Текст книги "The Cartel"

Автор книги: Don Winslow

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Текущая страница: 25 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

She nods and walks out the door.

Vera reaches for the pistol in his shoulder holster.

The guard blows the back of his head off.

Adán gets up to leave.

It’s all cleaned up now—there will be no “smoking gun,” as it were, to tarnish PAN in the last administration or this one.

Only one thing troubles him.

He still hasn’t received the phone call telling him that Keller is dead.

–

Keller comes to in the back of a black Suburban with tinted windows.

A medic in civilian clothes, but clearly military from his haircut and bearing, works efficiently and silently to clean and bandage his wounds.

“Who are you?” Keller asks.

The medic doesn’t answer his question, just makes small talk as he tries to keep Keller awake. Desperate for sleep, Keller realizes that he must have a concussion, so they’re keeping him conscious. This goes on all the way into Mexico City, where the car turns onto Paseo de la Reforma. Keller thinks that they’re headed for the embassy but the car pulls off earlier, in a neighborhood of banks and corporate buildings, and at number 265 goes down a driveway to a steel door. The driver shows some identification to a guard, the door slides open, and the car goes into the parking structure.

They load Keller onto a stretcher, take him to a room that looks like a small infirmary, where an American medic, just as military-looking, takes over, does a preliminary examination, and then takes X-rays.

“Where am I?” Keller asks.

“A concussion, broken nose, dislocated shoulder, two cracked ribs, and a few scattered shotgun pellets,” the medic says. “You’re a hard man to kill, sir.”

“Where am I?”

“Internal pain? Anything you haven’t told me about, sir?”

“Where the hell am I?”

“Someone will be in to see you soon.”

It’s Tim Taylor.

“Aguilar called us,” Taylor said, “when he couldn’t get hold of you. We sent people out looking for you. What the hell were you doing in Cuernavaca?”

“Luis is okay, then,” Keller says. “In El Paso.”

“He’s dead,” Taylor says. He tells Keller about the plane crash and then says, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m not going to,” Keller says. “Vera had that plane brought down.”

“Vera was found murdered,” Taylor says. “Same MO as the other cops. He was having an assignation. Like Aguilar, his demise is being attributed to the Tapias.”

“They didn’t do either,” Keller says. “Barrera did.”

“We know that.”

So it’s over, Keller thinks.

Aguilar is dead, the tapes destroyed in the crash.

Palacios is dead.

So is Vera.

Barrera cleaned up his mess.

“So you’re here to take me home?” Keller asks.

“Can you walk?”

“I think so.”

Keller eases himself off the gurney, the effort setting his ribs on fire. His legs are wobbly from the shock and the meds, but he manages to follow Taylor down the hall and into an elevator that they take to the sixth floor. When they get out, Keller sees more military types, although in civilian clothes, and people who look like computer geeks and accountants.

None of the offices are marked.

All of the doors are closed.

“What you see here doesn’t exist,” Taylor says, “except officially as an accounting office to make sure that the taxpayers’ Mérida money is being used properly. In reality, the hat racks in this building are pretty full—FBI, CIA, us, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Treasury, Homeland Security, the National Reconnaissance Office, NSA, Defense Intelligence Agency…you get the idea.”

He opens the door to a room where a dozen technicians sit at desks in front of computers.

“Everything here is state-of-the-art,” Taylor says. “Encryption equipment, counterencryption equipment, satellite surveillance, wiretapping, secure communications. Come on.”

They go to a locked door at the end of the hall. Taylor looks into a retina scanner and the door slides open to what seems to be some kind of lounge, with comfortable furniture, a coffee machine, and a bar.

A man who looks a little younger than Keller sits on one of the sofas and sips a beer. His hair is black and cut short. A little under six feet tall, broad-chested, ramrod posture. He gets up when they walk in and extends his hand to Keller. “Arturo Keller—Roberto Orduña.”

“Admiral Orduña,” Taylor says, “is the commander of the Mexican marines’ FES—special forces—roughly analogous to our SEALs.”

