Crossing the Line Read Online Free

of the men was aiming up through a rifle’s sight for a second shot while the other was bent over like he might be laughing.
    Roberto shouted down at them in Spanish—words I didn’t think at the time would help our situation: “Motherfuckers! You shoot again and I’ll cut your throats!”
    The one with the gun yelled, “You’re trespassing. Our boss doesn’t like trespassers. Put them back on the ground, he told us.”
    “I’m invited, you dumb animals. Go tell him it’s Roberto Burns. Before I come down there and stick that rifle up your ass.”
    The men laughed some more and the one with the gun pointed it. But there was an uncertainty in both their gestures. The rifle didn’t fire a second time.
    “You really know the guy who owns this place?” I’d asked him as I frantically readied the soggy ropes for a sprint to the summit.
    The men got into the Jeep and drove away to check with their boss.
    “Sort of. You wouldn’t like him.” He laughed. “Trust me. We need to get out of here,
che
. Fast.”
    And we did. Driving out a different way and over another barbed-wire fence before the men returned.
    “That was Hidalgo’s land,” Roberto said now. “His inland
estancia
. He told me about that wall after I pulled him off Aconcagua. Said I ought to come down sometime and give it a shot.”
    “If you really knew him, then why were we in such a hurry to get out of there? Why’d we drive over all those fences instead of just going by the house?”
    “I didn’t want you to meet him, bro.”
    Now it gave me a small thrill, learning that eight years earlier I’d come close to meeting one of the continent’s most brutal drug lords. A man believed responsible for hundreds of torture killings—his way of silencing those whom he suspected of disloyalty. His method was not only to kill the suspected individual, but to also kill every member of his family. Even close friends sometimes. It was a method that assured no one would ever testify against him. Simple and very effective. No one would sentence their entire family to death no matter what kind of protection or reward they were offered. And I felt a different sort of thrill, too, because my brother had been protecting me from him even way back then.
    Roberto sat forward, leaning over far enough so that between his legs so that he could gaze down on the Feds, the wolf, and the two trucks parked below.
    “I’m surprised they let us do this,” I told him.
    “Didn’t have no choice,
che
. Those two want Hidalgo bad. They’ll do whatever I want.”
    If they were dealing with my brother in the first place, it had to be true. What I didn’t understand was why he was dealing with them. Putting himself in danger of more time in prison if things didn’t work out, and risking a bad, bad death if they did. And maybe for not just him, although I didn’t want to think about that. Not yet.
    “I still don’t get why you’re doing this, ’Berto.”
    He shrugged. “Things are changing. I can’t explain it right now.”
    I didn’t push him. I’d save it for later.
    He glanced over his shoulder at me and then down again.
    “Now watch this. I’m gonna freak ’em out.”
    He stood and reeled about thirty feet of slack from his harness. Next he made an overhand knot. I didn’t realize right away what he was doing because I was thinking about what he’d said, and trying to guess the reason or reasons he was here.
    What was going on with him? Why didn’t he just stay in South America, where Grandpa’s compadres from the bad old days during Argentina’s Dirty War could protect him from extradition? Why hadn’t he knocked Tom Cochran’s teeth down his throat? And why had he apologized?
    I didn’t think I’d ever heard him apologize before. Not in thirty-two years of knowing him.
    The click of a carabiner’s gate snapping shut startled me out of my thoughts. He had clipped the knot to the bolts. He’d also unclipped his own anchoring knot. He dropped the