A Time to Die Read online

  On the open roads of South Texas, she’d questioned her thought process in even going many times. Bad enough the government was out to get her, if she’d stayed put the bureau would have defended her. For what that would have been worth, it might have been better than the situation she now found herself in. But they would have shut her down, and she didn’t let go of a story easily. Especially not the likes of the story she’d stumbled onto in Mexico.

  She finally ran into trouble when she hit Austin. The freeway southbound was closed. “Only open to local traffic,” the computerized notice reported. The official story was the risk of landfall by Hurricane Enrico. She knew better. Enrico was indeed a hurricane; currently in the Bahamas, it was spinning and grinning with a one in ten chance of turning north. Probably one in a million of making it into the Gulf of Mexico in April then on to Houston. No, that was just a convenient way to stop southbound traffic. South was into the unthinkable.

  She had a limited number of options to get south. Catch a ride with a local? Possible, but not with the gear stuffed into the back of the Civic. Hire someone? Too risky. Run the roadblocks? She supposed she could do that if she could manage that, but once past that roadblock any chance encounter with the law would end her trek instantly. No, she really only had one choice.

  It was late in the afternoon when she pulled up to a checkpoint along Texas Rural Route 12A. The cop looked at her 2003 Chevy Silverado that had seen better days. In the back was a substantial pile of hay bales and she wore clothes that not a single farmer in South Texas would have given a second thought to. The whole shebang had cost her almost $2,000, all said and done. Her Civic was at a parking garage at the airport, one mile from where she’d met the farmer complaining that they were only going to give him $1,500 in trade for his truck at the dealer. The extra $500 was enough to make him forget about the strange city girl who wanted a truck full of hay and paid cash. The clothes she’d gotten at a second hand store for less than $50. Her gear was under the hay. That had been a surprisingly hard little piece of work, leaving her sweaty enough to seal the deal on her disguise.

  “Run out of hay?” the cop asked.

  “Damn goats eat it faster than I can grow it,” she joked. Luckily she’d heard the farmer at the truck stop talking about how he and his neighbors were all raising goats these days.

  “Yeah, I hear that.” The cop gave her one more look over and she shot him her best ‘hey cutie’ smile. He chuckled and waved her through. So Kathy stepped on the gas sending the Chevy coughing and wheezing down the road.

  She cut back and got on the freeway a few miles later. Less than 100 miles north of Brownsville she picked up her first curious police officer. He’d been following her for at least five miles before she noticed. Kathy took the next exit she came to and pulled down the ramp. It was a dead exit (no services) and the cop followed her.

  “Shit,” she cursed as she glanced at the road signs then her smartphone. Nothing out here for miles and miles other than a small town to her left. She signaled and turned right like she’d done it a thousand times. Casually glancing in the rearview mirror, the cop stopped at the sign and watched her go. After a long moment, he went across the road and back onto the freeway without following her. She considered doubling back, then decided she’d tested her luck enough for one day and stuck with the side roads.

  The cell signals were getting progressively worse the farther south she drove. The roads themselves weren’t much better. It took her four hours and well into darkness to make it another fifty miles, putting her within ten of the outskirts of Brownsville. There she pulled into a little podunk gas station/grocery/post office whose front bench was crowded with locals gossiping and drinking beer. Kathy glanced at her gas gauge, appalled at just how much she’d used in only seventy miles, and decided to fill it up.

  “Don’t think I’ve seen you ‘round here,” one younger man said who was filling up a truck bed full of gas cans.

  “I came from Victorville,” she said, pulling a name out of her ass from a sign she’d seen back when exiting the freeway. She glanced at all the gas cans he was filling then noticed the station was charging almost $7 a gallon and decided to pad the story. “Our station is out of gas.”

  That seemed to fly. “Yeah,” the man said, “I’ve heard a few places are out. Deliveries have been late. Torrance here says if no one shows tomorrow night he’ll be down to diesel and super, so I figured to come in and fill up for the ATVs.”