“Let me first say how sorry I am about Luis Aguilar,” Orduña says. “He was a good man. Would you like a drink? A coffee? This is your building but my country, so I feel that I should be a good host.”

You made your point, Keller thinks. What do you want?

They all sit down.

“We’re losing the war,” Orduña says without preamble. “Drugs are more plentiful, more potent, and cheaper than ever. The cartels have more influence than at any time, have co-opted the major instruments of power, and threaten to become a shadow government. The war between them increases the violence to horrific levels. What we have been doing isn’t working.”

Keller knows this.

The strategy of drug interdiction is a broom sweeping back the ocean. The strategy of arresting traffickers at any level only creates a job opportunity that any number of candidates are eager to fill.

“We have to do something different,” Orduña says. “The law enforcement model isn’t working. We have to switch to a military model.”

“With all respect,” Keller says, “your president has already militarized antitrafficking. It’s only made things worse.”

“Because he’s pursuing the wrong model,” Orduña answers. “Are you conversant with the debate between counterinsurgency and antiterrorism doctrines?”

“Only vaguely.”

Orduña nods. “Counterinsurgency—the model for fighting terrorism for the past thirty years—focused on defense, preventing attacks while politically building relationships with the local people so that they would not support the terrorists. That is roughly analogous to what we—and you—have been doing in regards to drug trafficking, if you can say that drug traffickers are analogous to terrorists.”

“More and more they are terrorists,” Keller says.

“Al Qaeda killed three thousand Americans,” Taylor says. “This is going to sound callous, but that’s a fraction of the harm that drugs cause every year. And we spend tens of billions on interdiction and incarceration.”

“Exactly,” Orduña says. “Counterinsurgency is expensive, time-consuming, and ultimately unsuccessful, which is why your military has recently evolved toward antiterrorist doctrine, which emphasizes the offensive—narrow, specific attacks on prime targets.

“As it exists now, we arrest a cartel leader—Contreras, for instance—another takes his place. There is great motivation to take the job, but little disincentive.”

Taylor adds, “What we’re finding is that fewer jihadists are stepping up for the top positions, because we’ve made it a death sentence instead of a promotion. You take the big chair, we drop a drone missile on your head, or special forces take you out.”

“I wonder,” Orduña says, “who would want to be the head of, say, the Sinaloa cartel, if his two predecessors were both killed. The message is, ‘Go ahead and make your billions, but you won’t live to spend them.’ That’s what we want to do, abandon counterinsurgency and adopt antiterrorism.”

“You’re talking about a program of targeted assassinations,” Keller says.

“Arrest them if we have to,” Orduña says, “kill them when we can.”

Keller smirks.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Orduña says. “You’ve heard it before, and every piece of intelligence you gave Vera went straight to the Sinaloa cartel. The AFI was bought and paid for, but not my unit.”

“That’s what Vera said.”

“Not in my unit,” Orduña repeats. His men can’t apply for the unit, he explains, they have to be selected, talent-spotted, picked from the chorus.

Then they’re trained.

First at a secret camp in the mountains of Huasteca Veracruzana for a year and a half learning weapons, tactics—ambush and counterambush—evasive driving, surveillance, rappelling, explosives, survival.

If they make it through that session, they’re sent to another secret camp in Colombia for specific anti–drug trafficking training. How to infiltrate the cartels’ private armies, identify a drug lab, find stash houses, jump from helicopters, fight in jungles and mountains.

The men who pass that course then go on to a third school, on antiterrorism, in Arizona, on the “neutralization and destruction” of terrorist threats, where they’re taught intelligence, counterintelligence, surviving capture and interrogation. They’re put under intense physical and psychological pressure, and if they survive that, they’re taught how to inflict it—“soft” and “hard” interrogation techniques.

Then they come back to Mexico where their salary is 30,000 pesos a month, plus a 20,000 bonus for every risky operation, which makes them far less likely to take bribes from the narcos.

Another incentive is, to be blunt, looting.

