The Jaguar: A Charlie Hood Novel Part 26

She heard the elevator approach and b.u.mp 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 gla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 appet.i.te?

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 cla.s.s. I can do no more in this circ.u.mstance. 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-Fuisse 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 a.s.sa.s.sins, 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 bal.u.s.trades. 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-Fuisse 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 c.o.c.king 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 f.u.c.ked 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt and threw it into the kitchen. His unders.h.i.+rt was white and clean.

He looked at her, then sat. For a long moment he stared at his winegla.s.s, 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 Ulua. 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 Ulua 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 Ulua. 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 pa.s.s through. So, one day we pushed him through the window and into one of the dungeons and..."

33.

RIDDEN BY DREAD HOOD 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 s...o...b..x 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 appet.i.tes 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 b.u.t.ton on his wrist.w.a.tch 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sa.s.sin.

"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 b.u.t.t 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.

"Break it down for the men in good clear Spanish," said Bradley. "Make sure they know what they're supposed to do. I'll tolerate no f.u.c.kups, Fidel."

-We have these magnificent silent guns, use them intelligently, do not waste bullets, kill every man you see until we get to the gringa. Saturnino is mine. We will return here and deliver the Americans to the marina at Bacalar and we will be finished.

Some of the men murmured and some smiled.

-We have all studied the map and the drawings. Do you know your directions? Do you? Answer me.

They answered together, an unintelligible stream of language, then they rose and mustered. They took their guns from one crate and the magazines and sound suppressors from the other, and Hood watched them click the magazines into place and screw the silencers onto the barrels.

In these few moments Hood finally saw answers to questions he had long had: he knew these guns had been made in California two years ago, then sold to Carlos Herredia and the North Baja Cartel. Bradley's friend Ron Pace had designed and manufactured them and Bradley had arranged their sale and transport. How had Bradley found Herredia? That was still a loose end, but Bradley had a.s.sociated with bad people then, as now. One of them, Hood knew, had been on the North Baja payroll. This could explain why Herredia had the Love 32s and why Bradley had a million dollars in cash ready to pay ransom and why Bradley had Herredia's guns and gunmen helping him now.

Hood watched Bradley as he took up one of the weapons, gingerly extending the b.u.t.t and fitting the long magazine into it. It infuriated Hood that Bradley and the gun maker had made fools of him and his ATF brethren. Hood saw the excited pride in his face and the familiarity in his movements as Bradley screwed on the Love 32 sound suppressor. The expression reminded Hood of Bradley's wild, lovely mother.

Genes, Hood thought. Genetics. Genesis. Generator. Generations. Genealogy. And Bradley knows this too. Look at him.

Bradley caught Hood's look. "So, these are the guns you think I made, or sold, or whatever it is you think I did?"

"Clever-Harry Love and Murrieta."

"You are once again resoundingly full of s.h.i.+t, Charlie. The only thing I know about these things is that they work. Who made them or how they got here? I truly don't know. If you need to blame your career failures on me, go right ahead. But you're nowhere near where the truth lives. Wrong neighborhood. Not even close."

"We'll sort this out back in California, Bradley."

"I look forward to that."

The men stretched into their armor and shouldered their ammo packs. Some had hand-grenades on their belts, in case the extraction of Erin turned into a firefight. Hood recognized the grenades as U.S. military issue, which could be purchased by anyone in stateside surplus stores, emptied of explosive and cheap. These practice dummies had been finding their way into Mexico in growing numbers over the last year, where the narcos repacked them with gunpowder and plugged the bottoms and used them against each other and the government. If one of those explodes, he thought, there goes the stealth raid. It was hard to imagine forty-five men shooting it out and one unarmed woman living to tell about it.

Hood strapped the shotgun over his shoulder, then took a Love 32 from the crate. It was new and s.h.i.+ny and heavy for its size. He screwed on a sound suppressor. He caught Bradley looking at him, a faint, enigmatic smile just beginning to peek out.

"Oh, cheer up," said Bradley. "It's for Erin."

"California," said Hood.

"Vamos!" whispered Fidel.

Forty minutes later Hood and Luna were crouched in a thicket between Bradley and Fidel, looking out at the Castle. It climbed a not-too-distant hillside with its many colors, somehow regal and ramshackle at the same time. Pale smoke issued from a chimney then hovered atop the jungle in the breezeless air. The new sun threw orange light against its face as a dog trotted across a broad driveway.

Fidel whispered into his satellite phone and someone whispered back. He punched off and hung the phone on his belt, then under the cover of the palms he slid hissingly on his b.u.t.t down a lush embankment. Hood held the Love 32 to his chest and followed.

34.

ERIN WOKE UP JUST AFTER sunrise. She was curled up on one side of the bed with the sheet over her, still wearing her clothes from the night before. For a moment she looked out the window, saw the palms unmoving in the orange light, her mind crawling with images of the battle. She felt aged by what she had witnessed, made sadder and more fearful and better able to discern her blessings. The baby kicked and elbowed her. She also felt more determined than ever to preserve his life, to deliver him gasping and screaming into the world.

She looked out at the lightening sky and drew a mental picture of Bradley. She saw him not as a failed man but as a misled boy. Misled by whom? Still, when she pictured him and imagined what had happened to him her heart fell. The failed boy was hers and she had made a deal with him, which ent.i.tled him. But to what? He could quite easily have been killed or arrested in the service of trying to help her. He did not arrive...There are rumors of a battle with the Zetas and an arrest by the Army. She took a deep breath and calmly tried to imagine Bradley gone forever, nothing of him left but a memory and scattered evidence left behind. But she could not make this idea real. It sat out there beyond her understanding and she wondered what she would do if by some miracle they both returned home alive.

