The Jaguar

10

Bradley’s Cayenne rolled through El Dorado, one of several Baja and Sonora properties maintained by Carlos Herredia of the North Baja Cartel. Fellow LASD Sergeant Jack Cleary sat up front and Deputy Caroline Vega in back. On the freshly bladed dirt road ahead of them were two of Herredia’s armored SUVs with ports cut in the roofs for gunmen to stand and fire. Behind them were two more. The gunmen swayed in the dusk. Rainwater stood thinly pooled by the roadside.

Bradley had been here many times and he had never arrived without an armed escort by land or air, and seemingly never taken quite the same dusty labyrinth of roads that led him here now. Herredia forbade GPSs so all that Bradley knew for sure was that he was in Baja California, south of Catavina, north of Guerrero Negro and east of Mexican Highway 1. Bradley felt the same bristle of excitement he always felt in El Dorado, the same complicity in a world much more violent and profitable than his own and therefore more invigorating. He thought of Erin. And of his mother, and how she had enjoyed danger and would have loved this place. He missed her and knew he always would.

“Sweet airstrip,” said Vega.

“And golf course,” said Cleary.

“That’s a CH-47 military transport helicopter under the camo net,” said Vega. “Vietnam. Dad flew one over there. Wow, Herredia’s got two of them. I wonder how many tons of dope they’ve moved.”

“Nice little course,” said Cleary. “Bet he cheats.”

“Nobody calls him on it,” said Bradley.

“Dad got flak in his ass and a purple heart.”

“Better than flak in your heart and a purple ass,” said Cleary.

“Captain Obvious strikes again,” said Caroline Vega.

“You young people have no sense of humor,” said Cleary.

“There has to be some humor in order to sense it.”

“Caroline?” said Bradley. “Don’t try to impress Herredia with your wit and strength. He’s old school and he’s got a terrible temper. They don’t call him ‘the Tiger’ for nothing.”

“Aye-aye, sir. Should I be strapped when we get out?”

“Leave the guns where they are. Get cool, people. And Caroline? Jack? I owe you for this.”

“The fifty grand has me covered for the week,” said Cleary.

“I hope we can earn that bonus,” said Vega.

“We’re going to find her and take her back,” said Bradley. Or die trying, he thought, but he did not say this.

Soon they were stopped in the compound proper: the big ranch house, the outbuildings and guest casitas, the swimming pools and sweathouse, the gym and the outdoor pavilion. The parking circle was paved with river rock and a fountain gurgled forth in its center. The gun towers gave the place a prisonlike look. Bradley watched the Federal Judicial Police form a gauntlet around his Porsche and one of them raised a hand to stop him. They were large and humorless, much like the men who had come that night in the rain, but in uniform. Bradley understood that they could be genuine FJP or impersonators, or a combination. In this new Mexico, the old order had been made into no order at all.

That night they dined lavishly in Herredia’s ranch house. There were platters of fresh seafood and bistec sliced in the thin Mexican style and a dozen salsas from hot to incendiary and guacamole with plenty of cilantro and garlic, fruits and vegetables and afterward, every good tequila Bradley knew and some he did not. All from Baja California, Herredia said, except of course the tequila, which could only come from Jalisco and certain regions of Guanajuato, Michoacan, Nayarit and Tamaulipas.

Herredia was tall and thick and tanned by his many sport fishing hours at sea, his eyes expressive and his hair thick and curly. He told stories of his heroism, spiced by a modesty that was comically false. And I who cannot shoot well from two hundred meters shot the assassin through the heart with great luck!

Bradley was glad to see El Tigre taken by Caroline Vega’s severe beauty, so much so that he dismissed all four prostitutes in order to focus his attention on her. He moved her to sit on his left, opposite Bradley. Jack Cleary got drunk more quickly than Bradley had hoped but he was a fisherman too. So Cleary appreciated Herredia’s tales and smartly made no attempt to match them.

Present were old Felipe and the shortened ten-gauge shotgun that he was never without, and Fidel Candelario, the North Baja cartel lieutenant that Herredia had pledged to Bradley the moment he’d heard of Erin’s kidnapping and Armenta’s challenge.

