The Jaguar

3

The two dead men sat fast in their restraints in the last row of seats, helmets low, bandanas over their faces, and heads lolling like they were asleep. Erin could smell their blood and the various odors of the living. She listened to the automotive sounds inside the van dampened by the sound-absorbing bodies of the men. The men did not wear their helmets or face coverings now and she saw that they were young to middle-aged but none were old.

At first they tried to ignore her but she caught them looking. Then they studied her more boldly and she looked down. She saw that some wore work boots and some cowboy boots and others athletic shoes and one a pair of huaraches with no socks.

She sat in the middle seat of the second row, still in the nightgown, a red-and-blue striped serape from the barn pulled over her shoulders. Her nerves were raw and her insides were clenched and in spite of the warm night she was cold. She listened to the engine and the tires on the asphalt and the arrhythmic breathing of the men and the defroster going on and off. She pictured Bradley sitting in the trunk of the Cyclone with his head bleeding, trying to tell her that everything would be all right. And she pictured the baby inside her, his heart tapping away and his cells dividing amid the jolts of fear that he must surely be receiving from her. Such terror and not yet born, thought Erin. This world will be his. His life, four months strong, such a blessing after her failures. She lowered her face to her hands and rubbed hard at her temples and willed the nightmare to end.

In the dark they drove Interstate Eight near the California/Mexico border then got off at Jacumba and within seconds a boy on a motorbike was leading them from one dirt road to another and another. This road shrunk to a faint trail that allowed them to trundle slowly between hills of rocks. There was a narrow bridge and a short tunnel. Somewhere they crossed into Mexico and Heriberto said to one of his men that he was relieved to be home again where he could drink the water-no more Washington’s revenge. Of course this must be funny to a gringa if she could understand it, he added. Erin’s Spanish was good and she had always loved Mexican music and could play and sing norteno and marimba and fandango songs long before she knew what they were about. But she didn’t laugh at Heriberto’s joke.

Forty minutes later she was sitting in a small muscular jet shooting into the sunrise at four hundred miles an hour.

She dozed with her head against a window. Fear had always made her short of breath and groggy and she had always tried to let the grogginess work for her. It had helped her survive possible calamity for twenty-six years: the male tarantulas that emerged by the hundreds that spring evening in the campground outside of Tucson, the runaway horse on the ranch near Austin, the attempted assault in Las Vegas, the car accident in L.A. Panic kills, dad always said. A tough man, fabulous on the harmonica. He’d fought in Vietnam and read Hemingway. So she told herself to stay calm and deliberate and go to the cold place inside that her father had talked about. Steer yourself out of this nightmare.

She closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and tried to empty her mind but she did not sleep. The jet was full of sounds within the baffled roar of the engines. Her ears were trained for sound, and the waking world was a busy place for her. Now melodies and rhythms drifted into her as they often did, new melodies, strange and lovely, some carrying words. Gifts. In the long minutes of forced calm she let her rational mind speak: stay alive, girl, don’t let them see your fear, or the shape of what’s growing inside you. Bradley will save you. Bradley has always saved you. Bradley is good and truthful. Isn’t he? Then why in hell is all this happening?

Several hours later, in sun-blasted day, she walked down a short stairway that deployed from inside the jet, four men ahead of her and four behind. Their guns were not drawn and they seemed tired. They had not searched her. Even with the blanket around her she made it a point to hold her tummy in. She could feel the first-aid tape and its hard cargo, strapped high and out of sight on her right calf. The air was heavy and hot and smelled strongly of the ocean. There was white sand and stands of coconut trees and flats with mangrove thickets stretching far back into a silver lagoon.

She was ushered into a white Suburban with blacked-out windows. The engine was already running and the air conditioner was on and the driver waiting. Heriberto took the front passenger seat but the other men did not board. As soon as they were moving she tried the door so she could throw herself out and run for it, but of course the child guard was on and she was trapped. Heriberto turned and looked back at her with no expression on his face.

“You are very happy?”

“Very.”

“Maybe the worst is over.”

“This is a terrible thing to do.”

Heriberto pursed his lips and nodded. “There are many costs.”

“Why do you do things like this to innocent people?”

“Your husband is a criminal and an enemy.”

“You’re wrong.”

“And if I am not?”

“Then you should have taken him.”

“But we have taken something much more valuable than him. We have taken what he loves. Anything we want from him is now ours.”

“Who is Herredia? Who is Armenta?”

“They are men, Senora Jones.”

“Are they criminals and enemies?”