The FES marines get to keep a portion of what they capture—watches, jewelry, cash. Cops have done it forever, of course; Orduña’s genius is to make it legal and actually encourage it.

His men aren’t going to take bribes, they’re just going to take.

“Any man of mine who takes a bribe,” Orduña says, “knows that he won’t be arrested, tried, and sent to jail. He’ll just disappear out in the desert.”

Orduña has created a dirty unit designed to fight a dirty war, Keller thinks. Whether he realizes it or not, he’s formed his own version of the Zetas.

“We have a list of thirty-seven targets,” Orduña says.

“Is Barrera on it?”

“Number two.”

“Who’s number one?”

“Diego Tapia. I’m sure you understand that the public, knowing nothing about the ‘Izta cartel’ scandal, expects it. Our honor demands it. But I swear to you, if you work with me, I will help you kill Adán Barrera.” Orduña smiles and adds, “Hopefully before he succeeds in killing you.”

“The operation is a cut-out,” Taylor said. “No connection to normal DEA activities. Those will go on as usual, in cooperation, such as it is, with the Mexican government. This new unit will work out of here and only with the Mexican marines. The money has been siphoned off from Mérida, so there’s no budget line item, no oversight committee. No State, no Justice—only the White House, which will deny its existence.”

“Where would I fit in?” Keller asks.

“You’d run the American end of things,” Taylor says. “You’ll base yourself here and at EPIC. Only military flights back and forth. FES plainclothes security. Top-level clearance, top-level access.”

“I get a free hand,” Keller says. “I work alone. No handlers, no office spies.”

“You get only the logistical support you request,” Taylor says.

“And if this program comes to light, I get crucified.”

“I have the nails in my mouth.”

Jesus, Keller thinks, he’s offering me a job as the head of an assassination program.

Just like the old days in Vietnam.

Operation Phoenix.

Except this time I’m in charge.

“Why me?” Keller asks. “You’re not exactly the president of my fan club.”

“You’re a lonely, bitter man, Art,” Taylor says. “The only guy I have driven, angry, and good enough to do this.”

It’s honest, Keller thinks.

And Taylor’s right.

He takes the job.

Remembering what he once heard a priest say:

Satan can only tempt you with what you already have.

4 The Valley

Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that it shall no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter.

–Jeremiah 7:32

The Juárez Valley

Spring 2009

They drive east out of Juárez on Carretera Federal 2.

The two-lane highway parallels I-10, just a few miles away across the American border.

Ana insisted on driving her Toyota, not trusting Pablo behind the wheel (certainly of his old heap), and to allow Giorgio to snap all the pictures he wants. Oscar has sent them out into the Juárez Valley to get the story of the increasing violence.

Two months ago, Calderón sent the army out there, a column of troops with armored vehicles and helicopters, to try to quell the fighting between the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels that has made the rural valley a battleground.

Pablo looks out the window at the green belt that flanks the Río Bravo. This used to be mostly cotton fields—cotton with some wheat—but the maquiladoras lured most of the labor away and the cotton plants have long since withered.

This is bandit country and always has been, Pablo thinks, looking past the green strip to the brown sierra to the south. Long controlled by the Escajeda family who migrated down when Texas gained its independence, most of the old families in the valley were refugees, fleeing the encroaching United States.

The Escajedas did what so many border families did—they raised and rustled cattle, participating in the time-honored tradition of two-way cross-border raiding, they fought off first the Comanches and later the Apaches, then turned to cotton when the end of slavery up north created opportunity.

They smuggled marijuana and opium at the turn of the century, then whiskey and rum during Prohibition. The Escajedas grew rich from the bootleg trade, but far richer when Nixon’s War on Drugs made la pista secreta so profitable. You can drive or even walk to Texas from the little towns in the valley, and while the majority of drug trafficking still goes through Juárez, the value of this smuggling territory isn’t to be sneezed at.

