The Power of the Dog

Chapter Eleven
Sleeping Beauty

Rancho las Bardas Baja, Mexico, March 1997

Nora sleeps with The Lord of the Skies.

That’s Adan’s new sobriquet among the narco-cognescenti-El Senor de los Cielos, The Lord of the Skies.

And if he’s the Lord, Nora is his Lady.

Their relationship is in the open now. She’s almost always with him. The narcos have tagged Nora, with intentional irony, La Guera, “The Blonde,” Adan Barrera’s golden-haired lady. His mistress, his adviser.

Guero was laid to rest in Guamuchilito.

The whole village attended the funeral.

So did Adan and Nora. He in a black suit, she in a black dress and veil, they walked in the cortege behind the flower-strewn hearse. A mariachi band played lachrymose corridos in praise of the deceased as the procession marched from the church Guero built, past the clinic and the soccer field he paid for, toward the mausoleum that held the remains of his wife and children.

People wept freely, ran up to the open casket and threw flowers on Guero’s body.

His face in death was handsome, composed, almost serene. His blond hair was combed neatly straight back and he was dressed in an expensive charcoal-gray suit and conservative red tie instead of the black narco-cowboy garb he’d favored in life.

There were sicarios everywhere, both Adan’s men and Guero’s veteranos, but the guns were hidden under shirts and jackets out of respect for the occasion. And although Adan’s men kept a sharp lookout, no one was too worried about the threat of an assassination. The war was over; Adan Barrera was the winner and, moreover, he was behaving with admirable respect and dignity.

It was Nora who had suggested not only that should he allow Guero to be buried in his hometown with his family, but that they attend the funeral, not just publicly but prominently. It was Nora who urged him to make large cash gifts to the local church, the local school and the clinic. Nora who led him into donating all the money for a new community center to be named after the late Hector “Guero” Mendez Salazar. Nora who persuaded him to send emissaries in advance to assure Guero’s sicarios and cops that the war was over, that no vengeance would be sought for past deeds and that operations would continue as before with the same personnel in place. So Adan marched in the funeral procession like a conquering lord, but a conquering lord who held the olive branch in one hand.

Adan walked into the little tomb and, again at Nora’s urging, knelt beneath the little dome that held the pictures of Pilar, Claudia and Guerito and prayed to God for their souls. He lit a candle for each of them, then bowed his head and prayed in deep piety.

The shabby little piece of theater wasn’t lost on the people outside. They understood it-they were used to death and murder and, in a strange way, reconciliation. By the time Adan emerged from the mausoleum they seemed to have almost forgotten that he was the one who’d filled it with bodies in the first place.

The memories were buried with Guero in his tomb.

This was a repeat of the process Adan and Nora had gone through for the funerals of El Verde and Garcia Abrego, and everywhere they went it was the same. With Nora at his side, Adan endowed schools, clinics, playgrounds-all in the names of the deceased. Privately, he met with the dead men’s former associates and offered them an extension of the Baja Revolution-peace, amnesty, protection and a lowered rate of taxation.

The word had gone out-you could meet with Adan or you could meet with Raul. The wise majority met with Adan; the foolish few had funerals of their own.

The Federacion was back, with Adan as its patron.

Peace reigned, and with it, prosperity.

The new Mexican president took office on December 1, 1994. The very next day, two brokerage houses controlled by the Federacion started to buy up tesobonos-government bonds. The next week, the drug cartels withdrew their capital from the Mexican national bank, forcing the new president to devalue the peso by 50 percent. Then the Federacion cashed in its tesobonos and collapsed the Mexican economy.

Feliz Navidad.

As Christmas presents to themselves, the Federacion bought up property, businesses, raw real estate and pesos and put them under the tree and waited.

The Mexican government didn’t have the cash to honor the outstanding tesobonos. In fact, it was about $50 billion short. Capital was flying out of the country faster than preachers from a raided cathouse.

The country ofMexico was days away from declaring bankruptcy when the American cavalry rode in with $50 billion in loans to prop up the Mexican economy. The American president had no choice: He and every congressman on the Hill were getting frantic phone calls from major campaign contributors at Citicorp, and they came up with that $50 billion like it was lunch money.

The new Mexican president had to literally invite the narco lords back into the country with their millions of narco-dollars to reinvigorate the economy to pay back the loan. And the narcos now had billions more dollars than they did before the “Peso Crisis” because in the time between cashing in the pesos for dollars and the American bailout, they used the dollars to buy devalued pesos, which in turn rose again when the Americans issued the massive loan.

What the Federacion basically did was buy the country, sell it back high, buy it again low, then reinvest in it and watch the investments grow.

Adan graciously accepted El Presidente’s invitation. But the price he demanded for bringing his narco-dollars back into the country was a “favorable trade environment.”

Meaning that El Presidente could shoot his mouth off all he wanted about “breaking the backs of the drug cartels,” but he’d better not do anything about it. He could talk the talk but he couldn’t walk the walk, because that stroll would be right off the gangplank.

The Americans knew it. They gave El Presidente a list of PRI bigwigs who were on the Federacion’s payroll, and suddenly three of these guys were appointed state governors. Another one became the transportation secretary, and another guy who made the list was appointed the drug czar himself-the head of the National Institute to Combat Drugs.

It was back to business as usual.

Better than usual because one thing Adan did with his windfall profits from the Peso Crisis was start buying Boeing 727s.

Within two years he has twenty-three of them, a fleet of jet aircraft larger than that of mostThird World countries. He loads them full of cocaine inCali and flies them to civilian airports, military airstrips and even highways that are closed down and guarded by the army until the plane is safely off-loaded.

The coke is packed into refrigerator trucks and driven to warehouses near the border, where it’s broken down into smaller units and loaded into trucks and cars that are works of innovative genius. A whole new industry has been created in Baja, of “chop artists” who refit vehicles with hidden compartments called “stash holds.” They have false roofs, fake floors and phony bumpers that are hollowed out and filled with dope. As in any industry, specialists have developed-you have guys who are known as great choppers and others who are sanders and painters. You have some guys who do things with Bondo that a Venetian plasterer could only dream of. Once the cars are prepared they’re driven across the border into theUnited States and delivered to safe houses, usually inSan Diego orLos Angeles, then earmarked for various destinations: L.A., Seattle, Chicago, Detroit , Cleveland, Philadelphia, Newark, New York andBoston.

The dope also goes by sea. It’s delivered from its landing in Mexico to towns on the Baja coast, where it’s vacuum-wrapped and then loaded into private and commercial fishing boats, which cruise up the coast to the waters off California and dump the dope into the water, where it floats until it’s picked up by speedboats or sometimes even scuba divers who take it to shore and drive it to the safe houses.

It also goes by foot. Lower-end smugglers simply stuff it into packs and send it on the backs of mujados or coyotes who make the run across the border in the hope of making a fortune-say $5,000-for delivering it to a pre-arranged point somewhere in the countryside east ofSan Diego. Some of this countryside is remote desert or high mountains, and it’s not unusual for the Border Patrol to find the corpse of a mujado who died from dehydration in the desert or exposure in the mountains because he wasn’t carrying the water or blankets that might have saved his life, but was humping a load of dope instead.

The dope goes north and the money comes south. And both legs of this round-trip are a lot easier because border security has been relaxed by NAFTA, which assures, among other things, a smooth flow of traffic betweenMexico and theUnited States. And with it, a smooth flow of drug traffic.

And the traffic is more profitable than ever because Adan uses his new power to leverage a better deal with the Colombians, which is basically “We’ll buy your cocaine wholesale and do the retail ourselves, thank you.” No more $1,000-a-kilo delivery charge; we’re in business for ourselves.

The North American Free (Drug) Trade Agreement, Adan thinks.

God bless free trade.

Adan’s making the old Mexican Trampoline look like a little kid bouncing on his bed. Hey, why bounce when you can fly?

And Adan can fly.

He’s The Lord of the Skies.

Not that life has returned to the status quo ante bellum.

It hasn’t; ever the realist, Adan knows that nothing can be the same after the murder of Parada. Technically he’s still a wanted man: their new “friends” in Los Pinos have put a $5 million reward on the Barrera brothers, the American FBI has put them on the Most Wanted list, their photos hang on walls at border checkpoints and government offices.

It’s a sham, of course. All lip service to the Americans. Mexican law enforcement is no more trying to hunt down the Barreras than it’s trying to shut down the drug trade as a whole.

Still, the Barreras can’t rub it in their faces, can’t show them up. That’s the unspoken understanding. So the old days are over-no more parties at big restaurants, no more discos, racetracks, ringside seats at big boxing matches. The Barreras have to give the government plausible deniability, allow them to shrug their shoulders to the Americans and claim that they would gladly arrest the Barreras if only they knew where to find them.

So Adan doesn’t live in the big house in Colonia Hipodromo anymore, doesn’t go to his restaurants, doesn’t sit in a back booth doing the figures on his yellow manuscript pads. He doesn’t miss the house, he doesn’t miss the restaurants, but he does miss his daughter.

Lucia and Gloria are living back in America, in the quiet San Diego suburb of Bonita. Gloria goes to a local Catholic school, Lucia attends a new church. Once a week, a Barrera courier car meets her in a strip-mall parking lot and gives her a briefcase with $70,000 cash.

Once a month, Lucia brings Gloria down to Baja to see her father.

They meet at remote lodges in the country, or at a picnic spot by the side of the road near Tecate. Adan lives for these visits. Gloria is twelve now, and she’s starting to understand why her father can’t live with them, why he can’t cross the border into the United States. He tries to explain to her that he’s been falsely accused of many things, that the Americans take all the sins of the world and load them onto the backs of the Barreras.

But mostly they talk about more mundane things-how she’s doing in school, what music she likes to listen to, movies she’s seen, who her friends are and what they do together. She’s getting bigger, of course, but as she grows so does her deformity, and the progress of the disease tends to accelerate in adolescence. The growth on her neck pulls her already heavy head down and to the left and makes it increasingly difficult for her to speak properly. Some of the kids at school-it is a cliche, he thinks, that children are cruel-tease her, call her the Elephant Girl.

He knows it hurts her, but she appears to shrug it off.

“They’re idiots,” she tells him. “Don’t worry, I have my friends.”

But he does worry-frets about her health, chides himself that he can’t be with her more, agonizes about her long-term prognosis. He fights back tears when each visit comes to an end. As Gloria sits in the car, Adan argues with Lucia, trying to convince her to come back to Mexico, but she won’t consider it.

