The Power of the Dog

Chapter Twelve
Slipping into Darkness

Tijuana, 1997

Nora Hayden’s in the wind.

That’s the simple, brutal truth that Art’s trying to deal with.

Ernie Hidalgo all over again.

Source Chupar redux.

These are the scariest times in the life of any person who handles undercovers. The missed check-in, the non-signal, the silence.

It’s the silence that will make your stomach churn, your teeth grind, your jaws clench, the silence that will slowly extinguish the low flame of false hope. The dead silence as you launch one radar ping after another into the dark, into the depth and then wait for that returning ping. And wait and wait and get only silence.

She was supposed to have gone to the condo in Colonia Hipodromo to meet Adan. But she never showed up, and neither did The Lord of the Skies. Antonio Ramos did, in force-two platoons of his special troopers in armored cars sealed off the entire block and hit the condo like it wasNormandyBeach.

Only it was empty.

No Adan Barrera, no Nora.

Now Ramos is tearing Baja to pieces looking for the Barrera brothers.

He’s been waiting for this call for years. Convinced by John Hobbs that Adan Barrera is dealing arms to left-wing insurgents inChiapas and elsewhere, Mexico City has taken the leash off Ramos, and he goes at it like a pit bull on steroids. A week into the operation, he’s hit seven safe houses already, all in the exclusive neighborhoods of Colonia Chapultepec, Colonia Hipodromo and Colonia Cacho.

For an entire week Ramos’ troopers storm through Tijuana’s wealthy neighborhoods in armored trucks and Humvees, and they’re none too gentle about it, blowing off expensive doors with explosive charges, ransacking homes, blocking traffic and disrupting businesses for hours. It’s almost as if Ramos wants to alienate the city’s elite, who, indeed, are torn between blaming Ramos or the Barreras for all the trouble.

Which, of course, has been a centerpiece of Adan Barrera’s long-term strategy for years-to become so enmeshed with the Baja upper crust that an attack on him is an attack on them. And they do scream toMexico City that Ramos is out of control, over the top, that he’s trampling on their civil rights.

Ramos doesn’t care ifTijuana ’s upper crust hates his guts. He hates them, too, thinks that they sold whatever souls they had to the Barrera brothers-taking them into society, into their homes, allowing their sons and nephews to dabble in the drug trade-in exchange for cheap thrills by association and quick, easy money. They acted, Ramos thinks, like a gaggle of narco-groupies, treating the Barrera scum like celebrities, rock musicians, movie stars.

And he tells them so, when they come to complain.

Look, Ramos tells the city fathers, the narcotraficantes murdered a Catholic cardinal and you welcomed them home. They gunned down federales on the streets in rush hour and you protected them. They murdered your own chief of police and you did nothing about it. So don’t come to me and complain-you brought this on yourselves.

Ramos gets on television and calls the city out.

He looks straight into the camera and announces that within fourteen days he’s going to have Adan and Raul Barrera behind bars and their organization on the old ash heap of history. He stands beside stacks of captured weapons and piles of seized drugs and names names-Adan, Raul and Fabian-and goes on to name the scions of several prominentTijuana families as Juniors and promises to put them in jail as well.

Then he announces that he’s fired five dozen Baja federales for lacking the “moral qualifications” to be policemen, saying, “It is a shame on the nation that in Baja, many of the police officers are not the enemies of the Barrera cartel, but their servants.”

I’m not going away, he says. I’m taking on the Barreras-who will stand with me?

Well, not too many people.

One young prosecutor, a state investigator and Ramos’ own men-and that’s about it.

Art understands why the people ofTijuana aren’t flocking to Ramos’ banner.

They’re scared.

And why shouldn’t they be?

Two months ago, a Baja cop who exposed the names of crooked cops in the state police was found by the side of the road in a canvas bag. Every bone in his body had been broken-one of Raul Barrera’s trademark executions. Just three weeks ago, another prosecutor who had been investigating the Barreras was shot to death as he took his morning jog on the track of the city university. The gunmen had yet to be apprehended. And the warden ofTijuana ’s prison was killed in a drive-by shooting as he went out onto his porch to get his morning newspaper. The word on the street is that he had offended a Barrera associate who is incarcerated in his facility.

No, the Barreras might be on the run right now, but that doesn’t mean their reign of terror is over, and people aren’t going to stick their necks out until they see the two Barrera brothers on slabs.

The fact is, Art thinks a week into the operation, that we haven’t produced. The people of Baja know that we took a swing at the Barreras’ heads and missed.

Raul is still at large.

Adan is still at large.

And Nora?

Well, the fact that Adan didn’t walk into the trap in Colonia Hipodromo probably means that her cover was blown. Art still holds on to hope, but as the days go by in silence, he has to acknowledge the probability that he will have to search for her decomposed body.

So Art’s not in a good mood when he goes into the interview room in the federal lockup in downtownSan Diego to have a chat with Fabian Martinez, aka El Tiburon.

The little punk doesn’t look so stylish now in his federal orange jumpsuit, handcuffed and in ankle bracelets. But he retains his smirk as he’s led in and plopped into a folding chair across the metal table from Art.

“You went to Catholic school, didn’t you?” Art begins.

“Augustine,” Fabian answers. “Right here in San Dog.”

“So you know the difference between purgatory and hell,” Art says.

“Refresh my memory.”

“Sure,” Art says. “Basically, they’re both painful. But your time in purgatory eventually ends, whereas hell lasts forever. I’m here to offer you the choice between hell and purgatory.”

“I’m listening.”

Art lays it out for him. How the weapons charge alone gets him thirty-to-life in federal prison, not to mention the drug trafficking charges, each of which carries fifteen-to-life. So that’s hell. On the other hand, if Fabian becomes a government witness, he spends a few years painfully testifying against his old friends, followed by a short stretch in prison, then a new name and a new life. And that’s purgatory.

“In the first place,” Fabian answers, “I didn’t know anything about those guns. I was there to pick up produce. In the second place, what trafficking charges? How did drugs get into this?”

“I have a witness,” Art says, “that puts you at the center of a major narcotics network, Fabian. In fact, I kind of like you for 'kingpin status,’ unless you have someone else in mind.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Hey,” Art says, “if you want to pay thirty-to-life to see that card, call me. But basically, you’re in a bidding war with my other witness, and whoever gives me a better shot at Barrera wins.”

“I want a lawyer.”

Good, Art thinks, and I want you to have one. But he says, “No, you don’t, Fabian. A lawyer is just going to tell you to shut up and land you in prison for the rest of your life.”

“I want a lawyer.”

“So no deal?”

“No deal.”

Art says, “I need to read you your rights.”

“You already read them,” Fabian says, slumping in his chair. He’s bored now; he wants to go back to his cell and read magazines.

“Oh, that was on the weapons charge,” Art says. “I have to do it all over again on the murder thing.”

Fabian sits straight up. “What murder thing?”

“I’m arresting you for the murder of Juan Parada,” Art says. “We’ve had a sealed indictment since ’94. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say-”

“You don’t have jurisdiction,” Fabian says, “on a killing that happened inMexico.”

Art leans over the table. “Parada’s parents were wetbacks. He was born outsideLaredo, Texas, so he’s an American citizen, just like you. And that gives me jurisdiction. Hey, maybe we’ll try you inTexas -the governor there really likes to hand out lethal injections. See you in court, asshole.”

Now go talk to your lawyer.

Walk right into the shit.

If Adan had driven to his rendezvous with Nora in Colonia Hipodromo, the police would probably have nabbed him.

But he walked.

The cops would never expect Adan Barrera to be on foot, so when he saw the police vehicles start to pour into the neighborhood, he simply turned around and walked out. Strolled down the sidewalk, right past the roadblocks that had been set up in the streets.

It hasn’t been that easy since.

He’s been chased out of two more safe houses, getting warnings from Raul just in time, and now he’s in a safe house in the Rio district, wondering when the storm troopers are going to come smashing in there. And the worst part is the communications-or the lack of them. Most of his cell phones aren’t encrypted, so he is reluctant to use them. And the ones that are might have been compromised, so even if the police couldn’t decipher what he was saying, they could still get a fix on his location just through the signal. So he doesn’t know who’s been arrested, what houses have been hit, what was found in those houses. He doesn’t know who is conducting the raids, how long they are going to last, where they are going to hit, whether they know where he is.

What really concerns Adan is that the raids came without warning.

Not a word, not a whisper, from his well-paid friends inMexico City.

And that scares him because if the PRI politicians have turned on him, they must be very scared. And they must know that if they strike at the Barrera head, they don’t dare miss, which makes them dangerous.

They have to take me down, he thought.

They have to kill me.

So he’s taking protective measures. First, he distributes most of his cell phones to his men, who disperse throughout the city and the state with the instructions to make calls and then dump the phones. (Sure enough, Ramos starts getting reports that Adan Barrera is in Hipodromo, Chapultepec, Rosarito, Ensenada, Tecate, even across the border in San Diego, Chula Vista, Otay Mesa.)

