The Jaguar: A Charlie Hood Novel Part 16

He opened his eyes early in the evening to find Juan's mother bent over his duffel in the half light. She set something underneath the bag, then turned away silently and stole back in the direction of her family.

Hood stayed still for a few minutes, then sat up on his cot. He wrote a letter to Beth, about everything that had happened to him in the last days. Dear Beth, I have seen the most amazing things...He tried hard to explain killing the gunman, and this came easily to him because he had killed in order to preserve his own life, but when he tried to explain how he felt about it he started sounding sentimental and he finally had to settle on the word "bad." Reading over the letter, Hood decided it was a rather dry synopsis of events and he wished he could really write up a story like it was supposed to be written. He liked Conrad and Jack London and Steinbeck and Tom Wolfe and Sebastian Junger. He smelled coffee and heard voices coming from the lobby. Through the window he saw one of Tuxpan's remaining palm trees swaying only slightly in the breeze. No rain, thought Hood. No rain, please.

He slid his hand under the duffel and brought away what had been placed there by Juan's mother. It was a page from one of the glossy magazines, folded into a triangle. He half expected it to contain money and he hoped it did not. But the page contained nothing but an advertis.e.m.e.nt for shampoo and some very neat feminine handwriting in the upper left corner.

Taberna Roja Avenida Zaragoza Veracruz, Veracruz Hood memorized the words then refolded the paper and slipped it into the freezer bag with the pictures of Finnegan.

An hour later he sat in the back of a Bell 204 twisting off the roof of the Palacio Munic.i.p.al and into the spent subtropic sky.

22.

BRADLEY LOOKED THROUGH THE WINDs.h.i.+ELD at the Campeche lowlands. They had ridden out Ivana in the Sierra Madre de Chiapas and he was thankful to be off the precarious mountain roads and making good time on Highway 186.

It was Sunday afternoon on the seventh day after the kidnapping and they were one hundred miles from Erin. Crisp shafts of sunlight came down through the trees. Bradley felt edgy and impatient. A day and a half was plenty of time to travel a hundred miles by truck, he thought, so why was he stuffed with anxiety and dread? Did at least one of the pigeons make it through the hurricane? One, he thought: we only need one. He fidgeted inside the antiballistic vest. The vests were hot and sweat-inducing and they pinched the flesh and itched incessantly where it was hard to scratch. His palm was still open from Mike's knife. The wound would neither heal nor fester but rather remained half-closed and half-open, p.r.o.ne to painful accidents. He b.u.mmed another cigarette off Cleary and with his thumbnail flicked the wooden Mexican match to life.

They stopped in Las Flores for gas and cold drinks but the mercado shelves were practically bare. They found a few cases of bottled fruit punch and discounted packs of old tortillas, along with spicy corn chips and bananas. There were still cases of frijoles so they bought three of these and Caroline got the last ten gallons of bottled water and Cleary bought a carton of Mexican Marlboros. Young Omar tried to buy tequila but Fidel ordered him not to.

Bradley sipped the warm punch and tried to scratch his back against the gas pump while he watched the numbers race and the 1500 suck up almost a hundred liters of Pemex supreme. Fidel joined him, leaning against the SUV. He seemed cool and comfortable and impervious to the vests.

"Two more days, amigo."

"I know what day it is," said Bradley.

"Are you afraid to think about it?"

"I'm more afraid not to."

"You've done what you can. It's now up to her."

Bradley thought of Fidel walking into the warehouse where his wife and family hung dead. He couldn't imagine Erin in such a way and he wanted to say something to Fidel but there were few words he knew that were adequate and not overworn.

"I hope you get your vengeance. I'll help you if I can."

"Your soul is not black enough for that."

"You might be surprised."

Bradley looked at the village. The streets were dirt and the buildings had once been gaily painted but now the blues and yellows and cinnamon colors were long faded. Windows were broken or boarded. In the zocalo there were concrete benches arranged in a circle around a cracked concrete patio. The square was empty except for thin dogs watching them with suspicion and distant hope. The church stood at the far end of the square, its bell tower crumbling. Bradley saw that the panaderia was closed and boarded and so were the butcher shop and the shoe store. The newspaper office was doorless and abandoned and there were bullet holes in the windows. There was a mini-super across the street and outside its doorway stood a stout woman in a dark gray dress with two young children. She shooed them inside but stood her ground. Bradley nodded and she did nothing. There was a cantina with three trucks parked outside and an old man sitting out front on a wooden bench. The door was open and Bradley could hear faint music from inside.