“I won’t live like a fugitive,” she tells him. Besides that, she says she’s afraid in Mexico, afraid of another war, afraid for herself and for her daughter.

These are reasons enough, but Adan knows the real reason-she has contempt for him now. She’s ashamed of him, of what he does for a living, of what he’s done for that living. She wants to keep it as far away from herself as possible, be a soccer mom, take care of their fragile daughter in the peace and tranquility of an American suburban life.

But she still takes the money, Adan thinks.

She never sends the courier car back.

He tries not to be bitter about it.

Nora helps.

“You have to understand how she feels,” Nora tells him. “She wants a normal life for her daughter. It’s tough on you, but you have to understand how she feels.”

It’s odd, Adan thinks, the mistress taking the side of the wife, but he respects her for it. She’s told him many times that if he can get his family back together, he should, and that she would fade into the background.

But Nora is the comfort of his life.

When he’s being honest with himself, he has to acknowledge that the bright side to his estrangement with his wife is that it’s left him free to be with Nora.

No, The Lord of the Skies is flying high.

Until The supply of cocaine starts to dry up.

It doesn’t happen suddenly. It’s gradual, like a slow drought.

It’s the fucking American DEA.

First they busted up the Medellin cartel (Fidel “Rambo” Cardona turned on his old friend Pablo Escobar and helped the Americans track him down and kill him), then they went after Cali. They picked off the Orejuela brothers as they were returning from a meeting in Cancun with Adan. Both the Medellin and Cali cartels fractured into small pieces-the “Baby Bells,” Adan dubbed them.

It only makes sense, Adan thinks-a natural evolution in the face of ceaseless American pressure. Those who survive will be those who can stay small and low. Fly, as it were, under the American radar. It makes sense, but it also makes Adan’s business more complicated and difficult-instead of dealing with one or two large entities, he now has to juggle dozens if not scores of small cells, and even individual entrepreneurs. And, with the demise of the vertically integrated cartels, Adan can no longer rely on the smooth and timely delivery of quality product. Say what you will about a monopoly, Adan thinks, it’s efficient. It can deliver what it promises where and when it says it will, unlike the Baby Bells, with whom the prompt delivery of a quality product has become the exception rather than the rule.

So the production end of Adan’s cocaine business is getting shaky, and this vibrates all the way down the line, from the wholesalers to whom the Barreras provided transportation and protection, to the new retail markets in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York that Adan took over after the Orejuelas’ arrest. Increasingly, he has empty Boeing 727s-expensive to buy, maintain and staff-sitting on airstrips in Colombia, waiting for cocaine that’s too often late or doesn’t show up at all or, when it does get there, isn’t of the promised quality and potency. So the customers on the street complain to the retailers, who complain to the wholesalers, who (politely) complain to the Barreras.

Then the flow of cocaine all but stops.

The flood becomes a stream, then a trickle, then a drip.

Then Adan finds out why:

Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia.

Aka FARC.

The oldest and largest surviving Marxist insurgency movement in Latin America.

FARC controls the remote southwestern area of Colombia, along the critical borders with the cocaine-producing countries of Peru and Ecuador. From its stronghold there in the northwestern reaches of the Amazon jungle, FARC has waged a thirty-year-long guerrilla war against the Colombian government, the nation’s wealthy landowners and the oil interests that operate from the petroleum-rich coastal districts.

And FARC’s power is growing. Just last month, its guerrillas launched a daring attack on an army outpost in the town of Las Delicias. Using mortars and high-explosive charges, it took the fort, killed sixty soldiers and captured the rest. FARC cut off the critical highway connecting the southwestern districts to the rest of the country.

And not only does FARC control the cocaine-smuggling routes from Peru and Ecuador, it also has within its territory the Putumayo district, thick jungle and Amazonian rain forest and now also an important area for growing the coca plant. A domestic supply of coca was long a dream of the giant cartels, and they put millions of dollars of capital into coca plantations in the area. But just as their labors were coming to fruition, as it were, the cartels went out of business, leaving behind the chaotic Baby Bells and some 300,000 hectares under cultivation, and more being planted every day.

What Sinaloa was to the poppy, Putumayo is to the coca leaf-the source, the wellspring, the headwaters from which the drug traffic flows.

FARC cut it off, then reached out to him to offer to negotiate.

And I will have to do just that, Adan thinks now as he looks at Nora lying beside him.

She wakes up to see Adan looking at her.

Nora smiles, kisses him softly and says, “I’d like to go for a walk.”

“I’ll come with you.”

They put on robes and step outside.

Manuel is there.

Manuel is always there, she thinks.

Adan has had a house built for him on the grounds. It’s a small, simple house built in the Sinaloan campesino fashion. Except that Adan had the builder put it up in slightly outsized dimensions to allow for Manuel’s stiff, dragging leg. Had special furniture built to make it easier for him to get up and down, and a little Jacuzzi put in the back to ease the aches in his leg, which get worse with age. Manuel doesn’t like to use it, because he thinks it costs too much money to heat it, so Adan has a servant go over every night and turn it on.

Manuel gets up from a bench and follows them, his right leg dragging. At a discreet distance, he follows, with his distinctive limp. To Nora he is almost a caricature: an AK slung over his shoulder, a double loop of bandoliers over his shoulders like an old-time bandito, a pistol holstered at each hip, a huge knife tucked into his belt.

All he’s missing, she thinks, are the big sombrero and the drooping mustache.

A maid comes scurrying out with a tray.

Two coffees: white and sweet for him; black, no sugar, for her.

Adan thanks the maid and she hurries back into the kitchen. She doesn’t look at Nora, afraid that the gringa’s eyes will bewitch hers the way they did the patron's. It is the talk of the kitchen-look into the eyes of this bruja and you will come under her spell.

It was difficult at first, the staff’s passive hostility and Raul’s active disapproval. Adan’s brother thought it was fine to have mistresses but not to bring them into the family home. She heard the brothers quarrel about it and offered to leave, but Adan wouldn’t hear of it. Now they’ve settled into a quiet domestic routine, which includes this morning walk.

The compound is beautiful. Nora loves it especially in the morning, before the sun reduces all the shapes to silhouettes and bleaches out all the colors. They start their stroll in the orchard because Adan knows that she loves the acrid smell of the fruit trees-orange and lemon and grapefruit-and the sweet smell of the mimosas and jacarandas, their blossoms dropping from their branches like lavender tears. They walk past the neatly ordered flower gardens-day lilies, calla lilies, poppies-and into the rose garden.

She looks at the flowers glistening with water, listens to the rhythmic shoop-shoop-shoop of the sprinkler system that sprays all the flowers before the sun makes watering an exercise in instant evaporation.

Adan shoos a peacock away from the garden.

Indeed, the compound is alive with birds: peacocks, pheasants, guinea fowl. One morning when Adan was away she went out early on her own and there was a peacock perched on the edge of the central fountain. It looked at her and spread its tail and it was a marvelous sight, all the colors spread out against the light khaki sand.

Other birds are in the trees. An amazing assortment of finches-Adan tries in vain to teach her their proper names, but she knows them only by colors: gold and yellow, purple and red. The warblers and the lazuli bunting, and the incredible western tanager that looks to her like a flying sunset. And the hummingbirds. Special flowers have been planted and sugar-water feeders hung to attract the hummingbirds-Anna’s and Costa’s and black-chinned, as Adan has tried to distinguish them for her. She knows them only as dazzling flights of jeweled colors, and that she would miss them very much if they no longer came to visit.

“You want to see the animals?” he says.

“Of course.”

Adan is a practical, hardworking man and can’t quite bring himself to approve of the time and money Raul devotes to the menagerie. It’s just another entertainment for Raul, a sop to his ego that he has an ocelot, two kinds of camels, a cheetah, a pair of lions, a leopard, two giraffes, a herd of rare deer.

But no white tiger. Raul sold it to some collector in Los Angeles, and the idiot tried to drive it across the border and got busted. Had to pay a big fine, and the tiger was confiscated. It lives in the San Diego Zoo now.

The whale he owned became a movie star. They busted out the amusement park for every penny it was worth then burned it down, and the whale ended up in a series of hit films. So the whale did pretty well for itself, although Adan hasn’t seen it in any new movies lately.

So Adan and Nora walk through the private zoo in the morning, and one of the keepers is always ready with food for Nora to feed the giraffes. She loves their grace, their long necks and the way they walk.

She gets down from the little platform they use to feed the giraffes, picks up her coffee cup and moves ahead of Adan. Another keeper opens a gate to let her into the deer pen and hands her a plastic cup full of food.

“Good morning, Tomas.”

“Senora.”

The deer crowd around her, nuzzling her robe, pushing their noses out to get at the food.

Nora and Adan have breakfast on the east terrace, to catch the sun. She has grapefruit and coffee. That’s all-grapefruit fresh from the orchard, picked literally moments before it is served to her, and coffee. He eats like one of Raul’s lions. An enormous plate of huevos con machaca with chunks of yellowtail and strands of hot chorizo. A stack of warm corn tortillas. At Nora’s insistence, a bowl of fruit. And a small bowl of fresh salsa-the scent of its tomatoes and cilantro makes her mouth water, but she sticks with the slimming grapefruit.

He notices.

“It has no fat,” he says.

“The tortilla I’d eat with it does.”

“You have a few pounds to give.”

“You’re so gallant.”

He smiles and goes back to his newspaper, knowing that he won’t convince her. She’s almost as obsessed with her body as he is. As soon as he showers and goes into his office for a day of work she’ll spend the whole morning in the gym. He put in a stereo system and a television because she likes noise when she works out. And the gym has two of everything-two reclining cycles, two treadmills, two Universal weight machines, two sets of free weights-although she can rarely persuade him to work out with her.

On alternate days she runs on the long dirt road that winds up to the compound, which caused some complaint among the security staff until Adan found two sicarios who liked to run. Then she complained about it, said it made her self-conscious to have the men following her, but on this issue he put his foot down and there was no argument.

So when she runs two bodyguards trot behind her. At his specific instructions, they alternate running and trotting. He doesn’t want them both out of breath at the same time. If it comes to shooting, he wants at least one of them to have a steady hand. And they have been told, “If anything happens to her, it’s both your lives.”

