Krill had parked the car in a grove of dead fruit trees no more than fifty yards behind the house of the woman Negrito kept referring to as la china. After the setting of the sun, the wind had dropped, and the sky had turned as stark as an ink wash. The gingerbread house and trees and windmill and barn and horse tank, even the hills, seemed drained of color and movement of any kind. The horses and chickens were gone from the yard, and there was no birdsong in the trees. The only sound Krill could hear as he and Negrito approached the house was water ticking from a rusted pipe that extended over the surface of the horse tank. A nimbus of dust hung above the house like a great cloud of gnats.
Krill stopped and knelt on one knee behind a car that had no wheels or glass in the windows and whose metal was still hot from baking in the sun all day. He stared at the house and the absence of electric lights or movement inside. Negrito knelt beside him, the leather cord of his hat swinging under his chin, the heavy gray fog of his odor puffing out of his clothes. “Krill, you got to tell me,” he said.
“Tell you what?”
“Why we are here. I don’t see no percentage, man.”
“There isn’t one. Not for you, anyway, my old friend.”
“The others have deserted you, but still you talk down to me like I’m the enemy and not the maricones who ran away.”
Krill placed his hand on Negrito’s shoulder, which felt like a flannel sack filled with rocks. “Like me, you are a killer. But killing is not a problem for you. You sleep without dreaming and rise each morning into a new day. But I relive all the times I watched the light go out of my victims’ eyes. My thoughts have become my enemies.”
“That’s why there are whores and tequila in Durango. A trip there will ease your problems, jefe.”
“I have to talk to La Magdalena.”
“You want to sleep with her? That’s what’s going on? You think there’s something special about a Chinese woman in bed? They ain’t no different from our women. You love them at night, and in the morning they make your life awful.”
“Poor Negrito. Why do you always think with the head of your penis?”
“’Cause it ain’t never let me down, man,” said Negrito, and cupped his hand on Krill’s shoulder. “Come on, tell me the truth. Why you got to talk to this woman if you ain’t looking to poke her?”
“To confess my sins, hombre. To rid myself of the faces I see in my sleep.”
“It ain’t a sin to kill people in a war. We were farmers and cattle workers until the war came. The people we killed had it coming. What is the big loss when a Communist is killed?”
“My children died because of me.”
“That don’t make no sense, Krill.”
“I used to blame the army and the Americans and those from Argentina who first gave us our guns. But I took the pay of corrupt political men and did what they told me. I killed the Jesuit and the leftists. You know these things are true, Negrito, because you were there. The helicopter machine-gunned the clinic, but I was their brother in arms. I helped bring a curse on our land.”
“No, your head is screwed up, Krill. That woman ain’t no priest. Whatever you confess to her, she’s gonna tell the cops. Then they’re gonna hunt us down. They don’t want nobody to know what we done down there.”
“There’s something strange going on in that house,” Krill said.
“What’s strange is your head. It glows in the dark. I think you got too many chemicals in it. Remember those nights in Juarez?”
“The woman’s truck is by the barn, but there is no one moving in the house, and no electric light is turned on. But look through the window of the chapel. The candles are burning in front of the Virgin’s statue.”
“Of course. She burns candles all the time. That’s what people like her do. They burn candles. The rest of us work and sweat and sometimes take bullets, but they burn candles.”
“No, this one has been to war, Negrito. She is not one to go off somewhere or take a nap while an open flame burns in her house.”
“You make a complexity of everything,” Negrito said. “You are a man who cannot bear to have a quiet and simple thought. You constantly construct spiderwebs so you can walk through them.”
“Look on the far side of the fence, beyond the barn, where the grass is tall.”
“It’s grass. So what is the great mystery about grass?”
“There is a channel through it. The wind is not making the channel. Somebody walked through there.”
“Animals did. Deer or horses. They cross the field by walking on it. It took you a long time to figure that out?”
“No horses are in that field. And deer do not make paths on flat land, only on hillsides, where their feet have to find the same spot every day.”
“See what I mean? A simple visit to the home of this pretender sacerdote becomes a torture of the brain.”
“The back door is ajar, Negrito. There is something wrong in that house. You stay here and guard my back. You keep the rifle, but do not use it unless absolutely necessary. If everything is normal, I will come to the door and wave to you with my right hand, not my left.”
“ Claro, man. My head is starting to hurt again with all your cautions. I cannot stand this. We were never afraid before. I told you from the beginning, this woman who wears men’s trousers was bad luck. But your obsession has no bounds.”
“Then leave. Go to Durango. Bathe in the diseased fluids of your whores,” Krill said.
Negrito was breathing heavily, the whiskers around his mouth as thick as a badger’s. His pupils were no bigger than pinheads, the skin around his eyes wrinkled and flecked with scales. “You make me want to do something that’s very bad.”
