Saint Death

Wholesale, a pound of methamphetamine was worth $17,000.

The lab could produce 140 pounds a week.

140 pounds had a value of over two million dollars.

The lab stood to make him over one hundred million dollars a year.

Isaac wandered further down the line: the hydrofluoric acid solution vat, the aluminium strip and sodium hydroxide mixing tank, the huge reaction vessel, the filtration system, the finishing tanks. The first cook had been completed overnight and the meth had been broken down and packed in plastic bags, ready to be moved. “May I?” he asked, looking down at the bags.

“Please,” Felipe replied.

The gringo opened the bag and took out a larger-than-usual crystal. He held it up to the light and gazed into it.

Felipe knew it was pure.

C10H15N.

Eight-tenths Carbon.

One-tenth Nitrogen.

One-tenth Hydrogen.

The formula didn’t mean much to him apart from this: it would make him a whole lot of money.

“I knew it was good,” Isaac said, “but this is remarkable. How pure is this?”

“Ninety-eight per cent,” the chemist said. He looked up and down the line like a proud father.

“Very good,” Isaac said. “Very good indeed.”

“Have you seen enough, my friend?”

“I think so.”

“We should get you back to the plane. You have a long flight ahead of you.”

Felipe stepped out of the laboratory and into the baking heat. The land dropped down on all sides, covered with scrubby brush. The horizon shimmered as if there was another mountain range opposite this one, a thousand miles away. A trick of the heat. His cellphone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and looked at the display. He hoped it might be Adolfo. It was not a number he recognised.

“Hello Felipe.”

“Who is this?”

“You know who I am.”

He frowned. “The Englishman?”

“That’s right.”

“Then I am talking to a dead man.”

“Eventually. But not today.”

“What do you want?”

“I told you.”

“You told me what?”

“That I’d find you.”

There was a loud crack and one of Felipe’s guards fell to the ground. He looked over at the man; the initial response was one of puzzlement, but, as he noticed the man’s brains scattered all across the dusty track, the feeling became one of panic. Isaac screamed out. Felipe spun around, staring into the mountains for something that would tell him where the Englishman was — a puff of smoke from his rifle, a glint against a telescopic sight, anything — but there was nothing, just the harsh glare of the sun, a hateful kaleidoscope of refulgent brilliance that lanced into his eyes and obscured everything.

“Felipe.”

He still had the phone pressed to his ear.

“Listen to me, Felipe.”

“What?”

“I wanted you to know — your son is in America now. He’s been delivered. The Mafia, isn’t it? How will that go for him?”

Felipe pulled his gold-plated revolver from its holster and shot wildly into the near distance. “Where are you, you bastard?”

He started in the opposite direction, towards his second guard. The man was on one knee, his AK-47 raised, sca

“Felipe.”

“Show yourself!”

Isaac and his men ducked down behind the car.

“I should thank you, really,” the Englishman said.

He crept backwards towards the entrance to the lab. “For what?”

“I thought I was bad. Irredeemable. And maybe I am.”

He backed more quickly.

A bullet whined through the air, slamming into the metal door and caroming away.

“Stay there, please.”

He wailed at the rocks, “What do you want from me?”

“You reminded me — there are plenty worse than me. I’d forgotten that.”

The rifle shot was just a muffled pop, flat and small in the lonely quiet of the mountain. He turned in time to see the muzzle flash, fifty feet to his left and twenty feet above him. A stinging pain in his leg and then the delayed starburst that crashed through his head. His knee collapsed. Blood started to run down his leg, soaking his pants. He dropped forwards, flat onto his face, eating the dust. He managed to get his arm beneath him and raised his head. Through the sweat that was pouring into his eyes and the heat haze that quivered up off the rocks, he could see a man approaching him. The details were fuzzy and unclear. He had black camouflage paint smeared across his face, the sort that gringo football players wore. He had a thick, ragged beard. He was filthy with dust and muck. He had a long rifle at his side, barrel down.

Felipe tried to scrabble away, his good leg slipping against the scree.

“Isaac!” Felipe yelled. “Help me!”

There was no sign of him.

The hazy figure came closer.

“Please,” Felipe begged.

The man lowered himself to a crouch and blocked the way forwards.

“I’ll give you anything.”

Felipe raised his head again. The sun smothered him. The pain from his leg made him retch. The barrel of the rifle swung away, up and out of his field of vision. The Englishman straightened up. Felipe saw a pair of desert boots and the dusty cuffs of a pair of jeans. He scrabbled towards them.

The muzzle of the rifle was rested against the top of his skull.

He heard the thunk of a bolt-action rifle, a bullet pressed into the chamber.

The click-click of a double-pulled trigger, and then nothing.

62

Lieutenant Sanchez had delayed them for an hour. Captain Pope had made an angry phone call and, eventually, Sanchez had been contacted by someone from the Ministry of Justice in Mexico City and had been ordered to stand down. The six agents had dispersed into the streets to take up the search. A

She hacked into the municipal police database and withdrew everything she could find about Jesus Plato. She started with his address, plotting alternative routes to his house from the mansion and then looking for CCTV cameras that might have recorded his Dodge as it passed along its route. There were half a dozen hits — the best was a blurred shot from the security camera at a Pemex gas station showing Milton sitting in the front seat of the car while Plato filled the tank — but nothing that was particularly useful.

She extracted the details of Plato’s private car and ran that through the number plate recognition system that had recently installed on the Mexican highway system. That was more successful. The Honda Accord was recorded heading south: first on the 45, then past Chihuahua and onto the 16. It was picked up again on the outskirts of Parral, leaving the city on the 24 and heading to the south-west.

Towards the Sierra Madre.

Fourteen hours of driving.

She told Pope. He left with two of the others.

It was a long shot. They were hours behind him.

Then she skimmed intelligence from the army that said that Felipe González, the boss of La Frontera cartel, had been shot to death in the mountains.

It was all across the mainstream news hours later.

It started to make more sense.

The Accord was recorded heading north again, on highway 15 this time, heading up the coast. The camera had taken a usable picture, too. Milton was driving. He turned to the west at Magdalena, back towards Juárez.

She warned Pope that Milton might be meeting with Plato.

They put his house under surveillance.

They watched the police station.