The Face of Death (40 page)

57

UNLIKE KIRBY, I WANTED A VEST. I UNDERSTAND WHY SHE
doesn’t like them, but I lack her predator’s edge. Kirby was born to do this, to kick in back doors and enter houses filled with tear gas and flying bullets. Kirby doesn’t have a Bonnie waiting for her. I do.

“This damn mask is going to give me the hat-hair from hell,” she observes, examining the thing.

We’re crouched against the wall that surrounds the back of the estate. It’s a privacy wall, about six feet high. We’re not scaling it in any dramatic fashion. We each have a four-foot-high stepladder.

We’d both been offered MP5 machine guns, and we’d both declined. “Stick with what you know” is an old adage of the tactical situation. I know my handgun, my sleek black Beretta, as well as I know the color of my own eyes. Kirby had wisecracked about the MP5 clashing with her outfit, but I knew her reasons were the same: Travel light with the weapon of your choosing. Hers was a handgun as well.

“Ready to kick ass, over,” Kirby subvocalizes into her throat mike.

“Roger that,” Brady replies after a moment. “Armageddon will commence in two minutes from my mark. One, two, three—mark.”

“Ooohh, synchronized watches,” Kirby whispers.

“Countdown’s commenced, Kirby,” Brady says. “You get that?”

“Yes, boss.” She looks at me and grins. “Hey, Boone. Still think I’m not dangerous?”

“Negative on that, BB.” Boone’s voice comes through, amused. BB stood for “Beach Bunny. You’re bad news in a pretty package, that’s the truth.”

Kirby checks her weapon as she continues the banter. I’m not interested in joining in. My stomach is fluttering and I’m so charged up I feel like I should be throwing off sparks.

At least your hands are dry, I think.

This has always been the case. No matter what the stakes, no matter how dangerous the scene, my hands never sweat in a gunfight, and they are always steady.

“Forty-five seconds until the nasty,” Brady says, sounding bored.

I think about Gustavo Cabrera, inside that house. I wonder if he’s clutching a weapon as he stares through his windows. Are his hands steady or shaking? What’s he thinking of?

“Thirty seconds,” Brady says.

“How are you over there?” Kirby asks me. Her voice is light, but her eyes are assessing me. Taking stock.
Asset or liability?
they ask.

I hold out a hand for her. Show her its rock-steadiness.

She nods. “Coolness.”

“Fifteen seconds to D-day.”

Kirby checks her own handgun again, humming. It takes me a moment to place the tune. “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” She catches me staring at her.

“I like the classics.” She shrugs.

“Ten seconds. Get ready.”

We position ourselves at the base of our respective ladders.

My endorphin buddies are back and they’ve brought their friends.

(Fear and euphoria, euphoria and fear)

“Five seconds. Get ready to open the gates of hell.”

“Bring it on, daddy-o,” Kirby says, full of good cheer even as her killer’s eyes blaze.

The machine-gun fire, when it starts, is incredibly loud, even at this distance.

“That’s our cue!” Kirby yells.

We clamber up the ladders, reach the top of the wall, and lift ourselves over. We turn around and go into a hanging position, like someone doing a chin-up, before dropping to the ground on the other side. No jumps and rolls in the real world; it’s too easy to twist an ankle.

The gunfire continues, and I see flashes as well, over the top of the house. I can hear the helicopter rotors and a series of loud noises that I assume to be flash-bangs going off. As I run, I hear another noise as well. It takes me a moment to place it. Return fire, from an automatic weapon.

Kirby and I race toward the back of the house at a dead run. She’s moving faster than I am by a body-length or two, unencumbered by a flak vest or my extra years.

The house is smaller than I would have expected for the land its on. Per blueprints, it’s just under 3200 square feet, all of which is laid out in a single story. There’s a back door that leads through a small hall into the kitchen. We arrive at the door. I’m breathing hard and deep. Kirby appears unruffled.

“We’re in place, Mr. Boss-man sir,” she says to Brady.

“Roger that. Cutting loose.”

