T. Parker - The Jaguar

“Open the top!” yelled Bradley.

Fidel hit a dashboard button and by the time the shooters’ port had slid open bullets were whapping against the Yukon’s armor. Vega and Cleary and Omar sprouted up into the port with military assault guns and unleashed their storm. Bradley swung himself out the window and held on to the frame with one hand and reached across the bullet-pocked windshield and shot a man crouched by a strangler fig and another who was beside him and another who was reloading. In the periphery of his vision he saw the Mayans running off into the jungle and the tethered horse bucking wildly at the gunfire and the second SUV screeching to a stop on the far side of the cart. Its shooters too were up in the port and strafing the greenery fearsomely. The third Yukon swung to a stop and the storm multiplied.

Bradley pulled himself back into the cab, drove a fresh magazine into his weapon, clamped another mag crossways between his teeth, then opened his door and dropped to the mud beside the SUV. He crawled on his elbows to the right front tire, then lay himself out flat behind it and waited. The soft mud gathered him down and he had the Love 32 firm in his hands. As the men in the trees moved and became visible he shot them one bullet at a time, three men down for the five shots he fired, and he could see the fear growing on the faces of the others because they had no idea where the bullets were coming from and they couldn’t hear the report of his silenced weapon. They were young men and they wore military fatigues but no helmets or body armor. The “Z” insignias on their shirtsleeves identified them as Zetas, former Gulf Cartel allies now locked in a murderous rivalry with their old employers. A rocket-propelled grenade exploded in the trees and Bradley saw two Zetas twist airborne with the shrapnel, then collapse to earth with finality.

He watched the fourth of their caravan come to a halt fifty yards short of the cart. The man they called El Grande, Martin, climbed into the port opening and launched another grenade. It exploded deep in the jungle beyond the attackers and when Martin rose again with the launcher he was thrown back by machine-gun fire. Bradley heard bullets whistling madly against the armor of the vehicles and he saw that the bullets did not shatter the security windows but left them pocked with snowy divots and small cracks. He shot two more men with his last five shots, then took the full magazine from his mouth and reloaded. A sudden fury of fire from the trees slammed into his Yukon and he heard the lead screaming off the armor and punching through the places between the armor and he wondered if his people were dying just a few feet above him.

The fourth vehicle lurched forward and barreled toward them. But instead of following Fidel’s SUV into the mud hole the driver cut fast and hard across the highway, barged through the trees and disappeared into the shooters’ side of the rainforest. A moment later Bradley heard the fusillade of gunfire. Some of the ambushers panicked and spilled out onto the highway where they were shot to ribbons. Others must have run deeper into the jungle because the riot of guns and grenades coming from the fourth vehicle seemed to last for minutes. Then the fourth SUV came smashing out of the green and onto the highway, its three gunmen swaying wildly like trees buffeted by a storm but whooping and yelping and killing the ambushers as they tried to scramble away.

When they finally stopped shooting the world went silent. Bradley waited awhile, then climbed suckingly from the mud and stooped behind the hood of the Yukon. He kept his gun pointed to the trees but he looked through the window to see Vega and Cleary standing in the port and Fidel behind his open armored door with a riot ten gauge propped against the frame and Omar slumped bloody and still on the back bench.

A compact car came up the highway toward them from the west. Sun-blistered paint, Quintana Roo plates. It slowed when it came near the cart, and the family inside it stared wide-eyed at the armored gunmen who raised their hands for the car to stop. The driver was a middle-aged man who looked terrified, raising his hands as if he were under arrest. Three of Fidel’s men easily turned the wagon upright and rolled it to the side of the road. When one of them waved the little car on, it accelerated noisily but slowly in a cloud of white smoke while the children in the back seat turned and continued to stare.

Moments later the three other SUVs converged on Fidel’s stuck Yukon and pulled it out with their winches. Bradley saw that the armored vehicles were pitted in some places and punctured in others, though less so than the furious sound of the battle had implied. The plastic security windows remained unshattered and the security tires still held air.

He cut the horse loose and it walked slowly off to the side of the road and turned and looked at him. There was no sign of the Mayans.

The men and Vega stood in a loose circle for a moment, blocked from the jungle by their vehicles. An old truck came rumbling down the highway from the other direction and did not slow down. A man whimpered from somewhere off in the rainforest. Eduardo said that El Grande Martin was dead and so were Tito and Raul and Perro Negro and Omar. Fidel said if they’d been wearing their armor as ordered they would be alive, which earned him several hostile looks because three of them, according to Eduardo, had worn their armor. Fidel said they would bury the men properly soon but not now. Caroline Vega had been grazed on the forearm but the wound was not serious. Fidel took a small piece of shrapnel in his cheek.

From the jungle they heard at least two men moaning and Fidel said anyone who wanted to go put them out of their misery was free to do so. The men shrugged disinterestedly and Caroline glanced into the jungle, then at Bradley and shrugged too.

After the men had dispersed for their vehicles Vega pulled the metal from Fidel’s cheek and touched the other side of his face gently with her hand. He put his bandana to it and got into the mud-draped vehicle.

Fidel started up the Yukon. Bradley got in and closed his door and looked at the bullet-marked safety glass. Then he looked at his own mud-drenched front side and he thought that losing just five men here on this highway was an authentic miracle. How many Zetas had they taken down? More than a dozen, certainly. Twenty?

“What will people do when they see our vehicles?” Caroline asked.

“They’ll stay the fuck away from us like they should,” said Bradley.

“And what if we run across soldiers?” said Caroline.

“They don’t occupy the Yucatan,” said Fidel. “They can fight a battle or occupy a village for a few days. They arrive loudly and without surprise. They arrive with great volume and pageantry and media and politicians. But they never stay. We will make the vehicles appear better. I have spray paint and Bondo for the bullet marks.”

“We just killed a whole bunch of men,” she said.

“Zetas,” said Fidel. “We have helped Armenta even though he’s our enemy.”

“I feel lucky,” said Bradley. “I feel the big luck coming.”

It had been a long time since he’d felt the good luck that had so effortlessly accompanied him through the first twenty years of his life. Maybe it’s all changing for the good, he thought. Luck. And that means Erin is okay and I’m going to get her out of here alive and the baby will be born.

Some miles down the road their second SUV took the lead because Eduardo knew the area. Fidel followed him onto a narrow asphalt road, past an eco-lodge and a mini-super. The asphalt soon gave way to the pale white soil of the Yucatan. Deep in the tall twisted ceibas they stopped and dug five graves, taking turns, the labor utterly punishing in the heat and the mosquitoes and the sudden absence of adrenaline. The earth was sandy and loose and the graves soon filled with groundwater and remained shallow and without dignity. The digging went quickly because of the soft ground and the folding camp shovel carried in each SUV for this exact purpose, Bradley guessed. Carrying the bodies to the graves was exhausting and spirit-killing.