The Border

by Don Winslow

  The man walks her out into the street and hands her to another man, who puts her in the front seat of a car.

  No one stops him.

  Two other men get out of the car.

  “Stay there,” the man says.

  She does.

  Callan kicks in a door and they go up the stairs. A guard in front of a locked steel door starts to pull the pistol from his belt, but one of the Israelis shoots him twice in the throat, then tosses him down the stairs.

  Lev shotguns the lock off and they step inside.

  Callan moves down the hallway and goes through a door at the end of the hall.

  A woman stands to the side with a hairbrush and a tin of makeup. A tall, stout man with long hair holds a camera. He turns and sees Callan’s 9 mm Glock pointed at him.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asks. “I’m Olivier Piedra. I’m with—”

  Callan blows the top of his head off.

  The woman screams and starts to run, but Lev fires the shotgun into the back of her legs. She falls face-first, her arms splayed in front of her. Lev walks over, pulls a pistol and puts a bullet in the back of her head. “Zonna.”

  A customer backs against the wall, throws his arm in front of his face.

  Callan walks up to him. Presses the pistol against the top of his left kneecap and fires. The man bellows and collapses.

  “Crawl out of here,” Callan says. “Tell them there are new rules in the Zona. You touch a kid, you die.”

  They go back down the stairs.

  “I hate child molesters,” Callan says.

  “Apparently,” says Lev.

  “What’s your name?” Callan asks the little girl.

  “Flor.”

  “You’re safe now,” he says. “No one’s going to hurt you anymore.”

  He can see that the girl doesn’t believe him.

  She’s heard that before.

  Now he needs to figure out what to do with this little girl so he can take Piedra off his honey-do list and continue the hunt for the brothers Esparza.

  There’s only one thing to do.

  It’s five minutes to the border.

  The wait this late at night is only about half an hour and while he’s sitting in line he gets a call from Lev telling him to go into Lane 8.

  The agent there is on the Sánchez arm.

  They sit there for twenty-five minutes and the girl stares straight ahead. She doesn’t fidget, she doesn’t cry, she doesn’t say a word.

  Not one.

  Callan pulls up, shows his American passport.

  The agent looks at the girl. “Is this your daughter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Welcome home, Mr. Callan.”

  “Thank you.”

  He hopes Nora feels the same.

  They rent a “vacation condo” off Craigslist in the beach town of Encinitas, north of San Diego. It’s a small one-bedroom, but it overlooks the ocean and Nora likes to walk on the beach. Callan pulls into the underground parking structure, gets out, takes Flor’s hand, walks her up to the condo and lets himself in.

  Nora is still up, watching television.

  She sees the little girl.

  “Nora, esta es Flor.”

  He can see the questions in Nora’s eyes but she’s too smart and too sensitive to ask in front of the child. Instead, she gets up from her chair, squats in front of the kid and says, “Hola, Flor. Bienvenida.”

  “Flor might stay with us for a little bit.”

  “That would be lovely,” Nora says. “Are you hungry, sweetheart? Thirsty?”

  Flor nods.

  Nora takes her hand, walks her toward the little kitchen area. “Let’s see what we have.”

  They have some tortillas and some cheese, some sliced turkey and an orange. She fixes the girl a plate and sits her down on a high stool at the breakfast counter. They don’t have milk, but Nora pours her a glass of orange juice.

  The girl eats and drinks slowly.

  Afterward, Nora leads her to the sofa, where she sits watching and eventually falls asleep.

  Then Nora says, “Explain?”

  “They’ve been pimping her out.”

  “Where’s her family?”

  “Guatemala?” He’s quiet for a minute, then he says, “You’ve always wanted a child.”

  “So you bought me one?”

  “I didn’t exactly buy her.”

  “Oh.” She looks at the sleeping girl. “The life we lead now, it’s not exactly the best for a kid.”

  “Compared to what she has?”

  “We don’t know what she has,” Nora says. “She might have a family looking for her.”

  “Most of these kids come in on the train,” Callan says. “They’re trying to make it to the States.”

