South Read online

  Laminate-and-metal tables lined three of the room’s dingy off-white walls, leaving plenty of space for more victims. Nora shuddered, not just because the scratched linoleum floor was cold under her bare feet. She took off her Panama hat last, set it carefully on her clothes pile behind her. Only her chunky silver pendant was left; if they wanted to take it, they’d need those male guards. She didn’t bother to cover herself. Even though her face was on fire, she wouldn’t give this cockroach the satisfaction of seeing her as weak.

  Hope hunched against the cold next to her, arms folded tight across her bare chest, shuffling her feet. She’d removed everything except her tiny white cotton panties. Nora hugged her to her side and hoped almost naked was good enough for this woman.

  “Get the girl’s drawers off,” Lebow ordered. She pointed her baton at Hope, who shrank back against the table’s rim.

  Nora felt an explosion inside her. If I had my weapon… She was about to pin the woman’s ears back, but saw the void in her eyes and clamped her mouth shut. To this pig, all this was normal, just two more half-humans to put in their places. I have to succeed, Nora told herself, so this never happens to us or anybody else ever again. She knelt before her daughter, kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry, Cupcake.” Then she took away Hope’s last bit of modesty.

  Nora’s hands trembled with rage as she dropped the panties on the rest of Hope’s clothes. “Satisfied?” She didn’t bother to hide the snarl in her voice.

  Lebow collapsed her baton, clipped it to her belt, then pulled a pair of latex gloves from her back pocket. She pawed through their clothes, probed every pocket and seam.

  “Put your hands on your head, fingers interlaced.” Her bored voice recited rather than spoke the instructions. “Open your mouth.” A bony, latex-coated finger rummaged through Nora’s mouth. “Squat and spread your knees.”

  Nora followed each command without protest, choking back tears of shame and anger. She coughed on cue, stood, turned, bent over the table.

  Lebow shoved her finger inside Nora, poked and prodded. Nora gasped at the pain. She tried to hold back her tears, her curses, her feelings, but couldn’t. She’d been born here, just a few miles away. She’d fought for this country, risked her life for it. She was a federal officer. How could this happen? How did she become a criminal?

  “Spread your cheeks.”

  The woman switched orifices.

  Nora slammed shut her eyes and clenched her teeth so hard her jaw ached. Her daughter was watching this, her four-year-old daughter, seeing her mother violated. Nora could hear Hope’s soft sobs next to her. She wanted to kill this woman, beat her down with her own baton, then empty her own pistol into her. She could do it, it was there, inside her. They thought she was a terrorist? She’d show them a terrorist.

  “Right. Stand up, turn around.”

  Nora smeared the tear tracks off her face before she turned to glare into Lebow’s bulging eyes. She pulled Hope against her again, felt her daughter’s tears burn down her bare hip. “It’s okay,” she murmured to Hope, never taking her eyes off Lebow. “I’m okay. She didn’t hurt me. And she’s not going to hurt you.”

  She was giving up everything: her home, her career, her friends, her country, maybe her life if things went wrong. But she was also giving up the slights and insults, the suspicion, the graffiti on the front door, her children beaten up by bullies, her tires slashed. All to bring the truth to vermin like this, to show them what they’d become, what they’d done to the nation they supposedly loved so much. She would not let them see her break down.

  Lebow broke off the staring contest and shifted her narrowed eyes toward Hope.

  No. Way. Nora pushed Hope behind her. “If you touch my daughter…”

  The woman switched her attention back to Nora. “You threatening me?”

  “What would you do,” Nora growled, “if I was about to rape your kids?”

  Lebow’s eyes settled back into round two of the staring contest. Nora had lots of practice at this from facing down suspects during interrogation. After a few moments, the woman scanned Nora up and down once, then slowly met her eyes again.

  Then Nora saw it: fear. Just a flash, but it was there and unmistakable. Lebow had seen Nora’s hard abs, the sinews quivering in her neck and arms and thighs, the furnace burning behind her eyes. Probably nothing like any Muslim woman this dog had ever seen before. One who wasn’t afraid. One who’d fight back.

  “Get your clothes on,” Lebow sputtered. “You’re done.”

  Nora gave her the hardest smile she could manage.

  No. You and everybody like you…you’re done.

