The jaguar : a Charlie Hood novel.

T. Jefferson Parker.

For Those Who Make the Music.

Every hundred feet the world changes.

-Roberto Bolano, 2666.

1.

THE BLACK VAN ROLLED ACROSS the barnyard in the rain and stopped beneath an enormous oak tree. It was a large vehicle but under the canopy it was poorly visible, a dark shape within greater darkness. From it the men spilled and advanced quietly to a stable where they paused, then to the flank of the barn, then in single file to the ranch house where they pooled in the overhang of the deck.

Upstairs a young man watched through a window as he b.u.t.toned on his jeans. He saw the dull glint of the van under the tree and men snaking through the night. He counted ten of them. He looked back across the bedroom at his security monitors but they told him that the gate had not been breached and none of the doors or windows of the outbuildings had been disturbed. No warning indicators, no audio alerts. Yet this. The dogs were kenneled for the storm. The rain belted the roof and he saw the silver lines of it slanting outside the windows and he understood that he might die here tonight but she did not have to. He was twenty-one years old.

He went to her and put a hand over her mouth and rocked her upward from sleep as he whispered. Men are here.

What men?

Men with guns. We only have seconds, Erin. Get up now. Please.

How can this happen?

They beat the security. Up. Hurry. We have our plan.

She let out a small cry and held his hand tight and pulled herself up and out of bed. In the near darkness he put his arm around her and walked her across the suite and down a hallway and into another room lit by a faint nightlight. Her shoulders were white and her hair was red. Outside the wind hit the walls and the rain raked down upon the world. He let go of her and slid open the door of a walk-in closet and threw a hidden switch. The interior pivoted away with a motorized hum and was replaced by an alcove with a leather recliner and a fire extinguisher and a small refrigerator and a rack of weapons along one wall.

He kissed her and pressed a hand against her middle and felt the slight warm bulge through her nightgown.

I love you, Erin.

I love you, Bradley. Is this a nightmare? Why us? I hear things downstairs.

I'll handle it. You wait here and I'll come to you by moonlight. Like in your song. This is a promise. Hurry.

He guided her by the hand into the alcove. She sat on the recliner and he kissed her and pushed the switch and they held hands and gazes until Erin glided away and was gone. Bradley pulled the silenced machine pistol from the upper shelf and slung it over his shoulder, then took another and pushed off the safety and trotted back out into the hallway.

He heard feet on the stairs. He backed away from the bal.u.s.trade and when the first man came up and looked from under the brim of his helmet Bradley shot him and he arched back down into the stairwell. Another followed and Bradley shot him also but three more boiled up hydralike, shoulders hunched and faces down, and Bradley sprayed them but they surged toward him while he loosed his last few rounds and raised the second gun.

They knocked him over just before he could fire and pinned his arms to the floor. More men piled on. He expected their knives but he could barely move beneath their weight. He could smell their bodies and their breath and the gunpowder in the air and he could feel the hard ballistic armor that crushed down on him and none of his clawing or tearing or biting could damage that armor or the men inside it.

They grunted and cursed in Spanish and they kept their voices low and they had not fired a shot. He felt his lungs being squeezed empty and still the men were piling on, heavier and heavier upon him until the last spark of his breath flickered and he could not catch it. Bradley thrashed and grunted against them. He entered the darkness cursing them and he heard their voices above his own-profanities and nervous laughter.

He awoke and opened his eyes and saw nothing but black. He was on his back and tried to sit up but hit his head on something just a few inches from his face. He touched it with his hands: fabric over metal. There was a smell he knew. His knees were bent and he tried to straighten them but the s.p.a.ce was too small. When he tried to raise them they too hit the low ceiling and Bradley felt the panic gathering in his body. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Breath, sweet breath. Calm. The panic sat and waited. Bradley had always suffered in close places-in sleeping bags and crowded elevators and below decks-as had his mother and their ancestors deep into history.

He reached out and felt the curve of his enclosure and the smallness of the s.p.a.ce. He heard one of the terriers yapping. I'm in the barn, he thought. His fingers found a plastic crate and when he got a hand into it he felt the familiar air compressor with its power cord wrapped snug around the bottom, and the spray can of tire treatment that smelled of cherry, and the rubber blade of the window wiper. The Cyclone, he thought: I'm in the trunk of my old Cyclone, in the barn. Nineteen seventy, aftermarket trunk release. Broken.

The panic launched and Bradley shoved the crate away and braced both hands on the lid and pushed mightily but it did not give. He wriggled over onto his front side and got his knees under him and he drove his back up into the top. He felt the muscles of his thighs and groin flaring but the lid was unmoved. He turned over, breathing fast and hard, strangling on the closeness. Sweat ran off his face and neck and he felt it acc.u.mulating in the cleft below his larynx. He wondered how much oxygen was left. He heard voices from above him. He tried to calm his heart and listen to them but he could not.

