The Cartel (Power of the Dog #2)

by Don Winslow

In a few moments the men will lower themselves down fast ropes into the village near their target. Even with the element of surprise, there’ll be a firefight. The narco gunmen are protecting their boss and for him they’ll give up their lives. And the sicarios are well armed with AK-47s, rocket launchers, and grenades, and know how to use them. These sicarios aren’t just thugs, but special forces veterans themselves—trained at Fort Benning and elsewhere. It’s possible that some of the men in the chopper trained some of the men on the ground. People will be killed. Appropriate, Keller thinks. It’s the Day of the Dead.

The cell doesn’t have a window, but if it did he could see the brown hills of Tijuana, the city he once ruled like a prince. It’s that close, just across the border, a few miles by land, even closer across the water, and yet a universe away. Adán doesn’t mind not eating with the other prisoners—their conversation is idiotic and the threat is real. There are many people who want him dead—in Tijuana, all across Mexico, even in the States. Some for revenge, others from fear.

Adán Barrera doesn’t look fearsome. Diminutive at five foot six, and slender, he still has a boyish face that matches his soft brown eyes. Far from a threat, he resembles more a victim who would be raped in ten seconds in the general population. Looking at him, it’s hard to credit that he has ordered hundreds of killings over his life, that he was a multibillionaire, more powerful than the presidents of many countries. Before his fall, Adán Barrera was “El Señor de los Cielos,” “the Lord of the Skies,” the most powerful drug patrón in the world, the man who had unified the Mexican cartels under his leadership, gave orders to thousands of men and women, influenced governments and economies. He owned mansions, ranches, private airplanes.

“It’s Gloria,” Tompkins says. Adán knows what Tompkins is going to say before he says it. His daughter is dead. Gloria was born with cystic lymphangioma, a deformation of the head, face, and throat that is eventually fatal. And incurable—all Adán’s millions, all of his power, could not buy his daughter a normal life. A little over four years ago, Gloria’s health took a turn for the worse. With Adán’s blessing, his then wife, Lucía, an American citizen, took their twelve-year-old daughter to San Diego, to the Scripps clinics that housed the best specialists in the world. A month later Lucía phoned him at his safe house in Mexico. Come now, she said. They say she has days, maybe only hours… Adán smuggled himself—like his own product—across the border, in the trunk of a specially outfitted car. Art Keller was waiting for him in the hospital parking lot. “My daughter,” Adán said. “She’s fine,” Keller said. Then the DEA agent jabbed a needle into Adán’s neck and the world went black.

Watching his daughter lowered into the earth, Adán lifts cuffed hands in prayer. The marshals are kind—they let him stoop down, scoop up a handful of dirt, and toss it on Gloria’s casket. It’s all over now. The only future is the past. To the man who has lost his only child, all that will be is what already was. Straightening up from his daughter’s grave, Adán says quietly to Tompkins, “Two million dollars. Cash.” To the man who kills Art Keller.

Taylor, Keller thinks now, virtually drove me into Tío Barrera’s waiting arms. There was nowhere else to go. He and Tío made a lot of busts together. They even “took down”—a euphemism for “killed”—Don Pedro Áviles, gomero número uno. Then DEA and the Mexican army sprayed the poppy fields with napalm and Agent Orange and destroyed the old Sinaloan opium trade. Only, Keller thinks, to watch Tío create a new and vastly more powerful organization out of the ashes. El Federación. The Federation. You start, Keller thinks, by trying to cut out a cancer, and instead you help it to metastasize, spread from Sinaloa throughout the whole country. It was just the beginning of Keller’s long war with the Barreras, a thirty-year conflict that would cost him everything he had—his family, his job, his beliefs, his honor, his soul.

He has no interest in the world. “Then you don’t know what’s going on in Mexico,” Taylor says. “Not my problem.” “It’s not his problem,” Taylor says to Jiménez. “Tons of coke pouring across the border. Heroin. Meth. People getting killed, but it’s not Art Keller’s problem. He has bees to take care of.” Keller doesn’t answer. The so-called war on drugs is a revolving door—you take one guy out, someone else grabs the empty chair at the head of the table. It will never change, as long as the insatiable appetite for drugs is there. And it’s there, in the behemoth on this side of the border. What the suits will never understand or even acknowledge— The so-called Mexican drug problem isn’t the Mexican drug problem. It’s the American drug problem.

