“Where are you?” she yelled, and coughed at the effort. The river tried to invade her mouth again, and she swam harder to stay above the surface. “Señor!”

  “Aquí” A weak whisper, so close she could almost touch it.

  She’d found him. He had a broken arm, but he was hanging onto the little boy in the red coat. She dragged them both laboriously toward the bank until the man, taller than she, got his feet under him and began to wade in tine slippery mud.

  Something groaned high above them. As her own feet finally touched the ground and lifted her shoulders out of the water, the child in her arms, she looked up and saw the dim shadow of something falling. The bridge was collapsing around them.

  El Puente Negro was determined to have her.

  Even the FBI agents forgot about the division between suspect and police, and ignored Ana’s presence as she ran with them past parked cars toward the still burning bridge. She held Pete’s hand in hers and wouldn’t let go, though his long legs forced her to run fast to keep up; her house shoes were unequal to the demands of the street and then the gravel as they arrived at the road leading toward the railroad tracks. The female FBI agent was first to the fence; she yanked on it and nearly fell as it slid aside, neat as a curtain on a line. Her partner ducked through, taking the long hill down toward the river at a run.

  Ana understood immediately. Victims, or survivors, would be down there, not up here.

  The bridge was coming down, a hail of severed girders and broken ties. The whole center section dropped free with a huge tearing crash, sending water up toward the sky, throwing mist on her face as she slid down the steep hillside, her nightgown catching and tearing on rock, her skin burning. She made it to the bottom and realized that Pete was no longer with her. She didn’t have time to look for him; she spotted someone struggling in the current and without any hesitation dove into the icy water.

  The water was so cold it felt like a bum, and she immediately gasped for breath and got a mouthful of what tasted like oil. She spat it out and forced her sluggish muscles to work. The woman she’d seen vanished under the water, and Ana dove, her hands blindly reaching for anything she could grab.

  Nothing. She came up for a gagging breath and dove again, terrified that she’d already lost the woman, terrified that she would never come up herself.

  Her nightgown hooked on something sharp below the surface of the water.

  She was caught. She twisted and tugged, her skin numb from the cold, felt the current drag at her, gave the fabric one frenzied jerk, and drifted free.

  Her fingers brushed something else.

  A cold, drifting hand.

  She grabbed hold.

  Esmeralda dove, pushed off from the mud, and arrowed for the safety of the bank, pulling the boy with her; something slammed into the water where they’d been and knocked her aside like a toy in a bathtub; she lost her grip on the red coat and the boy tumbled away, lost in the current, lost.

  She came up with a raw scream and struck after him. Her arms and legs were aching with cold and weariness, but she would not give up. Could not.

  Jaime, she thought. Ayude me. Please, God help me save at least one.

  She flailed into the dark, felt something cloth-slick and pulled. It slid out of her cold fingers. She lunged after it as it sank, found the child’s arm, pulled him up like a rag doll. The current sucked at them both. They had been carried far from shore and now they were in the treacherous middle of the river, where the bottom dropped deep and it was impossible to wade against the current. They were being swept downstream.

  God give me strength. God give me strength.

  Agent Saletti was on her radio, shouting rapid-fire information as her partner stripped, off his coat and shoes and dove into the rolling water. Another girder fell, this one from the other side; loose ties rained like thrown bricks, any of them heavy enough to smash a man’s head like a melon. Pete scanned the water for bodies and located one, floating facedown; it was barely visible against the darkness, wouldn’t have been visible at all except for the lingering orange fire on the ravaged bridge. He dove and was angrily shoved aside by the current; he stroked hard to where he remembered the body had been. How much time, if the man was even alive? Something hit the water with a huge splash, either a girder or a railroad tie, and his skin crawled with the nearness of the hit. No time to think of that. Swim.

  The taste of the river was familiar. He remembered nights like this, cold water, futile dives into the water for missing children. God, how often—

  His fingers touched the waterlogged bulk of a sweater. He wrapped an arm across the man’s chest, got his face out of the water, and began to swim back for the bank. He couldn’t tell if he was towing a corpse, but he knew he had only minutes before the chill sapped his strength and took them both. There were floodgates downstream where the bodies ended up, smashed like toys between driftwood and iron grilles.

