The Power of the Dog

Chapter Five
Narcosantos

Mexico, January 1985

Six hours after Ernie goes off the screen, Art storms into Colonel Vega’s office.

“One of my men is missing,” he says. “I want this city turned upside down and inside out. I want you to arrest Miguel Angel Barrera, and I don’t want to hear any of your shit-”

“Senor Keller-”

“-your shit about not knowing where he is, and anyways, he’s innocent. I want you to pick up all of them-Barrera, his nephews, Abrego, Mendez, every goddamn one of the drug-pushing cocksuckers-and I-”

“You don’t know that he’s been kidnapped,” Vega says. “He might be having an affair, he might be drunk somewhere. You certainly don’t know that Barrera has anything to do with-”

Art comes across the man’s desk, right in the colonel’s face.

“If I have to,” Art says, “I’ll start a fucking war.”

He means it. He’ll call in every favor, threaten to go to the press, go there, threaten to go to certain congressmen, go to them-he’ll bring a division of Marines down fromCampPendleton and start a real goddamn shooting war if that’s what it takes to rescue Ernie Hidalgo.

If-please, God, please, Jesus and Mary, the mother of God-Ernie’s still alive.

A second later he adds, “Now, why are you still sitting there?”

They hit the streets.

All of a sudden, like magic, Vega knows where the gomeros are. It’s a miracle, Art thinks. Vega knows where every low- and middle-level narcotraficante in the city lives, hangs out or does business. They roust them all-Vega’s federales bust through the city like the Gestapo, only they don’t find Miguel Angel, or Adan or Raul, or Mendez, or Abrego. It’s the same old dye test, Art thinks, the same old search-and-avoid mission. They know where these guys were, they just can’t seem to find where they are.

Vega even leads a raid on Barrera’s condominium, the address of which he suddenly acknowledges, but when they get there they find that Miguel Angel is gone. They also find something else that makes Art go absolutely berserk.

A photograph of Ernie Hidalgo.

An ID photo taken in the Guadalajara MJFP office.

Art grabs it and waves it in Vega’s face.

“Look at this!” he yells. “Did your guys give him this picture?! Did your fucking guys do that?!”

“Certainly not.”

“My ass,” Art says.

He goes back to the office and calls Tim Taylor inMexico City.

“I heard,”Taylor says.

“So what are you doing?”

“I’ve been at the ambassador’s office,”Taylor says. “He’s going to see the president personally. Did you get Teresa and the kids out?”

“She didn’t want to go, but-”

“Shit, Arthur.”

“But I had Shag take her to the airport,” Art says. “They should be inSan Diego now.”

“What about Shag?”

“He’s working the streets.”

“I’m pulling you guys out.”

“The hell you are,” Art says.

There’s a brief silence, thenTaylor asks, “What do you need, Art?”

“An honest cop,” Art says. He tellsTaylor about the photo he found in Barrera’s condo, then says, “I don’t want any more of these MJFP assholes. Send me someone clean, someone with some weight.”

Antonio Ramos arrives inGuadalajara that afternoon.

Adan listens to the man scream.

And to the quiet voice patiently asking the same question over and over again.

Who is Chupar? Who is Chupar? Who is Chupar?

Ernie tells them again that he doesn’t know. His interrogator doesn’t believe him and pushes the ice pick in again, scraping it against Ernie’s shinbone.

The question starts again.

You do know. Tell us who he is. Who is Source Chupar?

Ernie gives them names. Any names he can think of. Minor dealers, major dealers, federales, Jalisco State Police-any gomero or dirty cop, he doesn’t care. Anything to make them stop.

They don’t. They don’t buy a single name he gives them. The Doctor-the others actually call the man “Doctor”-just keeps it up with the ice pick, slowly, patiently, meticulously, unshaken by Ernie’s shouts. Unhurried.

Who is Chupar? Who is Chupar? Who is Chupar?

“I don’t knoooooowwww…”

The ice pick finds a new angle to a fresh piece of bone, and scrapes.

Guero Mendez comes out of the room, shaken.

“I don’t think he knows,” Guero says.

“He knows,” Raul says. “He’s macho-a tough son of a bitch.”

Let’s hope he’s not too tough, Adan thinks. If he’ll just give us the name of the soplon we can let him go before all this gets too far out of hand. I know the Americans, Adan had told his uncle, better than you do. They can bomb, burn and poison other peoples, but let one of their own be harmed and they’ll react with self-righteous savagery.

Hours after the agent was reported missing, an army of DEA agents busted Adan’s safe house in Rancho Santa Fe.

It was the biggest drug bust in history.

Two thousand pounds of cocaine worth $37.5 million, two tons of sinsemilla worth another $5 million, plus another $27 million in cash, plus money-counting machines, scales and other miscellaneous office equipment of the drug trade. Not to mention fifteen illegal Mexican workers who were employed in weighing and packaging the coke.

But it cost far more than that, Adan thinks as he tries to shut out the moans of pain coming from the other room. It cost far more than that. Drugs and money you can always replace, but a child…

“A lymphatic malformation,” the doctors had called it. “Cystic lymphangioma.” They said it had nothing to do with the stress of their sudden flight from their home inSan Diego, steps ahead of the DEA, nothing to do with the jostling of the high-speed run across the border intoTijuana, nothing to do with the flight toGuadalajara. The doctors said the condition develops in the early months of pregnancy, not late, and they don’t really know what causes it, only that somehow Adan and Lucia’s daughter’s lymph channels failed to develop properly and because of that her face and neck are deformed, distorted, and there is no treatment or cure. And while the lifespan is usually normal, there are risks of infection or stroke, sometimes difficulty with breathing…

Lucia blames him.

Not him directly, but their lifestyle, the business, the pista secreta. If they had been able to stay in the States, with the excellent prenatal care, if perhaps the baby had been born at Scripps Clinic as planned, if perhaps in those first moments when they saw that something was terribly wrong, if they’d had access to the best doctors in the world… perhaps, just perhaps… even though the doctors in Guadalajara assured her it wouldn’t have made any difference.

Lucia wanted to go back to the States to have the baby, but she wouldn’t go without him, and he couldn’t go. There was a warrant out for him and Tio forbade it.

But if I had known, he thinks now, if I’d had the slightest thought that anything might have been wrong with the baby, I would have taken the chance. And with it, the consequences.

Goddamn the Americans.

And goddamn Art Keller.

Adan had called Father Juan in those first few terrible hours. Lucia was in agony, they all were, and Father Juan had hurried to the hospital right away. Came and held the baby, baptized her on the spot just in case, and then held Lucia’s hand and talked with her, prayed with her, told her that she would be a wonderful mother to a special, wonderful child who would need her. Then, when Lucia finally yielded to the tranquilizers and fell asleep, Father Juan and Adan went out to the parking lot so the bishop could smoke a cigarette.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Father Juan said.

“That God is punishing me.”

“God doesn’t punish innocent children for the sins of their fathers,” Parada answered. The Bible, he thought, notwithstanding.

“Then explain this to me,” Adan said. “Is this the way God loves children?”

“Do you love your child, despite her condition?”

“Of course.”

“Then God loves through you.”

“That’s not a good enough answer.”

“It’s the only one I have.”

And it’s not good enough, Adan thought, and thinks it now. And thisHidalgo kidnapping is going to destroy us all, if it hasn’t already.

GrabbingHidalgo had been the easy part. Christ, the police had done it for them. Three cops pickedHidalgo up in La Plaza de Armas and delivered him to Raul and Guero, who drugged him, blindfolded him and brought him here to this house.