When I was in it I was too in it, Keller thinks. I got Ernie killed and then I got nineteen innocent people killed. He’d made up an informant to protect his real source and Adán Barrera slaughtered nineteen men, women, and children along with the phony soplón to teach a lesson. Lined them all up against a wall and shot them. Keller will never forget walking into that compound and seeing children dead in their mothers’ arms. Knowing that it was his fault, his responsibility. He doesn’t want to forget, not that his conscience will let him. Some mornings the bell wakes him from the memory.

It was Nacho who negotiated Adán’s return to Mexico from the Mexican side, delivering large payments and larger assurances. Once that was arranged, Diego saw to it that most of the prison staff was already on Adán’s payroll by the time he arrived. The majority of them were eager for the money. For the reluctant, Diego simply came into the prison and showed them their home addresses and photos of their wives and children. Three guards still refused to take the money. Diego congratulated them for their integrity. Each was found the next morning sitting primly at his post with his throat cut. The rest accepted Adán’s largesse. A cook was paid $300 American a month, a senior guard as much as a thousand, the warden $50,000 above and beyond his annual salary.

Adán’s new cell, on Block 2, Level 1-A, of CEFERESO II, is 635 square feet, has a king-sized bed behind a private partition, a full kitchen, a bar, a flat-screen LED television, a computer, a stereo system, a desk, a dining room table, chairs, floor lamps, and a walk-in closet. A refrigerator is stocked with frozen steaks and fish, fresh produce, beer, vodka, cocaine, and marijuana. The alcohol and drugs are not for him but for guards, inmates, and guests. Adán doesn’t use drugs. He saw his uncle become addicted to crack and watched the once powerful patrón—Miguel Ángel Barrera, “M-1,” the genius, the progenitor of the cartels, a great man—become an addled-minded, paranoid fool, a conspirator in his own destruction. So a single glass of wine with dinner is Adán’s only indulgence.

“The Fives”—Interstates 5, 25, and 35—are the arterial veins of the Mexican drug trade.

Cocaine alone is a $30 billion market in the United States annually. Of the cocaine that goes into the United States, 70 percent of it goes through Juárez and the Gulf. That’s $21 billion.

Adán hired a convicted embezzler to digitize all his records so he can track accounts on computer, laptops that are swapped out once a month and freshly encoded. He uses scores of cell phones, changed every other day or so, the replacements smuggled in by guards or other of Diego’s employees.

Some evenings Los Bateadores convert the dining hall into a cinema, complete with a popcorn machine, and Adán invites friends in to watch a movie, munch popcorn or eat ice cream. The guests call these sessions “Family Nights” because Adán prefers PG films—lots of Disney—because he doesn’t like the sex and violence that come with most Hollywood films these days. Other nights are less wholesome. A prison guard cruises the Guadalajara bars and comes back with women, and then the dining hall is converted into a brothel, replete with liquor, drugs, and Viagra. Adán pays all the “fees” but doesn’t take part in these evenings, retreating to his cell instead. He’s not interested in women. Until he sees Magda.

“Stop.” Adán edges his stool closer, and says softly, “Juan Cabray, you know you’re going to die. And you will die happy, thinking of the money that will go to your wife and family. That’s a good thing, you’re a brave man. But you know…Juan, look at me…” Cabray lifts his head. “…you know that I can reach out to your family, wherever they are.” Adán says, “Listen to me, Juan Jesús Cabray, I will buy your wife a house, I will get her a job where she doesn’t work hard, I will send your son to school. Is your mother alive?” “Yes.” “I will see that she is warm in the winter,” Adán says, “and that you have a funeral that will make her proud. So, the only question is, do I take your family under my wing and make them my family, or do I kill them? You decide.” “I don’t know who hired me, patrón.” “But someone approached you,” Adán says.

Diego flushes but has to acknowledge this truth. The men responsible for guarding Adán have been transferred to Block 4, the worst unit in the prison, where the child molesters, the murderers, the lunatics go. There will be no movie nights, no women, no parties. They’ll be fighting and killing over scraps of food. New men will be coming in over the next few days. They’re volunteers, men who willingly get themselves convicted and sent to prison, knowing that when they get out in a few years they’ll be offered opportunities to traffic drugs, to make fortunes that they could never otherwise dream of.

