Free The Territory: A Novel by Tricia Fields

federal laws, but an armed fugitive on foreign soil was better than an employed cop dead in the water.
    She scouted the area around her, and then, crouching low to the ground, she moved behind another fallen tree for cover. Fortunately she had left her vest on. Bending on one knee, she raised her hands and steadied them on the trunk, her eyes scanning for movement in the brush.
    “This is Chief of Police Josie Gray!” she shouted. “Move out into the clearing. Put your hands in the air where I can see them.”
    No movement.
    “Throw your weapons to the ground and place your hands in the air!”
    A gunshot rang out and the water to her left splashed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sauly running toward his house at a sprint. Josie remained still, her eyes focused on the direction the shot had come from, probably thirty feet away and slightly to her right. She heard voices and the rustling of grass and breaking branches, but the sound was moving away from her. Within ten seconds, she heard the doors of a vehicle open and a pickup engine start. Still crouching, she rushed to the edge of the thicket and looked into the clearing in time to see a twenty-year-old two-tone pickup truck take off, following the river east. The truck was too far away to get a license number, but she was betting it had come from the Altagracia Ranch: a seventy-five-thousand-acre working ranch that the Federales had been monitoring closely for ties to the Medrano drug cartel.
    Sauly appeared again from the weeds like an apparition, his tanned body and bald head blending in smoothly with his surroundings. He had acquired a shotgun, which hung over his shoulder from a leather strap.
    “They’re gone,” she called out.
    “Who were they shooting at?” he yelled back.
    Josie ignored the question, more worried about getting across the river and getting Border Patrol on-site before two men turned into twenty. “Can you get me back across?”
    “Ten minutes!” he yelled.
    True to his word, ten minutes later he had rescued the kayak downstream, dragged it back, and paddled deftly across the river, just upstream from the cow, where the bank was slightly more sloped.
    “You paddle back. I’ll swim. Slide on down the bank, and I’ll help you in.” Sauly looked up at her with a wide grin, half his teeth rotted out, his eyes bright. Josie cussed, checked that her gun and phone were secure, and started down the sandy bank, hanging on to a skinny tree to keep from sliding into the river. Sauly had already climbed out of the kayak and was waist deep, holding steady. Josie knew the river was about eight feet deep in the center.
    “Let’s go, Chief. Have a little faith. I won’t let you get that pretty uniform wet.”
    With an arm on Sauly’s shoulder, she managed a quick step into the boat. It rocked back and forth but held steady. Several minutes later, she was safe onshore, where Sauly smiled and handed her the cocaine she had left in the boat.
    “You’re a good man,” she said.
    While he hid his boat again in the weeds, she contacted the Marfa Border Sector on Sauly’s home phone and talked with a patrol officer.
    “I’ve got ten packages. Probably a kilo each. The cow’s abdomen was sliced open. They took her organs out, stuck the coke in, and sewed her back up with what looks to be fishing line. When the cow got hung up, the fishing line snapped and her belly broke open.” The sector agent took off on a cynical rant against the kind of idiots who would route their drugs across the border in a dead cow. Josie didn’t recognize the agent, but he sounded fed up with the job. Josie finally broke in, “The Altagracia Ranch is about two miles upstream from here, Mexican side.” She provided directions to Sauly’s for the agent and said, “Shots were fired. If I hadn’t had a gun pointed in their direction, they’d have been more aggressive. They’ll be back.”
    *   *   *
    When Josie arrived back at the police department, a