Where the Doctor had revived him and started his ministrations.

Which, so far, have produced no results.

He hears the Doctor’s soft, patient voice from inside the room.

“Tell me the names,” the Doctor says, “of the government officials who are on Miguel Angel Barrera’s payroll.”

“I don’t have any names.”

“Did Chupar give you those names? You said that he did. Tell them to me.”

“I was lying. Making it up. I don’t know.”

“Then tell me the name of Chupar,” the Doctor says. “So we can ask him instead of you. So we can do this to him instead of you.”

“I don’t know who he is.”

Is it possible, Adan wonders, that the man really doesn’t know? He hears echoes of his own scared voice eight years ago during Operation Condor, when the DEA and the federales beat and tortured him for information that he didn’t have. Told him that they had to be sure that he didn’t know, so kept up the torture after he told them, again and again, I don’t know.

“Christ,” he says. “What if he doesn’t know?”

“What if he doesn’t?” Raul shrugs. “The fucking Americans need to be taught a lesson anyway.”

Adan hears the lesson being conducted in the other room. Hidalgo’s moans as the metal of the ice pick grinds against his shinbone. And the Doctor’s gently insistent voice: “You want to see your wife again. Your children. Surely you owe them more than you owe this informant. Think: Why have we blindfolded you? If we intended to kill you we wouldn’t have bothered. But we intend to let you go. Back to your family. To Teresa and Ernesto and Hugo. Think of them. How worried they are. How scared your little sons must be. How they want their papa back. You don’t want them to have to grow up without a father, do you? Who is Chupar? What did he tell you? Whose names did he give you?”

And Hidalgo’s response, punctuated by sobs.

“I… don’t… know… who… he… is.”

“Pues…”

It starts again.

Antonio Ramos grew up on the garbage dumps of Tijuana.

Literally.

He lived in a shack outside the dump and picked through garbage for his meals, clothes, even his shelter. When they built a school nearby, Ramos went, every day, and if some other kid teased him for smelling like garbage, Ramos beat the kid up. Ramos was a big kid-skinny from lack of food, but tall and with quick hands.

After a while, he wasn’t teased.

He made it all the way through high school, and when the Tijuana police accepted him, it was like going to heaven. Good pay, good food, clean clothes. He lost that skinny look and filled out, and his superiors found out something new about him. They knew he was tough; they didn’t know he was smart.

The DFS, Mexico’s intelligence service, found it out, too, and recruited him.

Now if there’s an important assignment that requires smart and tough, Ramos usually gets the call.

He gets the call to bring back this American DEA agent, Hidalgo, at all or any cost.

Art meets him at the airport.

Ramos’ nose and several knuckles are crooked and broken. He has thick black hair, a shock of which hangs over his forehead despite his occasional attempts to control it. Jammed into his mouth is his trademark black cigar.

“Every cop needs a trademark,” he tells his men. “What you want the bad boys saying is, 'Look out for the macho with the black cigar.’ ”

They do.

They say it and they watch out and they’re scared of him because Ramos has a well-earned reputation for his own brand of rough justice. Guys rousted by Ramos have been known to yell for the police. The police won’t come-they don’t want any of Ramos, either.

There’s an alley near Avenida Revolucion in TJ nicknamed La Universidad de Ramos. It’s littered with cigar stubs and snuffed-out bad attitudes, and it’s where Ramos, when he was a TJ street cop, taught lessons to the boys who thought they were bad.

“You’re not bad,” he told them. “I’m bad.”

Then he showed them what bad was. If they needed a reminder, they could usually find one in the mirror for years afterward.

Six bad hombres have tried to kill Ramos. Ramos went to all six funerals, just in case any of the bereaved wanted to take a shot at revenge. None of them did. He calls his Uzi “Mi Esposa”-my wife. He’s thirty-two years old.

Within hours he has in custody the three policemen who picked up Ernie Hidalgo. One of them is the chief of the Jalisco State Police.

Ramos tells Art, “We can do this the fast way or the slow way.”

Ramos takes two cigars from his shirt pocket, offers one to Art and shrugs when he refuses it. He takes a long time to light the cigar, rolling it so that the tip lights evenly, then takes a long pull and raises his black eyebrows at Art.

The theologians are right, Art thinks-we become what we hate.

Then he says, “The fast way.”

Ramos says. “Come back in a little while.”

“No,” Art says. “I’ll do my part.”

“That’s a man’s answer,” Ramos says. “But I don’t want a witness.”

Ramos leads the Jalisco police chief and two federales into a basement cell.

“I don’t have time to fuck around with you guys,” Ramos says. “Here’s the problem: Right now, you’re more afraid of Miguel Angel Barrera than you are of me. We need to turn that around.”

“Please,” the chief says, “we are all policemen.”

“No, I’m a policeman,” Ramos says, slipping on black, weighted gloves. “The man you kidnapped is a policeman. You’re a piece of shit.”

He holds the gloves up for them all to see.

“I don’t like to bruise my hands,” Ramos says.

The chief says, “Surely we can work something out.”

“No,” Ramos says, “we can’t.”

He turns to the bigger, younger federale.

“Put your hands up. Defend yourself.”

The federale’s eyes are wide, scared. He shakes his head, doesn’t raise his hands.

Ramos shrugs, “As you wish.”

He feints with a right to the face and then puts all his weight behind three ripping left hooks to the ribs. The weighted gloves smash bone and cartilage. The cop starts to fall, but Ramos holds him up with his left hand and hits him with three more shots with his right. Then he throws him against the wall, turns him around and drives rights and lefts into his kidneys. Holds him against the wall by the back of the neck as he says, “You embarrassed your country. Worse, you embarrassed my country,” and holds him with one hand by the neck and the other by the belt and runs him full speed across the room into the opposite wall. The federale’s head hits the concrete with a dull thud. His neck snaps back. Ramos repeats the process several times before he finally lets the man slide to the floor.

Ramos sits down on a wooden three-legged stool and lights his cigar as the two other cops stare at their unconscious friend, who lies facedown, his legs jerking spasmodically.

The walls are splotched with blood.

“Now,” Ramos says, “you’re more afraid of me than of Barrera, so we can get started. Where is the American policeman?”

They tell him everything they know.

“They delivered him to Guero Mendez and Raul Barrera,” Ramos tells Art. “And a Doctor Alvarez, which is why I think your friend might still be alive.”

“Why is that?”

“Alvarez used to work for DFS,” Ramos says. “As an interrogator. Hidalgo must have information they want, si?”

“No,” Art says. “He doesn’t have the information.”

Art’s stomach sinks. They’re torturing Ernie for the identity of Chupar.

And there is no Chupar.

“Tell me,” Tio says.

Ernie moans, “I don’t know.”

Tio nods to Doctor Alvarez. The Doctor uses oven mitts to pick up a white-hot iron rod, which he inserts “Oh my God!” Ernie shouts. Then his eyes widen and his head collapses on the table where they have strapped him down. His eyes are closed, he’s unconscious, and his heartbeat, which was racing a moment ago, is now dangerously slow.

The Doctor sets down the oven mitts and grabs a syringe full of lidocaine, which he injects into Ernie’s arm. The drug will keep him conscious to feel the pain. It will keep his heart from stopping. A moment later, the American’s head snaps up and his eyes pop open.

“We won’t let you die,” Tio says. “Now talk to me. Tell me, who is Chupar?”

I know Art’s looking for me, Ernie thinks.

Moving heaven and earth.

“I don’t know,” he gasps, “who Chupar is.”

The Doctor picks up the iron bar again.