  “If she has family here, maybe we could find them.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Of course we’ll look after her until we do,” Nora says. “Just don’t fall in love with her, Sean.”

  “She’s not a puppy.”

  “I don’t know.” Nora strokes the girl’s hair. “Kind of she is.”

  They talk to her in the morning, find out that she’s from Guatemala City, that she has no surviving parents and an older sister who won’t miss having another mouth to feed. No, she has no family in the United States.

  “Why did you come?” Nora asks.

  “My friend Nico,” she says. “He was coming. I would have missed him.”

  “Where is he now?” Callan asks.

  She doesn’t know. They got separated in Mexico City. She thinks that she took the wrong train.

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

  Flor shrugs.

  No one has ever asked her what she wanted to do.

  Nora sends Callan out to buy clothes. He has no clue so she writes down sizes, tells him to go to Target. She’d go herself but she doesn’t want to leave Flor alone and the girl is still afraid of men.

  Callan goes out with his shopping list.

  Blouses, pants, underwear, socks, shoes, sweatshirts, sweaters, a bathing suit. Pajamas, a robe, blankets, sheets, a pillow. Shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush. Crayons, pencils, drawing paper. And kids’ food, food she might like and is used to. Rice, chicken, milk, cereal, tortillas.

  Also dolls.

  “What kind of dolls?”

  “I don’t know,” Nora says. “When is the last time I bought a doll?”

  When is the last time I did? Callan thinks, but he goes shopping and draws lines through the list. Gets back to the condo to look out from the balcony at Nora and Flor walking on the beach, hand in hand.

  He drops the stuff off and drives back to Mexico to kill people.

  He’s summoned to a tactical meeting at Elena’s.

  Luis briefs them.

  As war leader, Callan thinks, Luis is one hell of an engineer.

  “The tactical situation has changed,” Luis says. “Núñez’s failed attempt on the Esparza brothers has changed the landscape. On the one hand, it’s a positive, because the Núñez faction has lost support in Mexico City. On the other hand, it’s a negative because it strengthens the Esparzas.”

  “What do we know about their condition?” Callan asks. He’s never known bullet wounds to strengthen anyone.

  “Not much,” Luis says. “They’re holed up somewhere deep in the Sinaloa mountains. The rumors are that Iván took two rounds in the shoulder, Oviedo was hit in the upper back, and that Alfredo wasn’t hit at all. But we don’t really know.”

  Elena sits with her jaw tight.

  Callan knows how badly she wants Iván dead.

  But her tactical choices are limited. The best move would be to reach out to Núñez and offer him an alliance against the Esparzas in exchange for Baja. Núñez would make that deal now, but Elena can’t make that alliance without alienating Tito Ascensión. If she drives Ascensión into Iván’s arms, she loses.

  And Ascensión’s beef was with Núñez, not Esparza. With the
split between them, Ascensión no longer has a reason to fight Iván. In fact, Iván, with his power in Sinaloa, would be more useful to him than Elena in a fight against Núñez.

  Elena’s in a tough spot.

  She needs a game changer.

  So do I, Callan thinks.

  I need out of this life.

  He says, “The Esparza brothers are in the same place at the same time. They’ve done that to consolidate their protection, but it also makes them vulnerable.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Elena asks.

  “If you can get the location,” he says, “let me go in. Me and Lev and a handpicked team of our best guys. We go in, we terminate the Esparzas and we get out.”

  “It’s a suicide mission,” Luis says. “It can’t work.”

  “It’s my suicide.” Callan shrugs. “Look, it’s a chance to end this war, win this war, in one stroke. If we keep fighting it the way we have been fighting it, we’re going to lose. You know that.”

  Elena considers what he’s saying.

  She knows that he’s right.

  And there are things that Callan doesn’t know that make the situation even worse. Elena has heard that Rafael Caro has put together a group that is loaning money to a business concern in the United States with close connections to the new government.

  Rafael didn’t approach her.

  If it’s true, Iván will be well-nigh unstoppable.

