The Jaguar

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 shoebox 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 fishing 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 bloody 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 appetites 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 button on his wristwatch 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 space 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 assassin.

“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 butt 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 fuckups, 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 associated 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 butt 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 shit, 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 shiny 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 butt down a lush embankment. Hood held the Love 32 to his chest and followed.