“Bullshit,” said Ozburn.

“I second that,” said Bly.

Hood said nothing, but he watched Mars tap his fingertips on the table.

“I had a long talk with the Homeland Secretary yesterday,” said Mars. He was thin and pale and he looked to Hood like an undertaker. “I’ve never heard her so heated up. She talked to our consul in Mexico City, he talked to the State Department, he talked to anybody in the White House who would talk to him. They’re not listening. Their hands are tied. Tied to each others’, as happens in our republic. They can’t rewrite international law for Jimmy Holdstock.”

“But they can leave him to be tortured and murdered?” asked Bly.

“I’ll be in Washington by late tonight,” said Soriana. “We’ve got meetings with State and the Mexican Consul first thing tomorrow. I’m still on hold with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but it’s looking better.”

“Go to meetings while Jimmy suffers and dies,” said Bly. “I have a badge. I’m really tempted to shitcan it right now.”

“What good would that do?” asked Litrell. “Even your conscience would lose, eventually.”

Ozburn stood and pushed the VCR PLAY button, but as soon as the blue-faced werewolf appeared, he hit PAUSE, then OFF. Hood watched as two white SUVs with blacked-out windows rolled to a stop near the Bell.

“I’m not turning in my badge,” Ozburn said. “And I’m not sitting on my hands while Jimmy’s down there. So, bosses, what do you recommend?”

“You’ll do exactly what we order you to do,” said Mars. “ATF will not sanction cross-border measures. It’s beyond our mandate. ATF follows the letter of the law. ATF will not set foot in Mexico until we are invited by the federal government of Calderón. Dan?”

“Ditto. You can’t go there unless the Mexicans say you can. They will say no such thing. This breaks my heart. I remember Kiki Camarena and I will never forgive our system for not being able to go down and get him. Pray for the diplomats to work out something with Mexico. Calderón is different. He is committed. Please be patient. Please believe in our country and our system.”

Soriana crossed his arms and sat back. “Sean, Janet, Charlie-I hope we’re clear on this. You can’t go south on us. Literally and figuratively. It’s not set up to work that way. I need assurances now, ladies and gentlemen. Something audible for my superiors. Rules are rules.”

“Aye aye, sir,” snapped Ozburn.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” muttered Bly.

“Yes,” said Hood.

Mars looked at each of them in turn, then turned off the recorder. He placed it in his coat pocket rather than back into the briefcase from which it had come. He stood and hefted the briefcase onto the table and left the room without it. Soriana shook hands with the Blowdown soldiers and walked out.

Hood watched through a window as the two men strode to the helo. But they boarded one of the white SUVs, then the vehicle spun a dusty U-turn and bounced stiffly on its struts across the desert toward the road.

At this, Litrell rose and went to the window and watched the SUV drive away, then he turned to face the others. “Raydel?” he asked.

Luna nodded and stepped to the table. He unzipped the main compartment of the briefcase and looked inside, then at each of the Blowdown teammates. His voice was clear and sharp.

“The Zetas have Holdstock outside of Mulege,” he said. “They will keep him alive for another forty-eight hours. Then they will behead him. I have men I can trust and men I cannot trust. If we do this, you will have to kill and keep from being killed. All I can promise you is someone’s death.”

Luna reached into the briefcase and brought out a clear plastic freezer bag with a semiautomatic handgun inside it. Five magazines had settled to the bottom. He set it on the table near Ozburn and then likewise set other guns before Bly and Hood. Hood looked down at the Glock, a simple, dependable Austrian killing tool of polymer and steel.

“No numbers,” said Litrell.

Luna continued to pull dark treasures from the briefcase: six fifty-count boxes of forty-caliber ammunition, three used-looking passports, three fat stacks of used U.S. twenties held with rubber bands.

“When do we leave?” asked Bly.

“Now.”

“We’ll need clothes and toiletries.”

“They are in the helicopter. We can fly almost to Cataviña. After that, the helicopter will draw suspicion. We need to go now. But before we leave, you need to understand that this is my operation in my country and I am in charge. There will be no dispute or discussion. There may be unusual circumstances. I am supported by some powers within my government and hated by others. Mexico is in a state of change. Mexico is a state of change.”

Luna stood before Ozburn. He looked him over from toe to head, and Hood saw him peer into Ozburn’s eyes. Then Luna did likewise with Bly, and when it was Hood’s turn, he looked back into Luna’s hard black eyes and he nodded but didn’t look away.

“Sean, Janet, Charlie,” said Litrell. “The Calderón government knows but it does not know. Washington knows but it does not know. They have taken an extraordinary step. You are the first. If you are successful, it will mean something even beyond the life of Jimmy Holdstock, maybe a new way of fighting this ugly war. If you fail, you will be denied and denied absolutely. Mexico and the United States have washed their hands of you. Those hands are already dry. Good luck.”

A few minutes later, the Bell engine wailed and Hood felt the machine corkscrewing backward up into the sky, felt the untethering of his body and his soul from the laws of gravity and of men.

11

He watched the rusted brown earth of Baja California scrolling under the chopper, rimmed by a vast curved horizon that defied measure. He could not tell by looking if this was an expired land or one still waiting to be born. There were occasional farms and there were sandy washes squiggling down from the hills where water had once raced, and the farmhouses had corrugated metal roofs and the tiny outbuildings huddled under stands of paloverde and mesquite. The dirt roads were etched in pale paths, and Hood saw only one vehicle moving there, drawing a cloud of dust behind it and moving so slowly, it looked to be not moving at all.

The Bell put down in the desert ten miles from Cataviña, just east of the Baja spine, a few miles south of the 30th parallel. Two rental cars were waiting. Hood and Luna took the lead. Luna drove the two-lane fast, passing the old cars of the natives and the ponderous travel trailers of the gringos, and he passed an eighteen-wheel semi on a blind curve negotiable by faith alone. Hood looked out at the boulders and ocotillo and cardon. A long red snake with its black head high off the ground whipped across Highway 1 in front of them and Hood looked over his shoulder and saw it serpentining over the shoulder gravel toward an outcropping of rocks. Behind the snake came the Ford containing Ozburn and Bly.

Half an hour later, Luna and Bly played table tennis in the rec room of the La Pinta Hotel in Cataviña while Hood and Ozburn inquired about lodging. The hotel was full, as they knew it would be, but they raised their voices and complained loudly, establishing themselves as gringo tourists who were now inconvenienced by a long drive south to Guerrero Negro.

The boulder-strewn beauty of Cataviña gave way to an incline at the top of which lay a great dry lake bed. It stretched on for miles, flat and hard beneath the blue sky. Gradually the barren landscape became generous again and Hood looked out at the sharp yucca and the spine clusters of the cholla deceptively backlit by the lowering sun to appear downy, and the elephant trees squatting among the boulders. The highway gradually lowered as they entered the Vizcaino Desert, seething with wind, immense. The thermometer read ninety-three degrees and the road ahead of them became a wavering mercurial slick. Two vultures ate at a roadside carcass, and as the car approached, one hopped cumbersomely away and the other withdrew its poached pink head from the spoil and blinked. Hood saw buttes rising flat in the east and for a moment he could see the Pacific Ocean, then it was gone.