She knew what all the presents in all the boxes were—and she didn’t want any of them.
She didn’t want to go back.
She wanted this, more of this.
She put a hand flat against the floor, held it there against the cold hard tiles. She pressed down hard, her fingers popping out as far as they would go, shaking, her wrist and forearm trembling too, and she let herself feel this aliveness, let’s call it that, she felt it in her palm, in her arm, aliveness, she could feel it everywhere now, in her thighs, her ass, her stomach, all over her face, along her gums, she felt it bursting through her shoulders and neck. Her whole body was smiling. She wanted motorcycles on her tail. She wanted bullets in the air, as insane as that notion was. She wanted to run. She wanted to have to run, to run or die, and then to be able to feel the panting quiet afterward.
Carver driving in the dark. She kept thinking about it.
She unzipped her flat-heel boots and took them off. She stretched her legs out. She spun her feet around and around, shoeless for the first time in two days. She brought one knee to her chest, held it there, kept the other extended. She thought about her breathing, then switched legs, exhaled, inhaled, did it all again.
After a while, she stood and dropped her arms and found the floor with her hands. Draped over her legs, she held that pose before standing and grazing the empty can on the counter next to her. Gustavo snorted. Looking at that fuckup puddled on the tile across the room, she suddenly backhanded the can to the floor. It fairly boomed when it hit the baseboards.
Gustavo bolted up so fast he smacked his head against the wall behind him. He called out something, she wasn’t sure what. His eyes were open now, and one of his hands was on his FN Five-Seven where it lay on the floor. The nine was nearby, and he snatched it too.
“Morning,” she said.
His eyes looked like they’d been left out in the rain. His shirt half open, only two of the bottom pearl snaps buttoned. A thick bloody scratch down his chest. His jeans had a rip in the knee, and his face was still dirty from running or falling or who knows what. She’d had a chance to wash up. He hadn’t.
Finally he coughed and cleared his throat and sat up straighter and rubbed his head where he’d hit it. He shoved the Five-Seven under his gut, set the nine back on the floor, and pulled his tea bag’s worth of coke from his pocket. He stuck an index finger into the plastic and lifted a bump to his nose, snorted it, and shook his head around like he’d been sprayed with a hose.
“You are a vision.”
He huffed a couple more bumps from his finger before putting the baggie away again.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Don’t mind me.”
“What, tú quieres?” He tapped his pocket, pointed at her.
“I’m hoping Carver might bring some coffee, thanks.”
“Carver,” he said dismissively.
“Yeah, the man who saved your ass.”
“You are not smart to got trust in that man,” he said, sniffing, shaking his head to clear it.
“Gotta say it’s worked out so far.”
“Worked for who?”
“You hear any motorcycles?”
Gustavo began shaking a foot. The heel on his boot flopped loose against the sole. He kicked down at the floor, trying to pop the bootheel back in place. “That man gonna make sure I die and probably you, tambíen. And why we not on a plane? Why we still in Tampico?”
She wished she’d listened to Carver, heard exactly what he said before he left. But those loud beautiful eyes.
“Ah, you don’t know,” Gustavo realized.
“Exfil is why. Carver went to set up our departure to the States.” She hoped that’s what he said he was doing.
Gustavo shook his head, reading her. “We’re not north porque we’re not going.”
He shimmied out of the boot with the broken heel. He began looking at it closely, inspecting the bootheel with a kind of fretful disappointment on his face.
“Getting you to the States isn’t as easy as you’d like it to be,” she said.
“You always saying this to me.”
“And now we’re on our way. You’re welcome.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, this shit is not welcome. Think. Think. Who those men, the soldiers?”
“Operators. Delta Force. Navy SEALs.”
“They not gabachos, I know that.”
“And how exactly do you know?”
“Los acentos.”
“Accents?”
“Sí, not gabacho, not Mexican,” he said, shaking his head. “They were, I don’t know what exact thing, pero ellos no eran soldados Americanos, no. Those men, they assassins, los mercenarios.”
