5

Fisher listened to the card protected door to the Airbase click, then wearily pushed it open and shuffled into the building. He first went by Ketchum’s office. The lieutenant was in yet another meeting with the brass, but Fisher found the box he was after without difficulty. He lifted the overfull container and took it to his office. Fisher had always had difficulty examining his own feelings objectively. Every thought that went through his mind was predicated on his previous experiences. The realization that the new enemy was beyond that experience, and foreign to his training, was like an odd culture shock. He now had to consider Alvarez’ own experience.

Besides that, he could not decide whether he disliked the man personally. He certainly thought he had, but he had not known the full story then. Perhaps he still didn’t know the full story. He could blame the ACSD for that.

This was why he had taken it upon himself to dig up the files on the events of 2007. He would swallow his pride, give up the idea of trying to dig up dirt on Alvarez, and seek help from the agent. The only way they could hope to make it through this was to help each other.

Fisher flipped through the various folders, the personnel records, and the photos, selecting anything that looked at all useful, and sticking a note to it for future reference. He did this for nearly a half hour, until he heard the rest of the team arriving. With that he replaced the files and set the box by his desk. It was time to go to work.

Heat waves cascaded over brown grass, summer had arrived early, as it tended to in central Texas. Through the waves a wolf bounded at its top speed, over seventy miles per hour. The helicopter easily kept pace with it. Garcia turned the aircraft sideways and flew at an angle, allowing Jebbins and Fisher to alternate shots. The wolf quickly tumbled through the grass in a ball of dead fur.

Garcia had stenciled a picture of a wolf on the side of the helicopter, but with the team’s recent success he was running out of space for the tally marks that kept count of the felled animals. This one made thirty confirmed kills.

Fisher couldn’t be happier. He could finally look forward to the next report he had to file. After another thirty minutes there were no more animals to be found, and Garcia was running low on fuel, so they returned to base, and Fisher elected to go ahead and draft his report. He walked into his office, pulled off his plate carrier, and let the air conditioner cool his body and dry his clothes of sweat for several minutes. Then he opened Word and formatted the memo, which would go up to Ketchum for review before the Lieutenant passed it on ultimately to Davis. Both should be happy to hear the good news, Fisher thought.

After several minutes Alvarez poked his head through the open door, and rapped on the door jamb. “Mind if I come in for a minute?”

Fisher glanced up at him. “Nah,” he shook his head. “Come on in.” As Alvarez walked up to the table he decided to get something out of his system. “Look, Alvarez,” he said. “All this stuff, this back and forth, and the put downs, I just-”

“Oh no,” Alvarez waved his hand. “It’s perfectly understandable. I’d feel the same way. I come in here, acting like I’m big and bad, and try to take over. It’s a dick move, but it wasn’t mine, but still, I’m sorry. That’s actually what I came in here to say.”

“Really? Well I guess it’s all water under the bridge then. And tell Michetti I’m sorry for the way we’ve acted to her too. We’re all trying our best here.”

“Yeah,” Alvarez nodded, the fatigue apparent on his face.

“Look, let’s forget it then and try to work. You’re the expert, can you check over this report and tell me what you think?” His request was delivered joshingly, but without the normal sarcasm.

Alvarez read it over his shoulder, and after a couple of minutes said, “it’s accurate, but it’s also optimistic. I would guess we’ve killed sixty percent or so.”

“Sixty percent? Well, could be worse. But we’re only a few days away from their ceremony. What are we supposed to do here?”

“Just keep on with it,” Alvarez shrugged. “All we can do. “We’re not going to make the deadline. That’s my no bullshit answer. All we can do is try, and come out heavy and deep on the night of. That’s the only way to fill in the gaps in coverage that missing it is going to leave.”

“Ketchum will love to hear that.” Fisher rolled his eyes.

“Well it’s the truth,” said Alvarez. “Fudging things won’t do anyone any favors.”

“Oh I’m going to give him the truth,” said Fisher. “But God help us. I wouldn’t want to be him delivering the news. And I don’t know if we can count on the SRT to do the heavy lifting on this.”

“If they’re the same as they used to be I know we can’t,” said Alvarez.

“Well shit, so we just hope we can snipe them all from a helo in a crowded area?”

“Well no. At least, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, but I think we should start drawing up a contingency plan for Ketchum to deliver to the brass. A worst case scenario.”

Fisher stared at the screen for a moment, then breathed in. “All right.” He started a new file. “What are you thinking?”