Her afternoons are long and slow. Because he works through lunch, she dines alone. Then she may take a short siesta, stretching out on the chaise under the umbrella, avoiding the sun. For the same reason, she spends most of the midafternoon indoors, reading magazines and books, idly watching Mexican television, basically waiting for Adan to show up before having a late dinner.

Now he says, “I have to go away on a business trip. I may be gone awhile.”

“Where are you going?”

He shakes his head. “Colombia. FARC wants to negotiate.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

She tells him that she understands. She’ll go to San Diego while he’s gone-do some shopping, see a few movies, catch up with Haley.

“But I’ll miss you,” she says.

“I’ll miss you, too.”

“Let’s go back to bed.”

She fucks him with demonic energy. Grips him with her pussy, holds him tightly with her legs and feels him spurt deep inside her. Strokes his hair as he rests his face on her breasts and says, “I love you. Tienes mi alma en tus manos.”

You have my soul in your hands.

Putumayo, Colombia 1997

Adan sits in the back of a jeep bouncing slowly over a muddy, rutted road cut through the Amazonian jungle of southwestern Colombia. The air around him is hot and fetid, and he swats at the flies and mosquitoes that swarm around his head.

It’s already been a difficult trip.

He rejected the idea of simply flying in on one of his 727s. No one can know that Adan is going to meet with Tirofio, the commander of FARC; anyway, the flight would have been too dangerous. If the American CIA or DEA intercepted the flight plan, the results would have been disastrous. And besides, there are things that Tirofio wants Adan to see en route.

So Adan first boarded a private sports-fishing yacht out of Cabo, then transferred to an old fishing boat for the long, slow trip for a landing on the southern Colombian coast at the mouth of the Coqueta River. This was the most dangerous part of the trip because the coastline is under control of the government and patrolled by the private militias hired by the oil companies to guard their drills and derricks.

From the fishing boat Adan climbed into a small, single-engine skiff. They went into the river at night, guided by the flames shooting out of the refinery towers like the signal fires of hell. The river mouth was silty and polluted, the air thick and dirty. They slipped up the river, past the oil-company properties, wrapped in ten-foot-high barbed-wire fences with guard towers at the corners.

It took them two days to get up the river, dodging army patrols and private security squads. Finally he’d got into the rain forest, and now he gets to make the rest of the trip by jeep. Their route takes them past the coca fields, and for the first time Adan sees the origins of the product that has made him millions.

Well, sometimes he does.

Other times he sees dead and wilted fields, poisoned by the helicopters that spray defoliants. The chemicals aren’t particular-they kill the coca plants, but they also kill the beans, the tomatoes, the vegetables. Poison the water and the air. Adan walks through deserted villages that look like museum exhibits-perfect anthropological exhibits of a Colombian village, except no one’s living there. They’ve fled the defoliants, they’ve fled the army, they’ve fled FARC, they’ve fled the war.

Other villages they pass have simply been burned out. Charred circles on the ground mark where huts once stood. “The army,” his guide explains. “They burn the villages they think are in league with FARC.”

And FARC burns the villages they think are in line with the army, Adan thinks.

They finally reach Tirofio’s camp.

Tirofio’s camouflage-clad guerrillas wear berets and carry AK-47s. A surprising number of them are women-Adan notices one particularly striking Amazon with long black hair flowing from beneath her beret. She meets his stare with one of her own, one of those what-are-you-looking-at glares that makes him turn his glance away.

Everywhere he looks he sees something going on-squads of guerrillas are training, others are cleaning weapons, doing laundry, cooking, policing the camp-and all the activity seems organized. The camp itself is large and orderly-neat rows of olive-green tents are set up under camouflage netting. Several kitchens have been constructed under thatched ramadas. He sees what appear to be a hospital tent and a dispensary. They even walk past a tent that houses a library of sorts. This is not a gang of bandits on the run, Adan thinks. It’s a well-organized force in control of its territory. The camouflage nets-to disguise against airplane surveillance-are the only concession to a sense of danger.

The escort leads Adan to what looks like a headquarters area. The tents are larger, with canvas sunroofs attached to create porches, underneath which are washbasins, and chairs and tables made from rough-hewn lumber. A moment later the escort comes back out with an older, stocky man dressed in olive-green camouflage and a black beret.

Tirofio has a face like a frog, Adan thinks. Fatter than one expects from a guerrilla, with deep pouches under his eyes, heavy jowls and a wide mouth bent into what seems to be a permanent frown. His cheekbones are high and sharp, his eyes narrow, his arched eyebrows silver. Nevertheless, he looks younger than his almost seventy years. He walks toward Adan with vigor and strength-there is no shakiness in his short, heavy legs.

Tirofio looks at Adan for a moment, sizing him up, then points toward a thatched ramada under which are a table and some chairs. He sits down and gestures for Adan to do the same. Without any introduction he says, “I know that you help to support Operation Red Mist.”

“It’s not political,” Adan says. “It’s just business.”

“You know that I could hold you for ransom,” Tirofio says. “Or I could have you killed right now.”

“And you know,” Adan says, “that you would outlive me by perhaps a week.”

Tirofio nods.

“So what do we have to talk about?” Adan asks.

Tirofio pulls a cigarette from his shirt pocket and offers one to Adan. When Adan shakes his head, Tirofio shrugs and lights the cigarette, then takes a long drag and asks, “When were you born?”

“Nineteen fifty-three.”

“I started fighting in 1948,” Tirofio says. “During a period they now call 'La Violencia.’ Have you heard of that?”

“No.”

Tirofio nods. “I was a woodcutter, living in a small village. In those days, I had no politics. Left wing, right wing-it made no difference to the wood I had to cut. I was up in the hills one morning, cutting wood, when the local right-wing militia came into our village, rounded up all the men, tied their elbows behind their backs and cut their throats. Left them bleeding to death like pigs in the village square while they raped their wives and daughters. Do you know why they did that?”

Adan shakes his head.

“Because the villagers had allowed a left-wing group to dig a well for them,” Tirofio says. “That morning I came back to find the bodies lying in the dust. My neighbors, my friends, my family. I walked back into the hills, this time to join the guerrillas. Why do I tell you this story? Because you may say you have no politics, but the day you see your friends and family lying in the dirt, you will have politics.”

Adan says, “There’s money and the lack of money, and there’s power and the lack of power. And that’s all there is.”

“You see?” Tirofio smiles. “You are half a Marxist already.”

“What do you want from me?”

Guns.

Tirofio has twelve thousand fighters and plans to have thirty thousand more. But he has only eight thousand rifles. Adan Barrera has money and airplanes. If his planes can fly the cocaine out, they can fly the guns back in.

So if I want to protect my cocaine source, Adan realizes, I will have to do what this old warrior wants. I will have to get him guns to protect his territory from the right-wing militias and the army and, yes, the Americans. It is a practical necessity, but there is also a sweet measure of revenge in it. So he says, “Do you have an arrangement in mind?”

Tirofio does.

Keep it simple, he says.

One kilo equals one rifle.

For every rifle Adan flies in, FARC will allow one kilo of cocaine to be sold from its territory, at a price discounted to reflect the cost of the weapon. That’s for a standard rifle-the AK-47 is the weapon of choice, but the American M-16 or M-2 is also acceptable, as FARC can get the right ammo from captured army troops or right-wing militias. For other weapons-and Tirofio desperately covets shoulder-held rocket launchers-they will allow a kilo and a half, or even two kilos.

Adan accepts without negotiating.

Somehow he feels it would be unseemly to bargain, almost unpatriotic. Besides, this deal will work. If-and it’s a big if-he can get his hands on enough guns.

“So that’s it, then,” Adan says. “We have a deal?”

Tirofio shakes his hand. “One day you will come to see that everything is politics, and you will act from your heart instead of your pocket.”

On that day, Tirofio tells him, you will find your soul.

Nora lays out clothes on the bed of their suite at a small hotel in Puerto Vallarta-shirts and suits she bought for Adan in La Jolla.

“You like?”

“I like.”

“You’ve hardly looked at them,” Nora says.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she says. She walks over and puts her arms around him. “Just tell me what’s on your mind.”

She listens attentively as Adan describes the logistical challenge he faces: where to get the quantity of military weapons he needs to fulfill his end of the deal with Tirofio. It’s relatively easy to get a few weapons here and there-the United States is basically one big gun mart-but the thousands of rifles he’ll need over the next few months, that’s something even the American black market can’t provide.

And yet the guns will have to come through America, not Mexico. As crazy as the Yanquis are about drugs coming across their border, the Mexicans are even more fanatic about guns. As much as Washington complains about narcotics coming across from Mexico, Los Pinos answers with complaints about guns coming in from the United States. It’s a constant irritant in the relations between the two countries that the Mexicans seem to feel that firearms are more dangerous than dope. They don’t understand why it is that, in America, you will get a longer jail sentence for dealing a little marijuana than you will for selling a lot of guns.

No, the Mexican government is sensitive about guns, as befits a country beset with a history of revolutions. Even more so now, with the insurgency in Chiapas. As Adan tells Nora, there is no way that he can import such a large amount of weaponry directly into Mexico, even if he can find a supplier. The guns will have to come into the States, then be smuggled by reverse route through Baja, loaded on a 727 and flown to Colombia.

“Can you even get that many guns?” Nora asks.

“I have to,” Adan says.

“Where?”

Hong Kong

1997

The first glimpse of Hong Kong is always startling.

First there is the endless flight across the Pacific, with nothing but hours of blue water beneath, then suddenly the island pops up, a swatch of emerald green with tall towers glistening in the sun, and the dramatic hills behind.

He’s never been there before. She has, several times, and points out landmarks through the window: Hong Kong itself, Victoria Peak, Kowloon, the harbor.

They check in to the Peninsula Hotel.

This is her idea, to stay on the mainland in Kowloon rather than in one of the modern businessmen’s hotels on the island itself. She likes the colonial charm of the Peninsula, thinks that he’ll like it, too, and besides, Kowloon is a far more interesting neighborhood, especially at night.

He does like the hotel-its old-style elegance appeals to him. They sit on the old veranda (now enclosed in glass) with its view of the harbor and the ferry landing, and have a full English tea (she orders) while they wait for their suite to be ready.

“This,” she says, “is where the old opium lords used to hang out.”

“Is that right?” he asks. He has very little knowledge of history, even of the drug trade.

“Sure,” she says. “That’s how the Brits got Hong Kong in the first place. They took it in the Opium War.”