“Whatever. You couldn’t hear shit in all that gunfire.”
He set his boot down on the floor. “I heard them after.”
“We were deaf!”
“I heard!”
“So you think this Agency spook has a squad of Polish mercs or Mossad agents on hand to save cartel turncoats? Is that your theory?”
He just looked at her, not understanding what she’d said.
“Okay,” she said, “why would the CIA need foreign mercenaries to deal with a Mexican cartel? It doesn’t make sense.”
He snorted his nostrils clear and turned his attention to the boot, slamming the heel on the tile. The echoes banged around the house.
“Will you stop that?”
“Los Golfos have for our use paramilitares, men who was soldiers once—Los Zetas.” He reached into his pocket, removed a multi-tool, and, tongue out, worked open the screwdriver. “If we got them, you think the CIA don’t?”
“You actually think the CIA uses Zetas?”
“No! They got their own, not Los Zetas, but men like them.”
“You gotta lay off the coke,” she said. “It’s giving you delusions. The CIA is saving you—”
“I didn’t call no CIA!”
“What difference does it make? How can you possibly complain about being rescued?”
“Porque I called you, y these hijos de la chingada arrive?”
“I just didn’t cover my trail, Gustavo. He found us by tracking me. And we’re fucking lucky he did.”
“Chale!” He slapped the wall, startling her. Over and over. Bang bang bang-bang. “No. No. No. You got to listen better. I called you, no? You one, you only. Pues, you come to me, yes, pero this dude Carver follow you, y tambíen, y tambíen, este pinche Zeta Tomás, he arrive and his Zetas, all these motherfuckers to kill us! Pero I told only you where I am! How there gonna be sicarios and CIA in Tampico with you? How you explain that?”
He had a point.
“Okay, okay, calm down.”
“Calm down,” he scoffed. “Why?”
“Maybe Moman told somebody.”
“Maybe, maybe! I dunno, you dunno. But why you got trust for this American? You love him or something?” He was using the pointed tip of the knife now like a screwdriver, twisting away at the bootheel. “No es accidente this man came here,” he said, pointing the knife at her. “That’s why I got no trust for him, he wanna put me in a dark American hole. What you call it? The black cell?”
“Gustavo, I’m not gonna let him take you to a black site.”
“You are not the boss. You say that to me, you not gonna let this or that happen, pero it mean absolutamente nada.”
She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t.
“Me and you,” he said, “we in this together. The Zetas know you know the tunnel, where it is, same as me.”
“Many thanks for that.”
He focused on the heel like he gave zero shits about her problems, and shook the boot around. It was loose, but better. He folded up the tool, put it back in his pocket.
“You tell the CIA man where it is?” he asked, pulling the boot back on.
“He doesn’t know,” she said.
“Maybe then you don’t love him.” He stood, tested the boot.
“He doesn’t even know I know.”
“Ah. Maybe you got no trust in him, same as me.”
A grinding noise silenced them. They both whipped their heads in the direction of the other side of the house.
“The garage door,” she said. “It’s him.”
A sharp screech of tires, the car pulling in. A slammed car door. Then the garage door closed. Then silence. Gustavo dug a finger into his bag of coke and did two bumps. Glared at her as though she’d summoned him and would have to answer for it. They waited, listening, keyed up. Somewhere in the house a door opened and closed.
Carver entered, set a plastic sack on the floor. He was wearing the same black T-shirt, a pistol holstered on his hip. He picked up the tension in the room.
“You two spatting, or is this just cabana fever?” he asked. No answer from either. He crouched, took a water bottle from the bag, nodded a heads-up, and tossed it to her. He did the same for Gustavo, but the man let the bottle slap the floor and skid into the corner next to him.
“Spatting then,” Carver said. “Cool.”
Gustavo stood up, put the coke in his pocket, removed the pistol from his front, and shoved it into the back of his jeans.
“¿El baño?”
