The Jaguar (22 page)

“The government fears the Zapatistas in the Sierra Madre,” said Fidel. “And they fear the Gulf Cartel. We are in the heart of their plaza. Armenta grew up not far from here. Rebels and drug cartels get along very well because the cartels provide jobs for the poor, growing
mota
and the poppies. Of course this is illegal. But those wealthy cartels that pay their bribes to the police and government, their people can grow all they want. In this way the government and the cartels work together to produce Mexico’s most valuable crops. But those without cartel sponsors? Or those who want to work for another set of cartel masters? They suffer. They don’t dare pick up a shovel to help themselves. Their fields are burned, or worse. But sometimes even the peasants who have jobs, they get ideas and they make demands of the government or the cartels. That happened here in Las Flores. They demanded that the school be rebuilt and that fresh water be supplied and that their protection payments be made smaller. A cartel enforcer disappeared near here. So the village is being starved. They are mostly Maya—they speak no Spanish and they worship their own gods and they disdain the Mexican government. Military patrols intercept the delivery trucks to this village, and send them back. Gulf Cartel patrols terrorize them with extortion and beatings and the rape of women and girls. So the
mercados
look like the one we were just in. Not enough food. Not enough water. Not enough medicine. In a few weeks the delivery trucks will stop coming here altogether. The people will leave for other villages or cities. For Villahermosa or Campeche or Chetumal. Some of them will disappear into the jungle and live in camps. Sooner or later the government will allow the supplies to come through and things will return to normal.”

“Normal.”

“Our normal. Mexico is cursed. So far from God and so close to the United States.”

Bradley nodded at the aphorism, then took the pump nozzle in his hand to top off the tank. His palm wound barked.

“What I want most out of this is Saturnino,” said Fidel. “He belongs to me.”

“If everything goes right, there won’t be a Saturnino. There will be Erin and we’ll get her and get the hell out.”

“And what if everything does not go right?”

They passed northeast through Escárcega. The lowlands spread flatly before them, rainforest thick with ceibas and strangler figs and Honduras Mahogany. The highway was straight and narrow and bleached gray by the Yucatecan sun.

Caroline Vega leaned forward from the back bench seat, her shiny black hair flooding onto the center console between the men. Bradley had seen the attraction growing between her and Fidel and it angered him because it detracted from their sense of mission. Caroline rarely engaged anyone, but she was engaging Fidel often.

“How long?”

“One hundred kilometers,” said Fidel.

“I like the ruins. Can we stop and look?”

“We’re not stopping to play tourist right now,” said Bradley.

“I didn’t ask you,” said Caroline. “And I can’t sit still much longer.”

“We should keep moving, Caroline,” said Fidel.

“Shut up, Caroline,” said Bradley.

They passed a clearing on the right of the highway, where a Mayan woman was selling honey in both jars and cans from a horse-drawn cart.
She stared at them without expression, her face hard and lined as tree bark.

“I’ve heard that’s the best honey in the world,” said Vega. “They sell it in my health food store in Silver Lake but I buy the stuff from Ojai.”

“We’re not stopping to buy some,” said Bradley.

She slugged him smartly on the shoulder and sat back in her seat. “Are we there yet?”

“We can stop and buy honey,” said Fidel. “It will improve the flavor of our very old tortillas.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” said Bradley.

“Fidel knows what he’s doing,” said Vega.

“Please, Bradley,” said Fidel. “I am not challenging your command. A few minutes is all.”

“Christ.”

Fidel slowed and U-turned onto the opposite shoulder of the highway. Slowly he rocked across the muddy ground and waited for the next vehicle to do the same before pulling back onto the asphalt. When they came to the cart they pulled in and parked but only Cleary and Bradley stayed. The three other Yukons arrived and waited with their engines running but no one got out.

“At least the men have a little bit of good sense,” said Bradley.

“This won’t take long. It’s hilarious watching Vega getting the hots for Fidel.”

“It’s not hilarious to me.”

“Amusing, then.”

“I’m not amused, either. I just want to get there and get set up.”

“I know. I do too.”

“We’ve stopped for fucking honey, Jack. I can’t believe this.”

“Remain calm, Deputy Jones.”