"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 wors.h.i.+p their own G.o.ds 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 G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l out."

"And what if everything does not go right?"

They pa.s.sed northeast through Escarcega. 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 s.h.i.+ny 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 pa.s.sed 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 f.u.c.king honey, Jack. I can't believe this."

"Remain calm, Deputy Jones."

Nerves make you p.i.s.sy, 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 bra.s.s 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 b.u.t.t, 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 b.u.t.t telescoped into the frame for now.

"Don't shoot yourself in the foot, Brad."

"Go to h.e.l.l, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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 b.u.t.ton 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 a.s.sault 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 winds.h.i.+eld 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 s.h.i.+rtsleeves 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 smas.h.i.+ng 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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.

Moments later the three other SUVs converged on Fidel's stuck Yukon and pulled it out with their winches. Bradley saw that the armored vehicles were pitted in some places and punctured in others, though less so than the furious sound of the battle had implied. The plastic security windows remained unshattered and the security tires still held air.

He cut the horse loose and it walked slowly off to the side of the road and turned and looked at him. There was no sign of the Mayans.

The men and Vega stood in a loose circle for a moment, blocked from the jungle by their vehicles. An old truck came rumbling down the highway from the other direction and did not slow down. A man whimpered from somewhere off in the rainforest. Eduardo said that El Grande Martin was dead and so were t.i.to and Raul and Perro Negro and Omar. Fidel said if they'd been wearing their armor as ordered they would be alive, which earned him several hostile looks because three of them, according to Eduardo, had worn their armor. Fidel said they would bury the men properly soon but not now. Caroline Vega had been grazed on the forearm but the wound was not serious. Fidel took a small piece of shrapnel in his cheek.

From the jungle they heard at least two men moaning and Fidel said anyone who wanted to go put them out of their misery was free to do so. The men shrugged disinterestedly and Caroline glanced into the jungle, then at Bradley and shrugged too.

After the men had dispersed for their vehicles Vega pulled the metal from Fidel's cheek and touched the other side of his face gently with her hand. He put his bandana to it and got into the mud-draped vehicle.

Fidel started up the Yukon. Bradley got in and closed his door and looked at the bullet-marked safety gla.s.s. Then he looked at his own mud-drenched front side and he thought that losing just five men here on this highway was an authentic miracle. How many Zetas had they taken down? More than a dozen, certainly. Twenty?

"What will people do when they see our vehicles?" Caroline asked.

"They'll stay the f.u.c.k away from us like they should," said Bradley.

"And what if we run across soldiers?" said Caroline.

"They don't occupy the Yucatan," said Fidel. "They can fight a battle or occupy a village for a few days. They arrive loudly and without surprise. They arrive with great volume and pageantry and media and politicians. But they never stay. We will make the vehicles appear better. I have spray paint and Bondo for the bullet marks."

"We just killed a whole bunch of men," she said.

"Zetas," said Fidel. "We have helped Armenta even though he's our enemy."

"I feel lucky," said Bradley. "I feel the big luck coming."

It had been a long time since he'd felt the good luck that had so effortlessly accompanied him through the first twenty years of his life. Maybe it's all changing for the good, he thought. Luck. And that means Erin is okay and I'm going to get her out of here alive and the baby will be born.

Some miles down the road their second SUV took the lead because Eduardo knew the area. Fidel followed him onto a narrow asphalt road, past an eco-lodge and a mini-super. The asphalt soon gave way to the pale white soil of the Yucatan. Deep in the tall twisted ceibas they stopped and dug five graves, taking turns, the labor utterly punis.h.i.+ng in the heat and the mosquitoes and the sudden absence of adrenaline. The earth was sandy and loose and the graves soon filled with groundwater and remained shallow and without dignity. The digging went quickly because of the soft ground and the folding camp shovel carried in each SUV for this exact purpose, Bradley guessed. Carrying the bodies to the graves was exhausting and spirit-killing.

An hour later they were back on the road. Bradley looked out the window for new danger. The Love 32, b.u.t.t retracted for storage and transport, was under his thigh again. He was suddenly spent, every bit of energy gone. Luck and hope were gone, too, two coins lost somewhere back along this road he had taken. He listened to the hum of the engine and the rasp of the tires on the highway. In the cab was only silence and the stink of mud and human fear.

23.