  ATVs, she thought, an idea stirring as she filled. “I’ve been looking to buy an extra one for the farm,” she said. “Had one die a few weeks ago and mechanic says it’ll cost a fortune to fix. Know anyone who has one for sale?”

  “What are you lookin’ for?”

  “Oh, about a thousand or so worth,” she said. He laughed and she did too.

  “I have an old Honda I’d let go for that. It ain’t pretty but I’d throw in a little utility trailer and a full tank of gas.”

  “Add two cans,” she said, gesturing at his truck bed, “and we’ll talk.”

  “I reckon we could,” he agreed and offered her his hand, “Tobey.”

  “Kathy,” she replied and shook his hand. It was warm, strong without being rude, and heavily calloused. Her pump nozzle clicked, signifying the tank was full, and she returned it to the pump just in time to see what was coming down the road. “Well there’s another one,” the man said.

  The tractor-trailer was massive. Blocky like civilian trucks weren’t anymore, it was painted in light tan and belched smoke as it cleared a little hill just before the station. On its low trailer was a pair of six-wheeled tanks. And on the tanks were dozens of soldiers in combat gear.

  Kathy didn’t think about it, she just reached in through the passenger window, grabbed one of her miniature camcorders, and filmed it going by. Several of the soldiers saw her, but not the camera. A chorus of whoots and wolf whistles floated on the wind, barely audible under the roar of the big Army diesel pulling its massive load. Another followed right behind, and another, and another. Twenty-nine had gone by when at last a solitary Humvee with a simple red and yellow flag flying from its long whip radio antenna passed by. A man sat in the passenger seat and she could see silver on his epaulets. She calmly put the camera in her pocket as it passed by; the man in the passenger seat regarded her calmly so she gave him a little wave. He nodded in reply.

  “People over in Victorville are a tad strange,” Tobey said once the Humvee was passed.

  Kathy took out the camera, made sure it had saved the recording before stashing it in her pants pocket. Looking at the rather handsome farmer she shrugged. “I like Army stuff. Let me get a Pepsi and I’ll follow you to your place and check out that ATV?”

  Nearby turned out to be almost 20 miles. People in Texas used a different kind of yardstick to measure distance. Tobey’s quaint little farm was nearly forty thousand acres of free range cattle land scattered southward in roughly a crescent shape. “Comes to a stop only about a mile from the border. Used to own it all the way down thataway, got tired of being invaded every time the politicians started talking about amnesty. Sold it to another guy.”

  She didn’t know squat about ATVs, but it looked like she was getting a bargain. The Honda was older, with only one headlight and almost no instrumentation. That being said, the seat was soft, it purred right to life when an electric starter was used and a little choke (she watched the whole operation carefully), and Tobey shifted it with his left foot just like a motorcycle. Lucky for her a boyfriend in college had taught her to ride one. So when it was her turn she managed to look like a pro as she tooled around the shed a couple times.

  Not being able to lean into corners scared her a bit. She made a mental note to be careful about that as she revved it a bit and felt the wind in her hair.

  “Sounds like a deal,” she said when she came to a stop next to her truck. He helped her unload the truck of the bales of hay, a bonus she gave him, and restack the gear she’d liberated fr
om GNN in the front (secured with bungies he found behind her seat). He didn’t comment on the gear as he used a couple 2x6 boards to load the ATV on board and add two full 5 gallon cans of gas, the little trailer, and tossed in a funnel of easy refilling.

  “It’s pretty late,” he said as she handed him ten crisp $100 bills and shook his head. “Victorville is quite a haul this time of night. You’re more than welcome to stay in the guest room, start out early if you want.”

  “What would your wife say?” she asked, fishing.

  “Don’t got one,” he admitted, “she run off with a lawyer from Amarillo about two years back.”

  “In that case, you got a deal.”