  The clock is not our friend, Elena thinks. If we don’t kill Iván soon, he’ll kill my last son. She looks at Callan. “How do you evaluate the chances of success?”

  Callan thinks for a second, then he says, “Three to one against. But that’s better than our odds of winning a protracted war.”

  “And you’d be willing to go,” Elena says.

  “I want one thing,” Callan says.

  Papers created.

  A US passport.

  The Young Wolf is getting shorn.

  Damien has come in for a haircut, because he doesn’t want to look like a total barbarian when he meets with Tito.

  He’s been in the hills a long time since his release from Baja. Growing opium, moving opium, fighting the police, the army, the marines.

  Fighting Sinaloa.

  And now his old friend Ric is on the run. It’s funny, but it’s bad, because the Esparza brothers will gain from it. But it was a wrong thing to do, and he’s ashamed of Ric. There’s a code, and he violated it.

  Now Damien sits in the barber chair to get rid of his long hair and his beard. It feels good to be back in civilization and Tito has guaranteed his security in Guadalajara, where no one would dare fuck with the Jalisco boss. Even so, Damien has four bodyguards with him in two vehicles, all armed for a fight.

  Damien has a grenade tucked under his shirt.

  If it looks like they’re going to take him out, the Young Wolf isn’t going out alone.

  The meeting with Tito might be tough.

  With Ric and his dad on the run, Tito has no good reason to keep fighting the Esparzas. But Damien has to keep him in the fight. The Esparzas aren’t going to forgive the kidnapping of Oviedo and Alfredo, and he doesn’t have the power to go up against the brothers on his own. Not yet, even though the heroin and fentanyl money is pouring in from Eddie. There was even enough money to invest with Rafael Caro.

  I’m a real estate mogul now, Damien thinks, laughing at himself.

  But it’s good.

  Good to bring back the family fortunes.

  And the money will give him the power to take Acapulco back, and when he has the port under control, it will bring a lot of the old Tapia people to him.

  The meeting with Tito has to go well.

  Damien pushes it out of his mind, leans back and relaxes. He knows the barber is good, Tito recommended the place. The barber massages his neck, and before he knows it, Damien falls asleep.

  The shouting wakes him up.

  Shouts and curses and he opens his eyes to see rifle barrels pointed at him. Black-clad marines in black hoods and masks scream at him to get down. He glances out the window—his bodyguards have their hands behind the backs of their heads, two of them are already cuffed.

  He reaches into his shirt for the grenade.

  “Don’t!” a marine yells.

  Damien hesitates.

  Live or die?

  You always think you’d go out a hero. A legend in a song. The Young Wolf wouldn’t be taken alive. He went out with a bang.

  It’s different when it’s real.

  Fuck all that.

  Damien decides to live.

  He slowly raises his hands.

  Two nights later, Damien Tapia gets visitors in his cell.

  Three guards.

  All of them huge.

  He’s scared. “What do you want, brothers?”

  They don’t answer him. Two of them grab him and throw him down on his bed. One holds his legs down, the other stretches his arms out.

  “Who sent you?” Damien asks. “Was it Elena? Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her it was a mistake.”

  They don’t answer him.

  “Núñez?” Damien asks. “I’ll never do it again. I’ll pay him back. Please. Tell him.”

  The third guard takes out a homemade blade.

  “Call Caro,” Damien says. “He’ll tell you I’m good people. He wouldn’t want you to do this. Please. Call him. No, call Tito. He’ll tell you. I’m with him. I’m with him. Please. Please.

  “I don’t want to die.”

  The guard slashes Damien’s wrists.

  “I heard he killed himself,” Caro says.

  “Do you believe that?” Tito asks, sitting in Caro’s kitchen, watching the old man make pozole. He didn’t like doing it, setting Damien up for arrest by the marines. But Caro had argued that the Young Wolf was causing too much trouble, shooting police, soldiers. That they didn’t need that kind of heat.

