at Terra. “The MedEvac copter is on another call, so you and the mother follow me and Ronnie. We’re parked by your truck. If we push it, we should be able to get there in half an hour.” As they were rushing down the river and back over the dune to the vehicles, Welter pulled Terra aside. “God damn it, Terra, why’d you do that? Endangering yourself, leaving yourself vulnerable. And for what?” He shook his head. “You gotta get your head right.”

She nodded. She knew he was right. But she wasn’t sure she had been wrong. 

Three hours later, Isa’s daughter lay safely in the ICU, hooked up to a heart rate monitor. Her mother sat beside her bed with one hand on the little girl’s and the other clutching something. Noticing Terra watching through the glass, Isa, her face lined with worry, held up a tattered photo of a man. She mouthed the words, “la cruz milagrosa.” The miracle cross. Was it meant as a question or an affirmation? Terra couldn’t say. Before she could respond, two nurses entered the room and began speaking with Isa.

As Terra and Ronnie walked to their vehicles, he exclaimed, “Damn, Terra! That was some badass heroic shit today! Hands all scraped and bloodied and you didn’t even notice! I was pretty much choked up from the moment I saw that little girl. You got some kind o’ steel in your, well, you know.” He grinned. “Just sayin’, you may be small but you’re ballsy. And strong as hell!” 

His excitement was lost on Terra. Her mind had gone nearly numb. She may have mustered a polite grin. She couldn’t say.

When Terra got home that night, she hugged her black lab, Gitter, then filled his dish. As he devoured his food, she lay on the kitchen floor beside him, spreadeagled and staring at the ceiling. After a minute, something began to well up in her. It started in her gut and made its way to her throat, like a rattlesnake bite working its way through her body. Before she knew it, she heard herself sobbing. After trying to choke back the sobs, she eventually gave in to them, curling up in a ball. 

Ten minutes later, after the crying stopped, she noticed that she was clasping the small cross that hung from her neck. Somewhere within Gitter’s crunching and the sting of her bloody hands and the image of the frightened, free-falling baby, Terra became aware that the vague sense of foreboding she’d felt earlier that afternoon remained a shapeless presence within her. A distant thunder rumbling steadily closer.