“The Opium War?”

“Back in the 1840s,” Nora explains, “the British went to war against the Chinese to force them to allow the opium trade.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No,” Nora says. “As part of the peace treaty, the British opium traders got to sell their product in China, and the British crown got Hong Kong for a colony. So they’d have a port to keep the opium safe. The army and navy actually protected the dope.”

“Nothing changes,” Adan says. Then, “How do you know all these things?”

“I read,” Nora says. “Anyway, I thought you might get a kick out of being here.”

He does. He sits back, sips his Darjeeling, lathers his scone with clotted cream and jam, and feels as if he’s one in a continuum of a long tradition.

When they get to their room, he collapses on the bed.

“You don’t want to go to sleep,” she tells him. “You’ll never get over the jet lag.”

“I can’t stay awake,” he murmurs.

“I can keep you awake.”

“Oh yeah?”

Oh yeah.

Afterward, they shower and she tells him that she has the rest of the day and the evening planned, if he’ll put himself in her hands.

“Didn’t I just do that?” he asks.

“And did you enjoy it?”

“That was me screaming.”

“Timing’s critical,” she says as he shaves. “Hurry up.”

He hurries up.

“This is one of my favorite things in the world to do,” she says as they walk down to the Star Ferry landing. She buys their tickets and they wait for a few minutes, then board the ferry. She chooses seats on the port side of the old, fire-engine-red boat, with the best view of downtown Hong Kong as they cross to the island. All around them, fishing boats, speedboats, junks and sampans ply the harbor.

When they land, she hustles him out of the terminal.

“What’s the rush?” he asks as she grabs him by the elbow and pushes him ahead.

“You’ll see, you’ll see. Come on.” She leads him down Garden Road to the base of Victoria Peak, where they hop the Tram. The Tram, a funicular, rattles up the steep grade.

“It’s like an amusement-park ride,” Adan says.

They get to the observatory just before the sun sets. This is what she wants him to see. They stand on the terrace as the sky grows pink and then red and then fades to darkness and the city’s lights come on like a spray of diamonds against a black satin pillow.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Adan says.

“I thought you’d like it,” she answers.

He turns and kisses her.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you, too.”

They meet the Chinese the next afternoon.

As arranged, a motor launch picks up Nora and Adan in Kowloon Harbor and takes them out into the bay, where they transfer to a waiting junk, on which they make the long trip to Silver Mine Bay on the east side of Lantau Island. Here the junk disappears into a fleet of thousands of other junks and sampans on which the “boat people” live. Their junk wends its way among the maze of docks, wharves and anchored boats before pulling alongside a large sampan. The captain sets a plank between his boat and the sampan, and Nora and Adan cross over.

Three men sit at a small table under the arch-shaped canopy that shelters the middle part of the boat. They get up when they see Adan and Nora come on board. Two of the men are older. One of them, Nora immediately sees, has the squared shoulders and rigid posture of a military officer; the other is more casual and a little stooped-he’s the businessman. The third is a young man who is clearly nervous in the presence of high-ranking superiors. This, Nora thinks, must be the translator.

The young man introduces himself in English as Mr. Yu, and Nora translates this into Spanish even though Adan knows more than enough English to understand basic conversation. But it gives her a pretext for being here, and she’s dressed for the role in a plain gray business suit with a high-collared ivory blouse and some simple jewelry.

Still, her beauty is not lost on the officer, Mr. Li, who bows when introduced, or on the businessman, Mr. Chen, who smiles and all but kisses her hand. The introductions having been performed, they sit down for tea and business.

Frustrating to Adan, the first part of the business is seemingly endless small talk and pleasantries, made all the more tedious by the double layer of translation from Mandarin to English, then English to Spanish, then back again. He’d like to cut to the chase, but Nora has warned him that this is a necessary part of doing business in China, and that he’d be considered a rude and therefore untrustworthy partner if he were to truncate the process. So he sits and smiles through the discussion of how beautiful Hong Kong is, then of the beauty of Mexico, of how wonderful its food, of how lovely and intelligent the Mexican people are. Then Nora praises the quality of the tea, and Mr. Li responds that it is unworthy garbage, then Nora says that she wishes she could get some “garbage” like this in Tijuana and Mr. Li offers to send her some if she insists despite the fact that it is unworthy of her, and so on and so forth until Mr. Li-a high-ranking general in the People’s Liberation Army-gives a barely perceptible nod to young Mr. Yu, who then starts in on the real business of the day.

An arms purchase.

This goes through the layers of translation, even though Li speaks more than passable English. But the translation process gives him time to think and confer with Chen, an officer of GOSCO-the Guangdong Overseas Shipping Company-and besides, it preserves the happy fiction that this stunning woman is a translator and not Barrera’s mistress, as is common knowledge in diplomatic circles in Mexico City. It has taken time to set up this meeting, time and delicate overtures, and the Chinese have done their homework. They know that the drug dealer has a relationship with a famous courtesan who is, if anything, as smart and aggressive a businessperson as is her lover. So Li listens patiently as Yu speaks to the woman and the woman speaks to Barrera, even though they all know already that he is here to buy guns that they wish to sell, otherwise he would not be here at all.

– What kind of armaments?

– Rifles. AK-47s.

– You call them “goat horns.” That’s rather good. How many do you wish to purchase?

– A small order at first. Maybe a couple of thousand.

Li is stunned by the size of the demand. And impressed that Barrera-or maybe it was the woman-took the care to phrase it as a “small” order, which gives them much face. Which I will now lose if I cannot fill such a “small” order. Good also how they dangled the at first as bait. Letting me know that if I can satisfy this gigantic order, there will be even more.

Li turns back to Adan.

– We don’t usually deal in such small numbers.

– We know you’re doing us a favor. Perhaps we could make it worth your while if we were to purchase some heavier armaments as well? Say some KPG-2 rocket launchers?

– Rocket launchers? Are you expecting a war?

Nora answers, The peace-loving Chinese people know that one purchases arms not so much to fight a war, but to prevent the necessity of fighting one. Sun Tzu wrote, “Invincibility depends on oneself; the enemy’s vulnerability on him.”

Nora had put the long hours on the airplane to good use. Li is impressed.

– Of course, Li says, given the modest volume, we would not be able to offer the same price as we can for larger orders.

Adan answers, Given as this order is just the beginning of what we hope will be a long business relationship, we were hoping that, as a good-faith gesture, you will offer us a price that will allow us to come to you for future needs.

– Are you saying you cannot pay full price?

– No. I’m saying I won’t pay full price.

Adan’s done his homework, too. Knows that the PLA is as much a business as it is a national defense force, and that they are under great pressure from Beijing to produce revenue. They need this deal as much as I do, he thinks, maybe more, and the size of the order is nothing to sneeze at, nothing at all. So you are going to give me my price, General, especially if – Of course, Adan adds, we would pay in American dollars. Cash.

Because the PLA is not only under pressure to produce revenue, it’s under pressure to produce foreign currency, and fast, and they don’t want any unstable Mexican pesos, especially in the form of paper. They want the long Yanqui green. Adan likes the cycle: American dollars to China for guns, guns to Colombia for cocaine, cocaine to the United States for American dollars…

Works for me.

Works for the Chinese, too. They spend the next three hours haggling over the details-prices, delivery dates.

The general wants this deal. So does the businessman. So does Beijing. GOSCO is not only building facilities in San Pedro and Long Beach, it’s also building them in Panama. And buying up huge tracts of land along the canal, which not only splits the American fleet in half but also sits astride the two emerging left-wing insurgencies in Central America-the FARC war in Colombia and the burgeoning Zapatista insurrection in southern Mexico. Keep the Americans busy in their own hemisphere for a change. Let them become more concerned about the straits of Panama than the straits of so-called Taiwan.

No, this arrangement with the Barrera cartel can only increase Chinese influence in the Americans’ backyard, keep them busy putting out Communist brush-fires and also force them to spend resources on their War on Drugs.

A bottle of wine is procured and a toast made, to friendship.

“Wan swei,” Nora says.

Ten thousand years.

In six weeks’ time, a shipment of two thousand AK-47s and six dozen grenade launchers, with sufficient ammunition, will be shipped from Guangzhou on a GOSCO freighter.

San Diego

A week after returning from Hong Kong, Nora crosses the border at Tecate, then takes the long, back-country drive through the desert and into San Diego. She checks into the Valencia Hotel and gets a suite with a view of La Jolla Cove and the ocean. Haley meets her and they have dinner at Top of the Cove. Business is good, Haley tells her.

Nora goes to bed early and gets up early. She changes into sweats and takes a long jog around La Jolla Cove, on the path that skirts the cliffs overlooking the ocean. She comes back tired and sweaty, orders her grapefruit and black coffee from room service and showers while she waits for her breakfast to be delivered.

Then she dresses and goes shopping in La Jolla Village. All the trendy shops are within walking distance, and she has a handful of bags before she hits her favorite boutique, where she selects three dresses and takes them into the changing room.

A few minutes later she comes out with two of the dresses, lays them on the counter and says, “I’ll take these. I’ve left the red one in the dressing room.”

“I’ll hang it up,” the owner says.

Nora thanks her, smiles and walks back out into the gorgeously sunny La Jolla afternoon. She decides on French cuisine for lunch and has no trouble getting a table at the Brasserie. She kills the rest of the afternoon with a movie and a long nap. She gets up, orders some consomme for dinner, then puts on one of her new black dresses and does her hair and makeup.

Art Keller parks three blocks away from the White House and walks the rest of the way.

He’s lonely. He has his work and little else.

Cassie is eighteen now, soon to graduate from Parkman; Michael is sixteen, a freshman at the Bishop’s School. Art goes to Cassie’s volleyball matches and Michael’s swim meets, and he takes the kids out afterward if they don’t already have plans with their friends. They have awkward once-a-month weekends at his downtown condo-he makes extravagant efforts to entertain them, but they mostly just hang around the complex pool with the other “visitation daddies” and their kids. And his own kids increasingly resent the mandated visits, which interfere with their own social lives.

Art understands and usually lets them cancel with a fake-cheery “Next time.”

He doesn’t date. He’s had a few short-term relationships with a couple of divorced women-convenience fucks scheduled between the demands of busy careers and the single parenthood of teenage kids-but they were more sad than satisfying, and pretty soon he quit trying.

So most nights he keeps company with the dead.