Nerves make you pissy, Bradley thought. Do something constructive.
He reached under the seat and made sure his machine pistol was handy. He slid it out and pulled open the slide just enough to see the sparkle of brass and copper, then he closed it and thumbed down the safety. Sweet. He gave the sound suppressor a snugging turn. It was a small gun, designed and built by a friend of his in Orange County, California, of all places. It was fully automatic, .32 caliber and easily concealable. It could take a fifty-shot magazine, and it had a built-in telescoping butt, similar in design to the retractable handles on luggage. The sound suppressor was removable and worked well. The gunmaker had named his invention the Love 32, due to his fascination with outlaws and lawmen, Murrieta having been shot down and beheaded by a man named Harry Love. Bradley thought that the gun should have been named the Joaquin Thirty-two, or maybe just the Murrieta, but naming it was not his privilege.

He had sold one thousand of them to Carlos Herredia, so his soldiers could match the firepower of the Gulf Cartel. He’d made himself a lot of money too, although Charlie Hood had come very close to busting him on felony gun-trafficking charges. Bradley smiled as he remembered those days, just a couple of years ago. Things had been so easy then. His luck had been so good. Well, things change, he thought. He lay the gun alongside his right thigh, the butt telescoped into the frame for now.

“Don’t shoot yourself in the foot, Brad.”

“Go to hell, Jack.”

Bradley turned around and gave Cleary a look, then he watched Vega and Fidel haggling with the honey seller. Omar looked on. Overhead the sun burned yellow, a searing heat, and the jungle trees still glistened from the storm. Vega pointed and Fidel collected a gallon can from the cart. Vega dug into her pocket for money. Like married people at a Safeway, thought Bradley. Married people in body armor. Wave of the future. They seemed to be moving in slow motion. They
plodded around the muddiest places back toward the SUV and Bradley swore they were taking their time to enjoy the walk together. Fidel balanced the can on one finger and caught it when it fell. Omar trailed behind them, head down, dodging the puddles.

After a brief eternity they were back in the SUV and Fidel had started up the engine while Vega passed around the gallon of Mayan honey. The label featured the head of a cartoon jaguar being circled by bees.

“Glad you could make it back before dark,” said Bradley.

“We’re just over one hour away,” said Fidel.

“Then step on it.”

Nearer the Reserva de la Biosfera Calakmul the land rose and undulated in gentle hills and atop some of these Bradley could see the stones of Mayan ruins still staunch against the rainforest. He looked at his watch, then at the maps that Mike had drawn for him. Sixty miles, he thought. He studied the minor roads on the macro map, the ones that would take him deep into the humid coastal jungle and finally to the Castle.

They drove through Conhuas without even slowing down. A few miles on Bradley saw a sign for the biosphere reserve and he liked the idea that they were about to enter federally patrolled land. He allowed himself hope. What a pleasure, he thought. What a thing to have. He looked over his shoulder past Caroline and Cleary and young Omar, and through the rear window he could see the black Yukon 1500 behind them and the other one behind it. And another bringing up the rear.

The column crossed into the biosphere reserve and passed the Becan ruins. They were heading almost due east now, and Bradley could see the rainforest making its slow transition to subtropical jungle—the trees and plants growing more densely together now, and taller with the increased rainfall and proximity to the Caribbean Sea.

They dropped into a basin and off to his right Bradley saw a hillock with another nameless, brazenly inaccessible ruin built upon it. The ruin looked to Bradley like a temple of some kind, square and squat and overgrown but it was a statement made perhaps six centuries ago that still had a voice if you could only hear it. He wished he could. And he wished Erin could see it because she could hear that voice if anyone could. It would mean something to her. Then he wondered if she had in fact seen that very ruin on her way to Armenta’s Castle. Had they hurt her? Did they respect her at all? Did they know she was pregnant? His heart was an anxious knot of emotions.

