In the Time of Man

Chapter Sixteen

They had been watching her for more than a year. Every six or seven weeks, they noticed that she left work on Friday evening and made a long drive down to Bisbee, near the border, to see her widowed mother. In the afternoon, her husband and the children drove ahead of her to beat commuter traffic out of the valley. She did not always finish work early so they took separate cars to avoid keeping the kids up too late. 

Invariably, she stopped in Sierra Vista to buy coffee before getting back onto Highway 90, a state maintained two-lane running roughly east and west through the rugged hills of Southeastern Arizona. Even in the summer months, it was usually nightfall by the time she reached Sierra Vista and they had noticed that she had never arrived at her mother’s while there was any remaining daylight. 

The two men sat in their car and waited. Traffic along 90 at that time of night was almost non-existent and they had seen the spacing on the headlights of her hybrid car so many times that they were confident they would recognize it at a distance.  They were parked on a ranch road switchback that commanded a broad view of where the highway bent around a hill. The spot was elevated enough above the roadbed that they would not be noticed and yet it allowed them access to the pavement in less than a few hundred yards. 

“I’m not comfortable with this,” one of the men said.

“You don’t have to be. Our comfort is of no one’s concern.”

“I think it’s too much. It’s going too far.”

“We don’t get to make those decisions, do we? I don’t recall when we’ve ever been asked.”

“Yeah, well, maybe it’s time.”

“Ain’t gonna happen and you know it. They think of us as soldiers and they give us orders. We can’t just stop following them now.”

“Yeah, we can.”

“But we won’t, and you damn well know it. Otherwise, we’ll end up like her and everybody else who gets in the way.”

“I’m just not sure I can do this.”

“You don’t have to. Just sit there. I’m driving.”

“It’s wrong, and we both know it. The government’s out of control. This whole thing is out of control. They can’t stop what’s happening now.”

“Maybe not. But they’re going to keep trying. And we’ve got our job to do.”

“You think shutting her up is going to change anything?”

“I have no idea.That information isn’t available at my pay grade, or yours, either. Hang on. Car’s coming.”

Headlights glowed behind a hill and then a pickup truck came around a curve and into view. 

“Not her.”

“She’ll be along.”

They both thought of themselves as normal American husbands and fathers. Their families lived in suburbs outside of Washington and Baltimore. One of them had three boys and had been married 22 years while the other was the father of two boys and two girls and had 17 years with his college sweetheart. Both were comfortably making mortgage payments on nice homes in middle-class neighborhoods and generally worked during normal business hours. When they told neighbors and friends they were employed by the Department of Homeland Security, people politely refrained from asking questions. Everyone understood that it was intrusive and indelicate to ask about the secret measures being taken to protect the country from terrorists and other threats.

“You can’t start killing reporters to shut them up.”

“Nobody said anything about killing anyone. But what happens, happens.”

“They didn’t have to, did they? We know what they expect.”

The two did not face each other in the darkness as they spoke. These types of discussions had never happened before when they were dispatched to execute a task and both of them were growing uncomfortable. Neither liked confronting the personal consequences of their job responsibilities and the oaths they had sworn. They had arrived at their intellectual rationalizations to provide a small quotient of personal comfort for themselves and to explain their individual acts as part of a larger need for their country. 

“I don’t like it any more than you do, pal.”

“It’s not about liking it. It’s about whether we choose to do this.”

“We made that choice when we took these jobs, didn’t we? It’s kind of hard to turn around and run back and say we’ve changed our minds.”

“You ought to just pay another visit to her house and give her more of a scare. She’ll figure it out.”

“That didn’t exactly work the first time, did it? And where the hell were you? I passed the police on their way in there out on the damned highway.”

“You know where I was.”

“Doesn’t matter. You saw all the damage she ended up doing after I tried to knock down her damned door. They want her more than scared.”

Another set of lights arched up over the rocky incline and they stopped talking. A car slowed and cautiously rolled around the bend, which was guarded by a low railing. 

“That’s her.”

“You don’t know that. She doesn’t have the only hybrid in Arizona.”

“We’re rolling. We’ll get close enough to check the license before we do anything.”

 “Jesus Christ.”

 “Shut up. We’re going to do what our country has asked us to do, needs us to do.”

 “Our country, my ass.”

Their car slipped onto the road less than a half mile behind the hybrid. Accelerating, they closed the distance rapidly and eased up near the rear bumper to read the license plate. The driver in front of them must have thought she was about to be passed but the headlights in her rearview mirror fell away as the car behind her slowed. 

