Iron River

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “No. She was not. They killed Frank back down where you saw. They went straight to Jimmy’s room. Up on the sixth, they killed two nurses and a patient and the deputy who was guarding Jimmy’s room. One of the first-floor nurses looked at her watch when they came in, then she called nine-one-one. She looked at her watch again when they carried Jimmy out—it was one minute and forty seconds later. They were in a tour bus, Charlie, a fucking tour bus. It stayed parked right out there until they loaded Jimmy in. My officers got here thirty seconds after it left. ATF got Customs to close the border heading south, but I haven’t heard a thing about any damned bus. They won’t use the crossing. They’ll use the dirt roads and the tunnels and the secret trails the traffickers always use.”

  Hood and Reyes stepped around two bodies that were still on the floor but covered with bloody sheets and blankets. The patients had been moved to the cafeteria. There was blood on the floor and the walls, and Hood could see where the bullets had left lines of holes in one wall and shattered the safety glass around the nurses’ station. A nurse lay dead and covered on the station floor, with her feet showing under the blanket and her white nurse’s shoes and her ankles smeared dark red. Paramedics pushed the deputy past in a gurney, and Hood saw his handgun lying on the floor near a wallow of blood. Farther down the hallway, he saw a crutch in the middle of the floor and another flung up against the wall and he knew Jimmy had fought.

  A Buenavista cop with a video camera began shooting and narrating. Ozburn and Bly came marching down the hallway toward Hood. Ozburn had a phone pressed to one ear, and Hood heard him asking “How the fuck can you fucking not find a tour bus with twenty fucking gunmen in it?” Bly looked equally furious, biting her lip, her gaze downcast and shifting.

  “Get me four helos and twenty agents,” barked Ozburn. “Fuck the fucking monsoon!”

  Ozburn’s Land Cruiser exited Highway 98 and ran west along the frontage road. The rain had stopped, but the wind was ferocious. Besides their sidearms, they had two combat shotguns and the M249 SAW machine gun that in the hands of the warrior Ozburn was reputed to pack hellish fury. Behind them were two sheriff’s SUVs and Reyes’s police Jeep, a total of fifteen lawmen, counting Blowdown.

  They came to a locked gate to which Bly knew the combination, and when Hood heard the lock click open, he shoved hard on the pipe rail gate and swung it out. A county-maintained fire road lay beyond. Ozburn drove through and picked them up and descended a long stretch south. The road was recently bladed, but the grade made the truck slip and slide even in four-wheel low, and Ozburn used first gear to negotiate the steep descent. At the bottom he turned left onto an even steeper road, and as Hood leaned forward, he saw that it was rutted and narrow, part of the warren of traffickers’ roads that spread throughout the Buenavista hills on both sides of the border.

  Ozburn stopped and waited. In the dashboard lights his face was beveled and his heavy features reminded Hood of the comic book heroes he had read about as a boy. Hood turned and watched the vehicles rumble one at a time down the steep muddy road behind them, then split off, one left and two right, Reyes and the deputies both familiar with this, the stateside branch of the labyrinth. They had all agreed to stay as close together as was reasonable and still cover the roads, in case good luck or a benevolent god ruled this night and they were actually able to overtake the tour bus and Jimmy. Fifteen well-armed fighters coming from different directions was a decent match for twenty Zetas. Less was not. Reyes had reminded them twice to avoid the gullies and low washes.

  At the bottom of the slippery slope, the Blowdown team found itself in just such a gulley, with steep sandstone walls and the bottom already running six inches of water, fast. Ozburn picked his way up the wash and fishtailed up a hill, tires hurling red plumes of water and mud until the vehicle hopped over the crest. From here Hood could see the lesser hills spread before him and the lights of Buenavista.

  The wind had blown out the monsoon clouds and now the sun rose yellow in the east. In the new light the roads throughout the hills looked like the scratchings of some huge child, playthings. Hood saw one of the sheriff’s SUVs spinning up a steep hill to the south. Reyes’s Jeep trundled along a ridge top, and the officer in the passenger seat ran the beam of a mounted floodlight in front of them in search of tracks. The wind hissed and whistled and shook the ocotillo and made chevrons on the rainwater that stood in elongated puddles alongside the road.

