side of the head as he tried to barrel out of the room. The blow contained more than seventeen months ’ worth of frustration, agony, and fury, and the man went sideways, his skull yielding to the shotgun ’ s stock like an overripe melon, then collapsed to the ground and didn ’ t move again. The man ’ s breathing became a gurgle, weak and irregular, and then grew inaudible. Paul moved jerkily across the room. It seemed his legs would hardly function, and his knees wouldn ’ t bend. He looked into his son ’ s eyes in wonder at the brokenness he saw there. He reached out and felt his boy ’ s shoulders, thin but strong under his hands. He was alive. Paul grabbed his son in an embrace.
“Dad,” the boy said, the word muffled in Paul ’ s chest. “They stole my bike, Daddy…”
“Jamie, shh,” Paul said, then disengaged and spun toward the door as he heard someone enter.
Get up! Behr commanded himself. Get the fuck up, Frank. He could squat four hundred pounds easy, and though the dog weighed a third of that, having the thing swinging from his arm changed the equation. He managed to roll to a knee and drove the animal against the wall. Thin wood paneling buckled and snapped free, but the dog didn ’ t disengage. Behr tried to drop his weight on the dog, to crush it, but the thing writhed and squirmed and endured no damage. Behr ’ s feet were beneath him now, and moving. Improbably the image of a blocking sled flashed in his mind from his high school football days. He continued on a few steps and the struggling pair crashed through a temporary bar setup. Broken bottles rained down around them, and Behr felt his hip grinding in broken glass. He found a bottleneck with his loose hand and drove it into the underbelly of the dog. The glass just crumbled and could not penetrate the dog ’ s thick hide. Finally the Presa let go of his arm, but there was no relief. It lunged for his throat. Behr tucked his chin. The dog ’ s skull slammed into his jaw, and he was almost knocked out by the blow. The dog sunk its teeth into Behr ’ s upper chest and hung on. Behr threw himself down on the animal again, beginning to lose hope. They landed among the broken glassware once more, and also on a cutting board and a half dozen limes. And a paring knife.
The shotgun was leaning against the wall where Paul had rested it, and it may as well have been in the car for all the good it would do him, for coming at him quickly, with smooth, assured steps, was a sinewy man with blood speckled all over his shirt and face and smeared on his pants. That was all Paul had time to register as he was grabbed around both arms and had his feet swept out from under him. He went down hard on his shoulder and ribs, the air crushed out of him. A tunnel of blackness swallowed him for a moment and then opened back up into a searing flash of white light.
Paul felt the man atop him, lifting, driving sharp knees into his midsection. Paul struggled and rolled from side to side, but found his every movement checked by the man ’ s weight. The man rose up, the violence on his face making it piglike, and drove a punch down at Paul ’ s chin. A slight turn of his head at the last moment was all that saved Paul from having his jaw crushed. The punch still landed, though, causing Paul ’ s head to bounce off the floor and his vision to swim. Paul felt his breath choked off as the man jammed a forearm across his windpipe. Paul was utterly unable to move, as if a vise secured him to the floor. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jamie kicking his attacker in the side, but with no effect.
“Run, Jamie,” Paul said, or hoped he had managed to say aloud as he felt his strength slide away and his vision dim once again. He recognized unconsciousness and death coming at him from the near distance. He bucked his hips and clawed out in desperation, but to no avail. Then there was a thud, repeated, then repeated again. Paul felt it more than heard it, the basslike vibration coming through the man who was killing him and into his own body. The man relaxed over Paul, his body dead weight now, lurching forward and going slack.
Paul took in a huge gout of air and then, with a great effort, pushed the man off him and looked up to find Victor standing there, covered in blood.
“Victor?” Victor held the shotgun in bleeding hands and appeared to be missing a few fingers.
“ Yo lo necesito, ” Victor said through broken teeth, and held up the shotgun.
Paul nodded, took Jamie by the arm, and exited the room. Victor, standing above the fallen man, swung the door shut.
Paul and Jamie came upon Behr, bleeding and big-eyed, in the narrow hallway.
“My god,” Behr said at the sight of the boy he ’ d stared at a thousand times in photos. “Is he…?”
“We ’ re gonna go, Jamie,” Paul said. “Can you?”
“Yeah,” the boy answered.
“Can you, Frank?”
“Follow me,” Behr said, gathering himself and raising his handgun. They followed him down the hall and out through the carnage of the house. Furniture was turned over and broken in the main area. The smell of gunpowder and the thick copper stink of blood were in the air. There were bodies. Paul saw two dead dogs sprawled on opposite sides of the room. They encountered one last guard, who was in the process of stealing something from a lockbox. He might have been the night gate guard, though neither Behr nor Paul could be sure, having only seen him through binoculars. Behr leveled his handgun. The man looked up and then ran out through a back door at the sight of them.
The sound of one, then another, shotgun blast reached them from inside as they made the car. Behr looked to Paul and gripped his gun.
“Victor,” Paul said.
“Victor?”
Jamie slid into the back and Behr lunged into the passenger seat. Paul started the car and began to drive. He expected the crack of a bullet from some unseen guard to tear his head away at any moment.
“Get down,” he said to Jamie, who did, lying across the floor in the back. Behr slumped lower, too, kicking off a shoe and peeling off a sock, which he pressed against one of his wounds. Paul rooster-tailed the car out of the gate, which hung open and still abandoned. No shot came. Paul fought to control his breathing, his sides heaving for oxygen, overloaded with adrenaline. He spit up in his mouth and let it go out the window, not taking his foot off the accelerator. Tears slicked his face.
“Jamie, get up now. I need to see you.”
His boy, impossibly, appeared in the rearview mirror. Paul thought for a moment that he himself had been shot back in the house and he was dying, and this was his death-moment fantasy image. But the moment went on and on. Paul got control of the car. Jamie was really there. Paul flashed on Carol, waiting at home for him, for them, to return. In his mind burned an image, of her face exploding with light, a light he could barely remember, in the instant when she saw her son again. Paul reached back with a hand and Jamie took it.
The dirt road gave way to gravel, and finally they were on asphalt again. They merged onto the main route, joining other cars and large trucks heading north. Mexican wind blew in the open windows. A cordon of federales ’ cars passed them going southbound with lights and sirens rending the night. Paul glimpsed Jamie in the backseat, staring out the window, incomprehension and barrenness on his young man ’ s face. They used dirty T-shirts and what was left at the bottom of the water bottles to clean themselves up. Behr wrapped a shirt around his tattered forearm. They kept driving, looking out every window and then at one another. It wouldn ’ t be long now. They’d be at the border soon.
