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“I know that and it’s awful but she knew the risks and it doesn’t make any difference. I still can’t. Look — let me tell you a story. I’ve been dealing with the cartel about as long as they’ve been around, least in the form they’re in at the moment. Before El Patrón, there was another boss. They called him El Señor de Los Cielos. Lord of the Skies, on account of the jumbo jets they said he had, packed full of cocaine up from Colombia. He was Mr Juárez for years. And then La Frontera came over from Sinaloa, trying to muscle in on his turf. There was a war, a proper one, a shooting war.”
He took another long pull on his beer.
“Bad things happened. Over the years, I got to see some pretty awful shit. The line of work I think you’re in, I’m guessing you’ve seen those things, too. And I’ve met bad men. But recently, things have gotten worse. The men have gotten worse — younger, and the old rules don’t apply. The one I remember more than all the others, he was just a kid. Fourteen years old from out of the barrio. This kid had been given a gun and told to shoot two dealers for the Juárez cartel. They were trying to sell on a corner that La Frontera was claiming for itself. And he did it. Point blank, one shot each in the back of the head and then another while they were on the ground. We picked him up. He didn’t try to run. I interviewed him. Looked like he wanted to talk about it. Like he was proud. He told me that he’d been wanting to kill someone since he was a little boy. Said that if he got out, he’d do it again, and I believed him. There are others like him. Dozens of them. What does that say for the future, John? What chance have we got?”
Milton looked at him. Had his face softened a little?
“Look around, man — I’ve got a family. Wife and kids. And look at me. I’m fifty-five years old. I retire on Friday. I’m going fix up this boat, drink beer and go fishing. There’s no place for a man like me in a world like that. You always had to go to work knowing that there’s a good chance you might get shot today. I could live with that. But now it’s worse — now, they’ll go after your family, too, and I won’t do that. I’ve done my time. I’m out. You understand?”
Milton did not answer.
There was no disapproval, just a quick recalibration of circumstances.
“I understand. This place — Samalayuca. Can you give me directions?”
DAY FOUR
“One More Day”
The devil in Hell we’re told was chained
a thousand years he there remained,
He neither complained nor did he groan
but was determined to start a Hell of his own,
So he asked the Lord if he had on hand
anything left when he made this land,
The Lord said yes there’s a plenty of land
but I left it down by the Rio Bravo. Joh
44
Beau Baxter had his face in the dust. The toes of his boots were against the gravel of the ridge, his pelvis pressed tight against it, his elbows prised up against rough stones. His Jeep was back up the ridge, his jacket was hanging from a Joshua tree. He pushed his Stetson back a little, loosening the hand-braided horsehair stampede string that was tight up against his neck. The rifle on the ground next to him was a Weatherby Mark V Deluxe with the claro walnut stock and highly polished blued barrelled action, chambered for the .257 Wetherby Magnum cartridge. He had been here since dawn and it had been so quiet, he thought, that you could damn near hear your own hair grow. He had a pair of twenty power Japanese binoculars he had bought in Tijuana. He swept the scrubland below with them. The valley floor was made up of a reddish-brown lava rock that, depending on the angle of the sun, could turn a blackish lavender. There were tracks of wiry javelina pigs and mule deer but nothing human. Beau stuffed his mouth with chewing tobacco and waited like an grizzled old buzzard guarding his roadkill.
He saw the dust cloud. It blurred in the shimmer and drifted north, the faint desert breeze catching it and pushing it back towards the city. It grew into a long yellow slash of dust, gradually rising, eventually growing to a mile long before he could make out the hire car Smith was driving at its head. It bumped off the asphalt and onto the rough track, greasewood bushes and pear cactus on either side, slowing to negotiate the deeper potholes. He put the glasses to his eyes and focussed. Eventually it was close enough for Beau to see Smith at the wheel and, in the back, Adolfo González. The cloud of dust kept drifting north.
Beau still wasn’t sure that he was doing the right thing. He had Adolfo. All he had to do was cuff him, wrists and ankles, put him in the back of the Jeep, cross the border, pick up his money. Smith would have let him do it, too, if it hadn’t been for the girl. Beau had watched as Smith spoke to El Patrón and, although he had kept his voice calm, he had seen the flashes of anger in his eyes. He would never agree to let him have Adolfo now, not until they had gotten Caterina back again. Beau wondered for a moment about drawing down on him, just taking the greaser and bugging out for the border, but there was something about the Englishman that told him that that would be a very bad idea. He didn’t want a mean dude like that on his tail. That, and the fact that he had just saved his life.
They had agreed to meet El Patrón out here in the desert, get the girl but try and get away with Adolfo, too. Beau was taking the risk with the bounty and so Smith had agreed that he should be the one with the rifle. Much less dangerous away from the action. Smith would make the exchange and Beau would provide cover, should Smith need it.
Beau knew that he would.
As a kid in the woods of southeast Texas, Beau had never really been good at much in particular with the exception of hunting. This talent was honed in Vietnam where he was trained as a sniper by the 101st Airborne in Phu Bai. He did his stint on a hunt-and-kill team with the Fifth Infantry Division out of Quany Tri Province. The team included rangers, recondos, jungle experts, snipers, special forces and even a mercenary who was trying to regain his US citizenship after previously hiring out to foreign governments. Beau reckoned that the reaper teams were the most deadly assembled group of specialists in all of ‘Nam.
He learned plenty, like how to shoot.
The sun behind him was a good thing: there would be no reflection off his glasses or the scope. It was climbing into a perfect blue sky, already blazing hot. There was no wind. No cloud cover. No shelter. The air shivered in the heat. The deep shadow of the ridge and the Joshua tree were cast out across the floodplain below him. A little vegetation: candelilla and catclaw and mesquite thickets. He put the binoculars down and mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief. He gazed out over the land. To the west and east were the mountains. To the south, the arid scrub of the barrial that ran out into the deeper desert. He saw another cloud of dust on the 45. He picked up the glasses again and found the road. It was another car, an SUV, with tinted windows. A narco car. It turned off the road and followed Smith down the same long track. He replaced the glasses, took a slug of water from the canteen shaded by his hat, and picked up the rifle. His vantage point was nicely elevated, not too much, well within the range of the Weatherby. He nudged the forestock around until he had the car in his sights. He thumbed off the safety and slipped his finger through the trigger-guard.
The narco who had climbed the mesa behind him had followed him all the way from Juárez. The man was a tracker, a coyote with experience of smuggling people over the border. He knew how to move quietly, how to avoid detection.