Raul goes to Radio Shack, buys more phones and starts working them, reaching out and touching cops on the payroll-Baja federales, Baja State Police, Tijuana municipal cops.

The news isn’t good. The state and local cops who do answer their phones don’t know shit-nobody’s told them anything, but the one thing they can say is that this is a federal effort, it’s got nothing to do with them. And the local federales?

“Off the hook,” Raul tells Adan.

Now they’ve moved again-getting out of the “safe” house in the Rio district just ten minutes before the police hit it. They’re in a condo in Colonia Cacho, hoping to be able to hole up there for at least a few hours until they can find out what the fuck is going on. But the local police aren’t going to be any help.

“They’re not answering their phones,” Raul says.

“Get them at home,” Adan snaps.

“They’re not answering there, either.”

Adan grabs a new phone and dials long-distance.

To Mexico City.

Nobody’s home. None of his connections in PRI are available to take a phone call, but if he’d like to leave a number, they’d be happy to return…

It’s the gun deal, Adan thinks. Fucking Art Keller has put together the guns and FARC, and used it to make Mexico City react. He feels like he wants to throw up. There were only four people in Mexico who knew about the arrangement with Tirofio-me, Raul, Fabian…

And Nora.

Nora is missing.

She never showed up at Colonia Hipodromo.

But the police did.

She got there before me, he thinks. She got swept up in the raid and the police have her on ice somewhere.

Raul gets hold of a laptop and then forces one of their resident computer geeks to come to this safe house, and the geek manages to get out encrypted e-mail messages to their network of computers. An encryption of the geek’s own design-he was paid in the high six figures-so dense that even the DEA hasn’t been able to crack it. This is what it’s come to, Adan thinks, launching electronic messages into space. So they sit and watch for armored cars rolling up the street as they sit and watch the computer screen for messages. Within an hour Raul manages to summon a few sicarios and a couple of clean work cars that can’t be connected to the cartel. He also sets up a series of watching and listening posts to monitor the whereabouts of the police.

When the sun sets, Adan, dressed as a laborer, gets into the back of an ’83 Dodge Dart with Raul. In the front are a heavily armed driver and another sicario. The car makes its way through the hazardous maze that Tijuana has become, the scouts and listening posts electronically clearing paths until Adan finally makes his way out of the city and to Rancho las Bardas.

There, he and Raul take a breath and try to figure things out.

Ramos helps.

The Barreras turn on the evening news and there he is, at a press conference, announcing that he’s going to shut down the Baja cartel within two weeks.

“That explains why we didn’t get a warning,” Adan says.

“That explains some of it,” says Raul. Ramos has a virtual road map through the cartel. Locations of safe houses, names of associates. Where did he get his information?

“It’s Fabian,” Adan says. “He’s giving everything up.”

Raul is incredulous. “It’s not Fabian. It’s your beloved Nora.”

“I don’t believe that,” Adan says.

“You don’t want to believe it,” Raul says. He tells Adan about finding the tracking device in the car.

“That could have been Fabian, too,” Adan says.

“The police had an ambush set up at your little love nest!” Raul yells. “Did Fabian know about that? Who knew about the arms deal? You, me, Fabian and Nora. Well, it wasn’t me, I don’t think it was you, Fabian’s in an American prison, so…”

“We don’t even know where she is,” Adan says. Then a horrible thought occurs to him. He looks up at Raul, who has pulled the blind aside and is looking out the window. “Raul, did you do something to her?”

Raul doesn’t answer.

Adan jumps out of his chair. “Raul, did you do something to her?!”

He grabs Raul by the shirt. Raul flicks him off easily and pushes him onto the bed. He says, “What if I did?”

“I want to see her.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“You're in charge now?”

“Your obsession with that cunt has fucked up our business.” Meaning, Yes, brother, until you come to your senses, I’m in charge.

“I want to see her!”

“I am not going to let you become another Tio!”

El chocho, Raul thinks, the downfall of Barrera men.

Wasn’t it Tio’s obsession with young pussy that brought about his downfall? First with Pilar and then with that other cunt, whose name I can’t even remember. Miguel Angel Barrera, M-1-the man who built the Federacion, the smartest, toughest, most levelheaded man I’ve ever known, except his brain shut down over some piece of ass and it did him in.

And Adan has inherited the same disease. Hell, Adan could have all the pussy he wants, but he has to have that one. He could have had mistress after mistress as long as he was discreet about it and didn’t embarrass his wife. But not Adan-no, he falls in love with this whore, and is seen everywhere in public with her.

Giving Art Keller the perfect target.

And now look at us.

Adan stares at the floor. “Is she alive?”

Raul doesn’t answer.

“Raul, just tell me if she’s alive.”

A guard bursts through the door.

“Go!” he yells. “Go!”

The animals in the menagerie scream as Ramos and his men come over the wall.

Ramos shoulders the grenade launcher, aims and pulls the trigger. One of the guard towers explodes in a flash of yellow light. He reloads, aims again, and there’s another flash. He looks down and two deer are dashing themselves against the fence, trying to get out. He jumps into the pen and opens the door.

The two animals dash out into the night.

Birds are screeching and squawking, monkeys chattering madly, and Ramos remembers hearing rumors that Raul has a couple of lions out here and then he hears their growls and it sounds just like it does in the movies and then he forgets about that because there’s return fire coming in.

They’d come in by airplane after dark, a risky lights-out landing on an old drug-running strip, then done a night march across the desert and a long crawl for the last thousand yards to avoid the Barreras’ patrol jeeps.

And now we’re in it, Ramos thinks. He nestles his cheek into Esposa’s comfortable old stock, squeezes off two rounds, gets up and moves forward, knowing that his men are laying cover fire for him. Then he drops and lays down cover for the men who leapfrog ahead of him, and this is the way they move forward toward Raul’s house.

One of his men gets hit in front of him. Is moving forward and then jumps like an antelope when he gets hit. Ramos crawls forward to help him, but the man’s face is half blown away and he’s past help. Ramos removes the ammo clips from the man’s belt and rolls away as a burst of bullets stitches after him.

The fire is coming from the roof of a low building, and Ramos comes out of his roll into a kneeling position, flicks the rifle to bush-rake and strings the clip out along the roof line. Then he feels two hard thuds in his chest, realizes he’s been hit in the Kevlar vest, unhooks a grenade from his belt and lofts it onto the roof.

There’s a thud, then a flash and two bodies in the air, and the fire from that building stops.

But not the fire from the house.

Red, telltale muzzle flashes blaze from windows, roofs and doorways. Ramos keeps a close eye on the doors because apparently they’ve caught a few of Raul’s men inside the house and they’ll be trying to get out to outflank their attackers. Sure enough, one of the mercenaries fires a clip from the doorway, then makes his break. Ramos’ two shots take him in the stomach and he tumbles into the dirt and starts to scream. One of his mates comes out to drag him back in but gets hit half a dozen times himself and balls up by his buddy’s feet.

“Get the cars!” Ramos yells.

There are vehicles everywhere-Land Rovers, the narco-favorite Suburban, a few Mercedeses. Ramos doesn’t want any of the narcos-especially Raul-to make it into one of the cars and drive away, and now, after a hail of bullets, none of these vehicles is going anywhere. They’re all sitting on flat tires and shattered glass. Then a gas tank or two goes up and a couple of them are on fire.

Then things get weird.

Because someone has the brilliant idea that it would be a good diversionary tactic to open all the cages, and now there are animals running around all over the place. Running wild in all directions, panicked by the noise and the flames and the bullets whistling through the air, and Ramos blinks as a condenado giraffe runs in front of him, then two zebras, and antelope are zigzagging back and forth across the yard and Ramos thinks about the lions again and decides that this is going to be a very stupid way to die as he picks himself up and moves toward the house and ducks as some huge bird swoops low over his head and now the narcos bust out of the house and it is just the OK Corral out there.

Flickering silver moonlit images of men, animals, weapons-men standing, running, shooting, falling, ducking. It looks like some weird dream, but the bullets and death and pain are real as Ramos stands and snaps a shot here, then moves around some kind of wild donkey that’s braying in terror, and then there’s a narco to his left, then to his right-no, that’s one of his men-and bullets are zipping, gun muzzles blazing, men yelling and animals screaming. Ramos pops off two shots and another narco falls and then Ramos sees-or thinks he sees, anyway-the tall form of Raul running, firing pistols from his hips, and Ramos gets a momentary aim on his legs but Raul disappears. Ramos runs toward where he saw him and then dives for the ground as he sees a narco raise his gun, and Ramos fires from his back and the man flies backward and hits the ground himself, a little cloud of dust poofing up against the moonlight.

The Barreras are gone.