“What do you make a year?” Contreras asked. When Ochoa told him, Contreras shook his head and said, “I feed my chickens better.” “And do they protect you?” Contreras laughed. Ochoa deserted the army and went to work for the Gulf cartel. His first task was to recruit others like him. The Mexican army was rife with desertion anyway. Armed with cañonazos de dólares—cannonballs of money—Ochoa easily seduced thirty of his comrades away from their long hours, shabby barracks, and lousy pay. Within weeks he’d brought over four other lieutenants, five sergeants, five corporals, and twenty privates. They brought with them valuable merchandise—AR-15 rifles, grenade launchers, and state-of-the-art surveillance equipment.

“There was only one man born in a stable on Christmas who ever made anything of himself,” Ochoa liked to say, “and look what they did to him.”

He kisses Sondra on her cheeks. “Sondra…” “We always knew,” she says, “that we’d end up here, didn’t we?” No, we didn’t, Adán thinks. And if you did, it never stopped you from enjoying the houses, the clothing, the jewelry, the vacations. You knew where the money came from—it never stopped you from spending it. Lavishly. And, to my knowledge, you never turn down the package of cash that arrives at your house the first of every month. Nor the tuition payments for Salvador’s college, the medical bills, the credit card payments…

Adán had questioned the wisdom of bringing children to the prison, but Chele was firm about it. “This is our life. They need to know what it is, not just the good parts. I won’t have them being ashamed of their family.”

Short as he is—and he’s shorter than Adán by at least two inches—the get-up looks comical on him, like a child playing cowboy. No one is going to say that to Alberto, though, because his fuse is shorter than he is. Adán worries about Alberto’s violent temper, but Diego assures him that it’s nothing to worry about, that he has his little brother under control. I hope so, Adán thinks.

“Let me work with Tío Diego,” he says, looking Adán in the eyes for the first time in this conversation. “Or Tío Nacho. Or send me to Tijuana. I can help Tía Elena.” He’s so eager, so sincere all of a sudden, it’s almost sad. The boy wants so badly to redeem his father, Adán hurts for him. “Your father didn’t want this for you,” Adán says. “He made me promise. His last words to me.” It’s a lie. Raúl’s last words were his begging to be put out of his gut-shot misery. He said nothing about Salvador, or Sondra. What he said was Thank you, brother when Adán pointed the pistol at his head.

The irony, Keller thinks, is as perfect as it is painful. I’m a prisoner in the world’s largest solitary confinement. And Barrera is free.

As they drive away from the village, Aguilar says, “Don’t say it.” “What?” “What you’re thinking—that Barrera was tipped off.” “I guess I don’t have to.” “For all you know,” Aguilar snaps, “it could have been someone from DEA.” “Could have been.” But it wasn’t, Keller thinks.

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. “It’s a mansion,” Magda said. “More than I need or want,” Adán answered, “but there are expectations.” A king must have a castle, whether he wants one or not. It’s expected, and if the king doesn’t build one, he can be certain that his dukes will. Designing the renovation became a hobby of sorts in prison—Adán met with architects and builders, approved plans, even drew a few sketches of his own. It gave him something to look forward to.

The Fuenteses are originally from Sinaloa, and the family has ruled the Juárez plaza for years. Vicente doesn’t have the charisma or brains of his late uncle—he’s dissolute, flamboyant, too busy with coke and women to run his business well. And he’s lazy, Adán thinks. Too lazy to work out solutions to difficult problems, so his only reaction is the easiest one—killing. He orders up murders like takeout Chinese food, and a lot of his people are tired of it. Afraid that a casual word or a misunderstanding could make them next, a lot of them came over to Adán after his return to Mexico. Vicente resents it and sees Adán as a threat. Maintaining the relationship with Nacho, who moves vast weights of meth through Juárez, is the only reason he agreed to this meeting.

“When Nacho told me you were alive,” Vicente says now, “I wept.” I’ll bet you did, Adán thinks. Vicente asks, “Is Elvis here, too?” The joke doesn’t sit well with Alberto Tapia. “You want to meet Elvis, Vicente? Because maybe we can work that out.” Vicente reaches for the gun at his hip. So does Alberto. Nacho steps in. “Don’t make a liar of me, gentlemen.” Vicente eases his hand away. He believes he’s too handsome to die, Adán thinks, that it would be too great a loss to a world in need of beauty. Alberto waits for Vicente to back down first, and then, grinning, takes his hand away from his gun. But it could have happened that fast, Adán thinks. Plans that I’ve spent years constructing could have fallen apart in a stupid exchange of insults. We run a billion-dollar business and act like nickel gangbangers. He makes a mental note to tell Diego to get his little brother under control.