They’re never too busy and there’s no lack of them. Ernie Hidalgo, Pilar Talavera and her two kids. Juan Parada. All collateral casualties in Art’s private war with the Barreras. They visit him at night, they chat with him, they ask him if it was worth it.

At least for now, the answer is no.

Art’s losing the war.

The Barrera cartel now makes a profit of approximately $8 million a week. Fully one half of the cocaine and a third of the heroin that hits American streets comes through the Baja cartel. Virtually all the methamphetamine west of the Mississippi originates with Barrera.

Adan’s power is unchallenged in Mexico. He’s put his uncle’s Federacion together again, and he is the undisputed patron. None of the other cartels can touch his influence. Furthermore, Barrera has established his own cocaine supply in Colombia. He’s independent of Cali or Medellin. The Barrera drug operation is self-sustaining from the coca plant to the corner, from the poppy flower to the shooting gallery, from the sinsemilla seed to the brick that hits the streets, from the base ephedrine to the rock of crystal meth.

The Baja cartel is a vertically integrated polydrug operation.

And none of the above takes into account his “legitimate” businesses. Barrera money is heavily invested in the maquiladoras along the border, in real estate throughout Mexico-especially in the resort towns of Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas-and the southwest United States and in banking, including several banks and credit unions in the States. The cartel’s financial mechanisms are fully enmeshed with those of Mexico’s wealthiest and most powerful business concerns.

Now Art reaches the front door of the White House and rings the bell.

Haley Saxon comes into the foyer to meet him.

Smiles professionally and hands him the key to a room upstairs.

Nora’s sitting on the bed.

She looks stunning in her black dress.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

The red dress was her signal that she had to see him personally. For over two years now, she’s been leaving him messages in “dead drops” all over the city.

It was Nora who gave him the details of the Orejuela brothers’ meeting with Adan, the info that allowed the DEA to arrest them as they flew back to Colombia.

Nora who has given him a rundown on the new organization of the Federacion.

Nora who has provided him with hundreds of pieces of intelligence, from which he’s been able to glean a thousand more. Thanks mostly to her, he has an organizational chart of the Barrera organization in Baja and in California. Delivery routes, safe houses, couriers. When drugs were coming in, money going out, who killed whom and why.

She’s risked her life to bring him this information on her “shopping trips” to San Diego and Los Angeles, on her visits to spas, on any trip that she takes outside of Mexico and without Adan.

The method they use is surprisingly simple. The fact is that the drug cartels have a bigger budget and therefore better technology than Art does, and they don’t have the constitutional restrictions. So the only way to beat the Barreras’ superiority in high-tech is to go low-tech: Nora simply sits in her hotel room, writes down her information and mails it to Art at a post office box that he established under a false name.

No cell phones.

No Internet.

Just the good ol’ U.S. Mail.

Unless there was an emergency; then she would leave the red dress in the changing room. The boutique owner was looking at a possession rap that could have sent her to prison for five years. Instead, she agreed to do this favor for The Border Lord.

“I’m fine,” Nora says.

But she’s angry.

No, angry doesn’t describe it, she thinks as she looks at Art Keller. You said that with my help you would take Adan down quickly, but it’s been two and a half years. Two and a half years of pretending to love Adan Barrera, of taking a man I loathe inside me, feeling him in my mouth, my pussy, my ass, and pretending to love it. Pretending to love this monster who killed the man I really loved, and then guiding him, molding him, helping him to get the power to commit more of his filth. You don’t know what it’s like-how could you?-to wake up in the morning with that beside you, to crawl between his legs, to open yours, to scream your phony orgasms, to smile and laugh and share talk and meals, all the time living a nightmare, waiting for you to act.

And so far, what have you done?

Besides the Orejuela arrest, nothing.

He’s been sitting on this information for two and a half years, waiting for the right moment to act.

Now Art says, “This is too risky.”

“I can trust Haley,” she says. “I want you to take some action. Now.”

“Adan’s still untouchable. I don’t want to-”

She tells him about Adan’s deal with FARC and the Chinese.

Art looks at her with awe. He knew she was smart-he’s been tracking her as she’s helped to steer Adan through the shoals-but he didn’t know that she was this perceptive. She’s thought it through.

Damn right I have, Nora thinks. She’s been reading men all her life. She sees the change come over his face, his eyes are lit with excitement. Every man has his own turn-on. She’s seen them all, and now she sees Keller's.

Revenge.

Same as mine.

Because Adan has made a serious mistake. He’s doing the one thing that could bring him down.

And we both know it.

“Who else knows about the arms shipment?” he asks.

“Adan, Raul and Fabian Martinez,” she says. “And me. Now you.”

Art shakes his head. “If I act on this, they’ll know it was you. You can’t go back.”

“I’m going back,” Nora says. “We know San Pedro and GOSCO. But we don’t know which ship, which pier-”

And even if you can get that information, Art thinks, making the bust is the same as killing you.

When he’s about to leave she asks, “Do you want to fuck me, Art? For the sake of realism, of course.”

His loneliness is palpable, she thinks.

So easy to touch.

She opens her legs ever so slightly.

He hesitates.

It’s a small measure of revenge for leaving her “asleep” for so long, but it feels good and she says, “I was joking, Art.”

He gets it.

Payback.

He knows that leaving an undercover in place for as long as he has is unconscionable. Six months is a long time, a year is the max. They just can’t last that long-their nerves unravel, they get burned, the information they provide gets tracked back to them, the clock just runs out.

And Nora Hayden isn’t a professional. Strictly speaking, she isn’t even an undercover, but a confidential informant. It doesn’t matter-she’s been under deep cover, and she’s been under for too long.

But I couldn’t have used any of the information she gave me in Mexico, because Barrera is under Mexican protection. And I couldn’t have used any of her intelligence inside the States, because it might have compromised her before we could take Adan down once and for all.

The frustration has been awful. Nora has given him enough intelligence to virtually destroy the Barrera organization in one overnight coup, and he hasn’t been able to use it. All he could do was wait and hope that The Lord of the Skies flew too close to the sun.

And now he has.

It’s time to pull the trigger on him. And time to get Nora out.

I could just arrest her now, he thinks. God knows there are enough pretexts. Arrest her, compromise her and then she could never go back. Get her a new identity and a new life.

But he doesn’t.

Because he still needs her close to Adan, for just a little while longer. He knows he’s stretching her string to the breaking point, but he lets her walk out of the room.

“I need proof,” John Hobbs says.

Solid, tangible evidence to show the Mexican government before he can even think about prodding them to launch an offensive against Adan Barrera.

“I have a source,” Art says.

Hobbs nods-yes, go on.

Art answers, “I can’t reveal it.”

Hobbs smiles. “Aren’t you the same man who rather famously created a source that didn’t actually exist?”

And now Keller, with his well-known Barrera obsession, comes forward with a story about Adan Barrera making a deal with FARC to import Chinese arms in exchange for cocaine? Something that would get the CIA solidly on board in his war against the Barreras? It’s a bit too convenient.

Art gets that. I’m the Boy Who Cried Wolf.

“What kind of proof?” he asks.

“The arms shipment would do nicely, for example.”

But that’s the dilemma, Art thinks. Busting the arms shipment would expose exactly what I’m trying to protect. If I could get Hobbs to pressure Mexico City into launching a preemptive strike against Barrera now, there’d be no need to put Nora in jeopardy. But to get them to launch the strike, I have to produce the arms shipment, and the only person who can get me that is Nora.

But if she does it, she’s probably dead.

“Come on, John,” he says, “you could mask this from the Chinese side. Intercepts of maritime radio signals, Internet traffic, satellite intelligence-just say you have a source in Beijing.”

“You want me to compromise valuable sources in Asia to protect some drug dealer that you flipped? Please.”

But he is tempted.

The Zapatistas in Chiapas are more active than ever, their ranks reportedly swelled by recent refugees from neighboring Guatemala, so the potential exists there for a Communist insurgency that could spread regionally.

And a new left-wing insurgent group, the EPR, the Ejercito Popular Revolucionario, the Popular Revolutionary Army, emerged back in June at a memorial service for peasants in Guerrero killed by right-wing militias. Then, just weeks ago, EPR launched simultaneous attacks against police posts in Guerrero, Tabasco, Puebla and Mexico itself, killing sixteen police officers and wounding another twenty-three. The Vietcong started smaller than that, Hobbs thinks. He offered his Mexican intelligence counterparts assistance against the EPR, but the Mexicans, ever sensitive about Yanqui neo-imperialist interference, declined.

Stupidly, Hobbs thinks, because it takes only a quick glimpse at the map to see that the Communist insurgency is spreading north from Chiapas, fueled by the economic devastation of the Peso Crisis and the dislocations caused by NAFTA implementation.

Mexico is teetering on the brink of revolution, and everyone but the ostriches in State know it. Even Defense acknowledges the possibility-Hobbs has just finished reading the top-secret contingency plans for a U.S. invasion of Mexico in the event of a total social and economic breakdown. God, one Castro in Cuba is enough-can you imagine a Comandante Zero ruling from Los Pinos? A Marxist government sharing a two-thousand-mile border with the United States? And every state along that border soon to have a Hispanic majority? But God, wouldn’t the Mexicans hemorrhage cats if they ever got wind of that report?

No, the Mexicans can accept American military aide only through the veil of the War on Drugs. Not unlike the American Congress, Hobbs thinks. The Vietnam Syndrome prevents Congress from authorizing a penny to wage covert wars against Communists, but they’ll always open the vault to fight the drug war. So you don’t go to Capitol Hill to tell them you’re helping your allies and neighbors defend themselves against Marxist guerrillas; no, you send your supporters in the DEA to ask for money to keep drugs out of the hands of America’s young people.

So Congress would never authorize, nor would the Mexicans openly accept, the offer of seventy-five Huey helicopters and a dozen C-26 airplanes to fight the Zapatistas and EPR, but Congress has funded the same package to help the Mexicans suppress the drug traffickers, and the equipment will be quietly transferred to the Mexican army for use in Chiapas and Guerrero.

And now you have the patron of the Federacion providing weapons to Communist insurgents in Colombia? That would get the Mexicans solidly on board.

Art plays his last card. “So you’re just going to let a shipment of arms go through to Communist insurgents in Colombia? Not to mention the increase of Chinese influence in Panama?”

“No,” Hobbs says calmly. “You are.”