As the firefight dies down-Ramos selects the word dies intentionally, because many of Raul’s mercenaries are dead, or at least down-he goes from corpse to corpse, wounded to wounded, prisoner to prisoner, looking for Raul.

Rancho las Bardas is a mess. The main house looks like a gigantic folk-art colander. Cars are on fire. Rare birds perch in tree limbs, and some of the animals have actually crept back into their cages, where they cower and whimper.

Ramos sees a tall body lying by the fence on a bed of matilija poppies, the white blossoms flecked red with blood. Keeping Esposa trained on the body, Ramos kicks it over onto its back. It’s not Raul. Ramos is furious. We know, he thinks, that Raul was here-we heard him. And I saw him, or thought I did, anyway. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe the cell phone calls were fake, to throw us off the trail, and the brothers are sitting on the beach in Costa Rica or Honduras laughing at us over cold beers. Maybe they weren’t here at all.

Then he spots it.

The trapdoor is covered with dirt and a little brush, but he can make out the rectangular shape on the ground. Looking closer, he can see the footprints.

You can run, Raul, but you can’t fly.

But a tunnel. That’s very good.

He bends over and sees that the trapdoor has been opened recently. There’s a narrow line at its edge where the dirt has fallen through. He tosses the brush aside and feels for the concave handle, digs his hand in and lifts the trapdoor.

He hears the tiny click and sees the explosive charge.

But it’s too late.

“Me jodi.”

I fucked myself.

The explosion blows him to pieces.

The silence that was once ominous is now funereal.

Art has tried everything he can think of to find Nora. Hobbs has turned over all his resources, even though Art has refused to divulge the identity of his source. So Art has had the benefit of satellite photographs, listening posts, Internet sweeps. They all turn up nothing.

His options are limited-he can’t launch an Ernie Hidalgo-like search for her because that would blow her cover and kill her, if she’s not already dead. And now he doesn’t have Ramos waging his relentless campaign.

“It doesn’t look good, boss,” Shag says.

“When’s our next satellite sweep?”

“Forty-five minutes.”

Weather permitting, they’ll get images of Rancho las Bardas, the Barreras’ compound in the desert. They’ve had five of them already, and they’ve shown nothing. A few servants, but no one who looks like Adan or Raul, and certainly no one who looks like Nora.

And no movement, either. No new vehicles, no fresh tire tracks, nothing coming in or going out. The same is the case with the other Barrera ranches and safe houses that Ramos hadn’t yet hit. No people, no movement, no cell phone chatter.

Christ, Art thinks, Barrera has to be running out of places.

But so are we.

“Let me know,” he says.

He has a meeting with Mexico’s new drug czar, General Augusto Rebollo.

Ostensibly the purpose of the meeting is for Rebollo to brief him on the ongoing operations against the Barrera cartel as part of their recently rediscovered bilateralism.

The only problem is that Rebollo doesn’t really know much about the operation. Ramos was keeping his activities close to his vest, and all Rebollo can really do is get on television, look fierce and determined, and announce his total support for everything that the deceased hero Ramos has done, even if he doesn’t know what that is.

But the truth is that the support is wavering.

Mexico City is getting more nervous as days go by and the Barreras are still on the loose. The longer this war goes on, the more nervous they get, and they’re looking, as John Hobbs carefully explains to Art before they go into the meeting, for a “reason for optimism.”

In short, Rebollo purrs in his meeting with Art, his green army uniform pressed and neat as a pin, it is obvious that his DEA colleagues have an inside source of information as to the working of the Barrera cartel, and in the spirit of cooperation, his own office could be of much more assistance in the common struggle against drugs and terrorism if Senor Keller would share this source.

He smiles at Art.

Hobbs smiles at Art.

All the bureaucrats in the room smile at Art.

“No,” he says.

He can see Tijuana from the picture windows of this office tower. She’s out there somewhere.

Rebollo’s smile has faded. He looks offended.

Hobbs says, “Arthur-”

“No.”

Let him work a little harder for it.

The meeting ends unhappily.

Art goes back to the war room. The satellite photos of Rancho las Bardas should be in.

“Anything?” he asks Shag.

Shag shakes his head.

“Shit.”

“They’ve gone under, boss,” Shag says. “No cell traffic, e-mail, nothing.”

Art looks at him. The old cowboy’s face is weathered and lined, and he wears bifocals now. Christ, have I aged as much as he has? Art wonders. Two old drug warriors. What are the new guys calling us? Jurassic Narcs? And Shag’s older than I am-he’s looking at retirement soon.

“He’ll call his kid,” Art says suddenly.

“What?”

“The daughter, Gloria,” Art says. “Adan’s wife and the girl live in San Diego.”

Shag winces. They both know that involving an innocent family is against the unspoken rules that govern the war between the narcos and themselves.

Art knows what he’s thinking.

“Fuck it,” he says. “Lucia Barrera knows what her husband does. She’s no innocent.”

“The little girl is.”

“Ernie’s kids live in San Diego, too,” Art answers. “Except they never see their daddy. Set up a wiretap.”

“Boss, no judge in the world-”

Art’s stare cuts him off.

Raul Barrera isn’t happy, either.

They pay Rebollo $300,000 a month, and for that kind of money he should be able to come through for them.

But he didn’t shut down Antonio Ramos before the attack on Rancho las Bardas, and now he can’t confirm that Nora Hayden was the source of their troubles, something that Raul needs to know badly, and in a hurry. He’s holding his own brother virtual prisoner in this safe house, and if the soplon wasn’t his brother’s mistress there’s going to be hell to pay.

So when Raul gets the message from Rebollo-Gee, sorry-he sends word back. The word is simple-Do better. Because if you’re no use to us, there’s no loss in putting out the word that you’re on the payroll. Then you can be sorry in prison.

Rebollo gets the word.

Fabian Martinez huddles with his lawyer and gets right down to business.

He knows the SOP in drug busts. The cartel sends an attorney and you tell the attorney what, if any, information you gave up. That way, it can usually be fixed before any harm is done. “I didn’t give them anything,” he says.

The attorney nods.

“They have an informant,” Fabian continues, then drops his voice to a whisper. “It’s Adan’s baturra, Nora.”

“Jesus, are you sure?”

“It can only be her,” Fabian says. “You have to get me bail, man. I’m going crazy in this place.”

“A weapons charge like that, Fabian, it’s going to be tough.”

“Fuck the weapons.” He tells the lawyer about the murder charge.

That’s messed up, the lawyer thinks. Unless Fabian Martinez makes a deal, he’s looking at a long time in jail.

She’s not exactly a prisoner, but she’s not free to go.

Nora doesn’t even know where she is, except that it’s somewhere along Baja’s eastern coast.

The cottage they keep her in is made of the same red stone as the beach around it. It has a thatched roof made of palm fronds, and heavy wooden doors. It isn’t air-conditioned but the thick stone walls keep it cool inside. The cottage has three rooms-a small bedroom, a bathroom, and a front room facing the sea that is a living room combined with an open kitchen.

Electricity runs from a generator that hums noisily outside. So she has electric lights, hot running water and a flush toilet. She can choose between a hot shower and a hot bath. There’s even a satellite dish outside, but the television has been removed and there is no radio. The clocks have also been taken away, and they confiscated her watch when they brought her in.

There is a little CD player but no CDs.

They want me alone with my silence, she thinks.

In a world with no time.

And, truly, she has started to lose track of the days since Raul picked her up in Colonia Hipodromo and told her to get into the car, that all hell had broken loose and he’d take her to Adan. She didn’t trust him but she didn’t have a choice, and he was even apologetic when he explained that, for her own protection, she’d have to be blindfolded.

She knows they pulled south out of Tijuana. She knows they drove on the fairly smooth Ensenada Highway for quite a while. But then the road got bumpy, and then it got worse, and she could feel that they were slowly going uphill, rumbling along a rocky road in four-wheel drive, and then she could smell the ocean. It was dark by the time they walked her inside and took off the blindfold.

“Where’s Adan?” she asked Raul.

“He’ll be here.”

“When?”

“Soon,” Raul said. “Relax. Get some sleep. You’ve been through a lot.”

He handed her a sleeping pill, a Tuinol.

“I don’t need that.”

“No, take it. You need sleep.”

He stood there while she took it, and she did sleep hard and woke up in the morning a little groggy and with cottonmouth. She thought that she was on the beach somewhere south of Ensenada until the sun came up on the wrong side of the world and she worked out that she was on the inland side. When daylight came she recognized the distinctive, bright green water of the Sea of Cortez.

From the bedroom window she could make out a larger house just up the hill, and see that the entire area looked like a moonscape of red stone. A little while later, a young woman walked down from the larger house with a tray of breakfast-coffee, grapefruit and some warm flour tortillas.

And a spoon, Nora noticed.

No knife, no fork.

A glass of water with another Tuinol.

