The Power Of The Dog (88 page)

“Off the hook,” Raúl tells Adán.

Now they’ve moved again—getting out of the “safe” house in the Río 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,” Raúl says.

“Get them at home,” Adán snaps.

“They’re not answering there, either.”

Adán 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, Adán 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, Raúl, Fabián …

And Nora.

Nora is missing.

She never showed up at Colonia Hipódromo.

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.

Raúl 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, Adán 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 Raúl 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, Adán, dressed as a laborer, gets into the back of an ’83 Dodge Dart with Raúl. 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 Adán finally makes his way out of the city and to Rancho las Bardas.

There, he and Raúl 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,” Adán says.

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

“It’s Fabián,” Adán says. “He’s giving everything up.”

Raúl is incredulous. “It’s not Fabián. It’s your beloved Nora.”

“I don’t believe that,” Adán says.

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

“That could have been Fabián, too,” Adán says.

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

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

Raúl doesn’t answer.

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

He grabs Raúl by the shirt. Raúl 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 Tío!”

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

Wasn’t it Tío’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 Ángel Barrera, M-1—the man who built the Federación, 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 Adán has inherited the same disease. Hell, Adán 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 Adán—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.

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

Raúl doesn’t answer.

“Raúl, 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 Raúl 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 Raúl’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 Raúl’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 Raúl—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 Raúl running, firing pistols from his hips, and Ramos gets a momentary aim on his legs but Raúl 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 Raúl’s mercenaries are dead, or at least down—he goes from corpse to corpse, wounded to wounded, prisoner to prisoner, looking for Raúl.

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 Raúl. Ramos is furious. We know, he thinks, that Raúl 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, Raúl, 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 jodí.”

I fucked myself.

The explosion blows him to pieces.

The silence that was once ominous is now funereal.