by Jack Slater
The cartel chief didn’t know whether he owned this particular villa, or whether it was presently under loan from one of his lieutenants, or any of the businessmen who straddled the gray line between the straight and narrow in this dangerous part of the world, a place that had been home to the cartels for decades, and their predecessors for hundreds more. Still, it would suffice for now.
He knew that if one was to take a helicopter into the skies, flashes of red would appear on the land below, denoting fields of poppies that flowered three times a year. The marijuana plantations were easier to hide, though much less profitable now that a chill wave of legalization had swept across much of Mexico’s neighbor to the north.
Carreon looked down, his nose wrinkling as he spied the intentionally dirtied, foul-smelling sportswear he’d been forced to wear for the past eighteen hours, since his men had broken him free of the confines of Altiplano Prison.
This, at least, was something he could change.
He shrugged off first the zipped top, then the stained jogging bottoms, and left both in an untidy heap on the floor, correctly presuming that by the time he was done in the shower, both would be gone.
Standing naked in front of a floor-length mirror, he surveyed his frame with evident distaste. He shook his head. “What have they done to you, old man?”
Twenty-three hours a day in solitary confinement, with only forty minutes allotted daily to pace around a ten-by-ten foot concrete and steel cage for exercise had withered away what little muscle had survived into his fifth decade.
Times change, he mused.
Not too many years before, men like him lived little worse behind bars than they did outside. Prison cells could be made to look like high-end hotels, and there was little that was impossible to procure for an important prisoner, presuming of course that sufficient American dollars made their way to the correct bank accounts, and that a few scraps were left over for the guards themselves.
Perhaps $10,000 per month would have proved sufficient rent in those times to acquire a second suite of cells entirely, one that could be fitted with modern exercise equipment. Perhaps even a fitness instructor.
Still, at least some of the worst excesses of the past decade had melted free of his gut. Carreon wasn’t a particularly vain individual, but no man eyes with pleasure the softening of his waistline, the sagging of his skin, or the drooping of his cheeks. Perhaps his enforced diet would not prove a bad thing after all. It might be a solid foundation to build on later.
“But not tonight,” he grunted as he turned the shower on, twisting the knob until jets of steam sizzled through the air. Tonight would be an occasion of excess. Perhaps Ortega would arrive later on and bring with him some women to enjoy after dinner. His long-time lieutenant knew his master’s tastes very well.
There were women in the villa already, of course. He’d seen one or two of them, and they had seen him also, though they’d pretended not to. Old ones, aunts and grandmothers, dressed in black. There to cook and clean and keep their mouths shut. They would probably spend several days here, as long as he did, and then a few more, and if they kept their heads down then they would be driven away from this place with five thousand dollars in their pockets.
And if they didn’t, the coyotes would make short work of their corpses.
Soap suds frosted Carreon’s head and shoulders for a few seconds as he pulled them free of the stream of water flowing overhead as his fingers worked furiously to create a thick lather, then coursed down his body as he dived back under and flowed into the drain below, gray with the filth of days and the memory of many months more.
He lingered underneath the scalding flow for several minutes, his mind blank, his head resting against the tiled marble as the rain beat against the flesh of his back like the skin of a drum, a mellifluous gentle rhythm that became almost meditative.
Eventually he dragged himself from the shower, tilting his head to drain the water from it as he wrapped a heavy towel around his waist. He marveled at the luxury of such a small thing after so long without. All the bribes in the world couldn’t conjure up a shower like that, not through prison pipes.
The filthy tracksuit was gone by the time he stepped back out into the master bedroom. He walked to the small bar and removed two ice cubes from a small silver cooler. He placed them into a crystal whiskey glass and poured over a hefty measure of Macallan 1956. The exact cost eluded him, but he knew the liquor had to be expensive, if only because otherwise he would not be drinking it.
The liquid singed his throat as he knocked back half the dram in a fashion its distillers never intended, and his eyes closed as his mouth formed an expression that was half a grimace, half satisfaction.
Suitably refreshed, he refilled his glass, then dressed in a pair of pressed wool trousers and a light silken shirt. He felt…
Human.
With his base needs attended to, his mind wandered. His lieutenants had kept him apprised of business throughout his incarceration, of course. He was still entitled to legal representation, and although the authorities never wavered in their attempts to frustrate his exercise of that right, he was equally unbending in thwarting them.
But there was only so much detail that could be covered in those two-hour meetings. Broad brush strokes, when he craved minute detail, as relentlessly focused on every aspect of his business as Steve Jobs in his pomp.
“What are they saying about you, I wonder?” he murmured, searching for a screen or a remote control.
No television. Strange.
And frustrating.
Though Carreon would not admit it, perhaps not even to himself, he was as vain a man as any in his position might be. Like most cartel bosses of his generation, he had never courted the limelight. Escobar had done so decades before and made himself a target. The man had mocked the Americans, and while Carreon admired the dead man’s cojones, he was exactly that.
Dead.
No, there was no sense in tempting fate. The Americans were a simple people, when it came down to it. The truth was that they didn’t want to eradicate the drug trade, not really. Not even if they could, which he doubted.