She resisted taking it until her nerves got the better of her, then she swallowed it and it did make her feel better. She napped the rest of the morning and woke up only when the same girl brought her a tray of lunch-freshly grilled yellowtail tuna, steamed vegetables, more tortillas.

More Tuinol.

They woke her out of a deep sleep in the middle of the night and started asking her questions. Her interrogator, a small man with an accent that wasn’t quite Mexican, was gentle, polite and persistent What happened the night of the arms arrest?

Where did you go? Who did you see? Who did you talk to?

Your shopping trips to San Diego-what did you do? What did you buy? Who did you see?

Arthur Keller, do you know him? Does that name mean anything to you?

Were you ever arrested for prostitution? Drug charges? Income-tax evasion?

She asked her own questions in response What are you talking about?

Why are you asking me this stuff?

Who are you, anyway?

Where is Adan?

Does he know you’re bothering me?

Can I go back to sleep now?

They let her go back to sleep, woke her fifteen minutes later and told her it was the next night. She knew better, barely, but pretended to believe them as the interrogator asked her the same set of questions, over and over again until she got indignant and said I want to go back to sleep.

I want to see Adan, and I want another Tuinol.

You can have one in a little while, the interrogator told her. He switched tactics.

Tell me about the day of the arms bust, please. Take me through it minute by minute. You got in the car and…

And, and, and…

She climbed back on the bed, put her head under the pillow and told him to shut up and go away, she’s tired. He offered her another pill and she took it.

They let her sleep for twenty-four hours and then started again.

Questions, questions, questions.

Tell me about this, tell me about that.

Art Keller, Shag Wallace, Art Keller.

Tell me about shooting the Chinese man. What did you do? How did it feel? Where did you grab the gun? By the barrel? The handle?

Talk to me about Keller. How long have you known him? Did he approach you or did you approach him?

She answered, What are you talking about?

Because she knew if she gave him an answer she was going to mess up. In the fog of barbiturates, fatigue, fear, confusion, disorientation. She understood what they were doing, there was just nothing she could do to stop it.

He never touched her, never threatened her.

And that gave her hope because she knew it meant that they weren’t sure it was her. If they were sure, they would torture her for the information, or just kill her. The “soft” interrogation meant that they had their doubts, and it meant something else That Adan was still on her side. They’re not hurting me, she thought, because they still have Adan to worry about. So she held out. Gave evasive, confused answers, outright denials, indignant counter-assaults.

But she’s wearing down.

It’s getting to her.

Breakfast didn’t come one morning-she asked for it and the girl looked confused and said that she’d just served it. But she hadn’t. I know that-or do I? Nora wondered. And then there were two lunches, back to back, and then more sleep and then another Tuinol.

Now she wanders around outside the cottage. The doors aren’t locked and nobody stops her. The compound is flanked by the sea on one side and endless desert on the other three. If she tried to walk out she would die of thirst or exposure.

She walks down to the ocean and goes in up to her ankles.

The water is warm and feels nice.

The sun sets behind her back.

Adan watches her from his bedroom window in the house up the hill.

He is a prisoner in the room, guarded by a rotation of sicarios whose loyalty is to Raul. They take turns outside the door, round the clock, and Adan figures there must be at least twenty of them on the grounds.

He stands and watches her wade into the water. She wears an off-white sundress and a floppy white hat to keep the sun off her skin. Her hair hangs loose on her bare shoulders.

Was it you? he wonders.

Did you betray me?

No, he decides, I can’t let myself believe that.

Raul sure believes it, even though days of interrogation have failed to prove it. It’s a soft interrogation, his brother has assured him. She hasn’t been touched, never mind hurt.

She’d better not be, Adan has told him. One bruise, one scar, one scream of pain and I will find a way to have you killed, brother or no brother.

And if she’s the soplon? Raul asked.

Then, Adan thinks as he watches her sit down at the edge of the water, that is different.

That is a different thing altogether.

He and Raul have come to an understanding: If Nora is not the traitor, then Raul will step back down and Adan will resume his position as patron. That’s the understanding, Adan thinks, but experience tells him that no one who has assumed power ever gives it back again.

Not willingly, anyway.

Not easily.

And maybe that would be for the good, he thinks. Let Raul have the pasador, cash out, take Nora and go somewhere for a quiet life. She’s always wanted to live in Paris. Why not?

And the other half of the equation? If it turns out that Nora betrayed them, for whatever reason, then Raul’s little coup becomes permanent and Nora…

He doesn’t want to think about it.

The example of Pilar Talavera is vivid in his mind.

If it comes to that I’ll do it myself, he thinks. It’s funny how you can still love someone who betrayed you. I’ll walk her down to the ocean, let her watch the last rays of the sun fade on the water.

It will be quick and painless.

Then, if it weren’t for Gloria, I’d put the pistol in my own mouth.

Children bind us to this life, don’t they?

Especially this child, so fragile and needy.

And she must be worrying herself to death, Adan thinks. The news from Tijuana has surely hit the San Diego papers, and even though Lucia will try to shield her from it, Gloria will worry until she hears from me.

He takes another long look at Nora, then walks away from the window and bangs on the door.

The guard opens it.

“Get me a cell phone,” Adan orders.

“Raul said-”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what Raul said, pendejo,” Adan snaps. “I am still the patron, and if I tell you to get me something, then you go get it.”

He gets the phone.

“Boss?”

“Yeah?”

“Heartbeat.”

Shag hands Art the headset patched into the tap on Lucia Barrera’s phone. He hears Lucia’s voice Adan?

How’s Gloria?

She’s worried.

Let me speak to her.

Where are you?

Can I speak with her?

A long pause. Then Gloria’s voice.

Papa?

How are you, baby?

I’ve been worried about you.

I’m okay. Don’t worry.

Art hears the girl crying.

Where are you? The newspaper said The newspaper makes things up. I’m fine.

Can I come see you?

Not quite yet, darling. Soon. Listen, tell Mommy to give you a big kiss from me, okay?

Okay.

Bye, baby. I love you.

I love you, Papa.

Art looks to Shag.

“It’s going to take a little while, boss.”

It takes an hour but it feels like five, as the electronic data are sent to NSA and analyzed. Then they have an answer. The call came from a cell phone (we already knew that, Art thinks) so they can’t provide an address, but they can specify the nearest transmittal tower.

San Felipe.

On the east coast of Baja, straight south from Mexicali.

A sixty-mile radius from the tower.

Art already has the map spread out on the table. San Felipe is a small town, maybe twenty thousand people, a lot of them American snowbirds. There’s not much down there except the town, a lot of desert and a string of fishing camps to the north and south.

Even with a sixty-mile radius, it’s the cliched needle in the haystack, and Adan may have traveled to get into cell phone range and may even now be rushing back out.

But it gives us a target area, Art thinks.

Some hope.

“The call didn’t come from the town,” Shag says.

“How do you know that?”

“Listen to the tape again.”

They rerun it, and in the background Art can hear a faint hum with rhythmic pulses. He looks at Shag, puzzled.

“You’re a city boy, aren’t you?” Shag asks. “I grew up on a ranch. That’s a generator you’re hearing. They’re off the power grid.”

Art calls for a satellite sweep. But it’s night, and they won’t have the images for hours.

The interrogator picks up the pace.

He wakes Nora out of a deep Tuinol slumber, sits her in a chair and sticks the tracking device in her face.

“What’s this?”

“I dunno.”

“Yes, you do,” he insists. “You put it there.”

“What where? What time is it? I wanna go back…”

He shakes her. It’s the first time he’s touched her. It’s also the first time he yells. “Listen! I’ve been very nice to you so far, but I’m losing my patience with you! If you don’t start to cooperate I’m going to hurt you! Very badly! Now tell me who gave you this to put in the car!”

She stares at the little device for a long time, as if it’s some object from a distant past. She holds it between her thumb and forefinger and turns it around, examining it from different angles. Then she holds it up to the lamp and looks at it more closely. She turns back to her interrogator and says, “I’ve never seen this before.”

Then he’s in her face, screaming. She doesn’t even understand what he’s saying, but he’s yelling-flecks of spit hit her face-and shaking her back and forth, and when he finally lets her go she just slumps in the chair, exhausted.

“I’m so tired,” she says.

“I know you are,” he says, all softness and sympathy now. “This can all be over very soon, you know.”

“Then can I sleep?”

“Oh, yes.”

Art’s sitting there when the photos come across the computer screen.

His eyes stinging from fatigue, he wakes Shag, who’s sleeping tilted back in his chair with his boots up on his desk.

They pore over the photos. Starting with a large weather-satellite image of the entire San Felipe area, they cross off the section that is on the power grid, then start working their way through the enlarged vectors north and south of town.

They rule out the inland areas. No water supply, few passable roads, and the few roads that do snake their way through the rocky desert would allow the Barreras only one avenue of escape and they would be unlikely to place themselves in that trap.

