Iron River Page 8

  Hood looked at the four men across the room.

  “I’m sorry about what happened over in old town,” she said. “Were you there?”

  Hood nodded but said nothing.

  “Just like Dad,” said Beth Petty.

  “It was one of those situations where everybody does their jobs and an innocent man dies anyway. Maybe like the ER.”

  “Completely none of my business. I’m sorry. I could never get anything out of Dad, either. I think it scarred me for life. Terribly.” She smiled and blushed. “So I keep trying.”

  “I’ll talk to you anytime, Dr. Petty.”

  “Beth.”

  “Charlie. But watch what you ask for. You get me going and I’ll make Mike Finnegan seem quiet.”

  Her smile was tentative, then full. “What about that little dude?”

  10

  A small padded envelope arrived in the U.S. mail that afternoon, addressed to Blowdown. The senders had the correct task force field office location in El Centro. It contained a DVD.

  Hood, Ozburn, and Bly sat in their small conference area with the bad air conditioner and the TV and DVD player. Ozburn dialed his cell phone while Bly fed the disc into the machine and pressed PLAY.

  A warehouse maybe, one wall visible in deep background, no windows, the light fluorescent, chilly and bright.

  Jimmy strapped into a chair, wrists taped tightly to the armrests, fingers red and bloated.

  Jimmy, eyes wide at the camera and sweating hard as someone stepped into the picture—a man in a Halloween werewolf mask and pliers in one gloved hand who roughly lifted one of Holdstock’s swollen fingers above the others. The werewolf mask was blue-faced and black-haired. Then the camera zoomed to steel teeth on a fingernail. Hood watched. What he saw and heard scalded through him like a dose of venom and it briefly left him short of breath.

  In a break between Jimmy’s inhuman screams Hood could hear Ozburn talking softly into his cell phone.

  The government Bell landed ninety minutes later in a patch of desert behind the task force office, blowing sand into an opaque fog from which emerged four men. They leaned low and single file beneath the rotors as Hood watched through a window. He recognized ATFE agents Soriana and Mars from his Blowdown training.

  Soriana threw open the door of the task force office and marched inside. Mars followed him, carrying an oversize leather briefcase strapped over a narrow shoulder. It was heavy. Soriana introduced government consultant Dan Litrell from Washington, and Baja state police sergeant Raydel Luna. Litrell was red-haired and freckled and looked to Hood like an athlete. His handshake was powerful. Luna was taurine, both tall and large, with a thick neck and rounded shoulders and bowlegs. His head was shaved and tanned to the very top, where the hair was tapered up to form a short black mesa. His temporal and jaw muscles were pronounced. He shook Hood’s hand softly and his smile was not a smile and he said nothing, then turned his black eyes on Janet Bly.

  They brought in chairs, and everyone but Luna fit around the small conference room table. Luna stood in a corner like a punished schoolboy or a minor deity. The air conditioner wheezed loudly and produced a small amount of cool air. The men took off their jackets, and Janet Bly put her thick brown hair up under an ATFE field cap.

  Mars produced a small digital recorder and placed it in the middle of the table and turned it on. He established time and location and participants, but Hood noted that he said nothing about Raydel Luna.

  “Look, Sean,” said Soriana. “You start us off with the Blowdown buy at Guns a Million. Just walk us through all that because it sets the table for the rest of it. I’m going to record this whole meeting and I’m ready to roll when you are.”

  Ozburn told them the story up to the arrival of the Polaroids, which he then displayed. In his biker’s vest and black T-shirt he looked like a roadhouse gambler dealing poker. Then on to the DVD. The seven law enforcers watched the DVD in silence. Not one word. Hood thought that by him watching, Holdstock had to feel the pain anew, though this was preposterous.

  There was a moment of quiet after the last of Jimmy’s screams was cut short by the cameraman.

  “We need to go get him back,” said Bly. “They’ll kill him if we don’t.”

  “We can’t invade Mexico,” said Soriana. “We have to go through diplomatic channels. This is our only way.”

  “Bullshit,” said Ozburn.

