The Jaguar

by A. T. Grant

  “Who is Culjinder?” Felicity looked befuddled.

  David did not hear her speak. His mind was overwhelmed and his body paralysed. Felicity was about to repeat the question when Laura placed a restraining hand gently upon her arm.

  “You know,” Laura began, “I thought I was here for adventure, but actually I just needed to get away.” She stole a furtive glance at Marcus, who was still focused on David. “You see, just before I went to university, my father had a stroke. It was tough going for about a year afterwards, but he made a full recovery.” Laura paused and met David’s concerned gaze. “My father and I are especially close because my mother died when I was young. I could talk to him about virtually anything. The trouble is that I no longer can. There’s no connection anymore and he’s always angry with me about something. I feel as though it’s him I’m grieving for, even though he’s doing fine.”

  In her typically direct manner, out of the shadows, Dana spoke. She had been standing in the sand behind Marcus for the last few minutes, unseen since her return, and eavesdropping from a distance. “Do you think that your father changed, or was it you?”

  Marcus jumped up suddenly and, to everyone’s surprise except David’s, he and Dana embraced. Dana’s question was forgotten by all but Laura herself, as others looked to the couple for some explanation of their new found intimacy.

  “Look,” said Dana, “I know this doesn’t look particularly professional, but I think it’s best to be open with you all about Marcus and I. Unfortunately, it also shouldn’t make too much difference, as I can’t accompany you tomorrow. We’ve a late booking from an important business delegation, so I’m needed back at the resort. Still, the most important thing is that I’ve brought everybody’s kit back with me. I can take your dirty laundry away, when I leave again in the morning.”

  Marcus looked briefly crestfallen then rallied to distribute the newly arrived luggage with the help of Cesar. Sofia and Roberto wished everybody well with the expedition then went off to look for their children. Felicity and Ethan decided to join the others at the bar. Neither Laura nor David felt like leaving. As soon as they were alone, Laura moved to sit next to him and reached for an unopened can of beer in the sand.

  “Wow,” David exclaimed; “too much information!”

  “I understand exactly how you’re feeling. It’s funny, isn’t it... we spend half our lives worrying about what people do to us and forget all about the impact we have on them.”

  “I know Culjinder remembers me. It was the way she spoke when she called to arrange this holiday: casual, forced, nervous and concerned, all at the same time. I wonder how else she felt, when I didn’t recognise her?”

  “She wouldn’t have expected you to, David. Both she and your girlfriend... What is her name?

  “Phoebe.”

  “They both felt that this was where you needed to be. I would hold on to that, if I were you.”

  David reached for Laura’s beer and took a long, slow draught from it himself. “I am enjoying it here. I thought I’d be a lot more stressed. It does feel as though this is what I’m meant to be doing. I’ve spent most of my adult life feeling exactly the opposite.”

  “Whereas I, to be honest, am getting more and more confused.” Laura snatched the can from David’s hand and took another swig. “I’m not sure what I’m meant to be doing. Marcus is organising bags, whilst I sit here feeling like a guest, rather than a member of staff, despite sleeping in a dormitory.”

  “Laura,” responded David with concern, “you’ve made this trip for me so far. I can’t imagine anyone looking after me better than you’ve done. Every time I’ve made a fool of myself, you’ve helped to turn the situation into something positive.”

  “I do enjoy helping people, I admit. Perhaps that’s what I should be doing? Maybe that was the problem with my father?” There was a metallic crack as Laura buried a thumb into the side of the beer can. “I started helping to take care of him, rather than the other way around. He’s a proud man and probably resented that. Of course, at the same time, I was growing up and becoming more independent.”

  “With me, it’s the opposite.” David brushed at the sand with a foot. “When people I care for like Phoebe need my support, I’m not there for them. Somehow, I can’t separate my own trivial neuroses from real problems. The ironic thing is that when I do help someone, I enjoy it as much as you do.”

  The few remaining sticks of timber made a slow and graceful descent into the coals, as though making their final bow to the audience.

  “Shall I get some more wood?”

