17

Strock gazed out the window as they began their descent into Comalapa. Dawn broke through the cloud cover in smears of cold light until at last the plane dipped below the misty layers of gray. A riot of blue-white hues erupted in the distance beyond a range of ancient volcanoes, the shadowy peaks giving way to sprawling valleys that continued down to a coastal plain where sugar cane fields, vast and green, divvied up the landscape into tidy shapes. The strangeness of the geography conjured both a bracing sense of welcome and a low-grade terror. What in the name of God have you gotten yourself into, he wondered.

Inside the terminal, uniformed troops patrolled everywhere—a variety of camouflage patterns, some the usual jungle greens, others ominously black and olive drab. Strock guessed the blackish fatigues belonged to some sort of special forces brigade. It was one of those things you learned among men—the more elite the calling, the more fetishistic the costume.

Police officers, a few of them women, patrolled everywhere too, wearing crisp uniforms of their own, dark blue drill with combat boots and forage caps, looking less like cops than just more soldiers. Jude had warned him there’d be tight security. Two groups with ties to al Qaeda had threatened terrorist attacks in-country unless El Salvador pulled its troops out of Iraq.

As he lined up behind Jude in the queue for their passport clearance, Strock took out the State Department notice he’d picked up at the vaccination clinic.

The criminal threat in El Salvador is critical. Random and organized violent crime is endemic throughout the country.…

Avoid travel outside of major metropolitan areas after dark and avoid travel on unpaved roads at all times.…

Many Salvadorans are armed, and shoot-outs are not uncommon.…

Jude, watching Strock stuff the traveler’s advisory back into his pocket, said, “Don’t believe everything you read.”

“Wouldn’t be work down here for a guy like you, let alone me, if some of it wasn’t true.”

“It was worse two years ago, trust me.” Jude nudged his carry-on with his foot as the line edged forward. “You still have thieves everywhere, and only a fool would go into certain areas, especially at night. But Honduras has the real problem now. Guys over there climb on buses, pull out their nines, and rob everybody on board. That doesn’t happen here so much anymore.”

Strock said, “Gee, such a relief,” glancing off to his left. Following his eyes, Jude spotted a small vestibule walled with glass where a priest and nun greeted some two dozen rough young men. The vatos looked scared, rolling down their sleeves and conferring in whispers as two PNC officers stood guard. Shortly, two more cops joined them. One read a name from a clipboard, and they collected a bulky burr-headed kid and took him away, leading him along a dim lowceilinged corridor of scuffed tile, then down a narrow stairway.

Jude guessed the detainees had just come from the States. They’d get taken away one by one for questioning, fingerprints, a tattoo check. Those tagged as mareros would get shipped straight to prison without a hearing, maybe stay there for years. The priest and nun were collecting those who could pass the screening but had no family here. The lucky ones. After a few nights on a bedroll at a shelter, they’d get kicked free with a little pocket money and a warning: Things are different here. Second chances are a lucky privilege and they don’t come cheap.

A clamor erupted inside the glass-walled room. A pair of deportees—from opposing gangs, Jude guessed, Mara Salvatrucha, Mara Dieciocho—pugged off, throwing the odd wild punch, hurling insults back and forth. Others crowded around, teamed up. No sooner did the two cops at the door wade in, swinging their batons, than one kid spotted his chance.

He was small, trim, ghetto-handsome—exactly the kind to see prison, especially down here, as just a hellish, seamy, drawn-out way to die. He darted from the room, looked toward the doors beyond Customs, and bolted that direction.

He got thirty yards. He tried to hurdle the Customs desk but the agent on duty there snared him in a headlock till reinforcements arrived. Cops and soldiers materialized from nowhere and everywhere, summoned by whistle blasts, descending on the kid in a swarm. One of the dog handlers ran up late, and the German shepherd, straining at his leash, barked at the scrum of bodies with bared fangs, ready to lunge.

The officers hoisted the runner to his feet. He was a vision—eyes swollen shut, mouth dripping saliva and blood, broken hands hanging limp. His shirt was torn too, and the Gothic black lettering blazoned down his arm gave him away: Dieciocho. The police didn’t bother to take him back to the waiting area. They dragged him away toward the dim corridor, down the narrow steps. He’d be in La Esperanza, the prison called Hope, by noon.

Things settled down but the air remained charged. People minded their own business, avoided eye contact, shuffling forward as the line moved. Finally, with a cry of “¡Pase!” Jude got called forward. He told Strock to come with him.

The Delegado de Inmigración agent had a weak chin, tampeddown hair, and minuscule eyes trapped behind bifocals. Jude’s paperwork was routine and easily cleared. Then the Candyman stepped up.

Strock was hardly the only traveler who’d yet to shave, but the grayish tinge to his stubble looked particularly mangy. He presented his passport and arrival questionnaire—Jude had filled the form out for him, identifying the reason for his travel as vacation, not business, to avoid the more probative questions. Under Local Contact Jude had written his own name and cell number. If anything happened to Strock down here, he’d want to know. And if that meant, in effect, he’d stepped into his father’s old role—going along with Malvasio’s play while backhandedly protecting Strock—so be it.

He watched as Strock braced himself for the inevitable questions and the lies he’d need to provide for answers. The homely agent merely stamped his passport, offered a tepid welcome from some bottomless reservoir of indifference, then once again bellowed “¡Pase!” for the next passenger in line.

