Terror Rising: Book 0 – The Insurgence (3 page)

The sky was engulfed in gray. Lightning
flashed in thin vibrant lines from the north. The approaching storm
provided perfect cover to whatever nefarious operations were
happening below.

Martinez got out of the car first, as Angela
unbuckled her seat belt and opened her door. Her .40 caliber Smith
& Wesson pushed against her waist from her side holster. She
grabbed her binoculars and quietly shut the door. Martinez was
already at the boulder, peeking around it and waving her forward
with urgency. She turned the knob down on the handheld radio,
holstered on the other side of her pistol belt.

She reached the boulder and looked around
the other side, raising her binoculars. The box truck had stopped
within a shaded area of trees, branches swaying in the rising wind.
The trail of dust it had kicked up driving off-road drifted and
dissipated, settling back into the sand.

To Angela’s surprise, another vehicle was in
view—a station wagon. In front of the wagon stood two men. Their
features were hard to make out from the distance, but Angela could
see that they were tall and strapping and dressed in checkered,
long-sleeved shirts and tight blue jeans like something out of a
bad western. She had no idea what to make of it.

Martinez came around to her side, holding
his own pair of binoculars. “What do you think?” he asked, out of
breath.

“
I’d say a meeting is about to take
place,” she said.

“
Drug traffickers?” he
asked.

“
Could be. Still too soon to
call.”

Martinez took his handheld from his side and
spoke.

“
We have eyes on two vehicles
now.”

“
What’s
your location?”
Dawson’s voice
asked.

“
Same place we’ve been all along,”
Martinez answered, providing another wink to Angela. She got the
idea. They had never moved. She knew it was right to trust him,
though the intense drive still had her rattled.

“
They’re getting out of the truck,”
she said, looking ahead.

Two men exited the truck on both sides,
strikingly different in appearance. Their baggy pants were
tattered, and their white, long-sleeved shirts were stained with
dirt and oil. Their dark hair was bushy, and each had beards that
looked in need of grooming.

Angela’s eyes then caught something else:
every man below was armed—four in all. She could see a pistol
protruding from each man’s pockets.

“
We’ve got to get a closer look,”
Martinez said. “They drive off, we’ll never be able to catch them
in time.”

Angela turned and looked to him as he stood.
It was the first time she found herself doubting his judgment. She
felt safe where they were. Border Patrol procedures conditioned
agents to call it in. They weren’t encouraged to take action except
in the most extreme circumstances. And they still weren’t sure
exactly what was going on.

Martinez crept past her before she could
respond, crouching low and searching for a clear path down on
foot.

“
Captain Martinez,” she called out in
a whisper. “Sir!”

He was already climbing down the hill as she
struggled to decide whether to follow. She certainly couldn’t let
him go alone. She held the radio to her mouth and called Dawson.
“Pursuing the suspects on foot.”

“
What?”
he said.

“
Just getting a better look. We’re on
the hill right after the fork.” She paused, thinking of the code
name of their location. “Graffiti Junction,” she said quickly, and
then placed the radio to her side.

She followed Martinez, carefully keeping her
balance as she approached the edge of their plateau. The air was
thin even at their low altitude. Martinez was halfway down,
crouching behind some bushes. Angela looked toward the vehicles.
The men were standing closer to each other, talking.

Martinez had reached the bottom. He didn’t
look up until finding cover behind two large rocks, surprised at
the gap between him and Angela. He waved her down while pulling his
gun out.

What’s he going to
do?
Angela thought.

And where was their backup?

Extreme Measures

Martinez ran crouched low with his pistol
out and pointed down, finding cover behind a bushy desert Cypress
Tree, one of many throughout the area. He moved closer to the men
as they talked among themselves in the distance. Angela stopped
behind a sandy mound far behind Martinez, fearing that they had
been spotted. One of the apparent cowboys had looked up in her
direction as if hearing or searching for something.