  “I second that,” said Bly.

  Hood said nothing, but he watched Mars tap his fingertips on the table.

  “I had a long talk with the Homeland Secretary yesterday,” said Mars. He was thin and pale and he looked to Hood like an undertaker. “I’ve never heard her so heated up. She talked to our consul in Mexico City, he talked to the State Department, he talked to anybody in the White House who would talk to him. They’re not listening. Their hands are tied. Tied to each others’, as happens in our republic. They can’t rewrite international law for Jimmy Holdstock.”

  “But they can leave him to be tortured and murdered?” asked Bly.

  “I’ll be in Washington by late tonight,” said Soriana. “We’ve got meetings with State and the Mexican Consul first thing tomorrow. I’m still on hold with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but it’s looking better.”

  “Go to meetings while Jimmy suffers and dies,” said Bly. “I have a badge. I’m really tempted to shitcan it right now.”

  “What good would that do?” asked Litrell. “Even your conscience would lose, eventually.”

  Ozburn stood and pushed the VCR PLAY button, but as soon as the blue-faced werewolf appeared, he hit PAUSE, then OFF. Hood watched as two white SUVs with blacked-out windows rolled to a stop near the Bell.

  “I’m not turning in my badge,” Ozburn said. “And I’m not sitting on my hands while Jimmy’s down there. So, bosses, what do you recommend?”

  “You’ll do exactly what we order you to do,” said Mars. “ATF will not sanction cross-border measures. It’s beyond our mandate. ATF follows the letter of the law. ATF will not set foot in Mexico until we are invited by the federal government of Calderón. Dan?”

  “Ditto. You can’t go there unless the Mexicans say you can. They will say no such thing. This breaks my heart. I remember Kiki Camarena and I will never forgive our system for not being able to go down and get him. Pray for the diplomats to work out something with Mexico. Calderón is different. He is committed. Please be patient. Please believe in our country and our system.”

  Soriana crossed his arms and sat back. “Sean, Janet, Charlie—I hope we’re clear on this. You can’t go south on us. Literally and figuratively. It’s not set up to work that way. I need assurances now, ladies and gentlemen. Something audible for my superiors. Rules are rules.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” snapped Ozburn.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” muttered Bly.

  “Yes,” said Hood.

  Mars looked at each of them in turn, then turned off the recorder. He placed it in his coat pocket rather than back into the briefcase from which it had come. He stood and hefted the briefcase onto the table and left the room without it. Soriana shook hands with the Blowdown soldiers and walked out.

  Hood watched through a window as the two men strode to the helo. But they boarded one of the white SUVs, then the vehicle spun a dusty U-turn and bounced stiffly on its struts across the desert toward the road.

  At this, Litrell rose and went to the window and watched the SUV drive away, then he turned to face the others. “Raydel?” he asked.

  Luna nodded and stepped to the table. He unzipped the main compartment of the briefcase and looked inside, then at each of the Blowdown teammates. His voice was clear and sharp.

  “The Zetas have Holdstock outside of Mulege,” he said. “They will keep him alive for another forty-eight hours. Then they will behead him. I have men I can trust and men I cannot trust. If we do this, you will have to kill and keep from being killed. All I can promise you is someone’s death.”

  Luna rea
ched into the briefcase and brought out a clear plastic freezer bag with a semiautomatic handgun inside it. Five magazines had settled to the bottom. He set it on the table near Ozburn and then likewise set other guns before Bly and Hood. Hood looked down at the Glock, a simple, dependable Austrian killing tool of polymer and steel.

  “No numbers,” said Litrell.

  Luna continued to pull dark treasures from the briefcase: six fifty-count boxes of forty-caliber ammunition, three used-looking passports, three fat stacks of used U.S. twenties held with rubber bands.

  “When do we leave?” asked Bly.

  “Now.”

  “We’ll need clothes and toiletries.”