“Screw you, John,” Art says. “If this goes down, the CIA gets nothing. I don’t share intel, assets, credit, nothing.”

“Give me the source, Arthur.”

Art stares at him.

“Then get me the guns,” Hobbs says.

But I can’t, Art thinks. Not until Nora tells me where they are.

Mexico

There’s a meeting going on at Rancho las Bardas, too.

Between Adan, Raul and Fabian.

And Nora.

Adan insisted that she be included. The fact is that they wouldn’t have the deal in place without her.

It doesn’t sit well with Raul.

“Since when do our baturras know our business?” he asks Fabian. “She should stay in the bedroom, where she belongs. Let her open her legs, not her mouth.”

Fabian chuckles. He’d like to open La Guera’s legs, and her mouth. She’s the most delectable piece of chocho he’s ever seen. You’re wasting yourself with a wimp like Adan, he thinks. Come to me, tragona, I’ll make you scream.

Nora sees the look on his face and thinks, Try it, asshole. Adan would have you skinned alive and roasted over a slow fire. And I’d bring the marshmallows.

The Chinese want cash on delivery, and will accept no other form of payment, not a wire transfer or a series of laundered payments through shell companies. They insist that the payment be absolutely untraceable, and the only way to do that is a hand-to-hand cash transferral.

And they want Nora to make it.

It’s a guarantee for them, Adan sending his beloved mistress.

“Absolutely not,” Adan and Raul say simultaneously, albeit for completely different reasons.

“You first,” Nora says to Raul.

“You and Adan haven’t exactly kept your relationship under wraps,” Raul says. “The DEA probably has more photographs of you than they do of me. If you are arrested, you have a lot of information inside that pretty head, and motivation to give it up.”

“What would they arrest me for, sleeping with your brother?” Nora asks. She turns to Adan. “Your turn.”

“It’s too dangerous,” he says. “If anything went wrong, you’d be looking at life in prison.”

“Then let’s make sure nothing goes wrong,” she says.

She lays out her case-I go back and forth across the border all the time. I’m an American citizen with an address in San Diego. I’m an attractive blonde and can flirt my way through any checkpoint. And, most important, it’s what the Chinese want.

“Why?” Raul asks suddenly. “Why would you take the risk?”

“Because,” she says, smiling, “in return, you’ll make me rich.”

She waits as her answer just hangs there.

Finally, Adan says, “I want the best chop-artist in Baja. Maximum security at both sides of the border. Fabian, get our best people in California to make the actual pickup. I want you there personally. If anything happens to her, I hold you both responsible.”

He gets up and walks out.

Nora just sits and smiles.

Raul follows Adan out into the garden.

“What are you thinking about, hermano?” he asks. “What’s to stop her from turning on us? What’s to stop her from just taking the money and never looking back?! She’s a whore, for God’s sake!”

Adan whirls around and grabs him by the front of his shirt. “You’re my brother and I love you, Raul. But if you ever talk about her that way again, we’ll split the pasador and go our separate ways. Now please just do your job.”

As Nora waits in the line at the San Ysidro border crossing, Baja’s best chop-artist sits in a chair on the tenth floor of an apartment building overlooking the checkpoint. He’s a little nervous because he’s been asked to guarantee his work-if the car gets busted going across the border, Raul Barrera is going to put a bullet in the back of his head.

“Just so you have a rooting interest,” Raul said.

He doesn’t know where the car is going, he doesn’t know who’s taking it there, but he does know that it’s unusual for cash to be heading north across the border instead of coming south. He’s built stash-holds all over the nondescript Toyota Camry, and that little baby is loaded down with millions of American dollars. He only hopes that the Border Patrol doesn’t decide to weigh the car.

So does Nora. She’s not too concerned about a visual search, or even dogs, because the pooches have been trained to sniff for drugs, not cash. Even so, the bundles of hundred-dollar bills have been soaked in lemon juice to neutralize any smell. And the car itself is fresh-it’s never been used to carry dope, so there can’t be any residual scent.

There is residue of sand, however, carefully left on the driver's-side floor and in the backseat with some damp towels, a hooded sweatshirt and a pair of old flip-flops.

The wait at the border today is over an hour and a half, which is a pain in the ass. But Adan insisted that she cross on a late Sunday afternoon, when the crossing is the busiest, jammed up with thousands of Americans returning home from weekends at the cheap resorts in Ensenada and Rosarita. So she has ample time to work her way over into the third lane, where the Border Patrol agent coming on duty is on the Barrera payroll.

It hasn’t been left to chance, though. Raul stands at the window of the apartment and peers out through binoculars. There are three apartment towers overlooking the border from the Mexican side, and the Barreras own all three. Now Raul watches his paid Border Patrol agent take his position and look up toward the apartment tower.

Raul punches digits into his pager.

Nora’s pager beeps and she looks to see the numbers 666 on the little display screen-the narco-code for “All clear.” She nods to the driver in the Ford Explorer in front of her. The man is looking into his rearview mirror and now he turns right into the third lane, setting a pick for Nora to turn behind him. The Jeep Cherokee behind her does the same thing, making space for her. Horns honk, middle fingers are raised, but Nora is going to get into that third lane.

Now all she has to do is wait and fend off the squadrons of vendors who walk up and down the line of cars hawking sombreros, milagros, Styrofoam jigsaw-puzzle maps of Mexico, sodas, tacos, burritos, T-shirts, baseball caps, just about anything you can think of, to the bored people waiting to cross. The border wait is one long, narrow open-air marketplace, and she buys a cheap gaudy sombrero, a poncho and a MY GIRLFRIEND WENT TO TIJUANA AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT to fortify her tourist profile and also because she always feels bad for the street vendors, especially the kids.

She’s three cars away from the checkpoint when Raul looks through his binocs and yells, “Fuck!”

The chop-artist jumps up from his chair. “What?”

“They’re switching. Look.”

Raul peers down. A Border Patrol supervisor is rotating the agents into different lines. It’s a common practice, but the timing is awfully close to be just coincidence.

“Do they know something?” the chop-artist asks. “Should we abort?”

“Too late,” Raul answers. “She can’t turn around.”

Sweat pops on the chop-artist’s forehead.

Nora sees the agent being changed out and thinks, Please God, no, not now, when I’m so close. She feels her heart start to race and makes a deliberate effort to breathe deeply and slow it down. Border agents are trained to look for signs of anxiety, she tells herself, and you want to be just one more blond chick coming back from a hard-partying weekend in Mexico.

The Ford Explorer pulls up to the checkpoint. It’s “chock-full-o'-Chicanos,” as Fabian had put it, again part of the plan. The agent will spend a lot of time checking this car out and be more likely to give her just a cursory look. Sure enough, the agent is asking a lot of questions, walking around the Explorer, looking in the windows, checking IDs. The golden retriever comes out and scurries around the vehicle, sniffing happily and wagging its tail.

It’s good that it’s taking time, Nora thinks, it’s part of the plan. But it’s also excruciating.

Finally, the Explorer clears the checkpoint and Nora pulls up. She pushes her sunglasses up on her forehead to give the agent the full benefit of her blue eyes. But she doesn’t say hello or start the conversation-the agents look for people who are overly friendly or eager.

“ID?” the agent asks.

She shows him her California driver’s license, but has her passport in plain sight in the passenger seat. The agent notices.

“What were you doing in Mexico, Ms. Hayden?”

“I came down for the weekend,” she says. “You know, some sun, the beach, a few margaritas.”

“Where did you stay?”

“At the Hotel Rosarita.” She has receipts matching her Visa card in her purse.

The agent nods. “Do they know you took their towels?”

“Oops.”

“Are you bringing anything back into the country?”

“Just this stuff,” she says.

The agent looks at the tourist shit she bought in line.

This is the critical moment; he’s going to wave her through, or search the car a little more, or pull her off into the inspection lane. Options one and two are acceptable, but option three could be a disaster, and Raul’s holding his breath as he watches the agent lean through the window and look into the backseat.

Nora just smiles. Taps her foot and hums along with the classic-rock station on the radio.

The agent leans back out.

“Drugs?”

“What?”

The agent smiles. “Welcome back, Ms. Hayden.”

“She’s through,” Raul says.

The chop-artist says he needs to take a piss.

“Don’t get too relaxed!” Raul yells to him. “She still has to get through San Onofre!”

The phone rings on Art Keller’s desk.

“Keller.”

“She’s in.”

Art stays on the line to get the make of the car, a description and the license-plate number. Then he phones the Border Patrol station at San Onofre.

Adan gets a similar call in his office.

“She’s through,” Raul says.

Adan feels better but he’s still worried. She still has to get through the checkpoint at San Onofre, and that’s his fear-the San Onofre checkpoint sits on an empty stretch of Route 5 just north of the Marine base at Pendleton, and the area is rife with electronic surveillance and radio jammers. If the DEA were going to grab her, they would grab her there, far from the Barrera lookout towers or any possible help in Tijuana. It’s entirely possible that Nora is driving straight into an ambush at San Onofre.

Nora drives north on the 5, the major north-south arterial that runs the length of California like a spine. She drives past downtown San Diego, past the airport and SeaWorld, past the big Mormon temple that looks like it’s made from spun sugar and would melt in the rain. She drives past the exit to La Jolla, past the racetrack at Del Mar, and speeds past downtown Oceanside before she finally pulls over at a rest stop just south of the Marine base at Camp Pendleton.

She gets out and locks the car. She can’t see the Barrera sicarios who are parked nearby, but she knows they’re in one car or another, or maybe several, to guard her vehicle while she uses the bathroom. It’s highly doubtful that anyone is going to steal a used Toyota Camry, but nobody’s taking the chance with several million dollars in cash in the car.

She uses the toilet, then goes to a sink to wash her hands and freshens her makeup. The cleaning lady waits patiently while she finishes. Nora smiles, thanks her and gives her a dollar bill before going back out. She buys a Diet Pepsi from a vending machine, gets back in the car and starts driving north. She loves this stretch of highway that runs through the Marine base because once you get past the barracks it’s mostly empty. Just the range of hills to the east and to the west, nothing but the lanes of southbound traffic and then blue Pacific.

She’s been through the San Onofre checkpoint hundreds of times-most southern Californians have, if they make the trip from San Diego up to Orange County. It’s always been kind of a joke, she thinks as the traffic in front of her slows, a “border” checkpoint seventy miles from the border. But the fact is that many illegals are on their way to the Los Angeles metro area, and most of them use the 5, so maybe it makes sense.

