Savages

100

What to do, what to do?

Go to the FBI?

The DEA?

Ben is perfectly willing to do that, even though it would doubtless mean years in prison for him, if that would save O. But it wouldn’t—it would only kill her. If the feds could handle the cartels, they would have shut them down already.

So that’s out.

Their other alternative is …

Nada.

They’re fucked.

This is Ben’s mistake, and it goes back a long way. Ben always figured that he could live with a foot in two worlds. One Birkenstock in the officially criminal marijuana-dealing demimonde and the other in the world of civilization and law.

Now he knows that he can’t.

He has both feet stuck in the jungle.

Chon never harbored such illusions.

Chon has always known that there are two worlds:

The savage

The less savage.

The savage is the world of pure raw power, survival of the fittest, drug cartels and death squads, dictators and strongmen, terrorist attacks, gang wars, tribal hatreds, mass murder, mass rape.

The less savage is the world of pure civilized power, governments and armies, multinationals and banks, oil companies, shock-and-awe, death-from-the-sky, genocide, mass economic rape.

And Chon knows—

They’re the same world.

“What are we going to do?” Ben asks.

“As soon as the intel comes in,” Chon says, “I’m going to hop in my car and kill whoever they ask me to. You’re going to get your ass off the floor and deliver the dope.”

“You’re going to kill someone for him?!”

“I did it for Cheney and the Sock Puppet,” Chon says. “What’s the diff?”

The phone rings.

Chon grabs it.

“Yeah … yeah … got it.”

“They gave you the address?” Ben asks.

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean, sort of?”

“It’s a freaking boat,” Chon says.

It’s a freaking boat—

—at last, at last, putting Chon’s SEAL training to use.