Age of Blood

24

The Pave Low landed at an abandoned mine northwest of Alamos. They didn’t want to land inside or near the city. The presence of the military helicopter might spook whoever it was who held Emily Withers.

They had three cars waiting for them when they arrived. Each one had been a magnificent piece of Detroit machinery when it was built in the 1970s. But cartel wars, the high Mexican desert, and the complete absence of car washes had transformed the three Cutlass Supremes into studies in Bondo, baling wire, and the inventiveness of the needy.

Triple Six split off and prepared their weapons. Entering the city, they didn’t know if they would be going in hot or not. Their MBITRs were working, which wasn’t necessarily the norm. The systems were made for intrateam communications, and there were some things the SEALs did that they had trouble surviving. Like a Low Altitude/Low Opening (LALO) night jump into a Myanmar rain forest and the predictable ricocheting off of trees.

All the HK416s and SIGs were in good working order, although Yank wished he had more firing pins in the event he had to make field repairs. Only Yank and Walker had body armor, which wasn’t as Holmes would have liked. The good news was that their resupply was on the way. Billings had been given carte blanche, so the expectations were high. She’d also arranged for a safe house and access to agency assets. Holmes wasn’t sure what she’d said to get this sort of support, but he wished he’d been in the room.

Major Navarre and one of his men left in one of the cars and headed into Alamos to reconnoiter. They’d get them to the safe house, but would have to pull back after that.

After they left, Holmes brought the men together and asked Ramon and J.J. to join them. They gathered around an abandoned VW Beetle that had been opened like a tin can and used for a fire pit.

“YaYa and Hoover will be joining us soon. Nice to have the team complete,” he began. “Not sure how Hoover will deal with Ramon, but we’ll have to be prepared.”

“Hoover?” Ramon asked.

While the team had been at the Naval Special Warfare Training Center in New Orleans, Hoover had undergone his yearly checkup at the military dog hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. They hadn’t seen Hoover in two weeks. Holmes couldn’t help but note how getting him back felt right.

“Our dog,” Walker said. “A Belgian Malinois.”

“You have a dog?”

“We’ve had a dog on the team for more than two hundred years. It’s something we do,” Holmes said.

“Glad to see YaYa, too,” Laws added. “Boy hasn’t been the same since Myanmar.”

Holmes nodded. “It was his first mission. Sometimes it takes a while to work things out.”

Everyone turned to Yank.

“What’s everyone looking at me for?”

Laws and Walker laughed. Each had been the FNG at one time or another and remembered the uncertainty of their first mission.

“We’ve also been given an agency contact and a safe house,” Holmes said.

“Now that’s something new,” Laws said. “Not often the agency will give us the results of their hard work at espionage.”

“Who owns the safe house?” J.J. asked.

“Some organization called the Order of the Sacred Knights of the Virgin of Valvanera.” Holmes turned to Ramon. “Have you heard of them?”

Ramon laughed out loud. “The Knights? Your agency has them as your safe house?” He shook his head.

“What’s wrong with them?” Laws asked.

“Nothing I suppose, if you don’t mind their ideas of grandeur. Each of them is like a Don Quixote.”

“Can they be trusted?” Holmes asked, showing uncertainty at what he was hearing about the Knights.

“Can a crazy man be trusted?” Ramon shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“What else do you know about the Knights?” Holmes asked.

“It’s a monastic order created to protect the Virgin in Mexico. Much like yourselves, I suppose, except they don’t work for a country, but rather an idea.”

“When you say the virgin, do you mean the Virgin Mary?” Yank asked.

“Yes and no,” Laws answered. “The Virgin in Mexico is a little different. There’s an incredible native influence on the belief of the Christian Mary. Take the Virgin de Guadalupe, for instance, or Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

“Is that the one they see on walls and in toast?” Walker asked.

Laws nodded. “It’s what you call a Marian apparition, which is an appearance of the Virgin Mary. Now this goes all the way back to Cortez, who was a native of Extremadura, Spain, which is the original home of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He had a basilica built on Tepeyac Hill, outside of what is now Mexico City, but what was then Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztecs. The importance of the location is that the basilica was built on the Aztec temple worshipping the goddess Tonantzin, which early Spanish priests used to convince the Aztecs that the two were one and the same.”

“Another Aztec reference,” Walker said. “There seem to be a lot of them.”

“You’re right,” Laws nodded. “The Virgin of Guadalupe as she exists in Mexican culture is a syncretic icon. If you worship one, you’re worshipping them both. We’re also two days away from the Fiesta de Nuestra Señora de la Balvanera. More than ten thousand worshippers will descend on the city in devotion of the Virgin. Incidentally, Balvanera is a colloquialization of Valvanera. For the last seven days there’s been a growing procession going back and forth between Aduana and Alamos, carrying an image of the Virgin with them.”

“My guess is that the Knights are going to be involved in that,” Yank said.

“So amidst the celebration and the extra ten thousand people we’re supposed to find the senator’s daughter?” J.J. asked. “They sure don’t make it easy.”

“Might not be as hard to find as you think,” Ramon said. “If the Knights are tied into the town, they’ll know where leprosos could be. It’s all a matter of understanding the lay of the land. So yes,” he said grudgingly, “maybe having the Knights on our side is a good idea.”

“So it’s our side now,” Laws said.

“As long as we don’t go back up in any fucking helicopters, yes!”