Western Terminus Read online

  WESTERN TERMINUS

  An Eli Tucker Thriller

  By

  SCOTT ANDERSON

  Dedicated to Monroe

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to V.S. Valentine for help with viruses and epidemiology.

  Thanks to Flight Er Doc from the Internet for help with law enforcement equipment and military terminology.

  Thanks to David O. Riggs for help with military terminology and military com etiquette.

  Thanks to Ciara Lauren for help with national park procedures and equipment.

  Thanks to John Rymell for information on firearms transactions.

  Thanks to AJ for technical support.

  Thanks to Tom Billings, Steven Youndt, Bill Prep, Daniel Mason, Simone Rego, Mary Brown and several friends from the Internet for beta reads and edits.

  Thanks to Sarah A. Hoyt and Glenn Reynolds for inspiration.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Author claims no ownership of any product or trademark. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Western Terminus Copyright © 2019 by Scott Anderson and Ketch Publishing

  Cover Illustration Copyright © 2019 by Andrew L. Barnhill

  All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1795358286

  © 2019 Ketch Publishing

  Chapter One

  “Let me show you one of the exam rooms where we administer the vaccinations.”

  8:55 AM. The mercury had hit 105 right before Elias turned off the ignition and headed into the clinic. But it was a DRY heat. Ha, ha. He left his sport coat in the car and made a mental note to invest in short-sleeve dress shirts, something he would never have worn back East. Dr. Ellen wore a lab coat, stethoscope and a BIA name tag over an Ann Taylor blouse and a skirt in navy blue. She walked fast and Elias walked in her wake.

  “We can’t keep every migrant out, and Lord knows we can’t send them back where they came from. But with this pilot program of free clinics from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and HHS, we can be sure to vaccinate most everyone coming across and so prevent dangerous pathogens from becoming epidemics on the north side of the border.

  “The illegals, well, you just never know what they’ve been vaccinated for and what they haven’t. If you ask, they will tell you they’ve had all their shots and they’re perfectly healthy. They don’t want anyone questioning. So we start from square one and give everyone a full workup including shots, and scripts for whatever they need. An ounce of prevention and all that.” She turned the corner and knocked smartly on the flimsy door inside the building, a re-purposed mobile classroom. They had them back in Monrovia when he was a kid.

  “That’s strange,” said Elias. “Isn’t there such as thing as the Indian Health Agency that’s supposed to do this?”

  “Don’t ask me how Washington works. All I can tell you is that we have the resources to treat migrants now and we didn’t have them before. I’m thankful,” the doctor replied.

  “How do you get them to come in?” he asked. “I mean, how do they know they won’t just get shipped back?”

  “Word of mouth mostly. We make sure the coyotes know we don’t do that here. That they should come here and get free healthcare. ‘Obamacare,’ that’s all you need to say. They get the message and after a few have been through, word gets back to relatives in Sonora.”

  A tech opened the door in front of them and Dr. Ellen introduced Elias. “Marta, this is Special Agent Elias Tucker from the FBI’s office in Phoenix. He’s been assigned to Sierra Vista and Cochise County to keep tabs on the drug trade and so forth.”

  Elias could see there was a Mexican woman with three children about to be examined. She heard “FBI” and became alarmed. Dr. Ellen could see her alarm reflected in Elias’ face.

  Dr. Ellen turned to the woman and said something soothing in Spanish. The woman calmed down and released the death grip she had put on her youngest, a girl of maybe two years. Still in a diaper.

  Elias took a step into the room and smiled at the child. “Me encanta,” he said. That put everyone at ease. Dr. Ellen and Special Agent Tucker left. The baby cried when she took the wicked needle. They could hear her down the hall.

  “The worst is the UACs,” said Dr. Ellen. “The unaccompanied children. The coyotes will sometimes take them this far but usually they just end up with the border patrol.” There were two bored, dirty kids in the next office. They were perhaps ten years old, boy and girl, chucking pencils at each other. They barely looked up as Elias peeked in.

