The Territory: A Novel Read online

  As soon as the nurses walked into the operating room, the ambulance attendants turned and left without a word.

  “How bad is this?” Vie asked.

  “I’ll get your team locked in as soon as the surgeon gets here,” Josie said. “How long?”

  Vie looked at her watch. “Ten minutes at the most.”

  “I’ll be in the room with you. Otto will be in the lobby near the front entrance. We’re waiting on backup to surround the building.”

  Vie called over her shoulder to the younger nurse. She was a small-framed girl with slumped shoulders and round glasses.

  “Carrie, this is Josie. She’s the officer that will be in the room with us throughout surgery.”

  Josie shook the girl’s clammy hand. “Good to meet you, Carrie. Don’t sweat this. We’re going to be okay.”

  Carrie offered a weak smile, and Vie told her to get the surgical table set.

  After the girl left, Vie planted her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at Josie. “You never answered my question. Must mean it’s pretty bad.” Without waiting for a response, Vie turned back to the surgery room, already shouting orders.

  When the surgeon arrived, Josie followed him into the prep area, where he scrubbed for surgery and dressed in sterile gear. He was tall, early thirties, and rail thin with a calm demeanor that impressed Josie immediately. She gave him a quick summary of the situation.

  Before they walked out of the prep area, Josie stopped him at the door. “My first priority is the medical staff. You have control over the surgery. I have control over your safety. If I give you and the nurses an order, I need you to follow it. No questions asked. These people are murderers. I want to keep you safe.”

  He paused, considering his words, and then reached into the breast pocket on his scrub top. He handed Josie a picture of a baby.

  “She’s three months old,” he said, his voice strained.

  The baby’s hand was wrapped tightly around her father’s little finger, her lips forming an O, as if the camera had caught her by surprise.

  “Keep us safe,” he said. He squeezed Josie’s shoulder and pushed open the door into the surgery room.

  * * *

  Within fifteen minutes, Hector Medrano was prepped, and Josie and Otto had done what they could to secure the building. She had sent the mayor back to his office to reduce his risk and keep him out of the way. Otto was positioned at the front door, crouched behind the receptionist’s desk, while Josie stayed in the operating room. Her biggest fear was the unmanned door at the back of the clinic. It was locked, but they were wide open for attack. There were so few police officers in the region that backup was unlikely. Artemis was surrounded by towns with populations under eight thousand. Odessa was the nearest large town, at ninety thousand people, but it was 240 miles away. She had requested Border Patrol and DPS backup, but time was not on her side.

  As surgery began, Josie listened for voices or activity outside the operating room. She stood behind the surgical table to keep a clear view of the door, and attempted to avert her gaze from the bloody mess in front of her. Hearing the suction of body fluids made her realize she had not eaten since a half can of fruit cocktail for supper. She glanced down and watched the gloved hand of the surgeon, slick with blood, exit the man’s chest cavity. Her peripheral vision turned black, and she pressed her hands flat on the cool concrete wall behind her, bent her knees, and breathed in the pungent mix of antiseptic and blood. She forced herself to take slow, deep breaths.

  Vie, standing opposite the surgeon, called Josie’s name. “You’re looking a little peaked. You’re not going to drop on us, are you?” Vie asked.

  Josie shook her head, hoping Vie would leave her be.

  Focusing on the door, Josie listened to the surgeon’s steady voice and the measured blips and whisking of machines as her nausea subsided.

  The surgeon walked Carrie through the process of inserting a chest tube to stabilize the patient’s breathing, and Josie wondered at his bravery. He was one of twelve surgeons from El Paso and Odessa who served the trauma needs of several West Texas border towns on a rotating basis. With so few resources, the surgeons were required to take a course in triage. During emergencies, they were taught to determine which patients would live and which would die, regardless of treatment, so they could focus on the patients who would most benefit from immediate care. Josie feared the knowledge might be put to use that day.

