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.
An hour later they were back on the road. Bradley looked out the window for new danger. The Love 32, butt retracted for storage and transport, was under his thigh again. He was suddenly spent, every bit of energy gone. Luck and hope were gone, too, two coins lost somewhere back along this road he had taken. He listened to the hum of the engine and the rasp of the tires on the highway. In the cab was only silence and the stink of mud and human fear.
23
Erin sat in the leather chair facing the window. The post-storm evening was gray and cool and the tattered fronds hissed on the breeze. She wore the white nightgown buttoned to her neck and a pair of heavy white socks that Atlas had smuggled in for her and an embroidered Nahuatl blanket around her shoulders.
Nearly three days had passed since Saturnino’s attack and she still could not get warm or comfortable, or more than a few hours of nightmare-curdled sleep. Her rump was bruised and her back was scraped and she was torn and burning with pain where he had pulled out her hair. Since walking back here that night, wobbling and nearly senseless, supported on either side by Father Ciel and Benjamin Armenta, she had kept rolled-up tissue in her ear canals, hoping to stem the aural memories of the awful event. It worked only partially.
For almost three days she slept and roamed the room, the eyes looking back at her from the mirrors dull with fear. The life growing inside her was plainly afraid too-thrashing and kicking violently for minutes, then utterly still and possibly lifeless for hours. She kept waiting for the catastrophic evidence to appear, for that feeling of intimate death to come over her, as it had come before. Then she slept and slept more.
Erin looked at her body in profile several times a day and she could see it clearly now, and she knew they must see it too, and she didn’t know why it seemed so important that they not know. Would they not skin a pregnant woman? What would that matter? Maybe Saturnino would delight in it more. Did he have special skinning tools? Did they soak you in brine like a turkey? Would he rape her first? Of course he would. That was what savages did. She pulled the blanket tighter. She adjusted the earplugs. Please don’t let go, little man, she thought. I’ll take care of you. Her hands trembled and her feet were cold as a statue’s and when the tears started up she slapped her face hard to make them stop but they did not.
When she couldn’t sleep she picked up the Garcia Marquez book and continued where she had left off. Anything to escape those thoughts. The book was perfect for that, as intoxicating as anything she had ever experienced. She lost herself in the story of Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles, bitten by the dog and waiting for the symptoms of rabies to strike her. But Erin couldn’t see how the story could end happily, because rabies was always fatal back in the strange and superstitious Caribbean world of the eighteenth century. She liked the crazy colonial viceroys and Inquisitors and the decaying nobility and pirates, but the canopy of viral doom overhanging the tale wouldn’t allow her to truly enjoy it. The priest was going to be disgraced by his love for her and Servia Maria was going to die. Horribly. In her dreams Erin grew the same hair that Servia Maria grew after her death-sixty feet of splendid copper-colored waves. Had Armenta left the book here as a message? Then why this book, of the hundreds of thousands of them on Earth? And what was the damned message, anyway?
Later Atlas set the serving tray on the table and put out a glass of red wine and a plate of cheeses and fruit. He set a small package beside the food. He looked at her gravely as he worked the plastic wrap off the plate.
“Were you here when I performed?” she asked.
“Was I where?”
“Here. In my room.”
“No. I was there when you sang. You were fabulous.”
“When I got back I thought someone had been in here.”
“Maybe you were mistaked. You must have been extremely…infeliz.”
“Unhappy? Yes, I was.”
“Benjamin will be here in one hour for you,” he said in his sweet high voice. “He would like you to be nicely dressed for dinner and have the Hummingbird in its case.”
“I’ll dress how I want to dress.”
“Yes.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. McKenna.”
“I hate this fucking place.”
“You will be free in three days. It is planned. The money will arrive and you will be released. I’m not supposed to know this but I do. The servants all know, but some don’t believe. They are betting on what will be the outcome. And Benjamin has ordered that the tigers not be fed. It is not difficult to add together what this means.”