  “Thanks for showing me all this,” said Elias. “You have my number. If you see evidence of an uptick in drugs or if anything else weird happens…”

  “Thank you, Agent Tucker.” She took his hand in both of hers. They were small and cool. She lingered and then stepped back. She looked very tired.

  As he turned to go, she stopped him. “Oh! Agent Tucker! One more thing. While you’re in Bisbee, stop in and say hi to Sheriff Funk. He could be a good asset to you while you’re here.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and put his mirrored sunglasses back on before crossing the hellish tarmac back to the car.

  Chapter Two

  Bisbee would hardly count as a town anywhere Elias had lived before. Barely a smudge on the map. He was shocked at how fast the little car was eating up the blue line on the GPS as he approached Main Street. A sign on the outskirts of town showed the name of the town and the town motto: “An American Original” in stylized Old West lettering. The whole thing looked like a movie set.

  The buildings along Main Street were delightful. Right out of Gunsmoke, including the Technicolor paint jobs. All up and down the street, it looked like a gunfight might break out between a lawman and a varmint at any moment. The Mule Mountains rose in the distance in red and brown, speckled with stunted oak trees and acacia shrubs. The Cochise County Courthouse, a beautiful Art-Deco style six-story building smack in the middle of town, doubled as the Sheriff’s Department main office and county lockup.

  Elias parked out front and mounted the front steps. It was a lot cooler here, maybe 80 degrees. Something he could handle without literally breaking a sweat. Something about the elevation, maybe. The man at the desk directed him to the Sheriff’s office and Elias went through. No metal detector, one camera. Nothing like you’d expect. Just… man this place was corny! If his friends and family back East could see this, they would flip out at how unbelievably quaint it was. Like Disneyland Imagineers came and set up an Old West town.

  The Sheriff’s office was very quiet. Sparse. The walls were painted green and there was a large bullpen where several men and some women were sitting at desks. No one seemed to be conducting any interviews. There was a gun rack on the wall next to the soda machine. The polished hardwood rack had a couple of rifles in it. A wire lock ran through the trigger housings. There was one glassed-off office where a man sat talking on a black corded phone and staring at his computer screen under some fluorescent lighting. Elias identified himself to the nearest official and asked for the Sheriff. The man wore a neat mustache and had his badge on a chain around his neck identifying him as a Deputy Sheriff of Cochise County. He pointed Elias to the glassed-in office and Elias walked over, avoiding the gaze of others.

  He knocked on the door and the man inside looked up. He took one look at Elias and cocked his head in annoyance. He gestured brusquely to enter, and Elias came in.

  The man had an official-looking name plate on his desk. It read,

  THE FUCKER IN CHARGE

  Of You Fucking Fucks

  The man was on the phone. “Yes. Yes. Ok
ay. No, it has to be at least tomorrow. Yes. I’ll get someone to you. Maybe it’s a BLM issue, maybe it’s my jurisdiction. Yes. Okay. I’ll have my man call you. Okay. Okay. Okay. Goodbye.” And he hung the phone up with frustration.

  He looked at Elias up and down. “Oh great. Another one of you people.”

  Elias coughed. He was not used to being referred to like that. There was bigotry back East of course. White strangers never took their eyes off him and blacks didn’t quite accept him because he ‘acted white.’ He was always conscious to keep his hands where people could see them when he walked around in stores. But as much as he thought he’d be prepared to deal with racist southern-fried hicks, it still shocked him that the Sheriff of all people would be so unprofessional right off the bat. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Do you know what happened to the last one of you people they sent out here?” The Sheriff pushed away from his desk and looked almost angry now.

  “The last one they sent? No, I… What?”

  “Neither do I. That one didn’t even say goodbye before they recalled him.”

  “Recalled? I’m sorry. What are we talking about?”

