Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

He pulls the trigger.

Art hears the dry, metallic click.

“Jesus God,” he says. His knees feel weak, like water, like he’s going to fall down. His heart is racing, his body hot. He feels like he can’t breathe.

“The next chamber ain’t empty, Art.”

“Okay.”

“Knock this shit off,” Sal says. “You don’t know what you’re fucking with.”

Same thing Adan told me, Art thinks. Same words.

“Did Barrera send you?” he asks.

“When you got a gun at my head, you can ask the questions,” Sal says. “I’m telling you, stay away from the airport. Next time-and there’d better not be a next time, Arthur-we won’t be having a 'dialogue.’ You’ll just be alive, and then you won’t. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” Sal says. “I’m going to be leaving now. Don’t turn around. And Arthur?”

“Yeah?”

“Cerberus.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” the man says. “Don’t turn around.”

Art doesn’t turn around as he hears Sal walk away. He stands where he is for a full minute, until he hears a car on the street pull away.

Then he sits down and starts shaking. It takes a few minutes and a heavy scotch to get it together, but he tries to think it through.

Stay away from the airport.

So whatever it is they were loading on that plane, Art thinks, they’re very sensitive about it.

And what the hell is Cerberus?

He looks out the window, and there’s another Jalisco cop out there on surveillance. He goes into his study and calls Ernie at home. “I need you to bring a car over here. Come in the other way, and park it two blocks south. Take a cab home.”

He lets himself out the back way, through the kitchen door, then climbs over the back fence into his neighbor’s yard and out onto the back street. He finds Ernie’s car where it’s supposed to be, but there’s a problem.

Ernie’s still in it.

“I told you to take a cab home,” Art says as he slides in.

“I guess I didn’t hear that part.”

“Go home,” Art says. When Ernie doesn’t move, he says, “Look, I don’t want to fuck up your life, too.”

“When are you going to let me in on this?” Ernie asks as he gets out of the car.

“When I know what I’m doing,” Art says.

Like, maybe never.

He gets into Ernie’s car and drives to La Casa del Amor.

What if they’re waiting for me? he thinks as he makes his way over to the wall to retrieve the tape.

You’ll just be alive, and then you won’t.

Click.

Out.

He shakes off his fear and makes his way through the shrubbery to the wall. Takes a quick glance over the top and sees that Tio’s bedroom light is on. Crouching by the wall, he taps his earpiece into the tape recorder so he can listen live.

They say eavesdroppers never hear anything nice about themselves, Art thinks as he listens.

“Did it work?” Tio asks.

“I don’t know.” Sal’s Spanish is pretty good, Art thinks, but it’s definitely the same voice. “I think so, though. The guy seemed pretty scared.”

Yeah, no shit, Art thinks. Let me stick a gun in your neck and see how cool you are.

“Did he know anything about Cerberus?”

“I don’t think so. He didn’t respond at all.”

Relax, Art thinks. I don’t know shit about it. Whatever it is.

Then he hears Tio say, “We can’t take the chance. The next exchange…”

Exchange? Art thinks. What exchange?

“… we’ll do El Norte.”

El Norte, Art thinks.

In the States.

Yeah, Art thinks. Do it, Tio.

Fly it across the border.

Because as soon as you do?

I’m going to reach up and grab that plane right out of the sky.

Borrego Springs, California

January 1985

The plane, any plane really, flies toward a VOR signal. A VOR (Variable Oscillation Radio) signal is kind of like the radio version of a lighthouse, but instead of a beam of light it emits sound waves that register as beeps on a plane’s radio or a pulsing light on its instrument panel. All airports, even small ones, have a VOR.

But a plane full of dope isn’t going to land at an airport in the United States, not even a small one. What it’s going to do is land on a private airstrip bulldozed out of a remote part of the desert. The VOR signals are still crucial because the pilot is going to locate the landing strip by triangulating the location between three VOR signals, in this case, the VORs at Borrego Springs, Ocotillo Wells and Blythe. What happens is that the people on the ground are going to get on the ADF radio and give him that location, cross-referencing it by distance and compass points-called “vectors” in air navigation-from the three known locations of the VORs.

Then they’re going to park at the end of that landing strip, and when they see the plane, they’ll become their own landing tower, if you will, by flashing their headlights. The pilot will line his plane up toward the headlights and bring down the plane, with its valuable cargo.

For security reasons, the guys on the ground aren’t going to give that pilot the landing location until he’s in the air, because once he’s in the air, what could happen?

Well, lots, because the F in ADF stands for “frequency,” and that’s what Art has from listening in on Tio’s conversations, and he’s tuned in on it so he’s going to know the landing location just as soon as the pilot does. But that’s not good enough-Art’s crew can’t wait for him to land and then bust everyone, because they can’t get close enough without being spotted long before the plane gets there.

Once you get out of the little town of Borrego Springs, California, the Anza-Borrego Desert is a million acres of nothing, and if you turn on so much as a flashlight, it’s going to stand out like a spotlight. And it’s quiet out there, so a jeep sounds like an armored column. You’re not going to get close even if you can get there in time once you learn the location.

This is why Art is going in a different direction-instead of trying to chase the plane down and then sneak up on it, he’s just going to land it at his own airstrip.

It’s outrageous, his plan. It’s so out there, so totally crazed, that no one’s going to expect it.

First he needs an airstrip.

Turns out that Shag knows a rancher out there where it takes about a hundred acres to feed a single cow. So Shag’s old buddy has him a few thousand acres and, yes, he has a landing strip because, as Shag explains to Art, “old Wayne flies to Ocotillo to buy his groceries,” and he ain’t kidding. And as old Wayne’s opinion of drug dealers is about the same as his opinion of the federal government, he’s happy to host this little ambush, and even happier to keep his mouth shut about it.

Next thing Art needs is a co-conspirator, because the aforementioned Washington, D.C., would be somewhat less than thrilled to have the Guadalajara RAC conduct a stunt like this several hundred miles away from his assigned territory. What Art needs is someone who can make the necessary arrests and seizures, get it in the press and then start to track the airplane back without any interference from the DEA or the State Department. So that’s why he has Russ Dantzler sitting next to him.

Another thing Art needs to do is jam the pilot’s ADF, switch him over to a new frequency and then talk him down to the party at old Wayne’s ranch.

So the most important thing Art needs is, as old Wayne might put it, one big old shitload of luck.

Adan’s sitting in the front of a Land Rover in the middle of the chingada desert with a few million dollars’ worth of coke in the air and his future in his hands.

And now the chingada radio won’t work.

“What’s wrong with it?” he snaps again.