The panic came again and he chopped at the ceiling with both elbows but the ceiling did not give. He flipped over again, and again drove his back against the lid but the trunk was Detroit-built and it gave not even the smallest sign of coming open. So he pushed up on his young strong arms, arms that could easily press his own weight and more, but they were no match for the steel.

Bradley flipped over onto his back again and screamed the scream of the living and he knew that if he screamed loud enough the sound would rip a hole through the metal and he would be able to reach an arm through.

And the lid lifted. He sat up and looked into the faces of men and the barrels of their guns. Most wore helmets or bandanas or balaclavas. Beyond them he saw the lights and rafters of his barn. Some of the men poked at him with their barrels. Erin stood not ten feet away, one large armored man holding each of her arms, her nightgown torn and her feet bare and her eyes wild. Beyond her, along the far side, was the kennel and behind the chain link the twelve dogs paced or stood or sat and the terrier kept barking.

He gathered himself to climb out but a gun b.u.t.t hit him square in the forehead and he dropped back into place in the trunk and looked dizzily at the man who had hit him.

"Excuse me, Deputy Jones. My name is Heriberto. You are now living because I have been asked to be merciful to you." He was tall and wide, his face below the eyes hidden by a bandana. His voice was soft and lilting. Bradley noted his new white athletic shoes, jeans, and the Mexican Armyissue armored vest and helmet.

Bradley nodded faintly and looked again at Erin. He didn't know how long he'd been unconscious and it was his belief that she had not been beaten or raped. He wondered how they had breached his security and discovered the hidden room so easily. He tried to climb out again but the gun b.u.t.t corrected him as before. He saw the tears running down her face but he tried to stare at her in a way that imparted calm and strength. He felt the blood running from his scalp and down his lips and off his chin.

"You're going to be all right, Erin. I promise you that you will be all right."

"Deputy Jones, this is not a certainty," said Heriberto. "We are here to take your wife. You will see her again if you end your protection of Carlos Herredia and the North Baja Cartel in Los Angeles. And if you stop arresting the Gulf Cartel's Salvadoran friends. And if you offer one million dollars to Benjamin Armenta as an apology for the trouble you have caused and the money you have cost him. These are to be your labors, gringo Hercules. We give you ten days to complete them and your esposa will be released without harm. If you fail, Deputy Jones, then Saturnino will skin her alive. He is the enforcer ultimo and this is one of his methods. All of the lovely white skin. Off. Si, mis amigos?"

The men remained silent and did not look directly at Erin. She tried to break away but the men yanked her back and her hair flashed red in the tube lights of the barn. Beyond them the big sliding door was open and Bradley could see the rain lightly falling outside. It was an unusual monsoonal storm from the southeast, brief and warm, but Bradley was trembling cold and bloodied. His ears rang badly. He wiped some blood off his face and looked at his wife.

"You have the wrong man, you sonsofb.i.t.c.hes," she said. "He's a sheriff's deputy for the County of Los Angeles. He was second in his cla.s.s at the academy. He's been awarded for bravery. Get off our property."

Heriberto looked at her. His expression was incomplete because of the bandana but his eyes crinkled with amus.e.m.e.nt. He opened both hands and gestured at the s.p.a.cious barn with its Porsche Cayenne and the lovingly restored Cyclone and Erin's new Toureg hybrid turbo, and the tarped and trailered Boston Whaler and the gleaming quad runners and the John Deere and the profusion of tools and sporting gear. He nodded toward the big house and spread his hands in a gesture of inclusion, which included Erin. He laughed quietly and so did the men.

"All of this and a secret room with a motor? Why not a private jet? This is what the one-year policeman in los Yuniates earns? But the beginning pay is not forty-thousand dollars per year. All this? Where does all this come from, roja?"

"You've got the wrong guy, Heriberto," said Bradley. "I am not who you think I am."

Heriberto stared at him. "Tell your lies to the fools in your life. To your wife and your department."

"I do not lie to my wife."

Erin looked at Bradley with angry confusion. He saw the doubt on her face and, feeling judged by the one person he truly believed in, the doubt hit him harder than the gun b.u.t.t. He gauged his chances of lunging out of the car and getting to her without being beaten or shot. But then what? He saw the movement of the gunmen toward him and held still.

"Erin," he said. "I'll take care of this. I'll give them what they want. I'll give them twice of what they ask, whether it's in my power or not. You'll be free again. You'll see this home again and raise your children here and we'll walk that meadow in the spring and be in love."

She looked back at him through her tangle of hair but said nothing.

"If you fail us, Deputy Jones, we will send you her skin, rolled up in a small box," said Heriberto. "We will be in touch with you. Many details are to be coming. The Gulf Cartel will crush your master Carlos Herredia like a small dog. This is only the beginning. You tell him Benjamin Armenta says h.e.l.lo."

The two men pulled Erin toward the barn door just as four others stepped forward and pinned Bradley to the trunk bottom with their gun barrels. He looked up at their motley disguises and clothes and their vests with the military numbers stenciled in white. A moment later he heard a vehicle pull up outside the barn and one by one the gunmen backed away and disappeared.

