T. Parker - Iron River

Along another wall were racks of M14 and M16 rifles and Mossberg 12-gauge combat shotguns. The older M14s were fitted with night scopes and the M16s and shotguns had flashlights mounted on their barrels. There were vests and night-vision headsets and binoculars hung from hooks on the pegboard wall, and dozens of canisters of ammunition stacked knee-high on the floor. Hood studied the gear and thought of his tour in Iraq and wondered if he was drawn to the hardware of death or if it was drawn to him. We cannot eradicate your degeneracy. The wind lashed the windows and he looked outside to see a nearby paloverde break into a shiver of spines and small green leaves.

One of the uniforms brought over four folded chairs, and Luna and the Americans sat. A slender gray-haired man in a desert camo suit rose and handed out maps. Hood studied his. Mulege was a village of six thousand. It sat beside the Rio Mulege. It had an airstrip and a museum and even a U.S. consular building. It was one hundred sixty-one kilometers from here.

Hood looked down at the ink-heavy copy, noted the hand-drawn rectangle with the black X marked through it, south of town, five kilometers from the shrine of La Virgen Maria. The gray-haired man discussed the map first in Spanish, then in English. He said the black X was an abandoned hacienda where the American was being held captive. When he said this, he looked one at a time at Hood and Ozburn and Bly, and Hood saw gravity in his eyes. The man explained that the crosshatched pathways around the hacienda were dirt roads passable by four-wheel-drive vehicles. None of them passed within two kilometers of the hacienda, he said. Lookouts would be deployed throughout the area, but there was no way of knowing where, so the sooner they stopped the vehicles and proceeded on foot, the better.

Luna stood and spoke again in Spanish, then English. Just after sunset, five of their men would set out in two cars along the north dirt road. They would use their global positioning units to halt four kilometers from the hacienda, then continue on foot. They would have one satellite phone. He named the five. Eighteen minutes later, five men in two cars would begin their approach from the west on the dirt road accessible from Highway 1. They would end their drive within three kilometers of the hacienda and continue on foot. They would carry the battering ram and one phone. He named these five, too. When they were one kilometer away, they would travel only on their hands and knees and stomachs. Simultaneously, another group of four would drive the south road to within two kilometers before setting out on foot with one satellite phone to communicate with the rest. They would go to the ground one kilometer out. He named these.

Hood watched and listened and he thought that Luna looked like Jimmy, the same big neck and shoulders and the stout bowlegs. And Hood saw the shiny smooth mounds of muscle of Luna’s neck and jaws and temples all shaved clean and he thought that the man was very much like a bull in his strength and density and great available power. Jimmy had that, too, he thought, and in him it was tempered by a full and willing heart, and that was why Hood would use all of his tools, even lowly hope, to keep Holdstock from being tortured to death on alien soil at the age of twenty-six.

Luna said that he and the Americans would drive in from the east, then travel by foot and then by hands and knees. They would arrive ahead of the others by a few minutes-it would be ten P.M. by then. Luna would kill the guard at the generator and disable the generator and when the lights went out, they would take the house. The mission was to get the American out alive, he said. He said that certain things were in their favor: surprise, the cover of the wind, the new moon of two nights ago, the satellite phones for communication, the brand-new mounted lights on the rifles and the shotguns, the fact that the Zetas might be tired and perhaps drunk. He said certain things were not in their favor: The American might already be dead, the distances they would have to cover would leave them vulnerable to the lookouts, they didn’t know how many Zetas were there though his information said eight, they were unfamiliar with the hacienda and couldn’t know where the fire would come from or exactly where the American was being held.

Luna ordered first in Spanish, then in English, that they would take any man prisoner who cooperated fully and they would kill the rest without hesitation. A human silence rippled through the room, but there was the wind outside.

Hood wondered where the other two men would be. He looked at Ozburn and Bly. As if reading his mind, Luna said that Officer Blandon would be staying here to guard the armory and the communications gear, and Dr. O’Brien would be here also, waiting to treat the wounded and do what he could for the American.

“His name is Jimmy,” said Hood. “Jimmy Holdstock.”

“Jimmy Holdstock,” murmured someone.

“Right on,” said Ozburn.

Luna now left his place and slowly walked around the table. He looked at every face. Then he softly spoke another command in Spanish. Hood heard it clearly and it surprised him not for what it demanded but for what it implied.

He watched as the Mexican officers shook their heads and grumbled and cursed. They reached for their belts and pockets and deposited their cell phones on the table before them. Luna said something, and each man arranged his cell phone faceup directly in front of him.

The gray-haired man in the fatigues moved around the table with a dirty pillowcase and he and Luna watched them drop their phones into the bag. A uniformed cop with blue eyes and a drooping mustache caught Hood watching him, and his face colored in shame.

I have men I can trust and men I cannot trust.

Hood carried the combat 12-gauge slung over his right shoulder. The wind nudged him forward. The sky above was black and clear enough that the stars stood in relief, some near and some far and some in a dense middle belt. The night-vision headset was hot and tight and it cast the world in the same green highlights through which he had seen the murderous alleys of Anbar province. Hood listened to the rhythms of his boots on the gravel and to his breathing, and he felt the grit of the headset against his face and he could hardly believe he was doing this again.

They trod across the desert four abreast and fifty feet apart, well off the rough dirt road, picking their way around the boulders and the cholla and watching for rabbit holes and western diamondbacks. Sand drifts passed them from behind, then settled, then rose and hurried past them and settled again. To Hood’s right was Bly and beyond her Ozburn. They advanced methodically and Hood sensed their eagerness. To his left, Luna moved through the desert with a lightness that belied his size. He carried an M16 muzzle down in his right hand, and over his left shoulder hung a compound bow with an attached quiver of six arrows. They were big-game arrows, tipped with cross-blade heads with razor facets designed for penetration and the letting of blood, and in the green-limned world of the night-vision goggles, they glittered like huge emeralds at the ends of the shafts.

Hood topped a rise and the hacienda came into view. It was a kilometer away. The main house was large, two stories, and made of adobe brick. It was lit inside and out. There was a barn and three outbuildings visible in barnyard lights that twinkled in the wind. These all sat on flat ground in a small valley from the edges of which rose steep hillsides covered in mosaics of enormous pale boulders grouted with black desert scrub. Hood glassed the hacienda and saw two SUVs parked beneath a metal sun shade. There was a compact car tucked close to the barn, and three dirt bikes leaning against what had once been a chicken coop. The door of the coop stood open in the wind.