Keller lies on the bed in his apartment. His loneliness is a faint ache, like the reminder of an old wound, a scar you no longer notice because it’s just a part of you now. Like your Barrera obsession? he asks himself. Is there a legitimate purpose, a reason, a cause, or is it just part of you now, a disease of the blood, an obstruction of the heart? It felt good, didn’t it, pulling the trigger on the man you thought was Barrera. Seeing the fear in his eyes. At the end of the day you have to account for the fact that it felt good. Aguilar’s right—the ambush at the house was probably meant for me. Kind of funny, when you think about it, that Barrera and I each thought we’d killed each other. And were both wrong.

On the other hand, Gerardo Vera has become something of a friend. Well, not exactly a friend—Keller has no friends in Mexico, will allow himself no real friends among colleagues whom he doesn’t trust—but they do share an end-of-the-day beer from time to time, and Vera is as gregarious as Aguilar is closed. Almost everything Keller assumed about Vera turned out to be wrong. He’d thought that Vera was from your typical privileged Mexico City upper crust, when in fact he came up the hard way and had been a beat cop in one of the city’s most notorious slums. He’d fought his way up the ranks, gaining attention from his superiors for cleaning up tough neighborhoods, and when PAN took over and was looking for someone to clean up the scandal-ridden corrupt federales, they turned to Gerardo Vera.

Gerardo Vera spends the evening with his latest mistress. Good wine, good food, better sex. Drink, food, and women. What else is there in life? “God?” Aguilar asked him when he’d spouted this philosophy over lunch. “That’s the next life,” Vera said. “I’ll worry about that when I get there.” “Then it will be too late.” “Yes, Father Luis.”

Luis hopes for heaven. Keller fears hell. Vera fears only death, and that because he takes such pleasure in life.

Which in turn alarms Ochoa, because Forty isn’t one to panic. He’s risen quickly in the Zeta ranks despite not being one of the original special-ops veterans. In fact, he’s half American, a pocho from Laredo, with no military experience but a long history with the Los Tejos gang along the border. He took to the military training like he was born to it and didn’t blink at the rougher stuff. A story going around has it that Forty once tore the heart out of one of his living victims and ate it, saying that it gave him strength, and while Ochoa doesn’t really believe the story, he doesn’t really disbelieve it, either. So when Forty says, “There’s a problem”—there’s a problem. He follows Forty to the window and looks out. Police and soldiers are everywhere.

“Maybe not in front of the cameras,” Contreras says. “Ochoa, listen to me, this is the right decision.” Ochoa knows that it is. Contreras can still run the organization from prison, but only if he still has an organization to run. Which means the Zetas surviving. Contreras says, “My brother will take over the day-to-day running of the organization.” Despite the grimness of the situation, Ochoa almost has to laugh. The “little” brother is little only in the sense of “younger.” Héctor Contreras is known as “Gordo,” who is only impressive in that he manages to be obese despite an addiction to cocaine. The man has no self-discipline whatsoever, and therefore Ochoa has no respect whatsoever for him. Gordo “running the operation” in reality means that I’ll be running the operation, Ochoa thinks. There are worse things.

“It’s different with a woman and you know it,” Nacho said. “No, your wife has to be a virgin, of course, and the mother of your children must be from an important family.” Then Adán got what Nacho was really driving at. “Are you suggesting—” “Why not?” Nacho asked. “Think about it. An Esparza and a Barrera? Now that would be an alianza de sangre.” Yes, it would be, Adán thought. It would lock Nacho in. I would not only get his undying loyalty, but, in a sense, the Tijuana plaza back with it. But… “What about Diego?” he asked. “Have you seen his eldest daughter?” Nacho asked. “She’ll have a heavier beard than he does!”

Eddie Ruiz is twenty-six and a freaking millionaire. His dad wanted him to go to college, even offered to pay for it, which for Eddie’s old man was a big deal, but Eddie had basically said, “I’m good, Pops.” He was shipping weed in 120-pound lots, so the thought of sitting in class taking Accounting 101 or Introduction to Shakespeare seemed counterproductive. Pops was an engineer, had him a good-paying job, a house in the burbs, a nice car, so Eddie wasn’t one of those cholos who grew up in the barrio. He was a middle-class kid who went to a good school and played football with other chicanos and with white kids, so he had none of the usual excuses to start dealing dope. Eddie didn’t need an excuse—he had a reason. It made money.