The license plate was a correct match and the two men paced the hybrid’s 60 mile per hour speed.

“We’re coming up on two deep arroyos in this next S curve section. There aren’t any guard rails. Highway department probably didn’t think the curves were sharp enough.  I’ve driven this stretch a hundred times.”

“What are you telling me?”

“We’re making a move. Watch your door.”

He gained speed and closed the distance to the hybrid. In less than a minute, he had approached to within ten feet of its rear bumper. When the vehicle in the front did not attempt to pull away from tailgater, the driver inched closer and bumped the hybrid.  Tires screeched slightly as the smaller car swerved, recovered a corrected course, and then accelerated dramatically, as if trying to escape.     

In their black Suburban with its V-8 engine, the two men trailing the hybrid easily ran it down and slipped back into a stalking position. A yellow sign with a curved arrow to the left flashed in the darkness and a few seconds later the waxed and shining black SUV drifted over to the oncoming traffic lane as if the driver were attempting to pass.  Instead, he eased to within a few feet of the hybrid’s door, gained speed, and turned sharply rightward, forcing the driver of the smaller car to take dramatic corrective action.

Becky Acuna wheeled hard to her right and her Toyota went airborne, appearing to almost leap off of its right two wheels as the Suburban raced away into the darkness.  Her car lurched and then began a series of rolls in a flash of sparks, exploding glass, and the screech of crumbling metal and shattering composite materials. Becky made no sounds of fear or pain as her twisted vehicle took a final tumble off the shoulder of Highway 90 and about 50 feet down into a dry arroyo. She might have already been unconscious before the plummet. 

The two government agents stopped a few hundred yards beyond where they had forced Becky Acuna’s car off the road.

“We going back?” the man in the passenger seat asked.

“What the hell. Let’s take a look.” 

The driver saw no oncoming traffic in either direction and swung his vehicle around to the west. He killed his lights and parked, waiting for any approaching cars or trucks before opening his door and getting out.

“Grab that flash light out of the glove box there.”

“Yeah. Got it.”

“But don’t turn it on until I tell you it’s clear.”

“Right.”

Crossing the highway, neither of them heard any pleas for help or any other sound beyond a dry wind moving through the brittle living things inhabiting the desert night.

“Go ahead. Shine the light down there.”

“Okay.”

He played the beam across the chassis, which was pointing up in the air with the two front wheels still turning. The Toyota had spun around and was facing back to the west, as if it had left the pavement while it was traveling in that direction. 

“Driver’s on our side there. See if you can make her out.”

The second man aimed the narrow swath of light at the inverted window. An arm hung limp against the dust and gravel on the desert floor. The light did not brighten the passenger’s compartment but it appeared the driver had been wearing her seat belts. Nothing inside of the upended vehicle appeared to be moving.

“Goddamned hybrids don’t carry enough gas to even catch fire. Guess it’s just as well. Won’t attract any attention this way.”

“You want me to go down and take a look and see if she’s alive?”

“Not necessary.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“The matter’s resolved either way. Let’s go.” 

He turned around and trotted across the silver bank of the highway turn. His partner, who thought he may have seen the driver’s arm twitch just then, chased after him with the flash light extinguished. To the west, they saw two sets of high beams tracking through the desert and moving in their direction.

“I don’t get it.” 

He climbed in on the passenger side and the door swung shut behind him as they pulled out fast into the westbound lane.

“There’s not a damned thing to get. It’s not relevant if she’s dead or alive. If she’s dead, she damned sure isn’t causing the government any more problems. And if she’s alive, well, she’s clearly a smart woman. My guess is she got a clue because she’s got kids.”

“Yeah, well, so do I, pal. And I don’t want to raise them to think this is the way the world works.”

“Maybe it does work this way. Maybe it always has. And you know what else, pal? If we don’t do our job well, you may not get to raise your kids to be a damned thing.”

“You’re fuckin’ crazy. You know that?”

“I may be. But I might also know exactly what I’m talking about.”

A six-wheeled diesel pickup rattled past them eastbound and did not slow as it eased around the curve where they had forced the car into a series of flips before falling into the canyon. Fifty feet below the surface of the road, the compact lay crumbled and broken; a torn radiator hose was hissing softly in the dark. No one was likely to notice the wreckage for a very long time.