  Each person on the surgical team understood the danger they were in; operating on one of Mexico’s drug cartel elite after a failed assassination attempt—one that would most certainly be completed in the future—seemed suicidal. And at what cost? Three decent human beings in exchange for a man suspected by authorities to have plotted the deaths of more than twenty rival gang members in the past year. For the assassins, an order to kill was an order, not a suggestion. The international border was no obstacle. La Bestia ran an organization as structured as, and certainly more ruthless than, any government military.

  “The bullet struck bone. The fragments have to be removed. This will take longer than I’d hoped.” The surgeon lifted his head and looked to the ceiling, either to stretch or offer a prayer. He took a steel instrument from Vie as the other nurse rattled off numbers that meant nothing to Josie.

  Carrie checked the monitors. She pulled her scrubs away from her chest and twitched as if her clothes irritated her skin. Behind the blue mask, Josie saw the fear in her eyes.

  “Pressure’s dropping,” the girl said. “There’s blood in the breathing tube.”

  Josie heard muffled voices outside the building, and Vie lifted her head, her expression wary.

  With her back braced against the wall, her muscles taut and focused, Josie strained to decipher the noises from outside the unit. She reached Otto on his cell phone, not wanting the conversation on the public frequency.

  “I hear voices outside the building. DPS arrived?”

  “The front parking lot is empty. I just checked with Lou. DPS has two officers on their way, but they’re still thirty minutes out. The voices are coming from the east side of the building. They’re moving toward the back door.” Otto hesitated. “It’s about to get ugly.”

  Josie knew Medrano would not have made it through surgery in Juárez. Retaliation in trauma units was common there. It was ranked the deadliest city in the world. Just a month ago, Mexican authorities charged two members of La Bestia for the murder of a high-ranking police commander in Juárez who refused to pay the demanded protection. He took a bullet through his chest as he entered the grocery with his wife. When the bullet failed to kill him, the assassins followed the ambulance to the hospital and killed the officer, the ambulance driver, and three bystanders.

  Josie heard a car in the rear of the building, shut her cell phone, and slipped it in her shirt pocket. Within seconds, bullets pelted the back of the building, and glass shattered. The sound echoed down the hallway and filled the operating room. They had shot the back doors open. Voices were shouting, obviously inside the building now, speaking rapid-fire Spanish. Josie’s chest tightened under her vest, and she gritted her teeth, every thought focused on her actions.

  “Flat on your stomachs!” she said, waving to the floor.

  The surgeon looked wide-eyed at the man on the gurney. “I can’t leave him. He’ll die!”

  Josie pointed toward the corner of the room with her gun. “Now! They’ll spray this whole room with bullets if they can’t get in.”

  Gunshots echoed down the hall, just outside the trauma room, and Carrie screamed and dropped to her knees. Vie and the surgeon both looked to Josie for an answer. She motioned for them to cover their heads and lie on the floor in the corner.

  More shouts from the hallway, then two additional gunshots, single caliber, that sounded like police rounds coming from the front of the building, where Otto was stationed. The three medical personnel lay flat on their stomachs. Josie heard the young nurse crying and Vie praying aloud. The doctor wa
s between both nurses, his hands held protectively over their heads.

  Josie crouched in the opposite corner. She had two guns, one on her thigh, cocked and ready for backup, the other trained on the door, both with a bullet in the chamber and a full magazine. The police-issued sidearms were little consolation in combat with automatic weapons that could sweep a room in a matter of seconds.

  The trauma room echoed with the pounding of fists on the door and shouts in Spanish, but Josie couldn’t shoot without knowing who stood beyond the wall. With her gun trained on the door, she thought of Otto in the front of the building and hoped he hadn’t been hit. She shoved the image from her mind, forcing herself to keep focus.

  The cries of the young nurse on the floor turned to sobs.

  Bullets hit the door, ringed the handle, and the door flew open with a kick. Three gunmen screamed as they opened fire on the man lying on the table. Josie fired her pistol, hit one man in the chest, then a second in his upper arm. The first man stumbled backwards into the hallway; the second man fell back against the wall as the third man turned and fled, still yelling as he ran down the hall, spraying the walls with bullets.