  The Sheriff stood, clearly upset and raising his voice. Elias noticed the .40 caliber semiauto in his strap. He reflexively put his hand on his hip to feel for his own standard-issue Glock 19. “The last FBI agent! Every time DC sends us one of you people, you make things worse for us. I’m sick of it. You can tell your boss we don’t want any more of your help.”

  Elias took a moment to process that. “When you said ‘you people,’ you meant FBI agents?”

  The Sheriff stopped for a moment and realized what he’d said. He laughed. Another man entered the office. A black man. “Let’s start over. I’m Cochise County Sheriff Jim Funk. This is Barney, my desk Sergeant.”

  “Charmed,” said Barney without smiling.

  The Sheriff pulled two business cards out of his desk. “If you ever need to reach us for something official, you can call either of us.”

  Elias took the cards and put them in his pocket. “Thank you, Sheriff. I’m Special Agent Elias Tucker. I’m here to keep an eye on the drug trade and give the locals a hand where it’s needed.” He shook each hand earnestly. He handed each of them one of his business cards. Barney dropped off two binders of paperwork on Jim’s desk and left. Someone had brought in some barbecue takeout and the aroma had come in with Barney.

  “Sheriff Funk, I was unaware that the Bureau had fielded an Agent to assist you prior to my assignment.”

  “Assist!” He scoffed. “Suuure. We get either a new kid or someone marking their time to retirement. Every couple years.” He looked at the paperwork on his desk. Two phone lines were blinking. He shook his head. “You want a coffee?”

  Sheriff Jim Funk was about 50, maybe six feet tall, ten pounds heavier than his college days, and had unusual platinum blond hair with a few grays coming in. You could tell he was an athlete when he was younger, but the job wears you down. He had three inches and a good forty pounds on Elias, who was 27 and in good shape like a soccer player.

  Jim walked slow. There was no hurry in him at all. He was always where he wanted to be. He grabbed his cowboy hat from a peg near the door. He told the deputy Elias had talked to, “Lost time,” and they walked out to Main Street.

  “Welcome to Bisbee. Where ya from?” asked Jim.

  “Liberia,” Elias replied.

  “Hm. And then what? I didn’t know the Bureau took foreign nationals.”

  Elias laughed. “No, my father is a banker. We lived in New York. I’m naturalized. I’m American.”

  “Naturalized, oh yeah. When did you come to the States?”

  “I was ten. I graduated from Brown and got my law degree at CUNY and spent a year in the DA’s office in… but you don’t need to know all that.” They turned into a little diner complete with swinging saloon doors painted on the real glass doors. So corny!

  “I got time,” urged Jim. He put up two fingers to the waitress and they found a booth by the window.

  “I worked in the DA’s office in Suffolk County in Massachusetts for eighteen months. I learned a lot, including that I don’t really want to prosecute possession and public urination for the next twenty years.” They shared a smile.

  “So I looked around and applied to the Bureau, and that was last Christmas, and here I am.”

  “ICCU?”

  “Yes, technically. But they said to watch for drug crimes and missing persons specifically.”

  Jim nodded slow. “Opioids are in the news,” Jim said, looking out on the sleepy Main Street. “and the news drives the politicians, and the politicians drive the Bureau. Is that about right?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Elias said.

  The waitress brought coffee for Elias and a chocolate milk for Funk. “Could you eat?” Jim asked. Elias looked at his watch and then to the waitress. “What kind of sandwich can you recommend?”

  “Get the turkey club, honey.”

  “What comes with that?”

  She looked at her pad. “Cole slaw or… nothin’.”

  “What kinds of bread do you have?”

  “Wheat.”

  “Then I’d like a turkey club on wheat, and some honey mustard sauce on the side in a little cup, and do you have Stevia?” There wasn’t any Stevia in the little thing on the table.

  “There’s yellow mustard on the table there and no, we’re all out of Stevia.” Elias nodded.

  Jim got the small salad with the hard boiled eggs. He said, “My wife Cheryl says salad, but she didn’t say no eggs.”

