Текст книги "The Cartel"

Автор книги: Don Winslow

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 42 страниц)

They have to scramble, they have to talk to each other. They try their best to mask it—using cell phones only once, using SAT phones, text, e-mails, routing phone calls through international Internet services, but the less time they have, the harder these things are to do.

Even a sophisticated operation like EPIC can’t keep track of every individual communication, can’t intercept every e-mail or listen in on every phone, but what those guys can do is monitor traffic volume.

They already identified certain hot spots—geographical areas and cell phone towers combined with websites and servers that they know the narcos use—and if something is happening, those areas light up with increased traffic.

Now one of those hot zones goes absolutely Christmas tree.

The scans show a dramatic increase in traffic from a tower associated with one of Nacho Esparza’s frequent hiding areas in Jalisco. Several of the calls, all made from different phones, go to a tower in Nayarit, in remote jungle mountains south of Sinaloa. Geographically, it makes sense. Nayarit is close, a short drive or flight from Durango.

The Esparza element makes sense, too. There have been rumors for months about possible tension between Barrera and Esparza—Nacho’s absence at the company Christmas party was noted—and that Esparza was concerned Barrera was still an American snitch. Nayarit lies between their respective bases in Sinaloa and Jalisco—could they be planning a summit meeting to clear the air?

Keller looks at a map of the area served by the cell phone tower and then coordinates it with Google Earth. There’s only one significant residence in the area, a finca of several buildings carved out of the rain forest on the top of a hill.

It’s a perfect place.

Aguilar keeps his SEIDO people in Mexico City working twenty-four/seven tracing the ownership of the property. They track it back through several individuals until they find out that it’s owned as a “hunting resort” by a investment firm in Guadalajara.

The firm is a holding company already under suspicion for laundering money for Nacho Esparza. Armed with that information, they get a tap on the phone coming from the finca.

INCOMING CALLER: You have guests arriving.

RECIPIENT: When?

INCOMING CALLER: Two tonight. One tomorrow morning.

(Pause)

RECIPIENT: Three men.

INCOMING CALLER: You know who. And their people. No one else comes in or out. You understand?

(Call terminates)

Keller understands. “Three men—Barrera, Tapia, and Esparza?”

“It’s possible,” Aguilar says.

Vera is ecstatic. “We have him now. We have him. Dios mío, we might get all three of them.”

That night, fifty heavily armed men, with Aguilar, Vera, and Keller, board a SEIDO plane, its flight plan logged for Jalisco. The men all passed polygraphs that afternoon, and Aguilar confiscates all their cell phones as they board.

When they’re ten minutes in the air, Aguilar orders a change of course, telling the pilots that they’re flying to Nayarit instead. He has personally located an airstrip in a defunct logging camp only eight kilometers from the finca.

The landing is rough but successful.

“Go radio silent,” Aguilar orders the pilots.

“We should report—”

“I said go radio silent,” Aguilar snaps. “Any transmissions you make will be monitored.”

The men deplane and begin the hike up to the finca in the dim light of predawn. Keller is reminded again of Mexico’s amazing diversity—from deserts to rain forests—as they head up the rough, wet terrain through thick green jungle.

Aguilar struggles in front of him. He’s not really an operational guy, Keller thinks, his tennis shoes more suitable to a walk in the park than a slog in the mud. But Aguilar keeps going and doesn’t complain.

The sun is fully up when they reach a plateau that has been cleared for grazing. A few curious cattle look at them as they deploy into a semicircle for the approach to the compound of houses that stand about three hundred yards away, through a low silver mist.

No lights glow from the windows. Is it possible, Keller wonders, that we’ve caught him sleeping?

“You will wait here,” Aguilar says to him. “I want Barrera alive.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

Men are getting ready, clicking clips into place, checking loads—one or two cross themselves and whisper prayers.

–

Adán steps out of the house and walks down to the broad, cleared grounds in front.

He and Diego arrived last night by car, having left Magda in the safe house in Sinaloa. He would have brought her with him, but he’s not sure how safe this meeting is going to be. And he’s annoyed that he had to arrive first—he knows that it’s Nacho showing that he’s not subservient.