  5

  This boom in gene-based therapies has caused average life expectancy to surge to above 90 among those Americans earning the top 10% of incomes… However, for those in the bottom 60% who find health insurance entirely unaffordable – and for those with pre-existing conditions, the elderly, and pregnant women, who are considered uninsurable – life expectancy has plunged below 70 for the first time since 1964.

  — “Study: Longevity Linked to Income,” LATimes.com

  FRIDAY, 30 APRIL

  Mirabel Ojeda stared out at the Pit and felt her heart break for the first time that morning.

  A hundred people packed into the Emergency Department waiting room designed for forty-five, piled on the faded plastic chairs, sitting on the floor or each other, leaning, standing, whatever they could do. Another sixty or so clotted outside around the entry door. The racket and stench slammed into Bel as soon as she pushed through the automatic double doors from the treatment area. She could tune out the noise, and after all these years she was used to the funk—she was never away from this place long enough to get the stink out of her sinuses—but she couldn’t avoid the faces, the pain and pleading and fear in their eyes. She felt both utterly helpless and so angry she wanted to turn the Taser strapped to her waist on the first hospital administrator stupid enough to wander into this cesspool.

  Bel tugged the surgical mask back up her nose, squared her goggles and started her first hunt of the day. Only the bleeding or unconscious would get treatment anytime soon.

  Worn-out faces turned up to her as she pushed down each aisle. Fingers plucked at her scrub pants. She had to pretend she couldn’t hear the soft calls of “Nurse!” and “Please!” that followed her. In the Army, she’d never pass a patient who asked for help; here, it seemed to be all she did. Nostalgic for Bagram? She’d have laughed at that idea twenty years ago.

  She found a little boy with a raging case of measles; he’d have to wait. She stepped over the legs of a ragged, dirty guy with sores on his face, asleep against a concrete pillar; hard telling what he wanted—he was breathing—so he’d get to wait, too. Bel paused briefly in front of a lost-looking white couple in clean clothes, good gym shoes and nice haircuts trying to hush a red-faced, screaming infant. Poor little thing; probably an infection. Wait.

  Bel stopped again to squat beside an elderly man at the end of the row, shoulders huddled under a frayed cardigan (with the room temp at egg-poaching level thanks to the half-broken A/C), his breaths whistling in and out. Old folks were over a third of the ED’s patients now. Bel pictured Luis’ dad Alvaro, how his Medicare had become vouchers that could almost pay for insurance that didn’t cover anything, and how his big heart was slowly coming apart like a junker car. He’d respond to proteomic therapy if they had any way to pay for it. She reached out to squeeze the old man’s hand; the man peeked up enough to give her back a trembly, bashful smile. There: Bel’s heart broke a second time in ten minutes.

  Bel turned toward a ruckus at the door. Two dirty men in filthy blue overalls dragged a boy between them, their taped hands under his arms. The scrap-metal plant’s daily casualty. She shoved her way through the crowd and reached them just before they got to Reception. “What happened?” she demanded.

  “Saw got away from him.” The shorter man dug in his breast pocket. “Got the fingers right here.”

&
nbsp; That’s when she noticed the bloody cloth wrapped around the boy’s left hand. She tried not to show the catch in her throat. “Hold onto them, give them to the doctor. How old is he?”

  “Twelve, thirteen maybe.”

  Oh, God. “Follow me.”

  She marched into the ED’s treatment area. All the cubicles were full—she’d helped fill them—but maybe she could find someplace to put this boy. She risked a glance back. He was as dirty as the grownups, swimming in his overalls, his head wobbling as if there were no bones in his neck. His hair had been mowed down to an eighth-inch brush. He reminded Bel of Nacho when they’d shaved his head after he’d managed to pour paint over himself and let it dry. He’d been bright blue. She and Lucho took turns with the clippers while the other sneaked off to laugh until their sides burned.

  She’d love to laugh like that again. It’d been so long.

  Bel grabbed an orderly, growled, “Get me a gurney, stat!” then found a stray chair outside an exam cube. The men dropped the boy into it with a grunt. “We gotta get back,” the taller one said. “They clocked us out.”

  “Wait!” Bel already had the boy’s overalls open, exposing a stained undershirt over a shrunken chest. “What’s his name?”

