Iron River

“Don’t blame yourself for Jimmy,” said Ozburn. “It’s untrue and destructive. Jimmy isn’t about you.”

“I know.”

“Then do know it, Janet,” said Ozburn. “We’ll get him back. Somehow we’ll get him back. Find that tour bus, Hood. You’re the one with the eagle eyes.”

Hood continued to stare out the window and said nothing. Something broke into the cloudless western sky and he saw the ATFE helo swooping in on the wind, tipping wildly. It rose and dipped and sped up and slowed down as the gusts had their way with it. Then the helo was hovering above them, nose to the wind, rotors digging for purchase in the treacherous currents, searchlights blinking their greeting and their devotion. In this precarious thing, Hood saw everything good and hopeful and hopeless about the work that he had chosen.

When they got back to Buenavista and into cell range, Ozburn called Raydel Luna, but the Mexican policeman didn’t answer his phone.

Two hours later they still not been able to raise Luna.

The tour bus had long vanished and there was no word from Jimmy’s captors.

Neither Soriana nor Mars was available by phone: Both had been ordered to ATFE field divisional headquarters in L.A.

Sitting together in a Buenavista lounge for a late and bitter lunch, the Blowdown team watched in mute defeat as the Humvees and trucks filled with National Guardsmen rolled through the narrow streets on their way to secure the border, and the news network helicopters came drifting in from all of the four directions.

They’d been told that there would be one thousand Guardsmen in Buenavista by evening, and another three thousand deployed along the border from San Diego to Corpus Christi. Army and Marine units were standing by, but the president had yet to take this large step. The border had already been closed in both directions. Blowdown also knew that the coming public uproar and media tumult over Jimmy would leave any covert rescue operation without sponsors at the higher levels. So now almost worthless were their own secrecy and ability to surprise.

“Whole new fucking game now,” said Ozburn.

“We’re bit players,” said Bly.

Hood knew that they were right.

Je

25

That night Hood walked up the Imperial Mercy driveway with a bottle of the peppery organic zinfandel that Mike Fi

He dodged the reporters and showed his badge to a deputy at the lobby entrance, then showed it again to another deputy when he got off the elevator on the ninth floor.

He walked toward Fi

Fi

“Oh, that is good,” he said. “I haven’t had a glass of wine in months. What did you think of the president’s words?”

“How do you know so much about Jimmy?”

“Oh, straight to the point tonight. You’ve had a dismal day, I know. Web searches mostly. I once purchased access to law-enforcement-only sites but realized I didn’t need to. I’m pretty handy with a computer, Charlie.”

“So you hack in?”

“It’s easier than that. Passwords and protocols are not created by geniuses. They’re just people. I’ve never used my information for anything but good. I really have no one to discuss my findings with. I’ve never compromised an operation or an investigation or an undercover agent. Nor will I. Ever.”

“You haven’t been around a computer since you came here. But you’ve discovered things about Jimmy that have occurred lately.”

“Discovered or imagined?”

“True things, Mike.”

“Imagination is often truthful. Truth can even come from those who were not there-Homer and Matthew and Hawkings.”

“How did you know the Zetas would come for him again?”

“How could you not know it?”

“What will they do with him?”

“Bring him great pain.”

Hood studied the little man’s face. He had round cheeks and a pink tone of skin and his whiskers were red and getting longer, and with his cheerful blue eyes, he looked like an aging cherub.

Fi

“Fine.”

“Getting married, I hear.”

“This is what I mean, Fi

“You’re getting exasperated. The same as Reyes.”

“How did you hear it?”

“He told me weeks ago, Charlie!”

“Where? Why?”

“I was right there in the Viper Room. Owens was with me. It was the night the band changed its name to Erin and the Inmates. I was very much minding my own business. But Bradley Jones is immensely vain and immensely proud of Erin McKe

Hood drank some of the wine.

“Charlie, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I can’t hold my liquor. Nor can I resist it. May I?”

Mike slowly extended the cup, and Hood refilled it and handed it back. Fi

“You never lived on a vineyard in Napa, Mike. You made it all up. Even Owens stopped believing that story years ago.”

Mike stared at Hood for a long beat. In his eyes Hood saw broad contemplation but of past or future or of this moment he couldn’t guess.