So they concentrate on the coast itself, to the east of the range of low mountains and the main road, which runs parallel to the coast, with spur roads going east to the fishing camps and other small settlements on the beach.

The coast north of San Felipe is a popular spot for off-roaders and is pretty crowded with tourist, fishing, and RV camps, so they don’t give it much play. The immediate coast south of the town is similar, but then the road gets considerably worse and civilization becomes sparse until you get closer to the little fishing village of Puertocitos.

But there’s a ten-kilometer stretch between the two towns-starting about forty clicks south of San Felipe-where there are no camps, just a few isolated beach houses. The range is consistent with the strength of Adan’s cell phone signal, 4800 bps, so that’s where they concentrate their efforts.

It’s a perfect spot, Art thinks. There are only a few access roads-more like four-wheeler tracks-and the Barreras doubtless have lookouts posted on those roads and in San Felipe and Puertocitos as well. They would spot every single vehicle that came down the road, never mind the kind of armed convoy it would take to launch a raid. The Barreras would be long gone-by road or by boat-before we could get close.

But you can’t think about that now. First, find the target, then worry about how to take it out.

A dozen houses are set on the isolated stretch of coast. A few sit on the beach itself, but most are up on the low ridge above. Three are plainly unoccupied; there are no vehicles or recent tire tracks. Among the remaining nine it’s hard to choose. They all look normal-from space, anyway-although Art is hard-pressed to determine what abnormal would be in this case. All of them appear to have been built on lots cleared from the rocks and agave brush; most of them are plain, rectangular structures with either thatched or composite roofs; most of them Then he spots the anomaly.

He almost misses it, but something catches his eye. Something not quite right.

“Zoom in on that,” he says.

“What?” Shag asks. He doesn’t see anything where Art is pointing but rock and brush.

That is a shadow made by some rocks indistinguishable from the millions of others, but the shadow-the shadow is an even line.

“That’s a structure,” Art says.

They download the frame and enlarge it. It’s grainy, hard to tell, but examined under a magnifying glass there is depth there.

“Are we looking at a square rock?” Art asks. “Or a square building with a rock roof?”

“Who puts a stone roof on a house?” Shag asks.

“Someone who wants it to blend in,” Art answers.

They zoom back out, and now they start to spot other too-regular shadows, and pieces of brush that have even lines. It’s difficult at first, but then a picture starts to emerge of two structures-one smaller than the other-and shapes that could disguise vehicles underneath.

They coordinate the frame onto the large map. The house sits off a track that turns off from the main road, such as it is, forty-eight kilometers south of San Felipe.

Five hours later, a fishing boat beats its way up from Puertocitos through a heavy headwind. It anchors two hundred yards from shore, puts out its lines and waits for dusk. Then one of the “fishermen” stretches out flat on the deck and trains an infrared telescope on the beach in front of two stone houses.

He spots a woman in a white dress walking unsteadily down to the water.

She has long blond hair.

Art hangs up the phone, drops his head into his hands and sighs. When he looks up again, he has a smile on his face. “We got her.”

“Don’t you mean 'him,’ boss?” Shag asks. “Let’s not lose focus here. Getting Barrera is the point, isn’t it?”

Fabian Martinez is still in his cell, but he’s feeling a little better about life in general.

He’d had a good meeting with his attorney, who had assured him that he didn’t have to worry about the drug charges-the government’s witness was not going to appear, and certain people had been given information about the soplon.

The arms charge is still a problem, but the attorney has a genius idea about that, too.

“We’ll see if we can get you extradited to Mexico,” he said. “On the Parada murder.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“First of all,” the lawyer said, “Mexico doesn’t have a death penalty. Second, it will take years to bring you to trial and in the meantime…”

He let it hang. Fabian knew what he meant. In the meantime, things will get fixed. Technicalities will emerge, prosecutors will lose enthusiasm, judges will get vacation ranchos.

So Fabian lies back on his mattress and thinks he’s in pretty good shape. Fuck you, Keller-without Nora you’ve got nothing. And fuck you, La Guera. I hope you’re having a nice evening.

They won’t let her sleep.

When she first got there, they wouldn’t let her do anything but sleep, and now they won’t let her shut her eyes. She can sit down, but if she starts to doze they pick her up and make her stand.

She aches.

Every part of her-her feet, her legs, her back, her head.

Her eyes.

Worst of all, her eyes. They burn, they throb, they feel raw. She’d give anything to lie down and close her eyes. Or sit, or stand-just close her eyes.

But they won’t let her.

And they won’t give her any Tuinol.

She doesn’t want it; she needs it.

She has an awful pins-and-needles feeling in her skin, and her hands won’t stop quivering. Add to that the slamming headache and the nausea and… “Just one,” she whines.

“You want things, but you don’t want to give anything,” the interrogator says.

“I don’t have anything to give.”

Her legs feel like wood.

“I disagree,” the interrogator says. Then he starts in again, about Arthur Keller, the DEA, the tracking device, her trips to San Diego…

They know, Nora thinks. They already know, so why not just tell them what they already know? Just tell them and let them do what they’re going to do, but whatever it is I can get some sleep. Adan isn’t coming, Keller isn’t coming-just tell them something.

“If I tell you about San Diego, will you let me sleep?” she asks.

The interrogator agrees.

He takes her through it step by step.

Shag Wallace finally leaves the office.

Gets in his five-year-old Buick and drives to a parking lot outside the Ames supermarket in National City. He waits there for twenty minutes before a Lincoln Navigator pulls into the lot, slowly cruises around, then pulls up beside him.

A man gets out of the Lincoln and into the Buick with Shag.

He sets the briefcase on his lap. The latches open with a metallic snap, then he turns the briefcase so that Shag can see the stack of wrapped bills inside.

“Are police pensions any better in America than they are in Mexico?” the man asks.

“Not much,” Shag says.

“Three hundred thousand dollars,” the man says.

Shag hesitates.

“Take it,” the man says. “It’s not as if you’re giving information to the narcos, after all. This is from one cop to another. General Rebollo needs to know.”

Shag blows a long breath.

Then he tells the man what he wants to know.

“We need some proof,” the man says.

Shag takes the proof from his jacket pocket and hands it over.

Then he takes the three hundred thousand dollars.

A south wind blows up the Baja Peninsula, pushing warmer air and a layer of clouds over the Sea of Cortez.

With no more satellite photos, Art’s latest intelligence is now eighteen hours old, and a lot could have happened in those hours-the Barreras could have left, Nora could be dead. The cloud cover shows no sign of breaking up, so the intelligence is only going to get older.

So what he has is what he’s going to get, and he has to act on it quickly or not at all.

But how?

Ramos, the one cop in Mexico he could trust, is dead. The head of the NCID is on the Barreras’ payroll, and Los Pinos is backpedaling on the campaign against the Barreras in six gears of reverse.

Art has only one choice.

And he hates it.

He meets John Hobbs on Shelter Island, the sailing boat marina in the middle of San Diego Harbor. They meet at night, across from Humphreys by the Bay, and walk along the narrow stretch of park that flanks the water on the way out to the point.

“You know what you’re asking me to do,” Hobbs says.

Yeah, I do, Art thinks.

Hobbs tells him anyway. “Launch an illegal strike on the sovereign territory of a friendly country. It violates about every international law I can think of, plus a few hundred national laws, and could trigger-you’ll forgive the unhappy phrase-a major diplomatic crisis with a neighboring state.”

“It’s our last chance at the Barreras,” Art argues.

“We stopped the Chinese shipment.”

“This one,” Art says. “You think Adan will quit? If we don’t get him now, he’ll set up the arms-for-drugs deal and FARC will be fully equipped inside six months.”

Hobbs is silent. Art walks beside him, trying to read his thoughts, listening to the sound of the water as it laps on the rocks beside them. In the distance, the lights of Tijuana sparkle and wink.

Art feels like he can’t breathe. If Hobbs doesn’t go for this, Nora Hayden is dead and the Barreras win.

Finally, Hobbs says, “I couldn’t use any of our normal assets. We’ll have to outsource this, double-blind.”

Thank you, God, Art says to himself.

“And Arthur,” Hobbs adds, turning to him. “This can’t be a bag job. We could never explain to the Mexicans how we got the Barreras into custody. This will not be a law enforcement operation, it will be a covert intelligence action. This will not be an arrest, it will be an extreme sanction. Are you all right with that?”

Art nods.

“I need to hear you say it,” Hobbs insists.

“It’s a sanction,” Art says. “That’s what I want.”

So far, so good, Art thinks. But he knows John Hobbs won’t walk away from this without extracting his price. It doesn’t take long.

“And I need to know your source,” Hobbs says.

“Of course.”

Art tells him.

Callan walks from the beach back toward the cottage he’s renting. It’s a cool, foggy day on the NoCal coast, and he likes it that way.

It feels good.

