Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

And Guero-his apprentice, his assistant. An orphan whom he took off the streets of Culiacan as a manda to Santo Jesus Malverde, the patron saint of all Sinaloan gomeros. Guero, whom he raised in the business, to whom he taught everything. A young man now, his right-hand man, cat smart, who can do monumental figures in his head in a flash, who is nevertheless driving the Mercedes too fast on this rough road.

“Slow down,” Aviles orders.

Guero-“Blondie,” because of his light hair-chuckles. The old man has millions and millions, but he will cluck like an old hen over a repair bill. He could throw this Mercedes away and not miss it, but will complain about the few pesos it will cost to wash the dust off.

It doesn’t bother Guero; he’s used to it.

He slows down.

“We should make a manda to Malverde when we get to Culiacan,” Don Pedro says.

“We can’t stay in Culiacan, patron,” Guero says. “The Americans will be there.”

“To hell with the Americans.”

“Barrera advised us to go to Guadalajara.”

“I don’t like Guadalajara,” Don Pedro says.

“It’s only for a little while.”

They come to a junction, and Guero starts to turn left.

“To the right,” Don Pedro says.

“To the left, patron,” Guero says.

Don Pedro laughs. “I have been smuggling opium out of these hills since your father’s father was tugging at your grandmother’s pants. Turn right.”

Guero shrugs and turns right.

The road narrows and the dirt gets soft and deep.

“Keep going, slowly,” Don Pedro says. “Go slow but keep going.”

They come to a sharp right curve through thick brush and Guero takes his foot off the gas.

“?Que cono te pasa?” Don Pedro asks.

What the hell’s the matter with you?

Rifle barrels peak out from the brush.

Eight, nine, ten of them.

Ten more behind.

Then Don Pedro sees Barrera, in his black suit, and knows that everything is all right. The “arrest” will be a show for the Americans. If he goes to jail at all, he will be out in a day.

He slowly stands up and raises his arms.

Orders his men to do the same.

Guero Mendez slowly sinks to the floor of the car.

Art starts to get up.

He looks at Don Pedro, standing in his car with his hands in the air, quivering in the cold.

The old man looks so frail, Art thinks, like a strong wind could blow him over. White stubble on his unshaven face, his eyes sunken with obvious fatigue. Just a weak old man near the end of the road.

It seems almost cruel to arrest him, but…

Tio nods.

His men open fire.

The bullets shake Don Pedro like a thin tree.

“What are you doing?!” Art yells. “He’s trying to-”

His voice goes unheard under the roar of the guns.

Guero crouches deep on the car’s floor, his hands over his ears because the noise is incredible. The old man’s blood falls like soft rain on his hands, the side of his face, his back. Even over the roar of the rifles he can hear Don Pedro’s screams.

Like an old woman chasing a dog from the chicken coop.

A sound from his early childhood.

Finally it stops.

Guero waits for ten long moments of silence before he dares to get up.

When he does he sees the police emerge from the cover of the thick green brush. Behind him, Don Pedro’s five sicarios are slumped dead, blood running from the bullet holes in the side of their car like water from a downspout.

And beside him, Don Pedro.

The patron’s mouth and one eye are open.

The other eye is gone.

His body looks like one of those cheap puzzles where you try to roll the little balls into the holes, except there are many, many more holes. And the old man is coated with shattered glass from the windshield, like spun sugar coating the groom on an expensive wedding cake.

Foolishly, Guero thinks of how angry Don Pedro would be at the damage to the Mercedes.

The car is ruined.

Art opens the car door, and the old man’s body falls out.

He’s amazed to see that the old man’s chest is still heaving with breath. If we can air-evac him out, Art thinks, there’s just a chance that Tio walks over, looks down at the body and says, “Stop, or I’ll shoot.”

He draws a. 45 from his holster, points it at the back of the old patron’s head, and pulls the trigger.

Don Pedro’s neck jerks off the ground, then drops again.

Tio looks at Art and says, “He reached for his gun.”

Art doesn’t answer.

“He reached for his gun,” Tio repeats. “They all did.”

Art looks around at the corpses strewn on the ground. The DFS troops are picking up the dead men’s weapons and firing into the air. Red flashes burst from the gun barrels.

This wasn’t an arrest, Art thinks, it was an execution.

The skinny blond driver crawls out of the car, kneels on the blood-soaked ground and puts his hands up. He’s trembling-Art can’t tell if it’s fear, or cold, or both. You’d be shaking, too, he tells himself, if you knew you were about to be executed.

Enough is fucking enough.

Art starts to step between Tio and the kneeling kid. “Tio-”

Tio says, “Levantate, Guero.”

The kid shakily gets to his feet. “Dios le bendiga, patron.”

God bless you.

Patron.

Boss.

Then Art gets it-this wasn’t an arrest or an execution.

It was an assassination.

He looks at Tio, who has holstered his pistol and is now lighting one of his skinny black cigars. Tio looks up to see Art staring at him, nods his chin toward Don Pedro’s body and says, “You got what you wanted.”

“So did you.”

“Pues…” Tio shrugs. “Take your trophy.”

Art walks back to his Jeep and hauls out his rain poncho. He comes back and carefully rolls Don Pedro’s body up in it, then hefts the dead man in his arms. The old man feels like he weighs practically nothing.

Art carries him to the Jeep and lays him across the backseat.

Drives off to take the trophy back to base camp.

Condor, Phoenix, what’s the difference?

Hell is hell, whatever you name it.

A nightmare wakes Adan Barrera.

A booming, rhythmic bass.

He runs out of the hut to see giant dragonflies hovering in the sky. He blinks and they turn into helicopters.

Swooping down like vultures.

Then he hears shouting and the sounds of trucks and horses. Soldiers running, guns firing. He grabs a campesino and orders “Hide me!” and the man takes him into a hut, where Adan hides under the bed until the thatched roof bursts into flames and he runs out to face the bayonets of the soldiers.

A disaster-what the fuck is going on?

And his uncle-his uncle will be furious. He had told them to stay away this week-to stay in Tijuana or even San Diego, to be anyplace but here. But his brother Raul had to see this Badiraguato girl he was lusting after, and there was going to be a party, and Adan had to go with him. And now Raul is God knows where, Adan thinks, and I have bayonets pointed at my chest.

Tio has basically raised the two boys since their father died, when Adan was four. Tio Angel was barely a man himself then, but he took on a man’s responsibility, bringing money to the household, talking to the boys like a father, seeing that they did the right thing.

The family’s standard of living rose with Tio’s progress in the force, and by the time Adan was a young teen he had a solidly middle-class lifestyle. Unlike the rural gomeros, the Barrera brothers were city kids-they lived in Culiacan, went to school there, to pool parties in town, to beach parties in Mazatlan. They spent parts of the hot summers at Tio’s hacienda in the cool mountain air of Badiraguato, playing with the children of the campesinos.