Within two hours they had a working model of a response heavily armed enough to repel a military attack. By this time the helicopter was ready again, and Bocker and Michetti had looked over the latest satellite photos and had a decent idea of where to find more wolves. Fisher sent both reports to Ketchum then left with the others, hoping that he and Ketchum could discuss the issue calmly after his superior had a chance to read over it several times. As Fisher predicted, Ketchum did not take the news well. Thirty minutes after the email was sent Ketchum opened it and smashed his coffee mug across three months' worth of statistics sheets at his ACSD office.

Gar Bellows looked down at the gleaming face of Jennifer Lynn Ledbetter, her blue prom dress matching her eyes in the portrait that graced the local paper from the week of the massacre. The news of the botched raid of 51 El Gordo had hit the national level, not in a meaningful way, but enough to alert the up-and-coming journalist. He had heard of the massacre, just like everyone had, in passing. But the scope and terror of it had never gripped him until he read about it in depth. And now another bungle by the local cops! The town of Blackland was definitely cursed. But what had really struck him was the disappearance of Ledbetter, how her body was never located.

All of these mysterious and untoward happenings had attracted Bellows like a fly, and he was going to jump on this opportunity, impress his editor, and land a job with a real news agency, rather than the sleepy Albuquerque paper he currently wrote for. Bellows had done his research and found that Jenny’s father, Roger Ledbetter, had owned a hardware store in Blackland, while his wife Lilly stayed at home. They had both been found dead in their house after the attack, supposedly killed by the animal, but since they weren’t found for three days after the massacre, it had been hard to determine what exactly happened. Bellows had considered the possibility of foul play, of the senior Ledbetter being involved in crime, but nothing added up. His hardware store made him a well-placed pillar, not that that guaranteed anything, but it seemed unlikely he had anything untoward going on.

It didn’t matter either way. The Blackland High School Massacre was the perfect tragedy. Fifty kids dead, the prom queen ripped to pieces, supposedly at least; it had everything. And supposedly the prom queen’s ghost could still be seen in the school, doubled over and screaming in pain. It was a slam dunk of a story for a follow up piece, little work had been done in interviewing the actual participants, and now the five-year anniversary was coming up. It was time to strike. Despite the lack of interviews, Bellows was exuberant, confident that he could pry answers out of the cloistered, private town. And if he could it would spell his escape. Many had told Jasper Gettings of the futility of starting an honest to goodness print newspaper in the modern age, but he had been insistent that the Albuquerque Sentinel would follow a heritage he alone supposed existed. While the paper had a website it was a primitive, prefab kind of model, with less than a dozen visitors a day on average. The age of print media and even small news websites was dead, but Bellows had neither the credentials nor the experience to work for one of the large corporations, yet. A solid investigatory hit piece on the Arredondo County Sheriff Department, or some bonafide interviews and a real article on the massacre and its aftermath could catapult him to a real job, with real benefits. Bellows had heard of inspiration hitting out of the blue but had never experienced it until now. Now he was going to track down his future and make it for himself.

He printed the last news story he needed and stacked it with the rest on the side of his desk. Tomorrow he would present the story idea to Gettings, and with luck he would be on his way to Texas in time for the ceremony. He shouldn’t need much luck. Not a lot was happening in New Mexico at the moment. He would have to use his own money for the most part, it was not as if the newspaper had the coffers to send its people gallivanting around the country at the drop of a hat. But it would be fine. You had to spend money to make your future. He would need to persuade Forman, their photographer to come along as well. That would be difficult. The man hated to travel. He hated his whole job here and was not shy about saying so either. Bellows didn’t care. He was going to have this photographer earning his meager pay this week. Bellows finished the preliminary draft of an article on a school board meeting, which he would revise and turn in first thing tomorrow. He closed up his office, if one could call the cramped cage of a room that, and headed out with the research material in his hand. Once he walked out onto the street, he waved to the departing photographer, who was entering his own car. Bellows figured that he might as well try not to annoy the man before breaking the bad news when he saw him again. Right now almost nothing could ruin Bellows’ mood, however. He unlocked his car and started home, elated. After the thousands of dollars of debt for his journalism degree, after the fruitless months of job searching, after degrading himself by taking this pissant job in a pissant city in the desert, things were looking up. He would finally have both recognition and a real career, thanks to Arredondo County and its horrible luck and strange happenings.