  Laura declined. She was tired. She felt unsettled and the beer was making her feel more than a little light-headed, after so much sunshine. Her eyes had grown sensitive and even the string of white lights draping the hotel veranda now seemed vaguely oppressive.

  “Perhaps we should sleep. I also need to sort out what I’m taking with me tomorrow. Good night, David.”

  He watched her slim and diminutive figure walk a little unsteadily through the shadows. He listened to a seabird repeating a high-pitched, melancholic call somewhere further along the beach, but he didn’t feel alone. He was back on that other beach, at that other time. Another girl was sitting beside him, whilst he reveled in the intoxication of her scent. He had replayed the scene numerous times, but now it felt different. For the first time, he realised that Culjinder had lived as much of her life in that moment as had he.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ciudad Juarez

  The room was packed. The wardrobe had been dismantled and the small blue metal door beyond stood like the entrance to a cavern. Gennaro called out the security code numbers. Silvio punched carefully at the keys. With a gentle click, the door fell ajar. He smiled at Gennaro then withdrew. Silvio’s left arm had been supported by a sling since the battle with Xterra, so he wouldn’t now be the first one through. Two others stepped up, one tightening his grip on the small door-handle, the other on his machine gun. Gennaro took a final look around the room and gestured them forward.

  The door issued a shrill creak into the profound darkness beyond. It was like a membrane between dimensions.

  “Turn off the lights.” Gennaro listened intently. The sporadic firing behind him in the hotel made it hard to be sure, but no sound emanated from the void. “Can you see anything?”

  The two men leaned cautiously into the dark and then shook their heads. Others instinctively began pressing forward.

  “OK, let’s go.”

  Within seconds the only person remaining in Room 307 was the guard on the door. Inside the old records office, Gennaro could make out several lines of tall metal shelving, here and there supporting discarded boxes, packing crates and files. The air was stale and slightly damp. Light struggled through a dirty skylight window in the roof.

  “Spread out and look for a door. Watch your step and try not to knock anything over.” Gennaro crouched low, still only feet from the bedroom. The gunfire now sounded as though it came from a guest’s TV.

  “Boss, I’ve found it. I think it’s open.”

  Gennaro squeezed cautiously between two rows of shelving, but was thwarted by a mobile ladder. He backed up to try another route, aware that his suit was already coated in a thick layer of dust. He heard the door open and spotted a broken patch of light through several rows of intervening shelves.

  “Stop, you idiots; wait for me!” His order came too late.

  “We’ve found the way out.”

  “Stop,” Silvio echoed, from somewhere ahead of Gennaro.

  By the time Gennaro felt his way through the discarded office furniture, everybody else was assembled at the top of a stairwell. A square of glass in the roof provided the only illumination, so the steps descended progressively into darkness.

  Silvio was leaning awkwardly over the railing, protecting his bad arm. “
Listen, everyone,” he hissed.

  The building was eerily silent. Gennaro gestured for an automatic weapon then began to descend. The others followed, at a distance. The bottom of each flight of stairs was marked by a gaudy oil painting of big-eyed children or crusty peasants. Signs picked out different departments. Dust had settled thickly on the floor and nowhere did it seem to have been disturbed. Gennaro stepped out into a large atrium. Narrow shafts of daylight from boarded up windows drew lines across an enquiry desk to one side, and a row of office doors to the other. A corridor led past the stairs to the rear of the building. Double-doors opened onto the street. “We go out the front. I don’t want to be stuck in some back alley.”

  Scanning the lobby, the group edged forward. A panel of stained glass squares above the doors had been roughly painted out in black. One of the squares was missing and a line of daylight pointed to a particular spot on the floor. Silvio noticed the footprint first and gestured frantically.