Outside the terminal, despite the early hour, throngs of welcoming family and friends swarmed the sidewalk in the dense heat. Bachata music—ballads for the homesick, backed by cheesy synthesizers and drum kit beats—blasted from boom boxes as cab drivers milled through the crowd, touting forty-dollar fares to the capital.

Jude led the way to the parking lot, Strock lurching on his cane to keep up. They trudged across the spongy blacktop beneath a line of almendra de rio trees, moisture cloying their armpits and streaking the backs of their shirts, until finally Jude stopped behind his dusty, battered Toyota pickup.

Glancing around first to see if anyone was watching, he pulled a small telescoping mirror from his carry-on. “Set your bag down,” he told Strock. “This is going to take a minute.” He got down on his hands and knees to check the underside of his pickup, using the extended mirror and paying particular heed to the engine compartment, the transmission, the wheel assemblies. All was well. He got up from the ground, collapsed the mirror, and cupped his hand to peer through the driver-side window, studying the dash, the gear box, the ignition.

Strock, mopping his face with a handkerchief, looked over Jude’s shoulder through the window. “You always keep your spare in the passenger seat?”

Taking a dollar bill from his wallet, Jude folded it in half and slid it along the door crack on the driver’s side, all the way around. “Big trade in stolen tires down here. This is all just routine. Honest. Be done in a second.”

It was half-true. Jude would have performed this little exercise regardless, having let the truck sit so long in a public place, but he had less habitual concerns in mind as well. There was just too much he didn’t know, which meant it would pay to be a little extravigilant now that he was back in-country. If anything was going to go wrong, it would happen here.

He felt for the telltale, made of Scotch tape, that he’d placed across the gas cap cover before leaving for the States. Still there, good—he peeled it away. He checked that the index marks he’d made with clear nail polish on the hubcaps remained aligned, then inspected the ground for strange fluids or wire clippings. On the passenger side he repeated the procedure with the folded bill, moving on to do it around the hood, the whole time checking the ground.

Returning to his carry-on, he put away the telescoping mirror and withdrew a five-by-seven photograph of his engine compartment. Feeling first around the latch for trip wires, he lifted the hood and compared what was there with the photograph.

Strock said, “You are seriously creeping me out with all this.”

“It’s a funny country.” Jude wiped his brow with his sleeve. “You can make funny enemies.”

“Like who?”

“That matters?”

“What are you looking for? I mean, specifically.”

“Anything strange.” Jude leaned in to peer behind the engine block. “Sealed-up plumbing pipe or a rigged aerosol can. Smear of plastic explosive made to look like a patch job.”

“You’ve actually found stuff like that?”

Jude didn’t answer. He was staring at a spot tucked deep behind the engine, low on the firewall. He’d run through the protocol dozens if not hundreds of times, always finding nothing. It took a second to double-check, but sure enough, something was there.

Easing in closer, he saw a scrap of lined notepaper, about the size and shape of a finger, held fast with what looked like a wad of gum. There was nothing else attached, no wristwatch, no wires, so he guessed it wouldn’t detonate or catch fire if he reached down for it.

Straining to get his fingers there, he pulled gently. The slip of paper gave way easily. The gum stayed put. Jude stood up straight beside the truck and brushed some grease off the paper with his thumb.

The note consisted of five words: Hey, Jude—Don’t Be Afraid.

Thinking the handwriting might be Malvasio’s—and Strock might recognize it even after ten years—Jude folded the paper over, put it in his pocket. “No big deal,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Little joke from one of my coworkers is all.” True enough, Jude thought, possibly. He surveyed the parking lot, then looked past the rim of almendra de rio trees toward the crowded airport terminal, to see if anyone was watching.

“Some joke,” Strock said. “How come you’re not laughing?”

Jude leaned in to give the engine compartment one last good look. “You know how it is. Life with the guys.”

“Yeah. I remember it well.”

Jude slammed the hood down and pulled his keys from his pocket. His lower lip throbbed. Only then did he realize he’d been gnawing away at it like mad. He unlocked the passenger-side door, removed the spare, and threw it into the truck bed, then lifted their bags and tossed them in after the tire. “Let’s get going,” he said, climbing behind the wheel.

They headed out a long tree-lined avenue away from the airport. As Jude lodged into fourth, he glanced sidelong at Strock who stared out the window, gazing beyond a perimeter of eucalyptus trees at the U.S. Navy radar installation. Big C-130s and smaller P-3 Orions lined up along the airstrip, fueling for their patrols of the coast for drug boats and gun runners.

“They call it a forward footprint,” Jude said. “For exporting force. This sad little country is turning into a very big deal. If we go into Colombia or Venezuela to make sure the oil keeps flowing or to back a coup or whatever, this’ll be a staging ground—FOL, they call it. Forward Operating Location. You’ll have more Americans down here than in Puerto Rico, which is pretty much what it’s beginning to look like anyway.”

It reminded Jude of Eileen’s rant during the drive to her house that night. He missed her so bad it felt like an ache, and he intended to see her by day’s end and patch things up if he had to crawl all the way to La Perla and beg.

Strock murmured something, his voice a lazy growl. Jude turned to ask for it again but Strock hunched sideways, leaning into the passenger-side window. His head was bathed in sweat and lolled heavily on his arm. The cane lay loose in his grip.

He was snoring.