A moment later Ernie shouts, “Oh my Godddddddd!”

Art watches the flame ignite, then flicker, then reach up toward heaven.

He kneels in front of the bank of votive candles and says a prayer for Ernie. To the Virgin Mary, to Saint Anthony, to Christ himself.

A tall, fat man comes down the center aisle of the cathedral.

“Father Juan.”

The priest has changed little in nine years. His white hair is a little thinner, his stomach somewhat thicker, but the intense gray eyes still have their light.

“You’re praying,” Parada says. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

“I’ll do anything.”

Parada nods. “How can I help?”

“You know the Barreras.”

“I baptized them,” Parada answers. “Gave them their First Communion. Confirmed them.” Married Adan to his wife, Parada thinks. Held their malformed, beautiful baby in my arms.

“Reach out to them,” Art is saying.

“I don’t know where they are.”

“I was thinking of radio,” Art says. “Television. They respect you, they’ll listen to you.”

“I don’t know,” Parada says. “Certainly I can try.”

“Right now?”

“Of course,” Parada says, then adds, “I can hear your confession.”

“There isn’t time.”

So they drive to the radio station and Parada broadcasts his message to “those who have kidnapped the American policeman.” Pleads with them, in the name of God the Father and Jesus Christ and Mother Mary and all the saints to release the man unharmed. Urges them to consult their souls, and then, to even Art’s surprise, pulls the ultimate card-threatens excommunication if they harm the man.

Condemns them with all his power and authority to eternal hell.

Then repeats the hope of salvation.

Release the man and come back to God.

His freedom is your freedom.

“… gave me an address,” Ramos is saying.

“What?” Art asks. He’s been listening to Parada’s broadcast on the office radio.

“I said they gave me an address,” Ramos says. He loops the Uzi over his shoulder. “Mi Esposa. Let’s go.”

The house is in a nondescript suburb. Ramos’ two Ford Broncos, overflowing with his special DFS troops, roar up, and the men jump out. Gunfire-long, undisciplined AK bursts-comes out of the windows. Ramos’ men drop to the ground and return the fire in short bursts. The shooting stops. Covered by his men, Ramos and two others run to the door with a battering ram and knock it in.

Art goes in just behind Ramos.

He doesn’t see Ernie. He runs to every room of the small house but all he finds are two dead gomeros, a neat hole in each forehead, lying by the windows. A wounded man sits propped against the wall. Another sits with his hands high above his head.

Ramos pulls his pistol and puts it to the head of the wounded man.

“?Donde?” Ramos asks. Where?

“No se.”

Art flinches as Ramos pulls the trigger and the man’s brains splatter against the wall.

“Jesus!” Art shouts.

Ramos doesn’t hear this. He puts the pistol against the other gomero’s temple.

“?Donde?”

“?Sinaloa!”

“?Donde?”

“?Un rancho de Guero Mendez!”

“?Como lo encuentro?”

The gomero shouts, “?No se!?No se!?No se!?Por favor!?Por el amor de Dios!”

Art grabs Ramos by the wrist.

“No.”

Ramos looks for a second like he might shoot Art. Then he lowers his pistol and says, “We have to find that farm before they move him again. You should let me shoot this bastard so he doesn’t talk.”

The gomero breaks down into sobs. “?Por el amor de Dios!”

“You have no god, you motherless fuck,” Ramos says, cuffing him along the side of the head. “?Te voy a mandar pa'l carajo!”

I’m going to send you to hell.

“No,” Art says.

“If the federales find out we know about Sinaloa,” Ramos says, “they’ll just move Hidalgo again before we can find him.”

If we can find him, Art thinks. Sinaloa is a large, rural state. Locating a single farm there is like finding a specific farm in Iowa. But killing this guy won’t help.

“Put him in isolation,” Art says.

“?Ay, Dios!?Que chingon que eres!” Ramos yells. “God, you’re a pain in the ass!”

But Ramos orders one of his men to take the gomero and keep him somewhere and find out what else he knows, and says, “For God’s sake, don’t let him talk to anyone or it will be your balls I stuff in his mouth.”

Then Ramos looks at the bodies on the floor.

“And throw out the garbage,” he says.

Adan Barrera hears Parada’s radio message.

The bishop’s familiar voice comes softly over the background chords of Hidalgo’s rhythmic moans.

Then thunders the threat of excommunication.

“Superstitious shit,” Guero says.

“This was a mistake,” Adan says.

A blunder. An enormous miscalculation. The Americans have reacted even more extremely than he had feared, bringing all their enormous economic and political pressure to bear on Mexico City. The fucking Americans closed the border, leaving thousands of trucks stranded on the road, their loads of produce rotting in the sun, the economic cost staggering. And the Americans are threatening to call in loans, screwing Mexico with the IMF, launching a debt and currency crisis that could literally destroy the peso. So even our bought-and-paid-for friends in Mexico City are turning against us, and why not? The MJFP and DFS and the army are responding to the Americans’ threats, rounding up every cartel member they can find, raiding houses and ranches… there’s rumor that a DFS colonel beat a suspect to death and shot three others, so there’s four Mexican lives already lost for this one American, but no one seems to care because they’re only Mexicans.

So the kidnapping was an enormous mistake, compounded by the fact that, for all the cost, they haven’t even learned the identity of Chupar.

The American clearly doesn’t know.

He would have told. He could not have stood the bone-tickling, the electrodes, the iron bar. If he’d known, he would have told. And now he lies moaning in the bedroom that has become a torture chamber and even the Doctor has thrown his hands up and said he cannot get anything more, and the Yanquis and their lambiosos are tracking me down and even my old priest is sending me to hell.

Release the man and come back to God.

His freedom is your freedom.

Perhaps, Adan thinks.

You might be right.

Ernie Hidalgo exists now in a bipolar world.

There is pain, and there is the absence of pain, and that is all there is.

If life means pain, it’s bad.

If death mean the absence of pain, it’s good.

He tries to die. They keep him alive with saline drips. He tries to sleep. They keep him awake with injections of lidocaine. They monitor his heart, his pulse, his temperature, careful not to let him die and end the pain.

Always with the same questions: Who is Chupar? What did he tell you? Whose names did he give you? Who in the government? Who is Chupar?

Always the same answers: I don’t know. He didn’t tell me anything I haven’t told you. Nobody. I don’t know.

Followed by more pain, then careful nursing, then more pain.

Then a new question.

Out of the blue, a new question and a new word.

What is Cerberus? Have you heard of Cerberus? Did Chupar ever talk to you about Cerberus? What did he tell you?

I don’t know. No, I haven’t. No, he didn’t. He didn’t tell me anything. I swear to God. I swear to God. I swear to God.

What about Art? Did he ever talk to you about Cerberus? Did he ever mention Cerberus? Did you ever overhear him talking to anyone about Cerberus?

Cerberus, Cerberus, Cerberus…

You know the word, then.

No. I swear to God. I swear to God. God help me. God help me. Please, God, help me.

The Doctor leaves the room, leaves him alone with his pain. Leaves him wondering, Where is God, where is Arthur? Where are Jesus, Mother Mary and the Holy Ghost? Mary, bring me mercy.

Mercy comes, oddly enough, in the form of the Doctor.

It’s Raul who suggests it.

“Shit, that moaning is driving me fucking crazy,” he says to the Doctor. “Can’t you shut him up?”

“I could give him something.”

“Give him something,” Adan says. The moans are bothering him, too. And if they’re planning to release him, as he wants to do, it would be better to deliver him in the best shape possible. Which isn’t very good, but is better than dead. And Adan has an idea how to give the cop back and get what they want in return.

