The Border Lords

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Ozburn stood behind his wife and placed his hands on the back of her neck and gently kneaded the muscles. He looked down at the screen. It showed a smiling girl with braces on her teeth. The headline said: “Rabies Survivor Off to College.” He remembered the story from a few years back. The young teenager began having headaches and blurry vision and couldn’t walk straight. The doctors could find nothing and she got worse and worse. Finally her mother remembered she had been bitten by a bat while attending church months earlier. Ozburn had always been bothered by that detail: bitten by a bat in a church. But, armed with this new information, the doctors had quickly tested her for the rabies antibody, which was rampant inside her. Her prognosis was death. They gave her a few days, maybe a week or two. She had not been vaccinated against the virus and she was heavily symptomatic. No unvaccinated person had ever survived the virus after the appearance of symptoms.

  Seliah scrolled down and pointed to the screen. “See, Sean? Right here, now, listen—this doctor, Rodney Willoughby, after Jeanna got diagnosed, he thought up this experimental way to treat her. She was going to die, right, so he had to come up with something fast. He knew that rabies viruses get into your nerve cells and go straight up the body into the brain. They crave the brain. The virus is shaped like a bullet and each one has four hundred spikes that help them penetrate the host cells. They go cell to cell. It’s called ‘viral budding. ’ They force their way up the central nervous system and into the brain; then they replicate like crazy. The virus causes paralysis that leads to asphyxiation. That’s what kills you. The paralysis starts in your feet and works its way up until you can’t breathe. But guess what? Dr. Willoughby also knew that autopsies of human rabies victims showed hardly any brain damage—the whole viral brain invasion didn’t really damage the brain cells themselves; it simply caused them to give off fatal commands to paralyze. So he thought, what if you could protect the body against the viral paralysis by knocking the brain unconscious? Would an unconscious victim be less susceptible to the deadly commands of the virus? Could the person simply ‘sleep through it’? And, if so, and if this allowed the victim to survive for just a few more days, then the immune system could fight the virus off. Because once in the brain, the virus has almost completed its life cycle. If you can just hang on for a few more days, you can beat it. And it worked! It worked for that girl and it can work for us.”

  Ozburn continued to look at the screen and massage Seliah’s neck and shoulders. “We don’t have the virus, Sel.”

  Her muscles tightened and her tone of voice changed. “What the hell do we have, then?”

  “I’ve had a nervous breakdown from fifteen months of dealing with the scum of the earth. You’ve had one from fifteen months of dealing with me.”

  “Bullshit. Wise up. I know about it. We’ve got the symptoms. The fever and chills. The revulsion to water and light. The aches and pains and throat spasms. The agitation and insomnia and strength. The crazy sex. One guy in the literature went thirty-six hours straight! Biting, growling, anger. Even the aversion to our own reflections—that’s a classic symptom. Back in the old days, it was a test for rabies—if you could look at yourself in a mirror, then you didn’t have it.”

  “Then watch this,” he said.

  Ozburn set his sunglasses on the table, then walked over and pulled open the curtains to let the late-afternoon sun rush through the sliding glass doors. He looked out to the bright Pacific and though his eyes ached at the brightness of it he did not look away. In the living room he pulled the beach towel off the mirror. The mirror was framed in stamped aluminum that caught the onrushing sunlight. Ozburn stood before the glass and looked at himself. The light scorched his eyes but he willed them to stay open and to stay focused on himself. In his reflection he saw almost nothing he understood or even recognized but he kept staring hard and true into his own vast absence. It was like being burned alive.

  “I’m doing it,” he said.

  “Oh, baby. Look at your tears.”

  “I’m looking at my reflection.”

  “You sure are.”

  He was aware of her getting up from the dinette table, felt the thump of her bare heels on the pavers. In the mirror he watched her wedge between his body and one arm. Her platinum hair shone against his black vest and she faced the glass bravely. She squinted, her eyes almost shut, her fair face wrinkled with the effort and the pain.

  “Me, too!”

  “You, too, Sel. See? We don’t have no stinking rabies. Look at us. We can do it. We’re going to be okay.”