  Just then, Harold White Eagle came in and Jim called him over. “Hi Harold, this is Special Agent Tucker from Phoenix.”

  “I didn’t do it,” said Harold, flatly.

  “This is Harold White Eagle. Harold is an old friend of mine. He’s from Sierra Vista but originally from the Dos Cabezas reservation West of here. He knows everybody.” The men shook hands.

  Harold had a flat, ruddy face and thick, straight black hair in a ponytail. He wore large, square gray glasses. His lips bordered on purple. He wore a light cotton plaid shirt and a bolo tie with an elaborate silver and jade slide. He wore a large silver belt buckle and brown cowboy boots.

  “Hmmm, Phoenix. So is that still Agent Butterfield?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “What do you think of him?” Asked Harold White Eagle.

  “He’s fine. Why? You know something I don’t?”

  Harold reached down the table and put some Sweet & Low packets in his breast pocket. “He has all the charisma of a collapsed lung,” Harold deadpanned.

  “Well, maybe so,” conceded Tucker with a smile. “He doesn’t bother me and I try to get my reports in on time.”

  “I’m serious,” said Harold White Eagle, eyes wide. “I think they promote based on no sense of humor.

  “I’m glad I ran into you actually,” he said to Jim. “Look at over in Whitewater. There’s been a higher than normal flow through there.”

  “I’ll take a look,” said the Sheriff.

  Harold got up. On his way out, he put some money on the counter and took a copy of the Republic and a Danish from the tray.

  “What’s Whitewater?” Asked Elias.

  “Whitewater Draw. Nominally it’s a campground, but the real action comes from temporary housing for illegals coming up the 101 from Agua Prieta. Strictly off the books.”

  “So higher flow means more people. Gotcha. I’m going to go check it out.”

  “Yeah. Hey, it’s not too late. I’ll take you out there after. Meet some real gin-u-ine Mexicans.”

  Chapter Three

  It’s only about fifteen miles to Whitewater Draw, but there are some sketchy roads over the mountain between Bisbee and the campsite outside McNeal on the 191. Jim drove them in a marked Suburban with the light bar and police package. A very substantial vehicle. Jim pointed out Double Adobe, a little archaeological site where ASU has digs every year.

&n
bsp; They had Sirius XM on the talk station and the guy was talking about how now we were up to ten top government officials in DC who had been hospitalized with some kind of weird health thing, and that two of them had died – a Congressman and the head of the Bureau of Land Management. Normal conspiracy stuff.

  As they got nearby, Jim said, “Elias, These are the good bad guys. Sure they’re moving illegals through, but the people are being taken care of here. They’re no trouble and nobody’s in danger. I mean, this is probably the best situation for everyone. You understand? The FBI gets involved here… well, that wouldn’t be the best situation anymore. No offense to you, but your people have big feet and tiny brains. I just want to show you what we’re dealing with out here. As a courtesy.”

  “I get it. I’m on the job too, you know. The realities of keeping tabs on people,” replied Elias.

  The campsite was spacious and had all the amenities you could expect. What it didn’t have a lot of was trees, which was kind of weird for Elias. To him, camping meant the forest. However, there were ponds with reeds and sawgrass all around, as well as thousands of sandpipers. People come to Whitewater Draw to see the sandpipers. It’s what they’re famous for.

  Jim went through the front gate and shared a quick word with one of the staff before doubling back along a service trail. Even in the Suburban it was slow going.

  About a mile past the last campsite on the other side of one of the big ponds there were some white school buses parked alongside some fairly substantial tents. These were more permanent structures. They parked and Jim grabbed a six pack of Natural Light from the cooler. Then they proceeded on foot.

  A Hispanic boy of maybe 15 met them. He couldn’t have been five feet tall. Funk and the boy exchanged very friendly words in Spanish. Jim said, “Elias, this Frankie. He’s in charge of this camp most days.” Frankie smiled but Elias only nodded.