by Don Winslow
So the survivors will know their place.
It’s a killing ground, Art thinks.
El Salvador.
The Savior, my ass.
The compound sits in a grove of palm trees a hundred yards from the beach.
A stone wall topped by barbed wire surrounds the main house, the garage and the servants’ quarters. A thick wooden gate and a guard shack block the driveway from the private road.
Art and Ramos crouch behind the wall thirty yards from the gate.
Hiding from the full moon.
A dozen Salvadoran commandos are posted at intervals around the wall’s perimeter.
It’s taken frantic hours of negotiation to procure Salvadoran cooperation, but now the deal is in place: They can go in and get Barrera, whisk him to the U.S. Embassy, fly him out on a State Department jet to New Orleans and charge him there with first-degree murder and conspiracy to distribute narcotics.
A cowed real-estate agent has been hauled out of bed and taken to his office, where he gives the commando team a diagram of the compound. The shaken man is being held incommunicado until the raid is over. Art and Ramos pore over the diagram and come up with an operational plan. But it all has to be done quickly, before Barrera’s protectors in the Mexican government can get wind of it and interfere; and it has to be done cleanly—no fuss, no muss and above all no Salvadoran casualties.
Art checks his watch—4:57 a.m.
Three minutes until H hour.
A breeze wafts the scent of jacaranda from the compound, reminding Art of Guadalajara. He can see the tops of the trees over the wall, their purple leaves shimmering silver in the bright moonlight. On the other side, he hears the waves lap softly on the beach.
A perfect lovers’ idyll, he thinks.
A perfumed garden.
Paradise.
Well, let’s hope Paradise is about to be lost for good this time, he thinks. Let’s hope Tío is sleeping soundly, sexually drugged into a postcoital stupor from which he can be rudely awakened. Art has an admittedly vulgar image of Tío being dragged bare-assed into the waiting van. The more humiliation the better.
He hears footsteps, then sees one of the compound’s private security guards headed toward him, casually flashing a light along the wall, looking for any lurking burglars. Art slowly scrunches his body closer to the wall.
The flashlight beam hits him square in the eyes.
The guard reaches for his holstered pistol, then a cloth garrote slips around his neck and Ramos is lifting him off the ground. The guard’s eyes bulge and his tongue comes out of his mouth, and then Ramos eases the unconscious man to the ground.
“He’ll be okay,” Ramos says.
Thank God, Art thinks, because a dead civilian would screw up the whole delicate deal. He looks at his watch as it hits five, and the commandos must be a crack unit because at that precise second Art hears a dull whomp as an explosive charge blows the gate of the wall.
Ramos looks at Art. “Your gun.”
“What?”
“Better to have your gun in your hand.”
Art had forgotten he even had the damn thing. He pulls it from his shoulder holster and now he’s running behind Ramos, through the blown gate and into the garden. Past the servants’ quarters, where the frightened workers lie on the ground, a commando pointing an M-16 at them. As Art runs toward the main house he tries to remember the diagram, but as the adrenaline flows in, his memory flows out, and then he thinks, Screw it, and just follows Ramos, who trots at a quick but easy pace in front of him, Esposa swinging on his hip.
Art glances up at the wall, where black-clad commando snipers perch like crows, their rifles trained on the compound’s grounds, ready to mow down anyone who tries to run out. Then, suddenly, he’s at the front of the main house and Ramos grabs him and shoves him down as there’s another bass thump, and the sound of wood splintering as the front door flies off.
Ramos looses half a clip into the empty space.
Then he steps in.
Art enters behind him.
Trying to remember—the bedroom, where is the bedroom?
Pilar sits up and shouts as they come through the door.
Pulls the sheet up over her breasts and screams again.
Tío—and Art can’t quite believe this, it’s all too surreal—is actually hiding under the covers. He’s pulled the sheets up over his head like a small child who thinks, If I can’t see them they can’t see me, but Art can most definitely see him. Art is all adrenaline—he yanks off the sheet, grabs Tío by the back of the neck, jerks him up like a barbell and then slams him face-first onto the parquet wood floor.
Tío isn’t bare-assed, but wearing black silk boxer shorts, which Art can feel slide along his leg as he plants his knee into the small of Tío’s back, grabs his chin and lifts his head back far enough so that his neck threatens to snap, then jams the pistol barrel into his right temple.
“Don’t hurt him!” Pilar screams. “I didn’t want you to hurt him!”
Tío wrenches his chin from Art’s hold and cranes his neck to stare at the girl. Pure hatred as he pronounces a single word: “Chocho.”
Cunt.
The girl turns pale and looks terrified.
Art pushes Tío’s face to the floor. Blood from Tío’s broken nose flows across the polished wood.
Ramos says, “Come on, we have to hurry.”
Art starts to pull the handcuffs from his belt.
