T. Parker - The Jaguar

— Capitan? Please tell me what you want.

— Did you bring the guns to sell to Armenta? Or to kill him?

— Are you an honest soldier, capitan ?

The pulley squealed and Bradley’s breath caught and he stood on his tiptoes aghast at the pain and the promise of pain.

— To sell him or to kill him? Why is this difficult to say?

God my faith is in you, Bradley thought.

— To kill him.

— What did you say?

— Kill him! He kidnapped my wife. I told you. He’s holding her.

— I don’t believe this. I believe you came to sell the guns.

— I have no guns but the ones I gave to you.

— Then where is your wife?

— I told you. Somewhere above Kohunlich.

— But where? Why are you south if she is north?

— I don’t know exactly where.

The man at the winch moved slightly, the pulley shrieked overhead and the pain jumped through Bradley like a charge. He bellowed and stood on his tiptoes, his head down almost to his knees, his hamstrings burning.

— If you don’t know where she is then how can you save her?

— The Yucatan! Between Kohunlich and the Caribbean.

— This is only jungle. You must have coordinates or a map. Perhaps you are trying to sell weapons to Armenta. Perhaps this is why you slaughtered the Zetas on the highway.

— We were attacked. If Armenta knew I was here I’d be dead. He has my wife. She’s a performer in the Estados Unidos. Erin and the Inmates, very popular.

The capitan looked at Bradley then at one of his men, who shook his head.

— This means nothing to us.

— She means everything to me. Let me go. Let me try to find her. I’m no friend of Armenta. I swear to you on the name of the one God we know and fear.

— You must know where she is. You must have coordinates or a map. We can help you if you tell us where she is.

Bradley pressed up onto his tiptoes. He could feel the impossible angles forced upon his shoulder sockets and the imminent surrender of the joints. No pain in his life had prepared him for this if any pain can.

— I have the coordinates, he whispered.

The winch man cranked.

— I have them! he screamed.

He felt his feet leave the floor and he dove forward to preserve his shoulders and the next thing he knew the floor had jumped up against his face and the excruciating pain had vanished. In its place was something duller but better and in the center of it he felt the beating of his heart.

He felt the rough floorboard against his cheek. The overhead lights beat into his eye. There was rope piled on his head. He gasped rhythmically, aware but not aware, suspended between the waking and the other world. The dark shape of a man hovered over him and he understood that this was either the beginning or the end. He called upon all his inner strength to remember the GPS coordinates accurately. He summoned them up through the pain and humiliation and they came. So he shaved the seconds north and west enough to mislead the Mexican Army and he took a deep breath before delivering the most important lie of his life.

— Eighteen degrees, forty minutes, zero seconds north. Eighty-eight degrees, twenty-two minutes, sixty seconds west. Thirty armed men, at least.

— You will write this on paper.

— If my arms will work.

One of the men unclipped the hook from Bradley’s handcuffs and rolled him over. Bradley hollered from the pain in his shoulders. He knew the joints were twisted and stretched but not quite dislocated. For a moment he squinted against the lights. Then he sat up, his legs stretched flat out in front of him like an infant. He felt like an infant also, small and helpless and the object of great attention from larger, more powerful beings. He nodded at disbelieving Caroline Vega and the still stunned Jack Cleary, then looked up at the capitan.

— Pen and paper, please.

The captain waved one of the soldiers over and the man bent down and handed Bradley a stub of pencil and a tattered, body-warmed notepad open to a clean page. Bradley wrote in the coordinates. He wondered if perhaps the federal troops who protected the Reserva Biosfera de la Kohunlich might prevent these Army troops from entering onto their turf. Sure, he thought: a turf war like the CIA and FBI, or the U.S. Army and Navy might have. Everyone competes. Everyone meddles. Just two days, he thought. Just two days of stalling and posturing, and I can get Erin and be gone.

— If the numbers are different than the ones you told me I’ll execute you.

— Check them over, Captain.

The captain took the notebook and read the numbers and looked at Bradley.

— Perfecto . You will now come to Quintana Roo Police headquarters. Where you will be safe. The Campeche State Police will travel here to talk to you about the Zetas.

— Tomorrow is all I have, Captain. I’ve got one day to get her out of Armenta’s compound.

— I am afraid that you will be occupied for tomorrow. If we discover your wife we will detain and return her to the United States as our constitution requires.

— I will donate two hundred thousand dollars to the Army if you’ll let me go.

— Saturnino offered three hundred thousand and I told him to go to hell. I fear not for myself, but for my family.

— Four hundred thousand. Bring your family to California. I’ll get you on with the LASD. Starting pay is around forty thousand a year, plus benefits.

The captain stared down at him while he tore out the sheet with the coordinates on it. Then he smiled bitterly.

— Americanos. You come all the way to the bottom of Mexico to insult me with your bribes?

Bradley awaited the boot.

— Tell me what the cost of my wife is.

— The cost is your business with Benjamin Armenta and the many thousands of men like him.

The captain tossed the notebook back to the soldier and barked an order and marched heavily toward the door. Suddenly Bradley was up and being pushed along behind Cleary and Vega and he knew that sunrise would find him not at the cenote but in a jail in Chetumal, if sunrise found him at all.

Erin labored through the night and into morning, fell asleep with the Hummingbird and a notebook beside her on the bed, then awakened after two hours of horrifying dreams.

In one of the dreams Saturnino came into her room while she slept and she understood, in the strange logic of dreams, that if she awakened he would attack her. So she remained still, watching him through her closed eyelids. He had a perfectly V-shaped divot in the center of his hairline where the flashlight had crashed into him. He prowled the room looking for something on the table, then in the desk, his back to her. When he turned and looked at her from across the suite he was a leopard and in his mouth was a baby doll dressed in a blue jumpsuit as an infant boy might be. The leopard looked at her with the doll dangling, then dropped the doll and sprang through the window, silently gliding through the pane without breaking it, and into the dark. The doll ate a box of cereal, then grew roots and turned into a white poinsettia.

She was saved by the knock of Atlas, and she called for him to come in as she wrestled herself up from the nightmare. She was so glad to see him. Her life had come down to this day. Sweet Tuesday, she thought. Please be the day this ends. She cried and hid in the bathroom and checked if the gun was still there and it was. When she came out she asked him for coffee and a light breakfast.

Now she was back in the studio control room, listening to more of the narcocorridos in Armenta’s vast collection of CDs. She had not changed her clothes or showered. She could smell herself. Her hair was pulled back in a lank ponytail and her temples were dotted with perspiration in spite of the coolness of the studio.