She raised the binoculars to get a better
look. The driver of the truck and his passenger had their backs
turned to her, but she was able to make out the facial features of
the cowboys. They were deeply tanned with black goatees and thick
eyebrows.

The thick cover of tree branches above them
cast a shadow over their entire proceedings. Her handheld radio,
nestled in its holster like a thin, small brick, crackled slightly,
and her hand shot down to turn it off.

Martinez turned around to look for Angela.
As they made eye contact, he raised a finger to his lips for
silence. Angela knew the stakes, and she also knew that Martinez
was growing a bit too eager.

As the men continued talking inaudibly,
closer to each other, she wished that she could hear their words.
Her boot dug into the ground as she crouched, ready to spring to
the next position. Martinez looked ready to move himself, like a
cat bending back its hind legs. Suddenly, the men moved together in
a group toward the rear of the box truck. Martinez was off, gun
raised. Angela froze in place. She couldn’t believe it. Their
surveillance mission had switched to apprehension before she even
had time to think.

Martinez, it seemed, knew better, and took
cover behind some rocks piled together in slabs. But it was too
late. One of the cowboys stopped and turned just as the truck
driver placed his hand on the rear latch of the cargo door.

The cowboy leaned in and said something to
the other men with his eyes narrowed. The men halted. Their hands
reached toward their pockets, where handguns bulged. A Wild West
showdown was brewing under the cloudy Texas sky. For a moment,
everything slowed down, and Angela wasn’t sure what to do.

They had been spotted—that much she knew—and
the only thing that was going to help them was the uncertainty of
numbers. The four men had no idea just how many were watching
them.

Martinez kicked up dirt as he hit the
ground, skidding on his side, rushing to take cover. A cloud of
dust floated above the rocks, and that was all the paranoid men
needed to leap into action. The two cowboys fled like the wind
toward the station wagon without turning back.

They shouted out in a stream of
unintelligible panic—not in English or Spanish but something else.
Feeling emboldened, Martinez launched himself up from behind the
rocks and shouted, “Freeze!” But the cowboys were already in their
vehicle and peeling out as their two counterparts at the truck
swung around, confused and startled.

“Hands up!” Martinez demanded.

The station wagon’s engine roared as it
tires squealed away, billowing dust and exhaust in the air like a
trailing smokestack.

Martinez stood fast, pistol aimed, and
shouted at the remaining two men, ordering them to comply. Angela
rose from her position and aimed, but they appeared too far away
and out of range—at least for the precision required for a wounding
shot.

The men looked at each other with their
hands still at their sides, hesitant but not ready to throw in the
towel. One had a large forehead with receding hairline, while the
other had long curly locks to his shoulder.

“I’m not saying it again!” Martinez shouted.
His voice was hoarse. He sounded exhausted. The men must have
thought so too. They went for their pistols. Martinez fired a shot,
startling Angela. It struck the shoulder of the balding man and
sent him slamming into the back of the truck. His friend drew his
pistol and immediately started firing back. The loud, echoing shots
sent Angela diving for cover.

She got a mouthful of sand as her chest hit
the hard ground. More shots were fired from beyond her
mound—Martinez returning fire. She pushed herself up, ready to
engage. The men were shouting in loud, angry tones. The
high-forehead man, who had taken it in the shoulder, had his gun
out, firing at random all over the place.

Martinez took cover as Angela crawled closer
to him. She didn’t see the other man, the one with the curly locks,
but when she reached Martinez, she could see a body lying next to
the truck on his back.

“I got one of them,” Martinez said. “Right
through the head.” He didn’t sound proud of it. His face was pale
and his eyes dark with worry as though he knew they had taken their
pursuit too far.

The remaining man was undeterred. He rushed
toward them, firing his pistol, hitting the ground near them. A
chunk of rock flew up and hit Angela in the cheek. Martinez looked
stunned, too disoriented to move. And it was at that point that
Angela knew she had to make a quick decision.

