Don Winslow - The Kings Of Cool

The collateral theory being that if you kill enough leaders, it discourages middle management from applying for the job vacancy.

Nobody wants that promotion.

(More money

More responsibility

Corner office

Laser dot.)

Most Salafist leaders want to go to Paradise eventually, not immediately, generously yielding that privilege to lesser beings. Otherwise that cocksucker bin Laden would be standing on the top of the Sears Tower waving his arms like Come and get me, not hiding out.

Anyway, over the course of a couple of wars, Chon’s unit morphed from counterinsurgency to antiterrorism because the latter is

Cheaper,

Faster,

And easier to tabulate.

Bodies (especially dead ones) being easier to count than hearts (fickle) and minds (transitory).

So he’s used to missions like this.

There’s just so goddamn many of them.

So many Bad Guys to kill.

Dennis has put Bad Guys away to see other Bad Guys take their places

Dennis has looked into the dead, tortured faces of his sources

Dennis has seen You’ve heard the expression “truckloads of cash”? And thought it was a figure of speech?

Dennis has seen, literally — truckloads of cash headed south for Mexico to people who have kitchens with granite countertops, and he turns those trucks in to his bosses, who pose beside them while he dutifully puts a little money away each month for his kids’ college educations and his wife clips coupons because while Paradise is Paradise, Paradise is also expensive.

Dennis sees his face get a little older, hair a little thinner, belly no longer taut. Knows that his reflexes are a little slower, memory not quite as acute, that there might be more calendar pages behind than in front of him.

So maybe that little nudge of discontent was fear. Maybe not. Maybe it was just discontent, as in “the winter of” in a place that knows no real winter.

Anyway You need to know that Dennis hoards information. He feels justified in doing so because he’s worked hard to develop sources-they’re his — and he doesn’t share them because he doesn’t want to share the information they develop. This does not make Dennis particularly popular among his peers, but he doesn’t give a shit-the life plan isn’t to make friends among his peers, it’s to rise above them, and then they’re not going to like him, anyway.

So Dennis’s modus operandi is to work his sources to develop information right up to the point of making a bust, then dole those busts out for the best possible political and promotion-creating effect.

That’s why when one of his CIs-that’s “Confidential Informants,” and D has given a whole new meaning to the “Confidential”-tells him about this isolated little ranch house way the fuck out in East County near Jamul, he goes by himself.

The Lone Ranger

Or “the Lone Stranger,” as he’s known in the office.

(Undercovers are natural loners-they don’t trust anybody-paranoia is a survival strategy.)

Sans Tonto, as Paqu might say, recalling that she’s in her French phase.

To check it out.

Solo Surveillance.

Dennis has balls-big, clanging brass-so he drives out into the dark desert all by his lonesome, parks his vehicle on a ridge overlooking this ranch, and trains his nightscope on the house.

It’s a cash dump.

(There’s a phrase, huh?)

What’s happening is that the dealers are bringing their cash there to be counted, sorted, and stacked for the relatively short dash down across the border. On any given night, there’s going to be hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in that house.

Dennis takes one look at this and knows it’s the bust that could Put Him Over.

Because what he also sees through that scope is

Filipo Sanchez.

Number Three in the Baja Cartel.

The night is eerie green.

Through Chon’s night goggles.

Monster-movie green.

He rolls out of the APC

(Armored Personnel Carrier) behind his team and rushes toward the compound of two-story concrete buildings where the CIA boys said the AQ honchos are holed up.

Pressing the butt of the M-14 rifle to his shoulder, he keeps it at firing position as the C4 charges blow the gate off its hinges and the team goes in.

Chon has a photo of the AQ asshole that is Target Number One burned into his memory pan.

Mahmud el-Kassani.

Where are you, Mahmud?

Dennis knows Filipo-hells yes, he does, he has Filipo’s picture pinned up on the bulletin board in his office. He knows the names of Filipo’s wife and kids, knows what futbol team he follows, knows that Filipo subscribes to the Padres games on satellite TV. This must be an important cash dump for Filipo to chance coming over the wire, so he must be up there checking up on things, making sure that all of the money goes south and none of it gets lost and wanders toward other points on the compass.

While Dennis would normally keep this house under surveillance for a couple of weeks and then turn it over to his superiors so they could get the credit, now he’s thinking about playing leapfrog. The San Diego SAC is looking at retirement, and a pop like this could put Dennis’s ass into his empty chair.

So this is totally a cowboy move, highly discouraged by the Powers That Be, but Dennis knows that he has a justification-he can always say that he had to take the chance-who knew when and if Filipo would ever come back, be on this side of the border, and there’s a federal trafficking warrant on the guy, anyway, so He clips his badge onto his jacket, finds his DEA cap in the backseat, pulls his weapon, and goes in.

Chaos in the compound

(foxes in the henhouse) as women shriek, children scream, goats bleat.

No chaos for the team-they know exactly where they are and where they’re going: up some stairs to the second floor.

Bullets zip past them as the AQ fight back.

Chon moves the rifle around smoothly Target, shoot

Target, shoot

Target, shoot

He makes it to the door and heads up the stairs.

One of the AQ shot out the lightbulbs at the sound of the explosion and it’s black and tight in there.

Chon feels someone come out of a doorway beside him and he swings the rifle to take him out and sees it’s a kid, can’t be twelve in the traditional vest the waskath

(from which Chon knows we got the word “waistcoat”) and skullcap big black eyes

Shoot every male is the order but Chon isn’t going to follow that order so he shoves the kid back in the room and moves up the stairs into a room that becomes a charnel house as the team shoots everyone inside and Chon sees

Mahmud.

Who doesn’t want to become a martyr this night.

He puts his hands up to surrender.

Chon drills him twice through the chest because

Chon wants him to be a martyr.

(Paradise is Paradise, but it’s also expensive.)

Yeah, they might try to slug it out with him.

In which case he’s dead.

More likely they’re just going to bolt

In which case most of them will make it

But it’s Worth the Risk.

Nailing Filipo Sanchez? Come on.

So Dennis charges down there in his Jeep like a movie cowboy on his horse. There’s no fence, no gate, because the narcos don’t want to call attention to the house and Dennis just drives right up, slams the brakes, and jumps out, badge in one hand, pistol in the other, and announces, “DEA! This is a raid! Nobody fucking move!”

Dennis has balls.

Three gunmen are just standing there, open-mouthed, staring at him, clearly trying to figure out what to do. And this is the moment when, if they were going to shoot him, they would.