“You don’t got a gun?” Yeah, Eddie got a gun, up in the attic of his house. He never needed a freakin’ gun. “I don’t carry one.” “Well maybe you fucking should,” Chacho says. He looks around to the six or seven Los Chachos hanging around the room for agreement, then pulls his Glock. “See? I carry a gun.” All the Los Chachos show their guns. Of course they carry guns, Eddie thinks. Shit, four of them are Nuevo Laredo cops. Chacho says, “You pay me.” “For protection,” Eddie answers. “You call what just happened to me ‘protection’? Because I don’t, Chacho.” “I’ll take care of it,” Chacho says. “Maybe Soto’s afraid of the CDG. I’m not.” “What about the Zetas?” Chacho answers, “What are we, ten-year-olds running around with walkie-talkies? ‘Come in, Z-1. Over-and-out, Z-2’? I gave up playing with GI Joes when I discovered my dick.” His boys laugh.

So that’s the deal and she knows the deal. Her whole family does. When she first started dating Eddie, they didn’t like him. When they found out he dealt dope, they flipped out and forbade her to see him. But when the money started rolling in, they changed their tune. Now Teresa’s mother helps launder the cash.

Monterrey sits in a valley dominated by the Cerra de la Silla, which Eddie knows as Saddle Mountain. Eddie’s bilingual but he usually thinks in English. Now in either language he’s in deep shit.

Even in Monterrey, which a lot of people think is the most “American” of Mexico’s cities. Whirlpool is there, and Dell and Boeing, and a lot of other corporations like Samsung, Sony, Toyota, and Nokia. Monterrey is rich while Nuevo Laredo is poor, and Eddie knows why—the men who sit in those corporate offices decided that the products that used to be made by cheap labor in Nuevo Laredo could be made by even cheaper labor in China. So Nuevo Laredo dried up and blew away while Monterrey built skyscrapers and opened new restaurants where Mexican yuppies could complain about the hollandaise sauce. Eddie and Chacho ran to Monterrey because Chacho has a safe house in the suburb of Guadalupe and because, narco-speaking, it’s an open city. No one has a strong presence there, even the CDG, and there’s an unspoken agreement that Monterrey is neutral ground, safe turf. Narcos go there to sit on the sidelines when they need to, or park their families when things heat up in their own plazas.

Chacho flips the meat on the grill and they get into one of those Tex-Mex border skirmishes about the marinade. “You beaners use too much lime,” Eddie says between swallows of cerveza. “Shit, if I wanted fruit juice, I’d get a V8.” Chacho says good-naturedly, “You pochos wouldn’t know good meat if it hung between your legs, which it don’t.” “You want to see?” Eddie asks. “Didn’t bring my magnifying glass,” Chacho says.

Everyone keeps waiting for Barrera to show up in Nuevo Laredo. A rumor, repeated to the point that it’s become “fact,” is that his men came into a Nuevo Laredo restaurant, confiscated all cell phones, locked the doors, and politely said that no one could leave. The story goes on that Barrera came in, had dinner in the back room, paid everyone’s check, and then left. The cell phones were restored to their owners, who were then allowed to leave. Keller knows it’s bullshit, but finds it revealing that such a story could be considered true. He knows that Adán Barrera will come nowhere near the war zone until the shooting is all but over.

What he does is he takes out a full-page ad in El Norte, Monterrey’s biggest daily newspaper. In the form of an open letter to the president of Mexico, Eddie implores him to “intervene to resolve the insecurity, extortion, and terror that exists in the state of Tamaulipas, especially in the city of Nuevo Laredo, carried out by a group of army deserters who call themselves the Zetas.” The ad goes on, “Seriously, dude, the Mexican army, the federales, and the attorney general lack the means and tools to handle these guys? I’m no angel but I take responsibility for what I’ve done.” And he signs it. “Sincerely, Edward Ruiz.”

“Is she hungry?” Eddie asks. He turns to one of his flunkies. “What we got? For a kid?” “I don’t know. Cheerios, maybe. A banana?” “Then give her Cheerios and a banana,” Eddie says. “What are you standing there for?” The girl sits down at the table and eats hungrily. Eddie watches her. When she’s done, he reaches into his pocket and gives Norma a thousand pesos. “Bus fare. My guys will run you to the station.” She takes the money. “What about my husband?” Norma asks. “He said to tell you that he loves you,” Eddie says. Actually, he didn’t. Eddie doesn’t even know which one he was, but what the fuck, right? Make the woman feel a little better, something to tell her friends. After they leave, he slips the videocassette into an envelope, addresses it to the Dallas Morning News, and has one of his guys drop it off at FedEx. Then he goes back to Acapulco and thinks about maybe starting a new career. Filmmaking.

