Savages

248

Lado isn’t happy, but Elena is furious.

Out of her skull angry.

Because she feels like a fool.

She let these Americans dupe her and now she wonders if she let her fondness for (or fascination with?) the girl get in the way of her better judgment.

Settling into the new American house—

Well, compound, really, a new fortress set in the remote desert, with more yards of barbed wire, alarms, sound and motion sensors, armed men patrolling in four-wheel-drive vehicles and ATVs, all on high alert since the last assassination attempts—

—is sadly easy. Another set of clothes, sets of linens, towels, toiletries, kitchen appliances that have never been used to fix a meal, all as sterile as her present life. Lado’s wife, the perfect hostess, a lady-in-waiting, has come personally to see that everything is in order. Even the surrounding desert seems too clean—scrubbed by wind and bleached by the sun, an exterior to match her sparse interior landscape.

Thirst.

She thinks about her new life as a refugee.

A billionaire mujado, a wetback with greenbacks.

Lado has prepared this (sere) ground against this day, when the cartel would have to leave Mexico and take up a new existence in this new and savage land. Everything is in place—the safe houses, stash houses, the markets, and the men. The DEA generously bribed, her presence here duly un-noted.

She had hoped to leave the bloodletting behind, and now this.

A war that came with her.

A betrayal of her trust.

And now the necessity to commit yet another atrocity.

She gets on the phone to Lado.

“Bring Magda here.”

“She won’t want to come.”

“Did I ask you what she wants?” Elena snaps.

The silence of acquiescence. She’s used to that in men—passivity is their small rebellion. It seems to keep their precious cojones in place.

Then Lado asks, cruelly, “What about the girl? The other one.”

“We have no choice but to follow through.”

“I agree.”

Did I ask if you agreed? Elena thinks, but keeps the thought to herself. What she’s asking him to do is enough without adding her bitchiness to it. She knows what’s behind it, too—she doesn’t want to kill this girl.

Elena sits down at the computer and turns on the monitor.

The girl is in her room—at a ranch just a few miles away—lying on her back, doing her nails.

In preparation, Elena thinks, for going home.

You do not want to kill this girl because she reminds you of your own wild child, of yourself during your brief flash of freedom in what now seems another lifetime.

Well, if you do not wish to kill her, don’t.

It is your choice, you don’t have to answer to anyone.

Elena recognizes this for what it is—a moment of rebellion against the present state of her life, against what she’s become.

A forlorn hope.

If you do not kill this girl—if you do not do exactly what you promised to do—then you put your own children at risk. Because the savages will see you as weak, and they will come for you and yours.

Lado has waited patiently.

She says, “Do it. And I want them to see it.”

I am the Red Queen.

Off with her head.

“Do you want to be there?” Lado asks.

“No,” Elena says.

But she’ll make herself watch it on the screen. If you can order it, she demands of herself, you can watch it.

“I want it done before Magda gets here,” she adds.

“It will take me a little time to get there,” Lado says.

“As soon as possible, please,” she says. She has another thought. “Get in touch with these bastards. Let them know.”

Let them suffer.