Candelario looked to be thirty years old to Bradley and in the prime of life. He was six feet tall, solid, clear-eyed and sharp-nosed, his black hair razor-cut stylishly short. From Bradley’s angle he looked Arabic. He explained in good English that he was from Baja Sur, growing up one generation behind the great El Tigre, whose footsteps he had followed from poverty to power.

He told Bradley that he was in command of a personal guard of twenty men, each one of whom he trusted with his life. They were seasoned men, many with advanced military training in counterterrorism, counternarcotrafficking and hostage liberation. They were professionals, not the beheaders or skinners or other patologico monsters who had overrun Mexico. They had of course whatever weapons and communications gear they might need. They had four heavily armored GMC Yukon XL 1500s customized by a Texas company in Laredo. Even the windows repelled small arms fire. If they had to travel long distances, they used one of Herredia’s transport helos. My men are the optimo, he said, the best of the best.

Bradley looked from Candelario to Herredia, then back to the young lieutenant. “I’m lucky to have you.”

“But I am the one who has you,” said Fidel.

“Carlos, tell this guy right now who’s going to be in charge of those men and this action,” said Bradley. “If we’re not clear on that, this whole thing is a waste of time and life.”

Herredia leaned forward and pointed a thick forefinger at his associate, then at Bradley. “You are partners. You are equal. You are more similar than you know.”

“That won’t work,” said Bradley.

“We will make it work,” said Fidel. He said this with a wry smile that Bradley neither liked nor believed. “And when we find Armenta, he will be ours and your wife will again be yours.”

“She’s the only thing that matters.”

“I know this type of emotion.”

“You’re lucky to know it, Fidel.”

Candelario looked at him darkly and Bradley understood. “She and our two children were taken by Armenta’s son, Saturnino. He left them hanging in a warehouse and he sent word where to find them. I found them. Just as I will find him.”

Later Herredia showed off his newest passion-a horse breeding and training facility. It was tucked back behind the house against the sharp Baja hillsides. He had already built the stables and paddocks and there was an earthen track and an infield of very green grass. The sprinklers came on and Bradley watched their spray crisscrossing in the moonlight.

“I need the stud,” Herredia said. “I have the mares but I need a magnificent horse to make my racers.”

“I know a breeder in Temecula,” said Caroline.

“I want the best!” said Herredia. He gave her his most engaging smile.

“Something tells me you’ll find a way to get it,” she said.

Bradley saw Fidel look at her with sharp eyes and no expression on his face. You’re right, my man, he thought: she’s a beauty and a match for you.

They all talked late into the hot Baja night. They sat in an outside pavilion around a rough-hewn table with bottles of tequila sparkling before them. The water of the swimming pool shifted with wedges of light and shadow and above them the stars were adamant at this uncertain latitude. Felipe sat away from the table where the light faded nearly to darkness, his shotgun across his lap, and whenever Bradley looked over at him his posture was unchanged and his withered old face like a gargoyle held half light and half shadow.

Bradley drank slightly and let the tequila-fueled energy rise around him. He had sat here with Herredia so many nights, earning large money, missing Erin, looking into the stars and sending thoughts to her, unable to use a satellite phone for reasons of security, his cell phone useless. Now when he remembered those nights a wave of nostalgia swept him up and he felt weightless and unable to determine his own direction, like a cork bobbing in a hostile sea. His throat tightened and his heart beat hard. He breathed deeply. Keep yourself together, he told himself, for her. He thought a brief prayer to God. And another to El Famoso. One to Malverde and another to anybody or anything that could hear him. I don’t care what you are or what you want from me. Save them. Save them. Just save them.

He looked at Caroline sitting next to El Tigre and paying close attention to another of his stories. She was two years older than Bradley, dark-haired and brown-eyed, strong and forceful. Her cheekbones were high and scarred by old acne and her tightly gathered ponytail called attention to the scars. Her smile was rare. She was fearless in bad situations and apparently not satisfied with what other people might call normal life. Caroline reminded him greatly of his mother, which was one of the reasons he noticed and later sought her out and brought her close.

But I see that my beautiful dorado is now in the mouth of a great white shark that is the size of Isla Cerralvo and I must land it with my little Shimano reel that is only for the small fish!

Cleary smiled along blearily but when Bradley caught his eye he saw something acute and sober in it. Good, he thought, you’ll need all the clarity you can muster, Jack.

