He walked away and got in a white SUV. He slammed the door and drove into the desert, back the way we had come. We stood there watching him go. I’m not going to lie—I was getting scared.
“You marry Amapola?” the old man said.
“One day. Look, I don’t know what you guys are doing here, but—”
“Look at that,” he interrupted, turning from me and gesturing toward a helicopter sitting on the field. “Huey. Old stuff, from your Vietnam. Now the Mexican air force use it to fight las drogas.” He turned to me. “You use las drogas?”
“No! Never.”
They laughed.
“Sure, sure,” the old man said.
“Ask Amapola!” I cried. “She’ll tell you!”
“She already tell me everything,” he said.
Arnie put his arm around my shoulders. “Come,” he said, and started walking toward the helicopter. I resisted for a moment, but the various Mexican soldiers standing around were suddenly really focused and not slouching and were walking along all around us.
“What is this?” I said.
“You know what I do?” the old man asked.
“Business?” I said. My mind was blanking out, I was so scared.
“Business.” He nodded. “Good answer.”
We came under the blades of the big helicopter. I’d never been near one in my life. It scared the crap out of me. The Mexican pilots looked out their side windows at me. The old man patted the machine.
“President Bush!” he said. “DEA!”
I looked at Arnie. He smiled, nodded at me. “Fight the drogas,” he said.
The engines whined and chuffed and the rotor started to turn.
“Is very secret what we do,” said the old man. “But you take a ride and see. Is my special treat. You go with Arnulfo.”
“Come with me,” Arnie said.
“You go up and see, then we talk about love.”
The old man hurried away, and it was just me and Arnie and the soldiers with their black M16s.
“After you,” Arnie said.
He pulled on a helmet. Then we took off. It was rough as hell. I felt like I was being pummeled in the ass and lower back when the engines really kicked in. And when we rose, my guts dropped out through my feet. I closed my eyes and gripped the webbing Arnie had fastened around my waist. “Holy God!” I shouted. It was worse when we banked—the side doors were wide open, and I screamed like a girl, sure I was falling out. The Mexicans laughed and shook their heads, but I didn’t care.
Arnie was standing in the door. He unhooked a big gun from the stanchion where it had been strapped with its barrel pointed up. He dangled it in the door on cords. He leaned toward me and shouted, “Sixty caliber! Hung on double bun-gees!” He slammed a magazine into the thing and pulled levers and snapped snappers. He leaned down to me again and shouted, “Feel the vibration? You lay on the floor, it makes you come!”
I thought I heard him wrong.
We were beating out of the desert and into low hills. I could see our shadow below us, fluttering like a giant bug on the ground and over the bushes. The seat kicked up and we were rising.
Arnulfo took a pistol from his belt and showed me.
“Amapola,” he said.
I looked around for her, stupidly. But then I saw what was below us, in a watered valley. Orange flowers. Amapola. Poppies.
“This is what we do,” Arnulfo said.
He raised his pistol and shot three rounds out the door and laughed. I put my hands over my ears.
“You’re DEA?” I cried.
He popped off another round.
“Is competition,” he said. “We do business.”
Oh my God.
He fell against me and was shouting in my ear and there was nowhere I could go. “You want Amapola? You want to marry my sobrina? Just like that? Really? Pendejo.” He grabbed my shirt. “Can you fly, gringo? Can you fly?” I was shaking. I was trying to shrink away from him, but I could not. I was trapped in my seat. His breath stank, and his lips were at my ear like hers might have been, and he was screaming, “Can you fly, chingado? Because you got a choice! You fly, or you do what we do.”
I kept shouting, “What? What?” It was like one of those dreams where nothing makes sense. “What?”
“You do what we do, I let you live, cabrón.”
“What?”
“I let you live. Or you fly. Decide.”
“I don’t want to die!” I yelled. I was close to wetting my pants. The Huey was nose-down and sweeping in