Reach out again to Arturo.

“Heroin?” the Doctor asks.

“You’re the doctor,” Raul says.

Heroin, Adan thinks. Homegrown Mexican Mud. The irony is deft.

“Fix him up,” he tells the Doctor.

Ernie feels the needle go into his arm. The familiar prick and burn, then something different-blessed relief.

The absence of pain.

Maybe not absence; say, detachment, as if he’s floating on a cumulus cloud high above the pain. The observed and the observer. The pain is still there, but it’s distant.

Eloi, eloi, thank you.

Mother Mary Mexican Mud.

Mmmmmmm…

Art’s in the office with Ramos, poring over maps of Sinaloa and comparing them with intelligence reports on marijuana fields and Guero Mendez. Trying to somehow narrow down the grid. On television, an official from the Mexican attorney general’s office is solemnly pronouncing, “In Mexico, the category of major drug gang does not exist.”

“He could work for us,” Art says.

Maybe the category of major drug gang doesn’t exist in Mexico, Art thinks, but it sure as hell does in the United States. The second they got the news about Ernie’s disappearance, Dantzler busted the cocaine shipment in two directions.

His sweep just missed Adan at his safe house in San Diego, but the bust was epic.

On the East Coast he hit pay dirt again, arresting one Jimmy “Big Peaches” Piccone, a capo in the Cimino Family. The FBI in New York passed along every surveillance photo of the crew they had, and Art’s looking through them when he sees something that freezes his balls.

The photo is obviously taken outside some wise-guy hangout, and there’s fat Jimmy Piccone and his equally obese little brother, and a few other goombahs, and then there’s someone else standing there.

Sal Scachi.

Art gets on the phone to Dantzler.

“Yeah, that’s Salvatore Scachi,” Dantzler tells him. “A made man in the Cimino Family.”

“In the Piccone crew?”

“Apparently, Scachi isn’t in a crew,” Dantzler says. “He’s sort of a wise guy without a portfolio. He reports directly to Calabrese himself. And get this, Art-the guy was a full colonel in the U.S. Army.”

Goddamn, Art thinks.

“There’s something else, Art,” Dantzler says. “This Piccone guy, Jimmy Peaches? FBI has had a tap on him for months. He’s Chatty-fucking-Cathy. Been running his mouth about a lot of stuff.”

“Coke?”

“Yup,” Dantzler says. “And guns. Seems like his crew is heavy into selling off hijacked weapons.”

Art is taking this in when another line rings and Shag jumps on it.

Then, sharply, “Art.”

Art hangs up from Dantzler and gets on the other line.

“We need to talk,” Adan says.

“How do I know you have him?”

“Inside his wedding ring. It’s inscribed, 'Eres toda mi vida.’ “

You’re my whole life.

“How do I know he’s still alive?” Art asks.

“You want us to make him scream for you?”

“No!” Art says. “Name the place.”

“The cathedral,” Adan says. “Father Juan will guarantee safety for both of us. Art, I see one cop, your man is dead.”

In the background, along with Ernie’s groans, he hears something that gives him, if possible, worse chills.

“What do you know about Cerberus?”

Art kneels in the confessional.

The screen slides back. Art can’t make out the face behind the screen, which, he supposes, is the point of this sacrilegious charade.

“We warned you and warned you and warned you,” Adan says, “and you wouldn’t listen.”

“Is he alive?”

“He’s alive,” Adan says. “Now it’s up to you to keep him alive.”

“If he dies, I’ll find you and kill you.”

“Who is Chupar?”

Art’s already thought this through-if he tells Adan that there is no Chupar, it’s tantamount to putting a bullet in Ernie’s head. He has to string it out. So he says, “You give me Hidalgo first.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

Art’s heart practically stops as he says, “I guess we have nothing to talk about, then.”

He starts to get up. Then he hears Adan say, “You have to give me something, Art. Something I can take back.”

Art kneels back down. Forgive me, Father, I’m about to sin.

“I’ll shut down all operations against the Federacion,” he says. “I’ll leave the country, resign from the DEA.”

Because, what the hell, right? It’s what everyone’s been wanting him to do anyway-his bosses, his government, his own wife. If I can trade this vicious, stupid cycle for Ernie’s life…

Adan asks, “You’ll leave Mexico?”

“Yes.”

“And leave our family alone?”

Now that you’ve crippled my daughter.

“Yes.”

“How do I know you’ll keep your word?”

“I swear to God.”

“Not good enough.”

No, it’s not.

“I’ll take the money,” Arthur says. “You open an account for me, I’ll make a withdrawal. Then you release Ernie. When he shows up, I’ll give you the identity of Chupar.”

“And leave.”

“Not a second later than I need to, Adan.”

Art waits for an eternity while Adan thinks it over. While he waits, he prays silently for both God and the devil to take this deal.

“A hundred thousand,” Adan says, “will be wired to a numbered account in First Georgetown Bank, Grand Cayman. I’ll phone you with the numbers. You will withdraw seventy by wire. As soon as we see the transaction, we’ll let your man go. You will both be out of Mexico on the next flight. And Art, don’t you ever come back.”

The window slides shut.

The waves rise ominously, then break and crash on his body.

Waves of pain, larger with each set.

Ernie wants more drugs.

He hears the door open.

Are they coming with more drugs?

Or more pain?

Guero looks down at the American cop. The dozens of puncture wounds where the ice pick was inserted are pussy and infected. His face is bruised and swollen from the beatings. His wrists, feet and genitals are burned from the electrodes, his ass… The stench is horrendous-the infected wounds, the piss, the shit, the rancid sweat.

Clean him, Adan had ordered. And who is Adan Barrera to give orders? When I was killing men, he was selling blue jeans to teenyboppers. And now he comes back, having made a deal-without M-1’s knowledge or permission-to release this man, in exchange for what? Empty promises from another American cop? Who is going to do what, Guero wonders, after he sees his tortured, mutilated comrade? Who is Adan kidding? Hidalgo will be lucky to survive the car ride. Even so, he will probably lose his legs, maybe his arms. What kind of peace does Adan think he will buy with this bleeding, stinking, rotting piece of flesh?

He squats beside Hidalgo and says, “We’re going to take you home.”

“Home?”

“Si,” Guero says, “you can go home now. Go to sleep. When you wake up, you will be home.”

He sticks the needle into Ernie’s vein and pushes the plunger.

The Mexican Mud takes only a second to hit.

Ernie’s body jerks and his legs kick back.

They say that a jolt of heroin is like kissing God.

Art looks at Ernie’s naked corpse.

Lying fetal inside a sheet of black plastic in a ditch off a dirt road in Badiraguato. His dried blood is caked flat black against the shiny black plastic. The black blindfold is still around his eyes. Otherwise he’s naked, and Art can see the open wounds where they jammed an ice pick through his flesh and scraped his bones, the electrode burns, the signs of anal rape, the needle marks from the lidocaine and heroin injections up and down his arms.

What have I done? Art asks himself. Why did someone else have to pay for my obsession?

I’m sorry, Ernie. I’m so goddamn sorry.

And I’ll pay them back for you, so help me God.

There are cops-federales and Sinaloa State Police-everywhere. The state police arrived first and effectively trampled the scene, obscuring tire prints, footprints, fingerprints, any evidence that might tie anyone to the murder. Now the federales have assumed control and are going over everything again, making sure that not a shred of evidence has been neglected.

The comandante comes over to Art and says, “Don’t worry, Senor, we will never rest until we find out who did this terrible thing.”