Until recently, two Escajeda brothers, José “El Rikin” and Oscar “La Gata,” controlled the drug trade out here and maintained a fragile peace between Sinaloa and Juárez, allowing both cartels use of the plaza for a price.

So there was “peace in the valley,” as it were, even while Juárez tore itself apart, until two months ago, when the army arrested La Gata, and the Sinaloa cartel took it as a signal to move in. The Sinaloan invasion forced El Rikin to choose sides, and he picked his local team, the Juárez cartel.

Now it’s a war zone.

“I didn’t sign up to be a war correspondent,” Pablo says. “We should get extra pay.”

Giorgio, of course, is thrilled with it. He would love to have been a war photographer, and looks like one, in a green shirt, khaki cargo pants, and a khaki vest. He quickly snaps an army convoy of three armored cars as it comes in the opposite direction.

Pablo sees Ana’s hand gripped on the steering wheel. She’s tense, sharing the road with farm trucks and military convoys, and you never knew when a vehicle could be filled with sicarios from one side or the other and when you might drive into a full-fledged firefight, maybe a three-sided one.

He’s relieved when they reach the army checkpoint—a thrown-together post of sandbags, barbed wire, and plywood, outside of Valverde. It’s hot out here now, sweltering really, outside the protective shade of the greenbelt, and Pablo is sweating heavily as Ana stops the car and the soldier walks over.

Pablo knows that it’s more than the oppressive heat making the sweat come through the thin fabric of his white shirt—he’s afraid. Military of any stripe have always made him nervous, all the more so when they’re edgy. This one wears cammies, a combat helmet, and a heavy protective vest, and can’t be happy in this heat.

Ana rolls down the window.

“What are you doing here?” the soldier asks.

“Press,” Ana says.

“Tell him not to take my picture,” the soldier snaps.

“Giorgio, for Chrissakes,” Pablo mutters.

Giorgio lowers his camera to his lap.

“Identification?” the soldier asks.

They hand him their press IDs, and he scans them carefully, although Pablo doubts that the soldier can read. Most of them are rural boys who joined the army to escape hunger and drudgery, and most are illiterate.

“Get out of the car,” the soldier commands.

Noooo, Pablo thinks, aware of the cardinal rule when confronted by cops or soldiers—never get out of the car. Once you’re out of the car, only bad things can happen. Once you’re out of the car, you’re theirs—they can take you off into a ditch and beat you up, rob you. They can take you inside the post, they can put you into the back of a truck for a ride to the main base, and Pablo’s heard stories about what happens to people who get taken to the base.

Now he sees two other soldiers, their interest aroused, get up and walk toward the car. One of them unslings his assault rifle and comes around to the passenger side.

“Get out of the car!” the first soldier yells. He brings his rifle to his shoulder and points it at Ana.

“No, no, no!” Pablo yells, throwing his hands up. “It’s all right! We’re reporters! Reporters!”

Giorgio slips Ana an American ten-dollar bill. “Give it to him.”

Ana’s hand shakes as she passes the soldier the bill. He lowers the rifle, stuffs the bill into his pants pocket, peruses the IDs for a few more seconds, and then hands them back. He waves his hand and a soldier lifts the barrier.

“Go ahead.”

“Jesus Christ,” Pablo says.

–

The little town of Valverde has around five thousand inhabitants and consists of about twenty blocks arranged in a rectangular gridiron in the desert flat. Its houses are small, mostly cinder-block with a few adobes, many brightly painted in vivid blues, reds, and yellows.

The Abarca family bakery is in the center of town on Avenida Valverde—a continuation of Highway 2, and the main street.

The bakery is in the center of town in more than just the purely physical sense—for three generations the rose-painted building has been a meeting place, a social center, where people go when they have an issue or a problem.

“Ir a ver a los panaderos,” has long been a saying in town.

Go see the bakers.

If the landlord is pressing you for money you don’t have, an Abarca will go talk to him. If you need a document completed and can’t write, an Abarca will fill it out for you. If your child is having trouble at school, an Abarca will visit with the teacher. If the soldiers have taken your son away, an Abarca will go to the post to inquire.

