The Jaguar (34 page)

She heard muffled sounds downstairs, voices and doors slamming. This took her back nine days to the invasion of her home and she wondered if she had entered some new dimension where violence was the beginning, middle, and end of everything. And she thought if the safe room in Valley Center wasn’t enough to keep her safe then this table sure wasn’t. She battled against a flood of terrible ideas: that Bradley had been caught and executed just a few miles from here, that Hood was being manipulated and useless, that Armenta was dead and the men who would soon find her here would be a thousand times worse than he was. She told herself and the baby to ignore such thoughts. She heard the voices again downstairs and more from outside on the drive and through the window she could still see the light of the flare thinly red against the dark. She closed her eyes and listened to the strange disturbing melodies emerging from the voices and the sounds and she made up words to be carried by those melodies. The tunes merged and changed and returned but the one constant in them was the dependable beat of her heart.

A few minutes later the generators groaned to life and the lights came on. She took the derringer and crawled out trying to avoid the glass and when she was away from the window she stood. Voices came from within the Castle and from the driveway and she didn’t recognize them, though she thought she might have heard Heriberto down by the courtyard.

She stole out of the dining room and across a softly lit living room with old-looking area rugs and paintings on the walls and a fireplace where a gas flame flickered between artificial logs. She stood in a foyer and opened the door and looked up and down the hallway.

She heard the elevator approach and bump to a stop, then the release
of voices from around the corner. She backed into the foyer and trotted across the living area and went back to the dining room.

At the window she stood in the broken glass and looked down toward the courtyard. The flare light was gone but the floods were working again. It looked like a forty foot drop from here, plenty enough to break her bones and kill her baby, she judged. Through the French doors was a balcony heavy with vessels and flowers and two monkeys that sat on the wrought-iron railing as if they’d been watching the shootout, cracking seeds and dropping the hulls to the driveway. Down on the sandy drive lay four bodies on four blankets of blood. Two black SUVs waited, doors and liftgates open, engines off and headlights on. Four men she did not recognize emerged from somewhere below her and when they came to one of the dead they took his feet and hands and dragged him to the rear end of the closest SUV. There they swung the body four times, each time higher, and on the fifth heave they let go and she heard the thump of him hitting the cargo space and the waddle of the SUV on its struts.

Erin turned away and her eyes were caught by the bounty of untouched food on the table. Suddenly she was very hungry. She knew this was impossible after seeing everything she had just seen, but what did that matter? No other laws seemed to apply here, so why should any law against appetite?

So she sat back down where she had sat earlier. She put the Cowboy Defender on her lap and the soft cotton napkin over the gun and pulled a warm tortilla from its straw keeper and filled it with shrimp ceviche and thought: if I’m going out I’m going out with a full stomach and a little class. I can do no more in this circumstance. Melodies swarmed her, many with lyrics already attached. She thought of her parents, sticklers for manners, and she straightened her back and raised her forearms so as not to rest on the table. The Pouilly-Fuissé was still chilled in its clay cooler so she poured a little and took a sip.
Outside she saw live men carrying dead men to vehicles and slinging them aboard. Like bags of potting soil. She could not tell the loyalists from the assassins, the good guys from the bad, except for Heriberto, who seemed in charge. Maybe there is no difference, she thought. She could see the lepers peeking from behind the courtyard balustrades. The Castle dogs were newly emboldened and they slunk back into the light to investigate. Occasionally she heard distant pops from the jungle and she avoided conclusions as to what they meant. A few minutes later the men slammed the doors of the vehicles and got in and drove away. Where do you take ten dead men on a hot evening? she wondered. To an air-conditioned funeral home, of course. The Pouilly-Fuissé really was good.

The voices of the men from the elevator got louder until they were right outside in the hallway. Then they went silent. She waited for some murmured discussion or the clank of cocking weapons or for them to crash through the door, but she heard nothing. She loaded up a plate with tamales and small lobsters and dug right in. They could not have tasted better, even if they were hotter. Truly fantastic, she thought. Unbearably delicious. Last supper. Heaven can wait. What do you think, down there, little guy? Good stuff? Too bad your father isn’t here but we’re only here because he fucked up.

