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alongside the house, holding his cell phone at arm’s length. Still no signal. He closed the phone. The dogs, he noticed, looked more like hyenas. “What are those, anyway?”
    “Dingoes,” the old man said, “smarties. I feed cattle, and these dogs are my caballeros. A man and twelve of these fellas can handle a herd of three hundred head very easily.”
    Kenneally had been working with what looked like the Mexican military. But it could be anybody, even other Customs and Borders officers in disguise, who knew? The kid was in it, though, in deep, and somebody was going to want to talk to him, for sure. Not Jim, though. All Jim wanted was to track down the bomb, if there was one.
    “I need to get back to my office,” he said. “I’ll pay you to drive me, or I’ll buy your vehicle.”
    “Where’s your office?”
    Was it dangerous to reveal that information? He wished he knew more about what he was dealing with. What if they came up out of the brush later and worked this man over? What might he reveal when his eyeballs were being washed with acid? “El Paso,” Jim lied.
    The old man was silent so long that Jim thought he hadn’t heard. “Problem is,” he finally said, “if I sell you the truck for what it’s worth, which is about fifteen dollars, how am I gonna get another truck? And I can’t go to El Paso; I got three hundred head on feed; they need papa.”
    Legally, Jim could not commandeer the truck. “How much do you need, then?”
    “Ten thousand is gonna do me a decent replacement.”
    He couldn’t write the man a personal check for that amount, because the expenditure wouldn’t get approved and money transferred to his account before the check bounced. “Mister, I want to appeal to your patriotism.”
    “I am sorry to tell you, but I am faithful to an America that has been gone so long you never had the good fortune to know it. That makes me a real patriot, fella.”
    “I hear you and I understand and I agree.”
    “You only think you do, and that’s the problem with all’a you people.”
    Jim had no choice. He would lie again. “Sir, I am going to commandeer the truck. I have the legal right to do this. I will leave you a receipt, and I will have it returned to you as soon as possible.”
    “Billions of dollars thrown down the drain every day, and all you can do is steal one old man’s old truck. You oughtta be ashamed, Federal Officer. Course you’re not, ’cause you’re the same as the rest of ’em, just somehow lost the thread of freedom. I shoulda let ’em pop you, see how my dogs do on white meat.”
    Jim respected this man’s suspicion of government, but what could he do? “The vehicle will be returned by six o’clock tomorrow night, and you’ll be compensated fairly.” He held out his hand. “I am taking the keys.”
    That brought a moment between the two of them, not pleasant. Jim could see the old man considering what to do—shoot him, set his dogs on him, or give him the truck.
    He waited for the decision. The old man took in a breath, let it out as a sigh. “There goes one perfectly good truck,” he said, “Federal Officer.”
    As Jim went to the truck, he watched the dogs carefully. They were no longer in the slightest interested in the night out beyond the house pasture, but they were tracking him with their eyes. A snap of the old man’s fingers and he’d be torn apart.
    The truck was ancient, its radio torn out, its cab dusty with old feed. He felt rotten taking it, even for a day. Worse, he’d have to rely on what was going to be a very busy San Antonio FBI to return it.
    He opened his wallet and counted out as much as he dared to go light, a hundred dollars. “I’m sorry I’m not good for more. But I might need my cash.”
    The old man took the money. “My tax refund?” he asked with bitter irony.
    “Is there any way out of here that doesn’t involve Fifty-seven?”
    “Well, you can use my track over to Eighty-three, then head down to Crystal