  Their faces were wet ghosts in the glass. He watched Seliah reach up with her hand and wipe her mouth.

  “We’ve got it and I know it. I’m going back, Sean. I’m going to get the protocol. You have to come with me or you’ll die down here. I didn’t come here for me. I came here to get you.”

  “I’m here because this is where I’m needed.”

  “Because some drunk priest tells you so?”

  “Joe has nothing to do with this. No more than he caused what’s ailing us. See? We’re looking at our reflections.”

  “I can’t look anymore. My eyes are on fire.”

  Ozburn moved between Seliah and the mirror and gathered her close in his arms. Her body was hot through the cobalt satin and he could feel her strength. Their mouths found each other and Ozburn untied her robe and pushed it away and it dropped in a soft rush. He lifted her up firmly so as not to break the kiss and carried her into the bedroom.

  He laid her on the bed and straddled her and whispered into her ear. “If I make love to you long enough, you won’t have the strength to leave.”

  “I’m ready. I’m eager. Then I’m leaving.”

  Twenty hours and eleven orgasms later Ozburn lay exhausted, watching Seliah pack the last of her things. She was just out of the shower and she moved with grim purpose.

  Ozburn worked himself out of bed and slipped on his jeans. It was noon. Almost an entire day had gone by and they had barely left the bed. His feet were numb and his legs were weak and his cock ached and was filling with blood again. Out in the living room he dug into his duffel and pulled out the cash and counted out ten grand. This he folded neatly and stuffed down into Seliah’s purse.

  Daisy trotted from the bedroom like an impresario, followed by Seliah, rolling the suitcase behind her.

  She let go of the handle and walked up to her husband and took his hands in hers. “I love you more than anything on earth. In the name of that love, come with me. You’ll be dead in a week if you don’t.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You’re choosing loneliness and death over life and me.”

  “They’ll lock me up, Sel. You know that. It would be worse than being dead, sitting in a cell and wondering where you were and what you were doing. Don’t ask me to do that.”

  “Charlie says maybe we can work something out.”

  “Charlie says whatever you want to hear.”

  “Father Joe Leftwich is not your friend.”

  No matter how hard Ozburn tried, he still could not see one reason why Joe Leftwich of Dublin, Ireland, would do such a thing. No reason at all. But Seliah had until now been a wise and loyal wife and he owed her allegiance and respect even when they saw things differently.

  “I’ll get to the bottom of little Joe,” he said.

  “It will be too late.”

  “It must be done, Seliah.”

  She put her face up to his ear and whispered, “Forget him. All you have to do is get dressed, pack that duffel and get in the car. I’ll drive. Daisy can have the whole backseat. We’ll be in the hospital in Orange by midafternoon. But maybe we can stop off home for a not-so-quickie. Leave Daisy and get one of the neighbors to feed and walk her.”

  “I love you and I’m sorry. I’m very sorry for everything, Sel. I don’t know how to even begin an explanation.”

  “Good-bye, then.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “I didn’t think they could ever bring us
down.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “I don’t know,” said Seliah. “The whole world? ATF? Father Joe? Charlie? I know there’s more to this than you and me. You and I were just fine, weren’t we?”

  “More than.”

  “We were good. We were golden. We were the best of them. Write. Call. Pray.”

  “I’ll write and call,” Ozburn said. “And I’ll come to you when I’m finished. I promise.”

  “We’re never going to see each other again. Do you understand, Sean?”

  “I don’t believe that. I can’t believe it and live.”

  She put her arms around him and rested her head on his chest. Ozburn felt the weight of it with each beat of his heart. He held her gently and the minutes went by.

  He rolled her suitcase to the car and put it in the trunk. He put her laptop and the bouquet of paper flowers on the passenger seat of her car. He was still having trouble feeling his feet and his legs felt heavy as iron.

  Ozburn stood in the parking lot watching her drive away. Daisy sat beside him. He watched the Mustang as it slowed, then swung out of the lot and onto the road. It was a red car and it looked optimistic against the gray asphalt but it picked up speed and headed for a rise and she was gone. Ozburn’s heart finally broke. He stood there for a long while, dazed by the new silence, waiting for the feeling to come back into his feet so he could walk back into the room.