Nacho arrives in a helicopter, and Adán has to wonder if it was a precaution or a deliberate act of noblesse oblige. Now Nacho emerges from the chopper flanked by bodyguards, like a president, looking cool and breezy in a linen suit. If Diego is the soldier of the Sinaloa cartel, Esparza is its diplomat. He strides over to Adán and his first words are, “We shouldn’t stay long.”

“I know you’re busy,” Adán answers.

The irony is apparently lost on Nacho, or he simply chooses to ignore it. “It’s good to see you, Adán.”

“Is it?” Adán asks.

Nacho smiles as if he doesn’t understand what Adán could possibly mean. “Of course.”

“Because I’ve been back for quite a while,” Adán says. “You could have had the pleasure of seeing me earlier.”

Unflustered, Nacho answers, “There’s a two-million-dollar reward on my head. I was concerned that if I walked into Puente Grande, I might never have left.”

“Funny, I had the same concern.”

“I delivered a million and a half reasons why you shouldn’t have had any concerns,” Nacho says.

“Then why all this pressure?” Adán asks. If Nacho delivered the right money to the right people, there shouldn’t be any.

“I could ask you the same question, Adanito,” Nacho answers. “Why all this pressure?”

Adán ignores the diminutive version of his name. “You’re worried that I’m a soplón? An informer?”

“I’m thinking that you did it before.”

“And you were the beneficiary,” Adán answers. “I didn’t hear any complaints then. Nacho, you were my uncle’s best friend and closest adviser, and then you were mine. There shouldn’t be tension or suspicion between us. I’ve given up nothing about you. We have to use the authorities as we can—no one is better at this than you—and any connections I have are your connections as well.”

“I hope you know that’s mutual, Adán.”

“I do,” Adán answers, “and I understand other concerns that you might have, so let me tell you what I’ve already told Diego. I have no ambition to be patrón. I understand that you have your own organization now. I only want to be, at most, the first among equals.”

Nacho opens his arms and they embrace.

“You know that I value you,” Adán says. “Your wisdom, your experience. I rely on you. Tell me what you want.”

“The Tijuana plaza,” Nacho whispers.

“It’s my sister’s,” Adán says.

“She can’t hold it,” Nacho answers. “And I want it for my son.”

Then Adán hears a tremendous roar in the sky.

–

Keller looks up to see a Mexican air force fighter fly directly over the ranch.

Low.

“God damn it!” Keller yells.

Lights come on in the finca.

“Go!” Vera yells.

They rush forward.

Keller goes with him, Aguilar’s prohibition forgotten in the rush to get there before Barrera can get away. It’s still possible, Keller thinks as he runs across the pasture. There’s only one road out and we have it covered.

–

Adán looks up and sees a fighter jet zooming in low.

Nacho’s eyes widen. He pushes Adán away and runs back toward his helicopter. Stumbling on a rock, he falls and stains the knee of his linen slacks. A bodyguard picks him up and leads him into the chopper.

The rotors start.

Diego unslings his AK and looks for something to shoot at.

Adán sees men moving across the pasture toward him. He runs for the helicopter, which hovers just a couple of feet above the ground. Nacho looks out at Adán and then signals the pilot to take off.

“Nacho, please!”

“Let him in,” Esparza says.

One of his guards hauls Adán up, and Diego jumps in behind.

The helicopter takes off.

As it circles the finca, Adán sees the troopers moving in below. He isn’t sure—it must be his imagination—but for a second, he thinks he sees Art Keller. He leans across and, over the throb of the rotors, shouts to Nacho, “Tijuana is yours, if you can take it from Teo!”

–

Keller sees a helicopter come up from the mist.

It circles the compound once and then takes off in the other direction.

Barrera has slipped the noose again.

–

“That was deliberate!” Keller yells at Aguilar when they get back to the plane.

“It was an unfortunate mistake,” Aguilar answers. “It was supposed to be a high-level reconnaissance flight…”

An “unfortunate mistake,” my ass, Keller thinks. It was deliberate, the only way of warning Barrera that someone could think of.