Fidel said little at first and appeared to be glaring at the glass of tequila that he had not sipped. He wore a tan T-shirt and a gold cross on a chain, tan camo pants and suede combat boots. Bradley wondered why Mexican outlaws so loved the military. It had to be more than to fool the people they preyed on.

Bradley and Fidel spoke briefly of their families and where they grew up, then of cars, sports, guns, music, Obama and Calderon. Somehow Lorca and Neruda and Urrea came up and they spoke of them too. But all of this had the air of obligation to it and their words came out flat and lifeless because their hearts were in other places.

“Where do you think she is?” asked Bradley.

“Armenta is strong in the south. Veracruz, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Campeche.”

“But he has safe houses all over Mexico.”

“He will take her where he is strongest.”

“It’s a different world down there.”

“Yes, jungle. Rainforest. Not desert. Jungle rots the body and the soul.”

“Is Saturnino still his enforcer?”

“Yes. He is a murderer and a rapist.”

Bradley felt his heartbeat accelerate. Now this would be added as fuel for his terrible dreams and images. “Maybe we’ll both get what we want.”

Fidel leaned toward him. His eyes were bright and dark and his nose was hooked. “We have one of Armenta’s men. We took him by surprise in the night, much as your wife was taken. He will know where she is. The difficulty is making him want to tell us before he expires.”

“Then lighten up on him, Fidel. If you kill him he won’t say much.”

“We should leave this to our capable men. We all have different natures.”

“Let me have a try at him.”

Fidel looked at Bradley. “No. You would not have self-control.”

“True.”

“Only self-control can get you out of Mexico alive.”

“I’m getting her out of Mexico alive.”

“I will do what can be done. And if it ends as it did for my mujer then I will have one more fellow prisoner in this hell that is life. You.”

Later when everyone had gone to their rooms Bradley walked past the pool and through the gate and down to the pasture and stood for a while looking at the hillsides to the east, brushed with moonlight. Low in the distance a slick of rainwater caught the light more brightly. Bradley had never seen standing water in this part of Baja. Horses stirred in the paddock.

Again he opened his mind to the raids of memory. What memories were here. For nearly three years, from the time he was just seventeen years old, he had driven to El Dorado once a week and returned home with an average of twelve thousand dollars in cash. The North Baja Cartel took in roughly four hundred thousand dollars a week off the L.A. streets and Bradley drove the collected money south to make his percentage. He had earned nearly a million-six in those first two and a half years, almost pure profit, little overhead and no taxes.

In those early days he had posed as a fisherman, a surfer, a social worker, a church charities representative. He had lugged fishing gear, camping equipment, surfboards, piles of new and used clothing, Bibles and religious literature, cases of canned food and water and sports drinks. He had used several vehicles, some with doctored plates, and several different sets of false documents. Later, his LASD shield became useful at times. Still later, when Herredia brought several U.S. Customs agents under his influence, complementing the Mexican inspectors he already owned, Bradley’s job had gotten much easier. The good old days, he thought. Money and more money. He had enjoyed it immensely.

But now as he stood in this desert and looked at the far hills he felt betrayed by what he had once thought of as bravery and confidence. And betrayed by the burden of Murrieta. Wasn’t it all just stupidity and foolishness? What had he gotten for it? A small fortune, yes. And for a while, on the legitimate side of his life, good LASD performance reviews and a minor hero’s status.

But he had also been shot and stabbed and involved in a shootout that had claimed six lives. This earned him an ongoing LASD Internal Affairs investigation that stopped his Mexico deliveries a year ago and dried up his largest stream of revenue.

One year ago, he thought. One cursed year ago everything changed. IA had begun tailing him at work, then had him reassigned from Narcotics to a desk job in Fraud; they had spied on him during his free time and even tried to spy on him at home; they had interviewed his fellow deputies; and they had no doubt gained access to his phone records and bank transactions. They were a thousand terriers yapping and biting at his ankles. The terriers had only begrudgingly given him these ten days off even though his vacation time would cover it.

A year of bitter suspicion and a drastic pay cut and now, worst of all, Erin kidnapped. And their unborn child. Unimaginable. Fire of my life, Bradley thought, I have delivered you to my enemies.

He closed his eyes and heard her voice: Come to me by moonlight, sugar/Let the moon be your guide.

Bradley opened his eyes on the moon and to him it looked not like a guide but an unmoved witness to his own vanity and failure.