He opens the door to the cottage, pulls his. 22 and points it.

“Eeeeezy,” Sal says. “We’re good.”

“Are we?”

“You walked off the reservation, Sean,” Sal says. “You should have talked to me first.”

“You’d have let me go?”

“With the right precautions, yeah,” Sal says.

“What about the hit on the Barreras?”

“Old news.”

“So we’re good,” Callan says, not lowering his aim. “Thanks for telling me. Now leave.”

“I got a job offer for you.”

“Pass,” Callan says. “I don’t do that kind of work anymore.”

That’s okay, Scachi tells him, because we’re not talking about taking any lives this time. We’re talking about saving one.

They decide to go in from the water.

Art and Sal pore over detailed area maps and decide it’s the only way to get in quickly. A fishing boat will go up from the south at night, and they’ll embark on Zodiacs and land on the beach.

Now it’s a matter of time and tide.

The Sea of Cortez has extreme tides-the low tide can ebb hundreds of yards, and that distance would make a quick raid impossible. They can’t get across hundreds of yards of open beach. Even at night, they’d be spotted and mowed down before they got near the houses.

So the window for a successful raid is narrow-it has to be night, and high tide.

“We have to go between nine and nine-twenty,” Sal says. “Tonight.”

It’s too soon, Art thinks.

And maybe too late.

Nora talks all about her last visit to San Diego.

How she went shopping, what she bought, where she stayed, how she had lunch with Haley, a nap, a run, dinner.

“What did you do that night?”

“Hung out in the room, ordered dinner, watched TV.”

“You were in La Jolla and you just watched TV? Why?”

“Just felt like it. Being by myself, hanging out, vegging out in front of the tube.”

“What did you watch?”

She knows she’s going down the slippery slope. She knows it, but there’s nothing she can do about it. That’s the nature of slippery slopes, isn’t it? she thinks. What I really did that night was go to the White House and meet with Keller, but I can’t say that, can I? So

…

“I dunno. I don’t remember.”

“It wasn’t that long ago.”

“Dumb stuff, you know. Some dumb movie. Maybe I fell asleep.”

“Pay-per-view? HBO?”

She can’t remember if the Valencia has pay-per-view movies or HBO or anything. She’s not sure she ever even turned the TV on there. But if I say I watched a pay movie, then that would show up my bill, wouldn’t it? she thinks. So she says, “I think it was HBO or Showtime, one of those.”

The interrogator senses that he’s moving in on the kill. She’s an amateur; a professional liar is vague about everything. (“I don’t remember-it might have been this, it might have been that.”) But this woman had been certain and detailed about everything that she’d done. Up until her account of the evening, when she became uncertain and evasive.

A professional liar knows that the key is not to make his lies look like the truth, but to make his truth look like lies.

Well, her truth looks like truth, and her lies?

“But you don’t remember what the movie was.”

“I was, you know, channel surfing.”

“Channel surfing.”

“Yeah.”

“What did you have for dinner?”

“Fish. I usually have fish.”

“Watching your weight.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll be back in a bit. While I’m gone, please think about what movie you watched.”

“Can I sleep?”

“If you sleep, you can’t think, can you?”

But I can’t think if I don’t sleep, Nora worries. That’s the problem. I can’t think of any more lies, I can’t keep them straight, I’m not even sure myself what happened and didn’t. What movie did I watch? What movie is this? How does it end?

“If you can remember what you watched that night, I’ll let you sleep.”

He knows the process. When put under enough pressure, the mind will create an answer. It doesn’t matter if it’s fact or fantasy in this case. He just wants her to commit to an answer.

In exchange for sleep, the woman’s mind will “recall” the information. It might even seem real to her. If it turns out to be so, fine. But if it turns out to be false, she will have given him the crack from which everything else will splinter.

She will fall apart.

And then we will have the truth.

“She’s lying,” the interrogator tells Raul. “Making things up.”

“How can you tell?”

“Body language,” the interrogator says. “Vague answers. If I put her on a polygraph and ask her about that particular evening, she fails.”

Do I have enough to convince Adan? Raul wonders. So that I can dispatch this lying bitch without starting a civil war with my brother? First Fabian sends a message through his lawyer saying that the woman is the soplon. Now the interrogator is on the edge of catching her in a lie.

But do I wait?

For Rebollo to get us a definitive answer? If he can get us an answer?

“How long before you break her?” Raul asks.

The interrogator looks at his watch. “It’s five o’clock now?” he says. “Eight-thirty, nine at the latest.”

Now the clouds are on our side, Art thinks, as the fishing boat cuts through the choppy water. He listens to the rhythmic slapping of the hull against the small waves that break against the bow. The bad weather that had obscured their intelligence-gathering operations is now working for them, hiding them from the view of spotters on the coast as well as other boats, some of them doubtless loaded with Barrera security.

He looks at the men sitting silently on the deck. Their eyes shine bright against their blackened faces. Smoking has been forbidden, but most of the men have unlit cigarettes playing nervously in their lips. Others chew gum. A few talk quietly, but most just sit and stare out at the gray fog glimmering under the moonlight.

The men wear Kevlar vests over black jumpsuits, and each man is his own arsenal, carrying either a Mac-10 or an M-16, a. 45 pistol on one side of his belt and a wicked, flat, palm-leaf-killing blade on the other. The vests are festooned with grenades.

So these are the “outside resources,” Art thinks.

Where the fuck did Scachi get them?

Callan knows.

It’s old-fucking-home week, sitting here with the Red Mist boys, some of them his old bunkmates from Las Tangas, waiting to do what they do.

“Interdict the terrorists’ arms supply at its source,” was the way Scachi had put it.

Three Zodiac boats covered with canvas tarps are lashed to the deck. There will be eight men to a boat and they’ll land fifty yards apart. The men in the two northernmost boats will head toward the larger house. The crew of the third boat will make for the smaller cottage.

Whether or not we get there is a good question, Callan thinks.

If the Barreras have been tipped off we’ll be walking into a cross fire coming from stone houses, pinned down on a bare beach with no cover but the fog. The beach will be littered with bodies.

But they won’t stay there.

Sal’s been clear about the spec: No one is to be left behind. Dead or alive or anywhere in between, they’re getting back on the boat. Callan glances over at the pile of cinder blocks on the aft deck. “Headstones,” Sal called them.

Burial at sea.

We ain’t leaving no bodies in Mexico. Far as the world is concerned, this was a hit carried out by a rival narco looking to take advantage of the Barreras’ current difficulties. If you get captured-and don’t get captured-that’s what you tell them. No matter what they do to you. Better idea? Swallow your gun. We ain’t the Marines-we won’t be coming to get you.

Art goes below.

The strong smell of diesel fuel makes his stomach lurch. Or maybe it’s nerves, Art thinks.

Scachi’s drinking a cup of coffee.

“Like old times, huh, Arthur?”

“Almost.”

“Hey, Arthur, you don’t want this to happen, say the word.”

“I want it to happen.”

“You got thirty minutes on that beach,” Sal says. “In thirty minutes we’re back on the boat and heading out. Last thing we need is to get stopped by a Mexican patrol boat.”

“I got it,” Art says. “How long until we get there?”

Scachi kicks the question to the boat’s captain.

Two hours.

Art checks his watch.

They’ll hit the beach around nine.

Nora makes her mistake at 8:15.

She starts to fall asleep standing up, but they shake her and walk her around the room. Then they sit her down again as the interrogator comes in and asks “Do you remember what you watched that night?”

“Yes.”

Because I have to get some sleep. Have to sleep. If I can sleep I can think, and I can think my way out of this. So give him something, a little something, buy some sleep. Buy some time.

“Very good. What?”

“Amistad.”

“The movie about slaves.”

“That’s right.”

Go ahead and ask me about it, she thinks. I’ve seen it. I remember it. I can talk about it. Ask me your questions. Fuck you.

“There are no network movies on a weeknight, so it must have been pay-per-view or HBO.”

“Or some other-”

“No, I checked. Your hotel has only HBO and pay-per-view.”

“Oh.”

“So which was it?”

How the hell should I know? Nora thinks.

“HBO.”

The interrogator shakes his head sadly, like a teacher whose student has disappointed him.

“Nora, that hotel does not get HBO.”

“But you just said-”

“I was testing you.”

“Then it must have been pay-per-view.”

“Was it?”

“Yes, I remember now. It was pay-per-view because I can remember looking at that little card they put on top of the television and wondering if the staff thought I was ordering porn. Yes, that’s right, and I… what?”

“Nora, I have copies of your bill. You didn’t order a movie.”

“I didn’t?”

“No. Now, why don’t you tell me what you were really doing that night, Nora?”

“I did tell you.”

“You lied to me, Nora. I’m very disappointed.”

“I’m just confused. I’m so tired. If you let me get some sleep.. .”