But who?

–

Four federal agents are waiting when the helicopter lands at a ranch farther down in Nayarit.

Adán looks at Nacho. “I guess you’ll take Tijuana on your own. And the rest of it.”

“Come on,” Nacho says.

They get out of the helicopter and follow the agents into the house.

Four million dollars later, the helicopter takes off again, with Nacho Esparza, Diego Tapia, and Adán Barrera on board.

–

Keller has a cup of coffee in a Condesa café, and then does a little shopping at El Pendulo bookstore. He picks up an Elmer Mendoza novel, then walks along Avenida Amsterdam, which used to be part of the old racetrack, and stops in at Parilladas Bariloche for a reasonably inexpensive dinner of papas con amor and arrachera. Sitting there perusing the Mendoza, he knows that he’s the image of the lonely, middle-aged divorced man—reading alone at a table for one.

Maybe, Keller thinks, I’ve become too used to solitude.

Maybe I like it too much.

He finishes dinner and then walks over to the Parque México.

Barrera has gone radio silent—no calls, no e-mails, no sightings, not even any rumors.

The trail is cold and dead.

The next meeting of the Barrera Coordinating Committee has the feel of a postmortem. Keller looks at his colleagues and wonders which, if either of them, has been tipping off Barrera.

He’s also aware that he’s been told to keep his big mouth shut about it—Mexican law enforcement has its shiny new soul—and Art Keller is not going to besmirch it. And the truth is that he doesn’t have anything solid, just his suspicions.

And his gut feeling that both of these men are about to throw in the towel.

Aguilar is actually right when he points out to Keller that the search for Barrera is only one part of a multifaceted effort, and that neither SEIDO nor AFI can commit all their time and resources for what seems to be an increasingly quixotic quest.

Keller hears the subtext—we’re going to get you the hell out of here—and he’s too smart to hasten the process of his own demise by making noise about corruption.

“Let me tilt at one more windmill,” he says.

–

Keller and Vera watch from behind the one-way glass as Aguilar interviews Sondra Barrera.

She looks like hell, Keller thinks.

The Black Widow.

“You were present at the Christmas party in El Puente prison,” Aguilar says.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Sondra answers.

“Well, you were there,” Aguilar says. “We have witnesses.”

Sondra doesn’t respond.

“You were there with your son Salvador and other members of the family,” Aguilar says.

“I don’t know—”

“Where is Adán Barrera?”

Sondra laughs.

“Did I say something funny?” Aguilar asks.

“Do you think Adán would tell me where he is?” Sondra asks. “Do you think I would tell you if I knew?”

“Do you know?”

Sondra Barrera has no love for her brother-in-law, Keller knows, but she’s not going to give him up, even if she could. He’s her paycheck, her pension, her social security.

“My husband is dead,” Sondra says.

“I’m aware of that,” Aguilar answers. “What are you getting at?”

“That Adán has an instinct for survival,” Sondra says. “Other people die for him. You’ll never find him.”

“Is he in touch with your son, Salvador?”

“Leave my son alone.”

Keller sees the alarm in her eyes. Aguilar must have seen it, too, because he presses, “Tell me where Adán is and I won’t have to speak to your son.”

“He’s good,” Vera says to Keller. “Whatever else you can say about the persnickety bastard, you have to admit he’s good.”

“Please leave my son alone,” Sondra says, on the verge of tears.

“I wish I could.”

“You’re bastards, all of you.”

“You’re hardly in a morally superior position, Señora Barrera,” Aguilar says. “Do you know how many people your late husband killed?”

Sondra doesn’t answer.

“Would you like to know? Does it matter to you? No, I thought not.” He hands her his card. “This is my number. If Adán contacts you, I hope you will call me. And please have Salvador make an appointment. I don’t want to pick him up on campus and embarrass him.”

After Sondra and her lawyer leave, Aguilar comes into the room and sits with Keller and Vera. “Well, that was useful.”

“It was,” Keller says. “I know Sondra—she’ll panic.”