“Cutting loose” means that they’re going to start chewing up the front lawn with machine-gun fire like there’s no tomorrow, followed by tossing out flash-bang grenades as they fire tear gas canisters in through the front windows.

“Time for some hat-hair,” Kirby says, giving me a wink.

We slip on the masks. They’re SWAT issue, with a wide line-of-sight and plenty of peripheral vision, but they’re still gas masks. My forehead starts to sweat right away.

“Commencing,” Brady says.

I thought it had been noisy before. That was nothing compared to the sound assault that signals Brady’s team is indeed “cutting loose.”

The sound of two fifty-caliber machine guns fills the air with thunder. Not long after that, the flash-bangs begin to roar, one after the other, not stopping. We hear the crash of shattering glass.

Kirby kicks the door open and we’re inside. I can’t smell anything but the rubber of my mask, but the house is full of smoke and vapor. Cabrera is firing away with an automatic weapon and the roar of it is immense inside the home. There’s no way he could hear anything above that.

Kirby moves forward, her gun out now. I follow, weapon ready as well. We creep toward the sound of his gunfire. The flash-bangs continue to explode. We move through the kitchen and reach the doorway that leads to the living room and the front of the house. We each take a side of the doorway and peer around.

Will you look at that? I think. Pure carnage.

Cabrera is outlined in light. He’s crouched and firing up at an angle, toward the chopper, I know. His back is to us and his body shakes every now and then when he fires his weapon—an M16, I now see. He’s surrounded by broken glass from the windows.

The plan at this point had been unelegant but simple. As Kirby had put it: “Try and tackle that sucker.”

I look at Kirby, and she looks back at me. I see her eyes squint in a smile and I nod.

We don’t have much time. It won’t take long for Cabrera to wonder why Brady’s team are such bad shots. He’ll smell a trap.

Kirby bolts out, running toward Cabrera. I breathe deep, once, inside my mask, and follow.

Cabrera’s instincts kick in and he whips around with the M16, eyes wide, mouth grim. Kirby doesn’t slow, moving into him rather than away, forcing the weapon up as it discharges, tracing bulletholes in the ceiling. I have my gun up and am moving back and forth, looking for a shot as the two of them struggle with each other.

“Goddammit, Kirby,”
I shout,
“get out of my line of fire!”

My voice is muffled by the mask, drowned out by all the man-made thunder.

Kirby’s other hand brings up her gun. Cabrera abandons the M16 and chops one hand down on her wrist, while the other goes for her throat. She blocks the throat blow, but loses her weapon. Cabrera’s eyes are red-rimmed by the tear gas, and he’s coughing, but he continues to fight.

“Fuck,” I mutter, then “Fuck!” I shout, bobbing and weaving, my heart pounding, my head pounding, my hands still dry.

Kirby goes for his balls with a swift kick. He turns his leg in, taking it on the thigh, and manages to slam the butt of his palm into her cheek. She stumbles backward as her face whips to the side.

Time freezes.

Finally!

The stumble has given me a clear shot, so I shoot him in the shoulder.

He grunts and drops to a knee. Kirby moves in and slams him in the face with her fist once, twice, three times, and then she’s behind him as he struggles to stay on his feet, and she’s got him in a choke hold.

He scrabbles at her arms. It’s too late. His eyes roll up in his head. She lets go, pushing him forward so that he falls onto his stomach. She whips out a set of zip-ties and secures his wrists.

And just like that, it’s over.

“Ceasefire, boys,” Kirby says, the mask giving her voice an echoey sound. “He’s down.”

My hands begin to sweat.

58

GUSTAVO CABRERA IS SITTING ON A CHAIR, GAZING AT US. HIS
shoulder has been tended to. His hands are secured in his lap now, rather than behind him. He should be more worried. Instead, he looks like a man at peace. His eyes have been treated for the gas and they’re staring at Alan. Assessing.

Alan takes this amiably. Cool as a cucumber, but it’s deceptive, because when it comes to interrogations, Alan is a shark. All lion, hold the lamb. He cocks his head, assessing Cabrera right back. Waiting.