“We know who did it,” Art answers. “Miguel Angel Barrera.”

Shag Wallace loses it. “Goddamnit, three of your fucking guys kidnapped him!”

Art pulls him away. He’s holding him up against the car when a jeep comes roaring up and Ramos hops out and trots over to Art.

Ramos says, “We found him.”

“Who?”

“Barrera,” says Ramos. “We have to go now.”

“Where is he?”

“El Salvador.”

“How did-”

“Apparently, M-1’s little girlfriend is homesick,” Ramos says. “She called Mommy and Daddy.”

El Salvador

February 1985

El Salvador, “The Savior,” is a little country about the size of Massachusetts located on the Pacific coast of the Central American isthmus. It’s not, Art knows, a banana republic like its eastern neighbor Honduras, but a coffee republic, whose workers have such a reputation for industriousness that they were nicknamed “the Germans of Central America.”

The hard work hasn’t done them much good. The so-called Forty Families, about 2 percent of the current population of three and a half million, have always owned almost all the fertile land, mostly in the form of large coffee fincas-plantations. The more land that was devoted to growing coffee meant less land devoted to growing food, and by the mid-nineteenth century most of the hardworking Salvadoran campesinos were basically starving.

Art looks at the green countryside. It looks so peaceful-pretty, really-from the air, but he knows that it’s a killing ground.

The serious slaughter started in the 1980s as campesinos started to flock into the FLMN, the Marti National Liberation Front, or into workers’ unions, while students and priests led the movement for labor and land reform. The Forty Families responded by forming a right-wing militia called ORDEN-the Spanish acronym means “order”-and the order they had in mind was the same old order.

ORDEN, most of its members active-duty Salvadoran army officers, got right to work. Campesinos, workers, students and priests started disappearing, their bodies finally turning up on roadsides or their heads left in school playgrounds as a civics lesson.

The United States, pursuing its Cold War agenda, pitched in. Many of the ORDEN officers were trained at the U.S. School of the Americas. To hunt down FLMN guerrillas and farmers, students and priests, the Salvadoran army had the help of American-donated Bell helicopters, C-47 transport planes, M-16 rifles and M-60 machine guns. They killed a lot of the guerrillas, but also hundreds of students, teachers, farmers, factory workers and priests.

Nor were the FLMN exactly angels, Art thinks. They committed their own murders, and funded themselves through kidnappings. But their efforts paled in comparison to the well-organized, amply funded Salvadoran army and its ORDEN doppelganger.

Seventy-five thousand deaths, Art thinks as his plane lands in a country that has become its own mass grave. A million refugees, another million homeless. Out of a population of only five and a half million.

The Sheraton lobby is gleaming and clean.

The well-dressed and the well-heeled relax in its air-conditioned lounge or sit in the cool, dark bar. Everyone is so clean and so nicely dressed-in cool linens and the white dresses and jackets of the tropics.

It’s all so nice in here, Art thinks. And so American.

There are Americans everywhere, drinking beer at the bar, sipping Cokes in the coffee shop, and most of them are military advisers. They’re in civvies, but the military look is unmistakable-the short sidewall haircuts, the short-sleeved polo shirts, the jeans over tennis shoes or highly polished brown army-issue.

Ever since the Sandinistas took over Nicaragua, just to the south, El Salvador has become an American military ghetto. Ostensibly, the Americans are there to advise the Salvadoran army in their war against the FLMN guerrillas, but they’re also there to make sure that El Salvador doesn’t become the next domino to topple in Central America. So you have American soldiers advising the Salvadorans and American soldiers advising the Contras, and then you have the spooks.

The Company types are as obvious in their own way as the off-duty soldiers are in theirs. They dress better, for one thing-they wear tailored suits with open shirts and no ties instead of sports clothes that came off the rack at the base commissary. Their haircuts are stylish-even a little long, in the current Latin American fashion-and their shoes are expensive Churchills and Bancrofts. If you see a spook wearing tennis shoes, Art thinks, he’s playing tennis.

So there are the soldiers and the spooks and then there are the embassy types-who might be neither, either or both. There are the actual diplomats and the consular officials who deal with the daily, mundane issues of visas and lost passports and American retro-hippie kids arrested for vagrancy and/or drug use. Then there are the cultural attaches, and the secretaries and the typists; and then there are the military attaches, who look just like the military advisers except that they dress better; and then there are the embassy employees, who wear fictional job descriptions as transparent veils of decency, and who are really spooks. They sit in the embassy and monitor radio broadcasts out of Managua, their ears keenly pitched for the sound of a Cuban accent or, better yet, Russian. Or they work “the street,” as they say, meeting their sources in exactly such places as the Sheraton bar, trying to suss out which colonel is on the way up, which is on the way out, which might be planning the next golpe-coup-and whether this would be a good thing or a bad thing.

So you have your soldiers, your spooks, your embassy types and your embassy spooks, and then you have your businessmen.

Coffee buyers, cotton buyers, sugar buyers.

The coffee buyers look like they belong. They should, Art thinks. Their families have been down here for generations. They have the easy air of ownership of the place-this is their bar, theirs and the Salvadoran growers with whom they’re having lunch on the broad patio. The cotton and sugar buyers look more classically American corporate-these are more recent crops on the Salvadoran landscape-and the American buyers have yet to blend in. They look uncomfortable, incomplete without ties.

So you have a lot of Americans, and you have a lot of wealthy Salvadorans, and the only other Salvadorans you see are either hotel workers or secret police.

Secret police, Art thinks. Now there’s an oxymoron. The only thing secret about the secret police is how they manage to stand out so much. Art stands in the lobby and picks them out like bulbs on a Christmas tree. It’s simple-their cheap suits are bad imitations of the expensive tailored look of the upper class. And while they try to look like businessmen, they still have the brown, weathered faces of campesinos. No ladino from the Forty Families is going to enroll in the ranks of the police, secret or otherwise, so these guys assigned to monitor the comings and goings at the Sheraton still look like farmers attending a city cousin’s wedding.

But, Art knows, the role of the secret police in a society like this isn’t to blend in but to be seen. To be noticed. To let everyone know that Big Brother is watching.

And taking notes.

Ramos finds the cop he’s looking for. They repair to a room and start the negotiations. An hour later he and Art are on their way to the compound where Tio is holed up with his Lolita.

The drive out of San Salvador is long, frightening and sad. El Salvador has the highest population density in Central America, growing every day, and Art sees the evidence everywhere. Little shanty villages seem to occupy every wide spot in the road-jerry-rigged stalls made of cardboard, corrugated tin, plywood, or just plain chopped brush offer everything for sale to people who have little or nothing with which to buy. Their owners rush the jeep when they see the gringo in the front seat. The kids push up against the jeep, asking for food, money, anything.

Art keeps driving.

He has to get to the compound before Tio disappears again.

People disappear in El Salvador all the time.

Sometimes at the rate of a couple hundred a week. Snatched by right-wing death squads, and then they’re just gone. And if anyone asks too many questions about it, he disappears, too.

All Third World slums are the same, Art thinks-the same mud or dust, depending on the climate and the season, the same smells of charcoal stoves and open sewers, the same heartbreakingly monotonous scenery of malnourished kids with distended bellies and big eyes.

It’s sure as hell not Guadalajara, where a large and generally prosperous middle class softens the slope between rich and poor. Not in San Salvador, he thinks, where the shanty slums press against gleaming high-rises like the thatched huts of medieval peasants pressed against castle walls. Except these castle walls are patrolled by private security guards wielding automatic rifles and machine pistols. And at night, the guards venture out from the castle walls and ride through the villages-in jeeps instead of on horseback-and slaughter the peasants, leaving their bodies at crossroads and in the middle of village squares, and rape and kill women and execute children in front of their parents.