  Ozburn threw the truck into park, and the Blowdown team simply watched. The cholla vibrated in the wind. Hood saw a jackrabbit stretch between patches of creosote. On the downhill side of the dirt road the water was running hard, bubbling with sand and rocks. But the longer he stared south across the border, the less movement he saw until finally at the horizon’s end, there was nothing moving at all, certainly not a tour bus alive with red hibiscus and dancers and jumping marlin, only the newly rinsed land motionless under the fickle sky.

  “It’s his mind,” said Bly. “Once you lose it, it’s gone. It breaks like a rubber band. I saw it happen to my grandmother. Just poof, gone and never to come back again. She was old. Jimmy? I think he almost lost it in the hospital. He barely hung on, then he turned the corner. If they take his mind, we’ll never see him again.”

  “I want that bus,” said Ozburn. “Right out there on that wide muddy road, stuck to its axles, a bunch of Zetas running around for us to mow down.”

  “That was cool what you did, Hood,” said Bly. “Giving Jimmy your weapon and cutting away his bandage so he could shoot it.”

  “Thanks. The doctors weren’t too happy.”

  “Yeah, well, an hour ago if Jimmy had had a piece and his bandage cut right, there might be less people dead,” said Ozburn. “Or would it be more? Fuck it.”

  “It was the butts ’n barrels game to see who got Hell on Wheels,” said Bly. “Jimmy’s luck turned when he lost it. He spun the gun and nailed himself and nothing’s gone good for him since. One damned spin of a gun. Which got him stuck in the Dumpster that night. Then later he took out Victor Davis in the restaurant because he saw a threat that none of us did. Did you ever think that—that Jimmy saw what we did not? He’s got twenty-twenty uncorrected, you know. You know? Then it was one hundred percent pure bad luck that he misses with one shot and kills some poor guy trying to get his girlfriend out of harm’s way. And the guy is Gustavo Armenta. And the Zetas grabbing him? What could be worse luck than that? Why not grab one of us? Benjamin Armenta doesn’t know who shot his son. It could have been Davis returning fire, it could have been me or one of you. Or both of you. But no, they take Jimmy. Twice.”

  “Don’t blame yourself for Jimmy,” said Ozburn. “It’s untrue and destructive. Jimmy isn’t about you.”

  “I know.”

  “Then do know it, Janet,” said Ozburn. “We’ll get him back. Somehow we’ll get him back. Find that tour bus, Hood. You’re the one with the eagle eyes.”

  Hood continued to stare out the window and said nothing. Something broke into the cloudless western sky and he saw the ATFE helo swooping in on the wind, tipping wildly. It rose and dipped and sped up and slowed down as the gusts had their way with it. Then the helo was hovering above them, nose to the wind, rotors digging for purchase in the treacherous currents, searchlights blinking their greeting and their devotion. In this precarious thing, Hood saw everything good and hopeful and hopeless about the work that he had chosen.

  When they got back to Buenavista and into cell range, Ozburn called Raydel Luna, but the Mexican policeman didn’t answer his phone.

  Two hours later they still not been able to raise Luna.

  The tour bus had long vanished and there was no word from Jimmy’s captors.

  Neither Soriana nor Mars was available by phone: Both had been ordered to ATFE field divisional headquarters in L.A.

  Sitting together in a Buenavista lounge for a late and bitter lunch, the Blowdown team watched in mute defeat as the Humvees and trucks filled with National Guardsmen rolled throu
gh the narrow streets on their way to secure the border, and the news network helicopters came drifting in from all of the four directions.

  They’d been told that there would be one thousand Guardsmen in Buenavista by evening, and another three thousand deployed along the border from San Diego to Corpus Christi. Army and Marine units were standing by, but the president had yet to take this large step. The border had already been closed in both directions. Blowdown also knew that the coming public uproar and media tumult over Jimmy would leave any covert rescue operation without sponsors at the higher levels. So now almost worthless were their own secrecy and ability to surprise.

  “Whole new fucking game now,” said Ozburn.

  “We’re bit players,” said Bly.

  Hood knew that they were right.

  Jenny Holdstock appeared on the TV that hung over the bar and pleaded through tears for the return of her husband. He was the best man she had ever known, the best father. She looked truly hopeless. The girls sat on either side of her, nervous and bewildered.

  25

  That night Hood walked up the Imperial Mercy driveway with a bottle of the peppery organic zinfandel that Mike Finnegan had requested, and a straw. The broad semicircular drive was now a parking lot of media uplink vans and portable lights and camera crews and generators and miles of cable. He saw vehicles from all the big news networks and from stations he’d never heard of and affiliates from all over the American Southwest. Network helicopters crisscrossed the sky above. Reporters and videographers roamed and gave Hood the curious eye. He recognized two New York network anchors he’d been watching for years and several reporters, amazed that tiny Buenavista had spawned a tragedy of such interest.

