'No one can stop you now.'
'There's a Mexican trying to.'
'Kill the governor for me, por favor.'
'We could kill his wife and daughter very easily,' Hector Garcia said.
'No. His wife and daughter did not murder my son. We do not kill women or children or innocents. We have already killed one innocent, the college girl.'
'And the Ranger.'
'Rangers are not innocents.'
'My men, they were careless, with machine guns.'
'Yes, careless and now dead.'
Enrique looked Hector in the eye.
'Will you do that small favor for me?'
' Si, mi jefe, I will send-'
'No. Do not send anyone. I want you to go north of the river. I want you to go into Tejas. I want you to kill the governor.'
' Si, mi jefe. I will leave tomorrow.'
' Bueno. But first, Hector, bring my son home.'
TWENTY-THREE
'You gave me no father, you took my mother, and now you take the only woman I have ever loved. You should not be so cruel. But then, why do I talk to you? You are not here to listen. There is no god on the border.'
Jesse and Pancho ran the river at dawn. He tried to run out his anger and his disappointment, his sadness and his longing, his loneliness and his broken heart. The sun just now peeked above the horizon and brought light to the borderlands. It had been one week since the governor's wife had left. It seemed as if forever.
Pancho barked.
He faced south as the river flowed. In the distance, two black objects appeared in the sky. They quickly grew in size. They came closer. Fast. And then that same WHUMP WHUMP WHUMP sound became louder and louder until two sleek black helicopters flying low and fast just above the river blew past in a rush of wind, weaving left and right with the course of the river.
Hector Garcia glanced out the window of the helicopter at the man and his dog. He once had a dog. Back when he was a captain in the special forces. A commando. Employed by the Mexican Army and trained by the U.S. Army. To fight the drug cartels. But his entire unit had hired out to the Guadalajara cartel as enforcers. Everyone except Hector Garcia.
He had hired out to Enrique de la Garza.
El jefe was different than the other cartel heads. He was educated and sophisticated. Religious and generous. A faithful husband and a family man. He even had a code of honor: Los Muertos do not use drugs, do not sell drugs to Mexicans, do not kill women, children, or innocents, and always tithe twenty percent to charity and church. They never initiated gun battles with other cartels; they only killed in self-defense or in the pursuit of justice; they killed corrupt politicians or policia only as a last resort, preferring instead to put them on the payroll; they were not wanton killers who hung corpses from overpasses to frighten the people or rolled heads into nightclubs or set fire to casinos to kill innocent Mexicans. They were not animals like the other cartels. They were civilized, like their leader. Hector had been twenty-five at the time, and after six years in the corrupt Mexican military, he yearned for order and discipline and honor. He had been Enrique de la Garza's right-hand man for seven years now. He would give his life for el jefe. He owed that much to him.
Because Hector had killed his wife.
Women were his weakness, and Liliana de la Garza made him weak. Her beauty was breathtaking and unparalleled among women. When Hector hired on and first met her, the lust ignited inside him. Over two years the fire grew and grew until his desire burned out of control. Until he thought he would go insane if he did not have her. One night, when el jefe was out of town, he drank the whiskey then went to her suite. He knocked on her door. When she answered, he pushed his way in.
He raped her.
She said Enrique would kill him when he returned. Hector knew his fate. The machete. He also knew that Liliana would attend mass at seven the next morning. She would travel in a caravan of Mercedes-Benzes to the cathedral. So he tipped off the gringos at the DEA in Laredo; he told them El Diablo would be in the caravan.
They killed Liliana de la Garza instead.
The Italian helicopter cruised at one hundred seventy-five miles per hour. They hugged the Rio Bravo, running below radar; and with the Predator drone gone from the sky, the U.S. Border Patrol could not see the two helicopters flying west along the border.
They were invisible.
They cleared Laredo and Nuevo Laredo and the maquiladoras where the gringos enslaved the Mexicanos and the wretched colonias that lined both sides of the river on the western outskirts and veered northwest over the vast Chihuahuan Desert. They would cut the corner and pick up the Rio Bravo again where it made the big bend. They flew low enough to see the jackrabbits and the roadrunners and the peasants heading north across the desert; they would most likely die before they reached the river. They soon passed over Sabinas and Nueva Rosita and the impressive Rio Conchos. Hector sat up front with the pilot as he did back in the military. But this chopper was not as it had been flying old Hueys in the army. El jefe had spared no cost when he purchased the fleet of six helicopters. So they traveled in air-conditioned comfort, and the men sat in the back cabin in leather seats and played video games on the flat-screen monitor; their AK-47s lay at their feet on the carpeted cabin floor.
Hector's thoughts returned to el jefe. He had always viewed killing as part of the business. He did not take it personally. Not even when the gringos killed his wife. But his son's death-that he had taken personally. Jesus de la Garza had been a mean, cruel, undisciplined boy. Of course, his father could not see the true boy. He saw only the boy he wanted his son to be. Hector had not been disappointed when the governor of Texas had killed him. But el jefe had become obsessed with venganza.
So Hector Garcia would seek el jefe 's revenge.
They rejoined the Rio Bravo at the big bend. They dropped down to just above the river surface and followed its course, veering right and left, through the steep rock canyons the water had carved into the rugged land over millions of years. The rock walls rose five hundred meters on both sides; brown water lay below and blue sky above. They flew so low that when they came upon two rafts of gringos floating down the river, the rafters bailed out for fear the helicopters would hit them. Hector and the pilot shared a laugh. It was a magnificent journey, but a short one. They soon emerged from the big bend and turned north into Tejas.
'Ten minutes,' the pilot said over the radio.
Hector checked his AK-47. They followed a narrow highway that cut through the lower portions of the Davis Mountains and passed through the little town of Marfa. They flew over cattle grazing and land that once belonged to Mexico.
'Two minutes.'
His soldados got ready. Hector had brought a dozen men, even though he expected no resistance.
'In and out,' he said over the radio. 'No shooting except on my order. A Team makes entry, B Team secures the perimeter.'
Six men would go in; six men would stay out.
'Thirty seconds,' the pilot said.
A small town came into view. The streets remained vacant. They flew in low and fast searching for the red roof with the clock tower. Hector pointed.
'There!'
The courthouse. The sheriff's office, jail, and morgue occupied the basement of the two-story courthouse that sat on a grassy block surrounded by trees, apparently the only trees in town. The pilot pulled the nose up, and