She showered and changed and when she came out Atlas had delivered a light breakfast and a large pot of coffee. She drank the coffee at the desk with the Hummingbird on her lap, scratching down the lyrics as they stole into her head.

A few minutes later Owens knocked and Erin let her in. She was dressed for travel in slacks and a smart linen jacket, and she trailed a gold-colored rolling bag behind her. A pair of sungla.s.ses was pushed well up into her hair. "Mike needs me. Benjamin thinks it's his idea that I go. For my safety."

Erin felt more abandoned than she knew she should. "Your safety."

"I'll be back in two days."

"I'll be writing for my life."

"Get the guitar. I'll bring the coffee."

In the tracking room Erin sat at the Yamaha and Owens pulled a stool from the vocal booth. Erin felt her way through a melody one key at a time, a bright Tejano tune, then paused. "I thought I was dead last night."

"I did too."

"But here we are."

"Benjamin told me there were ten men. His men. It broke a part of his heart that his own men would do that. Of course, with what was left of his heart he executed the three who were captured alive."

"Did he put their heads in a bag?"

"Yes, personally."

"Listen to what we talk about here, Owens. We don't say these things in the U.S. There we say have a great day. Or no worries. Here we say he fed a reporter to the leopards. Has an attack like that ever happened here before?"

"There was an attempt on his life a year ago. Here. Two foolish boys. Hired shooters. Nothing like last night."

"And it was so strange, Owens. I watched them load the dead men into the vehicles. b.l.o.o.d.y and ugly. Then when I turned away from the window and looked at the food I was hungry. More than hungry-starved. I ate a lot. It tasted so good. I even drank some wine. When Benjamin came into the room I wasn't sure who it was, and I didn't care. I'd given up. I was still eating. I was too terrified to be afraid anymore."

"You'll be home in a week, Erin. Maybe less."

Erin found the minor note she needed and wrote it down. "One week. Eleven more songs to write, and twelve to record."

Owens looked at her a.n.a.lytically. "Write well, Erin. Let the angels whisper in your ears. I'll see you in two days."

Erin studied her face, the black hair and gray eyes, her lovely body and shapely arms, the knife scars ringing her wrists like angry snakes.

Owens stood and took the handle of her rolling bag. "My ride's here. Whenever Benjamin arranges my travel it's always three armored SUVs."

"Will you go anywhere Mike tells you to?"

Owens smiled. "Within reason. Or slightly beyond."

"I worry about you too, you know. I don't like or trust him."

"Mike was hoping that his pigeons might make you reconsider him. He went to more than a little trouble to do that. He wants your friends.h.i.+p and trust. He adores Bradley."

Erin considered. "I don't understand one thing about you but I'm glad you're alive."

Erin listened to the smooth roll of the luggage on the studio floor. She didn't watch Owens leave. She felt that her best and only friend had betrayed her and now the future was even more bleak. One week, she thought. Eleven and twelve. Eleven, twelve and out.

For the next hour the music came clear and fast. Two songs stormed in simultaneously, notes and words falling close together like rain. Erin scribbled the phrases and kept two separate ledgers as each grew. One was the Tejano song that had begun in her room and the other was a lullaby to the baby, a waltz, and it brought a little mist to her eyes as it wafted across the morning and into her ears, addressed specifically to her, sent from that part of the universe unknown and unknowable. The little digital tape recorder was a sound-activated wonder-simple to use and very clear on the playback.

My darling son My darling son On the beach And the meadow run Follow a dream Follow a dream And when you return A man you will be But until then darling son You are my darling son Goodnight to you You and the stars tonight Goodnight Then suddenly the Tejano song b.u.t.ted in and took over, as if it were jealous of Erin's attention elsewhere. She struck the notes of melody on the grand with her left hand, and scribbled down the words in her notebook with the other. It was a song about a young man racing home to his lover on a dark night and he's driving way too fast, and he gets pulled over by a highway patrolman. The patrolman locks him in the back of his cruiser and gets on the radio. The song is the young man's plea to be let go because his woman is so good and sweet and he hasn't seen her in a very long time. The more the young man brags about her, the more astonis.h.i.+ngly beautiful, but less believable, she becomes. But the cop lets him go and in the end the young man makes it home and she is plain and poor but in his mind every bit as lovely as he had said she was.

Time pa.s.sed. She wrote and rewrote, played phrases one way and then another. She collected them all on the little recorder because sometimes you didn't hear a jewel the first time through. It was hard to free her heart to feel the words and the stories because of the great black hole in her universe that was her captivity, and the lesser one that was her husband.

Later she saw Armenta looking at her through the window of the control room. Heriberto stood behind him with a large black rifle of some kind strapped over his shoulder. Armenta looked weary and absent as he lifted a cup of something to his mouth and gave her a slight nod. She turned back to her notepad and a moment later when she looked back for him both men were gone.

Later Armenta came into the tracking room with his accordion case and set it down next to one of the instrument booths. He was clean shaven and groomed, barefoot, in shorts and a blue wedding s.h.i.+rt. He wore a wide military-style belt outside the s.h.i.+rt, hung with phones and weapons. Barefoot and in shorts and a festive s.h.i.+rt he looked like a tourist arriving at a resort.

"I need to play."

"It's your studio."

"Are the songs coming to you?"