  “They are in the helicopter. We can fly almost to Cataviña. After that, the helicopter will draw suspicion. We need to go now. But before we leave, you need to understand that this is my operation in my country and I am in charge. There will be no dispute or discussion. There may be unusual circumstances. I am supported by some powers within my government and hated by others. Mexico is in a state of change. Mexico is a state of change.”

  Luna stood before Ozburn. He looked him over from toe to head, and Hood saw him peer into Ozburn’s eyes. Then Luna did likewise with Bly, and when it was Hood’s turn, he looked back into Luna’s hard black eyes and he nodded but didn’t look away.

  “Sean, Janet, Charlie,” said Litrell. “The Calderón government knows but it does not know. Washington knows but it does not know. They have taken an extraordinary step. You are the first. If you are successful, it will mean something even beyond the life of Jimmy Holdstock, maybe a new way of fighting this ugly war. If you fail, you will be denied and denied absolutely. Mexico and the United States have washed their hands of you. Those hands are already dry. Good luck.”

  A few minutes later, the Bell engine wailed and Hood felt the machine corkscrewing backward up into the sky, felt the untethering of his body and his soul from the laws of gravity and of men.

  11

  He watched the rusted brown earth of Baja California scrolling under the chopper, rimmed by a vast curved horizon that defied measure. He could not tell by looking if this was an expired land or one still waiting to be born. There were occasional farms and there were sandy washes squiggling down from the hills where water had once raced, and the farmhouses had corrugated metal roofs and the tiny outbuildings huddled under stands of paloverde and mesquite. The dirt roads were etched in pale paths, and Hood saw only one vehicle moving there, drawing a cloud of dust behind it and moving so slowly, it looked to be not moving at all.

  The Bell put down in the desert ten miles from Cataviña, just east of the Baja spine, a few miles south of the 30th parallel. Two rental cars were waiting. Hood and Luna took the lead. Luna drove the two-lane fast, passing the old cars of the natives and the ponderous travel trailers of the gringos, and he passed an eighteen-wheel semi on a blind curve negotiable by faith alone. Hood looked out at the boulders and ocotillo and cardon. A long red snake with its black head high off the ground whipped across Highway 1 in front of them and Hood looked over his shoulder and saw it serpentining over the shoulder gravel toward an outcropping of rocks. Behind the snake came the Ford containing Ozburn and Bly.

  Half an hour later, Luna and Bly played table tennis in the rec room of the La Pinta Hotel in Cataviña while Hood and Ozburn inquired about lodging. The hotel was full, as they knew it would be, but they raised their voices and complained loudly, establishing themselves as gringo tourists who were now inconvenienced by a long drive south to Guerrero Negro.

  The boulder-strewn beauty of Cataviña gave way to an incline at the top of which lay a great dry lake bed. It stretched on for miles, flat and hard beneath the blue sky. Gradually the barren landscape became generous again and Hood looked out at the sharp yucca and the spine clusters of the cholla deceptively backlit by the lowering sun to appear downy, and the elephant trees squatting among the boulders. The highway gradually lowered as they entered the Vizcaino Desert, seething with wind, immense. The thermometer read ninety-three degrees and the road ahead of them became a wavering mercurial slick. Two vultures ate at a roadside carcass, and as the car approached, one hopped cumbersomely away and the other withdrew its poached pink head from the spoil and blinked. Hood saw buttes rising flat in the east and for a moment he could see the Pacific Ocean, then it was gone.

  They crossed from Baja California to Baja California Sur just above Guerrero Negro. The Blowdown team found lodging there at the Nationale. Luna checked in later and ordered food to his room while the three Americans demanded the six-top in the middle of the dining room and spoke loudly through the dinner, as suggested by Luna. They continued loudly in the cantina after dinner and the men took turns dancing with Janet, her movements infused with anger. She was strong-bodied and pretty when she smiled, but there was no smiling at all that night and Hood thought how easy it was for them to look like miserables straining for fun.

  In the morning they drove south into the oasis town of San Ignacio. The date palms planted by Spaniards nearly three centuries ago rose dense and cooling from the arroyo floor, and Hood could see the rolling hills of figs and grapes and oranges. There was a breeze and on it Hood smelled the citrus and the sweet green smell of fresh water.