  “Why not?” Caro says. “The whole family is crazy. The father? All this killing, this violence, it’s no good for anyone. Maybe it’s for the best.”

  “And you’ll take over his heroin routes,” Tito says.

  Caro stirs the pozole. “What can I do for you, Tito? What brings you here?”

  “My thirty million dollars,” Tito says. “I want to see a return.”

  “You already have,” Caro says. “Núñez has been indicted.”

  “Means nothing unless the government goes after him.”

  “They will,” Caro says. He sips the pozole, then shakes in some salt. “I’ve heard he’s left Eldorado and is in the wind. The kid, too. Good riddance.”

  “I thought you were a loyal Sinaloa guy.”

  “They let me sit in a cell for twenty years and did nothing,” Caro says. “Your thirty million dollars are in Washington, DC, working hard for you.”

  Caro places the lid on the pot and steps away from the stove.

  “Do you know what the secret to making good pozole is?” he asks. “Let it cook slow.”

  Let Sinaloa kill itself.

  First thing Eddie wants to know—am I on DEA’s radar?

  No, Hidalgo tells him, DEA hasn’t tripped to him yet. As far as the feds are concerned, you’re an ex-con who opted out of the witness protection program and they couldn’t give a shit what happens to you.

  What about Darius Darnell? Is he on the DEA radar?

  No, Darnell is off the screen.

  Then Eddie toe-dips on his money-laundering operation—names a few banks where he puts money. Hidalgo says he’ll get back to him—waits a week and then comes back—no, the banks are safe.

  Except, of course, they’re not now.

  At Keller’s direction, Hidalgo, as Tony Fuentes, has been feeding Eddie misinformation like little morsels of poison hidden in his food.

  Fuentes also brings gifts—answers to questions that Ruiz hasn’t asked. Eddie, here’s the DEA’s intelligence on three rival organizations operating in New York. Here’s surveillance info on a Núñez “sales te
am” reaching out to gangs in Manhattan, a Jalisco slinger moving into Brooklyn. Listen to this, Eddie—audio of a Sinaloa customer in Staten Island who’s unhappy, maybe open to an approach.

  Then they watch the pings.

  The Núñez sales team stops making cold calls and the Staten Island retailer turns out to be open to switching jerseys. Interestingly, the Jalisco dealer in Brooklyn gets a pass.

  Does that mean that Caro is getting closer to Tito Ascensión? Keller wonders.

  Stay tuned.

  They’re careful, they’re cagey, feeding Ruiz only bits and pieces so he doesn’t get suspicious on the basis that if it seems to be too good to be true, it is. Eddie tests—asking Fuentes about the safety of a two-kilo shipment he has moving into Manhattan.

  Ruiz can afford to lose two kilos if Fuentes is a plant.

  Keller lets it go through. Makes sure NYPD lays off it, too. Lays off but stays close enough to track it to Darnell, and from Darnell out to his sales teams in Brooklyn, SI and upstate.

  It had taken a few weeks for Ruiz to pop the big question—what can Fuentes tell him about a DEA investigation of money laundering in New York City?

  You have to be a little more specific, Hidalgo tells him.

  Banks? Real estate? Loans?

  Hidalgo feeds him back what he already knows—there’s a high-level DEA investigation into Berkeley and Terra regarding a loan from HBMX with possible drug money behind it.

  Ruiz puts the next question to him—what’s the current status of the investigation?

  Stalled, Hidalgo answers after going to research it.

  The chief witness overdosed.

  The Park Tower investigation is going to die on the vine. In a month, Keller will be out of there and the new boss won’t take it up.

  You can all breathe easy.

  Over the next couple of weeks Ruiz switches the emphasis to Mexico—what does the DEA know about his fields in Guerrero? His smuggling routes, his people—his traffickers, his accountants, his gunmen? What about the cops on his payroll, politicians, government officials?

  The truth is they don’t know much.

  But this is where the process of turning the organization in on itself begins. Keller takes what little intelligence he has on the Ruiz operation, solicits more from Orduña, and uses it to inject the poison into Eddie.