“A pocho,” Forty says. “So, Chuy, do you think you have what it takes to work for the Zetas?” “Yes.” “Well, you’ll have to prove it,” Forty says. Chuy looks around the room. Five other Zetas are standing around, looking at him. Then there’s another man, sitting on a wooden chair, his hands tied behind his back, dried blood at the corners of his mouth. “You see that man?” Forty says. “He owed us money that he didn’t want to pay. He wanted to pay it to someone else. Do you understand?” “Yes.” “Now he has to pay,” Forty says. Forty takes the pistol from his holster and puts it in Chuy’s hand. “You ever shoot a gun before?” “Yes.” “You ever kill anyone before?” Forty asks. Chuy shakes his head. “You will now,” Forty says. “If you want to work for us. If you don’t, well, m’ijo, you’ve seen what you’ve seen, do you understand?” Chuy understands. He either proves he can kill someone or someone else comes in and proves it on him. “I don’t think the scrawny little shit can do it,” Forty says to the others. Chuy isn’t sure either. Like, it’s one thing to fire a gun into the air, another thing to… Esteban whispers into his ear, “Gabe did it.” Chuy lifts the gun. It’s heavy, solid, real, and he points it at the kneeling man’s head, looks into the man’s eyes and sees the terror as the man begs and pleads for his life. The trigger is heavy, harder to pull than with the gun he found in the brown paper bag. “If you don’t do it,” Forty says, “you’re a punk. A bitch.” Chuy fires. Puts the m...

Finally, it’s Chuy’s turn. Esteban comes and gets him, opens the door, and ushers him into the room. Forty and Heriberto Ochoa, Z-1, El Verdugo himself, are there to greet him and tell him what he has to do to graduate. A man, his hands tied behind his back, kneels on the floor. One of the Kaibiles stands behind him, and he hands Chuy a serrated knife. For the rest of his life, whenever he can sleep, Chuy will have nightmares about what happened in that room. What he sees is the man’s face.

Esteban comes over every Friday and hands each of them $500 in cash, their weekly salary. For doing nothing. So far all they’ve done since they got back from the training camp is sit on their asses, play Call of Duty and Madden, go to the Mall del Norte, hit Mrs. Fields, and try unsuccessfully to pick up girls. (This is frustrating to Chuy. He can’t tell them that he’s a man, a killer, an elite trained warrior. To them he’s just a middle schooler.) Otherwise, they sit around, drink beer, smoke weed, jerk off, and sleep until noon. It’s teenage boy heaven. Except for the nightmares, it’s a good life.

“You drive and I’ll pull the trigger,” Gabe tells him. “Why don’t you drive and I pull the trigger?” “Because I’m older.” “By a year.” “Year and a half,” Gabe says. “Big deal.” But Chuy drives. He don’t have no license, but they’re going to kill a guy, so he’s not exactly sweating the underage driving thing. He pulls up on the curb, Gabe checks the load on the 9mm and gets out. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

Chuy has about $120,000 in the bank (well, not in the bank, he can’t open his own account), but what does an eleven-year-old buy with $120K? Can’t buy a house. Can’t buy a car. Can’t buy a ticket to an R-rated movie.

Eddie’s having a relaxing evening cocktail at the Punta Bar down by the beach in Acapulco, scoping out this tourista chick who looks like she’s either Danish or Swedish or Norwegian, but definitely a Scandinavian Ten. Blond hair. Rack. Yoga ass. Eddie knows he’s looking tight—new plum-colored polo, white jeans, huarache sandals. It’s annoying that the shirts have to be a size too large these days to accommodate the Glock, but war is hell.

Chuy goes to the address of the safe house they gave him. Gabe and Esteban are there waiting for him, and Chuy smiles at them. “Forty wants to see you,” Esteban says. Chuy smiles. Of course Forty wants to see him. When he gets into the room, Forty stands up and slaps him so hard across the face Chuy thinks he might black out. His head spinning, he says, “But I killed Ruiz.” “No you didn’t,” Forty says. “You missed.” “I saw—” Forty slaps him again. “A grenade?! You throw a grenade into a bar full of tourists, and then start shooting?! Are you stupid?! Are you crazy?!” “I’m sorry.”