She jumped up as the shots coming at them
ceased, only to see the man quickly gaining on them. She raised her
pistol, aiming steadily, and fired a shot into his chest.

The man flew back and flopped onto the
ground. His pistol lay just out of arm’s reach. His body was still.
The echo of Angela’s shot echoed in the air as sirens wailed in the
distance. Martinez was on his knees, staring at the ground. Angela
knelt down and examined his worry-stricken face.

“Are you okay?”

He snapped out of his daze. “Yeah,” he said,
wiping the sweat from his brow. “Why didn’t they listen? I-I didn’t
want to shoot them.”

“You had to,” she said, placing a reassuring
hand over his left shoulder badge.

“I know.” He paused to get on his feet, and
Angela helped him up. “They didn’t listen. What language were they
speaking?”

“It sounded Arabic,” Angela said.

He flashed her a surprised glance and wiped
away the sweat building on his forehead. “You think? I mean, I
didn’t understand a word.”

At the same moment, they both looked ahead
and surveyed the two motionless bodies in the distance. “You think
these are our drug runners?” Angela asked.

“I hope so,” Martinez said in a worried
tone, his hand still clutching his pistol. The sirens were getting
louder. Angela turned her radio on and was met with cross-chatter
demanding their status. It sounded like a combination of Dawson’s
voice, their patrol chief’s, and three others.

“Better check it out before the cavalry gets
here,” Martinez said, signaling to the box truck under the
trees.

Angela agreed and followed Martinez as he
walked toward the truck with his pistol aimed. There was no sense
in letting their guard down now. Anything was possible along the
southern border. Angela held the radio to her mouth and reported
the incident the best she could.

“Received fire from suspected drug
traffickers. Both assailants down.”

Radio static was followed
by an angry voice shouting.
“What the hell
happened out there?”

It was the voice of Border Patrol Chief
Milton Drake. He was as gruff as they came, and he went completely
by the book. Angela had managed to make it a year without getting
on his bad side, though she had the feeling that those days were
over. They’d have to come up with one heck of a story to explain
themselves.

Martinez walked slowly past the curly-haired
shooter’s body, lying on the ground in a contorted pose. She could
see shells in the dirt leading up to the place where he lay.
Thunder rumbled in the graying sky—perfect timing.

She walked past the man and couldn’t help
but look at his face. The back of his head was buried in the sand.
His eyes were open and his mouth agape, with a stream of blood
trailing down his chin. His chest revealed a puckered hole in the
center with blood soaking his shirt around it. She’d never seen a
body so freshly dead and couldn’t help but stop to look at him, her
mind filled with questions and sadness too.

“Am I talking to myself
here?”
the chief’s voice said on the
radio.
“Agent Gannon, what the hell
happened out there?”

She raised the radio to her mouth sighing.
Martinez was already at the truck, circling it with his pistol
aimed.

“During line watch, we intercepted an
unlicensed vehicle, sir. When we approached the vehicle, the driver
and passenger fired at us.”

“And where is this vehicle
now?”
Chief Drake asked.

“Near Graffiti Junction,” Angela
answered.

The name came from an area where Mexican
gangs often tagged their surroundings after illegally crossing the
border into America. She could see some of their spray-paint
markings on the rocks around them, noticing them for the first time
since they arrived on the scene.

“You two stay put,”
Chief Drake said with finality.
“Don’t make another move.”

“Yes, sir,” Angela said. She holstered
her radio and jogged over to Martinez, who had just finished
searching the area.

“I don’t see anyone else,” he said.

“What about the station wagon?” Angela
asked, catching her breath.

Martinez looked around. “What about it?”

“We have to find them. Have the police issue
an APB on it or something.” It was an older-model Lincoln with wood
paneling, at least twenty years old. It shouldn’t be too hard to
find, but Martinez seemed disinterested. He walked to the rear of
the truck and placed his hand on the latch.