“Do we have a trace on her phones?” Vera asks.

“Of course,” Aguilar answers. “And her son’s.”

“Luis is getting into the game,” Vera says, getting up to leave.

“I’ve been in the game,” Aguilar answers.

But Vera is already out the door.

Aguilar turns to Keller and says defensively, “I’ve been in the game.”

–

Sondra calls a number in Culiacán. “…they’re talking about obstruction charges.”

“They’re bluffing.”

“It’s not Adán’s voice,” Keller says.

“No,” Aguilar agrees.

“I will not go to prison. I will not have my son go to prison.”

“Relax. We’ll fix it.”

“What does that mean?” Keller asks.

“I don’t know,” Aguilar snaps.

“Call him.”

“That’s not necessary. We can take care of it.”

“He’s not leaving us hanging out there.”

“You know he wouldn’t do that.”

“I don’t know that.”

“Sondra—”

She hangs up.

“Who was she talking to?” Keller asks.

“Esparza?” Aguilar asks. “Tapia? I don’t know.”

But now they have the number she called, and it’s a simple matter of technology to tap its calls.

They sit through a long night. Finally the man in Culiacán, now code-named “Fixer,” makes a call to the 777 area code—Cuernavaca. “Sondra’s panicking.”

“Tell her to calm down.”

“You don’t think I did? She wants us to talk to him.”

“To say what? Just fix it.”

“Obviously. If she gives us the time.”

“What can she tell them?”

“Who knows what she knows?”

“Silly bitch. What about the kid?”

“He’s his father’s son.”

“The man loves him.”

“Then we should tell him.”

Keller feels a jolt shoot through his body. The men on the phone call are about to contact Adán.

The next minutes are agony.

Aguilar orders an underling, “Get Vera in here.”

The AFI chief shows up twenty minutes later, disheveled, in a tracksuit and sweatshirt. “This had better be good. I’ve been seducing this woman for weeks.”

Aguilar briefed him.

They sit in silence, watching the phone monitor.

Hoping, praying.

Then it lights up.

“Cuernavaca” is on the phone.

“Jesus,” Vera says. “It’s 555—a Mexico City number. Barrera’s here.”

Here, Keller thinks, in Mexico City. He’s so goddamn smart, Barrera, he flies under the radar by getting under the radar’s shell. You have to hand it to the son of a bitch, it’s as clever as it is arrogant.

Classic Adán Barrera.

Keller listens as “Cuernevaca” says, “It’s me.”

“What is it?”

“Is that Barrera?” Aguilar asks.

“Can’t tell,” Keller answers.

They listen as “Cuernavaca” describes the problem with Sondra Barrera. Then the recipient of the call says, “The pendejos, why do they have to interfere with families?”

Keller nods. It’s him.

“What do you want to do?” “Cuernavaca” asks.

“Just tell her you spoke with me and we’re fixing it. Send them on vacation or something.”

“Atizapán,” the technician says, naming a town on the outskirts of Mexico City, “5871 Calle Revolución.”

“Cuernavaca” says, “Do you think…we should…”

“She’s my brother’s wife.”

The call goes off. Vera grins. “Did we just hear ‘Cuernavaca’ suggest killing Barrera’s sister-in-law?”

Keller is already on the horn to DEA to request a satellite run.

By early morning they have a hit.

“Look at this,” Keller said.

He shows them a grainy video image of Adán Barrera standing on the roof of the house, gazing out over the neighborhood, a cup of coffee in his hand. He only stayed a minute, and then went in.

“It’s him,” Keller says.

“Are you sure?” Aguilar asks.

Keller has come to learn that the head of SEIDO is a cautious man, constantly checking and rechecking the “facts” to make certain that they are indeed facts, and not rumors or deliberate misinformation. The image is grainy but Keller is reasonably sure it’s Adán—the short stature, the shock of black hair across the forehead…

“Put a percentage on it,” Aguilar presses.

“Eighty-five,” Keller says.

“Eighty-five is good,” Vera comments.