What usually happens is that you get to the checkpoint, tap your brakes, and, if you’re white, the Border Patrol agent waves you through with a bored sweep of the hand. That’s what usually happens, she thinks as she stops about a dozen cars before the checkpoint, and that’s what she’s expecting.

Except this time the Border Patrol guy signals her to stop.

Art looks at his watch-again. It should be going down now. He knows when she crossed the border, when she hit the rest stop. If she didn’t turn around somewhere, if she didn’t get hinky and change her mind, if… if… if…

Adan paces the office. He also has a timetable in mind, and Nora should be calling in soon. She wouldn’t risk a call near the surveillance at Pendleton, and there’s nothing for her to say until she’s through San Onofre, but she should be through by now. She should be in San Clemente, she should be…

The agent signals for her to roll down the window.

Another agent walks over to the passenger side. She rolls that window down, too, then looks at the agent beside her, gives him her best beautiful look and asks, “Is there something wrong?”

“Do you have ID on you?”

“Sure.”

She digs through her handbag for her wallet, then holds the wallet open for the agent to see her license. As she does, the agent on the passenger side pushes the tracking device between the headrest and the seat as he leans in to examine the back.

The first agent takes a long time looking at the license, then says, “Sorry for the inconvenience, ma'am,” and waves her through.

Art grabs the phone before the first ring stops.

“Done.”

He hangs up and blows out a long breath of relief. He has the aerial surveillance in place now, a mix of military-aircraft “traffic” helicopters and private planes, and can track her all the way.

And when she meets with the Chinese, we’ll be there.

Nora waits until she’s in San Clemente before she picks up the cell phone and punches in the number in Tijuana. When Fabian answers, she says, “I’m through,” and hangs up.

Now it’s just a matter of driving north until the Chinese give them a time and location for the meeting.

So that’s what she does.

She just drives.

Adan gets the call from Raul that Nora is through the San Onofre checkpoint, and goes outside for a walk. Now it’s just a matter of waiting.

Yeah, he thinks, just waiting.

Fabian has trucks standing by in Los Angeles, waiting to take delivery of the arms and drive them to the border at an isolated spot in the desert, where they’ll be transferred to different trucks, driven to several different airstrips and then flown to Colombia.

It’s all in place-but first Nora has to make that first, all-important transaction with the Chinese. And before she can do that, the Chinese have to tell them where and when.

Art also has men standing by-squadrons of heavily armed DEA agents, Federal Marshals, FBI-holed up in San Pedro waiting for the word. The San Pedro Harbor is huge, and the GOSCO facilities there are enormous-row after row of cargo warehouses, so they have to know, specifically, which one to hit. It’s a tricky operation because they have to lay off until the deal is in place, but then get in there quickly.

Art’s in a helicopter now, watching an electronic map of Orange County and a red blinking light that represents Nora. He debates with himself. Put a ground unit on her now, or wait? He decides to wait as she takes the 405 North exit off the 5 and heads for San Pedro.

No surprises there.

But he is surprised when the blinking red light gets off the 405 at MacArthur Boulevard in Irvine and turns west.

“What the fuck is she doing?” Art says out loud. He tells the pilot, “Pull in on her!”

The pilot shakes his head. “Can’t! Air-traffic control!”

Then Art gets what the fuck she’s doing.

“Goddamnit!”

He calls for ground units to hustle to John Wayne Airport. But the map tells him that there are five potential exits out of the airport, and he’ll be lucky to cover even one of them.

She gets off MacArthur at the airport exit and pulls in to the parking structure.

Art’s helicopter hovers over the 405, north of the airport. It’s his best hope, that she pulled into the airport to block audio surveillance, is getting the location in San Pedro, and will shortly pull back onto the highway.

Or, Art thinks, she’s taking millions of dollars in cash and getting on an airplane. He watches the screen but the blinking red light is just gone.

Nora gets on the cell phone.

“I’m here,” she says.

Raul gives her an address in nearby Costa Mesa, about two miles away. She pulls out of the structure and turns west on MacArthur, away from the 405, then turns onto Bear Street into the nondescript flat gridiron of Costa Mesa.

She finds it, a small garage on a street full of small warehouses. A man with a Mac-10 machine pistol slung over his arm opens the door and she pulls in. The door closes behind her, and then it’s like the Formula 1 race she once went to with a client-a crew of men instantly jump the car with power tools, take it apart and put the money into Halliburton briefcases and then into the trunk of a black Lexus.

This, she thinks, would be the moment for a rip-off, but none of these men are even tempted. They’re all illegals with family back in Baja and they know that Barrera sicarios are parked in front of their homes with orders to kill everyone inside if the money and the courier don’t leave that garage quickly and safely.

Nora watches them work with the smooth, silent efficiency of a first-class pit crew. The only sound is the whine of power drills, and it takes only thirteen minutes to disassemble the car and reload the money in the Lexus.

The man with the machine pistol hands her a new cell phone.

She calls Raul. “Done.”

“Give me a color.”

“Blue,” she says. Any other color would mean that she’s being held against her will.

“Go.”

She gets into the Lexus. The garage door opens and she pulls out. Gets back on Bear and ten minutes later she’s back on the 405, heading toward San Pedro. She drives right under a traffic helicopter circling the area.

Art stares at the empty screen.

Nora Hayden, he finally admits to himself, is in the wind.

She knows it, she gets it, she’s driving north into God knows what and now she’s doing it alone. Which is nothing new for Nora-except for her too few years with Parada, she’s been doing it alone her whole life.

But she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to get this done now. Or what’s going to happen. The easiest thing in the world would be to just take the money and keep going, but that won’t get her what she wants.

It’s nighttime as she passes through Carson, its natural-gas drills burning like signal towers in some sort of industrial version of hell. Working the plan, she gets off this time at the LAX exit and calls in.

They have the place for the meet.

An AARCO gas station heading west on the 110 exit.

On the way to San Pedro.

“Give me a color.”

“Blue.”

“Go.”

For a second she thinks about just using the cell and calling Keller on the hotline number he gave her, but then the number would show up on phone records, and besides, the car might be bugged. So she just drives to the gas station and pulls up by the pump. A car flashes its lights. She pulls over by a row of phone booths (God, does anyone use pay phones anymore? she wonders) and sits there while an Asian man with a small briefcase in his hand gets out of the other car and walks over to the passenger side of her car.

She unlocks the door and he gets in.

He’s a young man, probably mid-twenties, dressed in the black suit, white shirt and black tie that seem to be a uniform for young Asian businessmen these days.

“I’m Mr. Lee,” he says.

“Yeah, I’m Ms. Smith.”

“I’m sorry,” Lee says, “but please turn around and put your hands on the door.”

She does it and he frisks her for wires. Then he opens the briefcase, takes out a small electronic sweeper and checks the car for bugs. Satisfied it’s clean, he says, “You will forgive me, I hope.”

“No problem.”

“Let’s drive.”

“Where to?”

“I’ll tell you as we go.”

He gives her directions and they head for the harbor.

Art has the GOSCO harbor facility under surveillance.

It’s his last, best shot.

A DEA agent sits high atop a gigantic crane, his powerful night-vision glasses trained on the GOSCO entrance, and he sees the black Lexus coming down the street.

“Vehicle approaching.”

“Can you ID the driver?” Art asks.

“Negative. Tinted windows.”

It could be anyone, Art thinks. It could be Nora, it could be a GOSCO manager coming to check on a warehouse, it could be a john finding a dark spot for a quick blow job.

“Stay on it.”

He doesn’t want to be on the horn too much. If this is really going down, the narcos will have audio sweepers going, and even though his transmissions are encrypted, the sad fact is that the narcos have a bigger budget and better technology.

So now he sits in the back of a hippie van three miles from the harbor and waits.

It’s all he can do.

Nora drives down a street between two rows of GOSCO warehouses that run perpendicular to their two loading wharves. Two huge GOSCO freighters are pulled up at the wharves. Sparks fly from welders doing repairs on the ships, and forklifts scurry back and forth between the wharf and the warehouses. She keeps driving until they’re in a quieter area.

A warehouse door opens and Lee directs her inside.

“I lost them,” the agent says to Art. “They went into a warehouse.”

“Which goddamn warehouse?”

“Could be one of three,” the agent answers. “D-1803, 1805 or 1807.”

Art consults a plan of the GOSCO facility. He can have teams at the location inside ten minutes and cut the group of warehouses off from two sides. He switches channels and says, “All units, prepare to move in five.”

Mr. Lee is polite.

He gets out, comes around and opens the car door for Nora. She gets out and looks around her.

If there’s a huge shipment of weapons in here, it’s cleverly disguised as a whole bunch of empty shelves and a black Lexus identical to the one she drove in.

She looks at Lee and raises her eyebrows.

“Do you have the money?” he asks.

She opens the trunk, then the briefcases. Lee flips through the stacks of used bills, then closes everything up again.

“Your turn,” Nora says.

“We’ll wait,” he says.

“For what?”

“To see if the police arrive.”

“This wasn’t part of the plan,” Nora says.

“It wasn’t part of your plan,” Lee says.

They stare at each other for a few long moments.

“This,” she says, “is really boring.”

She gets back in the car and sits down, thinking, Please God, don’t let Keller come blasting through that door.

Shag Wallace’s voice comes across the radio.

“On your signal, boss.”

Art tightens his Kevlar vest, flips the safety of his M-16 off, takes a deep breath and says, “Go.”

“Roger that.”

“Hold!” he yells into the mike. It comes from his gut-something’s wrong here, something’s hinky. They’ve been too careful, too cute. Or maybe I’m just getting chicken in my old age. But he says, “Stand down.”

Fifteen minutes.

Twenty.

Half an hour.

Nora reaches for her phone.

“What are you doing?” Lee asks.

“Calling my people,” Nora says. “They’re going to be wondering what the hell happened to me.”

He hands her his own phone. “Use this one.”

“Why?”

“Security.”

She shrugs and takes the phone. “Where are we?”

“Don’t send them here,” Lee says.

“Why not?”

He has a little self-satisfied smile on his face. Nora’s seen it on men a thousand times, usually after one of her spectacular fake orgasms. “The merchandise isn’t here.”

“Where is it?”

Now that no police have arrived at this location, he feels it’s safe to tell her the real one. Besides, he has Adan Barrera’s mistress as insurance.