  She heard the clinic’s back door slam and tires blow gravel through the parking lot. Josie leaped from her crouched position on the floor, yelling at the injured man to drop his weapon. He leaned against the wall, holding the other hand over the bleeding wound, the automatic rifle at his feet.

  Josie pushed him to the floor, kneeled on his back. He cried out in pain as she pulled his arms back and snapped handcuffs on him. Stepping into the hallway, she pushed at the gunman lying on his back on the floor. From the chest wound, she was certain he was dead. She put her backup weapon inside the concealed holster under her shirt and carried his AK-47 with her. Otto ran down the hallway to the back entrance as Josie stood, leaving the wounded man moaning on the floor. The two nurses and doctor stared up at her from the floor.

  “Anyone hit?” she asked them.

  They began to pull themselves up into sitting positions, still too shocked to know if they were hurt. They all appeared fine to her, and she told them to stay down. She glanced at Medrano on the operating table. He was no longer recognizable.

  With her back pressed against the wall in the hallway, she moved quickly toward the rear entrance. Otto rushed back inside, sweat dripping down his face, his coloring so red, she worried he might be having a heart attack.

  “It’s clear. No one back there, no cars or people in the parking lot or in the yards across the street.”

  “You okay?” Josie asked. Her voice echoed in her head as if in a box, and the smell of gunpowder burnt her nose.

  Otto wiped the sweat off his forehead with his shirt sleeve. “Jesus, I thought you were all dead. The staff okay?”

  “They got the patient. That’s it.”

  The two stood in the silence of the hallway, ears still ringing in pain from the gunfire.

  * * *

  Eight hours later, Josie sat in the mayor’s office, along with Moss and Sheriff Roy Martínez. Moss had requested a debriefing to discuss the shooting. His office was located in the Artemis City Building, which was connected to the left side of the police department in downtown Artemis. The mayor’s office was located in the back of the long, narrow building, and was walled in brown 1970s-style wood paneling and beige shag carpeting. The conference table, large enough for eight people to sit around, dominated the office. A mahogany desk the size of a twin bed took up the space in the back. Josie could smell the cigar smoke on Moss’s clothing from across the table as he plugged a laptop cord into a wall socket.

  Built like a linebacker, with wide shoulders and a squat stance, the mayor held himself in great esteem and was not shy about sharing that opinion with anyone who would listen. Three years ago, when Josie applied for the position of chief of police, she had the support of the city council, the other officers in the department, and Sheriff Martínez. Moss was the hold-up. He had told her to take her name out of the running, that she did not belong, that she was not strong enough mentally or physically for the rigors of the job. It wasn’t personal, he said, but women were not “built” for police work. She had ignored his demand and was appointed shortly thereafter. Josie had never learned who put the political pressure on Moss to hire her, but she knew he resented her presence and would relish her dismissal.

  Josie connected her digital camera to the mayor’s laptop, downloaded the images, and clicked through the set as she provided a description of the pictures she had taken, inside and out at the Trauma Center, as the Artemis PD and Texas Department of Public Safety officers processed the crime scene. She explained that she had hit one of the gunmen in the chest and he had died at the scene.

  Moss interrupted her. “That is not good. Not good at all.” His eyebrows furrowed, and he stared hard at Josie.

  She ignored the comment and pointed to a picture of the gunman she had shot in the arm being loaded into an ambulance. “The Arroyo County Sheriff’s Department took this man, the second gunman, into custody and transported him to the Arroyo County Hospital. The bullet was removed and the wound dressed. He was transported to the jail about an hour ago.” She made eye contact with the mayor. “Our jail. The surgeon said the man needed to remain in the hospital overnight.” She gestured to the sheriff sitting across the table from her. “Martínez fought and won.”