Carver pointed. Gustavo stomped down the hall unevenly, fussing over his boot. Harbaugh guzzled down her water. So good.
“What got up his ass?” Carver asked, cracking open a bottle of water himself and leaning against the counter. His hair was mussed like he’d been driving with the top down, some sweat holding it in place.
“He thinks your operators are foreigners, that you’re taking him to a black site.”
“How coked up is he?”
“A few bumps since he woke.”
“He slept?” Carver was astonished.
“It resembled sleep.”
Carver polished off his water and crouched to get another, holding one up for her. She nodded and he tossed it and she snatched it out of the air. Naturals, the two of them, like a pair of jocks in a beer commercial. She set her empty by.
He was looking at her now in a vague way. An equally vague panic bloomed within her.
“What?” she asked.
He skipped whatever it was, instead saying, “There’s an airstrip a few hours from here we’re gonna use. I’m waiting to hear on a plane, but—”
“I have to tell you something,” she said quickly. “I know where the tunnel is.”
She didn’t know exactly why she told him, or why now, except that she didn’t want to withhold it.
He looked down, motionless. His thoughts were inscrutable. When he looked up, his blue eyes were troubled in a way that shook her.
“How?” he asked.
“He told me.” She dropped her voice a half-register as the toilet flushed. “He built the thing in secret for the cartel. All those dead construction workers were killed to keep it that way.”
Carver stood, looked disgustedly toward the bathroom. Water ran from the tap in there.
“He says killing them wasn’t his idea. I think I believe him. Maybe. When he was the last man standing, he got spooked, and assumed he was next.”
“So he bolted.”
“Right.”
“Why’d he tell you the location?”
“Leverage.”
“What leverage?”
“He told me in front of this guy from the cartel.”
“Shit.” He looked pissed. “What guy?”
“One of the Zetas. But before they started chasing us. He and Gustavo talked. The Zeta tried to convince Gustavo to go back with him, that it was just a family dispute, that he’d let me go. But Gustavo told me where it was to put me in the same danger as him.”
Carver shook his head as though impressed or flummoxed, she couldn’t tell. He studied the lip of his water bottle.
“You’re quiet,” she said.
He seemed to realize he was scaring her, and his expression softened. But she couldn’t be scared anymore. Maybe it was crazy, but she didn’t feel fear.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“Just puts a new wheel on the wagon, is all.”
She liked that he put it that way. Old-timey. Like these were well-worn problems.
“Should we have someone check it out?” she asked. “On the US side maybe?”
“No,” he said flatly. “First thing is to get you out of Mexico. The cartel knows you know where it is, they’re gonna have dirty cops looking for you. You get picked up, and . . .”
“I didn’t even think of that.”
“It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. I’m trying not to fuck up.”
“Relax. You didn’t. I promise.”
He fetched her empty waters and put them in the sack and then grabbed the full one Gustavo didn’t take and opened it and handed it to her. She waved it off. She felt full.
“You done good. Earlier, driving through all that shit. Real good. Perfect.”
“Thanks.”
“We should do that again,” he said, taking a long draft from the water bottle so she couldn’t tell what he thought or what he really meant, saying that.
She waited for him to pull the bottle away from his mouth before she said what she knew she would.
“Don’t say something like that unless you mean it.”
He smiled and nodded like he did mean it.
She said she wanted to get some air, but what she really needed was a minute out of Carver’s presence. Little point in denying it. She was already spinning up joint task forces in her imagination. Applying to the Agency. She was not oblivious to what a dick he’d been or her own strange trajectory through American jurisprudence and law enforcement, which found her fantasizing a third move into spycraft or whatever this was . . . but she was hooked. Deep. She couldn’t even imagine the woman who’d practiced law or run confidential informants or pondered a union with the likes of Bronwyn.