  “Get down everybody,” Gennaro screamed, as the first bullets ripped into wood and flesh. He was lying in a pool of blood, but it wasn’t his own. A body danced in front of him, in response to each burrowing shell. He crawled as hard and fast as he could; praying that cover would come before a shell. He smashed into a wall and heaved from shock and pain. Clawing at the ground, he fought with all his strength to keep moving. Everywhere was the sound of automatic weapons; a deep, drilling sound that mined all thought and reason. His hand rounded a corner and he pulled himself into a side corridor. Flat on his belly, he sucked at the dust. It blocked his nose and made him sneeze. His head throbbed and the room span. He opened fire.

  The magazine emptied. Casting the gun aside, Gennaro peered intently into the darkness. He had aimed low into the counter opposite, hoping to smash through to those sheltering behind. He could hear someone dragging himself across the floor. A shadow darted along the counter and a handgun responded from somewhere beneath the stairs. Again there was silence and then the creak of old hinges. As Gennaro painfully levered himself up, the air in front of him exploded and his face was bathed in heat and light. He could not see and thought he could not hear, until a second explosion sent him back to the floorboards. There was a sound like the start of summer rain then just the roar in Gennaro’s ears.

  He could hear Silvio, he was sure of it. He could hear Silvio sitting on the stairs, laughing. For a moment Gennaro thought that he must have lost his mind. He pushed himself further back down the corridor, just in case, and called through the swirling smoke. Silvio responded.

  “Hello, Gennaro. I always knew you were bullet proof.” Silvio laughed again, but his laughter ended in a spluttering cough, as he sucked in acrid fumes.

  “Are they dead?”

  “They are dead. So is everyone else. You know, I almost forgot about the grenades. I didn’t know what to do with them, so I stuffed four into my sling. I never thought that carrying an injury would prove so useful. You can come out now.”

  Gennaro groaned and struggled to his feet. Making his way carefully across the debris and body strewn hallway, he stopped to check one man for a pulse then snatched a pistol from the hand of another. The Reception area had ceased to exist and what had been the front desk was reduced to a shapeless pile, stained with body parts. The window and partition wall to the main office had blown inward. Silvio stood beyond it, kicking at the dead. As the partition cracked under Gennaro’s feet, a noise came from underneath it. He jumped off, sliding on the glass strewn floor beyond. Silvio used his good arm and raised the panel, revealing a young man with a shaven head and a gaudy orange sweater. His nose, cheek and jaw were fractured. Blood spilled from the corner of his mouth and one foot had disappeared.

  “Please,” the youth stretched out an arm covered in splinters.

  Gennaro found a pump-action shotgun amongst the wreckage. He opened and examined the breach, snapped the gun shut then took aim at the remaining foot.

  “I will not kill you, if you answer me quickly and truthfully. If not, you’ll be just one more dead body in a shoot-out.” Gennaro waited for his words to sink in. “Where are Marcelo and Eusabio?”

  The boy stared at the gun, his face screwed up in pain, then mumbled through broken lips: “They’ve gone after the man who killed my friend, Jose; Marcelo’s brother. I hope that they succeed.”

  Gennaro toyed with the trigger as he mulled the words over.

  “Where?”

  The youth looked surprised. “I don’t know.”

  There was truth in the boy’s eyes as he struggled to hold his assailant’s gaze. Gennaro stood up with a sigh. Silvio cursed and dropped the panel casually on the boy’s head. There was a squeal of pain as the pair walked crookedly over it, and back out into the hallway. Gennaro let out a string of whispered expletives as he realised he had lost his mobile. Silvio passed him his, the screen shining brightly in the gloom. For a moment, Gennaro struggled to clear his head. Then he remembered Luis’ number and tapped at the digits.

  The conversation was one-sided. It was to-the-point. When Gennaro returned the phone to his friend, he was full of unspoken emotion.

  “Whatever happens now, we still go out the front door.”

  Silvio nodded gravely then smiled warmly as he passed Gennaro one of the two remaining grenades.

  “Help me pull out the pin.”

  Gennaro obliged.

  “Now?”

  Gennaro smiled appreciatively back at his old friend.

  “Down!”

