The Power of the Dog

by Don Winslow

  Nora Hayden, he finally admits to himself, is in the wind.

  She knows it, she gets it, she’s driving north into God knows what and now she’s doing it alone. Which is nothing new for Nora—except for her too few years with Parada, she’s been doing it alone her whole life.

  But she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to get this done now. Or what’s going to happen. The easiest thing in the world would be to just take the money and keep going, but that won’t get her what she wants.

  It’s nighttime as she passes through Carson, its natural-gas drills burning like signal towers in some sort of industrial version of hell. Working the plan, she gets off this time at the LAX exit and calls in.

  They have the place for the meet.

  An AARCO gas station heading west on the 110 exit.

  On the way to San Pedro.

  “Give me a color.”

  “Blue.”

  “Go.”

  For a second she thinks about just using the cell and calling Keller on the hotline number he gave her, but then the number would show up on phone records, and besides, the car might be bugged. So she just drives to the gas station and pulls up by the pump. A car flashes its lights. She pulls over by a row of phone booths (God, does anyone use pay phones anymore? she wonders) and sits there while an Asian man with a small briefcase in his hand gets out of the other car and walks over to the passenger side of her car.

  She unlocks the door and he gets in.

  He’s a young man, probably mid-twenties, dressed in the black suit, white shirt and black tie that seem to be a uniform for young Asian businessmen these days.

  “I’m Mr. Lee,” he says.

  “Yeah, I’m Ms. Smith.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lee says, “but please turn around and put your hands on the door.”

  She does it and he frisks her for wires. Then he opens the briefcase, takes out a small electronic sweeper and checks the car for bugs. Satisfied it’s clean, he says, “You will forgive me, I hope.”

  “No problem.”

  “Let’s drive.”

  “Where to?”

  “I’ll tell you as we go.”

  He gives her directions and they head for the harbor.

  Art has the GOSCO harbor facility under surveillance.

  It’s his last, best shot.

  A DEA agent sits high atop a gigantic crane, his powerful night-vision glasses trained on the GOSCO entrance, and he sees the black Lexus coming down the street.

  “Vehicle approaching.”

  “Can you ID the driver?” Art asks.

  “Negative. Tinted windows.”

  It could be anyone, Art thinks. It could be Nora, it could be a GOSCO manager coming to check on a warehouse, it could be a john finding a dark spot for a quick blow job.

  “Stay on it.”

  He doesn’t want to be on the horn too much. If this is really going down, the narcos will have audio sweepers going, and even though his transmissions are encrypted, the sad fact is that the narcos have a bigger budget and better technology.

  So now he sits in the back of a hippie van three miles from the harbor and waits.

  It’s all he can do.

  Nora drives down a street between two rows of GOSCO warehouses that run perpendicular to their two loading wharves. Two huge GOSCO freighters are pulled up at the wharves. Sparks fly from welders doing repairs on the ships, and forklifts scurry back and forth between the wharf and the warehouses. She keeps driving until they’re in a quieter area.

  A warehouse door opens and Lee directs her inside.

  “I lost them,” the agent says to Art. “They went into a warehouse.”

  “Which goddamn warehouse?”

  “Could be one of three,” the agent answers. “D-1803, 1805 or 1807.”

  Art consults a plan of the GOSCO facility. He can have teams at the location inside ten minutes and cut the group of warehouses off from two sides. He switches channels and says, “All units, prepare to move in five.”

  Mr. Lee is polite.

  He gets out, comes around and opens the car door for Nora. She gets out and looks around her.

  If there’s a huge shipment of weapons in here, it’s cleverly disguised as a whole bunch of empty shelves and a black Lexus identical to the one she drove in.

  She looks at Lee and raises her eyebrows.

  “Do you have the money?” he asks.

  She opens the trunk, then the briefcases. Lee flips through the stacks of used bills, then closes everything up again.

  “Your turn,” Nora says.

  “We’ll wait,” he says.

  “For what?”

  “To see if the police arrive.”

  “This wasn’t part of the plan,” Nora says.

  “It wasn’t part of your plan,” Lee says.

  They stare at each other for a few long moments.

  “This,” she says, “is really boring.”

  She gets back in the car and sits down, thinking, Please God, don’t let Keller come blasting through that door.

  Shag Wallace’s voice comes across the radio.

  “On your signal, boss.”

  Art tightens his Kevlar vest, flips the safety of his M-16 off, takes a deep breath and says, “Go.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Hold!” he yells into the mike. It comes from his gut—something’s wrong here, something’s hinky. They’ve been too careful, too cute. Or maybe I’m just getting chicken in my old age. But he says, “Stand down.”