“You want to be me, Negrito, to leave your own body and live inside mine. And because you are a killer by nature, you believe a bullet can give you my heart and brain.”
“I am a loyal servant and follower and brother, not an assassin. I want you to be you and the leader you used to be, Krill, not a self-hating fool ruminating on his sins.”
“If I wave with my left hand from the door, rather than my right, what message will I be sending you?”
“I see only one message in any of this: that of a man being led with a ring through his nose by the Chinese puta.”
“You are brave in ways that few men are, Negrito. But do not try to think anymore. For some men, thinking is a dangerous vanity. You must accept that about yourself.”
Krill stood and walked toward the back entrance of the house, a holstered. 357 Magnum hanging from the right side of his web belt, his skinning knife in a scabbard on his left. He stepped up on the back porch and listened, then felt a breeze on the back of his neck and heard the windmill come to life and water running into the horse tank. But where were the horses? Or the illegals who came almost every evening for food or benediction at the house of La Magdalena?
He paused at the back door and listened again. The windmill was stenciled against the black and gray patterns in the sky, and tumbleweed was bouncing through the yard, hanging in the fences, skipping by the junked car where Negrito was crouched with the M16. Krill pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Through the hallway, he could see her sitting very still in a straight-back chair, her hands resting on her knees, her hair tied in a bun. In the gloom, he could hardly make out her features. Her face was so still that in profile, it looked like it had been painted on the air. He eased his. 357 from its holster and waited, his left foot in front of his right, breathing slowly through his mouth, the checkered grips of his revolver hard inside his palm.
He stepped backward, never taking his eyes off the Chinese woman, his left arm extended out the door. He opened and closed his hand so the fading light would reflect off it, then moved his arm up and down so Negrito could plainly see that he was signaling with his left hand and not his right. Please remember what I told you, he thought. This is the moment I have to count on you, Negrito. This is when your skills will be of the greatest necessity.
Krill went down the hallway and could see the woman watching him from the corner of her eye.
“Magdalena?” he said, his voice hardly audible.
She continued to stare straight ahead, her hands absolutely still.
“?Que pasa?” he said. He glanced over his shoulder. Where was Negrito? “Senora, look at me,” he said. “It’s Krill. I want to make confession. I murdered a Jesuit priest. I must have absolution. You can give it to me.”
He stepped into the room and felt the barrel of a gun touch the back of his head. “Bad timing, greaseball,” a voice said.
There were four men inside the room, all of them wearing beige-colored gauzy masks with slits for the nose and mouth and eyes. One man stood against the far wall, his left hand on the shoulder of a girl not over ten years old. With the other hand, he held the stainless-steel four-inch blade of a clasp knife under the girl’s throat. The girl’s eyes were wide with terror and confusion, and her bottom lip was trembling.
The man holding the gun to the back of Krill’s head removed the. 357 from his grip. “Who’s with you?” he said.
“A shit pile of people. They’re going to cook you in a pot, too,” Krill said.
“That’s why you came in by yourself?”
“Who are you guys?” Krill said.
“Your worst nightmare, fuckhead.”
“In my nightmares there are no guys like you. I don’t have space in my head for guys in Halloween masks or guys who frighten little girls with knives. These are not the guys of nightmares. These are clowns and eunuchs who were born with penises but no cojones. Why would guys like these be in anybody’s nightmares? That would be a great mystery to me.”
“Antonio, don’t speak to these men,” the woman said.
“I was just clarifying my thoughts to myself, Magdalena. These men and their cleverness are a great mystery to me,” he said. The yard was empty, the light dying in the trees, the windmill spinning against a horizon that looked as though the clouds were dissolving and running down the sides of the sky. Then he saw Negrito moving from behind the barn and around the front of the house, bent low, his greasy leather hat pulled down tight on his head, the M16 gripped with both hands, his heavy, truncated body moving with the fluidity of an animal’s. In the distance, he thought he heard the thropping sound of a helicopter’s blades.
“Take me but leave the child,” the woman said to the man holding the gun to Krill’s head.
“That’s not a problem,” the man replied. “But this guy is. Who is he?”
“A man seeking forgiveness. He’s no threat to you,” she said.
“You a coyote, buddy?” the man with the gun asked.
“No, hombre. I’m a Texas Ranger. I’ve been shooting the shit out of guys like you for many years.”
“You’re a real wit, all right. So smart you came in here and stuck your head in a mousetrap.”