She heard the front door open and close and someone walking across the tile toward her. She made sure her back was straight and her shoulders were not slouched. Armenta came into the room with the shotgun slung over his shoulder. He had a bottle of tequila in one hand and in the other a heavy gunnysack tied off at the top. His face was dotted with blood and so was his shirt so it looked like the hummingbirds were zooming through red rain. His new coif was ruined. His gaze went from her to the shattered window then back to her again.

He slung the gunnysack into the far corner of the living room
where it landed with a thud and skidded on the tile. In the kitchen he washed his hands. Then he walked into the dining room and set the gun on the floor beside his chair and plunked the bottle of reposado to the table at his place. He stripped off the bloody shirt and threw it into the kitchen. His undershirt was white and clean.

He looked at her, then sat. For a long moment he stared at his wineglass, then he lifted and swirled it up at the light and sipped. “Can I now tell you about Veracruz?”

“I would especially like to hear about Francisco, the mentally challenged boy with the narrow head.”

Armenta smiled. “When we were boys we used to crawl into the fortress at San Juan de Ulúa. This was very early morning, or later in evening, after the tourists had gone away. The soldiers did not care if we offered one bottle of good rum. We would go far and deep into the vaults and storage rooms in search of the pirate treasures that were certainly still there. But we could not get into the torture chambers or the cells because the Ulúa windows were cut into the stone in such a size that no man’s head or even a boy’s head could fit through them. There were never bars at Ulúa. It was a form of mental torture that no prisoner could fit his head through the open windows and escape, yet there was the window, open and with no bars. So also, we could go no further in search of the gold and jewels that were there. But the head of Francisco? It fit easily, as did his narrow shoulders. He was an imbecile, but still he could pass through. So, one day we pushed him through the window and into one of the dungeons and…”

R
IDDEN BY DREAD
H
OOD MADE
Bacalar in the dark of early morning. The Hotel Laguna was built up a bluff from the lagoon and as he got out of the truck he saw the levels cantilevered up the rise. He heard the palm fronds rattling and the halyards pinging on the masts of the yachts down in the marina.

No one answered his knock on casita four. He glanced at Luna and knocked again. Two days had gone by since Bradley had called or answered his phone, which meant that Erin was almost certainly still a prisoner and Bradley was likely captured or killed. Hood looked at his watch and waited.

In Merida, Armenta’s men had finally contacted him, ordering him to Veracruz—hundreds of miles from where Erin was being held. They had given him two days to make the drive. Hood could make no sense of this, so instead of following Armenta’s orders, he and Luna had driven southwest out of Merida on Highway 180, feigning a run to Veracruz. Soon they had reversed to the north outside Campeche and picked up 186 for Bacalar.

Now the moths and beetles tapped against the porch light and he knocked once more. Suddenly he heard the shuffle of footsteps in the thicket beyond the casita and both Hood and Luna drew down on a young man who stepped out with his hands up and a contemptuous scowl on his face.

“I am Domingo,” he said. “Fidel is waiting. If you have flashlights in the car bring them.”

“Is Bradley alive?”

“Alive.”

They woke the hotel manager and Luna badged him and paid pesos for a room for one week. Luna ordered the manager to make sure the car was not touched and he handed him more bills. The manager was slender and young and he averted his eyes and quickly filled out the registration slip by hand and in silence. He set a shoebox on the counter and took off the lid and rummaged through it. Finally he handed Luna a room key. Luna asked for a second key and gave it to Hood. The manager said to have a good stay in Bacalar, there is fishing and snorkeling, but he didn’t look at any of them when he said it.

Back at the car they brought their weapons from the trunk and Luna locked the doors and checked them all before nodding at Hood and Domingo.

Once into the dark jungle they followed their light beams, trotting down a faint and narrow path. Domingo was stocky and short but he was indefatigable and did not look back.

