stench of flame, smoke and death sticks in his nose.
The smell of burning flesh never leaves you.
Orduña waits for him at the little airstrip hacked out of the forest. The commander of FES sits inside the bay of a Black Hawk helicopter. Keller and Admiral Orduña had formed an “anything you need, anytime” relationship during their war against the Zetas. Keller provided him with top-level American intelligence and often accompanied his elite special-forces marines on operations inside Mexico.
This one had been different—the chance to decapitate the Zeta leadership in a single stroke came in Guatemala, where the Mexican marines couldn’t go. But Orduña provided Keller’s team with a staging base and logistical support, flew the team into Campeche, and now waits to see if his friend Art Keller is still alive.
Orduña smiles broadly when he sees Keller walk out of the tree line, then reaches into a cooler and hands Keller a cold Modelo.
“The rest of the team?” Keller asks.
“We flew them out already,” Orduña says. “They should be in El Paso by now.”
“Casualties?”
“One KIA,” Orduña says. “Four wounded. I wasn’t so sure about you. If you didn’t come in by nightfall, a la mierda todo, we were going over to get you.”
“I was looking for Barrera,” Keller says, sluicing down the beer.
“And?”
“I didn’t find him,” Keller says.
“What about Ochoa?”
Orduña hates the Zeta leader almost as much as Keller hates Adán Barrera. The war on drugs tends to get very personal. It had gotten personal for Orduña when one of his officers was killed on a raid against the Zetas, and they came in and murdered the young officer’s mother, aunt, sister and brother the night of his funeral. He had formed the Matazetas—“Zeta Killers”—the morning after that. And kill Zetas they did, every chance they got. If they took prisoners, it was only to get information, and then they executed them.
Keller had different reasons to hate the Zetas.
Different, but sufficient.
“Ochoa’s dead,” Keller says.
“Confirmed?”
“I saw it,” Keller says. He’d watched Eddie Ruiz pour a can of paraffin all over the wounded Zeta boss and then toss a match on him. Ochoa died screaming. “Forty, too.”
Forty was Ochoa’s number-two man. A sadist like his boss.
“You saw his body?” Orduña asks.
“I saw his head,” Keller says. “It wasn’t attached to his body. That good enough for you?”
“It’ll do,” Orduña says, smiling.
Actually, Keller didn’t see Forty’s head. What he saw was Forty’s face, which someone had peeled off and sewn to a soccer ball.
“Has Ruiz shown up?” Keller asks.
“Not yet,” Orduña says.
“He was alive the last time I saw him,” Keller says.
Turning Ochoa into a highway flare. Then standing on some old Mayan stone courtyard watching a kid kick a very bizarre soccer ball around.
“Maybe he just took off,” Orduña says.
“Maybe.”
“We should get in touch with your people. They’ve been calling about every fifteen minutes.” Orduña punches some numbers into a burn phone and then says, “Taylor? Guess who I have here.”
Keller takes the phone and hears Tim Taylor, the DEA chief of the Southwest District, say, “Jesus Christ, we thought you were dead.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
They’re waiting for him at the Adobe Inn in Clint, Texas, on a remote highway a few miles east of El Paso.
The room is your standard motel “efficiency,” a large living room with a kitchen area—microwave, coffee maker, small refrigerator—a sofa with a coffee table, a couple of chairs and a television set. A bad painting of a sunset behind a cactus. A door at the left, open now, leads into a bedroom and bathroom. It’s a good, nondescript place to hold their debrief.
The television is on low, tuned to CNN.
Tim Taylor sits on the sofa, looking at a laptop computer set on the coffee table. A satphone stands upright by the computer.
John Downey, the military commander of the raid, stands by the microwave, waiting for something to heat. He’s out of cammies, Keller sees, showered and shaved, wearing a plum polo shirt over jeans and tennis shoes.
Another man, a CIA guy Keller knows as Rollins, sits in one of the chairs and watches the television.
Downey looks up when Keller comes in. “Where the fuck have you been, Art? We’ve done satellite runs, helicopter searches …”
Keller was supposed to have brought Barrera out safely. That was the deal. Keller asks, “How are your people?”
“Phwoom.” Downey makes a gesture with his hands, like a flushed covey of quail. Keller knows that within twelve hours the spec-ops will be scattered all over the country, if not the world, with cover stories about where they’ve been. “The only unaccounted for is Ruiz. I was hoping he came out with you.”
“I saw him after the firefight,” Keller says. “He was walking out.”
“So Ruiz is in the wind?” Rollins asks.
“You don’t have to worry about him,” Keller says.
“He’s your responsibility,” Rollins says.
“Fuck Ruiz,” Taylor says. “What happened to Barrera?”
Keller says, “You tell me.”
“We haven’t had any word from him.”
“Then I guess he didn’t make it,” Keller says.
“You refused to get on the ex-fil chopper,” Rollins says.
“The chopper had to take off,” Keller says, “and I still had to find Barrera.”
“But you didn’t find him,” Rollins says.
“Special ops aren’t room service,” Keller answers. “You can’t always get exactly what you order. Things happen.”
Right from the jump.
They’d helicoptered onto a firefight that was already in progress