  He couldn’t see Ana anywhere. He swam for the only thing he could guide by, the FBI agent with her radio, standing on the riverbank.

  He made it just as Ana heaved herself out of the water, towing a dark-haired woman.

  The male FBI agent didn’t come back.

  The world narrowed to her will and the river. Esmeralda no longer thought of the child whose head she held above water; he was part of her now, and they would live or die together. She would not give him up.

  They were far from the bridge, so far it was a glimmer of fire and a suggestion of twisted black metal, and the water roared in her ears like a crowd as it pushed her farther from shore. She tried to swim, tried with every muscle, but she was shaking with cold and exhausted. She floated, face straining to the sky, holding the boy close, and let the river take them.

  “Hold on!” yelled a voice in English. She blinked foul water from her eyes and looked behind her, saw a pallid Anglo man in a white shirt and tie being swept toward them. No, he was swimming toward them. He slowed, treading water, and grabbed hold of her. His skin was icy, but hers was numb. “Hold on, I’ve got you!”

  He began to swim for all of them, and she thought how strange it was to be saved by a man as white as the one who’d put her in the water, how very strange life was, and she knew Jaime was smiling at the joke, too.

  They made the far side of the river—the Mexican side. They lay gasping on the bank, chilled beyond thought, but the thought of the little boy spurred Esmeralda to move. She stripped the boy’s soggy red coat away and saw that his eyes were closed. When she moved him, muddy water flowed from his nose.

  She screamed and rolled him onto his back and pumped his lungs with her hands. When she was sure the water was out, she began breathing into his mouth, fumbling at it because she had never tried before. The Anglo man moved her aside and checked for a pulse at the boy’s neck, shook his head, and compressed the boy’s chest, over and over, signaling for her to breathe.

  She almost missed the boy’s slight movement, out of rhythm with her efforts; she was very close to collapse, her vision gone gray from strain. The man looked ashen as she tugged on his arm and pointed down at the boy’s face.

  The boy was breathing. The man checked the side of the boy’s neck and said something in English that sounded like a prayer.

  Esmeralda put her arms around the Anglo man and said, “Thank you.”

  He seemed surprised. He was awkward at it, but his arms went around her and he hugged her in return, and they rocked together for a precious eternity over the body of the boy they’d saved together.

  Chapter 24

  November 25, 1996

  Peter Ross

  The man Pete had pulled out of the water was still alive, but he had broken bones and a fractured skull, and his back was burned away. He was wearing what looked like paramilitary gear, and there were no tags in his clothes, no identification on his body. The female FBI agent, who Pete finally realized was named Saletti, rolled up his ski mask to reveal a slack-jawed Anglo face that Pete dimly remembered seeing at the temporary bombing investigation headquarters on base.

  “Know him?” she asked. He shook his head and coughed, bringing up muddy water. They were all going to have pneumonia. “I think his name is Kimball, but I’m not sure. One thing’s for sure, he doesn’t work for Rámon Cruz.”

  Ana was shivering with cold; Agent Saletti took her own coat and wrapped it around both Ana and the victim she’d saved, a frightened Mexican woman who shook her head in answer to any questions. Even now she was afraid of la migra. There was no way to know how many had been on the bridge.

  Down the bank, Pete found a man with a broken arm and two more women who’d somehow fought their way to shore; one of them was crying and asking for her husband. Pete looked out on the river and knew that if the man was out there, he was dead; there was no way he could go into the water and come out again. Agent Saletti couldn’t swim.

  “Did you find Garman?’ she asked; she’d followed him down the bank. “My partner?”

  “No.” He had to stop and cough again, more water mixed with phlegm. God, he was cold. There were sirens above. Ambulances coming. He couldn’t face the idea of being another news story.

  Ryan. He’d almost forgotten. He turned back to Saletti, who was looking out at the river with dawning terror on her face.