So the survivors will know their place.

It’s a killing ground, Art thinks.

El Salvador.

The Savior, my ass.

The compound sits in a grove of palm trees a hundred yards from the beach.

A stone wall topped by barbed wire surrounds the main house, the garage and the servants’ quarters. A thick wooden gate and a guard shack block the driveway from the private road.

Art and Ramos crouch behind the wall thirty yards from the gate.

Hiding from the full moon.

A dozen Salvadoran commandos are posted at intervals around the wall’s perimeter.

It’s taken frantic hours of negotiation to procure Salvadoran cooperation, but now the deal is in place: They can go in and get Barrera, whisk him to the U.S. Embassy, fly him out on a State Department jet to New Orleans and charge him there with first-degree murder and conspiracy to distribute narcotics.

A cowed real-estate agent has been hauled out of bed and taken to his office, where he gives the commando team a diagram of the compound. The shaken man is being held incommunicado until the raid is over. Art and Ramos pore over the diagram and come up with an operational plan. But it all has to be done quickly, before Barrera’s protectors in the Mexican government can get wind of it and interfere; and it has to be done cleanly-no fuss, no muss and above all no Salvadoran casualties.

Art checks his watch-4:57 a.m.

Three minutes until H hour.

A breeze wafts the scent of jacaranda from the compound, reminding Art of Guadalajara. He can see the tops of the trees over the wall, their purple leaves shimmering silver in the bright moonlight. On the other side, he hears the waves lap softly on the beach.

A perfect lovers’ idyll, he thinks.

A perfumed garden.

Paradise.

Well, let’s hope Paradise is about to be lost for good this time, he thinks. Let’s hope Tio is sleeping soundly, sexually drugged into a postcoital stupor from which he can be rudely awakened. Art has an admittedly vulgar image of Tio being dragged bare-assed into the waiting van. The more humiliation the better.

He hears footsteps, then sees one of the compound’s private security guards headed toward him, casually flashing a light along the wall, looking for any lurking burglars. Art slowly scrunches his body closer to the wall.

The flashlight beam hits him square in the eyes.

The guard reaches for his holstered pistol, then a cloth garrote slips around his neck and Ramos is lifting him off the ground. The guard’s eyes bulge and his tongue comes out of his mouth, and then Ramos eases the unconscious man to the ground.

“He’ll be okay,” Ramos says.

Thank God, Art thinks, because a dead civilian would screw up the whole delicate deal. He looks at his watch as it hits five, and the commandos must be a crack unit because at that precise second Art hears a dull whomp as an explosive charge blows the gate of the wall.

Ramos looks at Art. “Your gun.”

“What?”

“Better to have your gun in your hand.”

Art had forgotten he even had the damn thing. He pulls it from his shoulder holster and now he’s running behind Ramos, through the blown gate and into the garden. Past the servants’ quarters, where the frightened workers lie on the ground, a commando pointing an M-16 at them. As Art runs toward the main house he tries to remember the diagram, but as the adrenaline flows in, his memory flows out, and then he thinks, Screw it, and just follows Ramos, who trots at a quick but easy pace in front of him, Esposa swinging on his hip.

Art glances up at the wall, where black-clad commando snipers perch like crows, their rifles trained on the compound’s grounds, ready to mow down anyone who tries to run out. Then, suddenly, he’s at the front of the main house and Ramos grabs him and shoves him down as there’s another bass thump, and the sound of wood splintering as the front door flies off.

Ramos looses half a clip into the empty space.

Then he steps in.

Art enters behind him.

Trying to remember-the bedroom, where is the bedroom?

Pilar sits up and shouts as they come through the door.

Pulls the sheet up over her breasts and screams again.

Tio-and Art can’t quite believe this, it’s all too surreal-is actually hiding under the covers. He’s pulled the sheets up over his head like a small child who thinks, If I can’t see them they can’t see me, but Art can most definitely see him. Art is all adrenaline-he yanks off the sheet, grabs Tio by the back of the neck, jerks him up like a barbell and then slams him face-first onto the parquet wood floor.

Tio isn’t bare-assed, but wearing black silk boxer shorts, which Art can feel slide along his leg as he plants his knee into the small of Tio’s back, grabs his chin and lifts his head back far enough so that his neck threatens to snap, then jams the pistol barrel into his right temple.

“Don’t hurt him!” Pilar screams. “I didn’t want you to hurt him!”

Tio wrenches his chin from Art’s hold and cranes his neck to stare at the girl. Pure hatred as he pronounces a single word: “Chocho.”

Cunt.

The girl turns pale and looks terrified.

Art pushes Tio’s face to the floor. Blood from Tio’s broken nose flows across the polished wood.

Ramos says, “Come on, we have to hurry.”

Art starts to pull the handcuffs from his belt.

“Don’t cuff him,” Ramos says with undisguised irritation.

Art blinks.

Then he gets it-you don’t shoot a man who’s trying to escape if the man is handcuffed.

Ramos asks, “Do you want to do him in here or out there?”

That’s what he expects me to do, Art thinks, shoot Barrera. That’s why he thinks I insisted on coming along on the raid, so I could do just that. His head whirls as he realizes that maybe everybody expects him to do that. All the DEA guys, Shag-especially Shag-expect him to enforce the old code that you don’t bring a cop killer back to the house, that a cop killer always dies trying to escape.

Christ, do they expect that?

Tio sure does. Says smoothly, calmly, tauntingly, “Me maravilla que todavia estoy vivo.”

I’m amazed I’m still alive.

Well, don’t be too amazed, Art thinks as he pulls the hammer back.

“Date prisa,” Ramos says.

Hurry up.

Art looks up at him-Ramos is lighting a cigar. Two commandos are looking down at him, waiting impatiently, wondering why the soft gringo hasn’t already done what should be done.

So the whole plan to bring Tio back to the embassy was a sham, Art thinks. A charade to satisfy the diplomats. I can pull the trigger and everyone will swear that Barrera resisted arrest. He was pulling a gun. I had to shoot him. And nobody’s going to look too closely at the forensics, either.

“Date prisa.”

Except this time, it’s Tio saying it, and he sounds annoyed, almost bored.

“Date prisa, sobrino.”

Hurry up, nephew.

Art grabs him by the hair and yanks his head up.

Art remembers Ernie’s mutilated body lying in the ditch bearing the marks of his torture.

He lowers his mouth to Tio’s ear and whispers, “Vete al demonio, Tio.”

Go to hell, Uncle.

“I’ll meet you there,” Tio answers. “It was supposed to have been you, Arturo. But I talked them into taking Hidalgo instead, for old times’ sake. Unlike you, I honor relationships. Ernie Hidalgo died for you. Now do it. Be a man.”

Art squeezes the trigger. It’s hard, it takes more pressure than he remembers.

Tio grins at him.

Art feels the presence of pure evil.

The power of the dog.

He jerks Tio to his feet.

Barrera smiles at him with utter contempt.

“What are you doing?” Ramos asks.

“What we planned.” He holsters his pistol, then cuffs Tio’s hands behind his back. “Let’s get going.”

“I’ll do it,” Ramos says. “If you’re squeamish.”

“I’m not,” Art says. “Vamonos.”

One of the commandos starts to slip a black hood over Tio’s head. Art stops him, then gets into Tio’s face and says, “Lethal injection or the gas chamber, Tio. Be thinking about it.”