“I will confess,” Cabrera says. “I will tell you everything. I will gratefully tell you where the hostages can be found.”

His voice is soft, lyrical, and vaguely reverent.

Alan taps a finger to his lips, thinking. He stands in a sudden motion. He leans forward and points a huge finger at Cabrera. When he speaks, his voice is large and loud and accusative.

“Mr. Cabrera, we know you’re not the man we’re after!”

The happiness in Cabrera’s eyes is replaced with alarm. His mouth opens in surprise, closes, opens again. It takes him a moment to get himself under control. His lips compress into a determined line. His eyes are sad. Still peaceful, though.

“I am sorry. I do not know what you mean.”

Alan barks out a laugh. It sounds vaguely insane and definitely menacing. Scary. I’d be worried if I didn’t know it was all an act. He sits back down as suddenly as he’d stood and hunches forward. Relaxed now, just two guys having a talk. He smiles and wags a finger at Cabrera in a “you old dog” kind of way. A “don’t kid a kidder” kind of way. “Now, sir. I have a witness. We know it’s not you. There’s no question about this. The only question is: Why are you really working with this man?” Alan’s voice is low and smooth, steady as syrup going onto pancakes. Then: “Hey! I’m talking to you!” Loud again, a shout.

Cabrera jumps. Looks away. Alan’s seesaw between extremes is unsettling him. He’s developed a twitch in his cheek.

“He’s been a victim of torture,” Alan had told me prior to beginning Cabrera’s interview. “Torture is basically about reward and punishment and establishment of intimacy. The torturer will scream at you and call you hateful things and burn you with cigarettes, then he’ll personally apply the ointment to the burns and become all solicitous and soothing. The victim ends up wanting one thing more than anything else.”

“The guy with the ointment and the nice voice.”

“Right. We’re not going to burn Cabrera with cigarettes, but moving back and forth between rage and kindness should be enough to rattle him pretty good.”

Roger that, I think. Cabrera was starting to sweat.

“Mr. Cabrera. We know you were supposed to die here. What if I were to tell you that we’d be willing to fake your death? To make the rest of the world think you were shot while we were attempting to apprehend you?” Alan is continuing with his normal voice now. He’s established dominance and instilled fear.

Cabrera is looking back at him, a hopeful, speculative, complicated look.

“If you help us,” Alan continues, “we’ll carry you out of here in a body bag.” He leans back. “If you don’t cooperate, and let us help you, then I’ll march you out of here in front of the cameras, and he’ll know that you’re still alive.”

No reply. But I can see the conflict in him.

He stares at Alan for a moment, searching. He drops his gaze to the floor between us. His whole body slumps. The twitch in his cheek disappears.

“I don’t care about myself. Can you understand that?”

His voice is humble, calm. It’s difficult to reconcile the gentleness in front of me with the hardness I saw as he burst into the FBI lobby, guns blazing. Which one is his true face?

Both, perhaps.

“I understand the concept,” Alan says. “I don’t understand it as it applies to you. Enlighten me.”

Another searching look. Longer, this time.

“I am going to die, eventually. This is my fault, no one else’s. A weakness for women, an unwillingness to be safe.” A shrug. “I get what I deserve with the HIV. But I tell myself, at times, perhaps it was not entirely my own fault. I was…harmed when I was a young boy.”

“Harmed how, sir?”

“For a brief and very terrible time, I became the property of evil men. They…” He averts his gaze. “They had their way with me. When I was eight. These men, they had kidnapped me, while I was getting water for the home. They took me and in the first day, they raped me and they beat me. They whipped my feet until the blood ran like little rivers.”

His voice is slight now, almost dreamy.

“They made a demand, when they beat me. Words to say. ‘You are the God. I thank you the God.’ The harder we wept, the more they beat us. Never anywhere else but on the feet.

