Do They Know I'm Running

efforts in this farce a matter of public record. Let the Mexicans claim victory. Let them raise the specter of terrorists at our door, without us or them having to prove much. The feigned threat served the purpose of truth-or what the geniuses in D.C. wanted known as truth. Besides, Lattimore knew he’d bargained on much the same indifference to what was real, what was pumped-up nonsense. There were no innocents in the room.

Regardless, it would matter only to him that a woman named Fatima Hassan with a teenage daughter named Shatha, both using forged papers and assumed names, had finally been located and interviewed at the refugee camp at Al Tanf. The pseudonyms accounted for the delay in proper identification. Fatima confirmed she was the widow of Salah Hassan, who had disappeared in the custody of the Mukhabarat when her daughter was a child. Her husband was charged with money laundering and never emerged from prison. She further confirmed, after evidence was provided, that she worked at a Baghdad brothel after her husband’s arrest, did so for some years, and that her forged identity papers had been provided by the criminal syndicate that ran the brothel and provided protection for her and the other women working there.

Asked if she knew of a Samir Khalid Sadiq, she conceded that she did; like her, he was part of the Palestinian community in Iraq. Pressed on the matter, she admitted as well that he had been a client, a particularly loyal one- obsessive, perhaps, was a better word, but his generosity not just to her but to her daughter had convinced her to look past his infatuation. She said she knew he had been a soldier during the war with Iran, was fluent in both English and Spanish, and worked for a local TV station translating news wire items or so he had always told her. After the U.S. invasion, he made a promise to help her emigrate to America. With the war’s dislocations, however, she lost touch with him.

When asked if she was aware that this same Samir Khalid Sadiq had been the informant who had identified her husband to the Mukhabarat, she fell silent for several minutes. When she finally spoke, she said simply, “I forgave him long ago, just as he forgave me.” She declined to say more.

“We have reliable information,” Orozco announced, turning toward the cameras with that same feline smile, “that the Arab was in contact with local pandilleros.” Gang members. “This was how he expected to get across, with their assistance. And as I have said, one of them died here with him. We are following up on this and hope to have more arrests in due time.”

A predictable move, Lattimore thought, keep the thing open-ended, so you could draw it out until memories faded, the next god-awful whatever stole the headlines. If necessary, nail a few tattooed bozos, drag them past the cameras and call it a day.

He wondered what had become of Happy, what had become of his cousin, wondered if he would ever know or if, in the final analysis, it mattered. He turned away from Orozco and the wall of lights, murmured a path through the other Americans and headed for the door, hoping the oppressive closeness of the scene wouldn’t follow him outside as he tried to think of how he might get Godo’s body shipped back to his aunt.

COME NIGHTFALL THEY WERE STILL CLIMBING. LUPE’S BREATHING HAD become more labored, her skin felt cool to the touch. Even with his arm around her she stumbled and staggered and nearly fell when the path veered sharply or a tree root rose up through the dusty bed of bullet-shaped acorns and dry pine needles. He tried not to use the flashlight too often. Once, though, as they’d come upon what he’d thought was a dung pile, a sudden stab of light had caused the thing to stir, then slither off-a sidewinder, coiled to strike. He’d once heard that a pregnant woman causes snakes to sleep as you pass and he wondered if he should take this as a sign. Another time, hearing the low snarling growl of a mountain lion, he’d fired the pistol into the tree canopy, scattering birds and scaring the animal off into the underbrush.

They couldn’t stay lucky all night, he thought, nor risk so much noise. His skin tingled with imagined bugs, against which he just kept walking, arm locked tight around Lupe’s waist, their hips pressed flush, moving along the narrow twisting hillside trail like a single clumsy four-legged beast. Every ten steps or so, he switched on the flashlight, got his bearings along the path, turned it off.

The path had led them across one rise after the other, sometimes a leisurely upward grade, other times as steep as a ladder, descending only briefly before resuming uphill, to the point he would have given anything to feel the ground dropping off into a reliable, continuous downgrade. His leg muscles burned, the small of his back was a tight ball of pain. He could only imagine what misery Lupe was enduring in silence.