Then Krill heard banging and shuffling noises at the front of the house, booted feet coming down hard on the gallery, and a door flying back against a wall. Krill felt his heart drop. Two more men, each wearing the same masks worn by the men inside the house, were pulling and shoving Negrito into the living room. Blood leaked in a broken line from under the brim of Negrito’s leather hat, running through one eyebrow, streaking the stubble on his cheek. His face was lit with a grin as wide as a jack-o’-lantern’s.”?Que bueno! Everybody is here!” he said. Then Negrito saw the expression on Krill’s face, and his grin faded. “These cobardes come up behind me. I’m sorry, Krill,” he said.
“So you’re the one they call Krill. We’ve heard about you,” the man behind Krill said.
The helicopter passed overhead and circled over a field and began to descend on the rear of the property, the downdraft flattening the grass, blowing dust and desiccated cow manure in the air.
“Hey, Krill, I know who these guys are. They’re Sholokoff’s people,” Negrito said.
“No, we have no interest in these people or the business they conduct,” Krill said.
“Ain’t that right?” Negrito said to his captors. “You work for that Russian prick. We know all about you. I hear a couple of your guys are missing their noses. Be nice to me, and maybe I’ll tell you where their noses are and you can glue them back on.”
Negrito, Negrito, Negrito, Krill thought.
The man behind Krill stepped back and looked at both Krill and Negrito like a photographer arranging a studio portrait. “This is quite a pair,” he said.
“What do you want to do?” said the man holding the knife to the little girl’s throat.
“Take the girl in the kitchen.”
“And?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know if this gig has parameters or not.”
“There’s a key sticking out of the lock in the pantry door. What does that tell you?”
“Lock her inside?”
“Brilliant,” the man with the gun said. “Then take the woman to the chopper.”
“What about these two?”
“That’s a good question,” the man with the gun said.
“I’ve got a question for you,” Negrito said.
“You’ve got a question? Wonderful. What is it, greaseball?” the man with the gun said.
“If you’re born without cojones, does that mean you’re automatically a queer, or is it something you learn? ‘Cause I believe every guy who ever called me a greaseball was probably a maricon. Know why I think that? ’Cause when I was in jail in Arizona and Texas, it was always the Aryan Brotherhood guys who were trying to get me in the sack. That’s right, man. Macho gringos like you was the main yard bitches in every joint I was in. I tell you what, man. ’Cause you look like a nice guy, I’m gonna do something for you. You surrender to me and Krill, I’ll fix you up with some punks that ain’t got a feather on them. You gonna dig it, man.”
“We’re wasting time here, Frank. What’s it gonna be?” one of the other men said to the man with the gun.
“We split the difference,” Frank replied. “Krill is the guy who kidnapped the Quaker. Josef will want to talk to him. The ape seems to have a death wish.”
“Listen to me, hombre,” Krill said. “Negrito is a good soldier. He can be of value to you. He will never give up information to the FBI. Pain means nothing to him. His only defect is he runs his mouth when he shouldn’t. But he can be a valuable man to your employer.”
“I see your point,” the man with the gun said. “We’re all just making a buck. We shouldn’t let it get personal. I totally understand where you’re coming from.”
No one in the room moved. In the silence, Krill could hear the little girl whimpering. The man who had been holding a semiautomatic on Negrito put it away and looked at the. 357 he had taken from Krill. It was nickel-plated and had black checkered grips, and each chamber in the cylinder was loaded with a hollow-point round. “Your name is Negrito?” he said.
“That’s my nickname. It’s ’cause I’m mestizo.”
“Do you mind riding in a helicopter?” the man asked.
Negrito shrugged and gazed out the window, his eyes dulling over, his mouth downturned at the corners.
“Because we don’t want you to be uncomfortable. Can you handle heights? You don’t get airsick or anything like that?”
Negrito looked at Krill. “We had some fun, didn’t we, amigo? They’re gonna remember us for a long time. Don’t let this guy get to you. We’re better than any of them. We’re stronger and smarter and tougher. Guys like us come back from the dead and piss in their mouths and shit in their mothers’ wombs.”
Krill stood frozen, the sound of the helicopter blades growing louder and louder in his head, the dust swirling in the downdraft, the rain clouds forming into blue horsetails, the windmill shuddering against the sky, all of these things happening simultaneously as the man with the. 357 lifted the barrel and fired a solitary round through one side of Negrito’s head and out the other.
Hackberry Holland was reading a biography of T. E. Lawrence under a lamp by his front window when he heard thunder rolling in the clouds far to the south, reverberating in the hills, where occasionally a flash of dry lightning would flicker and then die like a wet match. The book was written by Michael Korda and dealt with the dissolution of empires and a new type of warfare, what came to be known as “wars of insurgency,” all of which had their model among the sand dunes and date palms of Arabia. As Hackberry read the lines describing the white glare of the Arabian desert, he thought of the snow that had blanketed the hills south of the Yalu the first morning he had seen Chinese troops in their quilted uniforms, tens of thousands of them, many of them wearing tennis shoes, marching out of the white brilliance of the snowfield, heedless of the automatic-weapons fire that danced across the fields and the artillery rounds that blew geysers of snow and ice and dirt and rock in their midst.
