Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

Art gets that. I’m the Boy Who Cried Wolf.

“What kind of proof?” he asks.

“The arms shipment would do nicely, for example.”

But that’s the dilemma, Art thinks. Busting the arms shipment would expose exactly what I’m trying to protect. If I could get Hobbs to pressure Mexico City into launching a preemptive strike against Barrera now, there’d be no need to put Nora in jeopardy. But to get them to launch the strike, I have to produce the arms shipment, and the only person who can get me that is Nora.

But if she does it, she’s probably dead.

“Come on, John,” he says, “you could mask this from the Chinese side. Intercepts of maritime radio signals, Internet traffic, satellite intelligence-just say you have a source in Beijing.”

“You want me to compromise valuable sources in Asia to protect some drug dealer that you flipped? Please.”

But he is tempted.

The Zapatistas in Chiapas are more active than ever, their ranks reportedly swelled by recent refugees from neighboring Guatemala, so the potential exists there for a Communist insurgency that could spread regionally.

And a new left-wing insurgent group, the EPR, the Ejercito Popular Revolucionario, the Popular Revolutionary Army, emerged back in June at a memorial service for peasants in Guerrero killed by right-wing militias. Then, just weeks ago, EPR launched simultaneous attacks against police posts in Guerrero, Tabasco, Puebla and Mexico itself, killing sixteen police officers and wounding another twenty-three. The Vietcong started smaller than that, Hobbs thinks. He offered his Mexican intelligence counterparts assistance against the EPR, but the Mexicans, ever sensitive about Yanqui neo-imperialist interference, declined.

Stupidly, Hobbs thinks, because it takes only a quick glimpse at the map to see that the Communist insurgency is spreading north from Chiapas, fueled by the economic devastation of the Peso Crisis and the dislocations caused by NAFTA implementation.

Mexico is teetering on the brink of revolution, and everyone but the ostriches in State know it. Even Defense acknowledges the possibility-Hobbs has just finished reading the top-secret contingency plans for a U.S. invasion of Mexico in the event of a total social and economic breakdown. God, one Castro in Cuba is enough-can you imagine a Comandante Zero ruling from Los Pinos? A Marxist government sharing a two-thousand-mile border with the United States? And every state along that border soon to have a Hispanic majority? But God, wouldn’t the Mexicans hemorrhage cats if they ever got wind of that report?

No, the Mexicans can accept American military aide only through the veil of the War on Drugs. Not unlike the American Congress, Hobbs thinks. The Vietnam Syndrome prevents Congress from authorizing a penny to wage covert wars against Communists, but they’ll always open the vault to fight the drug war. So you don’t go to Capitol Hill to tell them you’re helping your allies and neighbors defend themselves against Marxist guerrillas; no, you send your supporters in the DEA to ask for money to keep drugs out of the hands of America’s young people.

So Congress would never authorize, nor would the Mexicans openly accept, the offer of seventy-five Huey helicopters and a dozen C-26 airplanes to fight the Zapatistas and EPR, but Congress has funded the same package to help the Mexicans suppress the drug traffickers, and the equipment will be quietly transferred to the Mexican army for use in Chiapas and Guerrero.

And now you have the patron of the Federacion providing weapons to Communist insurgents in Colombia? That would get the Mexicans solidly on board.

Art plays his last card. “So you’re just going to let a shipment of arms go through to Communist insurgents in Colombia? Not to mention the increase of Chinese influence in Panama?”

“No,” Hobbs says calmly. “You are.”

“Screw you, John,” Art says. “If this goes down, the CIA gets nothing. I don’t share intel, assets, credit, nothing.”

“Give me the source, Arthur.”

Art stares at him.

“Then get me the guns,” Hobbs says.

But I can’t, Art thinks. Not until Nora tells me where they are.

Mexico

There’s a meeting going on at Rancho las Bardas, too.

Between Adan, Raul and Fabian.

And Nora.

Adan insisted that she be included. The fact is that they wouldn’t have the deal in place without her.

It doesn’t sit well with Raul.

“Since when do our baturras know our business?” he asks Fabian. “She should stay in the bedroom, where she belongs. Let her open her legs, not her mouth.”

Fabian chuckles. He’d like to open La Guera’s legs, and her mouth. She’s the most delectable piece of chocho he’s ever seen. You’re wasting yourself with a wimp like Adan, he thinks. Come to me, tragona, I’ll make you scream.

Nora sees the look on his face and thinks, Try it, asshole. Adan would have you skinned alive and roasted over a slow fire. And I’d bring the marshmallows.

The Chinese want cash on delivery, and will accept no other form of payment, not a wire transfer or a series of laundered payments through shell companies. They insist that the payment be absolutely untraceable, and the only way to do that is a hand-to-hand cash transferral.

And they want Nora to make it.

It’s a guarantee for them, Adan sending his beloved mistress.

“Absolutely not,” Adan and Raul say simultaneously, albeit for completely different reasons.

“You first,” Nora says to Raul.

“You and Adan haven’t exactly kept your relationship under wraps,” Raul says. “The DEA probably has more photographs of you than they do of me. If you are arrested, you have a lot of information inside that pretty head, and motivation to give it up.”

“What would they arrest me for, sleeping with your brother?” Nora asks. She turns to Adan. “Your turn.”

“It’s too dangerous,” he says. “If anything went wrong, you’d be looking at life in prison.”

“Then let’s make sure nothing goes wrong,” she says.

She lays out her case-I go back and forth across the border all the time. I’m an American citizen with an address in San Diego. I’m an attractive blonde and can flirt my way through any checkpoint. And, most important, it’s what the Chinese want.

“Why?” Raul asks suddenly. “Why would you take the risk?”

“Because,” she says, smiling, “in return, you’ll make me rich.”

She waits as her answer just hangs there.

Finally, Adan says, “I want the best chop-artist in Baja. Maximum security at both sides of the border. Fabian, get our best people in California to make the actual pickup. I want you there personally. If anything happens to her, I hold you both responsible.”

He gets up and walks out.

Nora just sits and smiles.

Raul follows Adan out into the garden.

“What are you thinking about, hermano?” he asks. “What’s to stop her from turning on us? What’s to stop her from just taking the money and never looking back?! She’s a whore, for God’s sake!”

Adan whirls around and grabs him by the front of his shirt. “You’re my brother and I love you, Raul. But if you ever talk about her that way again, we’ll split the pasador and go our separate ways. Now please just do your job.”

As Nora waits in the line at the San Ysidro border crossing, Baja’s best chop-artist sits in a chair on the tenth floor of an apartment building overlooking the checkpoint. He’s a little nervous because he’s been asked to guarantee his work-if the car gets busted going across the border, Raul Barrera is going to put a bullet in the back of his head.

“Just so you have a rooting interest,” Raul said.

He doesn’t know where the car is going, he doesn’t know who’s taking it there, but he does know that it’s unusual for cash to be heading north across the border instead of coming south. He’s built stash-holds all over the nondescript Toyota Camry, and that little baby is loaded down with millions of American dollars. He only hopes that the Border Patrol doesn’t decide to weigh the car.