Keller wants to go in right away. He requests and receives another satellite flyover with mega-audio capability and sits listening to what he believes is Adán’s voice inside the house.

Talking to a woman.

“Do you want red or white?”

“Red tonight, I think.”

“Is that her?” Keller asks. “Magda Beltrán?”

The beauty queen.

Aguilar shrugs. “Narcos have a lot of women.”

“Not Adán,” Keller says. “He’s more of a serial monogamist.”

They run the audio against DEA recordings of Adán and come up with a close match.

“We know that he’s inside the house now,” Keller says. “Let’s do it now.”

“It’s too risky,” Aguilar says.

Vera—usually the more aggressive—agrees. “Too much chance of my men hitting each other in a crossfire.”

“Or a civilian,” Aguilar says.

It’s frustrating—the AFI troopers are good, more and more of them have received training at Quantico, but Keller yearns for American special forces, with their high level of training and equipment. He knows it will never happen—D.C. would never send, nor would Los Pinos ever accept, American troops on Mexican soil—but Keller would give a lot right then for special operators who preferred to fight at night.

But this is the Mexicans’ call to make, and they decide to wait until dawn. Aguilar puts his best surveillance team on the scene, and Vera sends an AFI plainclothes team in case Barrera tries to leave the house.

“We have him penned in,” Vera reassures Keller. “He’s not going anywhere. He’ll be there in the morning.”

Keller hopes so.

Adán hasn’t stayed free this long by being careless, and he doubtless has men watching from the house, as well as halcones—“falcons,” lookouts—on the street. Not to mention an average, misguided citizen who sees Barrera as some kind of Robin Hood and who could get very rich very quickly by warning the patrón about strangers in the neighborhood.

But now the “strangers” are in place—four armored vehicles filled with AFI troopers with black hoods and Kevlar vests—parked blocks away from the building. The troopers are armed with automatic rifles, flash-bang grenades, and tear-gas canisters. Two helicopters stand by to take off as soon as the raid starts, and they’ll drop more AFI troopers onto the roof.

Keller urges the sun to hurry the hell up.

The house will be full of sicarios, and, sleepy or not, they’ll fight to protect Barrera, and there will be gunfire. And when the shooting starts, Keller thinks, the distinction between justice and revenge tends to get blurred.

Then Vera’s voice comes over the radio.

“Two minutes.”

The plan is straightforward, perhaps too much so, Keller thinks. At the “go” command, the vehicles will charge up to the building and AFI troopers will get out, bludgeon open the door, and go in while others guard the back entrance and seal off the streets. The SEIDO agents will follow to make arrests and gather intelligence and evidence—cell phones, computers, cash, and weapons.

Aguilar checks the load on his service revolver, and tightens his Kevlar vest. Then he turns to Keller and says, “You will remain in the vehicle. We will bring Barrera out and you will identify him. Is that clear?”

“I heard you the fifteenth time.”

They sit in silence for an interminable ninety seconds, until they hear Vera say, “Go.”

Aguilar starts to follow his men out of the car.

Keller watches him go down the block, then pulls his gun and follows.

“Juras! Juras!”

Keller hears the halcones shout that the cops are coming, but the lookouts—most of them kids—run away as the AFI troopers pour out of the vehicles.

Gunfire blasts from the windows and the roof.

Vera seems oblivious to the bullets zipping around him. Pistol in hand, he urges the men with the battering ram to hit the door. More afraid of him than the bullets, the troopers pick up the ram and run it into the door.

The door comes off its hinges, pulling the trip wires on the grenades attached waist high to the sill.

Keller sees the red blast as two troopers fly back.

“Muévanse!” Vera yells at the stunned survivors.

Move!

They balk as bullets zip out through the doorway and they look at their two comrades lying in the street, limp as puppets.

“Rajados! Cowards!” Vera yells. “I’ll go!”

He runs in.

His men follow him.

So does Keller, who trots toward the house, remembering Vietnam and his Quantico training—don’t run to your death—and saves his oxygen for the firefight.

And, like ’Nam, he hears the choppers coming in.

–

The house is a bedlam.