There’s been too much of that lately.

Jimena is waiting out in front for them.

“Did you have any trouble getting here?” she asks as they get out of the car. She wears a yellow smock over faded jeans, both smeared with flour.

“No,” Ana lies.

Pablo hopes that they will go inside. Hot as he is, his nerves still jangled, the aroma coming from the bakery still tantalizes. He can smell the pan dulce, the distinct ginger of the marranitos, the anise of semitas, and he thinks he detects some empanadas.

It’s almost lunchtime, but what he really wants is an ice-cold cerveza.

Jimena quickly dashes both hopes.

“Marisol is waiting for us,” she says.

They follow Jimena to the largest building in town, the two-story town offices, and meet the councilwoman upstairs.

Marisol Salazar Cisneros, actually Dr. Marisol Salazar Cisneros, is a Valverde town councilwoman. When Jimena said they’d be meeting her, Pablo did his homework on the Internet—Cisneros was born to a middle-class family of planters outside of Valverde, went away to have a career in the capital, and then returned to open a clinic in the town.

Impressive, Pablo thought, fully prepared to hate the overachieving do-gooder.

What he isn’t prepared for is her beauty. Marisol Cisneros is simply beautiful, to the point that Pablo feels almost intimidated as he shakes her hand. She invites them to sit down at the table, Giorgio instantly starts taking her picture, and Pablo feels a twinge of irrational but nevertheless powerful jealousy.

“You’re friends of Jimena’s,” Marisol says.

“We’ve known each other since the feminicidio,” Ana says. “Pablo worked very closely with her in those days.”

“I think I might have read your stories,” Marisol tells him.

“Thank you,” Pablo says, feeling stupid, and wishing that he’d gotten a haircut or at least shaved.

“And thank you for speaking to us,” Ana says. “The mayor declined.”

“He’s a good man,” Marisol says, “but he’s…”

“Afraid?” Ana prompts.

“Let’s say ‘reticent,’ ” Marisol answers.

“Has he been threatened?” Pablo asks, finding his voice.

“I don’t know.”

“But you have,” Pablo says.

A month ago, she tells them, she was driving back from Práxedis G. Guerrero, farther east in the valley, where she was doing checkups on pregnant women, and an SUV forced her car off the road. She was terrified—all the more so when three men in ski masks got out and fired AR-15 rounds over her head.

“You’re sure they were ARs?” Pablo asks.

“Quite sure,” Marisol says. “Unfortunately, we’ve all become experts at armaments around here.”

The men told her that she wouldn’t be so lucky the next time, so she’d better learn to keep her “stupid bitch legs open and her mouth” shut.

“What had you been saying?” Ana asks.

“It’s not so much what I’d been saying,” Marisol answers, “as what I’ve been asking. When person after person comes into your clinic with bruises, skull fractures from gun butts, signs of electric shock torture, you ask questions. I demanded answers from the commanding officers.”

“What did they tell you?” Pablo asks.

“To mind my own business,” Marisol says. “I told them that injured people are exactly my business.”

“To which they responded—”

“That enforcing the law is theirs,” Marisol answers, “and that they would greatly appreciate my not interfering with their work.”

She told them that as long as their work consisted of hurting innocent people, it was her sworn duty—both as a physician and as a town official—to interfere.

“The army’s working theory,” Jimena says, “is that there is no such thing as an innocent person out here. They accuse us all of working with the Escajedas and the Juárez cartel.”

They break into houses looking for narcos, drugs, weapons, money, Jimena tells them. They steal whatever they can lay their hands on, and if you object…you wind up at Marisol’s clinic.

“If you’re lucky,” Jimena adds. “If not, they blindfold you, throw you in a truck, and take you to the base in Práxedis. There are eight young men from Valverde there now, and we can’t even find out about their status.”

“You’ve gone before a judge?” Ana asks.

“Of course,” Marisol answers, “but normal law doesn’t apply in a state of emergency. The valley is under martial law, so the army can do pretty much what it wants.”