  Fifteen minutes.

  Twenty.

  Half an hour.

  Nora reaches for her phone.

  “What are you doing?” Lee asks.

  “Calling my people,” Nora says. “They’re going to be wondering what the hell happened to me.”

  He hands her his own phone. “Use this one.”

  “Why?”

  “Security.”

  She shrugs and takes the phone. “Where are we?”

  “Don’t send them here,” Lee says.

  “Why not?”

  He has a little self-satisfied smile on his face. Nora’s seen it on men a thousand times, usually after one of her spectacular fake orgasms. “The merchandise isn’t here.”

  “Where is it?”

  Now that no police have arrived at this location, he feels it’s safe to tell her the real one. Besides, he has Adán Barrera’s mistress as insurance.

  “Long Beach.”

  The new GOSCO facility at Long Beach Harbor, he tells her.

  Pier 4, Row D, Building 3323.

  She calls Raúl and gives him the information. When she hangs up she says to Lee, “We have to call our boss and get the okay for this change of plans.”

  Art Keller is sweating bricks.

  If that was Nora who went into the warehouse, she’s been there for over half an hour. And nothing’s happened. No one has gone in or come out, no trucks have arrived. Something’s gone wrong.

  “All units stand by,” he says. “We’re going on my signal.”

  Then his cell phone rings.

  Lee listens anxiously as Nora tells Adán Barrera all about how they took her to an empty building and put a gun to her head as a test, and how the guns are really at Long Beach, “Pier 4, Row D, Building 3323.”

  “Pier 4, Row D, Building 3323,” Art Keller says.

  “You got it,” Nora says.

  She hangs up and hands the phone back to Lee.

  “Let’s get going,” she says.

  He shakes his head. “We’re staying here.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She understands when he takes a .45 from beneath his black suit jacket and lays it on his lap. “When the transaction is safely completed,” he says, “I will take the car with the money, and you will take the other car and drive away. But if something unfortunate should occur . . .”

  Long Beach, Art thinks.

  Fucking Long Beach. We have to get down there before Barrera’s trucks can get ther
e and load up. He gets on the radio and tells his people to scramble. We have to move this goddamn army down to Long Beach, and do it in a hurry.

  Fabián Martínez is thinking pretty much the same thing. He has a freaking convoy on the road now, three semis painted as CALEXICO PRODUCE COMPANY that he had ready to go to San Pedro, and now they have to roll down the 405 to freaking Long Beach.

  Pain in the ass.

  He sits in the passenger seat of the lead truck with a Mac-10 under his coat.

  Just in case.

  Two of his best men are in a scout car about half a mile ahead. They’ll go in first, and if they spot anything that shouldn’t be there, they’ll send him a beeper message to get the fuck out.

  It’s cold for a southern California night, even in March, and he pulls his collar up around his neck and tells the driver to turn on the fucking heat.

  Nora sits in the front seat of the Lexus and waits.

  “Do you mind if I turn on the radio?” she asks.

  Lee doesn’t mind.

  Racing down to Long Beach, Art reformulates his plan.

  What goddamn plan? he thinks. That’s the problem. He had a tactical plan for the raid in San Pedro, but now it’s just going to be a make-it-up-as-you-go cavalry charge into God knows what, and that makes him very goddamn nervous.

  The best thing to do would be to let the Barrera trucks make the pickup and hit them on the road. But he has to make sure that Nora is all right. So the bust has to be at the warehouse, and now it just has to be smash-and-grab. Go in fast, go in hard.

  All the agents have been briefed—they all know that The Border Lord wants La Güera bad, and he wants her alive because she can be pressured into giving up her boyfriend. They know that, Art thinks, but will they remember it in the chaos of a raid, especially if the Barrera people decide to shoot it out?

  It has all the potential for a major-league goat fuck, and Nora could end up dead.

  He radios back to Shag again to make sure he understands.

  Fabián’s scout cars don’t see anything they don’t like, and they give him the 666 signal.

  It’s one in the morning and the Long Beach complex is busy with trucks loading freight. Which is very good, Fabián thinks. What’s three more?

  He finds Pier 4, then Row D, then Building 3323, an enormous Quonset hut like all the rest. He hops out of the truck and knocks on the office door. He stands outside, stamping his feet, as two Chinese men inspect his trucks—the cabs and the trailers. Then the big metal door of the building slides open.

  Fabián climbs back into the cab of the lead truck and leads them in.

  Nora startles when Lee’s cell phone rings.