He sat up and wiped blood from his face. Through the barn door he saw that the rain had ended and he heard Erin shout out to him: "Come to me by moonlight, sugar!/Let the moon be your guide!" These were words to a song she was writing and she'd been singing them in slightly varying melodies for the last week now. "I love you, Bradley!"

Love or loved? He sprang out of the trunk and ran to the door and saw the van heading down the dirt road toward the gate. He ran to the workbench, got the .357 Magnum revolver from a drawer, then to the all-terrain vehicles waiting side-by-side at the far end of the barn, ga.s.sed as always, keys in their ignitions. He chose the best one and jammed the gun into the holster strapped under the dash while turning the key.

He bounced through the barn and shot out the door, up on his hands and feet, head held low. Shirtless he shivered as he cut through the cool wind and found the road and gunned the quad runner through its gears. I will not fail you. He saw the taillights of the van as it cleared a rise, then he saw nothing but the pocked road.

Seconds later he was nearly upon the van. It was loaded heavily and the back tires slipped and spun in the fresh mud. The gate was not far away. He slid out the revolver and guided the whining quad with one hand and he raised the pistol and sighted down it. The van, big and easily hit, bounced along ahead of him but to fire was only folly and he knew they had beaten him this time. He backed off the accelerator and touched the brake and swung the ATV into a sideways slide that threw mud in a big rooster tail and finally brought it to a stop. He shivered with cold and his eyes filled with tears and blood as he watched the van leave his property not through the gate but through a large hole cut in the chain-link fence.

2.

HE SHOWERED AND DRESSED AND bandaged the scalp wounds then took the steps down into the bunker he'd built beneath the foundation of the barn. The vault was roomy and made of poured concrete with double rebar, heated and air conditioned, and the walls were painted white. The lights were recessed and low-voltage and bright. There was a desk and three standing safes, file cabinets and a long table covered by colorful Mexican blankets.

He knelt and spun the dial on one of the safes. He swung open the heavy door and pulled out one million dollars, weighed and shrink-wrapped in one-pound bundles. There were twenty pounds of one-hundred dollar bills; four pounds of twenties and sixteen loose hundreds to complete the amount. He took out another ten pounds of twenties-ninety six thousand dollars to sustain himself and whoever else might help him get Erin back. This all fit into a piece of lightweight rolling luggage.

He sat at his desk for a short while, staring straight ahead at the blank white wall. Fury and fear. How could he not have known? How could Herredia's organization have no warning, no inside information? How could Armenta even attempt this? Erin, light of my life. Where are you and what are they doing to you? With the eyes of his mind he tried to picture her but all he saw were the most terrifying pictures he had ever imagined. Ten days. Ten.

He forced away these images but now his thoughts came heavy with shame. He'd loved her to the point of obsession but what was that but a young man's foolishness, dwarfed in importance by his failure to protect her, his wife, sleeping, pregnant with their child, in their own home? If you fail, Deputy Jones, we will skin her alive. He knew this was not just a gruesome threat. Flayings had joined beheadings as statements of fact among the drug cartels.

Sitting in his vault, cold and hungry and a.s.saulted by things he could not control, Bradley felt his former self step aside. She was gone; now he was gone. Into him flowed the rage and the shame, and they ran the miles from his heart to the narrow capillaries. He felt them turn into strength and will and he knew that only these could bring her back.

He went to the long wooden table that sat against one wall of the vault and carefully lifted the blankets that were spread upon it. Here were his mother's journals and many framed pictures of her and of his brothers, and of her family back into the time when photography had just been invented. He put his hand on the journals and looked down at the pictures, which he dusted every month. There was also a fine Western saddle and a tooled-leather scabbard and a pair of six-guns in a two-holster rig that he cleaned and oiled once a year. The steel and leather were dark and shiny and smelled of the past. Beside the saddle was a forged steel mesh vest that had been dented by bullets, some fired nearly a century and a half ago, but some quite recently.

In the middle of all this stood the gla.s.s jar containing the head of Bradley's ancestor, the great outlaw, El Famoso, Joaquin Murrieta, 1830-1853. The blanched face was handsome as in legend but Joaquin's famed mane of black hair had fallen to the bottom of the alcohol and it rose slightly and lilted when Bradley picked up the jar in order to speak to his greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgrandfather facetoface.

"Give me your blessings," Bradley said quietly. "I need every last one of them that you can spare. Don't let them do to Erin what they did to Rosa. Or to me what they did to you."

The head bobbed gently as if in agreement. It looked forlorn. Bradley set the jar back on the table and wiped it clean with a cotton towel kept there for this purpose, then he snapped the colorful serapes before spreading them over the artifacts. Dust motes rose and swirled in the hard light.

Back up in the barn he stood at the open door. The wind was still blowing and the early sunlight sparkled through the wet trees to the east.

Bradley opened his cell phone and made his first call.

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 Jac.u.mba 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 a.s.sault 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 h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.senger 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."