Talk about getting caught in a three-way firefight, Pablo thinks. The people in the Juárez Valley are trapped in a murderous triangle—the Juárez cartel demands their loyalty, the Sinaloa cartel demands that they change sides, and the army is a force of its own. So if the locals aren’t literally caught in a crossfire—mowed down between narcos trying to kill each other—they’re being squeezed from three sides.

Jimena takes issue with this analysis.

“There aren’t three sides,” she says, “there are two. The army and the Sinaloans are the same.”

“That’s a serious allegation,” Ana says, scribbling notes.

“Here’s how it works,” Jimena answers. “The army raids a house on the pretext that it has drugs or weapons. They smash things up, maybe arrest people, but usually not. But that night, or the next, the New People come and kill everyone in the house.”

“So you’re saying that the soldiers are the Sinaloa cartel’s bird dogs,” Pablo says. “They sniff out the Juárez people, then the narcos come in and shoot.”

“Sometimes the killers are wearing black masks, like the federales and the army do,” Marisol says.

“The army is hunting down the Juárez people,” Jimena says, “Los Escajedos, the Aztecas, what’s left of La Línea. They’re exterminating them. I don’t see them hunting down Los Sinaloanos.”

“It appears to be one-sided,” Marisol adds.

They take a walk around the town.

The streets, even at midday, are mostly empty. A few old people and kids sit in the shade of a gazebo, a handful of soldiers peer out from a sandbag barrier. Pablo has the eerie feeling that people are peeping at him behind closed window shades. Some of the buildings are pockmarked with bullet holes, or chipped from grenade blasts.

Pablo sees a surprising number of empty houses. Some are empty shells, others still have all the furniture inside, as if the people are away on vacation.

“They’re not coming back,” Jimena says. “They’ve been threatened by one or the other cartel, or more likely by the army.”

“Why would the army threaten them?” Ana asks.

“So they can steal their houses,” Jimena says, “steal their land.”

She sees Pablo’s dubious look.

“Come on,” she says.

–

They drive east to Práxedis.

Jimena joins them—Marisol stayed in Valverde for her clinic’s office hours. It’s a beautiful day, the sky an almost impossible blue, set off by pure white cumulus clouds.

Nevertheless, the drive is tense as they go farther into the desert, farther into bandit country. They pass through another army checkpoint (another ten-dollar bill, but at least no guns raised this time) before getting into the little town, even smaller than Valverde.

The look is similar, though—soldiers on the street, shot-up buildings, some of them abandoned.

“The narcos gunned someone down in there,” Jimena says. “The owner got frightened and closed the store.”

“Where do people go for groceries?” Ana asks.

“Valverde.”

The army base is set up in what used to be a gymnasium. Now the building is surrounded by coils of barbed wire, sandbags, and a metal gate with a security shack in front.

“Don’t pull up too close,” Jimena warns.

They park a block away and walk to the guard shack.

“I’m here to see Colonel Alvarado,” Jimena says.

The guard knows her. She comes most days making the same demands. “He’s busy.”

“We’ll wait,” Jimena says. “Tell him I’m with three reporters from a Juárez newspaper. No, m’ijo, seriously—he’ll be mad at you if you don’t tell him.”

The guard gets on the phone.

A few minutes later a sergeant comes out and leads them into a makeshift office with a desk and a few folding chairs. Alvarado sets his cigarette in an ashtray, looks up from his paperwork, and gestures for them to sit. “Señora Abarca, what can I do for you today?”

He’s a slick piece of work, Pablo thinks. Immaculately groomed and tailored, sandy hair brushed straight back, pale blue eyes that look right through you, the sort of person that Pablo has loathed—and, okay, yes, feared—his entire life.

“You still have eight young men from my town in custody here,” Jimena says. She starts to run off the names—Velázquez, Ahumada, Blanco…

“I have told you and told you and told you that this is army business and you have no standing whatsoever to—”

Ana identifies herself and asks, “Have these men been charged with anything, and, if so, what?”