  She sees Lee’s hand tighten on the pistol grip as he answers it. She sucks in a deep breath and readies herself to make a grab at his wrist as he hangs up, turns to her and says, “Your people are there. Everything’s okay.”

  “Good,” she says. “Let’s get going.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Not yet.”

  Fabián stands talking with the Chinese guy in charge.

  “You got your money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In another location,” the man says. “As soon as this transaction is safely concluded, she will rejoin you.”

  Fabián doesn’t like it. Not because he cares about Nora Hayden—other than wanting to fuck her in half, he wouldn’t care if she did get smacked—but because Adán does care, and is holding him responsible for Nora’s safety. And these slants are holding her hostage? Not good at all. So he says, “Get her on the line.”

  Lee hands Nora the phone. “They want to speak to you.”

  Nora takes the phone.

  “Give me a color,” Fabián says.

  “Red.”

  Fabián gives the Chinese guy back his phone, then takes his Mac-10 from his jacket and sticks it in the guy’s face.

  “Call your boy back,” he says. “Tell him it’s cool.”

  Guns appear from everywhere. All Fabián’s men pull, and all the Chinese guys. Except most of the Chinese are up in catwalks, aiming down, so they have a tactical advantage.

  It’s your basic stalemate.

  Which disappears when the office door blows in.

  It’s just chaos.

  Art’s the first through the door, with a phalanx of agents behind him. He throws the switch and the metal cargo door opens again to reveal another platoon of DEA, FBI, and ATF, a whole lethal alphabet soup with automatic rifles, shotguns, Kevlar vests and bullet-resistant visors, nightlights shining from the tops of their helmets.

  The agents are yelling at the top of their lungs.

  “FREEZE!”

  “DEA!”

  “GET DOWN! GET DOWN!”

  “FBI!”

  “DROP YOUR WEAPONS!”

  Weapons clatter on the metal catwalks and the concrete floor. Fabián thinks about trying to shoot it out but quickly sees that it’s futile, lets his Mac-10 slide to the floor and puts his hands up.

  Art looks around for Nora. It’s hard to spot anything in the chaos, with men running, other men hitting the floor, agents grabbing people and throwing them down. He looks for her blond hair and doesn’t see it, so he screams into his radio mike, “GO!” hoping Shag can hear him over the cacophony, praying it’s not too late.

  Beside him, a Chinese guy is yelling into a cell phone.

  Art grabs him by the collar, throws him down and kicks the phone from his hand.

  Lee hears his boss screaming over the phone.

  Nora sees his eyes widen and then the gun comes up, pointed straight at her forehead.

  She screams.

  Over the dull thump of an explosion.

  Blood and bone spray against the passenger window.

  Lee’s body slumps back into the seat and Nora turns to see the SWAT sniper standing in the doorway, the door hanging crooked off its blown hinges.

  She’s still screaming as Shag Wallace slowly approaches the car, opens her door and gently takes her by the elbow.

  “It’s all right,” he’s saying. “You’re all right. Come on now, we have to get you out of here.”

  He takes her out of the car, walks her outside and puts her in the front seat of his own car. “Wait here for a minute.”

  Shag goes back into the warehouse, gets into the front seat of the Lexus and takes the .45 from Lee’s dead hand. Then he holds it a few inches away from Lee’s forehead, aims it at the entry wounds and pulls the trigger.

  He wipes the gun and goes out to his car.

  Sits next to Nora and tells her to hold the .45 for a second. Numb with shock, she does what he says. Then he takes the gun back and says, “Here’s your story: Things went sick and wrong. He was going to shoot you. You grabbed the gun, you fought, you won. Do you understand that?”

  She nods.

  She thinks she understands. She’s not sure. Her hands won’t stop shaking.

  “Are you okay?” Shag asks. “Look, it’s all right if you’re not. If you want to stop this right now, just say the word. We’ll understand.”

  “Have they arrested Adán?” she asks.

  “Not yet,” Shag answers.

  She shakes her head.

  Art kneels on Fabián’s neck and attaches the plastic telephone ties to his wrists.

  “It was that cunt, wasn’t it?” Fabián asks.

  Art kneels down a little harder as he recites Fabián’s rights.

  “Fucking right I’m going to want a lawyer,” Fabián says.

  Art hauls him to his feet, shoves him into one of the DEA vans and walks over to inspect the two cargo containers—twenty feet long, eight feet wide and eight feet high—filled with crates.

  His men take them out and bust them open.

  Chinese-made AK-47s—two thousand of them—spill out of the boxes in pieces: barrels, magazines, stocks. Other tools include two dozen Chinese KPG-2 rocket launchers, which are considered especially valuabl
e because they are handheld.