They’d brought no water. They’d had no time, they hadn’t known Melchior would drive them out to the foothills and leave them to run or die. Roque wondered if the man was still alive, if his act, the feigned robbery, had fooled the others. He had no such doubts about Happy. He’d heard the gunshots as he and Lupe climbed beneath the tree canopy deeper into the hills. There’s no one left but me and Tia Lucha, he thought. Me and Tia and now this one, Lupe.

They came to another rock face, rising like a wall from the truncated path. Flipping on the flashlight briefly, he saw exposed roots and small rock ledges that might provide a fingerhold here, a foothold there. He would have to feel for them in the dark. The bluff extended indefinitely in each direction, there would be no getting around it that he could see. It rose only twenty feet or so, hardly an impossible climb.

Switching off the light he turned to Lupe.-What do you think?

His eyes readjusted to the dark as he waited for her reply. He could just make out the lines of her face. Though quick, her breath had settled into a rhythm and her left arm hung limp, the shoulder of her shirt crusted with blood.-I can try. She licked her parched lips.

– You can hold on to my belt, watch where I put my hands and feet.

She flexed her left hand, testing its strength, wincing.-Let’s hurry.

On again briefly with the flashlight-he mapped out his strategy in his mind’s eye-then off. He reached for the highest root he could without jumping, dug into a crevice in the rock with his toe, waited for Lupe to grab his belt, then hoisted himself up. Catching his balance, he felt for the next exposed root, got his hand around it, found a second foothold and pulled himself up again, this time feeling Lupe’s weight until she scrambled for her own hold below him.

– You’re okay?

– I’m fine, yes. The words a hiss of air against her teeth.-Quick. Please.

He patted and pulled his way upward, until finally his hand reached the top of the bluff. He searched the ledge blindly, hoping for another root to grab hold of, only to encounter a scaly scuttling thing. Before he could pull back his hand the poisonous sting flared down into his arm like a streak of molten wire. He shouted in pain then said, “?Bajo! ?Bajo!”

They tumbled to the bottom, her first, him on top, tangling up as they tried to scramble to their feet. His hand burned, he shook it as he reached for the flashlight, flipped it on. The wounds were small but deep, two of them, vaguely parallel. A spider not a scorpion, he thought, probably a tarantula. It would be painful, not dangerous but he couldn’t imagine trying the climb again-he doubted his grip would hold, especially with Lupe’s added weight, and for all he knew there was a nest of them up there, not just one.

– Let’s wait here a moment while I think things through. He cradled his bad hand, chewing his lip.-Maybe there’s another way. But he knew there wasn’t. They could try their luck, slash through the trees, see if somehow, somewhere, they stumbled upon another path down the mountainside. But if such a path existed why would this one be here-who forged dead ends up the sides of mountains?

He tried the flashlight again, looked left, looked right, saw only the dense forest and the mountain wall, the twenty-foot bluff that might as well be a mile high. His hand felt afire, his whole arm had turned weak but the pain was only half of it. He remembered his Day of the Dead benedictions with Tia Lucha, her steadfast conviction that her sister, his mother, lay just beyond a veil of incomprehension-someday they would all gather together again, laugh, sing, weep. When young, he had believed, not so much now. But maybe that wasn’t the point. Could there possibly be anything waiting beyond death that would be so much worse than this?

He heard a rustling off to his left. Another mountain lion, he thought, or the same one, it had been tracking them all along. That’s how it will happen, he thought, a predator smelling the blood. He moved the flashlight to his left hand, his good hand, then drawing Melchior’s pistol from his belt with his swollen aching right. He didn’t know how many bullets were left.

To hell with being seen, he thought, turning the flashlight on and pointing it at the noise, discovering not a mountain lion but a small raccoonlike face protruding from the broad-leafed greenery-immense and probing eyes, a whitish snout, a long curling tail like a monkey’s. A coatimundi. He’d never seen one except on nature shows. They