Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

Adan has known this all along, but there was no point sharing any of it with Raul until the last possible moment.

Adan is staying in a different safe house than the rest of them and now he goes down into the basement, where the real assassination squad is barracked. These sicarios were flown in on separate flights over the course of the last few days, quietly picked up at the airport and then sequestered in this basement. Meals have been brought in a few at a time from different restaurants, or cooked in the kitchen upstairs and then brought down. No one has gone cruising or nightclubbing. It’s strictly professional. A dozen Jalisco State Police uniforms are neatly folded on tables. Flak jackets and AR-15s are neatly racked.

“I’ve just confirmed everything,” Adan tells Fabian. “Are your men ready?”

“Yeah.”

“This has to go right.”

“It will.”

Adan nods and hands him a cell phone that he knows has been compromised. Fabian dials a number and then says, “It’s on. Be in place by one-forty-five.”

Then he hangs up.

Guero gets the word ten minutes later. He’s already gotten the call from Parada, and now he knows that Adan intends to ambush him as he drives into the airport.

“I think we’ll show up for the meeting a little early,” Guero tells his head sicario.

And ambush the ambush, he thinks.

Raul gets the call from Adan on a secure phone, then goes down into the dormitory and wakes up the sleeping gangbangers.

“It’s off,” he announces. “We’re going home tomorrow.”

The kids are pissed, disappointed, their dreams of a cool $50K having just gone down the shitter. They ask Raul what happened.

“I don’t know,” Raul says. “I guess he got word we were on his trail and ran back to Culiacan. Don’t worry-there’ll be other chances.”

Raul tries to make them feel better. “Tell you what, we’ll leave early for our flight-you can go to the mall.”

It’s a small consolation, but it’s something. The mall in downtown Guadalajara is one of the largest in the world. With the resilience of youth, the boys start to talk about what they’ll shop for at the mall.

Raul takes Fabian upstairs.

“You know what to do?” Raul asks him.

“Sure.”

“And you’re good to do it?”

“I’m good,” he says.

Raul finds Callan in an upstairs bedroom.

“We’re going back to TJ tomorrow,” Raul says.

Callan’s relieved. This whole thing has been so fucked-up. Raul gives him his airline ticket and the day’s schedule then tells him, “Guero’s going to try to hit us at the airport.”

“What do you mean?”

“He thinks we’re going there to make peace with him,” Raul says. “He thinks we’re just protected by a bunch of kids. He’s going to gun us down.”

“He thinks right.”

Raul smiles and shakes his head. “We got you, and we got a whole crew of sicarios who’ll be dressed as Jalisco State Police.”

Well, Callan thinks, at least that answers my question about why the Barreras were using a crew of kids. The kids are bait.

And so are you.

Raul tells Callan to keep his hand on his gun and his eyes open.

I always do, Callan thinks. Most of the dead guys he knows got that way because they didn’t have their eyes open. They got careless, or they trusted somebody.

Callan don’t get careless.

And he don’t trust nobody.

Parada puts his faith in God.

Gets up earlier than usual, goes into the cathedral and says Mass. Then he kneels at the altar and asks God to give him the strength and wisdom to do what he has to do this day. Prays that he’s doing the right thing, then ends with, “Thy will be done.”

He goes back to his residence and shaves again, then chooses his clothes with more than particular care. What he wears will send an instant message to Antonucci, and Parada wants to send the right message.

In a strange way, he harbors hope for reconciliation between himself and the Church. And why not? If Adan and Guero can come together, so can Antonucci and Parada. And he is, for the first time in a long time, truly hopeful. If this administration goes out and a better one comes in, in this new environment perhaps the conservatives and liberation theologists can find a common ground. Work together again to seek justice on earth and the bliss of heaven.

He goes to light a cigarette, then snuffs it out.

I should quit smoking, he thinks, if only to make Nora happy.

And this is a good day to start.

A day of new beginnings.

He chooses a black soutane and drapes a large cross around his neck. Just religious enough, he thinks, to mollify Antonucci, but not so ceremonial that the nuncio will think he’s gone completely conservative. Conciliatory but not obsequious, he thinks, pleased with his choice.

God, would I like a cigarette, he thinks. He’s nervous about his tasks today-delivering Cerro’s incriminating information to Antonucci, and then sitting down with Adan and Guero. What can I say, he thinks, to effect a peace between the two of them? How do you make peace between a man whose family has been killed and the man who-as rumor has it anyway-killed them?

Well, put your faith in God. He will give you the words.

But it would still be comforting to smoke.

But I’m not going to.

And I’m going to drop a few pounds.

He’s going to Santa Fe for a bishops’ conference in a month and plans to see Nora there. And it will be great fun, he thinks, to surprise her with a svelte, smoke-free me. All right, not svelte, maybe, but thinner.

He goes down to his office and occupies his mind with paperwork for a few hours, then calls his driver and asks him to get the car ready. Then he goes to his safe and takes out the briefcase filled with Cerro’s incriminating notes and tapes.

It’s time to go to the airport.

In Tijuana, Father Rivera prepares for a christening. He puts on his robes, blesses the holy water and carefully fills out the necessary paperwork. On the bottom of the form he lists as godparents Adan and Lucia Barrera.

When the new parents come with their blessed child, Rivera does something unusual.

He closes the doors of the church.

The Barrera crew arrives at the Guadalajara airport fresh from the mall.

They’re loaded down with shopping bags, having basically tried to buy the freaking place. Raul had tossed the kids some bonus money to soothe their disappointment over the cancellation of the Guero lottery, and they’d done what kids do in a mall with cash in their pockets.

They’d spent it.

Callan’s watching all this with disbelief.

Flaco bought a Chivas Rayadas del Guadalajara futbol jersey-which he’s wearing with the sales label still attached to the back collar-two pairs of Nikes, a new Nintendo GameBoy and half a dozen new games for it.

Dreamer went strictly the clothes route. Got himself three new lids, all of which he has jammed on his head at the same time, a suede jacket and a new suit-his first one ever-carefully folded in a wardrobe bag.

Scooby Doo is glassy-eyed from the video arcade. Hell, Callan thinks, the little glue-sniffer is usually glassy-eyed anyway, but now his pupils are glazed over from two solid hours of playing Tomb Raider and Mortal Kombat and Assassin 3 and now he’s sipping the same giant Slurpee he’s been hitting on the whole ride over from the mall.

Poptop is drunk.

While the others were shopping, Poptop went into a restaurant and hammered beers, and by the time they caught up with him it was too late, and it took Flaco and Dreamer and Scooby to wrestle him back in the van to go to the airport and they had to stop three times on the way so Poptop could throw up.

And now the little shit can’t find his airline ticket, so him and his buddies are digging through his backpack looking for it.