The land flattened and dipped and rose again. They had just topped the next rise when Fidel slowed to navigate around a wooden cart that had overturned smack in the middle of the highway. A horse stood a few yards away, looking at them with interest, and two Mayan men were trying to get the cart back upright but were having no success at it. The cans and jars of honey had rolled unhelpfully downhill, some of them already to the shoulder where the jungle crowded high and close to the highway and the storm water stood in long pools. Vega and Cleary were craning forward to see and Cleary made some crack about picking up all the honey they wanted and Bradley saw that the horse was still tethered to the cart by the rope around its neck but there was no bit or bridle in sight. The Mayans stopped pushing on the cart, then let go and backed away a few steps while looking at them. Bradley saw movement within the jungle, and the first burst of gunfire slapped against them. Fidel swung the vehicle around the cart and onto the shoulder, where it quickly spun and slid sideways toward the jungle, tires digging in, throwing mud rooster tails into the air.

“Open the top!”
yelled Bradley.

Fidel hit a dashboard button and by the time the shooters’ port had slid open bullets were whapping against the Yukon’s armor. Vega
and Cleary and Omar sprouted up into the port with military assault guns and unleashed their storm. Bradley swung himself out the window and held on to the frame with one hand and reached across the bullet-pocked windshield and shot a man crouched by a strangler fig and another who was beside him and another who was reloading. In the periphery of his vision he saw the Mayans running off into the jungle and the tethered horse bucking wildly at the gunfire and the second SUV screeching to a stop on the far side of the cart. Its shooters too were up in the port and strafing the greenery fearsomely. The third Yukon swung to a stop and the storm multiplied.

Bradley pulled himself back into the cab, drove a fresh magazine into his weapon, clamped another mag crossways between his teeth, then opened his door and dropped to the mud beside the SUV. He crawled on his elbows to the right front tire, then lay himself out flat behind it and waited. The soft mud gathered him down and he had the Love 32 firm in his hands. As the men in the trees moved and became visible he shot them one bullet at a time, three men down for the five shots he fired, and he could see the fear growing on the faces of the others because they had no idea where the bullets were coming from and they couldn’t hear the report of his silenced weapon. They were young men and they wore military fatigues but no helmets or body armor. The “Z” insignias on their shirtsleeves identified them as Zetas, former Gulf Cartel allies now locked in a murderous rivalry with their old employers. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded in the trees and Bradley saw two Zetas twist airborne with the shrapnel, then collapse to earth with finality.

He watched the fourth of their caravan come to a halt fifty yards short of the cart. The man they called El Grande, Martin, climbed into the port opening and launched another grenade. It exploded deep in the jungle beyond the attackers and when Martin rose again with the launcher he was thrown back by machine-gun fire. Bradley
heard bullets whistling madly against the armor of the vehicles and he saw that the bullets did not shatter the security windows but left them pocked with snowy divots and small cracks. He shot two more men with his last five shots, then took the full magazine from his mouth and reloaded. A sudden fury of fire from the trees slammed into his Yukon and he heard the lead screaming off the armor and punching through the places between the armor and he wondered if his people were dying just a few feet above him.

The fourth vehicle lurched forward and barreled toward them. But instead of following Fidel’s SUV into the mud hole the driver cut fast and hard across the highway, barged through the trees and disappeared into the shooters’ side of the rainforest. A moment later Bradley heard the fusillade of gunfire. Some of the ambushers panicked and spilled out onto the highway where they were shot to ribbons. Others must have run deeper into the jungle because the riot of guns and grenades coming from the fourth vehicle seemed to last for minutes. Then the fourth SUV came smashing out of the green and onto the highway, its three gunmen swaying wildly like trees buffeted by a storm but whooping and yelping and killing the ambushers as they tried to scramble away.

When they finally stopped shooting the world went silent. Bradley waited awhile, then climbed suckingly from the mud and stooped behind the hood of the Yukon. He kept his gun pointed to the trees but he looked through the window to see Vega and Cleary standing in the port and Fidel behind his open armored door with a riot ten gauge propped against the frame and Omar slumped bloody and still on the back bench.

A compact car came up the highway toward them from the west. Sun-blistered paint, Quintana Roo plates. It slowed when it came near the cart, and the family inside it stared wide-eyed at the armored gunmen who raised their hands for the car to stop. The driver was a
middle-aged man who looked terrified, raising his hands as if he were under arrest. Three of Fidel’s men easily turned the wagon upright and rolled it to the side of the road. When one of them waved the little car on, it accelerated noisily but slowly in a cloud of white smoke while the children in the back seat turned and continued to stare.