Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

Because the federales are pushing their way through the crowd now, searching for the Barrera brothers. Adan sees them coming and gets up to head for the back, slips and falls, gets back up again and, when he does, a federale points a rifle in his face and smiles, and Adan is dead, except the federale’s smile disappears in a whirl of blood and Adan feels someone grab his wrist and pull him down and then he’s in the water on the floor, face-to-face with a Yanqui who says, “Get down, asshole.”

Then Callan starts shooting at the advancing federales with short, efficient bursts-pop-pop, pop-pop-knocking them down like floating ducks in a carnival game. Adan glances down at the dead federale, and, to his horror, sees that the crabs have already scuttled over to feed at the gaping hole where the cop’s face used to be.

Callan crawls forward and takes two grenades from the guys he just shot, then quickly reloads, belly-crawls back, grabs Adan and, firing behind with the other hand, pushes him toward the back.

“My brother!” Adan yells. “I have to find my brother!”

“Down!” Callan yells as a fresh burst of fire explodes toward them. Adan does go down as bullets punch him in the back of his right calf and send him sprawling face-first into the water, where he stupidly lies watching his own blood flow past his nose.

He can’t seem to move now.

His brain is trying to tell him to get up, but he’s suddenly exhausted, much too tired to move.

Callan squats down, hefts Adan over his shoulder and staggers toward the door labeled BANOS. He’s almost there when Raul takes the weight off him.

“I got him,” Raul says.

Callan nods. Another Barrera shooter has their backs, firing behind him into the chaos of the club. Callan kicks the door open and finds himself in the relative quiet of a little hallway.

To the right is a door marked SIRENAS, with a little silhouette of a mermaid; the door to the left is marked POSEIDONES, with a silhouette of a man with long, curly hair and a beard. Directly in front is the SALIDA, and Raul makes straight for this exit.

Callan screams, “NO!” and pulls him away by the collar. Just in time, because slugs come ripping through the open door just like he expected they would. Anyone who has the time and manpower to stage this kind of hit is going to place some shooters outside the back door.

So he yanks Raul through the POSEIDONES door. The other shooter goes in behind him. Callan pulls the pin on one of the grenades and tosses it out the back door to discourage anyone from standing around there or coming in.

Then he jumps into the men’s room and closes the door behind him.

Hears the grenade go off with a dull bass thump.

Raul sits Adan down on the toilet and the other shooter guards the door while Callan examines Adan’s wounded leg. The bullets have passed clean through, but there’s no way of telling if they’ve broken any bones. Or hit the femoral artery, in which case Adan is going to bleed to death before they can get him help.

The truth is that none of them are going to make it, not if the shooters keep coming, because they’re trapped. Fuck, he thinks, somehow I always knew I’d die in a shithouse, then he looks around, and there are no windows like you’re supposed to have in American restrooms but there is, directly above him, a skylight.

A skylight in a men’s room?

It had been another one of Raul’s style points.

“I want the bathrooms to look like cruise-liner cabins turned sideways,” he’d explained to Adan when arguing for the skylights. “You know, as if the ship was sunk?”

So the skylight is in the shape of a porthole, and the bathrooms are ornate, and everything except the sink and the toilet is turned sideways. Which is just what you want, Callan thinks, if you’ve been pounding margaritas and go to take a piss-a seasick shitter. He wonders how many college kids have staggered in here in pretty good shape and then puked it all up once they got sideways, but he doesn’t think about it for long because that fucking stupid porthole above them is the way out, so he climbs up on the sink counter and opens the skylight. He jumps, gets a grip then pulls himself up and through and then he’s on the roof and the air is salty and warm and then he sticks his head back down through the porthole skylight and says, “Come on!”

Fabian jumps and pulls himself through the skylight, then Raul lifts Adan up and Callan and Fabian pull him up onto the roof. Raul has a hard time squeezing himself through the small porthole, but manages just in time as the federales kick open the door and spray the room with bullets.

Then they rush in, expecting to see dead bodies and screaming, twisting wounded. But they don’t see any of that and they’re puzzled until one of them looks up and sees the open skylight and then he gets it. But the next thing he sees is Callan’s hand dropping a grenade and then the skylight closes, and now there are dead and screaming, twisting bodies in the men’s room of La Sirena.

Callan leads the way across the roof to the back of the building. There’s only one federale guarding the alley in back now, and Callan dispatches him with two quick shots to the back of the head. Then he and Raul carefully lower Adan down to a waiting Fabian.

Then they take off trotting down the alley, Raul with Adan slung over his shoulder, toward the back street, where Callan shoots the window out of a Ford Explorer, opens the door and takes about thirty seconds to hot-wire the ignition.

Ten minutes later they’re in the emergency room of Our Lady of Guadalupe hospital, where the registration nurses hear the name Barrera and ask no questions.

Adan is lucky-the femur is chipped but not broken, and the femoral artery is untouched.

Raul is giving blood with one arm, on the phone with the other, and in minutes his sicarios are either rushing to the hospital or searching the neighborhood of La Sirena for any of Guero’s boys who might be lingering. They don’t come back with any, only the news that six of the partyers were killed, and ten of the “federales” are either dead or wounded.

But Mendez’s gunmen have failed to kill the Barrera brothers.

Thanks to Sean Callan.

“Whatever you want,” Adan tells him.

On this Day of the Dead.

You have only to ask.

Whatever you want in this world.

The teenage girl makes him his own pan de muerto.

Bread of the Dead.

The traditional sugary sweet roll with a surprise hidden inside, a treat which she knows Don Miguel Angel Barrera especially likes and looks forward to on this holiday. And as it’s good luck for the person who takes the bite that has the surprise in it, she makes one roll just for him, to make sure that Don Miguel is the one who receives the surprise.

She wants everything just right for him on this special night.

So she dresses with special care: a simple but elegant black dress, black stockings and heels. She applies her makeup slowly, paying particular attention to the exact thickness of the mascara, then brushes her long black hair until it shines. She checks the effect in the mirror and what she sees pleases her-her skin is smooth and pale, her dark eyes are highlighted, her hair falls softly on her shoulders.

She goes into the kitchen and places the special pan de muerto on a silver tray, flanks it with amber candles, lights them and goes into his dining-room cell.

He looks regal, she thinks, in a maroon smoking jacket over silk pajamas. Don Miguel’s nephews make sure that their uncle has all the luxuries that he requires to make his existence in prison bearable-good clothing, good food, good wines, and, well, her.

People whisper that Adan Barrera takes such good care of his uncle to assuage his own guilt because he prefers his uncle to linger in prison so the old man won’t interfere with his leadership of the Barrera pasador. Sharper tongues wag that Adan actually set up his own uncle so that he could take over.