“Don’t cuff him,” Ramos says with undisguised irritation.
Art blinks.
Then he gets it—you don’t shoot a man who’s trying to escape if the man is handcuffed.
Ramos asks, “Do you want to do him in here or out there?”
That’s what he expects me to do, Art thinks, shoot Barrera. That’s why he thinks I insisted on coming along on the raid, so I could do just that. His head whirls as he realizes that maybe everybody expects him to do that. All the DEA guys, Shag—especially Shag—expect him to enforce the old code that you don’t bring a cop killer back to the house, that a cop killer always dies trying to escape.
Christ, do they expect that?
Tío sure does. Says smoothly, calmly, tauntingly, “Me maravilla que todavía estoy vivo.”
I’m amazed I’m still alive.
Well, don’t be too amazed, Art thinks as he pulls the hammer back.
“Date prisa,” Ramos says.
Hurry up.
Art looks up at him—Ramos is lighting a cigar. Two commandos are looking down at him, waiting impatiently, wondering why the soft gringo hasn’t already done what should be done.
So the whole plan to bring Tío back to the embassy was a sham, Art thinks. A charade to satisfy the diplomats. I can pull the trigger and everyone will swear that Barrera resisted arrest. He was pulling a gun. I had to shoot him. And nobody’s going to look too closely at the forensics, either.
“Date prisa.”
Except this time, it’s Tío saying it, and he sounds annoyed, almost bored.
“Date prisa, sobrino.”
Hurry up, nephew.
Art grabs him by the hair and yanks his head up.
Art remembers Ernie’s mutilated body lying in the ditch bearing the marks of his torture.
He lowers his mouth to Tío’s ear and whispers, “Vete al demonio, Tío.”
Go to hell, Uncle.
“I’ll meet you there,” Tío answers. “It was supposed to have been you, Arturo. But I talked them into taking Hidalgo instead, for old times’ sake. Unlike you, I honor relationships. Ernie Hidalgo died for you. Now do it. Be a man.”
Art squeezes the trigger. It’s hard, it takes more pressure than he remembers.
Tío grins at him.
Art feels the presence of pure evil.
The power of the dog.
He jerks Tío to his feet.
Barrera smiles at him with utter contempt.
“What are you doing?” Ramos asks.
“What we planned.”
He holsters his pistol, then cuffs Tío’s hands behind his back. “Let’s get going.”
“I’ll do it,” Ramos says. “If you’re squeamish.”
“I’m not,” Art says. “Vámonos.”
One of the commandos starts to slip a black hood over Tío’s head. Art stops him, then gets into Tío’s face and says, “Lethal injection or the gas chamber, Tío. Be thinking about it.”
Tío just smiles at him.
Smiles at him.
“Hood him,” Art orders.
The commando pulls the black hood over Tío’s head and ties it at the bottom. Art grabs his pinioned arms and marches him outside.
Through the perfumed garden.
Where, Art thinks, the jacarandas have never smelled so sweet. Sweet and sickly, Art thinks to himself, like the incense he remembers from church as a kid. The first scent of it was pleasant; the next would make him feel a little sick.
That’s how he feels now as he frog-marches Tío through the compound toward the van waiting in the street, except the van isn’t waiting anymore, and about twenty rifle barrels are pointed at him.
Not at Tío.
At Art Keller.
They’re Salvadoran regular army troops, and, with them, a Yanqui in civilian clothes and shiny black shoes.
Sal Scachi.
“Keller, I told you the next time I’d just shoot.”
Art looks around and sees snipers perched on the walls.
“There was a little difference of opinion within the Salvadoran government,” Scachi says. “We got it worked out. Sorry, kid, but we can’t let you have him.”
As Art wonders who “we” are, Scachi nods and two Salvadoran soldiers take the hood off Tío’s head. No wonder he was fucking smiling, Art thinks. He knew the cavalry couldn’t be far off.
Some other soldiers bring Pilar out. She wears a negligee now, but it accents more than it hides and the soldiers gape at her openly. As they walk her past Tío, she sobs, “I’m sorry!”
Tío spits in her face. The soldiers have her hands behind her back and she can’t wipe it off, so the saliva runs down her cheek.
“I won’t forget this,” Tío says.
The soldiers march Pilar to a waiting van.
Tío turns to Art. “I won’t forget you, either.”
“All right, all right,” Scachi says. “Nobody’s forgetting anybody. Don Miguel, let’s get you into some real clothes and out of here. As for you, Keller, and you, Ramos, the local police would like to throw you both in prison, but we talked them into deportation instead. There are military flights waiting. So, if this little pajama party is over . . .”
“Cerberus,” Art says.
Scachi grabs him and hauls him off to the side.
“The fuck did you say?”
“Cerberus,” Art answers. He thinks he’s figured it all out now. “Ilopongo Airport, Sal? Hangar Four?”