“The only reason to lie is to cover something up. What are you covering up, Nora? What did you really do that night?”

She puts her face in her hands and sobs. She hasn’t cried since Juan died, and it feels good. It’s a relief.

“You were somewhere else that night, weren’t you?”

She nods.

“You’ve been lying all this time.”

She nods again.

“Can I sleep now, please?”

“Give her some Tuinol,” the interrogator says. “And get Raul.”

Adan’s door opens.

Raul comes in and hands him a pistol.

“Can you do this, brother?”

She feels a hand on her shoulder.

Thinks it’s a dream at first, then opens her eyes and sees Adan standing over her.

“My love,” he says, “let’s go for a walk.”

“Now?”

He nods.

He looks so serious, she thinks. So serious.

He helps her get out of bed.

“I’m a mess,” she says.

She is. Her hair is disheveled and her face is puffy from the drugs. It occurs to him that he’s never seen her without makeup.

“You always look lovely,” he answers. “Here, put a sweater on. It’s chilly-I don’t want you to get sick.”

She walks out with him into the silver mist. She’s groggy and has a hard time getting her footing on the large pebbles of the beach. He holds her by the elbow and gently walks her away from the cottage, toward the water’s edge.

Raul watches from the window.

He saw Adan and his woman leave the stone cottage and walk into the dark. Now he’s lost sight of them in the fog.

Can he do it? Raul wonders.

Can he put the barrel to the back of that pretty blond head and pull the trigger? Does it matter? If he doesn’t, I will. And either way, I am the new patron, and the new patron will run things differently than the old one. Adan has gotten soft. Always the little accountant-good with the numbers, not so good with the blood.

A loud knock at the door interrupts his thoughts.

“What?!” he snaps.

One of his men comes in. He’s out of breath, as if he’s run up the stairs.

“The soplon,” he says. “We just got word from Rebollo. He got it straight from the DEA guy, Wallace-”

“It’s Nora.”

The man shakes his head. “No, patron. It’s Fabian.”

The messenger lays out the evidence-the sealed murder indictment, the threat of capital punishment, then the smoking gun: copies of deposit slips, deposits made by Keller in Fabian’s name in banks in Costa Rica, the Caymans and even Switzerland.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars-profits from the tombes pulled off by the Piccone brothers.

“They made him a deal,” the man says. “Plata o plomo.”

He took the silver.

“Let’s sit down,” Adan says.

He helps Nora down and sits beside her.

She says, “I’m cold.”

He puts his arm around her.

“Do you remember that night in Hong Kong?” he asks. “When you took me up to Victoria Peak? Let’s imagine we’re there.”

“I’d like that.”

“Look out there,” he says. “Can you imagine the lights?”

“Adan, are you crying?”

He slowly pulls the pistol from its place at the small of his back.

“Kiss me,” Adan says.

He turns her chin to him and kisses her softly on the lips as he eases the gun barrel behind her head.

“You were the sonrisa de mi alma,” he whispers into her lips as he pulls the hammer back.

The smile of my soul.

Brother, I’m sorry. By the time the information reached me, it was too late. Such a tragedy. But we will avenge ourselves on Fabian, you can be sure of that.

Raul rehearses his lines.

Deal with La Guera now, Fabian later, he thinks. It will destroy Adan, killing this woman. He won’t be able to resume control of the pasador.

He’s your brother.

Esta chingada, he thinks. It’s fucked.

He pushes the messenger aside and runs down the stairs and outside into the night.

Yelling, “Adan! Adan!”

Adan hears the shouts, muffled in the fog.

He hears the footsteps running on the stones, coming closer. He tightens his finger on the trigger and thinks, I can’t let it be him.

Over his shoulder, he can see Raul’s tall form loping toward them like a ghost in the mist.

I have to do it.

Do it.

Art jumps out of the boat before it reaches the beach.

He stumbles through the ankle-deep surf, trips and falls face-first onto the beach. He gets up and crouches down low as he moves up the slope and then he sees Raul Barrera.

Running toward Adan.

And Nora.

It’s a long shot, a hundred yards at least, and Art hasn’t fired an M-16 in anger since Vietnam. He raises the rifle to his shoulder, presses the nightscope to his eye, leads Raul by a few feet and squeezes the trigger.

The bullet takes Raul in mid-stride.

Square in the stomach.

Art sees him tumble, roll and then start to crawl forward.

Then the night lights up.

Raul crumples to the ground.

Rolling in agony on the rocks, shrieking in pain.

Adan runs to him. Drops to his knees and tries to hold him, but Raul is too strong; his pain is too strong and he writhes out of Adan’s grasp.

“?Dios mio!” Adan yells.

His hands are drenched in blood. The front of his shirt and his pants are soaked with blood.

It’s hot.

“Adan,” Raul groans. “It wasn’t her. It was Fabian.” Then he howls to God, “?Dios mio!?Dios mio!?Madre de Dios!”

Adan tries to clear his head.

The world’s exploding around him. Gunfire everywhere, and the sound of footsteps running toward them on the rocks. Then Raul’s bodyguards are there, some firing behind them, others trying to lift Raul off the ground.

“Get a car!” Adan yells. “Bring it here. Raul, we’re going to get you to the hospital.”

“Don’t move me!”

“We have to.”

They start to drag him up the beach, away from the attack.

Adan grabs Nora by the arms and starts to pull her up.

“Come on!”

A grenade lands a few feet away and bowls them both over.

Nora lies on the rocks, concussed, blood flowing from her nose. Adan is screaming something but she can’t hear a thing. Manuel is pulling him away. Adan’s screaming and trying to pull his way back to her, but the campesino is too strong for him.

Two sicarios try to grab her, but two short bursts of gunfire cut them down.

There’s another flash of light, and then darkness.

Art sees Raul and Adan being dragged up the hill toward some Land Rovers at the top of the hill, near the main house.

He heads for them.

Bullets stitch around his feet.

A slight man with rimless glasses comes out the front door of the cottage and starts to run up the hill, but a short burst of bullets catches him as he runs, and he flies backwards like a silent-movie comic slipping on a banana peel.

The door slams shut behind him and gunfire starts to blaze from the windows. Art drops to the ground and crawls toward Nora. Callan moves beside him, rolls, shoots in bursts of two and then rolls again.

Then Callan yells behind him, “Rounds!”

A second later a grenade whooshes through a window of the cottage and explodes.

The shooting from the cottage stops.

Raul shrieks with agony as his men lift him into the backseat. Adan gets in from the other side and cradles his brother’s head in his lap.

Raul grasps his hand and whimpers.

Manuel jumps behind the wheel. Raul’s men try to stop him, but Adan yells, “I want Manuel!” and they let him go. The car starts up the beach, every bump a jolt of agony for Raul.

Adan feels as if his brother’s grip is going to crush the bones in his hand but he doesn’t care. He strokes Raul’s hair and tells him to hold on, everything is going to be okay.

“Agua,” Raul mumbles.

Adan finds a plastic bottle of drinking water in the seat pouch, twists off the cap and holds the bottle to Raul’s mouth. Raul gulps it down and Adan feels the water pour onto his own shoes.

Adan turns and looks back down the slope.

He sees Nora’s limp body.

“Nora!” he screams. Then, to Manuel: “We have to go back!”

Manuel isn’t having any of it. He has the car in first gear, four-wheel drive, and is moving slowly up the hill, another Rover falling in behind, the sicarios pouring cover fire out the back.

Tracer rounds arc through the night like lethal fireflies.

A rocket-propelled grenade hits the car behind Adan’s and explodes, sending shards of heated metal spinning into the air. The driver tumbles from the car in flames and twirls like festival fireworks in the night. Another body slumps out the open side of the car and sizzles on the rocks.

Manuel hits the accelerator and Raul screams.

Art sees one of the Rovers go up, tries to peer through the flames and sees the lead Rover chugging up the slope.

“Goddamn it!” he yells. He turns to Callan and orders, “Stay with her!” He shifts Nora’s dead weight onto Callan and starts running toward the escaping Land Rover. Rounds from the main house buzz around his head like mosquitoes. He puts his head down and keeps moving, past the burning Rover and its charred bodies, toward the other Rover that’s struggling up the slope in front of him.

Adan sees him, twists around and tries to get his pistol in position to get a shot, but every muscle he moves sends Raul into a fresh paroxysm of pain. He sees Keller, still running, bring his rifle to his shoulder.

Adan shoots.

Both men miss.

The Rover crests the ridge. It slips into its downhill slide and Raul screams. Adan holds him tight as the vehicle picks up speed.

Art stands on the edge of the ridge. He’s hunched over, catching his breath, as he watches the Rover rumble away from him.

He takes three deep, gasping breaths, raises his rifle to his shoulder and sights in on the back left windshield, where he last saw Adan. He takes a long breath, then squeezes the trigger on the exhale.

The car keeps moving away.

Art trots back toward the main house.