“I was taken with other children, both boys and girls, to Mexico City. It was a long journey, and we were kept quiet with threats.” His gaze comes back to me, and it looks like it should bleed. “I prayed, sometimes, for death. I hurt, not just in my body.” He taps his head. “In my mind.” Taps his chest. “In my heart.”

“I understand,” Alan tells him.

“Perhaps. Perhaps you do. But this was a special hell.” He continues. “In Mexico City we heard the guards speaking at times, and from their words we came to understand that we would go to America in the coming months. That our training would be complete and that we would be sold to bad men for great sums of money.”

The trafficking ring, I think. And the circle closes.

“I was in a deep place with no light. I had been raised very religious, you understand. To believe in God, in Jesus Christ, in the Mother Mary. But to my eyes, I had prayed to them each, with all my might, and still the men came to hurt me.” He winces. “I didn’t understand then. The fullness of God’s plan. In that dark place, when my despair was greatest, God was going to send me an angel.”

He smiles as he says these words, and a kind of light fills his eyes. His voice finds a rhythm, like a wave that’s always coming but never reaches the shore.

“He was special, the boy. He had to be. He was younger than me, smaller than me, but somehow, he did not lose his soul.” His gaze on me is intent. “Let me help you understand the significance of that. The boy was only six years old, and he was beautiful. So beautiful that the men liked using him best of all. Every day, sometimes twice a day. And he angered them as well.
Because he would not cry.
They wanted his tears, and he refused them. They would beat him to make him weep.” He shakes his head, sad. “Of course, he always wept, eventually. But still…he did not lose his soul. Only an angel could have resisted them in that most important way.”

Gustavo closes his eyes, opens them.

“I was not an angel. I was losing my soul, falling deeper and deeper into despair. Turning away from the face of God. In my despair I thought about killing myself. I think he sensed it. He started coming over to me at night, whispering to me in the dark while his hands touched my face. My beautiful white angel.

“‘God will save you,’ he told me. ‘You must believe in him. You must continue to have faith.’

“He was only six, or perhaps seven, but he spoke with older words and those words rescued me. I came to know his story, that he had been called by God when he was only four years old, that he had resolved to enter the seminary at the earliest possible age, to devote his life to the Holy Trinity. Then one night, the men came, and stole him from his family.

“‘Even so,’ he would say to me, ‘you cannot lose faith. We are being tested by God.’ He would smile at me, and it was a smile of such pureness, of such bliss and belief, that it would pull me away from the despair that wished to drown me.”

Cabrera’s eyes are closed in reverential remembrance.

“He did this for a year. He suffered every day, we all did. At night, he spoke to us all and made us pray and kept us from wanting death more than life.” Cabrera pauses, looking off. “One day, that fateful day, he saved my body as well as my soul.

“It was only the two of us. We were being transported by a guard to the home of a wealthy man, a man for whom just one boy was not enough. I was shaking in fear, but the boy, the angel, as always, remained calm. He touched my hand, he smiled at me, he prayed, but as we drove on, he became concerned when he saw that his prayers were not reaching my heart. I was afraid this time in spite of his words. My fear only grew as we approached, until I was trembling uncontrollably. We arrived at the house, and without warning, he reached over and took my face in his hands. He kissed my forehead, and he told me to be ready.

“‘Be not afraid, but trust in God,’ he said.

“We left the car and the guard fell in behind us. The boy turned without warning and he punched the guard in the groin. The guards were used to our obedience, and so this one was caught by surprise. He doubled over in pain and screamed in rage.

“‘Run!’ the boy told me.

“I stood there, trembling. Unsure. Ever the victim.

“‘Run!’ he said again, only this time it was a roar, the voice of an angel, and he fell upon the guard, biting and kicking.

“His words reached me.

“I ran.”

Cabrera rubs his forearm with one hand. I can see him there in the moment, but I can see it mixing with the present as well. The fear of indecision, the joy of making an escape from hell. The guilt of taking what the boy had offered, and of leaving him behind.