Alvarado looks at Giorgio’s cameras. “Tell him not to take my picture.”

“Don’t take his picture,” Ana says. “Have these men been charged with anything, and if so, what?”

“These men are still being interviewed,” Alvarado says.

“Interviewed or interrogated?” Pablo asks.

“And who are you?”

“Pablo Mora. Same paper.”

“It takes three of you?”

“Safety in numbers,” Pablo says. “We have reports that people are being tortured in this facility.”

“There is no truth to that,” Alvarado says. “That is merely propaganda that the traffickers put out and some journalists are foolish enough to repeat.”

“Then you won’t mind,” Ana says, “if we talk to these men?”

“Did I say ‘foolish’?” Alvarado asks. “Perhaps I should have added ‘corrupt.’ ”

“What does that mean?”

“That some journalists are on the cartels’ payrolls,” Alvarado says.

Pablo feels a deep flush come over his face and hopes that the others don’t see it or chalk it up to the heat.

Jimena says, “The doctor in Valverde —”

“Dr. Cisneros?”

“Yes—has asked fifteen times to be allowed to examine these men,” Jimena says, “and has received no response.”

“We have perfectly qualified medical personnel here.”

“She is their physician.”

“Dr. Cisneros is a woman?” Alvarado asks.

“You’ve met her at least ten times,” Jimena says.

“Can we see the prisoners from Valverde, yes or no?” Pablo asks.

“No.”

“Why not?”

Alvarado says, “Something that they say and that you report might compromise an ongoing investigation.”

“Don’t police usually do criminal investigations?” Ana asks.

“These are different times.”

“Are you concerned,” Pablo asks, “that the local police are on the cartels’ payroll, as well? And if so, which cartel?”

Alvarado doesn’t answer.

“Suppose,” Ana says, “we just see the prisoners but don’t interview them?”

“Then what would you have to report?” Alvarado asks.

“That they haven’t been tortured,” Ana says.

Alvarado answers, “But you have my word. Isn’t that good enough?”

“No,” Ana says.

Alvarado glares at her with the hatred that a macho man feels toward an uppity woman.

So Pablo gathers up his courage and chimes in with rapid-fire questions—Do you intend to charge these men? If so, with what? When? If not, when do you intend to release them? Why won’t you produce them? What, if any, evidence do you have against them? Why haven’t they been allowed access to lawyers? Who are you? What’s your background? Where did you serve prior to the 11th Military Zone?

Alvarado holds his hand up. “I don’t intend to be interrogated.”

“Is it torture for you?” Pablo asks.

“I have no comment for your paper.”

“So we can print that you refused to answer,” Ana says.

“Print what you like.” Alvarado stands up. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have real work to do.”

“I’ve contacted the Red Cross and Amnesty International,” Jimena says.

“It’s a free country.”

“Is it?” Jimena asks.

“Yes, unless you’re a criminal,” Alvarado says. “You’re not a criminal, are you, Señora Abarca?”

The threat is clear.

He scribbles out a pass and hands it to Ana. “This will get you back to Juárez with no difficulties. May I suggest that you stay there? These roads can be very dangerous these days.”

“Really?” Ana asks. “But we passed so many army patrols on the way.”

–

“Those are two brave women,” Ana says in the car on the way back to Juárez.

“Indeed,” Pablo says.

“And you have a hard-on for the lady doctor,” she adds.

“Who wouldn’t?” Giorgio asks from the backseat.

“Me,” Ana says.

“You would if your gate was hinged that way,” Giorgio says. “It’s not, right? You’re not double-hinged, are you?”

“I wouldn’t want to ruin your adolescent fantasies with a denial,” Ana replies.

“They take my mind off things,” Giorgio says.

“What things?”

“All of it,” Giorgio answers. “The killing, the corruption, the oppression—the enervating sameness of it all. The fact that we’ve fought how many revolutions and end up with the same old shit. But here, check this out.”