  “Cullen,” the shorter man said. He looked up at the other man. “Know his last name?” The other man shook his head. “Sorry, miss. They took his badge when we was going out. Look, we gotta go.”

  Bel accepted the wad of bloody paper towels holding the boy’s fingers and waved the men away. They’d fired him on his way to the hospital. They wouldn’t even spring for an ambulance. Bastards. Where were his parents? Did they send him to the plant? Did he have a home, or just some nasty little tent someplace?

  She peeled off her left glove, reached out, hesitated, then stroked the fuzz on his scalp. Soft, like a puppy’s. Cullen rolled his head back and peered at her through grayish eyes sloshing with tears and pain. I’m so sorry, she wanted to say. About everything. You’ll be okay, really. We’ll make it better. But she couldn’t shove the words out of her mouth; she couldn’t lie to him. So she simply caressed what was left of his hair and tried to not let her tears out.

  The orderly—a doctor from Myanmar who couldn’t practice here—arrived with the gurney. Bel helped him ease the boy onto it. “Clean him up and re-wrap the hand,” she told him. “Take his vitals, type him and give him a tetanus booster. See if you can find a doctor. Thanks.” She took one last look at Cullen, stuffed down a sigh, then trudged back to the Pit. The hospital could help the boy. She’d seen too many patients turned out the moment they could stand, though, to believe this time would be different.

  The screaming in the Pit drilled through the double doors into the treatment area.

  Bel, scurrying to the lab cart with samples of what she hoped wasn’t typhus, stopped and stared toward the doors. It wasn’t the normal screaming. Ros—one of the older nurses, Bel’s age maybe—caught her eye from the exam cube across from her. Bel passed the samples to an orderly and hit the doors running.

  A swarm of Pit inmates heaved in the open area in front of Reception. Next to a nearby concrete pillar, a frail, hairless woman wailed over the still body of a man. Taser leads trailed from his back across the floor. Three Pit creatures pointed guns at the man while a security guard threaded plasticuffs around his wrists.

  Bel followed the path Ros cleared into the center of the scrum. There she found Dortmund kneeling next to a bundle of blond hair and blue scrubs curled into a ball on the blood-spattered linoleum. She gasped. “Oh, God.”

  The bundle was Pippa, a way-too-young nurse’s aide from someplace in the Midwest. Blood and snot poured out of her battered nose, one eye was already swelling shut, and she squealed every time either Dortmund or Bel touched her. Pippa whimpered “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry” between hacking coughs.

  “What happened?” Bel demanded of Dortmund. He was about the same size as her husband, but he seemed huge compared to the rest of the nurses.

  “I dunno,” he said. “He was yelling about waiting three days for a doctor before I put him down.” He leaned close to Pippa, crooned, “Hey, Pips, it’s okay, you’re safe.”

  For once, the ED staff worked like the machine it was supposed to be. A gurney crashed into the Pit, Bel and Ros gently rolled Pippa onto a backboard, and the girl soon disappeared into the treatment area, surrounded by nurses and orderlies.

  Bel stood rooted next to Pippa’s puddle, waiting for an orderly to come clean up. She sucked air through her cupped hand, trying to calm her stomach. That could’ve been her. Coming into the Pit unarmed was like wearing a meat dress in a kennel, but the hospital wouldn’t buy enough Tasers for all the nurses.

  Ros pressed her arm into Bel’s. “Does one of us gotta get killed before we do something?”

  Not this again. Ros had been carrying water for a union organizer for the past eight months. Every day, Bel expected her to disappear and wind up in a landfill. “You want us all to end up like that?”

  Ros crossed her arms hard. “They can’t afford to do that. We have skills. It’s not like they can just drag random people out of a Ryantown and put ‘em to work here.”

  “You’re sure?” She swiveled on Ros, dropped into a whisper. “I was in the union at Regional. I did what you’re doing. Remember how they broke our last strike? I lost two friends. So no, I’m not going to help you get the nurses fired or murdered. I know how you feel, Ros, but I just can’t fight anymore.”

  “Bullshit. You’re still in this dump. You’re fighting every day.” Ros’ narrow jaw went hard. “We need you, qin. The younger nurses, they respect you, they’ll follow you.”

