T Parker - The border Lords

"You get wind," said Beth. "I get paramedics on a code three with a gunshot suicide attempt. Gotta go."

"Okay, Beth."

Hood put the Stetson on his head and held the cell phone in one hand and pushed the door closed with the other. He was surprised how strong the wind was and when he looked out at the vast desert before him he saw the ocotillo swaying and the cholla quivering like lambs' tails in the moonlight and the blink of stars in the wind, as if they were squinting into it.

He slid the dead bolt home and put his phone back in its hip case, then tilted the hat rack upright. He looked where the rack had hit the wall and there was a new impression there, and not the first. The old bevel and latch plate were worn smooth and the heavy door was prone to this. Another fix, he thought. The old adobe was full of them.

Hood set out collecting the hats. He put on his favorite Borsalino fedora over the Stetson, then a nice Panama on top of that; then he got his Dodgers, Angels and Padres ball caps in one hand and a canvas breezer in the other and carried them back into the foyer for the rack. He set them back one at a time, thinking of Beth.

When he walked back into the living room Sean Ozburn was standing back in the darkness in the far corner, two Love 32s slung over his shoulders and aimed in Hood's direction.

"I was standing on your porch and the door opened," he said. "I took it as an invitation."

"Sean."

"Slide your Colt across the floor to me."

"The whole rig is in the kitchen, by the coffee machine."

"Then the AirLite on your ankle."

Hood took a knee and slid the revolver slowly from the holster on his left ankle, backhanding it across the tile to Ozburn like a shuffleboard puck. It clattered and spun to a stop. Hood failed to mention the two-shot.40-caliber derringer he carried in a tiny canvas holster on his right calf, just above the sock. He packed the ankle cannon on days he thought he might need it, and he had carried it twelve days running now. It was passably accurate within ten feet but would stop a man cold.

He opened his hands to Ozburn and stood. "How do they fire, the Loves?"

"Extremely well. The sound suppressors are ingenious-Ron Pace uses steel wool and aerosol foam inside the fiberglass tube, so they're sponges acoustically, and super light. You can hardly hear these things, just the shells feeding in and spitting out. They clack like a child's plastic machine gun."

"Where's Daisy?"

"Out in the truck watching our stuff."

Hood studied him. Ozburn let go one of the guns and pushed his sunglasses up onto his head. He studied Hood back, swaying slightly like a man just off a boat. "Good to see you, Charlie."

Ozburn looked leaner and paler than the biker-surfersnowboarder who had essentially vanished undercover fifteen months ago. His hair was longer and his gunslinger's mustache was trimmed. His well-muscled body had always filled out his clothes, which he had worn snug in admitted vanity, but now the leather vest had some slack in the chest and his badass leather pants looked a size too big. Back from the crags of Ozburn's face his eyes stared, blue and cool, and in them, even at this distance, Hood saw something haunted. Ozburn growled softly, then rolled one big shoulder up and wiped his mouth on the leather vest.

"That was a shitty thing, sending me a picture of Seliah like that," he said.

"I hoped you'd see it and just give yourself up."

"Well, I'm not. And it was shitty of you tricking her into the hospital that first time, too. I've thought of punishing you for it. I should."

"You wouldn't if you'd seen her that night. She was mean and crazy. She was dangerous to herself. She scared the hell out of me, Sean."

"So you say. Maybe you did the right thing. But maybe you staged this whole thing to get me to surrender. The whole thing, start to finish."

"That's not rational."

"Rational means nothing after the things I've done and seen."

"I didn't stage Arenal or Father Joe or the wound to your toe. I didn't stage Seliah's symptoms, or yours. I didn't stage the tests they gave her. It's all real, Sean-everything she told you. Nothing has been faked or staged. You just spent three days with her-was she the woman you used to know? Answer me. Was she?"

Ozburn lowered the machine pistols and walked across the living room toward Hood. Gone was his easy athletic grace, replaced by a heavier, more conscious gait. He sat in a faux cowhide swivel chair, one of two that had come with the rental. He let one of the weapons dangle to his side on its sling and the other he rested across his lap, hand still on the grip, finger still inside the trigger guard. He nodded toward the other chair, which sat opposite across a big, tattered Navajo rug that looked two hundred years old. Hood walked to the chair and sat.

"No," said Ozburn. "She's not the woman I knew. I'll admit there's something wrong with both of us. Big wrong. The list of ailments goes on and on. The latest is, I can't feel my feet sometimes. And sometimes, I can't feel anything below my knees. Can't walk or even stand when that happens. Don't get any big ideas, Hood, because they feel just fine right now. And everything I see is green. You're green right now. The whole house, the whole world."

"Well, no shit, Oz-your nervous system is filled with the rabies virus. So is hers."

Ozburn wiped his face with his free hand, and when his hand passed over his eyes they were still fixed on Hood. "Okay. Okay. I've thought this through, Charlie. Whether what you say is true or not, Seliah is where she belongs right now. She can make it. She's strong and good."

"And you?"

"I'm right where I belong, too. I chose this path and I'm staying on it. I'm going to deliver ninety of these Loves to Blowdown. And you're going to take down some nasty Mara Salvatruchas in L.A. and a hundred and fifty-seven grand in cash. It'll be the best bust I've ever made. It's the proof of my training and my skill and my value. It's the reward for the last fifteen months. It justifies what I've become. After that? Well, I'm not spending the rest of my life in prison for taking out a few of our enemies. You wouldn't. Which brings me to a proposal."

"Propose, Sean."

"Why should I surrender? ATF needs me now more than ever. I do things you regular agents won't do. I've crossed every line that can be crossed except for one-I've stayed loyal to my cause and my people. If I know Soriana, he hasn't gone upstairs with those videos of me in action. He can't afford the fact that one of his best special agents has gone upriver and taken out some bad guys. If that got public, it would damage ATF. Badly. Soriana knows this. So, tell him to destroy the videos and fire me. They'll have to put me on a cash payroll but they'll never see me again. You'll be my contact. We'll talk in the ether. I can nurse Seliah back to health. For ATF, I'll be the guy who does what it takes for you to win. I'll be the black agent. When you need to cut a deal with the devil, you send in Oz. Makes sense, doesn't it? Doesn't it, Charlie?"

Hood considered. The wind rushed the house and the sand ticked at the windows. He looked at Ozburn in the lamplight of the living room and saw a dead man. "It makes no sense that I can see."

"Tell Soriana."

"I'll tell him."

"I've got some interesting news. Herredia wants to deliver the guns to me in California."

Hood thought about this. "Why?"

"El Tigre says the U.S. is safer than Mexico. He'll use his drug supply lines to move the weapons. He must feel solid in California."

"After two safe houses get blitzed?"

"I'm not complaining," said Ozburn. "Saves me a run from south to north with ninety new machine guns in my truck. I'm taking it as good luck."

Hood was caught short at the blunt irony of this: guns going not south, but north. Guns made in Mexico by an American businessman. Was the union now complete? Were they one now, the United States and Mexico, joined and made identical by drugs, money and guns?