“I do not need to tell you the story of every moment, month, or year after that. I did escape, from that hell on earth. I came home to my family. I lived for many years after that as a troubled boy, and later as a troubled man. I was not a saint, I was often a sinner, but—and this is the most important thing of all—I had lived. I had not committed suicide.
I had not damned my immortal soul.
Do you understand? He had saved me from the worst fate of all. Because of what he did for me, I will not be barred from heaven.”

I do not share Cabrera’s beliefs. But I can feel the strength of his faith, the succor it provides him, and it moves me.

“I came to America,” he continues. “I believed in God, but I was troubled, always troubled. I’m ashamed to say that I did drugs at times. That I saw prostitutes. I contracted the virus.” He shakes his head. “Once again, the despair. Once again, the idea that death might be better than life. It was then, at that moment, that I realized: The virus was a message from God. He had sent me an angel, once, and that angel had saved me. I should have been thankful. Instead, I had wasted many years embroiled in my own sorrows and rage.

“I listened to God’s warning. I changed my ways, became a celibate. Grew closer to God. And then, one day eleven years ago, my angel returned.”

Cabrera’s eyes now grow mournful.

“Still an angel, but no longer one of light. He was a dark angel. An angel made for the purpose of vengeance.”

The tattoo, I think.

“He told me that he had gone through terrible, terrible things as a result of helping me escape. I cannot tell you the things he told me. They are too evil. He told me that at times, for moments only, he would doubt God’s love. But then he would remember me, and he would pray, and he was certain again. God was testing him. God would lead him from that place.” Cabrera grimaces. “One day, God did. One day, all of the boy’s faith, all of his prayers, his sacrifice for me, all these things were rewarded. He and the other children, in America now, were rescued by the police, by your FBI.

“He described it as a glorious moment. It was, to him, as though God had kissed him. His faith and his suffering had been justified.”

Cabrera goes silent now. A long silence. I have a very bad feeling building inside of me. Something that tells me I know what’s coming.

“One night, he said, God returned them to hell. Men came to where they were sleeping, and murdered the police that guarded them. Men came and took them away and returned them to slavery. Terrible,” Cabrera whispers. “Can you imagine? To be safe, and then to be snatched away from hope again? And for him, it was the worst of all. They knew that he had been helping, that he had told the police the name of a guard. They didn’t kill him, but they punished him in ways that made his prior existence in hell seem like heaven.”

I knew it already, someplace inside me, but now it is confirmed.

I move so I’m standing next to Alan. “The boy’s name was Juan, wasn’t it?” I ask Cabrera.

He nods. “Yes. An angel named Juan.”

I don’t know if his picture of Juan as a young saint is the truth, or the overidealized memories of a once terrified and abused child who found a very good friend when he needed one most. What I do know is that this is a story I’ve heard before. It’s a story where no one wins, not even us.

Killers are killers, and what they do is unforgivable, but there’s a certain tragedy in the ones that were made. You see it in their rage. Their actions are less about joy and more about screaming. Screaming at the father who abused them, the mother who beat them, the brother who burned them with cigarettes. They begin with helplessness and end with death. You capture them and put them away because it must be done, but there’s no savage satisfaction to it.

“Please go on,” Alan says. His voice is gentle now.

“He told me that he had come to realize God had another plan for him. That he had sinned in thinking himself saintly, in comparing his sufferings to those of Christ. His duty, he now knew, was not to heal, but to avenge.” Cabrera shifts in his chair, uneasy. “His eyes were terrible to see when he spoke these words. Such rage and horror. They did not look like the eyes of someone touched by God. But who was I to say?” He sighs. “He had escaped from his captors. He told me about returning in later nights to visit blood and vengeance on the men who had tortured him. It’s how he came to understand that it had been two men, an FBI agent and a policeman, who had betrayed him and the other children. These men, he told me, were the most evil of all, the men wearing masks, hiding behind symbols.

“He had a plan, a long design, and he asked me to help. He couldn’t be captured once everything had been done, because God had revealed to him that his work extended beyond vengeance for just his own suffering. He needed me to become him, in
your
eyes. I agreed.”