  “They’ll have to follow someone else.” Bel broke away, stalked toward the doors. A union, these days? That was a fantasy. Bel couldn’t see risking her family and life for a fantasy. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nurse Ojeda to Reception, please.”

  Oh, hell. Bel shoved her frustration back into its cave and trudged through the double doors into the Pit. To her left, a broad-shouldered man with a red-blond crew cut stood near the bulletproof glass window stretching across the three reception stations. He stood out from the others because he looked healthy and wore a vaguely disgusted expression.

  The reception clerk must have pointed in her direction, because the man paced straight for her. He flashed a badge a couple steps away. “Mirabel Ojeda?”

  A cop? Was Lucho in trouble again? “Yes?”

  “Jack McGinley, ICE.” He had some kind of Southern accent. “I just jawed some with your husband a while back.”

  Not in uniform, she noticed: newish jeans, tan combat boots, a white, short-sleeved snap-front shirt with blue pinstripes. A gun peeked out from behind his right hip. Bel was glad she still wore her surgical mask so this McGinley couldn’t see her worry. She fumbled a moment for something to say. “What…what do you want?”

  “Well…” McGinley ran his gaze around the Pit. His mouth screwed up into a knot. “Could we step out somewhere that ain’t the Black Hole of Calcutta? You reckon that’s possible?”

  This wasn’t the first time she’d faced questions from ICE or the Border Patrol or DEA. They didn’t make her nervous anymore, just resentful. At least this time—for the first time in ages—she wouldn’t have to lie. As she led the cop outside, though, a single thought stomped up and down her brain: Lucho, what have you gotten yourself into now?

  6

  The economic activities of Mexico’s three corporatized narco supercartels have completely displaced the rump federal government in the 28 Mexican states under their control. Legitimate and illicit business activities in the United States, Latin America and Asia support the cartels’ generation-long funding of local infrastructure development and maintenance, law enforcement, and education, as well as the regional military forces that prosecute Mexico’s ongoing civil war.

  — “Unclassified Key Judgments (from October 2030 NIE),” National Intelligence Council


  FRIDAY, 30 APRIL

  La Paloma—Ray’s biggest bar in Orange County—occupied a hundred-plus-year-old brick building on the southern edge of downtown Santa Ana. Luis figured every cop in Southern California knew that like all the other businesses Ray managed, it was also a Cartel money laundry. As he entered through the brick courtyard, Luis could see his name being typed on some watch list. Not that he had any choice.

  When the patrón calls for you, you come.

  Ray met him at the weapons check. Luis traded his Sig for a claim ticket, then Ray ushered him into the main bar.

  Inside he found brick, dark woodwork and the normal early-Friday-night crowd: twenty or so people drinking, a half-dozen couples dancing bachata—slower and sexier than salsa—to a DJ. They wore their best shabby clothes and their much-repaired good shoes. The women had done what they could with home perms and cheap makeup, or had just hacked their hair short like Bel and half the actresses on the web. The drinkers, the dancers, even the DJ were various kinds of lean, some hard, some sick; low pay and expensive food made for a great weight-loss plan. A couple hookers—not obvious, but dressed better than the normals—worked the room. Luis knew the local zip and kronk dealers were in the second bar across the breezeway. One-stop shopping.

  Luis checked the place Tavo used as a meeting room, sticking into the bar floor off to his right. Venetian blinds blocked the big windows. “Is this one of those talks where Tavo brings out the sledgehammer?” he finally asked, trying not to sound like a school kid waiting to see the principal.

  “No, no.” Ray waved away the idea. “He just wants to talk face-to-face, you know? Tell you his side of things. Be chill.”

  “A cartel sub-boss calls me in for a lecture, and you want me to be chill? Seriously?”

  “Just…” Ray spread out his hands, palms down, meaning even it out.

  They stood off to the side of the room, watching the action swirl around them. Ray paid a lot of attention to the waitresses—tall, dark, full of attitude, short black skirts and blood-red shirts—and they returned it, smiling and flashing eyes his way. Luis would’ve enjoyed the show more if his attention hadn’t been nailed to Tavo’s door, imagining what would happen when he went through it. “What kind of mood is Tavo in? Is he pissed?”