Hood kept the pace. He had a Remington ten-gauge in his hands and his .45 on his hip and the AirLite .22 strapped to the inside of his left combat boot. His belt was heavy with ammunition and his antiballistic vest was tight and hot. He thought of Hamdaniya and his fear was no less here than it had been there. He synched his breath to his stride and thought about Erin and the bloody hours ahead and he wondered who would survive them and who would not. He thought of Beth at the hospital in Buenavista, and of his mother and father, brothers and sisters. Of Suzanne Jones and her reckless escapades, her appetites and her beauty. Of her son, Bradley, alive still, for now at least, and ready to face a storm of cartel bullets to rescue his wife.

Soon they had run two miles by Hood’s guess and still there was
no hint of sunlight. He pushed the LED button on his wristwatch and glanced down: 4:24
A.M.

The camp was little more than a crude opening hacked from the trees. The sun’s first light had just begun to penetrate the jungle, and the faces that looked back at Hood were suspended in gloom as if painted by old masters. Some were lying down and others sitting and some stood.

Hood looked around in the pale light. A small campfire burned and two enamel coffeepots rested on one of the rocks of fire ring. He smelled tortillas and grilled meat. There were empty plastic bottles scattered everywhere on the ground. The three vehicles had been parked deep in the forest, scarcely visible, covered in loose fronds, with branches jammed under the tires for traction in the fine loose soil. Two wooden munitions crates sat on the ground away from the fire.

The men were sullen and dirty and looked tired. Domingo said something in Spanish that Hood didn’t catch and some of the men laughed and most turned their faces away and others merely stared at him or Luna.
Narcos,
thought Hood.
Sicarios
. Not friendly cops. Bradley had recruited gangsters. Caroline Vega sat cross-legged on a blue tarp and Jack Cleary lay snoring atop a sleeping bag.

“Charlie Bravo!” Bradley called, moving into the clearing from the trees. “You’re a long way from Veracruz, my friend!”

He walked to Hood with a smile and a limp. When he came closer Hood saw that one of his front teeth was gone and the one next to the empty space had been broken off at a sharp angle. His face was bruised and his lips were split and swollen and one eye was totally shot with blood. He had not shaven in days, and even his heavy black
whiskers could not hide the damage. But the energy came off him, strong and wild.

“Like my new look?”

“It’s not bad.”

“I have to sleep on my back because my face is smashed up. My mouth hangs open and I snore and keep everyone awake. Meet Fidel.”

A muscular man dressed in military fatigues rose from beside the campfire and shook Hood’s hand strongly. He was tall, but not as tall as Hood, and he looked to be approximately Hood’s age. His hair was closely cut and unlike the others his face was freshly shaven. His eyes were black. There was a medallion of Malverde around his neck and a knife in a scabbard on his belt and another protruding from a pocket sewn onto his boot. He looked to Hood like a Moorish assassin.

“Fidel is Baja State Police, and my right arm,” said Bradley. “These are his men, our counterparts in Mexican law enforcement. We’re going to rescue Erin, and Fidel is going to arrest the rapist-murderer Saturnino. Or cut out his heart and hand it to him as it beats. Whichever feels right!”

Fidel shot Bradley a look. Bradley smiled and Hood saw the pain of it. Hood introduced Luna to Fidel and he could tell that they somehow knew of each other and that between them flowed understanding and dislike. Cleary rose to one elbow and yawned. Caroline Vega poured two cups of coffee and brought them over. There was a time of silence broken by one nearby bird and a soft occasional pop of the fire. Hood studied the men as they studied him.

Fidel went to one of the wooden crates and threw off the lid. He looked down into it for a moment. Hood tried to read the expression on his face. Fidel lifted a new stainless steel machine pistol from the box and held it up for his men to see. Murmurs. Next he extended the telescoping butt of the pistol and worked it into the crook of his elbow.
From the second crate he lifted an extended magazine and pushed it into the handle of the gun. Then a sound suppressor, which he screwed onto the barrel. Hood recognized the Love 32 immediately, one of the thousand such guns he’d let slip through his hands and into the clutches of these men, Mexican
narcos
. Brokered by Bradley Jones. Hood’s heart beat with anger.