Bellows never had seen himself as anything but an investigative journalist, someone on the cusp of revealing the next Pentagon Papers with every story. Blackland was hardly of that caliber, but it was something. Multiple incidents of police misconduct and controversy, and the strange, unfriendly attitude of locals to previous attempts to uncover the truth had “conspiracy” written all over it, but it also made for virgin reporting territory. He could be the first to blow the lid off everything going on there, he simply had to grasp the story tight and ride it into an exhaustive admission, force the truth out and force the town to lay its secrets bare.

Jenny Ledbetter was likewise the perfect hook. A beautiful, young, white woman, who, as every article had mentioned, was known to be the shoe in for prom queen, had either been butchered or disappeared, depending on which version of the sordid event one heard. It struck the reporter as strange that the FBI and the Texas authorities would close the case without a body, or even parts of one. It was all another salacious and possibly even prurient layer to the mystery, and his readers would certainly see it as such just the same.

Bellows watched his future career unfold before him, blocking out the Albuquerque suburbs in his mind’s eye and unleashing a gilded promise of recognition, expertise, and quite honestly, dignity in his job. Bellows was committed to his profession more than anything else in life, and certainly more committed than any of his punch clock coworkers. It was up to him to reveal the truth, whatever bizarre and likely sinister truth it may be, about what happened on the fifth night of May, and like any good journalist, he would leave no stone unturned in that quest for truth. He smiled to himself and basked in the possibilities he had uncovered. He could not wait to reach Texas. There was no doubt in his mind now that the cops and possibly the citizens had a great deal to answer for, and he was going to get that justice, and pull the truths out of them no matter what it took.

Sylvia Slatamont was livid. She had just finished an article in the Texas Observer on the El Gordo Street incident, only to see another local piece about the same sheriff’s department killing wolves. Killing wolves. It was a profanity, an affront against nature. The 23 year old senior in environmental science at the University of Texas had always been acutely conscious of what her heart told her, and her heart and instincts were telling her to stop this pointless massacre of wolves. She just needed to make a few phone calls. According to the Observer, the Arredondo County Sheriff Department had a unit dedicated to flying around in helicopters in order to shoot a pack of wolves calling the rural county home. Why they insisted on using taxpayer dollars to kill animals Slatamont had no idea. Helicopters simply added insult to the injury. Wolves were defenseless enough as it was. She recalled hearing that the Russians killed wolves from helicopters, and the animals were nearly wiped out there. Stanley P. Young was spinning in his grave no doubt. Then again this was nothing new, merely another, different, barbaric chapter in a barbaric history of ecological manifest destiny writ large. The coast was practically destroyed by the BP spill, which continued to haunt the Gulf two years after the disaster. Several of her friends had recovered mysterious canisters with government markings and the designation “M-18” in the Guadalupe Mountains, and her own ornithology professor had just completed an environmental impact statement, that would be ignored no doubt, for Fish and Wildlife, due to a development company’s burning desire to de-list Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge as such in order to turn it into a golf course. It was beyond infuriating, and far, far too many people of the backward and provincial state of Texas would either ignore the peril or actively contribute to it. Slatamont had moved to the state to teach its population about such threats, and to educate them regarding the resources this doomed wasteland took for granted. A lot of good it had done her, she huffed to herself as she frantically texted friends and classmates. She couldn’t solve all of these problems, but she could attack one of them. A population of grey wolves in Texas was unique, and it needed protection.

Grey wolves didn’t live in Texas, or at least they were not native, but Slatamont didn’t know that. She was unfamiliar with the original range of the gray wolf, or for that matter the red wolf, which, while it was once common throughout the South, was as good as extinct in the 21st century. She did know that these wolves the police were killing were definitely not coyotes. Not based on how they were described. She looked over the Observer’s article again and noted that the county in question, Arredondo, which was “spearheading” the assault, had a storied history of bungling and misconduct among its law enforcement personnel. All the more reason to put a stop to their speciescide, she supposed.

As several of her friends answered her texts she smiled, in spite of the horrible news. She had enough responses to merit going forward with a plan of action. She dialed a number now, and heard a response after only three rings.

“Hey,” the male voice answered.

“Trey, listen up. We need to get a group together. I want to take your van up around Denton.”

“Uh sure. When? What’s going on?”

Good old Trey, she thought. You didn’t even have to tell him what you needed his stuff for, he would simply go along with it. He was one of the most generous people she had ever known. “I’ll text you the details. Some pigs are killing wolves.”