  He dodged the reporters and showed his badge to a deputy at the lobby entrance, then showed it again to another deputy when he got off the elevator on the ninth floor.

  He walked toward Finnegan’s room, stunned by the day. Hood had seen the TV evening news, already bristling with angry citizens wanting to go get Jimmy back from people who were supposedly our friends. The American president had just finished a televised news conference reassuring the American people that they were safe from criminals from all nations, urging patience, and pledging to secure the border “decisively and by any means necessary.” The Mexican president had warned the United States that any form of “retaliation” across the border would, under international law, constitute the invasion of a sovereign state.

  Finnegan held the lidded blue plastic hospital cup with his good left hand and raised the straw to his mouth to drink.

  “Oh, that is good,” he said. “I haven’t had a glass of wine in months. What did you think of the president’s words?”

  “How do you know so much about Jimmy?”

  “Oh, straight to the point tonight. You’ve had a dismal day, I know. Web searches mostly. I once purchased access to law-enforcement-only sites but realized I didn’t need to. I’m pretty handy with a computer, Charlie.”

  “So you hack in?”

  “It’s easier than that. Passwords and protocols are not created by geniuses. They’re just people. I’ve never used my information for anything but good. I really have no one to discuss my findings with. I’ve never compromised an operation or an investigation or an undercover agent. Nor will I. Ever.”

  “You haven’t been around a computer since you came here. But you’ve discovered things about Jimmy that have occurred lately.”

  “Discovered or imagined?”

  “True things, Mike.”

  “Imagination is often truthful. Truth can even come from those who were not there—Homer and Matthew and Hawkings.”

  “How did you know the Zetas would come for him again?”

  “How could you not know it?”

  “What will they do with him?”

  “Bring him great pain.”

  Hood studied the little man’s face. He had round cheeks and a pink tone of skin and his whiskers were red and getting longer, and with his cheerful blue eyes, he looked like an aging cherub.

  Finnegan raised the blue cup, and the straw found his mouth. He sipped and swallowed. “I know who you are, Charlie. I closely followed the exploits of Allison Murrieta as did so many Angelenos. Video of the funeral was all over the Web, of course, so imagine my surprise when her arresting officer—shown so very briefly on a late news clip—turned up as a mourner, too. Turned out to be you. Certain law enforcement and courthouse blogs were revealing. You were much talked about. How is Bradley, her son?”

  “Fine.”

  “Getting married, I hear.”

  “This is what I mean, Finnegan—just exactly how did you hear it?”

  “You’re getting exasperated. The same as Reyes.”

  “How did you hear it?”

  “He told me weeks ago, Charlie!”

  “Where? Why?”

  “I was right there in the Viper Room. Owens was with me. It was the night the band changed its name to Erin and the Inmates. I was very much minding my own business. But Bradley Jones is immensely vain and immensely proud of Erin McKenna. He told me everything—the date, the location, the early Californio fiesta theme. I couldn’t shut the boy up.”

  Hood drank some of the wine.

  “Charlie, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I can’t hold my liquor. Nor can I resist it. May I?”

  Mike slowly extended the cup, and Hood refilled it and handed it back. Finnegan took a long sip, then let go of the straw and sighed. “In Napa we grew a grape called carignane. It was a filler grape, like merlot, and we mixed it with the big cabs and petite syrah and some zinfandels. A very strong, very opinionated varietal. Personally I loved it better than all of them. I wanted to bottle and sell it. But commercial wine making is driven by marketing, and the marketers could never even pronounce carignane, let alone sell a bottle of it to a blockhead in a supermarket. So merlot won out. Merlot got to be the new star. Largely because the name is easy to pronounce and fun to say. It’s got that subversive little t at the end, silent and suggestive and a little French. But as a grape, it’s gutless next to my beloved carignane.”

  “You never lived on a vineyard in Napa, Mike. You made it all up. Even Owens stopped believing that story years ago.”

  Mike stared at Hood for a long beat. In his eyes Hood saw broad contemplation but of past or future or of this moment he couldn’t guess.

  “True, to a point,” said Mike. “But it’s a good memory, made up or not. I need all of those I can get. Don’t you?”

  Mike sipped again. Hood saw a sparkle in his eyes now, the joy of getting caught in a lie and truly not caring.