  His house was about what you’d expect for a farm less than ten miles from the Mexican border in southern Texas. Lots of sturdy old furniture that had once belonged to his parents. Pictures of siblings (maybe), older relatives, and such. Another picture of him, younger, in an Army uniform holding an assault rifle in the desert and showing a thumbs-up. He came back from the kitchen, catching her looking at that picture and handed her a beer. Domestic, and it tasted great. “Gulf war?” she asked. She’d guessed he was maybe forty, but now in the light with all these pictures she realized he was closer to fifty.

  “First one, yeah,” he admitted. “Me and a bunch of buddies were Guard back then. Fun weekends of shootin’ and drinkin’. Then that fucker Saddam invaded and quicker ‘in shit we was in Saudi and having Scuds fired at us. Don’t get me wrong, compared to what them boys went through after the second war, all we did was shoot a few rounds and drink for six months.” He gestured to an old recliner which she sat in and he sat on the ottoman in front of her.

  “Kathy,” he said looking at her closely, “if you are a farmer I’m a flying pig.”

  She took a big drink of beer then pretended to look over his shoulders for wings. He chuckled. “What made you say that?”

  “No one this far south would be hauling hay around in April,” he started. “Grass is already growing like crazy, I’ve had to bush hog my truck lot twice already. That pickup has Green County plates, that’s north of Houston. Your accent is all wrong. This here Southern accent is as contagious as the common cold. I know transplants, and they pick it up fast. And finally, farmers don’t have a truckload of camera gear from a network hidden under hay bales.”

  “It’s a long story,” she said, finishing her beer.

  “So suppose ya’ll tell me about it?”

  “Can I have another beer? And maybe a bite to eat?”

  Tobey considered her for a long moment then shrugged. “Come on into the kitchen,” he said. There was a formal dining room like in older country homes. But in the kitchen was a nice little well used table for two. She noted that both chairs were well worn, and the table had spots where plates had scarred the finish from decades of use.

  “So,” he said, taking down a pan and fishing around in the fridge. “Beef or chicken?”

  “Surprise me,” she said. He nodded and produced a pair of steaks in Ziplocs that he transferred to the microwave. “My name is Kathy Clifford, a reporter with GNN.”

  “Thought that name was familiar,” he said.

  Kathy nodded. “A few days ago I saw something that would curl your hair.”

  He cooked and she talked. She left a few things out, like how she sent the story without authorization, stole the camera gear, and the government was looking for her. He asked intelligent questions in all the right places. She couldn’t see from the Gulf War picture what his rank had been, but she estimated he’d been an officer. She was just finishing up as he slid two plates onto the table. T-bones, medium rare, with baked potato and all the fixins.

  “Wow!” she said, using a steak knife so big Bilbo Baggins would have gone to Mordor and back with it to slice off a chunk. It practically melted in her mouth. “Em me gawd,” she said around another bite.

  Tobey grinned and nodded. “You want good steak, go eat with a cattleman. Butchered that one day before yesterday for a cousin. Found it lame and hate to waste meat.” The thought that this had been a living animal so recently didn’t slow her down a bit. Reporters learned to roll with the punches. She’d watched them kill and process a goat for her once in India.

  “So they have the roads all cut off up north?” he asked. She chewed and nodded. “And you just bought this truck and blew the roadblocks pretending to be a farmer?” Nod. “And they bought that?” Wink and nod. “You’re quite the woman, Miss Clifford.”

  “Oh,” she said and swallowed, pointing the broadsword at his face, “call me that one more time and it’s game on.” He laughed and held up his hands in surrender and she laughed too. He started in on his steak as well and for a while the only sounds in the old kitchen were clinking knives on plates and grunts of satisfaction (mostly from Kathy).

  “You know,” she said after a while, “I know your wife didn’t run off, either.”

  “How you figure?”

  “This kitchen, it speaks of a long happy life together. So does that living room, and the care with which it was decorated. It screams happy farm wife. The flower beds. You’re working hard to maintain them, but falling behind. Someone not too long ago labored hard over those azaleas. Your turn.”

  Tobey didn’t look up. “She died of cancer two years ago.”

  Kathy felt like an ass. “Shit, I’m sorry,” she said, “that wasn’t fair of me.”

