Hood shrugged off the pack and let it drop to the ground and so did Luna. Two of the men on foot dragged the packs toward the horsemen and they opened the flaps and upended the packs and the one-pound bundles of drug money tumbled out into the sand. The men sifted through the packets, looking for dye and transponders.

Jimmy’s horse snorted and lowered his head in search of grass, and Hood saw that Holdstock was weak and his balance was bad. Jimmy looked down as if to help the horse find something.

“Jimmy, look at me,” he said.

After a moment he looked up, but Hood wasn’t sure if Jimmy recognized him or not.

“Luna,” said Vascano. He spoke Spanish, and Hood could follow his meaning if not all of his words. “I am pleased to meet you. When I heard your name, I decided to sell this man to you and not to Armenta. It wasn’t only the money. It was because of you. You run your enemies down like dogs. You kill with guns and a bow and arrow. You accept no bribes. You are loyal. You are an unusual man. Step forward.”

Luna stopped halfway to the horses.

“But you are poor as a peon and your family has nothing and your department is corrupt. Your government is corrupt. The soul of your country is corrupt. So what are you loyal to but your own foolishness? You are a dog chasing its tail. Come and work for me. I’ll pay you ten times what they pay you now.”

Luna looked up at Vascano but said nothing.

“Say something,” said Vascano.

“We choose. We decide and that is final.”

“Who says what is final?”

“Each man.”

“Prove to me that you profit from your loyalty.”

“There is no profit. There is want and need and humiliation at the hands of the weak. But that does not change things.”

“But your wife wears old clothes, and one of your sons needs surgery and your daughters have no prospects because they are thick and bullish and built for fighting, like you are. I know these things, Luna. They are facts.”

“My wife is still beautiful in old clothes and the bones of my son will heal. My daughters will marry warriors like themselves.”

Vascano nudged his horse forward. Hood saw that it was black and beautiful and there were silver studs in the black leather of the harness and rimming the shiny black saddle. Vascano looked down at Luna and he coughed, and the cough multiplied itself until Vascano evacuated it with one deep convulsion. Vascano’s face was white and his hair was a madman’s. His son rode forward to wait beside him, and the Zeta with the lowered shotgun shuffled left to keep a clean line of fire.

“It is not you and me,” said Vascano. “It is Mexico. Everything must be torn down. Everything must be rebuilt. The age of privilege and corruption is nearly over. There is always revolution in the hearts of men, and now those men have guns to match our hearts. We will cut the head from the snake. We will stamp the last life from the body and then Mexico will have new life and a new body.”

“Then Mexico will be trading one generation of selfish tyrants for another.”

“The bloodshed and confusion will pass. Help me make them pass, Luna. Be loyal to hope, not foolishness.”

“Hope does nothing.”

“Then be loyal to your family and the abundance you can bring them. Heal your son.”

“I will not.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t work for the enemies of Mexico.”

“Oh? Then who is this standing behind you? And who is this pathetic man on the horse? They are Americans, and Americans are the enemy of Mexico. They have the appetites of Satan and the money and guns to satisfy their appetites. They are rotting with luxury and godlessness and they have spent themselves into ruin. They have nothing in common with us but a border.”

“You kill and kidnap.”

“So that rotting America will help me drive this rotting government from our land.”

“And to put five million into your pocket.”

“It will finance the revolution as well as myself. Share it with me, Luna. For Mexico and for yourself.”

“You are not a revolutionary. You are a murderer and a beheader. I will not work for you.”

Vascano stared down at him white-faced and crazy-haired, then he pulled an overlarge revolver from his holster and shot Luna straight through the heart. The bullet twanged off a rock behind Hood. Luna rocked back, then charged, but the shotgun roared and caught him high, knocking him backward off his feet onto the sand. He rose slowly, his great head a bloody mask, tattered and featureless and grotesque. He charged again, but this time it was into the river where he fell forward on the rocks and lay still in the shallow brown water.

Hood had moved toward Luna and now stood before Vascano. Vascano had lowered his gun, but it was still in his hand resting against the saddle blanket.

“Who are you?”

“Deputy Charlie Hood of Los Angeles.”

“You volunteered for this?”

“It’s my job to do this.”

“Are you a friend of Jimmy Holdstock?”

“Yes.”

“What do I do with two rotting gringos?”

“You let me take Jimmy back like you said you would.”

“If you go back, you can say where I have been. You can fight another day. You are worthless to me alive. You are weak. You are nothing without thousands more of you. Jorge, what do I do with them?”

His son eased his mount forward and he stopped abreast of his father. Again the shotgunner maneuvered to his left for a clean sight line.

“You send them home so they can tell the tale of Vascano, the revolutionary who destroyed the puppet Luna. The world will fear you more, and the men and women of Mexico will love you more. These men are your prophets.”

“This would be letting rattlesnakes go free.”

“Their stories will help us. They will give us a face.”

Vascano looked at his son. “You will be our face.”

A cough erupted in his chest and continued, deepening. He turned and motioned to the shotgunner, then he raised his pistol toward Hood and fired. The bullet screamed by Hood’s head, both a sound and a feeling.

Vascano lowered the gun. The shotgunner spoke into a satellite phone, but he kept his other hand on his weapon, the barrel aimed at Hood.

A moment later a helicopter suddenly surged over the top of the canyon and cut a sharp descent toward the water in graceful switchbacks and finally it pivoted itself down upon the rocks near where Luna lay. The water around the machine quivered as if rising to a boil, then burst into a chop, and downstream of Luna it was turned pink by the deafening and indifferent blades. Two of the Zetas carried the backpacks to the helo, and Vascano and his son dismounted and gave the reins of their mounts to the shotgunner and stroked their horses adios, then strode to the helicopter, ducking under the rotors and climbed in with the money. The machine rose back into the sky and within moments had vanished over the canyon rim.

The shotgunner barked something to his men, and three of the Zetas started back toward town. Three more came up behind Hood and he felt the barrel of a gun against his spine and he fell in behind the first three. He heard the others behind him and he turned to see one of the men leading Jimmy’s horse. Jimmy slumped and swayed not quite with the rhythm of the animal. The bandages on his hands looked smaller than they had at Imperial Mercy and they looked clean, their whiteness jarring in this bloody desert.

A gun barrel found his back again and Hood turned to the trail and he listened to the clopping of the horses behind him. At first he thought of the heat and of the bodies ahead on the road and of Luna dead in the river, but these thoughts fell away by their own weight. With the sound of the horses, Hood thought instead of years ago, riding with his father and mother and brothers and sisters when he was a boy in Bakersfield, trotting past the oil pumpers that sometimes spooked the rented mounts, galloping along the smooth flat edges of the cotton fields with the morning sun warm on his back and feeling that life was good and it was going to get even better and he was impatient to get to all those better things. The world was a place of wonders.