  He ate the leftovers and guzzled some vitamins and packed as quickly as he could. His feet felt better. He found one of Seliah’s earrings wrapped up in the bedsheet and for a beat the breath in him stopped. I am alone, he thought, and it is now up to me and I will see you again. I will see you again.

  He swallowed the earring then called Daisy and paid cash for his nights at the Estero and drove Father Joe’s loaner to the airstrip where Betty waited, yellow and freshly washed, eager to take to the sky.

  29

  Four hours later Hood was parked outside the Ozburn home waiting for Seliah to come out. In the time it had taken her to get here from Ensenada, Hood had called in a favor with his old LASD patrol sergeant and was now at the wheel of a white slickback Interceptor with screened-in backseats for transportees and a short bar of interior running lights and bulletproof windows. The sergeant had offered a backup unit and two uniforms but Hood had declined. He was afraid they’d set her off and she’d change her mind. He was afraid she might change it anyway. She said it would take a few minutes to pack up some things.

  He pulled the buzzing cell phone off his belt.

  “Charlie Hood, this is Mike Finnegan. Erin told me you wanted to talk. I was so truly happy to hear that.”

  Hood looked up at the Ozburn front door. No sign of Seliah. He felt the same uneasy suspicion he’d always felt when talking to Finnegan, a suspicion that the man was somehow outside of his own understanding and experience. Mike’s companion, Owens, had once told Hood that the only way to comprehend Mike was to understand that he was insane. But Hood had wondered if it was more than that. As a boy, Hood had seen a tiger walking down a Bakersfield sidewalk—escaped from a private collection, he later learned—and Hood had realized that nothing in his life had prepared him to understand such a being. He had the same feeling now.

  “How have you been, Mike?”

  “I’m no longer in bathroom fixtures.”

  “Where are you living now?”

  “I can’t seem to leave L.A. Owens and I share some nice quarters here. She’s getting lots of work.”

  “And you?”

  “Well, the family sold off part of the old Napa County estate. My share was, well, not insubstantial. You wouldn’t believe what a few thousand acres of grapes is worth. Of course, the new owners will build embarrassing mansions on it and probably let root rot kill the grapes, but that’s progress, American style.”

  Hood thought back to the first and last time he’d actually seen Mike Finnegan’s face. It was a year and a half ago and it was the day Mike had suddenly checked himself out of Imperial Mercy Hospital. His body cast lay in pieces on the floor of his ICU room. He’d been caught on security video, dressed in new street clothes, leaving the hospital with Owens.

  Hood found his L.A. apartment abandoned and his phone number no longer good. No forwarding information. Neighbors knew nothing. Ditto Owens. Hood made inquiries but got nowhere. Hood suspected that Mike had tipped Bradley Jones and Ron Pace about ATF’s surveillence of the Pace Arms gunmaking facility in Costa Mesa. But he could prove nothing.

  “Why did you leave Imperial Mercy like that, Mike? What was the hurry?”

  “I just can’t sit still sometimes.”

  “You tore the cast apart with your bare hands?”

  “What else could I have used?”

  Hood glanced up at the Ozburns’ front door. “Of course you know that Pace and Bradley smuggled the guns out of the Costa Mesa manufacturing plant, got them down into the hands of cartel shooters. A thousand of them. They’re being used to kill people on both sides of the border.”

  “How sad. The chaos down there is bound to get worse before it gets better. But Charlie, this was a year and a half ago—ancient history. So, catch me up with your world. Who is this fascinating Sean Gravas character?”

  Hood felt his scalp crawl. “You and I both know who Sean Gravas is.”

  “Yes. Few people do. We’re all strange bed partners, aren’t we—ATF and the North Baja Cartel and little old me?”

  Hood looked up to the Ozburn home. No Seliah. Had she changed her mind? He checked his watch.