  Roy Martínez said, “After the hit on the Trauma Center, I won’t risk another unsecured situation.” Martínez shifted in his chair. A burly former marine, he was a large, muscular man who barely fit between the arms of the wooden captain’s chair. He often looked uncomfortable in his uniform, as if he needed more space to breathe. He cleared his throat and said, “There’s a nurse outside his cell to keep track of his medical needs. He’s a Mexican citizen, so we’ll have to figure out who’s going to pay for this mess.”

  “We can’t afford the phone bill, let alone the medical bills for a fugitive,” the mayor said.

  Josie pressed the space bar on the laptop and showed the last picture, a wide-angle shot of the operating room. The gurney and body had been removed, but blood splatter remained on the walls and floor. Yellow stickers, numbered one through fifty-eight, were scattered about the room near pockmarks and holes in the white cinder block.

  “Fifty-eight bullets used to kill a man who was already half-dead,” Josie said. “It’s a miracle we didn’t lose the entire medical staff.”

  Moss stood and walked to the window, then turned to face them. “This has to stop. I will not allow my town to be overrun by terrorists.”

  Sheriff Martínez cleared his throat and pushed a finger in between his neck and his brown uniform collar and tugged. He leaned forward in his chair toward the mayor. “Allow? You think the law officials in this town are allowing these people to shoot up the town?”

  Moss stared back at Martínez and didn’t speak. His expression changed, as if he were recalculating his next move.

  “The city police department has three officers, including myself. The sheriff’s department has four, and they have to run the jail,” Josie said. “You have drug cartels across the border with million-dollar arsenals. You patch one hole in the border, and they just blow through another. They dig under the fence, they go over it in biplanes, they scramble the radar. We’re in their line of traffic right now. And we don’t have a tenth of the officers we need to fight back.”

  “Then patch the crack. Blow their asses down the border. I don’t really give a damn, but I don’t want them here,” Moss said.

  “Then don’t allow medical transports across the border!” Josie said.

  “Do you understand what kind of political hell we’d get if he died because we wouldn’t allow him access to a surgeon?” Moss asked. “A U.S. citizen? The media would eat me alive!”

  “We have two thousand miles of border with Mexico, and only a third of it is controlled. I just read a briefing last week from Homeland Security stating that West Texas was put on the
national watchlist for high-intensity drug trafficking. We’re a designated port for weapons transportation and terrorist entry.” She let her words sink in. “We need more officers.”

  “Whose paycheck do you plan on squeezing? Yours?” He pointed directly at Josie. “I’m telling you, either get a grip on this situation, or I will find someone else who can.”

  Martínez interrupted. “I don’t like your threat or your tone of voice. You don’t have the power to replace me or her, so knock off the meaningless bully tactics.”

  Moss’s eyes bulged in anger. He looked at Martínez. “That’s fine! Let the voters deal with you. But the commissioners and I can and will run her out of town if she isn’t doing her job.”

  “You need to be reminded of your place.” Martínez leaned forward in his chair toward Moss. “You’re a figurehead who can be voted out. You have absolutely no support to remove Chief Gray. And if you try, I’ll personally run a campaign against you like this town has never seen.”

  * * *

  After thirty minutes of talk that left everyone angrier, the mayor dismissed both officers with a wave of his hand and a vague order to catch the sons of bitches. Josie and Martínez exited his office and walked across the street to his car, which was parked in front of the courthouse. It was six o’clock, and the smoldering July sun intensified the misery. The grass around the courthouse lawn had been brown for a month, and even the massive oak trees that ringed the courthouse looked faded to Josie.

  Martínez leaned against the hood of his sheriff’s car and stroked his mustache. “You still shook up over the shooting?” he asked.

  Josie stared at the pavement and considered the question. She respected and liked Martínez as a person. She was a foot shorter, but he never tried to overpower her with his physical presence, a tactic he used often—and effectively—with others. Josie stood at a thin five feet seven and carried herself with assurance. Most people had no doubt when looking at Chief Gray that she was capable and in charge, but that afternoon, she had begun to worry for the first time in her career that the criminals were getting the upper hand.