After all, drugs built fear, and fear built jobs.
Jobs for prosecutors who made their reputations by going toe to toe with men like him. Then jobs for those same lawyers as they became politicians, running on platforms that promised results they failed to achieve in the courts. Jobs in the Coast Guard, in shipyards, for police chiefs and cops on the beat.
And so for someone to entirely choke off the flow of drugs across America’s southern border was also to put to an end the economic carousel that had spun faster every decade for over 50 years. They wouldn’t do it. Sure, they would take a scalp or two, extradite men like him from Mexican jails and parade them in front of American courts. They would find one of his narco submarines and send a camera crew below decks before scuttling the vessel to the bottom of the ocean, just so the heartland voters watching the nightly news knew exactly how terrified they were supposed to be.
They would never actually dare stop it. So for a man in his position all that remained was to avoid becoming one of those scalps.
Yet for all of that, Carreon itched to see his face broadcast on the evening news. Notoriety was a currency all its own. You couldn’t spend it. But it salved the soul.
“Yet why so obvious?” he murmured.
It wasn’t like Ortega, his right-hand man, to court attention in this way. His lieutenant knew as well as he did the price of fame. Understood that however alluring the flame, it never paid to become the moth.
More to the point, where was he?
Carreon’s fingers clenched around the crystal glass in his hand. He was not accustomed to being kept waiting.
But since he knew he would not find the answers he wanted inside the villa’s master bedroom, he finished the second measure of whiskey and set the glass down on the nearest surface. The ice cubes rattled before settling, a thin sheen of melt water alr
eady visible at its base.
He descended to the villa’s first floor, passing only a maid who bowed her head as he swept by. The possibility of questioning the woman about his present situation did not even cross his mind. She was no more important than the furniture, and as far as he was concerned, probably less informative.
Besides, he was taking the time to revel in his newfound freedom. Attired at long-last in clothing that didn’t make his skin itch, it was at first difficult to focus on the concern which slowly but surely began surfacing at the base of his consciousness.
Carreon stepped out onto the villa’s front terrace, an area the size of two tennis courts gored into the rocky mountainside and adorned with an Olympic length swimming lane that fell off the edge and glittered turquoise in the onrushing dusk. In addition to the glow emanating from lights embedded in the pool’s tiles, clusters of flickering candles sat on the edge of the terrace, spaced out every few feet.
Where is everyone?
The concern that had previously flickered now built itself into a flame as Carreon confronted the realization that after so long in the shadows, he was now a target. The target. Even the crooks in the Mexican government would not be able to overlook the crimes of a man who had blasted his way out of one of their jails in such attention-grabbing fashion. It didn’t matter how much he offered them now, they would have to come after him.
To encourage the others.
“Then why, Ortega?” Carreon breathed. Why greenlight such an operation – and more to the point, why do such a thing without at least consulting him first?
Could it be a play? Ortega making a move for control?
Carreon dismissed the thought almost immediately, but that it had occurred to him at all spoke to the wilderness of shadows into which he had now been thrust.
The whisky took the edge off the tide of anxiety sloshing in his gut, but he needed more. A table was set in the center of the terrace, and yet more candlelight reflected off the familiar shape of a silver champagne bucket. He looked around for someone to fetch him a glass, yet still there was no sight of company. Grimacing with irritation, he walked toward it, accompanied only by the sounds of his footsteps, and the cicadas in the distance.
He plucked a champagne flute that looked almost risibly delicate in his meaty hands and slowly poured from the ice-cold bottle, decreasing the angle of the glass until it was both full and level. He replaced the bottle in the ice water and walked toward the edge of the terrace, staring out into the mountains below. Flaming torches, spaced farther apart than the candles on the terrace, were set into the rocky earth throughout the villa’s grounds, and he focused on one in particular, his eyes growing heavy as he stared into the flickering flame.
For an instant, it disappeared. The cartel chief’s brow furrowed, and then a chill crept down his spine as he realized the cause. Someone was out there. Silent and close to invisible, save for the very second that he had passed in front of the fire.
Were they his?
Of course they are, Carreon chided himself, shaking his head. He was becoming an old woman well before his time. Perhaps that was a byproduct of spending time behind bars. Before his arrest he’d thought himself invulnerable. Whether that was still the case, he could not yet say.
He raised the glass to his lips and kept it there for a long time as the bubbles coursed down his throat. He only stopped when the champagne was almost gone, and the sound of footsteps that were not his own met his ears.
Carreon twisted, squinting his eyes until a familiar face hove into sight.
“Jefe,” the man said, pausing and bowing his head. “It is good to see you looking so well.”
The cartel chief released the tension in his face. “Warren,” he grunted, exhaling a not insignificant breath of relief. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“My apologies, jefe,” came the reply, the Spanish accented with a familiar Texan drawl, but perfectly understandable. “You’ll understand, we were forced to take certain precautions. No one could know where we planned to spirit you. It’s not safe. For now, at least.”