  “Mike, a few days ago I stood in the Mexican desert where a rabid man had chained himself to a post so he wouldn’t hurt anyone else. That’s where he died. The post was still there. And his grave. I thought of you.”

  “Juan Batista! I love that part of the West. From the cerveza to the curanderas.”

  “You know everything, don’t you, Mike.”

  “I absorb your flattery.”

  “So, what do you know about the Arenal Volcano and Father Joe Leftwich and his vampire bats?”

  Silence.

  Then: “Charles, I told you once that if there was something you wanted very badly, something I could help you get, that we might form a relationship.”

  “I don’t want a relationship.”

  “Then what do you want? To make me your informant?”

  “Call it that.”

  “What do I get in return? A lighter sentence when my day in court arrives? Perhaps some cold hard cash? An ATF windbreaker?”

  “You can have any or all.”

  “I don’t want any of that. I want like for like, Charlie. That’s all I’ll ever want from you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? Just like that?”

  “I said okay. I’ll play by that rule. Like for like.”

  Hood expected Mike to laugh but he didn’t. When he’d seen the tiger in Bakersfield, the huge svelte beast had lit a spark of panic in him but Hood had kept on walking toward school anyway. What else could he do? His destination was the only answer to his fear and he knew exactly how to put one foot in front of the other. And again. The tiger had faded into a stand of oaks, stripes blending into the shadows.

  So now, too, Hood kept walking, toward what, he wasn’t sure, but he was walking and his legs were strong. His eardrums buzzed but his eyes saw far and clearly as he looked out over the silver Pacific. He felt cold in his heart and knew this coldness was right.

  “Charlie, who murdered the three young assassins in the Buenavista safe house? And the two others in San Ysidro?”

  “We don’t know yet. We suspect the Gulf Cartel but we don’t have good evidence. We do know they’re trying to move into the North Baja Cartel’s turf in Southern California. The Zetas are going their own way so Armenta needs firepower. Now you, Mike, like for like—Arenal, Costa Rica. Speak to me.”

  “Where to start? Central America is literally crawling with us. The heat, the beauty of the land and the ocean and the prox
imity to Caribbean culture. But most of all, the generations of colonial exploitation and craven, power-mad governance. Dictatorships both private and military! Rampant corruption, rampant lust. From Papa Doc to Trujillo to Noriega—it’s difficult to find a more fertile place to work. And factor in a widespread belief in magic—they believe! García Márquez can bring tears to my eyes, even though I’ve never been to the Caribbean. I’d so love to meet him. The whole region is brimming with rich potential for us.”

  “Who is us?”

  “I led you to that water once.”

  “You denied it later.”

  “We can be whatever you want us to be, Charlie. It has always worked best that way.”

  “Damn whoever you are. Tell the truth.”

  “I am trying to provide some context for you. Now, I say this with some embarrassment—all of Central America and the Caribbean is rife with our internecine squabbles. There are jurisdictional overlaps, petty procedural disputes, chasms of noncommunication, turf wars. Pity the human beings down there. You need to understand the history. But Charlie? Back to my question. My guess is Ozburn killed them. Too much pressure working undercover. Too much frustration. Surrounded by too many bad men. Takes it out on the handiest target he can find—the young sicarios. He either overrode the surveillence system or, better yet, he didn’t. Which means you have him on video. Which means you have proof of a rogue ATF agent running wild along the border.”

  “He’s AWOL as Gravas. We both know that much.”

  “Yes, but what is he doing? Is he on the run or part of some crafty ATF operation? His apparent madness isn’t simply deeper cover?”

  “No. It isn’t.”

  “But would you be telling me ATF secrets if they were true, Charlie? Or do you only give me the lies?”

  “Only the lies for you, Mike.”

  “How is Seliah?”

  “Fine so far as I know.”

  “So, you are in her kitchen, so to speak. I mean ATF is, not you personally. You wouldn’t personally go into Seliah’s kitchen, now, would you?”

  Hood looked back up to the Ozburn porch. No Seliah. What if she changed her mind and ran out the back door? “She’s uncooperative, Mike. We’re keeping her at arm’s length.”