T. Parker - The Jaguar

Hood fixed him with a calm and durable look. “You’ve fucked with me enough, senor.”

“ Si. Es verdad. Now you will take the money to Ciudad Juarez.”

A city steeped in blood, thought Hood.

“It is thirteen hours with no flat tires,” said Rescendez. “That is driving on the U.S. side, of course. You have two days to make the drive. You will stay at the Lucerna. And you will be guarding Benjamin’s money very well.”

“I understand,” said Hood. “Now, you wait here, please.” Hood climbed into his vehicle and fetched one of the small Mike Finnegan photo albums from the console. The empty booklet had been complimentary and the cover image was a festive holiday ribbon now out of season. But each page was made of slotted clear plastic and each photograph was well displayed and protected. He brought it to the cop and opened the cover and handed it to him. The plastic pages caught the sunlight and Hood watched I. Rescendez flip through the six photographs, then shrug and hand it back.

“No,” he said. “I don’t know this man. Who is he and what has he done?”

“He’s a bad man.”

“The world has many.”

“Keep the book. Show the pictures to the men you work with. Your neighbors and friends. Call me if anyone knows of him or sees him. A thousand dollars for any good lead. My numbers are on the back.”

“I still think I’ve seen you before, Mr. Bravo.”

Rescendez lifted his cell phone and snapped a picture of Hood.

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.”