  “Look, he could be on the other side. Get back up to the top of the hill, tell them we’ve got survivors down here. And don’t tell anybody I was here.”

  “What? I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can. If the newspapers get hold of me, they won’t leave a chewed rag behind. Tell your superiors I’ll talk to them tomorrow, but I’ve got to find Ryan right now.”

  “Joe Ryan? DEA?” Her face lit up with understanding. “You guys weren’t supposed to be here.”

  “Something like that. Get up the hill. I’ll wait until you come back.”

  Truth was, he couldn’t have made it up the hill himself at the moment. Too cold, too tired. He sank down on his haunches and looked up at the twisted wreckage of the bridge as she started climbing. Since a train didn’t come hurtling off it, he assumed they’d caught it in time.

  I’m going to be answering questions for the rest of my natural life, he thought. But at least he had a few more years to do it in.

  Ana was where he’d left her, shivering in Saletti’s coat, trying to calm the mojada sitting with her. She turned blindly toward him as he sank next to her, opened the coat to let him have a taste of heat. She smelled like the rotting river; they all did.

  “Like your new perfume,” he mumbled. She laughed, but the laughter became tears.

  “Why? Why do this?” she choked out. He smoothed her short, dark hair.

  “Because they wanted to send a message. Hurt us, we hurt you. Death for death. I guess the only merciful thing is they didn’t kill as many.” He pulled back to look at her. He could do it now without any conflicting anger, bitterness, or hurt. Whatever they’d done to each other, it was past. “It’s us on a larger scale, Ana.”

  She coughed, deep, racking coughs that spilled water out to the dirt, and he held her head until it passed.

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped “I knew how you felt about abortion. I’m sorry I had one.”

  And there it was, out between them, after so many years of misdirection and misplaced anger. He remembered her fragile, defiant harshness the day she’d told him. I know It’s a sin, but I’m not going to have the baby. You want to leave, you leave, I’m not carrying around a reminder of you.

  It had been the last thing between them, the very last. He’d hated her so much for that.

  And now he knew how to forgive.

  “It’s past,” he said, and held her close against the chill. “Please don’t cry.”

  But she did, anyway. She cried until the paramedics, arrived and wrapped her in blankets and hot packs and pulled her up the hill to the waiting ambulance. Pete watched them carry up the others, refusing treatment except for a warm, dry blanket and hot packs. Agent Saletti picked her way down the hill to put a hand on his shoulder.

  “My partner’s alive,” she said. “The Mexican police found him and two survivors on the far side, a woman and a little boy. I think that’s everybody.”

  He nodded. His shivering had abated, and he was starting to feel light-headed with exhaustion.

  “Think you can walk up the hill?” she asked. He nodded. She cocked a cool eyebrow. “Think you can wear Agent Garman’s trench coat and put on these sunglasses and pretend you’re FBI until I can get you out of here?”

  Ryan was gone, but the story unraveled surprisingly quickly. Agent Saletti, Pete discovered, had a taste for chewing ass, and knew how to do it constructively, Ryan was apprehended on his way to Sierra Blanca; he relied on his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to say anything at all. Lacking any pressure on him, they turned to the man in the hospital, Kimball, and when he regained consciousness, they got a few other names. Jorgensen, for one. Pete was sorry to hear that, but he remembered watching Ryan go into a closed meeting, Jorgensen standing at the door. It fit.

  It was the next day, and he was mostly whole again except for an all-over body ache and phlegmy deep-chest coughs that the doctor said was perfectly natural. His shoulder ached from tetanus and booster shots. Agent Saletti looked as perfectly composed and coifed as ever, but her partner—who had finally been formally introduced to him as Agent Garman—looked like death warmed over. It had been a long swim for him, followed by a brisk life-saving chest compression.