Tio just smiles at him.

Smiles at him.

“Hood him,” Art orders.

The commando pulls the black hood over Tio’s head and ties it at the bottom. Art grabs his pinioned arms and marches him outside.

Through the perfumed garden.

Where, Art thinks, the jacarandas have never smelled so sweet. Sweet and sickly, Art thinks to himself, like the incense he remembers from church as a kid. The first scent of it was pleasant; the next would make him feel a little sick.

That’s how he feels now as he frog-marches Tio through the compound toward the van waiting in the street, except the van isn’t waiting anymore, and about twenty rifle barrels are pointed at him.

Not at Tio.

At Art Keller.

They’re Salvadoran regular army troops, and, with them, a Yanqui in civilian clothes and shiny black shoes.

Sal Scachi.

“Keller, I told you the next time I’d just shoot.”

Art looks around and sees snipers perched on the walls.

“There was a little difference of opinion within the Salvadoran government,” Scachi says. “We got it worked out. Sorry, kid, but we can’t let you have him.”

As Art wonders who “we” are, Scachi nods and two Salvadoran soldiers take the hood off Tio’s head. No wonder he was fucking smiling, Art thinks. He knew the cavalry couldn’t be far off.

Some other soldiers bring Pilar out. She wears a negligee now, but it accents more than it hides and the soldiers gape at her openly. As they walk her past Tio, she sobs, “I’m sorry!”

Tio spits in her face. The soldiers have her hands behind her back and she can’t wipe it off, so the saliva runs down her cheek.

“I won’t forget this,” Tio says.

The soldiers march Pilar to a waiting van.

Tio turns to Art. “I won’t forget you, either.”

“All right, all right,” Scachi says. “Nobody’s forgetting anybody. Don Miguel, let’s get you into some real clothes and out of here. As for you, Keller, and you, Ramos, the local police would like to throw you both in prison, but we talked them into deportation instead. There are military flights waiting. So, if this little pajama party is over

…”

“Cerberus,” Art says.

Scachi grabs him and hauls him off to the side.

“The fuck did you say?”

“Cerberus,” Art answers. He thinks he’s figured it all out now. “Ilopongo Airport, Sal? Hangar Four?”

Scachi stares at him, then says, “Keller, you just earned first-ballot entry into the Asshole Hall of Fame.”

Five minutes later Art’s in the front seat of a jeep.

“I swear to Christ,” Scachi says as he drives, “if it was up to me, I’d put one in the back of your head right now.”

Ilopongo’s a busy airfield. Military aircraft, helicopters and transport planes are everywhere, along with the personnel needed to maintain them.

Sal steers the jeep to a series of large Quonset-hut-type hangars, with signs on the front designating them numbers 1 through 10. The door of Hangar 4 slides open and Sal drives inside.

The door closes behind him.

The hangar is bustling. A couple dozen men, some in fatigues, some in cammies, all armed, are unloading cargo from a SETCO plane. Three other men are standing around talking. It’s been Art’s experience that any time you see a bunch of men working and other men standing around talking, the ones talking are the ones in charge.

He can see one of their faces.

David Nunez. Ramon Mette’s partner in SETCO, Cuban expatriate, Operation 40 veteran.

Nunez breaks off the conversation and walks over to where the crates are being stacked. He barks an order and one of the worker bees opens a crate. Art watches Nunez lift a grenade launcher out of the crate like it’s a religious idol. Bitter men handle weapons differently than the rest of us, he thinks. The guns seem connected to them in a visceral way, as if a wire runs from the trigger through their dicks and to their hearts. And Nunez has that look in his eye-he’s in love with the weapon. He left his balls and his heart on the beach in the Bay of Pigs, and the weapon represents his hope of retribution.

It’s the old Cuba-Miami-Mafia drug connection, Art realizes, hooked up again and flying coke from Colombia to Central America to Mexico to Mafia dealers in the United States. And the Mafia pays in armaments, which go to the Contras.

The Mexican Trampoline.

Sal hops out of the jeep and goes up to a young American who has to be a military officer in mufti.

I know that guy, Art thinks. But from where? Who is he?

Then the memory comes back. Shit, I should know that guy-I did night ambushes with him in Vietnam, Operation Phoenix. What the hell is his name? He was Special Forces back then, a captain… Craig, that’s it.

Scott Craig.

Shit, Hobbs has the old team here.

Art watches Scachi and Craig talking, pointing to him. He smiles and waves. Craig gets on the radio and there’s another confab. Behind him, Art can see packages of cocaine stacked to the ceiling.

Scachi and Craig walk over to him.

“This what you wanted to see, Art?” Scachi asks. “You happy now?”

“Yeah, I’m fucking thrilled to death.”

“You shouldn’t joke,” Scachi says.

Craig’s giving him the bad look.

It isn’t working. He looks like a Boy Scout, Art thinks. Boyish face, short hair, clean-cut good looks. An Eagle Scout going for his Dope for Guns Badge.

“The question is,” Craig says to Art, “are you going to be a team player?”

Well, it would be the first time, wouldn’t it? Art thinks.

Scachi’s apparently thinking the same thing. “Keller’s got a reputation as a cowboy,” he says. “Out on the lone prairieee…”

“Bad place to be,” Craig says.

“Lonely, shallow grave,” Scachi adds.

“I’ve left a full account of everything I know in a safe-deposit box,” Art lies. “Anything happens to me, it goes to The Washington Post.”

“You’re bluffing, Art,” Scachi says.

“You want to find out?”

Scachi walks away and gets on the radio. Comes back a little later and snaps an order: “Hood the motherfucker.”

Art knows he’s in the back of an open car, probably a jeep, from the bouncy action. He knows he’s moving. He knows that wherever they’re taking him, it’s a long way away because it feels like they’ve been traveling for hours. It feels like that, anyway, but he doesn’t really know because he can’t see his watch, or anything else, and now he understands the terrifying, disorienting effect of being hooded. The floating, fearful sensation of not being able to see but being able to hear, and each sound a stimulus for a progressively frightened imagination.

The jeep stops and Art waits to hear the metallic scrape of a rifle bolt or the click of a pistol hammer being pulled back or, worse, the whoosh of a machete slicing first through the air and then He feels the gears shift and the jeep lurches forward again and now he starts to tremble. His legs twitch uncontrollably and he can’t stop them, nor can he stop his mind from producing images of Ernie’s tortured corpse. He can’t stop the thought Don’t let them do to me what they did to Ernie, or its logical corollary, Better him than me.

He feels ashamed, wretched, coming to the realization that when push comes to shove, when the terrible reality is at hand, he really would have them do it to someone else rather than himself-he wouldn’t take Ernie’s place if he could.

He tries to remember the Act of Contrition, recalling what the nuns taught him in elementary school-if you’re about to die and there’s no priest to give you absolution, if you say a sincere Act of Contrition you can still go to heaven. He remembers that; what he can’t remember is the goddamn prayer itself.

The jeep stops.

The motor idles.

Hands grab Art above the elbows and lift him out of the jeep. He can feel leaves under his feet; he trips over a vine but the arms won’t let him fall. He realizes that they’re taking him into the jungle. Then the hands push him down to his knees. It doesn’t take much force-his legs feel like water.

“Take off the hood.”

Art knows the voice giving the crisp order. John Hobbs, the CIA station chief.

They’re at some kind of military base, a training camp by the looks of it, deep in the jungle. To his right, young soldiers in cammies are running an obstacle course-badly. To his left he sees a small airstrip that has been carved out of the jungle. Straight ahead of him, Hobbs’s small, tidy face comes into focus-the thick white hair, the bright blue eyes, the disdainful smile.