  “So we were lying to each other,” he admitted. “Guess that makes us even. Another beer, Kathy?”

  “Yes,” she said quickly. A little later they moved into the living room and he put some music on a hi-fi that dated back almost as far as the house. She perked up in surprise as the mellow sounds of cool jazz emerged from the speakers. “I would have never picked you for a jazz fan,” she said as she sipped the beer.

  “After the service I lived in Memphis working for a car plant for a few years. Beale Street for dinner, dancing on the weekends. I met Maggie there. I guess you could say it got into my blood.”

  She nodded, silently cursing herself for not being able to stay away from that particular subject. Finishing her second beer she found herself on her feet, swaying with the rhythm of the music. Tobey watched her, an interesting smile on his face and she wondered just what he was thinking. He got up and went to the kitchen, returning with another couple beers. Kathy sashayed over to him, her hips swaying with the music and took the beer.

  “Are you trying to get me drunk?” she whispered into his ear.

  “You seem to be doing a fine job of that without my help,” he said, a laugh in his voice.

  Her arms went around his neck and his around her waist. He was just a little bit taller than her, the bristles of his beard rough against her cheek. He smelled slightly of honest work, hay, and a little bit of animal musk. It was the smell of a man, and she found she liked it. An unusual revelation for a city girl.

  “I know what you’re doing,” he said, his mouth inches from hers.

  “Do you?” she asked, and kissed him. He tasted like beer. Kathy imagined she did as well. After a second, he responded and returned the kiss.

  They came closer together. The arms that he’d had around her waist pulled her closer and she unconsciously formed to the leanness of his body. They danced and kissed for a minute, then the song ended and he gently untangled himself from her arms.

  “I need to get your room ready,” he said, a little out of breath. She watched him go and sighed, then finished her beer.

  “It’s not much of a guest room,” he apologized. The sheets looked like they hadn’t been out of storage in ages, and the plastic flowers had a good layer of dust on them. Still, it was a bed and better than sleeping in the truck as she’d originally planned before heading south. “I’ll be down the hall if you need me,” he said. He hesitated, almost like he was uncertain of his resolve, then turned and left.

  There was a little three-quarters bathroom off the room. She stripped and went in to use the shower. Th
e hot spray and Ivory soap washed away the day’s grime and left her feeling human again, if unfulfilled. There was an oversized robe hanging from the back of the door so she put it on and went back into the room. Out in the living room the record player was still going. It had loaded another LP after the last one finished. The scratchy sound of the old vinyl was somehow soothing and it helped her make up her mind.

  Tobey looked up from the book he was reading in his big bed, propped up on a pillow his hairy bare chest looked freshly washed. “You need something?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said as she pushed the door the rest of the way open, and dropped the robe to the floor. She padded over slowly and stood next to him. He looked her up and down and sighed before pulling back the sheets so she could slide in next to her. He was naked as well.

  “It’s been a long time,” he admitted as she found him under the sheets.

  Kathy wrapped her hand around him and stroked the considerable hardness she’d found. “You never really forget,” she assured him with a purr in her voice, and it was true.

  * * *

  The flight back to the States was agonizingly long, even in a plane like the A380. The rear of the lower deck behind the four massive engines was a little noisier than other areas, though immensely better than a C-130 would have been. Andrew had flown so much in his military career he figured he could probably sleep if the plane was taking fire.

  He spent the first couple hours checking out the video offerings on the seat back entertainment system. Ward was playing on his smartphone while Prescott produced a paperback novel from his bag and fell into it. Andrew got a chuckle out of the looks the two MPs got when they went to the restroom and people saw their M9s in their flap holsters. Finally, he found himself zoning out and decided to sleep for a few hours. And that was how he missed the early meal.

  “I’m going to catch some sack time,” he told Ward. The man nodded, put his phone down for a minute and produced a handcuff key. He unlocked one of the cuffs. Andrew half expected him to cuff the other one to the seat arm or something, but instead put it back on the same wrist as the other, effectively making them useless.