The power out, faint light comes through the few windows—screams of pain and bursts of automatic weapons fire cut through the darkness. The carnage is horrific, although it’s hard to make out the narcos from the AFI troopers. Keller hears Vera’s voice in front of him, toward the back of the house, shouting orders.

Stepping over the bodies of dead and wounded, Keller looks for the stairs. Adán wouldn’t be on the ground floor or on the top. He’d be on the second, in the back, with the possibility of getting out a window.

If he’s even here, Keller thinks. This was an ambush—a booby-trapped ambush—and they were ready for us.

But the voice track said he was here. Was here, anyway, Keller thinks as he finds the stairs and starts up, pistol pointed in front of him.

Then he trips over Aguilar’s legs.

The lawyer sits on the landing, his back against the wall, his legs stuck straight out, his left hand grasping his right arm, the glassy look of the wounded in his eyes.

He sees Keller.

“You’re supposed to be in the car,” Aguilar says softly.

Keller crouches beside him. The wound is jagged—shrapnel, not a bullet. Keller rips Aguilar’s sleeve and uses it as a tourniquet. “The medics are on the way. You won’t bleed out.”

“Go back to the car.”

Keller continues up the stairs.

A grenade clatters down the steps.

Before he can move, it goes off by his ankles. The smoke explodes up, choking him, blinding him. Staggering up the stairs, he hears gunfire above him, as the AFI troopers fight their way down from the roof. A sicario appears through the smoke in front of him. He looks confused when he sees Keller, then throws his AK up to his shoulder.

Keller fires twice into his chest and the man goes down.

Pushing past him, Keller makes it to the top of the stairs. He opens the first door he can find and sees—

Adán—

–standing by the bed—

–a pistol in his right hand.

“Don’t,” Keller says.

Hoping he does.

Barrera raises the gun.

Keller fires.

The first bullet takes off the bottom of Barrera’s jaw.

The second goes through his left eye.

Blood sprays against the wall.

The woman screams.

Keller lowers his gun.

–

Vera walks up behind him.

Together, they look down at the corpse.

The black hair, the slightly pug nose, the brown eyes.

Well, one brown eye.

“Congratulations,” Vera says.

“It’s not him,” Keller says.

“What?!”

“It’s not fucking him.”

Adán used lookalikes before, at least three of them during his war with Palma, and when Keller sees the body up close, remote from the chaos, adrenaline, darkness, and smoke, he realizes that it wasn’t Adán and that the whole raid has been a setup.

Keller, Vera, and the AFI troopers tear through the house, and in one of the bedrooms they find it.

The bathtub has been torn up and there it is—the entrance to a tunnel.

Keller jumps down.

Pistol in front of him, he moves down the tunnel, which is wired for electricity and has lights. He hopes that Barrera is in here, cowering somewhere, but the greater likelihood is that if Barrera’s down here, he has an army of sicarios protecting him.

Keller keeps pushing anyway.

Vera is right behind him, his gun also drawn.

They walk under the street and then come to the end of the tunnel and another metal ladder. Keller climbs up and pushes open the trapdoor into another house.

It’s empty.

Barrera is gone.

–

They do the press conference that afternoon. Aguilar questioned the wisdom of making a public show of what had been a desperate shootout near the nation’s capital, but Vera insisted.

“We must not only combat the cartels,” Vera said, “we must be seen to be combating the cartels. That’s the only way to restore the public’s confidence in their law enforcement agencies.”

Keller watches on television at the embassy as Vera describes the daring raid, the intense firefight, and memorializes the brave men who gave their lives. He goes on to praise the diligent work of SEIDO, and introduces Luis Aguilar, “who, as you can see, shed his blood in the pursuit of this criminal.”

Aguilar mumbles through a typed statement. “We regret our failure in this instance. However, we assure the public that the battle will go on and we must…”

Vera throws his arm around his colleague’s shoulder.

“We’re Batman and Robin.” He looks straight into the cameras. “And he’s right—the battle is just beginning. We won’t relent in our hunt for Barrera, but now I’m talking to the rest of you narcos out there. We’re coming after you. We’ll be in Tijuana next.”