He closed the book and placed it on his knee and stared out the window. Not far down the road, he could see a tree limb that had fallen across the telephone line that led to his house. Just as he got up to check the phone, he saw a cruiser turn off the road into his drive, its emergency bar rippling, its siren off. Hackberry stepped out on the front porch and watched R. C. Bevins get out of the cruiser and walk toward him on the flagstones, his face somber. “You tried to call?” Hackberry said.
“Yes, sir, your phone’s out. Your cell must be off, too.”
“It’s in my truck. What is it, R.C.?”
“We’ve got a homicide at the Ling place. The victim appears to be Hispanic. From the exit wound in his head, I’d say somebody used a hollow-point. A ten-year-old girl had been left in Ms. Ling’s care and saw it all. When her mother came for her, she found the girl locked in a pantry. Ms. Ling is gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“From what the little girl said, there were six guys in masks. They took Ms. Ling and a friend of the dead man on a helicopter.”
“How long ago?”
“A couple of hours.”
“Did you print the victim?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get a priority with AFIS.”
“Pam is already on it. Who do you reckon are the guys with the chopper?”
“Josef Sholokoff’s people.”
“The little girl said the dead man and his friend spoke Spanish. She also said the friend had a pistol on one hip and a long knife on the other.”
“What else did she say about him?”
“She said he was tall and that he had funny shoulders. She said they were too wide, like he had a stick pushed sideways inside his shirt.”
“That’s Krill.”
“What would he be doing at Ms. Ling’s place?”
“I don’t have any idea, none at all.”
“You okay, Sheriff?”
“How long have you been trying to get me?”
“About fifteen minutes. There wasn’t no way you could know the line was down.”
“Was Ms. Ling hurt?”
“The little girl said a guy shoved her down. The same guy held a knife at the little girl’s throat. She said they all had gloves on, and the shooter called the dead man a greaseball. You think these are the same guys who crucified Cody Daniels?”
“What’s your opinion?”
R.C. scratched at his eyebrow. “I think we got a special breed on our hands,” he said. “I think all this is related to that Barnum boy we got locked in our jail. I’m not sure if we done the right thing on that.”
Pam Tibbs was waiting for Hackberry when he arrived at the jail. She was not wearing makeup, and there were circles under her eyes. “What do you want to do?” she asked.
“About what?” he said.
“Everything.”
“Did you talk to the FBI yet?”
“I reported the homicide and the kidnapping. I didn’t mention our boy in isolation,” she said.
“You’re uncomfortable with that?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing, Hack. I don’t know what the plan is.”
“They’re going to call.”
“The abductors are?”
“You bet.”
“Then what?”
“We’ve got what they want. As long as Barnum stays in our hands, Anton Ling will be kept alive.”
“Hack, they wouldn’t have grabbed her if we hadn’t locked up Barnum.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“Where are you going?”
“To take a nap,” he said.
He went up the spiral stairs and pulled a mattress from a supply locker into an alcove off the corridor and lay down on his side with his head cushioned on his arm and fell asleep with far more ease than he would have guessed, knowing that his dreams would take him to a place that was as much a part of his future as it was his past. He remembered the words of the writer Paul Fussell, who had said he joined the army to fight the war for its duration and had discovered that he would have to fight it every day and every night for the rest of his life. In his dream, Hackberry returned once again to Camp Five in No Name Valley and the brick factory called Pak’s Palace outside Pyongyang. The dream was not about deprivation or the harshness of the weather or the mistreatment visited upon him by his captors. It was about isolation and abandonment and the belief that one was totally alone and lost and without hope. It was the worst feeling that anyone could ever experience.
In the dream, the landscape changed, and he saw himself standing on a precipice in Southwest Texas, staring out at a valley that looked like an enormous seabed gone dry. The valley floor was covered with great round white rocks that resembled the serrated, coral-encrusted backs of sea tortoises, stranded and alone, dying under an unmerciful sun. In the dream, he was not a navy corpsman but a little boy whose father had said that one day the mermaids would return to Texas and wink at him from somewhere up in the rocks. All he saw in the dream was his own silent witness to the suffering of the sea creatures.
“Jesus Christ, wake up, Hack,” he heard Pam Tibbs say, shaking his arm.
“What? What is it?” he said, his eyes filmed with sleep.
“You must have been having a terrible dream.”
“What’d I say?”
“Just the stuff people yell out in dreams. Forget it.”
“Pam, tell me what I said.”
“‘He takes people apart.’ That’s what you said.”
The telephone call came in one hour later.