Hood watched Bradley as he took up one of the weapons, gingerly extending the butt and fitting the long magazine into it. It infuriated Hood that Bradley and the gun maker had made fools of him and his ATF brethren. Hood saw the excited pride in his face and the familiarity in his movements as Bradley screwed on the Love 32 sound suppressor. The expression reminded Hood of Bradley’s wild, lovely mother.
Genes, Hood thought. Genetics. Genesis. Generator. Generations. Genealogy. And Bradley knows this too. Look at him.
Bradley caught Hood’s look. “So, these are the guns you think I made, or sold, or whatever it is you think I did?”
“Clever-Harry Love and Murrieta.”
“You are once again resoundingly full of shit, Charlie. The only thing I know about these things is that they work. Who made them or how they got here? I truly don’t know. If you need to blame your career failures on me, go right ahead. But you’re nowhere near where the truth lives. Wrong neighborhood. Not even close.”
“We’ll sort this out back in California, Bradley.”
“I look forward to that.”
The men stretched into their armor and shouldered their ammo packs. Some had hand-grenades on their belts, in case the extraction of Erin turned into a firefight. Hood recognized the grenades as U.S. military issue, which could be purchased by anyone in stateside surplus stores, emptied of explosive and cheap. These practice dummies had been finding their way into Mexico in growing numbers over the last year, where the narcos repacked them with gunpowder and plugged the bottoms and used them against each other and the government. If one of those explodes, he thought, there goes the stealth raid. It was hard to imagine forty-five men shooting it out and one unarmed woman living to tell about it.
Hood strapped the shotgun over his shoulder, then took a Love 32 from the crate. It was new and shiny and heavy for its size. He screwed on a sound suppressor. He caught Bradley looking at him, a faint, enigmatic smile just beginning to peek out.
“Oh, cheer up,” said Bradley. “It’s for Erin.”
“California,” said Hood.
“Vamos!” whispered Fidel.
Forty minutes later Hood and Luna were crouched in a thicket between Bradley and Fidel, looking out at the Castle. It climbed a not-too-distant hillside with its many colors, somehow regal and ramshackle at the same time. Pale smoke issued from a chimney then hovered atop the jungle in the breezeless air. The new sun threw orange light against its face as a dog trotted across a broad driveway.
Fidel whispered into his satellite phone and someone whispered back. He punched off and hung the phone on his belt, then under the cover of the palms he slid hissingly on his butt down a lush embankment. Hood held the Love 32 to his chest and followed.
34
Erin woke up just after sunrise. She was curled up on one side of the bed with the sheet over her, still wearing her clothes from the night before. For a moment she looked out the window, saw the palms unmoving in the orange light, her mind crawling with images of the battle. She felt aged by what she had witnessed, made sadder and more fearful and better able to discern her blessings. The baby kicked and elbowed her. She also felt more determined than ever to preserve his life, to deliver him gasping and screaming into the world.
She looked out at the lightening sky and drew a mental picture of Bradley. She saw him not as a failed man but as a misled boy. Misled by whom? Still, when she pictured him and imagined what had happened to him her heart fell. The failed boy was hers and she had made a deal with him, which entitled him. But to what? He could quite easily have been killed or arrested in the service of trying to help her. He did not arrive…There are rumors of a battle with the Zetas and an arrest by the Army. She took a deep breath and calmly tried to imagine Bradley gone forever, nothing of him left but a memory and scattered evidence left behind. But she could not make this idea real. It sat out there beyond her understanding and she wondered what she would do if by some miracle they both returned home alive.
She showered and changed and when she came out Atlas had delivered a light breakfast and a large pot of coffee. She drank the coffee at the desk with the Hummingbird on her lap, scratching down the lyrics as they stole into her head.
A few minutes later Owens knocked and Erin let her in. She was dressed for travel in slacks and a smart linen jacket, and she trailed a gold-colored rolling bag behind her. A pair of sunglasses was pushed well up into her hair. “Mike needs me. Benjamin thinks it’s his idea that I go. For my safety.”
Erin felt more abandoned than she knew she should. “Your safety.”
“I’ll be back in two days.”
“I’ll be writing for my life.”
“Get the guitar. I’ll bring the coffee.”
In the tracking room Erin sat at the Yamaha and Owens pulled a stool from the vocal booth. Erin felt her way through a melody one key at a time, a bright Tejano tune, then paused. “I thought I was dead last night.”
“I did too.”
“But here we are.”
“Benjamin told me there were ten men. His men. It broke a part of his heart that his own men would do that. Of course, with what was left of his heart he executed the three who were captured alive.”
“Did he put their heads in a bag?”
“Yes, personally.”
“Listen to what we talk about here, Owens. We don’t say these things in the U.S. There we say have a great day. Or no worries. Here we say he fed a reporter to the leopards. Has an attack like that ever happened here before?”
“There was an attempt on his life a year ago. Here. Two foolish boys. Hired shooters. Nothing like last night.”
“And it was so strange, Owens. I watched them load the dead men into the vehicles. Bloody and ugly. Then when I turned away from the window and looked at the food I was hungry. More than hungry-starved. I ate a lot. It tasted so good. I even drank some wine. When Benjamin came into the room I wasn’t sure who it was, and I didn’t care. I’d given up. I was still eating. I was too terrified to be afraid anymore.”
“You’ll be home in a week, Erin. Maybe less.”
Erin found the minor note she needed and wrote it down. “One week. Eleven more songs to write, and twelve to record.”
Owens looked at her analytically. “Write well, Erin. Let the angels whisper in your ears. I’ll see you in two days.”
Erin studied her face, the black hair and gray eyes, her lovely body and shapely arms, the knife scars ringing her wrists like angry snakes.
Owens stood and took the handle of her rolling bag. “My ride’s here. Whenever Benjamin arranges my travel it’s always three armored SUVs.”
“Will you go anywhere Mike tells you to?”
Owens smiled. “Within reason. Or slightly beyond.”
“I worry about you too, you know. I don’t like or trust him.”
“Mike was hoping that his pigeons might make you reconsider him. He went to more than a little trouble to do that. He wants your friendship and trust. He adores Bradley.”
Erin considered. “I don’t understand one thing about you but I’m glad you’re alive.”
Erin listened to the smooth roll of the luggage on the studio floor. She didn’t watch Owens leave. She felt that her best and only friend had betrayed her and now the future was even more bleak. One week, she thought. Eleven and twelve. Eleven, twelve and out.
For the next hour the music came clear and fast. Two songs stormed in simultaneously, notes and words falling close together like rain. Erin scribbled the phrases and kept two separate ledgers as each grew. One was the Tejano song that had begun in her room and the other was a lullaby to the baby, a waltz, and it brought a little mist to her eyes as it wafted across the morning and into her ears, addressed specifically to her, sent from that part of the universe unknown and unknowable. The little digital tape recorder was a sound-activated wonder-simple to use and very clear on the playback.