“Whaaa...? Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But we’re going to stop them.” Just like that, her plan was set in motion, and Sylvia Slatamont could rest assured that she was doing something, if only a little, for one of the most diverse states in the Union. The sheriff department would be forced to stop, either from the publicity or from pressure from the federal government. Either way, she would have saved a defenseless and misunderstood species, one that had been maligned enough, and slaughtered for too long. If Arredondo County wanted to kill them they had to get through her and her posse first. This weekend she and that posse would arrive in Blackland and make life hell for anyone who wanted to wipe out those wolves. She smiled again, and hoped that Abbey and Muir were doing the same as they watched her.

Eduardo Berrocal was a sicario, or at least thought of himself as such. In truth he covered many bases for the Gulf Cartel, and killing others was simply one of a laundry list of job descriptions he could claim. Still, he was certain that killing was what Ramiro Hurtado had called him to discuss. The man was too important to bother with any of the more menial tasks Berrocal took care of. “You wanted to see me, sir?” he timidly asked from the edge of Hurtado’s office door. He was painfully aware even as he half bowed that it felt like he was slinking in, but Hurtado had that effect on people.

“Eduardo, yes. Come in, please.”

Berrocal did so, and took an offered seat in front of the boss’s desk. Hurtado got right to business.

“Have you been out to Nuevo Laredo?”

“Oh yes. I saw it last week,” Berrocal nodded.

“It’s insane,” said Hurtado. “To be honest, I’m skeptical that Alvarez acted alone, but regardless, he is certainly the mastermind in all this.”

Berrocal nodded, thrilling at the idea of what he suspected Hurtado was going to ask.

“That’s why I brought you here. I’d like to give you the task of killing him.”

“Do we know where he is?”

“I have a pretty good idea,” said Hurtado. He passed a sheet of paper across the desk.

Berrocal glanced at it. It appeared to be a police report or memorandum of some sort. His English was not the best, though he clearly saw Alvarez’ name in reference to being sent to Texas.

“One of our people in El Paso got that for us,” said Hurtado. “Whatever “consistent gale” is, he’s part of it. I also came across this.” He passed over a magazine, open to a specific page which Berrocal had more trouble making out, but Hurtado knew this and explained it.

“The Texas Observer says that the police are killing these wolves in northern Texas. Didn’t someone say that’s what Alvarez was doing down here, killing wolves?”

“I don’t know, to be honest.”

“Well it’s definitely what I heard,” said Hurtado. “I wouldn’t forget hearing about someone doing something as idiotic as that. Alvarez is in Texas, I’m certain of it. Now, here’s what I need you to do. When you leave here cross the river and head to this address.” He scribbled a Brownsville address on a notecard. “Facundo Sainz is there. He’ll get you some guns, then you two head to this town, Blackland, and find Alvarez. I don’t care what you do to him, just keep it quiet.”

Berrocal nodded, then thought of something. “And, sir, when we kill him, the, ah, the reward, would that-”

Hurtado cut him off with a chuckle. “There’s a good bit extra in it for both of you, don’t worry. You may have heard that I don’t spend money more than I have to, and, well, you would be right. So take this reward as an indicator. I’m not handing a bounty like this out frivolously. I want this bastard dead as fuck.”

Berrocal left with the order ringing in his ears, distracting him all the way through the border checkpoint and into Brownsville. He found Sainz expecting him, and, as promised, with a good many firearms. Berrocal loaded a modest selection of both guns and ammunition into the car while Sainz modified some false documents to show him as an American citizen, and then they left, heading through a late afternoon crawl to finally break free of the town and head for Dallas.

Both were quiet and focused, already spending their money in their heads. Berrocal smiled at the thought not only of the pay but of the street cred. Alvarez was quickly becoming something of a cult figure in certain circles, and to be the man who killed such a specter would almost be better than the monetary rewards. Alvarez was supposedly almost like some force of nature, but Berrocal was confident. They would separate the man, they would hunt him down and find him when he was weakened and tired. Then, they would torture him for all of the colleagues he had killed. When he was no longer anything resembling a human, and capable only of begging for death, they would kill him, slowly. He probably had no idea. He would have to live his life looking over his shoulder of course, he obviously knew that, but neither Berrocal nor Sainz were strangers to death. They had killed people better than Alvarez, and both had the sublime knowledge of being consummate in their plans. They were now the attackers, not Alvarez. The table was turned, and with it the advantages. Ray Alvarez was already dead, they just needed to show him that it was so.