  Silvio bowled his grenade at the double doors. Once again the darkness was smashed into tiny, iridescent pieces. Gennaro’s ears hurt so badly he wanted to tear at the lobes. Silvio was retching and writhing beside him. Gennaro put an arm around him and raised him, spluttering, to his feet. In front of them a door hung from a hinge at an acute angle, poised to fall. They staggered in tandem into a stream of fresh air, blinking at the dazzling triangles of light. Ducking low, the street slowly resolved before them.

  “Shit!” Silvio spat down the steps, but no spittle came, only another cough.

  Gennaro stared impassively at the scene. Police in large numbers clutched tightly to their weapons, as they crouched behind car doors, trunks and hoods. They were being hailed through a megaphone, but Gennaro wasn’t interested in what the officers had to stay. He was not going back to prison and neither was his friend. He stared over their heads, over the rooftops of Ciudad Juarez, at the same blue sky he had dreamed and played under as a boy. Fumbling behind his back, his thick fingers struggled to remove the remaining pin. Silvio slumped onto the top step. For a moment Gennaro thought he was cradling his injured arm. Then he saw the concealed pistol.

  “Ready, Amigo?”

  “Always.”

  As Silvio opened fire, Gennaro began to run. The tension in his body released and he felt a sudden surge of well-being. He began to relax his grip upon the grenade. The first bullet hit him, but his body belonged to somebody else. The next three took away his legs, but legs didn’t matter anymore. His massive frame sank unsteadily onto its knees, like the slow collapse of a bull elephant yet to realise it was dead. His head rolled back. He smiled at the sky, greeting another old friend. There was time for one last breath. He savoured the warmth of the sun on his face; and sucked in the world.

  A heavy-callibre shell ripped out his shoulder and he span backwards into the dirt. Above him he could see Silvio’s crumpled form, trickles of red migrating slowly down the steps between them. The grenade span crazily a few inches from Gennaro’s face. It looked like a child’s toy.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chihuahua, some moments before

  “Luis?”

  “Gennaro, call me back - I was in the bath.”

  “Luis, I can’t call you back. I need to talk to you now and you must listen carefully.”

  “Give me a second then - I’ll
find a robe.”

  “No, Luis, listen now, please.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything: they knew about the escape route. We were ambushed. Silvio and I made it through, but I doubt by now anyone is left alive in the hotel. If they set an ambush that means they’re softening us up for whatever is outside the building. We’re stuffed, Luis, and I’m tired of running. We’re going outside and that will be that.”

  “Gennaro, I can send more people.”

  “Even if you can arrange it, they’ll be too late. They probably couldn’t get through to us anyway.”

  “Can’t you hide?”

  “I don’t hide - that isn’t the man your father taught me to be. I would have died at fifteen without your father. He saved me and gave me forty good years. I’m content with that. To me, he was a great man, Luis, but now he’s gone and Felipe’s gone too.”

  “But I still need your help, Gennaro.”

  “Do you know, Luis, a minute ago I was staring into the eyes of a man who tried to kill me. He looked so young he could have been my grandchild. My generation has passed on and I shall follow. I’m too tired to fight anymore, Luis. It’s up to you now.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Save your brother. Save Alfredo. He’s all you have left now. Maybe you two can start again. You could go straight. I know you’ve always wanted that. You try hard, but you’re not a gangster, Luis - you’re better than us.”

  “Alfredo?”

  “Eusabio and Marcelo are after him, Luis. If they’re not already with you then they must have guessed where he’s going. Eusabio knows Don Paulo’s house much better than Alfredo does, and our people there will follow his orders. You need to contact your brother. You need to get to him before those bastards do.”

  “Gennaro...”

  “I know, Luis. I have to go now. Please don’t let it all end here.”

  Gennaro disconnected. Luis stood stunned in the middle of the bathroom floor, naked and shivering more from shock than from cold. He was angry at both Gennaro and his father. Why had Gennaro given up? Why had his father ever trusted Eusabio? He tried to block out the sense in what Gennaro had just told him. He also knew his father had had little choice but to confide in someone outside the family: neither Luis nor Alfredo would have wanted to work any closer with the old man.