Scachi’s men go about their jobs in a workman-like, unhurried fashion. One squad lays down cover fire in short, disciplined bursts, while the other squad moves forward; then they exchange roles. Three rotations of this tactic get one of the men to the side of the house. He presses flat against its stone walls as the others pour fire through the windows. Then, on a signal, they stop shooting and Scachi’s guy attaches a charge to the door and throws himself to the ground as the door splinters.

The other mercenaries jump in.

Three quick bursts of gunfire, and then silence.

Art goes in.

It’s a charnel house, a madhouse.

Blood everywhere, dead and wounded bodies, Scachi’s mercenaries moving efficiently to dispatch the sicarios who linger between worlds.

Three dead sicarios are sprawled on the floor of the front room. One of them lies facedown with two entry wounds in the back of his head. Art steps over him to get into the bedroom.

There are eleven more bodies.

One wounded man, his shoulder a splotch of red, sits against the wall with his legs splayed in front of him. Scachi walks up to the wounded man and swings his foot like he’s trying to make a fifty-yard field goal against the wind.

His boot hits the man’s balls with a solid thump.

“Start talking,” Art says.

The sicario does. Adan and Raul were here, so was La Guera, and Raul was badly hurt, gut-shot.

“Well, that’s happy news anyway,” Scachi says. He does the same calculation that Art does-if Raul Barrera has been shot in the belly, he isn’t going to make it. He’s as good as dead-better, in fact.

“We can catch them,” Art tells Scachi. “They’re on the road. Not far ahead.”

“Catch them with what?” Scachi asks. “You bring a jeep?” He looks at his watch, then yells, “Ten minutes!”

“We have to go after them!” Art yells.

“No time.”

The man keeps spewing information-the Barrera brothers left in the Land Rover, headed for San Felipe to get help for Raul.

Scachi believes him.

“Take him outside and shoot him,” he orders.

Art doesn’t blink.

Everyone knew the rules going in.

The Land Rover rattles over the busted road.

Raul screams.

Adan doesn’t know what to do. If he tells Manuel to slow down, Raul will certainly bleed out before they can get him help. If he tells Manuel to speed up, Raul’s suffering is even worse.

The left front tire drops into a wash and Raul shrieks.

“Por favor, hermano,” he murmurs when he catches his breath. Please, brother.

“What, brother?”

Raul looks up at him. “You know.”

He turns his eyes to the pistol at his hip.

“No, Raul. You’re going to make it.”

“I… can’t… stand it… anymore…” Raul gasps. “Please, Adan.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m begging.”

Adan looks at Manuel.

The old bodyguard shakes his head. He’s not going to make it.

“Stop the car,” Adan orders.

He takes the pistol from Raul’s belt, opens the car door, then gently slides out from under his brother’s head and lays it back on the seat. The desert air is pungent with sage and hermosillo. Adan lifts the pistol and points it at the top of Raul’s head.

“Thank you, brother,” Raul whispers.

Adan pulls the trigger twice.

Art follows Scachi out onto the beach, where Sal makes the sign of the cross over two dead mercenaries. “Good men,” he says to Art. Two of the other mercenaries carry the bodies back onto the Zodiacs.

Art trots up the beach, back to where he left Nora.

He stops when he sees Callan walking toward him, carrying Nora over his shoulder, her blond hair hanging down around her limp arms.

Art helps him heft her dead weight into the boat.

Adan doesn’t go to San Felipe, but instead to a small fishing camp.

The owner knows who he is but feigns ignorance, which is the smart thing to do. He rents them two cabins in the back, one for Adan, the other for the driver.

Manuel knows what to do without being told.

He parks the Land Rover right next to his cabin and carries Raul’s body inside and into the bathroom. He lays the corpse in the bathtub, then goes out to get a knife like the fishermen use. He comes back in and butchers Raul’s body, severing his hands, arms, feet, legs and, finally, his head.

It’s a shame that they cannot give him the funeral he deserves, but no one can know that Raul Barrera is dead.

The rumors will start, of course, but as long as there is a chance that the Barrera pasador’s enforcer is still alive, no one will dare make a move against them. Once they know he’s dead, the gates will be open and enemies will flood in to take their revenge against Adan.

Manuel takes a scaling knife and carefully strips the skin off Raul’s severed fingertips, then washes the skin down the bathtub drain. Then he puts the body parts in plastic shopping bags and rinses out the bathtub. He carries the bags out to a small motorboat, fills them with the lead shot fishermen use to weigh down skein nets and takes the boat deep into the Gulf. Then, every two or three hundred yards, he drops one of the bags into the water.

Each time he does, he says a quick prayer, addressing both the Virgin Mary and Santo Jesus Malverde.

Adan stands in the shower and cries.

His tears swirl down the drain with the dirty water.

Art and Shag go to the cemetery and leave flowers at Ernie’s grave.

“Only one left,” Art says to his headstone. “Just one left.”

Then they drive down to La Jolla Shores and watch the sun go down from the bar at the Sea Lodge.

Art lifts his beer and says, “To Nora Hayden.”

“To Nora Hayden.”

They touch glasses and silently watch the sun go down over the ocean in a ball of flame that turns to a fiery gold on the water.

Fabian swaggers out of the Federal Court Building in San Diego. The federal judge has agreed to extradite him to Mexico.

He’s still in his orange jumpsuit, his wrists shackled to his waist, his ankles chained, but still he manages to swagger and flash his drop-dead-killer movie-star smile at Art Keller.

“I’ll be out in a month, loser,” he says as he passes Art and steps into the waiting van.

I know you will, Art thinks. For a second he considers trying to stop him, then thinks, Fuck it.

General Rebollo personally takes custody of Fabian Martinez.

In the car on the way to the arraignment, he tells Fabian, “Don’t worry about anything, but try not to be arrogant. Plead not guilty and keep your mouth shut.”

“Did they take care of La Guera?”

“She’s dead.”

His parents are at the courthouse. His mother sobs and holds him; his father shakes his hand. An hour later, for a half-million dollars in assurance and as much in private payoff, the judge releases Junior Numero Uno to his parents’ recognizance.

They want to get him out of sight and out of Tijuana, so they take him to his uncle’s compound in the country outside Ensenada, near the little village of El Sauzal.

He gets up early the next morning to take a piss.

He gets out of bed, really a mattress set out on the terrace, and walks downstairs to the bathroom. He’s sleeping out there because all the bedrooms in his uncle’s estancia are filled with relatives and because it’s cooler out there at night with the breeze off the Pacific. And it’s quieter-he can’t hear bawling babies, or arguments, or lovemaking, or snoring or any of the other sounds that come with a large extended family reunion.

The sun is just up and already it’s hot outside. It’s going to be another long, hot day here in El Sauzal, another baking, boring Ensenada day full of nosy brothers and their imperious wives and their bratty children and his uncle who thinks he’s a cowboy trying to get him on a horse.

He gets downstairs and something is wrong.

At first he can’t put his finger on it, and then he does.

It’s not something that’s there, it’s something that isn’t.

Smoke.

There should be smoke from the servants’ quarters outside the gates of the main house. The sun is up, and the women should already be making tortillas, and the smoke should be rising above the compound walls.

But it isn’t.

And that’s odd.

Is it some sort of holiday? he wonders. A feast day? Can’t be, because his uncle would have been planning for it, his sisters-in-law arguing obsessively about some detail of menu or table setting, and he would already have been assigned his proper, tedious role in the arrangements.

So why aren’t the servants up?

Then he sees why.

Federales coming through the gate.

There must be a dozen of them in their distinctive black jackets and ball caps and Fabian thinks, Oh, fuck, this is it, and he remembers what Adan always told him to do and he throws his hands up and knows this is going to be a major hassle but nothing that can’t be fixed but then he sees that the lead federale is dragging one leg behind him.

It’s Manuel Sanchez.

“No,” Fabian mumbles. “No, no, no, no…”

He should have shot himself.

But they grab him up before he can find a gun, and force him to watch what they do to his family.

Then they tie him to a chair and one of the bigger men stands behind him and grabs him by his thick black hair so he can’t move his head, even when Manuel shows him the knife.

“This is for Raul,” Manuel says.

He makes short, sharp cuts along the top of Fabian’s forehead, then grabs each strip of skin and peels it down. Fabian’s feet pound the stone floor as Manuel skins his face, leaving the strips hanging against his chest like the peels of a banana.

Manuel waits until the feet stop and then shoots him in the mouth.

The baby is dead in his mother’s arms.

Art can tell from the way the bodies lie-her on top, the baby beneath her-that she tried to shield her child.

It’s my fault, Art thinks.

I brought this on these people.

I’m sorry, Art thinks. I am so, so sorry. Bending over the mother and child, Art makes the sign of the cross and whispers, “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.”

“El poder del perro,” he hears one of the Mexican cops murmur.

The power of the dog.