It was a hot afternoon that promised a sweltering evening, already heavily humid, the real heat yet to come. She stood outside in the sandy roadway, scanning the flatlands all around, the farmhouses, a windmill, the palms, the sense of nearby bodies of water. She didn’t get the air she pretended she was after, so she settled for movement and wandered off the road and along a narrow path in the wispy grasses that grew in these sands, still barefoot. She was maybe fifty feet from the road when she heard a vehicle, a pristine black Chevy SUV, rolling past. It gave her the discomfiting feeling that she’d been in America all this time, in South Carolina or a Gulf hamlet, and that the blond-haired woman she could just make out in the open window from this remove—what’re you lookin’ at, bitch? popped unbidden into her mind, made her absolutely certain that the woman was someone she knew. Or would.
She’d seen an SUV like that at Moman’s. Before Carver left her there alone . . .
Whatever thoughts might’ve come next were obliterated in the succeeding moment, when the sunlight scintillated into her eyes off a plane of water to her left, and she stopped. As her eyes readjusted, she was stunned to be mere steps from a throng of sun-basked crocodiles on a slope of drying mud. She wasn’t in America anymore. In fact, “American” ceased to be a category of any meaning, as not three feet away, the nearest of the ancient and untroubled beasts rose smiling from the muck to greet her.
She’d never run so fast in her blessed life.
She only rose from the front step when Gustavo and Carver’s voices hit a pitch that broke through her panting, the goose bumps subsiding. A CIA agent and cartel lieutenant were bickering in the empty house behind her. There were crocodiles everywhere. This was normal. This was fine. She actually smiled as she headed inside.
Carver squinted at the fresh light and acknowledged her but did not cease his harangue. “You put her in mortal danger with the cartel, and you think you’re just gonna bounce?” he shouted.
Gustavo’s hair was slicked back and his face washed, and he’d tucked in his shirt. She noticed no
w that he was missing one of his shirt pockets. The scratch on his chest looked like it’d been cleaned, too.
“Stop me,” Gustavo said to them, his hand on his FN in his belt. The nine shoved in the back of his pants.
She didn’t say anything, inhabiting a post-crocodile view on things that told her she’d already had her close call of the day. But it was curious that Carver didn’t say anything either. Gustavo pressed his bootheel against the wall, leaving a black print on the white, as he took another bump and arched his back.
Carver edged his hand onto his holster, unsnapped it.
“Be calm. The only one I’m gonna shoot is me,” Gustavo said.
“Not if I do it first,” Carver said.
“Then do it!”
She touched Carver’s arm.
“Let me,” she whispered.
“Give me the water,” Gustavo said.
Harbaugh picked up the bag and handed it to him.
Gustavo took out a bottle of water and drank, letting streams run down his cheeks and throat. He threw the bottle, still half full, and it smacked the floor and bounced and rolled around, water gurgling in spurts from it. Then he wrapped the black plastic bag around his fist and walked through the kitchen and out the side door. Carver made to go after him, but she stepped in front of him, her hand on his chest.
“I got it.”
“I’ll get the car. I’ll run him over or shoot him. If we have to bring him in hooked to an IV and life support, so be it.”
“Carver.” Her hand was still on his chest. “He’ll never listen to you. This is my area. This is what I do.”
She turned her palm into a single index finger and poked him in the chest, pushed him back.
“Your area,” he said, as though trying out the concept. “Okay, fine. But fucking hurry.”
When she was at the door, she knew before he started saying it that he was telling her to watch out for crocodiles. But she knew all about the crocodiles. She had this.
Chapter Twenty
This Close
It was overcast, but Harbaugh had never sweated so much in her life. It poured down her back, her arms, it flicked off her fingertips as she ran. She should’ve brought a towel. Her barefoot gait was tentative, thrown off by the weight of the sicario’s .40 in her hand. She didn’t want it to jostle out of her waistband, so she sweaty-palmed the entire gun in the hope that no one would notice the barefoot woman running with a Smith & Wesson. And there were crocs, for chrissakes. But she pressed on, afraid she’d lost Gustavo.
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