Carreon nodded, mollified at last by the show of respect. He convinced himself that his prior worries were just figments of an overactive imagination. “How long?”
The American, Warren Grover, brushed the palm of his hand over his shaven head as he considered the question. “Until it is safe,” he finally replied.
That was no answer at all, Carreon thought, his expression echoing his frustration. “And when will that be?”
Grover stretched out his arm and pointed toward the table at the center of the terrace, which his boss only now remembered was set for two. “You must be hungry.”
“Answer the damn question,” Carreon hissed. “Where is Ortega? I need to speak to him.”
“Of course,” Grover said, not waiting for his boss as he started toward the table. “We can talk about that.”
Carreon began to follow before he recognized what his subordinate had done. He stopped dead, fingers clenching the fragile champagne flute as his mind groped with the flagrant display of disrespect. It took him a few seconds to process the insult. Men simply did not speak to him this way. And if they did, they had to go, no matter that Grover was the head of his security wing. Insubordination could not be tolerated.
He dropped the champagne glass, and the tinkle of smashing glass rattling across the marble tiles caused Grover to stop, turn, and observe his boss with what appeared to be an amused upturn at the corners of his lips. He was close enough to the table that he could almost touch it.
“Is there a problem?” Grover asked, in English this time.
“Get me a phone,” Carreon said, his tone laced with danger.
Grover paused a beat before delivering his answer, the amusement now plain on his face. He dragged back the nearest of the two chairs and took a seat. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Security concerns. It’s just too dangerous.”
“I don’t give a damn what you think,” Carreon replied, stretching out his arm imperiously and jabbing his finger to accentuate his point.
“That’s a shame,” Grover murmured, reaching for a second flute as he poured himself a glass. “Unfortunately, jefe, things have changed since you were last with us.”
He turned his head toward the villa and let out a loud whistle that momentarily startled his erstwhile master, still standing a few feet away in a state of stunned indecision. Then he gestured at the remaining seat and repeated his offer for Carreon to join him. The Mexican did so, because in that moment he didn’t see any other option. It was plain that the plates were – or had already – shifting underneath his feet.
“Explain yourself, Warren,” Carreon croaked once he had the comfort of a solid foundation beneath him. “Where is Ortega? What is –”
He almost said happening but caught himself just in time. He had a very clear sense of what was probably occurring, even if he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that it really was. Yet saying it aloud seemed somehow wrong, as though it was crystallizing a situation that was still in flux.
“Ortega –” Grover started, stopping himself as a procession of servants neared the table, setting down platters of seafood and sushi. He waited until they departed before he resumed speaking.
“Unfortunately, Ortega is unable to join us,” he finally replied, relaxing into his chair in a show of proprietorial comfort.
“Why?” Carreon asked, numb to the inevitable answer.
“You know why,” Grover replied, casually filling a plate with sushi rolls. He looked up. “You gotta try the wasabi, jefe. I had it flown in from Japan to celebrate your release.”
“What have you done?”
Grover cocked his head, set the plate down, and reached into his inside breast pocket. He pulled out a phone, and the light from the screen reflected off his face like a child recounting a ghost story. His thumb flicked up on the screen before he set it down on the table and flicked it toward Carreon.
“What –?”
The cartel chief’s eyes fell toward the phone’s glow. They focused, then bugged wide as the color drained from his skin. Ortega’s face was as recognizable as the last time he’d seen his oldest, most loyal friend.
Nothing else was.
Blood splattered the white restaurant tablecloth, and Carreon stopped counting after he made it to seven entry wounds scattered across his lieutenant’s back. The other man in the image he did not recognize. But they did not matter.
Nothing did now.
As tendrils of shock tugged against Carreon’s tongue, attempting to still his power of speech, he fought to raise his gaze back to Grover’s smug face. “Why?”
His security chief – though that description no longer fit – shrugged, a piece of sushi suspended near his lips by a pair of chopsticks, which bit into the flesh rather than cradling it. “Nobody told you? There’s been a change of management.”
14
“I suggest you let me through, soldado,” sneered Senadora Josefina Salazar, her lips curling as she spat out that final word.
Soldier.
The disdain in the woman’s voice was evident. The cause, impossible to ignore. The acrid stench of the smoke still pouring out of Altiplano hung on the air, a thick, heavy blanket, a visible testament to the slow, inexorable failure of the hulking, tottering institution known as the Mexican state.
The soldier, a sergeant in his mid-twenties, stood his ground. “Senator, please, you cannot. This is a restricted –”
Salazar was too professional to look back at the huddle of press behind her, but she knew exactly where their lenses were pointed. After all, they were why she was here. And it was better not to look too concerned about people’s opinions of you. They tended to be more positive that way.
“It wasn’t so restricted when you failed to stop those monsters destroying this place, was it?” Salazar said, jabbing her finger angrily at the scorched prison walls a few hundred yards away, across the scrub. Each of the larger holes, those which a man could scramble through, was guarded by a military Jeep and several men. She had no doubt that the television cameras would linger on those areas. The shot was, after all, made for TV.