Scachi stares at him, then says, “Keller, you just earned first-ballot entry into the Asshole Hall of Fame.”
Five minutes later Art’s in the front seat of a jeep.
“I swear to Christ,” Scachi says as he drives, “if it was up to me, I’d put one in the back of your head right now.”
Ilopongo’s a busy airfield. Military aircraft, helicopters and transport planes are everywhere, along with the personnel needed to maintain them.
Sal steers the jeep to a series of large Quonset-hut-type hangars, with signs on the front designating them numbers 1 through 10. The door of Hangar 4 slides open and Sal drives inside.
The door closes behind him.
The hangar is bustling. A couple dozen men, some in fatigues, some in cammies, all armed, are unloading cargo from a SETCO plane. Three other men are standing around talking. It’s been Art’s experience that any time you see a bunch of men working and other men standing around talking, the ones talking are the ones in charge.
He can see one of their faces.
David Núñez. Ramón Mette’s partner in SETCO, Cuban expatriate, Operation 40 veteran.
Núñez breaks off the conversation and walks over to where the crates are being stacked. He barks an order and one of the worker bees opens a crate. Art watches Núñez lift a grenade launcher out of the crate like it’s a religious idol. Bitter men handle weapons differently than the rest of us, he thinks. The guns seem connected to them in a visceral way, as if a wire runs from the trigger through their dicks and to their hearts. And Núñez has that look in his eye—he’s in love with the weapon. He left his balls and his heart on the beach in the Bay of Pigs, and the weapon represents his hope of retribution.
It’s the old Cuba–Miami–Mafia drug connection, Art realizes, hooked up again and flying coke from Colombia to Central America to Mexico to Mafia dealers in the United States. And the Mafia pays in armaments, which go to the Contras.
The Mexican Trampoline.
Sal hops out of the jeep and goes up to a young American who has to be a military officer in mufti.
I know that guy, Art thinks. But from where? Who is he?
Then the memory comes back. Shit, I should know that guy—I did night ambushes with him in Vietnam, Operation Phoenix. What the hell is his name? He was Special Forces back then, a captain . . . Craig, that’s it.
Scott Craig.
Shit, Hobbs has the old team here.
Art watches Scachi and Craig talking, pointing to him. He smiles and waves. Craig gets on the radio and there’s another confab. Behind him, Art can see packages of cocaine stacked to the ceiling.
Scachi and Craig walk over to him.
“This what you wanted to see, Art?” Scachi asks. “You happy now?”
“Yeah, I’m fucking thrilled to death.”
“You shouldn’t joke,” Scachi says.
Craig’s giving him the bad look.
It isn’t working. He looks like a Boy Scout, Art thinks. Boyish face, short hair, clean-cut good looks. An Eagle Scout going for his Dope for Guns Badge.
“The question is,” Craig says to Art, “are you going to be a team player?”
Well, it would be the first time, wouldn’t it? Art thinks.
Scachi’s apparently thinking the same thing. “Keller’s got a reputation as a cowboy,” he says. “Out on the lone prairieee . . .”
“Bad place to be,” Craig says.
“Lonely, shallow grave,” Scachi adds.
“I’ve left a full account of everything I know in a safe-deposit box,” Art lies. “Anything happens to me, it goes to The Washington Post.”
“You’re bluffing, Art,” Scachi says.
“You want to find out?”
Scachi walks away and gets on the radio. Comes back a little later and snaps an order: “Hood the motherfucker.”
Art knows he’s in the back of an open car, probably a jeep, from the bouncy action. He knows he’s moving. He knows that wherever they’re taking him, it’s a long way away because it feels like they’ve been traveling for hours. It feels like that, anyway, but he doesn’t really know because he can’t see his watch, or anything else, and now he understands the terrifying, disorienting effect of being hooded. The floating, fearful sensation of not being able to see but being able to hear, and each sound a stimulus for a progressively frightened imagination.
The jeep stops and Art waits to hear the metallic scrape of a rifle bolt or the click of a pistol hammer being pulled back or, worse, the whoosh of a machete slicing first through the air and then—
He feels the gears shift and the jeep lurches forward again and now he starts to tremble. His legs twitch uncontrollably and he can’t stop them, nor can he stop his mind from producing images of Ernie’s tortured corpse. He can’t stop the thought Don’t let them do to me what they did to Ernie, or its logical corollary, Better him than me.
He feels ashamed, wretched, coming to the realization that when push comes to shove, when the terrible reality is at hand, he really would have them do it to someone else rather than himself—he wouldn’t take Ernie’s
place if he could.
He tries to remember the Act of Contrition, recalling what the nuns taught him in elementary school—if you’re about to die and there’s no priest to give you absolution, if you say a sincere Act of Contrition you can still go to heaven. He remembers that; what he can’t remember is the goddamn prayer itself.