  “They planned to incriminate you,” Garman said over lunch—Mexican food, of course. He and Agent Saletti were enchanted with the local cuisine. Saletti had fallen in love with refried beans and green sauce. “Jorgenson found the backpack at the clinic while Dr. Gutierrez was busy talking to the paramedics and you were coordinating with the local police. He looked inside and showed it to Ryan, and Ryan hid it because he thought it was evidence of a complete DEA screw-up. Bad enough that one of them put a bullet in a ten-year-old girl when she wasn’t even carrying drugs. Apparently he got suspicious about the contents of the backpack and had his lab run an analysis of a sample. They identified it as explosive.”

  “When was this?” Pete asked. He tried to take a bite of sour cream enchilada, but nothing tasted right. Antibiotics.

  “Two days before the bomb went off. There’s no way to tell if Ryan could have prevented the bombing, but if he’d shared the information, it’s possible something might have gone right.” Garman handed around a plastic basket of flour tortillas, took one, and smeared butter on it. “But he kept his mouth shut. Once the bomb went off, he was stuck.”

  “Why bomb the bridge?”

  “This is where it gets strange,” Saletti said. In the light of day, she was a slender young woman, fresh-faced, with thick, dark hair and a mouth that always seemed to be smiling. She took a bite of sauce-laden refried beans on a flour tortilla. “We think Kimball had ties to a paramilitary organization that was basically a front for white supremacists. We also think Ryan might have been a member. The others don’t seem to have been, but they fell in line in the aftermath of the bombing. Ryan talked a good line of hate. He convinced them that striking back at what was known as an immigrant highway was a simple countermove against a militant Hispanic terrorist.”

  “Jorgensen lost a lot of good friends,” Garman agreed. “The other guys, too.”

  “We all did,” Pete said. “That’s not an excuse.”

  Garman looked down at his place, pushed Spanish rice from one side to another. He reached for a golden-brown sopapilla and poured, honey inside.

  “Never had these before,” he said. “I did two years at the field office in Dallas, but they make it different there. No sopapillas. I like these.”

  Saletti offered Pete a bite of cheese enchilada. When he shook his head, she said, “Phil and I worked the bombing in Oklahoma City. Believe me, no matter how much logic you apply, it’s tough not to want revenge.”

  He looked up at them, her young face and old eyes, Garman’s haggard, haunted expression.

  “I know aLl about it,” he said. “But if we don’t stop this right here, right now, this whole city will come apart. More than ninety-five percent of this town speaks Spanish at home. More than a quarter of them don’t know English at all. Almost thirty percent live in poverty, and ten percent of the Anglos control ninety percent of the wealth. You want to talk about revenge? If this city gets going, It’s going to make the L.A. riots look like protest marches.”

  Saletti put down her bite of refried beans. Garman sighed and shook his head.

  “So what’s the answer?” he asked.

  Pete considered the remains of his sour cream enchilada. “I wish to hell I knew.”

  That afternoon he went to see Esmeralda. He walked the familiar route, across the bridge, carrying a sack of groceries, down the hill and onto Calle Gavanza. He knocked on the door of her house, knocked again, shifted the groceries from one arm to the other, looked in the window. The living room was unchanged, the table in place, Jaime’s picture still standing up.

  Esmeralda wasn’t home.

  He left the groceries on the front porch and walked around through the gate to the back door, but she wasn’t there, either. Her backyard was mostly dirt, though she had managed to coax a few pansies out of the hard ground near the door. A small chicken-wire pen held three hens, a magnificent dark red rooster, and a small wooden laying hutch. From the way the chickens were pecking the dirt, they hadn’t eaten; he found the feed and scattered it for them, not sure he was doing it right, not even sure how much they needed. He wasn’t a farm boy.

  It didn’t feel right. She should have been home.

  At the corner of Calle Gavanza and International, he saw the modest stone shape of a church. He went in without much knowing why, except that when Esmeralda was distressed he knew she liked to pray, and if she’d heard about the Black Bridge, she was probably very upset. He stood at the back of the small church for a few minutes, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness, before dipping his fingers in the font and crossing himself. There were a few women in the church, most wearing mantillas that covered their heads, but he didn’t think any of them looked like—