“What about the beauty queen?” a reporter asks. “What about Miss Culiacán?”

Vera steps back in. “She wasn’t in the house. But don’t worry—we’ll find her and give her a new sash.”

The reporters laugh.

–

The fight starts the next day.

“You’re going home,” Aguilar tells Keller.

“Absolutely,” Keller answers. “The moment Barrera is back behind bars or on a slab.”

“Now,” Aguilar insists. “It’s too dangerous—not only for you but for other people. The booby-trapped door could have been meant for you. Other men paid with their lives.”

“That’s what soldiers do,” Vera says.

“They were policemen, not soldiers,” Aguilar says. “And this is a law enforcement action, not a war.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Vera answers.

“I object to the militarization of—”

“Tell that to the narcos,” Vera says. “If Keller is willing to stay until the job is done, I’m willing to have him. If he’s willing to stay.”

Keller’s willing.

Adán Barrera is still out there, in his world.

La Tuna, Sinaloa

Adán walks out onto the little balcony off the master bedroom of his finca.

The ranch was his aunt’s, abandoned back in the ’70s when the American DEA came in and devastated the poppy fields with fire and poison. Thousands of campesinos and gomeros—now refugees—fled their mountain homes.

Tía Delores’s finca stood empty for years, a home for only ravens.

Since his return to Mexico, Adán has poured millions into renovating the main house and the outbuildings, and more millions turning the ranch into a fortress with high walls, guard towers, sound and motion sensors, and casitas that serve as living spaces for the servants and barracks for the sicarios.

For Adán it is a return to innocence, of sorts, to the idyllic day of his teenage years when he would come up here to escape the heat of the Tijuana summer and dive into the cold waters of the granite quarries. Of family dinners at large tables under the oak trees, listening to the campesino men play tamboras and guitars, and the old women, the abuelas, tell stories from a time beyond his memory.

A good life, a rich life, a life that the North Americans destroyed.

It is good to be home, Adán thinks.

Despite Sondra’s stupidity.

Stupid, vapid Sondra was a perfect pawn for both white and black. As it turned out, it wasn’t a problem. He and Magda went to the safe house in Atizapán, he let himself be seen and heard, and then he slipped out of the net that had been thrown around the house.

The lookalike was already there, a happy idiot thrilled to have a nice house and a beautiful woman for a few days, an expensive whore who resembled Magda in all the most superficial ways.

Adán will take care of the lookalike’s family.

The only downside is that Keller didn’t die in the ambush. It would have been perfect—the North American killed in a botched raid that couldn’t have been blamed on me. But Keller is still out there, alive, and Magda is still urging that he be left out there. Too much at stake now, Magda says, too much happening to take another chance.

Adán maintains the “stay of execution” but insists that it’s just that. Unlike the United States, Mexico has no death penalty, but Adán likes to think of Keller just inhabiting a mobile cell on death row.

After the raid, Adán deemed it safe to move to the ranch in Sinaloa, outside La Tuna, high in the Sierra Madre. His convoy made its way up winding roads—dusty now but often impassable with mud in the rainy season—through tiny hamlets made of spare odds and ends of wood and corrugated tin.

Despite its wealth in drug production, the Triangle is still one of the poorest parts of Mexico. The vast majority of the people are still campesinos—peasant farmers—as they had always been. The fact that they grow poppies and yerba instead of corn is only a detail.

For most, life never changes.

It was good to be home.

“Is there where you grew up?” Magda asked, looking at the expanse of green field with the mountains in the background.

“Summers,” Adán said. “Actually, I’m a city boy.”

The car pulled through the gate then up the macadam road lined with junipers, tall and straight like soldiers on parade. It stopped in the crescent gravel driveway outside the main house.

“No moat?” Magda asked.

“Not yet.”

Magda looked at the main house, a two-story stone building with a central structure flanked by two wings that came out at a forty-five-degree angle. A large portico with marble columns stood at the front of the central structure; balconies were cantilevered from the second floors of the wings.