“Long Beach.”

The new GOSCO facility at Long Beach Harbor, he tells her.

Pier 4, Row D, Building 3323.

She calls Raul and gives him the information. When she hangs up she says to Lee, “We have to call our boss and get the okay for this change of plans.”

Art Keller is sweating bricks.

If that was Nora who went into the warehouse, she’s been there for over half an hour. And nothing’s happened. No one has gone in or come out, no trucks have arrived. Something’s gone wrong.

“All units stand by,” he says. “We’re going on my signal.”

Then his cell phone rings.

Lee listens anxiously as Nora tells Adan Barrera all about how they took her to an empty building and put a gun to her head as a test, and how the guns are really at Long Beach, “Pier 4, Row D, Building 3323.”

“Pier 4, Row D, Building 3323,” Art Keller says.

“You got it,” Nora says.

She hangs up and hands the phone back to Lee.

“Let’s get going,” she says.

He shakes his head. “We’re staying here.”

“I don’t understand.”

She understands when he takes a. 45 from beneath his black suit jacket and lays it on his lap. “When the transaction is safely completed,” he says, “I will take the car with the money, and you will take the other car and drive away. But if something unfortunate should occur…”

Long Beach, Art thinks.

Fucking Long Beach. We have to get down there before Barrera’s trucks can get there and load up. He gets on the radio and tells his people to scramble. We have to move this goddamn army down to Long Beach, and do it in a hurry.

Fabian Martinez is thinking pretty much the same thing. He has a freaking convoy on the road now, three semis painted as CALEXICO PRODUCE COMPANY that he had ready to go to San Pedro, and now they have to roll down the 405 to freaking Long Beach.

Pain in the ass.

He sits in the passenger seat of the lead truck with a Mac-10 under his coat.

Just in case.

Two of his best men are in a scout car about half a mile ahead. They’ll go in first, and if they spot anything that shouldn’t be there, they’ll send him a beeper message to get the fuck out.

It’s cold for a southern California night, even in March, and he pulls his collar up around his neck and tells the driver to turn on the fucking heat.

Nora sits in the front seat of the Lexus and waits.

“Do you mind if I turn on the radio?” she asks.

Lee doesn’t mind.

Racing down to Long Beach, Art reformulates his plan.

What goddamn plan? he thinks. That’s the problem. He had a tactical plan for the raid in San Pedro, but now it’s just going to be a make-it-up-as-you-go cavalry charge into God knows what, and that makes him very goddamn nervous.

The best thing to do would be to let the Barrera trucks make the pickup and hit them on the road. But he has to make sure that Nora is all right. So the bust has to be at the warehouse, and now it just has to be smash-and-grab. Go in fast, go in hard.

All the agents have been briefed-they all know that The Border Lord wants La Guera bad, and he wants her alive because she can be pressured into giving up her boyfriend. They know that, Art thinks, but will they remember it in the chaos of a raid, especially if the Barrera people decide to shoot it out?

It has all the potential for a major-league goat fuck, and Nora could end up dead.

He radios back to Shag again to make sure he understands.

Fabian’s scout cars don’t see anything they don’t like, and they give him the 666 signal.

It’s one in the morning and the Long Beach complex is busy with trucks loading freight. Which is very good, Fabian thinks. What’s three more?

He finds Pier 4, then Row D, then Building 3323, an enormous Quonset hut like all the rest. He hops out of the truck and knocks on the office door. He stands outside, stamping his feet, as two Chinese men inspect his trucks-the cabs and the trailers. Then the big metal door of the building slides open.

Fabian climbs back into the cab of the lead truck and leads them in.

Nora startles when Lee’s cell phone rings.

She sees Lee’s hand tighten on the pistol grip as he answers it. She sucks in a deep breath and readies herself to make a grab at his wrist as he hangs up, turns to her and says, “Your people are there. Everything’s okay.”

“Good,” she says. “Let’s get going.”

He shakes his head.

“Not yet.”

Fabian stands talking with the Chinese guy in charge.

“You got your money?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she?”

“In another location,” the man says. “As soon as this transaction is safely concluded, she will rejoin you.”

Fabian doesn’t like it. Not because he cares about Nora Hayden-other than wanting to fuck her in half, he wouldn’t care if she did get smacked-but because Adan does care, and is holding him responsible for Nora’s safety. And these slants are holding her hostage? Not good at all. So he says, “Get her on the line.”

Lee hands Nora the phone. “They want to speak to you.”

Nora takes the phone.

“Give me a color,” Fabian says.

“Red.”

Fabian gives the Chinese guy back his phone, then takes his Mac-10 from his jacket and sticks it in the guy’s face.

“Call your boy back,” he says. “Tell him it’s cool.”

Guns appear from everywhere. All Fabian’s men pull, and all the Chinese guys. Except most of the Chinese are up in catwalks, aiming down, so they have a tactical advantage.

It’s your basic stalemate.

Which disappears when the office door blows in.

It’s just chaos.

Art’s the first through the door, with a phalanx of agents behind him. He throws the switch and the metal cargo door opens again to reveal another platoon of DEA, FBI, and ATF, a whole lethal alphabet soup with automatic rifles, shotguns, Kevlar vests and bullet-resistant visors, nightlights shining from the tops of their helmets.

The agents are yelling at the top of their lungs.

“FREEZE!”

“DEA!”

“GET DOWN! GET DOWN!”

“FBI!”

“DROP YOUR WEAPONS!”

Weapons clatter on the metal catwalks and the concrete floor. Fabian thinks about trying to shoot it out but quickly sees that it’s futile, lets his Mac-10 slide to the floor and puts his hands up.

Art looks around for Nora. It’s hard to spot anything in the chaos, with men running, other men hitting the floor, agents grabbing people and throwing them down. He looks for her blond hair and doesn’t see it, so he screams into his radio mike, “GO!” hoping Shag can hear him over the cacophony, praying it’s not too late.

Beside him, a Chinese guy is yelling into a cell phone.

Art grabs him by the collar, throws him down and kicks the phone from his hand.

Lee hears his boss screaming over the phone.

Nora sees his eyes widen and then the gun comes up, pointed straight at her forehead.

She screams.

Over the dull thump of an explosion.

Blood and bone spray against the passenger window.

Lee’s body slumps back into the seat and Nora turns to see the SWAT sniper standing in the doorway, the door hanging crooked off its blown hinges.

She’s still screaming as Shag Wallace slowly approaches the car, opens her door and gently takes her by the elbow.

“It’s all right,” he’s saying. “You’re all right. Come on now, we have to get you out of here.”

He takes her out of the car, walks her outside and puts her in the front seat of his own car. “Wait here for a minute.”

Shag goes back into the warehouse, gets into the front seat of the Lexus and takes the. 45 from Lee’s dead hand. Then he holds it a few inches away from Lee’s forehead, aims it at the entry wounds and pulls the trigger.

He wipes the gun and goes out to his car.

Sits next to Nora and tells her to hold the. 45 for a second. Numb with shock, she does what he says. Then he takes the gun back and says, “Here’s your story: Things went sick and wrong. He was going to shoot you. You grabbed the gun, you fought, you won. Do you understand that?”

She nods.

She thinks she understands. She’s not sure. Her hands won’t stop shaking.

“Are you okay?” Shag asks. “Look, it’s all right if you’re not. If you want to stop this right now, just say the word. We’ll understand.”

“Have they arrested Adan?” she asks.

“Not yet,” Shag answers.

She shakes her head.

Art kneels on Fabian’s neck and attaches the plastic telephone ties to his wrists.

“It was that cunt, wasn’t it?” Fabian asks.

Art kneels down a little harder as he recites Fabian’s rights.

“Fucking right I’m going to want a lawyer,” Fabian says.

Art hauls him to his feet, shoves him into one of the DEA vans and walks over to inspect the two cargo containers-twenty feet long, eight feet wide and eight feet high-filled with crates.

His men take them out and bust them open.

Chinese-made AK-47s-two thousand of them-spill out of the boxes in pieces: barrels, magazines, stocks. Other tools include two dozen Chinese KPG-2 rocket launchers, which are considered especially valuable because they are handheld.

Two thousand rifles equals two thousand kilos of cocaine, Art thinks. God only knows how many kilos you get passed through for the rocket launchers, which are capable of shooting down helicopters.

Next they find six truckloads of M-2 rifles, converted M-1s, the standard army carbine. The difference between the original and the M-2 is that the latter can be flipped to full automatic by a single switch. He also finds a few LAWS, the American version of the KPG-2, not as effective against choppers but very good against armored vehicles. All of them perfect weapons for a guerrilla war.

And worth thousands of kilos of coke.

It’s the largest arms bust in history.

But he’s not done.

All of this is worthless if it doesn’t lead to the demise of Adan Barrera.

Whatever the cost.

If Adan slips the noose, the only chance of finding him again is through Nora. You have a plan in place to extract her, but plans have a way of going wrong.

She wanted to go back in, he tells himself. You gave her the option of calling it quits and she made up her own mind. She’s an adult, she can make her own choices.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

Nora drives the new Lexus down the highway to the first exit, pulls into a gas station, goes into the ladies’ room and throws up. When her stomach is empty, she gets back in the car and drives to the Santa Ana train station, dumps the car in the parking lot, goes inside to a phone booth, shuts the door and calls Adan.

The crying is no problem. The tears come easily as she chokes back sobs and says, “Something went wrong… I don’t know… He was going to kill me… I…”

“Come back.”

“The police are probably looking for me.”

“It’s too soon,” he says. Dump the car, get on the train, go to San Ysidro, walk across the pedestrian bridge.

“Adan, I’m scared.”

“It’s okay,” he says. “Go to the city place. Wait there. I’ll be in touch.”

She knows what he means. It’s a code they worked out a long time ago, for just such an emergency as this. The city place is a condo they keep in Colonia Hipodromo in Tijuana.

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you, too.”

She gets on the next southbound train to San Diego.

Plans have a way of going wrong.

In this case, the mechanics back in Costa Mesa are working on the tricked-out little Toyota Camry to get it ready for another run and they find something interesting jammed between the seat and the headrest on the passenger side.

Some sort of electronic device.

The crew chief makes a phone call.

Nora gets off the train in San Diego and grabs the trolley down to San Ysidro, gets off, climbs the steps to the pedestrian bridge and walks across the border.