“And take off the handcuffs.”

Art feels the circulation come back into his wrists. Then the burning pins-and-needles sensation as it does. Hobbs gestures for him to follow and they go into a tent with a couple of canvas chairs, a table and a cot.

“Sit down, Arthur.”

“I’d like to stand for a while.”

Hobbs shrugs. “Arthur, you need to understand that if you weren’t 'family,’ you would have been disposed of already. Now, what’s this nonsense about a safe-deposit box?”

Now Art knows he was right, that his last-gasp Hail Mary had hit the target-if the cocaine-running out of Hangar 4 was just the work of renegades, they would have capped him back on the road. He repeats the threat he made to Scachi.

Hobbs stares at him, then asks, “What do you know about Red Mist?”

What the hell is Red Mist? Art wonders.

Art says, “Look, I only know about Cerberus. And what I know is enough to sink you.”

“I agree with your analysis,” Hobbs says. “Now, where does that leave us?”

“With our jaws clamped on each other’s throats,” Art says. “And neither of us can let go.”

“Let’s go for a walk.”

They hike through the camp, past the obstacle course, the shooting range, the clearings in the jungle where cammie-clad soldiers sit on the ground and listen to instructors teach ambush tactics.

“Everything in the training camp,” Hobbs says, “was paid for by Miguel Angel Barrera.”

“Jesus.”

“Barrera understands.”

“Understands what?”

Hobbs leads him up a steep trail to the top of a hill. Hobbs points out over the vast jungle stretching below.

“What does that look like to you?” he asks.

Art shrugs. “Rain forest.”

“To me,” Hobbs says, “it looks like a camel’s nose. You know the old Arab proverb: Once the camel gets his nose inside the tent, the camel will be inside the tent. That’s Nicaragua down there, the Communist camel’s nose in the tent of the Central American isthmus. Not an island like Cuba, that we can isolate with our navy, but part of the American mainland. How’s your geography?”

“Passable.”

“Then you’ll know,” Hobbs says, “that Nicaragua’s southern border-which we’re looking at-is a scant three hundred miles from the Panama Canal. It shares a northern border with an unstable Honduras and a less-stable El Salvador, both of which are struggling against Communist insurgencies. So is Guatemala, which would be the next domino to fall. If you’re up on your geography, you’ll know that there is very little but mountainous jungle and rain forest between Guatemala and the southern Mexican states of Yucatan, Quintana Roo and Chiapas. Those states are overwhelmingly rural and poor, populated by landless helots who are perfect victims for a Communist insurgency. What if Mexico falls to the Communists, Arthur? Cuba is dangerous enough-now imagine a two-thousand-mile border with a Russian satellite country. Imagine Soviet missiles based in hardened silos in Jalisco, Durango, Baja.”

“So what, they take Texas next?”

“No, they take Western Europe,” Hobbs says, “because they know-and it’s the truth-that even the United States doesn’t have the military or financial resources to defend a two-thousand-mile border with Mexico and the Fulda Gap at the same time.”

“This is crazy.”

“Is it?” Hobbs asks. “The Nicaraguans are already exporting arms across the border to the FLMN in El Salvador. But don’t even take it that far. Just consider Nicaragua, a Soviet client state that straddles Central America. Imagine Soviet subs based on the Pacific side from the Gulf of Fonseca, or on the Atlantic side along the Gulf of Mexico. They could turn the Gulf and the Caribbean into a Soviet lake. Consider this: If you think it was hard for us to spot missile silos in Cuba, try detecting them in those mountains, over there in the Cordillera Isabelia. Intermediate-range missiles could easily reach Miami, New Orleans or Houston with very little response time available to us. That’s not to mention the threat of submarine-launched missiles striking from somewhere in the Gulf or the Caribbean. We cannot allow a Soviet client state to remain in Nicaragua. It’s that simple. The Contras are willing to do the job, or would you rather see American boys fighting and dying in that jungle, Arthur? Those are your choices.”

“That’s what you want me to choose? Dope-pushing Contras? Cuban terrorists? Salvadoran death squads that murder women, kids, priests and nuns?”

“They’re brutal, vicious and evil,” Hobbs says. “The only worse people I can think of are the Communists.

“Look at the globe,” Hobbs continues. “We ran away in Vietnam, and the Communists learned exactly the right lesson from that. They took Cambodia in the blink of an eye. We did nothing. They marched on Afghanistan, and we did nothing except pull some athletes out of a track meet. So it’s Afghanistan, next it’s Pakistan and then it’s India. And then it’s done, Arthur-the entire Asian landmass is red. You have Soviet client states in Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Iraq and Syria. And we do nothing and nothing and nothing, so they think, Fine, let’s see if they do nothing in Central America. So they take Nicaragua, and how do we respond? The Boland Amendment.”

“It’s the law.”

“It’s suicide,” Hobbs says. “Only a fool or Congress couldn’t see the folly of allowing a Soviet puppet to remain in the heart of Central America. The stupidity beggars description. We had to do something, Arthur.”

“So the CIA takes it upon itself to-”

“The CIA took nothing on itself,” Hobbs says. “This is what I’m trying to tell you, Arthur. Cerberus comes from the highest possible authority in the land.”

“Ronald Reagan-”

“-is Churchill,” Hobbs says. “At a critical moment in history, he has seen the truth for what it is and has had the resolve to act.”

“Are you telling me-”

“He doesn’t know any of the details, of course,”Hobbs says. “He simply ordered us to reverse the tide inCentral America and overthrow the Sandi-nistas by whatever means necessary. I’ll read chapter and verse to you, Arthur-National Security Department Directive Number Three authorizes the vice president to take charge of activities against Communist terrorists operating anywhere in Latin America. In response, the vice president formed TIWG-the Terrorist Incident Working Group-based in El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica, which in turn instituted the NHAO-the National Humanitarian Assistance Operation-which, in accordance with the Boland Amendment, is meant to provide nonlethal 'humanitarian’ aid to Nicara-guan refugees, aka the Contras. Operation Cerberus doesn’t run through the Company-that’s where you’re wrong-but through the VP’s office. Scachi reports directly to me, and I report to the VP.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m appealing to your patriotism,”Hobbs says.

“The country I love doesn’t get in bed with people who torture its own agents to death.”

“Then to your pragmatism,”Hobbs says. He takes some documents out of his pocket. “Bank records. Deposits made to your accounts in the Caymans, Costa Rica, Panama… all from Miguel Angel Barrera.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“Withdrawal slips,”Hobbs says, “with your signature.”

“It was a deal I had to make.”

“The lesser of two evils. Exactly,”Hobbs says. “I understand the dilemma completely. Now I’m asking you to understand ours. You keep our secrets, we keep yours.”

“Fuck you.”

Art turns and starts to walk back down the trail.

“Keller, if you think we’re just going to let you walk out of here-”

Art holds up his middle finger and keeps walking away.

“There must be some sort of arrangement-”

Art shakes his head. They can take their domino theory, he thinks, and shove it sideways. What couldHobbs offer me that would make up for Ernie?

Nothing.

There is nothing in this world. Nothing you can offer a man who’s lost everything-his family, his work, his friend, his hope, his trust, his belief in his own country. There’s nothing you can offer that man that means anything.

But it turns out there is.

Then Art understands-Cerberus isn’t a guard, he’s an usher. A panting, grinning, tongue-lolling doorman who eagerly invites you into the underworld.

And you can’t resist.