on this side to look the other way when shipments cross the river. And with such money comes violence. It will be here, too. And it will change our lives, just as it has changed theirs.'
He flipped through newspaper clippings on his desk.
'Twenty men killed in Acapulco… seventy-two in Hidalgo… one hundred sixty in Durango… one hundred eighty in San Fernando… They set fire to a casino in Matamoros and killed fifty-two. They murdered twenty-two journalists and ten mayors last year and the leading candidate for governor of the state of Tamaulipas, which includes Nuevo Laredo. They hang people from overpasses-imagine driving the interstate through Austin and seeing bodies swinging in the wind. We do not do that sort of thing in America. But in Mexico, governors, mayors, judges, prosecutors, police chiefs, they all get killed. The last chief in Nuevo Laredo was killed the same day he started. And just last week, guards at the state prison in Nuevo Laredo opened the gates and allowed the prisoners to walk out.'
'Why?'
' Plata o plomo. Silver or lead. The cartels tell politicians and police they must take the money or they will take a bullet. They pay one hundred million dollars in bribes every month… and they kill a thousand people every month.' He shrugged. 'At least in Mexico it is easy to know which politicians took the money.'
'How?'
'They are still alive.'
He gestured south across the river.
'The cartels engage in street battles in broad daylight. The city posts alerts on Facebook and tweets on Twitter to warn the citizens, and the schools have shootout drills to teach the students to lie on the floor until the gunfire stops, just as we once had nuclear bomb drills in our schools. Imagine if there were running gun battles in downtown Austin or Houston or Dallas every day-that is what Mexicans in Nuevo Laredo live with. Because of us. Would we live with that because of them? What if today the mayor of Denver were assassinated and tomorrow the governor of Oklahoma and the next day the police chief in Los Angeles? And all by Islamic terrorists? What if the Saudis were sending thirty billion dollars each year to those terrorists, which they used to kill forty thousand Americans the last four years? We went to war over three thousand American deaths. But that is exactly what we are doing to Mexico. Each year we send thirty billion dollars to the cartels for illegal drugs. And they are terrorizing Mexico-with our money. And our guns.'
He waved a hand up and down the river.
'Four thousand gun shops line the Texas side of the river, from Brownsville to El Paso. Sixty thousand guns in Mexico have been traced back to U.S. dealers, guns that killed Mexicans.'
'Why doesn't our government stop it?'
'The gun lobby is very strong, Mrs. Bonner. The Congress, we cannot even ban the assault weapons. Gunrunners pay straw purchasers to buy ten, twenty AK-47s at one time-the gun shops know those guns are going to the cartels. Obama proposed to ban such multiple purchases, but the gun lobby scared him off.'
'He didn't stand up to them?'
'He wants to be reelected.' The congressman exhaled. 'We arm and fund the cartels, but we blame the Mexicans for the violence on the border. Just as we blame the illegal Mexican immigrants for all that is wrong in America, even though we are to blame for much that is wrong in Mexico. But to blame is easier than to accept responsibility.'
'I thought the cartels were fighting each other?'
'Yes, they are fighting for the right to sell dope to the gringos. If we would stop buying their drugs, the violence on the border would end. Mexicans would live in peace-and in Mexico. The best way to stop illegal immigration is to stop the drug trade. But the flow of drugs across the border is relentless, like the wind.'
He pointed down at the bridge spanning the river.
'That is International Bridge Number One. Interstate 35 begins right there at the bridge and ends at the Canadian border. That is the drug super-highway. Half of all drugs smuggled into the U.S. travel up I-35. That is what the cartels in Nuevo Laredo fight for, and that is what Mexicans die for. What that boy today almost died for.'
'You said he worked for a cartel?'
'Yes. Most likely Los Muertos. '
'The dead.'
'It is the most powerful cartel in Nuevo Laredo. And El Diablo is the most dangerous drug lord in all of Mexico.'
The congressman now motioned at the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.
'See the white building there, and the tall wall, just across the river? That is El Diablo's compound. He is young, only forty-six, handsome and quite charismatic, something of an icon among his people. He takes money from the rich gringos and gives to the poor Mexicans, like Robin Hood. Or perhaps Pancho Villa. He is the de facto government in Nuevo Laredo. He funds everything-schools, hospitals, the church…'
'The church takes drug money?'
'Everyone in Mexico takes drug money.'
'Why?'
'Because it is the only money in Mexico. El Diablo, he gives away one billion dollars each year. The Justice Department labels him an international criminal and puts a ten-million-dollar bounty on his head, but the people of Nuevo Laredo, they view him as a hero. He is beloved by his people. They say he is an honorable man.'
'A drug lord?'
'Or he was… until we killed his wife.'
'We?'
'FBI, CIA, DEA… who knows?'
'How?'
'By mistake. Five years ago, they had the surveillance on his compound, and they thought it was him in the caravan, so they tried to kill him. Only they killed her.'
The congressman blew out a breath.
'They say it changed him.'
'In what way?'
'Before he was just a businessman, selling drugs to Americans just as we sell weapons to the world. He did not take our attempts to kill him personally. He understood it was just business. But after his wife, that is when he became El Diablo.'
Lindsay Bonner stared south across the Rio Grande at the white compound.
'The devil.'
Enrique de la Garza stared at the woman's image on the seventy-two-inch flat-screen television mounted on the wall of his office in the white compound on the south bank of the river. The high-definition made her seem to be standing so close to him that he could almost inhale her scent. Her creamy smooth skin, her sensual green eyes, and most of all, her wild red hair. He liked the red hair on an Anglo woman. And she was a very alluring woman, the governor's wife.
'Counting all residents of Texas will determine the future of Texas,' she was saying on the television. 'And the future of the border.'
The Laredo station had interviewed her that morning in Congressman Delgado's office just across the river from Enrique's compound. She was in town to encourage Mexicanos in the colonias to complete the census reports. Of course, she would not venture into the filthy colonias herself; she was just a pretty face to attract the media.
A very pretty face.
He picked up the high-powered binoculars from his desk and walked to the bulletproof plate glass wall facing north and peered across the river at the top floor of the building in Laredo where the congressman kept his office. Was she still there? Just a few hundred feet away from him? He would like very much to meet her, the governor's wife.
'Mr. de la Garza, you still there?'
The voice on the speakerphone brought Enrique back to the moment. He dropped the binoculars from his eyes-but not before noticing the two Border Patrol agents down on the far riverbank, peering through binoculars at