  “Tell me another story,” said Hood.

  “Once there were two powerful brothers who lived hidden in a forest. From there, they and their loyal helpers watched over a village. No one in the village ever saw them, but the brothers and their helpers made the sun rise each day and the rain fall and they caused every seed to grow or not grow. The brothers loved the village and every person and animal and plant and every living thing in it.

  “These brothers were not equal in their powers. The stronger was not the smarter, and the smarter was not the stronger. The stronger called himself the King, and the smarter called himself the Prince. They argued constantly about the best way to guide and watch over the village. The King believed that his rules should be revealed and followed, while the Prince believed that the villagers should be free to discover and be true to their own nature. One day they fought, and the King drove the Prince and all of his followers out of the forest and into the desert beyond.

  “Now the strong King from the forest revealed his rules to the village, and many believed and followed. Unbelievers were tortured and slain though the King did not approve this. So the smart Prince from the desert sent his followers into the village, disguised as citizens. These helpers tried to sway the villagers away from the King, using words and song and dance and art of every kind. Many men and women came to believe what the Prince’s helpe
rs said—that the King was nothing but a cruel old fool and that men were noble enough to make their own good rules. And the King, seeing that his might alone was not enough to rule the village, likewise sent his helpers disguised as citizens to persuade with words and song and dance and art of every kind.

  “And the village became a city, and the city became a state, and the state covered the earth.

  “So life on this earth became a contest between the King and the Prince, each unseen but each represented by his helpers. They compete for the hearts and minds of humankind. They are envious of humankind. Neither King nor Prince is powerful enough to defeat the other absolutely. This, Deputy Hood, is a way to understand what you see around you and what you do not see.”

  Hood sipped his wine. “Stories are lies.”

  “Through which we see the truth.”

  “It’s a Christian parable.”

  “Christ is neither mentioned nor implied.”

  “It reminds me of some Native American myths.”

  “A very insightful people. Doomed by trust, disease, and alcohol.”

  “I suppose there’s more you want to tell me.”

  “Surely you’re curious, Charlie.”

  Hood had the thought that he could indulge Mike Finnegan’s fantasies in exchange for whatever truth Mike might offer about himself, and about Jimmy Holdstock. “Which are you, Mike, the King’s helper or the Prince’s?”

  Finnegan chuckled, raised the cup again, drank, and lowered it to his belly. “Why not a simple villager?”

  “I’m appealing to your arrogance so you’ll tell me who you are and what you know about Jimmy.”

  “Charlie, I can’t tell you who I am. Nondisclosure agreements, you know. Most organizations have them. But I can tell you what I do.”

  Hood waited, sipped the wine. “What do you do?”

  “First you have to understand that I’m part of a huge bureaucracy. There are high levels and middle levels and then just basic workers. I’m a journeyman, a midlevel pro. Mainly we influence. Mostly we just talk. We certainly listen, very closely, I might add. We encourage. We dissuade. We cajole. We will at times frighten. We arrange meetings between key villagers without their knowing it. But we have no huge powers. We can do dream placements, which I told you about earlier, which are risky because they are unpredictable. We can cause or cure minor illnesses—colds and headaches and some allergies. Our senses are keener than those of most villagers, so it appears that we are prescient but we are not. We can read a villager’s thoughts so long as those thoughts are clear and strong and we are physically close to the person. For example, if I am within eight feet of someone, I can hear what they think and see what they see. Sometimes very clearly. It’s like hearing a radio or looking at a video. There is much clutter to sort through, I will tell you; on a crowded street, for instance, one thought intrudes upon others just like conversations going on at once. That’s why we live and work only in our assigned geographical divisions—because often we need physical proximity with our contacts. We develop relationships with some villagers, though far fewer than you might think. We can’t waste our time with the petty, the small-minded, the insane. We can easily use them when we need them, but they have no lasting value. We seek relationships with those of ambition and force and monstrous desire. We like to begin with children. Our relationships can become what we call partnerships. These partners come to accept who we are and what we stand for. My division, of course, is California. I got lucky, because I really love California—its geography and history and its various peoples. I inherited Holly-wood and all its glorious powers of persuasion and suggestion. See, our only real power is our influence over the villagers. Villagers run the village. Their will is free. Nothing is fated nor preordained. No one is possessed. Men and women are in most ways much stronger than we will ever be, much more capable of tremendous good and tremendous evil. You are our work.”