I won’t stay and pretend I can do better than that, he thought. I won’t stick around and watch as they kill him. He turned toward Lupe. She was clutching her shoulder and the bloodstain on her shirt had grown beyond the spread of her hand. If we can get halfway by nightfall, he thought, we might have a chance. He no longer bothered with hope. Everything now reduced to will and luck. He took her free hand, pulled her behind him as he resumed their climb through the trees.-My cousin understands.
Forty-Five
THE CHOPPER SET DOWN A HUNDRED YARDS FROM THE CIRCUS OF strobe lights swirling across the desert plain, the law-enforcement vehicles encircling a small enclave of unfinished houses, the capital of nowhere. Lattimore and the others aboard crouched and ran through the rotor wash and churning dust toward the nearest of the houses while the Mexican PC-6 that had escorted them since crossing the border tailed away, puttering off in a northerly loop.
It was just past sunset, not quite dark, the western sky a crimson fantasy of low swirled cloud getting swallowed up by night. He’d flown from San Francisco on a moment’s notice aboard an agency Gulfstream, a rare extravagance, arriving in Tucson a mere hour ago, met at the airstrip by an FBI liaison named Potter who’d steered him immediately to the helipad. They were joined there by a crew of ICE agents, like Lattimore wearing raid jackets with their agency affiliation emblazoned across the back, plus a few brush-cut military sorts Lattimore learned were DIA, two tight-lipped civilians who were clearly spooks, bringing Andy McIlvaine to mind-he’d dropped off the planet since their impromptu lunch-all of them sent here to lend some form of credibility to what he could only assume would be a dog and pony show of inimitable Mexican overkill.
They were met by a uniformed police officer who snapped to with a crisp salute, then led them through the idling crowds of chattering cops to the one roofed house in the tiny development, inside which a battery of tungsten lights transformed the shoddy interior into a brilliant if sordid photo shoot. Near the far wall, the bullet-riddled body of an Arabic-looking male lay sprawled in conspicuously little blood amid the scattered cinder blocks, the sawdust, the litter of nails. Beside him, in even worse shape if such a thing was possible, lay Happy Orantes’s cousin, the ex-marine with the torn-up face, Godo. The whisking hum and whirr of cameras battled with the rumble of generators and a wafting stentorian narrative provided by a jefe de grupo of the MFJP, the federal judicial police. The jefe, bedecked in stiffly creased khakis, hands clasped in the small of his back, appeared to be in control of the proceedings.
With the arrival of the Americans he took a break from his interview and swept forward, hand extended, face crafted into a catlike smile. The cameras followed him as though drawn by gravity. His name tape read “Orozco.”
“Welcome, gentlemen.” His English was soft, Southwestern. “I was just telling the members of the press about our operation, our good fortune in discovering a suspected terrorist before he was able to cross into your country.”
Lattimore only half listened to the rest-the anonymous tip that led them to this house, the fierce standoff and eventual commando assault, the regrettable but unavoidable death of the terrorist and a gang member who’d fought to protect him. Out of some nagging perversity he wanted to point out how obvious it was the bodies had been dragged in from somewhere else but doubted anyone would care much. The skin of the story would never get peeled back, no one wanted to see what festered underneath. It was one of those tales, the kind all sorts of people want too much to hear-why bother much over details? And though Lattimore finally had in his possession the paperwork from the Baghdad office that could lay waste to the vast edifice of bullshit the jefe was erecting, he lacked authority to share. The bureau wanted no part of making its efforts in this farce a matter of public record. Let the Mexicans claim victory. Let them raise the specter of terrorists at our door, without us or them having to prove much. The feigned threat served the purpose of truth-or what the geniuses in D.C. wanted known as truth. Besides, Lattimore knew he’d bargained on much the same indifference to what was real, what was pumped-up nonsense. There were no innocents in the room.
Regardless, it would matter only to him that a woman named Fatima Hassan with a teenage daughter named Shatha, both using forged papers and assumed names, had finally been located and interviewed at the refugee camp at Al Tanf. The pseudonyms accounted for the delay in proper identification. Fatima confirmed she was the widow of Salah Hassan, who had disappeared in the custody of the Mukhabarat when her daughter was a child. Her husband was charged with money laundering and never emerged from prison. She further confirmed, after evidence was provided, that she worked at a Baghdad brothel after her husband’s arrest, did so for some years, and that her forged identity papers had been provided by the criminal syndicate that ran the brothel and provided protection for her and the other women working there.
Asked if she knew of a Samir Khalid Sadiq, she conceded that she did; like her, he was part of the Palestinian community in Iraq. Pressed on the matter, she admitted as well that he had been a client, a particularly loyal one-obsessive, perhaps, was a better word, but his generosity not just to her but to her daughter had convinced her to look past his infatuation. She said she knew he had been a soldier during the war with Iran, was fluent in both English and Spanish, and worked for a local TV station translating news wire items or so he had always told her. After the U.S. invasion, he made a promise to help her emigrate to America. With the war’s dislocations, however, she lost touch with him.
When asked if she was aware that this same Samir Khalid Sadiq had been the informant who had identified her husband to the Mukhabarat, she fell silent for several minutes. When she finally spoke, she said simply, “I forgave him long ago, just as he forgave me.” She declined to say more.
“We have reliable information,” Orozco announced, turning toward the cameras with that same feline smile, “that the Arab was in contact with local pandilleros.” Gang members. “This was how he expected to get across, with their assistance. And as I have said, one of them died here with him. We are following up on this and hope to have more arrests in due time.”
A predictable move, Lattimore thought, keep the thing open-ended, so you could draw it out until memories faded, the next god-awful whatever stole the headlines. If necessary, nail a few tattooed bozos, drag them past the cameras and call it a day.
He wondered what had become of Happy, what had become of his cousin, wondered if he would ever know or if, in the final analysis, it mattered. He turned away from Orozco and the wall of lights, murmured a path through the other Americans and headed for the door, hoping the oppressive closeness of the scene wouldn’t follow him outside as he tried to think of how he might get Godo’s body shipped back to his aunt.
COME NIGHTFALL THEY WERE STILL CLIMBING. LUPE’S BREATHING HAD become more labored, her skin felt cool to the touch. Even with his arm around her she stumbled and staggered and nearly fell when the path veered sharply or a tree root rose up through the dusty bed of bullet-shaped acorns and dry pine needles. He tried not to use the flashlight too often. Once, though, as they’d come upon what he’d thought was a dung pile, a sudden stab of light had caused the thing to stir, then slither off-a sidewinder, coiled to strike. He’d once heard that a pregnant woman causes snakes to sleep as you pass and he wondered if he should take this as a sign. Another time, hearing the low snarling growl of a mountain lion, he’d fired the pistol into the tree canopy, scattering birds and scaring the animal off into the underbrush.