  “The water comes from a river and the river is underground,” said Luna. These were the first casual words he had offered since Hood had gotten into the car with him the day before. The tone of his voice implied great volume unused. “It comes to the surface here and there is a dam.”

  “It’s tranquil,” said Hood. He looked out at the thatched-roof dwellings and the tree-lined plaza and the magnificent domed mission rising above the palms.

  “It is the last tranquility you will see. On this assignment.”

  “Are you hopeful, Sergeant?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “Hope counts.”

  “Does hope or lack of hope cause anything that happens?”

  “I think it can.”

  “But maybe this is a superstition, that men can influence events by what they believe. The gambler. The priest. That ills can be remedied by a hoped outcome. That American hope can be expressed through power, and that this power is deserved and eternal.”

  “Luck comes to the hopeful. Luck comes to those who are ready for it. I’ve seen it happen.”

  “Oh, we will be ready, Mr. Hood. You see the mission? Its walls are four feet thick and made from lava blocks. The blocks were not made with hope but with the opposite of hope. They were made with fear that they might not last.”

  Hood thought about this. “That’s fine, Sergeant. But I’m going to hope we can get Jimmy out of here and back across the border alive. I’m going to hope that real hard and I’m not going to stop hoping it until it happens.”

  Luna cracked the smile that was not a smile but did not take his eyes off the road. “A discussion of hope is a small thing. If you want the killing down here to stop, you must stop the guns. Simple.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “My country is being torn apart by yours. America supplies the guns and the need for the guns. I don’t understand your people. You are insatiable for power and luxury. You are insatiable for improvement. You are insatiable for drugs. You take drugs to wake up and drugs to fall asleep. You take drugs in the morning to become alert and drugs at night to sleep. You take drugs to have sex and drugs to not have children. You take drugs to keep your legs from twitching. For your children it is an easy step to the pleasure drugs that come up through Mexico. But we of the police cannot defeat this way of thinking. We cannot eradicate your degeneracy. So it’s the guns. You need to stop the guns.”

  “But you need to stop the dope, Sergeant. The cartels crave the guns and the money just like our people crave the coke and smack. Your poisons are made for our young. Your people profit from what you yourself admit you can’t change. And if you want to use the word degenerate you can apply it to the cartels and the Zetas. Mankind doe
sn’t suddenly become pure south of the border.”

  Luna looked at Hood, then back to Highway 1. “So,” he said. “This.”

  Hood waited, but Luna said nothing more. “Yep. This.”

  Near Santa Rosalia they pulled off onto a dirt road that led back into a narrow valley. There were white boulders and cardon cactus reaching sedately into the air, and their arrangement was harmonious enough to have been planned. The breeze had become a steady wind now, and across this vista dervishes of sand whirled with sudden fury, then collapsed. Hood and Luna came to a gate made of barbed wire and old branches grayed by the sun. A uniformed officer walked it open, his pant cuffs trailing in the dust.

  Hood turned to see the second car follow. When they came over a rise, he saw the low pink stucco building at the end of the road. There were four satellite dishes and various antennae sprouting from the roof. And there were six beaten white sedans and the six black-and-white radio cars parked without order in the circular dirt driveway.

  Luna waited for Ozburn and Bly, then led the Blowdown unit into the building. There was one main room and it was heavy with cigarette smoke and filled partly with uniformed police and the rest with what Hood took to be plainclothes officers. He counted twenty. They sat in folding metal chairs around two long tables set end to end in the middle of the room, and when the Americans came in, they all pushed back their chairs in a clamor of metal on concrete and stood. The men wearing hats doffed or tipped them to Janet. The smokers crushed out their cigarettes in ashtrays and on the floor. Luna introduced the Americans, then rattled off a few sentences of such rapid Spanish that Hood caught only a few words. There was another table against a far wall, with two ancient spiral-corded landline phones and charging stations for six satellite phones, and a computer, monitor, printers, faxes, and a large tilting stainless coffee percolator with the spigot near the bottom.