Heriberto studied her. His face was wide and the planes of it were flat and hard. The stubble on his chin was gray but his hair was black. “They are honest men. They represent no authority except their own power to survive and prosper. Their cruelty is magnificent. But they do not deceive.”

She considered his words and said nothing. Deceive? Could she say that much about her husband? What Heriberto had said back in the barn in Valley Center had rung true. If Bradley was a simple deputy then where had all of their treasure come from? From his mother’s estate, he’d always said. The estate of a school teacher who died young?

First there was the white sand road, then a stretch of freshly paved asphalt. The road wound through the jungle away from the lagoon. She tried to reckon directions by the sun but it was straight overhead and defiantly still. There were few road signs and these were hand-painted and announced small hotels or cabanas for rent, eco-tours, fishing charters, ruins. The man drove fast and he gave no quarter to the other vehicles on the narrow road. Erin watched for a state or highway sign. Quintana Roo. Good. Good for what? She turned and saw that the silver Denali and the black Tahoe that had started the drive with them were still in place behind. Soon the signs vanished and there was nothing but the hunched shoulders of the jungle and the curve of road.

Heriberto turned and looked at her. “You will see that there is almost no wind now. This means a hurricane is coming. On the news they say in four days. There will be much rain.”

“Good thing I packed the serape.”

“Don’t be afraid.”

“Why would I be afraid? Because you invaded my home and beat my husband and want to skin me? Because of your guns and the smell of your dead men? No fears here, none at all.”

“It is good that you fight fear with anger. Anger is like lifting a blanket from your eyes.”

“What shit.”

“Now you are begin to see the real world.”

They turned off the highway and onto a smaller asphalt road that brought them to a guard gate manned by soldiers in green camo. They were young and their weapons were strapped to their shoulders and two of them approached as Heriberto rolled to a stop and lowered his window. Erin saw a large stone-and-brass sign announcing the RESERVA DE LA BIOSFERA DE KOHUNLICH and the yellow-and-black striped barrier across the road. Heriberto and the young soldier talked for a moment, then the barrier lifted and they drove through. Erin turned and saw the vehicles behind them stopped at the gate, the arm lowered again.

Later they turned off onto a white-sand trail and when they came to a streambed the Suburban passed through it easily with the water swooshing up into the wheel wells. Just past the stream was a gate that Heriberto unlocked with a key and relocked after the Suburban and the two other vehicles had passed through. After that the road became wider and the land more hilly and they passed four more locked gates. Not a single vehicle came or passed them. Heriberto made a call on a satellite phone each time they went through a gate. Erin couldn’t hear what he said. She saw an iguana napping on a log and a monkey striding upon the high branches of a tree and a small wild pig watching them from the jungle shade. She wiped away the tears running from her eyes but she did not make a sound.

They pulled up one last steep grade and at the top was another gate and three armed men standing outside a guardhouse. They wore the same varied clothing and body armor that her captors wore but no helmets or face coverings. The front windows went down and the three men took turns chattering away with Heriberto and poking their faces in to look back at her.

They rode up a long rise overhung with foliage to a level place and stopped. Through the windshield a structure rose, grand, immense, and disheveled. She stepped out of the SUV into the heat and looked up at it. It was a Mexican-Caribbean-Asian mongrel with curving red Chinese roof beams and turquoise Jamaican storm shutters and many balconies. The balconies had elaborate wrought-iron railings and they slouched, overladen with bright ceramic pots that sprouted flowers. Some of the walls were painted white and fingerprinted by vines long gone, although one entire level was festive yellow and another was lime green. The edifice was loosely v-shaped, with the two wings facing each other to form a colonnaded loggia and courtyard below. It seemed to have grown out of the steep green hills and it looked random and out of plumb, which made its stories hard to count: she saw four then five then four again. It seemed important to get that much right, but she could not. Thirty rooms, she wondered. Fifty? The plaster was ancient and spotty and portions of it were crumbling away. The roof was overgrown with trumpet vines and mandevilla and honeysuckle busy with birds that trilled and flitted anxiously.

Erin listened to the crazy notes of the songbirds and wished she was one of them and could fly away. She watched as two women came down a stairway from the third level and walked a path into the jungle. They wore long, loose white dresses and white rebozos that covered their shoulders and heads. One turned to Erin as they walked but her face was lost within the folds of the shawl.

Heriberto appeared beside her and together they looked up at the madly colored extravagance.

“Does it have a name?” she asked.

“El Castillo.”

“The Castle.”

“One of the homes of Benjamin Armenta.”